To answer your question quickly, yep, just spamming 1-2 attacks will get you killed quickly, particularly with engineer. So in order to survive as one you will have to swap to other kits/abilities quickly to get access to various conditions, fields and ways to mitigate the damage coming toward you. Likewise these same fields can be used offensively by firing projectiles through them for various effects or simply standing in them/coaxing mobs into it to suffer the effects.
Look for access to blinds and use your environment to your advantage (corners of buildings/structures/around trees etc), the engineer has a lot of access to blind fields and aoe that can really help, as the majority of the mobs damage can be mitigated this way. Something like this perhaps would be good to take advantage of blind;
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFAUlUUhqqYJWwPLQ7FA-e
That’s just the skills, don’t worry too much about traits at this point, and for armor, go straight for vitality so you have a decent health buffer as you learn engi, throwing in armor with Power as you become more confident with it.
Its difficult to learn anything if you just get one shot off the bat because of very little HP.
Overcharged Flame turret is a pulsing smoke field, Grenade kit #3 is a blind, Bombkit #4 is another pulsing smoke field, and later onward once you get access to elites, mortar kit has another pulsing blindfield on its #4.
You could also go condition damage later on too, grenade/bomb/FT turret can take advantage of condition damage a lot via burning stacks (poison/bleed for grenade) but it takes a little getting use to as conditions are damage over time whereas Power is straight up damage as fast as you can cycle cooldowns which as you alluded to toward the end of your post is actually how engineer is usually played – cycling cooldowns out through every kit including your main weapon set.
Note the difference however that Power is mitigated by a mobs toughness, but condition damage /bypasses/ toughness.
If you’re not dealing with too many mobs at once and its just a single mob or two giving you grief, consider swapping out flame turret for the flame thrower kit, it’s got a few significant differences;
- its auto attack isn’t something to yell about but its great for tagging enemies when say you’re at a big event.
- has a very hard hitting #2 that finishes off as a blast, combine this with your healing turret toolbelt Regenerative Mist for a quick top up of health on the move if your healing turret is on cooldown. Outside of that, when you fire the glob at an enemy, wait for it to JUST pass through the enemy then detonate it right behind them to get the most out of it.
- pushes enemies back and extends their burning duration by 2 seconds on #3
- produces a fire field in a line on #4 (try to keep mobs on this field, #3 will help you with this if positioning is not easy)
- single AoE blind on its #5, see an enemy about to wallop you? trigger it to on-demand cause that attack to miss, lifesaver if you run out of endurance/dodges, can even be swapped to and used while being stunned/ragdolled around!
- The toolbelt ability doesn’t seem like much but currently at endgame plays a significant role in getting insane damaging ticks with burning, but for the moment its still very nice supplemental damage (even when using power) when dealing with a tough mob.
Other alternative setups could be..
Healing Turret / Flame Thrower Kit / Flame Turret / Bomb Kit / Mortar Kit (if you dont like having RSI with throwing grenades constantly)
Healing Turret / Flame Turret / Elixer U / Bomb Kit / Mortar Kit – Elixer U’s toolbelt has 2 possibilities, it can come out as a smokewall which blinds (and destroys enemy projectiles!) or a reflect wall, which while doesn’t blind, causes enemies to get their shots reflected back at them (and since they generally deal a lot of damage you can make short work of them). Elixir U itself helps with getting through your rotations quickly as well.
.. And many more, one thing you’ll quickly realize I think with engineer is that they’re incredibly versatile, which is a blessing and a curse, you can cover all sorts of gaps but in order to be effective you will find yourself changing your build/swapping abilities around a lot to actually get a decent amount of damage going and mitigating damage dealt to yourself.
Some other bits for food for thought;
Net Turret paired with rifle is a lot of immobilization spam with an overcharge stun, excellent for dealing with that one really tough or high damage melee mob like warrior and thief types, Net Turret toolbelt is also a second rifle #2.
Toolkit is incredibly useful, magnetize particularly is unique in that if you need to ‘peel’ a mob or simply bring it into your fields/killzone, that will help you do it. Toolkits Auto Attack hits very hard in power builds as well as crippling foes hit by it, on top of that nailbox for more cripple/bleeds and prybar is the toolkits nuke. Gear Shield will buy you time for cool downs to come back up when things get too hot.
I hope this helps, if you have any other questions please feel free to ask.
