I’ve actually been having no trouble at all with my engineer. At level 20 now and it’s been a breeze. I haven’t really looked into the class at all, just sort of going with the flow, but I’ve been using the flamethrower a lot along with a Thumper Turret. At the moment I’m using a pistol and shield. I have died a lot less on my engineer than on while leveling my warrior or mesmer and it’s been a ton of fun!
I find the Thumper Turret actually works much better at absorbing hits from mobs than phantasms and clones on my mesmer when I was leveling. Perhaps it’s been fixed now, but I hated the first 40ish levels of my mesmer because none of the mobs would react to phantasms and clones.