Guild Wars 2

Zenith.7301:

I mean, is an engineer with an air/fire sigil killing you? Not really.

Ever met a static discharge engi?
from 100 to 0 in less than a second if you run anything else than soldiers, knight or dire.

1. upgrade your gear every 5 levels.
there are npc merchants which sell white gear for your current level and will update their inventory, according to your level. the easiest-to-find ones are in divinity-reach, southern top level where the bank is. from there on walk down the west-ramp and you’ll find them on the right side in a corner.
also buying trinkets from the renown-hearts vendors once a heart got completed may seem like a waste of carma, but bolsters your stats decently as well.

2. kite mobs and use the terrain to get them into chokes, so your bombs / other aoe’s are most effective

3. use elixir H in the beginning as a heal since it’s easy to use, but learn the healing-turret-combo soon since it’s our best heal (place the turret, overcharge it immedeatly (works best if you spam the healing skill) and then blow it up right away to blast-finish its waterfield). if you use the turret, F1 + rifle #5 is a nice heal as well

4. you have easy and heavy access to cc’s as a engi. use rifle #4, big old bomb, thumper-turret overcharge, throw mine to cc the cat out of any veteran / group of mobs that could overwhelm you otherwise.

5. equip rocket-boots to break immobilize/cripple/chill and for escaping the melee-range of mobs. netshot (rifle #2) and net-turret (mainly it’s belt-ability) help you to keep mobs on distance as well. if you trait for exploding turrets, your healing-turret becomes a nice cc as well.

6. Flamethrower has decent damage on #2, but #1 is under-performing drastically. Switch back to rifle or another kit whenever FT #2 is on cd.

7. if you use bombkit and nades together, smokebomb and nades #3 are awesome loads of blind, that keep a group of mobs perma-bklinded if used decently. if you run the Flamethrower as well, #5 adds additional blind.

keep these 7 points in mind and experiment with all your utilities, then you shouldn’t run into problems on engi ever while leveling.

come back once you’ve hit 80 and you’ll get some help for pvp / wvw / endgame pve as well.

I don’t get why everyone complains about gearshield being to powerful when rangers get the 3s block on GS for just a 15 sec cd, 12 if traited…

gearshield is fine where it is.

turrets are rubish (for pvp and wvw), but if you want a easy build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpWrlcxzLseRCbBNyx8GQOhLIqN+xIGAA-T1BEwAMV+BT9nO6IAcBBit/AhHAwWlgkCgJpWA-w

maintains huge loads of power, is almost immune to soft-cc (and resistant to condis in general), brings good cc, and FT is a easy-to-use kit. Together with super-speed, netshot and magnet-pull you have all the means to catch people that want to abuse your rather short effective range, giving you the advantage when it comes to positioning.

I’d say a good beginner build into the deeper reals of what the engi is capable of. Just don’t camp in FT all day long while mindlessly spamming #1. with the loads of power to your hands, blunderbus, prybar and jump-shot will hit like a truck, so chain them in.

lauch PBR has some nice dmg on its own, and the newly added daze is awesome, but the s/d bolt is heavily delayed (long, invisible after-cast), and it has a rather long cast-time in itself(personal opinion). PBR’s knockback is nice, but given the other options you have for that slot, it still under-performs.

I rather take toolkit, goggles and rifle turret since I can cast throw wrench and instantly fire analyze and surprise-shot after it, making this into a 5-projectile insta-burst + 10 stacks of vulnerability and reveal. surprise-shot also has a decent base dmg (crits up to 3.5k), so the burst really hurst and if there are targets for s/d to bounce back on, it almost always downs zerkers and burns a decent amount of health from bunkers.

backpack regenerator is a nice trait in itself, especially since it does not work like the tooltipp describes it.
the regen from it will “silently” tick for 10sec (not even displayed in the combat log, but you can see the numbers and health increase directly) even if you switch into TK / EG for just a split-second, therefore giving you constant and reliable heals, even when mainly staying on rifle.
But it requires 4 points into alchemy, either hurting your cd’s (if you don’t go fully into tools) or your damage directly (if you leave out key-traits in firearms or explosives in exchange)
the dodge-bomb is simply too good to be passed on, therefore I just go 3 into alchemy and at least 1 into explosives in all my s/d builds.

+1
/15scharrss

its all over the wiki.
you can start here, http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage and dig trough the other related articles as well.

Dub.1273:

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Gaile Gray.6029:

definitely on their radar.

you mean … table?

Trashcan?

most likely^^

2 guildies just got kicked from a AC run by path-sellers.

They opened the dungeon, but since the dungeon-owner does not close the instance anymore if he leaves / gets kicked, path-sellers started to abuse that.

Sure, path-sellers could open their own instances as well and kick people later on from it, but making the owner of a dungeon non-kickable would increase the defensive options regular players have against it by just opening all paths themselves.

I don’t mind people 4- or 3-manning a dungeon to sell the slots, but the abuse of the current party-system increased heavily over the past weeks.

The only other option would be to only run dungeons with guildies to be safe, but that would make it just worse for pugs and everybody else affected by such disgusting methods.

Could you please one-up the priority of that problem and fix it with the next build by actually making online instance-owners non-kickable? I know that would also kitten up cases where the dungeon-owner has a permanent dc (or has to go), but that could be negated by actually allowing a dungeon-owner to leave the party without closing the instance if he does so himself, or allow kicking him by the group if he remains offline for longer than x minutes.
Ty.

>Do you guys prefer this meta to past metas?

Kinda yes, since it potentially opens team-comps to consider all classes, reducing the discrimination other classes expirience (if all classes had viable cele builds)
Kinda no, since the classes identity kinda becomes foggy and slips into the background, due to cele builds all serving as bruiser role, with individual animations. It’s a more open meta, but stale to watch or play.

>If you could rebalance the game so ALL of these comps were viable, would you? Do you want to face meta viable Decap/bunker/berserker teams?

Yes. The cele amulett is the epitome of balancing a class’ capabilities in its own, but specialising towards a single role (decap / bunker / dps) should always come with rewarding outcomes, on the cost of obvious incapabilities. In essence, cele should and must be able to compete with specialized amulets, but should never dominate them, nor get dominated.

>Do you like this about the celestial meta? Do you prefer the rotational requirements of other metas or the mechanical requirements of the celestial meta?

I enjoy both and would love to find a-net a golden path in the middle between both metas. tune down the impact of conditions, so they become supportive dots or utility effects, rather than complete shutdowns. also increase base-values of skills, and lessen their dramatic scaling (healing-skills are nicely balanced with healing power all across the classes for example, but power and condi-dmg do scale way too drastically with some skills, which is one of the reasons why cele currently dominates that dramatically).

>Do you want celestial builds for all classes so that the role that elementalist/engineer/warrior fill right now could be filled by any class?

Again, yes and no.
It would be awesome to give all classes the option to run a cele bruiser build, but more-so it is imprtant to maintain a class’ identity.
Necros are natural counter-offensive tools against condi-play.
Thiefs should always be able to jump in, work their magic and leave as fast as they appeared.
Guardians should always be able to maintain a groups survivability.
Warriors should bring blunt offensive force and offensive group-buffs, while maintaining their very own safety.
Mesmers should always be able to confuse and mess with opponents offensive mechanics, while bringing group-mobility to the table
Ranges should always be able to roam and snipe single targets, be it with arrows from afar or movement-impairing traps and mobility in close range
Engineers should always be able to deny areas, be it with explosives, turrets or blunt cc’s
And eles should always stay the physical weak, but extremely offensive class that they are, allowing for focused burst, aerial support/healing or areal denial with raw dmg.

If I had a saying in how classes should be balanced in general, I’d keep most as it is right now, but would allow each class to profit nicely from defensive stats if they choose to pick them, change damaging conditions to scale with a players’ toughness, and increase the direct base-dmg of most skills, while also tuning down their scaling with power.

Currently the game feels like “go burst or bust”, reducing most encounters to 10-15sec of ability-spam, while on the other hand cele builds negate any identity a class formerly had, just leaving them with unique attack-patterns and different animations. this must change in order for gw2 to truly become e-sports ready (not that I care about e-sports that much, but since that is a-nets proclaimed goal, they should consider drastic changes in their balancing to reach it).

I came up with this and called it “RNGeebuS/D”
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpkrtdxmKseRSehM6rJDCyAJEXvvA-TJBFwACuAA12foaZAAPAAA
Guarantees one abusive whisper every 15min.

3 steps to help you.

step one:
go back to hotjoin

step two:
take a screenshot from the build of a mesmer who “insta-gibbed” you.

step three:
post it here.

until then:
/thread

didn’t looked into the builds, just some general advice;
if you have enough crit-chance, go for strength instead of battle. battle was awesome until it got nerfed recently, now it simply does not perform anymore.

might-stacking itself was nerfed for 1/7th of its overall power, but still performs. You’ll just not get the same awesome outcome that you might have seen on youtube before the nerf kicked in.

Do it like me and don’t give a kitten.
I just spam nades, minefield and analyze all day long to stack vuln, and don’t even care about your personal dps. Dungeons are just a daily gold-grind and running the meta for them is
a) counter-productive since you have to invest a lot of gold beforehand.
b) unrewarding since you can cap vulnerability easy with niche-builds as well.
c) unnecessary since Dungeons are too easy to care about “best in slot”.
d) useless, since the meta barely performs in fractals, therefore is a even bigger waste to be set up for it there.

Justin, maybe it would actually BE a good idea to make MMR visible for each player in their statistics.
reduces the QQ on the forums and allows them to figure out why what matchup occurs that often for them.

funfact: it is not a bannable offense to lean back and smoke a cigarette while the whole map goes ape-poo.

Non-interested in ranked matches here.

I almost always play s/d engi in unranked, and killing turreteers goes as follows:
- full s/d volley on the rocket-turret (bouncing s/d projectiles prepare the turreteer for the coming burst)
- wait and kite for 7 seconds (gearshield once he runs in and tries a netshot/OS combo)
- blunderbus, OS, surprise-shot, rifle-jump on the engi.
I win.

Less
than
10
seconds

I’m not even listed on the LB, so do I get granted grandmastership in pvp for doing nothing but a basic, 10sec rota? xD

against cele engi:
bring as many condi- / terror-mancers as there are engis. we hate necros.
against cele ele:
shatter- or PU-mesmers. eles hate confusion.

abuse the necros as bunker with plague-form and let the mesmers nuke from off point.
there you go, 100% hardcounter against a cele-engi / -ele team.

yes, it’s a bug.
no, it doesn’t need fixing.
why?
because it performs well as it is.

on the other hand, for PvE it would be awesome if:
- turrets could crit
- would scale with all your values (including vitality / toughness)

That could open a whole new world for solo-dungeon builds and make them more fun and rewarding for new players who got hyped about the engi mainly because TURRETS.
Ofc these changes should never ever make their way into pvp because the QQ is already loud enough there.

Terrorsquad.2349:

Shaogin.2679:

Stark.1350:

3-4k from rocket turret is complete BS.

^^This here. Post screenshots or complete BS.

I’ll screenshot when I face a turret engi and get hit

nope, you make a screenshot of your combat log after being hit by the rocket-turret and show us the damage dealt from each skill. Because what I think is that you got hit by the turrets overcharge, were knocked on the ground, and the engi himself used rifle-jump to land on your head.

Turrets can’t crit, and their max dmg is 1.6k (rocket-turret). whatever has hit you there, it was most probably not a turret.

yes, that is one of the reasons why healing turret has such a high range, so you can drop and pop it on the go with swiftness, without having to fear to leave its field to early.

wvw is a blobb-fest and designed as such.
Still you can make it easier for defender to deal with them, without overpowering defenders.

Solutions to decrease the effectiveness of blobbs:
- make gates impossible to be damaged by players. (only siege works)
- change omegas’ auto-attack to fire direct projectiles instead or arcing ones (makes siege in general more useful against omegas, therefore discouraging omega-rushes)
- keep waypoints closed for 10 more seconds than the defense event goes, preventing a blobb to portal in right away by actually making waypoints perma-contested if a wall or gate keeps getting hit
- allow hit cannons / mortars / oil to produce white swords, but keep waypoints open until a wall or gate is hit (introduce different alert-states: white swords for permanent siege /camp-lords being hit with a 30sec delay (waypoint remains open), and red flashes (like the ones from dug up chests in silver-wastes) for hits on gates or walls , which do close waypoints, but are displayed on the corner of the minimap for every player currently on that map immediately)

blobbs on the open fields should remain as such, since
a) many people actually enjoy big zerg-fights
b) it gives PvE’rs the opportunity to gain map-completion without the need to dive too deep into the pvp portion of the game (cause many dislike pvp /wvw anyways but need it for their legendaries)
c) roamers have a easier time since the mayority of players is blobbing around instead of camping in every tower / camp permanently

glorious were the days of old ICP, juggernaut and kit-refinement…

ICP is fine, but juggernauts current iteration is bugged, and kit-refinement is not even considered in any serious build anymore (superspeed on s/d toolkit builds is still fun, tho)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlcTp6qlXxWLseNCbBByJkCRfkh8kP+wAA-TRSDwAs2fosGinK/SoE8l6Pg0BM4CAAwEU8HAApAiYqF-e

ascended trinkets are cheap, so use them

have fun.

It does and a lot do run it in WvW / PvP.
For PvE condis are just generally bad, even tho roughly 25% of the engis personal dps (even on zerker builds) comes from condis.

I personally don’t like them since I prefer the concept of YGWYS. Applied condis can get cleansed, spread or transmuted, opening your main dmg-source for becoming your death sentence, therefore I rather opt for power-dmg and reduce the options of counter-play my opponent has against me.
Just my personal preference tho, and condis have many notes on the pro-side as well.

how to kill golems in keeps with low defender-numbers:
build a row of 7 ballistas behind every outer gate (costs 320 supps per row)
man it with 7 people that have targeted a omega from above the wall
wait for the gate to drop
all balistas fire spreadshot and skill #3
problem solved (and the zerg usually dies with them)
enjoy your stomps.

in case it fails, you definitively should have dealt enough damage to deal with the rest via your inner defenses.

necro-post…
/15schars

I don’t mind these changes.
but I fear that they could be a stealth buff instead of a nerf to cele engis.
yes, you loose 2sec burn (in reality, the burn lasts for 7.5 sec on cele engi with balthazar runes, so the duration of IP would be decreased to 3.75 sec), but since you now have a free master-tier slot, you’d rather pick short fuse than accelerated packed turrets, giving all nades a reduced cd of 20%, increasing the amounts of all other condis we could spam.

we maybe loose the knockpack on our healing turret for it, but considering that cele rifle still uses the actual rifle and toolkit, that would only be a minor loss for all we get there.

For pve it would be nice of course, allowing us to choose the 10% dmg increase for nades + deal additional burning (even tho FT is already in the meta there), making non-meta nade-builds more viable than they already are.

Overall I’m fine with the change, but since it can be hardly considered as nerf, I don’t think the OP will achieve what he intends with it.

thumper turret:
will buff 3sec of protection every 10sec in 600 range for up to 5 allies if traited for it.
turret stats (increased range by 50% if traited / also clear indicator that the direct dmg is increased by 15% as well):
Cooldown: 50sec after destruction (36 if picked up)
Damage: 635
Crippled: 3 s
Number of Targets: 5
Rate of Fire: 3 s
Radius: 240
_
Thumper Turrets’ Overcharge:
Cooldown: 30sec upon activation (may triggers with a delay (read below))
Damage: 953
Launch: 400
Number of Targets: 5
Radius: 240
Combo Finisher: Blast
_
How to deal with thumper turret:
- even if traited, it’s effective range never excels 360, making it easy to avoid its overcharge and normal attacks.
- the turret is heavily armored and will most likely survive cleave-dmg, making it necessary to focus it directly for effectively clearing it. If you run a condi-build, don’t bother with it and attack the engi directly, since the protection it buffs does not help the engi against your condis as well.
- again, its overcharge is clearly indicated by the tingling noise and orange glow on the turret, and will not trigger immediately, but with the next attack-interval. dodging them completely is possible with high vigor uptime.
__________

general tipps:
unlike thumper (which attacks as PBAoE), rifle and rocket-turret can actively made confused in their targets chosen. The turrets AI will primarily fire at the last target being hit by the engis direct attacks, so mesmers can use their phatasms as meat-shields for some shots, while thieves and rangers can use pets / thieves guild to bate the engi into attacking their own AI, while hiding in stealth for a second. that will ensure that the turrets continue attacking pets /npcs / clones until the engi can get a direct hit on you again.
if the engi could not deal direct damage (block, blind, aegis, invulnerability) to a specific target, the turrets will choose the closest, not obstructed target to fire at. If a target is chosen (a direct hit got dealt) the turrets will continue to fire at it, regardless if LOS is maintained or not. turrets only switch target on their own if they current target becomes invalid (stealth / the target left their effective range / target got killed).
This targeting-behavior can be easily exploited by 2 players, facing a single turreteer, if the one player being targeted immediately breaks LOS, so the turrets continue to fire at him, giving the other player air to breath until the engi manually switches target to the remaining player, which then can easily swap positions with his friend to ensure that the turrets keep firing against obstructions.

also, full turreteers have no stunbreaker as long as the thumper turret is on the ground, still they can blow up the thumper and use its stunbreaker while being stunned (forcing the thumper turret on a 50sec cd). They have no leaps but the rifle-jump, and only 2 condi-clears every 15/20 sec (usually we blow up our healing turret, so 20sec is most likely), and one condi-transmute every 15sec. that means that it is extremely easy to stunlock or condi-spam a turreteer. Additionally the engineer lacks of stability, so not only has this build only one, really inconvenient stunbreaker, it can be cc-spamed to all times. If you ensure that the rocket-turret is down, you can actually pop stability, endure the thumper turret and keep the engi kicked out of his point to cap it right under his bum.

And that is why turrets in general don’t need a nerf. This build is grabage, and people that fall for it really just suffer from a l2p issue. Nerfing turrets is generally a bad idea, since they definitively have their usage in niche-builds, like net-turret with some nade-specs, flame-turret in conjunction with the Flamethrower or rifle-turret in s/d builds, all of which are no OP and fun to play against. It would be a shame to nerf turrets just because some people get confused by the amount of information required to play pvp successfully, and they suffer from this issue not only against turreteers, but against a wide variety of builds from most classes which are unrighteously deemed overpowered.
Stop the nerf-madness and rather teach people how to become better combatants.

So, you got killed by turrets recently?
Ok.
Here is what you did wrong:
a) you have fought 1v1 against a turret engi.
b) you have fought on point against a turret engi.
c) you have focused the engi first, instead of his turrets.
d) you have not used proper LOS to mess with the turrets’ targeting.

Some facts that you should be aware when fighting against turrets:

rocket turret:
will buff 3sec of retaliation in 600 range for up to 5 allies every 10sec if traited for it (easily to spot if the turreteer has a huge load of buffs to all times or not)
turret stats (increased range by 50% if traited / also clear indicator that the direct dmg is increased by 15% as well):
Cooldown: 50sec after destruction (36 if picked up)
Damage Damage: 1,429
Attack Range: 1,000
Number of Targets: 5
Rate of Fire: 4 s
Radius: 240
_
rocket turrets overcharge:
Cooldown: 20sec after activation (may triggers with a delay (read below))
Damage Damage: 1,588
Attack Range: 1,000
Knockdown: 2 s
Number of Targets: 1
Rate of Fire: 4 s
Duration: 4 s
Radius: 360
_
how to deal with the rocket-turret:
- use LOS to avoid its auto, or use high endurance regen (sigil of energy / high vigor uptime f.e.) to dodge it regularly.
- it is rather fragile, so focus and burst it down. after that you have 50 sec of free time to burst the engi.
- it is easy to avoid the overcharge skill of the turret since it will:
a) not fire immediately, but be queued up to be shot as the next firing-interval (regular dodging automatically solves that issue)
b) make the rocket-turret show a distinctive orange glow and make a tingling noise as soon as the engi triggers (and queues up) the overcharge.
- note that the overcharge produces an arcing, fast traveling, homing projectile. LOS may be ineffective behind too low cover.
__________
rifle turret:
will buff 5sec of fury every 10sec in 600 range for up to 5 allies if traited for it.
turret stats (increased range by 50% if traited / also clear indicator that the direct dmg is increased by 15% as well):
Cooldown: 20sec upon destruction (15 if picked up)
Damage: 476
Attack Range: 1,000
Rate of Fire: 2 s
_
rifle turret overcharge:
Cooldown: 30sec after activation.
Damage Damage: 476
Rate of Fire Increase: 50%
Attack Range: 1,000
Vulnerability: 8 s
Duration: 10 s
_
how to deal with the rifle turret:
- its direct damage is minuscule so you can ignore it, unless it is traited for buffing fury, in which case it should be taken out right after killing the rocket turret and right before engaging the engi directly.
- its overcharge doubles the dps, which can be a potential problem. but – like the rocket-turrets’ overcharge – it is clearly announced by the orange glow and tingling noise. Use wall of reflection to let the turret kill itself or LOS to avoid it for 10sec.
__________

they are definitively not ranged.
remember the 4 elite-guards in TA forward in that deadly bubbles?
I like to use toolkit #4 to simply run into them and smack the guards until they give in, because these bubbles destroy projectiles not only on their outer sphere, but inside as well.
My preferred method wouldn’t work if TK auto and #3 were registered as projectiles^^

I guess you either had lag, the eles had blocks (arcane shield / aegis) up, or you simply were slightly out of range.

one tipp:
even tho elixir H is a nice (random) swiftness boost along with elixir B, try to go for the healing turret ASAP and get its correct combo into your reflexes. It’s by far our most valuable healing-skill and you’ll need it a lot later on.

Same goes for targeting practice with nades once you have the grenadier-grandmaster trait unlocked (post level 80, when finishing your personal story would be a good time to practice with it). Without that trait nades kinda under-perform dmg-wise and are more of a burden than a help while leveling.

Not enough QQ in this thread…
I guess I pack out my old turreteer build and hang-glide in khylo for a bit…
Or I could go to sleep…
Hard decissions.

3 parts for that one:

part 1 – no technical solution in sight
It is simply impossible for a moderator (or program) to track every written sentence to double-check it for insulting content before it gets submitted. A program is simply not capable of filtering them properly (except for buzzwords), and there are WAY too few moderators out there to check all posts preemptively. And the staff we have is actually occupied with looking into tickets and hunting down bots/hackers.

part 2 – deal with insults on your own
As you rightfully have stated already, pvp easily cooks up emotions, therefore it is only natural that people vent. If they vent on you, you can always block them, report them for verbal abuse, or – the most straight forward option – ignore them. A post can only be referred to as insult if you take it as one (still, not everything you perceive as insult is an actual one), so it is up to you to discard it for yourself and stand above it. Learn to ignore them, take your amusement out of it, or try to calm the person down respectfully (a flamewar is not considered “respectfully”).

part 3 – This is a game, kids don’t care, deal with it.
The End.

Can someone explain me why people – after 2.5 years – still respond to troll-threads?

lore-wise you will love charr in iron legion. The whole quest-line in engineered around engineers.
for wvw and pvp small asuras are your best friends, even tho the later got half-nerfed with standard-models (luckily only a few people use them outside of the competitive scene).
if you like bulky trenchcoats with rusty metal-platings, go for male humans (they look best in middle armor), or go for female human if you prefer bare flesh.

sylvari are kinda meh for engi (plants + gears == wat), but since scarlet is a thing, you have enough fanboys (soooorry, immersed people) running around in that combo. I cringe every time I see them, tho.

and norn?
welp, nothing more entertaining that seeing one of those with that giant mustache + monocle running around with a flamethrower. outside of that combo they simply look weird, especially since I expect a norn engi to excel in nothing but the alchemical art of beer-brewing.

velhavn.7694:

if you’re gonna use magitech armor, then human engineer is the good one,

here is what charr look like in new HoT helm :
http://i.imgur.com/pD8QIg4.png

“HURRF HUR FRRRR DURRRRRRRR”
I feel bad for our fellow charrs.

healing bombs
blind-spamming + 4k autos on up to 5 targets
nade-spamming (backline-build)
s/d (focus build)
FT badge-farming (blobb-build)

and these are just the ones I like to use.
I guess others have other preferences as well.
But we already had this discussion multiple times, so here are the short-ndes of the current consensus:

Cons:
- low/no stab, needs a guardian to be carried
- mid armor, needs more defensive cd’s than GWEN
- GWEN-stuck commanders will discriminate engis / not open for experiments.

Pros:
- Extremely versatile / gap-filler for all possible roles (focus, melee, backline, support, you name it)
- superior melee cleave and dmg, while still maintaining the necessary survivability
- loads of aoe-cc, perfect in combination with a WoC or Null-field.
- surprise-factor. engis are rare in zergs / GWEN-stuck enemy commanders will avoid meteor-showers and wells, but ignore nade-barrage, minefield, BoB, similar skills.
- superior mobility. we can enter, drop skills (minefield after empower f.e.) and leave a enemy-zerg before they (could) react.

cele rifle…

welp, even if it sounds counter-intuitive, engis will always try to stick in mid to close range to you, so we can profit the most from blunderbus, jumpshot, nades and toolkit. even tho nades say they are on a 1500 range, their projectiles are that slow that we only use them in 2 modes:
carpet-bombing a point without specific target from afar, or nade-spamming a single-target on point black.
lessons to be learned from this: if a engi charges towards you, back off and kite him. and don’t just run in a huge curcle around him, switch your pattern often with teleports, leaps and stealth to avoid preemptive nades flying towards the point you’re running to.
use LOS to avoid the long-range auto of our rifle. we definitively will rely on it if we recognize that our nades will not hit efficiently. dodge our magnet-pull. if you don’t you end in downstate without any option to avoid that. always expect a second magnet-pull right after. if you dodge, good engis will interrupt the cast and have it available again after 4sec cd.
we don’t have a cd on weapon / kit swap, so always expect us having access to our full kitten nal. if we loose health too rapidly, we will trigger elixir S (invulnerability) or our shield-block. you have no option to work around that, but to back off and burst us again within 16-20 sec (traited or not). else our block is off cd, and every 60sec we have elixir S ready as well. Elixir S is our only stunbreaker on this build tho. try to bait it out and you can stunlock and kill us pretty easily, unless we get the option to do exactly that first.
always dodge if we come really close, else overcharged shot will knock-back and prepare you for impending death.

cele engis have a wide variety of skills to choose from, and some like to take utility goggles with them if they meet a stealth-heavy thief. the goggles have a 40sec cd, are a stunbreaker and give us immunity to blind for 10sec. additionally their toolbelt skill is called analyze, the one that inflicts 10 stacks of vulnerability for 10sec and also puts reveal for 6sec on you. analyze has a 1.2k range and is a insta-cast (it can be triggered even while we’re stunned). the cd of this skill varries between 30 and 23 sec, depending on how much points your friend decided to go into our tools-line.
Choosing it in duels against thieves or mesmers is a kittenish move, but if your friend decides to do so, you have little to no chance to gain control over the fight.

anyways, engineers are the natural hard-counter for thieves, so don’t feel bad about getting obliterated so often by them.

balthazar is awesome as gap-filler for condi-nade builds since they have naturally only one source of burn: ICP
flamethrower on the other hand comes only with one condition: burn, but plenty of access to it. Burn scales poorly with condi-dmg, still we can profit from the dmg-boost on burning targets, so you just want your burn to stick on your target (and maybe some people around it), while you use the active dmg-modifiers to deal serious dmg. we already have plenty access to burn, so instead of adding one more source, I added a dmg-modifier from runes of flame-legion to underline the already present trademarks of this build.

also keep in mind that this is a pvp build. In wvw I still preffer s/d over everything else and did not have tested this build yet. from the looks of it I’d say it’s too immobile to catch fleeing roamers, but will deal just fine with everything that decides to stay.

there’s no point in arguing about that anymore.
a-net already has decided on a concept for our specialization, they just not have published information about it yet, still they are far beyond the concept phase.
whatever we get, since it will involve a 2h-hammer it is already awesome.

once you have speedy kits and don’t need elixir B anymore, combine slick-shoes’ superspeed and rocket-boots for superior leaps.
if you want more dmg, equip throw mine and forceful explosives instead slick-shoes.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpWrlcxzLseRCbBNqxAqJI6NOkq8xIEAA-TJBFABCcBAQZ/hoLDAwDAAA

run this for more offensive use of your flamethrower
picking juggernaut is bad, because the trait currently is broken. no toughness for you.
ofc you could still pick sigil of strength to stack might, and run hoelbrak runes (better option for pvp than strength), but people often do the mistake to be too tanky than is good for them. Additionally strength is a boon. boons can get ripped, corrupted and in the worst case. stolen by thieves to be used against you. I personally don’t like to build around a boon-stacking mechanic and rather try to balance the base-values of a build, while picking useful boons on that way if they seem worth it. Yes, might-stacking is quite powerful, given the results, but on the same time one of the main-reasons why necros even counter engis on power-builds that hard.

runes of the flame-legion give a 7% dmg-increase on burning targets, and also increase its duration by 30% (you build now features way more burn-sources, thx to ICP), add on top of that the base-dmg increase from FT #1 of 10% on burning targets, and you almost deal a fifth more dmg than your base-power would allow normally. To augment that to even a quarter more, add sigil of force instead of air.
Also your stunbreaker actually helps you to close the gap to kiting enemies, and your overall higher base-dmg, along with the additional sigil of air and fire-procs give even the FT auto quite a oompfh (yes, the auto is still bad (compared to a proper rotation), but I prefer fun over efficiency, and there is nothing more entertaining than literally melting the faces off of your enemies).
additionally you have better defense with TK blocks + 65% uptime on vigor, better control with box of nails + exploding turrets + magnet-pull + slick shoes, better mobility with speedy kits + super-speed…
basically you have better everything.

it survives, it is viable cc-support, and the best thing: even the god-kitten auto-attack on FT is not a waste anymore.

dude, I was the engi.
but yes, warris usually are limited to rather… dull combat strategies, none of which surprise.

choovanski.5462:

Arkvan.3561:

Bunker-Turret-CC Engis are one of the few things I honestly struggle with (the other one being blind thieves who know how to play) as a Hambow Warrior. I can honestly say I wish I could beat them to death with their own turret.

you are playing the last spec a turret engineer wants to face, the high health high armour cc monster. kill the rocket turret with either your hammer or bow, then stunlock that engineer. if the thumper turret is up they have no stunbreaks, so the Earthshaker > staggering blow > backbreaker combo will work extremely well. pin down on the bow will never be broken they will just have to sit there and eat your arcing arrow.

works unless the turret engi decides to break LOS and wait for the hambow to step on point in order to hit the engi. the warri then has ~8 of stability to try whatever until he becomes a flying mess of limbs, serving as bullseye for all cc’s the engi can pump out. by the time the engi runs out of cd’s, the warri has bitten the dust.

Arkinos.7245:

Raiff.6742:

Those saying Engie has no range abilities/weapons seem to miss out that the Rifle is a 1200 weapon, the pistols can be traited to about the same range, Elixer gun is 1200, Grenades can be up to about 1500 range. You can (and I have) make a very successful range Engie., especially if you like turrets.

The rifle’s basic attack is worthless, the real dps come from 3 and 5 which are both melee range. Rifle also has only 1000 range on the basic attack, not 1200.

Pistols cant be used properly in groups because of the condi caps.
Flame Thrower has ~400 range which is a little bit more than some GS aoes.

dunno about you, but I run s/d for a pretty long time in wvw now and all of its variants use the auto to gap cd’s. running berserker stats gives you a good 2.4k base-crits, going up to 3.4k – 3.9k even – after considering guard-stacks, bloodlust and the might from other allies. sure, 7k-8k blunderbus, prybar and 10k-12k jumpshot hits are nothing to ignore, but still the auto delivers quite a heavy punch, given that it is effective just as much on all ranges.
group-fights are actually pretty relaxed when you can AA any given target to death in 5-10s, and spare your cd’s for those who decide to go after you.

@nano, tried it out today.
that is my normal s/d build
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpkrtdxmKseRSeBN6rkkpAyAsAxFwvA-T1BEwAMV+xS9n26Ayt/AgHAAhLAwWlgkCYUhRA-w

after just switching to runes of the defender and armor mods, I thought to myself, why not go the full way and become the most annoying, rng-based opponent ever. so I went for this.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpkrtdxmKseRSehM6rJnCyAJEXvvA-T1BEABMp8jF1fIf/h20BAwDAggLAwWKBJFA7CrA-w
man, tonight was a great night.
Random blinds, chills, 3-4 might, aegis, heals, and transmutes…
Measured in rage-whispers per minute, it was pretty effective.^^

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Plague_
it says craft-able because this ring can be crafted from a acc-bound recipe drop in CM. you can not craft it without the recipe, and the recipe itself is acc-bound.
so yea, getting trinkets will be annoying, but on the other hand, 2 ascended accessories can be obtained by doing all guild-missions 4 weeks in a row (they only require around 1h per session, giving you 7 guild-recommendations, and for 12 you get 1 trinket, so 2 weeks for one, 4 weeks for both)
and ascended rings are even faster, and easier obtained:
you can buy one ring for 10 pristine fractal relics, and you get a guaranteed drop of them once every 10 fractal levels per day.
1-9 = one guaranteed relic per day
10-19 = one guaranteed relic per day
20-29 = one guaranteed relic per day
30-39 = one guaranteed relic per day
40-50 = one guaranteed relic per day.
if you run lvl 1, 10, 20, 30, and 40 you get 5 relics per day, so 2 rings in 4 days.
then again, agony prevents you from doing so (high-dmg condition that will kill you right on the spot, depending how much agony-resistance you have) so if you just do lvl 1 once daily (no agony on the levels 1-9 so beginners have it easier), you’re done in 20 days with your rings
and as you noticed, one amulet only costs 20 laures and 250 wvw badges anyways.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Equipment_acquisition_by_stats

this link should help you out.
in essence, you can craft rabid, buy rabid from dungeon tokens (CM / AC), buy rabid from WvW-badges, and buy rabid from karma.
since you farm the mats yourself anyways, one exotic will cost you only ~2g since you can buy the insignia and combine it with leatherworker 400 right away without the need of a recipe.
components needed for all armor types, for rabid stats:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rabid_Intricate_Gossamer_Insignia

edit:
and no, ascended armor only gives a 5% stat boost in comparison to exotic, so only weapons and trinkets are worth to go for directly. Play the build I gave you a bit with exotic armor (and the correct runes / sigils) to see for yourself how it feels. If you decide later on to make changes or switch it to something else, you will be happy to not have wasted 100’s of gold for ascended armor.
I made the same mistake in the beginning as well, by crafting PVT ascended armor that I now rarely use. Luckily I now have spare-sets of ascended celestial, berserker and Knight lying around (I was always more the power-engi type of player).

another tipp:
if you mix stat-types, always make sure your trinkets / weapons are the offensive part of the mix, since they yield better stats and therefore ensuring that you don’t end up as sitting duck, ready to be picked up by a bursty opponent.
That also means that you can craft rabid weapons / buy rabid trinkets right away without fearing that they ever become useless in your condi-build. The same goes for berserker on Power-builds as well.

err, rifle-turret.