Guild Wars 2

So SoS, how does it feel to have SBI do their old “you siege a place for a few hours we swoop in and take it kthxbai” tactic on you guys several times?

It isn’t fair, but hey war isn’t fair, but maybe now you’ll understand why the hell we are all so kitten confused on JQ that we get double teamed all the kitten time.

SBI must have a pretty darn good PR machine to keep them so squeaky clean reputation wise cus I rarely if ever see people attack them when they are open. If, god forbid, we leave our flank open for a second its attacked immediately by whomever is hungry.

Probably the reason we are so jaded. Countless times I see us push into SBI lands only for you guys to attack our flank instead of attacking SBI elsewhere. But, whenever SBI attacks us you join in on the party.

Last night we had to try and defend you guys attacking dawn over and over while sbi attacked our bay over and over. Obviously we would lose one. Funny thing is the entire time SBI was rampaging over all of your territory.

First and last wvwvw post I’ll ever make cus in about a few seconds I’ll be called a whiner or a brat. Personally I don’t care. Just pointing out the obvious that you guys clearly cannot see.

…unless he server hops. He just got the game a week ago. His goal was to 100 percent the map. A justifiable goal, can be done with time. Until I told him how the map works in Eternal Battlegrounds.

He was actually quite frustrated. The server I’m on has been blue for the past month now with no signs of an actual color swap any time soon (we are going to be in this tier for a while at number 2). Eternal Battlegrounds is very defensive and our cluster is VERY competitive. Rarely, if ever, does one color actually take another colors keep. I’ve seen it happen once.

So, anet, any changes any time soon on this? What about random colors every week? No one cares if they are blue, red, green, supposedly the tactical advantage is the same. It would bring more people into WvWvW too as they would pop in for there vistas then maybe think its cool and stick around.

I feel even worse for those on servers that get stomped. They have zero chance to get world completion.

Bug fixes are another story, he was only mentioning the changes.

A bug fix is something like: Rocket Turret can now be detonated underwater.

A change is something like: Rocket Turret now fires three rockets instead of one.

Changes are usually at the top of the patch notes. Bug fixes are usually relegated to the bottom in one big clump. This is standard practice, as most customers want to see what has changed, not what was fixed. Also, a lot times patch notes simply state “fixed several bugs with so and so.”

This is because the community at large is not yet privy to what was broken, and most companies like to keep it that way.

These threads always devolve into two sides; those that think Engineers need buffs, and those that think they are fine. They are not fine. There’s a reason they are the least played class right now. I see maybe one or two engineers in LA. I love the class and all its tricks, but that’s all I feel like at times, a trickster or a gimmick.

Turrets are a gimmick. Tool Kit is a gimmick. Bomb kit is laughable as a melee kit other than WELL coordinated groups that can stack finishers with your abilities. Mortar is a gimmick. You can leap on a mob, blunderbuss, switch to elixir gun and acid bomb, then back to rifle, look like a clown the entire time, then marvel how a ranger just out damaged you from range with one volley. The profession needs A LOT of work.

Be careful Vol. Although this is supremely useful and makes the grenade kit a lot more user friendly, anet has explicitly stated that auto attack ground target macros are suspension or ban worthy.

Engineer is fine!
Why just the other day I took on a 30 vs 1 in WvWvW with Tool Kit and Rocket Turret.
My personal goal is 50 vs 1 but when that happens I think we will get nerfed!

Pistol 1 with coated bullets is the fastest, easiest, and best way to tag and farm mobs in the orr zerg.

It’s why the guy said P/P or P/S. It doesn’t matter. You can literally autoattack tag everything with pistol 1.

All you need is 30 in firearms. Rest don’t matter.

So to reiterate; pistol 1 with coated bullets.

Casia, I don’t think you understand what the word anecdote means, otherwise you wouldn’t be using it as a pejorative when half of your posts are riddled with stories and baseless opinions on your mesmer, or your centaur runes, or your fantastic crit dmg no condition pistol build.

Math and empirical evidence has clearly abandoned you; but then again you can always reply with yet another thread about an abilities power scaling you gleaned from a wiki to make yourself sound brilliant and sow more disinformation. You already lead coglin like a lap dog; now whenever I see a thread by him I envision a man with a leash around his neck.

Yet you are right, and you are amazing. Coglin, you are the best engineer in the world. If god played an engineer it would be you. No one else here excels at the engineer as much as you and whenever they have an opinion it is pointless as it is merely because we are horrible at playing this game! I am terribly sorry for trying to hose your golden play style, for it is the greatest of all play styles and for me to even say otherwise is an affront to the lord of engineers himself! The lord of engineers commands that we bask in the glory of under-powered offhand pistol skills! If we don’t then the lord of engineers will summon his mistress Casia to berate you with nonsensical information and poorly thought out builds! If you disagree with her then the lord of engineers will reply FURIOUSLY with a message filled to the brim with words like “excel” and “hosed” and “no-skill!”

Main hand pistol with coated bullets (30 point firearms).
OR
Grenades with grenadier (30 point explosives).

Both are fun and do well enough.
Don’t believe the hype that “grenades” are the only option for dungeons if you want to do AoE. You will cramp up, get fatigued, and end up playing poorly in the long run (I see it more often than not). Seriously, go run Lupi as a Grenadier and tell me you are having a good time.

I have done every path in every dungeon except two paths in Arah, and have played pretty much every build the engi has to offer from flamethrower to bomberman and everything in between and right now pistol with coated or grenades with grenadier will BOTH end up offering you competitive AoE dmg.

In three seconds Casia and her friend Coglin will proceed to kitten all over this post. You can believe them if you want. I could personally care less.

First off casia, I know the difference between a water field and a light field and yes I made a mistake. The difference between you and me is I own up those mistakes and will leave the post there because I really don’t care at this point.

If you want to go around promoting power pistol builds with crit damage then be my guest, i’m sure teams will eagerly choose to face you; and they won’t even have to wait that long to kill you because your whole squad is packing centaur runes so you can swiftness stack!

As for Coglin, yes Casia was using supply drop as a cop out. Saying you have a blast finisher in your kit because of your 180 second cooldown elite skill is like saying your a pet class because you can summon two hounds of balthazar every 240 seconds. It’s a cop out. I’d love to join whatever group or thing you do coglin. If you need a tank don’t worry, I can tank dungeons because I can go immune to all damage for 2 seconds! Trust me it will work! I am stating fact! If you need blast combos don’t worry! I can drop one every 3 minutes!

Casia.4281:

(Fumigate is terrible, dont use that. But acid bomb is HIGH damage, and an escape. Super elixir is a strong heal, and aoe cond removal. F does more damage then static shot, and 1 does more damage then explosive shot)

I’m rereading posts in this thread and beginning to realize that a lot of engineers are very misinformed.

Tranquilizer Dart does not do more damage than Explosive Shot. Explosive shot gets two attacks in the time it takes tranq shot to do one. Elixir F does not do more damage than Static Shot when you factor in confusion.

I’d support my evidence with math, but I’d rather some people stay misinformed so they are easier targets in pvp.

The agreed upon build for dps with pistol/shield is 10/30/0/30/0. You are already taking 30 in alchemy. You have plenty of toughness as you are going full rabid.

If you take 10 from firearms because you think coated bullets isnt worth it, then what is? 10 extra points in explosives? It’s hilarious that Casia stated power scales horribly with pistols in her first reply then goes ahead and reveals her awesome power/crit damage pistol build…Sorta contradictory huh?

Put it in toughness? One 10 point toughness trait is not worth the sacrifice. Tools? How many toolbelt skills do you really use with a condition based p/s engi? You are going elixir H, the toolbelt skill sucks with that, elixir B, toolbelt skill sucks with that, and most likely elixir R. The cooldown with 10 points in tools reduces the skill to I think 64 seconds. Spending 10 points to shave six seconds off a skill is pointless when you could take coated bullets instead.

You talk about guarantees. Well you are pretty much GUARANTEED to fight more than one person at a time in spvp or wvwvw. I don’t know what game you are playing where every fight is a magical 1v1, but I’m playing a different one. In that situation a build with coated bullets will always outshine a build without coated bullets.

So, the ball is in your court. Convince me of a better use of 10 points.

LameFox.6349:

Especially with something like coated bullets… if you find you’re not actually shooting through multiple targets much anyway, you might well get more use out of something else.

You can hit a lone target twice with explosive shot and coated bullets as long as you are at max range. If you don’t believe me go to a training dummy, stand at max range, and press 1.

Trust me, there is never a bad reason to take coated bullets, and taking those 10 points from firearms and placing them somewhere else will never net you more damage.

If you want to survive in dungeons you need 20 in alchemy for cleaning formula, no questions asked. With 20 in alchemy you have a decent HP pool.

Now what type of damage do you want to do?
If you want to deal condition damage then go with full rabid, which is precision, toughness, condition damage.
If you want to deal damage with grenades then go power/precision/toughness.
I find rifle to be more useful as a CC tool in dungeons than a damage source so you can build survivability with that and pack an elixir gun for even more supportive abilities to go with your CC.

Casia.4281:

10 in tools.
10% crit damage(long duration fury, and 50-60% base with crit gear like you should with a p/p build), 10% cd on toolbelt, speedy kits for perma swiftness, toobelt recharge on 25% life, for elixir R always being up to self rez.

immobalize+cripple on glue shot is stronger then pointblank stun/reflect.
We are talking wvw. if you are stuck in one place, you can just be avoided. And you can’t advance on a point, while holding shield reflect. (block you can)

supply drop is a blast finisher.

Saying supply drop is a blast finisher is a cheap cop out. I don’t see many engineers wasting supply drop on a fire field just to get might stacks when they could of saved it for a more opportune moment; like maybe as a huge AoE stun.

Like yuki said, how long are you gonna survive against a zerg when you saunter up to 600 range just to pop your blowtorch? How often do you do this? Be honest with your answer please.

You will survive more running from a zerg with reflect than with glue shot. I’d rather reflect a net shot then toss out glue shot.

How much damage do you think 10 percent crit damage adds to your pistol crits? I’ll give you a hint. Roughly 36 extra damage. You get similar output with 100 extra power, which is what you would get when you place 10 in explosives. Have you ever dropped super elixir then comboed it into an aoe heal with the shields 30 second cd blast finisher. Well you can do that with P/S. P/P doesn’t have options like that.

Look at the abilities, look at what they do, P/P is not worth it over P/S and that needs to change.

Yuki is right, and I’m not just saying that because he agrees with me.

I will say it again and again, blowtorch is not enough to justify taking offhand pistol over shield.

10/30/0/30/0 with Pistol/Shield gives similar DPS than a P/P specced the same.

Casia, one question. You don’t take 10 in explosives with P/P, where exactly do you spend those 10 points then that increase your DPS by so much you can sacrifice not taking a blast finisher, a reflect, a stun and a daze?

Regarding single target, a 6 second burn deals the same damage as someone applying three two second burns; the condition stacks in duration not intensity.

Regarding AoE, coated bullets with explosive shot and poison dart volley is more than enough. Taking the off hand pistol for blowtorch to add on top of that is not worth the sacrifice to all of the utility and benefit you get from a shield.

Casia.4281:

pdv is only really aoe with coated bullets. I dont really consider missing your primary target and hitting another aoe.

What pistol build does not take coated bullets?

They realize they went Elixir X and turrets and quickly respec

Oh, and sorry for the double post, but the trait is NOT single target with explosive shot. The bullets can apply the burn to every mob they hit with explosive shot and poison dart volley when they crit.
Most of your AoE damage comes from explosive shot and poison dart volley, NOT blowtorch. In fact, I’d go as far to say that over time static shot does more aoe damage over time than blowtorch, but I may be stretching it there.

Oh, and one last thing, you said most p/p skills are AoE.

ALL p/p skills are AoE. Static shot hits multiple targets, and by definition that could be considered AoE.

When did I ever say I’m using pistol offhand?
After realizing that you can get 100 percent uptime on burn with p/s is when I switched, and that is the point of this post.
There needs to be more incentive to use p/p over p/s other than glue shot.

Shifue
There are many errors in your thread.

Elixir Gun has pretty much the same range as rifle.
Tranq Dart has the same range as hip shot.
Elixir F has the same range as Net.
Jump Shot and Acid Bomb are pretty much the same distance leap (in fact I think acid bomb is a larger leap).
Fumigate and Blunderbuss have pretty much the same range.
Super Elixir and Overcharged Shot also have very similar ranges if not the same.

As far as I know, a pistol engineer is the only profession in the game who can reliably apply all four damaging conditions (bleed, burn, poison, confusion). That’s pretty kitten useful.

Tool Kit has one of the better confusion applying skills in the game plus an amazing block ability. I agree though it does need a lot of work.

Med Kit has one of the lowest cooldown heals in the game when specced properly (15 seconds I think?).

Mortar is not a kit. It is entirely useless though.

Flamethrower has the right idea, it just needs a bit of a rework, and many people have coined in on how to make this possible and not too strong.

Like every engineer you mention grenades several times in your post and how nothing really compares to them.

Well this is true, but this is also a problem. It’s a kit that has far too much versatility (blind, bleed, freeze, poison, and a baked in vulnerability with the explosives trait), has the longest range, and deals the most damage. Many people will come back with “oh but it’s hard to aim!” which is simply not the case in team based sPvP when you design a comp where several professions are there solely to lock people down. Have you ever fought a hammer warrior and a grenade engineer? The one weakness a grenade engineer has vanishes while your hammer warrior buddy locks a guy down with multiple knockdowns and stuns.

Every engineer that uses a pistol grabs 10 points in Explosives for the burn on crit trait.
Every engineer that goes for condition damage generally has a very high crit chance, whether you go glass cannon (power, precision, condi) or more defensive (precision, toughness, condi).
Every engineer, when built right with the proper runes, will generally have all four conditions up on a target most of the time WITHOUT the use of blowtorch.
Burn damage does not stack in intensity, but in duration. Once you get a nice duration on your burn through your crit proc you generally do not need to use blowtorch at all.

It’s time to give the engineers something useful when they sacrifice so much to use an offhand pistol (and no glue shot, while useful, should never be a reason to not go shield with its daze, blast finisher, stun and reflect).

My idea is to buff poison dart volley, give it a longer cooldown, and make it the number four skill for offhand pistol. Then, give us a ranged shot for pistol shot 2 and have it apply both a bleed and a burn, to help facilitate condition stacking.

This way, P/S has three conditions (burn, bleed, confusion) and P/P has four (burn, bleed, confusion and poison). Instead of P/S having the ability to apply four conditions while STILL having access to a blast finisher, a daze, a reflect, and a stun.

There needs to be more incentive to go P/P other than looks, because right now, there is no reason to go P/P over P/S.

CoE path 3.

Evolved Destroyer.

There is a place near the staircase where you can set up your Mortar and not get hit by the flame spikes and still hit the destroyer with the edge of your blast radius from the Mortar.

It’s actually useful as you can set up the Mortar, have someone else use it, then spam grenades yourself from the same area while the other three in the party spam the laser to keep the shield down.

Probably the most risk free way to kill this boss.

Other than that, yeah…..

It’s not that they don’t scale with weapons, it’s that they don’t really make any sense in regards to where their grandmaster traits are placed.

Flamethrower does a lot more with power then precision and condition damage, yet Juggernaut is 30 points deep in the precision/condi dmg tree. Elixir gun has an easier time stacking bleed which would make it a perfect fit for that tree, yet some of its best traits are scattered across Alchemy, a tree which is better served towards its buff duration and condition removal then buffing the damage on the gun (after all I’d much rather take 409 than improved elixir gun damage). Bomb Kit has one of its best traits (elixir infused bombs) lodged as a grandmaster trait in the tree that is littered with improvements to turrets and shield skills. Grenades put out a deceptive amount of condition damage yet their stuck in the power tree (which is both good and bad).

Also, most boss fights in the later dungeons require a lot of kiting and believe me, I have tried subject alpha as a grenadier and it was NOT fun or entertaining. I had a far smoother time just spamming my auto with the trait that gave me swiftness on crit, which also gave me vigor (a trait in the alchemy tree) along with elixir R. I was more mobile, lived the entire fight, and was able to throw out key revives.

The kits definitely need to be reworked to be more viable in PvE. I was in a group with an engi in CoF path 2 and he was a grenadier. After 15 minutes he logged off because his hand was cramping up. No joke. Strafing without an auto attack is horrible.

I will say this though, 20/20/0/30/0 with the proper traits does extremely well as a support dps with the rifle and the elixir gun, non stop swiftness/vigor, aoe ress, and a very sturdy way to stack bleed. Run 2 afflicted, 2 krait, 2 centaur runes for maximum bleed duration. Don’t get suckered into burn damage. More and more math is coming out that stacking its duration is a dps loss in pve as it doesn’t stack in intensity.

Hey cosmic, I appreciate all your insight and it is actually very useful.

I should note that I do swap out cleaning formula for elixir duration in fights that drop heavy conditions, but that was not the point of this guide. This guide was to help people with their engineer they might be struggling with because of all the bugs, traits that don’t work, clunky kits, and pretty bad turrets.

As far as CC goes I do have an aoe root and snare on a pretty short cooldown, it’s not much but its something. I will try out your ideas with napalm specialist and those runes that end up giving more uptime on bleeds and burns, for now though I’m doing fine.

Also, about Elixir U. Yes it’s random but the 66 percent chance to block projectiles is more useful than you can think. If they get stealth instead its still fairly defensive and lets them escape and regroup. Basically what I’m saying is it has a 66 percent chance to do something awesome and a 33 percent chance to do something OK, but 100 percent of the time it will help your group.

Hey Tarzan, I have to agree with a lot of what you said. At the end of my post I mentioned how I PvE 90 percent of the time, and I really enjoy the DPS that pistol/pistol brings to a group as well as the nice uptime on the group buff elixir b.

Eventually after a month or so I think I’ll try to focus on more PvP but right now I want to complete all dungeon paths first. When I switch to PvP i have to say that Pistol/Shield looks really enticing with 30 in inventions, 30 in alchemy, and 10 in tools for speedy gadgets maybe.

How to play - Let me make this clear, I PvE most of the time. I don’t PvP a lot, and when I do it’s world vs world so I can stick to the back and deal damage. I don’t run with a coordinated group in PvP either, and I’m sure this build will get WRECKED in coordinated pvp because of how squishy it is. What this build does do is it simplifies the PvE experience and is incredibly effective at what it does, which is supplying damage through conditions and crits and buffs and effects through your thrown elixirs.

General Rotation - Start with explosive shot of course to activate your auto. If you are not the current target, go ahead and activate your buffs/debuffs in this order: Goggles, Elixir B, Analyze. After analyzing the enemy quickly run up and activate Elixir U. Use Poison Dart Volley and Blowtorch and more autoattacks if the enemy is still not targeting you. If the enemy does turn to target you fire off a static shot and a glue shot. Back off and wait for your cooldowns to come back up. It’s ok to fire a poison dart volley from range, but if you have both Blowtorch and Poison Dart Volley up it’s best to get close and quickly use the two skills.

If things get hairy for you or your team find the ally with the lowest amount of hp and throw Elixir U at them. A lot of times people with low hp run around like maniacs. Hopefully the Elixir U effect you get is stealth, because usually people who are invisible calm down for a moment. When they calm down throw an Elixir H at there feet. Hopefully you just saved there life. If things get REALLY intense drop a Supply Turret. Inform your group that those little grey boxes on the ground are hp. Always try to hit as many people as possible with your thrown Elixir B (it really is a great buff).

Try and hit groups with your glue shot for maximum effectiveness. Save your static shot its blind and confusion. It’s more UTILITY than DAMAGE. Always try and use your blowtorch and poison dart volley on cooldown. Always try and evade roll if you are the one pulling to try and get a little extra damage with the powder keg. You have a lot of uses, use them all!

I recommend this build if you are feeling frustrated with your engineer and find it too difficult to operate. I am having so much fun right now and feeling less stressed overall. I can go full lazy mode during wave events and get gold by staying at range and pressing two buttons. I travel places quickly with swiftness up almost all the time. I love all the conditions I apply (burning, poison, bleed, confusion). Right now I am running a sigil that chills on crit (I forget the name) and it’s really useful. I’ve also run the AOE explosion sigil, and that is a blast as well, no pun intended. I hope this helped some of the struggling engineers out there. Why wait for Arena Net to fix our broken kits when you can have fun now! Don’t struggle through bugs, work around them! Yes, one day our kits will be fixed, but they have stated they are broken because of base code. What that means is that the auto-attack on our kits will be fixed in 2014. On that day I will happily swap out my goggles for an elixir gun and stack 10 bleeds on someone in a second with Elixir U. But until that day arrives, it’s potion guzzling mechanic all the way.

Happy Shooting.

Alchemy - 30 points. Once again I’ll break it down into three sections.

Hidden Flask and Fast Acting Elixirs - Hidden Flask is basically a free Elixir B at 75 percent health. I never notice it because I tend to favor a more controlled approach. In other words, I’m not gonna head into a fight with the mindset of, “ok I need to get to 75 percent HP so I can get this free buff!” It’s a passive, it’s a free buff, it occurs, there’s no strategy other than that. Fast Acting Elixirs on the other hand is EXTREMELY powerful. It makes it so your heal is on a 20 second cooldown. It reduces the cooldown of Elixir B and Elixir U giving you more chances to use them and a higher uptime on your buffs. I haven’t tested it with Elixir X but I’m not too sure if it works. Oh well, I never use Elixir X anyway.

Transmute and Potent Elixirs - Ok, Transmute. Does this even work? 3 percent, really? I’ve never even seen it work once. I could care less though because Potent Elixirs increases the duration of all of our buffs from Elixirs and when coupled with the 30 percent increase in boon duration thanks to the 30 points in Alchemy we have almost a 100 percent uptime on all of our buffs. Right now it does not work with Quickness, because for some lame reason Quickness is an “effect” and not a “boon.” But in my opinion it should because you are getting the Quickness “effect” from akittenElixir! Then again, knowing arena net if it was changed it would also “buff” the duration of the negative effects too, and I don’t know if I could live through 10 seconds of no healing or endurance.

Energy Conversion Matrix and either HGH or Automated Response - Energy Conversion Matrix is simple. 1 percent extra damage per each boon on you. Think about that for a second. Elixir B gives you four boons. That’s four percent extra damage. Stack that with Target the Maimed which gives you 5 percent increased damage to bleeding foes and your looking at 9 percent increased damage. Stack that again with goggles and your looking at 19 percent increased damage. At the press of two buttons you can deal almost 20 percent extra damage to the enemy with all of your skills. Awesome huh? Now for the discussion regarding HGH or Automated Response. HGH works with Elixir H. It also works with Elixir B and U. It’s a great skill and helps you get those might stacks up. Automated Response is more defensive in nature, but it also has a chance at failing. I hear a lot of complaints that it may or may not work with conditions already applied, which greatly weakens this ability. None the less, it’s a decent skill and can save your life. I run HGH 90 percent of the time though so I’m no expert on Automated Response.

Armor - I’m no expert here. I run Condition Damage, Crit, Power in that priority. If someone wants to chime in, I’m all ears.

Traits
Now for the build. It’s actually quite simple, and benefits all of your skills in some way or another.

Explosives - 10 Points. This gives you two key abilities. Evasive Powder Keg and Incendiary Ammo. The ammo is self-explanatory. It’s basically extra damage in the form of a burn whenever you crit. It works on a 1/3rd of your crits. Treat it as free damage for merely attacking whatever it is your attacking. The other ability, Evasive Powder Keg, needs a little more explanation. It drops a bomb at your location whenever you roll. This passive has a lot of uses. In PvE enemies WILL target the powder keg before it explodes. This is AWESOME for kiting. I kited a champion for 10 minutes and killed it solo thanks to this skill, glue gun, and swiftness from elixir b. It was a lot of fun actually. The best part was a guardian sauntered in right before it died and was in total shock at seeing a lone engineer and a dead champion. He was definitely pretty impressed, especially since I was an engineer and we are generally seen as weak. It’s also, and yes I’m going to use the phrase again, free damage. You are going to roll in pvp or pve anyway, why not get some free damage to go along with that evade. As an aside, 10 points in Explosives gives you 100 power and 10 percent increased condition time, which usually equates to about 3/4th of a second or so.

Firearms - 30 Points. Since we get 30 points in this trait line I’ll break it down in three sections, one for every 10 points.

Sharpshooter and either Rifled Barrels or Precise Sights - It’s really your preference here as to whether or not you want increased range or a chance to apply vulnerability on crit. I usually go with the increased range, but it does not hurt to take Precise Sights as you are going to be up close and personal every now and then. I find the 10 stacks I get with utility goggles more than enough for that nice bit of burst damage, but if you are in a long drawn out fight that doesn’t require much movement then go ahead and take Precise Sights. The other skill, Sharpshooter, is what makes it so we only have to take one Sigil of Earth to get an almost 100 percent chance to apply a bleed on our crits.

Target the Weak and Hair Trigger - Target the Weak gives us 10 percent crit against enemies below 50 percent. Couple this with the Fury boon you get from either goggles or elixir b and you’ll be sitting at a VERY high crit rate. WIth your crit rate so high you will be applying burning, bleeding, and vulnerability(if you traited for it) all the time. Hair Trigger reduces the cooldown on all of your pistol shots and must be taken no questions asked. There is nothing better than firing off your Poison Dart Volley, Blowtorch, and Static Charge more often. Oh and it reduces the cooldown on your AOE ROOT AND SNARE as well. Caps for emphasis.

Target the Maimed and Coated Bullets - Target the Maimed deals increased damage to targets that are bleeding. Who makes targets bleed? Oh yeah, we do, all thekittentime with almost 100 percent uptime. Coated Bullets is just awesome. Want to double the damage on your Explosive Shot? Want to hit a group of enemies with your poison dart volley? Want to wreck events like nobody else pressing only two buttons? There ya have it. Coated Bullets.

Now, let’s move on to the utility skills.

Elixir H - I take Elixir H as my heal skill because I grab the cooldown reduction on Elixirs, make this a heal with a 20 second cooldown. The random buff is useful, but unfortunately, the buff is random. I know that sounded redundant but it’s true. You can’t rely on the buff. Just think of it as a little present given to you for healing. With this build you will also get 20 seconds of might whenever you use it thanks to HGH, more on that later. It’s toolbelt skill has the same unfortunate random properties as its base. I throw the elixir occasionally but I try not to stress out about it too much as it is not a part of my rotation and its benefits won’t “save” you or your team unless you can modify the game to have it grant you the boon you want every time.

Utility Goggles - I’ve been running goggles as my stun break instead of Elixir U because the cooldown is still lower even if you are traited with the Elixir CD reduction (which you will be). It also gives you fury, which ups your crit chance by a large amount. It’s toolbelt skill is very deceptive. It instantly puts 10 stacks of Vulnerability on your target. This is basically a 10 percent damage increase while it is up. 10 percent across all of your abilities. Way better than Elixir U which gives you stability or stealth and never the one you want at the time thanks to Murphy’s law.

Elixir B - Wow! An Elixir that doesn’t have completely random properties! Call the president of Arena Net, I think this was an oversight. What this little potion does is grant you four boons, Fury, Might, Retaliation and Swiftness. The might it grants stacks with HGH, giving you two stacks of Might every time you quaff this sucker. The fury stacks with utility belts fury, giving you an increase in duration to the crit percentage. The swiftness gives you move speed, which helps you kite, escape, travel, it makes you move fast OK! I never notice the Retaliation buff, but it does work, and reflects damage back to the attacker. Its toolbelt equivalent is surprisingly useful for your team if you can hit three to four people. That’s three to four people with move speed, damage reflection, might, and an increase to their crit chance. Pretty nice buff huh?

Elixir U - Very very confusing tooltip. It does not give you a random professions buff, it gives you one of three debuffs. Either it makes it so you can’t receive heals (Zephyr), removes endurance and stops it from regenerating (haste) or makes you take 50 percent more damage (Frenzy). WTF BBQ! Why would I take this crap! Well, it also gives you the best effects in the game: Quickness. If you don’t know what Quickness is it’s probably best to experience it for yourself. Slot Elixir U, run up to an enemy, drink it, activate Poison Dart Volley. You will be astonished at how awesome the ability is after doing this simple test. The debuff lasts for five seconds and it’s up to you to decide when to take the risk. Personally, I like using it at the very start of a combo before kiting away and waiting for the debuff to wear off. I run up to someone, pop this sucker, use static shot to blind em, poison dart volley (which fires all shots in a split second thanks to the buff), blowtorch, glue gun and either roll away if I didn’t get the endurance debuff or run away if I did. Its toolbelt skill is basically a random effect. All you need to know is that you have TWO chances to grant protection from projectiles (wall of reflection or smoke screen) and ONE chance to grant stealth. It’s a defensive ability when thrown and even though the effect is random, it CAN save a group from a wipe.

Supply Crate – One could write a whole article on this abilities uses, but I’ll keep it simple, it pretty much does everything. It’s an AoE stun, it’s extra damage, it has extra CC in the form of the net turret (if your lucky it doesn’t always drop!), it drops healing bandages, it drops bandages that give you buffs, it’s just awesome in general. Elixir X is decent, but more often than not I’ll get the Juggernaut form when I want to CC a whole bunch of people and the Whirlwind form when I want to CC one person. In other words, random. I’ve used the Mortar occasionally in certain dungeons and it actually is quite useful, but I find the Supply Crate is versatile in all situations and is incredibly strong.

First you need two pistols. The skills you get with two pistols compliment this fast paced play style more so than the rifle or the pistol/shield combo. Let’s go over the abilities and see what they have to offer and when to use them.

Explosive Shot - While this ability may seem weak in comparison to other first slot attacks it offers a lot of hidden damage that most people neglect. First off every shot deals AOE damage. Second, every shot applies a bleed. Third, and this is the hidden part, its damaged is almost doubled against a clumped up group when you have the trait Coated Bullets. Basically it works like this, two enemies next to eachother, you fire explosive shot, the explosive shot pierces to the next one and explodes again! Double damage. The bleed doesn’t transfer unfortunately, but that is a minor nuisance.

Poison Dart Volley - Another ability that people find hard to use forcing them to neglect it entirely. Big mistake! This can potentially deliver some of the highest burst damage in your arsenal. The problem with the skill is that the volley spreads in a strange cone, making it so that only two or three of the five darts actually hit the enemy. How do we solve this? Simple. How does a cone usually work? Narrow at the start, wide at the finish. What does that mean? It means this ability, while it has the range, should be used as a close range shot! Kind of like a shotgun. When you get right up in the enemies face and use this skill all five shots WILL hit the target. Couple this with a high crit chance, and the Elixir U and you will do some really nice burst damage and gift your enemy with a nice five stacks of poison. I’ve had all five shots crit before and the damage is awesome indeed.

Static Shot - This shot is, in my opinion, one of the best skills in the game. It blinds, it confuses, and it bounces! It’s damage might be mediocre but its utility is almost unrivaled. No need to aim this sucker either. Just fire it before someone is about to hit you and enjoy the chaos!

Blowtorch - Ah yes, one of my favorite skills to use. A giant plume of flame that deals more damage the closer you are to the target. But why would we want to get close? Simple, you are going to be using Poison Dart Volley up close anyway, why not couple it with this sucker. The physical damage is decent, but the burn damage is what puts on the serious hurt.

Glue Shot - Doesn’t do any damage, but makes up for it for the fact that it’s an AOE IMMOBILIZE AND CRIPPLE AT RANGE! I can’t begin to illustrate how many times this ability saved my hide.

I have been reading a lot of threads lately about how difficult it is to play the Engineer. I’ve done some analysis and kind of figured out why and would like offer you guys the way I play the Engineer and how I found it to be more enjoyable again! First the analysis as to why there is so much backlash against this profession.

We have the ability to use more abilities in a single spec than any other profession in the game.

Let that marinate in your head for a while. An engineer with any weapon set, three kits as their utility, four toolbelt skills, and a Elixir X has exactly 29 (34) different abilities they can use at any given time. You have five weapon skills, five skills per kit (15), 4 toolbelt skills, and elixir x gives you five new abilites (10 if you count both forms which is why I put 34 in paranthesis). Let’s contrast that with a Warrior who has at most 17 different skills they can use at one time. 10 skills across two weapon sets, 2 different “burst” abilites (they change when you weapon swap), a heal, three utility skills, and an elite. The human brain at most can think of about 4 to 5 things at once. I am sure a genius could think about more, maybe 6 or 7, or maybe even a SC2 pro-gamer could attain such a level of micromanagement at their particular skill that it would seem like they are going above and beyond that threshold, however I am not a genius, and I am certainly no pro-gamer. I want to have fun! Like most of you I was overwhelmed with the Engineer and almost gave up until I decided to go back to basics and come up with a play style that was simple yet effective! So, without any more exposition I present to you my solution.

Do not use any weapon kits!

Take them out of the equation. Right now they are bugged and won’t even auto-attack when swapped unless you ctrl-click the first ability every time! They don’t work with many sigils that grant benefits on swapping, they don’t carry over any of the stats of your equipped weapon (why even have them in the first place ;/), a lot of their abilities are not working as intended (ever try to kill a burrow with a flamethrower?) and are all in all clunky to work with. So now that we’ve removed them let’s see what we have to work with.

Five weapon skills, four utility skills (including healing), four toolbelt skills, and an elite skill of your choice. We are now at 14 different skills, three shy of a Warrior. Much easier to wrap your head around right?

Upon realizing this I decided to come up with a fun build that would strengthen the weapon of choice I was using as well as being fun and interesting. I decided to go double pistols with elixirs.

Before you say, “oh that’s already been discussed,” stop. I read those threads and they didn’t offer much advice. Just a link to a build and maybe a video. I wanted to offer more!