Guild Wars 2

One cannot say what YOU will find more enjoyable. I have both with exotic gear, and my impressions:

Ranger:
The only worthwhile weapons are 1H Sword (dungeons (and open PvE)) and Longbow (open PvE). 1H Sword is all about the clunky auto attack, only use a different skill if absolutely necessary. Generally it feels like you’re punished if you switch your weapons during combat (unless you use two identical weapon sets for the boons of Skirmishing).
The pet can hardly be controlled and feels more like a nuisance than an asset.
Utility skills/traits are horrible, you often need to spend 30 points into a trait tree just to make a group of utility skills worthwhile.
When I played WvW I never had the impression I’m actually having an impact (was using 1.5k Longbow).

Engineer:
Grenade Kit!!!
In some groups Bomb Kit is also worthwhile but if you’re not using at least one of these skills the majority of the time don’t expect a warm welcome. Expect to swap between 3 to 5 different weapons sets rapidly for best performance; swapping is not as important in groups, though. A LOT of utility (vulnerability, water fields, cripple, freeze, blind, fire fields, block, pull…). Pretty awesome in the right hands. Might have a bad reputation due to “bad” Engineer players (Flame Thrower/No Kit-Engineers e.g.).
Permanent Swiftness, 1.5k range AoEs, a lot of utility; I’ve played WvW mostly alone or with a few guild mates, in those groups the Engineer is amazing; might differ when you’re doing hardcore WvW.

Advent Leader.1083:

I really can’t see how you can manage to build 25 stacks of vuln on an engie, though, on champs.

Explosives 30 => +30%
Giver Pistol and Shield => +20%
Traveler, Mad King or Lyssa => +20%

Vulnerability lasts 5*1.7 = 8.5 seconds, on ideal conditions 3*8.5 = 25.5 stacks of Vulnerability on normal mobs; hopefully for bosses someone else also applies a few stacks.

When I started to play Ele I used staff until around level 40; it was manageable, I could kill 2, maybe 3 enemies a few levels above me but one mistake and I was close to death, 2 mistakes and it was game over.
Then I switched to D+D and just rushed through the game, I pulled the next enemy(s) when the last was about to die; Dagger Water 2 heals yourself, too.

Go primary for Power and secondary for Condition Damage, you want to kill your enemies fast so you gain exp and level up fast.

Yaki.9563:

DPS is useful, not sure why you need to load up on support traits to be “useful”.

If I want straight-out damage I would take a Thief, or maybe a Warrior if I don’t already have 1 or 2 in my party.
We may just have different view-points, when I design a build I’m always thinking “what does this build provides that another build or profession doesn’t do better?”.

Devils.3679:

Condi removal Gs4 followed by Gs2, Yes consecrations are good but better of with the 20% more dmg while aegis is up and using Elite focus with tome of wrath imo.

Sure, the traits and skills are not set in stone; if you don’t use Consecrations change the trait.

I was always under the assumption that skill coefficient is just the damage listed in the tooltip when naked divided by 916; at least that was always correct when I did some number crushing.

Is your question if you can play a Ranger with the focus on condition damage or if another profession would fit that better?

I use this for PvE:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqelIqiY3zyuF17IyoCdmoH5nlpffe8WtFEC-jQgAYdABA-e
Giver weapons for +20% condition duration (Vulnerability, Bleed, Freeze, Cripple, …)
Berserker gear
2x Lyssa, 2x Mad King, 2x Water/Monk (nowadays 4x Traveler, 2x Mad King is properly better)

And this for WvW:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqel0piYH5yuF17IyoCdmoH5Xlpffe8WpFEC-jQgAYdABA-e
Giver weapons for +20% condition duration
Rabid gear
2x Lyssa, 2x Mad King, 2x Water/Monk (nowadays 4x Traveler, 2x Mad King is properly better)

Grenades deal a lot of damage, with constant Swiftness and Vigor, Protection when disabled and Regeneration (PvE) or Elixir S (PvP) it’s also hard to kill.

Longbow is a power weapon, meaning it gets the best benefits from Power, Precision and +Crit Damage.
Shortbow is more of a condition damage, meaning it gets more benefits from Condition Damage than Power.

However at your level it properly doesn’t matter yet because you just use armor you find.

Giver Pistol and Shield for +10% condition duration each
Berserker or Rampager

Explosives 30 with II, VII or VIII and XI
Grenade Kit

30/5/0/10/25 or 30/5/0/25/10 (I run a more defensive version with 30/0/0/30/10)

Ellementalist.4381:

I think the main issue here is how the person wants to play the char not how a few builds revolving around kits being OP.

There’s nothing wrong with using a fun build, but don’t complain that it isn’t as good as other profession’s best builds or that groups might not want you in their party if you use one.

TheGuy.3568:

You do realize you can run your basic nades build with zerker gear and be top tier DPS at range right?

Even with Berserker gear and Scholar Runes the direct damage output of a grenade Engineer is way lower than the direct damage output of e.g. a Guardian, Warrior or Thief; only with the Bleeding of Shrapnel Grenade, Shrapnel and possibly Sharpshooter and possibly Poison from Poison Grenade and Burning from Fire Bomb the damage output becomes equal to or even surpasses the other professions.

All joking aside we could run builds with consistent fire fields for group might stacking, still have group condition clearing still stack vulnerability (…)

That’s what I meant when I said “what’s more important is what besides damage those “best” builds add to the team, particularly damage boosts”.

The damage output of each profession’s “best” build doesn’t differ much from each other very much anyways, what’s more important is what besides damage those “best” builds add to the team, particularly damage boosts.

The Engineer’s issue is that his “best” build requires conditions, and it takes 7-8 seconds to inflict 20+ stacks of Vulnerability and ~20 seconds to inflict 20+ stacks of Bleed; in this time speed clear teams have already killed most foes so the Engineer isn’t very useful in that regard.

What the Engineer misses is a “good” direct damage option, a few buffs the Tool Kit could help out here.

Assuming you still want to be useful to your party to need to have Master of Consecrations and possible a condition remove like Absolute Resolution or Pure of Voice.

For damage you want 30 points in Radiance for RH Strength, and maybe 10 points in Zeal for Fiery Wrath.

Full build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQRAse7dlYg6C33xKEfIFSmCRCBteAQHk/UVIewKgRA
As poster above said, Berserker + Scholar Runes.

It basically comes down to: Do you like grenades or not? And to a lesser degree: To you like kits? The main strength of an Engineer is the Grenade Kit and the ability to quickly switch between the regular weapon skills and two to four kits.

Even after the nerf several months ago the Grenade Engineer is still one of the top damage dealers; however for optimal damage you need to be able to stack a lot of bleeds on a target so you conflict with any other condition damage dealer in your party.
Still, your spec can either increase your raw damage (Berserker), your condition damage (Dire) or a combination of both (Rabid or Rampage or Carrion).

At the same time the Engineer can bring a lot of utility/support, like the most stacks of Vulnerability of any profession (side-effect of grenades), stun-break, condition remove, healing and blast finisher with Elixir Gun, water fields with Healing Turret, fire fields with Bomb Kit, blast finisher and boon removal with Throw Mine, anti-projectile wall with Elixir U, or block and pull with Tool Kit (both come in very handy in WvW).

Regarding survivability, grenades have a range of 1500, outranging almost every other weapon/profession; together with 10 Tools and 10 Alchemy you’ll have permanent Swiftness and Vigor, making you very hard to catch in WvW and allows you to dodge twice as much as usual.
With 25-30 Alchemy the Engineer gets some good survival tools and doesn’t lose too much damage because longer boon duration → more Might and Alchemy 25.

Skills that pull foes seem to malfunction if there’s a height difference between the caster and the target.

Ele is very weak at lower levels because a lot of its staying power comes from traits and trait synergies.

If you don’t already use Dagger/Dagger switch to them when you’re playing solo. Up until level 30-35 I played with Staff and while it was possible to kill 2-3 foes a few levels above me it was tedious and took a good while. When I switched to D/D I easily roflstomped said foes.

Is this just Grenade Kit #1 or all skills?
Because with my own theory crafting I came to the conclusion that with [Shrapnel] and Shrapnel Grenade Condition Damage/Power increases the damage by more than Power/Precision/Crit Damage.

Are you considering that before the buff of [Shrapnel] a Berserker Grenade Kit Engineer was properly using [Incendiary Powder] or [Empowering Adrenaline] instead?

wookalar.8952:

How do you do more dps with the auto attack? It misses moving targets and only does like 400-600 a hit. I usually drop the aoe on a stationary target, then cleansing flame, he’ll be hit by both for a decent amount of ranged damage. My cleansing flame starts hitting for 700 then climbs to 4k at the end for several hits. It also hits several targets. you just need a bit of practice at aiming it.

Channeled attacks show the added amount of the damage you’ve done, not the damage of each hit.
So you’re not hitting for 4k something during the last hits but for e.g. 4.8k-4.4k = 400.

Are you using an invisible bag? Items in it cannot be sold, neither to NPC vendors nor the trading post.

edit:
And you have to have the items you want to sell in your inventory, you cannot sell directly from the bank. If you have deposited your materials they are in the bank, go to one in the main cities, click on the materials tab on the left (the one with the many tiny squares), drag them into your inventory and sell them.

Once you’re level 35 you can do AC speed clears; even with low level chars all three paths shouldn’t take more than around an hour. That’s almost three levels.
After you’ve done all paths you can continue doing AC SCs if you want but you’ll get only 20 ATears instead of 60.

Food still hasn’t an internal cooldown? I’ve thought I’ve read that they got a 2 second CD in the last patch…

It’s easier to get Soldier armor from dungeons; you can complete all AC paths in about 45-60 minutes, do that for a week or so and you should have at least your armor.

Edit:
Even easier is to get karma armor, iirc one piece is 42k karma.

Properly before it gave you full adrenaline bar and then healed you, meaning it always healed for the max amount; now it first heals you and then gives you a full adrenaline bar.

Or at least that’s how I understand the patch notes.

I’ve noticed yesterday that I couldn’t preview a light exotic armor I’ve found while I was playing my Engineer. Dunno if I could preview other armor types before but even if not change it so I can.

Fractals are divided into tiers, level 1-9 is tier 1, level 10-19 is tier 2, level 20-29 is tier 3 and so on.
The first time you defeat the Jade Maw in each tier (e.g. either level 2, 4, 6 or 8 in tier 1) you get a “chest” like you get when completing your daily; that’s called the fractal daily. Every tier has its own daily so e.g. if you’re level 30 you could do a level 2, 10, 20 and 30 fractal for 4 dailies.

I’m not sure if fractal dailies are character or account bound, meaning you could do the dailies with each character or not; I’ve read that the fractal dailies are account bound but iirc I’ve got a tier 1 fractal twice a day but it may have been a bug or the dailies have been reset.

ANet has made so far no statement that weapon damage will ever affect kits but they have stated that weapon stats will affect kits at some point in time.

I’m still using the same build I’ve used before but I’ve changed some of the major traits:
http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/engineer#10|9|1207|253|0|6383|4065|30|1876|0|1885|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|30|1015|1478|1479|10|1446|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|
You may want to switch [Explosive Powder] for [Short Fuse] and swap around the Alchemy traits.

I’m dealing almost 1k direct damage and between 0.5k and 1.5k condition damage, depending on how long a fight goes on.

RaynStargaze.6510:

after the 15% dmg nerf in the last patch + the 30% in this one – grenades were efficiently nerfed for 45%!!!! of their initial dmg

SentinelArk.5109:

Skill No. | Pre Patch PvP
1 – 0.450
2 – 0.450
3 – 0.000
4 – 0.450
5 – 0.000

Skill No. | Pre Patch PvE
1 – 0.500
2 – 0.550
3 – 0.000
4 – 0.500
5 – 0.000

Skill No. | Post Patch PvE & PvP
1 – 0.330
2 – 0.550
3 – 0.100
4 – 0.500
5 – 0.200

Assuming the above values are correct Grenade Kit #1 has been nerfed by 34%, not 45% as you claim, and the damage nerf to all other Grenade Kit skills has been reverted.

Travail.7390:

The most might you can stack with a sigil of strength is something like 6 stacks, which is 6% damage; 1% more than using the flat +5% damage sigil, and you don’t have to worry about building and maintaining might stacks.

Might is 1% more damage? So you have 3500 Power and ~2650 Condition Damage?
At level 80 Might increases your damage by (#Might*35+Power)/Power.
So, assuming you have 2000 Power 6 stacks of Might increase your damage by (6*35+2000)/2000 = 1,105 or 10,5%.

One of the previous patches broke Super Elixir and gave it the big heal on every pulse, not just on the impact. Now that has been fixed.

Grenade Kit would have been nerfed either way, they just did it in the same patch as they introduced Sigils to prevent some of the whine and flame.

Actually Super Elixir behaved for the longest time how it behaves now, a recent update broke the skill and replaced the pulse heal with the impact heal.
Did you seriously believed that would never be fixed?

Pestilence.3184:

so what your saying if its only 150 points right? so why have heavy/light/medium ?? if there is no real difference?

Because people expect a MMO has different armor classes, even if they don’t actually make much difference. If it is missing the game sucks, it’s one part the weird logic of MMO players.

Overworld.9613:

Quick question: does this boost make us move at +33% speed in combat also?
Cause we get slowed down in combat, does this make us normal swiftness speed even in combat?

Being in combat gives everyone a 30% speed nerf, so with a 50% speed buff you would be running around with 1*0.7*1.5 = 1.05 so you’re running 5% faster than a character out of combat without a speed buff.

If you want to mix Berserker and Knight:

As far as gear goes, a balanced between knights and berserker is based on the below stat comparison on what you lose per 1% of crit damage (credit to Reddit – paradiselight).
The tradeoff for 1% of crit damage is equal to:

5 stat points – upgrade slot of trinkets and backpack
10 stat points- traits (not an equipment, but listed for comparison)
12 stat points – glove, shoulder and boots
12.8 stat points – 1H weapons and amulet
13.33 stat points – Earring
14 stat points – Backpack (rare version from guild armorsmith)
14.22 stat points – 2H weapons
14.4 stat points – Coat
16 stat points – Ring, helm and legging

What this means, is that my coat, ring, helm, and legs are knight pieces, and everything else (including jewels in knight rings) are berserker stats. This lets you balance some survivability with damage by losing the least amount of stats possible.

Additional Toughness decreases damage by:
Additional Toughness/(Current Armor+Additional Toughness)

So e.g. to half the damage you take you have to double your armor.

You don’t need to be on the same server to join dungeons from persons of other servers; simply be in area of the dungeon, then the message “Want to join dungeon?” will pop up even if they are on a different server than you.
However this doesn’t work with fractals.

Mobs seem to favor players with lots of Toughness and low HPs; just let a Guardian with 3k+ armor and ~13k HPs attack the mobs first and for 80% of a fight that aggro will stay on the Guardian.

I really hope that’s just a sign error and will be fixed soon; it makes zero sense that a mob favors a heavily armored target over a squishy target.

Even if you only use the F1 skill of Med Kit over time it heals for more than Elixir H if we ignore boon increasing traits; not sure if Med Kit or Elixir H profits more from Healing Power. Healing Turret heals for a bit more if you explode it at the right moment.
If you include the Bandages, Antidote and Stimulant is way superior to Elixir H and Healing Turret only has the benefit of creating two water combo fields; only with traits that improve Elixirs I would bother equipping Elixir H.

Regarding the OP’s question:
I use [Speedy Kits] and [Invigorating Speed] so ideally I want to switch kits every 5-6 seconds; if I’ve taken a little damage I switch to the Med Kit, drop a Bandage and switch back to my Grenade Kit and have healed myself for a little and maintained my Swiftness and Vigor.

They have changed and explained that in one of the recent patches.
You can get loot for your level if the zone is at least about 2/3 of your level; it was said that you can find level 80 loot in a level 55+ area.

Basically, Fokus is a selfish weapon and Shield is a group support weapon.

Some possible uses of the Shield:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Any-20-FotM-Guards-here-Looking-for-input/first#post959374

Up until level 40-60 there’s hardly a better build than the signet one Beefcake linked; if you want to level as quickly as possible that guide looks like a very good guideline.

I’ve read that with [Incendairy Powder] Pistol OH becomes rather pointless because you can keep your foes burning even without Blowtorch, however I haven’t tested it.

A good portion of Elixir Gun’s damage comes from condition which afaik the + 15% damage trait doesn’t increase.
If you only put 10 points into Tools take [Kit Refinement] instead, every 20 seconds you create a Super Elixir when you switch to the Elixir Gun. If you put 20 points into Tools for [Speedy Kit] using the adept major trait in Alchemy for [Invigorating Speed} is a good idea.

I like 20/0/0/30/20 and 20/0/0/20/30 the most. Weapon sets are Axe in the main-hand and Mace, Shield or Warhorn in the off-hand and Longbow or Greatsword.

Link to a guide for a 20/0/0/20/30 Ace/Mace warrior build:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/75020-my-final-axemace-dps-dungeon-build/

Someone made the work and calculated the best combination of Knight and Berserker armor:

As far as gear goes, a balanced between knights and berserker is based on the below stat comparison on what you lose per 1% of crit damage (credit to Reddit – paradiselight).
The tradeoff for 1% of crit damage is equal to:

5 stat points – upgrade slot of trinkets and backpack
10 stat points- traits (not an equipment, but listed for comparison)
12 stat points – glove, shoulder and boots
12.8 stat points – 1H weapons and amulet
13.33 stat points – Earring
14 stat points – Backpack (rare version from guild armorsmith)
14.22 stat points – 2H weapons
14.4 stat points – Coat
16 stat points – Ring, helm and legging

What this means, is that my coat, ring, helm, and legs are knight pieces, and everything else (including jewels in knight rings) are berserker stats. This lets you balance some survivability with damage by losing the least amount of stats possible.

However this armor is for direct damage, if you’re going for condition damage other combinations may be better.

Karma Vendors:
http://dulfy.net/2012/09/08/gw2-templegod-karma-armor-sets/

Stats on order armor:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Knight#Triple_attribute

The above mentioned karma vendors sell exotic armor, so far the best item type. The order armor is only of rare quality so it’s one tier worse; imo only buy those if you like the look to transmute exotic gear to that look.
However the karma vendors only sell armor with three different stat combinations, and at least for one of those stat combinations they don’t sell a full armor set.

In the end you’ll want to buy/craft at least one piece of armor.

DesertRose.2031:

Both ranged weapons of the Guardian are situational but are strong if used in the right situation.
The staff provides a little group-wide healing, group-wide Might, group-wide Swiftness and an AoE attack on its auto attacking, making this weapon very good for DE because you can support other players and easily tag a lot of foes for XP and loot and for running from A to B. With [Altruistic Healing] skill #3 and #4 also turn into great self-heals.
The Scepter is one of the highest DPS weapons of the Guardian however due to the slow projectile speed of its auto attack and the nature of its skill #2 it’s only strong against fairly immobile foes.

However it’s not feasible to use one of the ranged weapons as your standard weapon set, they are weapons to switch to if the situation calls for it.

Yeah, it not like power creep has destroyed so many games’ balance.

At max level and max equipment the armor difference between light armor and heavy armor is less than 300. At max level each piece of equipment gives bonuses to three different stats, and with those bonuses it’s possible to boost your armor by ~1000; on top of that you can boost your armor by 300 via trait points.
A light armored character can easily end up with more armor than an heavily armored character.

You’ll notice the difference in base health far more but in the end active defense determines your survivability, e.g. dodge rolls, blocks or skills that blind foes.

How durable you are not only depends on your profession but also on your build; e.g. you can build an Ele to fall down the moment a boss looks at him or to be a bunker.

If you equikittent you unequip your weapon, anything else stays the same. You still get the stats bonuses from armor, amulets, rings, earrings etc.

Anything that deals direct damage (which is everything but conditions) benefits from Power according to the following formula:
(Current Power + X Power) / Current Power = Damage gain
So, if you double your current amount of Power your direct damage will be doubled.

Condition Damage increases the damage of each condition differently, full list:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition_Damage

For leveling until around 40-60 going primarily Power and/or Condition Damage and secondarily Vitality and/or Toughness is a solid route to go.
Bomb Kit is properly the best until level 60, then Grenade Kit surpasses it.

Only the highest one is active.
Best simply ignore all the traits that give you a fixed speed buff, the Arcane Power trait, Staff Earth #2 followed by Staff Air #5, Staff Air #4, Dagger Air #5 or [Zephyr’s Boon] should be more than enough to have (almost) constantly Swiftness on you.