Guild Wars 2

Just wanted to give my thanks for maintaining this stickied thread.

I’d be more than just a little livid, given that reaction to all the hard work put into this list.

Kontrolle.3514:

played such builds since beta mostly in WvW.
Every single build i liked used Kit-Refinement and E-Gun.

Now i barely play at all because of the last changes, tried different builds and all are complete horrible. The best build for solo roaming was with e-gun and flametrhower condition spec. Elixir S is a must for stomping/rezzing and the key to win if youre outnumbered.

I could face everything and it was awesome and unique compared to the 90% lamebad ele/thief/mesmers. This class and so the whole game died for me in the last patch. I try every day to login but after a couple of minutes i just get angry and ragequit.

Still trying to cope with Kit Refinement nerf too… It’s like, I go to the old faithful E-gun to remove that immobilize or fear and… nothing happens. Suddenly I realize I’ve triggered cooldown with nades or something, and I feel dazed and, well, screwed. =/

I suppose the suggestions on mitigating it’s effect help (ie, not switching to certain kits til you need it) But…. 10 seconds is rediculous, imo. Should be 3-5 at the most as it already has individual cooldowns.

I love the Altruism suggestion. I myself tried 4x Lyssa and 2x Altrusim for all the boon goodness with medkit and weapon swap, and additional precision.

With Elixir B, I’m getting 1-6 stacks of might, random protection, aegis, regen or retaliation outside of combat. And that’s without the in combat Strength and Battle might stacks.

I noticed both issues when I went through the area weeks ago.

Only one logger was left not stuck/glitched, and I managed to complete the task… via the single working logger. Took forever

The Devourer queens were indeed permanently dead too. Fortunately, there’s other ways to complete that task at least.

Elixir gun’s auto can stack weakness indefinitely on non-champion mobs.

As stated by Jarin, if vulnerability stacks are your thing, definitely want to go full explosives. Traited grenades (Steel Packed, Kit Refinement) can quite easily aoe stack vulnerability to 25, as well as routinely aoe blind and freeze.

20 points into Alchemy can net you Cleaning Formula 409, removing conditions on elixir toss. Kit refinement in Tools allows you to drop a second Elixir Gun Super Elixir for an additional condition removal.

Rifle is great for immobilizes on even Champion mobs, while pistol 3 is a nice relatively low cd blind. And don’t forget shield’s three interrupts!

I have this bug as well. May post a screenshot later.
Can’t scroll beyond State of Decay

Had this same problem today, after entering Cursed Shore.

Never had this issue before, but I’ve heard others in map complaining in map chat about it recently.

Target nearest and key bound targeting works fine still.

Aryto.5873:

Kromulous.4291:

Still in the process of collecting, very few have been added from outside sources (people other than me) :

krm plz

You’re turning the vast majority of our servers’ Charr into internet stars.


. . . and we can’t have that, can we?

P.S. Cass is Sand, not white.

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

<3

Daww… was kinda hoping to see my own engineer in the collection. And I know a number of those at least were from TC. =P

I might post some screens of my own Charr later.

It’s interesting to note how long it’s taking for mods to lock this exploit thread. Just goes to show how often Engineer forums seem to be read by admins!

When I first saw the new hair colors and eyes, I didn’t think it’d work very well with the Charr at first.

One particular shade of blue caught my eye, however, and the following hair, eye color and fur pattern came to mind:

If I didn’t already have a human elementalist, I would totally create a Charr ele with this appearance

Just an update, Behemoth has spawned at least once on Tarnished coast since the time of my last posting.

Not sure what the hold up was, but Scholar Breanna(? Brinna?) was definitely sitting around doing nothing for hours near the monastery.

I can second the bugged Shadow Behemoth on Tarnished Coast.

I’ve been in Queensdale for several hours as well, nothing going on.

I can’t help but notice that other events seem broken too, namely the Corrupted Champion Oakheart. The area around the point of interest has the ‘shadow’ tainted effect, as if the Oakheart was up, but it’s definitely not. Seems stuck.

Other servers have had normal spawn cycles, and it does indeed seem like guesting is the way to go…

No shared cooldown, as of at least yesterday before the Flame & Frost II patch. Haven’t tested today.

I had switched to this combination as part of the Sickman build, and both effects were indeed procing separately, despite what the wiki may say.

Battle main, strength off. Don’t see why it wouldn’t work the other way around though.

Rozbuska.5263:

Ozymandias.5704:

I found my own engineer fairly easy to level, I only have a bad time soloing champions and such.

What kind of build do you use? What kind of armor and weapons?

Imo engineer is one of best class to solo champs. Try some like static discharge build – Massive dmg, Rifle has geat CC with short cd, perma swiftness, lots of dodge. Melee champ will never hit you.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-V70;2sPFn0l6gSFx0;9;5T-9T;1235;10;015BL;5sV2DsV2D5Bw

(copy/paste link click will dont work)

I gotta say, I have to agree. The engineer has issues. PvE soloing is not one of them.

I’m using a pretty standard kit mastery/sickman syndrome build, 30/0/0/20/20 and honestly, the amount of utility I have at my discretion in terms of blinds, cc (imob, freezes, cripples, knockdown, knockback) and movement control (rifle #5, eg #4) is great.

Kit refinement may have had an internal cooldown added, but the healing throughput and condition removal I can achieve is amazing, even more so now that Super elixir has been buffed.

I will say that Engineer was indeed the hardest profession to level for me. But it was also just the second one I’d ever played.

More or less the exact build I’ve been using since Elixir build has gone down the toilet.

I can’t really recommend this build more! Great for solo and group play.

Damage, imo, is still subpar to other professions, but I’m still getting used to proper timing and boon stacking, so the build name is quite accurate. (Curse you altitis). Also need to get into the habit of using FT a lot more.

Still quite viable with Rifles, I might add.

SlimGenre.6417:

In S/D it’s very easy to maintain 25 stacks might on yourself at all times, so that boosts dmg output a lot. Also, because PvE is against non-thinking NPC’s, they’re not going to run away from your Dragon’s Tooth. I run a 15/0/0/25/30 for S/D pretty much standard wherever I am, PvE, PvP, WvW. Utilities are Lightning Flash, Arcane Wave, and whatever I feel like I need at the time for my 3rd. In WvW I use Dragon’s Tooth primarily as an additional blast finisher in Ring of Fire for more might, if it hits players, great, if not, that’s just more might for me and anyone else in range.

I also fight S/D in melee range like I were running my D/D build, so your big hits are more likely to connect.

I main an Engineer, so I’m no stranger to having the option of range, yet still preferring getting up close and personal.

A build with more points in water is what I originally intended, better support. I just didn’t care much for Scepter’s water abilities. Also worried that my damage would be crappy overall for soloing PvE stuff. I’ll give it a try though!

Biased towards Charr, as I have four… Great racials (Minus the elites). I hear good things about the Asura ones too though.

It’s strange, most engineers I see are either Charr, or specifically, female human, not sure why. You’d think Asura engineers would be more common…

Shameless bump.

I too was instantly drawn to S/D Ele for PvE. I picked up on the full combo listed by Ray pretty quick, which I just found to be amazing. (I might add, it does great burst damage on top of stacking might incredibly high)

I’m curious to know what other S/D PvE builds there are out there. I’m still new to the class, and haven’t played around with many traits, so build advice while leveling is also appreciated.

Namely, I’m looking for something to take advantage of Scepter’s quick auto attacks. Taking full advantage of on crit sigils and traits such as Burning Precision looks really promising with a condition build.

This is what I have so far. Signet of Fire for a flat crit boost and access to additional burn, AW for the blast finisher. Third Util is free, filled with either another signet or AS (as not being interrupted is nice).

Even with precision/cnd dmg gear, Accuracy, and Signet of fire however, I’m worried my crit rate will be too low to benefit much from on crit procs… I can’t see going into Air very far.

Also clueless on an elite. Disclaimer: Noob elementalist theory crafting here.

As I’ve said before (And dunno if someone’s suggested in this thread yet):

Make #2 like Harpoon Gun #3. It retains its current function as an interrupt, but also gives the engineer some mobility that other downed states have, and a chance at moving to a safer location.

Maiden England.3491:

Only a Charr engineer will say “lock and load” when you pick up a bucket of water

Only a Charr engineer would don her medkit backpack, grin, and growl out: “Time to hunt some prey…”

Swagg.9236:

nofo.8469:

Only an engineer, don’t worry.

Everybody else go home. This guy won.

I’d be inclined to agree if I didn’t love this thread so much.

Veritas.7342:

I like the thought of the four-legged running animation, but there are two problems with it, both of which have already been mentioned. First, because Charr are so big but run at the same speed as all PCs, they feel way too slow for the animation; second, the animation is rather poor – hands and feet hit the ground at almost exactly the same time, and leave it similarly. It’s the same thing wrong with the Worgen racial run animation in WoW, albeit with somewhat less flailing. As others have said, it’s not running, it’s bouncing.

The worgen run animation just looks plain silly. It actually looks normal when your character is scaled up and the animations are slowed down; it looks much more graceful and natural.

It’s pretty obvious that they were designed to cycle through the animations at much slower speeds than regular scaling and mount speeds.

Stormdancer.4972:

It might be nice to allow a toggle between running on all fours, and the upright ‘jog’ that the NPCs usually use.

I wouldn’t mind a toggle. I don’t always want to run with my weapons drawn, and I don’t always want to run on all fours either. The animation is there already and used – Enter combat and sheathe your weapons. You default to running on all fours as soon as combat ends though.

myrtthe.3149:

Had this also just after a guildie got it, when we were at the last part before beating Jormag. It’s like an alarm going off in your left ear only. Going to character select and the sound continued, had to log out and back in before it was fixed. It was the first time I encountered this since the start of the game.
And thanks Jayne, I’ll look into that.

Having this exact issue. Happened three times now, it’s incredibly annoying…

I’ll try deleting local.dat

I was gonna purchase a frame or two to hopefully get an Endless tonic too, with my extra stuffing and such.

Sadly, they’re definitely gone from the Lion’s Arch vendor, at least.

There’s a chain of events that spawns a Champion Destroyer… harpy? I think it was, in that area. Sets everything on fire.

Probably things didn’t reset properly when it was defeated.

The elixir traits are kinda buggy. Often times, something causes them to not even work at all with Elixir X. (May have been since fixed, but the cooldown trait was definitely not working for the longest time)

As the others have said, Elixir X is more or less your suicide elite. It has situational uses, like for bunkering, holding a small area (particularly Tornado form), but it’s so easy to just mitigate, or outright ignore. In tornado form, anyone can simply stay out of range and pelt away at you. The small health increase from Rampage doesn’t justify the loss of your utility skills and kits.

Supply Crate provides several bandages worth 1k heal each (at 80) that anyone can use, is a blast finisher, stuns, and drops several turrets which can buy you some time, not to mention, provide AoE Regen.

It’s true that it’s not too hard to AoE to get rid of the turrets completely, but that’s still pressure taken off of you.

Kimbald.2697:

Lite.3819:

After experimenting with every possible situation and weighting every skill, this is the best I can come up with. I’m quite proud of this build, it’s pretty close to jack of all trades. I use this build for PvE, PvP, and WvW. The only change is the Berserker amulet to Knight amulet when I switch to PvP.

It’s based on the idea that you make almost no mistakes.
http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/engineer#14|0|1207|253|4700|4603|4065|30|1422|1789|1885|20|1866|1433|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|20|1883|2270|0|0|0|0|28047|0|49962|49962|49962|49962|49962|25790|21080|0|0|0|0|

Very close to what I use myself.
More or less based on the few things that work: Tool Kit, EG’s #5 and grenades for carpet bombing mindless zergs or mindless targets…

Elixir gun mostly for condition remaval, doubled with kit refinement, some healing and an escape.
If I happen to target a single hardhitting enemy, the weakness comes in handy.

Grenades because it’s our only real ranged option…

Tool kit for defense and more melee fun.

I use a pistol and shield myself, and didn’t go 20 in Firearms, instead I went 10 in Alchemy and full 30 in Tools.
Your damage will be better, and the riffle is good cc.

My defense will be slightly better, but in essence it’s the same.

Builds like these are the closest I can find to being ‘versatile’ but frankly: they are a mess and lack in more ways than one…

As Casia explained: engineers lack the traits to create versatile builds that are truely valuable.

I’m more or less using a cross between your builds: 30/0/0/20/20, Rifle.

I’m really considering dropping 10 from Alch, and moving it into Firearms again, because I’ve used P/S forever, and miss it dearly… Plus, condition grenades are so much better than raw power now.

Honestly, it’s just silly that in order to get the most out of grenades, we must not only go 30 into Explosions, but also put points into Firearms now.

Just think about the difficulty in implementation of such a change, making engineers use Heavy armor. You really don’t go and release a game, and change a basic fundamental of the class, a few months down the line, like that.

Do engineers that played before the change simply keep on wearing their medium armors forever, until it’s unequipped? Imagine the novelty of seeing engineers wearing Medium cultural and dungeon sets still, after the change has been made.

Adding something new like a weapon set, however, is something different and much more within the realm of possibility. Still, I doubt it. I don’t see it as particularly necessary, even if it would be rather nifty to have more options aside from kits.

Nirvana.8659:

Kimbald.2697:

while we are on the subject of elixir S:

any other Asura get this annoying glitching when using it?
It’s as if my movement is too small for the game to handle well.

Yeeeeeees meeeeeeeeeeeeee.

When i use elixier S my screen go crazy , it start to shake up and down .
Uff , it’s a problem because it seems i don’t even move with this screen issue , i don’t understand where to go , where my enemy is .

I hope Developers know there is this issue and will fix it. Also,i doubt it’s only an asura problem.
Anyone can confirm this?

Sorry for the offtopic.
Regards.

I’ve respecced my engi towards damage and away from control and Elixirs, and haven’t honestly played much in a while…

But I don’t recall having any issues with Elixir S like this, on my Charr engi, anyway.

He’s been like this a long while on TC at least. I’ve never seen this many though before, most I’ve seen is five.

He also often winds up with his clones spread across the zone: I often see copies of him at Summit Peak as well, and the Thunder Den.

Hsinimod.5784:

Necromancer is not at first sight a utility class, but it has all the skills needed to work with. I’m not talking out of experience, but my roommate is always pulling tricks out and keeping me alive. Tanking, repeated condition removal, and small heals…. just seems it is all there and ready when needed.

The Necromancer is, imo, the class most like the engineer, in terms of being Robin to everyone else’s Batman.

A player who fully understands the class mechanics can do it all pretty well, but it’s still only going to be 80% of say, a thief’s damage, or a guardian’s support healing and boons.

Just a little note on 3: You’ll be using kits a lot as an engineer. While a kit is out, you’re in a ‘combat’ ready stance, which for Charr, means upright and on two feet. It also counts as a weapon unsheathing, so when unequipping a kit, you’ll have weapons drawn for a while.

Just something to keep in mind. And if it really bugs ya, just bind a key to Holster weapon for when you don’t wanna be on all fours.

Brtwrst.9312:

tl;dr available at the end

You have to spend 10 points and you’re not considering speed signets can stack with swiftness.

that is not entirely correct, speed buffs only stack to a max of +33%
so someone with swiftness moves at the same speed as someone with swiftness and any other speed increase. You can only run faster if a single skill gives more than +33%. This has been this way since Beta (actually since GW1 but that’s beside the point)

I really like that we have the chance (multiple even) to get increased movement speed without having to sacrifice a utility slot.
I think spending 10 points is a lot “cheaper” than bringing a utility skill which you don’t even really want to actively use because the active part is probably awful and you lose the passive speed when you do (bla bla ele has a trait to keep the passive part even when the signet is on cd bla bla – this is a (grandmaster) trait so doesn’t really count)

And utility slots are more valuable to us than to other classes because we get our “Weapon swap” from kits and all utility skills give us an additional tool belt skill. So you actually WANT to have as much utility customization options available as possible. It would really suck if we had to bring the “must have move speed Signet” just to keep up and run around with a skill we don’t use and a tool belt skill that might suck.

So considering that:
permanent swiftness > permanent 25% and
swiftness = swiftness + permanent 25%
i would say that we don’t really need a movement speed signet

PS. if you don’t use a kit – well tough luck. That’s almost like not using weapon swap on other classes so you are probably doing it wrong. (Don’t flame – just my opinion)

tl;dr: Having no signet is absolutely fine because: Permanent swiftness > REST

I’m with this guy pretty much. A signet would have to have an incredibly useful utility or active (with a low cooldown) to justify it replacing a weapon kit with five skills + a utility belt skill.

Utility slots are even more precious to engineers than other classes, as they’re our version of a weapon swap.

I wouldn’t argue against dropping Signets to 20% for all classes though… 25% is pretty close to Swiftness speeds, makes the boon slightly less useful. That’s an entirely different topic though.

zbrkesbr.4173:

There is a 100% method to avoid death on that slope: slide near the right wall continuously mashing jump button (default is “space”): you’ll jump midway and fall on stalagmite on the right side without any damage. Then you can proceed and jump further – even if you hit something midway – it wont be lethal.

Don’t need to mash jump at all. Just fall along the right side, catch the stalagmite, and follow onto the lower one (It’s still possible to die on the lip from the first, so make sure you hop to the lower one).

From the lower stalagmite, you won’t take enough fall damage, if any at all, to die. Unless you miss the water completely, of course.

In terms of usefulness, the only real choice is Supply Drop.

I mean there are, I suppose situational uses for say, the stability of Elixir X. But since there’s no reliable way to get the desired transformation, it’s sketchy at best to rely on that. (I often see engies popping it for the stability and then cancelling the form. Meanwhile in gaurdianland… permastability.)

Mortar’s range is bad, without the use of a trait. And it’s an aggro magnet, in addition to being incredibly fragile.

The turrets in supply drop are useful for drawing aggro, providing regen and immobilize, and naturally the bandages are useful for not only yourself, but any allies in the area.

waeren.9743:

tigirius.9014:

I use two superior fire and they don’t do anywhere near enough to justify taking 30% off anything much less the nerfs to all the kits we suffered that they didn’t detail.

I think you might want to read up on how sigils work.

What he means is, they share a cooldown. Having two is no more effective than having one.

http://www.gw2armorgallery.com/armour/charr/charr-light-cult-3-male.jpg

Every time I see this armor in character creation, I get this little voice in the back of my head that screams ‘MAKE A CHARR NECRO NOW’

I already have a Sylvari necro at 80 though. :<

Only quip is that it doesn’t conform to the Charr tail, unlike pretty much every other Charr cultural. The tail simply pokes through.

Hitboxes may be the same, but it is much, much harder to target a tiny Asura in a crowd, given the meh targeting system of the game.

KirinDave.6451:

imaginary.6241:

KirinDave.6451:

There is no reason to drop the rifle turret, ever.

Yes there is – as a blast finisher and additional two static discharges.

If you want a blast finisher, any turret will do. I’m not sure what you mean by two additional static discharges, detonating the turret doesn’t clear the cooldown; it’s just such a fast cooldown that usually it’s clear by the time you can drop, trigger, then detonate the turret.

The toolbelt skill is the best toolbelt skill for static discharges (the only thing that comes even close is the personal battering ram toolbelt skill, which only loses because of the longer cooldown), but the turret itself is almost comically bad except to get said blast finisher.

Using the utility belt skill to detonate your turret results in another static discharge effect. (It goes back to the remaining Surprise Shot cd once it’s detonated).

I dunno if this is true with other turrets, but I was pleasantly surprised to find this true on Rifle Turret.

So it is essentially a second static discharge on the same utility belt slot, with a long cooldown.

Have you accidentally disabled autoattack for it? I think you just control + mouse 2 the skill you want to auto, if I recall correctly.

My sbow autoattack works just fine here.

Lifelike.5862:

Permaswiftness isn’t that great really. Lots of classes can achieve it, including necromancers and warriors.

I don’t think you quite understand. This is perma-swiftness without using any cooldowns, other than GCD. If you have medkit active, throwing in a Stimulant will allow you to boost this to max.

In order for a Necro to get this kind of swiftness, you need to have a utility slot dedicated to Spectral Walk. Same goes for warriors and banners.

Maybe when Egun’s Superelixir pulses were healing for double what it should have, Engineer would have given any other support build class a run for it’s money.

It’s sad really, that a bug actually makes the class decent at a role finally, and they take so long to fix it, that many grow accustomed to it. Only to have it stripped away.

Forestnator.6298:

Yes, that’s what the engi is: good enough to be useful.

This ^

I don’t really see new weapon skills happening for any classes any time soon, much less the most neglected class in the game.

Sad, but true pretty much. That, and this.

Thenoob.1480:

The basics of the engineer are: you play at 100% to match others at 80%.

No matter how well you play as engineer, you’re only going to be ‘okay’.

Khisanth.2948:

Alexandra Triplett.1280:

Hey all, can you try changing the trait while you are running and see if you notice a difference? Visually it’s subtle.

That sounds like it would be very hard to notice.

I think a better way to test this is to have another necromancer running with you. One with the trait and one without. The person without the trait should start running first. If the trait is working then the person with the trait should eventually catch up and overtake the other person. The spawn point of either of the borderlands that doesn’t belong to your home server would be a good starting point since there is a fairly long path without any sort of obstructions.

Or just… anyone that’s not using movement modifiers. Doesn’t have to be a Necro.

This workaround works for me as well.

Once you switch back to your original gender, the glow slider doesn’t work still. Because it’s using the wrong slider: the male slider affects the female Sylvari, and the male slider affects the female.

As OP says, it seems like an easy fix…

There is plenty to complain about with the state Engineer is in right now. I see nothing on this list that is noteworthy, honestly.

1&2: The Utility belt exists for a reason. We do get an effective nine utility skills at any given time. The utility abilities for kits are nothing to scoff at, and quite often, are a large part of why I choose to even use a kit, which is how it should be. I might also add, we still have no cooldown on swapping kits, unlike attunement swapping. I don’t even need to mention kit modifying traits, do I? (Perma swiftness & regen, as well as free spells off cooldown are pretty nice, I dunno)

3: Probably your strongest point. It is annoying having so much unreliability, however one could say it’s part of the charm and the intended feel of the class. There is a way to achieve this without letting luck completely decide whether you succeed or not however, and I do think abilities that do have this element of chance do need to be reworked so that the outcomes are more similar and any can be used in any situation.

4: I’ve… never noticed issues? I mean, I play on an older PC. When half the people during world events aren’t still loading constantly or culling out, I’ve never had much an issue tossing elixirs into groups of people at all, even through the lag. I wouldn’t mind a slight radius increase, or a trait to do such, however. (I’m looking at you Acidic Elixirs)

I haven’t looked too thoroughly at how support guardians apply their own boons, but it would seem to me that if they’re hanging back, they’re only buffing ranged party members, or melee members if they’re up front. The Medium range playstyle of the engineer is perfect for optimum Elixir tossing coverage.

I honestly feel like there’s much else that needs to be discussed and fixed prior: a whole slew of still useless traits, a flat and blind 30% damage reduction (after a 15% reduction) to our only decent damage kit, weapon stats still not applying to kits, just to list a few.

Not sure what is meant by “Engineer only gear.” I assume you’re not talking about the runes.

Warriors on the other hand…

I’ve no idea how a 128% crit rate makes any sense. Let alone the 135% I was able to achieve later.

Low level scaling with stats and gear is a bit wonky, to say the least. And naturally, at 80, my crit rate would be no where near this… But still, take it for what it is.

Healing Signet is a little broken at lower levels. You can quite literally get Healing Signet on a new Warrior, and afk facetank Champions in level 1-15 zones.

Healing Signet scales poorly as you level though, also scaling poorly with healing power. Once you get to about 30-40’s, you’ll notice that the sheer regeneration alone is no longer keeping you alive.

Edit: Dekou beat me to it!

I went from despising my first toon (a mesmer) and deleting him, to making a second Mesmer and falling in love, being surprised by the survivability and awesome damage.

I currently have my new Mesmer at 35, proudly wearing Cultural armor. So far at this level, I’ve pretty frequently solo’d champions, making thorough use of Sword/Sword and Scepter/sword and the various blocks, along with distortion.

I know for a fact I disliked my first Mesmer because I had poor understanding of game mechanics. I have one of every class, except Gaurdian, over 35 at the moment, and I have to say that Engineer was definitely the class I found hardest to level.

That being said, I probably dislike Mesmer healing skills the most. It almost seems like points in Inspiration for Phantasmal Healing is a must for long term longevity…

Also, if you wanna see having issues with ranged mobs? Try rolling a Necro. Zero reflects, zero blocks, zero invulnerability. Best a Necro can do is hope to fear them at the appropriate time every once in a while.

I’m also experiencing this with the T1 Charr light cultural. I’ve posted in the stickied “Issues with character art, weapons, or armor.” thread

Just know you’re not alone!