Guild Wars 2

Do you wanna juggle? Get some bowling pins.

30/10/0/0/30, juggle Flame Blast, Shrapnel Grenade, Freeze Grenade, Acid Bomb, Blunderbuss, and Jump Shot. You’ve got other skills to conditionally use (overcharged shot, net shot, Napalm every other Acid Bomb, Smoke Vent, Flashbangs). With a berserker setup (running runes of altruism and 2 sets of 20% might have ultimately almost the same damage increase as 6 rubies, except when you’re hitting 25 stacks of might with rubies, then that’s better, but conditional).

Sigil of Battle after getting 25 stacks of bloodlust. Use grenade auto during the ~4 second downtime between juggling. Have fun.

Put grenade kit in instead of PBR. When you use those control skills, swap to grenade kit and land a freeze or shrapnel grenade on their heads. Even better if you’re landing 4 second roots from net turret.

I run a ‘juggle all the damage’ build, but I don’t bother with alchemy or going 25 deep into firearms for 5% more while bleeding. Look at it like this – 30 into explosives gives you 50% more grenade damage, and the 2 and 4 are hard hitting, with the 2 being okittensecond cooldown! Between that and flame blast, that’ll eat up about 20-30% of your time alone, and it’s time well spent given the damage output. If you’re curious, 30/10/0/0/30 is what I run. Acid Bomb, Flame Blast, Shrapnel Grenade, Freeze Grenade, Grenade Barrage, Blunderbuss, and Jump Shot are all worth using (toss in a napalm before acid bomb for a well used blast finisher imho – and 10 seconds of burning, if that matters at all).

Remove mortar, add mortar kit with same skills, but on much longer cooldowns (essentially giving us a potential 5th kit, with some decent abilities on ~70-90 second cooldowns).

@Acolytes – I gave them a shot, just didn’t work out.

@JUGS – I’m super interested, but I’m also 23. I don’t believe I’d have as much to relate to, and would undermine the point of your guild if I lied in attempt to join! I do appreciate the offer though!

Sporadicus.1028:

I know, but sometimes people need pen laid to paper instead of just folks arguing “Strength is better!” and “Battle is better!”

The posters before me have laid their reasons out, and I’ve laid mine. Hopefully this makes readers decide which way they want to play.

Sorry, didn’t mean to come off as attacking you. Meant to just try and discard these pages of arbitrary numbers in the fact that, at base value, 6 > 5. More duration? Well they’ll both scale the same, so it’ll still maintain the fact that battle > strength. There’s no point bringing up flamethrower or potatoes or William Shatner’s birthday, none of it is going to change the fact that, 6 > 5. I could bring up the fact it’s a 9 second internal cooldown and not 10, so technically for a brief moment (in optimal situation) that it’d be 9 stacks of might, but I’m probably not hitting that icd every possible chance, just like sigil of strength likely isn’t hitting it every possible chance (although it likely only suffers 1/5th of a second of wasted time – but that’s still wasted time).

It’s not hard to figure out Battle > Strength. For engineers, you should be juggling kits anyway to maintain ideal damage output. 6 > 5.

Depends on what you mean by ‘condition’ build. In WvW, your only solid damage output with something like carrion will be landing prybar, shrapnel grenade, or any source of burning.

If you go with rampager’s though, it’s not so bad – but then again, at that point I’m not sure if you’d have more benefit from berserker stats or not. I will say this though, with immense emphasis – confusion is pretty OP in WvW, and prybar gives 5 stacks of it for up to 10 seconds with certain runes + pizza. 10 seconds of ‘oh crap’.

Aveneo.2068:

I’m not too sure about that. At the moment (with runes and such) I have a constant 9 stacks passive.

And knowing ANet, if they would change it to On-Crit they’d throw an icd of 2s on. So I’d only be able to get the same number of stacks after at least 18-20s.

As you might imagine, I’d rather start the fight with my 9 stacks instead of having to wait 18-20s before I’m at the same number.

The first thing is that, even with 25 stacks of might, the flamethrower’s auto attack (it’s defining feature) is pretty god-awful. Second thing is that warrior GS has no internal cooldown, so maintaining 20+ stacks is no issue, 25 is easy if they’re against a wall. I know comparing one class to another isn’t entirely fair, but I’m simply pointing out some facts as they exist.

Change Juggernaut from ‘Stack of might every 3 seconds’ to ‘Might on crit’. Boom, grandmaster trait-worthy (alongside the 200 toughness). Although the damage does still need to be increased a bit anyway, 2.5 second channel for even 6k damage is kind of a joke.

Hey there, I’m lookin’ for a PvE guild on Jade Quarry that would take a fairly well-versed engineer into it’s ranks. I won’t lie – I’m wanting to join a guild purely for the new guild mission / trek / etc content. I’ve already done all the other content in this game, and this is content that I really want to sink my teeth into! I guess some credentials would help, so I’ll toss those out -

5.8k AP (I know these don’t mean much if someone just takes a salvage kit to everything on the TP, but trust me, I haven’t)
Level 80 engineer, guardian, necro, and warrior. All but the necro are geared out.
I’m very much into speed clearing dungeons and min/maxing situations.
I’m also very much up for discussing how to improve my own gameplay as an engineer in general.

If I had to say what my biggest flaw is, it’s my inability to take things at face value. If you tell me X is better than Y because Z, I’m going to go out and extensively test it.

If I had to say what my greatest asset was? Everything I go for is to optimize completion times and damage output. I’m looking for a friendly guild, but also a semi-organized one that wants to clear this new guild content as badly as I do!

It’s just a painful dungeon to run. Things like Sure-Shot-Seamus just troll you endlessly, and the reward output to time input is just zzzzzz

Gems into orbs or just working on a craft you haven’t levelled yet will get you the achievement in no time. I got it around ~250 in tailoring.

Aristio.2784:

Amadeus.5687:

@Phineas Poe
Theif Sword skill 2 is a stun breaker, and so is mesmer staff skill 2!

Mesmer Staff #2 is not a Stun Breaker. But it can be used -while- stunned to move, but it will not break the effect of Stun.

For the sake of saving your life, it’s a major stun breaker. Knocked down for 2 seconds by an engineer? Incoming freeze grenades? BWOOP, nope, deal w/ it. 8/10 second cooldown.

Where’s that picture of Patrick pushing the problem away?

“Let’s take the ranger’s problem…

…and push it onto Engineers!"

I wouldn’t use Pizza for PvE, not much point, unless you really love confusion.

Idea of the build is to just faceroll in grenades and keep up 23-25 permableeds, permapoison, and permaburning, along with a lengthy chill to help cc mobs. The vulnerability is just bonus. Your build is pretty much what I was testing a while back to prove one class can bust the bleed cap without pizza.

Until they make conditions on a per-player basis though, I’m not touching conditions. Do more damage through berserking + rubies than rampaging + bleed runes, and it gets worse with a smart guardian or necro in the party. Doesn’t mean it isn’t fun or WvW unviable though.

Acidic Elixirs needs to do something useful. Right now it’s craptastic damage. If throwing elixirs didn’t have a cast time (like Surprise Shot), I’d argue differently, but right now it’s one of the worst traits you can feasibly take in the game. First off you’re forfeiting a potential boon / effect in favor of attempting more damage, or you have to get close to make it work both ways – either way is a significant drawback.

My suggestion? “Thrown elixirs are now blast finishers.”

google.3709:

2/2/2 set up would work out nicer since every might is 35 more power, at 10 might you get 350 more attack which more than pumping 30 trait point into explosives, also even tho you lose some critical damage, you get more attack which will scale much nicer with your lower crit dmg and as for precision, thanks to med kit, you can take advantage of free fury

12 rubies = 120 power, 4% more crit chance, and 12% more crit damage.
2/2/2 setup = 3 stacks of might (105 power), 50 power, and 40% longer might duration.

Across different sources of might, this ramps up my personalized blast finisher to 28 seconds (100% uptime on the might I create, given the waiting is on Napalm’s cooldown), Sigil of Battle to a similar 28 seconds, and the trait from 15 to 21 seconds. I’m not going to take alchemy into account because this is strictly analyzing rune comparisons. From a purely mathematical viewpoint:

35 more power from the rune, no crit chance increase (I already use drop stimulant, this isn’t up for discussion), 12% less crit damage, but more might uptime. The combination of crit chance and crit damage is roughly a little more than a 7% damage increase. The power is debatable, but not ignorable – my primary issue however is the mixed up cooldowns I’m seeing. I’m fine with swapping to medkit every 10 seconds, it’s not hard to remember – but that’s not the case. Altruism is on a 15 second cooldown, and the trait is on a 10 – swapping every 15 seconds is also fine with me, but at that point the Altruism might will fall off. Every 20 seconds (or 10, as I currently do) is also easy to remember, as it’s when I can use drop stimulant again.

I’m basically looking at the raw gains – I’ll have some moments where I have more might than usual, at which point it’ll probably translate into a 10% damage increase beyond the norm. However, with a clever group, hitting 12-15 AoE might stacks isn’t hard from other players taking advantage of Napalm – and at that point, I’d be losing out on ~9% damage (only 50 power is from runes versus 120 with rubies, so it’s like 2 might stacks being lost).

It’s definitely an interesting build, but from a min/max point of view, the differences are so minimal and based on moments of time, producing an average is hard – sure, you can try to use skills like Fire Blast during your 15-18 stacks of might moments, but what if you go into those moments and FB is halfway through cooldown, or you just popped grenade barrage? Waiting to use those skills is also losing DPS, so it’s a prickly slope.

I’ve been debating something like this for a long time, but it’s hard to settle on. I really don’t like the 30 points in Alchemy – as it’s all primarily for boon duration above all else. I’m aware of how many stacks of might you can beef up just off medkit – I’ve been using the explosives trait and a battle sigil for a bit, as well as Napalm + Acid Bomb in almost every fight. With my good group (as in they see Napalm and instantly shove their banners into it), I’m hitting 22-25 stacks of might pretty quick – although with PUGs, it’s 9-12 on average.

I’m just trying to mentally tabulate if, alone, 6 ruby orbs versus the 2/2/2 setup of altruism/hoelbrak/fire, who would win out? I’m coming up with orb on repeat tests, but it’s hard to say – 3 stacks of 14 second might on medkit is pretty nice, along with pumping up my battle sigil to 28 seconds, and the trait to 21 seconds!

I’d wait for them to make legendary effects apply to kits. If they do that, that is.

Penguin.5197:

I think its decent under specific conditions. Combine it with full alchemy line and rune of earth set for 7.5 seconds of protection. Thats about 30% of protection uptime on its own, pretty useful in spvp (Where you get hit by crit almost every time), especially when combines with protection injection. You will almost always have protection uptime in battles.

Yes I know its off topic.

I’m not helping in this segue, but armor mods gives retaliation.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around that person testing builds without proper traiting based on what weapon you’re going to ideally use. For GS, something like 20/25/0/20/5 would be nearly ideal, whereas Hammer would be 10/25/0/30/5.

Freeze Grenade.
Stay cool.

Aveneo.2068:

@Kamahl – I’m sorry, but I don’t understand what your response has to do with my suggestion of adding certain passive effects when using a kit. To me you’re comparing toolbelt skills, which isn’t why I made this thread

Lemme sum it up for you – kits are our best utility skills. Other types of engineer utility skills can’t compete. Kits do not need buffing in general. Other skill types do. Toolbelt skills play a major role in how good an engineer utility skill is.

Now do you understand?

No. Nooooooooo. Kits are already our best utilities, and each one has anywhere from 2 to 4 very strong skills attached. Our turrets, gadgets, and elixirs need buffing the most badly – the RNG nature of elixirs, the pure bad-ism of turret & gadgets.. they just need an overhaul. Every kit ability has a pretty strong toolbelt skill, with the worst being either elixir gun or flamethrower (which, when you think about it, isn’t really that bad). The only elixir with a good toolbelt is elixir R, every other one is literally RNG: S has a 50% chance of trolling you. U had a 33% chance of making you flip a table. B is 25% chance to be useful, 75% to be something that isn’t really a major difference. Etcetera.

I think it’s only an issue with small asuras, I’m max sized and have never encountered this bug.

The price initially started rising due to the only ascended amulet being crafted via 750 piles.

Now it’s just.. silly. I don’t understand why it isn’t going down now, but as another poster said, T5 → T6 dust is a pretty good way to go. Or it was, now it’s kind of iffy.

10% more damage, faster endurance regen, and.. when they make scope work, will be friggin’ amazing. At the moment, it’s still a better alternative damage-wise to HGH, given HGH will eat up 2-3 of your skill slots in effort to stack might. 30 crit damage and faster toolbelt recharges do make an impact.

I’d say grenade kit’s auto attack is your ‘down time’ auto. Juggle flame blast, acid bomb, jump shot, blunderbuss, grenade barrage, shrapnel grenade, and freeze grenade. When those are on cooldown, just.. use throw grenade. You’ll never use it for more than 4-5 hits anyway – don’t forget to swap to medkit every now and then for 3 stacks of might and to drop stimulant!

Bumping with my own ‘OH YEAH’ agreement on this. Gadgets suck. Portable ram, utility goggles, throw mine (this one’s only slightly useful for boon removal), and rocket boots are awful (actually I like the boot’s utility skill). Slick Shoes is only useful for WvW situations, in sPvP it feels like a silly, weird effort to try and knock someone down with the skill.

While it’d need a revamp of a few traits, giving gadgets passive effects would thoroughly improve the diversity potential. Right now, why the hell would I ever take a gadget over a kit? Gadget toolbelts are universally bad, whereas kit toolbelts are outstanding – and come with at least 2 very solid skills attached. Gadgets are on long cooldowns with subpar effects.

Guys, I know I’m parroting myself, but.. flamethrower is worth the slot. But you’re not supposed to stay in it. Swap to flamethrower, push 2, tap 2 again at the right moment, maybe drop Napalm, then go back to your other damage method for ~5 seconds before busting out another hadouken.

There’s a plethora of complaints about how long some fractals take. While I don’t feel Grawl is very long (it’s two encounters and a boss), others like Dredge and Cliffside are incredibly drawn out and tedious. Sure, they were amazing and fun the first time, but that’s how all new content is – at the moment, these two fractals are a nightmare to players!

So, here is my suggestion: Make these two fractals count as 2/3rds of your fractal run. 3 normal fractals, and then if it’s an even level, Jade Maw, right? Well with this implementation, if you should happen upon Dredge or Cliffside, boom! That will count as 2 of your 3 fractals. It would somewhat remove the paranoia of having either of them as your third fractal (say you had Battlefield, then Ocean, you couldn’t encounter Dredge or Cliffside with this change).

Opinions? Thoughts?

Mostly a buff. Flamethrower is worth it just for Flame Blast in PvE. For PvP, it’s debatable. I could see it being used in sPvP for the control and the sudden burst from 2, as well as long term burning. For WvW, I’m hesitant to use it – grenade kit for long range, ‘safe’ damage, tool kit for magnet, gear shield, and prybar, and elixir gun for acid bomb helping me escape, as well as the super elixir cleanses.

Until they fix how conditions operate in PvE (as in your teammates won’t detract from your potential damage), the only class that should be considering a condition oriented build is the necromancer. Everyone else can put out more damage with berserkers by comparison. The kicker is, engineer can hit 25 bleed + permaburning + permapoison just by using grenadier, shrapnel, incendiary powder, and the 20% burn duration trait, but the moment another guardian pushes F1, that’s 20+ seconds where it’s not your burn that’s taking effect.

The old super elixir coefficients were .2 on landing and .1 on each tick. If they doubled it as said in the patch notes, it’ll now be .4 on landing and .2 per tick. Pretty crazy to be honest.

Alright everyone, I’m somewhat notorious for min/maxing, and my kitmaster setup for PvE has just dropped Tool kit for Flamethrower. Why? HADOUKEN. I just pop it off every 6 seconds, it hits harder than a level 3 eviscerate. It’s seriously worth it. Prybar was single target and Throw Wrench often only did half damage. Gear Shield is still outstanding though, and if I need a 3 second block, I’ll definitely swap tool kit back in.

But given how hard it hits on a 6 second cooldown, it’s like a second shrapnel grenade at point blank, without even taking the 15% trait. SHINKU HADOUKEN

google.3709:

just wondering cause i dont play turrents often, could you tell me some good uses of deploy able turrets ? is it to place turrents on places mobs can’t hit them or is there more ways people use it

thank you

I think one of the bigger uses would be to just plain troll people – with the knockback on detonate ability, you could just keep chaining ranged explosion knockbacks between healing turret, rifle turret, flame turret, and net turret. Then WOOPWOOPWOOP away and come back a bit later. It doesn’t seem particularly useful though to be honest.

Engineer can use an ash legion spy kit, pop elixir U, and do it. 5 seconds of quickness will get it done fast.

If you wanna go raw damage, as of this patch, best bet is to juggle the hard hitting skills between flamethrower (all 1 of them), grenade kit (3), and elixir gun (1 skill, but it also has several heals), as well as your main weapon, the rifle, which has 2 hard hitting abilities. While waiting, use grenade kit’s auto attack. 25 might stacks is a present, easily doable build, but the damage you lose out from staying in flamethrower, using 6 might runes (instead of 6 rubies, with regards to PvE), and the critical damage lost from tools (as well as the 10% more damage with full endurance versus 5% while bleeding), just heavily tips it in the non-flamethrower’s favor. While you can still maintain 25 might stacks without flamethrower (22+ easily) with HGH setup, that has the same issue of taking points away from a damage traitline for the sake of more power. 6 stacks of power = ~9% more damage (from a baseline berserker setup, all rubies – taking away the crit damage actually reduces this % by a small amount). That, and you forfeit some of your better damage abilities for elixir B and [elixir of your choice] alongside, well, grenade kit. After the patch, I’m taking flamethrower just for the 2. It hits harder than a level 3 eviscerate on a 6 second cooldown, without the 15% damage trait. Then swap back to grenades and keep hammering away (or elixir gun and pop off acid bomb in your fire field).

Guys, you can still 100 nades. You just have to run around with toolkit out before engaging. Magnet → Rifle, Net Shot → Grenade Barrage + Grenade Kit.

When I do 30+, there’s only two things I want to avoid – rangers, and flamethrower engineers.

Everything else, idgaf, eff yeah let’s do this. I do admit I’m getting a little tired of greatsword mesmers pulling mobs in Ascalon when I’m an engineer and about to toss a freeze grenade for a nice, long, slow approach for all those veteran one-shot warriors.

Gaudrath.6725:

Try soloing veterans five levels above your own with a greatsword, or certain champs on your own level with it.
Sword/focus or sword/shield are much better in many situations, especially when you are fighting a single, tough opponent.

Personally, I utilize the hidden skill called “weapon switch” and use BOTH the greatsword and a secondary weapon set. It is said that greatsword/sword/torch can really light things up!

Sadly, GS will still beat it while levelling – all it takes is just doing a quick jump, get your character model inside of theirs, and push 2. Repeat when possible, abuse Aegis + Renewed Focus + Retreat for up to 5+ blocks, and the blind for a 6th missed hit. You could maybe argue for sword at level 60 with Right Handed Strength, but after a great deal of testing, I find it still lacking if you can even get 80% of the bolts to hit your target (and if it’s a large target, and you jump inside, it’ll be 100% no problem).

Nascentish.2375:

On the topic of Med Kit, and this is more a general inquiry as opposed to one directed solely at you, is it as good as people say it is? I’ve unlocked it, but I find that it’s far easier to use Elixir H – the whole drop bandages/pick up bandages thing seems a bit awkward to me, and even with the Toolbelt heal, it doesn’t seem to be doing much, where keeping me from getting eaten alive is concerned? I’m probably missing something here, I’ve just had a hard time using it effectively.

Generally, you’ll see engineers use one of two skills in PvE – either healing turret, or med kit. If you have 30 in tools, there’s really no reason to use healing turret over med kit – the 15 second cooldown on your primary heal and additional 3k+ healing from your bandages are typically enough to recover from most PvE hits. That, and Drop Stimulant is one of the prime reasons you take Medkit – it’s one of the only healing skills that comes to mind with a method of improving your damage output. Healing Turret can also heal for a slightly less personal amount, but if you can time it, you can detonate it for a Water field + Blast finisher combo yourself, without any setup, every time! Usually results in about a ~7.3k heal total when you count the regeneration boon it applies, and ~2.3k-ish of that was AoE. It’s less selfish, but it doesn’t heal as much personally – and no stimulant! But the overcharge can work instantly if you double tap your heal skill. Between those two, it’s down to personal preference – although I find it really hard to say no to medkit with 30 in tools.

And a major bit of advice, as another poster said – rebind your utilities. I have my heal, 3 utilities, and elite bound to L. shift, L. alt, Z, C, and capslock (I wish I had another free button dear god anything but this) respectively. It’s not a big deal while levelling unless you’re extensively using a given kit, but when you hit 80, it’ll make things a lot easier since you won’t have to reach your digits across the keyboard.

Nascentish.2375:

1) Being able to perform moderately well across the board, in WvW, PvE, Dungeons, etc; I don’t care about micromanaging things, I just want to be able to do well enough.

2) Being able to do some decent damage. I get that conditions are great, and they do well enough insofar as killing things in PvE is concerned (as I’m only at level 38 at the moment and don’t particularly relish the thought of getting stomped in WvW just yet), but having to rely on status effects to whittle away at an enemy irks me a bit.

3) Having fun. I’ve heard wonderful things about the Grenadier, but every skill having to be manually targeted just didn’t work too well with my hands/playstyle?

I’ve got a lot of time under my belt on engineer, and will gladly address your concerns, as well as how to level less.. begrudgingly:

1) For PvE situations, I highly advise a sort of ‘Kitmaster’ setup – you focus on berserker stats, juggle the cooldowns between your rifle, tool kit, elixir gun, and grenade kit. 30/10/0/0/30, etc. Of course you won’t worry about this for a while, and if you have more questions, mail me in game – I’d be glad to share our best sustained DPS build with more depth.

2) See 1). I suppose I left out the part where the build drops double heal fields, has a 3 second block on a 16 second cooldown, provides 7.5 second chills and 2.5 second roots on deliciously low cooldowns, and.. well it’s overall just a great group support setup and damage. A player only labels themselves as “Support” if they’re too lazy to figure out how their class can do solid damage. All it takes to become “Support” is just slapping on a pair of helpful utility skills. Is a good DPS warrior running For Great Justice and Banner of Discipline support? No, but they are a better player because of it.

3) If you don’t like manual targeting, then I suppose all I can suggest is using the smart cast option – you’ll still have to target, but it will minimize how often you’re having to mash 1. And that kitmaster build I was mentioning? You’ll be juggling kits – so less time focusing on hammering down 1, more time pushing things like Elixir Gun → Acid Bomb → Weapon Swap (cancels the jump) → Grenade Barrage → Jump Shot → Blunderbuss → etcetera. Only time I advise spamming grenades is when someone time warps, at those points having 25 vulnerability is kind of a big deal. Flamethrower is pretty fun, but it’s also veeeery bad damage-wise. I’d sooner advise bomb kit with 10 points into explosives for larger radii for the sake of levelling.

4) – My own thing, levelling more easily. I’ll admit up to level 40 burning things works pretty well – blowtorch is kind of a “Kill the mob please” button until then. From 40 to 60 things start to slow down a bit for the engineer, but you can maintain some momentum – first off, as another poster has said, static discharge / rifle isn’t so bad for levelling at that point. Rifle turret, tool kit, and one with a good toolbelt like Rocket Boots are a good option (yes the skill itself is bluh, but that’s not the point of static discharge!). That, or just going power bombs – it’s not bad, and it actually clears mobs out fairly quick. It’s also just a bit boring, but if you end up having to kite around melee mobs 2-3 levels higher? It works well enough. Once you hit 60, grenadier trait and you’re golden. Yes, I saw you didn’t enjoy using grenades. With 50% more damage on them though, they might feel a tad more rewarding to use.

The Eternal Grace.3157:

I don’t agree with this at all. The class isn’t completely built over kits. Yeah, they’re awesome and used in many many builds, but that doesn’t mean you have to. Using a class to it’s “full potential” shouldn’t have to, and doesn’t rely on having to use certain utility skills or multiple kits. I think this can be said for any class.

You may not agree with it, but I’m gonna quote a dev post. Basically, you can choose not to use kits, and in turn lower the complexity limit – it’s only fitting that the damage should lower, as a result, within that given class. Why should something more braindead (within the same class) do more damage? And, yes, yes using kits is required if you want to have a good PvE build. I’d say the lazy static discharge PvE rifle build isn’t so bad, but it actually uses tool kit and med kit. As long as you’re using at least 3+ skills out of your kit, as opposed to the 1/2 that a regular utility skill would provide, I honestly can’t see the logic in not using them. Elixir gun – super elixir, acid bomb, vent healing mist. Tool kit – prybar, throw wrench, gear shield. Grenade kit – Everything that isn’t the 3 and 5 at all times, 3 when appropriate, 5 if you can land a shot that results in a 60 second poison on the mob. Taking things like Elixir B is just selfish, especially when looking at Elixir gun – double super elixir fields, heavy damage output on a 15 second cooldown, and AoE regen? Hnnngh. Grenade kit & elixir gun are a staple on any self-respecting PvE engineer’s bar. That last skill is up for debate, but it’s hard to go wrong with a 3 second block, a hard hitting prybar, and a throw wrench! Oh, right, and as a general fact of life it seems, all non-kit toolbelt skills are awful. Some exceptions exist, like Toss Elixir R and rocket kick, but.. well let’s be blunt, with those you’re taking them for the toolbelt rather than the utility slot.

We said the engineer is very complex because his complexity limit is very high, but you could run an engineer with simpler utility skills and fewer kits which would make it a relatively straightforward class. There would still be a lot of decision making, but it is true that some classes are intended to be a little more straightforward.

I’m just going to leave it on this note – we have 1 second swaps on our kits for a reason. If you’re not comfortable juggling kits, then you should settle for not using the class to its full potential. You don’t have to dip 20 points into alchemy just to use acid bomb, it still hits like a truck late for the depot just fine. Traiting Tool Kit will only reduce it’s cooldown – and I do it anyway because there’s no better working trait (this is true until they make Scope work).

And no, other utilities are not just as nice. The only time I’d say otherwise is in certain builds, like static discharge, or… well, I’m talking about PvE, so I won’t bring up any HGH build. There isn’t a single non-kit utility I’d rather have in any PvE situation, except 2: Graveling Scavengers (Elixir S), and Jade Maw (Elixir R). Those two should be obvious as to why.

Toss Elixir U is pretty awful – on one hand, it has a 66% chance of doing what I want it to. On the other hand, it has a 33% chance of kittening the bed and leaving me taking a very hard hitting attack on FotM. When I’m on my guardian, and I drop Wall of Reflection, I know 100% that I just need to take half a step back while doing so, and I’m safe from any given mob’s hard hitting abilities. When I do this with Toss Elixir U, I’m having to do a double take to make sure that I’m not relying on an invisibility-granting wall (which I would have to run through, after throwing it in front of me) to stop the Imbued Grawl Shaman’s attack. It’d also help if they fixed Elixir U’s duration so it wasn’t also random (read: it lasts 3-5 seconds based on which drawback you get). Removing the invisibility wall altogether from Toss Elixir U would make it far more viable, in all honesty.

I will say this – almost all of the Elixir Tosses are pretty bad. The reason more and more engineers are increasing the number of kits they take is because their toolbelt skill isn’t some sub-par utility skill, it’s actually a strong ability in it’s own right! Toss Elixir R is the only one some lazy designer didn’t dip his fingers in to.

The Eternal Grace.3157:

Arenanet even said when they announced this game that they didn’t want a game where players hit one button over and over. I feel like this is what I’m doing when I use the grenade kit.

Perhaps you should try swapping kits around then. I won’t advocate using the flamethrower in PvE – that’s monkey business unless you’re farming in Orr. I will say though, that juggling between rifle, elixir gun, tool kit, and grenade kit is not only a very fun method of playing, but it definitely drops the hammer down. If you’re attacking at long range, consider swapping to rifle for net shot every now and then – taking Sitting Duck would complement this nicely (I prefer 20% CDR myself) between grenade presses. When I play Engineer, it’s like I’m ringing off Beethoven’s Symphony with how quickly I juggle between kits and rifle, cracking off various skills, and auto’ing with grenade kit as a brief respite for ~5 seconds, before using shrapnel grenade, going back to another blunderbuss, and then.. well, I’m sure you get it.

Malvagite.3254:

The only ignorance is that you didnt acknowledge i said base damage in my post.

Really now? So taking less than 1 second to put out at least 10k, potentially 13k damage on a group mob while you’re still doing other abilities isn’t good damage? You intentionally try to undermine the damage by looking at tooltip values, when it’s the third hardest hitting engineer ability, and it just keeps going while you whip out several others. If that’s not good damage, then I don’t know what is. What, a 3.5 second channel for 20k damage on the same mobs? Maybe 30k if we’ve got the might and vuln rolling at the same time? Given the damage over time, a warrior in melee and an engineer juggling all their skills, it’s a minimal difference – and considering that an engineer will bring poison, AoE heals, blind, stuns-on-demand, and roots with > 25% uptime, that sacrifice is well worth the loss, and the difference in value shows in mob encounters, such as the start of the Grawl fractal and dealing with the Ice Elementals during the blizzard boss. The kicker is, that engineer damage is still maintained bar jump shot and blunderbuss at long range boss encounters (technically you can use blunderbuss semi-safely but I don’t feel comfortable running in for more than acid bomb against those heavy duty bosses, gear shield only goes so far).

Just because you don’t know how to pilot the class to its full potential doesn’t mean it’s bad.

I can’t even count on both hands anymore how many times I’ve killed thieves just after they shadow refuge. If you fire a net shot when they’re at ~50% health, they cloak, and you notice your net shot disappear well before max range? UNLOAD EVERYTHING. The worst time was when I thought they got away, and literally 10 seconds later (after continuing to hammer the ground for ~8 seconds expecting to suddenly get a kill confirm), they come out of stealth channeling Bandage Self.