Guild Wars 2

Why is everyone questioning if dwarfs can make a comeback simply because they turned themselves to stone?

Sylvari are walking trees! Trees! The day I can tolerate walking talking bits of shrubbery is the day I can accept rocks having children!

And who really knows where baby dwarfs come from anyway? What if they have been hopping out of rocks this entire time and we just didn’t know? I mean really think about it.

You gotta keep hope alive! The day of the dwarf will come!

PokeyPenguin.6178:

Typicalsloan.8603:

This would be the wrong way to go. Other kits need to be brought up to the level of nades not the other way around.

I agree, however I was responding to the OP who claimed weapons supplemented kits, and by kits I assumed he meant grenades, seeing hows its the only one that could be considered stronger than basic weapons.

On a side note, I feel grenades are too strong, and if every kit was as strong as grenade the engi would be overpowered.

Grenade with the 30 point trait are to strong perhaps. But they do have a skill cap. I think they are ok. They could be toned down a little bit, but if it got nerfed with the other kits getting a look over it would kill a lot of functional spec’s.

I’ve run a lot of similar builds with FT. It has it’s nice aspects but the lack of condition removal / counter CC makes you free meat for any organized players that eye you.

Swapping elixir R for elixir C and taking protection injection for the protection on crit, could really help the build though, swapping 10 points from tools or explosives into alchemy can as well. To get elixir S at 25% or condition removal on elixir use.

But to be honest I think going 20 explosives, 30 alchemy, 20 tools is a bit better. You can trade out mines and still have might stacking with HGH. Toss in elixir B, replace R with C, and then take H over the healing turret.

The damage is going to be a little less, but the survivability will easily be 2-3 times better. When being CC’d this build lets you get perma protection up as well as 10-12 + stacks of might.

If it’s not an on demand full condition removal it’s useless in most situations. Your only real option for conditionremoval is either elixir C or spec’ing alchemy with condition removal on elixir use and doing a full elixir spec with elixir H, B, and possibly C.

I have tried this many other ways, but not having condition removal on our weapons / healing abilities means we are forced to lose a utility slot.

When you then take into account that we have to lose a utility slot for a CC break, and for a kit to replace the weapon swap we don’t get.

You get a compounded issue which is at the core of must engineer issues.

I really want to run x build. It’s awesome but since I can’t have both elixir C and elixir S or spec into alchemy it just doesn’t work. I get burst down in 2-3s and my group can do nothing.

The thing is. Lets say your in melee with tool kit against another melee. A warrior or thief or even a ranger. They are going to be do doing 1.5-2x your damage on each hit. I hit the warrior for 1.5k, he hits me for 3k, I hit him for 3k, he hits me for 6k. Even another engi with bomb kit has me beat.

The problem with tool is the 1 ability is a bit weak but okay for a 1 ability. The 3 ability is nice. But we lack that strong burst of a 4 or 5 ability the other melee’s get. That 5-6k burst to chain after a strong 3rd hit from 1 or ability #3.

With tool you always have to swap back to rifle, and the 600 range on the pull is just to short to be effective.

tool kit doesn’t work that well for keeping turrets up. It’s more about top’ing them off before the next way comes.

For turret survivability the 30% turret reduced damage and then the turret regeneration traits work better.

Which turrets do you use and how do you use them btw?

when I run 3 turrets I run flame, rocket, and thumper. I place them close together and run a pistol / shield condition damage, toughness, vitality build.

When enemies get close to the turrets you can use the smoke combo flame to put up an AoE blind and then the rocket or AoE KB from thumper, or a detonate to not only CC enemy mobs but cloak the turrets and have them drop aggro. You can then blind the mobs, and knock them back with the shield.

Turrets strong point isn’t tanking as much as it is CC. Time the CC right and they can be very durable.

For turrets I personally like a 20, 10, 30, 0, 10 build that stacks condition / power / toughness or condition / toughness / vitality.

Power doesn’t help turrets at all, but condition damage does. Since they conditions they apply count as your conditions. So flame / rocket actually do a lot of damage if your a max condition damage build.

It depends on the build and situation. Typically I run 1-2 kits.

Namely tool / grenade or tool / bomb. In certain situations like keep defenses where I do not need to worry about CC I might use tool / grenade / elixir gun.

But I run heavy tool / power builds, and I typically have a lot of group support as well. It let’s me cut things like a CC break out of my build to free up space.

Grenade, bomb, and elixir guns with traits can end up being on par with the weapons. But this typically takes a combination of 20 / 30 point traits and each has their own advantage / disadvantages.

The dps and utility is there but the stat and sigil loss still hurts, and it keeps people from staying in kits full time. One swaps in to toss out a few conditions and then swaps back.

Flamethrower, and tool kit are just sub-par. Both the base weapons and other kits out preform them.

I know a lot of people like flamethrower and think it’s fantastic and tool kit has it’s fans, me being one of them. But you can swap bomb / grenade in their place in pretty much any build and end up with better survivability and dps.

Elixir R is nice but to be honest you have no real effective counter to CC or condition removal. Your gonna need heavy support to run this build or you’ll simply be focus’d or kited to death.

There are similar builds that use FT with elixirs that work much better since elixirs give you constant stacks of might and condition removal. While with the mine setup your gonna have dead time on might stacks. Which means it will only take someone wiping or stealing your boons to shut it down.

It’s not a bad build but in a group setting engineers are forced into elixir S and elixir C or into spec’ing full into alchemy.

We just do not have the same escape / survivability tools of the other classes. When an enemy team focuses you, you will die if you do not have on demand condition removal and elixir S.

It’s not like we can teleport, go into stealth, drop an immunity / reflect bubble, or go into mist form. You get 4s of elixir S for your group to do something and that’s about it.

Once you start doing a lot of 5v5 and actual group on group fights in WvW you realize just how pigeon holed engineers are.

3 things about the healing turret

1. if you detonate it at the right time it will activate it’s water combo field for an AoE heal. With solid + healing this can be extremely nice.

1. with elixir gun or someone else putting up a regeneration buff it is easy to maintain full up time regeneration

1. for crit power builds using static discharge. Using the tool belt, then summoning and detonating can easily get you a 3-6k burst of dps.

Additionally traits such as the AoE KB and Turret placement traits can turn healing turret into an on demand AOE KB or place-able AOE KB.

It takes a lot of micromanagement to use the turret to its full capabilities. If you simply set and forget it’s not worth using, and as a run away / soloer heal medkit is better. But in group situations healing turret is fantastic.

Tigger.8035:

Refer to the longest list of bugs in the game

The Engineer Bug thread.

I’m far too ready tokittenWvW with Mortar’s range passive

Sometimes you’ll get away with it, but after a while people will know to focus siege and AoE on you. Thieves in particular also like to pop on you if your not in a large zerg. Your basically a stationary target well within range of most peoples aoe at 1400-1500, and the 1-2 second delay of getting off the mortar is enough to kill you in a laggy situation.

It’s really depressing to be honest! It needs a 2000 range!

Captain.6248:

- IIRC, Anet said something about being a balance thing. But now they’re looking into it. Right now they’re prioritizing bugs and account based stuff first, so the balancing thing might take a while.

- Toolkit. It’s practically anti-range and can output massive damage. Teldo uses it if he feels like playing super dps glass cannon.

-Yes I agree. Turrets are underpowered. In dungeons, mobs treat it like hellspawn. Turrets should have more usefulness than a 5 or 6 second tank.

- Although the animation for it doesn’t show, flamethrower rarely misses for me. What race are you? I find that Asurans tend to miss more than the other races.

-The thing about grenade kit is that it’s POWERFUL. It’s incredible dps, but the drawback is that it’s hard to hit on moving players. That’s part of the reason why engineers have such a high skill cap, you need to prepare ahead of time (for this example, predicting movements). Not even the top pvp engineers use grenade kits because of how hard it is to hit. I feel like it should have a faster projectile speed and it’ll be up to par with bomb kit (pvp-wise).

I keep hearing that about toolkit but I’ve to actually see it work like that. You can get the dps really high on the 1# and the 3# with a nice power / crit glasscannon build. But I have never found the 1# to be better than hipshot on rifle. The 3rd hit might get 3.3-4k on a super squishy but on those targets hipshot will do 3k anyway and you got the benefit of range.

It’s nice for the toolbelt and when the range is right pulling them into a bomb or blunderbuss depending on the build you use. But for dps’ing I just don’t think it’s worth it over grenade or bomb. Unless if you focusing on the toolbelt, which is fantastic. The kit it self though is a bit weak imo.

The thing is all the items you listed can easily be said about other careers like thief and mesmer.

Engineer melee can work with a mixture of rifle / grenade kit / bomb kit. If you use grenade kit as a melee kit you won’t have issues with it being avoided. But it doesn’t work well till max gearing, and its not a brawler style. It’s hit and run really.

Turrets are weak in dps, but some of them can make up for that in utility such as thumper turret on a control point, or net turret while kiting. But much the same can be said for some of the necro pets, clones, a few ranger pets, and even spirit weapons and banners.

The sigil and weapons stats with kits is an issues, as is the way cone abilities like FT and Elixir gun 3 miss, but that’s true of all similar abilities. It’s no different on Guardian torch. Elementalists and Thieves have similar issues to our kits on stats / sigils as well with the summoned weapons and stolen items. It’s not as bad on Thieves, but Ele’s are in a similar boat if they like to use summoned weapons.

I’m not saying that your wrong, but it’s not like we’re the only ones with these particular issues. I think our issue is that since we are so diverse as a profession that we simply get the pick of a lot of these things, and without such a diversity of weapons to choose from it really limits our options. If your not a big fan of pistol, rifle, or the bomb/grenade kit play style engi is a bit rough at the moment. You might have more fun on something else like mesmer, warrior, or thief.

Wolfey.3407:

I really don’t believe that grenades are the most effective weapon in P.V.P./W.V.W.V.W. I use dual pistols with sigils set to 4-5% longer duration on effects depending on which map/ game mode I am playing in. Grenades are an awesome option;however, I find the usage of dual pistols to be way more effective, especially when it comes to spreading conditions.

It depends on the build you run. But in areas like keep sieges and defense they are pretty much the best option for condition and power spec’s because whether defending or attacking you either can’t get LoS or getting LoS is a death sentence. The gtaoe lets you arch over the edge or hit people on the walls you can’t reach with rifle / pistol.

Mortar is an option but it’s damage doesn’t scale, and for condition spec’s it only really has bleed for damage.

I’m not suggesting there is a L2P issue on grenades but that to compensate for the change from gtaoe to ptaoe they would need to bring down the damage. Grenade is in a nice place right now. It has it’s issues but it’s our only real ranged weapon outside of mortar in WvW sieges. If the #1 skill became ptaoe those of us in power builds would lose a lot of effectiveness due to LoS, projectile trajectory, and the damage output reduction.

So I am not saying that I wouldn’t love for Grenade kit to function on land like it does in water, but as the kit stands I feel it’s out best and most balanced kit. It has a place in both power, and condition specs, and I would hate to lose that. I’d much rather see some of the other kits like tool, and flamethrower tweaked to be as versatile and desirable as grenade. Even with its current gtaoe finger crunching annoyance. I swear my pinky is never gonna be the same from mashing my 1 key with it while trying to spam the #1 ability and kite at the same time!

Grizor.6543:

3) Jump shot locks you in the air for about 0.5s, even when you jump in same place (make JS more responsive)

Have you guys tried jump shot with quickness? It’s unbelievable how much better this skill is with it, response time is far faster. Seems like an easy fix to make the ability much more usable.

Yeah but going melee using jumpshot with quickness is almost pure suicide unless it’s a 1v1. You have enough survivability issues in a rifle spec as it is without tossing up + 50% damage when you enter melee.

For me my biggest QoL issue is the turret system, the under-par inventions trait line, and the simple fact that a minimum of 20 points in alchemy with elixir utilizes is pretty much mandatory for spvp and wvw. You need the condition removal on elixir use which removes the need for a condition removal utility which opens up space for elixir B or elixir S, to go alongside elixir R or the semi broken ((I’m about to time toss on the res field on myself, instarez)) When you add that to protection on CC, might on elixir use, and others like elixir S at 25% you have an overwhelming amount of survivability and dps in the same line.

Without alchemy your pretty going to be focused to death continually by a good group. To get the same amount of survivability outside of alchemy pretty much requires all 3 utility slots which kills any kind of dps spec, and since your going to be using elixirs in those spots anyway why not spec alchemy?

I know the dev’s don’t particularly like these kinds of posts, and I am sure they are well aware of the issues with alchemy and inventions. It’s also an insane amount of work to redo one trait line let alone two, and before you can do anything you have to actually come up with something creative to do. So I give the dev’s a lot of credit.

We turret engi’s must suck it up and make up for the inventions trait line with guts, bravado, and using net gun in rotation with rocket turret to spam CC with rifle.

(rifle net, tool belt net, tool belt rocket, net turret net, rifle net, rocket turret rocket, overcharged shot, net turret activate, rifle net, net turret net, overcharged shot) (with the cripple on immobilize trait just to be mean!)

The thing with grenades is the effective range is pretty much 400-500. Unless if your at a keep siege or someone is just staying still on an objective. Other wise when fighting moving players that know what they are doing, and you can be easily countered.

It’s not that I am not for it. It would be a nice change. But you only have to use grenade kit underwater to understand that it would be completely broken. Especially in a power build at 80 with the 30 point trait.

It’d be like having a ranged 3-4k auto attack. To be honest the only thing that keeps grenade kit from being extremely OP as it is, is the fact you can counter it by moving. Already in keep / tower defense situations, and when your spamming grenades on people standing on objectives it’s extremely strong.

They’d need to seriously nerf the dps output to give us the #1 ability as an fixed target ability.

With the smoke-bomb from the grenade trait if you use rocket boots to soon on the CC the bomb will spawn after the blast goes off. The bomb spawn is kind of funky. If you get knocked back sometimes it will spawn where you got knocked, sometimes where you land, it is also a short duration with a 60s CD so it’s easy to miss.

With Big O’l Bomb it has a long setup time before it goes off so to use it on the short duration combo fields you have to drop it, wait 1-2 seconds then drop the flame / smoke bomb to get it to trigger.

The #5 on flamethrower is not a combo field ability to my knowledge. Just an AoE blind like the #3 on grenade.

Rifle is namely a melee weapon.

With a heavy power / crit spec at 80 with vulnerability stacking you can get the autoattack to crit ~2k+ on squishy targets which is pretty good, but you’ll lack a ranged finisher. Grenade kit is nice and in some situations you can use it at ranged, but it is not a weapon the is reliable on the move if your fighting smart opponents. The aim / travel time kills it.

If you want a support spec with rifle I recommend doing a tool’s build with rifle, elixir R, and elixirgun. With the kit refinement trait you get a light combo field when you swap to elixir gun on top of elixir gun’s #5. This spec gives you a lot of group condition removal, the ability to give swiftness to allies, a nice amount of tick healing, retaliation on demand with jumpshot + elixir R, and with either a lot of power and crit or healing some other nice optional support tools.

It’s what I run most of the time. In keep / tower sieges I can basically make a zone of condition immunity with a nice amount of + healing going on in the radius. About ~450 a second. With spikes of 2-3k from healing turret and water field combos.

I carry a second gear set setup for power precision crit and swap when I want to do dps.

My base spec is 0, 20, 20, 0, 30 I get the rifle range + rifle damage traits. I swap in the vulnerability on crit or immobilize gives cripple trait when in support spec. The movement speed / enhanced supplies from supply drop for inventions, and then static discharge, kit refinement, and adrenal surge from tools.

You can tweak the traits around for fun builds as well. Such as deploy-able turrets and armor plating so you can support teammates for further back with your healing turret, or place things like rocket turrets behind enemies for a quick knock down, or to detonate for triggering a combo field like from elixir R / elixir gun.

For kiting rifle with net turret / land mine and slick shoes is all you need to never be caught by a melee. Add in supply drop, a passive speed boots trait, and swiftness from medkit on equip + #5 ability and it just gets silly.

I think if you make an alt and have it join the vigil you can put the gear in your bank and access it on your main.

I am not 100% because I have not done it with the vigil but it worked with other soulbound gear, so it should with the vigil stuff.

It seems to work by mob type if your going for things like 400 trophies. So you can switch around. Do skale for 10-15 minutes and then move to another group of skale or bats they tend to be close to each other.

For risen humanoid and nonhuman are different. So you can go do risen drakes / fish / chickens, and switch with humanoids.

The best places for the trophies actually tend to be the 80 explorable’s though.

As for event farming there are loads of events you can do if your only after karma. I like to do a lot of the lower level zone events since I can run the expanse of a zone and often solo them in 2-3 minutes and still get 80 loot from the splendid chests are special areas / end event bosses.

The game does penalize you if you do the same event over and over, but it’s not like there’s only 1 event in the game.

The 2 places to get destroyer stuff endgame is the dredge merc camp in WvW when the claiming even is up, and the explorable mode of fire-heart rise I think??? it might be the other one I get the dredge / flame legion naming dungeons mixed up from time to time.

For dps’ing there are 2 main mindsets and stat setups.

You have pistol spec’s utilizing + condition damage. These spec’s can utilize most of the kits, such as grenade, elixir gun, bomb, and flamethrower. I know a few specs that try to use tool but it doesn’t workout to well. Additionally turrets such as flame, rifle, and rocket work really well in condition damage builds.

The other dps builds utilize power and crit damage with the rifle. They center around kits such as the grenade kit, bomb kit, and tool kit. Some try to work the flamethrower in as a power weapon but it’s very limited and hard to use. Power builds also tend to use gadgets like PBR, and mines, as well as rocket turret, and rifle turret for their tool belt abilities.

It’s important to keep in mind that a lot of kits, and elixirs double in both specs. In power you use elixirs for the power from might and you use grenade for it’s toolbelt ability and #1 and #3 abilites. Where with condition you use elixirs for + condition damage from might and the condition attacks of #2-5.

The trait lines double up as well explosives, firearms, and alchemy are used heavily in both spec’s. Alchemy supports elixirs and offers our only real survivability through stats and traits, as well as condition removal, protection on CC, and might on elixir use with the passive + boon duration. Explosives gives the power needed in power builds along with traits that give vulnerability and raw + damage to certain attacks, for condition damage specs it gives condition duration and condition on crit traits to make even power abilities like bomb and grenade #1 have the chance to give conditions.

Firearms provides crit and + damage to power specs, and + condition damage and things like + 20% burn duration to condition specs.

The odd traits line are tools which is almost a must for power builds but to fit into condition builds, and inventions which seems to not really fit in with power or condition builds, although there are a few tanky turret condition builds.

Power builds are typically stuck needing to go into explosives, tools, and firearms to maximize crit, power, and crit damage to deal worthwhile damage. This doesn’t leave much flexibility to go into alchemy, and has lead to a lot of split builds such as 25, 10, 0, 10 25 or 20, 20, 0, 20, 10 or 30, 20, 0, 0, 20. Power builds also tend to use 1-2 kits, which restricts space on the utility bar for condition removal and cc break skills, they also tend to use more melee spec’s with rifle, grenade, and bomb kit. This makes condition builds a lot more durable.

1. If you run any kind of power build you want to run grenade kit. With the 30 point tactic you’ll do more damage with grenade #1 in melee than with the bomb kit #1. 3-4k when all the grenades crit in berzerker exotic gear is not unusual.

2. Mortar is nice it can be fun in PvE but if you use the above grenade spec you’ll do more damage and have better range with grenades. In WvW mortar ends up becoming a big ((hit me with AoE since I can’t move)) target, and in PvE it’s limited since you need someone else to take mob aggro to use it effectively. But its nice for events. Supply drop is really nice though.

3. the major downside to kits is they get no weapon or sigil contribution. Equipping a kit means you lose your weapon stats and your sigils. It’s the main reason why with the exception of trait-ed grenade kit and elixir gun that kits are sub-par to normal weapon attacks.

4. Traits upgrade turrets, and turrets upgrade with level, but they share no stats. Their conditions however count as your conditions so if you have heavy + condition damage you’ll see better dps from flame, rifle, and rocket to a point.

something that can really help if your having a bit issue with warriors and thieves, and cc spam in general is putting 10 points into alchemy as well.

You can get the protection injection trait that gives 3s of protection when your CC’d and has a 5s CD. So if they try to spam you with CC you can just about keep 30% damage reduction up.

It will massively increase your survivability if you pair it with the elixir C utility for turning conditions into boons.

10 trait points is not a lot to give up for the extra survivability. It helps a lot if you want to do a more melee spec with bomb kit, rifle, or FT.

did you unlock the chantry of secrets in bloodtide coast?

You can do a lot of burst with rifle if you stack power precision and + crit damage.

If you then do a spec heavy into tools / firearms or heavy into tools and split between explosives and firearms (I like 20 explosives, 20 firearms, and 30 tools) You can get massive burst damage from rifle. You can add in the tool / grenade kit tool belt abilities for nice burst and if you take static discharge you up that burst even more so.

Its not odd with a good crit to do 7k on a grenade barrage if both it and the lightning bolt crits on a soft target.

The only down side to going into the heavy rifle damage spec’s is that your survivability really takes a hit. Even if you trade some dps stats or a few trait points into alchemy you loose a lot of survivability not having shield.

Other profession can opt to have a second weapon devoted to defense but that typically doesn’t work out. You can use tool kit but its rough to use, and you dont really wanna use 2 kits since you need to keep a condition removal / stun break on your bar.

Overall I see the most rangers.

In WvW it’s mostly ele, ranger, guardian, mesmer.

The professions I see the least of are Engi and necro. Especially after the 30-40 zones.

Dwarfs! Never give up hope! If Trees can walk and talk so can Rocks!

I think a big part of the problem is the functionality of many of the leap / charge abilities. They are intended to act as range closers for melee but most of them just do not work well enough to fill that role. Some of them have self roots and extremely long animations that mean by the time you land your target is miles away. For others they may take you close to the target but stop just short of them.

If the leap / charge skills had better functionality, if the charge skills in particular worked like warrior charge in wow. Took you to the target and gave them a 1s stun or interrupt. It would make melee much more effective.

Also all self roots on melee abilities need to be removed. They make the abilities that have them next to useless since any moving opponent and can completely avoid them with little effort.

I may be wrong and it merits further testing but I believe that the set bonuses no longer stack. I was nothing something similar with + condition duration bonuses.

it should work however is you got a + boon duration and a + protection duration. But 2 + protection durations are a no go.

It might be a bug but it feels like its intentional to drive people to use full rune sets.

There are a lot of specs and playstyles that are just not functional until you reach 70-80 and have all if not most of your traits unlocked and the right gear sets. Sometimes all it takes is 2 upper tier traits that turn a meh or sucky weapon into something totally awesome.

Rifle is not easy. It is one of the most difficult weapons to use effectively in the game really, and it isn’t really viable until much later in the game when you can get the traits needed to fully support it. Even then its a glass cannon melee burst spec in a game that heavily favors ranged.

But don’t confuse 1v1 with actual game play when your fighting in groups or zergs. They are completely different.

There are some nice 1v1 specs out and engineers do fairly well. But you get absolutely destroyed in group settings with any kind of coordinated effort. All it takes is for a watch MA and your rifle engineer is useless in a real fight.

To be able to stay in melee for any length of time in PvE or PvP for that matter your really need a lot of group support. Typically in the form of a support spec;d guardian feeding you boons at the right time.

Knowing which abilities to dodge roll, and running a higher vitality setup are important but the backing of a good guardian can actually make melee viable in a lot of situations. Aegis block boons to cover you when your out of endurance, protection to soften hits that might otherwise 1-2 shot you, healing and regen to top off your health pool, and a whole other host of buffs.

Doesn’t have to be a guardian though a ranged thief or an engineer can chain blinds on a lot of bosses to prevent their attacks from hitting to allow melee to have a safer time of it.

But there are some bosses you just can’t do in full melee, and the easier option tends to be to stand around and pluck a bow for most. With group support though melee can be viable and in most cases melee will do better damage than ranged if they stay alive.

The core of any dungeon group I make tends to be a Guardian / Engineer or Thief

Engineer Combo Finishers

Blast
All turret detonate abilities
Mine Gadget
Thumper Turret (Tool Belt + Activate)
Bomb Kit Tool Belt
Supply Drop
Rocket Turret Activate
Rocket Boots

Projectile
Rifle #1
Pistol #1
Tool Kit Tool Belt
Personal Battering Ram Tool Belt
Rifle Turret Tool Belt
Elixir Gun #1

Leap
Rifle #5

Whirl
None

Think I might be missing a projectile or blast. But it should be a pretty complete list. Nets do not count as a projectile finisher at the moment.

Engineer Combo Fields

Flamethrower – Fire Field
Grenade Kit – Poison Field
Healing Turret – Water Field (1s~ duration from the 4 sec pulse + tool belt)
Flame Turret – Smoke Field
Bomb Kit – Fire Field, Smoke Field
Elixir Gun – Light Field (second light field with kit refinement trait)
Mortar – Chill Field, Water Field
Elixir R – Light Field
Elixir X – Light Field, Smoke Field
30 point explosives bomb on CC trait – Smoke Field

That should be everything. Please let me know if I missed anything.

don’t forget the discover tab as well. You can combine leather with trophies to unlock special items as well for extra discover xp!

If you want to get kitted out in exotic’s there are a few ways to do it.

The first is through karma vendors. Many of the endgame events in the 75-80 and 80 orr zones. The long chain events, and the temples in particular spawn in karma vendors that sell exotic sets with stats unique to the events.

You can also get exotics via crafting. Even if you are not a 400 crafter yourself you can gather all the needed materials and then have someone craft the items for you.

There are also karma vendors in the main WvW camps on each map that sell an exotic 80 set for karma.

You can also get them from doing the explorable mode of many of the dungeons such as honor of the waves, and arah.

You can even get exotics from the large loot chests found in many of the hidden areas, and jump puzzles in the endgame zones. These chest’s re-spawn daily. You may need to kill a few veterans or a champion to get to them but they are well worth the effort.

there are so many ways to get exotic gear that it’s almost silly, once you find them all.

you pretty much want to massacre centaurs. They give leather from bags and from trophy drops. Drakes / minotaurs are another good source for leather. The best way I have found is to break down items. Leather chest pieces will often give 5 pieces on average, legs 4, and everything else 1-3. Sometimes you’ll see blue items on the AH for 20-40c at lower levels.

There is not stand and spam healer as is typically in mmo’s. But there are professions with more healing and support type options that others.

Guardian, Elementalist, and Engineer can do a fairly nice amount of healing when setup for it, but often it is condition removal, and boons like protection that count for more than the healing they can do.

Ideally rather than healing damage done to your allies, you focus on reducing damage done to your allies by removing conditions, providing boons, and controlling the battle field with crowd control and barriers. healing really only serves to top someone off or by a second or two for their personal heal to come off cool down.

Guardians are really strong in these area’s, but you can play a support mesmer as well. Mesmer’s have some nice projectile reflects and group buffs they can give.

With a lot of the story quests you need to use items, or avoid npcs as part of the quest. It might be you do not need to attack those mobs and can avoid them, or there might be an object you can use to split them up or weaken them.

Additionally there are a lot of boss / power mobs in the low level stories that have special abilities you need to learn to sport and avoid. Other these abilities can 1 or 2 shot you if you get hit.

For Thief I have found dagger / dagger or dagger / pistol, and even pistol / pistol pretty good. I like to use the smoke bomb utility with them for an AoE blind on packs of mobs. Remember that they don’t re-spawn so you can burst 1-2 down, and then use your heal to stealth or leap through smoke bomb to escape and reset them.

It would help to know which race / quest your on though.

I don’t think they are in yet. Although the Zojja mini should not be mini and in fact should be a huge Zojja that follows you around with a look of smug superiority as befitting of all truly genius Asura.

Dragnog.7162:

Karast.1927:

A few things to keep in mind with Engi
Combing that 20 point explosives trait with the 20 point tools trait that gives you the ability to place turrets, in effect lets you use turrets as ranged knock backs. Like the mine from mine gadget. Drop rocket turret on a bridge have it knock down and shoot at people then blow it up and knock them off when they get to it.

As far as I know Deployable Turrets is now a 10 point Major Trait in the Tools tree. Also it only appears to be working with the Healing Turret and the Rocket Turret so be aware of that.

you may be right I’ll double check. I had thought it was 20 points since I always take it 20 points in since I like getting static discharge asap.

But the last time I used it I could place rifle, flame, net, thumper, rocket, etc without issue. But I typically only use 1 turret utility at a time. It might be that having more than 1 turret on your utility bar gums up the trait. I’ll give it a test later. But after the patch last night I was dropping rifle turrets all over the shop for knock backs.

Engineer damage output is actually fairly balanced the only downside is you really have to min max to extremes. Hybrid builds that combine condition / power tend to be somewhat counter productive. Engineers spam up a lot of conditions haphazardly on crit depending on your trait setup and ability usage and you don’t want a weaker burn or poison overwriting a stronger one. Without a lot of power your power abilities like grenade #1 rifle #3 and #5, tool kit #1, Flamethrower #2, among others just do lack luster damage.

I’ve found your better off going one extreme or the other. That and there are a few different ways to do the power / crit, and condition builds.

But to toss some numbers it not unusual in a max condi build to see burns tick at 1000 or in a power build to have jumpshot crit a soft target like an ele for 7-8k.

Both the bane and the saving grace of engineers is how our weapons, kits, and utilities are split between condition damage and direct damage. So no matter what build you use there are abilities on your bar that just end up being lack luster. You use the abilities tweaked to your spec and the CC / utility abilities but skip the others. While this limits you within a build it also allows a tremendous amount of flexibility. there are many trait builds that with a simple gear swap and trait swaps that can function as a condi build or a power build. You can nip out of combat and completely change your focus in a way a lot of other professions can’t. It’s the hidden benefit to the way the firearms, explosives, and tools trait lines work to support both condition / power specs.

try not to use more than 2 turrets in your 3 utility slots. Having a condition removal like elixir C, and a stun break like Elixir S / Elixir R / Utility Goggles is mandatory to be honest. Sometimes with group comp you can get away without 1 of them, typically condition removal, both without both the moment the enemy knows that you don’t have it they are just going to crush you. Aside from running for it with perma swiftness. Engineers don’t have any real survivability tools compared with the more fotm professions. Once they decide to kill you your dead or running, which sucks in this objective focused Spvp system. It’s ok in WvW.

For those doing condition builds with alchemy / elixirs this doesn’t really matter. Since your getting insane survivability out of the alchemy trait line.

A few things to keep in mind with Engi

1. Rifle is a melee weapon. Do a power / crit damage spec and it will do massive damage with jumpshot / blunderbuss

1. Turrets are weak on their own. The key to using turrets is using traits to support them.

More on #2 you can tweak your turrets using a number of traits to give them more utility and dps. The 20 point explosives trait that gives them an AOE explosive KD on death / detonate is a good example. It gives you a good melee counter if running a turret build and helps turrets mesh into an explosives spec. Letting them play off of other traits like the 25 point minor trait.

Combing that 20 point explosives trait with the 20 point tools trait that gives you the ability to place turrets, in effect lets you use turrets as ranged knock backs. Like the mine from mine gadget. Drop rocket turret on a bridge have it knock down and shoot at people then blow it up and knock them off when they get to it.

There’s also the 10 point tools trait static discharge that gives you a lightning bolt that bounces and does about 2k on crit in a crit damage spec. When you use a turret like rifle turret, with its super low cool down tool belt ability you get a really nice hitting damage ability. You can also use the tool belt, drop the turret and detonate to get a quick double burst hit with lightning. 4K + burst at times. You can also do this with healing, or rocket or any of the other turrets.

There are a lot of ways to use turrets if you break yourself away from doing a 30/30 build