@orion pax, I change my utility skills all the time to adjust to different situations, same with my food; general pve and wvw roaming: + condition duration food, wvw zerging or in an outnumbered situation: lifesteal on crit. but my build is settler’s armor, rabid or apothecary work just fine as well, giver’s weapons with sigil of corruption and sigil of earth, when i stack corruption i swap to bursting, but restoration works great in zerg fights in wvw or sigil of blood over earth for more sustain and life-steal. right now i am using runes of perplexity, since it is rather easy to interrupt with an engineer in wvw against people who aren’t using a lot of stability(i personally think the amount of confusion it applies needs to be toned down a little bit to perhaps 2 stack on hit and 3-4 stacks on interupt). breakdown on traits now: i would say the 10 points in explosives for bruns on crits is one of condition engineer’s greatest single target damage, i would recommend at least 20 in firearms(not 30 since most people NEED speedy kits to play engineer) for piercing pistol shots, when i 1st saw this back when it was a grand-master i was thinking it sounded awful, man was i wrong once you realize that each shot explodes and you can hit like at least 5 balled up targets(zergs or pve) that is like 25 hits(see attached pictures), also it can hit 1 target twice at near max range(actually happens quiet a bit). I basiclly fire my pistol into zergs(mind the retal though) for my bread and butter in zerg fights where as most engineers would be tossing slow grenades. the 1st 10 point trait in firearms is mostly optional, i prefer the pistol range increase, again just so i can penetrate my shots deeper into a zerg. 30 alchemy is mostly optional/situation traits, but i would say automated response is a near must have especially with the swell of new condition users wvw seems to have these days. being immune to all incoming conditions while below 25% hp is AMAZING, many of times i have been able to beat people just because i can get low and stay low and they can barely scratch me, or i was able to escape a dying situation because someone couldn’t immobilize me or they couldn’t inflict any damaging conditions to finish me off. i would recommend invigorating speed to compliment speedy kits of the other trait i would chose amoung blood injection(mostly in pve, not best wvw trait option), backpack generator(solid source of hp gain, stacks with regen and pusle healing), protection injection, or self-regulating defenses(works wonders with automated response). for pve i would recommend grenade kit, bomb kit, elixir gun, or flame turret. in wvw i would recommend tool kit(extra blocks, pull people off walls, cripple foes chasing you), rocket boots(good escape/chasing mechanism, also removes movement impairing conditions), elixir gun(blast finisher with optional leap, ranged bouncing cripple, massive ally condition removal, aoe heal with condition remove and lingering healing, good single target weakness and bleeding), or elixir s. i wouldn’t recommend flamethrower in most situations since the piercing pistol tags enemies tons better and at much more range. the only time i would use flamethrower is if u was attacking of defending through a gate against just a few people. basically try all the utilities skills and find what ones work best for each situation or what you play best with. my trinkets are all condition dmg, toughness, vit, and little of precision. if you don’t have access to ascended trinkets, pick up exotic rabid ones or apothecary. but this is all just how i play engineer, there are plenty of other effective ways to play engineer.
