Guild Wars 2

Based on the wiki, with or without verification, 16 lower tier mats would still be no where near as much of a payout with just a handful of T6 mats.

When I first entered WvW, I had huge expectations. That quickly died when I realized how simplified the mechanics were. One commander, stack on him, then roam around the country side capping territory you owned not less than 10 minutes ago. It gets dull very fast and you’re not alone in this. What keeps me most excited is when I’m on the defence in forts (not keeps, those are not as exciting). The guild I use to chill with referred to it as the Alamo. Often outnumbered, but we were highly skilled players that kept their zerg out. When they charged, they took heavy losses and had to regroup. It’s the best fun I had in WvW. You never knew when the next wave might be your last and that thrill was just really good.

For everything else though, you just have to roll with the zerg. This game is less about RTS or RP and more about capture the point. I’d like to suggest the game devs consider new experiences with WvW. To take ideas from games like Savage, Tribes, DOTA, etc. But, WvW has always been a 3rd class citizen in this game and it’s likely to stay that way.

Personally there’s only two downed skills that deserve the title.

1. Elementist vapour form
This is the absolute #1 best. I can’t even begin to account how many elementists have escaped stomps or zerg beatings by entering this form and freely making their way to the fort teleporter or to the safety of an oncoming zerg. It is for this reason it deserves the gold title.

2. Warrior vengeance – a solid #2. It doesn’t matter if you live or die afterwards. For that brief moment, you are given a second chance and that can make a difference.

IMO, all the other downed skills just delay the inevitable. I will just go to map view and spam the spawn point to get back into the game quickly rather than waste time watching the enemy pound on me. I’d even gladly use a suicide button to make it go quicker.

I made a full celestial exotic set, then made a full ascended set (thankfully you can buy the trinkets with laurels). I started this back in October and only completed the set last month. It is a very long task, especially for casual play. Still though, I don’t regret it. It’s the only armour I need and it opens many play styles. In my opinion, it’s time gated for that very reason. Once you have it, there’s no need for anything else and you can eliminate weapons and armour crafting from the game. Without that grind, the only thing keeping you in the game is new content, which itself takes time to develop. This is more or less a means to keep people occupied while new content is being worked on. And some people dig that sort of stuff.

The best thing you can do is try out all the skills and combat maneouvers. Think about how you can fight by mixing rifle with elixir gun, or grenades with gadgets, or flame thrower with elixirs, and so on. Once you develop a sense of how to fight with these skills, you then pick the traits that best augment your play style. For example, if you absolutely love the flame thrower, it would make sense for you to put 20 points into firearms so you can get juggernaut. It would also help to put 20 points into vitality so you can get backpack regen or 15% increased flame thrower damage. You need to get to that point to decide what works best for you and then maximize on it. If it takes you a while to decide what you want, then you’re doing it right. Keep at it and as you get more proficient, you’ll know what works best for you. And don’t feel like you absolutely need grandmaster traits. If getting a lower tier trait better suits your play style, then go with it. I often don’t roll any grand master traits as they’re not worth it for my play style.

5 engineers rolling with experimental turrets would be an interesting group. You would have infinite vigor (HT), protection (TT), fury (RT), and might (FT). If you go bunker build with 10/0/30/30/0, you already have peek toughness, vitality, and boon duration. You just get them to dumbo drop all their turrets at once and then go ape on the enemy. Hell, I’d just want to see a battlefield littered with turrets. That in itself would be a sight to see.

Of course, if you had 5 engineers then all 5 doing an elite supply drop would be a /gg right there. Especially if those turrets have the boons + shielding

The new monk runes only give 15% boon duration. 5% for 2x, +10% for 4×. You might have to mix with 2x water for another 5% to get 20% total. Although water and monk are similar, it would be nice to have a dedicated rune set so we at least get a special bonus out of a full set. Superior rune of strength only has a max of 45% might duration, so might duration was reduced by 20%. If we assume the same for boons, then we should expect no more than 25% boon duration. 20% is probably more in-line with Anet’s thinking since there are many traits that use that 20% magic number and they obviously don’t want general boon duration to creep close to the specialized runes.

So yeah, I think everyone is hoping for the best, but I say plan for the worst. IMO, 20-25% boon duration is not worth it. That buys me an extra second or two, which when considering animations and weapon activation times, doesn’t give me enough time to maximize on it. I’ve already begun planning using a new rune set and moving away from boons. It sucks, but that’s life.

Yeah, stability definitely benefits from boon duration. I’ve been rolling boon duration on my engineer for several months now and I’m afraid that play style will soon come to an end. I don’t blame Anet for what they’re doing however. It always felt odd to me to mix and match runes like that, but the duration payouts were necessary to attract customers to those products. At the new advertised rates for specializing, I just don’t don’t see the incentive and it’s likely those runes will sit in the bargain bin.

I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but I guess this is my incentive to switch over to Runes of Melandru. If I can’t get decent boons, then I’ll just make your own conditions and stuns weaker. I have a feeling the price of those runes are going to skyrocket.

Grenades take a little practice, but it’s doable. The trick is to unlock the camera from your character (there’s a game setting for this). This allows you to run in one direction and look in another without your camera turning to face your character’s direction. Then you just need to practice running in a circle or back and forth in a line while lobbing grenades behind or beside you.

If I were to rely solely on my primary weapon, I would go with rifle + static discharge (SD) combo. It does good damage, you only need to waste a slot for rifle turret and maybe another quick CD skill like personal battering ram so you can spam SD. Beyond that, you’re free to chose any other skill (I would highly recommend EG). I played this for a bit with full celestial gear and a build with 10/30/0/0/30. The celestial is nice because it adds survivability that you would otherwise lose out due to 0 pnts in toughness or vitality, and it also packs a punch with its high crit dmg.

Personally I wouldn’t want to confine myself to a such a small area just for reflection. I can’t even recall a time when projectiles were a serious threat. This is more of a defence against LB/SB rangers and p/p elixir engineers or grenadiers, but any other class or configuration will just AoE you or smack you upside the head with your own prybar.

However, that is not to say I wouldn’t use this for fun. The update will also include the ability to reset your traits for free while anywhere in the map. So when you feel like trying something else, the option is there. With deployable turrets and accelerant-packed turrets, it makes you all that more of a troll on the battlefield. 10/20/30/0/10 would probably be the best setup for this play style. Healing turret, rifle turret, and flame turret have the shortest cooldowns and therefore greatest spammage. You would have to take the heavy thumper turret over the rocket turret for the stun breaker though, which kind of sucks. Probably better to just equip the EG instead and forgo the fourth turret.

I find it kind of funny actually. I too am a resident on Blackgate and one time in battle for LA, the game said my queue popped and I could travel to that instance. When I said yes, it brought me to another overflow. Made me wonder how big the line-up really was.

Something like this however would be extremely low on Anet’s priority list. I’d rather Anet focus on content and profession improvements than worry about whether or not I have reserved rights to the home instance. Besides, any instance with me in it will be awesome

I’m not overly concerned with those nerfs. With just 50% in condi duration, you can boost everything back to its original state. All you need is 10 points in power + 40% from rare veggie pizza and you’re back to normal. If you’re going to go grenadier, you can even use less expensive food for just that 20% condi duration. Poison IMO is irrelevant since most condis are cleansed anyway. Plus if you manage to shotgun it with the grenadier trait, it’s 2×3 = 6s poison per second in the field. 6s poison is not all that bad, plus all you have to do is immob the guy and then lay down the poison field. He’ll have enough poison to last the rest of the fight (assuming no cleanse). The immob however is pretty dirty. Even with the nerf, we can still lock down someone for a long period of time.

Rifle net shot: 2s
Riffle blunderbuss: ~3s
Net turret toolbelt: 2s
Net turret: 2s
Supply drop: 1s stun + net turret
And add any extra like Big Ol’ Bomb, mines, or battering ram.

If you wanted to dedicate to lock downs, you can go for 110% condi duration. Just double those times! It’s crazy, you would totally cause someone to rage quit.

Ranger can be easy mode in PvE if your pet can maintain the aggro. I don’t play my ranger much, but I do recall times where mobs would chase me instead and I would have to get into a kite fight with a bow. IMO, kite fighting with engineer bombs is far more satisfying and easier in comparison, especially when being chased by a group of mobs.

I don’t frequent Southsun Cove, but every now and then I do the Karka Queen event + neighbouring events like saving the villages and stuff (the one where an army of banelings chase you and hit like a freight train). It’s definitely a dangerous area, but I wouldn’t feel safer with any other class. The engineer has a lot of utility and if things go south, I can just stealth out of there and try again. Granted, if your pet can sustain the dmg then all you have to do is sit there and auto attack, but that’s no fun

So I dunno. I’ve been playing engineer for over a year now and I’ve dialled in all of the play styles pretty well. I often don’t fear any mob in the game and I always run into a fight regardless of numbers. In the new Battle for LA fight, I often run into the thickest mob cluster (sometimes upwards to 7 mobs) so I can mingle with them. I’ll just kite around and blast them, smoke em out, burn em, confuse em, bomb them some more, etc. I don’t think I could pull that same stunt with any of the other classes and live to collect the loot.

There’s also the regenerating mist toolbet skill, which counts as a 1s water field every 25s (-CD if you have pnts in tools traitline). You can also trigger the healing turret’s cleansing burst (3s water field) immediately after deployment. Pick up the turret right after and you’ll have a reduced 15s CD to deploy it again. Or optionally detonate the turret for an extra water blast combo with a 20s CD.

Bomb kit is a run and gun kit, but grenades do require practice. You’ll be running in circles, adjusting your view camera, and throwing grenades in the direction you believe the enemy will be in when the grenades land. It can get pretty tense when you’re in a tight area, such as in some of the towers with a roof or when defending Bay in the lord’s room and you’re chasing people running along the back. The camera can be a bit unforgiving in those areas.

Engineers also excel at immobilizing. Riffle net shot and blunderbuss, net turret net shot with stun overcharge and toolbelt net shot, and elite supply drop for 2s stun + free net turret. Very handy in small skirmishes, not so much against a zerg though.

Engineer smoke bomb can also be used to generate stealth. With a rifle and mines (for blast combo), you can generate a quick 9s stealth combo all by yourself (big ol bomb + mine + riffle leap). Fire bomb also gives your team might.

And perhaps not as useful, but medkit does let you drop med packs for others. If you’re on the defensive, you can drop like 9 of them + 3 condi clenses before the fight, which offers over 10K health ready for anyone.

Bomb kit 100%. It fires like a machine gun underwater and pacts a heavy punch. I’ve never felt threatened with it. I’ll go tag 4 – 5 mobs and just kite them (run through them to screw up their attacks too). The other two skills match with my land based skills so I don’t trigger a silly recharge when leaving underwater; however if I know I’m going to be down there for awhile I’ll add riffle and rocket turrets to help out. And what ArrDee said, I switch to the harpoon gun to fire off the timed charge and mines (close range only) for extra dmg on the side.

If it’s WvW however, grenades. Last thing I want to do is close the gap only to find out there’s a zerg about to help him.

I’d definitely say we’re a rare bunch. I don’t see many in T1 WvW zerg fights. If I’m there with 40 – 60 guildies, there’s usually only myself and two others I know that main an engineer. PvE often feels the same. At world events, it’s usually just me. Sometimes though, like at the Twisted Marionette event, I did see a lot of engineers. That was about the only time I felt like I was amongst the educated elite. After a year of playing however, I have never come across more than 5 engineers in the same place and doing something crazy, like setup 5 mortars and turrets all over the place. It’s not hard to find 5 heavies or 5 rangers in an area, but 5 engineers is rarer then a precursor

Flame blast is powerful, but there’s some trade-offs. Switching to FT requires some small time as well as the cast time for some of the skills. Sticking with gadgets will allow for a more fluid combat experience. FB also requires you close the gap with the enemy, whereas a full ranged rifle SD can maintain distance with the rams + rifle. Seeing as you’re using grenades, you’ll want to keep that kit selected and spam your tool belt skills while throwing your grenades.

From my experience, FT goes well with EG and pistols. You can setup attack combos with them for maximum damage. For SD builds though, it’s all about spamming those tool belt skills. I remember getting some crazy numbers with that setup.

Since you have static discharge, the 2nd fastest toolkit cooldown is the personal battering ram. You can fire off your surprise shot and not long after the personal battering ram. You’ll get some nice burst damage.

Here’s my “all purpose” build
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vcAQJAqalUUpPrtbx+KseRSESh9vPIF5lviUUZ9/pgcB-zEDBoeChEEAkIgJqFRjtMMIVXht8KaqaA6eRWlET3KpeeLqOAwBAXHEDATA-w

Personally I go for the bomb kit. People are going to stick to your tag like glue and you want to maintain a steady train. Bombs are fire and forget, which is great. No targets, just run and gun through the thick of it. I’ll frequently switch to my pistol so I can get off my static shot, poison volley, and blow torch and the coated bullets really help to maximize their effects. I generally don’t have problems with this setup, but I do tweak the skills a bit. Sometimes I’ll trade the elixir gun for the tool kit’s gear shield and the elixir S for elixir B so I have ~7 seconds of stability. The general purpose celestial stat bonuses are pretty useful. Good health, toughness, healing, and decent pain dealer. You can’t go wrong with full PVT gear, although I haven’t rolled with that for some time now.

I’ve invested in Celestial and boon duration, which I like a lot. Boons last for quite a long time and that extra stability and protection has proven itself time and again. However, I have been thinking a lot lately about the opposite. Focusing on just removing conditions fast rather than keep my buffs up longer. For that, I’m looking at this setup

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vcAQJAqalUUpPrtbx+KseRSMSRnHdIF2H/iUUZ9/pgcB-zkCBoeChEEAkIgJqFRjtMqIasqaA6eRWlET3KpeeLqOAwBAXHEDATA-w

Swap out my boon duration runes for lowering condition durations. Combined with leg mods and lemongrass soup, that’s -65% duration for most condis and -98% for immo, chill, and cripple. That sounds really good on paper to me, but I’m not so sure yet. Often there’s a lot of condi removal in groups, but there are times where this would come in handy. I may use this as secondary gear if I feel like trying something different, but so far I’m happy with my current setup.

Something tells me it would be difficult to balance condition damage and duration. As an engineer, I can already lock someone down for a fair amount of time. If I could get even more lockdown time + deliver my range of conditions with maximum damage, I think that would be pretty powerful, especially with my grenades which are both power + condi dealers. I would practically have an infinite source of confusion, immo, burn, poison + blinds and lengthy chills every now and then.

However, I do agree that condition damage as it stands is lacking. For me, the biggest problem is that the user with the most condition damage gets the hit registration while others do not. Anet balanced conditions for 1v1 battles, not group fights. If my friend has just 1 more point in condition damage, then all I get out of the battle is my weak physical hit, or if I’m lucky and there’s some stacks left for me to register. IMO, I think that’s the bigger issue to tackle. They need to remove global stacks for damaging conditions and allow individual user stacks. Each user should have their own application of bleed, burn, poison, confusion, and torment. Duration based conditions like immobilize, chill, and blinds can remain on the global stack.

For me, that’s the only thing holding me back from going condition based. As it stands, it’s just not worth having to compete with other people to get the condi registration.

I remember my first living story Flame and Frost. To help a bunch of refugees arriving in Ascalon and Shiverpeaks. At the time I just picked up the game and played through the personal story. I thought that this living story stuff would be an extension to that experience. Content that would immerse you into the world of Tyria. Although that never quite happened for me. The story, the atmosphere, it all just felt dry and dull. Each month-long new content felt like filler. Something different to do, but never actually care about what was going on. Granted some of them were great. Super Adventure Box was a thrill and all the mini-games that came from living story events were creative. It’s just the story and execution needed some love.

That all changed for me with the downfall of Lion’s Arch, the mysterious drilling, and that much darker theme of death on your doorstep. I feel like Anet’s living story is finally resonating with me. I actually took the time to walk around Lion’s Arch and embrace what was going on. To feel that fire and destruction, to awe at the large machinery, the multiple enemy forces invading our lands, evacuating civilians. So many questions, theories, what’s going to happen, etc. I think Anet’s onto something interesting here and this is one chapter I wouldn’t mind if they spanned out a couple months to give it the proper story and detail it deserves.

So to all you hard working people at Anet, I say thank you and keep up the good work.

I recall reading somewhere (or maybe it was a YouTube video) where anet stated they wanted more people to put 30 points into something rather than get everything they needed with only 10 or 20. The problem is the balance is not proportionate. Grenadier gets you the most bang for your buck compared to, say rifled turret barrels, which would probably be considered the worse. I think if anet made all the other trait lines comparable to grenadier, it would be a different story. Then people would feel better about choosing what line to take, because in the end you’re getting some major buffs.

I can’t say if it’s right for you, but I went full celestial and I’m happy with the results. Base approx. 2500 armour, 450 condi, 60% crit dmg, 25% crit chance, 2500 attack, 500 heal, 22000 health. It synergies well with the engie’s power/condi setups. With might stacks and trait line specialization, plus fury for the extra 20% crit chance, you still cause a fair bit of pain without trading off too much power and/or survivability with other sets. Only problem with celestial is the charged crystals are time gated, just like the ascended mats. Takes a little longer to complete the set, but once you’re done there’s no real need to add more to your wardrobe.

I’m looking forward to the 2 handed weapon sigil update. I’ve been using 2x pistols for a long time because the benefit of having 2 sigils. Now that they are on par, it gives me a reason to go back to the riffle and use it as a secondary weapon. I think that’s a legitimate new design decision.

I’m not certain what to make of their rune adjustments though. I agree with their new direction; however introducing such a change this late into the game’s life is likely to create a bit of ruckus. I worked hard to get my max boon duration set, putting down time doing things I didn’t want to do and money to get them. If I have to do that exercise again, then I’m likely to just put down the game and move on.

In my opinion, the mortar is OK for what it does, it just needs a little polish around the edges. My first two changes below I think need to be addressed. Beyond that, other stuff is optional. The mortar is a situational skill, so no matter what it’s only going to be used when both you are your target are stationary. That limits the skill to fighting the inquest golem, the giant jungle wurm, and using it on WvW fort walls.

1. [Easy – Must Have] Add an attack queue. It’s the only skill I know of that doesn’t have an attack queue.

2. [Moderate – Must Have] Mortar skills should crit, scale with stats (currently it does not get boost from sigils), and apply traits.

3. [Balance – Nice to Have] Maintain 1500 max distance, but do not factor vertical distance in the equation, unless the vertical distance exceeds 1500 (don’t want ppl spamming mortar on cliffs). Or just have vertical distance play a smaller role when calculating the total distance.

4. [Hard – Nice to Have, but Highly Recommended] Replace launch elixir with some sort of temporary iron hide or projectile barrier skill. That’s far more useful. Or, replace the defensive skill with another offensive one like poison field or confusion field.

I agree with pza that adding new skills will just move the problem elsewhere.

I think the first thing Anet needs to do is add an attack queue to the mortar, just like every other skill in the game has. It’s cumbersome that they lock down the skills for 2 seconds and then you initiate another attack once the skill bar is reactivated. This is something they should be able to fix with ease.

I don’t think more range on the mortar will be effective. The parabolic arc of your mortar shells already provides to much time for the enemy to just walk out of harms way. By increasing the range you will increase the arc and will give all that much more time for the enemy to dodge. However, I do believe that that range limit should not be affected by vertical distance, only horizontal distance. At least this way you can use your mortar on top of a wall and get a true 1500 horizontal range and not something like 800 horizontal range + 700 vertical.

The healing shell is quite useless and should be replaced with a 3 second AOE poison shell or perhaps even confusion, which goes really well with “shell shock”. This and the distance fix above I think would make the mortar viable, at least for defensive purposes and wouldn’t require much effort on Anet’s part. The alternative is they scrap the mortar turret altogether and just give us a single call mortar strike skill and functions equivalent to the current concussion barrage. At least then it could be used in the heat of combat.

I’ve used the FT a lot in WvW and I don’t find it bad at all. I find the Flame Blast is quite deadly and it reaches people on fort walls. I wear full celestial gear and I get on average 5K AOE dmg from it, not including the pass-through damage. The bonus toughness from Juggernaught (and with backpack regen) helps me survive in those fantastic T1 zerg fights.

I don’t cling to the FT however. I use it in combination with EG, elixir B, and pistols. One of my strategies I toss elixir B for 8 seconds of stability (fyi I run with 95% boon duration). As I run into the zerg I’ll drop napalm, back out using acidic bomb (plus get AOE might stack for you and your linebackers), then flame blast, then static shot. It does very good damage in such a short period of time. While my AOEs are dealing physical damage (which is great since condis are difficult to stick), I’m using super elixir + healing turret to wash off any condis and regen my health while running by my commanders side to help out.

Stillshade, regarding your setup, I would make a few suggestions. Consider rolling with pistols and/or shield so you can get two sigils (unless you really like the rifle). When I roll with kits, I swap to my pistols just to add pressure, but I never use them to attack. Having two pistols gives me two sigils for best output. Sigil of bloodlust with sigil of battle works well together. 25 stacks of power combined with 25 stacks of might adds one heck of a punch. I would also swap out runes of might stack for runes of boon stack instead (2x travellers, 2x monk, 2x water = 45% boon duration vs 60% might). The engineer has many useful boons and you shouldn’t discount them. I maintain fury, swiftness, and a base of 10 stacks of might indefinitely. Stability is up 1/3 of the time and retaliation is up 2/3 of the time. When those guardians are shouting their heads off, I get an influx of boons that stick for a long time, each adding 1% more dmg output (25pts in alchemy gives 1% dmg per boon). I would also replace rocket boots. IMO I never really liked that skill. Most people use it to chase others, but that’s a bad thing to do with group play. Best to stick with your commander or use toolkit to pull instead.

Even with high toughness, most thieves are glassy and with backstab they will still hit hard. Every thief builds on stealth, so you’re going to want some AOE to deal with that. Grenades and bombs work really well. Bombs more so because the glue bomb + pistol glue shot will keep them in one place long enough to remind them why you don’t mess with a guy strapped with explosives

Timing is everything though. Cloak and dagger is their bread and butter. If they hit you and stealth, start timing. You will be attacked within the next 2 – 3 seconds and most likely they will try to get behind you, so anticipate that (ie: dodge backwards, not forwards or sideways). Just before you do that, put down your glue to immobilize them and then burst them as best you can.

If your build doesn’t have AOE, then I think you’re in for one hell of a time. You’re going to need to rely on your dodges and hope he makes enough mistakes for you to take him out.

Personally I use boon duration runes instead of might. The engineer has a lot of boons and increasing all of their durations is better than just focusing on the one. I have 2 travellers, 2 monks, and 2 waters. That gives 45% boon duration. + 30% from alchemy line + 20% from omnom cream for a total of 95%. The 20% elixir trait can boost that to 115%; however I prefer to use other traits instead.

With this I get about 10 seconds of stability every 30 seconds (which is awesome!), and near continuous regen, swiftness, and fury. As for might, I roll with FT juggernaught, which gives 10 free stacks (due to boon durations) just for doing nothing. With sigil of battle and fire blasts, I find it easy to maintain 25 stacks.

Now, back to the root of your question. A or B. Well, if you like to micromanage your boons like that, then it’s more rewarding to go that route. If however you just want to play and not concern yourself with that rubbish, then the increase condi dmg from runes of undead (which are also cheap to buy) would be a better option. I use to alternate between the two when I first started with engie and I did have more fun with perma stats like runes of undead. I only switched to alchemy because I really need access to those other boons for my playstyle.

This issue has been around since the beginning, but one of my biggest peeves is how both pistol and rifle free shoot in the direction of the camera rather than being level with the terrain, as is the case with the FT. Often I don’t have time to wait for toggling a target or risk the game auto targeting something I don’t want. I just want to quickly free shoot, especially on stealth targets. Having to bring my camera down to ground level and stare at my back while I shoot straight in front of me is both annoying and sets me up for a counter attack that I won’t be prepared for.

I would like anet to add the ability to queue the next mortar shot. It’s bad enough we have to wait 2 seconds per attack, but add in human delay for triggering the next attack and it’s more like ~2.3 – 2.5 seconds. Or you can spam your keyboard and watch as the glyph paint wears out. No thanks!

I also have a very hard time breaking away from an EG/FT build. The damage I pull off with those kits, the survivability, the AOE and wide cone of attack, 200 bonus toughness, quickness and ease of maintaining 25 stacks of might. It’s just to good to give up. I’ve tried hard to go back to bombs, grenades, turrets, riffles, etc. I just can’t. I don’t survive as long and I don’t deal the kind of punishment I’m use to seeing. As Mask and others have pointed out, the primary weapons and their traits need some love. I need a good reason to switch things up. I use to change builds almost weekly. I’ve been pigeonholed into this build for months now and I have not found a reason to leave it.

I bound my keys so they’re all within the ‘Q’ → ‘C’ range on the keyboard (3×3 block), plus 1 → 5.

Movement= WSAD
Skills 1→5 = 1→5
Skills 6→10 = Q,E,Z,X,C (Z,X,C activated with thumb)
Toolkit = <shift> + Q,E,A,D

It took me quite a while to adapt to it, but now I play very comfortably and I can execute any kit + toolbelt skills with ease. Just takes practice, really.

If you’re not interested in mastering the art of APM (actions per minute; starcraft invented term), then I think a turret based build with riffle would offer you the easiest play style. Just plant your turrets and focus on your riffle abilities. That way you spend more time engaged in the battle and less time on finding your mouse cursor or what keyboard button you have to press next. A bomb build also works, but you’ll want to combine that with Elixir S to get you out of a bind and do so quickly. If you can do that, then it’s not a bad play style either.

Mishva, I did a full condi duration build before and from my tests, it wasn’t as good as a full condi damage build. This was with full givers weapons, runes of the mad king and whatever that second rune set was. I had something over 100% condi duration with food buff. With that setup, I noticed I couldn’t kill things as fast as I did with a full condi dmg build. Although it’s not a bad support build. Confusion bomb + static shot + prybar adds a nice amount of confusion, which I found to be the highest dmg dealing application for that build.

The way I see it, you already get 30% condi duration from fully spec’ing out the power trait, which you’re going to do anyway for a grenade build. With rare veggie pizza to add an extra 40%, that gives you 70% total and you get to maintain ~2K condi dmg. In my opinion, ~2K condi dmg is the sweet spot where condis start to show some decent numbers.

Back when I rolled with a condition build, I was fully decked out in rabid gear and I used runes of the undead (cheap and effective). I never really worried about condition cleaners. We lob grenades faster than they can cleanse, so it’s just a short term gain for them. Plus it’s the damage grenades do that is to worry about. Pretty much every time I defend a gate by carpet bombing the zerg, they tend to pull off and resort to siege instead.

Personally, I prefer to run an average build using full celestial gear and boon duration boons. Although I main an FT, every now and then I switch it up and try other things. Celestial provides an excellent balance of condition and power, which I like a lot. It’s unfortunately not a casual build because it takes a long time and a lot of money to acquire, but once you get it you won’t have to worry about trite armour configurations. Just play and enjoy being average

I equip two pistols, but it’s mostly cosmetic. I’ve tried the HGH route with pistols a few times. With bloodlust and might stacking sigils, I find the DPS low in comparison to FT. I also don’t like having only 1 healing source. I’m not as bold as I would be running into a group fight as I would be with an FT/EG/Medkit combo.

That’s not to say it isn’t used though. Some people do run it and they enjoy it, which is what matters most in a video game. The elixir X however is pretty awesome and I do use that a lot. Though it’s like winning the lottery. If you get the tornado, you won the jackpot.

On its own healing power is nothing to boast about (by design); however when you add several sources of healing, it adds up. I don’t play with bombs anymore because I’m accustomed to range strategies, but backback regenerator + regen boon + supir elixir = a nice HP boost. If you were to throw elixir bombs into that mix, then you would be quite the mobile med station. In comparison, you would double your healing power using a cleric set, but that only offers an increase of about 70 hp per bomb (notwithstanding your offensive abilities take a nose dive). So as Nessou says, picking that bomb trait is more about offering that little extra support.

I would be curious to see 5 engineers group up and use it. That would give about 1000 hp every 2 seconds, which is quite sizable. Seeing 5 big old bombs going off every 30 seconds would be pretty funny too.

It really depends on what you would like to do and that you’re most comfortable playing. I often cycle between builds and strategies so I never really feel pigeonholed to any one of them. I do feel that a grenade build offers you the most options however. The range can mean the difference between reaching your target from a safe distance or closing the gap and risk being pulled and ganked.

It of course depends on your guild as well. Most guilds I particpate with or against often rush to their death or glory. In these circumstances you either play it safe from the edges of the confrontation (via grenades) or you tank up and run into the thick of it. Under the later scenario, you will want to focus on condition and stun removals above all else. It’s not about damage dealing, but as a group, each individual in your zerg will contibute some amount of damage as you advance through the thick of it. A bomb build in this case with focus on PVT gear, runes of melandru, and lemongrass soup offers the best combination. You will want at least 10 pnts into power to maximize your bomb radius. You will want 30 pnts into toughness so you can get bomb heals (which are getting a buff soon), and I would probably put the last 30 into vitality so you can get free elixir S, B, kit regen, and automated response.

You have to think about a build that works for defense and offense, as well as gear that you should have to accompany that. So if you dedicate to bombs for instance, you won’t have much for defensive capabilities when a fort is under attack in comparison to an engineer that spec’d in long-range powerful grenades.

I use it often in WvW, mostly for zerg fights where I need to tag as many bodies as I can and then collect all the lovely bags The FT on its own however is not good. Actually, that’s pretty much the same for all engineer skills. You need to cycle through a lot in order to get some burst damage. I often roll with med kit, tool kit, elixir gun, and the FT. Those three work very well together. My usual attack is to drop the flame wall using the FT. Run up and use the acidic blast from the elixir gun. This will give you and your allies a might boost + add more AOE dmg. From the distance, toss your FT napalm blast and and the same time charge in with your flame jet. This will cause a huge spike in damage by the time you close the gap (usually fatal for PvE mobs). When you’re close, switch to tool kit and prybar the enemy, then switch to pistol and add static shot for more confusion. FT works best when you free shoot rather than target, but for static shot it helps a lot to target before using it, so I often toggle and untoggle targets during combat to get the most from my weapons (lots of finger play!).

This setup also has lots of healing power, so it just keeps me going. Med kit heal + deploybale medkits, antidote for condition removal, elixir spray toolbelt for regen + stun break, and super elixir for impact heal, regen, and condi removal. If you add backpack regen, that’s an extra ~140hp per second on top of regen. Since I roll with Celestial, I get a nice boost my healing power.

As for retaliation, it depends. In one on one fights, it’s obviously a disadvantage so you want to switch things up until the retal depleats (when in doubt, prybar!). If you’re defending a fort and spraying through the door, a couple retal isn’t going to ruin your day much. Just put down the heals and you’ll do enough damage to the door crashers that you both have to pull off in the end. From my experience, it’s rare to see a zerg roll with a lot of retal. Even if they do, there’s enough necros on both sides to level the playing field so you don’t notice it (or it’s the last thing you’re worried about).

I leveled up a necro, engie, ranger, and warrior to 80 and my guardian to 55, which I got bored of and stopped playing. I also did theif for about an hour and didn’t like his playstyle so I dumped him. Of all these classes, the engie is my top fav. As SpellOfIniquity mentioned, it’s the most versatile class in the game. I never get bored of it and I’m constantly changing my traits around. Trying out new strategies and playstyles. Turrets, kits, bombs, grenades, pistols, rifles / control, elixirs, gadgets. It’s crazy how much that class can do and any of those traits can be mixed for some interesting results. All my other classes are pigeonholed to a single strategy because that’s the formula that works best for them. With the engie, I don’t feel any constraint.

The engie is not difficult to pickup so long as you setup a good keybind. The 1→0 on the keyboard won’t do well for the engie, so you’ll want to find something that will help you trigger your skills within a confined space on your keyboard. For instance, i have the traditional wsad movement keys. My 6→0 skills are mapped to q,e,z,x,c respectively, and my toolkit is mapped to shift+q,e,a,d. This is perhaps what will take the longest for you to adapt to. Once you get the hang of that and you memorize all the subskills with your kits, you’ll be good to go.

Also, one of the fun things to do with an engie is befriend other engies in your server. In WvW, it’s really fun to have a handful of engies setup motors or barrage the enemy with long-range grenades. It’s really quite a sight to see, especially when you’re synchronized.

For me, shields offer little value in zerg fights since most people are going to have stability and negate any use out of the shield. I still keep my SAB shield around for style points though

Anyway, switching to riffle or dual pistol is fine. The bonuses you get from either weapon set help to augment your damage with the FT, so you’re not losing out. When I run kits, I rarely go back to my primary weapons. There’s just not enough time to cycle through everything and I’d rather get the more damaging and useful skills out first.

I would get rid of the 10 pnts in power. Your build does not put out a lot of condition damage, so wasting a trait on applying 4 seconds of meager burning damage every 10 seconds is not as important. I would put it into alchemy so you can get 15% extra FT and EG dmg. That will get you more DPS. I would also swap range increase to weapon CD trait for the firearms line. Being able to shoot out more net shots or jump shots is better than having a small range boost. Most of the time you’re going to be up close and personal with your fights. If not, net shot, jump shot, or pull them with your toolkit.

Making #2 a blast finisher would IMO make the FT a little OP. It already does good AOE damage and on a short CD. It’s been a while since I played my other classes, but I don’t recall any class having both fields and finishers on the same weapon. Even the bomb kit doesn’t give you a blast finisher without using the big ol bomb for it and with a heavy CD. I find it acceptable to switch to EG #4 for a blast finisher or use mines.

FT smokescreen should however create a smoke field. Combined with EG #4, it would make the most sense as a viable getaway.

Everyone has to play their part in defending a fort. No doubt everyone will contribute building siege when the commander calls out for it, but the key point here is once that’s said and done, how can an engineer support the defense efforts. Using FT on the gate is an effective means to deter rams and gate crashers. Healing turret + super elixir provides healing to keep you in the fight longer, while supportive teammates are also applying their own skills, heals, and siege attacks to function as a group. The alternatives are to defend with grenades or mortar, each with their own effectiveness, risks and countermeasures.

If a team of 5 engineers with all the same gear defended the gate, then 5 FT jets would be a serious threat. It would be over 10K damage per target per 2 seconds with no CD. If they were experienced, they would drop a fire field with a blast finisher to gain 15 stacks of might each. Combined with juggernaught, that would put them at 22-23 stacks. Add to that 5 healing turrets and 5 super elixirs, they would be a death machine. From experience however, it’s rare for a zerg to door crash for the very reason that it only takes a handful of defenders to batch enough AOE to cause chaos. Still though, Oxstar’s advice is sound. If you see fellow engineers, consider working together rather than branching off doing your own thing. Regardless if you FT, grenade, or mortar. Working together is more effective than working alone.

Ferr, are you making use of combos? Single attacks are not enough to bring down a player fast enough, or even at all with some classes like elementists. Check Dirame’s first video link to get an idea of how to combine your skills into a sequenced attack as an example. Practice various combos in PvE to get the hang of it, then try it in WvW. The only time you should resort to single attacks is when your skills are on CD. You should be dealing at minimum 5K health per combo. That’s enough to offset any healing and allow your normal attacks to do the rest while your skills are on CD.

This is my current setup: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUl0picX3SrF1LJyoCdWIFSo9BSRddXiUUZNGA-jkxAYLACDQ2rIasFuioxqsx0vER1BBMK-w

I recently had a lot of money to spend, so I bought a full set of precision ascended gear. I mix that with soldiers armor to get a good balance of crit chance with toughness and vitality. 20K health is a sweet spot and I find it just enough to survive conditions and bursts. The FT is mostly stacking free might and for area fights. It’s very supportive in zerg fights. I do on average 3K damage per jet. EG is mostly for stun break and super elixir. Toolkit is mostly to catch runners or to slap ppl with a prybar. I use rifle as my entry into a fight. Overall, I offer good support to my zerg.

Your health is pretty low. At 16000, you’re quicker to kill because you don’t have much time to heal between burst attacks, especially if you’re stunned at some point. I run full soldiers set and have 3k armor (with juggernaut), 25k health, and boon duration runes. My stats are 0/20/20/20/10. This setup enables me to have a lot of skill configurations. Riffle + turret builds, pistol/shield + elixir builds, and kit builds. The soldiers gear gets me 3K power and with medkit fury, I have 41% crit chance. With FT juggernaught, the 8 stacks of might + condi proc sigil boosts my condition dmg up to 800 or so. In comparison to your stats, I’m already at an advantage.

The other problem is your skill choice. Grenades and rocket boots are not good for roaming. You need more control abilities. Abilities that immobilize or stun the enemy, and engineers have tons of control abilities. Riffle + net turret + sitting duck is one of the better options. Net shot from riffle, then net shot from net turret toolkit, then plant net turret for another net shot + overcharged stun. By then, your riffle net shot will have recharged. When the cripples get close to you, use overcharged shot and /laugh as they limp their way back to you Stability is your biggest concern. In those cases, whip up your toolkit, kite, and use shield block until their stability runs out. Shouldn’t take to long and after that, they become your play thing for the next minute. This works amazingly well against melee chars, but in general it’s good against all chars. People freak when they get stunned or immobilized and tend to forget about the fight. This buys you valuable turns to keep the pressure on them rather then they keep the pressure on you.

This is just some random ideas to help you out. Grenades IMO are really only useful in defending forts and towers. Even then, I prefer to use mortar since the shots lob much more easily over the wall and the mortar stats better with power builds (soldier set).

The only problem with this build is that it’s pure glass. You’re going to have a very tough time if you do temple runs. You’re likely to die on the first drop at Grenth, or get overwhelmed by the sheer number of risen at Balthasar.

The 33% extra burn duration is not worth it. Burn doesn’t stack in damage, just duration. Condition only applies damage on ticks, so your 1 second burn on the FT would need 100% condi duration in order to bump it to 2 seconds and deal the extra burn damage. To get 100% condi duration, you need 30 pnts into power, two giver weapons for +20% duration, mad king runes and I think lyssa runes for another +20% duration. Then your 33% burn duration would have value, but look at what you’re giving up just for all that.

I would rather remove the burn duration and put those 10 pnts into power because that will make your FT hit harder. That has greater DPS value than burn duration. I would also swap out rocket boots for the tool kit, and get rid of armor mods in favour of power wrench. Confusion is the strongest condition against mobs and they will drop like flies if you have high condi damage. Static shot + prybar + confusion bomb = death to all but the strongest mobs.

When I first started playing the engineer, I started to realize the limitations of turrets. I couldn’t help but draw comparisons to Runic’s Torchlight II engineer. Everything about that engineer is just awesome. You have a mobile healing bot, mobile gun turret, spider mines, a copter, and a sledgebot. All of them follow you around and offer cool abilities. I kept thinking to myself, why didn’t anet follow a similar idea? The golem is there as a race skill if you chose the Asurans. The mines are there, the healing turret is there, the rifle turret is there. There’s quite a similarity, but anet decided to make them all inert (except the golem, but that’s sadly a race skill). Well, whatever their reasons, turrets are more of a complimentary skill rather than a primary. They offer an advantage in 1vs1 fights, but quickly become a disadvantage when you fight against greater numbers or if mobs get in the way.

I don’t think anet is going to change the engineer’s skills. To much coding involved and has extremely high risk. As it stands, the engineer is really a kit class. It’s hard not to dedicate at all 3 utility slots to kits. They’re so versatile. 15 skills to chose from + 3 useful toolbelt skills all with reasonable CDs and uses. The new patch even encourages FT and EG combinations. EG primarily for stun removal, FT primarily for AOE attack, and toolkit to catch runners and cripple. 100% swiftness uptime, medkit for fury. All these pluses make turrets mediocre in comparison. Plus I’m not sitting around for a minute waiting for the turrets to CD. That’s just anti-game mechanics.

I don’t run an FT build as much anymore, but what you have is close to what I ran. Difference is I roll with the Medkit for fury + swiftness boost + some condi removal, Toolkit for pull + prybar on runners, Elixir S for escape + running into towers under attack (works well when combined with toolkit shield and stabilize), and the FT. When defending tower gates, I will swap out Elixir S for the Elixir Gun and medkit for healing turret. This helps me keep the pressure on while absorbing AOEs + retaliation. I also tend to swap medkit for healing turret just before entering battle and using up the stimulant. Gear is pretty much the same. I recall doing around 1400 dmg per flame jet if I maintain 100% connection.

I don’t know about the new patch. They moved traits around so it’s possible to max out your FT build without spending a full 30 pnts into Firearms, but then again having the full 30 in firearms lets you deal more crits and condi damage so that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Phineas Poe, they didn’t add 100 range, they moved the range trait from the Rifled Turret Barrels to the Elite Supplies. So now instead of getting range on all turrets + 15% dmg, you now only get 100 extra range and no other turret buffs. It’s actually a nerf. The funny thing is if you’re going to be on a mortar, odds are you are going to have a turret build so that you can protect yourself and deal extra damage. This trait change will now force you to sacrifice a valuable turret trait just for the added mortar range. And to add on that mortar skills are still bugged where they don’t always fire and sometimes there’s like this lag buildup where the game stacks up your attacks and like 5 seconds later a massive barrage just fires out.

Kimbald pretty much hit the nail on the head. The engineer has been looked at in the past, anet knows about our concerns, and this patch was designed to change things up a bit. Despite all that, I still feel like my original builds are the best ones. I have no need for mortar, rocket boots, or elixir gun. My standard skills I use have either been left alone or buffed, so there’s no reason for me to change anything. Had anet released the game where grenades only had a max range of 1200, then I would say the mortar would have value. By giving grenades the same max distance and making them so good, it’s really difficult to give them up.

The elixir gun’s #5 (super elixir) also removes conditions. Healing pulse is great too for when you need to FT the front gate. Healing turret + super elixir + 2x healing mists keeps you in the fight much longer. With only a 16 second CD (if traited), IMO that’s better than using any elixir variants. Elixir S is most useful for breaking stuns or quickly getting out of bursts. It’s also useful for getting into a tower under attack. When you’re within range, toss elixir S for stability and then activate your toolkit shield. You’ll have 4 seconds of invulnerability. If you need more time, then drink elixir S and gain an extra 3 seconds of movement. Never had a problem getting into a tower using this method.

IMO don’t let a fight linger to the point where you have to play more defensively than offensively. If that happens, you’re at a disadvantage. Take a close look at your loadout and find the optimal combos. For example, using toolkit #5 (magnet pull) then #3 (prybar) then double tap shield #4 launch your foe to a safer distance followed by double tapping #5 to stun him. In group fights, this “idle” time is most valuable as you are controlling the fight. There are many variations to this as well, such as using big ol’bomb, elixir gun acid bomb, battering ram, etc. Lot’s of fun ways to control the fight. That’s the engineer specialty. Try to keep your grenades only for fort defense and assault. If you use them in a skirmish, you might find you are not being as effective as weapons with auto-aim.

When you look at the engineer’s arsenal (grenades, bombs, turrets, pistols), it is a class suited for condition application and there’s two ways you can focus. You can focus on lower condi dmg with higher condi duration, or vise-versa. Since you spec’d into power, your focus is on duration so I would recommend you use giver weapons to boost you up to 50% base condi duration and have a yummy pizza to further boost that up to 90%. The primary purpose of your grenades is to freeze and poison the enemy, and the duration boost will shut down anyone without condi removals. It’s a very good supportive role that I’ve used with great success. I would also replace your runes of engineering with runes of the undead. The boost in condi damage will help offset the fact that you didn’t put any points into firearms. You can get an extra ~300 condi dmg boost out of that.

A similar build I rolled was 30/20/0/10/10. Toolkit + Bombs + Grenades + full rabid set with undead runes. It’s a very effective anti-zerg class because I would just pummel them with grenades and confusion bombs. The 10 pnts in vitality was so that I get the auto elixir S at 25% health. I would run into the thick of a zerg with toolkit shield, plant smoke, confusion, and fire bombs (in that order). Take a huge dps hit, and then run my tiny butt out of the kill zone. I would then just grenade them from the sidelines. The bags flowed like a river and while they wasted their skills on me, the rest of my zerg would go in to clean up. It’s also effective in smaller groups too as I would static shot + tool kit pull / prybar + confusion bomb to put 12 stacks of confusion, doing something like 2-3K dmg per skill use.