Guild Wars 2

Good afternoon,

Respectfully I must say that perhaps you should level your Ranger first so you get used to in game mechanics before leveling up that Engineer. You see, the Engineer requires you to be very comfortable with the way the game’s various mechanics work, ground targeting and combo planning in particular. I played a Ranger in BWEs, and thought Engineer clunky and awkward. Having first gotten accustomed to how the game works and what the possibilities are – i.e. “having an eye for the game” – I find it a lot easier to play the Engineer. In fact I much prefer it.

Please experiment with the Ranger to your heart’s content. It’s a great beginner profession that allows you a lot of leeway, and perhaps one day you feel like you want a challenge of a different kind

If you have any questions, feel free to post into this thread or mail me directly in game. I am not the authority on anything, but I try my best to help. I am also a leatherworker, so I can easily craft medium armor if you wish to experiment. (I find it dull that people don’t craft for each other, so I take this chance to promote social behaviour. hue hue hue :P)

Thank you.

ManCaptain.3154:

Oakwind.6187:

I kindly ask to take the following with a pinch of salt: I would not agree with Dervish being “fixed”. It simply got easily abusable builds that made it look strong. In addition, the Paragon profession is still silently weeping in the closet. How many years was it since release again?

By fixed I mean they corrected the super awkward class mechanic: putting up short recharge, medium duration enchantments all the time then tearing them down with special attack skills. With 0.75 sec cast time + aftercast that meant your autoattack swings got canceled and you got your kitten kited. The tear down skills removed powerful monk enchants more often than not. I saw this as a big mistake at Nightfall release and so I rolled Paragon. Well 5 years later, dervish got fixed and paragon was nerfed into uselessness outside pve (and it’s useful in pve because of one PvE only skill).

Fair dues. I never played Dervish personally outside HA and AB so I don’t know that much. Imbagon on the other hand was thoroughly unattractive to me.

DayLight.9603:

I have always played a Necromancer and will continue to do so (never having played an Engi) – BUT – I have a couple of free minutes and thought I’d browse through the forums and evidently made my way here. Last night, for the very first time, I encountered an Engineer who’s play style took my breath away – while exploring Arah nonetheless!

Never mind the thought of mobile dagger/dagger elementalists, or burst warriors and tanky guardians. In my opinion, Engineers, when well played, have everything to be easily recognized as a top class. This engi supported the team, dealt damage and was more than once the only player left standing, tanking the mobs and saving our skins.

So as somebody that has never played an Engi before.. I would like to /salute the class.

I hope today treats you well! In response to your observation, I guess this is the way the developers intended the Engineer to be played. Whether or not it pleases the playerbase is a whole other question. I’m personally fine supporting a team, but – and this is not directed at anyone in particular – I gather it’s natural to try to be more powerful than others. What really blows my mind is that if people had their way, every profession would do the same while not doing the same.

That having been said, I wish they spent more resources on fixing the actual issues – both quality of life and bugs of the engineers. Maybe then I’d be more inclined to buying Gems from them.

I try to encourage people to play as a team, regardless of profession. I’m really glad to see that at least someone still pays heed to teamwork

I kindly ask to take the following with a pinch of salt: I would not agree with Dervish being “fixed”. It simply got easily abusable builds that made it look strong. In addition, the Paragon profession is still silently weeping in the closet. How many years was it since release again?

Greetings!

Since I’m very bored at work, I’m taking this time to write a short introduction as well. The very first thing you need to understand about your engineer is this: You need to use all your skills to be able to effectively play and survive. This means weapon skills 1-5, the heal (6), utilities 7-9, elite, and toolbelt skills F1-F4 in particular.

What you are asking is if it is in your interest to go for a less kit-oriented build, while the problem seems to be that you’re uncomfortable with the constant ground targeting. There really is no build that completely frees you from it; it’s just one of those things you have to master as an engineer. Many of those toolbelt effects being random just exaggerates the issue, since you need to be in a constant state of focus to benefit from whatever happened since that Elixir S hit the ground.
You can find an option called “Fast-Cast Ground Targeting” from the Options menu, that removes the necessary mouse click after activating a ground targeted skill. (Free tip: Manually clicking on a toolbelt ground targeted skill automagically targets your own feet)

Furthermore, Conditions are your friends because they allow you to run the slightly more esoteric builds like P/P (Pistol/Pistol, to clarify) that allow you to ball up a bunch of mobs into a glue patch and afflict them with stacks of Bleed and Burning, with occasional Poison. The great versatility comes from the kits transforming the way you play depending on how you want to play. For example, you can aim your grenades to do more direct damage, with the same applying to bomb kit for instance. The reverse is also true: You can stack Precision and pick the Firearms traitline alongside Explosives and pick Burning on crit, Bleed on crit and Vulnerability on crit.

The result of this is that you don’t necessarily need to hit with every grenade, although doing so will reward you, whereas a more direct damage oriented grenadier gets a slap on the wrist for missing a barrage. I personally prefer running condition oriented because it allows me to relax more when I do tedious stuff, even if it takes longer to kill things.

Back on topic: You will not be able to play Engineer in a way that makes you feel like you can tackle everything, unless you master ground targeting and mobility simultaneously, alongside kits and generating and finishing combo fields.

I’m going on a limb here and say that you sound a little like myself: You don’t want to go for the hectic ASFADKFDJKFF PRESS BUTONS FASTUR OR DIAF! – playstyle that many fall victim to. The Engineer profession is definitely worth it but you need to let it grow on you. Do not compare playstyles to other professions, focus on mastering one thing at a time. The Engineer feels timid especially when leveling, and only becomes potent when the player knows his entire toolset, and has a clear plan of engagement. If you follow through with the learning curve, no two fights are necessarily the same, and you feel as though you can survive anything. Against my own rule, compare this against a Warrior, which is very much “Do or die”.

It would be very wise to learn how to autorun and turn on the option I presented earlier. Being able to run forward while swiveling your camera allows for great mobility and awareness. I also recommend rebinding all your keys in such a way that your fingers find what you need faster. I have WSAD for movement with A and D rebound for strafes (turning with mouse). Dodge is bound to mouse #5 and jump to mouse #4. Keys 1-5 are for weapon skills, Z, X, C are for utilities, Q is for heal, E is for elite, V is for autorun, and R, F, G, T are for toolbelt. I stress that the default keybinds make it downright impossible to play proficiently, unless your fingers have the dexterity of the tentacles of Cthulhu.

Thank you.

Hardly a book, but long one anyway. I still argue you should consider Omnomberry Ghost instead of the Sigil you’re using, and really, consider moving 10 points from Tools to Power.

On second thought, perhaps I should take the time to post an alternative build without Elixir Gun later.

I would just like to add Incendiary Powder (Power V) to consider if you insist on mixing Flamethrower and Elixir Gun. The Burning condition stacking* adds a lot of damage, especially if you insist on Blood Injection.

EDIT: Forgot that important word

A random thought for sure, but consider going for maxed out vitality in your gear, with 30 points into Alchemy and picking up Automated Response. In addition, Elixir S can help but if you have to bring team utility, Elixir R is a good option. If Automated Response can’t deal with the influx of condition damage – assuming you steer clear of direct damage – then you can use S to escape (along with the thrown) or R at your feet to revive yourself. Tossed R also cures conditions. The consideration here to make is maintaining mobility; if you aren’t standing in a field or well, 409 is oftentimes sufficient. Elixir C removes multiple conditions at once, but I personally try to time my tossed H and B for removing single conditions like Immobilize, Cripple and Blind while sparing C for removing mass damage (Confusion/Bleed stacks/Poison) when I use it.

If I understood your post correctly, you are running elixirs anyway, so maybe the above would be something to consider.

Ferum Flamebender.5910:

Maybe weird, but, aren’t downed skills ment to be a bit useless?
Like: “agh! I’m down! Here let me grab this …. Loaf of bread to give you one more slap!”

But still.. The CD is just too long on skill 2. 3 is arguable aswell, it’s a nice finisher interupt in PvP and WvW, but why would you want to pull something that’s trying to killing you, near you?

Thank you for saving this miserable morning at work with a good laugh. I lost it at the image of slapping a Charr with a loaf of bread in WvW and making him weep.

I have used #3 downed skill well exactly once when I was downed next to a cliff in WvW. It just so happened that a mesmer was standing with their back facing the drop. A quick pull with #2, followed with #3 and a free rally once gravity had done it’s simulated work.

Good day,

Even at the risk of appearing obnoxious, I decided to comment as follows: Your rank and FoTM level mean nothing to a struggling engineer because you offer precious little practical advice, and more random cantrips. That’s exactly the problem with people who don’t teach the Engineer Way of Thinking, but go with something like 100nades and decide that everyone else is bad because they are having problems.

The Engineer needs to know their skills, and traits by heart and how to combine them to achieve a desired result. It has been discussed to death on these forums that Engineers need to specialize highly to be effective. Only experience or a very experienced tutor can remedy this, because now we bump to the primary problem up and coming Engineers have:

They are extremely dependant on gear (and its stats and runes), which with the specialization issue bloats the disparity between hitting like a noodle, and hitting really hard and soloing champions. If one furthermore experiments with the Engineer damage in sPvP and goes back to PvE and tries to do something with a mix and match of masterwork and rare gear, it’s not hard to understand Engineer players who go: “What on earth? I’m doing like no damage, this isn’t fun.”

Furthermore, sweeping statements concerning pistols and condition damage hint towards a minor amount of axle grease between the ears. You won’t motivate anyone to play by making a thread about how everyone is doing it wrong instead of offering advice.

Not a single time was it mentioned that the #1 important thing as an Engineer is to adapt to the task at hand, and more importantly your team. This can be a particular obstacle to less savvy players because of the time investment, knowledge about mechanics and the requirements of having several gear and trait sets. I don’t mean to be a kitten but if you attempt – say – double pistols when your role is not clearly defined as being the bleed/burn/poison bot, then you need to be thwacked firmly on the noggin’. (Even then, Grenade or Bomb kit has its advantages over double pistols, and these differences are the ones you should be teaching; where they are usable and where less preferred.)

I don’t really know what people like you want, but you get no points from me for sweeping statements and running 100nades.

On an unrelated note, I am always up for discussing builds, traits and uses. Hit me with a mail or a tell in game if you’re interested in Engineers and reading this.

Thank you.

Tortun.5946:

Shurrup you, just applied for 10 jobs. So there!!! While I’m not working, I may as well enjoy the freeeeeedom!!!!

And while at work, we spam the forums, amirite? Don’t mind me, totally inconspicuous here.

Good day people,

Right off the bat I admit that even I was thinking a few days ago that “Hmm, were these guys working together?”. In retrospect, I don’t really care. We have met a lot of honorable, tough as nails opponents from both AR and PS and my hat goes off to all of you. You have made WvW fun for me, and the tight (scorewise) matchup has proved to be both exciting and fast-paced. I almost hope we get to fight both of you a while longer.

The way I see it is this: Disregarding hackers – who can go and drown in kittens – it has been a great learning experience. Mindless zerging does not get anyone far. Strategies and tactics are refining, little by little. In fact, zerging causes problems with culling and at that point all bets are off. I really love how these struggles teach us how to rally faster, in the right numbers, and organize better. Against you lovable people from AR, raw firepower is needed more often than not because the real siegers are hiding behind a rabble of militia. My favourite opponents are you fine folks from PS. You guys really punish us for getting complacent even for one minute, despite having the least people in the field. I can respect that.

Selfishly enough, I hope that these ordeals teach us Gandarans the needed backbone to organize better, rally faster, communicate and form proper fighting units instead of militias. That’s what I wanted to see in WvW in the first place.

Thank you from the memorable fights (especially the epic recent 3-way in SM) in 2012 and may the best warriors win 2013!