Guild Wars 2

I agree, Engineers should have the option for a new weapon/kit.

I lean towards the idea that it should be a mace/hammer since you can get already existing skins for them, opposed to kits, which can’t be customized cosmetically at all.

Way to get lucky with those Walls of Reflection! RNG’s favor shines upon you.

Great job, giving the Engineer a better name for all of us.

Self-stuns from Overcharged Shot and Rocket Boots do not proc traits such as Auto-defense Bomb Despenser or Protection Injection

Here you go: Five Gauge’s 100nade Guide

Currently, grenades work all-right with power, they used to be really good with it. In my opinion though, ’nades are more suitable for condition spam. Add a ’zerker set though and you have the 100nades build, which is currently one of the hardest hitting builds on the Engi getting about 16k+ damage (Soon to be nerfed).

In general about engineers and power, they work fairly with it, especially in comparsion to necros. I find that Tool Kit and Bomb Kit benefit the most from Power specs, and flamethrower as well to a a lesser extent. With 2500 power, I get about 1200 damage from the bomb kit auto-attack, about 650, 650, 1200 from the tool kit’s. Rifle also seems to do a fair bit of damage benefiting from Power as well, a lot more compared to pistol.

Firearms is an overall great line that has many of the Engi’s most useful traits in it. Whether or not you choose to invest in it, depends on what type of gear you’ll be running. Some of the traits in I believe belong more in the Explosives line, like 10% more damage from the rifle and 5 stacks of vunerability on immobolize. I also think that Juggernaught and the amount of stack of might it gives makes more sense in the Power line.

Engineer for sure.

They got Pistols, Rifles, Grenades, Bombs, Flamethrowers Mines, Rocket Launchers, Mortars. How much more soldier-like can you get!?

Note: It’s also a long standing joke in the engineer community that the engineer is a combination of the Commando (ANet Easter-egg) and Alchemist concepts for a class.

Stick with Rabid.

Firstly, Apothecary is very expensive, if you want to go all out be prepared to spend 100g+. I’m not sure how your play-style is but you’ll also be losing condition damage in favor of healing power. Rabid is also the best set for grenades in a condition damage set-up as you can proc extra stacks of vulnerability and bleeds. It also has bad synergy with the Inventions trait line, which converts toughness and healing power into power.

If you planned on spreading yourself thin from the beginning, then Apothecary might be good as it boosts the overall low base stats of both Healing Power and Condition damage. Honestly though, healing power just isn’t powerful enough to justify investing heavily into it. If you’re ikittenerg chances are people are popping off water-fields left in right as well, which heal for more.

Just to clarify, the main point of the post is that Stability and Stealth should NOT be limited to just to a couple of classes, as well as boon removal and other counter. These tools are powerful and everyone should be able to benefit from them.

Awesome post, I agree RNG must go.

Red Falcon.8257:

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While I do agree that skill is the answer to countering, I do not agree that it is a viable solution for this community. Not everyone can have high enough skill, there is always someone better. What I was proposing in my original post was that having Stability & Stealth more predominately on specific classes gives them unfair advantages to players who otherwise do not have a hard-counter to balance the fight. No player should have to arrive to the scenario where they are the one who brought a knife to a gun fight. (Even if they are a knife-combat expert ^^)

Damage Mitigation is the ultimate form of survivability. What Stability and Stealth both provide are forms of inherent damage mitigation. Stability, with it’s use of completely ignoring any form of stun or Stealth, which cloaks the players allowing them to avoid damage all together by taking advantage of other player’s inability to virtually see them. Both of these mechanics are very powerful when used by competent players.

The problem that I see is that while some classes have access to these buffs/boon more than others, the same applies to counters. It is unfair to give classes more access to these tools more than others. Sure we could all roll classes to counter this problem, but that is just a means to and end, and is not addressing the issue. I believe that there should be more boon removal across all classes, and also Stability/Stealth as well. While I understand that Stealth is exclusive to the Thief and Mesmer, it is just too powerful for just them to use. Either give all classes the ability to steath, provide a legitimate way to counter it, or rework the mechanic, blind AoE is just a quasi form of dealing with it and frankly, I’m fed up with culling playing to it’s advantage.

Tell me what you guys think: whether you agree and if not, why.

Most that I’ve seen and personally run, usually involve the trait Elixir-Infused Bombs, in the invention line, and/or Elixir Gun; making use of Super Elixir with or w/out Kit Refinement. Healing Turrets is another form of group healing via Regeneration. The good thing about all that I mentioned is that they all stack on top of one another and can be used to pump out fairly decent amounts of healing to you and your group.

Just as a note: Regen isn’t worth investing in for ticks below 300. In other words, you’ll probably want to have roughly 1400 Healing Power if you want to be effective. Viable is a subjective term, so don’t expect much out of healing spec from Engis.

Vitality, if you got condition removal or just being lazy. Toughness, is better overall, but you need to dedicate more attention to your health.

To be honest, going full knight’s would probably be more favorable, but your current setup certainly isn’t losing out on any stats. Problem is if you’re doing PvE, condition damage isn’t favorable for much of the content, in which case Power (Direct Damage) is more efficient in terms of DPS. WvW and PvP, having a bit of condition damage is always nice to catch unsuspecting/unprepared players off guard and giving you an edge.

Your kits would both benefit from power and condition damage. Examples for power: FT skills #1,2 and EG skills #2,4 (and certain extent 3 as well). Equally, the other skills also benefit from condition damage as well. Ultimately, it depends on what type of content you’ll be doing. If you’re doing a bit of everything then your current setup is fine.

mischwoof, the creator of the Tankcat build has a couple videos. I think he has a good sense of humor and has a creative editing style, but as of recently, he’s stopped making content related to GW2.

Personally, I’ve been searching for similar content myself (Engineers in PvE), but haven’t found anybody/thing interesting enough to catch my attention. I know what I’m looking for: Someone who plays Engi as their main, does lots of the mainstream content and who is willing to put out information for other players, as well as be entertaining. Perhaps that too much to ask of, but I may have a crack at it myself; if we can’t find anyone else to.

Wow, love the kit oriented buffs! I didn’t expect much from this update, but good see some damage buffs for FT and giving EG some appropriate utilities. The heal for turrets on Tool-kit is nice, but it still won’t keep turrets alive long enough, and will distract you from actually doing decent damage.

It’s a shame about kit refinement. It’s supposed to be an incentive to switch our kits and make use of the short cool-down. It really goes against the core mechanic of the Engineer class that kits have virtually no cool-down. Though I may be reading it wrong, and it could be that all the spells are now sharing one cool-down, in which case, makes it a buff so nades and elixirs could be spammed more.

Greetings on behalf of EMP Nice to see you on the Engi forum

Ojimaru.8970:

~snip

I use almost the same exact setup, except I use the Cleric’s Spineguard, which you can get from lvl 80 Personal Story.

To get 300 tick regen you’re probably going to need at least 1400 Healing Power, which will probably require you to go full Cleric’s including trinkets. You’ll also probably be investing 30 into Inventions as well, where you can convert 5% of your toughness and 10% of Healing Power into Power. Bombs are going to be hitting about 1000 flat-damage each on auto.

Killyox.3950:

PWNcakesAndROFLs.8263:

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I must say that you are rather wrong in your perception of engineer.

We are actually middle-front liners which AN said itself and is against wat you just said.

Overcharged shot, Blunderbuss, Jump Shot are middle-close skills. Flamethrower is middle range, toolkit is short range, bomb kit is short range, Even elixir gun is more middle range than long due to skills.

The only long range option, true option, are grenades.

My perception is not wrong. My response was implying the hypothetical situation that Engis are in melee range, which is not outlandish in any way, are not reliant on gap closers. Whether someone decides to go melee or medium range is up to the player, even if it’s not the most efficient way to play.

What’s RF?
Offensively, Elixir Gun is horrible, even with high amounts of Power. Bomb kit, on the other hand, is wonderful and hits hard. Condition Damage benefits both kits almost the same. The problem is that if you spec too much into Cond. Damage you lose out on the potential damage of Bomb kit with Power. This somewhat leaves you with the decision of either going with Cond. Damage or Power as your emphasis for damage output. So, if you want to bring them both, I’d recommend that you invest into both Cond. Damage and Power so both your kits will do respective damage. (I tend to favor Power over Cond. Damage)

Defensively, you got two choices: Vitality and Toughness. In my experience, both equally give about the same survivability. As a rule of thumb, Vitality is better when you don’t bring condition removal and Toughness is better when you do have it. Ultimately it’s up to how your play style is: Do you like concentrating on damage? Bring Vitality. Don’t mind keeping an eye on your health and conditons? Bring Toughness.

All-in-all, I’d suggest Carrion stats (Cond. Damage, Power, Vitality) for your build. As for traits; Explosive Powder and Forceful Explosive is nice for bombs, and Rifled-barrels and Sharpshooter are nice for Elixir-Gun.

I see that you spec’d 25 into inventions for healing power to power conversion and also the toughness to power conversion. I think it’s obvious for you to go with Cleric’s gear (Healing Power/Power/Toughness). You’re build seems solid, except if you do plan on going with Cleric’s I would drop the Firearms line entirely and invest the remaining points on Grandmaster traits; Firearms is almost useless with that low of a crit chance. Rifle works great with Power being used for damage and the regen from Elixir H would be high due to the Healing Power.

In regards to a stun breaker: If you’re a competent enough player, you won’t ever need one. Instead rely on predicting stuns and laying down a smoke bomb, or time a block to prevent it. That goes without saying that a stun breaker is still nice for emergencies

Mitigation is the ultimate form of survivability.

Engis don’t need gap closers that require the player to “rush” to an opponent. That’s why Engis have CCs for. Immobilize every 10s on the rifle, is OP and gives more than enough time to close a gap with jump shot. When using the Tool Kit you have Magnet, which has 1200 range. Point being is that Engis don’t need a gap closer when we have so many other ways of stopping foes.

On top of that, Engis aren’t designed to be in the midst of front-line battles. Take a note from our sister class, the Thief, they use stealth to pop in and out of battle. Similarly, the Engi should be going in CC’ing the opponent, when trying to get in melee range, then using escape skills such as rocket boots and super speed. Admittingly, CC is more suited for keeping foes away from a distance, but it is still more than viable for close range encounters.

Speed buffs are internally capped at 133%, normal speed is 100%. Swiftness only gives you 33% increased speed, so in combat (which reduces speed to 75%) it’ll only let you go to 108%. Out of combat Superspeed is capped out 33% increased speed, but in combat it lets the player achieve the cap, which makes it better than swiftness.

With 0 Healing Power @ level 80; Med kit heals for 7920 in total (includes bandages), Elixir H does for 5560 (w/Regen it’s 6860), and Healing Turret for 4920 (w/Regen it’s 5960, additionally with water combo field it’s 7280)

By numbers alone, Med kit seems to self-heal the best, but in my opinion all the heal skills are good; it just depends on the situation.

I find that Med kit, as the numbers reflect, is the best self-heal. It also has some nice utility to it via the drop antidote and stimulant, which alleviates the need to sacrifice utility slots for fury/swiftness/cond removal; though granted, the utility skills do a better job. On top of that when traiting into Tools you can reduce the cool-down of Bandage-self to 16s!

Elixir H is also good in the aspect of self-heal. With high amounts of Healing Power the Regen provided by it, helps alleviate a fair amount of pressure and even if it is RNG Protection does just as good of a job, albeit being useless against condition pressure. Also, by traiting into Alchemy you can reduce it’s cool-down as well make it remove conditions, and grant might; hell, if you even wanted to, you could make it inflict damage when thrown.

Healing Turret is my personal favorite heal. Just as Elixir H is benefits from high amounts of Healing Power in regards to the passive Regen that it can grant to yourself and/or Allies. On top of that the water field that can be combo’d by itself also provides extra healing for you and your allies that also increases with higher amount of Healing Power. It also has inherent reduced cool-down when picked-up, so picking it up immediately makes it an effective self-heal without traiting.

Having that amount of Condition Damage shouldn’t be a problem in PvE, save for some select mobs that can remove/transfer them. In WvW you can usually get away with it since most players don’t bother carrying condition removal. I’d definitely reconsider for sPvP though.

For a rune set I recommend 2x Lyssa + 4x Nightmare for the increased cond. damage as well.

The shield on the shield #4/5 is actually the Whisper’s Secret Shield, also a nice skin.

Use this link for a gallery of PvE/PvP shields that are available.

For Dungeons with PUGs; I’d recommend going Power. A lot of PUGs like to do runs quickly and with as much damage as possible. To fully utilize it I’d recommend using builds that involve Bomb Kit, Wrench Kit, Flamethrower (I’d recommend precision for this as well, since you should be utilizing it’s unique mechanic to proc many times). If you do not want to run a kit: Rifle is a solid choice, but Pistol is nice as well for the AoE. As a note, Pistol scales quite well with power, albeit less powerful than the rifle, it will still provide some nice utility via conditions. Let it also be known that AoE reigns supreme in PvE, at the moment, though hopefully in the future it should be adjusted.

From a situational stand-point, I personally use Sigil of Battle most. It’s more consistent through out battles, even accounting for death (losing stacks on Bloodlust), while also making me more powerful right off the bat; also assuming that you’re running kits. I use Bloodlust if I know I’m with a component enough team for the situation, but when running solo I find that Battle is more reliable.

Strength is a tricky one and I only use in specific set-ups that use a lot of precision. The problem with relying on crit chance is that it’s, plainly, chance. You need to understand that having 50% crit chance isn’t consistent. Meaning that you won’t being getting a crit every other hit. As an encounter extends that 50% chance become more and more random, effectively losing it’s reliability. That’s why if you’re going to be running strength for extended periods of time you need to have a fairly high crit chance (What % of crit chance to have, varies with length of time per encounter). In which case, you’re better off with Bloodlust for it’s consistency.

To name a few of the popular choices:
- Static Discarge burst, a combo that utilizes toolbelt skills with low cooldowns such as: Surprise shot, Launch battering ram, Throw Wrench, etc. and the tier 1 trait Static Discharge. As far as gear goes I usually see this type of set-up using Berserker stats, along with a rifle.
- 100nades burst, which is also a combo that utilizes toolbelt skills, but more specifically Grenade kit’s. Also using, tier 1 trait Kit Refinement; which casts a PBAoE version of Grenade barrage, when switching to Grenade kit. This set-up as well, I see being played with Berserker stats a lot of the time.

Personal set-ups I use for damage are using:
- Grenade kit spec’d out for condition damage (mainly bleeds and vulnerability stacking) using Rabid Gear
- Using Tool kit with Berserker’s Gear spec’ing for crit-damage for 7k+ Thwacks.
-Bomb kit using Cleric’s Gear for synergy in the Inventions line along with maxing out Explosives for power.
- Flamethrower using the tier 3 traits Juggernaut and HGH for mass might stacking. Made easier and possible with Might/boon durations runes on armor as well as Sigil of battle/strength on weapon(s).

Your perspective of the rifle sounds skewed, perhaps it is due to low level and inefficiency. The rifle is probably the hardest hitting attack set, next to ’nades and bombs, that the Engineer has currently. Due to stats not applying to kits, exotic rifles hit pretty darn hard in comparison to our other kits, especially with Berserker stats it really shows. Rifle is also an excellent utility skill-set that can compliment any Vulnerability set-up with traits such as Sitting Duck and precise sites along with the #5 Goomba-stomp that can provide excellent support for your party, as well as maintaining decent dps.

Personally, I love the Charrzooka it’s silly and over-sized, which suits the Engi and their quirky skills. Selling it however, will give you a nice ~25g to sit on to maybe invest in better gear or what-not.

To be honest, you have a great team composition as it is, so making a build for the Engi is a bit difficult with our current mechanics. It’d be awesome if you could give us more information on what your mates are running, so we can make a build that compliments their abilities rather than trying to force a build on to them. It’s always worth the effort to make your build effective to your team as possible even if it isn’t the most efficient, numerically. Regardless, I can still give you suggestions that may lead you in the right direction.

There is never enough healing/support/dps in a party, so don’t think that you are not contributing solely because the other classes can do it better, you are still capable. Conditions; yes, all the other classes can inflict them and maybe better in certain aspects, but none of them can lay them simultaneously and quickly as an Engi can. With a set-up like Grenade-kit with high-precision you can easily achieve max stacks of vulnerability and bleeds on your own and with perhaps food you can maintain long durations of poison, as well as providing a long-lasting chill that provides excellent control. Having that set-up in mind, I recommend Rampager’s gear with traits such as sharpnel, precise sights, and sitting duck if using a rifle (Do I even have to mention Grenadier?^^); also Goggles for a utility slot.

Healing: a nice build I see going in WvW, which also works excellently in PvE is one that utilizes Elixir-infused bombs + Elixir Gun. In high level fractals, it lets you be tanky, supportive and offensive, which will definitely help your party, albeit spread out thinly all at the same time! For this set-up I recommend using a Cleric’s set with your choice of runes (Use corresponding stat respectively, in areas you lack effectiveness). For the traits, you want to max out Inventions to get Elixir-infused bombs and want to invest at least 10 points into tools to get a second Super-Elixir from Elixir Gun when equipped using the Kit Refinement trait. I will warn you, the numbers aren’t going to be as transparent as the Grenade build, but the amount of contribution you are giving will be effective as you will be able to do it simultaneously as opposed to an Ele that must swap attunements in order to focus on a single role. Healing on an Engi isn’t great, so I’d recommend using a Sigil of Life to beef up your heals, if you plan on emphasizing on it.

That’s all I have time to post at the moment, let me know what you think and I’ll gladly elaborate on the ones I’ve mentioned or give you new ones. Hope I helped.

Will there be any changes to the Engineer class? They seem to suffer from mediocre: single-target damage, AoE, healing, damage mitigation, and RNG skills. Kits seems to be watered-down Elementalist attunements, Turrets seem to be immobile Mesmer clones/illusions, and Elixirs seem to be blatant concoctions of other class skills. Can you clarify how the Engineer shines, when in comparison to the other classes?

Is there any information regarding class balance? Engineer turret changes, Elementalist AoE reduction, Mesmer illusion/clone fixes, Necromancer pet AI, etc?

Dear ArenaNet,

I want to let you know that I have been loving your game, since the beta, and I’m pretty sure I will in years to come.

My question to you is in regard to the general philosophy of RNG (Random Number Generator) throughout much of the content. Why does obtaining a legendary require luck? Versus something more practical such as exotic gear that could be worked towards via tokens? I fail to see why something so significant is left to dumb luck. Sure legendarys can be bought from the Trading Post: but where is the merit in that? Will there be any implementation regarding the obtainment of such rarities reliably in the future?

SaboD.7290:

How is it that I’m changing the post? I’m sure at first the post said fly, but mobile whatever doesn’t matter. They don’t need to be mobile. Say I have a turret build, and I drop my turrets. Once I move on, my turrets stay put. I can then move on with nothing or destroy them get my tool belt utilities back and wait for the cool downs on my turrets to use them again.

If turrets are mobile as you suggest, you will loose your toolbelt utilities, granted they are not all that great for turrets but you loose them none the less. With no cool downs I can use my turrets at one place distroy them when done and drop them down again right away if I need to. The turrets would be able to be replaced at any time at any given moment. Thefefore they do not need to be mobile.

This post kind of makes me question the originality of turrets, as well as the Engineer class as a whole. It sort of seems that turrets are just re-skinned Mesmer illusions made static.

Awesome guild! All the people are quite friendly and down-to-earth. The TS server is packed a lot of the time.

To be honest, one of the main reasons I don’t use it is because of other classes. I really annoys me that I throw it down on an ele, thief, or mes because they ALWAYS use their escape skill and end up outside of the healing radius. I used to tell my party ahead of time not to do so, but now I don’t bother. Another is when I clearly throw my potion down and a warrior just slam a war banner down, completely wasting my effort.

I’m not saying it’s bad, I just rather use something I find more effective, personally.

Wasdclick.1764:

With the vulnerability alone, in a 5 man team, you are now effectively doing DPS that puts you right in the middle of the pack… Add grenade damage, and you can justly claim to have been responsible for a lot of damage, even if your white numbers are relatively low.

See what I mean? Synergy! You don’t get to see all the damage you’re actually doing.

This.
Vulnerability is a great way to support your group and is often a thankless job, but by doing so you no longer feel bad for your lack of dps.

In my opinion Engineers offer two types of support: offensive and defensive. Offensively, you can stack vulnerability, poison, and weakness really well; while defensively, you can offer multiple stacks of regeneration via Super Elixirs and regular regen. The only problem is that while Engineers are capable of these things, they do not excel in them and that is what I believe Engineers should be. Sure Necros can probably stack conditions faster, or a guardian dish out major heals, but Engis can do them both; at the same time.

As an Engi you WILL have to put a degree of effort more than other classes, but the payoff is you becoming a better player. I’ll tell you that I worry more about my team, rather than my own numbers. Are they doing too little damage? No problem, I’ll give them some might and soften up the mobs with vunerabilty and poison. Are they taking too much damage? I’ll put some regeneration on them and take off conditions.

Engineers offer a lot of utility and I only mentioned a handful of what they’re capable of. I will warn you though that the damage output is certainly not the best, but what some classes can do with one button, Engineers look like they’re writing a symphony.

WTB: Party-wide Protection & Stability

Yeah, even logging back in to GW1 now, the Paragon still has not received any sort of update, its a bit embarrassing really.

I do agree though, that people are going about this the wrong way. You play a class because it’s something you like, it’s not going to be perfect. And for the stubborn people like me, stop whining. Rather than just voicing your discomfort, find a work around. It doesn’t matter if we need specific gear or tactics to be viable, make it work (Like Tankcat). If the developers feel that is wrong they’ll change it, but in the mean time don’t establish an inferiority complex. Research and spread the word to make our class better.

Personally, I find that double super elixirs is more than enough in most cases for my party (I usually launch one on the melees, and another in front of the ranged), but it seems to me that 409 work better on oneself and all-right on the party. The way I use them is I use 409 for myself and use double super elixirs when I plan on party-wide conditions removal. It’s a bit overkill to bring both.

If you want to focus on pure support EG is a great choice. Something that I definitely suggest is to use Rifled Barrels trait as it increases the weakness duration to 3 sec, opposed to 1, making it more sustainable. Why the trait does that? I don’t know.

For gear, runes of Mercy also make a nice support tool as well, if you find yourself to be the last one alive; it makes reviving a less risky choice. Oh, and sigils of life maybe something you should look into if you want to provide more healing.

I haven’t been focusing much on group might stacking, but the build you have in mind seems to viable and runes of Altruism could surely help. Currently I’m running a power build with durability, that focuses on stacking vulnerability. I’m using full soldier’s gear with runes of altruism and sigils of bloodlust.
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-V70;0B-sPFn0m5;0Fx0;9;4TT;0949A145;45;06;9;26go
Copy and paste the link

I feel like we’ve reached a point with the Engineer class, to which regenerative/healing support isn’t really optimal. Though I’m not trying to put you off from using EG, Elixir-Infused, Dwanya runs, or what have you.

The way I see it is that we have other viable support options that excel better in a majority of situations. While, regen support maybe nice is large groups such as DEs or WvW; I think when it comes to Dungeons or fractals buffs and conditions, play more in our favor, in terms of support. With the new changes we can easily maintain 25 stacks of vulnerability on single targets and a high amount on several targets as well. I actually feel that vulnerability is now understated to how it used to work, but boosting everyone’s damage in your party by 25% is really powerful support. Coupled with poison and weakness, you can really lay down bosses for your party to wail upon with ease. We also have killer condition removal and not to mention how much might you can add to teammates via HGH and the new Altruism runes.

While defensive buffs are at our disposal, currently, I don’t think they are the best way about going to help your party, when the engineer is much better at apply control on enemies to let your party members finish them off. It’s a thankless job.

I just wish the Engineer community would stop thinking like a meat-head warriors about DpS and how “essential” it is to a team effort. ArenaNet never pigeon-holed Engis to grenade glass-cannon builds, they did it to themselves.

Personally, I used to run grenades for damage, but even then I acknowledged that I wouldn’t be a DpS machine and used them for the utility more than anything.

The Grenade kit is a step in the right direction, it forces Engis to not pigeon-hole themselves and explore more options, options that Engis excel in; which in my opinion is utility. Yes, they could’ve done it differently, as others suggest, such as buffing our other kits, but from a developer standpoint: which is easier to do in a short amount of time? Coding several changes, or changing one?

From my perspective, ArenaNet delivered. And not only that, but they went as far as to say that they will be implementing future changes to further buff Engis (Weapon stats to kits). Think about it this way: The nerf to grenades along with applying sigils to bundles was an intial step to spark the curiosity to explore more utilitarian builds. E.g. Weaker grenades, but 3 chances to proc a sigil… Sure you can add more damage, but hey what’s the point? Since they cannot do much damage, may as well use them for other purposes such as quickness, healing, etc… That is one possibility.

Now when the second step comes (weapon stats to kits), imagine how much more stronger Engis will become! And on top of that build diversification will also be more of a focus, since DpS is not a primary concern. I have full faith after this patch that ArenaNet will not fail to deliver, they are merely implementing the first step.

That is why I ask the Engineer community to not lose faith. Sure right now we’re gimped, but that is merely a shroud upon us to further tinker with our gadgets and hide us from the rest of the classes. When all is done we will be one of the most unique and diverse classes out there.

First off, your post is quite vague and doesn’t give any sort of context of the situation that you’re facing. (Build set-up, stats, playstyle, etc…)

Secondly, if you’re going against a mesmer you’ll naturally be in for a bad time, that’s their role.

Tips I can give from personal experience:
Look for pre-cursors, you can differentiate reals from fake from simple give-aways such as dodging, movement patterns, and variation in spell-casting.
Don’t fire blindly, odds are that they have confusion on you or a counter of some sort, so play smart and look at YOUR character and strip off any pesky conditions. Offensively, use AoE to get rid of any illusions/clones; your main objective is to isolate the real player. When you do manage to get them alone make sure you have some sort of CC ready, you should be able to handle them with ease afterwards. ( I recommend cripple since it’s a more obvious visual indicator in case they summon extra clones).

The lack of mobility is also what offsets them from me using them. But as other said I think making them mobile would be a viable solution.

My proposal is to either create a new utility skill that allows us to “call” our turrets to us. Similar to how Summon Spirits worked in GW1 it allowed, otherwise immobile spirits cough turrets cough, to be teleported to the player and then healed on top of that, mitigating damage and mobilizing them.

Or rather then creating a new utility skill make the Kit Refinement effect for Tool Kit teleport all of your turrets to you. That way it would encourage more users to use it as it was intended for. All of this can be done without even touching the actual turret skills, but would add a whole new layer of build diversity.

You mean Kit Refinement.

Yes, I do agree that an indicator would be nice, but I can’t see where it could be implemented in. Would it have a timer like the the other skills? or a visual indicator like conditions? The only way I can see it is if they put a separate little section off in the UI, which I don’t think is feasible.

Oh, not to be debbie-downer, but putting something like this in the game won’t probably happen soon, if at all. Useful idea though.

Also, if you insist on using sigils, you can always attack with your kits and at the last moment switch to your main weapon to get the kill (Only applies to sigils that use charges).

Well, it’s not a question of game-breaking, but rather balance. Look at the elementalist; they also do not have the option to swap weapons, but they have a crazy amount of skills to choose from thanks to attunements.

I think I get where you’re heading, but weapon swap isn’t a viable option when kits already exist. The option, in my opinion, would be to implement another kit or just give engineers another weapon to choose (cough hammers). No need to fool around with the class mechanics.

Also, the shield is fine. Both of the skills can repel both melee and ranged attacks with even sweet daze to top it off. Not being to block a pull is not the shield’s fault Pulls are meant as interrupts, one way to counter-balance blocking.

Yes, you can. There are several types of back-equipped items that you can find on the Trading Post. Also available is the guild backpack which can be purchased through your guild armorer, if applicable. Ah, and you can get some through your personal story line as well (not untill lvl 70+ though).

Having a backpiece is not mandatory, though it does provide you with an extra upgrade slot, that you may or may not find useful.

You can get one through your personal story line, I think it’s after lvl 26.