Guild Wars 2

Casual PvE? Bombs and grenades all the way. The third utility slot is completely up to you, but I’d recommend elixir gun. Acid bomb/blast finisher, stun break/regeneration and an aoe cleanse/heal field all in 1.
Lastly you’re definitely going to want to sink at least 10 points into tools for speedy kits for a permanent 33% increased movement speed.

If by subpar you mean it’s still not used as a turret but more as a healing bomb, then yes.

Perhaps you should say this after the upcoming patch when turrets may actually be useful.
Or maybe you’re just a masochist.
But perhaps a before and after comparison for turret builds would be somewhat useful.

It’s ok guys. I’m sure they spent a lot of time and effort making those bobbleheads.
It’s not like one would try to outdo last years April fools, right?

I’ve been using Artisan Maintenance Oil and Super Veggie Pizzas for quite awhile now.
Sure, there’s better options but I’m cheap.

Will this be the next thing us engineers will cling onto for months to come? Or will ArenaNet actually deliver?
Perhaps in a few weeks time we’ll find out.

Crion.8465:

Engineer mortar should have been done like Horrik from Fractals. A shoulder mounted mortar/cannon that allows the engineer to remain mobile, able to use it for a certain amount of time before it “overheats” or even making it an elite kit with the drawback of reducing movement speed etc, whatever. Point is: Non-stationary shoulder mounted cannon/mortar.

Make it happen, A-net.

I was just about to post the exact same thing.
I’d settle with it being an elite skill Launcher Kit with the same skills.
The animations are already there, at least for male Norn. It could also use the same model but with blue lights instead of red.

Phineas Poe.3018:

robertul.3679:

Elixir gun is quite useless. Only 1 useful skill(fumigate) and it’s weird to use. You can cure conditions with heal turret but it’s not really your job and you lose every single dps by swapping to elixir gun. Just..don’t.

I couldn’t disagree more.

Fumigate is a very useful skill, but it’s not really weird to use. You aim at allies and watch the conditions melt off them. What’s so hard to understand? Even untraited it’s easily one of the best condition removal skills in the game, removing 5 conditions off allies with a 12 second cooldown.

Acid bomb is one of the best scaling power attacks we have as engineers and elevates your overall DPS rotating to your elixir gun and using it versus auto-attacking with the bomb kit or grenade kit.

Super elixir also cleanses a condition and regenerates health (and stacks on top of the regeneration boon), though it requires ideal timing to use given its long duration light field.

The elixir gun is also the only kit we have access to that comes with a stun-breaker.

I don’t understand how someone could run high level fractals and not take the elixir gun.

Pretty much this.
In my opinion, acid bomb beats thumper turret and sure beats rifle turret for combat blast finishers. The aoe damage is also a big plus.
It surprises me how many pug engineers don’t use elixir gun at all. They typically prefer to camp grenade kit or even worse, flamethrower/pistol/rifle.

An elite gizmo kit.
It would have a set of fun team supportive abilities.

Air blast also works as a reflection skill.
Granted, I don’t know how long its duration is and also that I’ve never seen another engineer use it to reflect something.

A reduced cooldown (90 seconds?) and indestructability would help it I think. Adding a few seconds to #3 would do well also, or change #3 to a 5 second healing water field.
Probably remove the stability on use to balance it out.

Very similar to the build I run, but I use 30/30/0/0/10, might duration runes and a sigil of battle instead.

Grimwolf.7163:

Taekwondo? Try using #5 as a Human Male. He sounds like he’s passing a kidney stone.

It’s even worse when you follow it up with acid bomb.

Hamfast.8719:

My main character is an elementalist. The “sorcerer” or “wizard” of Guild Wars 2. Yet I am unable to find a satisfactory LIGHT SOURCE for her. Oh, I don’t need it very often; mostly for the occasional foray into the Sharkmaw Caverns jumping puzzle. But for the foremost spellcasters in the game, this oversight is shocking.

I have assigned my one-and-only “Flames of Kryta” torch to her for this purpose, but it is woefully dim.

I have hunted through the Staves, Scepters, Foci, and Daggers, but have not come up with anything that sheds a nice light (or skill granted from the item in question).

Any thoughts, anyone? (And please, by the six gods, let the answer not be a “Legendary” weapon!)

Just tried it out and the flamethrower works just like the real one.
You may also get lucky and an friendly engineer may spam one for you for free.

Have you tried Jezza’s Flamethrower?
The flamethrower auto attack on engineer lights up areas very well so perhaps the auto attack on this consumable flamethrower would be the same.

Plus.7209:

Adamantium.3682:

I guess I should add more to thread since I got a Legendary. Flameseeker Prophecies is pretty much not noticeable at all. No aura, no footsteps, completely invisible when you use a kit. Yay.

That’s alright, I got lucky rather than waste time saving up for it.

Congrats dude. I’ve been saving up, have my gift of mastery, and just finished my gift of fortune yesterday. Still not sure what I want to make, either Quip or Predator, but I really hope that we hear something back from Anet before I finish. Running grenades with a quip aura would be SICK, especially since it looks like conditions might start gaining some worth in PvE.

You can already use grenades and have a quip/predator aura.
Still, I’d still like to at least keep the aura/footsteps when using kits without having to resort to using expensive/long cooldown potions.

How interesting. They seem to have forgotten that mortar exists. Then again, I think most people forgot that it exists anyway.

I can’t really speak for WvW, but for PvE most will tell you to go Berserker stats on everything.
If you’re still learning the engineer it might be best to use berserker trinkets and knights everything else, then gradually move to full berserker when you’re comfortable with using active defences such as blinds and dodges at the right time.
Of course, nobody is going to stop you from going celestial, but you may want to look into 2 different armour sets. 1 for PvE and 1 for WvW.

I think you should include what it’s for. PvE, WvW, PvP?

I was in the same situation, so i had a good look at all 3 the legendary weapons and i thought:
I don’t want to glow purple and wield a joke gun, and the shield wasn’t too impressive, especially when it doesn’t add special effects/sounds to weapon skills and it lacks an aura/footstep.
All that was left was the predator which does look awkward at first with it being a sniper rifle but i got used to it and its skills eventually.
If you really want you can go back to pistol/shield and keep predators aura with the magic of combat transformation tonics.
In short, my vote if for The Predator.

Remember, you get 10% more crit chance against all enemies lower than 50% health, so you’ll be sitting around 65% at the second half of every fight.

Please let this happen.
I’m tired of setting up a might stacking combo as an engineer mid combat and getting crap like aoe retaliation and chaos armour, then having to wait 20+ seconds to try the combo again.
It kind of makes me not want to might stack during combat which in turn takes some complexity out of classes like the engineer and elementalist.

Abyss, celestial, antique gold and scarlet.
Charcoal/iron and icing worked well as cheap substitutes for abyss and celestial.

30/30/0/0/10
2,8,11/1,5,11/6
Healing Turret, Elixir Gun, Grenade Kit, Bomb Kit
Berserker with knights armour and condition duration.
The idea is to build and keep 25 vulnerability as quickly as possible while keeping everything slowed down with chilled.
Can still give might to the team through blast finishers in your fire bomb and can also give long lasting group stealth with blast finishers in your smoke bomb.
Should also note that this is for running with a pug. Could change knights over to more berserker if your always in a dedicated dungeon group.

I’ll just regurgitate what I think would change mortar for the better.
-Indestructability
-Cooldown reduced to 60 or 90 seconds
-Remove stability on use
-When in use, camera zooms out similar to when fighting SB
Now mortar is actually somewhat valuable, being able to use it for it’s #2-#5 and can be relocated more often all while still keeping its deadzone, forcing you to move when people are smart enough to get in close.
I chose to remove its stability so that you can’t just hang around the mortar and negate certain attacks. It also allows people to forcibly knock you off the mortar.

Indestructible, and reduce its cooldown to 60 or 90 seconds.
Or turn it into a elite projectile launcher kit with the same skills but #1 would hit harder.

Tried it once when in a dungeon and didn’t like it. Swapped it out for bomb kit after.
It seems to be more of a pvp weapon kit.

May want to consider race size if your planning on showing off weapons and armour to others.
Asura have better animations, but I prefer my human due to him being much larger.

Arenanet forbids you to dream about turret buffs.
I’m starting to think their vision for turrets is for them to be placed in far away unreachable areas where they can slowly piddle away at an enemies health bar then get 1 shot.

Merry Christmas!

I can only recall being looked down upon once, and that was by some foolish elitist Mesmer that thought having 3 engineers in a pug casual low level fractal run was a bad idea.
In all, i think a well played/built engineer is an incredible asset to the team.
Easy, fast and permanent 25 stacks of aoe vulnerability, ample blinds, anti projectile walls, one of the best team condition removals in game (EG #3, healing turret) and group might stacking, just to name a few of the things that make engineer credit to team.
The only class i can compare it to out of that list is ranger, and i personally feel that my engineer is easier, safer, less frustrating and overall provides more to the team.

Merry Christmas!

All i want for Christmas is for my hobosack to disappear.
Well, that’s not really all, but you get what i mean.

Merry Christmas!

Random effects on skills.
Turrets are still too fragile for being 100% stationary targets.
Legendary weapons can’t be seen when using kits.
Hobosacks.

Interesting engineer changes.
Turrets now targeting whatever you’re currently shooting is a good change along with increasing their health (I take it they fall under the category of pets/minions)
I would still like the elite mortar turret to be indestructible as it doesn’t do much damage (it cannot crit), it leaves you 100% immobile and defenceless to melee while manning it and it has a dead zone. The mortar receiving no aggro at all would be a good change to if indestructability is going too far.
The elixir changes are decent, although many would agree that completely getting rid of the RNG aspect of elixirs would be more desirable.
Overall it seems like a solid update for engineers. Just got to wait and find out if it’s true.

ESKan.6782:

What’s the point in slowing movement speed though, if the current accepted “best strategy” for most bosses is to lure him into a corner and melee him?

Because you may not be in an organised group or fighting a boss that you don’t want to be in melee range of.
Although I sure wish the enemy ai was a little more intelligent to not run around a doorway, stack on top of each other and take a massive amount of damage.

I find my chill engineer rather useful in pug dungeons where I find that I’m the one who’s getting targeted often.
It basically trivialises a large portion of melee bosses/mobs and gives high damage at up to 1500 range.
You really only need 30 in explosives, chill duration runes, grenade kit and mortar to get the most out of chill.
Using berserker gear helps to, although I opt to run Knights gear with berserker trinkets for that added survivability when playing with randoms.
Lastly, I’m not entirely sure but chill may also increase skill recharge on enemy npcs.

Dagger skins? That’s a good sign.
Perhaps there’ll also be pistol and rifle skins this time around. Or does Moto have a thing against giving out firearms to strangers?

Fits the engineer more than I’d thought it would.
After using this elite we could then start shooting our joke pistol or hip shooting a sniper rifle after knocking ourselves down with it.
I approve of this elite.

I’m all for a duelling feature.
A way they could implement it would be to have a large open (not instanced) arena in each city but only have 1 accessible each week.
For example week ones arena could be in Hoelbraks Lake Mourn, week two could be in the Black Citadels The Bane, and so on)
It could possibly liven up the other cities a little and give people more of a reason to go to them to do thing such as spectate, tutor and of course to duel.
If there are problems with lag due to so many duellers in 1 area, allow 2 or more arenas accessible each week.

Mortar is now indestructible.
Turrets now scale of the players vitality and toughness.

Here’s something I just found out.
Mortar can’t be used when transformed into either a Watchknight or a Charr in Fractals.
Not that mortar was that great to begin with, but it’s still a small issue that I would like fixed.

For me, the stealth is the most interesting change here, but it seems to be catered more towards the pvp crowd.
I would’ve liked them to include a change to PVE Long Range Shots range modifiers such as 0-350, 350-700, and 700+ would allow full damage.

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

Wukunlin.8461:

more food for thought: how does the dps of a downed warrior compare to rangers?

Obal was doing 1800 with Throw Rock in downed state. That’s comparable DPS to Shortbow autoattack.

Rocks do more damage than arrows?
I knew my slingshot would come in handy at some point.

Oh great, now I have to start reading the warrior balance changes to see if they nerfed my ranger again.

They could’ve just used the Tribal and Stalwart skins instead.
For those that don’t know, these skins are available in pvp but not pve for some unknown reason.

As a ranger, I disagree.
As any other class, sure it’s ok. Other than how long those barrage sections last.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Yes, we care about the forums. We also care about all the classes equally.

One of these statements is false.
Got to feel sorry for you Jon, you dared to stick your hand into the hornets nest. Did you draw the short straw at the latest dev meeting?

I wish ANet would address the issue of condition caps and conditions damage builds against objects and fix them, but I’m not expecting any change soon.

Ranger pet changes were a bit drastic.
There’s no need to make a class that already underperforms in dungeons even worse based on how they perform in an entirely different aspect of the game.
Although, was anybody really surprised by these foolish changes? The ANet balancing team has proven their incompetence many times ever since the games release by failing to actually balance the classes and failing to separate pve balancing from pvp balancing.

/sarcastic
What a twist!

I run a near perma chill build.
Trap Potency + frost trap + chill duration runes = 15 seconds of aoe chill.
Throw in a shortbow for its 3 100% finishers or the main hand axe and you’re set.
And yes, it is rather enjoyable in pve.