Guild Wars 2

Paulytnz.7619:

My counter – Spam grenades on yourself.

Also we can go invisible ourselves if immobilized with the right trait.

If auto attack didn’t break your stealth a split second after gaining stealth that trait would be much more valuable.

For what little pvp experience i’ve got against theives, i found my net turret to work fantasticly against them. Turrets have auto aim, so as long as the turret doesn’t bug out and shoot at inanimate objects, the thief will usualy be caught by its immobilize as soon as he breaks stealth. The turret will also point in his direction as he breaks stealth.

This is the Support/Control/Solo pve build that i’ve been using throughout most of my time as an engineer.

http://tinyurl.com/8ft3xnn

Gear is mostly Condition damage/toughness/precision

I liked both P/P and rifle equally, but i preferred the looks and control of rifles. I spend most of my time in kits anyway.

Healing Turret – For the heal when placed, the regeneration and the aoe heal when detonated with the water field it creates. Gain might when detonated on top of Napalm from flamethrower.

Elixir Gun – Groups will love you for using this.
Constant single target weakness, 3 seconds of swiftness for 4 party members or cripple for 4 enemies on a 6 second cooldown.
Fumigate for poison/vulnerability or 5 condition removals for all friendlies sprayed (i wish i could spray myself with it).
Acid bomb for stationary targets and for the jump back.
Super Elixir for even more condition removal.
I use the elixir gun for single targets, when i really need the extra survivability or if i need to stay at range.

Flamethrower – This is used for tighly packed groups or just when there’s a bunch on bad guys running around.
Flame Jet does ok damage, but its great when paired with on crit effects.
Flame Blast is tricky to use and buggy. I mostly use it when running towards my targets.
Air Blast is a fantastic knockback but good luck reflecting projectiles with it.
Napalm for the fire combo field. Have one down whenever possible for you and the team to shoot through
Smoke Vent is best saved when knocked down/dazed, when an enemy is charging up a big attack or when surrounded.

Net Turret – This and healing turret are the only turrets really worth anything.
I use it for chaining immobilize against melee mobs and bosses. Net attack, Rifle net shot, net turret, electified net, rifle net shot makes for a very long series of immobilizes and some dazes from electrified net.
I’ll occasionally change this out for Elixir R in groups.

Supply Crate – The best engineer elite skill by far.
Elixir X underwater whirlpool can dish out some serious damage but the chance of getting it makes it not worth it.

Toolbelt – Plenty of aoe regen, a burn and an immobilize.
Tip for Incendiary Ammo, it has a 45 second duration so applying it well before a fight would be best.

Traits – Fairly basic chance on crit traits (burn and swiftness) with cooldowns for kit skills and extra toughness and might when using a flamethrower.
Infused Precision/Invigorating Speed/Elixir Guns #2 go hand in hand with applying swiftness and vigor almost permanently in combat.
Protection Injection for protection against some of the nastier conditions.
Kit Refinement for 100% light combo field uptime (Elixir Gun) and aoe burn (Flamethrower)
Swap out Kit Refinement for Speedy Kits when travelling.

I’m still trying to master fluidity between kit skills but i’ve still been able to use this setup without many problems.

How about giving the #5 skill a smoke field?

Keep the rifle/shotgun the way it is and give us a sniper kit or something that’ll allow us to attack at 1500 range.

Paulytnz.7619:

“If they add auto attack on #1 and don’t nerf the damage, a close range grenadier seems real interesting to me as an alternative to a bomber engi.”

Why close range? With the right traits I am throwing my grenades at a distance of 1500 and I am throwing 3 at a time. It’s very OP lol, I can hit 500 with each grenade thats a constant 800-1500 damage every second or split second it seems; depending on how far away the target is and how fast you can click at the moment. :P

Why close range? Because i can see them outshining bomb kit more than it already does with #1 being auto attack.

The only thing letting the grenade kit down other than manual aim is the fact that they have flight time, and at close range flight time is near nonexistant.

I’m all for more kits/turret styles, but i’d prefer it if they gave us an option to unlock the styles through class specific acheivements so we can have them all.

Yeah there’s class balance issues, and i think ANet is more concerned with bug/exploit fixes first than gradually balancing out the classes later.

Come back in 2 weeks/a month and chances are that the engineer will have improved a whole bunch.

At least engineer will only get better with bug fixes.

If they add auto attack on #1 and don’t nerf the damage, a close range grenadier seems real interesting to me as an alternative to a bomber engi.

Engineers can be traited to work at 1200 range, and even 1500 with grenades.

We’re more of a support/control class than a dps, unless your a grenadier, but good luck hitting any intelligent target in pvp with grenades.

Engineer probably has one of the highest skill ceilings in the game.

We also have one of the longest (or maybe the longest) bug list of all classes.

If you enjoy the looks of a steampunk/modern weapons style character, the engi may be your class.

Build as tanky as you want, eventually you’re going to have to start dodging.

As you’ve built up precision, try out using Infusued Precision from the Firearms tree and Invigorating Speed in the Alchemy tree if you can spare the points. This gives you some insane uptime on vigor (i usually have it up 75%+ of a fight) Or alternatively, use Invigorating Speed and the Elixir Guns #2 ability for similar results, but with a power build it may be better to go with option 1.

If you have survivability issues try using net turrets chain immobilise for melee mobs (or spam bombs while running in circles) and if you can spare more trait points, pick up Protection Injection from the Alchemy tree.

I would say to use Cloaking Device from the Inventions tree, but it’s kind of bugged and not worth picking unless you run with kits that don’t auto attack.

Last tip is that i think endurance regen has a cap at 100% so trying to build beyond that is useless.

As much as i’d like to sugercoat the engineer for pvp, i just can’t.
For the WvW pvp side of things its hard for me to love the engineer because of all the class bugs (auto attack issues and kits not benefitting from weapons mostly) and as you’ve mentioned, class balance.
Although for group pve it’s an entirely different game. I find that i’m usually the last one left standing unless all the ranged mobs/boss decide they only want me dead, which happens way to often.
Utilising combo fields from the flamethrower to boost damage, the elixir gun to remove conditions that my fumigate can’t and chain immobilising melee mobs/bosses makes the engineer a real credit to team, among other things.
A great guide overall for making combos more clear to people. Wish i’d see more people setting up combos and using vitality/toughness than building glass cannons and getting wrecked.
To sum it all up, i love my engi in pve, but hate engi in pvp.

It isn’t user error or water mechanics or anything. Kits auto unequip after 5+ minutes of use, or at least they do for me.

True. I’m not sure how all these bugs got through game testing and didn’t get fixed. I sure hope that the no weapon/sigil stats on kits was not intended, because that’s some real poor class planning if it was.

Time for a post that’s on topic.
Yes i agree that the current mortar range is pathetic. Perhaps changing it to a natural 1500/1600 and traited 2000/2100.
Increasing it’s damage and fire speed wouldn’t be too bad either.

I’m not really sure if you can call it a bug, but the trait Cloaking Device in the Inventions tree really doesn’t seem to be working as intended.
When it activates, most of the time you’ll be pulled out of stealth almost instantly, making this trait useless.
I think it might have something to do with auto attack not disabling right when you cloak.

Seems like a good idea, and i’d like to also see a sniper turret similar to the ones somewhere in the Charr areas.
Just got to think of what traits could go with the sniper. Increased range? Damage? Piercing bullets?

I don’t really agree on having pets, but i’ve always wanted to have a robodog.

The trait Rifled Barrels reduces the cooldown from the Elixir Gun skill Elixir F from 8 seconds to 5.
The trait Fireforged Trigger doesn’t reduce the cooldown of Elixir F due to the above.