Guild Wars 2

if you are out for the maximum damage possible, you should use a mix of assassin’s and berserker gear and grenades/bombs/rifle.
at all costs leave the flamethrower at home, if you want to deal damage. it won’t help you maximize your damage output since it’s overall damage ist pretty crappy. i see berserker engis use ft now and then and mourn over the lost damage potential for the group. ft is a neat kit, but doesn’t contribute much to a damage focused build. it looks kitten (<-i don’t get the point of censoring words that even 5 years olds hear the whole day on the cartoon channel, but well, let’s call it “ungood buttocks”), though, which i think is why people use it. conditions also don’t bring that much benefit, since the dps from conditions (even under ideal circumstances) more or less equals the grenade autoattack. and even if using conditions, eg isn’t the best choice for applying damaging conditions.
since crits and aoe are what’s needed in pve i recommend this build (more or less, you can and should tweak your utilites anytime you need it. f.e.: goggles->elixir b for less vunerability [stun break isn’t that great in pve, you only need it in very specific situations] and more stability; tool kit -> bomb kit for less block [block is amazingly neat in some dungeons, though] and more aoe damage, etc.):
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/engineer/?2.2|4.5l.h8.d1a.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|1l.a5.1l.a5.1l.a5.1l.a5.1l.a5.1l.a5|2s.d1a.2s.d1a.3s.d1a.2s.d1a.3s.d1a.2s.d1a|u48b.f5.0.0.p26|2e.d|2c.2x.2f.2p.30|e

i run this one:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/engineer/?2.2|4.5l.h8.d1a.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|1l.a5.1l.a5.1l.a5.1l.a5.1l.a5.1l.a5|2s.d1a.2s.d1a.3s.d1a.2s.d1a.3s.d1a.2s.d1a|u47b.f5.0.0.p26|2e.d|2c.2x.2f.2p.30|e

for more damage you can switch the assassins gear with berserker, but the extremely high critchance is just so neat. you can switch the toolkit for bombkit for more aoe (but the block from tk ist pretty convenient).
i tested around a lot and this is probably the most (aoe-)damage you can get with engineer.

2k is the damage that autoattack on granades or bombs does (without any cooldown). but it seems that you are not looking for the “absolute numerical maximum” possible, so i think that build is “fine” except for healing tower, which is just too good not to use.

“Comments and improvements are welcome.”
the most massive improvement ist not using the flamethrower and/or turrets in pve.
and yeah, it might be used for sd, but sd isn’t actually the top of the food chain, either.

if you have a free skillslot thumper turret is nice for 3 consecutive blast finishers (+ launch), but otherwise towers aren’t even worth reading the skill descriptions.

dear dudes and dudesses from anet. this thread needs a sticky before it leaves the front page and people start making new threads with the same questions over and over again.
centralist organization always pays off in terms of administration efficiency, i won’t mention examples since you probably are selling copies there.
greetings
zach