Engineer Playstyles

[Taolas]

We have a good bit of interest in the Engi, and rightly so. Just some thoughts here:

My biggest issue with the Engi is the lack of combo blasts for combo fields. You have a few, but they don't feel like they synergize well.

**Support Engi**
-Elixir Gun- I'm finding the elixir gun is rather important if you want to hold a group together. It has a good duration Light-based healing field, and the kicker is projectiles going through it will remove conditions. Drop it in a group of people and they will essentially be condition free for its duration. If you trait the thing to make a spell when switching kits, you get a second field from that and almost no down time. Also, the toolbelt skill is a regen buff for more healing power.

The elixir gun has a rather weak skill 1, but it causes weakness. A 50% chance to fumble, which makes the attack do -50% damage. Spamming this can keep weakness up all the time and really helps against some harder targets. Sometimes I just keep the gun out for this skill.

Skill 2 will cripple then bounce to someone and swiftness them, not great, but okay if you need a quick cripple. Skill 3 is poison, good for canceling healing on trolls and stuff, but not great overall. Skill 4 is an escape and leaves a rather strong aoe field of pain, good for doing damage.

-Bomb Kit- It has a glue bomb that can immobilize and smoke bomb that can blind, plus I think blast combo into stealth? I really need to get better at that. Bomb is pretty good crowd control and the toolbelt skill is a knockdown/back, which is always helpful. I usually have it on my bar....

-Healing Turret- This can get you a maximum of 1 minute of regeneration, if you stand next to it for awhile. I used someone else's outside the fire elemental room so I could have regen inside, which worked alright. I wouldn't overcharge it to remove conditions, I think it turns it off from healing if you do. Have to pay more attention...

-Primary Weapon- I usually use the rifle for net shot and the one that blows someone back, but going pistol/shield can be fairly helpful too. The shield has great interrupt capabilities. If you throw it, it'll boomerang and hit/interrupt twice I believe. Also, the knockback on the shield block interrupts too, from what I've seen.

I'm going to end this short for now. I know Pyrrhus has his own playstyle, maybe he'll outline it.

[VKhaun]

I said screw it and just made my main an Engineer. I'll leave all the rerolling to my alts. I love the engineer and I'm indecisive about the rest so that's that.

I'm going for a rifle/flame thrower build. I enjoy DPS'ing and chucking potions at people (I love that throwing elixers and using them myself are on separate cool downs). Going to do flamethrower w/juggernaut after that, so if I can't, or don't want to, avoid the thick of it I can get the toughness buff and stability.

[Taolas]

Stolen from reddit. I didn't realize the taller Engineers could look so badass. That backpack, ooohhh yeah.


I just realized that your weapon bonuses are lost when you switch to a kit. I had condition damage on my weapon for the flamethrower, which is rather useless now that I realize I lose that bonus. Kits do give you their own bonuses, but mostly a power adjustment.

[Pyrrhus]

I said screw it and just made my main an Engineer. I'll leave all the rerolling to my alts. I love the engineer and I'm indecisive about the rest so that's that.

I'm going for a rifle/flame thrower build. I enjoy DPS'ing and chucking potions at people (I love that throwing elixers and using them myself are on separate cool downs). Going to do flamethrower w/juggernaut after that, so if I can't, or don't want to, avoid the thick of it I can get the toughness buff and stability.

Pretty much how i'm playing it right now. Flamethrower is dirty with my crit and the first tier skill in marksman, applies burning and bleed basically.

[VKhaun]

I just actually got the flamethrower and it is BADASS. Somewhat annoyed that I must reset the auto attack every time I equip the kit, but I'm pleasantly surprised that I like just about every skill I see on the engineer. The art is hitting me just right and the skills are fun to use.

If you go to the options menu there's a check box for tossing ground target skills immediately right at your mouse locations rather than using a template. Using that gave me a noticable dps increase on the grenade kit. No matter how fast you click or double tap the key it's two operations and the game doesn't seem to toss the nades as fast. Not to mention you have to hit twice as many buttons.

[VKhaun]

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fcEQ...xWjrGZNDCOEMJA

This is my target now. Jack of all trades support and condition damage dealer working off crits. I don't normally like leaning on crits but after trying the flamethrower and seeing how quickly it hits lots of targets over and over... crit's and on-crit effects are just going to normalize and things will be just as consistent as direct damage.

[Taolas]

Nice. I felt I didn't have enough on-crit stuff for the low levels, so I'm back to power. Eventually you get on-crit equipment iirc, so waiting awhile before I try it again.

Rifle/bomb/elixir still makes me a pretty darn good soloist.

Underwhelmed by our Elites The random rampage makes you tanky, but the damage sucks. Tornado is fun, but you usually get rampage. Supply Drop isn't my thing. Mortar is 30 skill points I'm jealous of the Elementalist's fiery greatsword elite.

[VKhaun]

Yeah at this point I feel like Char are an overpowered engineer race because of their direct offensive racial elite kit and AoE. Though I haven't used them so I couldn't tell you if they're enough damage to be worthwhile.

Supply drop sounds really good though. I have trouble with crowds because they won't move a boss around. You end up with a big pile of dead/down people on top of eachother and more people running up to die on the boss trying to rez them. I'm hoping supply drop and the healygig turret will help me encourage randumbs to move aggro to where the healing is.

[Graveworm]

Nice. I felt I didn't have enough on-crit stuff for the low levels, so I'm back to power. Eventually you get on-crit equipment iirc, so waiting awhile before I try it again.

Rifle/bomb/elixir still makes me a pretty darn good soloist.

Underwhelmed by our Elites The random rampage makes you tanky, but the damage sucks. Tornado is fun, but you usually get rampage. Supply Drop isn't my thing. Mortar is 30 skill points I'm jealous of the Elementalist's fiery greatsword elite.

It's funny you should say that, because Fiery Greatsword is the worst Elementalist elite in my opinion. Also, Supply Drop is fucking hilarious when you drop on top of an enemy keep wall in WvW.

[Pyrrhus]

I feel Engis will really ahine in post-80 pvp. Especially WvW. butthat is so long to wait

[VKhaun]

I feel Engis will really ahine in post-80 pvp. Especially WvW. butthat is so long to wait

I'm hoping juggernaut (perma stability and +200 toughness w/flamethrower trait, at the end of the crit chance line) will make PvE hillarious all the way up. Especially when you have the big events where the bosses are tossing everyone everywhere and I"ll suddenly be the only one tossing out healing for a few seconds.

[Pyrrhus]

I picked up one of my sylvari racials, which is a plant wolf pet, and it seems to work like an auto tank for 60s. On single pulls it insta-peeled for me. My other racial roots me and summons plant turrets around me, could be interesting with the passive that makes you invis while rooted.

[Taolas]

Some advanced notes:
*On weapon-switch sigils don't work with the Engi, even if you switch between weapons and kits.
*Gain stacks on kills will max at 25. If you have two weapons with the same sigil, you'll gain points twice as fast, but it will still max on 25. Need to try two different tiers of the same sigil though. You don't lose stacks when switching to a kit, but don't gain more either.
*Condition damage is really good for pistols. Since you lose your weapon stat bonuses on kit-switch, you typically only have to build a weapon around itself.

[VKhaun]

Some advanced notes:
*On weapon-switch sigils don't work with the Engi, even if you switch between weapons and kits.
*Gain stacks on kills will max at 25. If you have two weapons with the same sigil, you'll gain points twice as fast, but it will still max on 25. Need to try two different tiers of the same sigil though. You don't lose stacks when switching to a kit, but don't gain more either.
*Condition damage is really good for pistols. Since you lose your weapon stat bonuses on kit-switch, you typically only have to build a weapon around itself.

So I can build 25 stacks with a pistol, then go flamethrower and keep them?
Frikkin sweeeeet

[Taolas]

Yep, pretty easy to get your hands on a sigil of corruption too. Well, when the market is up anyway.

More info on those on-kill runes:
1. You can completely drop your weapon with the rune on it and keep the stacks. Have one weapon for building a rune to 25 stacks, then switch out!
2. You can only ever have 1 stack type active. If you dual wield two different ones, only one will become active and build up. You can only get to 25 stacks max. Best thing for dual wield is having two of the same stacking rune for building up twice as fast... if you plan on switching out.
3. It is one of the few ways to increase the power of your kits, so if you're not planning on getting downed, it's a pretty good thing to do.