Thief Main trying out Engineer. Any Tips?

As the title states, I'm a thief main, going on for over six years, and finally decided to retry engineer after so long. I will say the first 12 levels felt incredibly slow to me compared to thief. The weapons didn't feel too interesting, nor did they feel very powerful. That was till I got to level 20, unlocked all my utility slots, and have all the tool kits and most of the Turrets.

Now the class actually felt fun and as fast as thief. One of the things I really appreciated was how useful the utilities are at all times when compared to what most of the thief has to work with. Which for thief... it's often a use case specific Oh-Shit button, or something that helps you kill someone... but isn't guranteed to do you any good.

It wasn't long before I found myself forgetting about my main weapons, and just rapidly blasting through all of my hot bar tool kits and F skills. Thief has no cool downs... but Engie? You don't have idle periods... and I'm loving it as much as my main.

So... down to the meat of the topic. Do you have any tips for new comers to the Engie class?

I main engi and thief :)For leveling use your bomb, granade and/or flamethrower. Its good for casual leveling and good to start adapting your fingers to kitswapping. You will need it to min/max damage in fractals/raids.

Once you hit 80 id learn holosmith first, its a dummy version of the engi but its damn powerful with plenty of AoE and burst, perma vigor and swiftness.Scrapper is fun but less than optimal and needs some love from Anet, hammer feels great though with good animations but avrage damage at best.

The biggest difference is that thief are the most mobile profession out there and you will feel slow in comparison, but as a thief you are way squishy.Engineers can take a punch but are clunky to play in comparison except holosmith. Instead of single target burst and über mobility you got AoE CC and damage, passive and active lifesavers and alot of boons.

Overall though an engineer feels way more versitile and can fit into more situations than a thief. Eventhough its not meta with ex. sword(or pistol) + shield holo in WvW blobs its actually quite strong as a frontline bruiser, only thing lacking is groupsupport for the holosmith. Scrappers also work decently, and scrapper healer is meta in WvW.

Fractals/raids is more fun on engineer aswell but it for sure isnt relaxing. you need to do alot of work to keep up the pressure.

I've played engi since before HoT, back even before Celestial engi was a thing in wvw and pvp.I main all 3 medium armor classes as i like them the most, but engi probably takes to cake for me. Damage a holo can dish out is satisfying and at times it's hard to settle for less like with the other classes.Leveling wise i think @"Noha.3749" pretty much nailed it. After you hit 80 get holo.This is the open world setup i'm running with my engi http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQJAsenUUB1IjlXBmYBcJjl0C77pEAaA9xx7YfEMF1iqLA-jRBTABfoEMG9ASr8Dg9HaS9HA-eHematic Focus + High Caliber give you a total of 25% crit chance and No Scope + Short fuse give you perma fury (Corona Burst holo-mode skill 3# count's as an explosion), with 55% crit base you'll have 100% crit chance on your own. You can swap sword/shield for rifle whenever needed without losing anything. Speed runes because you don't want to be as slow as a snail and the extra vitality is great. Spectrum shield can be swapped for anything you want, Elexir U toolbelt skill now gives quickness as well, pair that with sword 3# skill you'll have plenty of self generated quickness, Corona Burst in holo-mode will generate might for you and give you stability. So in total you'll have a decent stability/quickness engi that also gets self-might and has 100% crit chance with over 20k hp that can adapt to any situation.For raids/high-fractals you'll want to run the meta power holo http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFAUnUUB9ZhVIDmYBcJjl3C77BNhCAgdoQUap/MuGnjA-jhRBABA8AAua/R5nZKBxTHAlq/8wFAgUARMZD-e

All that being said engi is still weak to the same things it was weak 5 years ago and that is condi. We don't have many ways of getting rid of them, but there are some tricks you can use.