Nate.8146

If you just want something that slaps, zerk sword Holosmith is good, but it needs quickness to really shine. If you have Jade Overcharge boons, then this build feels super good. Survivability is OK as well, but can get pretty rough in champ fights. Best all-around builds for engineers IMO have always been ranged condi focused. Pistol/Pistol vipers will melt trash packs quickly. Just go in with your Raptor, tail whip to draw them all in, static shot + blowtoch the blob, switch to grenade kit and spam shrapnel + grenades to finish them off. Range condi builds are much more forgiving in champ fights, where you don't exactly want to face tank them. Condi mech is very solo friendly. Mechs will agro champs so you can casually burn them down. Superconducting Signet is also one of the strongest engineer abilities.

So I've come back to the game to try out the new revision of the shortbow. It's certainly not going to win any notice me main character giga chad competitions, but I find it has a place with the solo scrapper juggy FT build. Basically you want to camp FT forever because you want that perma stability, which these days every kitten enemy has frequent access to CC just to annoy you. Drones have a 20s cooldown, which aligns with the cooldown of bow #4, so it's easy to know when to kick your rotation. You pop a well, swap to bow, trigger #4 (fire field + 3 might stacks) -> #2 (blast finisher + 5 might stacks + 3 might stacks) -> #5 (blast finisher + 3*2 might stacks) or #3 if #5 is on cooldown (+3 might stacks), will give you a burst of might to bump you up to 25 stacks, plus some protection since you weren't already invincible enough in this build (Iron Blooded + Backpack Regen). If you got allies nearby, the blast finishers in the well will give them and yourself quickness. You can also use #2 on your FT for one more blast finisher in the well, plus mines if you're rocking the boom booms. Or, if you're a selfish engineer, which I hope you are, then you're rocking the chrono relic for infini-quickness. Now you're just laughing maniacally. In about 2 seconds you now have full might stacks, perma stability, perma quickness, 50% uptime on protection and aegis, and super speed at your command. So the bow gives you that little boost to an already feel good, can't die no matter how hard you try solo build.

I generally run full celestial with mech. Jack of all trades is not only really survivable for yourself, but the mech too. It does decent damage output, with auto-attack pistols (no skills) and auto attack from mech will net around 17K dps with this setup. If I trigger pistol skills and spam grenades, I can get that up to about 25K for what is ultimately easy spam attacking. If you want to be downright unstoppable, then swap grenades for flamethrower, grab the juggernaut trait from rifles for perma stability, and flip out explosives for alchemy and select backpack regen + iron blooded. You'll take a DPS hit, but you'll be hard as nails to take down. It's basically a cheat code for the class 🙂 For a little more dps (+3-4K dps), I will swap out celestial accessories for viper (armor is still celestial), thus applying more condition pressure, but not going full glass. This was my setup to solo cap my guild hall, which I consider the toughest solo pve content I ever did. Not only do you need to survive, but you're on the clock as well. The mech performed brilliantly under this setup. Outside of that, I don't usually have a problem soloing roaming bosses or other harder open world content. If my mech dies, I'll use Overclock Signet to bring it back into the fight. If by chance it dies again (super rare), then I revert to the classic GW2 engineer tactic of laughing maniacally while running in circles and lobbing grenades.

Sorry Anet, but this shortbow is what you call an air ball. A cold turkey. A few cans short of a six pack. The lights are on, but nobody's home. It completely misses the mark in terms of engagement, entertainment, purpose, and fulfillment. I took it around PvE, fought a couple tough roaming bosses and IMO the weapon just doesn't click. Cons: It's a ranged AOE weapon that's designed for you to stand in the AOE to receive its benefits, which effectively puts you in melee range with the enemy. The boons are short and pointless. My mech gives way more useful boons and survivability. The barrier and heals are pitiful. The #4 arrow that gives 25 stacks of might in a game that's power crept over the years and hands out boons like candy is also pointless. At the end of the day, people are going to bring what works best and reliably to a party comp. An engineer shortbow is going to make best friends with the kick button. Too long, too many button presses. 2, 3, 4, 5, then any 2->5 btn to detonate. Several seconds will have gone by and you will have contributed nothing to the fight while you were busy trying to setup the boom booms that will disappear faster than it took you to set them up. Pros: 1. Chain reactions. It's nice that you're thinking outside the box, something GW2 has been known to do well over its life. So I give you credit for the idea, but not its execution. Imagine an alternative shortbow. Ground targeted bow #5 creates a tar patch, slowing all within it. Ground targeted bow #4 lobs a fire arrow that lights the tar patch up, creating an aoe burn field. Ground targeted bow #3 lobs a gas arrow that detonates in the fire patch to create a larger poisonous AOE gas. Bow #2 creates a static discharge in the gas cloud, zapping everyone for additional damage. That IMO would have been more engaging, purposeful, entertaining, and fulfilling. You could also pair the skills differently to create unique combinations and effects. Like shooting a gas arrow first then a fire arrow second to create an explosion with knockback. Or you could wait to stack 4 arrow combos for maximum effect. For an engineer that spends 95% of our time in kits, this alternative supports weapon swap play and provides us with unique combat experiences. We don't need more boons, we need more ways to play. GW2 was always about supporting yourself, not others. Give us more offensive variety.

They do actually define what Wayfinder is in the story, but you have to engage in the dialog to learn more about it being a rare honorary title to those that serve the Astral Ward. In short, it's purely wizard/cult speak for "Hero". More indirectly, from Isgarren's point of view, despite the insurmountable challenges the commander faced with the dragons, we managed to beat the odds and "find a way" to save Tyria. Ergo, the "Wayfinder". And although the commander is not the first to receive that title, we do know indirectly that it was given to other people who equally served, predominantly to keep Tyria safe. Though, I will say even the new NPCs in the game have difficulty referring to you as wayfinder. I recall specific events in Amnytas where the NPCs still refer to you as the commander. Even Zojja at one point stumbled on it. IMO, you are whatever title you prefer to recognize yourself as. The commander is just one of many heroic titles we received along our adventures in Tyria. At the end of the day, it's just how that culture identifies you.

If you're not attached to any particular relic, slap Relic of the Chronomancer on your Scrapper and restore quickness on well generation. I've been using that and it feels great using scrapper again.

There's a lot of reference material in GW2, so it's not surprising to see familiarity. Some of it is deliberate too, such as references to Star Wars, The Goonies, Terminator, Indiana Jones, and unsurprisingly in this chapter I did catch a Harry Potter reference. So it's not surprising to see a little reference here or there, with an artistic touch from Anet. The floating demon turrets in SOTO for example remind me of Destiny 2 Shriekers. Peitha feels like the alternate to D4 Lilith. The meta boss makes me think more of Cacodemons from Doom, with a touch of Cthulhu. All cool stuff IMO, even if it's a mixture of references with a different twist.

I would like to see more class relics, and specifically for each category of skill in those classes (ex: engineer: relic of gadgets, relic of kits, relic of explosives, etc.). I also don't think relics should focus on stat boosts. Your relic of the engineer for example just amps up engineer's damage output when they already have an explosive skill line that does just that. And it competes with similar relics like relic of fireworks. I'd rather relics be used to change the way you play a class. So using engineer as an example: Gadgets have more ammo and/or recharge quicker. Flamethrower kit uses a special napalm agent that deals increased burn condition and duration, but sacrifices strike damage. Turrets fire 50% faster, can be thrown 600 range, and have a 320 range aoe knockdown explosion when destroyed. Swapping out of Holosmith cooldown is reduced by 20%. And/or Holosmith heat reduces faster or slower by 20% (pros/cons for both, so offer both relics). Scrapper gyro wells last 33% longer. Blast gyro takes longer to blast, but deals increased damage and defiance break.

The building architecture and colour theme reminds me of Orokin architecture in Warframe, with a touch of TES white gold tower.

The 5 o'clock I just got home from work and want to rest and relax engineer build . Been using this since HoT, with some nice buffs from Anet over the years. Camp FT and never die or get CC'd. Guaranteed mob tagging for maximum loot. Perma quickness for faster mob tagging. Fastest running speed as well as speeding up slow moving quest NPCs. Lots of AoE, heals, combo fields, and range safety.

Try hovering around enemies in PoF and subsequent LS zones (White Mantle; Bloodstone Fen) and let me know how that works out for you 🙂. The fact that the new maps are in the clouds with death gaps makes it even all the more sinister for the devs to introduce those threats and collect all those juicy player tears.

I like to think EOD was the year of the engineer with all the Jade tech from Cantha. It's hard to think 1½ years have passed since that expansion, and the whole new-age techno style has really messed with my immersion in the game. Most of the time I don't even think I'm playing GW2 as it has changed so much. So in a lot of ways, I like seeing GW2 return more to its roots with SOTO, which I'm definitely feeling the elementalist vibes. Any ele mains out there stoked to immerse yourself in wizardry fantasy? I recently dusted off my elementalist and enjoyed unlocking his elite specs last weekend. I'm hoping to catch some black/white mages around the tower.

1. If the enemy can't reach you, it will reset the fight very quickly. They regen health and you're back to square one. You're not going to have your cake and eat it too. 2. You don't need a skyscale to escape combat. We've been running from hard fights since release, long before gliders, mounts, and the crazy amounts of power creep over the years. Or if you're smart like an engineer, you just run in circles dropping bombs and laughing your way to victory, nary a scratch. I see this addition no differently than I see the mastery trait Air Rescue. It's a quality of life that gives you back time to your life to focus on the core things that matter most in the game. In a lot of ways, it also makes sense from a lore and immersion standpoint. You fed, played with, and helped grow your skyscale. It's your companion and life friend. It should come to your aid when you are in most need. And if and when you need it, use it. If you use it often, then you might want to reconsider your builds and life decisions that get you into trouble all the time.

As someone who completed the fishing achievement and spent countless weeks of fishing time in this game, I can say that fishing in general is quite relaxing and it doesn't have to be stressful. I can understand the OPs complaint when it comes to completing the fishing achievement. It can be stressful looking for specific fish at dusk/dawn and you only have about 5 minutes. However, that actually gives value to the achievement. Something to be proud of your accomplishment. If the achievement were handed out like Halloween candy, it would be a pointless venture. When I see someone wear the most prestigious titles in this game, I know they earned it. And that's 100% fair game. There are lots of great, calm places you can fish at for the simple act of just... you know, fishing. Crystal Oasis IMO is one of the best with its crystal clear waters and relaxing desert theme and music. The Isle of Reflection is very peaceful and allows you to decorate the area to give it a more surreal fishing experience. Draconis Mons has boiling turbulent waters, giving you that dangerously adventurous fishing experience. Seitung Province has a lot of calm places to fish at, plus fishing tournaments to change up the pace. Interestingly, fishing near the leviathan is one of the best places because it's more social and engaging to fish with others. Fishing in New Kaineng is also relaxing and offers plenty of safe places to fish at. So in general, fishing is not infuriating, stressful, or inconsistent. It's only if you're chasing the achievement, which stressors are to be accounted for.

Hmm, can't decide which one... https://i.imgur.com/LFdyk2Z.jpg

The Good Moving on from dragons to the mysterious void. Jade appears to act like a ghostbuster trap to the void, so I suspect in the future we'll see a tie-in of kicking a jade block under a ghost/demon and watch it get sucked in. Gorrick is Egon Spengler, Rama is Peter Venkman, Yao is Ray Stantz, and the Commander is Winston Zeddemore. Sounds cheesy, but I'm game for this. The map overall is quite nice and adds a new activity to breakup the monotony. The Bad Character development is a little lacking. Rama and the Commander seemed out of touch. Not really caring and just doing whatever to kill the time. It picks up a bit near the end, but the emotion seems a bit lacking. Anet needs to fix their dialog system. They need to have characters interrupt right away. The silence between interrupts is pretty bad. The meta lacks purpose and some added difficulty. I think it could be great if they change it around a bit. Give players a chance to build up the mining camps (like Verdant Brink) and have meaningful defence missions while others move on with the main advance. Right now everyone pretty much follows the red circle and bounces between the east/west ends to kill whatever boss and move down to the next stage. It's very linear and uneventful. The GW2 renderer sometimes drops important visibility mechanics, like some of those void orbs that hit you for a good amount of damage. So many times I take damage because the game isn't rendering the kitten void orbs. Please Anet, fix your renderer. You cannot just make things disappear on whatever heuristic your game uses to keep it running. Find other ways to optimize your game. Even players or mounts disappear after a certain threshold, and I maintain high settings to help mitigate that, but still it happens. So many chest drops, but no keys to open them. Given the poor payout of those chests, there's no way I'm going to buy the crazy expensive miner keys just to open them. I suspect Anet's is attempting to recalibrate the economy by draining the cheap penny materials to make them more costly again. But offers like 2 ectos for a key? Nah man, that ain't happening. Nah eh. Now now, not ever. The Ugly Filters in their current implementation is an anti-game pattern. It's clear they wanted a way to justify using jade batteries in the new zone similar to how they were used in the rest of Cantha for defensive/offensive boots, but this is not the way. Either take the easy road and let us stack them up to 200+ charges, or tie them into some mastery mechanic that allows the rebreathers to drain your jade power levels directly. Higher mastery provide more oxygen time per unit of jade power consumed. There should also be boss attacks that threaten your filter lifetime and require players to take cover, go into isolation, or something to avoid draining. There has to be some threatening mechanic to give them purpose beyond adding extra clicks by the player.

In terms of quality, I rarely see people complain about Guardian and it's fairly well balanced. There was a time when Dragon Hunter was ridiculed because it veered from the fantasy, but people seemed to warm up to it after awhile. Probably from the OP dmg their traps did. In terms of fantasy, the Engineer has been consistent with its elite specs. Scrapper, Holosmith, and Mechanist actually fit the engineer theme very well. However, functionally engineers are still a kit based classed so these elite specs take a back seat to our core engineer kits. 9 years of using the same kits is pretty dull :) In terms of coolness, Revenant. All of Revenant's legends are pretty awesome, both in lore and presentation. If I would rate the worst for fun, I would probably give it to Ranger. Although Druid was quite interesting, I don't really feel any play style differences with Soulbeast, Untamed, and Core. They feel very samey and not particularly revitalizing compared to the uniqueness with other professions. Maybe tied with Warrior, but Warrior is kind of a cliche anyway.

Home Instances is GW2 answer to player housing. They built an entire storefront around it. To a limited degree, Guild Halls are also a type of housing, albeit few will ever be able to acquire one and fully upgrade it for personal use. I don't really see that changing given limited resources the devs have. It's also hard to compete with established games like ESO and Fallout 76 when they pump out lots of DLC per year and have housing fully integrated into their games. Not to mention, those games have way more detail, better lighting, a camera system that works indoors and in cramped settings, and has the atmosphere to immerse yourself and build really great looking houses. Guild Halls have.. jumping puzzles made from SAB furniture? IMO, GW2 needs to stick to what it does well that other games don't have. With the successful launch of EoD and their newfound playerbase, they need to keep that momentum and continue to think outside the box with new gameplay and reward systems. Competing with other games for player housing would be, IMO, akin to shooting themselves in the foot.

The engineer always had this. Perhaps other professions too, but I never bothered to test them. I often weave between primary weapon skills and kits all the time. Poison Dart Volley on pistol for example has a long drawn out animation, but you can swap to grenade kit right after the poison volley starts. This way you don't need to wait out the kit select animation delay and can start lobbing grenades. Works as well for Blowtorch, which has a slight delay in the attack. I assume this is a bug because it creates an odd presentation (ex: shooting poison darts from your grenade kit), but low priority and moot to fix since they can just balance the class to compensate for it. Much like what ESO does, given that the community won't allow them to fix it at this stage in the game's life.

Personally I don't like the collection quests. I tried it for the Juggernaut weapon and I was turned off by the end of the first collection round. It's more of a task list rather than an adventure, and there's still an input cost. At that point, I realized I'd rather play the game how I want to play it and save up for crafting a legendary. It's how I crafted my two legendaries and I got to enjoy the game doing it.

For me, I have to rate EoD last. When it comes to online gaming, engaging gameplay loops and replayability are the number one factors to keep me coming back. PoF also failed a bit on that front with its wide maps and non-engaging bounty system, but it gets some extra points over EoD due to the Isle of Istan. None of the 4 metas in EoD deliver IMO, and many of the maps lack events and things to do in between. I just look at the event timer to do the Seitung and Echovald metas back to back. After that, I don't have a strong reason for staying logged in. HoT maintains its title as the best expansion. Not just because it has the best metas, but the maps are filled to the brim with events that actually build-up to the meta. We also didn't have mounts back then, so the level design was focused on adventure and giving players things to see and do. Since PoF, mounts have trivialized the game and the new map designs reflect that. Everything feels more streamlined and it lacks that sense of adventure and discovery. They may be fun to ride and horse around on, but I think the game as a whole paid a major price for that.

It's a one time payment of 100 gold and 150 favour. After that, you can try to capture as many times as your sanity will allow :) It will cost you another 100 gold and 150 favour if you decide to change your guild hall in the future though. No refunds (dirty sons of ....).

Ahh, so you're the person I have to thank for buying my antique summoning stones :) Great guide, and enjoy your new lightsaber!

Huzzah! I thought I'd share some details about how I solo'd the Isle of Reflection guild hall with my Mechanist. It's a crazy thing I like to do, starting way back with Lost Precipice. I never managed to capture that guild hall because it was a bit too tough and RNG for me, but Isle of Reflection feels more like a challenging strike mission that will tax your focus and resolve. It took me about 5 tries, but I found a condi build with defiance break skills and food buffs was the way to go. Power builds is basically a no-go. With my build setup (not as optimal), I had about 2 minutes left on the clock. For reference, my sub-optimal build is posted here: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PexAQprlxy0YvMYWMOWL5xaA-zRRYVRRzMixlSEJSFFRHRQIhg8XkhpdEDGpZQyibA-e I want to stress that it's still quite challenging content to solo. I don't do raids and don't much care for strikes or PvP. I consider myself "good" with the engineer simply because of how long I've played it doing open world metas and stuff. If you're in the same boat and you have some disposable cash and guild favours to spend, maybe give it a try. The new guild hall is quite well decorated and has a great ambience for fishing. It's quite serene and beautiful (kudos to the artists). Personally, it's one of my more favoured of the guild halls. And if you can't quite solo it, don't be shy to open an LFG for it. It make take some time to find people to help, but I freely help others when I can, and with 2 or 3 people it's even easier run. Details For engineers that want to challenge themselves, you need to kite while throwing grenades and swapping to p/p on cooldown to get those burns and confusions in. Also time your defiance breaks so you drop that bar by as much as you can. Sometimes it will take two rounds to get it and that's fine. Just keep the DPS pressure on at all times. And you need those food buffs (rare pizza and master tuning crystal in my case). I tried to play it cheap at first (no buffs), but I would never have enough time to takeout the last boss. Those food buffs are instrumental. My rough timings. 1. For reference, you have 37 minutes to complete the mission. 2. Finish escort at around 32 minutes left. Move on ahead and kill mobs to keep the escort behind you moving smoothly. 3. Skip trash mobs on way to bosses or around bosses. Always focus on the boss. Let your pistol static shot bounce off any trash you pickup and confuse them to death. Usually the NPCs aggro them off you. Use the stealth on your mount to cruise on by without aggro. 4. Finish first boss (Enforcer; swordsman) around 25 minutes. Mech mostly tanks, just dodge his spinning attack that will always focus on you. 5. Finish second boss (Mage) around 18 minutes. Run in a circle lobbing nades. Only pause after the 5th whirlpool to get your p/p shots in. 6. Finish third boss (Specter) around 12 minutes. Much more relaxing boss to fight because the mech tanks for you. If the boss seems to aggro you too much, stand behind the mech and it will shield you from her projectiles. 7. Finish final boss with 2 mins to spare. A bit harder to fight because his lighting bolt relentlessly targets you. Dodge when you can to help lessen the damage. I was downed twice during the fight, but Jade bot + NPCs got me back in the fight. If you solo'd the guild hall, feel free to share your own experience.

You play engineer with grenades long enough, pressing 1,1,1,1... while dodging and kiting, it becomes a subconscious auto-attack 🙂