Suggestion for Solo Engineer build + gear

[Bastien.1645]

Hello,

 

I'm a returning player. I just bought PoF + HoT and will be getting EoD soon. I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions for a good Engineer build just to do all of the story content? I quit in 2013 so I have a LOT to catch up on! I have no idea what elite specialisations are but can google it, just need some suggestions as to what build to acquire/focus on 🙂

 

Also, I completely forgot but to get gear, I should just be able to find vendors or look at the trading post, and it's the max level best gear you can get ? This isn't like WoW where you have to grind for upgrades? Ironically I did like 4000 hours in guild wars 1 but never got into GW2 when it released, I remember in GW1 you could just buy gear at max level and was wondering if ArenaNet kept that type of gameplay. 

 

Thanks in advance!

 

 

[Gibson.4036]

Mechanist for easy play. Pew pew at a distant while your big green friend also pews. It’ll abandon you underwater, but grenades work well there.

Holosmith for fun. Bounce around with weapons made of light trying to stay heated up but not overheat. Strong, but not ez-mode.

Scrapper for utility like stealth, movement speed, the ability to support others during metas.

Best gear is ascended, and you won’t be able to buy that on the trading post. But exotic gear is close, and plenty fine for open world and story content. You can get some stat sets cheap on the TP, craft it, or get it pretty easily in Heart of Thorns.

Going for ascended, you can craft weapons and trinkets can be bought from vendors for living world 3 currency. Ascended weapons and trinkets with exotic armor is quite strong.

Metabattle has open world builds to check out. Hardstuck.gg has builds that are more raid/strike/PvP focused, but they do have celestial (all stats equal gear) OW builds, and most of their instance builds marked “Offensive Support” are really strong playing open world, and will also benefit other players when you end up in metas or world bosses.

 

Edited April 30, 2023 by Gibson.4036
Holosmith was my second character I played through the story on. Mechanist is one of my go to specs to do tricky achievements in story.

[Gravitron.7982]

On 4/30/2023 at 4:17 AM, Gibson.4036 said:

Mechanist for easy play. Pew pew at a distant while your big green friend also pews. It’ll abandon you underwater, but grenades work well there.

Holosmith for fun. Bounce around with weapons made of light trying to stay heated up but not overheat. Strong, but not ez-mode.

Scrapper for utility like stealth, movement speed, the ability to support others during metas.

Best gear is ascended, and you won’t be able to buy that on the trading post. But exotic gear is close, and plenty fine for open world and story content. You can get some stat sets cheap on the TP, craft it, or get it pretty easily in Heart of Thorns.

Going for ascended, you can craft weapons and trinkets can be bought from vendors for living world 3 currency. Ascended weapons and trinkets with exotic armor is quite strong.

Metabattle has open world builds to check out. Hardstuck.gg has builds that are more raid/strike/PvP focused, but they do have celestial (all stats equal gear) OW builds, and most of their instance builds marked “Offensive Support” are really strong playing open world, and will also benefit other players when you end up in metas or world bosses.

 

OP said that they don't have EoD yet, which means they don't have Mechanist. I'm assuming they are asking for a CORE Engineer build for Openworld/Story.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

Run something like this until you can get enough points to unlock an elite specialization.  From there, the two easiest elite specs to get are Mechanist (requires EoD), then Scrapper (requires HoT).  Holosmith is a strong choice, but it is more complicated and prone to blowing itself up.

Gear-wise, just buy exotics off of the TP.  Go full Berserker and rely on blinds from the bomb kit and supply crate to disable most enemies.  There's legendary and ascended gear, but legendary has steep requirements and has the same stats as ascended.  Ascended gear largely requires crafting, or getting very lucky with drops.  Don't worry about it too much, though, because Ascended is only about 11% better than Exotic.  

[The Boz.2038]

Mechanist and Scrapper are turbo comfy to play, and in their boon builds, welcome in endgame groups, too.
Doing your daily gathering on a quickness Scrapper is much less of a chore than on other professions.

[Joxer.6024]

since you dont have Mech

 

[Stx.4857]

For soloing tough mobs like champions, meta bosses etc you can’t get much better than Hizen builds.  He has one for mechanist and for Holosmith.  The gear is pretty high end though.  
 

if you’re just looking for a solid build to do the story and normal open world stuff with, any engi elite spec will work fine.  If you need cheap gear fast, go with berserker/cavalier for power with pack runes, or dire for Condi with Balthazar runes.   

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

First thing to do : UNLOCK MECHANIST
The best LI mechanist build you can find in the game  : http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PewAQl7lxysYvMXWMOsLnxNA-zRRYBhgKAOqp38LjIygKKBnHAA-e

 

Perma quickness/alacrity/fury/10-20 mights, nice Stab uptime, nice health regen, very good dps (at least against mobs, vets elites...), nice cleave because of Explosions, 2 breakstun with condicleanse, strong CC...
You just let the mech skills on auto and you spam 1 2 3 4.
You can gear with more Berserker obviously (or dragon etc). I don't remember the math but 40~50% BD is all you need for perma quickness.

Edited May 24, 2023 by Zhaid Zhem.6508

[loregnum.3619]

I have both a gyro quickness scrapper build and a power rifle/mace mech build. While mech may be the easier of the two and probably better to solo harder enemies like say HoT hero points, I find scrapper to be more fun to play. Scrapper can also easily handle mobs with all the barrier you'll be creating for yourself, especially if one of the gyros you pick is bulwark. There is a place in Echovald Wilds near the junkyard where you can get constant mobs spawning (as in there is no down time) with elites and vets for like 10-15 mins and both handle it just fine with scrapper arguably better. I'm now using this spot as a way to test how my characters/builds do with mobs because of the constant barrage of enemies.

I also really like using scrapper in the Dragonstorm event. Can tank a lot of the hectic boss fights where visibility of what is going on is low and you are also providing some quickness goodness to others.

[Deniara Devious.3948]

For open world pve and Living story pretty much any build will do, as long you are geared properly. If you don't know what stat combo is good, you can select celestial gear. Celestial won't be optimal for pve, but it will give you so much sustain that you won't die easily and you will eventually kill even though opponents.

I have a celestial core rifle engineer and I have not struggled with any pve map (except which require annoying timed meta events, you cannot solo and need to wait for the timer). Most champions and group events are also relatively easy to solo.
 

[Gendalfs.7521]

4 hours ago, loregnum.3619 said:

There is a place in Echovald Wilds near the junkyard where you can get constant mobs spawning (as in there is no down time) with elites and vets for like 10-15 mins and both handle it just fine with scrapper arguably better. I'm now using this spot as a way to test how my characters/builds do with mobs because of the constant barrage of enemies.

I use that same spot for testing 👌

[Hycinthus.6483]

On 5/19/2023 at 11:54 AM, Joxer.6024 said:

since you dont have Mech

 

How was he able to change weapon to pistol in the middle of combat? I am unable to do that so I am just stuck with sword. 

[Joxer.6024]

5 hours ago, Hycinthus.6483 said:

How was he able to change weapon to pistol in the middle of combat? I am unable to do that so I am just stuck with sword. 

I believe its when you drop out of forge? Not sure, will have to go abck and watch.

[Hycinthus.6483]

1 hour ago, Joxer.6024 said:

I believe its when you drop out of forge? Not sure, will have to go abck and watch.

Just look at his bars between 2:20-2:40. It kept switching between pistol and sword skills right?

Edited May 29, 2023 by Hycinthus.6483

[Duglaive.5236]

7 hours ago, Hycinthus.6483 said:

Just look at his bars between 2:20-2:40. It kept switching between pistol and sword skills right?

No, that's just Pistol and Photon Forge "weapon" skills of which some have sword-type animations. The changes occur when he drops in and out of Photon Forge.

[Joxer.6024]

this from Hizen

"the sword skills he talking about are photon forge skills"

 

Edited May 30, 2023 by Joxer.6024

[Hycinthus.6483]

5 hours ago, Joxer.6024 said:

this from Hizen

"the sword skills he talking about are photon forge skills"

 

Got it thanks!