Guild Wars 2 Engineer theory.

Hello first time readers to my new blog. I am still working on the layout of it because I am still getting used to Blogger's settings and I do not have access to good backgrounds due to the 300kb limit on images. With this blog I do intend on sharing whatever seems significant to me as I progress throughout the days playing whatever I am in the mood for. This mostly includes World of Warcraft, Dayz, Team Fortress 2, League of Legends and Guild Wars 2 when it comes out.

I am really looking forward to playing Guild Wars 2 so I can try my hand at playing an engineer which is ideally the perfect concept of a class for me. Playing through all of the beta weekend events and the stress tests It is my most played class and one of the most complex offering an incentive to explore the different combinations of skills the engineer has since they are the only ones who cant swap weapons but they can swap tool kits. In the last BWE (Beta Weekend Event) they tuned the shield skills since they felt it was a default choice if anyone wanted to use a pistol for a condition build. It was a default decision because it was pretty useful with the situational knock back and absorb it helped move people off flags or doors and saved you from impending doom at the hands of a firing squad of Rangers and Elementalists. I'm not sure if it was the tuning or a bug but the knock back did not work at all so every engineer went with dual pistols or tried to go Rambo with the rifle which was really a shotgun.

The buff they gave to dual pistols was great as it allowed us to add a blaze condition to our already ticking bleed which gives us  decent chunk of extra damage and AoE as long as we are close enough to the target for the close range bonus. That bonus is something I have recently discovered while I was chasing down some targets in world vs world and it works for Poison Dart Volley (Pistol), Blowtorch (Pistol), Blunderbuss(Rifle), and Overcharged Shot(Rifle).

Even though I prefer to use a more ranged approach running in after using Elixir B and giving a small burst with poison dart volley is fun and effective as it causes the average player to use an evasive roll early or back away playing into your ranged game where you can just keep boons up with elixirs and stack bleeds and burns on your target at a comfortable pace. This however does not always work which is why this is risky because if it is a melee you will be close and in their territory allowing them to set up a good stun and damage combo especially if the target is a warrior because they have one skill that can absolutely wreck a person if you are close enough and not moving. I tend to try to keep a distance and if they get to close drop a glue shot and roll out, the further away you are the less skills they can use on you and in this game kiting is usually a losing game since the slowing boons don't last long and there is no single class that can permanently keep something slowed so good use of evasive rolls and environment will take you far.