Finally got to run AsCat story mode with my Engineer last night. It was her first dungeon experience, my second time doing that run, and my first time actually leading a group.
It ended up being me and four chinese doods, only one of them speaking english, going through the whole thing. Guy says, I don think this one speak Chinese? "Sorry, only English and Japanese..." (awkward) (THANKS GAF! RUN WITH THE LITTLE GUYS SOME TIME!)
About 90 minutes or so later, my battered, bloody Engineer crawled out of those Catacombs with a shiny, bad ass swashbuckler hat in her iron grip. Seriously, we wiped constantly. It was bloody, messy, and chaotic.
But we did it.
No one dropped. No one complained. We adjusted our tactics with each fight and learned a lot. It was a shit load of fun.
I had the pleasure to run a group of three fractals with GAF over the weekend. The group leader was efficient and knowledgeable. He'd stop and fill everyone in on what they needed to do before we did it and we got through without too much of a hassle. It was a lot of fun, too.
So while there is a lot to be said for running in guild groups, last night I think I preferred the learn-as-you-go approach. It made us better players and I really felt like I'd accomplished something. It took us about 5 tries to finally take down those Lovers but when we did, I had to scream YESSSSSSSS! (in party chat) and watch the screen fill up with chinese characters as they like-wise screamed in what I imagined to be the all-caps equivalent of chinese characters.
Having said that, my Engineer died A LOT. I was running Rifle, Healing Turret, and Elixir Gun. I alternated my other utility skills between Rocket Turret, Grenade Kit, Elixir C, and Prayer to Kormir (goddamn Rangers / Necromancers!!!)
The Engineer experience wasn't as fun as I'd expected. I don't know, maybe I was expecting the Elixir Gun to make me this awesome healing / kiting machine but I just couldn't keep my teammates up or they'd often run out of the Elixir Gun 5 AoE heal.
Once an enemy got on me, it was hard to shake them off even with permanent swiftness. I thought my conditions with Bleed on Crit, Elixir C, Elixir Gun, Grenade Kit would have a bigger effect on battles but they didn't.
I left the dungeon thinking that I'd finally managed to eliminate one of my characters from lists of candidates for my main... until I tried on my AsCat hat! Maybe I'll go back and try some other builds or just something. I felt more useful, but a SHIT load more squishy than my Mesmer and Necromancer.
So I'm tweaking around with my Engie build. I ran a heal/survival build for a short time, and while it was impressive that it played so completely differently from my main, I wasn't too happy with it unless I had a group taking advantage of all the combo fields laid down by the heals. So I've decided to focus less on outright tankiness and go for more of a condition/heal setup.
So what I have now is a build that blasts skills out quickly with minimal cooldown on my tool belt, stacking on conditions all over the place while having very effecting heals from an upgraded Supply Drop and an Elixir Gun that plops down Super Elixir for free when I switch to it. And speaking of switching, my setup has the tiniest window between kit cooldowns, so I can flip back and forth between kits to self-combo between the Elixir Gun and my Grenade Kit almost instantly, slapping on bleeds and poison simultaneously.
Since support builds for engineers should probably have Elixir R for revives and condition clears, I've ended up with a setup that has my endurance filling up fast while I spam conditions and combo fields. I'm not sure how effective it's going to be. I'm also not sure if I can avoid carpal tunnel syndrome with all the rolling and tool belt/skill bar abuse.
Against standard PvE situations it's been very effective. Whether it stands the test of a Fractals run or taking a hit from a glass cannon in WvW is another story...
Wow, sounds like you're having a blast;D Engineer is probably why I have a hard time going back to Necro. I like the Necro in groups, by after 32 levels of hyperactive, Engineer play - it's hard to go back. Mesmer has complexity but I haven't found a build I like yet.
