BOON Control’s Aspira writes up his experiences with the Engineer during the time at Gamescom & when playing PvP against ArenaNet. This is possible the most in-depth look at the Engineer to date.
Engineer Gameplay feedback from Gamescom 2011
Having the opportunity to work the GW2 ESL PvP booth and play against ArenaNet for my time at Gamescom, I had the chance to see exactly what classes people were playing and how they were playing them in huge detail. The engineer was a lot more popular with the players than I expected. Initially I was expecting every team to be Elementalists and Necromancers (with the odd thief) as I expected the classes with insane visual spell effects and the stealthier to get fan priority, but all the classes were represented well and the engineer I love so much got some great playtime on the booth.
The biggest observation that I did notice from the fans playing the engineer during Gamescom was that it was always played in one of three ways…..
1) Rifle and turrets
2) Flamethrower spam
3) Grenade spam
Grenades!
The grenade spamming tactic was fun to watch as it is not a way I play my engineer at all. I have one build which incorporates the Grenade Kit utility skill, but I only grab it for the special ability “Grenade Barrage”, which runs of your F-keys and is basically a large AoE nuke using a ground template to attack. The guys at Gamescom however were actually equipping the pack and using the various grenade types which was great to see. I personally had initially wrote them off as being a bit weak but some of the players at Gamescom really made them work by using good positioning and always making sure they were with a team mate and not out solo. After Gamescom I think I am going to look back into the grenades and try and work on a team based build for them as they do bring a lot to the table, they are just not ideal for solo encounters.
Flamethrower!!!
The flamethrower was probably the most popular build played on the engineer at Gamescom and why wouldn’t it be, ITS A FLAMETHROWER!!! Not only does it look amazing (no seriously, it looks amazing, the flame jet actually changes the lighting effects around it, it is insane) but it is a great weapon to use. The AoE damage it brings combined with the crowd control of air blast and backdraft make it a great little weapon to use and a real crowd pleaser, ArenaNet have really desgined something awesome when they designed the flamethrower. Flamejet spam is the new awesome!!! ^^
Rifle!
The rifle was the most used weapon by the players at Gamescom playing engineer as it was the default weapon they zoned in with, but not many picked up turrets as it required them to swap out utility spells to pick them up and most people were just so excited to finally be playing GW2 PvP that they were just charging into combat as soon as they zoned in. The rifle is great though, so the guys running off headlong into battle on their newly made engineers were in for a great deal of fun. The rifle can trigger all abilities while moving (apart from jump shot – skill 5) which make it a really fluid character. The rifle also bring a lot to PvP, the “auto attack” as I call it, which is Hip Shot(skill 1) set on auto recast, hits for a good amount on players. It’s not the highest burst in the game by a long way, but it is steady damage that over time adds up and can catch people off guard. The rifle also brings the net shot (skill 2) which is some excellent crowd control. With 5v5 PvP in GW2, staying alive is very important. I know it sounds silly to think dying is ever not important, but in other games death has been a viable strategy at times, but in GW2′s 5v5, staying alive is seriously important. So this is where the net shot comes in very handy. If you’re fighting an opponent who suddenly realises they aren’t going to win, they try and kite you to a team mate to turn the battle into an advantage in their favour or your opponent is simply playing harassment and trying to drag you away from control points, then the Net Shot is your GG I WIN button. At present, it is a 3 second immobilise (snare), doesn’t seem like much, but in many situations it is enough to pin a target in place long enough to let an ally dish out a good spike, or to stop a retreating enemy and get the all important kills to start pushing the battle into your favour. The other rifle abilities include Blunderbuss which as a positional bleed attack which deals more damage the closer you are to the enemy, overcharged shot which deals good damage and knocks both the enemy and the engineer back, increasing distance between you and your foe, good follow up to Blunderbuss, and finally the jump shot. The jump shot is the engineer’s full character mobility skill in which the engineer shoots the ground under its feat causing it to leap between two points dealing AoE damage on the leap and the landing. This was a great skill in PvP as it helps you escape or chase down opponents…. and it gives you a cheap excuse to shout random quotes from the Soldier in TF2 each time you use it.
Guild Wars 2 Engineer (GuildWars2.com)
I can’t say much on the pistols for Engineer at the moment. I don’t think I saw anyone use them at Gamescom, more than likely because people were just so excited to play PvP in GW2 the game they didn’t want to waste time changing weapons when they had a character ready to go when they zoned in, but in my own personal opinion I think the rifle and flamethrower are just so good right now, both in their animations and what they bring to the fight that I think the pistols are being forgotten a bit. I would like to see them brought in to play a bit more and I am sure we will see tweaks to them to get them more PvP action.
Offensive & Defensive Gameplay!
I like to play both offensive and defensive engineer so when playing at Gamescom I did offensive on the first two show matches where I did some flamethrower play and on the second day I played more defensively using turrets and defending points. This shows the Engineer to be a versatile class that can adapt to suit the enemy tactics and fulfil multiple roles within a team. The offensive play is good as the flamethrower was great for confined spaces such as Clocktower. you can even use turrets offensively, dropping them in the enemy points. However, my favourite way to play it was defensively as seen in games 3 and 4 of the show matches. Given time to set up its Rifle and Thumper turret, the engineer can easily hold a capture point 1v1 against any other class and can even hold its own long enough in a 2v1 situation long enough to buy time to let reinforcements arrive. Why is it so good at this….. ? Thumper turret. Okay, it’s DPS isn’t the greatest DPs in the world and its attack speed is a little slow, but….. it has a lot of HP and its “special” F-Key ability is “Thump” that causes the next attack of the Thumper Turret to knock back all players – very annoying. This pushes them out the cap point if the turret is placed in a good position, it is yet more CC that the engineer can call upon, and the base damage of the turret, although not super high, stacks up over time causing it to be more “stealth damage” than anything else, and can really catch enemies by surprise. When you combine the Thumper and the Rifle turret together, you end up with some really nice damage output. The F-Key ability “Automatic Fire” on the Rifle turret puts out some very nice DPS and if you combine it with the Thumper so that once the enemy is knocked back and down on the floor trying to stand up, the rifle turret can be in automatic fire mode dealing crazy damage to them. It is a really nice combo between the two turrets and one which is very good to use as a defensive engineer.
Engineer Rifle Turret - Guild Wars 2 (GuildWars2.c0m)
So if you have Rifle and Thumper turrets as two of your utility skills, what do you want as your third…? Easy – Smelling Salts. No questions asked, easily one of the best skills in the game. Even Jonathan Sharp commented on it in his Battle For Khylo blog (
http://www.arena.net/blog/the-battle-of ... arp-on-pvp) saying “Pro tip: Use Smelling Salts to help allies revive faster. You can also use it just before you go down to quickly revive yourself! Self-administered CPR, anyone?”, The ability to fast resurrect allies or indeed drop the salt right before you are downed yourself allowing yourself to instantly get back up is just something no engineer should be without.
Ultimate Skill
Finally, ultimate skill on the Engineer, which is best ? Well for me, no doubt about it, Elixir X. Elixer X randomly gives you an ultimate from other classes. Currently it can give you the Ranger’s quickening Zephyr, the Necromancer’s Plague, the Elementalist’s Tornado or the Thief’s Stealth. It is kinda cool because sometimes you get exactly what you want for the situation you are in, sometimes you get the worst possibly skill for the situation you are in and you NEED to adapt to suit it. Being able to adapt to suit the skill that Elixir X has gave you is a good talent for any engineer to have and really turns the tides of battle.
PvP Showcasing matches vs ArenaNet
So, what are my thoughts on the Gamescom show matches ? Well of course I am a little sad we didn’t win, but being able to come so close to beating developers at their own game given the short time we had to practice. However, we went there to show the GW2 fans how amazing the game looks in PvP and how amazing the PvP itself is, and I think we won that as the majority of the feedback is from players who think the PvP looks amazing. If anyone was unable to play the PvP demo at Gamescom then you should try to get your hands on it at another convention ASAP if you can as it really is amazing and compared to similar types of PvP in other games, it’s just miles ahead of them in levels of fun and gameplay. ArenaNet really have done an epic job with their PvP.