Engineer PvE | Open World Pistol/Shield | Damage Juggernaut FT Build
Table of Contents
Summary
Tanky Flamethrower-based Engineer. Persistent 20+ stacks of Might through Juggernaut, +Might Duration runes, Enhance Performance, and Superior Sigil of Battle. Kit-switching with Med Kit, plus Speedy Kits and Invigorating Speed, for near-permanent Swiftness and Vigor on command.
I. Weapons and Skills
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- 0Swiftness: 5 s
- 0Swiftness: 5 s
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- 0Swiftness: 5 s
- 0Swiftness: 5 s
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- 0Swiftness: 5 s
- 0Swiftness: 5 s
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- Magnetic InversionRelease the magnetic field to push back nearby foes.Damage: 76Knockback: 300Combo Finisher: Blast
- 0Swiftness: 5 s
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- Throw Shield¾Throw your charged shield. Dazes foes it hits on the way out and back.Daze: 1 sDamage: 151Combo Finisher: ProjectileRange: 900
- 0Swiftness: 5 s
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- 0Swiftness: 5 s
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- 0Swiftness: 5 s
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- Smoke Screen 30Overcharge your flame turret, releasing a smoke screen that blinds nearby foes.Blind per pulse: 2 sDuration: 5Radius: 450Combo Field: Smoke
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- 0Swiftness: 5 s
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- Overcharge Supply CrateOvercharge supply crate's turrets.
Weapon and Skill Details
WEAPON SELECTION
Any of the three weapon combinations will work, and each has its merits.
Rifle offers immobilization and close-range burst, which synergizes well with the FT's strengths. It also offers you a little more reach (1200 vs. 900) when you can't get in close, but your longer-range damage is extremely poor.
P/P offers Blowtorch for an additional close-range burn, along with the multi-target poison and confusion of Poison Dart Volley and Static Shock, both of which offer situational utility and good multitarget spike damage.
P/S is my preference, as it offers multi-target poison and confusion, plus and extra Blast Finisher through Magnetic Inversion, which assists in Might stacking when synergized with the FT skill Napalm (a Fire field), plus extra CC through knockback, stun, block, and daze.
Choose the weapon that works for you and your particular playstyle. Either P/P or P/S will allow you to slot a Superior Sigil of Bloodlust for some extra Power, but the Rifle will offer slightly better base damage. It's a toss-up in my opinion.
UTILITIES
Your Healing skill will always be Med Kit. Switching to Med Kit will be your primary method of triggering Speedy Kits, Invigorating Speed, and Enhance Performance for Might, Swiftness, and Vigor. You can also incorporate Drop Stimulant into your kit-switching rotation for Fury and even more Swiftness and Vigor, without increasing the length of the switch (due to the one-second internal cooldown on kit-switching).
For Utilities, you always want Flamethrower in the 7 slot (this makes kit-switching easier, as discussed below).
I strongly recommend you take Rocket Boots as one of your two remaining utilities. It offers an effective, short-cooldown Blast finisher to easily trip Napalm's Fire Field for combo Area Might (note that in order to trigger the combo, you need not be standing in your Fire field when you initiate Rocket Boots-- you simply need to fly through it). Its toolbelt skill offers a short-cooldown, easy-to-use single-target burn. It's also a very handy mobility and escape skill.
The final Utility skill is a roamer; I slot several different skills there, depending on the situation.
Most frequently, you'll want to use Elixir Gun. It offers tremendous utility and group support, and is empowered by most of your Flamethrower-specific traits, so you might as well use it. It will also be your primary weapon in Aquatic combat, where the Flamethrower is unavailable. Elixir Gun's #5 skill, Elixir Bomb, is a powerful AoE heal, regeneration, and condition removal tool, and is worth using anytime more than one friendly unit is in the area. Its toolbelt skill, Regenerating Mist, offers point blank AoE regeneration, is also worth having, as HP recovery is one of the weaker points in this build.
Flame Turret is good for solo PvE against small groups of mobs, as it will usually keep them burning reliably throughout an engagement, and offers a ground-targeted AoE burn in its Toolbelt skill, Throw Napalm. After deployment, it also offers you a Combo Field: Smoke through its chain skill, Smoke Screen. This is situationally useful to trigger Area Stealth with one of your Blast finishers-- not something you'll do very frequently, but a pretty cool trick when the group gets in over its head. It's worth noting that Engineer is the only class other than Thief who can reliably pull this Area Stealth combo off solo, and the Thief has to be wielding a Shortbow to do it.
Rocket Turret is Flame Turret's longer-range, higher damage older brother-- it still offers a respectable burning rate, but does more direct damage-- thought its toolbelt skill is lackluster at best.
Throw Mine offers you TWO short-cooldown blast finishers, through both its primary and toolbelt skills-- and is particularly useful underwater, where many skills-- including Flame Turret-- are unavailable.
You'll also want to slot Elixir R (for AoE revive, particularly in boss fights), Elixir S (individual and AoE panic button), Elixir C (condition removal), and Utility Googles (10x vulnerability on demand, stunbreaker and blindness immunity) in certain situations. This adaptability is part of the fun of playing an Engineer, so go with your gut and your preferences.
II. Traits
Explosives
Firearms
Inventions
Alchemy
Tools
Trait Details
Allocation is 20/20/0/20/10. No need to invest in a Grandmaster Skill Manual here.
Key traits to empower Flamethrower are Fireforged Trigger, Deadly Mixture, and Juggernaut.
Key traits for kit-switching are Speedy Kits (perma-Swiftness), Invigorating Speed (perma-Vigor), and Enhance Performance (easy Might stacks, especially when combined with Superior Sigil of battle for 6(!) stacks of Might every five or six seconds, on top of Juggernaut's static bonus Might (which should stack to 9 passively with the runes illustrated below), and Fire Field + Blast Finisher for 3 stacks of Area Might per combo application.
For your Adept explosives trait, you can choose between Incendiary Powder (passive burning on critical) or Empowering Adrenaline (flat 5% damage bonus when Endurance is not full). Given that this is a tanky build, with almost no Precision or %Critical Damage, your critical rate will be low-- but Flame Jet, your primary attack skill, hits very frequently-- roughly 5 times per second-- so you should be able to maintain good uptime on Incendiary Powder anyway. Note that your critical rate will also be boosted intermittently by Target the Weak, a minor Firearms trait, and by Fury from Drop Stimulant, which helps on this count.
Skill progression should probably be as follows:
20: 0/10/0/0/0 (Fireforged Trigger for faster cooldown on Flame Blast)
30: 0/10/0/0/10 (Speedy Kits for mobility, which is important to quick leveling, between 30 and 40, allocate ppoints as you prefer-- you'll redistribute them at 40)
40: 0/10/0/20/0 (Deadly Mixture for flat 15% damage increase with Flamethrower)
50: 0/20/0/20/0 (With Deadly Mixture and Juggernaut, you now have the core skills of the build)
60: 0/20/0/20/10
70: 10/20/0/20/10
80: 20/20/0/20/10
III. Stat Specifics & Effects
Primary Stats
- Health 24132 (+8210)
- Vitality 1737 (+821)
- Armor 2531 (+551)
- Toughness 1467 (+551)
- Attack 3338 (+1422)
- Power 2288 (+1372)
- Critical Hit 10% (+10%)
- Precision 1116 (+200)
Secondary Stats
- Agony Resistance 45 (+45)
- Boon Duration 20% (+20%)
- Condition Damage 200 (+200)
- Condition Duration 20% (+20%)
- Critical Damage 6% (+6%)
- Damage 1050 (+5%)
- Defense 1064 (+0)
- Experience from Kills 20% (+20%)
- Ferocity 100 (+100)
- Might Duration 30% (+30%)
- Tool Belt Recharge Rate 10% (+10%)
Boons
Conditions
Control
Fields & Finishers
Stat and Effect Details
Equipment is Soldier's (Power, Toughness, Vitality) across the board. Precision and Critical Damage are ignored completely-- this is a pure power build. Critical Rate is important only to the extent is procs your passive Bleeding and Burning through the traits Sharpshooter and Incendiary Power, respectively.
If you want a bit more Vitality at the expense of some Power, you can also use Sentinel's equipment. Knight's equipment will offer you somewhat more Toughness and Precision for a better Critical Rate, but you'll have a comparatively low %Critical Damage, and much less Vitality. This leads to a more glass-cannon build, with somewhat similar damage-- The lost Power largely cancels out any gain in damage due to increase critical rate-- but less room for error, and inevitably lower survivability, especially is boss encounters, dungeons, and fractals. Your low HP will also make you particularly susceptible to conditions and, in Fractals, Agony.
You can try full Berserker's for more DPS, but at the expense of being VERY fragile. As the Flamethrower is inherently a close-range weapon, this makes survivability difficult, even in solo PvE. I don't recommend it.
The beauty of this build is that its easy Might-stacking makes it possible to output good AoE damage while maintaining excellent survivability. Utility and adaptability is high, and your near-permanent Swiftness and Vigor make mobility a breeze.
Weaknesses of the build include condition removal (can be remedied by slotting either Elixir Gun or Elixir C), vulnerability to crowd control, pretty poor healing power (your primary heal will grant you about 20% of your very high maximum HP) and its tendency to grab aggro from everything in the room (high AoE damage, high toughness= all the mobs want to EAT your FACE).
IV. Food, Armor, Trinkets & Upgrade Items
Food Nourishment
Power: 100
Vitality: 70
Experience from Kills: 10%
- (30min)
- Power: 100
- Vitality: 70
- Experience from Kills: 10%
Utility Nourishment
Gain power equal to 6% of your toughness
Gain power equal to 4% of your vitality
Experience from Kills: 10%
- (30min)
- Gain power equal to 6% of your toughness
- Gain power equal to 4% of your vitality
- Experience from Kills: 10%
Armor & Runes
- Defense: 97
- Power: 25
- Might Duration: 10%
- Power: 50
- 25% chance when struck to gain might for 10 seconds. (Cooldown: 5 seconds)
- Power: 100
- +20% Might Duration; -20% Condition Duration applied to you.
- Defense: 97
- Power: 25
- Might Duration: 10%
- Power: 50
- 25% chance when struck to gain might for 10 seconds. (Cooldown: 5 seconds)
- Power: 100
- +20% Might Duration; -20% Condition Duration applied to you.
- Defense: 338
- Power: 25
- Might Duration: 10%
- Power: 50
- +15% Might Duration; 25% chance when struck to gain might for 10 seconds. (Cooldown: 5 seconds)
- Power: 100
- +20% Might Duration; +5% damage while under the effects of might.
- Defense: 157
- Power: 25
- Might Duration: 10%
- Power: 50
- +15% Might Duration; 25% chance when struck to gain might for 10 seconds. (Cooldown: 5 seconds)
- Power: 100
- +20% Might Duration; +5% damage while under the effects of might.
- Defense: 218
- Power: 25
- Might Duration: 10%
- Power: 50
- 25% chance when struck to gain might for 10 seconds. (Cooldown: 5 seconds)
- Power: 100
- +20% Burning Duration; when struck below 80% health, you gain a fire aura for 5 seconds. (Cooldown: 60 seconds)
- Defense: 157
- Power: 25
- Might Duration: 10%
- Power: 50
- 25% chance when struck to gain might for 10 seconds. (Cooldown: 5 seconds)
- Power: 100
- +20% Burning Duration; when struck below 80% health, you gain a fire aura for 5 seconds. (Cooldown: 60 seconds)
Armor Stat Totals
- Defense 1064
- Power 75
- Might Duration 30%
Rune Bonuses
Superior Rune of Hoelbrak- Power: 25
- Might Duration: 10%
- Power: 25
- Might Duration: 10%
- Power: 25
- Might Duration: 10%
Accessories & Jewels
- Power: 5
- Agony Resistance: 5
- Power: 5
- Agony Resistance: 5
- Power: 5
- Agony Resistance: 5
- Power: 5
- Agony Resistance: 5
- Power: 5
- Agony Resistance: 5
- Power: 5
- Agony Resistance: 5
Accessory Totals
- Power:722
- Toughness:466
- Vitality:466
- Agony Resistance:45
Weapon Set Sigils
- Weapon Strength: 876-1029
- Power: 120
- Toughness: 85
- Vitality: 85
- Weapon Strength: 806-909
- Power: 120
- Toughness: 85
- Vitality: 85
Weapon Defense: 61
Weapon Set I
Sigil of Superior BloodlustYou gain +10 power each time you kill a foe. (max 25 stacks and ends on down or weapon change)
Sigil of Superior BattleYou gain 2 stacks of might for 20s when you swap to this weapon while in combat.
- Weapon Strength: 905-1000
- Power: 120
- Toughness: 85
- Vitality: 85
Water Weapon I
Sigil of Superior Force+5% damage.
Upgrade Item Details
Standard Runes are 2x Hoelbrak, 2x Strength, and 2x Fire for 60% additional Might duration.
If you play frequently in groups, consider substituting a pair of Superior Runes of the Traveler and a pair of Superior Runes of Water. You will sacrifice about 10% of your overall Might duration for 30% more Boon Duration, which will benefit Swiftness, Vigor, Fury, and any and all other boons provided by other players.
Trinkets are Soldier stats across the board, same as Armor and Weapons.
Given your high Vitality and Toughness, Sharpening Stones are a no-brainer as your Utility Nourishment. For Food, you can use anything that adds Might on kill or on critical, anything that adds Power, or, if you're having trouble staying healed, Life Stealing grub. Use your discretion.
V. Basic Gameplay
Main Skill Rotation
Your basic combat rotation. Open with Flame Blast and Detonate for AoE direct damage. Then apply Rocket Kick, Incendiary Rounds, Throw Napalm, drop a Flame Turret, or any other Burning effect, for a passive 10% increase in Flame Jet damage. Then apply Flame Jet, while circle-strafing, backpedaling, or evading your enemy in any other way you see fit. By the time Flame Jet finishes channeling, you should be ready to Flame Blast again. Hit Air Blast to push your opponents back for easier Flame Blast detonation timing, then let it rip. If anything is still alive, continue with Flame Jet, or repeat.
The Flamethrower has some non-obvious mechanics you should master to use it most effectively.
(1) Flame Blast-- For maximum damage, you want to detonate your Flame Blast after it has passed through your target, i.e. immediately behind the target, so they take both direct damage from the bolt and blast damage from Detonate. This is your heaviest-hitting direct damage skill, and should be used on cooldown, i.e., as often as possible.
(2) Flame Jet-- People often find Flame Jet difficult to aim effectively. This is because it uses a very counter-intuitive targeting mechanism. When your character is standing still, Flame Jet will automatically spray in a cone centered on your current target. If your character is moving, however, Flame Jet sprays in a cone directly in front of your character. The graphic for the flame will continue to track your target, but this isn't where the damage is happening-- when you are in motion, it's a static cone directly in front of you. Use this to your advantage when strafing-- don't even bother targeting your enemies, just run up and manually trip Flame Jet, then circle them while keeping your target(s) centered directly in front of your character. This "cleave"-style targeting allows you to control where your damage is focused on the fly, and is particularly useful in large world boss battles where the confusion of the crown (and often, lag) make it difficult to effectively target.
(3) Crowd Control-- Use Smoke Screen, your Flamethrower's #5 skill, for a quick and effective AoE Blind when you get surrounded. Air Blast is your most frequently available CC, for AoE knockback, and as stated above, is best used to line up your shot for Flame Blast so you have can time it properly. Finally, Supply Drop, your elite skill of choice, is a great tide-turner in tough miniboss battles or when you accidentally overpull. It provides a 2-second Stun on impact, plus a Flame Turret for area burning, a Net Turret for immobilization, and a Thumper Turret for close AoE damage and cripple, along with dropping a number of small health packs that heal you when you run over them.
Kit-Switching
This is your primary Kit-Switch rotation. It takes roughly 1.2 seconds to complete, and you will want to do so every 5-6 seconds to proc Swiftness, Vigor, and Might (3 stacks anytime, 6 stacks in combat). Drop Stimulant is only available every 20 seconds, but should be aprt of your regular rotation so that you can take advantage of it when available. This costs nothing, as there is a 1-second internal cooldown between switching into and out of Med Kit. If you slot the skills as bove, you should be able to kit the keys in the following order: 6 > 5 > Pause > 6 > 7.
One might ask: why hit 6 again after Drop Stimulant? Isn't it easier to switch directly to Flamethrower? The reason: Superior Sigil of Battle. the Sigil will not proc upon switching from one kit directly to another-- you need to drop out of your kits to your primary weapons, at least momentarily, to get those extra 3 stacks of Might.
Fire-Field Combo (for Area Might)
Lay down Napalm, then target your Rocket boots so that your path flies through your wall of fire. Enjoy 3 stacks of Might for yourself and your friends.
You can proc this combo with any Blast finisher, including most Turret skills 'Detonate Turret" function, Throw Mine, of the Shield's Magnetic Inversion.