Guild Wars 2 Preview - The Engineer Revealed

If anyone knows, I love Guild Wars and the lore behind it.  Back when Guild Wars was in its prime, I had three accounts and easily put over 3,000 hours (yes, that's a full time job) in a single year.  I was in a very dedicated and hardcore guild.  I even sold an account for $300!

Fast forward about 10 years and here we are.  ANET yet again holds the water just out of our reach so we continue to keep walking forward.  With the second to last class being previewed, we wonder what the last class will be.  I believe it will be the mesmer.  The mesmer is pretty much a "mind control" class.  I loved playing that class.

But this isn't about me or Guild Wars 1, it's about the upcoming class called the "Engineer".  If you want to see a few of the skills, shoot over to the official Guild Wars 2 profession page.

Here's a video of some of the engineer skills in action.  Sorry for the Gamespot video, it seems they got their hands on an exclusive video.  Enjoy

The engineer will have seven kits: the flamethrower kit; the elixir gun kit (which, again, can cause random effects in battle); the medpack kit (which offers healing to engineers themselves and to their teammates); the mine kit (which lets engineers drop stationary mines that can be tripped to enable their various effects); the bomb kit (which lets engineers set explosive bombs); the grenade kit (which lets engineers toss grenade items of various types); and the tool kit, a utility-focused kit with various useful support skills. In addition, engineers can deploy five different kinds of stationary turrets: healing turrets; flame turrets (which deal fire-based damage); net turrets (which fire incapacitating nets); rifle turrets (which deliver single-shot damage); and thumper turrets, which deal damage to all nearby enemies. Turrets are utilized based on a toggle system similar to the way Guild Wars 2's necromancers handle their summoned undead minions, in that only one turret of one type may be equipped for use at any time.

Arena Net's designers suggest that the engineer profession resembles the ritualist profession, which was introduced in the Factions add-on for the original Guild Wars. Like the ritualist, whose ability to summon spirit creatures acted as a powerful pre-battle strategy, the engineer has a clear-cut strength in planning ahead of battles. Specifically, the engineer can swap in the proper kit skills and establish a defensive perimeter with turrets. The engineer reflects Guild Wars 2's stronger emphasis on zoning and controlling space in battle; having a good sense of positional abilities, ranges, and spacing will play a larger role in Guild Wars 2 overall. It will likely make the difference between a mediocre engineer player and an expert engineer who can efficiently lock down an area, especially with proper intel on what sort of enemies will be incoming.

In the meantime, the engineer profession will have various skills and traits that make him useful to a party in other ways, such as the healing turret, which heals nearby allies; the random positive effects of elixirs; a glue-shot pistol skill that immobilizes enemies (along with a net-shot rifle skill); and even utility skills. These utility skills include "slick shoes," which leaves an oil slick behind engineers as they flee; any enemies that step on the oil slick lose their footing and fall head over heels. They can also set themselves up to deal damage by dual-wielding a pistol in either hand or set themselves up as a defensive character by wielding a pistol in one hand and a heavy shield in the other. Engineers with shields can get between their teammates and hostile enemy magics; in some cases, they can absorb and even reflect harmful effects back at their aggressors.

We're told that the engineer profession has already been implemented into the game's internal test version, which is part of Arena Net's philosophy of not revealing any feature or character in its games until that character or feature has been implemented, tested, and proven to work. The staffers of the Seattle-based studio suggest that the team started its character design process with the game's more straightforward professions, such as the elementalist and warrior. It then continued on to more complicated professions that merited more extensive testing, like the thief, the guardian, and now, the engineer. The studio is keeping one last new Guild Wars 2 profession under wraps for the time being, and in the words of one of the designers, "Not surprisingly, it's also kind of complex and definitely plays differently than other professions."