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Who doesn't like shooting people in the face with a
flamethrower? |
Do you like explosions and / or burning things? Then you may want to consider rolling an engineer in Guild Wars 2. Also, seek professional help because that's not normal. Recently I created a character in this class, and it's been one hell of a good time, and much a nice change of pace from my ranger. In fact, this character may wind up being the first I take to level cap in the game. I'm enjoying my time with him just that much.
So what made me decide to change things up, and shelve my trusty ranger? Really it was just a want for more excitement. The ranger is an amazing class for soloing stuff in PvE, but I was getting kind of bored sending my bear in to tank baddies, and then just tearing everything apart from afar. It was brutally efficient, but there was a complete lack of zazz unless I managed to pull four or five mobs at a time. With that, I got to looking through the classes once again, and the engineer really stood out. You can lob grenades, set up turrets, and shoot people in the face with a flamethrower. How could it not be fun?
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| There are some really nice views in this game |
When first starting out, you don't have access to the grenades, flamethrowers, and such. These are unlocked by spending skill points, but I pretty much made a beeline for the flamethrower because I just wanted to torch everything in my path in the least subtle way possible. Turrets are also pretty useful, as they add a little extra firepower (or a lot if you get something like the rocket launcher), and there's even a thumper turret which can act as a tank with enemies attacking it instead of you. I'm also starting to realize with this class that players need to be on the ball by swapping between the flamethrower and their regular weapons set. I'm going with a rifle for this, as it adds a lot of crowd control with its knock back attack, and nets for rooting enemies.
Playing as an asura engineer, the story has been reasonably decent for my character. I named him Reginald Barklay, and despite his namesake being one of the most timid and least confident engineers in Star Fleet (that I'm aware of anyway), this guy is anything but. He's supremely confident in his abilities, and maybe a little too curious for his own good. He even made a device that allows people to see glimpses into possible futures (emphasis on "possible" which usually translates into worryingly dangerous alternate realities). The amount of trouble that he's gotten himself into so far has been amusing, but now he's working on the questline that will determine which of the three major factions in Tyria that he will join. I've opted for the Vigil just because I like the cut of Crusader Slep's gib. It was tempting to team up with the Priory because they're largely academics, but I already did that on my ranger, so I wanted to do something different with this guy.
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| Skritt sure collect a lot of junk |
Having mostly played in the human and norn areas of the game, it was quite a contrast to run around in the asura areas of the game map. Humans really like their rolling meadows and fields. Norn live way up on snowy mountains. However, asura are in a jungle for the most part with lots of trees, plant life, and the occasional lake or river tossed in for variety. It's actually somewhat similar to the sylvari areas of the game with all the plants everywhere (though there are far more plants in the sylvari area, and they're suspiciously magical-looking). Oddly enough, after a time I found myself losing interest in these jungles, and decided to hoof it to the human areas of the game, then later to the norn zones. I just like those areas better, especially the snow swept mountains (there's something about cold, dark environments that I find very appealing). It's just too bad that Rata Sum is so unintuitive to find on the game map, as I couldn't figure out where it was, and wound up just running all the way to Divinity's Reach. I felt a bit derpy when I finally did locate asura capital, but at least the run helped me unlock a bunch of waypoints that will allow me to warp to a several more regions in Tyria should I feel the need.
It's not just my exploring and questing that's been a bit all over the place, so has my crafting. The game allows players to level all of the disciplines up to their maximum, unlike others where one is forced to choose a handful of them to focus on, and start rolling alts if they want to try their hand at other crafts. I've stayed fairly focused with my ranger, but on my engineer I've been dipping his fingers in all sorts of stuff. He's reasonably proficient as a huntsman (making guns, torches, bows, war horns, etc), a leatherworker (leather armor gooooo!), and is starting to get decent at jewel crafting. With the mountains of supplies laying around in my characters' shared bank, I may just get him started on cooking too. That's the problem with having so many options with crafting: I feel compelled to do all of them (gotta fill up all the gauges!). There's a lot more to say about crafting in Guild Wars 2, but I'll save that for another post focused entirely on that subject.
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| The Southwest of Tyria has a lot of jungles |
Reginald has just hit level 31, and I'm still having a lot of fun with him. Pretty soon he'll be venturing into new lands that I've never seen before, so I'm pretty excited about that. Exploration plays a big part in this game with all of the waypoints, points of interest, skill challenges, and vistas to find, so it'll be nice to go into zones that I've never seen before. I'll talk about those adventures next time in Travelling Around Tryia.
I'm slowly getting with the times, and got myself a Twitter thingie!
