Guild Wars 2 news » Meet the Scrapper: Engineer’s Elite Specialization

Hail, allies, and welcome! Today I’d like to speak with you about the new engineer elite specialization coming with Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™: the scrapper. This mechanical master brings damage and disruption to the profession through a variety of ingenious inventions and electrifying abilities.

The noble engineer has always been a jack-of-all-trades; however, this profession has tended to avoid the brawl. Scrappers are in their element in the thick of the fighting, surviving by anticipation and sheer fortitude. That survivability comes from several places, including traits, new toolbelt skills, utilities and their new weapon…

It’s Hammer Time!

This hammer-hefting force brings fresh energy to the battlefield. A few of the scrapper’s shiny new skills include:

Rocket Charge

Dash forward with a rocket-charged hammer to damage enemies.

With this skill you’ll bound three times to your target, allowing you to rapidly enter the thick of battle. This leap finisher will accumulate the effects of any combo field you pass through for an even more devastating arrival.

Shock Shield

Magnetize your hammer, blocking attacks while striking foes in front of you.

This is one of the skills that will allow you to stay in close combat by anticipating when your enemies are about to strike and nullifying their attacks. While blocking attacks you inflict heavy vulnerability on foes in front of you to tenderize them for your next move.

Thunderclap

Ionize an area, bringing down the power of lightning to stun and damage enemies over its duration.

Raising your hammer, you call down lightning to stun your foes and leave a pulsing lightning field at the point of impact. This can be used as an interrupt and set up for both damage and dazing when coupled with other attacks like Rocket Charge.

Time-Saving Tech: Function Gyro

Advancing Tyrian technology has freed our time to do other things. The scrapper extends this principle to the battlefield; the new class mechanic changes the way you approach (or do not approach!) allies and enemies during critical times. Becoming a scrapper changes your interaction prompt (usually done with the F key) to summon a multipurpose function gyro to rally a targeted downed ally or finish a targeted downed foe at range.

This allows you to keep the battle going and lock down a foe while your gyro gets your ally back into the fight or ends that pesky enemy before their friends can aid them. You’ll also be able to trait the function gyro so that it deploys with stability, further improving its odds of success.

Meet the Miniature Mechs

Having beaten and welded new creations into existence at the workshop, the scrapper can equip a new selection of utilities: gyros. These tiny machines have been crafted with specialised purposes. Each gyro model has a limited amount of fuel before it detonates or is destroyed in a hail of dazing sparks. If traited, they’ll explode in a larger area while stunning foes. Here’s a sample of their abilities:

Purge Gyro

Deploy a purge gyro to remove conditions from nearby allies.

This little fellow will follow you around, cleansing you or zipping to allies with conditions on them for purging every few seconds. This invention helps cover the engineer’s weakness to conditions giving the scrapper a window to either focus on the offensive, enable a swift escape, or both!

Tool Belt Skill—Chemical Field: Generate a noxious cloud of concentrated chemicals.
• The Purge Gyro’s cartridges of cleansing chemicals are incredibly toxic if not diluted. By shattering one at their location the scrapper creates a pulsing field of poison to damage foes and use for combo finishers.

Sneak Gyro

Deploy a sneak gyro to provide stealth to nearby allies.

The scrapper’s elite utility provides a pulsing cloak field around it veiling you and your allies from enemies. The gyro itself remains visible.

Tool Belt Skill—Detection Pulse: Remove stealth from enemies in a large area.
• On a short recharge, this toolbelt skill helps ensure that you are the one getting the drop on foes and not vice versa.

Specialist Supremacy

We’ve mentioned what a few traits will do through this reveal, but to give you a little more information, the specialization traits were built to emphasize three overarching goals: sustainable survivability, concentrated lockdown, and mobile stability.

I’ll leave you with a few traits until the upcoming Points of Interest livestream.

(Minor) Function Gyro: Gain access to the function gyro, which can be used to finish a foe or revive an ally at range.

(Minor) Decisive Renown: Successfully reviving an ally or finishing a foe grants boons to nearby allies.

(Minor) Impact Savant: The duration of your outgoing stuns is increased and the duration of stuns applied to you is decreased.

Shocking Speed: Using a leap or blast finisher in a lightning field applies super speed around you.

Recovery Matrix: Using a healing skill temporarily reduces damage you receive.

Stabilization Core: When a function gyro is activated, you and the function gyro gain stability.

Rapid Regeneration: Rapidly recover health while affected by swiftness or super speed.

Mass Momentum: Gain Power based upon your Toughness. While you are affected by stability, gain stacking might.

Expert Examination: Stunning or dazing a foe applies vulnerability and weakness to them.

Adaptive Armor: Gain stacking toughness when struck. Reduce incoming damage from conditions.

Final Salvo: gyros create a lightning field that grants super speed upon being destroyed. Reduces recharge of gyro skills.

Perfectly Weighted: Hammer skills deal increased damage. Evading an attack grants stability.

There is some strong synergy potential and stacking combinations between a few of these traits, but each trait also stands on its own.

We’re looking forward to further discussing the new scrapper specialization on our livestream this Friday on the official Guild Wars 2 Twitch channel. See you then!