Guild Wars 2 Engineer class unveiled

The penultimate Guild Wars 2 character class to be announced is the crafty Engineer, unveiled today. The canny ranged fighter will bring firearms, turrets, explosives, flamethrowers, and other gadgets to ArenaNet's subscription-free MMORPG.

The Engineer will be able to deploy a variety of different turrets, including plain old rifle turrets, AoE turrets and healing turrets. 'Backpack kits' will also offer a similar amount of variety, with different kits granting abilities with grenades, bombs, mines, meds and more. A bomb kit, for example would give the Engineer smoke, concussion, and fire bombs. It's a damage/support class, then.

They'll also get 'weapon kits,' replacing their weapon with something new and shiny. "For example, the flamethrower kit creates a short-range AOE weapon the engineer can use to overwhelm foes," ArenaNet says. "The flamethrower has skills like Immolate to damage nearby enemies, Air Blast to defend from ranged attacks, and Backdraft to suck enemies into range of the weapon's powerful attacks."

The Engineer will join the Elementalist, Warrior, Ranger, Necromancer, Guardian, and Thief professions in Guild Wars 2. There's still one more to be revealed.

While publisher NCSoft has said that Guild Wars 2 will enter beta testing in the second half of this year, and hinted at a 2012 launch, "when it's done" is still the most specific release date anyone will confirm.