Guild Wars 2

Hi guys, long time engi player of pretty much all the different engi builds. I’ve had a lot of fun this week with all the engi changes, especially since the condi bomb/nade build became so much stronger. Curious though, I’m not seeing any Cele Rifle engis roaming and I haven’t tried it myself because it doesn’t seem nearly as strong as some of the other options. Has anybody had success with it since the traits update? Thanks!

The big issue is the main strength of the old cele rifle builds was the burning from incendiary powder which has moved to the firearms tree.

There’s also a lot of ridiculous dps going on as well.

If you compare cele rifle engi with the other professions, it is significantly weaker now. Several good engi traits (e.g. protection on a critical hit and healing from bombs) got deleted, but those were not the part of the original cele rifle. The biggest problem is that the trait synergy is weaker than before the patch.

Incendiary powder is now GM trait in firearms tree. If you want to equip it, you need to sacrifice defenses.

Vigor on swiftness trait is gone. Grenade kit got nerfed (range, radius on some skills, removal of the poison field). Rifle/EG can no longer be traited for 1200 range. Medkit got butchered. Automated Medical response doesn’t trigger the healing mist (from healing turret).

I am not saying cele rifle is total trash now, but certainly is a lot weaker and several other builds and professions got a lot stronger (mesmer, guardian, elementalist etc). I predict most roaming engineers will go condition Pistol/Pistol with some “nice” runes, like perplexity, which promotes active “skilled” play.

It’s much weaker now with Incendiary Powder being moved out of the build and the loss of 300 power that the build had from 6 points in the top tree. I’m sure it’s still okay, but most likely just very mediocre.