Guild Wars 2

After staying up late into the night, editing and gaming, here’s my Engineer sPvP montage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCQGM_VGZU4&feature=plcp

This is my first ‘movie’ for GW2. I do use the Grenadier build in this video as I truly believe it’s the best build Engineers can have at the moment.

With its insane condition damage, its good level of control with the slick shoes chained with supply drop, and its above average survivability, this Grenadier build proved to be extremely useful for me during this video. I am struggling to find flaws with the build apart from movement.

You’ll see I pull of a 2v1 a couple of times. Being able to do that in sPvP is nearly impossible, but with this build there are ways you can do it and still survive.

I hope you enjoy the video!

Replied in the sPvP section, just supporting it here.

Nice video! I enjoyed it allot. The play-style you use with kiting and tossing at a close to medium range is very similar to what I do as well. I am still trying to get the fine points of elixir “R” down though.

Do you focus more on condition damage or go for more of a power build?

BakBakaa.2453:

I am still trying to get the fine points of elixir “R” down though.

Do you focus more on condition damage or go for more of a power build?

The tool belt ability for Elixir R is a pulsing AOE revive that pulses every 2.5 seconds to give a downed player a portion of health. I don’t know whether it is meant to happen but as I was playing around with the Elixir R I realised that if you throw it down right before you go down, and you go down in the radius, it will revive you too. It’s awesome :p

I focus on condition damage with this particular build. I could go power but I think condition damage is more reliable, as it gives me more time to kite and allows more room for movement in my opinion.

Optics.3289:

BakBakaa.2453:

I am still trying to get the fine points of elixir “R” down though.

Do you focus more on condition damage or go for more of a power build?

The tool belt ability for Elixir R is a pulsing AOE revive that pulses every 2.5 seconds to give a downed player a portion of health. I don’t know whether it is meant to happen but as I was playing around with the Elixir R I realized that if you throw it down right before you go down, and you go down in the radius, it will revive you too. It’s awesome :p

I focus on condition damage with this particular build. I could go power but I think condition damage is more reliable, as it gives me more time to kite and allows more room for movement in my opinion.

Oh, I see. Whenever I use elixir R I seem to either always miss the timing and stay alive longer than I thought I would or get stomped before I can get revived by it. I will keep trying it out and see if I can master it :P

I too enjoyed the condition damage. Seems like allot of people hate it but with a bit of practice you can blind, chill, bleed, poison, a target in a few seconds. With close to 1500 condition damage this eats their health pretty quickly plus provides aoe for pesky invisibility and Mesmer clones.

I noticed that you run with slick shoes on your bar. Do you find that knock down the most useful? Over something with a strong offensive skill like ram? Any time I run condition builds on my Engi I miss the rifle cc and feel like I need a knock back to compensate.

I think the toolbelt of elixir R works as intended, I’ve seen many mentions of it in builds as a self rezz.

As long as you die before the 6 second duration is over, you’re supposed to benefit from it too I guess

If running with grenades I would much prefer any knock DOWN over a knock BACK myself.
Just to be able to throw grenades on them the next second.

The personal battering ram is great but I wouldn’t use that for grenades myself.

It also seems Optics is using p/p so you get glue shot instead of the riffle net at least.
Not speaking for him, just saying it makes sense to me for these reasons.

Yeah Kimbald is correct. For both accuracy and control, the knock down which is practically a stun is more useful than a knock back. The shoes give us the opportunity to knock people down twice in a row, and with double speed we have a good gap closer or a good escape route. The knock down allows us to get a whole bunch of conditions on them at once and since our Blowtorch has to be in basically melee range, knocking them down is a perfect opportunity to get the damage from blowtorch out.
You’d be surprised how much damage you do in such a short amount of time with this build. You don’t need the full defensive capabilities from the rifle as much as you need the mobile and big condition damage from the p/p.

Great video. I’ll have to try out slick shoes with my grenadier build. The other obvious benefit to using grenades is super OP underwater combat and amazing WvW capabilities.

I do feel that for your build specifically, cleansing formula seems wasted because the only elixir you really have is your heal. Elixir R isn’t one you would use to cleanse off conditions.

Also, regen at 25% health is mostly useless. Regen ticks are very small, and at 25% health you’re almost dead. It would be better to spend those 10 extra points to get Automated response (immune to conditions below 25% health)

some good stuff here. was arguing a grenade build in other thread for spvp too.

I was saying rifle still, but the blind/confuse is very good.. I would probably use slick shoes as well, which I dont use in wvw/pve.

Grenade builds can really take advantage of working with an ally as well. the ability to just turn up the damage, the moment someone is preoccupied can’t be overlooked.

Not sure on condition damage though, even with a p/p. You say it leaves more room for kiting, but you deal more damage instantly, then condition damage deals over 10s with power/crit.
Condition damage just doesn’t scale well at all. you had to land that first hit to apply the condition damage as well.

Your grenade barrage does like 1300. A power/crit one does like 4-5k.

Venom shot.
Rabid
153x 5- 765 (41% crit, 170% damage crits)
and 189/s for 12s. 2376

vs
zerkers
317×5 1585 (41% crit, 190% damage)
97×12= 1164

1400 vs 3k venom direct attacks average. blowtorch, 800 vs 1800
Swaping power and condition damage 1 to1, your direct damage increases more.
And that is without including crit.
And assuming the condition damage isn’t removed. I can’t imagine any situation where 3k + 1.1k isnt better then 1.4k+ 2.3. The first is more damage, and its more bursty as well.

Its not like these moves stop dealing condition damage as well. and more importantly, you are still getting the blind, the anti-heal.

Granted, you may want knights or valk instead of zerker.

I went power for my nade engi too, I feel that conditions from nades aren’t applied enough to justify going condition, I mean what do you have, couple stacks of bleed on cooldown and bleed and burn proc from traits.
However each grenades gives vulnerability, even those from barage, so you can easily get crazy stacks of vulnerability which will further help your power damage.