Guild Wars 2

I am fan of pistol builds in this game my main is a P/D Thief and I am looking to make an engi, but I would like to have a clear idea before I start. I don’t really have enough experience with engi to start making one on my own. Any advice referring to P/P is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Pistols really shine with a condition damage build. With power, not so much.

You can do P/P power but going 30 firearms for coated bullets is a must.

When you get 4-5 enemies tightly grouped you can do massive damage in a power build since the 1 skill will pierce and explode for each target. So to a small group you can do 4-5x your normal damage.

Which with crits can be 4.5-5.5k per skill. Add in quickness and it’s monstrous

But its not easy to line it up, and you need lots of enemies tightly grouped to make it work, and outside of the 1 skill you really don’t have many other hard hitting abilities. You can use grenade kit / tool kit to make up for that, but after running it extensively I have found that it’s really niche like a lot of engi builds.

In certain dungeons, solo pve, and zergy keep defenses it’s great. But for 1v1 / small group pvp, bosses with adds, tpvp / spvp it’s really lack luster.

I run a 0 30 0 10 30 rifle crit build and I swap in pistols when I know I am heading into an area I can use them.

Otherwise the damage is fairly low for power builds.

They are nothing like Thief pistols. Just like how rifle is nothing like Warrior rifle.

Engineer weapons are very unique in their roles.

I don’t recommend coated bullets after much practice, reviewing the coeffs, and really giving other builds a shot.

Coated bullets only effects 2 skills. pistol 1 and pistol 2.
Venom shot becomes piercing. however, due to the spread of it, even 2 enemies lined up, you will hit the first target 5 times, and the second target 2 times. Same goes with any amount of a pack. only 1 or 2 of its hits will actually hit any particular target.

Pistol 1. units have collision, and you will pretty much NEVER in any game situation get more then 3 units close enough together to have more then 3 hit 1 target.
So best case scenario is the each target hit hits 3 times. The base coeff is .324.
grenade 1 for reference is .478 each. and thus innately .926. so coated bullets in BEST case scenario is getting up to equal with grenade 1 all the time. Most of the time, its not even. simply put, you are better off putting those trait points elsewhere. spending those extra 10 points on buffing what is without question the worst weapon skill in the game, makes no sense.
p1 is terrible, terrible terrible.
You most certainly do NOT get 4.5-5.5k crits on it. You 600 crits on it with a power build. x3 up to 2k total per target.

.324 scaling with 2s bleed.
vs Elixir gun 1 is .380 scaling with 4s bleed.

Mathematically, yeah, even pistols scale better with power then cond.
Zerks, knights or rabid.

The +range on pistols has little use, as you need to be fairly close to make them effective. blowtorch, venom are very much melee abilities. Glue shot is best used to keep targets IN melee, not out.

I would go 20 firearms (cdr), 30 alch (hgh, 409). and you can choose where to place the rest. inc powder and +duration/power. static discharge in tools, etc.

p/p, elixir H, elixir gun, elixir b(or slick shoes), elixir R, supply drop.

Scaling per hit:

p1 .324
p2 .37
p3 .37
p4 .305

Karast.1927:

You can do P/P power but going 30 firearms for coated bullets is a must.

When you get 4-5 enemies tightly grouped you can do massive damage in a power build since the 1 skill will pierce and explode for each target. So to a small group you can do 4-5x your normal damage.

Which with crits can be 4.5-5.5k per skill. Add in quickness and it’s monstrous

But its not easy to line it up, and you need lots of enemies tightly grouped to make it work, and outside of the 1 skill you really don’t have many other hard hitting abilities. You can use grenade kit / tool kit to make up for that, but after running it extensively I have found that it’s really niche like a lot of engi builds.

In certain dungeons, solo pve, and zergy keep defenses it’s great. But for 1v1 / small group pvp, bosses with adds, tpvp / spvp it’s really lack luster.

I run a 0 30 0 10 30 rifle crit build and I swap in pistols when I know I am heading into an area I can use them.

Otherwise the damage is fairly low for power builds.

They are nothing like Thief pistols. Just like how rifle is nothing like Warrior rifle.

Engineer weapons are very unique in their roles.

I see ty for the info. Btw I play my thief P/D pure condition no power. With engi I was looking for a change of pace maybe quicker kills since thief when played that way is all about control not so much burst dps.

P/P’s don’t scale well with power.
Go rifle.

EDIT:
Nevermind don’t go rifle if you don’t want to, just saying… Rifle scales better with power.

rifle doesn’t really scale much better with power. Grenades is about the only thing thats good for a power build.

Esrever.8613:

rifle doesn’t really scale much better with power. Grenades is about the only thing thats good for a power build.

Bombs

I have yet to find a way to use bombs. But then again I haven’t been trying.

Bombs are pretty easy to use. What is your problem with them? You just need to think ahead ~2 seconds to use them effectively.

In a mix of berzerkers / Valkyrie exotic gear I crit 900-1100 on pistol 1. That is with vuln stacking + might.

So ~25% from vuln makes the difference.

It is not hard to get 3-4 enemies hit with the pierce and explosion in pve, or tightly grouped players in WvW. Having guardians use the great sword pull helps a lot.

But even if you only 3 enemies overlap on the damage you still out due the damage from grenade kit due to the faster attack speed, attack arc, and travel time.

But as I said it is very niche in it’s usage. There are places where you can get a lot out of the setup but it is by far subpar to grenades which can pretty much be used in any situation to great effect.