Guild Wars 2

Anyone ever played around with the fact that Engineer can have an obscene number of blinds as well as some access to aegis … more if you factor in how well Engineer does with on-heal and on-weapon-swap?

Sources of Blind

• Weapon – Pistol – Static Shot (15s cd)
• Weapon – Rifle – Go for the Eyes (trait, 10s ICD, 33% chance on-crit)
• Utility – Grenade Kit – Flash Grenade (10s cd)
• Utility – Bomb Kit – Smoke Bomb (25s cd)
• Utility – Flamethrower – Smoke Vent (20s cd)
• Utility – Flame Turret – Smoke Screen (25s cd on turret, 30s cd on blind)
• Trait – Acidic Coating (10s ICD, 50% when melee’d)
• Trait – Auto-defense Bomb Dispenser (30s ICD, smoke bomb when CC’d)
• Sigil – Mischief (9s ICD, on weapon-swap)
• Rune – Flock (bird blinds)

Sources of Aegis:

• Trait – Armor Mods (15s ICD, when hit)
• Utility – Throw Mine – Gadgeteer (trait, 14.5 to 18s cd)
• Rune – Defender (10s ICD on-heal)

Combine this with Speedy Kits and Invigorating Speed giving you Vigor for more dodges rolls … and you’re not getting hit much :-)

If using pistol with shield … just lol.

Most of these are on small enough cooldowns that you can rotate them pretty well.

Maybe something along the lines of this with Rabid or Celestial:

• http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQJAqelUUpdrlYxWLseNCbBN6x8mtIyNelPGhAA-TZQPAAw+DAA

You could drop 2 points from Alchemy if you didn’t want the Vigor or Blind versus Melee if you wanted to trait more for nades. Or you could simply swap one of those traits out for some added regen from kits.

Just my latest crazy thoughts now put to text.

I too have done/noticed this.

Also, we can dish out a huge number (and duration) of cripples. I often run my Static Discharge build with Pizza – while selecting the Sitting Duck trait for 3 seconds immobilize with rifle net/glue bomb and (I think) 12-ish seconds of cripple and 5 stacks of Vuln. for 12 seconds. Throw wrench stack more cripple and vuln’s.

In PVE this cripple/immobilize can CC a ridiculously large number of NPC.

The only weakness of blind and cripple in WvW is that 17 seconds of cripple can easily be wiped by one condi clear.

Go for the Eyes also has blind on crit, but investing 4 in firearms hurts.

The reason I’m not as big of a fan of Go for the Eyes is that it is random. I prefer a bit more control over when I use things.

• Example: Warrior coming at you with an a Burst Skill … on-demand blind will make it miss … can’t reliably do that with random blind.
• Example: Mesmer about to cast a Phantasm … on-demand blind makes the phantasm not even be summoned and go on full cooldown … can’t reliably do that with random blind

Now, if going a power build, I’d probably swap to having it since a power build is likely going to use Rifle (why would it use pistol, lol).

Otherwise, Pistol + Shield provides some nice utility, some extra condition pressure, and some extra defense (not only do I use blind and aegis but I block and refect! wha ha ha!).