Guild Wars 2

I will mostly do dungeons and PvE with some WvW… And now I am buying my first exotic armor set for this Engineer.

I’m afraid of buying the wrong set and then regretting it later, so what prefix has the most viable builds available for it?

I’ve heard pow/prec/crit for grenades and bombs and such… But I’ve also heard Carrion is good for pistols and other condition damage builds. I can have two sets eventually ,but right now I want ONE set with a lot of options available for it. Help?

:( I shouldn’t make topics in the dead hours…

Really depends on what build you want, not the other way around.

If you’re going to be doing mostly dungeons and other group content, though, I’d recommend something with direct damage like Berserker.

My best advice, however, is to get a desired build first. Once you have it, you’ll know what kind of gear you’re looking for. Just run with greens and yellows until then.

Jigain.8231:

Really depends on what build you want, not the other way around.

If you’re going to be doing mostly dungeons and other group content, though, I’d recommend something with direct damage like Berserker.

My best advice, however, is to get a desired build first. Once you have it, you’ll know what kind of gear you’re looking for. Just run with greens and yellows until then.

Maybe I wasn’t very clear, but I was kind of hoping to get some build help as well. I’m really not sure what kind of builds are available in the first place. I am looking over the forum, but I can’t really find anything solid.

Is there a resource available that has a list of currently viable dungeon/pve builds? Even if it’s a more template-like build that allows me to play with it and tweak it to my liking. Thanks!

Though with grenades and such, berserker seems to be the best… Though I like P/P ankitten ot sure if that’s better with condition damage or not, hmm…

P/P is a condition-heavy setup (with poison, bleed and burning), so condition damage and condition duration would be more useful there than power or precision.

Grenades can go either way, really. With some creative use of trait points, you can have a very effective bleed- and vulnerability-applying grenade build. Add extra poison damage as well as chill and blind for control, and you’ve got a very solid build to stack condition damage and duration on. Change the build, though, and the right gear could get you a potent direct-damage grenade setup instead.

The general consensus is that you should go for direct damage (power and precision) for PvE and group content, as all condition damage has a cap that is quickly reached when multiple people are applying the same condition. In WvW, on the other hand, people relatively rarely stack up on Toughness, meaning condition damage and duration is preferred.

I’m afraid I’ve stopped giving specific build advice (mostly due to the “lolz ahmagerd if u don’t use my build u r liek supr scrub and deal 0.1k dps and u never did lvl 48 fracts” ignoramuses), but I’m sure someone else will be willing to help you. If not, there’s even a specific guild formed to help engineers (and mesmers) with build, gear, and strategy advice – “Illusionary Mechanics”, if I recall the name correctly. Might be worth looking into.

There is no one great set of armor. The armor is deliberately traited in such a way as to make you either survivable, but not deal out great amounts of damage — or you can burst large amounts of damage, but not be very survivable.

It comes down largely to play-style. Probably the most important question to ask (and answer) is what main weapon do you like? Pistol or Rifle? With pistol, you’ll want some ability to survive because it takes time for the Conditions to do their job. The Rifle is largely the opposite – it punches out great amounts of damage very quickly and benefits from a “Berserker” build.

The bigger question is what set of ascended gear should you get? These are harder to come by so ideally they fit in with most builds that you use. For most of my characters I get berserker ascended trinkets but I really like the celestial (all stat) items on my engineer since I feel that my engineer is much more versatile and is capable of utilizing each of the stats. I’m also otherwise a glass cannon so the defense helps.

I primarily toss grenades and spec 30/30/0/10/0. The last 10 points in fire arms may change as I test the new patch. You can bring rampagers/rabid/zerker armor/weapons with this build and each of them does well.

Try hitting 100% condition duration if you can since it helps for power or condition or hybrid builds. Koi cakes are super cheap right now; 40copper each and give you 40% condition duration. 30% from explosives, 10% from a giver’s pistol and 20% from runes is 100% duration for all of your conditions. This benefits any grenade build I choose since 25 stacks of vulnerability in an aoe along with poison and freeze is great for any group/build. Since your grenade 2 is both a high zerker & condition ability, your target will start to easily build up 10 stacks of bleeds even if you are full zerker. Then one lucky SOB is on fire from 8 out of 10 seconds. If your group/you stack might with runes/sigils/blast finishers in fire fields, your build will also benefit from the 800 boost to both power & condition dmg that 25 might gives.

With medkit, healing turret, elixir gun, or supply crate that bonus healing power helps out your team a bit. Swiftness on crits and vigor on swiftness helps doubles your dodge rate for more active defense. Toolkit and an offhand shield adds even more to that active defense.

So there is no reason not to mix and match or eventually get a few sets of armor. In that sense mix and matching AC/TA rabid/rampagers or CoF/CoE/Arah Zerker. If you check the temple karma armors, you will also find some great starter armor/trinkets for 42k karma a piece.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

So there is no reason not to mix and match

This cannot be said enough. Sometimes, your ideal set of armor isn’t necessarily “pure <insert prefix>”, but rather a mix of different stats to offset your weaknesses.

Although personally, I prefer to keep that particular stat balancing as part of the runes and gems. And, eventually, infusions.

Since your first mention was dungeon, I recommend you to get zerker. When you start doing dungeons a lot, you’ll eventually wish you had zerker. Also engineers usually aren’t expected to go up front or draw aggro (and perhaps even denied by your party if you offer), you won’t be needing much survival. If you need it you can always trait something.

If you want to keep the option to explore condition damage builds then perhaps rampager gears (power/PREC/cond). I’d advise against rabid or shaman because engineers are dependent on power. In my opinion, though, this is more for experimentation rather than effectiveness.

I also advise against knight because mobs love aggroing high-armor players so they will ignore melee fighters and run straight to you while you’re nading them even at maximum distance, which ruins the situation for everybody.

Mizstik.1736:

If you want to keep the option to explore condition damage builds then perhaps rampager gears (power/PREC/cond). I’d advise against rabid or shaman because engineers are dependent on power.

Not sure how your line of reasoning goes, especially on the second statement. You haven’t forgotten power does absolutely nothing for the damage conditions do, have you?

I run a pretty successful FT/Grenade condition build in WvW using rabid – but again, condition builds primarily for WvW and sPvP, not so much for PvE. Nonetheless the point is that rabid works just fine because condition focused builds do not require buttloads of power.

What I was saying is that an engineer depends more on power than on condition damage. Most of engineer’s skills deal dual power/condition damage with more emphasis on the power side. For example, FT-1, nade-2, pistol-2, rifle-3. Many of the skills don’t even have a condition component. Furthermore, engineers don’t have massive condition stacking the way some other classes do.

It’s just my opinion of course, but for rabid vs. knight I think knight would be the one with better damage. And we haven’t even touched on the limitations of condition damage here. I’m not saying it would not work (never said so) but I personally believe the alternative to be better.

But I was anyway advocating zerker for him so a condition build alternative would be rampager instead of rabid.

I began with power vit and toughness (soldier).
Later I mixed some Power Precision Condi DMG with it ! (Berserker)

Mizstik.1736:

What I was saying is that an engineer depends more on power than on condition damage. Most of engineer’s skills deal dual power/condition damage with more emphasis on the power side. For example, FT-1, nade-2, pistol-2, rifle-3. Many of the skills don’t even have a condition component. Furthermore, engineers don’t have massive condition stacking the way some other classes do.

It’s just my opinion of course, but for rabid vs. knight I think knight would be the one with better damage. And we haven’t even touched on the limitations of condition damage here. I’m not saying it would not work (never said so) but I personally believe the alternative to be better.

But I was anyway advocating zerker for him so a condition build alternative would be rampager instead of rabid.

I respect your opinion, but I don’t agree. In my opinion, most conditions (especially burning, as in the FT#1) benefit much more from condition damage and duration than from power and precision. Also, not agreeing with “not having massive condition stacking”, as I can keep an enemy (without condition cleansing effects) under permanent burning, poisoning, 20+ bleeding, and/or 20+ vulnerability with my build.

But, to each his own. This discussion merely highlights one of the prime features of the profession. The engineer has so many viable builds and playstyles that there’s a special build (“lol ahmagerd use my build u lvl 3 fracts scrublord”) for everybody.

For what my opinion is worth in the subject, I think Jigain has provided you some sound advice on where to go build wise. The Engineer has such a wide variety of roles to fill that it makes it hard to decide on what route to do since one is capable of using a Berserk set to obtain high numbers from a Grenade Kit or just doing the standard Static Discharge build. My personal perspective on Engineers is that there is such a wide range of conditions available that it is somewhat of a shame to neglect their viability in condition builds. I have stated before that I like to use Rabid armor and weapons while using Celestial as my accessories, but not everyone else likes that setup.

My suggestion to you would be to start off with a Rabid set as you have a naturally high crit chance with VERY good condition damage, which can easily be brought to the highest potential with an HGH build (gets boring after a while). The biggest benefit of Rabid in this case would be the increased Toughness providing you with a little bit more survivability, which allows you to bring out more of your potential without being on the floor because of a slow start on a new build(s). Whatever armor choice you do make, I would suggest getting as many armor pieces as you can from dungeons instead of buying, since you could put that money towards better uses like Food, Consumables, Runes, and Sigils.

Before you buy, definitely use some of that leftover karma and get temple armors:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Exotic_karma_armor

These are available in Soldier’s, Rabid, and Magi. I would suggest a mix of Soldier and Rabid, with specialization either way depending on whether you want to play a power-based build (soldier), condition-based build (rabid), or mix. This would be a very good start and doesn’t cost any gold.

If the temple vendors aren’t available, you can guest on a server where they are if you are able to find that information.

Jigain.8231:

I respect your opinion, but I don’t agree. In my opinion, most conditions (especially burning, as in the FT#1) benefit much more from condition damage and duration than from power and precision. Also, not agreeing with "not having massive condition stacking", as I can keep an enemy (without condition cleansing effects) under permanent burning, poisoning, 20+ bleeding, and/or 20+ vulnerability with my build.

But, to each his own. This discussion merely highlights one of the prime features of the profession. The engineer has so many viable builds and playstyles that there’s a special build ("lol ahmagerd use my build u lvl 3 fracts scrublord") for everybody.

I understand. I simply said what I thought was best based on my experiences.

Still, I don’t think FT#1 is a particularly good example. A typical hit with FT#1 probably does something like 1500 direct damage + 350 burn. If you spec condition damage it’d probably do something like 600 burn and it wouldn’t tick another 600 unless you get a whole 1s extra (+100% duration). Even if it did, that’s 1500 + 1200. However, a zerk spec FT#1 would do perhaps 2500 + 350 and could reach 3000-plus(+burn) depending on target armor. It’s similar for other skills like nade 2. Also I think 20+ bleed is pretty tough to get for engineers. Permaburn and vulnerability are easy though.

I also didn’t recommend zerker just because of the high damage. I recommend against using toughness (in pve) due to how mobs calculate aggro, as I described earlier. That leaves using vitality for survival, but there is no power/prec/vit set while power/vit/cond is undesirable for engineers because there are many traits (as well as sigils) that proc on crit and therefore are dependent on prec. Therefore by elimination
that leaves only zerker and rampager. If you need survival then use traits.

Additionally the OP wants a single armor set with the most options available in terms of builds and accessible content. Zerker sounds cliched and unfashionable but I believe it’s the most appropriate for engineers and if he doesn’t like that then I would recommend Rampager. Other sets would corral him into particular builds or certain content. (Rabid would be very nice in wvw but you’d feel wanting more if you run dungeon with that, especially if there’s another condition user in your party.)

But certainly it’s more than possible/viable to use any other armor set (even the healing set) with engineers and be successful and enjoyable in any content. If I recommend the same thing as Jigain did that would be boring right?

It’s no big deal getting up to +140% condition duration, so 100% for the extra tick is no worries if you decide to go down that route. Further, to make comparable damage you’d need to cut the direct damage aspect of the Flame Jet by half, as that’s done over two seconds whereas the condition is done over one. 600 damage per second for the burning sounds just about right for having no might. Also worth noting is that condition damage is the same regardless of armor, eliminating one of the tedious randomnesses of the game. Now, if we were to throw, say, 20 stacks of might into the game, things would shift a bit. Might increases Power and Condition Damage equally, yet cond.dmg. benefits more from the same value than power does. Also worth pointing out that 5 points in Sharpshooter gets you a minor trait that causes bleeds on 30% of your critical hits, so that’s another ~100 damage per second per stack. So what we’ve got here is a difference between (2500 / 2) 1250 damage per second, potentially decreasing against high-armor targets, versus 600 damage per second, constant regardless of target, plus (let’s assume four continuous rolling stacks of bleed) 400 damage per second from bleed, totaling 1000 damage per second condition damage. As you can see, the condition damage isn’t far off from the direct damage, and the remaining 250 is, in my opinion, a worthy sacrifice for hitting high-armor targets for the same damage.

As for 20+ bleeds, it is really easy to get with grenade kit, the right traits (Sharpshooter, Shrapnel, Short Fuse, Grenadier), the right set (anything granting you ~40% crit and at least 100% cond duration), and above all good aim.

I still personally recommend choosing a build that suits him before picking out an armor set to buy. The engineer has so many alternative builds and even, as proven here, viable armor sets for the same build that it’d be a shame to buy a set, try out the different builds that it works for, and then realize that even though there were plenty of them, none of them actually make the gameplay fun for you.

All valid points. I agree that traits such as sharpshooter that’d normally go into such a build also need to be considered. I’d like to note about one thing though. Condition damage is weaker against high-vit, low armor targets and that’s where zerker shines. But obviously condition damage is ideal against high armor, low-vit target.

Also zerker does not need condition duration food/rune. :P

Mizstik.1736:

All valid points. I agree that traits such as sharpshooter that’d normally go into such a build also need to be considered. I’d like to note about one thing though. Condition damage is weaker against high-vit, low armor targets and that’s where zerker shines. But obviously condition damage is ideal against high armor, low-vit target.

Also zerker does not need condition duration food/rune. :P

Unless you were stacking vuln out the wazoo for the highest potential base damage possible. In which case I have tried and found it quite effective, but there are certainly other alternatives that could and do work better for others.

Mizstik.1736:

All valid points. I agree that traits such as sharpshooter that’d normally go into such a build also need to be considered. I’d like to note about one thing though. Condition damage is weaker against high-vit, low armor targets and that’s where zerker shines. But obviously condition damage is ideal against high armor, low-vit target.

Also zerker does not need condition duration food/rune. :P

That is a very valid point. While condition damage does the same damage regardless of armor value, the percentual damage done decreases as the target’s health pool increases, whereas direct damage works conversely, with higher percentual damage on enemies with higher health pool but lower armor value. And since generally targets have an “either-or” relationship with regards to vitality and toughness, overall direct damage is ideal against that which condition damage isn’t, and vice versa.