Guild Wars 2

Hey Guys. Currently im playing a Engineer Twink, and id like to focus on Conditions and the use of the Flamethrower. Both the Carrion and the Celestial Set seem to offer good Stats for this Playstyle, but im not sure which i should prefer – So, i guess ill throw around some numbers and maybe you Guys could help

What it all boils down to in the End is that Carrion gives me more Condition Damage, while Celestial offers me more Critrate and slightly more direct Damage.

Number Comparison:

Health:
22482 with Celestial, 23852 with Carrion.

Armor:
2744 with Celestila, 2620 with Carrion. Since Celestial gives me slightly more Armor and Carrion slightly more health, i think its pretty even.

However:

With Celestial, Flame Jet will deal 1760 dmg and another 1227 Damage as Burn. Carrion on the other hand gives me 1640 damage, but 1543 burn damage – which is, in my opinion, a big difference.

Celestials biggest Advantage though would be the Critical Rate, 48%. With the Carrion Set i would only have 28% Critrate, which is so laughable low its probably not even worth it. Im using the Supply Crate as a Elite, so that probably benefits from the extra Healing Power Celestial grants me as well.

Im pretty sure Celestial will be superior, but then again – Im here for your opinion. What do you guys think? Which set will deal more Damage?

I wonder where you’ve got those high armor-numbers from with those sets. Are you going into the Inventions tree? Or maybe it’s due to full ascended gear… I’m too lazy to actually test that in the calculator right now. ^^

These would be the builds id use:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdIQJAqalUUpWr9ZxALseNSbhA6IVuIyrB/4iAA-TRiAABfq+zU7PA9JAAgHAgAHIAB1TIpSQxU+NwBEIAwBwv9NAe+5nf+5n73f/93f/tUA9prC-e

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdIQJAqalUUpWr9ZxALseNSbhA6IVuIyrB/4iAA-TRiAABTt/A0nAAIVCCwDAwU1fE4ABgmyvF1TMwBEIAwBwv9N47u55nf+5nfuf/93f/93SB0nuK-e

Keep in mind that when i said Armor, i meant actual armor – Not toughness.

I cant seem to edit my post, but now i realize…The Armor values in these builds are not even close to the armor values in the opening post. I have no idea what happend. When ive been testing this this morning, i had different values. Oh well, the question remains – More critrate or more condi damage?

I should probably mention that im going full PvE.

You’re getting +200 tougthnes from juggernaut trait.
Anyway.. your build is bad; it doesn’t really mather which stats u get. Engineer is designed to not use autoattack but to combine all those skills from different kits to a great and powerful combination. So sitting on flamethrower will make you incredible weak. Especially flamethrower autoattack is very weak. Use bombs or better grenades for autoattack but overall try to use as less time as possible with autoattacks.

Second, do you really mention to go condition damage because of burning? It’s like going condition damage with a guardian because of burning, lol. If you want to go condition damage, u need minimum 15+ stacks of bleed plus posion and burning. You won’t get those bleedings without grenades. Flamethrower is good for switching in, using #2 and #4 and switching out of it. Nothing more.

But, if for any reason you want to play flamethrower engineer:
- please don’t join my party.
- why focus on vitality so hard? Use zerker or if you are not that experienced use knights or celestial. Yes celestial is somehow good on engineer and even allows you to switch on more effective builds later when you noticed by yourself flamethorer #1 sucks.
- Why napalm specialist? You already got overkill on burning. 100% burning will stay 100%, foes can’T burn twice! Use Modified Ammunition instead.
- Replace Elixir C with elixir gun. You will get a Condition remove with super elixir (even if it is not mentioned in the tooltips, it removes one condition on impact) and you can autoattack with your pistol/rifle/elixir gun in the light field for more physical finisher which remove conditions.

I don’t go into depth with sigils and food. Someone else can do this please.

You forgot to add the +200 Toughness you gain from Juggernaut. The values are fine.

Personally – when only looking at the Flamewthrower – I think you might be better of with Celestial gear due to two reasons. First, you will have higher and more frequent crits with Celestial gear which makes the power portion of your damage even higher. Second, Sharpshooter will procc more often which partly compensates for the lower burning damage.

That doesn’t necessarily hold true for the Bomb kit or P/P, though. I’m actually a bit confused by your trait and utility set up.

Yeah, im still rather new to the game. So Flamethrower 1 is pretty much useless, eh?

Should i ignore the Burn/Condition Damage and just go Zerk/Migh Spam then?

So basicly this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpWrVXx+KseNydBNymkFQWgAI6C2icA-TxBFABIp8zhHEQJ7PkmOCAugAFq+zVKBDAgAwEn4En4EnYZAy3CA-e

Spam Rifle 3,4 and 5 and switch every few Seconds to the flamethrower for the Explosion and repeat?

What Forestnator said; keep in mind that engis need high crit chance to proc bleeding on crit, vuln on crit, burn on crit everytime it’s off cooldown, etc. The use of ft as a main weapon is a typical misconception of the class, as engis shouldn’t rely on one weapon/ kit only. This isn’t necessarily true in pve, where you want to use the best damaging auto attack and you may end up camping nades for the vuln, but flamethrower auto attack is one of the worst, and its only plus side is the high attack rate to proc “on crit” or “on hit” abilities. I’d highly suggest using grenades or bombs as a main kit, and take ft as an extra fire field, blast finisher, and blind. As a side note keep in mind the blind can be used while cc, making it a bit special and useful. Having precise sights as a trait will help your teammates and yourself to deal more direct damage.

Engi is a good hybrid class with nades, but hybrid builds are underwhelming in pve. Using berserker/ assassin gear, especially in group pve, is best, as your condis will get overwrited by other users. Let’s say a guardian is in the party, you already lost 600 to 800 dps from the lack of burning. IF a mesmer is there and use 2 phantasmal wardens, that’s another 20 stacks of bleeds you won’t be able to use. On the other hand, direct damage can stack, and the vuln spam engineers are capable of will maintain a +25% damage increase, along with the modified ammos multipliers. I know this build is far from your original post, but you’ll still use ft ( 2 off cooldown, fire field when needed) and you’ll have condi application ( about 20 stacks of bleeds and 25 vuln on a boss).
Using 6/6/0/0/2 is definitively more helpful.

EDIT: For your post up there, nah, hgh build is selfish and won’t work in pve. Don’t use rifle 4 off cd, and you really need something to auto attack with in your rotation. Rifle aa is still pretty weak, so nades/bombs are mandatory. The self might stack is good on paper, but your teammates won’t gain anything from it, and you loose 6 useful points that way.

But dont my teammates get a lot of might as well if i throw the elixiers?

No, it’s less than 5 might stacks on a high cooldown.

So using the Bomb Kit is pretty much the only way? Meh, thats a shame. Thanks for the help though.

bomb is more biased towards direct damage, so if you like that hybrid playstyle, grenades are the way to go.

Thanks for the tips. Still trying to figure out some of the less obvious game mechanics, such as combo fields. Gonna give it a try, grenades are fun to use as well.

Problem with engineer combo finishers is, most of them are knockbacks. For instance if you want to stack might with bomb kit, you’ll use B.O.B, fire bomb, supply crate ( stun) and shield 4 if you happen to run shield, so that’s 3 cc skills ruining the stack or breaking defiant stacks for no reasons. That’s also why flamethrower is great, because its low cooldown high damaging blast isn’t a control skill. In dungeons the three most used fields are fire for might stacking, smoke for stealth stacking ( wich is also your job as an engi) and light for condi removal because light fields are abundant so better use them anyway. You can use both nades and bombs anyway, with a grenade/bomb/ft setup. This happens to be great when you have an ele in the party, allowing 100% fire field uptime.