Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, I need some additional advice.

I was thinking of shifting to Modified Ammo with my engineer running on Celestial armor. Though he is currently equipped with Hoelbrak runes atm, should it be best that I switch it to Perplexity or keep it? Also as for my pistol and shield, I am planning on switching Sigil of Battle and Intelligence to Torment and Corruption respectively.

What aspect of the game do you focus on?

Oh, I didn’t specify that? My bad.

Yeah, I want to focus more on WvW Roaming especially since i have a bit of trouble facing 2 enemies at once when I am alone.

Bad idea! Modified Ammo benefits power builds more than condition builds since the damage increase doesn’t affect conditions! That and celestial builds are better as power oriented builds! If you want to run Perplexity with condi sigils, it’s better to run full condi armor/weapons! You’ll deal more damage and be more durable!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

Is that so? Hmmm…… I suppose I could go for that. Though I wonder, should I go for Carrion or Dire?

i like rabid/dire mix for condi roaming, with a nice side of perplexing aids

get enough crit to proc IP reliably and throw the rest of my stats at condi damage and survival

also, corruption always seems like filler to me. i like to go w/ major generosity, or maybe doom or geomancy for roaming but not zerging. torment is solid.

Hmmm I see what you mean. Though Generosity is fairly expensive.

On a different note, I just found Wolfineer’s 3 kit hybrid build.
http://www.wolfineer.com/celestial-3kit-hybrid-pve/

Since I don’t have a celestial shield to go with my pistol, would it be a viable alternative to have a dire and carrion pistol and shield for now? And since i only have Hoelbrak for Runes instead of Pack, I think I should be fine.

I like running a carrion/rabid/dire mix. My goto condi roaming build for WvW has carrion weapons and armor, with the rabid+dire trinket (they still haven’t made a unique name for that stat combo for whatever reason).

Carrion can provide more overall DPS since it improves your power as well as your condition damage, and scales especially well with the grenade, bomb, and tool kits. However, it’s important not to let your precision get too low so that you can proc your IP reliably.

My goto build uses elixir B, so I can reliably proc fury to replace the crit chance that was lost by speccing into carrion gear. As such, you may want to prioritize rabid gear over carrion if you can’t maintain a fairly consistent uptime of fury. I find that getting around the 30-40% crit chance mark is often enough, but people have different preferences.

Also note that carrion gear gives you vitality, whereas rabid will give you toughness. This can be important because it affects your ability to survive. You’d want to keep an eye on your life-to-armour ratio (note this is not vitality-to-toughness), and try to find something that works for you.

Without getting into the math, the rule of thumb is this: a life-to-armour ratio of around 10:1 will maximize your effective hit points, meaning you will be able to handle intense periods of damage much better than someone with a lower life-to-armour ratio. However, builds that exhibit a life-to-armour ratio of lower than 10:1 will generally be able to sustain themselves better of extended periods of combat, but are more vulnerable to spike damage. A life-to-armour ratio of greater than 10:1 is generally not advantageous, unless you’re only considering condition damage.

The reason for this is that a lower life-to-armour ratio are able to make the most out of their healing abilities. Thus, a lower life-to-armour ratio is really only useful if you can effectively keep yourself healed over the extended period of combat.

What sort of ratio is best for you and your build will rely mostly on what the build is and what you’re personal preferences are. With my go-to WvW roaming build, I maintain a life-to-armour ratio of a little bit under 10:1, but that might not be the best in your case.

The other thing you should note is that vitality is the only thing that will protect you against conditions, so going for carrion gear makes you naturally more resistant to one of the engineer’s most common weaknesses, that being condition pressure.

ArrDee.2573:

Bad idea! Modified Ammo benefits power builds more than condition builds since the damage increase doesn’t affect conditions! That and celestial builds are better as power oriented builds! If you want to run Perplexity with condi sigils, it’s better to run full condi armor/weapons! You’ll deal more damage and be more durable!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

So I was wondering, how much WvW roaming have you actually been doing as a Conidtion focused celestial Engineer with P/P or P/S? What do you base what you say on?

@op I have been running a condition celestial build the last 1½ month, and it have been a lot of fun and quite intrestring giving that a go! Modified Ammunition could be intrestring to give a go, but as pointed out it will only be the power dmg that will benift from it (which still can be a nice gain, I mean bombs/nades hit for a lot to begin with)

The Wolfineer’s you posted is a PvE build, so you would have do make some adjustments to make it fit a PvP setting! Using a Carrion/Rabid/Dire weapon until you get the celestial weapon shouldn’t be a problem at all, in my build I’m still missing the two celestial trinkets where I just use the dire+rabid ones!

In general I think you need to figure out yourself if you wanna stack might or not! With the current state of might after the nerf it’s something you commit to or not! I personally think you would be better of with Perplexity but that’s a matter of preference

Amadeus.5687:

ArrDee.2573:

Bad idea! Modified Ammo benefits power builds more than condition builds since the damage increase doesn’t affect conditions! That and celestial builds are better as power oriented builds! If you want to run Perplexity with condi sigils, it’s better to run full condi armor/weapons! You’ll deal more damage and be more durable!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

So I was wondering, how much WvW roaming have you actually been doing as a Conidtion focused celestial Engineer with P/P or P/S? What do you base what you say on?

frankly i agree with what vee wee said there and i got to gold rank almost only roaming as engi on low tier :P

insanemaniac.2456:

frankly i agree with what vee wee said there and i got to gold rank almost only roaming as engi on low tier :P

Yeah but why do you agree, what are the argument for why it’s better with power instead of condition! You can’t just claim something is better without reasoning it! I’m personal not whatever I think one of them is better then the other, and when are you condition focused and when are you power focused? Is it when you use rifle your power and P/P or P/S you are condition?

Amadeus.5687:

ArrDee.2573:

Bad idea! Modified Ammo benefits power builds more than condition builds since the damage increase doesn’t affect conditions! That and celestial builds are better as power oriented builds! If you want to run Perplexity with condi sigils, it’s better to run full condi armor/weapons! You’ll deal more damage and be more durable!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

So I was wondering, how much WvW roaming have you actually been doing as a Conidtion focused celestial Engineer with P/P or P/S? What do you base what you say on?

@op I have been running a condition celestial build the last 1½ month, and it have been a lot of fun and quite intrestring giving that a go! Modified Ammunition could be intrestring to give a go, but as pointed out it will only be the power dmg that will benift from it (which still can be a nice gain, I mean bombs/nades hit for a lot to begin with)

The Wolfineer’s you posted is a PvE build, so you would have do make some adjustments to make it fit a PvP setting! Using a Carrion/Rabid/Dire weapon until you get the celestial weapon shouldn’t be a problem at all, in my build I’m still missing the two celestial trinkets where I just use the dire+rabid ones!

In general I think you need to figure out yourself if you wanna stack might or not! With the current state of might after the nerf it’s something you commit to or not! I personally think you would be better of with Perplexity but that’s a matter of preference

This is very useful information indeed. Thanks. That just leaves me to do one thing: make a new set of celestial gear with Perplexity runes equipped.

Amadeus.5687:

insanemaniac.2456:

frankly i agree with what vee wee said there and i got to gold rank almost only roaming as engi on low tier :P

Yeah but why do you agree, what are the argument for why it’s better with power instead of condition! You can’t just claim something is better without reasoning it! I’m personal not whatever I think one of them is better then the other, and when are you condition focused and when are you power focused? Is it when you use rifle your power and P/P or P/S you are condition?

Because a power focused celestial build deals comparable damage to someone with berserker stats! Meanwhile a condi focused celestial build deals terrible power damage and terrible condition damage!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

ArrDee.2573:

Because a power focused celestial build deals comparable damage to someone with berserker stats! Meanwhile a condi focused celestial build deals terrible power damage and terrible condition damage!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

See that’s just an odd statement to come with! So what difference is it there is in “condition focused” compared to “power focused” that makes it go from “Berserker damage” to “terrible damage”.

There is 3, things I see that could make a full celestial geared build condition focused.
1. Using condition based food and consumables
2. Using condition specific runes and/or sigils
3. Using Pistol/Pistol or Pistol/shield

Seeing as we talk WvW, I would start out with removing 1 as something that could matter, I mean no matter what weapon or rune set you use, why would’t you want 40% condition duration as celestial? And whatever if you use sharpeing stone or tuneing crystal, the overall damage output should stay the same

2. using a condition specific rune, let’s just go with Perplexity, is that what makes it condition based? I mean I could for sure see the with running rifle with Perplexity, overcharged shot is a short CD interrupting ability afterall! would the overall damage output be lower then running might runes like Strength/Hoealbark? Probaly, but it have a potential better spike.
But a Pistol/Pistol build could use might runes just aswell, which I still think most people would run!
About the sigils, I would actually give the + to running with Pistol main hand, because they ain’t forced to use Sigil of Doom, and hence could use Geomancy, Cleansing (I do) or even Battle

Or is it 3, when you use another weapon loadout then Rifle? Is Pistol/Pistol damage output simply so low you go from “Zeker pew pew” to “Terrible damage?”

I mean, I use Pistol/Pistol + Condition food, I do not use a power nor condition rune, I use Rune of the Defender, so my damage is lower then a might stacker.
But even without might, my Prybar will still crit 3k, my blowtorch is still point black critting 2.5k and Posion Dart Volly can also get to 2.5k! All this obvious also come with the extra poison and burning uptime.

While I have seen plenty of 4k Prybar cirts, 3k blunderbuss and 2.5k-3k Jump Shots (and have tried playing with the might stacking) I haven’t noticed my damage go to terrible.

I would agree with you that a Rifle Engineer have a better spike damage potential, but that’s not what it allways comes down to.

My personal opinion is honestly it’s a matter about personal preference as a Celestial WvW roamer, because both works. Pistol/Pistol brings the lowest dmg, but best defence. Pistol/Pistol is the best outnumbered loadout for me, cause of superior AoE burning, bouncing blind and higher posion uptime and Rifle being in most situations the stronger 1vs1 spike weapon. But I’m not a fan of the dangers Rifle’s overcharged shot bring with it, with only one stun break and no stability I can’t afford to get knocked down in outnumbered situations. Also, net shot still bug out in uneven terrain way to much.

Amadeus.5687:

insanemaniac.2456:

frankly i agree with what vee wee said there and i got to gold rank almost only roaming as engi on low tier :P

Yeah but why do you agree, what are the argument for why it’s better with power instead of condition! You can’t just claim something is better without reasoning it! I’m personal not whatever I think one of them is better then the other, and when are you condition focused and when are you power focused? Is it when you use rifle your power and P/P or P/S you are condition?

its a combo of weapon and rune choice. rifle + power rune = power focused cele. p/x + condi rune = condi focused cele. condi focus cele is crap cuz your condis hit like wet noodles and you have no lockdown to wombo combo your big hits.