Guild Wars 2

So I dislike meta (I disdain being like everyone else), despite knowing that meta is there because they are the most effective. Anyway I’m always looking at alternative builds and Coated Bullets with Modified Ammunition has caught my eye.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fdUQJAqalcTpAr1Xx6KseNCbBB6OEi3KyjElPGxAA-TFCEABhfCAsZ/hdU+1i6PeoHYAzfHoEEgHAAA-w

Granted, it is more of an autoattack build, so I know it won’t likely buy viable in PvP, unless maybe paired with someone who is running a condition build. I’m thinking this would work better in PvE for farming mobs in Cursed Shores, and maybe some potential in WvW.

I’m still tweaking the armor stats, and not sure what to use for Runes. Melandrus is always nice, but just a place holder for now. Was looking at maybe Citadel for Fury duration + Power.

Just curious as to thoughts on how to improve it, or maybe even what some of these traits could use to become more viable.

Oh yeah the Sigil of Incapacitation were to be a cheaper route than Torment, but I see Incapacitation maybe hard to get without a recipe. Maybe just a Accuracy, Air, or Fire sigil instead? Haven’t decided yet.

114 (0.350) is the power coefficient for pistol #1. It does TERRIBLE direct damage. It’s fun, but it won’t work in pvp/wvw even with 25 stacks of might.

In light of this, I hope all engi’s start running this so I can eat them all for dinner.

QQing.3089:

114 (0.350) is the power coefficient for pistol #1. It does TERRIBLE direct damage. It’s fun, but it won’t work in pvp/wvw even with 25 stacks of might.

In light of this, I hope all engi’s start running this so I can eat them all for dinner.

im not sure you understand what it does. quoting that power coefficient is almost irrelevant. the number of hits scales quadratically with the number of mobs. the damage is better than just about anything else we have, but only when 5+ mobs are in a tight group. at 4 its about a wash. at 3 or less its a dps loss compared to using big hit skills.

and op, no it isnt any good in wvw or pvp because people are smart and the ai that you can abuse is rare. but its prolly pretty amusing in cursed shore where you can spawn camp groups of 10+ mobs in a small area.

I tried simillar build in past but it only works well on quite large groups of mobs.
Pistols are condi weapons and with soldier gear is your dps almost zero. If you wanna survability use at least dire and you will have much faster kills. Best idea is use rabid because you have many crit procs and it have also decent survability.
using elixirs are pointless without HGH, Switch MA for HGH and your dps will increase by half. Runes probably Nightmare or simillar condi focused

Rozbuska.5263:

I tried simillar build in past but it only works well on quite large groups of mobs.
Pistols are condi weapons and with soldier gear is your dps almost zero. If you wanna survability use at least dire and you will have much faster kills. Best idea is use rabid because you have many crit procs and it have also decent survability.
using elixirs are pointless without HGH, Switch MA for HGH and your dps will increase by half. Runes probably Nightmare or simillar condi focused

Like I said, still working on armor stats. Although I will ask, HGH only gives 2 stacks of Might. How much extra damage is that really compared to 2% extra damage per condition on enemy from MA?

Also, does the extra damage from MA (or any other traits/runes/etc) apply to Condition Damage too? Or is it just Direct Damage?

Never go that deep into firearm. 2 point at best.

Alchemy and elixers but you are not using HGH trait?
Its 2 stacks of might PER elixer used. That is A LOT of extra damage.
MA does not apply to condition damage, only power based damage.

Pistols do not scale with power damage very well.
You have Incendiary powder on a power based build?

For farming, nothing better than a Flamethrower build.

For WvW, this won’t work at all.

EDIT : Exploit Weakness sucks compared to most other traits.

ammayhem.5962:

Rozbuska.5263:

I tried simillar build in past but it only works well on quite large groups of mobs.
Pistols are condi weapons and with soldier gear is your dps almost zero. If you wanna survability use at least dire and you will have much faster kills. Best idea is use rabid because you have many crit procs and it have also decent survability.
using elixirs are pointless without HGH, Switch MA for HGH and your dps will increase by half. Runes probably Nightmare or simillar condi focused

Like I said, still working on armor stats. Although I will ask, HGH only gives 2 stacks of Might. How much extra damage is that really compared to 2% extra damage per condition on enemy from MA?

Also, does the extra damage from MA (or any other traits/runes/etc) apply to Condition Damage too? Or is it just Direct Damage?

HGH works also on toss elixirs and that might is really long so if you manage it corretly you can keep 25 stack all time.

Uh coated bullets doesn’t explode on every mob it hits, it pierces through them and explodes at max damage. That’s not quadratic scaling, at most it’s double if the mob is just inside max range and gets hit by both the bullet and the explosion.

I have made this work just fine for solo PvE. Obviously horrible for mass PvE or PvP. You want to go full rabid for the crit procs and condi damage. I would also take swift kits because it will both allow you to kite and save you time between spawns, I actually ran a nade condi build (6/6/0/0/2) because you get a whole lot of bleeds off nade 2.

I think for runes I just went undead? You want to look at the break point on bleed ticks and get an extra tick.

Again, sub optimal but if you are going to do it, get rabid, ignore power altogether and solo stack 20+ bleeds.

I’ve used it in the past for event farming because you can spec squishy and keep your distance. It came in handy for aetherblade farming when I got tired of lobbing grenades. If you pick the right target in the mob and position yourself properly, you will hit multiple targets with it regularly. I combined it with rifled barrels for safe, mindless farming. It’s not very useful otherwise.

to be honest metas are there for a reason. they work and are highly effective at what they do.

ofc you have the right to do as you like and I respect that. but please don’t throw away meta or disregard it simply because you don’t want to adapt or put any effort into the game

krixis.9538:

to be honest metas are there for a reason. they work and are highly effective at what they do.

ofc you have the right to do as you like and I respect that. but please don’t throw away meta or disregard it simply because you don’t want to adapt or put any effort into the game

I don’t think it’s about rejecting the meta per se.

When farming I find that the limiting factor is boredom more than efficiency. If I can farm 1 hour with this build but would get bored of the meta in 15 minutes, this is better for me.

This can work alright for solo farming things like megil, frostgorge trolls, etc. A full rabid build actually does very good damage solo (and horribly bad damage in large groups) and the toughness means you survive better (which is important when you are solo farming and accidentally agro a couple vets).

While optimal farming may involve following a train with zerker nades or flamethrower, this is not actually as far behind it as you may think because you can pierce through 10 mobs and they bleed out pretty fast. Actually in some spots I remember being able to just keep a continuous train of mobs behind me while running in circles aggroing more and bleeding them all out.

If you want to attack clumps like that, you’re generally much better off using grenades or something like the flamethrower. Or bombs if you want to be right in melee. Coated bullets has it’s place, but it doesn’t fit well in the current PvE environment.

The best use I’ve had out of it is in WvW. However, you’re generally going with a condi or hybrid based spec in that case. I usually run something along the lines of http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdEQJAqalcTp6qlcx+KseNCbBByNECRfko8kPGxAA-TFyCABA8gAsU9HsUidxJEIP9EJqEMLlH6t/AhAWsGA-w.

Of course, it might be better to drop coated bullets in favour of speedy kits in some instances as swiftness is the only real mobility such a build has.

Alright, here are some of the problems with that build.

First of all, as others has mentioned, pistol’s AA damage stinks. If I remember right, you have to hit at least 3 targets, all lined up so that the shot pierces to hit all three and have them all close enough so that the Aoe from the explosions hits all three AND if it’s only 3 targets, be juuust under max range so that when the shot detonates at max range it hits all three targets with it’s Aoe… to have an AA attack that’s equitable in direct damage per target as what Grenade kit or Flamethrower can do regardless of the number of targets hit, and there are very few places where one might encounter those conditions. The one place where I would seriously consider using pistol AA w/ Coated bullets as my primary damage source is running with the zerg in wvw, as it’s probably one of the best ways we have of tagging multiple enemy players without having to worry about our fps or if the other side was stacking retribution. Outside of that, literally anything else is a better alternative.

On top of that, even if you plan to use the AA as little as possible, Engineer pistol is a condi weapon, so you should have condi gear. Some might say Dire, and Yamsandjams’ idea of Carrion is very interesting, but I personally say Rabid, as there are more than enough good on crit traits and upgrades for Engineers to make the extra precision worth it.

Finally, if you are using elixirs, you should be using HGH. Yes, the might is totally worth it; With 7 stacks (which with HGH, you should be able to maintain most of the time with just Elixir B + Toss Elixir B +Toss Elixir H) Is 210 Power and Condition Damage at level 80, More power than you’d get with the points you have in Explosives, and more than twice the Power or condi damage you can get with any food or utility buff.

Anyway, if you want to stick with P/P and coated bullets, Yamsandjams’s build isn’t too bad. If you want a good mob tagging skill for PvE that isn’t meta, you can go with a FT build, Juggernaut and Fireforged Trigger from Firearms, with usually either Deadly Mixture (which means Elixir Gun and Rocket boots as your other two Utilities and Healing Turret as your heal) or all the elixir traits (including HGH) from Alchemy (Elixir C is the one you’d drop for FT, keeping B and S). You can keep your Soldier’s gear (Though Zerk w/ Knights might be better) and have either Flame Legion, Hoelbrak or Strength as your Runeset depending on money and concerns. It’s also pretty good for taggin in Wuv (just hope everyone isn’t using ret.) Only thing is that you’re probably going to want to drop either Incendiary Powder or your GM trait for Speedy kits so that you can get around the map at a decent pace.