Guild Wars 2

I made a hella TLDR post about the build I wanted to run, but now I am torn. To keep it short, I like stacking conditions and detonating blasts for that reason I use: P/S, EG, BK, and Elixir U (which I am not super attached to).

Currently, I am speced 10 Exp (Incend Powder), 20 Fire (Inf. Prec. & Rifled Barrels), 0 Inv, 20 Alc (Invigorating Speed, Prot Inj), 0 Tools.

I am generally hopping between EG and P/S and using bombs to create fields and for AoE. Elixir U is mostly for the projectile walls, but if I feel safe, I’ll chug it for the damage burst and to keep vuln up.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.
-Qwerkk

I’d highly suggest at least 10 more points into explosive to increase the radius of bomb.

Is this for PvE, PvP, WvW?

All the above in some sense, but PvE, WvW, and PvP (haven’t even started sPvP) in that order.

My gut said the last 10 in exp for longer condi and bigger booms, and then maybe 10 in inv just for the toughness and healing.

Personally I would say try 20/20/0/30/0
best balance, and even with Elixir b you can might stack through the roof, traited correctly of course. I know people complain about FT but it is a good point defence alternative to BK, the knockback is pretty nice, have blind flame wall, and big burst, u can have a slight bunker whilst in it with might stacks from juggernaut. Also flamewall plus lgiht zone from elixir and it’s blast finisher means more might and almost perma retaliation

But then again if u want to go more BK go through the explosive tree. It’s just overall better for using the BK without it It seems a little weak.

The final option is to drop into the toolkit line for having a free stunbreaker/big’ol bomb when u travel past 25% health, might save your life, speedy kits is always a little helpful, add to that the heal from med kit (5kish twice when being burst is handy)

I’d suggest swapping Infused Precison for Fireforged trigger and make more use of the EG. 25% more EG skills is hard to beat, and you can get more than enough swiftness from…

…Speedy Kits (10 in Tools) gives you perma-swiftness everywhere (even better than combat swiftness) and it reduces your tool belt CDs by 10% (more heals, stun breaks and Big ol’ Bombs). (Tip: Speedy Kits synergises with runes/sigils that proc on healing skills if you run with Med Kit as just swapping to the Med Kit will trigger the proc.)

The remaining 10 pts depends on your play style:

• If you use the Bomb Kit a lot, then 20 in Explosives gets you even more of them from Short Fuse, plus a bit more power and Cond duration.
• If you use your Tool Belt skills a lot, then going 20 in Tools reduces their CD even further and they fully recharge at 25% health (though outside of the Med Kit trait, the other major trait options aren’t that good for your build).
• Alternatively, you could go 15 in Tools for the Tool belt recharge at 25% health, and 25 in Firearms for the +5% damage against bleeding foes (which you will have up a lot of the time).

It’s hard to beat something like this for versatility and effectiveness.

You’ll have access to Bombs/EG/Rocketboots with the option to swap to grenadier and grenades if you need long range for something.

You also have essentially permanent swiftness, vigor and regeneration which makes you pretty sturdy as well.

You can swap to rampager gear if you want to do additional direct damage at the cost of some survivability, depending on your preferences.

Is the 5% really that noticeable? My EG does like 300 or so and I just can’t see 15 more damage doing a whole lot. Even with BK1 I am doing 800 or so and that is only another 40. Am I missing something? blush

I dipped into Tools already and speedy kits is pretty cool.

I am not a huge fan of grenades personally. I know it and FT are the Engi win button, but it is not my style, per se. I am also trying to keep my crit at about 50%, so moving too much out of firearms starts to make a dent in that effort.

Thanks for all the feedback! I really do appreciate it.

[EDIT] Also, I wish reserve mines wasn’t so useless.

You can do plenty of damage using the bomb kit, but having the option to effectively use nades when you need to attack from range is really handy.

I wouldn’t take Deadly Mixture if I wasn’t using the FT since most of the EG damage is condition based.

10 points in the firearms tree is worth 5% crit, but since your best damage gear options are rampager or rabid, you’ll probably have enough crit to be effective.

Knox.8962:

You can do plenty of damage using the bomb kit, but having the option to effectively use nades when you need to attack from range is really handy.

I wouldn’t take Deadly Mixture if I wasn’t using the FT since most of the EG damage is condition based.

10 points in the firearms tree is worth 5% crit, but since your best damage gear options are rampager or rabid, you’ll probably have enough crit to be effective.

You mean most of the eg autoattack damage is condition based from bleeds, don’t forget about acid bomb and the #2 skill which both scale quite well with power, the poison cone is pretty terrible for damage either conditions or power.

I know acid bomb does great direct damage, but I tend to save it for the blast finisher on demand.

I had no idea that the #2 skill scales well with power, it’s normally obstructed or out of range.

Either way, with a ton of condition damage stats, neither of those abilities will be doing a ton of damage.