Guild Wars 2

I’ve read several comments in the forums about stacking bleed up to near 20 stacks. However, not one of them have explained the best combos that lead to such high bleed stacks. Suggestions please.

My build is P/P condition/precision/tough. (I wont ever play the glass cannon :p)

If you’re going for conditions, don’t worry about bleed.

Burn is your most damaging condition. Engineers don’t stack bleeds very high by themselves, and there are other classes that stack bleeds much better than the Engineer.

There are, however, very few classes that can make use of Burn like we can with the Blowtorch.

Since the nerf in BWE 3 or so your Bleeding last only 2 sec. instead of 4 before the nerf i think.

other classes like the Thief has 4 sec.

So as Engi you hardly can stack more than 8 Bleedings

The biggest advantage to a P/P build is that the pierces can pierce an unlimited number of targets. This makes it supremely ideal for farming events in Orr because the P/P offers medium level damage but with unlimited targets extreme AOE DPS. Some people say it’s not enough to get credit but I have an easier time cause of pistol piercing getting credit for kills than I do out of an 80 Ele, 80 Guard, 80 Mesmer and 80 Necro. Sometimes there’s so many people it’s hard to get a few hits in, but in the vast majority of the time there’s no problems at all.

With decent bleed/condition modifiers at most you’re going to see is around 4s or so base duration from the main P/P attacks which really limits the number of stacks you can get. On average you’ll see around 8 stacks or so with occassional flickers of 10 (again with maximum bleed/condition) if you use a Sigil of Earth. I’ve seen up to 14 when I’ve popped Quickness (Elixir U) but that’s certainly not sustainable. That said with enough +Condition damage that’s still over 100 a tick and you’ll still see a good number of ticks at 8 stacks. It’s certainly no Conditionmancer build (15 bleeds spread on unlimited targets with Epidemic) but that’s kinda the other end of the extreme.

Burn (and poison) is sadly limited by the fact it’s a shared condition with others meaning you likely won’t see a lot of damage out of them even in a medium sized group.

We also do some great self combos with the throw Elixir U tool belt skill. If you throw it and it lands as a smoke field, that’s perma blind on the target(s). There’s other ones as well such as Light Fields (condition removal) as well.

Honestly the only frustration I have on my P/P build is that it’s limited range at 1050 can put you a bit into the hot seat but thankfully there’s a crapload of survivability in the build as well.

+1 to Everything Kodiak said

Thx for the response Kodiak. Super helpful

No problem.

For further details, this is the build I use. It’s the old “Skirmishing Alchemist” build by Vudani (few Youtube videos).

The 10 points in Inventions is arguable. I could see the 10 in Explosives but the burn proc from there is pretty terrible (1 tick and rarely seems to proc) so it’d mostly be for the 10% condition duration. I find in Orr I get immobilized a lot (Acolytes) so it comes in handy when you can drop all aggro (especially during an event). WvW it has similar uses.

Gear wise from PvE I went with working towards the Karma gear rewards from Orr (Condition/Tough/Precision) while rocking Chrysoberyl jewelry (Condition/Power/Vitality). I had also thought about going with Coral Jewelry (Precision/Power/Condition) but I wanted the extra hit points (for now) because I find myself often times up in the thick of it with the 1050 Pistol range in WvW, Events and when Soloing. I still may make the Coral Jewelry later. I also use Rampager Pistols (Precision/Power/Condition).

Sigils I went with dual Superior Sigil of Earths. I also went with 2 Superior Runes of Krait, 2 Superior Runes of the Afflicted, and 2 Superior Mad King Runes. This gives me +40% bleed duration alone. Add in some Food and now we’re cooking condition wise (hah hah…).

This gear/spec setup gives me quite a few HP and also a decent amount of Toughness. Combined with the constant elixir buffs for me to be sitting in a pretty decent situation most times. I have enough Crit that they are super noticeable but arguably don’t hit very hard. I had thought a bit about dropping Conditions entirely and going entirely for a Power/Precision build like this but it seems pointless.

I also like the fact that I can easily convert this build on over to Flame Thrower as desired. Sometimes the extra survivability and Toughness with the Flame Thrower kit (as well as the 7+ stacks of Might) really play out well with the High Precision, Condition and Survivability already built into the spec. But this is mostly when soloing or doing stuff on my story quest and not farming events with the powerful P/P.

Kodiak.3281:

Sigils I went with dual Superior Sigil of Earths.

Do you think Sigil of Earth and Sigil of Corruption is a good combo?

Dual sigils both triggering from on-crit is a waste. The ICD on one triggers the other.

Earth on one weapon and something like sigil of corruption on the other would be better IMO.

I would say the advantage of enginneers in a Condition spec comes to the condition diversity the profession has. You can have bleeds, poison, confusion and burning as damage sources and cripple, immob, blind as controls. Sure the lack of bleeding stacks is bad, but good rewarded by this diversity. In an example, with my necro i have some good trouble to defeat some Condition removal spec enemies, since i can stack bleed easily but only bleed, what make their job much easier. While Enginneer, i can bring many conditions to deal damage, what complicates the condition removals.

@Azmat Raza
I can be wrong, but since I tested 60% to proc bleed in a 40~50% crit chance is fine. With 2 Sigils you’ll have something like 80~85% to proc, but with Sigil of Corruption you have a better offensive option, since it improves your damage with burning, poison, bleeding and confusion.

@Edit
And like the upper guy said, 2 earth sigils dont proc, just 1.

The only reason why I wasn’t a huge fan of Corruption is I know when you go down and it’s hard as hell to get back up. It’s one thing when you’re farming Orr cause even if you do go down it’s super easy to get stacks back, but if you down on some boss with a super 1 shot ability or WvW (where you will invariably get downed) that Sigil is just completely wasted.

I also didn’t know two Sigils of Earth didn’t stack which in that case Corruption probably isn’t the worst choice. Could always go Accuracy I suppose too for additional crit.

Schnitter hit the core of condition pistols. I’ll add to that, and say that either Prec/Cond or Prec/Power is the way to go. I just swapped to the second and was very surprised at how much my damage increased. All of the pistol skills are combined damage, direct and condition. So with 30 pts in firearms, and a lot prec/power on gear, you are getting high returns on both parts of your damage- incendiary powder procs a lot this way as well. As a bonus, most kits (Flamethrower in particular) get more return from the same stats, giving you more skill options.

Theres a potion that grants swiftness. USE IT! It doubles your attack speed thus increases the stack. Also tune your Traits to inflict bleed on critical and Items to prolong bleed.

Orion the Cursed.1206:

Theres a potion that grants swiftness. USE IT! It doubles your attack speed thus increases the stack. Also tune your Traits to inflict bleed on critical and Items to prolong bleed.

Yea a lot of people don’t like Elixir U because of the random downside but honestly it’s great. However if you’re using it, it’s usually to overpower an opponent or to wrack up a lot of damage quickly for tags not really while taking lots of damage.

Max you can get from items is 40-45% but with Food that’s another 40% (Rare Veggie Pizza). You can eek out an extra 10% if you put 10 points in Explosives but 10% on a 2s base time is pretty awful. So those two, combined with the chance to bleed on crit from Sigil of Earth and the Trait can easily push you towards 8+ stacks with no effort.

That said here’s a video of me farming earlier:

You can see even with the Bleeds the main damage is from the pistol piercing and explosions in stacked up scenarios and certainly is more than viable. Honestly the only time I have trouble in general is on something like the northern Penitent Path where you got 40 people waiting at each event spawn point and the things are often times dead before you can even target it (which lets face it is the case for just about any class).

I can stack 16-20 bleed on my own, easy. Just not with the pistols. Need plenty of +condition time runes too, i use mad king because the birdies on elite entertain me.

The flamer has a lot of hits per second, that’s a lot of chances to crit. Add burn at the last hit of each blast. Then i stack poison and confuse because I’m an asura and have the skills for it. Then you get a condition damage build racking up close to warrior damage at skirmish range.

Maimakterion.5940:

I can stack 16-20 bleed on my own, easy. Just not with the pistols. Need plenty of +condition time runes too, i use mad king because the birdies on elite entertain me.

You should elaborate further.