Guild Wars 2

I’m getting ready to respec again and I’ve been running a heavy (30/30/x) Pistol/Grenade build that kite solos well, but it doesn’t seem to be effective in dungeons.

(Medkit, Grenades, Elixer Gun, Toolbelt)

I see a lot of people running Flamethrower and then complaining about it.

Elixer Gun 5 seems to really help the group out, so I’m reluctant to drop it for something else so I guess toolbelt would be what I would drop since I mostly just use the wrench and magnet to pull shooters.

How do I figure out what’s effective?

Howdy NoOneShotU. I currently run with +healing gear. But my spec is completely different than yours. And when going grenades/pistol it is better to focus on toughness rather than healing; in terms of a defensive stat. Toughness will reduce damage coming in to you but will not negate condition damage.

When in dungeons I honestly would look at group make up and then decide weather to use elixer gun or a blast finisher ( Rocket Boots, Throw mine). If your group make up has people who can throw down combo field: light, then go with a blast finisher. Combo field light is what the elixer gun’s 5 skill puts down, and any projectile finishers will cure conditions, and a blast combo will give area retaliation.

Also i would use healing turret over MedKit any and every day because the toolbelt skill for turret gives regeneration and produces a combo field: water. When the turret is deployed, the F1 skill detonates the turret and is also a blast finisher. When you put the turret down, wait till the turret releases water and then detonate it. This gives you the heal, the party in range regeneration, and aoe heal everyone for a decent amount (1,200-1,500 is what mine heals for currently).

When running as a grenade engineer the most important thing in dungeons is honestly condition damage and precision. This is where most of your damage will come from and benefit the party most.

Get rid of the tool kit also. There is really no practical use for this as it takes up a slot you can use for something else. If you want dps use elixir U. If you need condition removal use elixir c, if you need more survivability use elixir s.

Pistol OH is really only good for stacking conditions, fire in specific. As this gives no combo field and has a less effictive range than other options, a better choice would be go with a shield. Shields allow you to block, reflect projectiles, the 4 skills aoe knockback is also a blast finisher, and the 5 skills throw is a projectile finisher and stuns all enemies in the path it travels; both there and back.

And on your issue to pull shooters, going out of line of sight of the mob will pull the mob towards you.

Edit: If you need more help or want to further talk on the subject, send a message to me in game.

IIRC +healing scales so badly that it’s very rarely worth gearing for on any class or any spec.

+healing is kitten poor on every single class except engineer.
Engineer has one build that uses +healing, and on that build it actually shines.

+healing (due to bug or feature) does not help backpack regenerator or healing turret regen.

What it does do is affect self applied regen (from Elixir H, Healing Turret Toolbelt, and Elixir Gun toolbelt), med kit heals, elixir infused bombs, and all hard heals (the immediate heal from healing turret, healing kit toolbelt, and elixir H).

Note: I don’t recall whether +Healing gear affects super elixir.

Why is this important? The standard Bunker build is Med Kit, Bomb Kit, Elixir Gun.
With sufficient +Healing gear Elixir Infused Bombs can heal for ~320 a bomb —> 320 health per second (roughly, assuming 1 bomb a second, good assumption since bombs have 3/4s cast time iirc). Elixir Toolbelt Regen will tick for around 280 as well. Combine with Backpack Regenerator (120 health/s) and Super Elixir (120 or ~300, I don’t remember if it scales).

Doing some basic arithmetic, the bunker engineer can tick for 840 (1040 if super elixir scales) health per second. This is absolutley huge. With traits like inertial converter and toolkit refinement said engineer can keep this up effectively permanently.

Moreover, Medkit Toolbar will heal for around 6.8 k (compare to 4.8k w/o +healing) and each health kit will heal for over 2k instead of 1k (this also applies to supply crate). With the Inventions 15 trait, which you’ll have since you have elixir infused bombs, all medkit heals will recharge at 25% giving you an additional 6-7k heal from the 3 heal kits.

While + 800-1000 health/second while dropping bombs is not enough in and of itself to make you a bunker, the fact that you’re dropping bombs means you have multiple CC’s (bombs 3-5 + big ol’bomb) available to you, especially useful while kiting melee on a point. You can also apply weakness, poison, and have decent condition removal from 2 light fields, as well as excellent mobility from elixir 4+ speedy kits.

Downside of this build is that cc is far more effective against you than against a bunker guardian. Upside is you have way more damage and cc than bunker guardian, meaning you could very likely out cc people and kill them….eventually.

TL;DR: Bunker Engineer with +healing gear is quite decent. +Healing is absolute rubbish on everything else.

You forgot the initial placement heal from super elixir (i think 300 or so with 0 +healing) and the fact that 2 super elixirs placed on each other will give you healing from both of them. I’m also fairly certain that super elixir does scale with +healing

Super elixir scales with healing power pretty well. I was running a dungeon with another engineer, build 30/?/0/?/? (grenadier) while mine is 0/30/30/10/0. We were downscaled to lv 75. I had cleric trinkets (all green), another engi had no healing power at all. My elixir gun was healing for around 190 per tick, while other engi’s was like 95 per tick. Exotic trinkets would raise healing to ~250 I believe

From what I’ve seen healing power is good for turret because it scales with both self heal and water combo fields. Not as greatly as with super elixir, yet still, there’s like 20-25% bonus to instant AoE heal

I run with all Exotic Cleric Gears + Sapphire Accessories + (5pcs of Soldier Runes with 1 pcs of Lich).

With Rifle:
Attack 3077
Armor 3025
Hp 21262

With Kits:
Attack 2656
Armor2897
Hp 19982

Healing Power 1119 for both Main Hand and Kit equipped.

My Super Elixir Heal 600+ on impact, 252 per pulse.
Rifle/Pistol+Shield with 0/0/30/30/10 build.

Currently only runs Dungeons such as CoE, CoF, AC with 1 of my friends together with Pugs without much problems as often you need somebody to Kit in 1 of the paths.

Thought of changing my Cleric gears to Pow/Vit/Toughness but I feel there’s no need to as I’m pretty Tanky already and that will reduce my heal on Super Elixir & Regeneration Boon.

No problem exploring Orr Area for Orichalcum Ores as I don’t even need to kill mobs to mine them, if there’s too much mob just pop a Elixir X and mine freely with Stability.

Karma farming? Keep dropping bombs at the spawn area.

Here’s my Build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFA0kspqb3zOSMqwnD9AAAQtie8YAYZA

Blank traits are there for variations, completely optional.
Though you might ask why Elixir H?
Cus you don’t really use it very often & it’s F1 Toss Elixir skill is very beneficial for your Party compare to Med Kit & Healing Turret.

(with a Rifle build) I run with some +Healing on my gear and 6 Superior Rune of the Flock, but mostly precision and crit damage, this way my crit is quite high (both % and dam) and when I need to heal myself (or allies) it almost refills my health completely too. (not that I have a lot of vitality.) so anyway I’m kinda happy with this midway build!

Ronin.5038:

You forgot the initial placement heal from super elixir (i think 300 or so with 0 +healing) and the fact that 2 super elixirs placed on each other will give you healing from both of them. I’m also fairly certain that super elixir does scale with +healing

In pvp gear I get 140 healing per tick of super elixir, when no + healing at all.

At 300 or 345 + healing, which I reach in a few of my test builds, I get 170 healing per tick.

I think it averages down to 10 healing per 100 + healing stat for the super elixir.
While that is nice, it’s actually not that strong as a stat scaling.

Sadly other regeneration that is not ‘regeneration’ boon, doesn’t scale with + healing.
Like the healing from the runes (Dolyak wasit, not sure anymore) or the regeneration you trait when equipping a kit.
Those don’t scale with + healing.
If these did, it would open more options for a crazy regeneration build.

Not sure on the bomb healing, will test that in a little bit

Just tested the bombs:

to get the healin from bombs trait, you always end up with a minimum of + 300 healing since you went 30 in Inventions.

Each bomb than heals you and your allies for 176 per explosion.

After equipping a Shamen’s Amulet I got a total of 944 healing (300 + 644 from amulet and jewel)

Now each bomb did 240 healing.
So that’s 64 more per bomb.

644 more + healing gave 64 more health per bomb, pretty straight forward 10/1 scaling again.

Further on the bombs:

I lost 6500 health by swapping my amulets, I had 22.5 k first and only 16 after using shamen’s amulet.
This will vary from build to build obviously.

For me, to make up for that 6500 health, I need to plant about 100 bombs of which each did 64 more healing.

A bomb takes 1/2 seconds.
So that’s 50 seconds of bombing.
Important note: the bombs heal if there is a target hit or not, you can bomb heal while being nuked by a ranged who’s nowhere near the bomb radius.

Now: will I really be able to live 50 seconds longer just to make it worth losing my bigger health pool in order to get more + healing?

pvp is very fast in this game, so I doubt + healing is worth the loss of other stats in many cases.
But that’s for each build to be decided seperately.
If you get other traits working on + healing, like the mentioned super elixir, we are talking a very high regenrating build that only very high amounts of base health can make up for.
(my example only compared with the bomb healing and no other)

My conclusion for a support build running with + healing gear is: use bombs and the healing you can trait in 30 inventions, instead of grenades.

Also include the trait ‘Kit refinement’ in Tools.

Use an elixir gun: swap to it to get the free super elixir, and put another over it.
Use the tool belt skill from elixir gun for group regeneration.

But immediately swap to bombs and keep dropping them.

In the build you might take 25 in Explosives to reach vulnerability on explosions.
As well as increased bomb radius, and more damage from explosions.
These will greatly help in your support role, by also debuffing the mobs.

As said you would need 30 Inventions and 10 Tools for Kit refinement.
Leaving you only with 15 points to chose.
You could still take grenadier for ranged dps of course, no harm in doing that as well.

I wouldn’t take any ‘on crit’ traits though, since you’ll have very little crit I fear.
Aside the + healing I would go for power if anything, to strenghten your dps.

Were you taking into account the damage mitigated by the +798 toughness in that shamans amulet? That is a large difference in direct damage mitigation.

Good point, but I already had high toughness so for my particular build it didn’t change much.
Still 300 toughness more than my soldier’s amulet, so I should calculate those too indeed.

For some builds this will make an even bigger damage reduction.
It has to be taken into account yes.

How well does this type of build solo farm?

I ran a bomb build last night and I still feel really squishy. It also feels weird getting used to running up and dropping bombs everywhere rather than throwing grenades like I’m used to.

Is there a target Vitality (HP?) target you are shooting for?

Just wanted to edit in the build I’m considering:

http://tinyurl.com/bnp5bgq

I’m not really sold on Elixer B so I could grab just about anything there.

@NoOneShotU
The problem of “squishy” probably comes from your gear & your skill build as well.

Using Super Elixir without Kit Refinement? I rather not use it.
10 points on Explosive for Shrapnel is a no-no though Forceful Explosives is ok.
10 points on Firearms just for additional range of 150 on pistol, a waste of points & why do you need more range when you using Bombs?
Using a Shield but not using the Trait Reinforce Shield on Invention is a big waste.

Elixir B is bad even if you are a glass-cannon, the Fury is not worth for it’s CD & duration.

Retaliation is not a bad stat….

Using a Shield but not using the Trait Reinforce Shield on Invention is a big waste.

The cooldown reduction doesnt work on shield #5 when it either stuns or you throw it and you dont keep the 90 toughness when equipping a kit. So basically this stupid trait does half of what it says. I’ll probably take 10% more move speed in combat any day.

I like healing gear with a double super elixir. With a shamans amulet you get the toughness for direct damage, and double condition removal for conditions with the Elixir gun. Seems like such a waste not to pick up +healing when using elixir gun and it scales pretty kitten nicely on the healing turret direct heal if im not mistaken.

And yes ofcourse and AOE heal doesnt scale as good as a self direct heal. But yeah, its aoe. So super elixir scales double from kit refinement with + healing and also does more when used in a team situation. Like this the +healing is a nice difference imo.

I did dump the firearms for more explosives.

If I put 10 points in Kit Refinement 20/0/30/10/10 what does it do?

this is a very recent thread that was on page 2. It has some discussion that may help you.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Healing-Power-and-the-Engineer-mini-guide/first#post462982

I did read that thread when he first posted it. There wasn’t any discussion about Kit Refinement, and what it does exactly.

These are my issues running dungeons with the Heal-Bomber (bunker) build:

-I obviously need more toughness.
-Being right up in the mob’s face with so many spell effects makes it hard to tell when he’s about to do something really bad, and the range on bombs is tiny.
-People don’t stay in the heal areas so I have to stop bombing to throw Elixer H or what have you. (Main reason I don’t run Healing Turret)

The whole reason I brought this up was that I liked Pistol/Grenades but wanted more survivability.

Wiki kit refinement, it will give you the details.

For elixir gun it gives a super elixir when swapping to that kit. so an extra light field indeed, that stacks with the actual # 5 super elixir if you want to put them together.
Else it allows you to keep them up 100% since the free one lasts 10 seconds too.
The free one from kit refinement has a cooldown as well, can’t keep swapping to get it

For bombs a simple small bomb

for flamethrower an aoe fire blast (not a field)

For tool kit a free nails, so the #2 ability. Real handy when running: swap to this kit and get the nails without casting time.

For med kit it’s rather a odd: an explosion that doesn’t knock back, doesn’t cc in any form. Just some aoe damage.
Bit useless for swapping to a kit you need when healing.

For grenades it’s several grenades around you, not on you.

In the end only the one from elixir gun opens possibilities in usage, all the others just do ‘boom’ and that’s it.