Guild Wars 2

I was getting bored with my flamethrower build and I started working on using the elixir gun as my primary weapon because why not?

So, you can’t really get away from the support aspect of the weapon, but I want to be able to use it for more than vulnerability and heal/condition removal. So here is where I am going with it. Feel free to tear it all apart and tell me why it sucks and I’m a n00b.

Elixir Gun Build

Summary
Maximize Toughness, Healing Power and Power for survivability, group healing and damage output. Take advantage of Energized Armor and Performance Enhancement for extra power. Maximize regeneration abilities and blast heals for group survival.

Weapons
Cleric Pistol with Superior Sigil of Restoration
With the exception of tossing out Static Shot, pretty much here to have a sigil on it.
Cleric Shield with Superior Sigil of Life
Main use will be for the blast finisher and push back. Highly useful when up against a lot of ranged mobs.

Armor
Cleric Armor with 3x Superior Rune of Dwayna and 3x Superior Rune of Water
Between the two rune sets, I will have an increased regeneration duration of 35% along with 150 more healing power. Thanks to Performance Enhancement, that also gives me 15 more power. The 15% extra boon duration on everything else is bonus.

Jewelry
Cleric Amulet, Earrings and Ring with Exquisite Sapphire Jewels
Soldier Back Piece with Exquisite Sapphire Jewel
More Power, Toughness and Healing Power. No surprises here.

Utility Skills
Healing Turret
Chosen for the abundance of regeneration abilities. Three different regeneration granted from it. Tool belt, deployment and over charge.
Tool belt and over charge also give me the water fields I need for the blast group healing. Speaking of blast finishers, you can also detonate it to have it group heal off its own water field.
Typical use would be to drop it and pick it back up for the quick heal and regeneration.
Thumper Turret
Tool belt ability for stability is awesome. Other than the elixir elite skill, it is our only other reliable stability. Add in the fact that is also a blast finisher makes this a great follow up to the healing turret tool belt skill.
Deployed, it gives decent damage but can also be over charged for another blast finisher. Tie this with the healing turret, you can drop Thumper Turret and Healing Turret down together, over charge the healing turret, then the thumper turret for group heal, follow up with detonate thumper turret then healing turret for two more group heals. If done quickly enough, you should be able to get off 3 consecutive group heals with the two turrets (4 if you follow up with tool belt abilities).
Generally speaking, this is mostly used for the tool belt, but options are nice.
Rocket Boots
The tool belt ability is nice for the burn condition, but the primary use is for the stun breaker or blast finisher if one of our others are on cool down. Don’t be afraid to use this to get out of combat or move through combat.
Elixir Gun
Bread and Butter of the build. Our primary blast finisher is here with Acid Bomb. You want to make sure you are getting Fumigate on everything that you can and get the hell out of dodge. Made easier with Acid Bomb and Rocket Boots. Use Elixir F when you can as it makes the front line guys better able to get out of combat when they need to. You do want to be a bit stingy with Super Elixir as this is our primary condition removal with Healing Turret over charge for back up. We can easy spread around the regeneration with the Elixir Gun tool belt ability (and all Healing Turret abilities).
Supply Crate
Best of the engineer elites. Add in the fact that is also a blast finisher means you want to time this so you can make the most of that.

Traits
Firearms 25
Major
I – Fireforge Trigger
All of Elixir Gun skills are useful, so we want to be able to use them as much as possible.
IV – Rifled Barrels
We don’t really want to be in the middle of the action, but where we are needed to support our team. That being said, we want to make sure we will always be able to hit our target. This allows us to do that.
Minor
Sharpshooter
Pretty irrelevant as Tranquilizer Dart already gives bleeding
Target the Weak
Chance to do more damage? Sure I’ll take it, but not going to count on it.
Target the Maimed
This is more like it. 5% extra damage to bleeding foes and our foes are always bleeding.

Inventions 25
Major
V – Energized Armor
Maxing power by maxing survival. Gaining an additional 93 power from this trait before food.
VIII – Power Shoes
Being able to move around in combat quickly is important for us. Probably won’t noticed a change in speed inside to outside combat which is good. Means we aren’t getting slowed down to combat speed.
Minor
Low Health Response System
Another regeneration. Best not to need this but could come in handy.
Automated Medical Response
Healing skill reset. Good timing, but we shouldn’t be near 25% health.
Performance Enhancement
Yes, please and thank you. 10% of healing power is huge for this build. Boosts power by an additional 138 points before sigils or food is taken into consideration.

Alchemy 20
Major
V – Blood Injection
A minor boost to condition damage since that is one of the major vehicles of damage for us. Easily swap with Protection Injection if you expect to be held a lot.
VII – Deadly Mixture
15% extra damage with the Elixir Gun. No brainer.
Minor
Hidden Flask
Might, Fury, Retaliation and Swiftness all because I got hit a couple of times? This is actually a minor trait we could abuse since we should be able to move over and under 75% pretty easily. Not sure what the cool down is on this one is though.
Transmute
8% chance to change an incoming condition into a boon. Nice when it happens, but sure as hell don’t bank on it.

There you have it. Give your thoughts below on how I could improve and why. All responses without explanation or justification of advice would be ignored.

Beware! Rocket Boots is not a stun breaker
Also I would take protection injection instead since you won’t get much condi dmg bonus from Blood Injection

You can be more survivable if you swap power shoes for reinforced shield (faster cooldown on shield, bonus toughness for energized armor) and deadly mixture for backpack regenerator (regen when you hav the kit on)

Thanks for sharing. I’ve been a loyal supporter of Elixir Gun since the beginning, and your build is pretty similar to mine, only with more Cleric.

I experimented more with a Condition / Healing blend, but my Settler equips gave me a lower Power stat that I’m disappointed in, plus an excessive amount of condition damage.

I’ve been mulling over what runes to use, and your 3/3 setup makes a lot of sense, so I think I’m going to go ahead and copy it.

I personally go with Reinforced Shield and Backpack Regenerator and Slick Shoes over Rocket Boots, but I’m intrigued by the added maneuverability and will definitely try it out next time I’m out in the field.

After trying some of the differences in your build, I’m not a fan of Thumper Turret, but it seems to work for you, I guess. I prefer Throw Mine.

It’s bloody hilarious tossing a mine right behind you, using Acid Bomb, then laughing as a pursuing enemy gets knocked back into your acid puddle.

What about going the completely opposite way but still sticking to an Elixir Gun build?
Full Elixirs, 4 of them in fact + Elixir Gun, 30 Alchemy to get HGH to maximize Might stacks on party/self or alternatively pick up +20% elixir duration, whichever fits the situation better?

Gets -20% Elixir CD, HGH / 20% Elixir Duration, -CD, Dmg and Range for Elixir Gun, 20 points to spare. Elixir Layouts are always H&X, with the 2 utility slots varying. Say B&U for solo, B&R for some dungeons, C&R for others, U for projectile shielding in WvW, and so on.

Carighan.6758:

What about going the completely opposite way but still sticking to an Elixir Gun build?
Full Elixirs, 4 of them in fact + Elixir Gun, 30 Alchemy to get HGH to maximize Might stacks on party/self or alternatively pick up +20% elixir duration, whichever fits the situation better?

Gets -20% Elixir CD, HGH / 20% Elixir Duration, -CD, Dmg and Range for Elixir Gun, 20 points to spare. Elixir Layouts are always H&X, with the 2 utility slots varying. Say B&U for solo, B&R for some dungeons, C&R for others, U for projectile shielding in WvW, and so on.

Been doing something similar for sPvP exclusivly 3-4 months ago when I didn’t play my engineer mainly and just tried out PvP builds with all sorts of classes. Pretty fun actually but don’t know the viability nowadays.

Elixir Gun direct damage is minimal. Thus Deadly Mixture is quite useless trait (and any other similar), it does not affect conditions.
How to do respectable 1v1 damage with Elixir gun based setup you need decent crit chance + sharpshooter (+ sigil of earth) procs. And Incendiary Powder. Easily gets 10+ bleeds and the burning rolling. Which always lacks one stat, heal or cond or prec.

This is why I go 30 Inventions and bombs for a healing build.

I’m new to the engie but elixir gun seems pretty fun. The auto attack does ok condition damage and cuts the dps output of your target by 25% with perma weakness. F glob does decent direct damage and snares. Acidic elixir hits really hard if you can get something to sit still. The healing elixir is a nice extra source of healing and condi cleansing + light field for aoe retal or more condi clearing.

The main thing that sucks about it is the damage on fumigate is absurdly low. I find myself never bothering with fumigate since I do much more dps without it. The only purpose of it seems to be group condi clearing and maybe trying to poison someone right before they heal (not things that ever really come up during leveling.). I feel like they should up the dps to around 2/3 of what guardian’s torch 5 does (which is basically the same attack without pois and vuln.). As it stands now it’s a highly situational skill that should almost never be used.

Like all of our kits, it is highly dependent on the current situation and should rarely be something you stay in for long. I would hesitate to create an entire build around it. You swap into it to use it’s most powerful cooldowns and then swap out. The only time I find myself staying in Elixir Gun is if someone is focusing one of my teammates and I can stand back and freely fire Tranquilizer Dart at them. It’s far from perma weakness because the duration is only 1 second and the cast time is 3/4 of a second plus travel time. Not to mention it is extremely hard to keep the gun trained on a melee opponent that is circling you or running through you constantly.

fishergrip.4082:

I’m new to the engie but elixir gun seems pretty fun. The auto attack does ok condition damage and cuts the dps output of your target by 25% with perma weakness. F glob does decent direct damage and snares. Acidic elixir hits really hard if you can get something to sit still. The healing elixir is a nice extra source of healing and condi cleansing + light field for aoe retal or more condi clearing.

The main thing that sucks about it is the damage on fumigate is absurdly low. I find myself never bothering with fumigate since I do much more dps without it. The only purpose of it seems to be group condi clearing and maybe trying to poison someone right before they heal (not things that ever really come up during leveling.). I feel like they should up the dps to around 2/3 of what guardian’s torch 5 does (which is basically the same attack without pois and vuln.). As it stands now it’s a highly situational skill that should almost never be used.

Yeah I love EG but I think fumigate could use a slight dmg boost. The vuln stacking and condi cleanse is awesome, but what would make it even more awesome is if it transferred at least 1 condition off the allies to the primary target. Also I find that even though I appear to be fully within range, it says I missed or obstructed when clearly I am not. Fix those and EG would be all you’d ever need for a support type build.

Awesome to see some feedback on the build.

Super Riceman.8702:

Beware! Rocket Boots is not a stun breaker
Also I would take protection injection instead since you won’t get much condi dmg bonus from Blood Injection

You can be more survivable if you swap power shoes for reinforced shield (faster cooldown on shield, bonus toughness for energized armor) and deadly mixture for backpack regenerator (regen when you hav the kit on)

You are correct in that Rocket Boots are not a true stun breaker, but it does remove our limitations to most movement issues. If you are truly stunned, the elixir gun tool belt skill is a stun breaker. Thanks for clearing that up.

Also, after messing with the numbers some, I would have to agree that Protection Injection will be more beneficial than Blood Injection especially given relatively short cool down of the Protection Injection trait.

I was under the impression that Reinforced Shield didn’t work when you had a kit equipped. If that is not the case, then I would think this is probably the better choice. More damage with a weapon that is notorious for being a weak damage dealer is good.

Follow up to that is the same reason why I would still take the Deadly Mixture over Backpack Regenerator. With 4 abilities that grant regeneration, we will be able to keep group regeneration up pretty much 100%. Thus, making Backpack Regenerator less useful.

OtakuDFifty.2965:

…Slick Shoes over Rocket Boots, but I’m intrigued by the added maneuverability and will definitely try it out next time I’m out in the field.

Movement and blast finishers are the goal with the Rocket Boots. If you are in a group in which they are not putting out very many fields that you can blast away in, then Slick Shoes is an absolutely good alternative. Utility skills should never be hard and fast rules.

OtakuDFifty.2965:

I’m not a fan of Thumper Turret…I prefer Throw Mine.

I think Throw Mine is a great alternative to Thumper Turret. I prefer the quick F1,F2 for a group heal and regen without the extra hassle of target, toss, detonate to get the same effect. Also, having the stability is just too useful a lot of the time. That being said, if you needed the knock back then Throw Mine is a good replacement. I’d have to chalk this one up to personal preference.

Sabull.5670:

Elixir Gun direct damage is minimal. Thus Deadly Mixture is quite useless trait (and any other similar), it does not affect conditions.
How to do respectable 1v1 damage with Elixir gun based setup you need decent crit chance + sharpshooter (+ sigil of earth) procs. And Incendiary Powder. Easily gets 10+ bleeds and the burning rolling.

Correct in that Deadly Mixture does not effect condition damage, but we also don’t bother putting any points into condition damage either. It is a useless damage trait in this build because you will do more damage maximizing power than putting points into condition damage. Bleeding and Burning are two of the most used conditions in groups with Bleeding easily maxing out on any mob that takes more than a few seconds to kill. Putting any emphasis on this would only reduce our damage output, not increase it. Add in the fact that guardians and elementalists do a lot of fire damage, what little we would add to the queue would ultimately be better served by letting other classes have those slots. Instead, we want to focus our conditions on weakness, cripple, poison and vulnerability.

Working with the calculator on gw2buildcraft.com, no set of armor that gives healing power deals more damage. Of the ones that grant precision or critical damage increase, only Berserker is noticeably higher damage output and even that one, you are giving up 2000 effective health, 5% damage reduction and 300 healing power.

That isn’t to say that a mix of armor might not be the way to go, Knight armor gives a slightly better stat to effective power, effective health and same damage reduction at a cost to healing power. So how much healing power is enough? I don’t have an answer for that yet.

I’ll try to keep replying to people as I can. There are a lot of smarter people than me on these boards and hopefully somebody who is and has a good damage and healing calculator can chime in. I haven’t found a good one that covers all the skills I care about. Would love to find the sweet spot for power, survival and healing/group support.

As always, argue with me and prove me wrong. We will only end up with a better Elixir Gun build because of it.