Guild Wars 2

Just discovered the Elixir Gun on my 40ish Engineer last night in WvW. I think it was a good fit, I enjoyed melting people and supporting allies.

Here’s my thought on how I might spec:
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-VRw;2Z;0h0q5gTFx0;9;49J-T94;037;25685;0aN0;3sV2DsV2D9cv

I really don’t know what traits or gear work best with Elixir Gun. Condition Damage? Healing? Precision? Or strait up Power?

Please share your experiences and build advice on Elixir Gun Engineers! I’d love to see builds that lean towards damage, and others bunker/support.

Thanks!

I have never played a build just for elixir gun, but I do run with very similar utilities from time to time.

My advice for you (and again, I’m not the biggest expert) is to not focus on damage if you are running with just elixir gun because it really isn’t designed around doing damage. I’d drop deadly mixture in alchemy and save 10 points to get kit refinement which gives you an extra super elixir everytime you equip elixir gun.

Super elixir scales badly with healing power so I wouldn’t go for it either, if you want to play as support just focus on survivability stats mixed with a bit of power/cd/precision.

There are a number of sigils that would work well, I’d recommend on swap effects such as chill (hydromancer?) if you are going for support, bleed (geomancer?) if you are going for condition damage.

Ahh, one of my favorite weapon kits. I favor this kit more than Flamethrower since seeing a bunch of “miss, miss, miss, miss, miss…” in quick succession is very demoralizing.

As adviced above, elixir gun isn’t meant to be a hard hitter. It sorta does the opposite by making your opponents hit softer (cheers to weakness), move slower and all in all make you an annoying foe to face against. Try to make your build around that concept.

Pistol/Shield is a good weapon to hold. It gives conditions that elixir gun alone couldn’t dish out.

If I may, I’d like to suggest this build found in this very forum.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/The-TANKCAT-build-Prybar-some-faces

Make minor tweaks to accompany the elixir gun, but generally follow the concept formed by the build’s author.

If you want to use only the EG, and your focus is WvW, here’s my take on your build:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-VRw;0B-sP-h0s5gTFx0;9;5J-TJ;137;206853-LN1;0J;0TsW6TsW69cH

1. I took Kit Refinement. It’s worth it for the double Super Elixir alone. I took the points out of explosives, because that lacked the most synergy with the rest of the build.

2. I chose Elixir R instead of C. It’s a self-rez or ally rez, breaks stuns, and refills endurance. You don’t really need Elixir C, as Super Elixir cleanses (as does Med Kit, which is also now in the build.)

3. I chose Med Kit instead of Elixir H. Without Elixir specific traits, Med Kit is definitely the better healing slot. It provides a poor man’s version of both Elixir C (now gone from the build) and another source of fury to make up for your low crit chance, and offers more synergy with your kit traits (instead of cycling in/out of EG, you cycle between EG and Med Kit to keep 100% swiftness.)

4. As a rule of thumb, any time I run with a kit (which is… all the time?) I take both Speedy Kits and Invigorating Speed. The combo is just too good to pass up. I took Invigorating Speed in place of Protection Injection, because I’d rather keep Backpack Regenerator. I’d take out Deadly Mixture, but you said you like “melting faces,” so you might want to keep it.

5. As far as what’s listed on that site, I took Melandru runes. Your build had no stun breakers, and the one I posted only has a single stun breaker. Stun reduction will be important, and a reduction in condition duration is a nice bonus. With this build, however, I’d very likely take Runes of Altruism. Simply swapping to Med Kit counts as a “healing skill,” and you are naturally swapping often to keep up 100% swiftness/vigor.

Note: I would also personally take Elixir S instead of B, especially with the Med Kit equipped (gives you Fury, which is the main benefit of Elixir B in a build without high precision) but when offering suggestions for other player’s builds, I like to try to only swap out what I feel is essentially important. Elixir S is pretty nice, as an auto-stomper and another stun breaker, but if you want a more balanced build between offense and defense, B is a fine choice. If you don’t take Elixir R, definitely take Elixir S. You want at least one stun breaker in PvP.

-Travail.

Thanks for the advice so far!!!

I think I’m in two minds, as the Elixir Gun is a hybrid weapon built to damage and support.

(1) You could spec to maximize the power/condition damage of EG. Why use EG at all then? Why not go Rifle/Pistols/Grenades? Well, I want to melt faces, but I also want to have more value to my team. I’ve been having issues with survivability, and EG seems to help with that.

Now perhaps spec’ing for damage with EG just makes the support value of the kit worthless. But I don’t know, perhaps I should be looking for a different ranged build?!

(2) You could spec to maximize support of EG. I’m fine with this to an extent. I do find myself alone sometimes, or roaming with a small group. In those circumstances, I don’t want to be toothless. So, I got to be able to solo well with this build.

As far as Elixir S is concerned, I’m Asura and the camera totally bugs out with Elixir S.

Again, thanks for the advice, please keep it coming! Choosing the right stats worries me the most, as traits are a quick and easy change… gear is not!

I play an Asura to, and you can learn to work with that Elixir S bug just fine!
But yes, if you want to melt face’s, you should really use Elixir Gun, cause it ain’t what it’s made for! There is other better build options for a strong ranged damage setup (where one indeed would be grenade kit). When that is said, build’s like these are actually quite usefull, fun to play and in general awesome in WvW 5 man group play!

Just found this video, that seems to emphasize condition damage. Wondering what people’s thoughts are on it’s viability in WvW, as it is a bit old.

Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf-lYhdhGNw

Here’s a link to the build:
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-V70;2Z;0h0s5gTFx0;9;49T-T-4;0437;116A;14;5dZH9dZ192Vp

Seems to really push condition damage, Rabid jewels with precision/toughness/condition damage, condition runes.

Looks good from the video, but what do I know?

Concerning the build/video you just posted I’d say prioritizing cond dmg (and using Incendiary Powder) would be most viable in PvP>WvW>PvE. For PvP you want to keep the dmg rolling if you have a runner, or are messing with LoS. If you’re leaning more towards the WvW/PvE end of things I’d move away from cond dmg and towards pwr/prec. I may be completely wrong here, but that’s just how I see it. Concerning Incendiary Powder most people would agree Kit Refinement would be a better place to put those 10 points in many cases. This goes double if you’re leaning towards support.

After the changes to the nades, the E-Gun and Flamethrower are the best kits i run with. Yes, it is a skirmisher but it drops amazing amounts of condition damage when you swap properly, to a tonne of people. Between the two (not forgetting your dual pistols), you have a good lengthy periods of bleed, poison, weakness, vulnerabilities, fire, cripples, immobs, heals.

I’d say its a healthy amount of damage.

The elixir gun is pretty interesting.

It scales in alot of different directions. This can be an advantage or a disadvantage depending on your playstyle and how you want to look at it.

A main potential flaw is there is very little options for your build. 30 firearms, 30 alch, 10 tools pretty much. its hard to justify anything else.
20 in firearms will give 20% reduced CD. and rifled barrels which is range, and other stuff which I will mention in a moment.
Going 30 fully is hard to not due as 5% damage vs bleeding, and that extra crit/cond works with EG so well.
Alch same deal 15% damage potentially. however, if you are not going for a DD build, you might be able to skip out on going deep here.
10 in tools for kit refinement is a given.

EG 1 scales at .4 direct, and has a 4second bleed. .85 attack speed. 1s weakness.
At a 4s bleed, this is a highly consistent application of bleeds. 4 stacks. without sharpshooter, or any +duration. and it does scale well with +duration.
Pistol 1 is .35 p direct, and 2s bleed. Note then, EG1 is way more cond damage, and direct is pretty close. (weapon damage)

EG2 is .75 and 4 bounces. 8second CD. this is quite a bit of damage. all direct.
EG3 is TERRIBLE. .08 scaling. 5 hits over 2.5s. Insanely low. 1s poisonx5 hits, 5s duration, and 5 6s vuls, and cures allies cond, but not yours. Really, dont use this. there is a better option to do each of those things alone, elsewhere.
EG4 is .8 per tick for 5s. 6ticks total, first is instant.

So, what? EG2 and EG4 scale very well with direct damage. very. EG1 is ok direct, and great cond. Most of your damage will be direct with the EG. however, since the main attack is a cond based one, Cond is viable really.
Toolbelt and EG 5 obviously scale with +healing.

Rifled barrels. Changes everything.
It says it adds range. and it does… but thats not all.
EG1 is 1s weakness and 4s bleed normally.
With rifled barrels it becomes 3s weakness, and 3s bleed. 1200 range.
So it adds 300 range, adds 2 s weakness, and reduces the bleed to 3s. So it will do LESS damage with rifled barrels. The extra range however, may make up for it. (plus what it does for EG2)
EG2 3s cripple, 3s swiftness. 8s cd.
With rifled barrels the tooltip will SAY 5s cripple, 5s swiftness. however, this does not occur. it is still 3s. The big change aside from 1200 range, is the CD however, does become 5s. Which is a very large buff to direct damage. EG with rifled barrels is a significant ranged burst weapon.
There are tooltip bugs with the rest of the skills and rifled barrels as well, but no more function changes.

direct damage good and bad. +15% trait is obviously the largest trait. Rifles get 10, grenades get 10, many others get nothing. So that 15% is a significant buff to EG damage, as well has high up time on the bleed for the firearms trait. however, EG is still chained to the kit weapon damage. 920 average. while a rifle is that 1095 average.
So an EG 2 that hits at .75 twice, gaining that +15%, 5% vs bleeding, etc, sounds like it should hit super hard. hits.. good, but not omg hard. A rifle auto attack is competitive due to the base higher weapon damage. Its just naturally 17% stronger.

Acid bath problem. Acid bath hits like a ton of bricks. its a lavafont. (2kx6 is not uncommon for it)The main problem is the leap back is not tied with a CC Break or evade like other similar moves. Play with it, and you will find yourself using it, and not going anywhere more often then you would like. Its extremely unreliable.

I wouldn’t say the acid bomb is unreliable. As you rightly attributed, it does a lot of damage to people in it. Maximising the damage potential therefore relies on keeping people in it, or making sure they are unaware of being in it.

To caveat, I mostly play in wvwvw where I run the engineer as supporting skirmisher. Thanks to changes to the grenade kits recently, I was forced to explore other kits and found a gem in the e-gun.

Back to the acid bomb. In most wvwvw situations, winning or losing the skirmish depends on controlling. Engineers have glue shots, elixir f from the e-gun, etc, to cripple and slow frontline skirmishers. To maximise the damage from acid bomb also relies on control. Smacking them with an Elixir F, then dropping back with an acid bomb helps to keep them in the pool longer (bread and butter). Likewise for glue shot, though I dislike the shorter duration and the switching.

As for CC break, yes, acid bomb doesn’t help you get out of those. So yes, you are forced to pick your fights. If I cannot drop an acid bomb, rocket boots out of dodge.

Apart from damage, the E-gun also provides AOE healing! You have the Super Elixir which has a 20 sec cool down and lasts for 10 secs. You have the healing mists that grants regeneration to allies around you. And on to of that, you have your usual healing slot skill. Pick a turret and you can even AOE remove conditions.

The E-gun engineer provides an amazing amount of support abilities, especially for wvwvw. I just wish there were more of them around.

SpaceCowboy.1398:

As far as Elixir S is concerned, I’m Asura and the camera totally bugs out with Elixir S.

Again, thanks for the advice, please keep it coming! Choosing the right stats worries me the most, as traits are a quick and easy change… gear is not!

I’m an Asura, too. I’ve learned to live with the Elixir S camera, because it’s such a good skill. It’s in every build I’ve used for the past few months, either the utility or Self-Regulating Defenses. :P

-Travail.