Guild Wars 2

Introducing the Toxicat build made possible by the Dec 10, 2013th patch:

For those of you that wish to get away from grenades and bombs, this build can deal some serious damage while keeping a good deal of evasion. This build takes advantage of Modified Ammunition and the incredible ability of the Elixir Gun to quickly pile on conditions.

The build consists of the following:

• 20 Explosives: Exploit Weaknesses + Incendiary Powder
• 30 Firearms: Fireforged Trigger + Precise Sights + Modified Ammunition
• 20 Alchemy: Blood Injection + Deadly Mixture

Armor: Celestial Armor with Superior Runes of Antitoxin seem to work great in providing useful stats to burn through enemies. Antitoxin runes for its extra condition damage and defense against enemy conditions.

Weapons: Giver Pistol and Shield using Superior Rune of Geomancy and Superior Rune of Tormenting. This combination provides extra condition duration to insure max damage to Mod Ammo while also providing easy access to torment application.

Trinkets: Celestial or Berserker here depending if you need more defense or damage, respectfully.

How to play: Start off with tranquilizer darts to stack the first few conditions (2-5 on the first hit alone!). Then start using Elixer F to keep enemies at bay. Fumigate to remove conditions from allies and stack vulnerability once enemies are in range. Use Acid bomb the second an enemy is in range and on cool down if possible as its your largest damage attack, especially when the enemy is loaded with conditions. Elixir B to provide stability and retaliation mostly. Elixer S to get out of tight situations.

I’m still tweaking this build, so any suggestions would be helpful. So far I’ve only tested this in PvE as I am not too good at WvW quite yet. I’m in training still. I’d really like to hear how this build can work in a more skilled PvP’er than myself.

tldr: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcIQJAqel0pyXnuyuF17ICoH1FgNiiUgZN2HF0HbB-jUCBYLIYNBk8Gk8IIJfFRjt2uIasqFYqSER1eDFRrGA-w

~Mishra Smokehowl the Toxicat

I honestly dont’ know why people try to build away from bombs and nades, sadly for pvp they are go to kits, and while elixir gun does have its uses, an amazing stunbreak with regen, the 4 ability for movement, and fumigate to help with condi cleansing allies, it simply is not a damage weapon. And while this build might be great for trolling, it simply put lacks heavy condi pressure. You have 1 way to apply burning, confusion, and poison, and that sadly is not enough with all the condition removal currently floating around. I understand if you want to play this way, that is fine, however you would be better served in WvW dropping elixir b and picking up bombs and forceful explosives.

sigils work on a global CD, if you run with both of those it won’t work. i’d drop the geomancy for any of the condition damage stacking ones.

though you can get a high enough damage off of egun alone, providing you use your 2 and 4 skills appropriately, you might want to swap out the elixirs for ft w/ juggernaut and rocket boots for extra burning and damage.

also, in wvw it’d be a mistake to run without power shoes or speedy kits. movement is key to survival

Egorum.9506:

sigils work on a global CD, if you run with both of those it won’t work. i’d drop the geomancy for any of the condition damage stacking ones.

iirc torment is on a different global cd from the rest of everything… or it was when it was introduced.

is it not any more?

zaragoz.6351:

I honestly dont’ know why people try to build away from bombs and nades

Maybe because some of us just really don’t like playing with nades and bombs, it is really powerfull yes, but what an awful gameplay!

I like to see that some just keep truing make it work without those explosive things.

I have a similar build but not the same approach, I play it full condition:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcQQJAqalspSXX3SfF17ICoH1FgNiiU8YN2HFzHbB-j0BBINChUFBhkGMHqIasVTFRjVzATHjIqGA-w

I use full rabid stuff to up precision and condition damages, all with toughness that allows great survivability and gives us a short extra condition damage with the rune of the undead.

The [superior sigil of Earth] is a classic, but the [Superior sigil of Bursting] seemed to be ideal since we are puting a lot of different conditions on the enemy.

I also have different things in the traits:
Firearms—>Hair trigger instead of Fireforged trigger: I want to apply blowtorch as much as I can, it deals a lot of damages.
Explosives—>I’m ok with yout choice but sometimes I just swap Exploit weakness with Empowering Adrenaline for the extra 5% damage, but it is only for fights without too much dashing.
Elixirs—>Fast acting elixirs instead of Blood injection, no vitality in this build (except for the 20 points in Elixir)

I use to change some traits for specific situations, for example if I want in-combat mobility I will use Firearms III and Elixir I.

The aim is to maintain a huge amount of conditions on the enemy while providing light support (with the E-gun 3 and 5 abilities, and the F1-2-3-4), never shoot the explosive shot but always try to swap for the E-gun when autoattacking.

I now this is not the ubber optimal way to play an engie, but it still is very nice to play with a lot of survivability and a kitten e-gun that looks like a Ghostbuster tool!

Thanks for the good suggestions folks. Like I’ve said, I’d like to stay away from bomb kit and grenades simply because I’m bored of using them. Their skills, while powerful, seem bland.

With that said, I’ve found flame thrower and juggernaut traits to help out a decent amount with dps against groups of mobs and especially in group play. However, retaliation eats me alive.

@Cyclohexane: You’ve got an interesting set up and I’ve not tried out the rabid set. I’ll have to give this set and trait set up a try too. Have you given the dire set a try?

I disagree with the hair trigger as I like to have my elixir gun skill up faster than my pistol. While static shot does wonders with confusion and blind, the acid bomb does too much AoE damage for me to want to give up, has a backwards leap to get away, and is a blast finisher. Not to mention how many times the extra boost super elixir has kept my tail alive too.

Thanks for the suggestions all! Keep ’em coming, maybe we can flesh out another viable non-bomb build.

Thank you for your feedback.

For the trigger choice, I have tried the fireforged one and I have to say it is pretty nice. I don’t know which choice is best but I have to give it a shot, moreover it allows more support so it is a good idea for dungeons and stuff, I need to try one with this trait!

I don’t know about the dire set, it is interesting with vita, tough, condi BUT I need precision on my setup—> I have 3 traits that triggers with critical hits, 2 of them have no cooldown, and the [Superior sigil of earth] is a call for critical hits.
So maybe a good rabid/dire mix could be a great solution!

I think a Carrion/rabid mix would be more appropriate, it would be a loss in toughness but more vita and more power, and while you talked about the acid bomb, I think this one is way better with power! I tried before the patch to get one set like this but I miserably failed (rabid exotic stuff and carrion exotic trinket, then comes the ascended trinkets and, ho! no carrion ascended trinket…) so I went full rabid, I don’t have the kidneys to buy a new stuff.

Non-explosive builds are the future!