Guild Wars 2

I love playing as a grenadier/ bomber engineer in WvW, PvE and dungeons. I run 30/0/30/10/0 as my trait setup with full knight’s armour and trinkets, basically turning me into a fortress. The goal here is direct damage since I don’t like using condition damage.

Here’s my current setup: Build

But I’ve been wondering if I should mix up my armor and/or my trinkets and possibly my trait setup. Any advice?

It doesn’t look bad for WvW. I often run healing bombs when I’m running with the zerg. People think their crap, but their amazing for breaking down gates to help everyone soak up arrow cart damage. They also don’t interfere with water fields like Super Elixer does. I would change your build in PvE though. Move 20 or 30 of those points in Inventions to Tools and Firearms. Swap Protection Injection for Invigorating Speed if you take Speedy Kits. I run full zerker bombs and nades in PvE (usually 30 20 0 0 20 or 30 20 0 10 10).

I’ve revised my build taking the advice into consideration. 20 points were taken out of inventions and put into tools and alchemy. I did not put any points into firearms since the traits only benefit rifles and pistols, both of which I hardly use except in emergencies.

As for armour and trinkets I mixed and matched Knights armour and Zerker trinkets. Here’s what I came up with:

Revised Build

Is this an improvement or do I need to tinker some more?

Dunno about WvW but in my experience in PvE it’s better to either use the Grenade Kit or the Bomb Kit and focus the traits and equipment to make it as strong as possible. If you run Bomb Kit you only need 25 points in Explosives, and if you run Grenade Kit you don’t need the range increase for bombs.

Regarding your second build:
You could check if 3-5% more damage from Alchemy 25 (Swiftness, Vigor and Might, Regeneration or Fury) is more than the 5% Toughness to Power from Inventions 10; if so the remaining 5 points of Inventions are better spend in either Firearms or Alchemy.
And you ended up with one of the standard grenade builds…

Good call on the unneeded 5 points in Inventions. After a brief estimation I think putting them in Firearms would be best.

Any last thoughts on the zerker trinkets?

If you want to exchange some of your Knight gear with Berserker gear start with the ones that are on top of the following list:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/81211-minmaxin-crit-dmg/#entry2175092

id recommend some cavalier trinkets

keep the toughness for wvw

I’ve taken the last two recommendations into consideration and came up with the following:

- Slotting one berserker amulet and the remaining five slots with cavaliers provides a nice rounded 30% crit. chance and 55% crit. damage.
Zerker/Cavalier

My question is, are those crit. stats sufficient and effective?

- Another option I’ve been thinking about is to go full fortress. Equipping full soldier’s armour and trinkets.
Fortress

Is going full fortress even a smart option in WvW ánd PvE?

In PvE the rule is:
Take as much Berserker as possible, take only enough other equipment (e.g. Valkyrie, Knight, Cavalier) to stay alive most of the time; ideally that would be none.

In WvW I use conditions so I have no clue what would be that best set for direct damage.