Guild Wars 2

Hi, I’m looking to make a PvE grenadier build that focuses on power so that rifle still does good damage, but I’m not sure where to begin with skill, rune and trait choices for best self/team damage output, and I’m not sure if posted builds work currently. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Thanks

Grenade Kit has the best synergies with two Giver weapons; +20% condition duration means 3 stacks more of Vulnerability, meaning 3% more direct damage for the whole team. If you want to use Rifle choose Berserker to get the most out of Rifle #5.

A grenade Engineer can be played with direct damage, condition damage and hybrid gear; however because condition damage is so bad in PvE it’s best to stick with direct damage, meaning Berserker. If full Berserker is too squishy for you get Berserker armore and Knight and/or Valkyrie trinkets (if you only aim for exotic gear) or Knight and/or Valkyrie armor and Berserker trinkets (if you aim for ascended gear).

Best but very expensive rune option is Scholar, cheaper alternative is 1×10% condition duration (2xMad King, 2xLyssa, 4xTraveler) and 2×15% boon duration (2xWater, 2xMonk, 2xTraveler). Sigil is Force, second one can be Bloodlust, Battle, Accuacy, Perception or Night (for certain dungeons).

Obvious trait choice is 30 Explosives for Grenadier. Master trait can be + 10% or -20% recharge. Adept trait Shrapnel, if you fight only against one foe, have 5+ points in Firearms, a Sigil of Earth and use condition duration food the trait Incendiary Powder could be used instead.
10 points in Tools for Speedy Kits is very good in open PvE and some dungeons, too. 10 points in Alchemy for Invigorating Speed is also fairly common; while you don’t need Vigor to survive in most dungeons having twice as many dodge greatly increases your margin of error.
Instead of 10 points in Alchemy you could go for 10 points in Firearms for -20% recharge for Rifle to be able to use Rifle #5 more often.
You’ll want to have at least 25 points in either Alchemy or Tools to get one of the +x% damage traits. The last 5 points can go either in Alchemy/Tools or Firearms. Valid Alchemy choices are Backpack Regenerator, Protection Injection and/or Self-Regulating Defenses, valid Tools choices are Scope, Static Discharge (with certain utility skills), Power Wrench (if you use the Tool Kit) and/or Speedy Gadgets (if you use Gadgets).
So, you end up with:
30/0/0/30/10 or 30/5/0/25/10
30/0/0/10/30 or 30/5/0/10/25
30/10/0/0/30 or 30/15/0/0/25

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Med Kit is good for solo play, with Med Kit #5 you can give yourself Fury. In teams Healing Turret is usually better due to the AoE heal, AoE Regeneration, water fields and blast finisher.
Elixir Gun is amazing, it gives you a stun break, cripple, small AoE heal and condition remove, a blast finisher and the blast finisher also serves as a leap back; if you don’t like the leap back you can cancel it by dropping the Elixir Gun. For solo play Rocket Boots are an alternative to travel faster.
One option for the last utility slot is Bomb Kit; with Bomb Kit #2, Big Bomb, Elixir Gun #4, Shield #4 and the Healing Turret you can give yourself (and the whole team) up to 12 stacks of Might before a fight, and if you wish even switch the Bomb Kit with another skill before the fight starts. Another option is Tool Kit, #2 is a cripple which is nice for solo play, #3 hits hard and #4 is properly the best block regarding block time/recharge time in the game.
Elixir U for the projectile destruction/reflection and Elixir R for its rezz on their throw elixir skills are also good options in certain situations.

If you use Static Discharge you want to use Tool Kit and Rifle Turret to make use of the trait as often as possible.

Elite is Supply Crate or a racial one.

Desert, I’m leveling a engi so haven’t tested: do you really need givers weapons to get 25 stacks of vulnerability? Thinking in taking steel-packed powder and precise sights enough.

Ryn.6459:

do you really need givers weapons to get 25 stacks of vulnerability?

Against normal and veteran mobs, no. Anything with Defiant does require more condition duration, though giver weapons are not necessary.

I run 30/10/0/10/20. All Berserker with 3 Superior Rune of Lyssa and 3 Superior Rune of Mad King, just for the condition duration. I wanted to bring more of what Engineer is good at, which I found to be Hard Knockbacks, loads of control conditions (Chill, Immobilize, Cripple, Weakness [SKALE VENOM!!]) and vulnerability.

For food, I carry +40% condition duration for fights that require heavy kiting, life steal on crit for survivability, Mango Pie for general sustain and other +Power +Pre foods.

Ryn.6459:

do you really need givers weapons to get 25 stacks of vulnerability? Thinking in taking steel-packed powder and precise sights enough.

Without Giver and food and with Steel-packed Powder and Precise Sights you’ll barely get to 25 stacks.
Without Giver but with + 40% food you don’t even need Precise Sights to get to 25.
With Giver and without food and Precise Sights you’ll alternate between 21 and 24 stacks.

Without Giver and food Precise Sights will inflict barely 4 stacks on average, assuming a crit chance of around 66%; imo that’s not worth 10 trait points. Someone once said to me that the main benefit of Precise Sights isn’t to inflict more stacks but to reach the max number of stacks faster.

Hmm… Givers is certainly viable, I still think a Zerker Rifle is the better choice.

I am running Assassins gear ATM so my crit chance is quite high, I also have a rifle with Perception on it so that helps as well.

IMO 10% Crit dmg is better than 3% party damage. Also consider that you will more than likely not be the only source on Vuln, maintaining 25 stacks should not be hard at all for a group.

Also Rifle just fits well with crit builds the Blunderbuss to Jump Shot combo hits like a truck and if used right it adds variety to an otherwise dull rotation. (while increasing overall DPS)

Just my 2c

?!?! I run 30/30/0/10/0 with divinty runes and celestial armor and I dont find it hard to stack up the vul.
I dont get the full stacks on defiant enemies sure but I can get it on everyone else. Ive always had a target crit chance of 50% when I was still changing my armor stats around and still didnt have a problem with vul.

I hope the tune of my post doesnt come across the wrong way. Its just from my exp <3

Sarah

Is Vulnerability stacking going to be affected by the upcoming condition stacking nerfs?

tattoohead.3217:

IMO 10% Crit dmg is better than 3% party damage.

It doesn’t, sorry. If we assume, for the sake of argument, that everyone is dealing the same amount of damage, then 3% extra damage for 5 players equals 15% extra damage on 1 player. If 5 players deal 100 damage each, then 3% of 500 is 15 damage, which is 15% of 100.

On the other hand we have 10% critical damage which isn’t actually +10% damage. Seeing as how your critical hits already deal 150% damage, they now deal 160% damage. 160/150=6.7% extra damage. Consider now the fact that not all your hits are actually critical hits (say you have 50% critical chance) then the number gets even lower because it doesn’t always apply (you go down to rougly 3% on average at 50% critical chance). The vulnerability applies on all hits on the entire party, whereas critical damage will barely give you +3% on your own hits.

Also consider that you will more than likely not be the only source on Vuln, maintaining 25 stacks should not be hard at all for a group.

That however, is a good argument. 0 extra vulnerability will do less than +10% critical damage.

Maderas.9741:

Is Vulnerability stacking going to be affected by the upcoming condition stacking nerfs?

To my knowledge, it only affects duration stacking conditions like burning and chill.

DesertRose.2031:

(…)
valid Tools choices are Scope, Static Discharge (with certain utility skills), Power Wrench (if you use the Tool Kit) and/or Speedy Gadgets (if you use Gadgets).

(…)

If you use Static Discharge you want to use Tool Kit and Rifle Turret to make use of the trait as often as possible.

Desert, what’s wrong with static discharge? You are the first one I see claiming is valid option for a grenadier build.

Ryn.6459:

DesertRose.2031:

(…)
valid Tools choices are Scope, Static Discharge (with certain utility skills), Power Wrench (if you use the Tool Kit) and/or Speedy Gadgets (if you use Gadgets).

(…)

If you use Static Discharge you want to use Tool Kit and Rifle Turret to make use of the trait as often as possible.

Desert, what’s wrong with static discharge? You are the first one I see claiming is valid option for a grenadier build.

It doesn’t always hit and can be buggy. It’s a very bursty trait, and full burst builds are typically more pvp oriented as they don’t have the same sustained damage as other builds.

Yes.Thing is that you should use some tool belt skills on cooldown, right? So I don’t see the point in taking speedy kits instead of static discharge (at least in combat). Is going to be a net damage increase over time, even being buggy.

Ryn.6459:

Desert, what’s wrong with static discharge? You are the first one I see claiming is valid option for a grenadier build.

If we assume that someone else provides the Might stacks for your group a SD build should deal the most damage; don’t quote me on that, though, I haven’t done the math if Scope might increase your damage more.

Ryn.6459:

Yes.Thing is that you should use some tool belt skills on cooldown, right? So I don’t see the point in taking speedy kits instead of static discharge (at least in combat).

Unless you have 10 points in Firearms you won’t have regularly access to Swiftness, and thus no regularly access to Vigor via Invigorating Speed. If you don’t use Invigorating Speed then Speedy Kits is somewhat pointless during fights.

i run this one:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/engineer/?2.2|4.5l.h8.d1a.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|1l.a5.1l.a5.1l.a5.1l.a5.1l.a5.1l.a5|2s.d1a.2s.d1a.3s.d1a.2s.d1a.3s.d1a.2s.d1a|u47b.f5.0.0.p26|2e.d|2c.2x.2f.2p.30|e

for more damage you can switch the assassins gear with berserker, but the extremely high critchance is just so neat. you can switch the toolkit for bombkit for more aoe (but the block from tk ist pretty convenient).
i tested around a lot and this is probably the most (aoe-)damage you can get with engineer.

So, explain me please flaws of 30/30/0/0/10 build. One of them is for sure lower crit damage bonus, but I get it from either my valkyrie set and zerker accesory…

You’ll die to a light breeze

Also the precision line traits don’t gel with grenades very well.

The only best way to work a 30/30/0/0/10 build is with dire gear, completely depending on the conditions. This tends to well with bombs, but not as well with grenades.

So it isn’t grenadier build… I will have to work around it it seems…

Tarreth.8914:

So, explain me please flaws of 30/30/0/0/10 build. One of them is for sure lower crit damage bonus, but I get it from either my valkyrie set and zerker accesory…

Scope (Tools 20) will give you 10% higher crit chance so the crit chance of a 30/30/0/0/10 build and a 30/x/0/10/25 is almost identical (iirc 2-4% difference) but the latter build has 15-20% more crit damage. Also, the Tools 25 trait is 10% more damage while the Firearms 25 trait is only 5% more damage.

Oh, I see. I think I’ll decide for 30/15/0/0/25. It fits me. I use alot my pistols to aid myself or others. Blind, immobilize, poison, burn, alot of cool stuff. Thanks!