Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone, today I have a concern regarding my preferred build for any game mode. The Celestial HGH Rifle. My build is great in terms of balance between offense and defense, relying on Might stacks for DPS instead of base power. This build works great as with Modified Ammunition I autoattack most world bosses for 2k non-crit, up to 3.5k on a crit. This is a very powerful build that works well in PvP as well.

My concern comes from the leaked buffs to the Engineer Class, specifically those to the Flamethrower. The Flamethrower is getting about a 33% boost to auto-attack damage, mixed with the Deadly Mixure trait the Flamethrower will now hit harder than a Rifle with Rifle Mod, currently they are tied. In addition Flame Blast(the #2) is becoming a Blast Finisher. The Flamethrower is all AoE too while the Rifle is single target minus the hard hitting abilities.

This change certainly makes the Flamethrower perfectly viable soon, but as HGH Flamethrower builds invest in traits in the exact same places as the HGH Rifle I worry for the Rifle being simply outclassed.

As far as fixing this one of my ideas would be to combine the Hair Trigger trait with Rifled Barrels; thus allowing you to pick up either Modified Ammunition or Go For The Eyes., giving you additional utility yet still having to chose between options. What is everyone else’s opinion on the matter?

Actually even after the 33% buff to FT#1, with a burning target and Deadly Mixture, Hip Shot with Rifle Mod will still be approximately 1,5% stronger.
While FT has a wider cone, it also has a much shorter range (425 to 1000 or 1200) and is limited to 3 targets.
Hip Shot may be a single target skill, but it pierces and you can hit at least 5 targets with it this way (tested with the golems in hotm).
Flame Blast will be great for sustained damage in PvE, but it is really difficult to hit someone with the pass through and blast damage in PvP.
The burst with rifle (3+5) has a longer cooldown but also a higher total damage.

FT HGH may be used as an alternative to rifle HGH, but with a different playstyle and with trade-offs (no Formula 409 or Backpack Regenerator, two elixirs less, shorter range)

Unless you pick up the Juggernaut trait, which there is no reason not to if you are using the flamethrower. Between Juggernaut and Deadly Mixture the autoattack on the Flamethrower ties Hip Shot from the Rifle with Rifle Mod.

Though the Flamethrower doesn’t hit targets from as large a range it will hit enemies in a wide cone. I treat the Flamethrower like a melee weapon for the Engineer, and as far as melee goes it out-ranges all other melee weapons outside of special abilities.

I currently run this and already find it to have greater DPS than the Celestial rifle HGH build currently does. Granted, atm the FT is only used for the Flame Blast as far as DPS goes and everything else is utility, but if you ambush someone they can easily go from 100-0.

It’s squishier but if you save your Elixir S for when you really need it it’s not a huge issue. With the upcoming buffs, I’ll probably just AA with FT instead of rifle now.

BurrTheKing.8571:

I currently run this and already find it to have greater DPS than the Celestial rifle HGH build currently does. Granted, atm the FT is only used for the Flame Blast as far as DPS goes and everything else is utility, but if you ambush someone they can easily go from 100-0.

It’s squishier but if you save your Elixir S for when you really need it it’s not a huge issue. With the upcoming buffs, I’ll probably just AA with FT instead of rifle now.

Lol change the 10 in Tools to 10 in Inventions and that is my build minus the Zerk gear. My whole reasoning behind wanting to use Rifle is that I want to be an engineer without any kits at all, Elixirs let that happen.

BurrTheKing.8571:

I currently run this and already find it to have greater DPS than the Celestial rifle HGH build currently does. Granted, atm the FT is only used for the Flame Blast as far as DPS goes and everything else is utility, but if you ambush someone they can easily go from 100-0.

It’s squishier but if you save your Elixir S for when you really need it it’s not a huge issue. With the upcoming buffs, I’ll probably just AA with FT instead of rifle now.

Current celestial rifle meta does run grenades with rifle isn’kitten So how can your dps be greater….

I don’t get the concern … what’s the problem if rifle is outclassed by FT (regardless if that is actually true or not)? it costs anyone playing an engineer nothing to use FT. That’s a good deal IMO.