If you’re going condition, you need to just go p/s and get runes of perplexity. You don’t have to go grenade kit, you can go bomb kit/tool kit/rocket boots I guess, dunno, the standard perplexity build is bomb kit/grenade kit/(insert rocket boots or elixir gun).
Not talking about theory here. Everything looks great on paper. I do a lot of wvw roaming and I get killed by every engineer with a shield running perplexity no matter how many of their conditions I cleanse. I eventually lose out the war of attrition as they amount of confusion they can apply, in addition to a projectile reflect, just defeats me each time.
Sure, I’d go p/s and switch it up, but I hate shield. I hate the way it looks, I can’t stand its animations, and captain america was one of my least favorite comic book characters. It’s sad, but p/p is really in a bad state right now when compared to p/s.
The reasoning is pretty much blowtorch and incendiary power. With IP and Bomb Kit a pistol/shield engineer can easily apply burn to an opponent, while also providing a flame field that they can blast finish themselves with their shield.
All p/p gives you is another way to stack burn with blowtorch and a horribly slow moving snare/root aoe. Off-hand pistol needs something to stand out from off-hand shield, something unique that an engineer can only get by equipping an off-hand pistol. Right now, there is no point, and it sucks.
There are so many things they could do to increase the effectiveness off off-hand pistol and not make it overpowered. If it provided some bleed stacks, I think it would be well worth it, especially if it was a decent amount. Right now, the only access engineers have to a powerful bleed (please note how I said powerful bleed here, I’m not talking about elixir guns bleed or explosive shot) are shrapnel grenade which provides three stacks and blunderbuss which I think provides 5 (I forget). Shrapnel Grenade is a kit and can be easily accessed by a pistol/shield engineer, and blunderbuss is on the rifle, which is more suited towards power/control builds.
Off-hand pistol really needs something to stand out from the crowd. As it is right now, it’s just another neat looking weapon.
And yes, I am well aware of maskganda’s p/p build, but I still believe, his build/rune choice/gear choice would do better as a p/s build. In fact, I tried it myself and had greater results, I didn’t miss blowtorch at all. Then I saw myself holding a shield and wanted to reroll.
