Guild Wars 2

I barely see any builds that use rifles and I like the look of them better than pistols/shields. I’ve been using grenades/bombs and it seems like if you go that route it’s getting gear with condition. How would a rifle build with bomb kit do? Why is condition much more popular than going power?

I’ve been running this build lately and I am enjoying it: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUl0piYnvy3F1LJyoCdGIF6lfJqQ+95Bb9gQIA-jkBBYjBhEJIJfFRjtKsIasqaER1qkYSBo1CA-w

I’m not the greatest player, but I find it decent in zergs, Ok in 1v1 (I lose to a lot of dedicated 1v1 builds though). Being able to easily stack 25 might makes this build shine (hi there 1700 condition damage and 3900 power), as hitting folks for 2k+ autoattack that procs burning and bleeds is pretty nice. A good blunderbuss will do 3.5k-4k on lightly armored opponents + 5-6 stacks of bleed. If you get a net on someone you can also do 7-8k with a grenade barrage pretty easily. Celestial gives you a bit more wiggle room than zerkers or rampagers but you will still go down realtively fast to focus fire so be prepared to gtfo (elixir s really helps with that, if you are a better player you could probably replace that with another utility).

After the patch I will probably replace IP with shrapnel, but I am open to suggestions from folks as to where to go form here.

Funnily enough this is the build that I find does best against mesmers for some reason. I still lose to really good mesmers, but bad mesmers drop like flies. Dire/rabid engineers will totally murder you though.

rifle is heavily a 1 v 1 weapon and its short range and lack of utility generally mean it looses to p/p or p/s as a viable choice for wvw. Condition is more popular in general because engineers get there power output from stacking might also engineers can apply conditions so fast that cleansing does not really effect them compared to say a necro who has long cool downs on his ability’s so generally goes the power root as it is more effective. All of this is outside of roaming ofcourse. There really is not any rules or guid lines when building a spec for roaming.

Hm, the reason why I personally wouldn’t want to go conditions with Engineer is, because I’ve found that they are quite bad with stacking bleeds. Only half-decent way to stack bleeds (up to maybe 12-15 at most, on a not-moving dummy) are grenades. Other than that, it’s either confusion or burn, which isn’t really that great if you intend to use it in PvE as well.

That being said, I’ve already spent many hours with thinking about, reading and testing stuff with my little Engineer. Changed the build like 5 times already haha, and she’s only just lvl 31 or so xD.

What I’ve come up with for now is this, though I feel like I might still be kinda vulnerable to conditions…

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/engineer/?2.1|4.1n.h17.0.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|1n.a7.1g.a7.1n.a7.1g.a7.1n.a7.1g.a7|4s.0.1n.67.1n.67.2s.0.3s.0.1i.67|5.p69.0.k16.k62|2f.2|2c.2x.2l.2v.30|e

It uses a rifle and is power-based, so I thought I’ll hijack this topic that way! Opinions and suggestions are appreciated.

I generally use the rifle because I like power far more than condi-damage. Also control is by far my favorite aspect to the game and the rifle gives oh so much of that.

Might stacking hybrid

I fluctuate between that build and This one

Depending on what I want to do. The grenades really gives you that additional condi-pressure that the rifle lacks while maintaining a very respectable power punch.

[edit] I believe condi is more popular because for roaming its easier to win with than a power/control build – but that is the nature of conditions, apply and forget. For context, I ONLY play WvW. So this is not a commentary on any other aspect of the game.