Guild Wars 2

Hey all,

I’m loving playing my engineer alt – it’s a lot of fun. I favor a double pistol weapon set. However, I’m noticing that my damage is pretty low. It’s a little disheartening watching a guardian or warrior 10 levels lower than you putting out twice as much damage.

Between my traits and my gear, I’ve been trying to evenly distribute between Cond Damage and Power. Power, so that my initial punch is heavier, and Cond Damage, because it would be stupid not to have some on a double pistol build.

However, I’m wondering if I’m doing something wrong – should I be stacking all Cond Damage instead of power? How can I increase the damage I’m doing?

From what tested the condition damage increase sucks as much as the healing bonus. You really want to stack as much Precision, Power and Crit damage as possible. If your not already using it pick up the piercing shots trait at the end of the power line.

Gotcha, so condition damage probably isn’t worth my time to mess around with?

I agree—condition damage isn’t going to help that 2sec bleed a whole lot. If you’re PvPing, you might go condition damage just for the burn/confusion.

Unfortunately, main hand pistols for all professions are seriously underperforming right now, since they don’t attack any faster than rifles like they’re supposed to. I can’t really recommend main hand pistol as a good source of DPS (although it’s still useful for the #2 and #3 skills). Pistol and bombs are good together, and grenades are of course very powerful after level 60.

the thing with P/P is that you really need 30 points in firearms for coated bullets to make it work, and it tends to do better with power rather than condi damage.

It’s silly but true.

For Condi spec’s grenade / bomb kit do much better.

The only thing we have the really compares well to warrior / thief is a power grenade build with the grenadier trait.

later on your can do burst spec’s with rifle in static shock spec’s but while they have competitive burst, their sustained dps is not that great.

At lower levels you might trait flamethrower, or tool kit. They work well until mid 50-60s.

imho if you are doing pistols you should be going condition damage as 5 out of 5 of your skills is doing a condition. 3/5 are doin condition damage. I got full carrions and it rips people apart in wvw. there is no way to cure from the bleed a pistol does because it will be reapplied right away. rifle == power/crit, pistol/pistol – pistol/shield == condition damage

I am amusing that this is in regards to WvW.

The main problem with condition damage that i have found in WvW is its long ramp up time. It will take you somewhere around 6~7 sec to get your conditions rolling for you to start doing good damage. In the same amount of time against a average opponent your already half health, and against a glass cannon your dead.(Yes skill plays a factor, and results may vary) Condition damage is great in a long drawn out fights, but really lacks the punch to end them quickly. If conditions are the way you want to go i would suggest to build as much survivability as possible. Not necessarily in your traits but in your utilities.

Preacher

Karast.1927:

the thing with P/P is that you really need 30 points in firearms for coated bullets to make it work, and it tends to do better with power rather than condi damage.

It’s silly but true.

For Condi spec’s grenade / bomb kit do much better.

The only thing we have the really compares well to warrior / thief is a power grenade build with the grenadier trait.

later on your can do burst spec’s with rifle in static shock spec’s but while they have competitive burst, their sustained dps is not that great.

At lower levels you might trait flamethrower, or tool kit. They work well until mid 50-60s.

This^.

Not doing a thing wrong. There is a huge imbalance between engineer damage with pistols and everything else in the game that does cond damage. We actually have to have explosives and firearms to do anything decent and even then it takes 24-30 bullets to do the same things as two handers do in three swings. (cept of course thief pistol damage) Both suffer slower shots (pistols that shoot at the same speed as rifles just doesn’t cut it sorry) and thus it lowers dps severely.

Can’t imagine how anyone thinks that’s balanced. Cond damage took a dump about a month ago and since then nothing but pow prec %crit damage builds have been useful. They need to seriously check some math.