Guild Wars 2

Hey, I’m not a fan of having many kits, but I was wanting to make a kit less, or solo kit build that’d use pistol shield, I’m not really worried about a lack of damage so long as I have a lot of conditions and control, what would you guys suggest I do utility and trait wise?

I’ve been running a full Turret build, with almost all the traits pertaining to Turrets (Hair Trigger and Reinforced Shield are my only non-Turret traits). It’s been working pretty well for me.

I’d definitely suggest using discharge for some of your toolbelt.

I know you want kitless if possible, but doing P/S conditions very much begs for Elixir Gun. You add weakness and cripple to your available conditions, and Super Elixir is great healing/condition removal.

I know an elixir-based build is somewhat popular, what with all the buffs it grants. Acidic elixirs, though, is a terrible trait and should never be picked (the damage is only slightly more than you’d get by sneezing on the enemy).

My favorite non-kit-reliant build has got to be the static discharge build. It cheats slightly by effectively forcing you to use med kit, but you never use it for the 1-5. With 30 on your toolbelt, Bandage becomes the fastest-recharging self-heal engineers have, not to mention it throws a moderately-damaging bolt out. I’m sure you can find a build somewhere on these forums for inspiration. Granted, I always liked using tool kit for the throw wrench tool belt skill, but it is by no means necessary. I played this build for a couple months, and it’s a load of fun, if one that requires your constant attention to your endurance and tool belt recharges. I also recommend using rifle instead of P/S, but you might be able to make it work.

U can’t go p/s cos it sucks totally. For solo kit u go p/p.
If you go with only p/p for damage u have to do with burning, cos any other sucks. Hence => Tools. Rocket boots (for toolbet counterpart), elixir B (for compensating low damage, and rifle turret for static discharge, yes. Medkit for fury.
As burning tends to be low duration anyway, we prefer condition damage.
Hence, must traits are: 30 2nd for napalm and bullets.
20 5th for speed and static.
last 20 are your choice.

P/S doesn’t actually suck unless the only thing you’re looking at is amount of damage. If it did, I wouldn’t be able to solo some of the things I do, thanks to the defensive options (and their offensive/retaliatory applications).

I certainly wouldn’t be able to win some of the fights I do if I were using P/P or a Rifle.

Anymras.5729:

P/S doesn’t actually suck unless the only thing you’re looking at is amount of damage. If it did, I wouldn’t be able to solo some of the things I do, thanks to the defensive options (and their offensive/retaliatory applications).

I certainly wouldn’t be able to win some of the fights I do if I were using P/P or a Rifle.

This, and as I said in the OP, I’m not really looking for damage, I’m looking for a more control oriented build, I soloed a champion yesterday with a build I was messing around with yesterday (had only one kit) because I was able to block/reflect his heavy hitting attacks and dodge his other ones.

Thanks for the info though, I think I may need to end up going with a single kit, which isn’t bad just not ideal.

P/s……slick shoes, mine, pbr, pick and of those with p/s and you have a ton of control.

Or you could make a b.u.s. build and have a lot of utility and still not use kits, or a combination of the two.

Problem is, there is nothing wrong with p/s when you want to bunker/support your zerg.
When you want to solo a champ you just make your fights much much longer without proper damage. And you won’t get one kitless with p/s. This is why i wrote my previous post.
If you want to solo a champ you can do it even in rifle + gren zerk.. like 5 times faster than with p/s. P/p burning is only alternative.

Let me start with this, if you’re an Engineer and not using a kit, you’re not playing the class to its full potential (with few exemptions). It’s the equivalent of playing the Elementalist and not switching attunments. With that out of the way you don’t have many options for kitless builds. You have the full Elixir run and gun builds, and static discharge builds. Other than those you can always wip up some kind of gadget build.

The only effective build that doesn’t utilize Kits in my book is Pistols and Pots, and in exchange it becomes vulnerable to condition removal and is really only truly effective in WvW. Then again, judging the effectiveness of something in WvW is silly because there tends to be gear gaps on opponents, opponents are often built for zerg combat, and our synergy with some food items is absolutely incredible. WvW balance matters still, but it can be much more loose in balance without anyone noticing the difference.

I initially loved the idea of having an automatic kit slot for a weapon, but GW2 has a set of designs that it hasn’t really broken yet and I doubt it will just for the Engineer. We would basically need to have an extra utility slot that would be kit only, or our “weapon-swap” would have no Tool Belt skill if it was incorporated into that. If you’ve ever worked as a designer, messing with something for one class when you’ve spent so much time maintaining the design for all classes is something that doesn’t often get too much consideration.

What I really think needs to be done, is some sort of Kitless trait that only takes 10 points in Firearms. Reducing the cooldowns of all weapons as well as some unikittenfects. Something like making Blunderbuss effective at full range, giving the Rifle auto some Vuln stacking, and/or increasing the bleed duration (even further then the 4s it should probably already be) of Explosive Shot. Then make it so with that trait, Kit’s don’t work. This opens up many more options for builds that don’t focus on kits, and they compensate for some of the balancing that our weapon skills get because we are assumed to have versatility with kits.