Guild Wars 2

Hi, i recently returned to GW2, after a break. When i got GW first i fell in love with the class and i played it till 80 and then took a break from the game for.. well quite some time.

So now i’ve been running around for a couple days, doing regular PvE content. No Dungeons or such, because after my long absence i decided to stay PuG. I know the Engineers reputation for Dungeons and this content, so i wanted to have a build that could, if needed be slotted over to work a bit with Granades, should i ever want to go into a Dungeon, but for my own personal enjoyment i prefer the Flamethrower.

I do change the Gadget quite frequently on demand, but for the most part i am sticking with my Flamethrower and Elixir Gun. I do at times use a Flamethrower turret for its Blindness aura.

Considering how often the Flamethrower hits an enemy i decided to go for an On Crit build, focusing on crits to up my damage a little. I’d like to stay with the Healing Turret, because i do very much like the support utility it gives me in Events. Dropping it to heal myself and other players during events is something i quite enjoy, which is also why i keep the Elixir Gun in my loadout. I went for crits and on crit effects, debuffing the enemy. I know condition damage isn’t that great, so i didn’t focus on it, but instead focus on Stacking vulnerability on the enemy.

I am not necessarily looking for the best possible build, i am just looking for a Casual/Scrub build where i can be ‘alright’ in all the games content, without having to gear in one way or another, specifically.

However, i am hoping you guys could share your opinions about whatever you might think of this build:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fdQQFAUlUUptr1axdLseRCbhMqwgM1EROd4HPEA-TBSCABWp8LQdEAcBAi4BB4p6PGt/QjKBr+ACIKgIC-e

Its mostly, just so i know i won’t spend hours farming for gear and totally gimping myself in the process.

A few things:

1. Shrapnel will do next to nothing in the build you linked. “Explosions” refer to mines, bombs, and grenades only. So it’ll proc off your dodge bombs and auto mines, but that’s it. I’d suggest selecting a different trait here. Something like empowering adrenaline is an easy 5% damage bonus, and accelerant packed turrets can be great for getting people off of you even though you’re only running one turret. Alternatively, you could slot the bomb kit or grenade kit to make this trait functional (could use toss mine as well, but the effect is minimal with that).

2. I don’t think speedy gadgets is worth it. While it does reduce the cooldown of something like utility goggles quite nicely, you’re giving up speedy kits, which is extremely valuable for mobility that you don’t otherwise have. This mobility could easily make up for having a longer cooldown on the stun breaker, and then some. Also note that speedy gadgets doesn’t affect the cooldown on the tool belt skills (in this case, analyze).

3. Be very cautious using self-regulating defenses (alchemy IV). This will interrupt your current action, meaning it can prevent you from healing yourself. Since you’ll still take condition damage while in elixir S form, this trait can actually kill you. It can also interrupt you if you’re about to finish off an opponent, giving them the opportunity to heal up. If you change speedy gadgets to speedy kits, I’d suggest using invigorating speed in this trait slot. The consistent vigor uptime can add much more to your survivability than self regulating defenses can, and you don’t have to worry about it interrupting your heal or something silly like that.

4. Your build is set up for vulnerability stacking, but you might consider putting more points into explosives in order to accomplish that. In particular, the steel packed powder trait (5 points in explosives) lets your explosions apply vulnerability everytime. In particular, using it in conjunction with the grenade kit traited with grenadier can allow you to apply a fairly large stack of vulnerability to multiple opponents quite easily and quickly. You would have to give up some other traits though, perhaps removing 2 from firearms to reassign to explosives.

5. While incendiary powder is generally a strong trait, your build has next to no investment in condition damage. This makes it exceptionally weak in comparison to a condition damage focused or hybrid build. Another trait here may be more optimal, especially if you decide to use the grenade or bomb kit.

6. While the utility goggles can be very useful, rocket boots is arguably better. While you lose a stun break, you gain the ability to clear movement impairing effects and build distance, which can prevent you from needing the stun break in the first place. Additionally, it has a relatively low cooldown, so you can use it liberally. Furthermore, rocket boots is another blast combo finisher, which works well with the healing turret or the rejuvenating mist tool belt skill. In particular, the cooldowns on rejuvenating mist and rocket boots (untraited) are almost the same, so you can pretty much always use rejuvenating mist before rocket boots to get the water field combo. However, utility goggles may be more useful in certain situations, but I think rocket boots is overall the stronger choice, particularly in WvW. I guess you could really put whatever the heck you wanted in that slot though.

7. I would say that it is unnecessary to maximize your precision to that degree. While it’s true that this can cause on crit procs to occur more frequently, you may end up giving up a lot of damage potential. I haven’t done the math, but you might consider swapping the assassin’s gear to berserker’s, knight’s, valkyrie’s, or cavalier’s gear instead. The reason you don’t need such high precision is because you have access to fury as well as multi-hit abilities (i.e. flame jet on flamethrower) that make proccing on-crit traits and other things relatively easy.

8. I think superior rune of the wurm is a bit of an odd choice. In particular, you have a low investment in vitality, so the ferocity bonus is minimized. That said, it does help round out the build a bit with the vitality bonus it gives. Even still, you might consider something like runes of the pack, or even going with traveler/speed runes if you don’t want to slot speedy kits.

9. While the sigil of peril does fit the theme of the build, I’d question whether it’s really giving you the value you want. At best, it will only really extend some stacks of vulnerability by about 2.5 seconds, while other sources will be less. It’s not that this isn’t helpful, but you’re giving up other valuable sigils, like a sigil of fire, force, energy, purity, bloodlust, battle, strength, restoration, leeching, blood, &c., which can easily be better choices for a minor loss in vulnerability duration.

10. The juggernaut trait can be decent for helping you obtain some extra damage, and also allows you to gain some extra toughness which can be useful in rifle builds. It also works well with things like runes of strength, but those are well through the ceiling in price right now.

To be honest, if you want to go the vuln stacking route, I’d suggest going with the grenade kit and taking 10 out of firearms and putting them in explosives. You could probably slot the kit in instead of your gadget.

Personally, I would probably ditch the vuln stacking route and go with something like: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdQQFAUlUUpvr1axdLseRSdBNqoAyAUARmwY8x+VTA-TBiFABDcBAKU9nkU+BwDCghDIwM7PcmOCAVCKKgIC-e. This keeps your utilities and keeps the trait distribution the same, although with different choices. I also feel the overall stats are more balanced this way. Although you will lose some crit chance and crit damage, this is compensated by your higher base power and your ability to build up might stacks quite easily. Rocket boots isn’t a necessity, but I just like them.

I usually make my builds from a WvW perspective though, so there’s probably certain nuances in PvE I’m not incorporating into my suggestions. If nothing else, I would just avoid having all that assassin’s gear and using something like a zerk/valk/cav combination.

@Yamsandjams

First i’d like to thank you for your input, its much appreciated. I’ll go the “few” pointed answers route and do it like this:

Sigil of Peril
For some reason it marked down the one i had in there previously. It actually should be Sigil of Strength for Might.

Grenade Kit
I really dislike the general playstyle of the grenade kit, even though i do like it underwater. The reason for that being, in big event thingies, with 10+ people blasting away at a Champion Mob, i personally find myself at times missing with the grenades. Having abilities to lock on the enemy, or blanket cone aoe, is much prefered by me in that situation. And also i might be doing it all kinds of wrong, but i seem to have a much easier time doing consistent damage with my flamethrower than i seem to be doing with the grenades. They feel a little weak to me and yes, i know it’s been the go to on the numbers end and i’ve been told to use it a number of times in the past. I can just conclude that i am not doing it right and so its kinda a bit wasted. I mean, subjectively, if i am feeling like i am doing more damage with a flamethrower than my skill seems to allow me to do with grenades, i feel like i should stick with the flamethrower for damage purposes.

Shrapnel Trait ineffective
I’ve been going with what the Build Editor told me on that one, and slotted it for Flame Blast. I’ve gotten quite good at letting the flame blast fly through the enemy and then detonate it for twice the damage. And the Build Editor marks it as Explosion. Also i figured its nice to have for those rare moments i actually slot a grenade kit. I honestly, never noticed it doesn’t apply to the Flame Blast. Was that changed? I need to pay attention to this.

Assassin Gear, Rune of the Wurm and Crits
If i would run a Grenade build, i’d totally agree with you. I actually would love to see the numbers on it, so if anyone of you guys can point me to a thread or a parser that allows me to check on the numbers, i’d be very happy to take a look at it (there is still a little munchkin/powergamer left in me to be interested in the numbers, just not to much).

The thing is, with the flamethrower i am hitting 10 times in a 2250 milliseconds. Thats one hit every 0,225 seconds, doing 120 damage (and the way i understand it, possibly a crit). With a crit potential of 65-85% it means of the 10 hits ~5 will be a crit, for double damage (thanks to Ferocity being at 199%). This means, at least in theory, as i imagine it to work (although, as i said, i was gone for a long time, and i haven’t involved myself in the numbers game, nor do i know exactly how the mechanics work), it will add another 600 odd damage, for a basic attack of 1800 Damage in 2,25 Seconds and a chance to trigger 10 crits. Add to that 2 potential chances for a stack of Might and 1+ stacks of vulnerability (1 from the sigil of frality and one without cooldown from Precise sights), in a cone effect. I’ve been running with the Precise sights for a while now, and i seem to be able to keep 3-5 vulnerability stacks on the target, without even attempting to. This means with the googles, or so my thought, i can put it to 15% extra damage, not counting the potential might.

And its why i picked the Wurm Sigil. It gave me additional Ferocity and seemed to be the best option, in general. Same goes for the Assassin Gear. Difference between Berserker and Assassin is having 90ish more damage vs 5% extra on the crit chance. That shouldn’t make to much of a difference in the grand scope of things, with the higher crit having the potential for better damage, or so my thought.

Rocket Boots
I think i need to seriously look into them, but i’ll admit, i have so far used them more as Travel aid, because their damage seems low compared to what else i could have in there.

Self-regulating defenses (Alchemy IV)
I never noticed that, thank you for the warning. I will reconsider my choice.

Juggernaut and Speedy Kits vs Speedy Gadgets
Hmm… i’ll test it out and see what i’ll like more.

You’ve been giving me much to think about, thank you. This was precisely what i was looking for