Lightningbolt+P+P/Rifle viable?
Sadly no. We probably have the most boring meta build. If you’re doing WvW, grenades/elixer build if you want to be the best build you can be. Other builds are moderate, but can’t stand up to other classes if they are experienced/80/know what they are doing.
sPvP many want engineers to be bunkers, so bunker builds mostly.
Ive experimented a ton with the rifle trying to make it a primary high damage tool, but sadly it is most useful and does the most damage when used as a support weapon for a kit (bomb, flame, nades).
practically a brand new game and already people are trying to dictate a meta
the beauty of the engineer class, and the reason a lot of people call it a difficult class to play, is that it has so many great and uniquely different builds.
if you are tired of running a long range grenade build then maybe a close range flamethrower build is more your style. i play a lot of WvWvW and was getting incredibly tired of fighting thieves who just spam invisibility. so i grabbed a flamethrower and now stack vulnerability, bleeding and burning on them while they are in stealth.
i think my record is downing 3 thieves while they were trying to stealth away.
It is meta when compared to other classes. The other builds don’t stand up against or compared to other classes who have similar roles. DPS wise, Tank wise, and support wise (support is probably our best imo).
There are fun classes, but anything other than nades is very focused on one spec. FT is great vs mesmers and invisi thiefs, but if someone keeps you at range like a ranger you can get owned. Im running some random tool kit build and i am unkillable, it took 4 mesmers to take me down. It was hilarious.
To be honest I don’t run dungeons a lot but I have been doing a lot of lurking on the forums and for the builds I’ve seen posted that depend on the static discharge for extra DPS tend to utilize rifle turret’s short cooldown, use either tool kit’s Throw Wrench, bomb kit’s Big Ol’ Bomb, or grenade kit’s Grenade Barrage for hard hitting tool belt skills, or utilize turrets’ detonation to squeeze extra static discharges out of them.
I think the only thing I haven’t seen mentioned in forums is something I do. A lot of people on the forums dislike mines and especially the mine field tool belt skill because it has a tendency to not trigger by itself. For static discharge, this is a good thing since you’ll be able to squeeze an extra discharge out of detonating the mines.
That said, you still probably aren’t going to get the DPS output you’d get from grenades.
Its not that people dont think something is good, it is that they are not good enough to take up a slot.
With mines, although its good for that extra discharge, its better to take something over that. one of the most popular skill setups for discharge is grenade kit + tool kit + goggles. The reasons is mostly that it is great for WvW. Discharge seems to be best in small group confrontations. So spvp and tpvp it can be good, but in wvw with such a large amount of people in zergs you’d have to target one person and be able to stop him while not getting killed yourself. When doing toolkit and grenades, it gives you enough utility and AoE dps to do well in all situations of WvW.
Exactly why I either run Toolkit/Grenades in WvW and leave the Mines for PvE. Unfortunately I don’t know enough about running dungeons to answer OP’s question about viability specifically for that venue.