Guild Wars 2

I am playing a dual pistol engineer but I am unsure what to go for in stats on my weapons or armor in general. Should I go for pure power or more precision?

When you play a dual pistol Engineer, your main focus should be Condition Damage (it’s a Condition weapon afterall)! There is 3 good stat lines for this: Carrion – Condition damage / Power /viatality, Rapid – Conidition Damage /Precision/Toughness and Rampager – Precision / Condition Damage / Power.

Personal I prefer to mix rapid with carrion, so I have a bit from all the stats, since Engineer got a lot of “Trggier on crititcal hit” trait’s, like Sharpshooter ect. But it depends on your playstyle and your kit’s, how much critical chance you want, or if you want it at all (I’m of the openion either you don’t take it, or atleast get 30-40% crit chance, ain’t it’s a waste)

in general, power up while leveling, it is the easiest trade off. as you scale and start to trait out, the engie becomes very unwieldy because of how spread out our trait combos are, but if you stick with dual pistols you’ll find that a mixture of condition damage and power become important.

If you search the forum for Maskaganda or anything about pp hgh (also “pphgh” if you want to maximize the search) you will find many discussions on how to become a little fiend (assuming you made the right choice in making an asura).

Also I am only in my low 20s as far as level so most the stuff I am seeing is single stat such as power or precision etc.

So you are saying basically go straight power for a while and then a mix of condition and power?

Check https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Mask-s-new-WvW-build-preview

Let me say this clear first: Pistols are NOT for leveling purposes, actually they NEED a rework right now as Elixir-Gun’s already better at condition damage (don’t suggest confusion based builds, they work far better against players and NEED dedicated condition equips), also condition damage in general is better AFTER you reach your cap, this is because there is a serie of traits/runes/sigils that you NEED to get just average results.

So I’ll point you to the best direction there is for leveling, which is Static Discharge, it is a trait (10sp in Tools) that works perfectly with the Rifle turret’s toolbelt skill, those 2 alone are a good base for any non-conditional build AND are available VERY early (which is where you stand)… oh and yes you’d better start using rifle, it is better for control and kiting compared to pistols and should help you learn engineer mechanics pretty well as it works fine in most builds.

You may not know this yet but in the Mists (pvp) you can try out any non-racial skill available in the game as well as every trait so go there and do some tests (to access pvp press its icon (upper left of the screen) and choose “Go to the heart of the Mists”, there is also a PvP locker which previews any armor available for any race/armor class.

I leveled up with pistol, RFreak, without issue. just because the rifle has more cc doesn’t make it “better”, only “different.” your advise sounds more like dictum than suggestion.

play how you want to. no one forum.opinion is the.final word on any matter.

I agree with nakoda. There is no best weapon for leveling. I used pistol/shield to level up because I felt dual pistols was too squishy. I switched to dual pistols later as I understood how to better play the class and focused on condition damage.

Generally as you level up, power will be the most useful stat. Once you hit higher level gear with more than one stat, you need to balance out damage with survivability. Look for stuff that has at least toughness or vitality along with power/condition damage.

I settled on dual pistols while levelling and found the following helped a lot:

1. Learn to watch the enemies animations and dodge their major attacks (not specific to pistols, but is a key mechanic to learn as dodging is the biggest damage reducer in GW2)
2. If you find yourself getting downed too often replace low level gear with better stuff from the TP – upgrading this way is surprisingly cheap and you’ll find even better gear as yo level so don’t be too worried about your choice.
3. Invest trait points in Firearms, it gives both precision (more criticals + bleeding = more damage) and extra condition damage, and the Hair Trigger trait (20% faster pistol recharge) will greatly increase your effective pistol damage and condition output
4. For armor and weapon stats focus on Precision (for crits), Power (for raw damage output), Condition Damage and Condition Duration (for increased condition damage). I started by focussing on Precision/Condition items but eventually swapped to more Power/Precision as it proved more effective overall (at higher levels anyway) due to the greater upfront damage – this was most noticeable when doing events with others as my high value condition damage would get diluted by their low value cond damage.