Guild Wars 2

I love my P/S for WvW, but I am curious if the update to sigils would make the rifle more viable. I highly doubt it would ever change for condi builds, but you never know.

I never felt the rifle was “not viable”. I hate that word though. I never understood why anyone wants to use undefined, fluid, or subjective term to try to define a concrete value.

Stereotypical? I didn’t know people were stereotyping Engineers.

Anyway, Wolfineer has some great videos using a rifle instead of P/S. Check them out.

rifle has always been good
perplexity is the only reason p/s is in the meta. honestly, without cheese mode confusion, thered be no reason for it to even exist outside of southsun cove.

@dancingmonkey
i tend to use a scale of counterproductive – bad – viable – good – optimal to rate skills in my mind and for engi only elixir C and AED clearly fall beneath viable. sure its subjective, but you gotta start somewhere to help you choose how to build your toon. the rest is basically finding the situations where certain things are optimal, and then deciding how to be optimal in the widest range of situations, or how to be so good at 1 thing that the weaknesses you ignore dont hurt you too much.

insanemaniac.2456:

perplexity is the only reason p/s is in the meta. honestly, without cheese mode confusion, thered be no reason for it to even exist outside of southsun cove.

Modified Ammunition+high bleed and poison uptime+a bouncing blind/confusion
on a low cooldown, as well as a personal reflect+AoE knock back/blast finisher, and a block/stun or projectile finisher/inline daze. This is an EXTREMELY useful set of abilities and goes way beyond ‘cheese-mode’ builds. Yes, Runes of Perplexity to have great synergy with this set, but it is hardly useless without it.

Stereotypical is a funny word to use when engis only really get 3 choices anyway. Yeah you are going to see a lot of p/s engineers but you see almost as many rifle ones. Don’t see pistol off hand very much though.

I run pistol off-hand on occasion in WvW. This is mostly for three reasons:

#1: I can’t hit anything with bombs in WvW, since most players are smart enough to get out of the way.
#2: I run tool kit, and it provides most of the utilities I need.
#3: It is a might stacking grenadier condi hybrid, so I enhance performance to get additional might instead of incendiary powder.

So, the off-hand pistol works quite well for me. It provides 10 seconds of burning on a 12 second recharge, and it does this really fast, so after I bait out the first cleanse this skill can hit really hard. Also, the glue shot is much easier to use and land than the glue bomb, so when chasing/escaping it works more effectively for me.

That said, pistol off-hand doesn’t have nearly the utility of the shield. It has more offensive power, but depending on the build it might not be necessary.

OptimistPrime.9283:

I love my P/S for WvW, but I am curious if the update to sigils would make the rifle more viable. I highly doubt it would ever change for condi builds, but you never know.

for conds builds now we can use rifle net for stop enemy and tartet it with some nade
but for perplexity setup P/S remain the easy way

insanemaniac.2456:

rifle has always been good
perplexity is the only reason p/s is in the meta. honestly, without cheese mode confusion, thered be no reason for it to even exist outside of southsun cove.

@dancingmonkey
i tend to use a scale of counterproductive – bad – viable – good – optimal to rate skills in my mind and for engi only elixir C and AED clearly fall beneath viable. sure its subjective, but you gotta start somewhere to help you choose how to build your toon. the rest is basically finding the situations where certain things are optimal, and then deciding how to be optimal in the widest range of situations, or how to be so good at 1 thing that the weaknesses you ignore dont hurt you too much.

I’m a big fan of perplexity but that’s cause I 1vX in wvw so anything that gives an edge I will use. Saying that though PS is a great setup with or without perplex imo. Shield gives so much survivability. The reflect, blast finisher, knockback and block daze have saved my little dudes life so many times.

Guess thats the beauty about us engis we are so flexible it just depends on what you are trying to achieve

OptimistPrime.9283:

I love my P/S for WvW, but I am curious if the update to sigils would make the rifle more viable. I highly doubt it would ever change for condi builds, but you never know.

it was always viable, especially in wvw.

P/S has unquestionably the highest “utility” but not necessarily the best damage or conditions.

It is hard to argue with fast application poison or a blind/confusion bounce or a block or a reflect/blast.

Is rifle viable? Absolutely especially when playing power based builds but you give up a lot of utility. Rifle also works well with CC build though depending on makeup so can P/P.

P/S is certainly better with perplexity runes, but it was still the most common set I ever saw in video or on servers well before.

if you have burning other than incendiary powder (rocket boots, bomb kit, flamethrower, etc.) use p/s
if incendiary powder is your only source of burning, use p/p.
if power use rifle

the problem is people overlook power builds.

No need to go perplexity on a p/s engineer, undead or scavinger runes are completely fine. Engis are a really strong condi class
I’d check Wolfineer’s youtube channel for various power/condi builds, he also has footage of the builds being used so you’ll be able to see if you like it

I picked up my first rifle literally within 10 minutes of starting my first character (Engi mentioned in sig), fell in love with it, never left it. It’s taken some time to figure out what will work in my specific case (can’t use grenades due to my wrists), but its done well in PvE and certain cases of WvW. The recent turret updates should help too.

insanemaniac.2456:

the problem is people overlook power builds.

I believe its because the engi character starts with a pistol, and if the player understands how the condition system works they’ll gravitate there quickly enough. In my case, the only other MMO I was involved in was Eve Online, so a game like this one is quite different… The Sigil system (until this patch) didn’t help matters any.

BTW, saw your build in the sig, I find it interesting. How hard is that to move away from Grenade kit?

insanemaniac.2456:

perplexity is the only reason p/s is in the meta. honestly, without cheese mode confusion, thered be no reason for it to even exist outside of southsun cove.

P/S is really strong without perplexity. Stun chains, reflect, blast finisher. All very nice.

Sungak Alkandenes.1369:

BTW, saw your build in the sig, I find it interesting. How hard is that to move away from Grenade kit?

i think itd be hard to migrate from nades. you might try healy bombs (and forceful explosives) instead. but… idk, the playstyle is very active, it very much takes advantage of constantly reevaluating the range you fight at and picking the right cd to blow next. and like… bombs are melee only, but nades are good up to about 800 range (like in a duel). and 1/2 the reason i take nades is so i can threaten siege from 1500.

the gear is solid as a wvw power set pretty much no matter what trait/utility setup you use. on almost any class.

You can definitely make it with the rifle but you have to remember you dont have the shield and you cant play as if you had the defense of the shield or the conditions from mainhand pistol.

In a power build you can force someone away just through auto attacks and you have a immobilize and launch to keep your distance.
Plus many people can be caught off guard by a rifle power build cuz they dont expect it, you can also help in by fights by locating the thief/ele/mesmer and auto attack them the whole time.
There are always other people built to do damage and you must hunt them down to win the fight since they are easiest to kill but have a huge impact on the fight.
They will also hunt you down so you have to remember to keep distance and not charge in if there is no reason to.

This is the build I use
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vcAQFAUlUUpmqlcxyKseRSM6RnJtoBpQv+VUB9/pAdB-TkAg0Ecp4yxlhLJXWuGEc+A

You can get around being squishy by shooting from the edges of the fight or using toolkit/exploding your turrets.

You also get many interupts which help in preventing revives or stomps.

You also dont sacrifice on support since you can create a huge heal through the healing turret and blast finishers.

The toolkit can save your life, pull an unsuspecting enemy and crit for huge dmg on just the auto attack which cripples when traited

The most important part of playing rifle is to get the jump on the enemy and not the other way around.
Shield is better when ambushed because it has defensive abilities, the rifle has gap creaters but cant defend as well when the gap is crossed.
Ambushing the enemy allows you to get in more of your attacks and can bring down the enemy to very low health so you wont be in a situation were your on the defensive

Stats will be different since its a pvp build and you play in WvW but the playstyle is the same. You can even swap speedy kits for deployable turrets to have a ranged knockback/heal

Rifle is viable but you have to build to its’ strengths, not build or play like you have P/S