Guild Wars 2

This is a build idea for those that want to show off their “The Flameseeker Prophecies” (or if you’d just like a pistol/shield build). I designed it for PVE and don’t know how well it will work in PVP or WvW. It is about eeking out as much damage from the Pistol as I can manage.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqelspiXnuyuF87IyoCdGoHAGfNiie8YU2kB-jwxAY/ASZApCAJviox2GKiGruGT5SEVDA-e

Weapons: Berserker’s Pistol/Shield – The reason this build exists. Don’t knock pistols for zerker builds until you try them out. Get a sigil of force and sigil of battle for increased damage and might respectively.

Pistol 1: Will crit for over 1k in level 80 zones, while stacking bleeds and doing lots of AOE damage. Coated Bullets is taken for piercing shots. The bullets will also often explode for 1k+ crits. I would argue that I can do more AOE damage with a pistol than with ‘nades. Nades will still have the advantage against a single target if you can get all 3 to land.
Pistol 2: When all the shots are taken, I’ve seen my total crit damage total over 5k. Also stacks poison.
Pistol 3: I use this every cooldown. This will also crit for 1k+. The confusion damage is just a bonus and will crit for about the same, maybe 950ish. It bounces 4 times, so if you have 4 mobs, that is four 1k crits and 8 stacks of confusion total.
Shield 4: Defensive skill. I don’t use it a lot against normal mobs (they die too quickly), but It shines during fights against ranged vets, champs, or bosses. It is also great if multiple mobs get too close and gives you a good knock-back.
Shield 5: Oh how I love this skill. Thrown shields will hit each mob in a line twice, once on the way out and once on the way back for about 1.2k crit damage.

Utilities: Elixir H, Elixir U, Elixir B, Elixir Gun, Elixir X

Elixer H – Heals, builds Might with HGH, and grants Protection, Regen, or Swiftness. 20 second recharge with Fast-Acting Elixirs. Gives you a throwable Elixir on your toolbelt which will build Might with HGH and randomly grant Protection, Regen, or Vigor.
Elixir U – Builds Might with HGH, grants Quickness and another random utility skill. (btw…did you know quickness affects gathering speed?). Gives you a throwable Elixir on your toolbelt which will build Might with HGH and create a random spell.
Elixer B – Builds Might with HGH, grants Fury, Might, Retaliation, and Swiftness. Gives you a throwable Elixir on your toolbelt which will build Might with HGH and randomly grant Fury, Might, Retaliation, or Swiftness.
Elixir Gun – I use this mainly underwater and to grant perma-Swiftness with the Speedy Kits trait. It also gives you Regen and a Stun-Breaker on your toolbelt. Elixirs on the Elixir gun will unfortunately NOT grant Might with HGH.
Elixir X – Because it’s fun. Use Supply Crate or whatever you want. It will build Might with HGH.

Traits: 0/30/0/30/10 (feel free to move things around if you don’t like my choices, they work for me so that’s why I’m recommending them). Thank you DesertRose for the Modified Ammunition suggestion.

Firearms – V. Precise Sights – 50% chance to cause Vulnerability on crit. A little extra damage will get through. VII. Coated Bullets – Love me some piercing bullets. Helps when fighting multiple mobs. XI. Modified Ammunition – More damage per condition type on a mob.
Alchemy – II. Fast-Acting Elixirs – 20% faster Elixir recharge lets you use your Elixirs more often. X. Cleansing Formula 409 – Say what you want, but conditions in PvE are still annoying, especially snares. XI. HGH – The backbone Might builder of the build. You’ll be stacking about 12-15 stacks for yourself. This is a good number because if you are running in a group, it’s likely you will also gain Might from other sources as well and Might beyond 25 stacks is just wasted.

Armor: Berserker’s with Ruby Orbs. Feel free to use Might runes if you would prefer.

Get yourself some Crit food and get out there and start chugging some Elixirs! Please feel free to critique and offer up some variations if you think there is a better way to run this build!

-K

If you’re running full Berserker why don’t you use Modified Ammunition instead of Incendiary Powder? Together with the minor trait it’s at least 9-11% more direct damage and it can affect more than one foe.

I’m not really a fan of HGH, with Bomb Kit and blast finisher you’ll be able to buff yourself with about as much stacks of Might, and more stacks for your allies:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqelIqSX3zyuF87IyoHd2ECAgeoX81IKqQ+B-e
Should be able to deal between 10-20% more damage or so than your version.

Actually, i like the modified ammunition idea. I’ll try that out.

As for bomb kit might stacking, i think the other benefits of Elixirs outweigh just stacking might. I don’t want to spend hardly any time in a kit except elixir gun for perma swiftness.

Kodiak.4213:

I designed it for PVE and don’t know how well it will work in PVP or WvW.

Zerker gear in WvW is great if you want to be a rally bot for the enemy.

I just made a build like this last night only mine is kind of a hybrid. I went 20/20/0/30/0 for enhanced preformance and HGH, together with altruism I can stack might like a boss. I also ran a sigil of battle but for some reason it won’t proc on kit swap (fml)

I am thinking of dropping the alchemy line alltogether and going with mod ammo and SD. I do love my rifle but sometimes I just feel like looking cool with my pew pew pistols

yeah, Mod ammo is a lot better than i gave it credit for initially. We all know how good SD is. I initially wanted to use SD, but the alchemy line gives you a little more of a safety net if things start to go south in a dungeon/open world.

And that is strange your sigil won’t proc. As far as my experience goes, i’ve always gotten might on swap.

I would advertise All elixir with Coated Bullets as more of a WvW utility+AoE spec.
Some aoe condition removal and buffing. Great condition removal and buffing on self.
And Toss Elixir R for getting that scrub commander up who got downed, that is something not many classes are able to do. Usually only warriors. Will also have aoe stability on Throw elixir B next patch.

And you can swap the build for 10/20/0/30/10, or 10/30/0/30/0 to get those elixir throws to remove boons.

I don’t know exactly what do you mean by “PvE” here. But yeah I can see this being great tagging those massive temple or some champion events with big zerg. When there is 20 mobs in a single spot. Piercing attacks hit atleast 10 targets, might be no limit.
But for dungeons, or anything without alot and ALOT of targets, pistol simply does not do anywhere enough dmg. Just wanted to say that cos you made a silly mistake of comparing pistol dps to nade dps, I know you weren’t serious.

But with utility in mind and using it in only massive AoE fests when you want to #1 #2 chillax. Iz gud.

We charrs get this cool skills “Hidden pistol”, that toolbelt skills hits hard, and does feel very bad kitten , fits the pure pistols feel here.

I love P/S, and boy I want this to work, but I just don’t see it.

I know you responded to the ideas of using SD instead, but I think that would definitely give you more damage than HGH. You can still get might if you bring a fire field, or creatively use ones you see combined with clever rune/sigil use. I know the damage wasn’t your reason for going down the elixir line, but I think it needs to be since you are using pistol after all. I think you let the blind from pistol and the two shield skills be pretty much all the defense you need.

Even still, I need more convincing

I’m not saying it’s the end all/be all of pistol/shield builds. But it has been working great for me. It’s a lot more enjoyable for me than spamming nades. And i meant what i said about out dpsing ‘nades when it comes to large groups. Remember, i said nades do have the advantage against one to 3 mobs if you can get all three grenades to hit all the targets (not easy to do w/o auto target). I’ve taken this build into TA’s level 80 path and it performs wonderfully. World bosses do leave you a little wanting, but that is maybe 5-10% of the game at level 80. Single target mobs in open world go down pretty quick. Give it a try and you might be surprised .

I’m all for fun builds that are effective, regardless of their status in whatever meta people want to fantasize about. I really can’t agree about the nades, but I see you’ve had that discussion already and made up your mind.

I appreciate clever P/S builds, and even moreso when it strays from the boring HGH and/or Grenadier that everyone runs. I’ll probably try this build at some point, but I’m just not completely sold. I have pretty much everything except Zerker pistols, so I’ll probably pick some up after the patch hits and I play around with Elixir B.

On second thought regarding SD, it may not be better than HGH simply because pistols apply so many conditions. With SD you’re doing nothing for those, but adding a few thousand more damage in your rotation. With HGH you’re adding probably a few hundred on top of all your hits as well as more than a few thousand in extra condition damage. I dunno, I bet they’re pretty much the same in the long run. Oddly enough what would hurt most of all using HGH over SD is probably going to be the crit damage from the Tools trait line.

EDIT: I will say one thing about this build, it will help me finish off that pesky pistol master achievement! 1700 hours and still not done with that… grumble grumble…

I run a similar build, but instead of HGH I go for Static discharge. Thats 10/30/0/0/30.
even without might, my basic attacks crit for 1200 dmg, and with coated bullet, they can hit 5 enemies 5 times each (if I round them up in a nice stack).

The Blind and confusion from Pistol 3# ,poision from pistol 2#, bleed from pistol 1#, bleed from crit trait, burn from crit trait and vul from Analyze all help me stack up some nice extra dmg from Modified Ammunition and Firearms’s 25 trait. As far as I know, that affects Static Discharge’s dmg.

Initiating with Pistol basic attack applies bleed (and maybe burn) and boost my dmg by 7%- 9%. Before the shoot lands, I fire Analyze for additional 10% dmg as well as a static discharge shoot.

I que Static Shot up right after my initial Explosive Shot to boost my Modified Ammunition dmg by another 4%. And fire Surprise Shot whenever it is off cooldown (7.75 sec with no cast animation)

After Static Shot, I use Throw Wrench for a third static discharge, and then turn over to Pistol volley if the enemy is near, or fire some more Explosive shots if they are at a distance. If the enemy have a clear line behind them will Throw Wrench return for another hit.