Guild Wars 2

I have been looking for an answer for a long time now, but I can’t find an answer: What are the major pros and cons of the rifle/pistol and which one, in your opinion, is better?

Rifle is for power and pistol for condi.

Rifle gives you good cc possiblities and pistol gives you with poisen and blind good utilty/defense abilities.

I like pistol/pistol more because of the style. At the moment we all play Vee Wees Rifle build because it is awesome and Vee Wee is Engi #1

First of all: Hi.
And then: Are you talking about PvE or WvW/PvP?

WvW/PvP

Pistol Mainhand

• condition weapon
• poison uptime
• blind n confusion
• small aoe
• very good

Pistol Offhand

• condition weapon
• short range burn, weak on long range
• short lasting soft cc
• much weaker than the shield and rather useless in any states of the game

Rifle

• power weapon
• awesome burst
• good aoes and line dmg
• short range weapon skills (except aa)
• root, and cc
• also great weapon

PvE

Pistol Mainhand

• power weapon
• skill 3 has a fast reacting blind
• just use skill 2 in close combat against one enemy (it spreads and will miss on long range)
• use it mainly to be able to whield a shield offhand
• using skill 1 lowers your dps since you simply could have used bombs or grenades instead.

Pistol Offhand

• much weaker than the shield and rather useless in any states of the game

Rifle

• power weapon
• awesome burst
• good aoes and line dmg
• short range weapon skills (except aa)
• root, and cc
• also great weapon

Shield
With a pistol grants you a block, reflection, combofinisher and stun. In PvP/WvW while playing condi dmg, use pistol and shield. In PvE in general use Pistol and Shield. The utility this weapon grants you is superior. Sure the rifle bursts but an engi uses grenades and bombs for PvE content damage source. You can fill your mainweapons with utility instead of damage, so Pistol + Shield > Rifle in PvE.
Full Berserker btw: (Power / Precision / Ferocity)

greez!

Thanks for making this thread, found some good tips for myself here. I’m currently going with a pistol/shield build but only lvl 10 atm. So far its fun. Still trying to figure out what to invest points in and learning the terminology.

Its been awhile since I leveled… I would assume a rifle would be the best weapon to use while leveling. It gives you more over all dmg, no need to wait for condi to rack up. It also gives you the net shot CC. If your new notice net shot has no cast time. That means it doesn’t eat a firing cycle. So you can net shot at any time and keep firing away for dmg. If I remember when I leveled I used a rifle turret for a long time, the tool belt skill surprise shot is also a zero cast time skill. That means you can engage a critter… and burst them pretty well for a low level toon, with surprise shot / net shot to CC and hold them for the last few hits. Blunderbuss and jump shot at point blank range anything that manages to get close enough. (Rifle 4 is also an interupt… so if you pull a vet or something after your opening rotation wait for its attack animation and use 4… to interupt it and if your net is back up you can rinse and repeat until its dead)

As others have said later… Pistol is the engi condi weapon… you see pistol / shield on most engis in both PvP and PvE. With kits doing most of the dmg work. You won’t find as many people using rifle…. mostly its a power weapon. It can however make a good surprise burst weapon (even on a condi build)… Sometimes when running a typical condi heavy WvW build I will load a Rifle with a sigils of intelligence and doom on it. If you find your self in a 1v1 it makes a great surprise super burst… switch out of your kit procing the Intel sigils and jumpshot / blunderbuss on top of someones head. Even with heavy condi gear on it can rack up some heavy dmg.

Xyonon.3987:

Shield
With a pistol grants you a block, reflection, combofinisher and stun. In PvP/WvW while playing condi dmg, use pistol and shield. In PvE in general use Pistol and Shield. The utility this weapon grants you is superior. Sure the rifle bursts but an engi uses grenades and bombs for PvE content damage source. You can fill your mainweapons with utility instead of damage, so Pistol + Shield > Rifle in PvE.
Full Berserker btw: (Power / Precision / Ferocity)

greez!

The added burst from Rifle #3 skill and Rifle #5 outweighs the utility from p/s. You’re at a net dps loss if you’re not using the rifle skills when they’re off cooldown.

no your not. the passive damage from another blast finisher = 3 stacks might for everyone outdamages the almost similiar damage from rifle 3 / 5 compared to bombs, especially against 3< targets where blunderbuss only hits 3 enemies.

Blunderbuss and Jump Shot is not similar damage, its on the order of 25% and higher damage than a normal bomb. Also the 6 stacks of vuln from jump shot > 3 stacks of might.

Thanks everyone for the tips. You are all fantastic for sharing your knowledge with the rest of Tyria.

Xyonon.3987:

Pistol Offhand

• condition weapon
• short range burn, weak on long range
• short lasting soft cc
• much weaker than the shield and rather useless in any states of the game

Orly?

Pistol offhand is actually quite strong atm in pvp. It synergizes really well with the balthazar rune. Youre looking at 7000-7500 burns from blowtorch every 12 seconds if you have corruption stacks up. And and an easy skillshot in glueshot to set up that condi burst.

1. Rifle
   1. Great direct damage. Hitting with Blunderbuss and Jump Shot can easily clear 10k damage total. Easily.
   2. Great condition damage. Hitting with blunderbuss at close range is four stacks of bleed. Mix this with Sigil of Geomancy and you just hit with 7. Take incendiary powder and this becomes 7 stacks of bleeding + burning.
   3. Great CC. Net Shot is a 10s recharge. That’s crazy strong for a skill that immobs for 2 seconds.
   4. Leap Finisher. This, mixed with the F1 for healing turret is a free 1.2k heal.
   5. No poison or burning naturally. You have to find another way to get these.
   6. Great Autoattack. This thing hits for a good 2k on power builds.
   7. Great for decapping. One overcharge shot followed up with a net shot is a near full cap.
2. Pistol/Shield
   1. Poison. Very spammable and great uptime.
   2. Very defensive. It’s hard to kill an engi who understands how to use this.
   3. Not very good at power damage or condition damage. Need to find these from outside sources.
3. Pistol Pistol
   1. Trinity of Condition damage. It has burning, poison and bleeding. All in one.
   2. Blowtorch is AoE. Get that on a person who is resing.
   3. Great Escape. Glue shot is great for it.
   4. Defense is hard to use. It’s all active and requires timing and aiming. Generally only shuts down one person for a short period of time.

Rifle: Great for setting up skills, combo’ing and controlling the enemy

Pistol: Condi spam! pretty use blow everything on cooldown. Static shot Is amazing, that’s about it.

ps: Pistol offhand is sooo much stronger than shield, at least in PvP

I agree about pistol, blowing CDs and starting off with Static Shot when in melee range is essential.

I use rifles for blast effects and I love the 3 shot combo when enemies surround me in melee, Jumpshot, Blunderbuss, Overcharge. I find that Rifles need a bit more help in the condition department than pistols but you can still spec to have rifle damage improve overall by stacking conditions on enemies. Just include the vuln, torment, burn and you can have lots of extra damage with modified ammunition. PVE of course.

I don’t fully buy the Rifle = Power, Pistol = Condi argument. If you’re running Elixir Gun (you probably should be for most PvP builds) then the only thing that Pistol nets you over Rifle in terms of conditions is Static Shot… in my eyes this doesn’t always make up for the extra CC, mobility and bleeding from Rifle. One of the most successful builds I’ve had on Engineer is a Rifle Condition build, and I keep coming back to it.

I can’t see many Power builds where you’d want to run Pistol (unless you really wanted the Shield), but Rifle is definitely viable for Conditions.

Rifle 4 + stun break instantly gives back control, even though the animation suggests you are still getting up.

So, you can knock back your foe, quickly pop utility goggles or such, and instantly roll backward to maximize distance (or forward if you have any reason to do that).

It’s a pretty thug combo