Guild Wars 2

Is a crit rifle build capable of putting out similar damage to a grenadier traited grenade build? I know the grenades are nice for AoE, but I’m sort of tired of using them all the time and want to try out a rifle build. Wondering if I’ll see a huge drop in damage output to a single target if I change over.

I have a level 80 exotic rifle with power/precision/crit damage if that helps. The majority of my equipment is power/precision/crit damage.

Grenades do more damage. Sorry.

Well that’s somewhat upsetting. Guess I’ll just keep grenades on the toolbar. Thanks.

Rifle VS Grenades.

• Due to the AOE damage that grenades have, they automatically do more damage when compared to a rifle. However, grenades are extremely easy to dodge/miss, have slow hit time, and poor casting while the engineer is dodging/avoiding attacks.

• In other words, if your trying to hit a moving target you will miss more than you hit. If your dodging attacks you will miss more than you hit. Grenades simply excel only if the target(s) are stationary.

• The rifle however allows damage to be dealt to the enemy regardless of their movement, and regardless of the engineer dodging attacks. The rifle also has a small AOE cone at 400 range (Blunderbuss) that isn’t bad if you are up close to the enemy. The rifle also has great cc abilities but doesn’t have the same AOE potential as grenades do.

• To keep it simple – grenades do more damage but only if the target is standing still.

• If you really want a versatile AOE crit build I recommend duel pistols. The auto attack (Explosive Shot) has splash damage, the bullets of all the skills pierce multiple enemies, it has a cone spell (Blowtorch) that works well at 600 range and deals massive damage, and another (Static Shot) ability that hits all enemies within close proximity to each other.

• However please note that duel pistols are a crit/condition based build, not a power one.

AoE Crit build?
Just go Power + Precision, forget about condition damage as it doesn’t do kitten against structures.

Or even better, go Power + Crit Damage, then get Power + Crit gear, then more power + Crit gear, and stack 20 points to firearms and 30 to explosives and 20 to tools, get the scope, 10%+ crit chance when you stand still, run up to your enemy, and just own everything with your grenades before they get to hit you twice.

Condition Damage builds are inferior in PvE, as grenades kitten straight outclasses condition based builds in damage. Sure, with the pistols flamethrower trick (slot 4) you can dish out 3000-4000 damage in 4 seconds for condition, but with the grenades you can crit 6000 on your toolbelt skill that has a similar cooldown. At least that’s my experience. I used to run a condition build, but then I noticed how outclassing grenades were in damage even when I were running CD crit build… Then I switched to full power-precision-critdamage and now I wish I had dont that a long time ago.

Grenades outclass any other damaging build for the engineer in a PvE scenario, you don’t need to worry about enemies moving about as you have freeze grenades and a rifle’s net shot to immobilize with.

… Just grab your grenades and go all power, forget about CD builds until this matter get’s balanced out.
IF it gets balanced out.

EDIT:
Oh, to answer your question, no. Rifles will not be able to dish out the same amount of damage as grenades in a PvE scenario. In PvP, that’s a different matter.

Use rifle when 1) your target is moving a LOT and in an unpredictable pattern, 2) your fingers are tired (get a macro mouse), or, 3) you want to burst some poor sucker down (still should have grenades for Grenade Barrage) in WvW.

Use grenades for everything else.

DPS wise the only thing that I have found that competes with grenade builds, whether your talking ST or AoE

Is a P/P power build with 30 fire arms for coated bullets.

90% of the time grenade will beat it’s damage output with spamming the 1-2 skills and grenade barrage.

But the 10% of the time when you have 4-5+ enemies clumped up tightly (dungeons, door ways, ramps, small rooms) it will out do grenade damage with the one skills.

If you run with guardians in WvW and have them use the GS aoe pull to set you up it can be really effective in the open field.

But it’s very niche.

You can somewhat say the same thing about FT when your attacking through gates.

But basically you can get the 1 skill to crit 900-1100. When you have 5 enemies in a small clump you get 1 explosion for each enemy so 4.5-5.5k with crits + bleeds on your main target with a much faster and more accurate attack than grenade. With quickness it is rather sickening damage output I must say. It’s a machine gun.

Poison dart #2 will also crit ~4k+ and give you additional poison damage. If you pair it with tool kit or grenade kit you wont lose the barrage damage.

If I didn’t feel it was suicidal I’d got 30 / 30 / 0 / 0 / 10 and do a grenadier coated bullets setup, for maximum possible damage.

So I was too interested to not try it and played around with a crit rifle build last night. It’s a modification on the one in the Build Thread:

http://tinyurl.com/9nps3ef

Have to say, I really like it. Instead of supply crate I use the Asura offensive golem. If I pop the goggles toolbelt ability, elixir u, and elixir b i can crank out about crazy burst damage. Can also sustain the +20% chance to crit almost all the time between all the different elixir’s and toolbelts abilities. It’s not as consistent as grenades in damage output, but burst damage is always fun. Obviously it’s just single target, but the piercing ability of rifle allows for some AoE if things are lined up right.

I use the same build as my default.

I rig it with Valkyrie gear and use the healing turret / tool kit / portable battering ram / utility goggles.

I like using the vulnerability on crit sigil and the orge runes as well.

I can maintain an average 6-7 stacks of vulnerability and can up that to ~17-23 when I want to spike.

PBR and Throw wrench actually hit really hard with max vulnerability up. It’s easily 4k for PBR and ~6k with both hits for throw wrench. With the lightning bolts from static discharge that can end up being 14-18k with a lot of aoe.

It works out to be a lot of mid range burst at around ~700-900 so you can drop or weaken an enemy before you close in to finish them off with jump / blunderbuss.

Even tool kit will crit 4.5k with full vulnerability with the 3rd hit of the one skill.

It is by far my favorite build.

I even carry an extra set of pistols to swap in with coated bullets at keeps / dungeons when enemies are grouped up tightly.

TwiceDead.1963:

AoE Crit build?
Just go Power + Precision, forget about condition damage as it doesn’t do kitten against structures.

Can you critical hit a structure? I don’t think I’ve ever seen this happen.

Karast, here is what I plan to get all my gear like:

http://tinyurl.com/9gvw5

I actually use the +Crit % sigil. Interesting that the PBR can do that much… I may need to try it out in place of one of my elixirs. Would give me some more good CC as well.

@LameFox
I have never seen a critical hit against a structure, no. But power does help!

Use grenades for damage, use rifle for the root, knockback and leap. It is pretty clear from the way engi weapons are set up that rifle isn’t supposed to be competitive DPS-wise.

Yukishiro, I would argue that after having played with this build for a couple days. Single target damage is much easier, more consistent even though it depends on crits, and burst damage is crazy high compared to my previous grenade build. Plus it allows me to be much more mobile with more CC. This is what I was looking for when I started my Engineer.

I say damage is more consistent in that I don’t have to worry about missing or having weird targeting issues come up. Frees me up to concentrate on popping elixirs/other cooldowns when ready.

The thing with pbr is it gives you a strong ranged hit, with a cripple, and an hard hitting ST KB from the utility.

The link you put up doesn’t seem to work for me.

I tried the crit sigil but I like the vulnerability proc sigil more since it works in concert with the trait.

I like the group support type feel of having the ability to increase allied damage.

If you swap from grenade the damage is a bit less. You miss that huge dps from 1 spamming. But it takes less effort to aim and fire so you can spend more time focusing on movement, placement, and so on.

I will from time to time lead groups, and it can be a bit much doing grenade while trying to lead, call targets, and keep track of everything else.

An important factor to note as well is that it has better build synergy than grenade in many cases.

If you go tool kit, and pbr. Between your normal rifle shots and these tool belt skills it is not hard to get 4-5 confusion or burn or poison stacks up when an allies drop a combo field.

Grenade for all of it’s dps does not have a way of trigger combo fields outside of additional utility skills.

Link fix:

http://tinyurl.com/8rdo7gm

Will try this tonight.

I’ve tried going around with full berzerkers before and you can do it, but you may need to swap elixir S into the build and run the protection injection trait from alchemy.

With full berzerkers you would be an easy target for anyone that wants you. In WvW I like Valkyrie gear since it gives me a really nice amount of vitality.

If you play the edges and are careful to avoid attention you should be ok, but if a group decides to focus you, you don’t have many options.

Karast.1927:

I’ve tried going around with full berzerkers before and you can do it, but you may need to swap elixir S into the build and run the protection injection trait from alchemy.

With full berzerkers you would be an easy target for anyone that wants you. In WvW I like Valkyrie gear since it gives me a really nice amount of vitality.

If you play the edges and are careful to avoid attention you should be ok, but if a group decides to focus you, you don’t have many options.

I run with full Berzerkers as well. It was very squishy, so I’ve been experimenting with traits. Last night I ran with Protection Injection, Protective Shield, low health response system, Hidden Flask, and Elixer S up. It definitely increased my survivability.

I found if I play smart and focus on hit and run tactics I can get away with just protection injection / the block from tool kit.

If the focus gets bad I swap in elixir S for utility goggles.

You can get away with being squishy with good team support and smart play in WvW / PvE and at times in sPvP.

But in tpvp / or if your a point guard you really gotta swap to a tanky bunker build.

I just noticed though my dps doesn’t not drop by all that much if I swap in a few pieces of Valkyrie for berzerker. You don’t really think about it but an extra 2-3k hp does help a lot.

Dybz.9275:

Yukishiro, I would argue that after having played with this build for a couple days. Single target damage is much easier, more consistent even though it depends on crits, and burst damage is crazy high compared to my previous grenade build. Plus it allows me to be much more mobile with more CC. This is what I was looking for when I started my Engineer.

It’s easier, sure. It’s not nearly as high. Obviously if you miss a lot of your grenade hits that will change the equation but that’s more of a player error kind of problem.

Also grenade build can have about the same mobility and CC. You can still use rifle skills. You have one less utility slot, but ice grenade is pretty good for CC/mobility itself. Anyone running grenade should be frequently switching to rifle for the CC and mobility it provides when needed, unless you’re running pistol/shield in which case you should be frequently switching out for the shield skills.

to be honest i have tried using pistol as con build it doesn’t work well power build pistol with crit is alot better

Pistol con build relies on picking skills like rocket boots and the bomb kit that give you access to decent duration burning. The pistol skills themselves arn’t enough to justify going con damage, especially given how bad engis are at stacking bleed.

I’m a Grenadier/Bomber engineer.
I rarely use rifle ( When I use it , it’s just for the knock down and net ).
I use bombs while kitting a melee mobs , grenades or ranged one and the mines for both.
This is my build >>
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fcEQFAUl0paZHxynF17ISoHS49pWiKUZfeIXtFEC
Power Shoes trait will help alot with kitting.

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

I’m a Grenadier/Bomber engineer.
I rarely use rifle ( When I use it , it’s just for the knock down and net ).
I use bombs while kitting a melee mobs , grenades or ranged one and the mines for both.
This is my build >>
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fcEQFAUl0paZHxynF17ISoHS49pWiKUZfeIXtFEC
Power Shoes trait will help alot with kitting.

Didn’t look at the build but that basic setup is pretty clearly what arenanet is pushing engi towards because at the moment nothing else really competes with it.

Looking at your build you’d be better off going for the 100% uptime swiftness + vigor than going as deep as you do into inventions for the 10% movespeed and the healing with bombs. The 30 inventions talent only heals for like 200ish per bomb and you have to still be standing on the bomb when it goes off to get the healing. Having vigor with 100% uptime would allow you to mitigate a lot more damage, swiftness is 23% faster than the runspeed talent, and it gives you an additional two boons to cushion boon stripping.