SPvP: benefits of Cele+Rifle over Rabid+P/S?

SPvP: benefits of Cele+Rifle over Rabid+P/S?

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Posted by: Akira.5746

Akira.5746

I TPvP occasionally with guild mates and am looking to improve. While I do well already (often my team’s top scorer — albeit, I doubt score is a meaningful performance measure), I’ve been downed enough to feel like the build I run is strong but not optimal. I am currently running 60044 Rabid 3kit P/S w/ Earth+Generosity and Balthazar.

I’ve looked through MetaBattle’s two “meta” Engi builds (Rifle Hybrid and Rabid 2Kit+S) and while I did pick up on a few tricks I hadn’t thought of (e.g. Rifle 4 on downed bodies), I didn’t spot a spelled-out reason to pick one build over the other. Even in the tournaments, I’ve seen some EU teams run Rabid while NA has mostly transitioned to Cele Rifle.

I would really like to know the obvious, brick-over-the-head reasons to run Cele Rifle over Rabid P/S, and the accompanying mindset and combat strategy adjustments one would make if they switched builds.

For example:
-Does the build aim to maintain ~25 Might in the same way Cele Eles do?
-If so, is it strictly via passives (Hoelbrak+Battle) or is there an ability rotation tied to it?
-Is the method of self-sustain much different (mainly blocks + Healing Turret combos)?
-How does Cele Rifle compensate for the loss of a reflect and a block+stun?

Any and all assistance would be appreciated.
Thank you for reading.


P.S.: I’d like to ask a similar question regarding Elixir S vs. Elixir Gun Kit; I currently use the E.Gun kit for the blast, heal and condi removal.

SPvP: benefits of Cele+Rifle over Rabid+P/S?

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Posted by: Sins.4782

Sins.4782

The celestial build stacks between 3 and 9 might depending on how long a fight has been going, if no one else contributes stacks. It’s not that crucial, and you could conceivably run another rune set if you wanted. Its strength relies in its hybrid damage, bringing both good condition damage and good direct damage, with high spike damage if used correctly. Using grenade barrage inside an immobilized enemies model does great damage, as do blunderbuss and jump shot, and they can be chained as well.

The celestial build is more vulnerable to direct damage spikes, with lower toughness, and lacks the block/stun of shield, meaning your best defense against a thief spike or similar is to dps the thief instead of block while your conditions tick. On the other side of the coin, celestial is better versus conditions, as it has both higher vitality and better sustain, but it still won’t save you vs strong condition builds as our condition removal is pretty kitten terrible.

Celestial rifle also trades the slower double stun of shield and magnetic inversion’s short range knockback for a much faster CC in overcharged shot. This makes interrupting heals easier, and makes moving corpses and setting up bursts possible. The soft CC of net shot also makes decaps easier, and key grenades much easier to land. You do lose out on pistol 3’s blind, but a properly timed net shot can negate a lot more damage than it.

Basically, the celestial build trades defense for offensive, and no longer gets countered by builds with condition immunity or very high condition removal.

For Elixir S vs Elixir Gun, it really depends on your style of play and what you want to do. Elixir S is a very solid option, with the stealth from its toss allowing you to set up initial bursts with magnet, or stealth downed allies to prevent stomps, or escape an outnumbered fight. The Elixir itself also allows you to safestomp versus anything but a thief or mesmer, which can be very useful if you do not have a guardian with stand your ground or an elementalist or d/p thief for securing stomps. Depending on your comp, even teamfights may be near impossible to win due to an inability to stomp, so there are definitely times when you’d want to run elixir s over any other option.

Elixir Gun on the other hand is the defensive/support option. It brings a condition remove and decent heal with super elixir, amazing condition removal on others with fumigate, and the hard-hitting blast finisher acid bomb, which can be used for damage on corpses, or blasting a water field, or escaping a fight. Elixir S beats it for escaping fights, but acid bomb can be used for faster movement across the map, meaning you may be able to make it to a point in time to contest it and prevent a decap which you wouldn’t have had time to with Elixir S. Elixir Gun also brings a superior stunbreak, making it the better option against CC heavy opponents and terrormancers.

It should be noted that Elixir Gun and Elixir S are not your only options for a third utility. Others you may want to consider:

  • Elixir U when facing multiple power rangers or other projectile heavy opponents, can also be used to safestomp against war/engi, and quickness stomp for when an enemy is being ressed.
  • Slick Shoes is a strong offensive option, providing up to 6 seconds of continual knockdown if used properly, as well as a decent escape and low cooldown stunbreak in Super Speed. Both this skill and its toolbelt skill are getting significant cooldown reductions in the next patch as well.
  • Thumper Turret combined with the Experimental Turrets trait to provide good protection uptime to your team during teamfights. Also brings good CC. Useful against direct damage heavy teams.
  • Elixir R for when you feel like trolling enemies by self ressing. Hilarious when used with the trait Always Prepared.

SPvP: benefits of Cele+Rifle over Rabid+P/S?

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Posted by: Lumines.3916

Lumines.3916

I think the greatest benefit of celestial is that it’s so tailored to the nature of the engineer. Celestial works with any engineer set up making it an excellent all rounder. It’s excellent with the rifle but works just as well with P/S too!

I run a Triple Kit (T, B, EG) celestial engineer with P/S, Balthazar runes, Battle/Geomancy sigils and it is nasty! Lots of blasting potential is what I love about it. If you pick up Enhance Performance in explosives, might stacking potential becomes even higher, doesn’t work if you want to run Nades tho.

PS: The strongest asset of celestial amulet imo is it gives you a much better matchup against your usual hard counter necros, the rifle variants especially so.

(edited by Lumines.3916)

SPvP: benefits of Cele+Rifle over Rabid+P/S?

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Posted by: Vieteriukko.6075

Vieteriukko.6075

Main difference imo is that rabid is stong vs all but necros. Cele is not that stong vs all but it is less bad vs necro. Against not great necro you might stand a chance. I picked cele to ease the necro hard countering a little bit.

SPvP: benefits of Cele+Rifle over Rabid+P/S?

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Posted by: Shaogin.2679

Shaogin.2679

I ran triple kit p/s condi engi and had trouble sometimes as well. Then I swapped out Elixir Gun for Elixir S and had much better results. I think the difference for me was that I could finally escape from outnumbered fights, get to a safer spot, and attack from long range when needed. Also allows me to secure stomps or stall the fight until my next block or heal is ready.

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SPvP: benefits of Cele+Rifle over Rabid+P/S?

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Posted by: Lupanic.6502

Lupanic.6502

As an p/p Rabid engi I have problems to fight a good ele because of the condition removal I am not able to put pressure on him. With cele you have the possibility to make condi and direct damage against every class.

SPvP: benefits of Cele+Rifle over Rabid+P/S?

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Posted by: dereck.8354

dereck.8354

I guess the big advantage of celestial is that you get a total of 3066 stat points instead of 2232 in other amulets (in spvp). Of course this could be of no use if you waste some of this stat points. But the engineer takes advantage of all stats. With celestial you won’t do spike damage, but you’ll do sustained damage both from conditions and power. The critical chance and damage will be in the middle range too. In the defense side, you won’t be a bunker, but you’ll have good health pool and also a good armor.
And finally, the healing power will help you both with backpack regenerator and with the healing from turret and regens.

I always tried to use celestial in other classes, but I always felt like wasting something and not being good in anything. Most classes won’t take advantage of healing power, or won’t have the synergy between direct damage and condition damage.

I’ve been playing with the celestial rifle lately and I simply love it. So much synergy between defense and attack. I don’t feel like a paper, or a bunker which can’t do damage anymore. LOL.