Guild Wars 2

Does Sigil of Fire and of Air work well with the Grenade and Bomb Kit in terms of extra damage? For WvW, Arena, and PvE.

id say no, to unpredictable. you want an on weapon swap if ur using kits. and fire would be good for aoe just not lightning

yes they work well since nades hit 3×. you can keep them on cd more often than almost any other profession.

however… they add a lot to burst builds, and neither bombs nor nades are burst weapons. theyre sustained damage weapons. so you would probably be better off picking something to complement your sustained damage rather than trying to be bursty with sustained weapons. like battle or doom or force/night or something.

Air and Fire sigils are most useful on power (especially berserker) builds for additional burst every few seconds, letting you attack intermittently as you kite while still doing good damage. If you’re running a power grenadier build, then sure, they will work just fine, though you should also consider taking other sigils, such as Battle or Force.

On a celestial or condition build, you’d be better off taking different sigils, such as Battle, Doom, Geomancy or Earth for offensive sigils and Generosity (PvP) or Cleansing (WvW) to handle conditions.

Are power builds pretty viable for Engineer? Or are celestial or condition builds the better routes to take?

For PvE, power grenadier is the meta. However, you don’t want Fire and Air sigils there, just get Force and Night/[Whatever] Slaying.

In WvW, almost anything can work. For example, I often roam with a full berserker Static Discharge build, which also happens to be one of the most fun engineer builds I’ve played. I’m sure you could put together a decent power grenadier build (though, again, Air+Fire might not be the most optimal sigil choice).

For PvP, you’d be better off on something slightly tankier. If you take the celestial amulet, you’d do nearly the same damage as a berserker (don’t forget that grenades also pack a significant amount of conditions), while having significantly more sustain. In the recent meta, you’re either a bunker (with celestial to do damage), a thief or dead.

I won’t be able to get ascended Celestial gear immediately at 80. What’s a good alternative until then?

Bombs and grenades work well with condition builds, so rabid and dire are both fine.

zerk in pve

knight armor / zerk trinket mix in wvw

Grenade and Bomb Kit both deal a lot of condition damage! While you could use Fire/Air for some kind of burst build, these kits benefit more from might stacking as might increases power and condition damage! Also might stacking received a huge buff a few patches ago with the introduction of Hoelbrak and Strength Runes! You can stack an enormous amount of might with just Sigil of Battle alone! Save Fire/Air for burst builds like Static Discharge! If you really wanted to use a grenade burst build, you can always try Steamhawke’s really old Grenade/SD build! 60026! Fire/Air + Pack Runes!

Wahoo! Bye frands!