Guild Wars 2

As the title says, I’m still struggling with which way to go for what I hope will be a mostly bomb build, heavy on defense and healing. With some grenade spamming in there and otherwise either P/P or P/S for main weapon.

So basically, apothecary vs. cleric, pretty much.

I know condi is the meta, but I’ve realized in some preliminary gameplay testing that I just do a lot more of things that apply straight damage rather than condition damage. In particular, thanks to elixir-infused bombs, I spam bomb #1 a lot (since it has no CD) and it doesn’t apply conditions. Similar with grenades, where only 2 apply damaging conditions and they have relatively long CDs compared to the #1.

So it seems power might be the better way to go. But I feel like I must be missing something.

I do realize that the regular weapon skills may well favor condition over power.

Thoughts? Thanks.

First of all; wvw, pvp, or pve?

But everything you mentioned that you wants seem to point towards solely condition damage. In which case I would recommend a mix of apothecary and dire.
The reason being, you want defense and healing, so going for condition damage you can still get a decent amount of damage from conditions as well as having plenty of toughness, vitality, and healing power.

On the other hand, you are right bombs scale fantastically with power, but only power, doesn’t do as much damage as only conditions and if you still go for defense and healing you will hit like a wet noodle.
And that’s where hybrid damage comes into play, you could go with some carrion armor which has both condition damage and power, but you would lose out on defense and healing.

edit: P/P and P/S excel with conditions naturally so if you go for power your pistols are pretty useless damage wise.

Thanks for the reply.

All three actually. I’m tinkering in PvP since it’s easier to test there, but I play all three modes.

Not sure why defense points towards condition damage over power… there’s apothecary and there’s cleric. I realize to max power damage you need crits as well, but seems to me the bombs do a lot more net damage even without crits.

One thing I do wonder about is if I’m overestimating the damage I’ll do with bombs based on the tooltips, because they don’t take into account the defense of my opponents. That seems to not really apply to conditions.. though there, issues like -duration% food and cleansing come into play.

The main thing that is giving me pause about just going for condi is, well, there’s simply a lot more #1 bombs being put out than anything else because of the lack of cooldowns. If I’m going to spam them for healing it seems to make sense to get more damage out of them unless the conditions I get in other ways make up for it a lot more in ways I don’t understand.

You pretty much said everything I was gonna, for conditions you only need 1 type of point allocation for damage while for power you also need crit chance and damage, and yeah, conditions ignore toughness.

Though I mostly play wvw what I am saying comes from a wvw standpoint.

Condis are fire and forget. You don’t have to immob/CC like you do with bomb auto. Condis only need one stat. Condis also synergize with defensive builds because the longer youre alive, the longer theyre dealing damage.

Cleric bombs are good for frontline zerging, otherwise go condi.

Thanks. Again, I realize that’s the traditional argument, but I can’t make sense of it given that, in a 30-second span, I’ll end up dropping maybe a handful of bombs that apply conditions, but 40 or 50 damage bombs. Even with no crits they just seem to do a LOT more damage. Oh, and the BOB is also direct damage only.

I did a bit of theorycrafting using one of the guide sites, and going from apothecary to cleric increases direct damage DPS by about 400, while only reducing condition DPS by 100. And that’s assuming zero crits. Even if you reduce that by 1/3 to take into account heavy armor, it’s still a lot higher.

So why does everyone go condi for bomb builds?

The only way I can see it making sense is if combined with regular weapon damage, which favors conditions. Is that why? Because for the bombs themselves, power seems clearly better.

Qaelyn.7612:

Thanks. Again, I realize that’s the traditional argument, but I can’t make sense of it given that, in a 30-second span, I’ll end up dropping maybe a handful of bombs that apply conditions, but 40 or 50 damage bombs.

….

Here’s the thing though. If you run a P/P condition build with bombs and grenades, you can throw out:

Pistol 2 (poison)
Pistol 3 (confusion)
Pistol 4 (burning)
Bomb 2 (burning)
Bomb 3 (confusion)
Grenade 2 (bleed)
Grenade 5 (poison)

That’s a lot of damaging conditions right there. And by the time you’ve finished a rotation of condition spreading, the first ones are likely to be off or nearing the end of their cooldown. As well, you’ve got access to a slew of other conditions you’re going to need for control, such as blinds, chills, and immobs. And you’ll get more conditions from various traits like Sharpshooter, Shrapnel, and Incendiary Powder.

In addition, if you bring along Tool Kit or Elixir Gun, you’ll have even more condition skills + survivability tools.

Right, that’s why I said it makes more sense taking into account other weapons. But I would only go P/P if I was doing conditions.. P/S seems to make more sense in general for a defensive build, no? The burn is strong up close but shield #4 is a nice skill to have.

I find confusion somewhat unreliable for damage. In PvE the monsters mostly attack really slowly, and in PvP/WvW it’s got a 50% debuff.

I ignored the non-damaging conditions because they work the same regardless of gear. As for the traits you mentioned: Sharpshooter and Incendiary Power are not relevant to a build with <10% crit chance, and Shrapnel is usually given up in favor of Forceful Explosives.

I realize that if I do the full rotation I can still apply a lot of condis… and maybe that’s the goal with a condi build. If I want to spam bombs to take advantage of elixir-infused bombs, power seems better.

(Note that I’m just trying to reason this out, not be argumentative. )

Since i think this is about my build that we discussed, ill try to answer some more questions.. Sure, go cleric with P/S if you NEVER want to kill a thing. People dont just sit and let you spam bombs on them. If youre roaming with a friend tho this is ok since he can very glassy so you can still succeed. If youre sitting there spamming bomb auto, youre doing it wrong.

Have you seen what confusion can do to people? 25 stacks lasting 20 sec ( if you took my advice about perplexity.) means 5k dmg every time they use a skill. If they try to use a movement skill, even if they cleanse it immediately after you apply it thats still a free 5k dmg. People in WvW are just bad in general and most will sit there auto attacking you with 25stacks.

Now i remember where this all started, you said your guild was talking about these unkilkable engineers. I linked you a video. Thats the build most people talk about when they say “unkilkable, condi AoE spam engineer”. An engineer good at blasting water fields really is unkilkable, and allows for a lot more offensive build.

In PvE, yes confusion is a bit of a waste due to low attack speeds. But it’s amazing in WvW and PvP. However, don’t ignore the bouncing blind on pistol 3. No matter your build, that’s handy.

I used to run a power build with P/S, and so can you. You’ll never use the autoattack, but pistol 2 actually hits harder than you’d think. I already mentioned the bouncing blind. Shield gives you a block, reflect, and blast finisher; good all the time.

Everything you’ve reasoned out is true. You can build crit% into a bomb/grenade to make use of the traits I mentioned, but not defensively.

Elixir Infused Bomb makes it difficult because conditions work well due to better stat allocation for defensive gear, yet power would work better for bomb 1 spamming. I’d go power. For WvW you’re going to have to decide exactly what role you want to fulfill. Full tanky support mean mostly spamming bomb 1 for the aoe heals to aid your allies, while still dealing damage. I don’t think you’ll be winning any 1v1 but you’ll be an effective point defender.

Good replies, thanks. Absolutely true that I need to take into account situations where running around spamming bombs won’t work. I was going at least partially off my experience last night, where I got into a few scrums between 5 or 10 of ours versus 5 or 10 of theirs.. and spamming bombs was actually pretty effective.

I guess my own lack of experience is showing here, so I should probably just stick with the “tried and true” conditions. I just kept thinking it was a waste that I was dropping so many bombs that did very light damage, but maybe I should be swapping weapons more.

Carpboy, was also thinking of your medic thread where I mentioned going carrion and you agreed that it would help with increasing bomb damage.

Another factor I was trying to take into account is that structures in WvW are immune to condition damage, though I suppose that nothing I do will matter much compared to one piece of siege equipment anyway.

How do you get 25 stacks of conditions, I mean, in realistic gameplay as opposed to theory? That seems pretty insane and yeah that would make a huge difference.

Qaelyn.7612:

How do you get 25 stacks of conditions, I mean, in realistic gameplay as opposed to theory? That seems pretty insane and yeah that would make a huge difference.

High crit % with traited grenades + Shrapnel and/or Sharpshooter and/or Sigil of Earth and/or Sigil of Geomancy = 3 chances per button press of crit with multiple ways to apply bleed.

Also, Perplexity Runes + TK Prybar + Concussion Bomb + Static Shot + multiple interrupts = Lots of confusion.

Okay, but this isn’t going to be a high crit build either way. I like to have my cake and eat it too but realize I can’t make a build that’s both high defense and high offense.

I know perplexity runes are powerful, and considered them for my mesmer. They do seem to make a lot of sense here. I’m not sure how many interrupt-generating effects I have though. There’s BOB, shield #4, and if I use tool kit, the pull ability there. I guess also some other utilities but.. so few slots.

How about you go for both?

definitely condi. full shaman/apothecary should get you like 3k armor and 24k health with ~1200 condition damage and healing at full corruption stacks. something like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqelIq6ZX3SyF17IRoH2/+qV0D9bZH/pgcB-j0BB4gBkWAk+AI/sIaslRFRjVPjIqWfETKAmkGB-w

at the end of the day though it won’t really matter because you’re not gonna kill anything with 30 into inventions unless they run 0 condi removal and you won’t kill anything period if you run clerics. though if someone is running no condition removal they deserve to lose.

Qaelyn.7612:

Okay, but this isn’t going to be a high crit build either way. I like to have my cake and eat it too but realize I can’t make a build that’s both high defense and high offense.

I know perplexity runes are powerful, and considered them for my mesmer. They do seem to make a lot of sense here. I’m not sure how many interrupt-generating effects I have though. There’s BOB, shield #4, and if I use tool kit, the pull ability there. I guess also some other utilities but.. so few slots.

Seras is actually quite right, the armor stat Rabid (which was mostly forgotten when Dire came out) is arguably the best for a condi engi. Just look at the firearms tree, precision and condition damage. Sharpshooter with grenadier is amazing synergy. You really only need about 30-40% and some fury. All while healing like a beast and having close to 3k armor. Also remember that even with 0 prowess (or ferocity?) critical hits will still do an additional 50% damage. Build example

But you want to do healing bombs, sorry I got off track. Here is a power based healing bomb build I was trying out for a while. It didn’t work that well outside of the zerg, but was fun. With 15-20 stacks of might your autos can crit for respectable damage, but its more about supporting your teammates and healing for obscene amounts.

EDIT: New patch has new stat combo that could open up some interesting choices for power healing bombs!!!!

Power and bombing goes really well together. The bad thing about bombing is that its kinda Melee.. Wheter we are talking serious PVE or WvW or Spvp, We engineers are best mid range, going back and forth. We do NOT have heavy armor to support our melee actions to its fullest, and we have poor stabilty (Even with last update wich was a HUUUGGGE happy dance for engineers). 5 sec Stab doesnt cut it for me. 5 sec is 1-3 attacks :/

Berserkers is good for power stacking, engineers have some sick burst dmg with SD rifle builds.

Cant say im too much a fan of condi dmg in pve/wvw. It just doesnt do the dmg i want or give the wished loot for some reason.

Thanks for the replies. Lots of opinions. Lots of confusion (for me, not the other players. )

Again, I have no illusions about a build that’s highly defensive also being highly offensive.

I do like the idea of a balance, which is part of why I was looking at carrion gear. Of course, there I give up something also. No free lunch.

I don’t plan to roam solo with this character. It’s intended to be used in a small group, and I’m okay with doing less damage than others. I just want to do as much damage as I can while also being tough and supportive.

Qaelyn.7612:

Thanks for the replies. Lots of opinions. Lots of confusion (for me, not the other players. )

Again, I have no illusions about a build that’s highly defensive also being highly offensive.

I do like the idea of a balance, which is part of why I was looking at carrion gear. Of course, there I give up something also. No free lunch.

I don’t plan to roam solo with this character. It’s intended to be used in a small group, and I’m okay with doing less damage than others. I just want to do as much damage as I can while also being tough and supportive.

You definitely should have said youre roaming with others first. Go full cleric with rifle for some control. Id also run HT for more group heals (even tho MK is bigger solo heals). Dont forget to stack stealth with Bomb kit 4, and youre group will absolutely love you.

Sorry, I wasn’t trying to be confusing… I’m just still so much at the figuring out stage right now that I’m not sure which factors are most important.. know what I mean?

I’m actually toying with the idea of instead of full defense, maybe going 30/10/30/0/0 for both bomb and grenade spamming.. gear being a mix of cleric and soldier. Would that make any sense at all or am I just confused again?

Qaelyn.7612:

Sorry, I wasn’t trying to be confusing… I’m just still so much at the figuring out stage right now that I’m not sure which factors are most important.. know what I mean?

I’m actually toying with the idea of instead of full defense, maybe going 30/10/30/0/0 for both bomb and grenade spamming.. gear being a mix of cleric and soldier. Would that make any sense at all or am I just confused again?

That specific build would make a lot more sense with condi, because of grenadier and shrapnel.

Just keep experimenting with what does and doesn’t work for you.

You think so? Interesting. I thought again that whether spamming grenades or bombs both would be more power oriented but maybe not.

And don’t I really want to run the bomb-radius buff trait and the one that stacks might? That doesn’t leave room for Shrapnel.

Maybe I really will split the difference and just go for both. I mean, I do both types of damage so why not.

As an aside, I just did one of the new living world events. One of the commanders actually asked for AoE heals and I ran around bomb-spamming the whole group, lol.

Qaelyn.7612:

You think so? Interesting. I thought again that whether spamming grenades or bombs both would be more power oriented but maybe not.

And don’t I really want to run the bomb-radius buff trait and the one that stacks might? That doesn’t leave room for Shrapnel.

Maybe I really will split the difference and just go for both. I mean, I do both types of damage so why not.

As an aside, I just did one of the new living world events. One of the commanders actually asked for AoE heals and I ran around bomb-spamming the whole group, lol.

Bomb radius trait isn’t needed as much after the buffed base bomb radius. And enhance performance is a niche trait. Only for HGH.

“Buffed base bomb radius” = some buff they did before I started playing I assume.

That trait almost doubles the areal coverage of bombs, so seems pretty pivotal to a bomb-centered build.

Wasn’t enhance performance supposed to be instead of HGH? I thought that’s why the build in that other thread suggested it.

Thanks for the reply, figuring this out slowly but surely.

Qaelyn.7612:

“Buffed base bomb radius” = some buff they did before I started playing I assume.

That trait almost doubles the areal coverage of bombs, so seems pretty pivotal to a bomb-centered build.

Wasn’t enhance performance supposed to be instead of HGH? I thought that’s why the build in that other thread suggested it.

Thanks for the reply, figuring this out slowly but surely.

Yeah it was a couple patches ago. And they have a 240 base radius. The trait adds 60. Thats 25% increased radius.

Enhance performance, battle sigil, elixirs, and noble runes are all mandatory for an HGH build. One cant come close to compensating for another.

enhance performance wasn’t required for hgh. it was good for stacking might without hgh though. battle, enhance performance, noble runes. ahhh it was so good for my wvwvw build before the nerf. so much might stacked.

Carpboy.7145:

…
And they have a 240 base radius. The trait adds 60. Thats 25% increased radius.
…

The base radius is 300 / 240 / 180 for BoB / glue / rest.
The increase in radius is 20% / 25% / 33,3% and the area increase is 44%/56,3%/77,8% respectively.

Carpboy.7145:

Qaelyn.7612:

Thanks for the replies. Lots of opinions. Lots of confusion (for me, not the other players. )

Again, I have no illusions about a build that’s highly defensive also being highly offensive.

I do like the idea of a balance, which is part of why I was looking at carrion gear. Of course, there I give up something also. No free lunch.

I don’t plan to roam solo with this character. It’s intended to be used in a small group, and I’m okay with doing less damage than others. I just want to do as much damage as I can while also being tough and supportive.

You definitely should have said youre roaming with others first. Go full cleric with rifle for some control. Id also run HT for more group heals (even tho MK is bigger solo heals). Dont forget to stack stealth with Bomb kit 4, and youre group will absolutely love you.

Okay, so in another thread Seras said small groups work better with condi. Just different views or am I confused again.

What if I were to split the difference and go with celestial? Of course that would make my healing weak and probably make me a “jack of all trades master of none”.

I like to go 6/6 celestial armor and then supplement with appropriate trinkets.

I think, with respect to if you’re going to go power vs condition vs hybrid, you have to decide first what playstyle you want. Do you want healing bombs? Do you want to roam in small groups? Do you want to support a zerg? Do you want burst damage? Do you want to specifically use your rifle most? Your grenades? Gadgets?

The decision on how to gear is very build specific and playstyle specific. If you find that your fighting isn’t really making use of your healing bombs, you don’t want Settler gear, but if you find that healing your allies with bombs is your favorite part, then step it up and grab Apothecary. If you just want to use your rifle and burst down 1 guy, grab a mix of zerk/soldier and have fun. If you want to be a jack of all trades, master of none, yea grab celestial. If you want to bunker down then grab some Dire armor. Don’t be afraid to mix n’ match to make up for your strengths/weaknesses.

I’ve found so far that I enjoy being in dungeon-sized groups and also slightly larger ones. For example, I’ve been using my healing bombs to great effect in the “lane defense” portion of the marionette fight, and also on the platforms. I want my healing power high to keep that utility up.

I have little interest in 30v30 WvW zergs. Too much chaos and don’t feel like I make much of a difference.

The only real question is basically apothecary versus cleric. There are so many different factors to take into account, and engineers seem to do so well with both power and CD, that I’m almost thinking I’m better off going with both and just having a little of each, with a bit of vitality added somewhere (maybe a shaman or carrion weapon).

Weapon choice then becomes the big thing. I’d always used P/S but the rifle is growing on me especially for the nice immobilize on #2. If I go conditions though P/P seems the way to go.

I’m currently planning on not going full defense, rather 30/0/30/10/0.

Thanks!

Qaelyn.7612:

I’ve found so far that I enjoy being in dungeon-sized groups and also slightly larger ones. For example, I’ve been using my healing bombs to great effect in the “lane defense” portion of the marionette fight, and also on the platforms. I want my healing power high to keep that utility up.

I have little interest in 30v30 WvW zergs. Too much chaos and don’t feel like I make much of a difference.

The only real question is basically apothecary versus cleric. There are so many different factors to take into account, and engineers seem to do so well with both power and CD, that I’m almost thinking I’m better off going with both and just having a little of each, with a bit of vitality added somewhere (maybe a shaman or carrion weapon).

Weapon choice then becomes the big thing. I’d always used P/S but the rifle is growing on me especially for the nice immobilize on #2. If I go conditions though P/P seems the way to go.

I’m currently planning on not going full defense, rather 30/0/30/10/0.

Thanks!

I really do think cleric with rifle for groups. You’ve got lots of CC and immob, on demand stealth, and awesome support. Plus with rifle you get that extra leap through HT (or smoke bomb). I think you were going nades/bombs? I’d strongly suggest TK as your third utility, as pry bar hits exceptionally hard, the #2 helps when running away or keeping people in your bombs, and the #4 is great for survivability. Between bombs, nades, and rifle you should have plenty of dmg as well.

Yeah before I read that I had already bought some stuff to try out. Went with apothecary armor, runes of altruism and cleric trinkets. Just yellow stuff since I’m tinkering.

Went into WvW with my 30/0/30/10/0 build and, well, it’s not working for me. At all. I rarely use the grenades anyway, since they have a ridiculously long lead time. And I’m dying much faster than I want when I’m outnumbered… I don’t expect to win a 1v3 but I’d like to at least have a chance to escape.

So back to the drawing board. :/ Going to return to 10/0/30/30/0, and go with a much of cleric and soldiers. With rifle. And maybe also use a slot for Elixir S or something as I really seem to have no way of escaping when I’m overwhelmed.

Or maybe just go condition like everyone keeps telling me with something like ellesee’s build: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fgw2skills.net%2Feditor%2F%3FfcAQJAqelIq6ZX3SyF17IRoH2%2F%2BqV0D9bZH%2FpgcB-j0BB4gBkWAk%2BAI%2FsIaslRFRjVPjIqWfETKAmkGB-w

Meh, I spend too much time trying to figure out builds.

Qaelyn.7612:

Yeah before I read that I had already bought some stuff to try out. Went with apothecary armor, runes of altruism and cleric trinkets. Just yellow stuff since I’m tinkering.

Went into WvW with my 30/0/30/10/0 build and, well, it’s not working for me. At all. I rarely use the grenades anyway, since they have a ridiculously long lead time. And I’m dying much faster than I want when I’m outnumbered… I don’t expect to win a 1v3 but I’d like to at least have a chance to escape.

So back to the drawing board. :/ Going to return to 10/0/30/30/0, and go with a much of cleric and soldiers. With rifle. And maybe also use a slot for Elixir S or something as I really seem to have no way of escaping when I’m overwhelmed.

Or maybe just go condition like everyone keeps telling me with something like ellesee’s build: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fgw2skills.net%2Feditor%2F%3FfcAQJAqelIq6ZX3SyF17IRoH2%2F%2BqV0D9bZH%2FpgcB-j0BB4gBkWAk%2BAI%2FsIaslRFRjVPjIqWfETKAmkGB-w

Meh, I spend too much time trying to figure out builds.

Offensive builds tend to perform much better in WvW. Defensive ones take time to kill opponents, and that whole time youre increasing the chance one of their friends or Zerg will show up.

Its why i first recommended this build for you.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DfUoHcJLWjoc

In other words “the best defense is a good offense”, a famous line and often true. Here also, you’re right. I take that approach somewhat with my mesmer.

But this was actually more offensively oriented than I originally planned. I think the test I gave it was a poor one because:

1. It’s designed to work with a group of 5 to 10 and last night half my guild was elsewhere so it was more like 3 of us.
2. It was reset night, where the particular opponents we faced always come out gangbusters and we seemed to always be in mismatched fights.

But I still thought I was missing the backback regenerator and automated response in particular. So I made a PvP version of your Medic Engineer to test out.. 10/0/30/30/0, melandru runes, sigil of energy, cleric amulet. Even with not much experience, I found it took half the other team to bring me down… which is exactly what I’m looking for.

Of course WvW is different but I still think this will work well for me, so I’m going to basically steal your build and tweak it a bit. (Not sure I want to spend 25g on runes that may change in a few weeks, for one thing.)

Thanks for the reply, appreciate it.

When I play my healing engineer it usually is a power build.
My kits then become bomb, tool kit and elixir gun.
I do not take grenades in this case.
My weapon will typically be a rifle.

It synergizes well. Rifle does quite good damage at range. E-gun provides weakness and is not at all bad in power builds either given its fast attack. Bombs provide conditions which are more stacks duration than intensity. So you get good damage even with lower condition damage.

If you take grenades or pistols, there is more to scale off of condition damage.
Grenades can go either way just fine. Power based grenades do hit quite hard.

Either way works. Both work better in some situations and worse in others. It is about as even a decision as you will get when using apothecary/settler gear for healing.

One of the reasons I went to power was tool kit. When you run 25% speed v perma swiftness, that pull is very useful for killing enemies and the extra leap from the rifle has gotten me distance I have needed many times.