Guild Wars 2

So I was looking at the linking between critical hits and engineer traits. We have a traits that do:

Burn (33%)
Bleeding (30%)
Vuln (50%)
Blindness (50% /rifle /10s CD)
Swiftness ( 50%/ 5s CD) -> Trait to gain Vigor as well on Crit

Could you trigger a critical hit enough to get this to stack? The last three are possible with the rifle but not with pistol since you want to pierce. The trait line would be 10/30/0/10/0 so you would have 20 left over to spend. I might go 20/30/0/20.

Thoughts?

The vuln stack traits is not the best, except maybe with a 30 point explodion and grenade, or a flamethrower.

With a rifle, the attack speed won’t stack much. Without any condition duration, Vuln stay on the target for 3 sec. That’s hard to stack a lot of them. 3% damage increase.

Swiftness is also pretty useless if you use speedy kit, like 50% of engineer.

I would be curious to see this build

Never liked the blindness of rifle, tried it many time, but it would just not help me really much.

With a sigil of frailty in the mists, I was able to keep a constant vuln and bleed stack on all the golems for the entire health bar with just pistol 1. My max stack was 6vuln and 6 bleed. I was also able to keep swiftness and vigor up the entire time as well. I guess the question is, what is the best amount of stacking?

Well if you add sigil of frailty, for sure you will have more stack. But is it worth it?

Are you going for team damage? or Solo damage.

Because the DPS add of Sigil of Air or Fire is usually a better option.

I’m doing this for a potential wvw roaming. I’m about to make my exotic shield and pistol so I’m trying to work out the best build. I run a condition primary with prec/tough/vitality/power sub. I find that the pistol’s rate of fire keeps the stacks from vuln and bleed when using a sigil of frailty and I paired that with a sigil of strength for might stacks. Since you crit fast, I can build 4 stacks of might. I just am not seeing anything great from the rifle AT ALL. I’m also not seeing too much from burn, I get a 733 tick of kitten seems.

EDIT: Sigils of fire and air run fairly expensive on TP.

Thiefz.3695:

With a sigil of frailty in the mists, I was able to keep a constant vuln and bleed stack on all the golems for the entire health bar with just pistol 1. My max stack was 6vuln and 6 bleed. I was also able to keep swiftness and vigor up the entire time as well. I guess the question is, what is the best amount of stacking?

That’s still pretty low if you compare it with the vanilla grenadier spec. What rune set up were you using?

If you want to add up those stacks then go for condition duration. If you like condition+crit change, then go for runes of lyssa. Nightmare runes are also good, although I can’t remember if they’re still bugged.

Thiefz.3695:

I’m doing this for a potential wvw roaming. I’m about to make my exotic shield and pistol so I’m trying to work out the best build. I run a condition primary with prec/tough/vitality/power sub. I find that the pistol’s rate of fire keeps the stacks from vuln and bleed when using a sigil of frailty and I paired that with a sigil of strength for might stacks. Since you crit fast, I can build 4 stacks of might. I just am not seeing anything great from the rifle AT ALL. I’m also not seeing too much from burn, I get a 733 tick of kitten seems.

EDIT: Sigils of fire and air run fairly expensive on TP.

Frailty and Strenght share the same cooldown, so I wouldn’t recommend pairing the 2.

And choice between rifle and pistol come back to : Do you want to be condition or direct damage?

What utility are you going to use? Because stacking vulneribility when you are mostly using condition isn’t really a thing I would push.

With those gears, you are better with pistol. Rifle is a power/crit gun.

Here’s my build

Temple armor for CD/PRE/T. Runes of undead. I have knights orch earings for T/P/Pre. Carrion rings and amulet. Knight pistol and PVT shield.
I’m running about 1500 power, 1700 tough, 1600 vit, 1100 cond with 40% crit chance.
I run the 5% tough to power and cd, 5% vit to cd. Swift crit, vigor on swift, vuln on crit, piercing bullets. 90 tough with shield.

I do ok, just trying to refine it. What I found out is that the magnetic inversion crits. So you can reflect additional damage if it hits the crit. I just don’t know if it comes from you or the source.

EDIT: I use tool kit, elixir S and B with supply crate.

The burning one is really good. If you can crit reliably, it’s a nice way to supplement your damage. Since it has such a short duration matched with a short cool-down, you can renewing it constantly and it’s almost like gaining an extra auto-attack.

Bleeding is alright—like burning but just worse off since it does less damage but has the same chance to proc (3% is somewhat negligible).

Vulnerability was already covered by Kardiamond. The only way you’d really get the most out of it would be to use it in tandem with Poison Dart Volley and a high crit chance build, but even then you can only get a maximum of 5 stacks out of it which would vanish within your next two attacks or so—not really worth it.

Blindness. Eh. I suppose it’s alright for openers if you have the range. It’s honestly not terrible since it could ruin an opponent’s opening strike or even proc randomly in mid-combat and flub up someone’s combo or sustained assault. I personally just don’t think it’s worth it given the lack-luster effect of Blind and its cool-down.

The swiftness one is pretty alright. With even a modest crit chance, you end up getting infinite swiftness in combat. I slotted the trait once and after extended combat, I would always have roughly 20-30 seconds of swiftness still on me. It’s a viable replacement for Speedy Kits if you want to proc Invigorating Speed, the only trade-off (and it’s a big one) is that you don’t have a renewable source of swiftness outside of combat.

• Note: When I traited for swiftness on crit, I also had Speedy Kits traited. Using them both gets you swiftness for days but it’s probably best to trait just one in order to preserve your slots for diversity’s sake.

I guess I didn’t get the Vuln issue. There is no cool down for the vuln so you can keep triggering it so long as you are hitting the crit. I was able to hit it continuously when I had fury up to about 6 stacks of vulnerability. If I could keep fury up, which I added goggles to do so, I was able to increase that to about 16 stacks until the effect of the goggles winded down. So where does one see the most benefit from vulnerability? Just pure damage output?

As for the poison dart, my tests showed that poison dart hit the vuln crit and the flame crit which basically added 4 conditions on hit (bleed is always constantly up). It was nice but I’m not sure how optimal in normal pvp.

EDIT: So this is what I get if you have the trait and you have the sigil of frailty plus about 60% crit, you have vuln up all the time. Because pistol 1 is a bleed and you get a chance on crit, you always have bleed up. So on average you have 2-3 stacks of bleed and vuln up at all time. Even when cleansed, you can build it up on the next hit.

Well Vuln doesn’t increase condition damage, so it mostly direct damage increase.

Not sure what your question is

Critical hit Engineer is amazing. I saw a video once of some guy doing 5k then 9k with one jumpshot and 3k’s with static discharges.
Yeah, warrior be doing 28k, but that’s with how many hits (with luck they’ll all connect) vs 2. I don’t know the build though =(

all this crit proc discussion while ignoring grenades.

its like.. idk… not having something to drink with your dinner.

why bother with pistol or rifle when grenades proc 3x as many crits?

insanemaniac.2456:

all this crit proc discussion while ignoring grenades.

its like.. idk… not having something to drink with your dinner.

why bother with pistol or rifle when grenades proc 3x as many crits?

Because rifle shots are mroe reliable, grenades are too easy to dodge and a closeup blunderbuss or jumpshot does more damage than a grenade throw anyways, not counting the toolbelt skill. Grenades are more about bleeds anyways.

Oxstar.7643:

Because rifle shots are mroe reliable, grenades are too easy to dodge and a closeup blunderbuss or jumpshot does more damage than a grenade throw anyways, not counting the toolbelt skill. Grenades are more about bleeds anyways.

in pve, lead your target. they dont change directions randomly. in wvw, throwing at a zerg hits the target cap. in spvp… well, idk, switch out after using 2/3/4/5… spamming too predictable for spvp anyways. blunderbuss has a cd, just like the higher damaging grenade skills. jumpshot is as hard to land as a grenade toss.

is there a problem with grenades being more about bleeds than rifle? rifle is a direct damage weapon. grenades are a hybrid and go either way.

I have 98% crit chance on my engi all depends on gear what you choose

That’s what I needed to know or that I missed Kard, condition damage doesn’t increase with vuln just straight damage. I appreciate the follow up guys!

I don’t run grenades because I’m lazy. I normally PVP on a laptop so I don’t use a mouse. It’s more of maximizing my playstyle. I don’t believe it’s the most efficient for everyone but it is for me.

Man It must be a challenge to play on a laptop without mouse hehe. :P

Thiefz.3695:

I’m doing this for a potential wvw roaming. I’m about to make my exotic shield and pistol so I’m trying to work out the best build. I run a condition primary with prec/tough/vitality/power sub. I find that the pistol’s rate of fire keeps the stacks from vuln and bleed when using a sigil of frailty and I paired that with a sigil of strength for might stacks. Since you crit fast, I can build 4 stacks of might. I just am not seeing anything great from the rifle AT ALL. I’m also not seeing too much from burn, I get a 733 tick of kitten seems.

EDIT: Sigils of fire and air run fairly expensive on TP.

No condition built engineer should be running without P/P, the #4 is your hardest hitting condition.

Swagg.9236:

The swiftness one is pretty alright. With even a modest crit chance, you end up getting infinite swiftness in combat. I slotted the trait once and after extended combat, I would always have roughly 20-30 seconds of swiftness still on me. It’s a viable replacement for Speedy Kits if you want to proc Invigorating Speed, the only trade-off (and it’s a big one) is that you don’t have a renewable source of swiftness outside of combat.

This is Infused Precision, the level 10 Firearms trait? That gives 5 seconds of Swiftness, but can only trigger once every 5 seconds, right? I don’t see how that could give long duration swiftness unless you had some kind of Boon Duration going, say from Alchemy, which clearly is possible.

Where I could see it being handy is if you have 10 points or more in Tools, and you toggle from Speedy Kits while traveling to something else like Static Discharge when you get in a fight, relying on Infused Precision for Swiftness. Obviously that is a bit easier in PvE where fights are predictable than PvP/WvW where the fights are less so.