Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, here’s a solo/small group WvW build I put together just for fun. (btw: yes, I know, Nade builds are better)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqalspSXX3SfF17ICoH6FfNiiU8YU2HF0HbB-jgCBYLIYNBkqIhk0A5QFRjtMsIasaGYqUER1OEYeEER1SBsoyK-e

I call it, " The Rich Man’s Pistol/Elixir Gun Build" … because the necessity to have constantly running Rare Veggie Pizza’s and Toxic Focusing Crytal’s makes this build prohibitively expensive.

Obvious upsides:
1. +100% condition duration, plus 1349 condition damage, plus massive burn damage, plus frequent 6 second Sharpshooter Procs, plus frequent Sigil of earth procs = your opponent’s Melandru/Lemongrass Soup build is a joke you laugh at.
2. Near perma Poison, plus perma cripple, plus near perma weakness, plus frequent confusion, plus consistent vulnerability application = a heavily softened up opponent.
3. Extremely good condition removal between Alchemy X (409) and Elixir Gun skills 3 and 5.

Obvious downsides:
1. No vigor, No endurance … uh Oh !
2. So-so Toughness, with very limited health regen.
3. You gotta be swimming in gold to run it ! (lol)

Assuming you were the Bill Gates of GW2, would this build fair well in solo/small group WvW play? Any trait or utility choices that could improve it?

PS: (yes, I know, Nade Builds are better – lol)

I’m not a fan of modified ammunition on condi builds, as your direct damage is really low. You could drop 10 from firearms and grab HGH instead!

Noss.4105:

I’m not a fan of modified ammunition on condi builds, as your direct damage is really low. You could drop 10 from firearms and grab HGH instead!

Noss, Thanks for your input.

You know, I considered doing just that; but whenever I theory crafted the difference between the average number of might stacks I would have from going HGH (minus the 100 condition damage loss from moving 10 out of Firearms) , with the average amount of added direct damage from keeping an extremely high number of different conditions on the opponent with Modified Ammo … the extra 10 for MA won out by a sliver.

But I’m going to go back and do the math again in case I missed something. Which is very possible.

You don’t need to run traveler’s rune on this for the move speed, you actually get perma swiftness from elixir h+elixir b+toss elixir b.

What that means is you can run noble runes and roll HGH. I can see where MA might seem like the better choice but the 30 in alchemy gives you an extra 10% boon dur and 100 vitality in addition to the extra raw power and condition damage. Power beats precision 1:1 unless you have greater than 50% crit damage and rabid provides enough precision to reliably proc all your on crit abilities without having to invest heavily into firearms.

you can also swap 10 more points away from firearms into explosives to adjust for the 10% condi dur loss. the noble runes provide the condition damage to replace what you lost.

The extra 200 range on your weapons isn’t as noticeable as the 20% cd redux on pistol will be. Running the above variation with sigil of battle over earth is an additional +315 pow/condi over 2 stacks of low damage (<150) bleed.

The real issue with 100% condi dur builds though is you sacrifice everything to gain very little in terms of damage, survivability, and mobility. Anyone roaming w/ zerkers will steamroll you before you can load them up, and anyone who’s in bad shape can just run away and you can’t chase them.

just what i’ve noticed trying something similar before

Egorum.9506:

You don’t need to run traveler’s rune on this for the move speed, you actually get perma swiftness from elixir h+elixir b+toss elixir b.

What that means is you can run noble runes and roll HGH. I can see where MA might seem like the better choice but the 30 in alchemy gives you an extra 10% boon dur and 100 vitality in addition to the extra raw power and condition damage. Power beats precision 1:1 unless you have greater than 50% crit damage and rabid provides enough precision to reliably proc all your on crit abilities without having to invest heavily into firearms.

you can also swap 10 more points away from firearms into explosives to adjust for the 10% condi dur loss. the noble runes provide the condition damage to replace what you lost.

The extra 200 range on your weapons isn’t as noticeable as the 20% cd redux on pistol will be. Running the above variation with sigil of battle over earth is an additional +315 pow/condi over 2 stacks of low damage (<150) bleed.

The real issue with 100% condi dur builds though is you sacrifice everything to gain very little in terms of damage, survivability, and mobility. Anyone roaming w/ zerkers will steamroll you before you can load them up, and anyone who’s in bad shape can just run away and you can’t chase them.

just what i’ve noticed trying something similar before

Egorum – many/many thanks. Rock solid advice. +1

Noss.4105:

I’m not a fan of modified ammunition on condi builds, as your direct damage is really low. You could drop 10 from firearms and grab HGH instead!

Noss, I ran the math again … I stand corrected, total dps output (assuming 6+ stacks of might at all times) from HGH will beat out the roughly + 12% to 16% increased direct damage from TtM and MA (assuming 5+ different conditions running at all times) .

Thanks.

id like to provide my thoughts on how you could change the build without taking away from the concept of the build to much.

drop MA and Rifled barrels for fire-forged trigger and hair trigger, the extra range is handy but wont keep you out of harms way, you also have the crippling to effectively keep opponents away from you when you want to, modified ammo might seem good on paper but in reality reapplication of conditions will be you biggest friend here, since your conditions are the biggest factor for damage especially considering P/P and elixir gun arnt very good with power and because with condition removal being in abundance chances are your 100 condi duration will only function well with skills that stack intensity (bleeds, confusion).

i would drop the runes of traveler since you dont need the speed increase or the stats with a build like this and take 2 runes of lyssa and 4 runes of perplexity(cant utilize 6/6 perplexity with this build but they add condition damage and another source of conditions that function well with the concept of kiting in this build).

i would like to drop the givers pistols for 2 rabid pistols because at 80% condition duration with IP and Pistol 4# and if you take reduced cool downs you got a good enough source of burning duration this will also bump up your condition damage, you also never want to be using pistol auto when you have EG since it is so much more effective then pistol auto and with 80% condition duration you still get a good 7 second bleed, 2 rabid pistols will also amp up your toughness just that little bit more and you dont really need vitality because of engineers large base health and the fact that you have a whole lotta condition removal.

so the last part is what do my suggested changes bring to the build, more condition damage output, more condition application, more toughness,

but you have less range (not really an issue since you can kite melee easy and most ranged opponents will easily be able to deal with such a small increase)less pure damage output (also not an issue, pistols and Elixir gun damage is so low that 10-15% damage you could potentially get wont add up to the ability to reapply conditions alot faster) and last point, 6 runes of traveler are 60ish gold on avarage 2 lyssa and 4 perplexity will add up to around 15-16 gold area giving you a whole lot more cash to spend on food.