Trying to salvage my engineer.
Set your main kit swap to what your weapon swap on other classes would be.
Basic [BS] NSP/Mag
Love my engineer but I hate kit swapping.
I really love the style and gameplay of pistol/shield and am trying to make it work. Alas the DPS appears to be just kitten poor compared to grenades or bombs.
This is what I am using, pistol/shield with an HGH. Auto only ends up hitting for about 700 on a crit with the short bleed. That just isn’t enough. I tried rifle, and while really fun I am not convinced it’s viable without kit swapping.
Suggestions, or without kit swapping should I just figure out something else to play?
I’d advise focusing on making that bleed more potent through condi damage and duration. It isn’t the best bleed ingame, but keep in mind that the autoattack is capable of dealing full damage to up to 25 targets (Bullet pierces to hit 5 targets, each explosion hits an additional 4)
Another thing worth noting is that the shield gives two interrupts for the purpose of the new confusion runes, and you could easily swap one of your utilities for one of the knockbacking gadgets if you needed more interrupts.
Alternately, if you do smaller fights, turrets become viable as it is possible to stunlock individual targets through a combo of net turret, rocket turret, and the CC on whatever weapon you might be holding. Rifle works better for quadturret builds, but that doesn’t mean P/S isn’t also an option.
However, you are correct that without kits, you are hindering yourself outside of extremely niche builds.
Talia Gallowglass [Few] ~ Sylvari Engineer Main
Ferguson’s Crossing
Ferguson’s Crossing
(edited by Sylentir.8913)
A few things about your build,
1.) zerker armor is absolutely going to give you a impression that you are not doing enough damage, you have literally only 3 attacks to choose from (pistol auto scales horribly with power stats alone).
2.) As someone else stated you can take just one kit to simulate having a weapon swap like any other class and you can replace elixir u without too much of an impact to do it. My personal favorite choices would be bomb kit or toolkit, both of which give you a melee option for when things get too close. One offers a pulsing smoke field blind (bk) and one offers a additional block (tk)
3.) Some of your traits are not giving you as much benefit as you imagine them to be and you are missing out on some important ones like cleansing formula 409 (in pve you probably don’t need that trait though)
4.) If you want to use the pistol shield and are willing to at least use 1 kit to swap then going a condition damage build with rabid type stats would most likely yield significantly better results
I will include a possible build for you to try, you can gear it up cheaply using rare or even masterwork to see if it is something you will enjoy but in the build editor I will include exotics (just find the rare or masterwork counterparts) Benefits of this build (once in full exotics) will include decent toughness (2700), ridiculously high condition damage (1692 base), especially once hgh gets your might stacks up, Quite good condition removal (6). Access to burning and confusion on the bomb kit, additional cc/defense in form of the smoke bomb and glue bomb, or confusion and a additional bleed source on the tool kit + a additional block and pull which can be used both offensively to get someone closer to you or defensively to interrupt a long channel skill from a distance. Decent crit chance to help proc additional bleeds and with using rare veggie pizza as your food a additional 40% condition duration which will also help stack them up. You can swap out the rune sets I have in there with whatever you want really, either condition duration or boon duration would be the best bets at the expense of losing quite a bit of toughness condi damage. So it is a tough choice between having harder hitting condi’s or longer lasting condi/boons. Without further ado
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-V;4Z;09-o5cQFx0;9;49J9T-2;053-0;019A;9NX8aNX8aPtki-M;4VX-d0h1l2sZy49eWPk4R06Rk06R;9;9;9;9;9;4V6s5W It is not the only option by in large but it should yield significantly better performance for you than the current setup you have included, while being significantly “tankier”. Of course in pve it will suffer from the same achilles heel that all condition builds do in large events/dungeons with conditions being overwritten so easily. In wvw you should find much better success with this for solo/ small group roaming, and it’s generally a pretty easy and relatively fun playstyle in my opinion with the switching in between melee and range. Give it a shot try it out with the cheaper gear first so you don’t spend a ton regearing and happy engineering!
Edit: If you do wish to use rifle as stand alone and one additional kit (toolkit) and stay with power based stats, then you can just run a rifle sd build. You will do fantastic damage but the downside is lack of condition removal and it’s really squishy compared to other options.
(edited by ShadowPuppet.3746)
@ShadowPuppet.3746,
I have full apothecary exotic (alturism runes) and ascended gear, 2 giver’s pistols, shaman shield and pistol. Create a build for pve and wvw that can actually kill people while being survivable. Perplexity runes?
First of all what are we talking here? PvE/PvP/WvW
Pistol/Shield often serves as a secondary weapon to a kit, not as the primary. Also I’m pretty sure most builds will utilize at least one kit. Just think of kit swapping as swapping weapons on any of the other professions.
The only builds I can think of where you’re going to be spending the vast majority of your time using your weapon are (Rifle) Static Discharge, P/P (non-Nade) HGH, or Rifle HGH. None of those use P/S, and only the Rifle builds use your Zerker gear.
@ShadowPuppet.3746,
I have full apothecary exotic (alturism runes) and ascended gear, 2 giver’s pistols, shaman shield and pistol. Create a build for pve and wvw that can actually kill people while being survivable. Perplexity runes?
I will leave this here for you since you mentioned perplexity runes and apothecary gear (though I think he has some mixed other trinkets iirc) It includes the build link and some gameplay footage .
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Stop-hitting-your-self-WvW-Roaming-video/first#post2647151
First of all what are we talking here? PvE/PvP/WvW
Pistol/Shield often serves as a secondary weapon to a kit, not as the primary. Also I’m pretty sure most builds will utilize at least one kit. Just think of kit swapping as swapping weapons on any of the other professions.
The only builds I can think of where you’re going to be spending the vast majority of your time using your weapon are (Rifle) Static Discharge, P/P (non-Nade) HGH, or Rifle HGH. None of those use P/S, and only the Rifle builds use your Zerker gear.
Yeah, it was challenging to try and make a build that fit within his/her criteria of not using any kits and using a pistol shield and still maintain at least some amount of damage output. I just couldn’t think of any that exactly matched so I tried to get as close as I could with using only 1 kit to simulate having a weapon swap, and still using the p/s. It still isn’t going to be as effective as other options but they seemed to indicate not wanting to use gk either so with very little to go on, I tried lol.
@ShadowPuppet.3746,
I have full apothecary exotic (alturism runes) and ascended gear, 2 giver’s pistols, shaman shield and pistol. Create a build for pve and wvw that can actually kill people while being survivable. Perplexity runes?
I have a build I use that has similar gear, with two variations (no perplexity runes though). I think the original one was created by Amadeus and I just adapted it to be more supportive. Here’s the one I use:
This build has a few roles, namely disabling enemies, hurting/disabling them with conditions (especially burning), and popping off water blast combos.
Since this build has high toughness and low vitality, the ability to survive with this build comes down to effective healing. Up to four water blast fields can be attained with this build by using the healing turret overcharge and the tool belt skill in conjunction with magnetic inversion, acid bomb, rocket boots, and the turret destruction. I find it’s usually best to save regenerating mist for rocket boot usage, although using it with acid bomb can work well too. In between water fields, the super elixir can provide some additional AoE healing with the option for retaliation or other condition cleansing.
The flamethrower might seem to be a bit of an odd choice, but it allows for extra burning through incendiary ammo and other attacks, plus the flame blast can be a good source of direct damage for when it’s needed. The blind also helps secure stomps or avoid attacks, and the air blast in rather invaluable. This one can probably be substituted if you find something else to work better though.
The sigil of leeching provides extra damage and self-healing every 10 seconds (approximately 900 I think). With the amount of kit swapping you’ll be doing, this provides a great way to improve sustain and damage output. It’s also important to note that the rune of the water 6 piece bonus applies to oneself as well, so it’s useful whether solo or in a group.
The original build was more like this:
Not as high of healing potential, but good protection up time as well as a significant amount of burning. This one would be more proficient at killing people and possibly surviving encounters, although the former would be better if you’re looking for group support. The original build also suggest using throw mine instead of elixir gun, but I’ve only seen elixir gun used in this build before.
Pistols and Rifles seem pretty weak on damage…engineer seems to rely on bombs and grenades for that mostly.
First of all what are we talking here? PvE/PvP/WvW
Pistol/Shield often serves as a secondary weapon to a kit, not as the primary. Also I’m pretty sure most builds will utilize at least one kit. Just think of kit swapping as swapping weapons on any of the other professions.
The only builds I can think of where you’re going to be spending the vast majority of your time using your weapon are (Rifle) Static Discharge, P/P (non-Nade) HGH, or Rifle HGH. None of those use P/S, and only the Rifle builds use your Zerker gear.
Yeah, it was challenging to try and make a build that fit within his/her criteria of not using any kits and using a pistol shield and still maintain at least some amount of damage output. I just couldn’t think of any that exactly matched so I tried to get as close as I could with using only 1 kit to simulate having a weapon swap, and still using the p/s. It still isn’t going to be as effective as other options but they seemed to indicate not wanting to use gk either so with very little to go on, I tried lol.
I’m actually trying different Bomb Kit builds in WvW at the moment. One with my condition gear and one with my old Tankcat gear. I took a look at the build you linked, and I had never considered a Bomb Kit HGH build. I’d offer up a tweak though. Rifled Barrels can probably be dropped and put into Explosives for either Incendiary Ammo, Short Fuse, or Enhanced Performance. Or For more defense/utility put those points into Inventions for Cloaking Device/Reinforced Shield. That’d also give you a recharge on Elixir H at 25%.
Bombs means I’m in the front line of a zerg (On Blackgate, there’s really no other type of wvw), Nades is retal magnet. I guess what I really need is a burst class (thief, mesmer, or ele) to kill folks while I tank and draw their aggro for skirmishes and havoc.
First of all what are we talking here? PvE/PvP/WvW
Pistol/Shield often serves as a secondary weapon to a kit, not as the primary. Also I’m pretty sure most builds will utilize at least one kit. Just think of kit swapping as swapping weapons on any of the other professions.
The only builds I can think of where you’re going to be spending the vast majority of your time using your weapon are (Rifle) Static Discharge, P/P (non-Nade) HGH, or Rifle HGH. None of those use P/S, and only the Rifle builds use your Zerker gear.
Yeah, it was challenging to try and make a build that fit within his/her criteria of not using any kits and using a pistol shield and still maintain at least some amount of damage output. I just couldn’t think of any that exactly matched so I tried to get as close as I could with using only 1 kit to simulate having a weapon swap, and still using the p/s. It still isn’t going to be as effective as other options but they seemed to indicate not wanting to use gk either so with very little to go on, I tried lol.
I’m actually trying different Bomb Kit builds in WvW at the moment. One with my condition gear and one with my old Tankcat gear. I took a look at the build you linked, and I had never considered a Bomb Kit HGH build. I’d offer up a tweak though. Rifled Barrels can probably be dropped and put into Explosives for either Incendiary Ammo, Short Fuse, or Enhanced Performance. Or For more defense/utility put those points into Inventions for Cloaking Device/Reinforced Shield. That’d also give you a recharge on Elixir H at 25%.
Yeah, after thinking about it a bit more last night I actually came to the same conclusion about rifled barrels. Just not sure which route would be better served, having more burning or better defensive options. Either way I think the build is severely limited in damage potential by staying in the criteria that I used to make it (no gk, using p/s, and only one kit) so that was why I decided to throw in hgh hoping that the extra might stacks will offset the much less variety of conditions but I need to thoroughly test it before I can come to any real conclusion about it’s effectiveness.
(edited by ShadowPuppet.3746)
Bombs means I’m in the front line of a zerg (On Blackgate, there’s really no other type of wvw), Nades is retal magnet. I guess what I really need is a burst class (thief, mesmer, or ele) to kill folks while I tank and draw their aggro for skirmishes and havoc.
And then hope that they don’t have a bunch of hammer warrior’s and guardian’s stacked in the frontlines. Lack of stability will really hamper your effectiveness in that type of scenario. I don’t zerg, well I should say rarely zerg so someone else can probably give you better advice on what to do in that situation as far as build options goes. The times I have zerged I just never felt my individual contribution as much as when I am in a small group or running solo. I understand many people can only seem to find this type of action on their servers. I am in TC now (moved from SoR), so it’s only a t2 server at the moment and I find plenty of opportunity for small group solo play, which is partially why I moved, because I just don’t enjoy zergs lol
Thank you everyone for the replies.
I perhaps should have been more clear. I dislike the use of kits, but I’m not totally opposed to using them so long is isn’t tedious. I have seen some of the recommended builds which use three kits and their weapons in finger contortion acts to get their rotation working.
I am going to play around with Elixir Gun some more as that does not sound half bad or require aiming like grenades does or to be in melee like bombs.
I really like all of the abilities on 1-5 for P/S, but I am willing to use P/P or Rifle. In fact I often run around with P/P when doing off level PvE stuff. However I use P/S in the zerg or in WvW (Reflecting a Kill Shot makes my day.) simply as a matter of utility. I find Rifle is awesome in SPvP and to a lesser extent WvW, but found that Explosive Shot is just really really good against an opposing zerg or a mass of mobs.
I am going to see if I can track down some “Giver” guns tonight and build a set of Condition Damage armor and see how this works out.
Thanks again for all of the feedback, and I apologize for making it seem like I was completely inflexible.