Guild Wars 2

So a friend in my guild has arranged a 1v1 tournament within our guild plus the guilds in our alliance. I, as the given class, the Engineer, am having trouble choosing a build that gives me a fair chance countering whoever I face. The thing is, I hate playing with builds a lot of other players are using, (in this case HGH and SD). I know that the build I am doing best with is the HGH Grenadier. It’s a very very strong build, I cannot deny that. Call me crazy, but I’d rather lose this tournament with a build I like and feel comfortable with than to win with the “best” build most players use. And lately I’ve been a bit lost in my theorycrafting. I know I like rifle more than p/p or p/s and would love to make a build around that.

So I was just curious about what are your builds you feel most comfortable with are. Are you mainstreaming with SD/HGH or have you made your own arsenal? Please share!

this sounds like you

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Nakoda-s-FT-S-TPvP-Guide-Updated-04-17-13/1850889

I know how you feel Esk. I was running a confusion mesmer for a while, got bored of mashing the same buttons every time I saw someone (although it was an extremely good build), and am now an engineer.

I’ve been playing around with an off-center build for WvW. I’m using P/P, elixir H, elixir B, elixir gun, elixir S, supply drop. I am a little bit HGH-ish (10/30/0/30/0) for the insane condition removal with 409, and use the elixir gun as an extra set of condition damage skill and extra heal/escape button. My armor is set up to give maximum bonuses to condition duration and condition damage.

I’ve been winning around 80-90 percent of 1v1s in WvW (win rate vs. thieves is around 50%). Generally the enemy does their thing for about 5s and then melts over the course of the next 10s after I apply conditions. The swiftness from elixirs H and B means that melee characters are often dead before they can touch me.

I’m surprised that more people don’t use the elixir gun (instead of nades) in WvW. It is absolutely punishing with maxed out condition damage stats and the traited range improvement. Plus you heal and give retaliation to zergs, so it feels like you’re actually helping the group.

kazi.6438:

I’m surprised that more people don’t use the elixir gun (instead of nades) in WvW. It is absolutely punishing with maxed out condition damage stats and the traited range improvement. Plus you heal and give retaliation to zergs, so it feels like you’re actually helping the group.

Nades are better at damage and spreading conditions. Each grenade toss (when traited) can potentially spread conditions to up to 15 targets compared to elixer guns 1. Fumigate can also only hit 3 targets at a time so even that is inferior to spreading conditions. Grenades are also great at proccing on crit effects as each grenade you toss has a chance of proccing the effect since you throw 3 attacks at once. Elixer guns direct damage is also kitten poor compared to nades (even if your spec only for cond dmg, with full might stacks nades direct damage can be very noticeable while elixer gun’s will always be kitten poor). All of this combined with the fact Nades have longer range and WvW has devolved into a giant zerg blob fest and you can see why nades are more popular.

Kazi, I’ve been running grenades and elixir gun in WvW a lot. Using full apothecary armor. Not that great condition damage but its decent. But giving up some of the damage, I can outheal the retaliation, so that’s pretty cool. I like the elixir gun as well

Yeah, survivability and ease-of-use are the two nicest things about the elixir gun. Plus skill 4 is like having an extra elixir s. Bad situation? Press button 4. Half the time its enough to escape.

Also I’ve noticed that elixir gun shots will track, meaning that you never miss unless they dodge. This is especially deadly since every autoattack does ~6 seconds of potentially 3 stacks of bleed/burn per shot (this is with traits/sigils).

I’m considering dropping the HGH trait and going 20/30/0/20/0 for the extra 10% condition duration. With long-duration conditions like bleed, extra condition duration is a flat 10% increase in damage, which might be better than HGH in this case now that I think about it (heresy!).

How is the apothecary armor btw? I was looking into that but was unsure how it would play.

Expensive, but I still use it So I guess It’s nice. Main stat is Healing Power, secondary stats are toughness and condition damage. I like it a lot.

I`m back to GW2 after 3 months. I`d try a FT/EG build.
Any good news about this idea? I plan do run dungeons and WvW.
As far as I know FT was based on Power and for EG one needed Cond dmg / duration.

Any input / suggestion will be appreciated, thank you.

Oh and I`m looking for a friendly guild, that will do the above dungeons and w3, but I guess that`s in a different forum branch.

Have a great day.