Guild Wars 2

Hey everybody, this is my first post to the engi forums. Wanted to throw out my current build and see what the feedback was.

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/fizzles-pistol-s-static-dis-build-engineer-9214.html

I didn’t set any runes in, but i’m using the runes of scholar right now; not a permanent thing.

so the biggest thing about this build is utilizing static discharge. the skills I selected were mainly because of their accompanying tool belt skills having low cooldown and ranged attack.

because of this, I get to spam surprise shot, throw wrench, and launch personal bat ram every few seconds (w/speedy gadgets trait) and get a LOT of ranged aoe damage with static discharge.

other skills are pretty standard. precise sights is awesome and i’m still not sure about coated bullets but i didn’t really care for any of the other ones like 20% extra burn when the only burn that i’ll be doing is from my incendiary powder which burns for 2 seconds and that didn’t seem worth the .4seconds extra (if that math is even right).

invigorating speed could be switched out with blood injection for some more dmg on long fights or protection injection for some survivability. self-reg defenses seemed too long of a CD for me.

Anyways, looking forward to the feedback and I’m really interested to hear from those who know how the rifle compares to the pistol. I realize there’s probably more true dmg output with the rifle but I really like the poison/confusion along with a reflect/block combo i’ve got with my pistol shield.

cheers!

I’ve been running a Static Discharge P/S build in WvW to much success, so I’ll help you out. I use a 0/30/20/0/20 build for reference.

On the subject of Rifle vs P/S, it really comes down to Power and Control vs Conditions and Durability. Rifle has the ability to keep the enemy where you want while giving you high burst damage with point blank Jump Shot, Blunderbuss, and Overcharged Shot. It compliments Static Discharge almost perfectly by turning you into a PBAoE burst machine. That said, I prefer P/S because as you said, I really like the poison/confusion and the reflect/block combo that P/S offers. You can whittle your opponent down easily, and let your conditions do the work as the enemy kills themselves on confusion and reflect. Tool Kit goes great with P/S because it gives you another source of confusion and a 3 second block.

I want to know if you’re using this build for PvE or PvP/WvW, though? I don’t know how good cripple is in PvE, but the Power Wrench trait is invaluable if you’re using Tool Kit, IMO. It turns Throw Wrench into a moving cripple and was changed about a month ago to work with Gear Shield and Magnet. Cripple on Gear Shield means you can get away much easier by blocking while running and cripple on Magnet allows you to stick on your enemy. Not to mention 20% cooldown reduction on all Tool Kit skills.

I use a full set of Runes of Centaur on my Engineer. The +Bleeding duration is useful for Pistol and with Med Kit, you can upkeep Swiftness infinitely on your Engi. With Invigorating Speed in your build, you can keep Vigor up infinitely as well. Though again, this is more of a “PvE or WvW” situation since I don’t know how useful Swiftness is to you if this is for PvE.

Hope this info helps you. Trying to cut my post down so it doesn’t turn into a bigger wall of text, so if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

really good info man! thanks for the reply

power wrench is very tempting, I hadn’t even looked at it until you mentioned it. Also, those runes are my new best friend, ty for mentioning them

I’m coming from a lot of sWvW/sPvP and the build i used: pistol/s, HT, FT, BK and specialized in explosives for a lot of control and not too much dmg.

I wanted to make a build that was PvE dmg focused but might be able to transfer over, or help out in those PvE situations where you’d like a bit more control.

Specifically, I HATE that the FT misses on objects in PvE, so I immediately threw it out, and BK was useless when most bosses would 1shot me as I would get close and I didn’t really get too much feedback as to whether the debuffs were actually helpful during fights. I tried grenades, but I’m not too great at skill shots, and they seems a little unreliable unless the mobs were staying together.

I really like the swiftness/vigor up when i need it because usually when i pull out my medkit i need to get out of an area or i’m running to an objective.

just ran through CoF and I wasn’t as tanky as I’d like to be, but I really enjoy being able to have burst dmg as well as condition dmg.

Sophora.1436:

It turns Throw Wrench into a moving cripple and was changed about a month ago to work with Gear Shield and Magnet. Cripple on Gear Shield means you can get away much easier by blocking while running and cripple on Magnet allows you to stick on your enemy. Not to mention 20% cooldown reduction on all Tool Kit skills.

Power Wrench does only apply Cripple to TK skill 1 and Toolbelt Throw Wrench.
Gear Shield and Magnet do NOT apply Cripple to the target, sadly.
The reduced cooldown gets applied to TK 2-5 though.

This is consistent with the Power Wrench tooltip.
It would be great if it would work like you state though.

Sorry, my mistake. I guess it was one of those patch updates that bugged and never actually worked.

Well, the Power Wrench tooltip states:
“The Throw Wrench and Smack skills heal turrets twice as fast, and cripple foes for 5 seconds. Tool kit skills recharge 20% faster.”

And it does that. See linked thread below.
Althought I’m not sure if it really applies a 5 second cripple with TK ability 1. Had not enough time to test… will test tonight.

November 15th patch notes states:
“Power Wrench: This trait now applies to Gear Shield and Magnet.”

Which is vague at best.

Follow here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Engineer-Bugs-Compilation-1/1034255

Maybe it gets cleared up.

On the Tool Kit:

previously the cooldown reduction of the trait did not work on the gear shield and magnet.
That is whay the patch changed: the cooldown reduction the trait offers.

The cripple works on Throw Wrench and on the FIRST hit of #1 (there are 3 of wich the third hits bloody hard).
Smack-whack and Twack or something.

This is enough for those 3 hits from #1 by the way: the cripple is constantly applied.

If you pull and want to use box of nails or # 1 after, for cripple… they’ll dodge before you can hit.
That’s what people do when you pull them: they immediately dodge and run away.

So put down box of nails first, or use kit refinement and swap to the kit immediately before pulling.
Or use throw wrench before or after, but reember they WILL dodge straight after pull if they can. Luckily throw wrench hits on the way back too

The first hit didn’t apply 5 seconds of cripple. I was just testing it. Hit once with Toolkit ability 1 and dodge away. Its just a mini cripple of 1 second or something (hard to tell).
And if Throw Wrench hits, I can’t see 5 seconds of cripple also… maybe if Throw Wrench hits twice?

Sadly BoN has a cast time, so once I hit TK2 and wanted to pull, people were out of range. Kit Refinement doesn’t really work reliably either.
Most of the time I get no BoN or really long delayed procs.
This was a patch ago. Maybe I have to test tonight. They could have silent fixed it.

kit refinement always has the same cooldown as the spell it copies, so it can’t proc each time if you swap often.