Guild Wars 2

for general lvling are pistols or rifle better for killing things?

i felt like both are terrible for leveling honestly and that you’re better off just constantly using a kit, but if i had to pick i would say rifle is easier in my opinion to start with, once you get coated bullets pistols are probably better at fighting large amounts of mobs.

Rifle. Make a bee line for Hair Trigger in the Firearms line so you can use the Rifle skills more frequently. Root your target with Net and continue to Hip Shot. When your target closes with you use Blunderbuss, Jump Shot, Overcharged Shot in that order. That should kill anything of equal level. If you want a great high damage utility on a short cooldown, grab Rocket Boots. This will get you out of melee giving you enough time to throw another Net Shot. The Toolblet skill Rocket Kick is a 19 second cooldown damaging move with a HUGE burn attached. This is a great no nonsense leveling set up. Add whatever else you want to it.

Oh, and stack Power over all.

Rifle, hands down.

Pistol is pretty terrible for two reasons – 1. it’s a hybrid weapon, but it scales so poorly based on conditions that you do more overall DPS stacking pure power. But if you’re going to stack pure power you might as well go rifle since it scales even better.

2. It’s balanced around a 0.5 second fire time, but due to the animation the actual fire time is ~0.75 second (same as rifle), this leaves it doing much less dps then it should.

It’s a kitten shame because I like the shield alot, but the pistol is just too terrible to use.

Doesn’t that mean attempts to stack Might would be best?

Use the one you like, both are as bad/good, all depends on if you like the jumpshoot and pull that rifle have or not, same with Pistols skills.

Pistols, Pistol and Shield, or Rifle? No. Grenade Kit and Bomb Kit for leveling.

Okay, that being said:

• Pistol and Shield is remarkably tanky, once you learn to use the shield skills. It’ll take you all day to kill things, but you’ll be in little or no danger doing it.

• Dual pistols exists only for one reason: Blowtorch. Dual-pistols is the melee-range weapon combo. It’s fun. But it’ll get you killed. A lot.

• Rifle’s auto-attack hits like a brick. The other 4 attacks are, at best, situational. The good news is, it’s single-target, it doesn’t steal aggro from other players. The bad news is, it’s single target, you’re doing no damage to the other targets when you get swarmed.

InfamousBrad.5879:

Pistols, Pistol and Shield, or Rifle? No. Grenade Kit and Bomb Kit for leveling.

• Rifle’s auto-attack hits like a brick. The other 4 attacks are, at best, situational. The good news is, it’s single-target, it doesn’t steal aggro from other players. The bad news is, it’s single target, you’re doing no damage to the other targets when you get swarmed.

grenades and bombs suck without traits. Extremly against single target…

Rifle Autoattack pierces (learn 2 position mobs), Blunderbluss and Jumpshot are AoE. So 3 out of 5 Skills are AoE. By far the best leveling weapon.

blutstein.2468:

grenades and bombs suck without traits.

Bombs do not suck in the least un traited. In fact, since day 1 it has been considered been considered one of the top AoE options to level in PvE. As well, the trait to extend bombs explosion radius is a tier one trait. You can solo ten mobs with bombs.

Even Grenades don’t suck in Solo PvE while leveling up. Heck, even the value of Dual Pistols seems to be greatly underestimated. With Grenades, Bombs, and Pistols you can pull 5 to 6 mobs that are easily more then 7 levels above you and burn them all down.

Heck, in Solo PvE you are going to have the easiest time experimenting and testing things out. Flamethrower Might stacking, Tool Kit melee fighting, and much more is viable while leveling up. There will be very little differences in speed unless you are intentionally trying to be non-optimal with gear or traits.

Basically a rifle will give you a lot more control, but I did just fine with pistols.

I leveled all the way to 80 with dual pistols and had a ton of fun doing it. Never had any problem. I tried the rifle a couple of times and just didn’t like it for leveling. For PvE, I think Static Shot is fantastic. I don’t agree with those saying bombs suck for leveling. To me they were fantastic(plus another source of confusion). And with several quests areas requiring you to take out siege which was often guarded by NPCs… I’d just run right up to the siege and start dropping bombs on the siege. The NPCs would run up and get hit too. With the blind component of Static Shot + blind from the bomb, plus blind from Flamethrower… you could stand in the middle of trouble for a good bit and not get hit. Just gotta pay attention on mobs that knock down. But Pistols, bomb kit and Flamethrower kit were my standards all the way up to 80.

I mean at the end of the day, when leveling you’re gonna deal with either ranged mobs or melee mobs 99% of the time. Once you figure out which is which. I’d run up to the ranged(while shooting) and then the melee adds would run in… made for simple herding and the bomb kit did wonders.

coglin.1496:

blutstein.2468:

grenades and bombs suck without traits.

Bombs do not suck in the least un traited. In fact, since day 1 it has been considered been considered one of the top AoE options to level in PvE. As well, the trait to extend bombs explosion radius is a tier one trait. You can solo ten mobs with bombs.

Coglin is completely correct in saying this. The grandmaster trait for bombs is a nice to have, but not essential for them in any way. In fact, If you like running around with swiftness, you may not even get your bomb heals when you run because you exceed their radius before they go off.

The traits that increase damage and range are also non-essential, especially if you’re still leveling. Just run around dropping bombs and aggroing everything (as our explosives often do) and as long as the mobs are close combat you’ll whittle them to nothing in no time.

Kalari.2760:

for general lvling are pistols or rifle better for killing things?

Rifle all the way you do better damage and have better control your time to kill is lower and jump shot is just fantastic for getting around jumping puzzles or other awkward areas. Pwr engi is the way to go in pve when leveling.

For levelling? Use pistol/pistol. From levels 1 to 30, blowtorch usually takes off 60-70% of any given mob’s health from that long, long burn, not to mention it’s AoE. Then use bomb kit when you can’t use blowtorch. Boom, levelling.

Don’t use the pistol at 80 though. It’s awful. For PvE, anyway.

leveling? flamethrower, bombs or grenades. Aoe>single target, and you can always swap back to your main weapons (I used p/s) while things are on cooldown.

Q: What to use for levelling? Dual Pistols? Pistol & Shield? Rifle?
A: All of the above!

The Engineer doesn’t shine until its weapon abilities are combined with its many kit/utility/toolbar skills. The only way to find the combination(s) that best suits your play style is to try out as many of them as you can with each of the weapon options. And given how many options the engineer has, this will take a decent chunk of your levelling time.

(FYI, I made the mistake of finding a weapon set I liked – dual pistols – and then sticking with it while I rushed to get to L80. I wish now that I’d made more use of that time trying out other combinations. Now I’m having to go back and experiment with things I could/should have tried while I was levelling.)

Zenguy.6421:

Q: What to use for levelling? Dual Pistols? Pistol & Shield? Rifle?
A: All of the above!

The Engineer doesn’t shine until its weapon abilities are combined with its many kit/utility/toolbar skills. The only way to find the combination(s) that best suits your play style is to try out as many of them as you can with each of the weapon options. And given how many options the engineer has, this will take a decent chunk of your levelling time.

(FYI, I made the mistake of finding a weapon set I liked – dual pistols – and then sticking with it while I rushed to get to L80. I wish now that I’d made more use of that time trying out other combinations. Now I’m having to go back and experiment with things I could/should have tried while I was levelling.)

I totally agree, if you want to kill mobs with just a weap, then the engineer is not for you, the engineer is about combining your resources in order to kill or control situations effectively.

I’m a lv 80 asura engineer using p/s, flamethrower, bomb kit and elixir c and I can tell you I’m very happy with that combo. Of course my gear and traits make it work, so you just have to experiment with lots of combinations unlike other professions, that’s the nice thing bout being an engineer: versatility.

Use all the dual-pistol cooldowns and swap to a kit for your actual damage. If you’re using pistol 1 for damage you’re doing it wrong.

Rifle is for PvP control, specific ranged builds, and suckers.

Rifle and Pistol/Pistol are very different and both hit really hard when played right.

Rifle:

Hip Shot (1) —-—> @ 100 distance——>Net Shot (2) —-—→Blunderbuss (3) —-→Jump Shot (5) —-—> Overcharge Shot (5)

P/P:

Glue Shot (5) —-—> Poison Dart Volley (2) —-—> Explosive Shot (1) —-—>@ 200 distance —-—> Static Shot (3) —-—> lift hands from any movement as to allow toon to auto face —-—> Blowtorch (4) —-—> Dance with it a bit more and its over.

I find both weapons fun and powerful but since I lean towards ranged P/P is my proffered set of choice.