Guild Wars 2

Every time i go into a larger event, i find myself wishing there was a option to plinking away with the rifle.

Yes yes, there is grenade kit. But having to hammer my 1 key to death becomes tiresome pretty kitten fast. Also, it is virtually impossible to maintain DPS between all the FX and models milling about and the big bad constantly shifting aggro target…

And flamethrower? Forget it. May as well go melee given the “range” on that thing. One itty bitty lag spike and all of a sudden i am face to face with something dangerous.

Well, you get what you get. You play a profession specifically design for mid ranged combat. Honestly, I wish you could play the profession at a range if you chose, but that was not the design and balance philosophy of the profession, and they never advertised it as such either. They do specifically state that it is a mid range profession.

Now having said that, the problem as I see it, is that we are build poorly for mid ranged fighting. We have literally one solid cleanse, and that is elixir C. We have 1200-1500 range weapon skills, then we have a ton of 120-240 range of melee weapons. But between 240-1200 we have next to nothing. We have a few pistol shots, and 2 rifle shots.

The whole long/mid/short may work in SPVP, but it makes crap all sense in PVE. There you are either long or you are melee, thanks to the banzai behavior of the AI…

I highly recommend investing in some condition duration.
Wether it be givers weapons, food or both, the increase in chill duration is invaluable for landing those grenades in an uncoordinated group. Net shot during chill downtime, throw in a net turret if you really want to overdo it.
Other than that, all we’ve really got is rifle auto for long range.

Also you can easily run SD rifle builds. Sure nades may slightly out dps SD but the rotation is easy and the burst is berry nice.

I run SD for roaming and pve world events, I’ll switch to nades in coordinated groups and fractals.

I don’t quite understand, are you looking for something to tag event mobs with, and still do decent direct damage?

If so, reexamine the flamethrower. 425 range is amazing, and because it hits so many times you’ll be able to easily tag multiple things, despite the maximum three target cap.

Flamethrower engineers are arguably better for mass mob tagging than staff guardians. It’s certainly a lot less work, as you have to spam 1 far less, and it also hits targets through walls and objects just like Wave of Wrath.

Mostly i am looking for anything that gives me more ranged DD options than hitting #1 and going AFK.