Guild Wars 2

For PvE: I run the rifle. I always thought that the second sigil going with pistol was too important to go without, but the truth of the matter is that your damage output is significantly greater if you integrate rifle skills into your rotation that your damage will be just having a second sigil. I really only swap in the shield when we truly need that extra blast finisher.

For PvP: The rifle is better for control, the pistol for conditions, and the shield for defense. I use them all depending on the composition of the other team. Sometimes knocking people back with Overcharged Shot is better than using the shield and blocking attacks. Active versus reactive play, so to speak.

Forestnator.6298:

If you are just hiding with your good guildies and deny any bad party – then sorry mate, then you are not a good – okay let’s say excellent player.

Someone can have a brilliant mind but be a bad teacher, or simply not want to teach.

Arantheal.7396:

nope.
You are right, your method works, but not if you actually deal with incontrollable values, which humans are.
For all that matters, I’ll never swap again my whole skill-set just for a single situation, that relies this much on coordination.

If you wipe, you go again. And if you’re unwilling to swap around skills to best suit each situation—even your whole bar—you’re not really playing the engineer to its fullest potential.

If you want to play it safe with pugs, be my guest. But I think you owe it to yourself and others pushing pugs into learning more advanced mechanics and tactics, and giving yourself the opportunity to display to them how good the engineer actually is.

Soldier amulet over Cleric?

Then put 10 in Alchemy instead of Tools. That’s the first trait split I advertised writing this guide, but went ahead and shifted 10 to Tools because I was surviving without vigor just fine. I don’t see the controversy.

I’ve ran 10 Tools in FOTM 49, Arah, CoE, and killing Tequatl. I don’t know what you mean about this being a world event build, or that 10 Alchemy is necessary for dungeons.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

You really shouldn’t be calling a rifle/bomb build “meta” or “dungeoneer”. Not without some important qualifiers anyway.

It’s decent for blowing through open-world content though I guess.

You’re more then welcome to use grenades with this trait distribution.

Nice bomb damage there.

Updated part 4 a little bit. Added a tidbit about ideal choice of food.

Cheers.

Arantheal.7396:

the mess comes from the fact that not a single one of these skills is used by me in fractals.
Elixier H, Nades, elixier U, elixier B.
tough the HT is there, I would have to rebuild my complete fractal build for one single part of a random fractal that may not even occur…
HgH condi-build btw

You don’t have to run with the build I talked about to do what I said.

You can swap skill just for the stealth run in Dredge and swap back.

What skill mess?

1. Drop Healing Turret and Rifle Turret
2. Drop Big Ol’ Bomb → Smoke Bomb
3. Swap to Elixir Gun → Acid Bomb
4. Detonate turrets

Magical 12 seconds of stealth. You can even use Rocket Boots instead of Rifle Turret and give yourself a 900 range advantage. Or use Magnetic Inversion (shield) instead of Acid Bomb. We have so many blast finishers to choose from, and all on skills that you should be using already.

All it takes is one more blast finisher among the 4 other people in your party to get the final 3 seconds of stealth.

Arantheal.7396:

Phineas Poe.3018:

Arantheal.7396:

>Having a smoke field is so huge in Dredge.
p1 you mean? cause dredge in general are immune to blind

It’s used for stealth.

I assume you’ve never ran it with randoms then.
organizing them to actually blast something will cost you the last nerve…
If I could not laugh about the sorry picture most pugs deliver, I’d have rage-quited 2 days after became 80 the first time^^

I don’t pug FOTM. Join a larger guild.

We will sometimes take a random fifth, but that’s the extent of it.

Arantheal.7396:

>Having a smoke field is so huge in Dredge.
p1 you mean? cause dredge in general are immune to blind

It’s used for stealth.

Bomb Kit Engi is one of the best classes to take for FOTM. Having a smoke field is so huge in Dredge. And with Modified Ammo, it’s probably the best AoE DPS in the game right now that isn’t a conjured weapon.

OP updated, including some new skill calcs and better utility skill breakdown.

Merry Christmas.

I would aim toward power in an FT/EG build, not condition damage.

Not sure how anything I said related strictly to EB. I almost never go there, and prefer jumping between borderlands as the server needs it.

Whether your zergs are organized or not, it’s ultimately about staying alive and tagging as many people as possible. Obviously there’s a bit more to it, like blasting water fields, but my point was mostly to iterate how differently you must construct your build to be successful in zergs versus roaming. You prioritize survivability in WvW; you don’t necessarily in PvP/roaming.

hints.8036:

I’m reading this thread because I haven’t played my engineer in a while and want to see what I should do to “update” my build. For large-scale WvW (say T1 zerging), I think the old build is still viable (some videos just from today 1 2 3 4).

I think we are all guilty of relying on a small number of PvPers figure out builds for us in WvW. The truth is that certain OP traits like Incendiary Powder are much less useful in WvW because of internal CD etc..The requirement for a zerg (busting!) build is very different…

What do you mean by the “old” build?

I agree that PvP builds don’t directly translate to successful zerging, but if solo/small-group roaming in WvW, you can use PvP builds fairly effectively. Truth is, when it comes to zergs, it’s ultimately about staying alive as long as possible, tagging a lot of players for badges/bags/wxp.

Some people like tagging with the grenade kit from far away. Others like running with the front line using the flamethrower. And a lot of players these days are running healing bombs, including myself. You can’t just take a build you found online and use it and immediately find success. You have to figure out what you actually like to play, and then determine the most effective way to construct a build around it that is both highly taggable and very survivable.

So which kit do you like best? They’re all viable if built properly.

Penguin.5197:

grenades have a good distance but 4/5 of the skills are made for adding conditions.

Not sure that’s 100% true. Shrapnel Grenade and Freeze Grenade both deal a lot of direct damage. And don’t forget about Grenade Barrage.

Also if looking for “mid-range,” I’d say Flame Blast on the Flamethrower scales just fine with Power. 600 range; first hit scales by 75%, second hit by 175%.

Krag.6210:

Some things you should add to your guide:

Toolkit: Great kit all around, Prybar does very nice damage plus adds a condition, you also have a block skill which is pretty handy when you lack endurance regen and the Magnet is also pretty good to position mobs, Toolbelt skill does average damage but works well with static discharge.

I thought I had the Tool Kit there already, but I guess I didn’t. It shall be added. Thanks for notifying. However…

Krag.6210:

Throw Mine: Strips boons and is also a blast finisher, deals insane damage with the toolbelt skill, usually hits between 15-25k damage and it’s only a 20s cooldown. The toolbelt skills is also a two steps thing (deploy->detonate) so it’s 20% endurance back.
Superior to Rifle Turret imo.

I dislike Mine Field as it has a 1-second cast time. Not every mine will always hit your target either, especially if they’re much smaller. Many times I find I’d have just done equal damage just spamming bombs.

If they made a point to reduce the skill’s spread I’d find it more useful, but overall I think the tool belt skill is useful only for boon stripping.

Why are you dodging while stealthed? Seems like a poor use of endurance.

You can find a couple in my signature. But IntoTheMists and Guru are where I generally post mine. Reddit moves too fast, and the moderators don’t sticky individual build threads here.

10/0/30/30/0, regardless of what kits you run, is probably the ideal bunker setup. Either Cleric or Settler amulet works. I prefer Settler myself, since I primarily run Bomb Kit and Tool Kit together for the confusion burst. My third utility is usually either the Elixir Gun or Elixir S. Elixir Gun is better against condition classes, while Elixir S is better against burst.

Am I the only one that—dare I say it—actually likes the hobo sacks?

It used to be 100/400. Now it’s 200/500.

I think they just failed to correctly update the tooltip.

Yamsandjams.3267:

It’s actually 25 in Firearms, not tools, but yeah.

Yeah, my mistake. Already fixed.

Elementalist is very easily the worst class in sPvP right now.

I was doing Dwayna a couple days ago and, during the fight, I decided to fight in melee range with the bomb kit. Because I’m a bad player, I failed to dodge one of her instant-down attacks, and Reserve Mines went off as expected. But then it detonated again. And again. And again. And even after I was brought back up from downed state, it kept going off repeatedly. I tried to get fraps on before the fight ended, but all I’ve got is the below screenshot.

Has this ever happened to anyone else? It was actually pretty awesome, because she went down like a sack of potatoes the second it started happening.

30K DPS; ENGI OP.

pza.8024:

Krag.6210:

usually hits between 15-25k damage

vid or screenshot or it didnt happen.

It’s really quite possible, actually. I don’t use Throw Mine myself, but I do have Reserve Mines, which basically does Mine Field at 25% HP. The skill itself actually bugged out and kept detonating over and over again (about to post a thread about it). They each did about 3.5K; click the picture below to see.

These numbers were from wearing a mix of ascended and exotic Celestial/Traveler armor. Ascended Berserker jewelry with the Predator. With Scholar and Zerker gear, I think 25K is more than possible on certain targets.

STRanger.5120:

Of course I know that AH ticks once per 3 seconds, however if you read my post again, I also mentioned warriors signet (which heals for 392hp/second and that’s without any traits or healing power, just the healing skill slot), which is passive and really effective no matter the build.

As someone that plays a warrior, I think people overrate how good Healing Signet actually is. Yes, it heals for 392hp a second. That means over 15 seconds, it will return 5880 health back. But that’s actually assuming that you’re taking damage every second. Against condition classes, Healing Signet is good. Against burst classes like Mesmer and Thief, your HP plummets and you have no real way to gain it back but burn your endurance and dodge, praying that your signets and stances keep you alive in the meantime. Warrior has really poor vigor maintenance, and a lot of builds require you to use Burst skills to gain it back—emptying out your adrenaline in the process, which results in even worse sustain due to Adrenal Health’s embarrassing health renewal at level 1 adrenaline.

The Healing Turret by comparison (when picked up) gives back 5040 health and 8 seconds of regeneration every 15 seconds. Regeneration heals back 130 of your HP a second with zero healing power, so this means the Healing Turret in total gives back 6080 health. And it heals your allies. And it cures 2 conditions. And it’s a blast finisher when you detonate it. Detonating it actually diminishes its healing effectiveness per second, but sometimes you just need that extra 1.2K HP now more than you need the 5K heal later.

The situation is really quite simple. The skill ceiling of the warrior is quite low—perhaps the lowest of all classes in the game. If you can work around the weaknesses of Healing Signet, you can create a powerful build. Build engineers by comparison is relatively difficult, and it sometimes isn’t so obvious to build your traits and stat allocation to get the most effective results. In short, bad engineers get beaten by good warriors. But a good engineer will give any warrior trouble. While their stunlock builds cut through most classes like a hot knife through butter, engineers can trait for 53% damage reduction while stunned. Really, if you’re getting embarrassed by warriors, you just aren’t building properly against them.

STRanger.5120:

And if you take in consideration warriors higher base HP and armor, the ability to trait for shout-healing (with similar investment an Engi needs to trait for bomb-healing and make the bombs effective) which is really strong, again even without healing power, you got a class that has really better sustainability and is easier to play as a bonus.
I’m not saying that Engi is weak in any way, just saying that there are classes, which are purely favorized in the terms of balance. And I would like to know why, but nobody will ever answer that unfortunately…

Vigorous Shouts heals for 1.5K. It’s really quite terrible sustain, which is why almost no one uses it.

STRanger.5120:

ellesee.8297:

Chuck Zitto.2367:

Little upset that elixir infused bombs got a 50% increase in healing power which in anet terms means it went from .1 healing scaling to .15 or about 30 or so more hp per bomb explosion. Even with full healing power its less healing per second than warrior passive healing singet with 0 healing power and every warrior build has adrenal heal as well and some have banner regen or shout heals.

healing bombs, backpack regen, elixir gun aoe, perma regen gives us tons of passive healing for bunker builds

You have to be quite crazy to even try to compare this (master major):
Regenerate health every second when using a kit.
Healing: 117 (0.05)

with this(master minor):

Regenerate health based on adrenaline level.
Adrenaline level 1 healing: 125 (0.15)
Adrenaline level 2 healing: 240 (0.15)
Adrenaline level 3 healing: 360 (0.15)

If you add a signet to this, warrior beats any passive regen of an Engi with just these two abilities, and I guess that he doesn’t even need healing power to achieve that…..

Edit: Also calling a weapon skill (elixir gun) a “passive” ability, that’s the stuff man…..

Well, first of all, Adrenal Health ticks only once every 3 seconds. So at maximum adrenaline, it’s 120/second—nearly identical to Backpack Regenerator.

Ultimately I think debates over “passive” healing are erroneous, anyway. Most of what the engineer has is active: Super Elixir, Elixir-Infused Bombs, Healing Turret. That doesn’t change the fact that our sustain is quite good compared to warriors, especially considering that we have (1) better blocks, (2) better invulnerability skills, and (3) better damage reduction while stunned.

I think cherry-picking individual traits is a mistake. You have to look at what all is offered in a single build as a warrior and an engineer.

Malhavoc Adhamar.3675:

Changing Modified Ammo to this new form rewards engineers who want to focus more on using rifle/pistol as their main source of damage rather than kits, which imho should be the focus of the trait line.

Literally every trait in Firearms except Fireforged Trigger and Juggernaut in one way or another benefits either the rifle or the pistol, so I’m not sure it’s as unfocused as you insinuate.

The Firearms tree is fine, and the new Modified Ammo is perhaps one of the greatest buffs we’ve ever been granted. ArenaNet should leave it alone and focus their efforts elsewhere: ideally with turrets and gadgets.

Rozbuska.5263:

Pretty much all mobs are safe on melee range if you know their combat mechanics imo much more mobs are more dangerous on range than melee.

Yup. There are only a handful of bosses in this game that you are forced to fight at range, and just about all of them are a snore in the first place (i.e., Jellyfish Beast).

It synergizes well with Target The Maimed (25 Firearms), which gives a 5% damage increase to all targets suffering from bleeds, so I’m fine with it.

Yeah, they both get rune and sigil slots too.

Just remember that ascended armor has all defensive infusion slots while weapons have offensive infusion slots.If you run fractals and just put simply agony infusions in all of them it doesn’t matter, but for WvW keep in mind that ascended armor can only be infused with toughness, healing power, or vitality.

Going for armor will not be a huge boost in damage, but can make a difference for your zerg builds.

I was thinking something similar, running Settler’s gear with AED, the Bomb Kit, the Tool Kit, and Elixir S.

Can’t say it’s necessarily an effective roaming build, but I think it’d work decently in zergs.

Kanto.1659:

Ten minutes spamming grenade #1, huh? I see.

I apologize for derailing your thread as I was answering Krag/Mork’s utility/damage point of view regarding Tools for Firearms.

No apology necessary. I think it’s a conversation worth having.

RE: Ten minutes of spamming #1, as much as I recognize that one playstyle is “easier” than the other, there’s a certain amount of gratification surviving Golem fighting him at melee range the entire time that enriches gameplay enjoyment than standing in the back spamming grenades in no apparent danger.

Kanto.1659:

I am not hardcore enough to be in melee wearing paper for armor, and, as I mentioned, nor am I playing with min maxed pros who do Might/Vuln/Fury stacking. I am sure your build rocks for players in either situation.

You don’t have to play in min/max groups to run a build like this. Between this and my FT/EG combo build, I have always advertised builds that are just as effective in pugs as they are in organized groups. If anything, builds like these lend themselves better to pugs, as most min/max groups will already have Elementalists with Lightning Hammers for stacking might and Guardians/Warriors for vulnerability. This build was intentionally constructed to cover the bases of vulnerability, might, condition removal, and general DPS—not that it is necessary the best at any of these roles.

Kanto.1659:

With this last patch I tried 30/30/0/10/0 with grenades and though I could see that there was a boost I found myself with the usual complaints (grenades not fit for all situations, no perma swiftness and a lack of ‘burst’ for open world situations (was still fiddling with Kessex at the time and some minor world exploration).

So I went for 30/10/0/0/30 and I am pleased. For those bosses/situations where I need to dodge a lot and can’t reliably be aiming grenades while moving out of red circles, I use the Rifle and SD (rifle turret, Battering Ram) which also gives me burst for low HP enemies where grenades slow lob is not as good. When the boss/situation allows it, or I want AoE (a small flaw with Rife/SD if we don’t want to melee and despite the SD’s bouncing) I switch to grenades and can lob them all day long from 1500 distance (or closer and make use of SD when I am reduced to using grenade #1) while my team contribution is stacking Vulnerability.

This is not a grenade-centric build. This is a bomb-centric build, taking grenades only when players are too lazy to actually learn how to survive in melee range. At first I felt that the bomb kit wasn’t suited for a lot of world events, dungeons, and fractals. But after composing this build together and testing it over the past week, I can count on one hand the number of fights I have to use grenades with.

It’s harder to play, certainly. You have to know the safe spots against Fire Elemental. Staying alive against Golem requires a lot of precise movement, avoiding lightning fields and knockbacks. But it’s a lot more fun to play than just standing at 1200 range firing hip shot or—worse—spamming #1 for ten minutes lobbing grenades from 1500 range.

Sigil of Energy fully rectifies the loss of Invigorating Speed, and opens up the advantage of taking Hair Trigger and Sitting Duck together, which makes the rifle a very powerful weapon choice with both direct damage and a ton of vuln stacking—and still take Static Discharge!

I really suggest you try the new build I posted and see how you like it before you go back to 30 Tools.

OP has been updated.

Maskaganda.2043:

-almost all of our cooldown reduction traits are just that, they dont give any bonuses like you see in every other class

This is a big one for me as well. It’s incredible how powerful certain traits are on other classes. Master of Consecrations improves Guardian consecrations by reducing their cooldown and improving their duration. This makes Wall of Reflection go from 25% upkeep (10s/40s) to 37.5% (12s/32s).

And it’s a 10-point trait.

They need to start merging traits. Hair Trigger and Rifled Barrels should be combined. Fireforged Trigger and Deadly Mixture should be combined. The FT/EG combo does fairly mediocre damage already, and shifting Deadly Mixture out of Alchemy will do a lot to improve its effectiveness. A good way to keep this balanced would be to make this a master tier trait, meaning you have to choose between Juggernaut for extra toughness or “Fireforged Mixture” for extra damage.

Build diversity. Can’t get any better than that.

Krag.6210:

Thank you for that. It’s still kinda hard to decide, I wish Tools had something else than the useless Scope for Crit Chance.

I happen to like Speedy Gadgets when I’m running Rocket Boots. Blast finisher on a 16 second cooldown is pretty awesome.

Krag.6210:

I tried a bit of 30/30 but can’t get used to either losing speedy kits or having subpar endurance regen and losing a potential +10% dmg sigil for +10% crit dmg doesn’t make much sense to me. Sigils are there to give your class an extra edge in my opinion, not replace a missing trait.

That’s a fair criticism, but even without Sigil of Night/Force I’m doing more damage than I ever did on my Engineer.

I’ve ran a Sigil of Energy rifle through a couple dungeons and a guild Tequatl kill today.

Taking the 10 Tools alternative is totally safe. Especially since you’re likely swapping after every Fire Bomb to either your elixir gun or rifle, your endurance uptime is just as good as it is with vigor.

I’ll be updating the OP with a 10 Tools variant tomorrow morning. Enjoy!

ellesee.8297:

is target the maimed and the extra crit chance worth the static discharge and crit damage loss?

Yes.

A Bomb Kit Engineer with 30 Explosives eating Koi Cake maintains 3 conditions: burning, bleeding, and vulnerability. That’s a flat 6% increase from Modified Ammunition. Target The Maimed gives another 5%. So even taking no other conditions into consideration (i.e., confusion, crippled, immobilized, poison, blind) you’re already getting a permanent 11% damage increase just spamming #1 and #2 (when it comes up) as a bomber. Period. All the time. 11%. No Endurance required.

It’s also important to identify that taking 30 Firearms gives you room to take both Fireforged Trigger and Sitting Duck. You get the extra vulnerability stacks and more Acid Bombs per minute. Even more direct damage over 25 Tools.

You lose out on some Critical Damage, yes. But with how many conditions the Engineer has access to, I’ll take a potential 24% damage increase over 25% Critical Damage—16% of which a 30/30 Engineer has regular access to.

zaragoz.6351:

So if you did take sigil of energy and speedy kits, what would you second sigil most likely be?

Well, I run the rifle … but if taking a shield or off-hand pistol, I suppose Force/Night/Whatever is suitable.

Elevating this for those who might’ve missed.

Thus far I’m pretty satisfied with the new setup. I’ve been seeing some pretty ridiculous auto-attacks with my Celestial/Traveler gear. I haven’t ran many dungeons since the patch so I cannot say how good it is there with Berserker/Scholar.

I’ve actually swapped out Infused Precision for Fireforged Trigger in most content. I’m beginning to find that Vigor isn’t really all that necessary since a lot of classes provide AoE Vigor these days in their own “meta” builds. Sigil of Energy is also a viable option, freeing you up two traits to take, and to even perhaps slot 10 Tools instead of 10 Alchemy, which would result in a large damage increase than just Force anyway (with the traits included). This would also eliminate the need for Traveler runes, so I might post that as an alternative. More testing is needed before I do that, though.

For PvE, 30/30/0/10/0 is the new meta regardless of whether you’re running solely the bomb kit or grenade kit—-or a mixture of both.

I wouldn’t run pistol-only in PvE. Not enough damage.

Mishva.9416:

I’d rather have main hand Shield and off hand Torch first.

Shield/Shield Engineer sounds all right by me.

Rozbuska.5263:

Its sounds good but its master trait and for me are infused bombs and medical response much more usefull. But yes those last 10 poins are very moderate, maybe Kit Refinement – it will provide much more defensive utility

APT was moved to an Adept trait in yesterday’s patch. It literally swapped places with Incendiary Powder (IX → V). I suggest trying it out.

I’ve also liked Fireforged Trigger, for the quicker Super Elixir.

I can’t decide between the two.

insanemaniac.2456:

Phineas Poe.3018:

insanemaniac.2456:

i dont see the point in firearms.

youre better off with another trait line entirely with the sole exception of hair trigger. sure its 200 more condi damage, but those traits are crap. like seriously, burn duration for a grandmaster? hardly build defining. you dont need it between any 2 of incendiary, rocket boots, bomb 2, and pistol 4.

No one in this thread posted a build with more than 10 points in Firearms, so I’m not sure who you’re talking to.

ostrich’s build in the op

Oh, ha. You’re right. My apologies.

I think 30 Firearms does have its uses, however. Your criticism is a little too scathing, especially when Modified Ammo now works with kits.

Haralin.1473:

A Warrior regs more with no Healingpower every second as we engis can do with bombs with a grand master tier trait thats balance!

Um, yes. Because they forgo having a healing skill. A Cleric Engineer still has Healing Turret healing them for 7K every 15 seconds.

I actually have been running something similar, but I take Accelerant-Packed Turrets instead of Speedy Kits. Since bunkers usually end up holding the same point, there’s no need for Swiftness … and the extra knockback from Healing Turret has often made the difference defending/capping nodes.

You could also sink 10 points into Firearms for Hair Trigger. I just think 10 Tools is unnecessary.

insanemaniac.2456:

i dont see the point in firearms.

youre better off with another trait line entirely with the sole exception of hair trigger. sure its 200 more condi damage, but those traits are crap. like seriously, burn duration for a grandmaster? hardly build defining. you dont need it between any 2 of incendiary, rocket boots, bomb 2, and pistol 4.

No one in this thread posted a build with more than 10 points in Firearms, so I’m not sure who you’re talking to.