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Core Engi WvW


ShazaM.2583

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The main issue with running full celestial is you won't really make use of the heal stat unless running med kit (which is usually run with different traitlines for healing) and the condition damage will be quite poor in addition to the power damage. At most I'd make use of some celestial trinkets just to round out the survivability , aiming for 1500+ condition damage and/or 2200+ power with 200% + critical if it's not a support build. However, because poison dart volley is pretty underwhelming in practice despite 5 stacks of poison and poison grenade is on 25 cooldown I don't think it's worth the investment into condition damage unless you're going for flamethrower or something with burning. In addition, any grenade interaction with shrapnel in the firearms traitline for bleeding is diminished down to ~1s in WvW.

Typically it's some sort of marauder build (with durability rune or scholar rune) because engineers with conditions are rather underwhelming in WvW. Firearms' Modified ammunition has no cap so it scales quite high in a squad with 2% power damage bonus per condition on the target. Even with the damage nerfs in WvW a typical power build attacks for around 1.5-2K auto attacking so a condi build needs to either stack many bleed /poison/torment stacks at once (whether through skills or boon corrupt) or be able to put a few stacks of short duration burn concurrently and consistently. It's much easier to stack burn with a guardian.

Pistol is projectile , flamethrower is melee range and doesn't bring anything major other than burn so you rely on others for cover conditions , elixir gun is more support than condi (it doesn't self clear so you need to combo with light field), while grenades are projectile-like (they don't really get reflected but have a travel time) and may not all hit the target. Grenades are okay in a squad because in larger fights the likelihood of the grenades hitting is higher although you have to deal with retaliation.

The power coefficients on the kits haven't been touched much so they are in relatively the same shape as before. However, they use the "bundle" weaponstrength (968.5 for ascended) rather than weaponstrength of the equipped weapon (1150 for rifle and 1000 for pistol).

If you can manage to hit things with mortar or bomb kit they do decent power damage which is why you see DPS scrappers with marauder gear and the explosives line.

You could probably run explosives + firearms + alchemy (for sustain) if you aren't running an elite spec.

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I've seen people saying core cele is doing kinda OK. I decided to try it out, it wasn't bad, but I wasn't amazed either.In case u'r interested with different approaches, power core lacks sustain, better to go scrapper or holo.Pure condi engi is simply bad. Not enough condi output & pistol being ancient weapon that used to be decent in 2013 and nothing changed since then.

Whatever is your build choice, you are forced to use Elixir U (being the best stability source on core and holo), and Alchemy to buff it, most likely.If you want to go cele, you need to equip pistol/shield for any kind of sustain and damage. Rifle was nerfed and it never had enough damage to begin with; on top of that u'd be dependent on condi output from traits (I present you: whole one second of bleeding from Sharpshooter - make sure to check WvW version, hardly anybody uses Firearms as its trash-tier trait line anyway), and use Granade Kit as it's "the most celestial" kit. Bomb kit is kinda ok in case of damage put requires enemies to stand in the fire field and in your meele range, we all know how that usually goes in WvW roaming.Mortar kit is amazing so I recommend getting used to it.

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As others have mentioned core engi really isn’t worth it. I’ve been running a p/p burn engie for a while with Balthazar runes and full celestial and the damage just isn’t there since pistols have been nerfed into garbage. I do ok in a couple of 1v1s but mesmers and thieves usually eat me alive. In Zerg fights won’t contribute much: you are relegated to running around the edges trying to pick off scragglers (toolkit pulls are fun) and finishing off downs. With the massive condi cleanse and the insane projectile hate you will work twice as hard for half the reward. Any other power build regardless of class is more rewarding than core engi.

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@Samug.6512 said:Pure condi engi is simply bad. Not enough condi output & pistol being ancient weapon that used to be decent in 2013 and nothing changed since then.It's still ok-ish, but it did take a heavy nerf in the balance patch (~70% less tick damage on the blowtorch isnt exactly a small change and the small poison boost doesnt make up for it). I can beat most opponents I meet and the harder bunker matchups that totally counter condi (core necro and weaver being the two nastiest) can still often be fought long enough for reinforcements even if you would loose a straight up 1v1. Had a hilarious fight with a core necro not long ago where it went on for like 2 minutes... until we both downed at exactly the same time, lol. Needless to say he won that fight though - engie skills are crap in downstate compared to a necro that's literally an automatic win.

Nowadays its servers that's often more of a pain than any individual fight. The pistols still utterly break down when it starts lagging, totally unusable. I particularly like the moments when it take like 5 seconds between each shot, as if Anet is taunting you that it's not slow enough already.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I don't think condi engi is the worst. Been trying a little condi holo build and it does OK. will have a hard time obviously with classes with lots of condi clear and is a bit clunky. DPS can be a bit slow to ramp up though.

I've tried core engi builds most of them aren't really so great. Scrappers and holos have lots of good builds tho.

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@"BoostedFC.6812" said:I Like core grenadier engi a lot it has insane burst.

You sure can play engi. The issue I have with core is, everything you present can be achieved if you swap Tools with Scrapper, and you even get more stuff. You get more defense, cc and survival from hammer, constant barrier spam, even quickness (along with bonus power) and superspeed from Tools is compensated from Scrapper traits. The only thing you'd miss is condi cleanse and healing from F5, but this has a long cd and in XvX situation med packs will probably be picked up by your allies by accident.

Unfortunately the design of elite specs for Engineer ANet decided to go for allows for very little possibilities of trade-offs that would actually make us choose core over elite specs. Especially now, that we basically have only 2 good core trait lines (Explosives and Elixirs), choosing a 'modern' one makes sense over choosing ancient and underpowered stuff like Tools or Firearms. That's the only way we can keep up vs favorite ANet's professions like guardian or ele.

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@Samug.6512 said:The only thing you'd miss is condi cleanse and healing from F5, but this has a long cd and in XvX situation med packs will probably be picked up by your allies by accident.Also option for moa, neither scrapper or holo can do it. For example I used it on a nuke scourge yesterday that was already immobilized and getting hammered by our peeps. Sometimes you just have to use it for effect.

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