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[PvE] OW Flamethrower Scrapper


Turkeyspit.3965

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I don't have a lot of experience with engineer, as I only leveled to 30-40 before using tomes to get to 80, and since then 100% of my playtime has been as full minstrel Scrapper in WvW (which I love).

But now I kind of want to see Tyria on her, and I'm not about to try zone completion in full minstrel. So I was thinking of running the following build:http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdQQFAUncoC1ahtoCupC0ehl7iCsBjwA47/GwCk+0j9cH-jxBBABYp8LgLAAAPAgKV/pm9HOTJYe6AAA-e

Yeah I know, OW who cares, blah blah, well I'd like to not die and for it to be as faceroll easy as possible; bonus points for being able to solo champs.

Interested in feedback, particularly on my choice of Explosives trait line. Alchemy seems meh other than Backpack regenerator, but maybe Tools is a better option?

I think with this build I have enough baked in survivability to go full zerk. In any case I'm thinking I should keep zerk in the chance that I want to swap out and try Holosmith; don't want to carry 3 gear sets around...

The only real weakness I see is lack of condi clear, but I suppose in HoT/PoF content I can swap out shredder gyro for purge gyro.

So suggest away!

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A solid build despite being a very simplistic one.

The Explosives and Firearms trait choices you made are perfectly fitting for a power build. Tools is mainly used for utility purposes which isn't all that useful for scrapper, Alchemy is a waste because if you want to be tanky and deal lots of damage at the same time, then in the Scrapper specialization I would recommend you switch Shocking Speed for Recovery Matrix.

If that isn't tanky enough for you, then use the Adaptive Armor trait and the Healing Turret to get barrier more often due to the lower cooldown if you pick it up. I wouldn't recommend you use Adaptive Armor unless you want to be even more tanky because with the trait and healing skill choices I recommended you give you more than enough sustain so that you can kill mobs quickly without having to worry about dying.

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Surprisingly not a single metabattle link yet. That is a miracle!

First of all it is a very nice build, I can see you already thought about what could work together. Many things do make sense. I ran similar builds in the past. FT is always fun in PvE. Here are a few ideas:

Note: When I started writing (more than an hour ago), I did not plan to write that much. But I got carried away, sorry.
(1) Flamethrower & StatsFT is by definition a very nice weapon to farm in PvE, because of the cone-Aoe you can quickly tag plenty of enemies. On trash mobs, it works awesome. Once you go towards Veteran, Elite, Champion or even Legendary monsters, things get a little difficult. The major reason for this, the FT is nowadays a condition-kit. Its main strength comes from its ability to stack up burning quickly on your enemies. That is why most of us no longer run power-gear.

But the numbers of the FT add up? That is a trap most of us blindly walked into over the years. The FT auto-attack Flame Jet is a so-called chain-attack. That means that the damage is the same on each tick, but instead of displaying the number over and over, it adds up the visual damage-counter (on screen numbers). That is why FT damage always looks insanely high - on the first view. If you look into the system-chat however, you notice how weak the damage pulses really are. As you are already wielding the Rifle as a main-weapon, you can easily spot the differences.

There are a few options to solve this. When you are doing farming in larger groups (e. g. Labyrinth during Halloween or Istan) you want to do low damage on purpose, so everyone can tag the mobs before they die. Again, against trash mobs, it is not a big deal. But fights against tougher mobs take a lot longer than necessary.

Most of us go with condition-gear (vipers) and add a few more condition-based attacks. This however mostly ruins the idea of camping the FT-kit and goes pretty close to the kit-based core engineer. #Pianoengineer. As you probably want to try Holosmith as well, you can go with Grieving Stats. You don't need to get them on all pieces, just weapon + armor will significantly increase your damage. Grieving is simply Berserker's Stats + Condition Damage. The PPF stats are obviously a little lower than with true berserker's, but still pretty high.

How to obtain Grieving stats?

Grieving stats were added during Path of Fire. But instead of using Inscriptions & Insignias to craft gear, you can use Intact Mosaics. They drop from legendary bounties, but purchasing them from TP might be cheaper. Compared to Berserker's Inscriptions/Insignias, they are even cheaper. The Mosaics are one of a kind, you can use them for weapons & armors. If you use ascended gear, you can just stat swap.

 

Alternatives:

  • Rampager = Power + Precision + Condition Damage
  • Viper = Power + Precision + Condition Damage + Expertise

Expertise/Condition duration is mostly needed for tougher enemies. The longer the fight lasts, the more burn-stacks you can put and maintain on your enemey, so the more damage-over-time you deal. If you fight mostly trashmobs, rather stick to condition-damage.
(2) Might stacking and maintainingIt is quite obvious that you want to go for 25 might stacks permanently. I have done a lot of these builds, in most cases people overdo the might generation. So I'll run a few quick simulations to see what is necessary and what is an overkill ... Ok, the Strength Rune is sort of an overkill. It does the job, but I found an option that may fit better to your build. And it is A LOT cheaper :p. As long as you keep fighting (hitting) you can maintain 25 might stacks. On multiple enemies it should be even easier. You do not need additional might sources, so you can easily swap the Blast Gyro out and replace it for a condition-cleanser or something else.

How does it work?We are using the infamous Superior Rune of the Traveler. Judging from the price on TP, it is not worth to waste a second of thought. But it fits perfect here (imho). You get the following boosts:

+8 to All Stats+5% Boon Duration+12 to All Stats+10% Boon Boon Duration+16 to All Stats+25% Movement Speed; +10% Condition Condition Duration

All Stats currently means Celestial + Expertise + Concentration, which is very nice.

In addition we need to replace your sigils with Superior Sigil of Strength and Superior Sigil of Earth. The earth-sigil is probably causing some pondering now. I know it also has trash value, the only expensive piece so far is the strength sigil. Why do I use so much trash? I don't know, it works ^^.

In addition we need one minor adjustment to your traits, Firearms: replace High Caliber with Sanguine Array.

Normally the rune + the strength sigil are not capable of getting you up to 25 stacks. The synergy with boon duration works out very well, but the runes give way too less bonus to get it working. So we use a little synergetic effect to get us another might source, the Earth Sigil. Sanguine Array generates might whenever you add bleeding to an opponent. By using Firearms trait, you get a chance of 33 % on critical hits to cause bleeding on an enemy. That is normally not enough to get a significant amount of might, but if you combine it with the Earth Sigil, which also grants bleeing on critical hits, you get enough might.

Again the Strength Rune Set works as well. But if you want to focus a little more on condition damage, which you should for both the FT and the Holosmith later, this change to your gear may be helpful. It is not perfect, I am sure the other engineers can find better solutions. But it does work, you end up with 25 stacks during combat, you need no other might sources, your condition damage output and duration gets increased and as a secret bonus you move faster, which is always nice in PvE.

Note: This works IF you keep Mass Momentum + Juggernaut. If you remove any of them, the might-generation will be too low to maintain 25.
(3) TraitsExplosives is never a bad choice, except for support/heal builds.

A more defensive alternative can be the Inventions trait-line (2-2-1). It automatically adds a first condition-cleanse to your normal heal, no matter what skill you pick. AMR is a life-saver trait that grants you access to your healing-skill when on low HP, even if it is on cooldown. You grant protection to yourself + allies when using a heal, nice. Soothing detonation is one option. If you want to stick to your Strength Rune Set, Mecha Legs is also very nice. The Energy Amplifier increases your healing-power which is sort of a waste. But honestly it is almost impossible to get a trait-setup where all traits help your build. The icing of this cake makes the Anticorrosion Planting. As you have already played support, you probably know this trait already. Whenever you grant yourself or an ally protection, you cleanse one condition. A quick recap, how do we cleanse conditions at the moment:

  • Using the heal skill
  • Granting protection from the healskill use (you + allies)
  • Using Medic Gyro Toolbelt (creates a pulsing moving water-field, that grants protection per pulse on allies)

That is good, for normal situations plenty of cleanse. If you run my suggestion with the runes & sigils, you can replace the Blast Gyro. One oldfshioned option is the Thumper Turret. Thumper Turret is an awesome source for blastfinishers and powerful crowd control. There are two options (trait) to go with the Tumper Turret, depending on the situation.

(A) You run out of HP: Soothing Detonation it is. It generates extra heal for launching blastfinishers in combofields. Just activate the Medic Gyro toolbelt and launch the Thumper Turret, detonate it and launch the toolbelt + other blastfinishers. If executed correctly, you can almost get the same healing as from the Gyro's base heal - for yourself AND your allies.

(B) You are short of condition-cleansers and/or are bombarded by projectiles: Experimental Turrets it is then. This causes the Thumper Turret to generate yet another protection buff upon placement + a reflection dome, similar to the Bulwark Gyro's toolbelt skill.
(4) Elite Skills

The motar-kit is always useful. For longer bossfights, the Supply Crate might be a neat option. The toolbelt creates an area condition eraser. Why don't I say cleanse? Because it wipes off all XD. See it as an emergency cleanse when everything else is on cooldown. The Supply Crate itself deals an impressive amount of CC to bosses, which allows you to lower the break-bar drastically. Experimental Turrets (B) also works with the crate.

Sorry for the long post. Hope you can find a thing or two you can use for your build.

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I also think you have a Solid Build there and with this you should be fine using zerker gear, or maybe some marauder/valkyrie stuff mixed in. The only think that I would probably Change is the blast gyro, probably to grenade kit combined with short fuse for more vulnerability , fury and spike dmg. But that is kinda a personal thing^^

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Thank you for that well detailed post. I haven't had much time to play around with my DPS scrapper since my original post, but I did notice what you meant when saying the Power FT does lack some oomph. Will definitely keep this in mind moving forward. Also I haven't done any of the achievements in Jahai, so I believe there is an achievement that rewards a full set of Grieving gear.

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  • 1 month later...

@Turkeyspit.3965 I use pretty much the exact same build for OW. I prefer Blast Zone to Glass Cannon, however (more damage all the time, instead of just at 75%+ health) and Adaptive Armor over Applied Force (the Quickness uptime from Applied force just isn't high enough for my tastes).

I also switch out Mortar for Supply Crate if I know I'm going to need the condi cleans from Med Pack Drop.

Edit: Oh, and you may see better damage with an Air or Fire sigil instead of Accuracy. With High Caliber and No Scope we're already sitting at near 75% crit chance.

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