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Lost about gearing my character


LaHuguu.9561

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I’ve been playing GW2 since EOD launch, at a very chill pace mainly doing solo PvE, open world metas, and story line achievements hunting (almost 100% from LWS1 to mid-POF right now) and just recently got to strikes and T1 Fractals as a pug (kitten you social anxiety).
Because of the hype and because I wanted a low intensity experience to begin with, my most played character is a mechanist, classic power rifle build with full berserker exotic gear. I enjoy myself, not having to worry about complex rotations and still progressing through my solo goals at a steady pace.
 
My main concern is about uping up my skill game and getting ascended stuff, while making the best use of my time (I’m a doctor in real life, not a lot of free time to play) : because I can only get one and only one ascended set, what should I choose ?

* Berserker : keep on playing as usual, the old and true power rifle mech ; not a lot of fun and variety, but a steady pace and I can pug with anyone without being a deadweight (very prone to being nerfed in future times though)

  • * Diviner (+/- mix with Berserker) : maybe try on the Power Alac build on instanced content, but won’t a lot of groups prefer having a truly dedicated Healer Alac Mech instead of a hybrid support DPS ? Also, I'll be losing a little bit of DPS on solo open world content

  • * Trailblazer : the Hizen open world condition build looks fantastic (pistol/pistol + flamethrower kit), will add a bit of fresh air, but won’t be of great use in instanced content

  • * Harrier : heal alacrity mech is top notch right now, I’ll be a main asset in any group, but won’t be able to do open world with it

  • * Celestial : be mediocre at anything but don’t have to worry about gear for a good amount of time

 
For now I’m more inclined to get the berserker stuff, switching from full DPS traits to support traits depending on the content I plan on doing.
I know there won't be an absolute and perfect answer, like one build to rule them all, but I would like to have your opinion on this matter. If time, and thus in game money wasn’t an issue, I would get 2 or 3 sets, but as of right now, I’m limiting myself to only 1.
 
I don’t want to change my elite spec and learn a totally new playstyle yet, I also don’t plan on rerolling right now (even if Scourge or Mirage/Virtuoso seem kinda nice for the content I’m aiming at).
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I will sugest to you alac dps mechanist

as alac dps role (pam) ppl will not look on your dps as much, and you will be more of background character

it's similar to dps mechanist, but on top you will can apply aoe barrier to team, and help your healer upkeep boons by presing f2 and f3

only mechanic is that evry time you apply barrier, you grants alac to team (f3 and Barrier signet)

 

and for open word, boons will help you for solo play (might/fury) ^^

 

check it out and hf 😄

 

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PeQAQlZwaZvMXWMOuLvxVA-zRRYBRBXOcQGlRbFQ6JgaziemRAA-e

 

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This is a bias for me, but I'd go with cele mech.

It can cover all of the roles of dps/healer/boon provider. It's actually pretty strong, and while it wouldn't be THE best, it will still do its role very well. The only place you wouldn't be able to really run cele is raids only because bosses aggro off of the toughness someone has. Other than that you could run cele mechanist anywhere else and have solid results.

https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mechanist_-_Alacrity_Support_Condi_DPS

This build if you wanna drop the toughness, Ritualist stats is an equally good option or even Plaguedoctor if you can't get your hands on Ritualists as easily. I will warn you, this build will take a bit to achieve for ascended and it's on the expensive side if you plan to get exotics for it, but it's easily one of the most future proof statlines you can get on current engineer without having to worry about nerfing or any sort of big changes.

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It really depends on what you want to do. The problem I see for celestial is that you said you like to play power mech, but going celestial on a power build in group content is basically griefing (rifle mech loses about 10k DPS, and when I tried it with rev on power vindicator, it was even 15k difference). Aside from that, cele is decent on condi DPS builds (condi mech loses about 5k going from viper to cele, which is pretty average seeing as my soulbeast loses only about 2k). In terms of healing, it is actually meta in some situations when running with experienced groups. And on condi boon support, while ritualist is better, the difference is pretty small. So cele is a valid choice for condi support builds and not quite griefing for condi DPS.

 

If you want to keep playing power, there is no road around berserker. You might get away with just a few diviner's trinkets when playing boon support, without getting an entire 2nd set, but you would definitely have to get something extra, and for healing you'd have to get complete harrier/celestial too.

 

Trailblazer is a trap. It's a pure solo build with its only advantage being passive survivability. If you don't just afk, the added healing power and concentration on celestial will make up for the lower toughness if you ever actually use your healing skill, and even moreso if it (or any other skill) give regeneration or protection. And the added power stats will pick up the slack with the loss of condi stats, and give you slightly better burst.

 

Personally I'd go for berserker first for the following reasons:

1. That's the role that's needed everywhere, and I don't like shooting myself in the foot by doing something exotic on my first build for group content.

2. If I go celestial on my first build I might be inclined to blame my performance on the gear rather than how I play, so going for the meta stats allows me to directly compare the numbers and know whether and how much harder I have to work on my rotation vs. grinding for another set.

3. Even if you don't switch the stats on your gear, you still have to switch runes, so whichever role you pick for the celestial set, it will be locked into that role unless you spend gold on the runes each time you switch.

 

However if you already have legendary runes that can be swapped at no cost, your main role is healer or condi support, you are ok with a ~5k DPS loss when playing DPS, and you only go power when playing solo, celestial will give you that flexibility.

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Here are my suggestions and how you can/could go about coming to those same conclusions:

 

1. read up and check up on the builds which might interest you, in this case power dps mechanist and alac support mechanics (for example: https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mechanist_-_Alacrity_Support_Power_DPS and https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mechanist_-_Power_DPS). You can immediately see similarities, most notably berserker gearing

 

2. input those builds in say a build editor to get the recommended stats. (http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/ works well).

 

3. adjust and change the item stat distributions as needed to get as much synergy on items between both builds, especially on harder to get items or less priority items. For example: 1 goal could be to get the armor stats to be identical since armor in general is one of the more expensive equipment gearing to get, while trinkets are in general considered easiest (with sufficient access to certain living world content).

 

4. adjust the build as well as possible, also consider using exotic items on certain slots until you can fill those with ascended (for example armor).

 

Taking those considerations, you could run following builds:

1. power dps mech sees no changes given it's full berserker gear

2. you can change the alac support dps to (the build up top aims for 45% boon duration): http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PewAQl7lJg9ycZx44u8GVB-zRRYBRNDO4yoiUI9Kw2BA-e

 

The resulting alac support build now brings 48.73% boon duration while running Sigil of Concentration (instead of Air) on the weapons. You could also run Soul Pastry food and replace Sigil of Concentration for Sigil of Air (as required for the power build) and reach 45.5% boon duration.

 

You will be sharing: weapons, sigil, armor and runes across both builds but will have to acquire 2 sets of trinkets (again, probably easiest done via living world content, check the ascended trinket acquisition wiki page).

 

I would recommend against celestial, mainly because it brings toughness with it and as such becomes a liability in raid content (if you have no intention of raiding, this is less of an issue) and it's more of a jack-of-all trades setup (which works fine for most content).

 

TL;DR:

When working on a budget (be it in game resources, time, accessibility, etc.) try to find synergies which save you work/effort and as such can speed up the process of getting a build up and running. Some common approaches are: swap to exotic armor and weapons, put larger stat differences between builds on ascended trinkets and make use of living world episodes, use different build of the same class to fill different roles, etc.

Edited by Cyninja.2954
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If you're looking for something general purpose and don't want to reroll to another class, what I would suggest is looking for a set of gear that you can respec your engineer into any of the Engineer elite specs (or indeed core) and still have a viable build. If you have Ascended armour and jewellery then you can use exotic weapons without much loss of performance until you settle on whatever weapon / build suits your playstyle the best.

If in doubt, 1 would go with Power oriented gear because there's strong Power builds in all of the Engineer elite specs. Don't forget you can always re-stat Ascended armour and weapons in the Mystic Forge fairly cheaply and easily. Ascended jewellery less easily, it depends. Often you have to re-acquire via Living World. Which is why I tend to put whatever stats I feel I will always need for survivability (like vitality and perhaps toughness) on the jewellery, allowing me to adjust the armour stats later if I need to switch between Power, Condi or support. Personally I never build glass cannons, so never go full Berserker (yeah I know, will never top the dps charts but I value flexibility).

You could of course just go full Celestial which will make you a jack of all trades, master of none, but still be perfectly viable for most content. I did this on my Firebrand and it's worked out really well. But Firebrand probably suits Celestial more than most classes and I'm not so sure I'd do it on my Engineer. Perhaps those who have tried Celestial on Engineer can provide better insight?

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On 12/16/2022 at 12:19 PM, Sindust.7059 said:

It really depends on what you want to do. The problem I see for celestial is that you said you like to play power mech, but going celestial on a power build in group content is basically griefing (rifle mech loses about 10k DPS, and when I tried it with rev on power vindicator, it was even 15k difference). Aside from that, cele is decent on condi DPS builds (condi mech loses about 5k going from viper to cele, which is pretty average seeing as my soulbeast loses only about 2k). In terms of healing, it is actually meta in some situations when running with experienced groups. And on condi boon support, while ritualist is better, the difference is pretty small. So cele is a valid choice for condi support builds and not quite griefing for condi DPS.

 

If you want to keep playing power, there is no road around berserker. You might get away with just a few diviner's trinkets when playing boon support, without getting an entire 2nd set, but you would definitely have to get something extra, and for healing you'd have to get complete harrier/celestial too.

 

Trailblazer is a trap. It's a pure solo build with its only advantage being passive survivability. If you don't just afk, the added healing power and concentration on celestial will make up for the lower toughness if you ever actually use your healing skill, and even moreso if it (or any other skill) give regeneration or protection. And the added power stats will pick up the slack with the loss of condi stats, and give you slightly better burst.

 

Personally I'd go for berserker first for the following reasons:

1. That's the role that's needed everywhere, and I don't like shooting myself in the foot by doing something exotic on my first build for group content.

2. If I go celestial on my first build I might be inclined to blame my performance on the gear rather than how I play, so going for the meta stats allows me to directly compare the numbers and know whether and how much harder I have to work on my rotation vs. grinding for another set.

3. Even if you don't switch the stats on your gear, you still have to switch runes, so whichever role you pick for the celestial set, it will be locked into that role unless you spend gold on the runes each time you switch.

 

However if you already have legendary runes that can be swapped at no cost, your main role is healer or condi support, you are ok with a ~5k DPS loss when playing DPS, and you only go power when playing solo, celestial will give you that flexibility.


Yea, that's a my bad that I didn't go into the power side of cele. Some classes can make up for it, Engineer is unfortunately not one of those even with might ramping and traits dedicated to it. Though, I found it interesting that cele mecha is meta for the healing side of things. For awhile, I read pure Harrier was the way to go until further notice. Learn something new every day. 

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5 hours ago, Dreams.3128 said:


Yea, that's a my bad that I didn't go into the power side of cele. Some classes can make up for it, Engineer is unfortunately not one of those even with might ramping and traits dedicated to it. Though, I found it interesting that cele mecha is meta for the healing side of things. For awhile, I read pure Harrier was the way to go until further notice. Learn something new every day. 

Not a single build site (neither SC, LN, Hardstuck or metabattle) recommend celestial out the bat for HAM. The reason being: the gain (mostly in regards to a little bit of extra damage) is barely worth the loss (healing power and worse: boon duration). Not to mention the toughness gained, which can pose a problem on some encounters.

Celestial was run over harrier in the past because of the high and over the top amount of barrier and additional damage the mech could bring. Both of those aspects were toned down by now. If you are running cele over harrier you are essentially giving up boon duration and healing, putting more pressure on your squad and it's positioning, for a low amount of extra damage (which is most likely made irrelevant by the lower uptime of scholar on your squad mates).

Celestial still makes a great set for open world content for mech, as it does for most classes currently which have access to hybrid condition damage and support skills.

Edited by Cyninja.2954
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8 hours ago, Dreams.3128 said:

Though, I found it interesting that cele mecha is meta for the healing side of things. For awhile, I read pure Harrier was the way to go until further notice. Learn something new every day. 

It depends on the group and the fight. Harrier is the default meta setup, but there are fights that don't need as much healing when the group is experienced enough. For example our guild runs Dhuum with a cele HAM who is also tanking. There are a few other fights like that, but I don't know all of them since I don't play a healer. In fractals it's also used sometimes. The point was, celestial is close enough to meta for healers to be a valid choice, and there are other considerations too in OP's case.

 

TL;DR: you're not wrong that harrier is the best for healers, but cele isn't that far behind, especially when there are other considerations like in OP's case.

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I found Grieving to be very useful if you don't want to spend a lot on constantly switching between condition and power build for Engineer as a DPS. Not to mention the Mech can take stats from both condition and power stats with the possibility of a hybrid condition and power DPS build more open as a option thanks to Grieving with the Engineer trait Modified Ammunition (increase strike damage by 2% per condition on a enemy) or go Incendiary Powder (apply burn damage every Crit at a 33% chance each time) aiding a bit more on where you want to focus on more.

Not to mention a good amount of kits benefit for having both good amount Power and Condition stats at once.

Edited by EdwinLi.1284
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4 hours ago, EdwinLi.1284 said:

I found Grieving to be very useful if you don't want to spend a lot on constantly switching between condition and power build for Engineer as a DPS. Not to mention the Mech can take stats from both condition and power stats with the possibility of a hybrid condition and power DPS build more open as a option thanks to Grieving with the Engineer trait Modified Ammunition (increase strike damage by 2% per condition on a enemy) or go Incendiary Powder (apply burn damage every Crit at a 33% chance each time) aiding a bit more on where you want to focus on more.

Not to mention a good amount of kits benefit for having both good amount Power and Condition stats at once.

Does grieving really work well? If this was about Guardian or Elementalist, yeah, grieving would be a (near)meta option for some builds, but engi does almost equal amounts of both fire and bleed damage, and also significant amounts of confusion with a bit of poison sprinkled in. So engi can't use +40 or +50% single condi duration runes, because he loses too much condi duration on the other condis. So you need expertise on gear, and that's something that grieving does not provide. So I'm pretty sure that celestial would outperform grieving on condi builds. It would probably be better than cele on power builds, but in turn you can't play boon support with grieving, so this set isn't very "hybridy".

 

And in regard to the Modified Ammunition trait... Without additional condi duration you will not benefit from that trait when playing power, and it is a power trait. Condi damage does not buff it. Also either is irrelevant in group content, because the bosses will most likely have all the condis on them that exist, giving the maximum benefit from that trait.

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3 hours ago, Sindust.7059 said:

Does grieving really work well? If this was about Guardian or Elementalist, yeah, grieving would be a (near)meta option for some builds, but engi does almost equal amounts of both fire and bleed damage, and also significant amounts of confusion with a bit of poison sprinkled in. So engi can't use +40 or +50% single condi duration runes, because he loses too much condi duration on the other condis. So you need expertise on gear, and that's something that grieving does not provide. So I'm pretty sure that celestial would outperform grieving on condi builds. It would probably be better than cele on power builds, but in turn you can't play boon support with grieving, so this set isn't very "hybridy".

 

And in regard to the Modified Ammunition trait... Without additional condi duration you will not benefit from that trait when playing power, and it is a power trait. Condi damage does not buff it. Also either is irrelevant in group content, because the bosses will most likely have all the condis on them that exist, giving the maximum benefit from that trait.

It will certainly be based on your chosen Main weapon, kit you use more often, and what path you want your Mech. 

Though I found Grieving best for Mace Main weapon since by design, the Mace is a hybrid type weapon for Engineer designed for the user to go either Power, Condition, or Hybrid. However, that is intentional since they wanted a weapon that can do both DPS paths for Mechanist. 

Trying to use this for Pistol, Rifle, and specific kits varies since this is more experimental right now and I'm still testing things out. 

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