solo mechanist build with focus on keeping mech alive

[Ramses.4369]

Wanted to see if someone could give some directions on how to improve this build or give more damage. The build's focus is to stand next to your turrets and let the mech tank everything while you give all your boons to the mech with focus on regen. Have tested the build a little so far and enjoyed it alot so I would like to ask what could make it even better, ofc ascended gear and such will be used later but I only have exotic right now.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PeiAoqlZwcZJsDWJWyP1RVA-DSJYoKeNQhgK3RBESCYwnAWe/3CA-e

[elteano.2679]

First, the concept is neat and there are some things to consider when looking to get damage here. First, we want to consider where is the source of the damage: the engineer of course in this case. Because the Engineer is the source of damage, the Engineer should be the target of most of our boons.

Which boons are we producing? The Mech itself is traited to upkeep 25 Might, Alacrity, a solid chunk of protection, and incomplete Fury. As such, we have just a little more Fury to come up with and Regeneration as you want that in your build.

Currently, the Rifle Turret provides the Fury, but we can find better sources. Rifle Turret does not scale on our stats at all, so it is dragging down our damage compared to other options for that Utility slot.

Healing Turret gives us Regeneration, although we may consider other options there as well:
- Rectifier Signet - gives us and our Mech a constant tick of healing that can be consumed for burst healing
- Mainhand Mace - (moving to melee range) Skill 2 gives buckets of Regeneration
- Elixir H - both the heal skill and the toolbelt skill grant Regeneration. We will not have 100% uptime, but with our boon duration from Seraph gear we will get pretty far.

Overall, I would recommend going for Rectifier Signet. We can add Regeneration from another source on top of this if we like, such as replacing our Dwayna Relic with a Durability Relic.

Finally, this leaves Flame Turret. This is giving us some Might, but we do not need Might beyond what the Mech is providing. We can slot something here that does more damage, but because the burning inflicted by Flame Turret does scale off of our Condition Damage and Expertise, it is not a bad choice for damage.

The core of this is: We do not need turrets to provide our boons, as the Mech is already doing most of that work. As such, the Inventions trait line is not necessary for the build, and swapping this trait line could help our damage.

The following recommendations will be applicable whether or not you want to keep the turrets:

Rune

Your primary conditions as an Engineer are Bleed and Burn. Afflicted is OK for Poison Dart Volley but you will get more damage out of Rune of the Trapper, which benefits burning as well.

Relic

As mentioned before, we can likely keep our mech alive without the Dwayna Rune, so we can consider another option here. If you are looking to swap for damage, the Fractal Relic is a strong choice. If we make trait line changes below, we could consider Aristocracy as well.

Gear

Seraph Gear is good for healing but will limit your damage potential. Change this to something more damage-oriented to increase results. For a condition build, you ideally have both Condition Damage and Expertise. Viper's will yield the highest damage, with Celestial, Trailblazer's, and Ritualists offering different options for sustainability. Celestial will be closest to Seraph, as it offers all stats, although at a lower value per stat than other sets. Swapping to Celestial will likely lower your overall healing and boon output, increase your tankiness, and increase your damage.

Playstyle

As mentioned before, our Mech creates a great number of helpful boons. Standing close to the mech will allow us to maintain a large amount of might and fury, which will have a huge impact on our damage output. In addition, Blowtorch (Pistol 4) damage and conditions dealt scales on distance to target, with closer targets being hit harder. Using this in melee range will help our overall damage output.

If you are open to moving off of turrets:

Instead of Inventions, take Explosives. If you want to stay primarily at range, swap Rifle Turret for Grenade Kit. If you want to be in melee, take Bomb Kit or Flamethrower.

Your Explosives trait selection would be:

1: Short Fuse - this provides Fury when you hit foes with explosions (all of your grenades, bombs, and Flamethrower Skill 2).
  - Alternatively, take Glass Cannon, which will increase our Strike Damage.

2: Aim-Assisted Rocket - free rocket when hitting foes with projectiles. Will trigger Short Fuse as well.

3: Shrapnel - Explosions can bleed on hit. Each grenade and each tick of Bomb Kit Skill 2 can trigger this.

Another key trait here is Steel-Packed Powder, which causes Explosions to inflict Vulnerability. Each Vulnerability stack is an additional 1% incoming damage to your foes, up to 25, which can be pretty significant.

Bringing Kits will increase your damage considerably, as most of Engineer's condition capabilities are spread through a variety of the kits available.

If you are opposed to bringing kits, swapping Rifle Turret for Superconducting Signet will likely yield the greatest gains.

Consider as well swapping Supply Crate to Mortar Kit. Mortar Kit will always be available, compared to Supply Crate's incredibly long cooldown. It gives you Poison on Skill 2 and can as well be used to heal with Skill 5. Skills 3 and 4 provide useful soft control effects with Chill and Blind.

[Curennos.9307]

I'd take Bunker Down instead of Medical Dispersion Field in the Inventions Traitline. You have decent crit and while MDF might provide more healing to the mech overall (Idk, it'd be hard to hit the mech with the medkits that get placed on the ground), you have to be very close to the mech and this build won't have a lot of self healing. You're also not using shield, so I'd swap Over Shield for one of the other two traits as well.

Taking mace instead of pistol mainhand would also be useful- depends on how much you need the range, but you can give the mech barrier and more regen (and to yourself obv).

I'm assuming you'd like to keep the theme of sticking with the turrets, so I'll leave those alone. I'm not much of a fan of supply crate though, especially in open world- if you already have the turrets out, why use it. Mortar kit would provide some healing and more damage, depending on how you want to allocate your stats.

Swap Rune of the Afflicted for Trapper, I think. More general condi duration. Would also be worth incorporating some plaguedocter stats, or viper as another poster mentioned, for more damage (and plaguedocter for vitality, your health pool is looking a lil squishy). You would need to keep some crit around though if you want to make use of Bunker Down.

Not sure Shift Signet is worth it- your mech isn't really going to do much damage. I'd trade for superconducting signet, barrier signet, another turret or stunbreak, a kit, etc.

[Nate.8146]

I generally run full celestial with mech. Jack of all trades is not only really survivable for yourself, but the mech too. It does decent damage output, with auto-attack pistols (no skills) and auto attack from mech will net around 17K dps with this setup. If I trigger pistol skills and spam grenades, I can get that up to about 25K for what is ultimately easy spam attacking.  If you want to be downright unstoppable, then swap grenades for flamethrower, grab the juggernaut trait from rifles for perma stability, and flip out explosives for alchemy and select backpack regen + iron blooded. You'll take a DPS hit, but you'll be hard as nails to take down. It's basically a cheat code for the class 🙂

For a little more dps (+3-4K dps), I will swap out celestial accessories for viper (armor is still celestial), thus applying more condition pressure, but not going full glass. This was my setup to solo cap my guild hall, which I consider the toughest solo pve content I ever did. Not only do you need to survive, but you're on the clock as well. The mech performed brilliantly under this setup. Outside of that, I don't usually have a problem soloing roaming bosses or other harder open world content. If my mech dies, I'll use Overclock Signet to bring it back into the fight. If by chance it dies again (super rare), then I revert to the classic GW2 engineer tactic of laughing maniacally while running in circles and lobbing grenades.