Is Rifle back?

[Sifu.9745]

What's happened to Rifle in PoF? Have been seeing so many engies running around with Rifles these days, especially in PvP, but i can't find any buffs to Rifle since PoF launch. I don't see any trait in Holosmith that buffs Rifle directly, so can someone enlighten me why do you take Rifle over Sword or Hammer?

[Arimas.3492]

I'd guess since Forge mode is a good melee option as Holosmith Rifle acts as more of a bursting set (so imagine rifle was the kit you switch to to use certain skills). Most of the damage you'll be doing is in forge but when you can't be in forge you go back to rifle and use your hard hitting abilities 3/5 and maybe 4. Then do some kit stuff and back to forge.

Sword is a decent weapon but for PvE there are no good offhand power options so take rifle instead since it covers all 5 slots. AFAIK most meta power engi builds have used rifle for a long time, its just that kits are used primarily over the rifle for main source of damage (see bomb kit autos).

Also if you play Holosmith you can't use Hammer so rifle is the better choice.

[insanemaniac.2456]

back? was it gone? it's always been power engi's (only) weapon of choice whenever scrapper isn't great

[Adamantium.3682]

Pretty much what Arimas said. Sword isn't good enough so Rifle wins by default. In a DPS rotation you'll only use Blunderbuss and Jump Shot, but it's nice to have the CC options there as well for breakbars, and Jump Shot can be used for mobility/leap finisher.

Sword/Shield offers a lot of the same things, just worse. CC is worse due to cooldowns, spike damage worse because #2 is severely undertuned, and mobility worse due to the awful animation of #3. If sword gets buffed to do better damage than Bomb Kit it will likely replace Rifle for Holosmiths IMO.

[ellesee.8297]

Holosmith is a power build and so with the engi's limited weapon selection, you can choose sword/shield or rifle. Sword is probably the worst main hand in the game. Rifle has always been good. Overcharged shot and net shot have always been one of the power engi's strongest tools.

[lorddarkflare.9186]

@ellesee.8297 said:Holosmith is a power build and so with the engi's limited weapon selection, you can choose sword/shield or rifle. Sword is probably the worst main hand in the game. Rifle has always been good. Overcharged shot and net shot have always been one of the power engi's strongest tools.

Pistol main hand is worse. I mean, any weapon where should avoid using the auto attack at all cost has got to be the 'worst'.

[ellesee.8297]

The pistol auto attack is great. Its a reliable method of getting incendiary powder and sigil procs and is probably your main attack at range, not that I advise anyone to run condi Engi. Anet gutted it years ago and it's still bad.

[Lunateric.3708]

@ellesee.8297 said:The pistol auto attack is great. Its a reliable method of getting incendiary powder and sigil procs and is probably your main attack at range, not that I advise anyone to run condi Engi. Anet gutted it years ago and it's still bad.

It's objectively a terrible auto attack, grenade auto is several times better hence it is what you use on the condi engi rotation.

Condi engi was one of the best DPS you could see before HoT too, so you're also mistaken with that.

[santenal.1054]

If you are going to argue with someone, make sure you are talking about the same game mode.

[coglin.1496]

@ellesee.8297 said:The pistol auto attack is great. Its a reliable method of getting incendiary powder and sigil procs and is probably your main attack at range, not that I advise anyone to run condi Engi. Anet gutted it years ago and it's still bad.

I am not sure "great" means what you think it means. Your justification for your statement is backward as well. Of the three skills on MH pistol, the auto attack is the least reliable of applying procs. For one, if you are using it at all you are impacting your damage output negatively. The other skills per use have a literally a 400% better chance per skill use of static shot and a 500% better chance with poison dart volley per skill use of proc-ing incendiary powder and sigils.

[EdwinLi.1284]

Rifle is quite useful for Holosmith in PvE as well because certain fights have mechanics where players are forced to switch between Range and Melee attacks often because the mechanic adds a protective shield on the enemy that greatly reduce damage caused by Melee or Range attacks.

[ellesee.8297]

I don't really want to get into pistol in a rifle thread but assuming you're running the standard condi build, you burst with FT burns and then use pistol autos during downtime. Using any other autos will actually impact your damage negatively unless you are running elixir gun which will do less damage in a team fight but is better because it applies weakness on your focus target. Even if you are running explosives condi, the pistol auto is better than grenade autos in 1v1s because of reliability. You tab target and press 1 and it will hit and with those hits come sigil and incendiary powder procs. You may miss grenade attacks. Anyone who has ever fought a thief with grenades will attest.

As for poison dart volley and static shot, poison dart volley goes everywhere at range and makes you vulnerable up close. Static shot would be the best way to apply procs if you can perfectly time the proc cooldowns because the first hit is single target. However its cooldown doesn't align with your procs which are on a 9-10 second cd, therefore unreliable.

[Tyaen.5148]

As much as I hate rifle, I've had to switch back to it with Holosmith. It has a great rotation mix with forge. Great CC and burst.

[Ardid.7203]

Rifle is back with Holo because the other power alternatives are worse, and because PF is a solid enough crutch to not depend on the weapon itself for damage.

Rifle still needs to be revised and improved, Shield still needs to be revised and improved, MH Pistol still needs to be revised and improved. Core Engie still needs to be revised and improved to at least be on par other professions and offer more build diversity.

Just as I feared, Holo seems to be turning into a shameless (and still lacking) cover up for the deficiencies of the base.

[thehipone.6812]

Rifle is nice for a ranged option that isn't grenades. Plus if you're running crystal config: eclipse you have very easy access to stability to blast stuff in the face with blunderbuss + overcharged shot without cc'ing yourself.

[Bish.8627]

I played most of the PoF personal story with sword and shield, just never felt right to me. So I swapped out a holo skill for nades and picked up my rifle again. Feels so much better. You can pop in and out of range on bosses and bounties, you can always have a burst skill available. Quite fluid popping the hardest hitting rifle and nade skills, a few nade 1's and then going back into holo, especially nice when you come out of holo with 25 might and hit nade toolbelt and jump shot!

[Ivantreil.3092]

Pretty much back because it's the best from the worst options, if hammer was moved to core, it would instantly replace Rifle, no brainier decision.

That said, i really wished rifle shined from better reasons rather than shining only due to Sword performing worse, i don't like that the Rifle is seen as a hassle and that they would remove it as soon as someone finds a power build without it.

Both weapons deserve their love respectively, and we know what anet has to do for bring that, (aka buff the weapons aa for good).... but oh well, this is what we have (and will have)...

[Hitman.5829]

That's because engineer can do some serious damage with rifle, I just fought a rifle engineer doing massive damage in the range of 8000 per attack! I don't know how he did it, but it melted my warrior in less than 15 seconds and I had 2 endure pains and I was a spell breaker trained. Something must be happening to engineer, they must have gotten something new because the damage was insane!

[Arimas.3492]

@Hitman.5829 said:That's because engineer can do some serious damage with rifle, I just fought a rifle engineer doing massive damage in the range of 8000 per attack! I don't know how he did it, but it melted my warrior in less than 15 seconds and I had 2 endure pains and I was a spell breaker trained. Something must be happening to engineer, they must have gotten something new because the damage was insane!

Rifle has always done pretty good burst damage, even before HoT you could hit really hard with Blunderbuss and Jump Shot, which is why sword can't really compete. With same stats I'll hit 8k Jump Shot or Blunderbuss but only a 4k on sword's highest damaging skill.

[Ivantreil.3092]

@Hitman.5829 said:That's because engineer can do some serious damage with rifle, I just fought a rifle engineer doing massive damage in the range of 8000 per attack! I don't know how he did it, but it melted my warrior in less than 15 seconds and I had 2 endure pains and I was a spell breaker trained. Something must be happening to engineer, they must have gotten something new because the damage was insane!

I know the rifle well, i went berserker Rifle this last season, those aa's you mentioned? The deal 1.6k - 2k of damage at best (and that IF hes berserker).

If he melted you so badly, you played bad against him, the only way i can imagine he did such absurd damage for like melt is that he went full elixir offensive and rifle turret, with no space for defensive utilities, a good engage and he was dead man.

Unless last balance patch broked the aa, i can't see how he could melt you as a spellbreaker, 1.6k-2k hits in a 3/4 cast time isn't good enough for melt a warrior so fast, let alone a spellbreaker, an engi must rely on boons if he wants to see damaging numbers, thing that your class is good at countering now...

Are you sure you didn't eat a 4,3,5 combo? (Thing that is already hard, as he would have to remove your stability pulse passive first.)

[Arimas.3492]

@Ivantreil.3092 said:

@Hitman.5829 said:That's because engineer can do some serious damage with rifle, I just fought a rifle engineer doing massive damage in the range of 8000 per attack! I don't know how he did it, but it melted my warrior in less than 15 seconds and I had 2 endure pains and I was a spell breaker trained. Something must be happening to engineer, they must have gotten something new because the damage was insane!

I know the rifle well, i went berserker Rifle this last season, those aa's you mentioned? The deal 1.6k - 2k of damage at best (and that IF hes berserker).

If he melted you so badly, you played bad against him, the only way i can imagine he did such absurd damage for like melt is that he went full elixir offensive and rifle turret, with no space for defensive utilities, a good engage and he was dead man.

Unless last balance patch broked the aa, i can't see how he could melt you as a spellbreaker, 1.6k-2k hits in a 3/4 cast time isn't good enough for melt a warrior so fast, let alone a spellbreaker, an engi must rely on boons if he wants to see damaging numbers, thing that your class is good at countering now...

Are you sure you didn't eat a 4,3,5 combo? (Thing that is already hard, as he would have to remove your stability pulse passive first.)

Definitely sounds like the 3/4/5 abilities, they said the fight was over in like 15 seconds so that doesn't leave much room for AA's. Could be a classic SD build on top of it, that can put out a lot of damage quickly enough to not notice each individual thing unless you look at the combat log. Berserker rifle engi still hits like a truck in a lot of cases its just that everything else is much more powerful than it used to be its tough to risk that kind of build so no one really does it anymore.

[Zlater.6789]

People use rifle for 3 and 5 on power dps engi, because they are a dps increase over bomb autos. Because holosmith gives engi a viable power dps spec you will see more of rifle in place of p/p on condi engi.Also nice to mention rifle is a well thought out QoL weapon, it has good cc and gives some much needed mobility. Rifle 4 with traited Stability from corona burst is really nice for avoiding that personal knock back and the rifle 2 is also really helpful in a lot of different situations.The autos on rifle are pretty bad, but because of the design of engi you will never want to use your rifle autos over your nades or bombs or toolbelt skills or photon forge skills anyway.

[Zlater.6789]

Oh just to add about this sword stuff. Remember that a part of the reason sword is a bad choice is also because there isn't a good offhand weapon choice. Sword doesn't inherently need to have good dps, it just needs to be useful for something, or just synergies well with the class.I would dare say that if they just changed the bonus critical chance from being above the heat threshold to critical damage, it would become more desirable because now it synergies far better with your gearing choice. Or even if they increased the distance travel of sword 3 then maybe that would make it more interesting in pvp.

[Adamantium.3682]

I still think shield is a good offhand, the cooldowns have just been left in the dust with power creep. Shave each cooldown by 20-30% and it's in line with the current game balance IMO. I do really like the skills.

Your point is well made though, the 5 skills from rifle as a total package just outclasses sword+shield in every way. Better damage, range, sustained damage, mobility, and CC. I'm not really considering sword+pistol because it would only be for max dps it doesn't really add much beyond Blowtorch IMO. It's not a total package of functionality like sword+shield is.

[Ivantreil.3092]

@Arimas.3492 said:

@Ivantreil.3092 said:

@Hitman.5829 said:That's because engineer can do some serious damage with rifle, I just fought a rifle engineer doing massive damage in the range of 8000 per attack! I don't know how he did it, but it melted my warrior in less than 15 seconds and I had 2 endure pains and I was a spell breaker trained. Something must be happening to engineer, they must have gotten something new because the damage was insane!

I know the rifle well, i went berserker Rifle this last season, those aa's you mentioned? The deal 1.6k - 2k of damage at best (and that IF hes berserker).

If he melted you so badly, you played bad against him, the only way i can imagine he did such absurd damage for like melt is that he went full elixir offensive and rifle turret, with no space for defensive utilities, a good engage and he was dead man.

Unless last balance patch broked the aa, i can't see how he could melt you as a spellbreaker, 1.6k-2k hits in a 3/4 cast time isn't good enough for melt a warrior so fast, let alone a spellbreaker, an engi must rely on boons if he wants to see damaging numbers, thing that your class is good at countering now...

Are you sure you didn't eat a 4,3,5 combo? (Thing that is already hard, as he would have to remove your stability pulse passive first.)

Definitely sounds like the 3/4/5 abilities, they said the fight was over in like 15 seconds so that doesn't leave much room for AA's. Could be a classic SD build on top of it, that can put out a lot of damage quickly enough to not notice each individual thing unless you look at the combat log. Berserker rifle engi still hits like a truck in a lot of cases its just that everything else is much more powerful than it used to be its tough to risk that kind of build so no one really does it anymore.

Well, i did it, after the fall of Drunk Engi, i swapped the amulet to berserker, rune and sigils aswll, everything else i left it as how it was (except the healing skill, i swapped it to the good ol' healing turret).

Didn't manage to reach top 250 this time, but at least i did reach mid plat with it, i guess it's a good spot considering that it's a handicap with everything else that is around...