I came back around a week ago, so forgive me if it's severely lacking somehow, but I've had great success with this build as an anti-bunker in tPvP and in general just having fun in hotjoin. It is for the most part, what I used to use.
Explosives Condi-Dmg
Basically you never have to use any of the auto-attack abilities. If you are worried about burst damage from Thieves, Warriors, or Mesmers then you can pick up Protection Injection instead of HGH. High Poison Uptime with Poison Volley and Poison Grenades. Offers Chill Grenades as well for extra wearing down power. Has multiple sources of every damage condition and is loaded with the control conditions, in fact it technically has access to every condition in the game. Blinds in particular are borderline overpowered especially when you have 3 of them on rather short cooldowns. Sigil of Batlte is changeable with Geomancy, but I always get pissed when Geomancy goes off when I'm at a distance. You can float around 10 to 15 stacks of Might with HGH and Sigil of Battle, which I always find useful in breaking a bunker Ele or Guardian. Even the Pistol CD could be changed for Knee Shot, but I love the Pistol cooldowns. Remember it actually has a very high amount of Power in it, and while you won't crit (but you do some with Fury) your direct damage is actually quite meaningful. Since Runes of Nightmare actually give a total of +20% condition duration, you are at +50% condition duration which is ideal for the vast majority of your damaging conditions - not to mention useful for the control conditions.
What it lacks is a stun break and perma-swiftness. What it brings is the ability to kill a Bunker 1v1 or 2v2, powerful utility in the form of the control conditions, massive AoE effects that can sway team fights easily, and in general is actually pretty survivable. It even has meager boon support, but it's not really a strength of the build. To me personally the lack of a stun break isn't a big deal since the sheer volume of Blinds coupled with intelligent dodge rolls make it so the vast majority of stuff is avoided. I mean the general survivability of this build is phenomenal for how little it actually invests in it. 25k health is enough to survive most bursts and there is a hint of Protection in there, especially if you decide you want Protection Injection over HGH. Again though, I can survive indefinitely against any Bunker Ele or Guardian, so I pick up the Might to kill them quicker. The lack of perma-swiftness bugs the hell out of me, but the ability to kill a Bunker seems worth it.
You'd think condition removal would be the bane of a condition build, but when you dump 6 to 7 conditions on a target at almost all times then people begin to complain about any condition removal that isn't a full wipe. Not to mention, all of your conditions are on reduced cooldowns and you have multiples of most of them. You can easily overload your opponents with conditions, even those with plenty of condition removal. On your own defensive side of conditions you are very vulnerable to condition overload, but most condition classes actually just rely on bleed stacks so the four single condition removals you have are most often enough. Not to mention 25k HP is unnaturally high for many builds.
The only real weakness I've found is when opponents run a double burst setup if they attack without Smoke up. That can kill you before you can react, but in this case you just need a resurrection and the fight is now likely in your favor. Role is a roaming bunker destroyer, which does a ton of all types of damage. Personally I don't even think a Necro is capable of killing a Bunker build reliably, but this build feels like it does the job. Even using this build in hotjoin, I survive the legions of burst Mesmers, Warriors, and Thieves and succeed on multiple 1vX fights every day. I love the Engineer so much. I don't think any other class can do meaningful direct damage, bleed damage, burn damage, poison damage, confusion damage, and retaliation damage all at once.
Edited by Ayestes, 16 January 2013 - 03:44 PM.
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Global_GW2, on 01 December 2012 - 10:44 PM, said:
