14 replies to this topic

[Lilie Mae]

So I was going grenade/rfile build 30/20/0/0/20 with berserker gear except for rifle (going for legendary) and WvW chest piece to get some more vit and toughness.

But I'm wondering how well such a build would work in dungeons? Especially some of the more difficult ones. Since I'm going for legendary rifle I want to have a build made around rifle, so probably some dps build.. And I love the grenades in WvW. So.. my question is if this would work in dungeon as well or if anyone have any suggestion on other builds with rifle that works good in dungeon. Or some gear suggestions..

[Quasi]

Unfortunately, the rifle by itself has poor DPS. During your dungeon encounters you will probably be running grenades 99% of the time, with the other .99% being elixir gun and the final .01% being when your timer on the grenade kit runs out because you've been in it so long and the game switches you back to rifle. The rifle is only good for its combo in killing solo mobs and players in PvP. Maybe in the future legendary weapons will apply their particle effects to kits, but right now ANet seems to be more concerned with changing the cool down of throwing underwater elixirs that nobody uses.

[coglin]

Quasi, on 04 December 2012 - 03:14 AM, said:

Unfortunately, the rifle by itself has poor DPS.

My rifle auto attack does 1700-2000 damage, Blunderbuss 4000+, OS 2500, and 5k Jump shots. So I beg to differ on you claim.

[FoxBat]

coglin, on 04 December 2012 - 03:33 PM, said:

My rifle auto attack does 1700-2000 damage, Blunderbuss 4000+, OS 2500, and 5k Jump shots. So I beg to differ on you claim.

However much crit you have out the wazoo on your autoattack, add up three grenades hitting a target with that gear and it should be more. Particularly when you factor in the vulnerability stacks and what that does for your group's DPS.

The rest you listed is burst, which tends to not down silver+ mobs in one go. You can incorporate it into grenade spam if you don't mind getting up close and personal, but it would just be a brief respite before grenading again.

[CepaCepa]

coglin, on 04 December 2012 - 03:33 PM, said:

My rifle auto attack does 1700-2000 damage, Blunderbuss 4000+, OS 2500, and 5k Jump shots. So I beg to differ on you claim.

Mine too, actually my blunderbuss and jump shots crits have seen bigger numbers. However, that auto attack is what kills it compared to grenades. 2K crit every 0.75 second is nowhere near a 4.5K crit every second, not even counting all the on proc traits that 3 grenades can trigger. If I get the chance, I often go into melee with grenade kit, once Grenade Barrage is on CD, #2 and #4 are both on CD, I swap to rifle and do #3 + #5 and immediately swap back for grenade #1 spam.

And of course there are many fights where there is only a single mob/boss and he is moving too fast for grenade to land, AND you're too afraid to go into melee range and grenade since boss often have 1-shot mechanisms. If you're missing more than half of your grenades, you're better off just doing auto shotting with rifle. Note that often in those situations you can't use rifle #3 and #5 on CD either so in general it's a direct comparison between #1 skills of those two weapon set.

Basically, Rifle #3 and #5 are the only 2 skills that does sufficient burst damage in such a short time that it is worth it to trade out a spammable Grenade #1. And actually that might even be debatable once you factor in the 3 proc chance of each grenade throw.

To answer the OP, Grenade + Rifle is definitely viable in dungeons, in fact its high aoe damage provides much advantage to your group. You just need to make sure that you can live to do that damage. For example, I take both elixir S and elixir R on my utility slots, helps a ton when mobs decide to turn onto me.

[coglin]

FoxBat, on 04 December 2012 - 06:45 PM, said:

However much crit you have out the wazoo on your autoattack, add up three grenades hitting a target with that gear and it should be more. Particularly when you factor in the vulnerability stacks and what that does for your group's DPS.

What does that have to do with anything. I quoted someone claiming "Unfortunately, the rifle by itself has poor DPS.". SO why your quoting me and talking about grenades is beyond me.

CepaCepa, on 04 December 2012 - 07:00 PM, said:

Mine too, actually my blunderbuss and jump shots crits have seen bigger numbers. However, that auto attack is what kills it compared to grenades. 2K crit every 0.75 second is nowhere near a 4.5K crit every second, not even counting all the on proc traits that 3 grenades can trigger. If I get the chance, I often go into melee with grenade kit, once Grenade Barrage is on CD, #2 and #4 are both on CD, I swap to rifle and do #3 + #5 and immediately swap back for grenade #1 spam.

Again, I quoted someone claiming "Unfortunately, the rifle by itself has poor DPS." and was pointing out the obvious ignorence of the statement, so why your quoting me and talking about grenades is beyond me.

Edited by coglin, 04 December 2012 - 11:37 PM.

[Kurosov]

the rifle, like pretty much anything engineer is not designed for pure dps, although engineers to pump out some decent damage.

the mass utility and cc attached to the skills is what you should build around. Grenades/Bombs do have the best damage wide though. You just need to a) bind grenade skills to mouse, turn on fast cast ground targetting and c) learn to throw grenades where an enemy WILL BE when they land, not where they currently are.

Also keep into consideration the damage ring of explosions in 3 dimensonal so walls/ledges/ceilings can be targeted instead of the floor

[Arxae]

Lilie Mae, on 04 December 2012 - 12:58 AM, said:

But I'm wondering how well such a build would work in dungeons? Especially some of the more difficult ones. Since I'm going for legendary rifle I want to have a build made around rifle, so probably some dps build.. And I love the grenades in WvW. So.. my question is if this would work in dungeon as well or if anyone have any suggestion on other builds with rifle that works good in dungeon. Or some gear suggestions..

I run rifle as primary weapon about 9/10, sometimes switching to the pistols of not much control is needed. Dungeons don't need DPS, dungeons need control. The rifle is very good at this with net shot and overpowered shot. Running a condition build will net you more dps, but you will need dual pistols for that.

[Bloodtau]

coglin, on 04 December 2012 - 03:33 PM, said:

My rifle auto attack does 1700-2000 damage, Blunderbuss 4000+, OS 2500, and 5k Jump shots. So I beg to differ on you claim.

Sure it does. give us some proof and your armour etc....

[Isti]

Bloodtau, on 05 December 2012 - 09:47 PM, said:

Sure it does. give us some proof and your armour etc....

I run the same build and get the same sort of numbers against standard targets with full 'Zerker gear, Superior Runes of the Wurm (something like Eagle would give you even higher damage).  Cripes, you really have to be asleep at the switch to NOT do really good rifle damage if you gear full glass cannon.

Edited by Isti, 05 December 2012 - 10:15 PM.

[coglin]

Bloodtau, on 05 December 2012 - 09:47 PM, said:

Sure it does. give us some proof and your armour etc....

I already posted my rifle and grenade damage in a video yesterday. If you do not have the sense to locate it, that is your problem. I am not posting it again for you individually.

Edited by coglin, 05 December 2012 - 11:24 PM.

[Bloodtau]

coglin, on 05 December 2012 - 11:23 PM, said:

I already posted my rifle and grenade damage in a video yesterday. If you do not have the sense to locate it, that is your problem. I am not posting it again for you individually.

No proof then.

[KodakMoment]

I see no point of using rifle 80-100% you might aswell have rolled a warrior. It's always good to rotate between rifle/gernades to take advantage of the cooldowns

Edited by KodakMoment, 06 December 2012 - 08:59 PM.

[CepaCepa]

coglin, on 04 December 2012 - 11:36 PM, said:

Again, I quoted someone claiming "Unfortunately, the rifle by itself has poor DPS." and was pointing out the obvious ignorence of the statement, so why your quoting me and talking about grenades is beyond me.

I wouldn't call it "ignorance". Poor is a relative term, which needs to be put into context of the bigger picture to have any meaning. In the passage that you've quoted, he was obviously comparing rifle dps with that of grenade, and he was assuming that no kit swapping is happening in between.

If you don't like the term "poor", I guess "Mediocre" is a better vocabulary. Or in a more positive way, we can say that rifle raw damage by itself is "fine".

No need to be worked up about this, the point is to tell the OP that "stay in grenade when you can, and swap back to rifle according to situations", I see nothing wrong with that suggestion. Kit swapping and all that is "advanced techniques" which he'll surely find out himself.

And you don't have to defend yourself fervently whenever someone quotes you. People quote others on forums because it makes the subject clear and saves time to type everything out again, it just serves as a highlight of the topic most of the time. Often time people won't even disagree with you, just adding their own opinion on top of what you said and/or discuss around the general topic.

[hungryolred]

I'm going for rifle/gren/eg build and try to sprinkle rifle in kit rotation: its such a badass skill set, but I rarily switch to it thinking about heavy dmg.

Stomp on their head, make em eat lead, knock em on their arse, and wrap em up for a grenade shower. Man, that's fun.
It's a slightly unrelated question: going to be 80 soon and was wondering what armor set ups people typically use for this style build. Has anybody compared zerk to knight?
I was going to try knight armor and 2 valk/3 knight trinkets.