User:Masel/Builds/Mechanist
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Dual Pistols Condition Mechanist[edit]
Criterion | Rating |
---|---|
Burst Damage | 3/5 |
Sustained Damage | 5/5 |
Utility Options | 4/5 |
Survivability | 5/5 |
Difficulty | 1/5 |
- Condition Mechanist with Mech Core: J-Drive is a simple yet very strong build in all aspects of PvE gameplay. It has low actions-per-minute (APM) and high range, combined with fairly high burst for a condition build. These factors make it one of the best condition builds to go for as a beginner.
- The core "mech"anic (huehuehue) of Mechanist is the Jade Mech CJ-1, which functions similarly to Pets on Ranger. Many effects and benefits on mechanist occur around the mech, not the engineer, making positioning within a certain range of the mech important.
Link to the DPS Build in the Build Editor:
Playstyle & Skills[edit]
Skill Type | Skills | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Mech Skills |
| |||||
Dual Pistols |
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Bomb Kit |
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Utility |
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Playstyle & Rotation Concept[edit]
- Mech Core: J-Drive makes your Signets retain their passives while they are on cooldown. This might seem lackluster at first, but is very strong, especially considering the passive effects they have (e.g. 12% condition damage on Superconducting Signet!
- The most important combos on Dual Pistols are to pair Static Shot and Blowtorch and Poison Dart Volley and Fire Bomb.
- Static Shot & Blowtorch share the same cooldown. Make sure to always use Static Shot first, as it has a higher skill priority than Blowtorch. Doing it the other way around might lead to accidental cancels of Blowtorch.
- Poison Dart Volley and Fire Bomb also share a cooldown, which is why we'll go into bomb kit after every cast of Poison Dart Volley. On top of Fire Bomb, use Concussion Bomb every second time in bomb kit.
- Fire Bomb ensures that you maintain Thermal Vision, which is one of the advantages of running Bomb Kit over Grenade Kit.
- Grenade Kit is an excellent option to use instead of Bomb Kit, as it retains the capability to deal damage from range. It can be higher damage as well, but only when you dip into grenade kit every ~5 seconds to use Shrapnel Grenade. If you decide to use Grenade Kit, use Poison Grenade and Freeze Grenade whenever they are available too!
- Use Superconducting Signet and Overclock Signet on cooldown.
- You can always set the first two mech skills to auto attack mode, so that your mech uses them on cooldown. I do not recommend doing that with Sky Circus to keep the capability to deal Defiance bar damage on demand, as the CC output of the build is low otherwise.
Utility Skills[edit]
Skill Choice | Notes |
---|---|
Rectifier Signet | Strong pasive and active heal. Heals both you and the mech! |
Shift Signet | Very versatile skill. It will copy all boons you gain to your mech, which is especially oweful in instanced content and meta events where you receive a lot of boons from other players. It is also a Stun break, a Teleport and removes conditions. The teleport is awesome to do mechanics in instanced content! |
Superconducting Signet | Very strong active and pasive damage source. The AoE from this is created around the mech, so try to use it when it is in melee range. |
Bomb Kit | Strong source of damage + Explosions that trigger Shrapnel. Also maintains Thermal Vision via Fire Bomb! Can be replaced with Grenade Kit for ranged gameplay. |
Overclock Signet | Strong damage skill. Be careful to not cancel the other Mech Skills with this! Since your Mech does not take damage in instanced content, it should not be required to save it for the resummon. |
CC Skills for Breakbar Damage:[edit]
Gear[edit]
Important Stats (descending in Importance):
- 100% Bleeding Duration (~72% from Gear + 33% from Serrated Steel)
- 100% Burning Duration (~72% from Gear + 33% from Incendiary Powder)
- Maximize Condition Damage
Since the vast majority of damage comes from Bleeding and Burning, it is important to reach 100% condition duration on them.
Armor | Prefix | Rune |
---|---|---|
Head | Viper's | Superior Rune of the Trapper |
Shoulders | Viper's | Superior Rune of the Trapper |
Chest | Viper's | Superior Rune of the Trapper |
Gloves | Viper's | Superior Rune of the Trapper |
Legs | Viper's | Superior Rune of the Trapper |
Boots | Viper's | Superior Rune of the Trapper |
Trinket | Prefix | |
Amulet | Viper's | |
Ring 1 | Viper's | |
Ring 2 | Viper's | |
Accessory 1 | Viper's | |
Accessory 2 | Viper's | |
Backpack | Viper's | |
Weapon | Prefix | Sigil |
Pistol (Main Hand) | Viper's | Superior Sigil of Earth |
Pistol (Off Hand) | Viper's | Superior Sigil of Bursting |
Purpose | Item Type | Source |
Damage | Ascended Food | Cilantro and Cured Meat Flatbread |
Damage | Non-Ascended Food | Plate of Beef Rendang |
Survivability | Ascended Food | Peppered Cured Meat Flatbread |
Survivability | Non-Ascended Food | Oysters Gnashblade |
Damage | Utility | Toxic Focusing Crystal |
Survivability | Utility | Potion Of Karka Toughness |
Damage | Relic | Relic of the Fractal |
- For a budget variant, simply replace all armor pieces of Viper's with rare/exotic Ritualist's. For the backpack, you can use a Crafter's backpack of the highest tier and select either Celestial or Rabid.
- Ascended gear is always ideal, but exotic gear is fine for everything aside from higher-tier fractals.
Traits[edit]
Explosives | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Firearms | ||||||
Mechanist | ||||||
Explosives[edit]
- The most important trait in this traitline is Shrapnel, which causes Explosions to apply Bleeding and Crippled.
- It will also massively increase damage in solo gameplay due to all the Vulnerability it applies, especially when using Grenade Kit (each grenade is a seperate Explosion!).
Firearms[edit]
- The bread and butter traitline for condi engineers: 33% longer duration on both Burning and Bleeding (as explained above in the gear section) and lots of Condition damage and Expertise.
- To maintain the 5% damage modifier from Thermal Vision, you need to apply Burning every 5 seconds.
- Also comes with a chance to apply Bleeding on critical hits via Sharpshooter. That's why you should aim to have a decent Critical chance to keep applying Bleeding. Keep that in mind when you change to defensive gear without Precision (e.g. Trailblazer)!
Mechanist[edit]
- Using Mech Arms: Single-Edge Cutters and Mech Arms: Single-Edge Cutters makes your mech inherit your Condition damage and Expertise and gives it condition-based attacks.
- Mech Core: J-Drive improves your Signets as explained above. Never take this off, it is too good.
DPS Rotation Showcase[edit]
You can find my most recent rotation showcase here.
Open World Build[edit]
You can find my most recent open world build showcase here.
Increasing Survivability[edit]
For OW, it can make sense to make a build more forgiving, so that you can sustain on your own.
- Mechanist is a sturdy choice by default, as your mech is a great punchbag that will attract aggro and focus on many enemies.
- To improve your gameplay, give Mech Controls a read to understand how the controls of the mech (and ranger pets) work.
- On condi engineer, both Explosives and Firearms are essential for their functionality! I do not recommend swapping either of them out.
- Instead, I recommend to make use of Barrier Signet instead of Superconducting Signet and use Bowl of Lemongrass Mussel Pasta paired with a Potion Of Karka Toughness when you want a more relaxed experience. That gives you a large damage reduction (10% + another 12%) and 220 Toughness.
- Bowl of Lemongrass Mussel Pasta is an basically free survivability, since we are overcapping on condition duration on Burning and Bleeding by over 4% anyway.
- If you have money lying around, you can swap a few pieces of Viper's out for Trailblazer or Celestial 1-to-1. If you decide to do so, choose the larger pieces (weapons, chest and amulet alone provide 40% of the stats coming from gear).
- Second, with dual pistols, the build is fairly limited in its options to deal area damage and relies on Kits to trigger Shrapnel. That is why we're going to make Grenade Kit the primary weapon set for open world. It feels great to spam grenades and drastically increases the overall damage output.
- Note that Grenade - the "auto attack" inside Grenade Kit - will not cast automatically as it is a ground AoE. If you want to spam it, just hold down your auto attack button (left mouse button or whichever button you have it on). You need to re-press that button after every other skill in Grenade Kit. It sounds wonky, but is very easy to learn.
- To further reinforce teh AoE potential, make use of Grenadier in Explosives, which increases the radius of grenades and makes them fly faster.
- As Grenade Kit becomes the primary weapon for open world, you can freely change the weapon used along with it. Even weapons that do not have native conditions on their skills still apply lots of Bleeding via Sharpshooter and - in case they include frequent explosions like Hammer or Rifle - via Shrapnel. This gives you full flexibility and allows you to play whichever weapon you like!
- It can happen that your mech dies, which strongly decreases your damage and survivability in open world. I recommend saving Overclock Signet for cases where that happens!
Boon Coverage[edit]
- This build has low native boon generation, and usually one would think that's a disadvantage.
- However, this build does excellent damage even without boons and scales heavily with external boons applied by others.
- Nonetheless, we're going to make a few smaller tweaks to cover Might (and Fury if you want to).
- Sanguine Array will grant you Might whenever you apply Bleeding. With Grenade Kit, you will cover a lot of Might this way!
- If you don't need the benefits from Grenadier, you can use Short Fuse for full Fury uptime!
- Using Mech Frame: Channeling Conduits will cover some Alacrity on yourself and allies and provide better boon coverage via Protection, Stability and Aegis. It is a personal dps loss overall, so it is ultimaely a matter of preference.
- If you can, make use of Jade Tech Offensive Overcharge and Jade Tech Defensive Overcharge.
- They give 150 permanent Toughness, Vitality, Condition Damage and Power as well as all boons aside from Stability, Resistance and Resolution on entering combat. These effects can be pre-stacked by using an Enchanted Snow Diamond Tonic repeatedly when out of combat. The Protection from this is another free massive gain to survivability!
- In case you don't want the hassle of reapplying jade protocols from time to time, you can abuse the synergy between Relic of the Cavalier and Blast from the Skyscale to apply lots of Aegis, Resistance, Might and Quickness to yourself. It does not have an internal cooldown and applies the boons on every hit of Blast. This also works with any other mount engage when hitting multiple targets.
Dealing with Incoming Conditions and Control effects[edit]
- Shift Signet is a Stun break and a condition cleanse with a relatively short cooldown. Make use of this to get yourself and/or your mech out of dangerous situations, as it is also a nice teleport!
- For another Stun break and condition cleanse, swap to Mech Frame: Channeling Conduits in Mechanist. Remember to switch off the auto-use on mech skill 2 if you do that.