User:Masel/Builds/Mechanist

Dual Pistols Condition Mechanist

Build Rating (Subjective)

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:

Build

Playstyle & Skills

Skill Type	Skills
Mech Skills
Dual Pistols
Bomb Kit
Utility

Playstyle & Rotation Concept

•  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

Utility Skills

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:

•   Sky Circus
•   Static Shot via   Rocket Punch
•   Glue Shot
•   Glue Bomb

Gear

Important Stats (descending in Importance):

1. 100%  Bleeding Duration (~72% from Gear + 33% from  Serrated Steel)
2. 100%  Burning Duration (~72% from Gear + 33% from  Incendiary Powder)
3. Maximize Condition Damage

Since the vast majority of damage comes from  Bleeding and  Burning, it is important to reach 100% condition duration on them.

Gear

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

Explosives
Firearms
Mechanist

Explosives

• 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

• 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

• 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

You can find my most recent rotation showcase here.

Open World Build

You can find my most recent open world build showcase here.

Increasing Survivability

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

• 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

•   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.