User:Masel/Builds/Mechanist

Dual Pistols / Spear 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

Playstyle & Skills

Skill Type	Skills
Mech Skills
Dual Pistols
Spear
Grenade Kit
Utility

Rotation Concept

You can find my most recent spear rotation showcase here.

Rotation Log

You can find my most recent dual pistol rotation showcase here.

•  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!)
• There are two variants you can play: Dual Pistols is ranged and does less damage, while the other with Spear is melee (even though you can always camp   Grenade Kit for range. They both follow the same concept, so it is easy to adapt to both of them. Since you cannot weapon swap on  Mechanist, you have to decide prior to engaging combat which one you want to use.

Rotation Flow (Spear)

Section	Notes
General Stuff	If you want to skip using kits altogether, you can replace the kit listed below with   Flame Turret. This will make the build even more straightforward, but costs ~2-3k dps. In either variant, use   Superconducting Signet and   Overclock Signet on cooldown.   Shift Signet is an awesome mobility tool that also cleanses conditions and breaks stuns. Use it to your advantage and to position yourself and the mech! 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.
General Rotation (Spear)	The most important combo on Spear is to pair   Conduit Surge and   Shrapnel Grenade. They share the same cooldown length, which is very convenient. Make sure to use   Conduit Surge every 10 seconds to maintain the focus on the target! This makes all your other spear skills more powerful against that target. Always use   Lightning Rod and   Electric Artillery as well as   Devastator on cooldown. Keep in mind that both   Conduit Surge and   Devastator are movement abilities. This gives you quite a bit of mobility, but can also cause problems (YEET!). Use   Freeze Grenade and   Poison Grenade every time they're available in   Grenade Kit. Using   Conduit Surge on cooldown ensures that you maintain  Thermal Vision with a single skill, which is one of the advantages of running Spear over Dual Pistols.
CC Skills for Breakbar Damage	Sky Circus   Lightning Rod via   Rocket Punch   Glue Shot   Roiling Skies

Rotation Flow (Pistols)

Section	Notes
General Stuff	If you want to skip using kits altogether, you can replace the kit listed below with   Flame Turret. This will make the build even more straightforward, but costs ~2-3k dps. In either variant, use   Superconducting Signet and   Overclock Signet on cooldown.   Shift Signet is an awesome mobility tool that also cleanses conditions and breaks stuns. Use it to your advantage and to position yourself and the mech! 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.
General Rotation (Dual Pistols)	The most important combos on Dual Pistols are to pair   Static Shot and   Blowtorch and   Poison Dart Volley and   Shrapnel Grenade.   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   Shrapnel Grenade, use   Freeze Grenade and   Poison Grenade every time they're available.   Bomb Kit is an excellent option to use instead of   Grenade Kit here, as it ensures that you maintain  Thermal Vision via  Fire Bomb. It is higher damage as well, but restricts you into melee rang
CC Skills for Breakbar Damage	Sky Circus   Lightning Rod via   Rocket Punch   Glue Shot   Roiling Skies

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.
Grenade Kit	Strong source of damage + Explosions that trigger  Shrapnel.
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.

Gear & Traits

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
Spear	Viper's	Superior Sigil of Earth 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

Traits

Explosives
Firearms
Mechanist

• 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.

Explosives

• The most important trait in this traitline is  Shrapnel, which causes Explosions to apply  Bleeding and  Crippled.

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.

Open World Build

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

Link to the OW build in the editor (gear pieces can be replaced with Celestial for more survivability

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 fairly sturdy choice by default, as your mech is a great punchbag that will attract aggro of many enemies.
• In terms of gear, you can swap pieces of Viper's out for Ritualist's or Celestial 1-to-1. If you decide to do so, choose the larger pieces first (weapons, chest and amulet alone provide 40% of the stats coming from gear).
• Mechanist does benefit greatly from using Celestial gear (moreso than many other builds), since it includes strong  Healing Power coefficients on the Barrier skills and   Healing Turret, but has fairly low passive healing. Celestial is the only prefix that gives  Condition Damage,  Expertise,  Concentration and  Healing Power, making it a great choice here.
• The build will work just fine with Ritualist's as well, which you can also use to make it a very good provider of group  Alacrity in instanced content. Just find the spot between the three gear options that makes it comfortable for you.
• To improve your gameplay, give Mech Controls a read to understand how the controls of the mech (and ranger pets) work.
• 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!

• On this build, we'll make use of spear for open world as the primary weapon. While it is melee, it has some really nice synergies with a bunch of engineer traits as well as strong mobility, making it an excellent tool for open world.
• Both   Devastator and  Conduit Surge are mobility skills.  Conduit Surge refreshes whenever you kill your focused target, allowing you to quickly move from mob to mob (giving it a  Deadeye-vibe).
• The auto attack chain on spear applies both  Bleeding and  Vulnerability on every hit.
• The  Bleeding makes up for a very nice synergy with  Sanguine Array, as it will apply  Might on every auto attack.
• Covering 25  Vulnerability and a fairly low number of explosions on spear makes  Explosives somewhat redundant, since the only major damage gain in it comes from  Shrapnel. Since we're not using any kit,  Shrapnel isn't really required.
• That is why we'll swap out  Explosives for  Alchemy:

Alchemy
Firearms
Mechanist

• The reasoning behind the other trait changes is explained in the next section on boon coverage.
• Using  Sanguine Array and  Compounding Chemicals together creates very strong self-healing, especially when hitting multiple targets, since  Sanguine Array doesn't have a cooldown.
• Your easy sources of  Bleeding are  Sharpshooter and the spear auto attacks.
• This build covers almost all boons in the game, making  Iron Blooded very strong on it for defense.

Boon Coverage

• This build is a complete Boon machine, since it covers all boons in the game aside from  Resistance with a very good uptime. The more pieces of Ritualist or Celestial you have, the easier it becomes. It shares many of the boons in an area too!
•  Compounding Chemicals gives you additional 240  Concentration, making boon coverage even easier.
•  Might is covered by  Sanguine Array and  Mech Arms: High-Impact Drivers .
•  Fury is fully covered by  Boiling Point.
•  Alacrity is covered by   Barrier Signet &  Crisis Zone (Mech skill 2). You also share  Alacrity in an area!
•  Quickness is covered by   Elixir U and  Mech Core: Jade Dynamo.
•  Vigor is covered by   Elixir U and   Invigorating Speed
•  Protection is covered by  Crisis Zone.

Dealing with Incoming Conditions and Control effects

•   Healing Turret will convert conditions on you into boons via  Transmute.
•   Elixir U is a stun break you can save when you have external sources of  Quickness.
•   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!
•  Mech Frame: Channeling Conduits another Stun break and condition cleanse.
•   Elixir U and   Crisis Zone apply  Stability, allowing you to ignore incoming CC!