Guild Wars 2

On the heels of my Guardian build thread, I decided to do the same with warrior builds following the 10/17 patch which will move Empower Allies to Tactics 20. I break them into two categories, GS+Axe and Pure Axe. Please note that you cannot compare the Effective Power of the GS builds to the Pure Axe builds because attack speed and attack coefficients are different. Effective Power is only used to compare Apples to Apples, so an Axe build with a smaller EP might actually have greater DPS than the GS build.

Assumptions:

Banner of Disc
Banner of Strength
Fury
25 Might
25 Vuln
10% Sigil
10% Dungeon Potion
Scholar Runes (exception below)
Ascended Weapons

GS+Axe Builds

30/25/0/0/15

Perception Stacks with Sweet and Spicey: 23,000

30/10/0/0/30

Bloodlust stacks with Curry Butternut: 22,702

30/0/0/10/30 (Empowered 3 boons)

Bloodlust stacks with Curry Butternut: 22,770

Conclusions:

These are all very close since they share very similar traits. However, the 30/25 build is a hair superior to the other options. One thing to consider is that the 30/25 and 30/10 will generate more Vuln stacks than the 30/0 build. Since we are presume 25 vuln stacks already, this bias is in favor of 30/0. In actual gameplay, the 30/10 and 30/25 would generate about 2 more vuln stacks on a boss (4 vs trash) which would widen the gaps. As it is, I am fairly confident that 30/25 will be the meta build post patch

Pure Axe Builds

30/25/0/0/15 (Deep Strikes instead of FGS)

Bloodlust stacks with Curry Butternut: 23,115

30/10/0/0/30

Bloodlust stacks with Curry Butternut: 22,430

30/0/0/10/30 (Empowered 3 boons)

Bloodlust stacks with Curry Butternut: 22,486

Conclusions:

I am very confident that if all you care about is absolute min/max dps and don’t care for the Greatsword playstyle or benefits, the 30/25 pure axe build will be the absolute best dps you can get. Greatsword has excellent dps and a 3rd dodge and a hard hitting gap close so the 1% (or less) dps advantage pure axe would maintain is not worth switching to if you are comfortable on GS+axe/mace. If you prefer pure axe, then it works out for you too.

Bonus Empowered Allies Build

20/30/0/20/0 (Pure Axe with Empowered and Empowered Allies)

Bloodlust stacks with Sweet and Spicey: 19,416

Conclusions:

This build has EA (7% party wide DPS boost) and only gives away 17% personal dps to the meta build. In theory, it would seem that this build is viable as a one-of in a speed running party, with additional warriors playing the meta builds, or no additional warriors at all. However, a few things to note are that this build has no Fast Hands or Versatile Rage, and no Signet cooldown trait, and no forceful GS trait. Therefore it will have an extremely difficult time maintaining max might stacks and will almost certainly been a leech. So assuming 25 Might stacks for this build is being extremely generous and not exactly reflective of actual gameplay. It would be interesting to see if clear times are actually faster with 4x meta warriors vs 3x meta warriors and 1x of this EA build. I guess there is no reason we couldn’t test this now.

Surely 20/30/0/20/0 would be better as 25/25/0/20/0. Theres no reason to go 30 in arms unless im missing something? Or even 30/20/0/20/0.

Warriors need no party , why u made a build to carry other people

spoj.9672:

Surely 20/30/0/20/0 would be better as 25/25/0/20/0. Theres no reason to go 30 in arms unless im missing something? Or even 30/20/0/20/0.

You’re missing Furious. Though, that trait is a waste if you don’t burst often or use berserker’s power.

spoj.9672:

Surely 20/30/0/20/0 would be better as 25/25/0/20/0. Theres no reason to go 30 in arms unless im missing something? Or even 30/20/0/20/0.

It’s entirely possible. I will crunch the numbers on those too. I got the 20/30 from discussing builds with guang.

I think the thought process was with 20/30 you can spam your evis on cool down since there are no adrenaline greedy traits in the build. 25/25 is probably the best with that in mind.

Are gs/axe rotations calculated with or without whirwind and if they are with it how many hits are assumed? 3 boons seems quite conservative if at the same time assuming full dmg buffs, and is the minimum you would assume warrior to have all the time.

Interesting results still and thanks for sharing them.

Or you could use my Zalculator to get your answer straight away

I’m not calculating exact dps, just effective power.

From everything I’ve ever compared calculating exact dps gives the same results when comparing the same things. Exact dps is useful for comparing apples to oranges, though.

Zelyhn I downloaded your calculator and found it overwhelming and not user friendly. I’m sure the math is correct and your results are valid but it looks like greek to me (that I can read greek is besides the point). Just advice from me (who isn’t really a math person) look how simple and easy to use my spreadsheet is, just 4 simple inputs and the results spit out. That sort of interface would make yours way more user friendly.

Yeah I can understand well I’ll just run a few numbers and I’ll tell you what I find in results for the comparisons you have stated here!

Still don’t like forceful greatsword when you have a party good at stacking might, but frequently regret not having it in pugs >.> bowbears should make empower reflect back to you instead of being wasted

If your party stacks might properly just swap forceful with deep strikes even on a GS build. Forceful is good for running sections though.

spoj.9672:

Forceful is good for running sections though.

The difference is almost negligible. Raced a few times against something who had Forceful, and myself without it, they would hardly be an extra Rush or two ahead of me.

Yeah its not much but it does make a slight difference especially with someone who is good at doing it properly.

20/30/0/20/0 is ideal since you don’t need to maintain full adrenaline all the time. With Furious traited Eviscerate should be spammable on CD, so that’s not an issue either. You won’t hit as hard as you would with the current 30/0/0/10/30 build but it’s not worth dropping Empower Allies just to avoid the DPS loss.

Do you really need furious to get full adrenaline back in 10 seconds? Cause if you dont then surely 25/25 would be better.

spoj.9672:

Do you really need furious to get full adrenaline back in 10 seconds? Cause if you dont then surely 25/25 would be better.

Isn’t it 30 hits to get full adrenaline? You won’t get that much without the extra adren on hit.

Better to test in game than speculate. Ill see how fast i regain adrenaline tomorrow. Always seemed to go up fast enough as far as I can tell.

You mighta had the axe cooldown reduction trait if you ran a 30 disc build, Sharpened Axes. Gives more adrenaline on axe crits.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

I’m not calculating exact dps, just effective power.

Apparently reading forum posts shouldn’t be the last thing I do before going to bed since you clearly state you are calculating effective power in the original post.

I’m going to run a man-mode build.

0/0/0/0/0 naked sword/nothing?

Not going to change build, same as guardian. Always before the new meta arrives!

By the way, do we have 17th month?

I need a bit more information to compute dps for each build if you don’t mind (and pardon my ignorance on warrior):
-unless otherwise stated utilities are FGS and two banners?
-what adept trait do you pick in discipline?

- FGJ*, banner and signet of fury
- it’s usually signet recharge one

but Nike said assumptions are banner of strength and banner of disc, so we assume two warriors?

Zelyhn.8069:

but Nike said assumptions are banner of strength and banner of disc, so we assume two warriors?

Pretty much. Though it doesn’t matter too much. You’re mostly just looking to compare what build has the better effective power or DPS, under x assumptions.

Zelyhn.8069:

but Nike said assumptions are banner of strength and banner of disc, so we assume two warriors?

One warrior can cast both and someone else in the group carries the other banner. Done that plenty of times. You’d have to trade off either FGJ or signet of fury though. With ele groups giving off both might+fury FGJ can be traded off without a loss on the war.

Ok roger that.

for the 30/25, since we assume full might, don’t we just always take deep strikes instead of forceful GS ?

spoj.9672:

Better to test in game than speculate. Ill see how fast i regain adrenaline tomorrow. Always seemed to go up fast enough as far as I can tell.

I can save you the trouble and tell you that I did a quick test on the dummy on LA and just auto-attacking with no crits gets me about half an adrenaline bar in the time it takes for Eviscerate to recharge, almost 2/3rds if you use Cyclone Axe. If you get double on crit with Furious you’d actually still need 100% crit chance to be able to Evis on cooldown so I highly doubt you’d be able to hit full adrenaline in ten seconds without, unless you use Whirling Axe or something.

Best to do a comparison of both, since GS cooldown reduction actually has an impact on rotations, pretty much only because of whirlwind attack. If anything I would say assume that you have Deep Strike + Forceful Greatsword, dropping Rending Strikes.

Ok, I used to assume you don’t usually use WWA unless your target is against a wall, should I include it in the rotation then?

You should, but you should either mention that it’s assuming you’re on a wall or somehow come up with a figure that’s more probable in practice. You generally aim to hit 4 times then weapon swap, so you aren’t too far away, but this isn’t always the case. Rush should also be in the rotation if it isn’t, however that’s again another weird skill because it won’t work on large hit-box targets such as Lupicus.

Adding to this, the amount of times that you can viably hit a target without getting out of range obvious varies with the size of the foe as well (Whirlwind attack). You should probably just mention that you’re assuming the target is on a wall.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Rush should also be in the rotation if it isn’t, however that’s again another weird skill because it won’t work on large hit-box targets such as Lupicus.

You mean Tequatl.

Ok, if I assume that WWA has a damaging range of 150 it would hit a bit less than twice on average on a human-sized target. Since bosses are larger I could assume a 3 hit average.
For a normal rotation you would use it once every other GS swap, for a cd reduction rotation it would be used at every GS swap then.
Just so I am sure: if you swap to GS, use 100b then WWA, your swap cd is back up during WWA or do you need one AA at some point ?

As for rush, I compute a coefficient of 1.70, the wiki states a cast time of 2, how is it like in practice? I expect a smaller animation time due to being in melee

Rush has a slightly longer cast than the first autoattack. It’s about 0.8 seconds i believe.
Also, rush has no problems against targets such as lupicus, you just have to stand inside them.
WWA hits three times on average, even on tiny enemies. It’s more based on from where you start and where you’ll end.
Bladetrail is worth casting too, it hits twice and sometimes becomes some weird bouncing projectile that hits 3-5 times per enemy.
Also: What is Deep Strikes? I’m sure you mean Deep Cuts (50% longer bleeds).

Ok then, I’ll see what kind of rotation c/s I get with this

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Deep_Strike

Deep Strike, Dub. Extra precision for signet. Pretty good trait to look into as a replacement for Rending Strikes, since the growing trend (for us at least) involves having at least 2 un-activated signets.

Deep Strike is the yolosignetwar trait. I think it’s probably better than Rending Strikes, due to apparently it’s only able to maintain like ~2 vuln on a boss? Think with a certain combination you’re able to hit near 100% cc without perception stacks, which is pretty neat.

EDIT: And actually, I guess for some kills you could have 3 unused signets due to fury and might up-keep, you won’t need to activate your SoR.

Dub.1273:

Rush has a slightly longer cast than the first autoattack. It’s about 0.8 seconds i believe.
Also, rush has no problems against targets such as lupicus, you just have to stand inside them.
WWA hits three times on average, even on tiny enemies. It’s more based on from where you start and where you’ll end.
Bladetrail is worth casting too, it hits twice and sometimes becomes some weird bouncing projectile that hits 3-5 times per enemy.
Also: What is Deep Strikes? I’m sure you mean Deep Cuts (50% longer bleeds).

Bladetrail needs open environment so you get 2 hits/target be worth using since it disappears in wall which then again will lower the efficiency of WWA. I think melee range rush is quite close to arcing slice so 0.8 must be close estimation.

Weird NA tactics. I guess you’re using somewhat like 1 ele 1 engi 1 guardian 2 war then?
I can’t imagine any other (effective) setup that maintains 25 might, 25 vuln, has both banners and 2 warriors with 2 unused signets.

Has anyone tested if deep strike actually works? At least it doesn’t show in hero panel. 2 Signets would give you 3-4% crit chance assuming it works, so it would only be an ok replacement for rending strikes in solo play or a group that will reliably hit maxed vuln all the time which is rare.

Do we have any data on bosses’ condition duration reduction?

Bladetrail doesn’t always disappear in walls. And there are plenty of bosses that you don’t fight at walls.

You can achieve (I won’t say maintain, because someone will be pedantic and say it drops after x seconds) 25 might and vuln with the usual warrior supremacy team builds. If what the math gurus say is true about Rending Strikes on bosses then it’s not much of a loss.

Though, I would like to see more engineers

Alternatively you could always drop Forceful Greatsword for it.

50% duration on vuln and weakness. All other conditions last full duration (unless it’s a boss like alphard with -100% condition duration, immunity to cc or entiys that are immune).

How do you maintain 25 might in a 3w/1g/1m party without the guardian contributing nothing but mindless might spamming?
You have 3 might per warrior, 0-4 from guardian, 0 from mesmer. You’d need to use blasts, so either the warriors run warhorn offhand or lb. Or they loose dps picking banners up and blasting guardians firefields (who had to take at least two in a fight longer than 20 seconds).

The thing is even a single stack of vuln missing would promote rending strikes over deep strike in group play.

Concerning bladetrail I feel it disappears in every high wall, let’s say higher than the caster. I would say majority of walls, or at least a remarkable portion of them are higher than that and there is often an obstacle within 900 range that will absorb bladetrail. There are many encounters where it should be used for sure but I just don’t feel like one can include it into a general rotation.

That’s not true. Because if the DPS increase is > the difference in a loss of 1 vuln stack, then it doesn’t matter. This is theoretical talk, I’m assuming that none of us have actually run numbers on how different the personal DPS would be.

If you don’t know how 3W/1G/1M hits 25 might without blasts then I’m kind of worried.

Anyway, I actually bothered to go ingame and look at the effects of Deep Strike and I wasn’t that impressed tbh, the crit chance didn’t look high enough to make blood lust > perception, however this is just assumptions, I haven’t run any numbers.

EDIT: Though I did look at the 30/10/0/0/30 one, that looked kind of cool.

It’s not like walls are 360° around you.
Also: judging from Arah perspective there are only 1-2 fights where bladetrail doesn’t work. Ooze and Simin.

And yeah, about deep strikes it even loses in solo play since you activate signet of rage and benefit more from perma bleed anyway (deep cuts).

I know how 3w/1g/1m hits 25 might. But not how it maintains 25 might and 25 vuln.
Edit: No, i actually don’t know how 3w/1g/1m hits 25 might without blasts.

1 vuln stack increases dmg taken by 1 percent. Assume every goroup member does similar dmg compared to each other. 25th vuln compared to 24 vuln adds 0.01/1.24 = 0.008 = 0.8% group wide dmg. If the vuln stack is added to alower amount than 24 the increase is bigger. That would mean an increased dmg of 5*0.8=4% if we wanted to think the added dmg as done by a single person (which is the case when using deep strike). 3-4% crit chance loses against that by far, and will lose by even more if talking about vuln change other than from 24 to 25, and a single warrior doing 1/5th of groups dps seems like a good approximation for me in a group like engi, ele guard 2*war.