Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, rather odd question I have for you today.

As I’m sure you’re all aware of by now, Berserker’s gear is pretty much the king of PvE in terms of stat combos, since precision benefits power, and ferocity benefits precision, and so on. Basically, best damage combo. The problem I’m having right now is that I don’t want to run Berserker’s on every class I play, since it makes gameplay feel rather stale and uninteresting to me – doesn’t matter if you’re a thief, elementalist, or warrior, you’re just gonna be blowing things away with high damage abilities. I’d like to have some slightly different stat combinations for each of my classes, but at the same time I still want to be useful to my groups for dungeon runs and the likes by providing a good deal of damage.

Right now, I have a Ranger, Guardian, and Engineer all at level 80, with plans to get a Revenant up to that level once HoT releases. Right now my gear stats are as follows:
Ranger: Berserker. Main class, and provided the stigma that follows Rangers, I don’t want to stray too far from optimal on this one. Really enjoy having Berserker’s stats on this class, but as I said, I’d like some variety for my others.
Engineer: Sinister. This is the obvious choice for me, since Engie can run a hybrid damage build disgustingly well (Bleeds and burns on crit, more damage to targets with conditions, etc). Loads of fun, and really satisfying to be able to use everything at the class’ disposal to deal high levels of damage.
Guardian: Soliders/Knights. Not too happy with this one. Soldiers and Knights combo just feels like a watered-down berserker, and it doesn’t really provide anything to make the class feel particularly different from my other builds. I thought about running Zealot’s here, though due to the price of Zealot’s gear, it’s difficult to test a build out without selling one of my kidneys in order to do so. Zealot’s would provide more damage, though I’m unsure of just how much use Guardian would make of Healing Power. (For reference, I play a rather defensive guardian, with stuff like Save Yourselves/Battle Presence/Writ of Persistence being part of my kit.)
Revenant: Rabid. It’s early days to be theorycrafting builds for Revenant, but Mace/Axe felt amazing to play for me in the beta tests, and I really like the idea of a hybrid damage build here again. Rather than pick Sinister’s again here, I was considering Rabid since Revenant already gets 40% crit chance from fury thanks to traits, and as a far more melee-oriented class than Engie, could benefit from the little bit of tankiness that Rabid provides without sacrificing too much damage. The other option would be something like Power/Ferocity/Condition Damage, but as that stat combo doesn’t exist, this seems like the closest I can get.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Much of this is just theorycraft at the moment, and without access to certain stat combinations, keeping damage high without resorting to using the same stat combo over and over again is difficult. If you guys know of any combinations of different stat combos that have worked for you, I’d love to hear them.

You’ve pretty much got it covered.

Zerker is highest direct damage set
Sinister is highest condition damage/physical hybrid set
Rabid or Carrion are highest condition damage but also defensive.
Soldiers/Knights are essentially handicapped zerker sets for people who can’t dodge or don’t know how to organize active defenses

The other set you can use is assassins for high crit builds. Some thief and eles use this set for maximum crits on big damage attacks.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

You’ve pretty much got it covered.

Zerker is highest direct damage set
Sinister is highest condition damage/physical hybrid set
Rabid or Carrion are highest condition damage but also defensive.
Soldiers/Knights are essentially handicapped zerker sets for people who can’t dodge or don’t know how to organize active defenses

The other set you can use is assassins for high crit builds. Some thief and eles use this set for maximum crits on big damage attacks.

I want to like assassin’s, but I just can’t see a reason for it to exist. People with berserker’s stats have already found ways to hit the 100% crit chance cap, and that’s with only a minor boost to precision. If it was Ferocity/Power/Precision, I’d run it in a hearbeat on big-hitting classes like thief, but right now the increased crit chance doesn’t feel like it really does anything.

On my guardian Im currently running Valkyrie gear with Captain trinkets. Gives me a bit more survivability than straight out zerker, while not trading in as much damage as Soldier/Knight would.

You do a Burn or hybrid build for guard, works awesome in PvP, but its less effective in PvE, though still decent.

Just get a cheap exotic set for your guardian, slap on some runes of Balthazar or Legion and go at it. There are some decent builds posted in the guardian section. I personally run balth runes. Build wise if you can, avoid the traits that apply burn on blocks cause you won’t be blocking as much in PvE due to mobs ability timers being too long and unblockable boss abilities.

Other then that, have fun.

Assassin has some merit for reflect mesmer since (if I understand well) your power stat is ignored for attacks you reflect, but your own precision can cause a crit. So going for maxed crit chance at the detriment of power makes sense.