Guild Wars 2

Greetings everybody!

Great Sword eternal lover here, so bear with me, please:).

First of all, my apologies if I posted my question in the wrong forum section, or maybe shouldn’t have posted it at all for being a newbie, etc. – didn’t mean to offend, seriously.

It’s just after reading some discussions about the April 15 Feature Pack changes, I came to a conclusion that no class will ever pick Great Sword as their primary weapon from now on, especially not in serious combat engagements, such as PvP or WvW (that is, against player opponents). And being a person which, well, somehow got emotionally tied to Great Swords for all eternity, as they say, I’m asking all those who might take the time to help me – is there a future for people like me in this game?
And my apologies for maybe being too pompous. That’s just the way I feel.

Gwaymor.4835:

I came to a conclusion that no class will ever pick Great Sword as their primary weapon from now on

Why? I missed something about the patch?

Anyway, Mesmers are really good with GS, long range, push back, good phantom skill.

Why would you think that? Warrior, guardian, mesmer, and ranger will still be fine with a GS

Well, just read the warrior’s forum – with the new dual wield trait it seems Great Swords will no longer be viable at all. Same thing about critical damage debuff (sort of). Again, I’m rally a newb, so maybe it’s me who got baffled by all the figures, but that’s why I’m asking my question.

About the trait it is a warrior specific thing, and it won’t make GS not viable at all.
The crit damage nerf is a global nerf, from every armor, weapon and trinkets.

So, yeah, classes that was good with GS will still be good.

This happens every time any game gets a patch, expansion, update or (with single-player games) a sequel.

There are always people predicting doom and gloom – that every minor change will make the affected weapon/stat/class etc. unplayable and no one will want to touch it ever again. In the vast majority of cases it’s an over-reaction and nothing like that happens.

Sometimes it does require players to make some changes to their build or playstyle but that can be as minor as swapping one trait perk or utility skill.

Sometimes it actually makes things more popular. Like the big Dervish update to GW1 – they completely re-worked the profession and before it happened a lot of people were adamant the changes would ruin them, but afterwards they actually worked a lot better. (I had to scrap my entire build because that particular set-up was unplayable, but after a morning of experimentation I ended up with one that was much better.)

Greatsword will still remain viable on Warrior and Guardian. Axe pre-patch is better than Greatsword for Warrior and will be better post-patch, but Greatsword and Axe/Mace combo still does and will do alot of damage

So, what class would be recommended to play? With the Great Sword as main, probably PvP or Wvw oriented, preferably more or less solo… and quite many hours put into learning to play, that’s for sure:).

I would say out of all classes that can use a GS I find ranger the most fun/skill oriented to use. The weapon isn’t made for all out offense on rangers like it is on the other classes. It brings a lot more utility/survivability.

Rangers get a lot of hate in game/forums but they are by far my fav GS class.

Thank you, Countzu. I thought something along the lines when looking at the ranger’s moves with the Great Sword.
Sorry for upping the post, I’d just really like to see a perspective here. Any other input for me?

The change in critical damage will be across the board (not just GS weapon) and frankly it needs a bit of a nerf.

Actually, I think GS will be BETTER after the patch as you will be able to apply a 2nd Sigil to them.

Because of the second sigil and the deconfliction of multiple on-crit sigils, Greatswords will be better after the patch than before.

What you’re getting confused with here is that the Warrior now has a ‘more’ viable build. Axe has been buffed by 10%, making a 6-6-0-2-0 Axe/Mace build the new highest damage spec. This doesn’t reduce the Greatsword’s viability, it just makes the Axe do more damage. Greatswords retain advantages in mobility, in exchange for losing about 5% dps and losing a ranged option.

If an engagement is a short one, the greater mobility may still result in a higher clear speed than using something with greater damage. To be clear, Axe/Mace|GS was never even the max damage spec, but it was used by the earlier meta crafters due to its combination of mobility and damage, making it at that time one of the most viable options for dungeon speedclears. It was outdamaged by another spec. This got corrupted halfway by people who never understood the original intent of the build.

Thank you for the answer, Hayashi, but did I understand you correctly that the Great Sword was ALWAYS a sub-par choice (for the warrior, at least)? So now that it gets a second sigil, but so do the other two-handed weapons, it will remain in the same “place in the charts” relatively to the other two-handed weapons?

If so, then what class would RELATIVELY, as they say, better off using Great Sword compared to, say, hammer (if an answer to this question at all exists)? Forgive my newbness:).

For the warrior, it’s the best two handed weapon for damage, so even though its place doesn’t change, that’d still make it the best. It’s just that it won’t match the axe.

If talking greatsword vs hammer as far as I know only the Guardian and Warrior can use both. In the charts both would get an equal buff in terms of utility from the second sigil.

Generally speaking, the greatsword is a mobility weapon (across all the classes), the hammer is a control weapon. Between these two, any application that requires more mobility will do better with the greatsword, any application that requires more control will do better with the hammer. For instance, a zerg vanguard would do better with a hammer knocking down everyone from an opposing zerg while their damage dealers and conditioners behind them attack the defenseless knockdowned people. Whereas if you’re running the Frostgorge champion train, you’d definitely want a greatsword, or you might have problems even catching up before the champions die.

As a capsule summary:

Axe – Multiple target ranged (Ranger), Cleave DPS (Warrior)
Greatsword – Mobility and 2nd tier Cleave DPS (Warrior, Guardian, Ranger), Ranged single target DPS (Mesmer)
Longbow – Ranged single target DPS (Warrior, Ranger)
Shortbow – Multiple target ranged (Thief), Condition applicator (Ranger)
Pistols – Ranged single target DPS (Thief, Mesmer), Condition applicator (Engineer)
Rifle – Ranged single target DPS (Engineer)
Torch – Burning applicator (Mesmer, Guardian, Ranger)
Warhorn – Swiftness buffer (Necro, Warrior, Ranger)
Swords – Cleave DPS (Guard, Ranger, Thief, Mesmer), Condition applicator (Warrior)
Mace – Counterplay (Guard, Warrior)
Dagger – Main hand: Single target melee DPS (Necro, Thief), Offhand: Condition applicator (Ranger, Thief, Necro), Both: Melee cleave DPS (Elementalist)
Shield – Defense, Control (Guardian, Warrior, Engineer)

Choose the weapon set you need according to what kind of application you’re intending to use it for.

Since certain things are more important than others in normal gameplay, some weapons appear a lot more than others. For instance nearly nobody except rangers use the warhorn (in conjunction with RaO elite), pretty much nobody uses the torch, and because ranged damage is less than melee dps, the melee dps weapons are all more common in PvE than anything else.

Now that’s what I call “a thorough explanation”. At the very least now I can choose those weapon sets for myself.
Thank you so much for that. Cleared things quite a bit:).
Cheers!

Just some extras to the excellent weapon summary from Hayashi:

Longbow for Warriors has several AoE options so it’s not exclusively single target DPS.

Rifle for Warriors was omitted, and is single target ranged DPS (unless you trait Crack Shot.