It’s really all about what you’re comfortable with. I like to think that dying is the game’s way of telling you that you’re doing something that isn’t right for you yet.
The biggest thing unmentioned in guides (for any class really) you read like at Metabattle is a lot of people have been doing these encounters and content for years now. They have encounters timed out that they know when abilities are going to happen and what they need to do to counter them. So newer players who haven’t run these encounters a bunch of times are going to run into issues when they go in and don’t recognize that hand rising means you will need to dodge after 2 seconds and other various tells.
A lot of what works and doesn’t work really depends on your group. A lot of those Metabattle guides also don’t mention they’re intended to be ran only with other Berserker groups who destroy the content faster than was ever intended allowing you to bypass certain boss mechanics by burning down the boss as fast as possible before they even have a chance to do those mechanics! So not running Berserker if the rest of your group is can become a bad scenario for everyone as well if the group you run with is setup for that. However as Evalia mentioned if you’re not in one of those groups it’s not a race and it’s more important to be learning the mechanics of the encounters.
It’s also important to recognize the group you’re with and how they play. Stacking might is an AOE mechanic that happens around you. If your group isn’t stacked up around you and most of them are all ranged and kiting the mob that won’t help anyone but yourself. In those cases it might be better to simply put on a Staff, back up and kite as well for your own self survivability. The same goes if someone is already sharing Might like a Phalanx Strength warrior.
Generally speaking you want to focus on Power currently over Condition damage. This is because many classes have passive ways to apply bleeds which can often times take up much of the bleed stacks (example: Mesmer on crit, Warrior on crit, etc). There are also many encounters in the game that are simply immune to Conditions and Crits so ultimately focusing on Power is the most versatile solution. While learning I’m personally a fan of using Power focused gear with some defensive stats on it (such as Valykrie or Soldiers). This gives you a little bit more HP and Toughness to survive an extra few hits without immediately going downed at the loss of a little bit of damage (depending how overboard you go with it).
As for Might Stacking itself Scepter/Dagger definitely my favorite as well. The key getting up to 25 is not only stacking it initially but always switching back to Fire on cool down and reapplying it through DT+Fire Ring repeatedly. Runes of Strength are also huge, but fairly spendy so make sure you put them only in gear you can salvage (can’t salvage WvW gear or Karma gear).
Kodiak X – Blackgate
