Ive spent the vast majority of my play time since launch running a toughness/AH build with something like 0/15/30/20/5 for, well, everything. It was tanky and survivable, and performed great for everything I did whether that be PvE roaming, wvwvw zerging, dungeons, events, solo grinding, etc. I didnt slow down ever because I rarely had to, and as my gameplay evolved, I found myself rarely going down in health.
After the trials were released I tried to solo it with my AH build. My RL twin plays the game too; he has a badkitten engi full ascendent, zerker, who just wrecks everything he comes into contact with. He first soloed t4 trials on release day after figuring out the strat.
I thought to myself, “Man Ive soloed so much stuff I didnt think possible, and can survive super well in dungeons – I bet I can do this.” Lets just say it was a realization – I didnt have the damage to down the plunderers. I tried more control, even pushing as much burst as I could with other sigils, but none of it could drop these guys fast enough. Then again I thought a 5k crit on a MB was crazy rare, and a 5k whirlwind the same.
My bro duoed it with me to show me the strat. After a few failed attempts due to my lackluster DPS (which he pointed out after comparing numbers on mumble) I tried a few different builds, and finally decided to get out my old zerker set and try a pure DPS build, gear and all.
Lets just say it was night and day in performance in terms of taking out the plunderers swiftly. As in, easily doing twice the damage I was before, and able to compress it in shorter burst windows.
I thought, well this build is great at this but I bet it falls down everywhere else. So I’ve spent the past couple days running it through hard dungeons, easy paths, wvwvw, solo pve. It blew my mind away how much faster everything was. With my engi bro in a party, it wasnt uncommon to see 16k crit whirlwinds in CoF, which is lvl 75. I started to think, “this is 3x the damage I was putting out with a nearly 3k attack, 40 crit, 80 crit damage AH build.” In overworld events I’ve come close to 18k whirlwinds at 80.
Another thing I have come to realize: reviving a teammate is the most powerful heal in the game. It’s fast if you have aware teammates, and going down doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It’s a fact zerkers go down but I found in groups where its all extreme DPS, going down wasn’t a bad at all since I could capitalize on it with Honor IV Protective Reviver – it was an effective way of healing, reducing passive damage, and supporting the team that I never get to use on tanky (but DPS ineffectual builds) that other players use. Running with a hammer and Signet of Judgement, that trait alone gave me the tankiness of valor guardian (without the healing).
Downed status is a design apparatus to make up for the lack of a trinity in this game. Berzerkers capitalize the most on this feature. Guardians have some of the best innate defenses built into the class, and the fact that we can get so tanky using blinds/blocks/dodge allows us to further take advantage of “moar deeps”.
So the build I’m running is a 20/25/0/25/0 build. For solo it destroys anything I touch by opening with virtue of justice, symbol from 2h sword, leap, WW. I find the resource runs to be twice as fast, event farming even faster, wvwvw zerg rushing to be okay (using a pvt wep); in dungeons I still offer great support through aoe blinds, high dps with mild control, and still decent sustain through dodge healing/GS healing. Running with an engineer and warrior just scales so well with the build its quite silly.
Making the switch literally changed the game for me. Mastering dodge, timing of active mitigation, and crazy dps has made high armor and healing simply wasted on me. This is only more clearly shown in groups where cross buffing and debuffing is more prevalent. I was a limiting factor in how long fights took by speccing for more defense than my skill ceiling had risen to.
I’m not advocating that DPS is all you should spec for and that tank builds are useless. This is obviously not the case for sPvP at all. Wvwvw also has plenty of room for all types. I’ve just evolved is all. If you havent tried it yet – its a rush and I recommend it.
So, here ya go. Look it over and give me some advice if youve been down this path and have any recommendations.
(For solo pve I actually drop the Renewed Focus for the Sylvari Hound and Signet of Judgement for Retreat- more dps. For groups I drop Superior Aria for Protective Reviver (Honor IV), for Fractal Maw I use Staff/Scepter+Focus and drop GS Power for Scepter Power in Zeal)
