Guild Wars 2

So I thought about using swords on my Guardian after getting my hands onto a very nice looking sword that I cant use on any other character.

Now here is the deal: I have a lot of chars with weird builds but my Guardian is a very much DPS focused char with full Zerk.

I went to the wiki for some numbers (Yes this is nerdy and unnecessary) but couldnt find a number for the exact duration of Whirling Wraith so I tried it and ended up with ~2.3 seconds.

Now here is the thing:

The GS chain does less dps than the Sword chain. Its 4236 dps for the sword chain at 3k power vs 3364 dps for the gs chain.

With 2.3 seconds for GS2, that skill does less dps (4123) than the sword chain at 3000 power, but only marginaly more dps than the sword chain at lower levels of power. The break even point here seems to be at about 2400 power which is basically what you have on an unbuffed full zerk Guardian anyway. This is on top of the fact that the GS2 ability is cooldown based so the effective dps are somwhere between those of GS2 and the GS chain.

So I wonder why every guide recommends GS despite having less dps than the sword even on its dps ability with a significantly weaker chain and possibly, where did my calculation go wrong? Some accurate numbers for GS2 would also be nice.

And save yourselves the trouble of metazerk discussions, I play a lot of different builds but this is for my metazerk char.

I would say that every guide suggest a gs because you can hit a lot more enemies with it than only the one or two you can with the sword. Thus your dps gets higher with a gs.
Gs has also some nice skills while sword only has a blink and this channeling attack

Although Sword is better against bosses imo, The greatsword is just simply an amazing all rounder weapon to have, especially if you specc it out with things like Sigils of Fire and Air, with the right build, whirling wrath would hit on average 6k+ along with your other comboes.

Greatsword is preferred over the sword because of its better utility and superior aoe cleave. Also, most builds out there are often for pvp and wvw where the extra cc is usually far more beneficial than a little increase in dps. If there’s one weapon which can see you pull in a circle of enemies and have you burst them down to low health very quickly, it’s the GS.

Thing is though, in 1v1 fights, I’d rather use a hammer or sceptre/ foci over the GS.

I find sword very effective in PvP, it’s the focus of my main build (in my sig). It’s fast, hits hard and all of the damage is loaded on AA instead of easily dodged bursts. I’ll set it up with whichever weapon’s utility I’m looking for at the moment. Scepter is good all around but it’s hard not to take greatsword simply for Binding Blades that pulls thieves in stealth.

Camping sword in dungeons works fine. Again, secondary for whatever I’m looking for at the moment like hammer protection or greatsword cleave.

I’ll take hammer/staff in WvW though in zergs. That’s probably the one place I don’t use it in my build. Roaming on the other hand will have it.

Two things though. AA #2 needs a cripple and AA #3 should be unable to be reflected. Really sucks eating half your melee damage.

Are you accounting for the fact that you can have Symbol of Wrath and Binding Blades (don’t use the pull) ticking at the same time as GS#2 and GS#1? I’m pretty sure those go into the PvE DPS rotation.

Exedore.6320:

Are you accounting for the fact that you can have Symbol of Wrath and Binding Blades (don’t use the pull) ticking at the same time as GS#2 and GS#1? I’m pretty sure those go into the PvE DPS rotation.

I actually forgot about that, but they are also somewhat situational.

You sometimes dont want to use the symbol because of combos and the damage of Binding Blades is low as well as on a 30s cooldown, having nearly zero impact on your overall dps once you calculate it with the cooldown in mind.

I also forgot to mention that I only care about pve situations.

We looked at camping each weapon using optimal setups to camp the weapon. GS + sword/focus rotations do the most dps ignoring pure scepter. GS2 does more dps than sword. It does even more if you stand in a target’kittenbox and hit all 14×. Symbol is a dps gain so it should be in the calc. Binding blades is also a gain. This is due to the condition it applies. It also will hit one target with all the blades meant targets around it if you stand in the hitbox which is nice for bosses with adds like alphard. It wasn’t considered as multiple hits for our calcs though since that is very situational.

obal.3218:

We looked at camping each weapon using optimal setups to camp the weapon. GS + sword/focus rotations do the most dps ignoring pure scepter. GS2 does more dps than sword. It does even more if you stand in a target’kittenbox and hit all 14×. Symbol is a dps gain so it should be in the calc. Binding blades is also a gain. This is due to the condition it applies. It also will hit one target with all the blades meant targets around it if you stand in the hitbox which is nice for bosses with adds like alphard. It wasn’t considered as multiple hits for our calcs though since that is very situational.

The symbol may interfere with the fire fields, so it’s a nuisance to the team.

YuiRS.8129:

The symbol may interfere with the fire fields, so it’s a nuisance to the team.

Just control when to put it. You try to put it right after the last fire field and no nuisance to the team. It’s different with the hammer because its a constant light field, but there is little problem with GS4.

Basically, GS have a bad auto-attack, but great skill 2-5. Sword have bad skill 2-3, but good auto-attack. So the goal here is to use GS skill 2-5, then switch to sword for some auto-attack, etc.

Here some dps numbers for different weapons set. It’s variable depending on what build you are using. There numbers are with a good build, in a good party (might, fury, vulnerability, etc).

- Sceptre : 11-12k dps. But it’s only good against slow/big target when you can land all hits on your smite. Otherwise it drop rapidly in dps (Lupi, Bloomhunger, etc)

- GS + Sw/F : 10-11k dps. Its the standard weapons set in PvE. Give you access to the most blind and dps, in the majority of situation.

- GS + M/F : 10-11k dps. Its always a bit less dps than Sw/F, but not by much (1-2%). It will give you more sustain healing to keep your team alive, but it will make a high uptime of light field that could screw up might blasting. Useful in some particular situation or when you have a PS Warrior.

- Hammer : 9-10k dps. Here you sacrifice some dps to gain perma protection on your team while in melee. 33% damage reduction is huge but that’s mostly for fractal. In dungeon you shouldn’t need it unless you are still learning to dodge. It’s a pain in the kitten if you use it while someone is tying to blast might.

- Sword or GS camping will be around 9k dps. It’s low dps, it have no rotation and limit what you can bring to your team.

Some things are really situational as dps depends upon a variety of factors which some of them have been discussed by Obal. In addition to that, you also have to factor in target AR, ferocity and crit chance (the sum of the precision and fury uptime %) weapon co-efficients, sigils, traits and etc…. This will also change your numbers. Finally, how about the might?

Have you tried disabling melee assist and standing inside the target to land all projectiles with WW and to land multiple binding blades on a single target?

Thaddeus.4891:

Here some dps numbers for different weapons set. It’s variable depending on what build you are using. There numbers are with a good build, in a good party (might, fury, vulnerability, etc).

- Sceptre : 11-12k dps. But it’s only good against slow/big target when you can land all hits on your smite. Otherwise it drop rapidly in dps (Lupi, Bloomhunger, etc)

- GS + Sw/F : 10-11k dps. Its the standard weapons set in PvE. Give you access to the most blind and dps, in the majority of situation.

- GS + M/F : 10-11k dps. Its always a bit less dps than Sw/F, but not by much (1-2%). It will give you more sustain healing to keep your team alive, but it will make a high uptime of light field that could screw up might blasting. Useful in some particular situation or when you have a PS Warrior.

- Hammer : 9-10k dps. Here you sacrifice some dps to gain perma protection on your team while in melee. 33% damage reduction is huge but that’s mostly for fractal. In dungeon you shouldn’t need it unless you are still learning to dodge. It’s a pain in the kitten if you use it while someone is tying to blast might.

- Sword or GS camping will be around 9k dps. It’s low dps, it have no rotation and limit what you can bring to your team.

These numbers are not possible unless all numbers on the wiki are wrong.

Which would be very annoying since the ingame numbers are wrong as well most of the time.

Arkinos.7245:

These numbers are not possible unless all numbers on the wiki are wrong.

Which would be very annoying since the ingame numbers are wrong as well most of the time.

These numbers are possible and the numbers on the wiki are not wrong. Let’s take the easiest example with the hammer. Here is the build I will use.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJASRlsApUo9CxQI8DNR8gY7nX1GoBmP3C-ThRBABXt/o8DPdB5dBAA4BAQp6PmpEMAwBwv/GAO/8zP/8z78zP/8zPfMA6B-e

First we need to see what are our coefficient for the hammer auto-attack. We gonna have 2 coefficient. One normal for the first 2 swing of the hammer and the second for the 3 swing and the symbol (because they won’t have the same amount of damage modifiers). The 3rd swing count as a symbol even if it shouldn’t. That’s 0.8+0.9= 1.7 coefficient for the first 2 swing. The 3rd is 1.0 and with writ of persistance the symbol will have a coefficient of 2.5 over the normal 1.5 coefficient. So that’s 1.0 + 2.5 =3.5.

Power : the build give you 2788 power and you add 170 from the banner of a warrior and 750 from 25 stack of might for a 3708 power.
Weapons damage : 1100 on average.
Crit chance : 55% + 8% (banners) + 20% (fury) = 83%
Crit dmg : 206%
Armor : 2600 (standard use on your tooltip)

If you do the math, you will see 5k dmg fro the 2 first swing and 10k dmg from the last. Now we add the dmg modifiers : (Sigil of Force, Sigil of Night, Scholar Rune, Radiant Power, Fiery Wrath, Slaying Potion, Vulnerability and Symolic Power (but only for the second number). That give use a total of 34 596dmg and the full chain last 3.7sec for a dps of 9 350. After you need to add up the buring which is around 200-300 additional dps. Now, this is the normal maximal dps from that build. You could for exemple have a sigil of slaying for a additional 5% dmg, or have a ranger for frost spirit and spotter. But you could also not activate all your dmg modifier all the time, not having all buff all the time and that will decrease your actual dps.

It will depend on your composition and the skills of your party members.

Thaddeus really well said except this might be confusing…

Armor : 2600 (standard use on your tooltip)

as it is not your armor but the target armor that matters.