Guild Wars 2

With the fixing of guardian shield is sword/shield a viable option for dungeons now? I was thinking of running radiance/valor/virtues in full Sinister gear.

Definitely really good for Fractals, especially for the Grawl fractal’s last boss. Not sure how well for regular dungeons but skill 5 could ruin a good stack. From the footage I’ve seen of Raids, it looks like it might be viable for that content too.

Mace is superior to sword now for PvE content. Sword is just too much of a burden to use against enemies you won’t need the teleport for.

Black Box.9312:

Mace is superior to sword now for PvE content. Sword is just too much of a burden to use against enemies you won’t need the teleport for.

Doesn’t the sword blind? Isn’t that useful?

Ok so if I wanted to go sinister I should use sword/ torch?

Black Box.9312:

Mace is superior to sword now for PvE content. Sword is just too much of a burden to use against enemies you won’t need the teleport for.

Been gone a year. Last time I played mace was frowned upon and sword was praised. I still decided to built moot anyway just in case mace ever became good. So what changed while I was away to reverse the roles?

Aza.2105:

Black Box.9312:

Mace is superior to sword now for PvE content. Sword is just too much of a burden to use against enemies you won’t need the teleport for.

Been gone a year. Last time I played mace was frowned upon and sword was praised. I still decided to built moot anyway just in case mace ever became good. So what changed while I was away to reverse the roles?

Sword and mace were always close, Mace gained a damage modifier and sword lost one shifting the gap heavily into mace’s favor, I wanna say it’s around 7% worse dps than mace on any build atm.

kitten I just really want to make sword work for PVE. Love the way Jormag’s breath look on guardian. Any help making a build would be greatly appreciated.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/1/18/Jormags_breath_animated.gif

Adam.3716:

kitten I just really want to make sword work for PVE. Love the way Jormag’s breath look on guardian. Any help making a build would be greatly appreciated.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/1/18/Jormags_breath_animated.gif

I don’t think it’d be too much of a hit, really, but Guardian sword has always just been pretty wonky. The autoattack is really hit-or-miss (literally), and isn’t very effective against trash mobs since roughly half of its DPS is in the non-cleaving third hit. There’s not much reason to use the blind anymore, and there never was a reason to use the 3 skill to begin with.

Sword/Shield is the best very reliable to reflect those fireballs at the weapons testing in the Molten Facility fractals. The rest take Mace, really.

Velho.7123:

Sword/Shield is the best to reflect those fireballs at the weapons testing in the Molten Facility fractals. The rest take Mace, really.

I beg to differ, you can do the same with mace for blocking those, with the 3 skill. And you don’t need shield there, if you have retreat and wall with mace you can block all of them in given phase with a tiny bit of team work, or just put on focus and use shelter to cover them all solo.

So there is no build that makes sword useful? I was thinking full sinister meditation. Sword/torch.

Sword is worse than mace for zerk and sinister setups. It’s not as bad for sinister though for trash. You want to run scepter for bosses for sinister though. Valor is also not a good line for pve. Condi guard might be worse in expansion as well so I wouldn’t invest in a set yet since they might change stuff. So basically, just use mace as guard and sword for other classes like rev and mes.

In the meantime, if you REALLY want to use Sword, make sure you bring Retribution, since the old Powerful Blades trait that gives +10% Sword and Spear damage is still in there.

what? i dont want to ask for a nerf for Retribution but they need to fix the effect or the tooltip... preferably the tooltip because that merge was totally unknown to me. are there more of these kind of traits?

Adam.3716:

kitten I just really want to make sword work for PVE. Love the way Jormag’s breath look on guardian. Any help making a build would be greatly appreciated.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/1/18/Jormags_breath_animated.gif

You can play how you want. If you like sword, go for it. Not following the meta doesn’t mean you still can’t do the encounter, it just means you’ll be taking extra time. Depending on group this may be anywhere from a kick to an attitude of “we’re here to have fun, and part of that is you using an awesome sword”. You should try to find more people like the latter.

SirMoogie.9263:

Adam.3716:

kitten I just really want to make sword work for PVE. Love the way Jormag’s breath look on guardian. Any help making a build would be greatly appreciated.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/1/18/Jormags_breath_animated.gif

You can play how you want. If you like sword, go for it. Not following the meta doesn’t mean you still can’t do the encounter, it just means you’ll be taking extra time. Depending on group this may be anywhere from a kick to an attitude of “we’re here to have fun, and part of that is you using an awesome sword”. You should try to find more people like the latter IMHO.

He asked about sword/shield being useful so I guess he somewhat cares about being optimal.

Keksmuffin.1450:

SirMoogie.9263:

Adam.3716:

kitten I just really want to make sword work for PVE. Love the way Jormag’s breath look on guardian. Any help making a build would be greatly appreciated.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/1/18/Jormags_breath_animated.gif

You can play how you want. If you like sword, go for it. Not following the meta doesn’t mean you still can’t do the encounter, it just means you’ll be taking extra time. Depending on group this may be anywhere from a kick to an attitude of “we’re here to have fun, and part of that is you using an awesome sword”. You should try to find more people like the latter IMHO.

He asked about sword/shield being useful so I guess he somewhat cares about being optimal.

That’s a good point, but useful doesn’t mean optimal. It’s not a well defined term in context either. I took it to mean will still allow him to complete dungeons with a team. Of course it will as other factors matter more to dungeon completion than one weapon choice.

Well I guess it’s a matter of priorities. I would prefer playing sword aswell, I got sword skins worth thousands of gold that I can’t really use now while I kinda dislike mace skins in general but I still use mace because it just outclasses sword in pretty much every aspect in pve.

On the plus side mace feels a lot more active and is more than just spamming your auto until weaponswap is up again. Getting a dps increase out of protectors strike is fun.