Guild Wars 2

The Build

I’ve been trying out a hybrid PU build in sPvP that I’ve had some decent success with, and I imagine it’d work even better roaming in WvW, but that’s something I’m still getting into, so I haven’t tried it out myself yet.

The way I play it is essentially to survive and ramp up damage over time through applying a variety of conditions as well as direct damage from interrupts/phantasms/direct attacks and might stacking; it’s not uncommon to have 15-25 stacks up at any given time. I’ve found that it works incredibly well in 1v1s, quite well in 1vX, and even works decently well in teamfights due to the AoE damage/control that GS provides and the ability to consistently interrupt high priority targets.

I’m not saying it’s the most powerful build out there, and to be perfectly honest, a lot of the reason I use it is that I’m TERRIBLE at shatter, bu I’m posting to the forums mainly to get thoughts on the build in general, and more specifically, ways that it could be improved.

The build looks potentially decent. I have some worries though.

It’s obviously built on the same sort of meta-build as celestial eles/warriors/insert might stacking class here. You take the celestial amulet for general stats, then rely on constant might stacking to make up the difference in damage. There’s just one issue, and that issue is that you need constant might stacking.

Most of the classes that do this can stack might with either long duration skills (20s duration) or blast finishers (20s base duration as well). This long base duration scales impressively well with the strength runes % increase. However, the only might access you have in this build other than battle sigils is from BI, and that has a 10 second base duration. So instead of getting nearly 30s of might per application, you get only about 15s. On top of that, you also rely heavily on interrupts to get that might stacked, you can’t maintain it on your own.

Basically, I’m very skeptical that you can reliably maintain enough might to make this build work effectively. Yes, you’ll have times when you built up a load of stacks from a couple interrupts in a row, but that’s the exception to the norm. You only have 3 interrupts in your entire build, all of which are on cooldowns of 30 seconds or higher, and 2 of which are single target. In order to maintain even 10 stacks of might from interrupts, you need to hit with every single interrupt you have, immediately off of cooldown. I just don’t see it working.

Wow this is interesting.

I can definitely see it working, but it seems very uniquely shaped to your own personal playstyle (which is pretty cool) so it’s hard to give “general” advice. I agree with Py- errr… Fay, that the build’s success will depend almost entirely on your interrupting ability, and to that end I’m curious if you’ve tried Focus over Torch for better AoE application (though while I know that kinda diminishes the point of PU since you’d only have 2 stealths, just throwing the idea out there for something to try out.)

I think that if you can maintain atleast 12ish stacks of might (an extra 420 power/condition damage) constantly, you’re good to go. Sigils of Strength may be an interesting alternative to the energy sigil on Greatsword.