Guild Wars 2

Been playing around with this build a lot tweaking it here and there and I’ve finally come up with something a good bit better that I have been enjoying a ton so far

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQUQNAndWjMap7VaibMcKCZGP7XzCge8+cVLqCrD;TMALLGJMhA

Basically going for all power using axe/focus and deathshroud as primary damage source with staff secondary for aoe/utility when needed. Also focuses heavily on stacking vulnerability for increasing everyones damage on the target still. The 5 Points in Blood Magic for Full of Life could also be useful in a few other places but a matter of personal preference on that one really.

Utilities:
1 – Blood is Power for Might Stacking along with the Death Shroud trait
2 – Well of Suffering for AoE Damage and more importantly Vulnerability stacking
3 – Spectral Walk for Stun break + Swiftness + Life Force regen while being attacked.
Elite – Lich Form for Bosses / single target and Plague for any tougher aoe encounters.

As always some of these are switched around as the encounter/situations demands but this is what I been using in general.

Armor:
Helm, Shoulders, Chest, and gloves are all Power/Toughness/Vitality exotics bought with karma from Orr Temple vendors.

Leggings and Boots are both Knights crafted gear (Toughness/Power/Precision) atm threw in to add at least a little more crit to boost the dps a little bit.

ALL Armor pieces have Crest of the Soldier on them atm for a good boost to all 3 Power/Toughness/Vitality.

Jewelry is all Emerald Orichalcum crafted jewelry with the exception of the Ancient Karka Shell from the Lost Shores event. All gems on the jewelry have been replaced with Crest of the Soldier as well. Backpiece is still the Mad Kings Memories until can afford to craft an ascended Power/Tough/Vitality piece but it also has a Crest of the Soldier in it. Also working on getting Nightmare Coils to replace rings and Emerald Pendant for the Amulet. Ascended Jewelry obviously great as well if can get a hold of Lost Seal of Usoko and/or Royal Signet of Doric.

Weapons:
Primary: Ghastly Axe (Power/Toughness/Vitality) from AC Vendor with Superior Sigil of Peril in it for increased Vulnerability duration
Offhand: Knight’s Pearl Focus which is crafted with Toughess/Power/Precision and using a sigil of bloodlust for power boost

Secondary: Knight’s Pearl Quarterstaff also crafted and using Superior Sigil of Fire atm.

*Worth noting is that all Power/Toughness/Vitality gear can also be found on AC, SE or HotW Dungeon Vendors – WvW Vendors for Badges of Honor and Order of the Vigil vendor if your a member. For a great site to find locations of all the gear with the stat combo you want this site is amazing: http://wiki.guildwar...m_nomenclature.

Unbuffed Stats with above gear and build setup:
Power: 2,236
Precision: 1,295
Toughness: 2,046
Vitality: 1,375

Attack: 3,201
Critical Chance: 22%
Armor: 2,996
HP: 22,962

Base Unbuffed Noncrit Damage on test dummies in LA:
Axe #1 Autoattack: 700-900 Damage
Axe #2 Ghastly Claws Ability: 3k Damage on a 6.5s Cooldown
Axe #3 Unholy Feast: 900 AoE + Cripple + Retaliation per target hit
Deathshroud #1 Autoattack: 800+ increasing as might stacks
Deathshroud Life Transfer: 2400 AoE
Lich Form #1 Attack: 1600

All of these numbers are base with no might stacks and no other boons or consumables used. Obviously when using it the numbers get higher with the use of Blood is Power and Deathshroud might stacking paired up with the vulnerability stacking. Master Maintenance Oils are amazing with this build as you have a high toughness/vitality both of which are converted to Power with the Oil active.

For WvW and Event Farming I’ll switch out the IX Death Shivers Major Trait in Death Magic for the V Staff Mastery Trait since they are more aoe intense and thus use the staff more for those but otherwise this build has worked out great for doing everything pretty well so far. Any questions just hit me up and any tips or suggestions are always most appreciated

Nice build!

I tried something similar with Axe,dagger and minion not long ago. Interresting build!

tho, I think Axe vuln stacking is a bit slow and weak. For a near melee weapon, I rarely used #1 auto attack, I used #4 focus to stack to vuln, then #2 for damage and switched to dagger(or #3). But since you use staff, it’s different.

But with all those vuln buff, I bet a dagger over a staff would do crazy damage. But you have to sacrifice your range, and not everybody want to do that.

Oh And what do you think of Death shiver trait? AoE vuln staking in DS?

Personnally I didn’t like it at all. The vuln stacking is really slow and only stack 1 vuln charge each 3 sec. I didn’t think it was worth it.

Good job<!

I use a very similar build (might/vuln stacking). One thing you might want to try is ditching the Soldier’s crests for Monk/Water/Strength runes. The Boon duration and Might duration stack, and the Boon duration also helps with keeping Swiftness up more.

I need to test more to see if the loss of raw stats is worth it.

just wondering why you put 5 points in blood magic …. would use them in death magic (dark armor I or staff skill 20%) or soul reaping (last gasp) instead.

AFAIK, all might duration 2-sets stack, so you could have 3x 20% might duration and end up with 20s+ mights.

Kardiamond.6952:

Nice build!

I tried something similar with Axe,dagger and minion not long ago. Interresting build!

tho, I think Axe vuln stacking is a bit slow and weak. For a near melee weapon, I rarely used #1 auto attack, I used #4 focus to stack to vuln, then #2 for damage and switched to dagger(or #3). But since you use staff, it’s different.

But with all those vuln buff, I bet a dagger over a staff would do crazy damage. But you have to sacrifice your range, and not everybody want to do that.

Oh And what do you think of Death shiver trait? AoE vuln staking in DS?

Personnally I didn’t like it at all. The vuln stacking is really slow and only stack 1 vuln charge each 3 sec. I didn’t think it was worth it.

Good job<!

I have yet to mess with Dagger much more as I’ve never been a big fan of close range melee style combat in any game over the years really, though I admit what little I did mess with it here on the Necro was kinda fun. I’ll have to play with it some more at some point.

I’ve found with a combination of #4 Focus and Axe #1 I can usually maintain a vulnerability stack around 14-17 which isn’t to bad.

Concerning the Death Shiver trait I am kinda up in the air about that one to. As you mentioned it does stack rather slow and sometimes it’s hard to tell that its even working at all lol. I may switch to protection from wells for a little added support in dungeons but in wvw and general open world pve I use the Staff Mastery anyways since those involve a lot more aoe.

Regrets of Sini.6083:

AFAIK, all might duration 2-sets stack, so you could have 3x 20% might duration and end up with 20s+ mights.

Test this in the mists BEFORE you spend money on runes.

IIRC, 2 of the +Might rune sets count as the same set. So you end up with 4/6 in Fire/Hoelbrack and 2/6 in Strength, rather than 2/6 in all 3 sets.

oneking.7396:

just wondering why you put 5 points in blood magic …. would use them in death magic (dark armor I or staff skill 20%) or soul reaping (last gasp) instead.

I was kinda up in the air on this one but I think I’m going to switch it over to Last Gasp in Soul Reaping. The added LF Pool I can see being more helpful than the 50 Vit/Healing and we have a few sources of regen already that the protection from dark armor could be more useful. I never have a problem generating enough LF really but the extra gain from dark armor surely doesn’t hurt either.

Another option would be to get ritual of life in blood magic, sacrifice a bit of power to get a nice heal on revives.

PinCushion.7390:

Regrets of Sini.6083:

AFAIK, all might duration 2-sets stack, so you could have 3x 20% might duration and end up with 20+s mights.

Test this in the mists BEFORE you spend money on runes.

IIRC, 2 of the +Might rune sets count as the same set. So you end up with 4/6 in Fire/Hoelbrack and 2/6 in Strength, rather than 2/6 in all 3 sets.

Tested this last night. Triple 2-set gives 60% duration.
BiP has 12 sec duration, with 10 points in Death Magic BiP’s duration is 13.25, which the 2-set’s then add to for an additional 7.9 sec. When added together my BiP was 21 sec.

Now add 2x sigil of Battles to that, plus Reapers Might and you can maintain a good deal of might (I don’t want to say how much, just try it and see for yourselves) for quite some time while in combat. If you get lucky or get good with focus and well of corruption you can throw a 25 stack of vulnerability on your target to go with all that might. Add in close to death for a 20% dmg and well… let’s just say “Beastmancer lives!”

maybe we shouldn’t be talking about this though. I’ve just fine tuned this build I don’t want it to get nerfed >:)

I almost think you’re going to have too much vulnerability. I also agree with people here if you’re going to go axe with Vuln stacking and well of suffering you should be going dagger.(which you can do easily with this build).

This build is pretty solid for wvw as well because of the ability to solo/small scale with D/W and A/F or switch to Staff for zerg surfing.(switching the DS vuln trait for Faster cooldowns on staff is also a good trait if you find yourself using staff more).

I’ve been taking a lot of flack lately from people saying power specs are weak, and I can’t go back to relying on epidemic after well spiking people. BiP→WoS→dagger 3 → dagger 1→wh 4 daze and DS 3 for interupts on heals.

I have been thinking about a similar build that uses DS as a primary damage source. Interesting that the 3 sets adding +20% might duration stack.

This: http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mVVm0McM0mTCFmmTCFmx9Maxokbooaq8khA707kiH7ki37070z7kGo70V7ofD70m
…is my build. I chose Soul Marks so that every staff skill nets life force, then uses the +might and pierce/vuln traits for DS1 to do most of the damage and buff me up.

I’m still debating whether or not the +10% dmg on marks or the retaliation on entering DS trait is better in my 2nd major for spite and whether or not I should drop my 10 in Blood Magic for 10 in Death Magic and staff mastery (I just really hate reanimator). I expect I’ll use the staff a lot since it gives me so much life force. I just have the dagger/warhorn set to switch to when I spectral grasp someone to me or when I need to move fast.

I havent realy tested Retalitaion to much in this game. I understand it scale from power, how much do Retaliation proc on this build?

I guess Retaliation is as good as it gets with a build like this.

Pretty sure Retaliation is calculated based off the opponents power, not your own, as they are the one hitting you.

Pinkus.2860:

Pretty sure Retaliation is calculated based off the opponents power, not your own, as they are the one hitting you.

I can be just as sure Retaliation is calculated by how much force is applied when I smash my mouse on the table like a spastic halftard and scream POTATO!!!

But there is probably a more reasonable way to determine how retaliation damage is calculated.

MysticoN.5068:

I havent realy tested Retalitaion to much in this game. I understand it scale from power, how much do Retaliation proc on this build?

I guess Retaliation is as good as it gets with a build like this.

Retaliation is great when it lands but there are exploitable bugs that prevent it from doing damage.

Pinkus.2860:

Pretty sure Retaliation is calculated based off the opponents power, not your own, as they are the one hitting you.

Retaliation is calculated based on your power not your enemies.

“Retaliation deals 267 damage per hit at level 80 with the base power of 916, and +1 damage for every 13.4 power above that. It is not reduced by the target’s armor.”

It can also trigger damage based proc based effects from runes and sigils.

The damage is so slow once people realize this they will ignore you….Try a 30/30 Condition build and you will see how fast things die.