Guild Wars 2

In order to avoid respec’ing, I’m running the following WvW build, that I’m hoping to also use for AOE farming. It’s a power build with pieces of rare/exotic Berserker armor and rubies.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBmWDbkRrSPTzdjfTRIp4ZXDSx71VkijZMqCrD;TsAg2Crouxcj4G7Nubk3s2YsxuBA

Note, its very mark dependent with nothing to help wells, because I use marks and signets in WvW.

Unfortunately I almost die whenever I fight 4+ lvl 80 mobs….and I can never kill a Veteran for it, which is almost necessary when running nodes in the Straits of Malachor.

Am I asking too much of my build? Do I really need to respec a separate equipment/trait setup every time I want to go from farming to WvW?

What are others doing?

Only up to sixty myself so far but Scepter/Dagger with build focusing on condition damage/crit and using the utilities blood is power and epidemic.

Gather up your group, hit them with your four aoe’s between scepter/dagger and staff and then use blood is power. They should all have about 9 stacks of bleeding and a poison on them. Use epidemic on one and suddenly all but one have twice that much. Focus on the one you used epidemic on while the rest melt away. Has worked for me so far. You can even pop into DS and use the #4 if you want more AoE damage to wrap it up. Remember to use Scepter #2 as often as possible to keep them crippled and run in a circle around them. Scrippled foes moving in a circle don’t get a chance to attack very often. Remember to strafe, not run backwards.

That’s good advice for a conditionmancer, but I’m trying to eliminate the need to respec for WvW. Right now my build is power/crit and my rare/exotics are power/crit.

I’m having a hard enough time crafting my exotic power armor, let alone having to craft two different sets of armor AND respec every time I switch between farming/wvw

since you’re equiped with berserker gear, you’ll want to max your power and crit damage, so imo a 20/20/0/0/30 or a 30/10/0/0/30 build would be better suited, not only have you given yourself an extra dps boost (extra power and crit damage) but your death shroud will be instrumental in farming multiple enemies in pve, i’m currently using axe and focus with staff on offhand (although i don’t switch to staff that often anymore unless i fight a vet to pull him into marks before wells)

pull a group, lay down your 3 wells, switch to ds and press #4 after the channel ends everything inside the wells is dead, it’s as simple as that, if something survives use axe #2 to refill your lf pool and rinse repeat, i took down a veteran giant like that somewhat easily as well, took 3x 3 wells though and some dodging haha

for traits, take chill on blind very handywith well of darkness, axe mastery: axe #2 is very powerfull in pve, i had it crit in it’s final hit during the channel for over 5.5k on regular occasions, faster skill cldwn in ds, slower lf depletion, faster ds recharge so you can pop in and out very easily, to survive or get might stacks

my axe has a quickness rune and my focus has the chance to chill on crit rune

i’m currently saving up for an exotic dagger and warhorn in offhand, so i can daze if need be and to get dagger #2 and #3, and of course warhorn #4 and #5 can both be very handy if things go wrong

as for armor runes, i took the advice in the mr freeze thread, but i’m currently looking at divinity runes (so very expensive right now:( ) to improve my overall stats instead (i want to give my crit% another push) of just increasing frozen duration (which is handy in wvw though if you ever run into 1vs1 or 2vs2)

I guess I could also be open to switching my WvW spec to a more condition-based build but the WvW and AOE farming condition builds would have to be a lot better to make me start getting gear all over again..

Tim,

I’m intrigued with DS being instrumental in farming, but aren’t you kittening your uptime without the lower wells CD trait in blood?

I’m guessing you are using something like this build in order to maximize DS usage:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW3djQaZ6daia87JCoH769OLqwxoe4uyhOA

If you want to stick with that original trait point allocation, I’d just toggle some skills and traits which don’t require respeccing. That might be enough.
Something like:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBmWDbkRrSPTzdjfPBIp45rne094iHpg4hB;TsAg2Crouxcj4G7Nubk3s2YsxuBA

Sorry guys, I’m an idiot.

I didn’t post the right link to my spec. I changed it in the OP, but here it is:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBmWDbkRrSPTzdjfTRIp4ZXDSx71VkijZMqCrD;TsAg2Crouxcj4G7Nubk3s2YsxuBA

Corky.9743:

Tim,

I’m intrigued with DS being instrumental in farming, but aren’t you kittening your uptime without the lower wells CD trait in blood?

I’m guessing you are using something like this build in order to maximize DS usage:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW3djQaZ6daia87JCoH769OLqwxoe4uyhOA

yeah that’s almost exactly what i’m using, though i’ve taken axe mastery instead off the 20% extra damage to enemies below 50%, i’m not sure if that trait works :/ as i haven’t seen any noticable difference in damage for some strange reason

i’d rather have all the bonuses to ds, power, crit and crit damage than 20% faster well recharge and a lot of other things nd stats that really don’t help me kill faster, but i guess it’s just my general preference

it’s really a worthwhile spec i’ve found AND a lot more fun as well than a pure condition build, remember that you’re not just increasing damage while in ds or ds usefullness everything that does damage and can crit will do it 30% harder, and with berserker gear it’s easy enough to get to around 35-40% crit chance and around 70-80% crit damage, probably even 45-50% crit chance with the right runes and sigils, and that’s where the most damage will be coming from, and let’s be honest it’s always nice to see big numbers and extra power means extra damage across the board

all i need to test out now is check if dagger would be better for pure dps than axe, but i’m kind of fond of my axe and can’t afford a berserker exotic dagger yet anyway,
after that 6x divinity runes, and i think it might be very powerfull for farming in pve

and also remember with all the ds improvements your life expectancy increases as well, being able to pop in and out of ds every few sec is so handy

0/20/30/20/0 serves me well, blood is power + epidemic with scepter/dagger and staff. Pick up the well location trait (focused rituals), mostly toughness/vitality gear (soldier or earth) with condition/power in trinklets.

Curses: IV, IX
Death Magic IV, V, VIII
Blood Magic III, VIII

Works good camping big mobs in the Orr.

This is the build i use/ used whilst farming Plinx chain in cursed shore that i made in this video:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQJAWWjEaV6ZaGb07JCZGP7aQPevucW8hgB;TIALCGEA

• Armour is full level 80 rare (yellow) Magic Find, 5 runes of the pirate, 1 rune of the traveler.
• Jewelery is the level 80 masterwork (green) Magic Find, with the 3% mf gems replaced with 4%
• I use a Magic Find staff with a luck sigil to stack up to 25 stacks of luck before switching to my exotic staff for damage.
• Using Omnombery Bars for food

Total Magic Find is 161%

On average i was farming 2 to 3 gold & 20k karma per hour

GW2 skills. That’s my current build for Cursed Shore, with Magic Find gear on. You can swap Spectral Walk for Well of Darkness if you need the extra survivability. However you should have enough in Area Weakness from the Poison fields.

So, I’ve come to the conclusion that AOE grinding mobs and node farming is inferior to chain running events with the zerg. I’ve upgraded my MF gear (thanks for the staff-swapping idea Ascii!) and will be using that for my $$/karma farming.

Not sure if you know this BTW, but you don’t actually need to have 2 staffs equipped. Just swap the Luck one out with the MF one, manually, after you have your 25 charges. Then you can still leave axe/warhorn equipped for run speed/life force recharge.

So, the only thing that is mandatory in this kind of build is Greater Marks and Staff Mastery, in the Death Magic tree, which is great because a WvW power build should have these anyway.

Now its just a question of how I want the rest of the WvW build to look. I’m wondering whether a 30-point Soul Reaping would be worth it. I haven’t done much WvW, but I assume your lifeforce can stay pretty high with all the deaths around you. Couple that with the Soul Reaping DS traits and you could probably stay in DS for a long time (when you aren’t slamming down your staff marks):

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBmODbESLTvTzYjfPRIp4ZXDSx71F1D3VO0B;T0A5TSnUPpciiLDXCusc54Sy1igBBbQA

I’ll probably start another thread focusing on this WvW build, but if you have any thoughts here, please let me know!