PvE Powermancer build
I use D/WH + A/F power build. for PvE the 400 toughness while channeling is pretty good with axe and dagger 2 and D/S 4 you will be channeling a lot. It lets you run a little less toughness overall. If you go against a Kholer type mob if you get caught just pop d/s and you should have enough life force to survive.
I wouldnt worry about condition transfers for BiP with consume conditions and the heal from D 2 it will make that a wash really.
I think the Warhorn is the most under rated weapon overall. The daze is great i use it in pretty much every instance of the game. Interupting heals on veterans in wvw saves a lot of time. WH 5 works even after you switch weapon sets so pop it right before you switch and as swiftness/cripple is always good.
As far as lacking aoe yes it is weak, but in dungeons you’re focusing down mobs asap anyways most of the time. Well of suffering is almost always on my utility bar and i usually rotate well of power and corruption pretty regularly depending on what dungeon i am running ( TA has a lot of conditions so WoP works well Dagger Dagger is great in this dungeon with the Condition transfer on D 4)
As far as the focus goes the focus 4 fits right in to the vuln stacking scheme you have and use it when the Well of suffering is on cooldown. focus 5 chill is great for when you are low health and need to kite a bit
Any way you go it will add value to a group.
I personally dislke staff for power builds just because to do any decent dps you need all the mobs to be in a line for Staff 1 to hit them all. ( the speed of this projectile is waay to slow to be effective. Marks are good and with the 20% cooldown reducion you can keep regen up constantly but you will still have to wait for staff 3 4 5 to cooldown. In my opinion save staff for condition builds when your primary weapon is scepter.
@Dariroch
All interesting points, I think I am happy with the weapon choices (I may swap OH dagger for Warhon in the future)
What’s your oppinion on the choice of traits/gear/sigils – I have chosen the current setup from the perspective of DPS
As a conditionmancer I run full rabid with rampager/carrion trinkets – I generally find I am the last player to go down – probably too much toughness
Not sure what amount of toughness (i.e. how many knight pieces to use) to give the optimum surviveability versus dps setup
Just a note on BiP, if you use it without a target then you don’t suffer the self-bleed but you do get the 10 stacks of might.
Otherwise use it to boost your heal (if you’re running consume conditions), or use it when you swap to staff and transfer them with the mark.
I run knight’s head, gloves and boots and then full berserker’s elsewhere. (0 in death and 20 in blood) and survive just fine, but then this would differ based on play style and experience playing as a ‘melee’.
Lastly, I run warhorn with the dagger and it is extremely useful, mainly for the daze. It’s saved lives more times than I care to count and can also shut down whole groups of mobs (especially as an opener when you KNOW a certain ability will be used straight off the bat)
Honestly all knights jewelry and maybe 1 knights armor piece max rest zerker or pow tough vit.
I use a mix of 2 Pow tough vit (ac armor) and 2 tough prec vit gear(knights) 2 Berzerkers Pow Prec crit. Honestly 3-4 Knights total gear is all you will need.
Your Dps will be higher than mine. I run a slightly more defensive build of 30/0/10/5/25 or 30/0/0/15/25 most of the time.
Pretty much any way how you spend the 15 points besides spite and soul reaping doesn’t really matter much if you want to focus on Crit more do Curses you want to have channeling/staff/well buffs go Death. If you want dagger bonuses/ vampiric go blood. its all stylistic beyond that,
Your traits are almost the same as I would do.
Sigils might on weapon swap, blood lust I use aoe chill on weapon swap for WvW.