Guild Wars 2

I pretty much devote almost all of my time in game to WvW, and have tried pretty much every weapon set and build (or similar) that has been posted. I’ve gone back and forth several times on the Wells and Staff power build because in the end, it really comes down to having to give something up. This makes sense, and I actually believe it is a strong design that you can’t have ‘everything’ you’d want — and choices are good for diversity.

So lets take the WvW Power Wells model, and look at what I would say are the most popular and useful traits available for this type of build.

Spite- Marks at the Master level is helpful, but the real reason to go this route is obviously Close to Death.

Curses- Focused Rituals at the Master level is about as far as you’d want to go. Furious Demise and Chilling Darkness (if WoD) are also helpful.

Death- Greater Marks (when fixed for Chillblains) and Staff Mastery would require 20 points in this line. Those that bypass ground-targeting Wells might also consider Ritual of Protection.

Blood- Ritual Mastery is at the Master level. Adept level has some useful traits, but nothing groundbreaking.

Soul Reaping- The entire line has some useful stuff at each stop, but nothing that are mandatory for this specific build. The +crit damage per point in the tree is nice.

1. I think the initial biggest question is if you require Focused Rituals, of if you can do without them. This can often come down to what type of player you are — if you hang around commanders and large groups doing siege/keep battles, the ground targetting would obviously be huge. If you run in small groups, you can likely get away without them.

2. Close to Death or not? With this trait being fixed, it really helps the Spite trait line and a power-well build. I frankly didn’t find the trait, when only 10%, worth investing in what I consider a pretty broken trait line. The Marks trait and Reapers Might are both ‘decent’, but there really aren’t many options there.

3. What to do with the Death line? Right now, with Greater Marks not working correctly for Chillblains, it is easy to put off this trait and use those points into something working correctly. When Greater Marks is completely fixed — this will not be so easy to pass up. Even with this being a power-wells build, you will be using the Staff for your primary damage. Staff Mastery is pretty nice as well, not only for the quicker damaging spells, but being able to have fear available sooner (which will also be much more powerful with a greater marks fear).

4. Do we end up just taking the longer cooldowns on the Wells? If we took what we gathered from the first three questions, we’d be left with a 30-20-20-0-0 build and nothing available for the Blood trait line. The 20% off of Wells is a pretty big boost — 9s off of Suffering and Corruption, 12s off of Darkness and Power). Additionally, if we plan on bringing Well of Blood as our heal, we’d really want Ritual Mastery in our build.

My personal preference? I’m leaning towards 30-20-0-20-0 until Greater Marks is fixed for Chilllblains. Once GM is fixed, I might actually lean towards dropping Focused Rituals and the Curses line entirely for a 30-0-20-20-0 build. I also do a fair amount of small group stuff, so the ground-targetting of the Wells, especially in open-field where they are dodged out of more frequently, isn’t as big a deal.

With the new Spectral Walk you can kinda get by without Focused Rituals even in defensive siege situations.

Pop SW inside the keep or on the walls, run outside, drop your wells, teleport back.

Doesn’t help you much when attacking though.