Guild Wars 2

im trying to make the greatsword work but enemies like the thief especially interrupt thieves or druids that have immobilize kill me without a scratch on them. anyone have any power builds that use the greatsword that theyd be willing to share?

Greatsword by nature is not made to play well against enemies with access to fast attacks or blinds. It can have some nice burst potential, but you should not use it as a primary weapon, more so as a “utility” weapon of the Damage variety.

With that said, feel free to give this a spin: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNAR3dnMbCtbid2AebC0biFcBLuK2FDjQXtAwBgqL0GeWA-TpBFABFcQAKa/BAOCAiXGghHAgAXAAA

get used to it. GS is a kitten weapon, and is easily countered because of bad design on all fronts.

Don’t take pvp seriously in this game, its a joke, and the reason that this game has such low twitch viewers, streamers, and tournaments have such a low turn out.

Kahrgan.7401:

get used to it. GS is a kitten weapon, and is easily countered because of bad design on all fronts.

Don’t take pvp seriously in this game, its a joke, and the reason that this game has such low twitch viewers, streamers, and tournaments have such a low turn out.

that got salty real quick

Black Iris Flowers.3418:

Kahrgan.7401:

get used to it. GS is a kitten weapon, and is easily countered because of bad design on all fronts.

Don’t take pvp seriously in this game, its a joke, and the reason that this game has such low twitch viewers, streamers, and tournaments have such a low turn out.

that got salty real quick

It’s true though.

Can’t help you, I usually get destroyed when I try using that ladle.

Greatsword was designed to fill the gap in power AoE weapons that made Necromancer such an awful group member in PvE.

When Reaper came out with its long chills and special chill condition damage, greatsword seemed somewhat viable despite its slow skills. However, when the chills were shortened, greatsword suffered. Changing Chill damage to bleeding meant investing in bleed duration, which put greatsword and chill in direct competition with sceptre.

Greatsword remains primarily a PvE weapon because of its PvP nerf.

If you play GS in pvp, you deserve to be reported for match manipulation.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/PvP-Dreaded-Power-GS-Axe-Wh/first#post6445956

To those salty people who are being hostile, they can sit in Bronze anyways.

charrboiledeggs.8164:

Black Iris Flowers.3418:

Kahrgan.7401:

get used to it. GS is a kitten weapon, and is easily countered because of bad design on all fronts.

Don’t take pvp seriously in this game, its a joke, and the reason that this game has such low twitch viewers, streamers, and tournaments have such a low turn out.

that got salty real quick

It’s true though.

Sadly, Anet see it as their prized child despite the fact it is probably the lowest pop. game mode.

I want to tank my rating and play gs nec for lolz.

Gwaihir.1745:

I want to tank my rating and play gs nec for lolz.

just play it in t3 plat like me ;p

Don’t use it as a primary weapon and not right away.. get the interupts in, the pulls etc.. get them off guard – #5 is a good one with elite shout then 2/3-2 then Reaper shroud if poss.

It’s about knowing what gs is good for and not in the current situation.

And while it is a situational weapon as to weather or not it can be good… it isnt crap by far.. people just dont want to put effort into anything anymore..and no.. staff isnt that much better when you take away the fear skill.

Probably objectively worst in whole game, and definetly if you consider it is a newly designed, had a role to fill, was “meant” to be on the stronger side for promotion, has had quoted “a lot of hard work for NEW TECH” used and it still the most disfunctional abilities.

Greatsword IS crap … by far.

Wait for mid to become a clusterkitten then gs2 away.

The only game mode I have found greatsword useful in is dungeons with the stacking mechanic and elite mobs you can gravedigger spam. Using it in wvw, spvp, fractals (except for static fights like old tom), open world, or raids is an exercise in frustration.

Step 1: make Reaper’s Onslaught attack speed increase affect Greatsword in addition to current effects.
Step 2: Greatsword is now a million times more viable.

Gwaihir.1745:

Wait for mid to become a clusterkitten then gs2 away.

Interupt. Stun. Interupt. Knockback. Daze. Interupt.

Good luck against good players.

Lahmia.2193:

Step 1: make Reaper’s Onslaught attack speed increase affect Greatsword in addition to current effects.
Step 2: Greatsword is now a million times more viable.

I like this. A combination of alacrity and double AA speed would fix greatsword in PvP. Cut damage in PvP, if

The lack of high chill uptime keeping foes near and the short range, slow attacks are greatsword’s main limiters. The whole slow, ponderous but hard-hitting theme is a lie. A PvP skill split for RO make a lot of sense.

Flumek.9043:

If you play GS in pvp, you deserve to be reported for match manipulation.

nah some can make it work, there are kittenty players who play Meta should we report them aswell ? there is ranks now so if a Power GS Reaper can mantain his rank np imho.

a good way to counter Thief interupts is Poison Cloud, the more patient will be fooled once or twice only tho, useing GS is a secondary weapon-set imo and waiting for the oppprtunity to strike: ex after a well placed stun or immob

You need to use its strengths appropriately and have another weapon to catch mobile professions. I run Spite/SR/R GS + A/D on my power reaper and find myself carrying a majority of the fights that happen. That said, you can’t treat GS as a primary weapon because it’s too slow to be universally good; you need something to fill its weaknesses, or otherwise yes, it is not a good weapon to use at all. If you fill its weaknesses and switch weapons/shroud properly, you’ll find it has amazing utility.

GS excels when engaging a point and subsequently fighting on it with another (or especially multiple) melee players, and not so much because you can keep it out and keep hitting people with it, but because its first few seconds of skill use are extremely impactful and create a great setup for the rest of your kit. I like to approach with A/D, if nobody is dead or low, engage and move in while casting Axe 2, mass corrupt with Axe 3 and Dagger 5, and then by the time I’m on the point, interrupt the whole set of enemies with GS 5, apply a blind field via GS4, vuln and LF generation on CC’ed targets with GS3, and move into shroud to whirl the field and deal tons of damage to boon-corrupted, vuln-stacked enemies. Interrupt heals/resses with Executioner’s Scythe/CTTB, and cleave downs/ressers with gravedigger resets.

That, or ignore the setup and rush into the fight with GS5 to interrupt stomps or channels if things on-point look bleak. It all kind of depends on what’s happening.

I like having A/D as my alternate set because the damage and burst LF gain is good, it has a transfer on skill 4 like staff, runs double AoE corruption, and most significantly lets you kill thieves with GC. The GC channel tracks stealth and does a huge amount of damage, and a CoD proc will eat up the thief’s three boons gained from their ToTC and the two effects combined will usually down a thief that doesn’t shadowstep into the distance. The plus side is that your cooldown here is 8s; their essential one is 50.

The bottom line is that you can’t think of gravedigger as good. It’s far too clunky to use very often unless you have nothing better to do, and even then, I only recommend trying for it when running Signet of the Locust to increase your in-combat speed and land it with a degree of reliability. GS AA’s 1 and 2 do plenty of damage and have much better hitboxes/reliability for the most part. If you burn your cooldowns, you should for the most part be using shroud or A/D.

D4 and Suffer should handle most of your cleansing needs. If against an excess of DH’s/block-heavy builds like mesmer and warrior, I also recommend switching out of SotL and going NCSY for the extra corrupt + unblockable attacks. An unprepared DH will be one-shotted via Soul Spiral with a good NCSY because their block chains are simply invalidated and they’ll likely hit a max-damage-proc of Chill of Death.

If you learn to really utilize the awkward timing on GS you can make some amazing plays with it. While I think Dagger is the better power weapon in general, I’d put GS up there as a viable alternative with excellent group/fight utility. I think too many people get absorbed with camping it and are not using shroud/rotating weapons, though, and that’s why they think it’s worse than it really is.

jhern.6097:

im trying to make the greatsword work but enemies like the thief especially interrupt thieves or druids that have immobilize kill me without a scratch on them. anyone have any power builds that use the greatsword that theyd be willing to share?

Unfortunately, GS only has a place in PVE. It does not work well in PVP environments. There are some situations where you get some use of it, for example make a tanky power reaper with GS and use on frontline pushes, but even then, your other weapon sets give you better choices and GS is kinda “meh” at best.

My only advice is this, if you’re going to use Greatsword, don’t use staff. Having two slow weapons will ALWAYS get you killed by fast specs.

Dirame.8521:

My only advice is this, if you’re going to use Greatsword, don’t use staff. Having two slow weapons will ALWAYS get you killed by fast specs.

Exactly, which emphasizes the point made above; GS is an aggressive melee utility weapon for the most part and staff is pure utility. Since you can’t treat GS as a true mainhander you’ll screw yourself running the two together.

I like to think that by far and large, if you’re running GS, OH dagger on your secondary is pretty much a hard requirement for the utility that it can cover as opposed to staff that GS misses out on.

Power Reaper PvP builds are often shroud focused due to running the Soul Reaping traitline and having a lot of Life Force generation. The GS + Axe/X weaponset lets you trait Speed of Shadows.

When running such a build there is no need to camp on GS. Just ignore the auto attack and use it for it’s very good situational utility. Your damage comes from Axe, Reaper Shroud and massive shroud enter/leave procs (SS, Hydromancy, Leeching).

This is a very bursty and fast paced playstyle – completely different to a Condi Reaper build.

edit:
It’s official! Power Reaper new meta! xD
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Reaper_-_Power_Boonstrip