Greatsword Build? What items should I aim for?
Well I personally build upon this guide and made my own style so it might help you as well if you wish to be tanky and play a bit more defensively.
I don’t have a Guru account so I’ll ask you here about your build Leviatana, since I too am working on my GS build (at least until the new fixes) because the WvW Coat and Greatswords are too kitten sexy NOT to make work:
1. Why 25 points in NM? How do you justify this over at LEAST 10 points in Skirmishing for the 30% extra crit damage from pet trait? Also the fury on weapon swap really helps imo. Compared to.. 10% less damage from your Greatsword? 30% pet crits (not to mention the crit damage and precision from the tree itself) will go a lot longer on both your weapons than 5%+5% with boons.
2. Why Double bears? You say its to have an extra version of “you” but I don’t really see that being viable. You already ARE you, tanky as hell, so why not have your pet hit like a truck to compensate (see #1)? And with the 16 second swap CD I haven’t had any problems keeping my pet alive in MOST encounters, sometimes I have Black bear on my set.
3. Why Spike Trap? If this is for dungeons, don’t you find a Combo field more beneficial to your group? (Ice doesn’t require cond damage, Fire is always nice), and if its PvP, Ice slows more than Spike and you could be using Muddy Terrain since you have the 20% Survival CDR.
Hopefully these questions become obsolete when they fix spirits/NM tree next week. If they do it right I’m looking forward to a 0-0-30-25-15 build like this, but right now I just can’t seem to justify it.
I’m rolling a 20/20/0/0/30 build (to clarify, 20 power, 20 crits and max beastmastery) and it’s good fun (in pve anyway). I’m using cleric’s armour and jewellery, so the upshot is I can heal a very large chunk of my health (over half) in one go with Heal as One, and the pet has ferocious health regeneration with signet of the wild and the traits natural healing/compassion training.
Couple the pet’s durability with it’s ability to hit like a truck (a drake or bear does ~ 50% more damage than me a swing) and you’ve got two things that both hit pretty hard and can take quite a pummelling.
Gear-wise IMO GS is one to balance for, because you’ll need toughness and vit to soak up going melee along with power and crit to squeeze some decent damage. I ended up slotting knight’s armor (with emerald orbs for now), Valkyrie trinkets and berserker weapons for a balance. My other weapon is generally a LB for burst.
Trait-wise I’m 0/30/30/10/0. Why 30 in skirmishing? Partly for the crit damage, but also for the traps. Being able to drop a flame trap every 12secs is a significant DPS addition, and frost to apply chilled will really help reduce your incoming damage in melee. I like thrown traps because they can be used to keep up the pressure even when it’s time to back off and heal, they suit my scrappy style of combat.
For pets I like the eagle for it’s DPS and the trouble it gives mobs avoiding hits. My other pet is a canine for their nice balance of dps/cc/survivability.
So my opening against a veteran or gang of normal mobs might go something like this. Flame trap just outside of range → longbow3 → mob will pop the flame trap → eagle bleed, unload the longbow and swap to GS → ice trap to take the edge off their dps → swoop → start melee with a frost aura…
Once I’ve finished a particular opening I just make everything up as I go along, I don’t have a ‘rotation’ as I don’t think it suits GW2’s implementation of combat at all.
Incidentally, as much as I love and use the GS in landscape, I swap it out for an axe and warhorn for dungeons because of the high dps on melee skills on silver mobs.