Guild Wars 2

I’ve been experimenting with a build recently and found it works wonders. At least at soloing, not much team utility.
Variant 1:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNBHhF6kQFaF0+VwiF4axAHCFrA4dWUENr73tFq5MWalaSA-TlSDABHp8jijAwDHCgUVCij6PFY+DgHAgEnAAV2fIF9BkCoIlRA-w

Excellent when fighting more than one opponent or necros, rangers, basically anyone who has summons for your axe to bounce off of. So all you do is pop RaO, use Hunter’s Call, a few axe auto attacks use Sic’ Em then swap to GS swoop in hilt bash followed by a maul and your cat will hit like a truck. Your pet will quickly get 25 might stacks while you will be sitting at around 10. All while maintaining 596 passive regen. Shooting up to 1670hp/s with Troll Unguent. Mobility wise, you can have permanent swiftness, just swap out Sic’Em for Guard when not fighting. Along with Call of the Wild you will have permanent swiftness.

Variant 2:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNBMhF6kRFaF0+VwiF4axAHCFrA4dWsFNr7hoFq5MWalaSA-TlSDABHp8jijAwDHCgUVCij6PFY+DgHAgEnAAV2fIF9BkC4blRA-w

This is better when fighting solo opponents like warriors or thieves because your axe wont be able to bounce to anything to get might stacks. Also this has incredible burst healing potential with a Blast and 2 Leap finishers with your healing spring;’s water field totalling at around 12k burst heal. Also the condition cleanse is nice.

Variant 3:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAnXRnEqQrg2vCWsAXLG4QoYFAvzitoZdPEtQNnxSrUTC-TlSDABHp8jijAwDHCgUVCij6PFY+DgHAgEnAAV2fIF9BkC4blRA-w
Basically the only difference here is the Axe offhand which is extremely useful against all these LB rangers, whirling wrath, hundred blades. etc. This can be run with either axe or sword, depending on the situation.

So there you go this is more of a defensive build, if you wanted to sacrifice some defence for offence you can swap out the sigils for battle and bloodlust and change the BM traits to Mighty Swap or Stability Training and Zephyrs Speed. Taking Strength runes could turn this into more of a Mighty Beastmaster build.

Tell me what you think. I’ve given this one quite a bit of thought and cant see any more improvements.

i think you are going overboard in a few places.

try playing with only 1k healing power and compare the survivability. I bet it wont go down much if at all.

more importantly, you have too much regen boon. there is no benefit to have more than 100% uptime. i would pick up natures bounty, then either decide between dwayna runes or natures voice but not both.

I run a very similar BM build, though I use celestial stats and runes of the ranger for higher crit and ferocity, and don’t go for Nature’s Voice since I’m only running with a single shout. Instead I go 3 into Skirmishing so I get fury on weapon swap, which then is given to my pet in a slightly shorter duration.

I was using clerics for a while before the patch though. Might go back to that but keep the ranger’s runes to see how I fair with more baseline power. Maybe go back to Nature’s Voice just to ensure I have potentially permanent regen when combined with Healing Spring, which works oh so well with Call of the Wild.

tbh i run axe-horn/axe-axe right now and the amount of might you get in battle is near trollish it can perfectly be ran in a full zerker gear to. Ive been laughing the hell out at rangers mesmer necromancers or prety much any foe that werent alone of late because my pet goes rampage mode and overkill on the damage from all this might stacking

Agreed Swap Power from Vit , take some Healing stats turn it into power you’ll get a lot more from that than Power from Vit.

than take Natures Bounty for more Party Supporting still hitting that 5k heal.
but if i did that i’d consider taking guard.

swap the 30% pet crits for 10 in beastmastery for ether shout master or Mighty swap(to help maintaince might stacks on both pet and you , this still gives the pet a Auto 6 stacks of might on swap with the axe might , it’ll help in 1vs1 Situation to make up for the loss of a optimal ricochet.

or stick with Sick um + shout master , for more often 40% pet damage and party regen.

also Remove Compassion training its only good for The pets casting heals like the furnwolf and MoA’s , change that to a Cripple on f2 for more combat control.

Any comparison on BM Cleric vs apothecary im currently lvling a axe/torch axe/war horn and was considering apothecary any thought or incites

Raven.9603:

i think you are going overboard in a few places.

try playing with only 1k healing power and compare the survivability. I bet it wont go down much if at all.

more importantly, you have too much regen boon. there is no benefit to have more than 100% uptime. i would pick up natures bounty, then either decide between dwayna runes or natures voice but not both.

While I agree with you on having more than 100% uptime on regen isn’t optimal, im willing to sacrifice some efficiency for the mobility that nature voice gives with guard when im not in combat. Besides it may not make a difference to have more regen re-apply when fighting warriors or rangers; but when going against guardians,necros, thieves, engis, and mesmers who can just strip the boon off you are left very vulnerable. Since we invested so many points into HP any time we don’t have regen up we arent using the build effectively which is also why, when using this build avoid Poison like the plague. Unless I am using S/WH and GS with Healing spring I think that Nature’s Voice and Dwayna’s runes are the way to go.

I also tested the difference between 1kHP and 1.8kHP you get with exotics, food, and life stacks. Turns out its about 155hp/s passive regen which is 9.3k hp/minute. Since HP scales linearly that 800 extra HP gives a 30% increase in passive regen or about 23% with the active Troll Unguent.

Power scales pretty poorly after about 2k and it will have buffs from the WvW traits and 800 points into precision is hardy worth it. So now if those 800 points were put all into toughness that would give me about 20-25% more resistance against Direct Damage. Since this is more of a condition heavy meta, I think its better to drop a few points out of HP through the food buff and sigil and pick up some condition resistance/cleanse. So meet somewhere in the middle at ~1500HP