Guild Wars 2

So i am fairly new to ranger. For the last few days I have been trying out the Axe/Torch & SB Meta. I find it very boring. I would like to stick with a condition based build since all my other characters are the typically berserker power builds.

Is Sword mainhand a viable weapon for a condition build? If anyone runs a build like this I would love to hear how it works. I mainly run open world events/zergs. Sometimes dungeons and low level fractals.

I run long bow and sword/x but I’m full zerker build and I find it to be useful for speed runs because of the high dps and sword main hand is good for a quick dodge re-engage when needed. It saved me lots of times

It can be used well, I would recommend using offensive stats like sinister or viper. Cus then you can match the loss of conditions with some raw damage. It’s not as efficient as axe though.

Sword is a power weapon unless you’re fighting humans. If you’re into WvW you can use sword as a condi weapon for the poison and evades, but it has way too little condi application for a PvE condi weapon.

Ranger tends towards either power or hybrid, it doesn’t really do condi in a fun way. The only way to make it more complex is to run it with druid and support in like fractals or wherever.

Seeing what game modes you play, sword/x and shortbow is perfectly fine for a condition based build. You’re not playing high level fractals, raids or duelling on a high level for now so you have much more room to experiment and don’t need to squeeze out that last 0,5%.

Sword has poison, you can add more conditions via traits, sigils and runes. Have fun!

Fluffball is right, sword (in PvE) is a power weapon. In condi builds axe is just superior with its tasty bleed from splitblade and winter’s bite. Sword, on the other hand, can benefit to condi builds only with there serpent strike. And thats a fairly weak 2 stacks of 6s poison (ok, 11s in full viper with food) every 15s.