Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone,
I mainly run pve dungeons and fractals and want to do as much raw damage as possible. I’m pretty much full zerk build with just a little extra toughness and vit. Most of the experienced rangers I’ve talked to claim sword/torch is the best way to go and i’m inclined to believe them. However I’m curious if this is still true even with no investment in condition damage. Currently I like sword/axe because with my build PoS hits like a truck and scales well with zerk stats. WD doesn’t do a ton of damage on it’s own since it’s channeled over 5 seconds but I love the utility! If you combine the direct damage it does with it’s retaliation and reflect damage (and combo whirl) it’s still a pretty great skill.

I have heard that burning as a condition still does good damage even with no +condition damage and that why sword/torch is still good for zerks. Has this been anyone else’s experience as well? I can see how since bonfire isn’t channeled you can lay it down and fight within it to really stack up some damage. Torch #4 only seems like a good opener to get some burning started before you enter melee range.

Any feedback appreciated!
Thanks!

For dungeons, I prefer Sword/Warhorn for the 5 skill (almost 20 seconds of fury for the entire team). However, while that is recharging it would be good to switch to sword/torch for the added fire field (which can grant might to the entire team when you use WH #5), so you use the fire field, then switch to WH and use 5. Personally though, I just run Sword/Warhorn all the time. (Although I may have just theorycrafted a new build for myself.)

Burning scales the least with the condition damage stat. e.g. If you go from 0 condition damage to 1000 condition damage:

Burning goes from 328 to 578, a 76% increase
Bleeding goes from 42.5 to 92.5, a 118% increase
Confuse goes from 130 to 280, a 115% increase
Poison goes from 84 to 184, a 119% increase
Torment goes from 32 to 69, a 116% increase.

So yeah, one way to interpret this is that your condition damage stat is not as important for burning as it is for other conditions.

I use mostly sword/warhorn myself, but I do swap to sword/torch if there are swarms of trash mobs to clear (e.g. the Ulgoth chain to recapture the forts from the centaurs). I would probably use it more if they ever fix Bonfire so it affects 5 targets (AOE) instead of 3 (cleave).

If you use both s/w and s/t, the sword’s autoattack chain is not interrupted by weapon swaps. So it’s pretty easy to drop the firefield and blast it for might stacks without missing a beat.

Torch 4 is a good opener since it has good range (900, 1200 with trait – yes you can throw a torch further than you can fire a shorbow, but don’t complain or they’ll probably reduce torch’s range). But it’s also handy for keeping burning up while Bonfire is on cooldown. It’s got a long 6 sec duration so scales well with condition duration. Torch 5 and Flame Trap reapply 1 sec burns, so you need 100% condition duration to lengthen their duration. But the 6 sec burn on torch 4 can be lengthened with just 17% condition duration.

Both torch 4 and warhorn 4 need a lockout which prevents you from firing the skill without a target. I’ve wasted those so many times when I forget to choose a target. In theory you can aim torch 4 without a target, but it pretty much never happsn.