Guild Wars 2

I’m up to scale 31, though I’ve done nothing but spam scale 30 and 26 for daily rewards for a while now. I thought I’d share my build with you all and see what you think. Any suggestions on improving/optimising it would be welcome, but it’s worked wonders for me so far, so I thought I’d share regardless.

Gear:

- Soldier armor pieces (Power/Tough/Vit) fitted with Emerald Orbs (Pow/Prec/Tough)
- Soldier Sword (didn’t want to get rid of the legendary status of Bolt, this would be Berserker) + 2 Berserker Daggers, 1 in off-hand and one spare, with 2 Berserker Pistols and a Berserker Shortbow.
- Sigils:
Sword – Superior Sigil of Paralysation
Off-hand dagger – Superior Sigil of Perception/Bloodlust (up to you)
Stowed dagger – Superior Sigil of Force
Pistols – Superior Sigil of Blood + Force
Shortbow – Superior Sigil of Air/Fire/Energy (up to you)
- 2 Knight accessories (Pow/Prec/Tough)
- Berserker Ascended backpiece
- Berserker Amulet
- Vine of the Pale Tree (Pow/Prec/Crit/Vit) and Adelbern’s Royal Signet Ring (Pow/Tough/Crit)

Overall stats (when wielding S/D):
2937 Attack
41% Crit Chance/64% Crit damage
2897 Armor
15715 HP

Build:

0 – Nothing
30 – Practised Tolerance, Side Strike (swapped out for Signet Use where appropriate), Executioner.

Reason for not using Critical Haste – I hate when this trait procs. It is usually in a situation where I’m attempting to dodge with Flanking Strike or Disabling Shot and the dodge window is significantly reduced. I removed it just for safety.

Reason for swapping for Signet Use – the grawl fractal boss. In situations where I’m low on endurance or I get caught out with burns, Signet of Agility benefits both me and my team. Sometimes I’ll leave this on for other condition-heavy or dodge-heavy encounters.

30 – Infusion of Shadow, Cloaked in Shadow (changed for Shadow’s Embrace or Master of Deception when appropriate), Shadow’s Rejuvenation.

Reason for swapping to Shadow’s Embrace – condition-heavy encounters that cannot justify keeping the blind.

Reason for swapping to Master of Deception – Smoke Screens, Powders and Refuges on the Uncategorised fractal to combat the harpies, negate Old Tom and provide safety from the Asura’s lightning bolts, as well as protect from arrows and elementals in the grawl fractal. There’s also protection from Bloomhunger’s agony bombs while ressing allies, and negating the Dredge Suit’s bombs.

10 – Vigorous Healing (swapped out for Fleet Shadow when appropriate)

Reason for Fleet Shadow: Underground Facility fractal. I will often solo the bomb planting scenario by utilising Smoke Screen Area Stealth, Powder, HiS and Refuge. This part goes a whole lot smoother when I’m doing this alone with no mobs being aggravated. Otherwise, extra dodges are welcome, and the 2 stacks of Might per stealth from C+D are more than enough for me, so I don’t see the benefit of trading off potentially life-saving Vigor for a little power boost.

Utilities:

- Hide in Shadows
- Roll for Initiative/Shadowstep/Smoke Screen (situational)
- Shadow Refuge (never removed for any reason, ever)
- Signet of Agility (same here)
- Dagger Storm/Thieves Guild/Basilisk Venom (situational)

Why Roll for Initiative? I’m more comfortable using it over Shadowstep in a pinch, as I’m often holding down right click, thus not seeing the cursor and finding a suitable location to teleport to in a panicky situation often goes to pot. The roll also gives me precious initiative and IMMEDIATELY cures crippling conditions that disrupt my flow.

Why Shadowstep? I swap to it during the Jade Maw. I’ll often run out to the tentacles on my own to get some crystals with my relatively high spike damage (using D/D here), and if something goes awry, I can instantly get to a crystal if focused on.

Why Smoke Screen?: Grawl (arrows), Harpies (knockbacks), Bloomhunger ( protecting downed allies from agony bombs while ressing) and the Dredge Suit (bombs). It also has uses in Ascalon against mage fireballs and hard-hitting archers.

Why Basilisk Venom?: Legendary Archdiviner. Those AoE spams, while not difficult, are a nuisance. Rather than spawn 2 Thieves that will get annihilated or waste a Dagger Storm on any potential Chanters who don’t pose a justifiably high threat anyway, I’d rather just negate this attack completely.

Overall playstyle:

S/D is obviously the main focus. The idea is to get stuck in to combat and apply blind after blind, daze after daze while nailing down formidable DPS. When you’ve got a decent amount of Perception/Bloodlust stacks to keep you going, you can switch out to the Force dagger for some extra DPS instead. In encounters with solitary bosses like Bloomhunger, I opt to use both daggers for the higher spike DPS. This also applies to the Archdiviner and the Snowblind final boss (I forget what his name is). Against the Dredge Suit or the Ice Elemental, I use D/D and P/P. P/P for the decent single-target DPS against the boss himself, and then switch out to D/D to heartseeker spam the boss’ face off when time for the final push. If not using P/P, Shortbow is the secondary (using Choking Gas and Cluster Bomb for Area Weakness when outnumbered eg. Dredge).

I pretty much outlined everything up above. Traits, utilities and weapon combinations are swapped out accordingly when common sense calls for them. Especially blinding on stealth – don’t forget to get rid of that against Dredge and enemies with Defiant! I’ve probably repeated myself a few times, but I guess I’m trying to go in to as much detail as possible with this. Essentially, I went with the ethos of being stocky and utilitarian, but with damage that’s not to be ignored.

So that’s my build and essentially how I’m playing. I’ve had almost no problems at all up to the 30+ region, and any times I’m downed are usually by pure stupidity/brain farts on my end. What do you think? Any ways to improve it? Thanks.

Oh, and one more thing – I use Master Maintenance Oils and Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew (Omnomberry Pie when P/P is in use). Still undecided on whether I should use Superior Sharpening Stones instead.

Thanks for sharing the build! It looks like a good one and I think I’ll give it a try.