Guild Wars 2

I’ve been doing a lot of WvW lately in smallish(5-10 man) groups, but fairly often just as a duo with an Engineer, I’ve really been enjoying both D/D+Sb and P/D+Sb, I’ve been messing around with a lot of builds but cant seem to find one that really stands out. What I’m looking for is a build that gives me a nice balance between being able to burst targets down when needed while also having relatively decent survivability and still being useful in the group situations. now I understand this is asking a hell of a lot from one build, and it may not be possible, but any advice would be greatly appreciated.

just to clarify, I’m not looking for insanely huge burst and amazing survivability..but a bit of both, when running as a duo with the engineer, we seem to focus on “hit and run tactics” to avoid larger groups storm rolling over us if we hang around to long, yet I was hoping to still have the survivability in the build for when I run with the larger groups.

I find sb is pretty useless in small scale pvp, p/p gives you much more useful 7-8k bursts.
I use this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAoY6alUmiPHdy5E+5Ey2jKUnIK+DFlODaqlA
14k health, 2.4k armor, 3100 unbuffed atk, 90% crit dmg. You get the best from both worlds.

Use powder to either disengage or set up a BS, shadowstep to engage and disengage.
If target resists D/D burst swap to P/P and unload him to death.
Everything is on short CDs so it’s very good for attrition fights.

As long as you are not making it too obvious it is pretty strong and most of all you rarely die.

forgive me if it sounds stupid, but wouldn’t more towards shadow arts offer more survivability or does it gimp the damage to much for what it gains? since currently I’ve been at 2.4k armour with 16k health and I’ve felt incredibly squishy unless I’m in and out of stealth as soon as possible(which I suppose is a given), and so far my P/D heavy shadow arts/acrobatics build has been the one to give me more staying power in the larger fights but I felt gimped as all hell on the damage aspect, although I did enjoy the sneak attack of the pistol.

Check your PM’s, I sent you some info.

Try this, it’s what I’m running atm, and it is doing the job I wanted it to (I’m using the new Orr exotic amulet for the time being)

The build: (cut and paste it)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsYVlUmaPHdy5E+5Ey2jKcn4JuHMlT1UdFwKA;TMArPGjMJA

With this setup, every time you stealth, you move at 50% increased speed, you gain 2 stacks of might, a 5 second regen good for around ~2k of healing, one condition removed, and a healing pulse every 3 seconds for ~425. S/D is excellent at control, and the main damage comes from the auto-attack chain.

Gear:

Armor: Pow/Tou/Vit armor
Runes: 6 Ruby Orbs
Weapons: Berserker weapons, mainhand sigil of rage, offhand superior accuracy

Jewelry:

Back: Prototype berserker fractal (pow/pre/crit dam)
Earrings: Cavalier Orr Ring + Emerald Orich (Exquisite ruby orbs)
Amulet: Gwen’s Necklace (ascended)
Rings: Adelbern’s Royal Signet + Rurik’s Royal Signet (both ascended)

Food:

Master Maintenance Oil
Bowl of Curry Butternut Squash

The stats:

Attack: ~3185 (add 2 stacks of might every time you stealth for 10 seconds, avg. is 4 stacks) 3325 effective attack (you would gain 25 stacks of power from sigil of bloodlust and swap out to your other weapon)
Crit chance: 49% (56% with traits)
Crit damage: 101%
Armor: 2959
Health: ~15-16K
Healing power: 300

I run almost the same build as fade. I feel it works very good for WvW where you need some survivability. Fade what’s your toughness with this build. The S/D is very good for stopping people from getting back in their keeps

It’s 1846 toughness, but I’m still missing the ascended amulet, as I don’t have the laurels for it yet. That should add another ~36 toughness. I still need to get another Cavalier Orr earring to do some testing with, but finding a server with an open Temple of Balthazar is proving difficult.