Guild Wars 2

With the Ferocity changes & new GM traits, it was inevitable the meta would shift at least a little bit. I’m here to shine light on the matter to those who don’t look at external sources.

Note that there is no best build, they are situational and I will explain where each one fits

1) “Main” Warrior Axe/Mace /Sword.

Traits:

4| V, X
6| I, V, XIII
0|
4| VI, VIII
0|

This is the equivalent of the pre-patch 30/10/0/20/10 Empowered Allies build. One Warrior in every group should be running this, and will use both Banner of Discipline & Banner of Strength when multiple Warriors are present.

The reason for the change is that taking 10 points from Strength & 10 points from Discipline and applying them into Arms works out to be more DPS than the pre-patch build was because of the new GM trait, while still maintaining Empowered Allies. Do note that it is absolutely worth swapping to the Sword as part of your rotation, as Impale -> Rip increases your overall DPS.

This is still a DPS build at heart, so armor is still full Berserker, your runes are all Scholar, with sigils maintaining your 10% Modifier (Night, Undead etc) on your Axe, and Force on both your Mace & Sword.

2) DPS Warrior Axe/Mace /Sword

Traits:

6| V, X, XI
6| I, V, XIII
0|
2| VI
0|

What’s that? The best DPS build doesn’t feature a GS?! Good, eh? If you already have a Warrior in the group, this is the build to run. Not really much else to say, other than Dual Wield Agility is borderline OP. The 10 points in Tactics are slightly better than 10 in Discipline, but both are viable.

Again, make sure Impale->Rip is part of your rotation because it will increase your overall DPS.

As standard, full Berserker with Scholar runes. 10% Modifier in Axe, Force in Mace and Sword.

3) Solo Warrior GS Axe/Mace or Warhorn

Traits:
6| V, IX, XI
5| V, X
0|
0|
3| VI

Yep. The standard 30/25/0/0/15 is downgraded to a solo build. Forceful Greatsword is far too good in a solo environment.

Full Berserker – standard. Strength runes, however, are better than Scholar. Your Sigils will be your standard 10% Multiplier & Force in your GS, with 10% in your Axe & Battle in your Mace or Warhorn.

Nothing to say here, standard build everybody knows and played anyway.

Something would be amiss if I didn’t mention the little stacking trick.

You want Bloodlust to be your stacking sigil. You can stack on land, and replace the weapons while maintaining your stacks, as long as you have an underwater weapon with the same sigil.

Nothing more to say.

For the fanboys and worshippers, and those who believe metas are trademarked and were made up always by the same individual, after much digging and grinding here is the link i supposedly copied from_______

You could at least link to Nike’s video/guru thread.

Yeah this is copied from Nike.

All this may be true but what about healing, toughness and vitality? All of my stats seem to be down by about 20% I have no damage or condition mitigation what so ever when I use my usual build running Rubicon armour. I used to be able man seige equipment, jump into the middle of a decent size mob and have a little fun before being forced to retreat or die. Today man… I was taking damage like it was noones business until I switched out to my Knights setup.
I guess this is what happens in open pvp worlds, when all someone has to do is spam complaints from multiple forum accounts trying to gain an advantage to gank people while disregarding organized pvp because it is considered too balanced. Why is it mostly a range, caster or stealthy toon player that does this?

This is all calculated based on you being able to stick to the boss and keep attacking though, and that the situation doesn’t favor any particular types of playstyle.

I’m still not convinced that holds true all the time. Having done FotM 40+ mainly in pugs, I think most people can’t. And if they can’t, it starts to weight on the side of you shouldn’t bother either, because as then fights last longer, things become more chaotic, and the benefits of you sticking vs the higher chance of you making mistake and getting downed start shifting towards the later end.

Plus, there’s quite a few fights that favor burst damage or mobility. An example being Lupi on P3, it really helps to have WWA to get out of the huge PBAoE, and since you’re already on GS, why not just throw HB at him?

Or the dredge final boss. You can melee him for a brief while before you gotta move, so it favours burst damage.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Plus, there’s quite a few fights that favor burst damage or mobility. An example being Lupi on P3, it really helps to have WWA to get out of the huge PBAoE, and since you’re already on GS, why not just throw HB at him?

Or the dredge final boss. You can melee him for a brief while before you gotta move, so it favours burst damage.

That’s how I see it too. Having GS on swap is still useful for burst and mobility, and Rip isn’t much to shout about. A lot of PvE comes in as “burst” these days, heh.

I havn’t done the maths for it but I wonder if rotating out to GS to HB/WWA on a wall/ then rush would be a DPS increase against faceroll bosses once they fix the rush bug.

Cos rush’s damage is quite eye-catching.

I havn’t done the maths for it but I wonder if rotating out to GS to HB/WWA on a wall/ then rush would be a DPS increase against faceroll bosses once they fix the rush bug.

The 30/30 axe build is superior dps even when the boss is against the wall, over a full rotation of both weaponsets.

As pointed out, the advantage of greatsword is not the dps, its the self-buffing ability. If you need self-buffing because your party is bad, or you are solo’ing/duo’ing/trio’ing content, run the 30/25 gs+axe build. If you run with an organized group, you should certainly be using the axe builds. Heck the 30/25 gs build is barely better personal dps than the empower allies build, without even considering how much it buffs your teammates.

What I think is happening is a lot of people (not you specifically Xae just so you don’t think im talking about you) have carebear tendancies and can’t imagine playing without their greatsword because they like the aesthetics. This is a perfectly fine position to take, but be honest. Admit you’re doing it because you care about looks and aesthetics more than you care about efficiency. Once you can admit you don’t play to win, the easier it will be to enjoy a play how you want casual mentality where you can use your greatsword to your heart’s content.

Plus, there’s quite a few fights that favor burst damage or mobility. An example being Lupi on P3, it really helps to have WWA to get out of the huge PBAoE, and since you’re already on GS, why not just throw HB at him?

Retrait for lupicus if you need to.

Or the dredge final boss. You can melee him for a brief while before you gotta move, so it favours burst damage.

No, has 2 important attacks. If your group has proper dps you can kill him in one pour. Most people have no clue how to melee him so they don’t even try. Use offhand Sword. Use an Energy Sigil

^ yes, you can kill him in one pour, but realistically you won’t have a group that can all the time. It takes so long gathering a group for 40+ without rangers and necros I just take anyone that comes along.

I don’t think you need to retrait for Lupi. You can’t go near him when he’s casting that attack anyways.

And I don’t think it’s just carebear tendencies. What looks good on paper often just doesn’t work out. Either because you don’t have the skills to pull it off or reality (like dredge in an average pug) doesn’t let you.

You can’t trait-check in pugs and you don’t know how well the other players can play anyways. You certainly can’t just kick guildies from your party and tell them ‘sorry, you aren’t good enough’ when you call for guild runs (cos that’ll make them really appreciate being part of the guild). So I don’t think an organised party is really an assumption you can just without question assume in general build-making.