Guild Wars 2

I’ve always leave my Adrenaline full to benefit from the 15% extra damage from Berserker’s Power, but I’ve always lamented the fact that I never get to benefit from the class’s defining mechanic. So I’m thinking about dumping BP and actually using Arcing Slice. Is this at all worth it? Or am I sacrificing too much damage for it to be worthwhile? Thanks.

PS – I don’t swap to axe (or any other melee weapon) for Burst because I’m usually rolling a longbow for tagging purposes.

arcing slice is garbage, never usei t.

your auto attack almost does more damage

i mean, if you really want to make use of adrenaline actively, you could maybe try eviscerate, but every time you do it is one less time you could swap to bow and throw a fire field, so yeah

If you’re running Berserker’s Power, using Arcing Slice is something I would not endorse unless you absolutely need the Fury.
If not, you can use it if you need the fury but it is a DPS loss compared to your regular greatsword auto-attack chain.

arcing slice doesn’t do enough damage to warrant using it and the fury you dont need.. Its not a very good burst skill compared to others like evicerate, kill shot, skull crack, earthshaker, combustive shot, flurry. These other burst skills actially do somthing either damage or good cc. Arcing slice is worthless.

if u need fury use FGJ and or signet of rage.

FGJ more than covers my Fury needs. I was just hoping there was an actual reason to use AS. Like I said, it sucks not using the class’s mechanic as a GS user. I’m still hopeful we’ll get two-handed axes at some point. Then I’d be able to use a two-handed melee weapon and burst skills*.

*I don’t use a hammer because I’m a pve’er.

if you arcing slice then activate signet of fury you can have both berserkers power and get to use your adrenaline skill

Berserker’s Power is a bad trait because it completely negates the warrior F1 mechanic. While it’s obviously strong and a highly used/desired trait, its very nature is contrary to the profession mechanic. I can completely understand the OP’s desire to want to drop it in favor of actually using F1. As if warrior weren’t a faceroll boring class to begin with, even the single profession mechanic skill is worthless.

I don’t know of any F1 skill that is worthless besides greatsword’s.

I think berserker’s power is a great trait because it gives you the option of choosing between consistent 15% damage increase and hoping to finish the fight/enemy with a hard crit (evisc). Longbow F1, hammer F1, mace F1, rifle F1, axe F1, and sword F1 are all frequently used and beneficial in PvP/WvW on this game. While some tend to be less practical than others, all of them seem to at least have use except for greatsword’s.

I don’t really concern myself with the awful F1 of greatsword because all of its other skills besides autoattack are so wonderful.

I’d say feel it out man, find a way to weave AS into your rotation if you want to hop off of Berserker’s Power. I would also shovel all of the biased against the skill out of the way before you stop using it after just a few times and really dig into what it allows you too do. It’s been debated to the grave over why AS is good, why AS sucks ect., but one of the reasons I love it is because it allows you to run other utility skills ratherthan being forced into FGJ or Signet of Rage to get your Fury.

Arcing Slice is really only beneficial if you lack Fury from another means (your build doesn’t have a reliable 100% Fury uptime) and there is only one target (AS does not cleave). The cast time + aftercast makes it do roughly the same DPS damage as an autoattack without the vulnerability stack at full adrenaline.

IMO, short of revamping the ability with new effects, the 3/4s (+1/4s? animation time) cast time is the biggest problem with the ability. If it was insta-cast to 1/4s (both + another 1/4s? animation time), it would be a much more viable ability used in rotation. AS is just too slow and doesn’t cleave.

Most of the time warriors can maintain fury with FGJ + SoR so it’s a non-issue to ignore Arcing Slice. However, there are some instances where it makes sense to use it occasionally, i.e. to augment might gain for Phalanx Strength or if you’re running Battle Standard instead of SoR, etc. This is mainly for pug use as organized teams should have a few viable sources of party wide fury.

Frankly, this is nitpicking, PvE is not very demanding in GW2 and thus you could go either way and still accomplish the task, handily.

Only use arcing slice to cleanse conditions.

Purple Miku.7032:

I don’t know of any F1 skill that is worthless besides greatsword’s…

Dunno if this was in response to my post or not but I want to clarify. I don’t think the warrior F1 skills are worthless. My issue is with the trait Berserker’s Power. The trait trivializes the profession mechanic by incentivizing the player to not use it, essentially making the F1 skill worthless.

The more buttons I can press the happier I am. I don’t like the trait because it discourages clever play in favor of more autoattack.

the bonus actually applies to the F1 attack, making it so builds that use the F1 skill will take it too

15% damage on something like eviscerate is not trivial

axe and rifle builds using adrenaline would want to take it (maybe sword too, not sure how sword works, don’t often use it MH)
hammer, mace, and bow would typically not take it due to their adrenaline skills being utility/CC
gs is really just kind of meh regardless of the trait or not

There’s actually no reason to not use Arcing slice,
Fury, huge damage boost
condition clean
it’s damage is better then auto attack and does not scale with adrenaline
you can start casting the animation at range and it will still hit when you get close.

i usually find myself using f1 instead of auto attacking trying to finish people off, or when people trying to get away from you, landing a f1 is more beneficial then trying to auto attack.

you have to know, arcing is 3/4 cast time, auto is 1/2, arcing out dps one auto attacking, but 2 auto attack out dps arcing, but it will be 1 second cast time with 2 hits and more difficult to land, by using arcing you also get benefit from fury.

if you are talking about PvE, theres no reason to use 90% of the F1 skills

any build that uses gs, but doesn’t use either berserkers power or heightened focus is a bad build.

therefore you never use arcing slice.

So the consensus seems to be “two-handed axes can’t get here soon enough”.