Guild Wars 2

I was mainly Greatsword from early levels up until around 51 or so, then I started experimenting. I was finding GS to be a bit lackluster. Saw a Sword/Sword build and I was pretty impressed with the bleed damage, and Riposte is really useful.

I also heard axes are pretty great, so I tried out axe/sword. I didn’t try axe/axe because I’ve heard axe offhand is not that great, but I’m finding axe in mainhand doesn’t really keep up with bleed damage, unless I’m really missing something.

Right now Sword/Sword seems the most fun and for the moment, highest DPS. Hundred Blades on GS was nice and all, but there were way too many times where I’d start it, and the mob would move away after I had only hit it one time. Pretty frustrating. Too situational for my tastes.

With Sword/Sword, I tend to start a fight with either a Leap, or a normal hit, then use Riposte which adds several stacks of bleeds with the counter attack, and then normal attack the mob to death, which is rather quick.

Just thought I would share my input and hope it helps others, and hopefully for some advice in return.

Have you tried a Shield?

I find the combo very fun and looks kittening awesome. I tried wielding various offhands, but one thing I hate is, rarely do you actually use the offhand animation-wise. It just gets on my nerves swinging a mace around while your other arm doesn’t do anything when logically, you’d integrate both weapons into your attack pattern

Shield doesn’t have that problem. It’s there, on your arm and when you pick it up, it does its job.

But yeah, I keep a variety of weapons; a sword, a shield, a hammer, a greatsword, a rifle and a bow (just got an axe exotic but haven’t played with it much). With my build, I can swap the traits on everything but the axe.

When I go sword, I go shield and when I go sword/shield, I like to go bow so I use sword master (10% crit = more bleeds), shield master (+toughness with shield and faster cooldowns) missile deflection (shield now reflects projectiles and blocks everything for 3sec) and strong bowstrings (for projectile finishers). It feels pretty tanky and the combo comes with a fire shield (sword leap or shield leap into your longbow fire field). In PvE, since I’m Asura, I have radiation field, so I can apply weakness with my leaps too or poison with my bow. It’s a combo defense/offense utility…I tried off-hand sword while I was leveling but I just don’t care for it. Shield is just too useful, either deflecting strong shots back, leaping into fields, or being that extra line of defense in a boss chain of attacks.

I have not tried a shield yet. I may give it a go at some point. I currently use a rifle for ranged.

I tried axe/mace recently, and I like it. You get a knockdown with it, and a ranged snare.

Switched to bow recently too, and I am kind of digging that. Arcing Arrow hits like a dang truck, but not sure how well it scales, because I am only around level 40. Although the Bow pulls ahead on in AoE, it’s still strong single target, and it’s far less boring then rifle.

Saziel.3897:

I also heard axes are pretty great, so I tried out axe/sword. I didn’t try axe/axe because I’ve heard axe offhand is not that great, but I’m finding axe in mainhand doesn’t really keep up with bleed damage, unless I’m really missing something.

Warriors are a profession that tends to rely on Power/Precision more than Condition damage, with the Sword being the only melee weapon that leans more towards Condition damage.

Well the Longbow can utilize Condition Damage as well, but the Warrior even more so then other professions needs Power in the build as well. Crit and Crit Dmg isn’t necessarily as important if you have powerful condition damage. You end up doing almost as much condition damage as a condition damage build and a ton of direct damage as well since the Sword and Longbow have healthy damage coefficients.

In particular it handles Mesmers pretty well since it has the Longbow. It just has troubles against condition removal, since it doesn’t have too many conditions it applies at once. Burn, Bleed, Confusion, Blind, Cripple, and Immobilize are pretty much it. You also need to sacrifice a slot for Signet of Fury likely, in order to have some decent adrenaline generation to power Flurries and Combustive Shots. I admit though, Signet of Rage plus the 30 point Strength trait for free Berserker’s Stance is extremely helpful in adrenaline gain beyond that. It’s not uncommon to start a fight with a full power Combustive Shot followed by a Fire Shielded full power Flurry.

I run a 30/30/x/x/x build with Carrion Amulet / Rampager’s Jewel and +20% condition duration from runes. Signet of Fury, Bull’s Charge, and Signet of Rage are key. Sword/Shield and Longbow as the weapons. Defensively you can fill the utility slot with Endure Pain, but honestly I prefer Fear Me! since you are pumping it’s duration by +50% anyway. Mending for condition removal is my preference as well, but running Signet of Stamina and the adrenaline heal is worth it too I bet. I’m also running an Opportunist variant right now for extra Fury uptime, but Furious is also viable considering you have 30%/50% crit even without much for Precision in you gear.

Your basic combo of Combustive Shot -> Longbow 3 -> Longbow 5 -> Sword 2 -> Flurry will kill anyone without condition removal up, and anyone that does now has that much less condition removal to deal with you. +50% Burn Duration and +100% Bleed Duration matters. Also have to keep in mind your direct damage is actually very meaningful as well. Incredible in team fights since you can lock down targets so well, survive with a shield, and have the AoE damage the Warrior often lacks.

I’d rather just focus on Power/Precision/Crit Damage for those huge Arcing Arrow burst criticals. The Burning is a nice bonus, but I would never stack Condition Damage just because of it.

The Condi-Dmg is for the Sword and Longbow together, not necessarily just the Burning on the Longbow. The Bleed, Confusion, and Burning more then make up for damage lost on an Arcing Arrow.

I’d agree though, that if you weren’t pairing the Sword with it then Condi-Dmg is a terrible idea. I think it’s also underestimated how close this build’s direct damage is to a build devoted to that concept. It already has 50% crit under Fury and Crit Dmg doesn’t feed your damage output as much as I think most people think.

Not saying it doesn’t have it’s weaknesses, because there are clear ones such as dueling things that aren’t vulnerable to AoE. Damage output as a weakness isn’t one of them though.

I got a buddy that plays m/s manly plays pvp and he used that combo for the 2 counters. Seemed pretty decent to.

I’m currently leveling up a warrior and so far I love running with sword/axe. Group up a couple mobs at a time and they die fast. Occasionally i’ll use axe/horn or sword/horn for travelling purposes.