Guild Wars 2

I was dabbling with the idea of using a sword/axe or sword/mace (shield for tougher fights). Currently, I am running a build focused around Axe/Shield. So far I have not found anything to be better than the axe main hand. It has really nice 4 stack of vulnerability and the auto attack is massive. The toss axe is good for stopping runners though in PvE, it is mostly useless.

Is there a way to make the sword bleed damage be comparable to the direct damage of the axe auto attack?

In my opinion condition damage is very risky in PvE because how poorly conditions stack and because of plenty of condition-immune structures.

I used to play Sword/axe too and went the condition road, however Conditions have so many downsides it is painful.

you probably think conditions deal more damage than direct damage because it has to tick over time to do the damage right? At least in most other games it was this way.. no wrong with similar weapons conditions deal about the same damage as direct damage option

Conditions doesnt scale with other stats.. while critdamage benefits from power conditonsdamage dont.

CD doesnt do any good against yellow objects.. well critdamage or pricision wont too but when you go the critroad you most likely have more power than you would as conditioner

Bleeds can be capped at 25 stacks wich happens in Events or if you have 2 other conditioners in your party so some damage might be lost… same with burning if you got a elementalist or eng in your party. The weaker burning delays the stronger one.

Tag mobs in events with conditions can be problematic if they die before some ticks oocured you wont get any reward.

Some bosses have buffs that reduce the effect of some Conditions on them and some Bosses can remove conditions due to different abillities. And some Bosses can heal themself when a condition is applied…

Last but not least you wont know how much damage you deal unless you do complicated math. If you crit you see immediately “ok That was a 5k crit” to see what damage your condition do you have to calculate it.

Monki.5012:

I used to play Sword/axe too and went the condition road, however Conditions have so many downsides it is painful.

you probably think conditions deal more damage than direct damage because it has to tick over time to do the damage right? At least in most other games it was this way.. no wrong with similar weapons conditions deal about the same damage as direct damage option

Conditions doesnt scale with other stats.. while critdamage benefits from power conditonsdamage dont.

CD doesnt do any good against yellow objects.. well critdamage or pricision wont too but when you go the critroad you most likely have more power than you would as conditioner

Bleeds can be capped at 25 stacks wich happens in Events or if you have 2 other conditioners in your party so some damage might be lost… same with burning if you got a elementalist or eng in your party. The weaker burning delays the stronger one.

Tag mobs in events with conditions can be problematic if they die before some ticks oocured you wont get any reward.

Some bosses have buffs that reduce the effect of some Conditions on them and some Bosses can remove conditions due to different abillities. And some Bosses can heal themself when a condition is applied…

Last but not least you wont know how much damage you deal unless you do complicated math. If you crit you see immediately “ok That was a 5k crit” to see what damage your condition do you have to calculate it.

Summed up exactly what I was going to say.

I tried condition damage P/D on my Thief for PVE and it was a huge mistake.

Conditions are a nice bonus on the side for a Warrior, but they should not be used as your main form of damage. Power and Precision are a lot more viable.

Monki.5012:

I used to play Sword/axe too and went the condition road, however Conditions have so many downsides it is painful.

you probably think conditions deal more damage than direct damage because it has to tick over time to do the damage right? At least in most other games it was this way.. no wrong with similar weapons conditions deal about the same damage as direct damage option

Conditions doesnt scale with other stats.. while critdamage benefits from power conditonsdamage dont.

CD doesnt do any good against yellow objects.. well critdamage or pricision wont too but when you go the critroad you most likely have more power than you would as conditioner

Bleeds can be capped at 25 stacks wich happens in Events or if you have 2 other conditioners in your party so some damage might be lost… same with burning if you got a elementalist or eng in your party. The weaker burning delays the stronger one.

Tag mobs in events with conditions can be problematic if they die before some ticks oocured you wont get any reward.

Some bosses have buffs that reduce the effect of some Conditions on them and some Bosses can remove conditions due to different abillities. And some Bosses can heal themself when a condition is applied…

Last but not least you wont know how much damage you deal unless you do complicated math. If you crit you see immediately “ok That was a 5k crit” to see what damage your condition do you have to calculate it.

Condition damage does do more then direct damage for bleed warriors.

It does scale with other stats
Direct damage = power prec crit dmg
Condition dmg = Condition dmg prec condition duration (Prec is there because 33% chance on crit to bleed and sigil of earth) two critical parts of a bleed build.

The bleed cap is an issue. But it doesnt cause to many problems unless you have three bleeds in the party, two is fine.

You tag mobs just as easily, tagging is more of a weapons feature then a bleed/direct damage feature. Some bosses have condition removal your right. They are alot more rare then monsters/bosses with high armor. Bleeds dont get reduced by armor/prot boon where direct damage does.

The deal you deal is easy to calculate, hardly complicated. Number you see for the attack + Number you see for the bleed x Duration of the bleed.

Eg: With no condition duration stats: Rifle hits for 800, bleed ticks for 50. 800+50*6 = 1100 I know my bleed times just by playing the class. So i can do the math in my head during the fight, not that it matters much anyway

Kazin.2073:

It does scale with other stats
Direct damage = power prec crit dmg
Condition dmg = Condition dmg prec condition duration (Prec is there because 33% chance on crit to bleed and sigil of earth) two critical parts of a bleed build.

This is only partly true. While one could argue that condition damage does scale to some extent, it does not scale to the same extent power/crit/prec do with each other. While precision does cap out eventually, it has a much higher ceiling for power/crit based builds then it does Sigil of Earth centered builds, all while crit damage and power can be stacked infinitely.

- Condition duration is not a real stat. Traits and sigils/runes are your only source of condition duration, it does appear naturally on gear and therefore limits how much of it that can be stacked.
- Sigil of Earth has a 2 second ICD, which means precision becomes useless relatively quickly for SoE-based builds. Not to mention that even if SoE didn’t have an ICD, precision would still scale substantially better for Pwr/Prec/Crit builds because the value of precision as a stat is highest on berserker pieces due being directly affected by both crit damage and power.

Now if they would just let damaging conditions naturally crit and perhaps up the coefficients on con damage a bit, I don’t think there would be such a huge disparity between scaling.

Blacksarevok.8104:

Kazin.2073:

It does scale with other stats
Direct damage = power prec crit dmg
Condition dmg = Condition dmg prec condition duration (Prec is there because 33% chance on crit to bleed and sigil of earth) two critical parts of a bleed build.

This is only partly true. While one could argue that condition damage does scale to some extent, it does not scale to the same extent power/crit/prec do with each other. While precision does cap out eventually, it has a much higher ceiling for power/crit based builds then it does Sigil of Earth centered builds, all while crit damage and power can be stacked infinitely.

- Condition duration is not a real stat. Traits and sigils/runes are your only source of condition duration, it does appear naturally on gear and therefore limits how much of it that can be stacked.
- Sigil of Earth has a 2 second ICD, which means precision becomes useless relatively quickly for SoE-based builds. Not to mention that even if SoE didn’t have an ICD, precision would still scale substantially better for Pwr/Prec/Crit builds because the value of precision as a stat is highest on berserker pieces due being directly affected by both crit damage and power.

Now if they would just let damaging conditions naturally crit and perhaps up the coefficients on con damage a bit, I don’t think there would be such a huge disparity between scaling.

While condition duration does not appear on gear. It scale sooooo much better then anything else. Condition duration is the same as crit damage, % for % with the following assumptions: 100% crit chance and the bleed finishes duration. Now 100% crit is not realistic so as it is lowered condition duration is MORE beneficial then crit damage.

Let looks at some sources for condition duration for bleeds: Traits (50%) runes (15%x2) Strength tree(0%-30%)

Imagion if there was a trait that added 50% more critical damage, how insane does that sound? Well the bleed trait is better then that unless your 100% crit chance. It is clear that condition damage/precision/condition duration scales better then power precision crit damage. Remember, you don’t lose any power for going rampage items, you actually have a higher crit chance with rampages as precision is its main stat. So you still get same power, higher crit chance and lower crit damage. So your direct damage is likely to be 70% that of a berserker (you will have 50% passive crit dmg + ~30crit dmg instead of 109 crit dmg) in the direct damage department. Let alone how hard bleed scales ontop of that.

Now, I understand your point for crit chance on sigil of earth. Your missing the trait 33% chance on crit to cause a bleed which does not have a cooldown. This scales perfectly with crit chance. There are also additional benefits to crit, such as food procs (onnomberry ghosts) 30point talent in arms are two that I commonly use.

They don’t need to let bleeds crit, they are already many fold stronger. I crit 800 with my rifle with bleed spec, with berserker I achieve around 1200, the difference is I get 130 bleeds instead of 60 and they last twice as long (12sec for rifle 1 bleed). Let alone how well the sigil scales.

Sigil of fire is ~1k damage every5sec
Sigil of earth is ~(5sec bleed duration x 2 condition duration items x 130 bleed ticks) aka 1300 damage every 2sec. This is ignoring the 30% proc chance on fire and 60% proc chance on earth

The trait 33% chance on crit to cause bleed is very strong as well. There is simply no trait available for berserker that matches the dps benefit.

The traits scale better, condition duration scales ALOT better. (Think of food, there is +40% condition duration food available, you don’t see +40% crit damage food, not that it would be as good either)

Bleed rocks

Anything works in PvE so long as you actually do work.

Kazin.2073:

Blacksarevok.8104:

Kazin.2073:

It does scale with other stats
Direct damage = power prec crit dmg
Condition dmg = Condition dmg prec condition duration (Prec is there because 33% chance on crit to bleed and sigil of earth) two critical parts of a bleed build.

This is only partly true. While one could argue that condition damage does scale to some extent, it does not scale to the same extent power/crit/prec do with each other. While precision does cap out eventually, it has a much higher ceiling for power/crit based builds then it does Sigil of Earth centered builds, all while crit damage and power can be stacked infinitely.

- Condition duration is not a real stat. Traits and sigils/runes are your only source of condition duration, it does appear naturally on gear and therefore limits how much of it that can be stacked.
- Sigil of Earth has a 2 second ICD, which means precision becomes useless relatively quickly for SoE-based builds. Not to mention that even if SoE didn’t have an ICD, precision would still scale substantially better for Pwr/Prec/Crit builds because the value of precision as a stat is highest on berserker pieces due being directly affected by both crit damage and power.

Now if they would just let damaging conditions naturally crit and perhaps up the coefficients on con damage a bit, I don’t think there would be such a huge disparity between scaling.

While condition duration does not appear on gear. It scale sooooo much better then anything else. Condition duration is the same as crit damage, % for % with the following assumptions: 100% crit chance and the bleed finishes duration. Now 100% crit is not realistic so as it is lowered condition duration is MORE beneficial then crit damage.

Let looks at some sources for condition duration for bleeds: Traits (50%) runes (15%x2) Strength tree(0%-30%)

Imagion if there was a trait that added 50% more critical damage, how insane does that sound? Well the bleed trait is better then that unless your 100% crit chance. It is clear that condition damage/precision/condition duration scales better then power precision crit damage. Remember, you don’t lose any power for going rampage items, you actually have a higher crit chance with rampages as precision is its main stat. So you still get same power, higher crit chance and lower crit damage. So your direct damage is likely to be 70% that of a berserker (you will have 50% passive crit dmg + ~30crit dmg instead of 109 crit dmg) in the direct damage department. Let alone how hard bleed scales ontop of that.

Now, I understand your point for crit chance on sigil of earth. Your missing the trait 33% chance on crit to cause a bleed which does not have a cooldown. This scales perfectly with crit chance. There are also additional benefits to crit, such as food procs (onnomberry ghosts) 30point talent in arms are two that I commonly use.

They don’t need to let bleeds crit, they are already many fold stronger. I crit 800 with my rifle with bleed spec, with berserker I achieve around 1200, the difference is I get 130 bleeds instead of 60 and they last twice as long (12sec for rifle 1 bleed). Let alone how well the sigil scales.

Sigil of fire is ~1k damage every5sec
Sigil of earth is ~(5sec bleed duration x 2 condition duration items x 130 bleed ticks) aka 1300 damage every 2sec. This is ignoring the 30% proc chance on fire and 60% proc chance on earth

The trait 33% chance on crit to cause bleed is very strong as well. There is simply no trait available for berserker that matches the dps benefit.

The traits scale better, condition duration scales ALOT better. (Think of food, there is +40% condition duration food available, you don’t see +40% crit damage food, not that it would be as good either)

Bleed rocks

Condition duration is great, I agree, but you forgot to mention 2 things:

1.) Condition Duration still benefits builds that don’t stack condition damage. I’d say that a full berserker-geared build would still gain half the benefit of condition duration (since from my experience, conditions do about half damage when geared berserker when compared to full rampager) ON TOP OF the benefits of crit damage.

2.) You won’t always be getting all of your condition ticks off (condition clearing, target dying, etc…). So you really can’t compare the theoretical max damage of conditions since when applied realistically it will be lower (most of the time, at least).

Any direct damage build would only get 10-20% condition duration from the strength tree. Condition duration scales down, so this will result in +0s-1s duration on most of your bleeds. (Eg 6sec from rifle x 10% = 6.6 = 6sec still) It only becomes strong when your stack it alot. It certainly doesnt do anywhere near as much for a direct damage build as crit damage does for a condition damage build (it has the same power, higher crit chance)

This is correct. Bleeds don’t always get to finish, so in some situations where a fight lasts less then say 10sec (its a guess not entirely sure) berserker builds will do more dps then condition damage builds. Does it really matter? How important is a fight that lasts only a matter on seconds. I’m more worried about the long boss fights.

Condition clearing is very very uncommon in pve. I do only fractals and there is no condition clearing from bosses in there at all. What there is plenty of is protection boons and high armor targets. In both these situations condition damage builds surge ahead even further due to the large hit zerker builds take.

1 point to make. While a target can die and bleed dps is lost, is does have a benefit. What if you go down? After you go down your dps on the target is still solid for a few seconds, this allows rallies to occur far more easily.

Kazin.2073:

Any direct damage build would only get 10-20% condition duration from the strength tree. Condition duration scales down, so this will result in +0s-1s duration on most of your bleeds. (Eg 6sec from rifle x 10% = 6.6 = 6sec still) It only becomes strong when your stack it alot. It certainly doesnt do anywhere near as much for a direct damage build as crit damage does for a condition damage build (it has the same power, higher crit chance)

This is correct. Bleeds don’t always get to finish, so in some situations where a fight lasts less then say 10sec (its a guess not entirely sure) berserker builds will do more dps then condition damage builds. Does it really matter? How important is a fight that lasts only a matter on seconds. I’m more worried about the long boss fights.

Condition clearing is very very uncommon in pve. I do only fractals and there is no condition clearing from bosses in there at all. What there is plenty of is protection boons and high armor targets. In both these situations condition damage builds surge ahead even further due to the large hit zerker builds take.

1 point to make. While a target can die and bleed dps is lost, is does have a benefit. What if you go down? After you go down your dps on the target is still solid for a few seconds, this allows rallies to occur far more easily.

- Well, on my Warrior I am 20/30/0/0/20, so I get +20% duration, and I also have +50% bleed duration. So I am only losing 10% from the tree, and 30% from runes. So yeah, the disparity is much smaller in comparison.

- I agree that condition builds generally have better survivability, however this boils down to skill more than the builds themselves. I hardly ever find myself getting downed, at least compared to my Thief.

- As for your last point, this is entirely true…but you will be doing more damage in berserker stats during your downed state, so i think it evens out in the end.

Here is the difference, you have 70% condition duration on bleeds that do less then HALF as much damage as a condition duration build.

Most of that is wasted due to rounding down.

As a condition damage build you lose 70% crit damage but its gain more for each point then a crit damage build. Just look at the numbers or go to mists and compare how much damage a single shot does. Count it if you need to. Its not even close.

Oh yeah, I wasn’t arguing that condition duration had the same value for both builds (it’s certainly better for con damage builds). I was simply arguing that there is still decent value in it for direct damage builds, and you can still achieve decent con duration without giving up any direct damage.

My reason to use a sword instead of an axe is better use of the boon Might
At lvl 80 1 might gives 35 power en 35 condition damage.

So if u cant deal conditions that do damage over time, u use the boon Might less effectivly. With my own buffs/sigil i can keep around 11-17 stacks might up so thats 400-600 power AND 400-600 condition damage.
With mostly Knight gear (trinkets are Power/Thoug/Condition) and own buffs i get 3.1K+ attack power with 1.1K+ condition damage and 70% crit chance.

In fractal runs were might stacks keep aboven 20+ ur missing out on 700+ condition damage if u cant apply DoT conditions.

Thats my 2 cents and the reason why i run a 0/10/20/30/10 build that has decent dps, bleeds and party suppert tru banner healing, remove condition via shouts.

You guys seem to forget that the 33% Bleed on crit trait works for Critbuilts too. So you apply a condition while having high crit damage. Sure the bleedticks are quite low due to no conditiondamage.
I might be wrong but I think a critbuilt with additional low conditondamage does more than a conditiondamagebuilt with additional low Crit% since you get your full potential + some minor DoT.

There are only two advantages for Conditionbuilts over Critbuilts I found so far:
Dragon World Bosses can bleed but you cant crit them
If you crit you generate a huge amount of threat and gain the aggro most likely but with CD the damage is streched over time. I noticed that I got threat more often now that I crit heavily than before when I did almost the same Damage with Condition

Another thing one might mention is that Axe Burst is saver to use than Swordburst which for me is a huge factor. With Axe you jump to the target, deal damage and can retreat if nessesary. With Sword you need to stand still several moments to unload your maximum potential which can be quite dangerous.

Seems all theoretical to me. One says one thing while another says another.

I think both builds have their place and can compete with each other in certain aspects. One benefit of a direct damage build is it can take down objects a lot easier and regular mobs are more of a breeze.

Benefit of a condition build is your other conditions (bleed, poison, burn, confusion) will do better damage and your other effects (weaken, immobilize, cripple, etc) often last longer.

For the entire process of me leveling up and some time more (maybe 2 months after launch) i played full rampager gear. Bleeds stack nicely the 33% chance on crit to bleed results in me solo being able to keep 15-18 bleeds at times constant that tick 70-80 each tick witch equals to 1200+ extra dmg per second. Sword + axe was great for that build due to both sword main attack bleeding and the wirlwind criting. The main problem i found while PvE-ing with my warrior (dungeons that is) was the lack of survivability. In all fairness the build i use now (power/toughness/vitality shout build) is one of the most tankiest out there and to me almost all other builds feel squishy, but getting killed by AoE was nothing uncommon even to normal mobs if i was not careful for a moment.

My point is that bleed warriors have a common problem with pure zerker warriors. In some dungeon fights (mainly boss fights), due to their squishyness they have to jump in and out of combat all the time, while tougher builds in the famility of the one i use (power/toughness/vitality + shouts ) can stay and do melee dmg for longer even if that dmg is lower. Yes, my crit chance is just below 30% (50 in reality because i can keep constant fury on without breaking a sweat), but so far i haven’t found a situation in witch i’d prefer to be in zerker or bleed build.

P.S. i use Sword + shield instead of Axe + shield for the extra mobility that the sword provides (Leap) + hamstring slows for more time.

i use yojaks build in pve sometimes, pwr/prec/cond and the bleeds are nice vs bosses, but its not really any better than the same with axe pwr/prec/toughness which works on objects as well.

Kazin.2073:

Let looks at some sources for condition duration for bleeds: Traits (50%) runes (15%x2) Strength tree(0%-30%)

Bleed rocks

You can get 45% from runes actually (15% x 3). Runes of the Krait, Centaur, and Afflicted. But at the moment, they don’t work.

I love the sword skills so i have optimized bleed.

Yes, bleed is awesome in PvE.

And i do not use any sigil that optimizes bleed. And i do not use offhand sword. sigils of restoration and of blood for survivabilty. I still do an insane amount of bleed damage.

Knights armor, lionguards weapons, Coral upgrades and coral jewelry.

Sword/horn and the swap slot is rifle with agony I think.

traits:
5
30 (I, III, VIII)
15 (I)
20 (VI, IX)
0

All signets and i hardly ever pop them except for rage and that only out of combat.

try it, you may be surprised

RollingBob.8502:

I love the sword skills so i have optimized bleed.

Yes, bleed is awesome in PvE.

And i do not use any sigil that optimizes bleed. And i do not use offhand sword. sigils of restoration and of blood for survivabilty. I still do an insane amount of bleed damage.

Knights armor, lionguards weapons, Coral upgrades and coral jewelry.

Sword/horn and the swap slot is rifle with agony I think.

traits:
5
30 (I, III, VIII)
15 (I)
20 (VI, IX)
0

All signets and i hardly ever pop them except for rage and that only out of combat.

try it, you may be surprised

This is interesting as I have been told by many warriors who seem to be knowledgeable about the class that all signets is for leveling up and that is all. This thread has made me a bit confused. So the only thing that helps the warrior bleeds at the moment is the trait. The sigils and runes are not working correctly at the moment?

its more of the duration increasing ones dont seem to help that much for bleeds. But for a pure bleed setup id say something like a strength or earth sigils. Str pumps up bleed dmg and since i tend to like running higher crit the strength procs alot and the earth is a 60% chance to get another 5 sec bleed which if your already stacking cond dmg will hurt and yeah i would strongly reccommend staying away from signet of fury or might for top lvl play