As a commander, you’re typically put in this situation while on the move:
—You’re in front of everybody.
—You’re often the enemy’s first target.
^because of these two, you’re in the best position to make GREAT bait.
—You’re the first one able to “grab hold” of an enemy player.
—You’re a class that has a lot of options to achieve ^this.
With that said, the above build includes the following:
PROS:
1: Two traits for crowd control, as well as about 5 with both weapons combined4One of which basically makes you a heat-seeking missile for 900 range. Fear is unstoppable (stomp takes time, can be interrupted) and works great if you can get behind 1-2 people in a skirmish.
2: Lots of dodging/speed for you and your buds.
The ability to cross a lot of terrain in a short time:
(permaswift plus savage leap + bulls charge, switch to rifle, #2 for an immob/cripple) and your zerg just swoops in and rolls ’em)
3 AoE downed revive, which is huge for lords and early parts of a big brawl, where the winner is usually the team that rallies first more often.
4 Easier to jump down steep terrain in wvw (usually pretty essential) plus you can keep jumping off of a gate to aoe stomp rammers constantly, in and out.
5 If you’ve noticed anything about most builds in WvW, they’re very evasive/survival based. Thus most times you need every ounce of CC in this build alone just to hold onto ’em while your buddies finish ’em off. The freeze procs help with their mobility, too.
6 Rifle does kitten dps compared to other things, but for only 1 trait slot you get faster CC (#2 and #5) and the ability to roll back into your zerg and keep contributing. This is a survival build as much as it is support/CC.
7 AoE condition cures x2 for you and your buds in addition to a pretty strong passive HP regen with decent toughness (adrenal health + signet + gear + constant regen from trait/horn). This is probably my favorite thing to do. Being able to break almost every form of CC, TWICE, and get back to your buds helps bait in a lot of people into your zerg, as they get frustrated and chase you.
CONS
A: You do almost no DPS compared to other builds. Prepare to get laughed at in a solo fight as you hold onto a guy but can’t kill him as he wears you down. Flipside to that though is most times your’e tagged up, so help usually isn’t too far away.
B: The fewer players around you, the worse you can expect to perform. This build is like a force multiplier, making the zerg much stronger, but usually requires 5+ to be really effective
C: As you’re often diving in and out of fights, you often need to wait for certain traits to recharge, or you won’t come out the next time. You’ll be doing crappy rifle damage, but at least you can CC a little bit while they recharge.
D: No burst heals. Bright side is you don’t have to waste critical seconds burst healing, either.
All in all this is a build that allows me to be aggressive with a zerg, and get more kills than you normally would without proper CC. It’s definately a Niche build, would work for non-commanders in group++ WvW roams, camp flips, etc. But beyond that, don’t use this
Interested to see what you have to say about it.
Resident Zerg Idiot
Isle of Janthir
(edited by GavinGoodrich.1382)