Condi Warrior Late Game Viability
Never tried Dontain’s build but I never agreed with it when I watched his video outlining it. Primarily, I didn’t like the bleed duration he aimed for when he could’ve went for just base condition duration to enhance immobilize, cripple, burning and whatever else you apply.
Also, I’m still not a proponent of whirling axe on a hybrid condition build. Whirling in a fire field could be replaced by extending condition duration toward 75% and using Fan of Fire properly.
As for it’s effectiveness in FotM and Orr, it functions. It won’t do the best damage but you have opportunity to diversify your build for higher HP or toughness if you’re not focusing on crit damage. I’d possibly recommend mace off-hand for its ranged CC or sword for its defensive/offensive blend (Riposte, learn to love it!) over axe off-hand.
But most importantly, have fun. Get in there and whirl your heart out :P
I think the point of the whirling axe was to stack crits for omnomberry ghosts for health regen, that video was made pre food nerf (also it was there for quickly filling adrenaline so you can launch your longbow firefield combos and such). I haven’t tried the omnomberry + whirling axe combo yet.
I haven’t tried sword offhand with this build (but running around with dual swords looks so badass!) I’ll try it out and see how it goes! I don’t like the mace offhand to be honest.
Don’t want to be mean, however since your condi you would just be holding back most necromancers by making them go over the cap, I would not group with you in dungeons because you would be lowering my dps. (speaking as a necro.)
Necromancers can apply more bleeds and more types of conditions all at a safe distance (Aka they don’t need to be in melee at all, I can do it all at 900-1200 range.)
If a warrior ran into the group, it would overdo the necromancers conditions and he would have a hard time, also the fact that you would be out doing each others dps.
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The condition warrior gameplay is normally VERY viable, but sadly a current bug with the whirl projectiles ( introduced on the 25th) is making it lose a lot of it’s punch at the moment ( due to no pewpews on the whirl).
Dontain’s video is nice for the gameplay showcase, but it was made while omnohms were still in season. His builds were also a little wonky . Foodwise I recommend going pizza/koi + crystals.
Normally extremely viable but equipment is key…. pre-80, go with carrion/rabid crests equipment. post80 get that exo gear and go either full carrion if you’re making a non critty build or full rabid if going for a critty build. ( Fact : you can get 5/6 rabid armor pieces off the orr temples. I got shoulders off CM.)
Don’t want to be mean, however since your condi you would just be holding back most blablablablabl
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I agree with Kaga that Dontain’s build was a little wonky. If you want to play condis, go for it. I recommend feeling out what you like (weapons; utilities; balance of crit, power, condi dmg) then putting together a rough build idea and running it by some of the guys here if you’re interested in hearing some constructive criticism.
The one thing I would caution against in running a pure condi build is that, if puging, you sometimes get thrown into the mix with another condi heavy build. When I ran a condi warr, it happened to me a few times, and it made the dungeon really boring and slow because we were condi capping everything. When I switched to a more hybrid build, I still got the same AoE gameplay, but in the event that I got paired with another condi user, I didn’t feel as useless and was able to enjoy some flashy crits.
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(edited by Veritas.6071)
I guess the best thing here would be to have 2 sets of armor and switch between the two… The condi build I have to say excels in solo play when doing map completion, the zerker warrior just dies too kitten much on his own to be a pleasant experience when PvE-ing. But I agree in dungeons if someone else is running bleeds that condi build becomes a lot less efficient. Blaaah.
I honestly don’t think Warrior is cut out to be a pure condition profession. You only really have bleed and burning to work with and confusion in PvE isn’t that effective.
I usually have several kinds of builds on my Warriors and when I go condition, I tend to go condition-hybrid. Basically, don’t put your eggs in one basket and build for support/condition or all-around damage. My hybrid build tends to hover around 900-1100 condition damage and 1500 power with 50% crit and 60% chance and around 75% condition duration without my giver’s weapon.
Bleeds still do good damage (like 100/tic) and I can still do good direct damage. If a build who focuses on conditions joins, I can either keep doing what I do and stack bleed, burn and poison (Asura) or just swap to a greatsword, pop a few traits around (I do that already anyway) and good to go. It won’t do as much damage as a zerker but it also has over 2.5k armor with conditions that can last almost 2x as long (more weakness on your hammer/mace, more cripple and again, Radiation Field is a really good PvE skill).
Warrior’s can pump out some high damage conditions. For Great Justice + Battle Standard or Signet of Rage, and Banner of Strength get your condition damage really high.
I’m not real experienced as I only went to HotM once to see what it could do, but I think Sword/Sword would be more beneficial then Axe.
If fast enough you could use Impale>switch to Longbow before the Sword reaches the foe so you don’t have to wait 5-10 seconds for weapon swap. Use skill Pin Down/Longbow 2/Arcing Arrow. Then switch back to Sword to use Rip, possibly Riposte to block an attack and apply 4 more bleeds then go to town from there.
My advice might be bad though, like I said I don’t got any experience at all with a condition set up on Warrior but in my mind that combo could work very well especially if you got a Sigil of Geomancy on one of your Swords
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I honestly don’t think Warrior is cut out to be a pure condition profession. You only really have bleed and burning to work with and confusion in PvE isn’t that effective.
I usually have several kinds of builds on my Warriors and when I go condition, I tend to go condition-hybrid. Basically, don’t put your eggs in one basket and build for support/condition or all-around damage. My hybrid build tends to hover around 900-1100 condition damage and 1500 power with 50% crit and 60% chance and around 75% condition duration without my giver’s weapon.
Bleeds still do good damage (like 100/tic) and I can still do good direct damage. If a build who focuses on conditions joins, I can either keep doing what I do and stack bleed, burn and poison (Asura) or just swap to a greatsword, pop a few traits around (I do that already anyway) and good to go. It won’t do as much damage as a zerker but it also has over 2.5k armor with conditions that can last almost 2x as long (more weakness on your hammer/mace, more cripple and again, Radiation Field is a really good PvE skill).
With Fast Hands + Sigil of Doom or Asura Radiation Field, warrior can add poison with decent uptime. Even then, poison isn’t that critical in PvE to begin with (it’s only worth 2 bleed stacks). Not having Torment, even though it’s a unique condition, is pretty negligible due to no profession being able to even maintain just 3 stacks (i.e. it’s not a huge bonus to those professions either). Warrior has a large amount of access to confusion if traited appropriately, but it’s not necessary in many PvE cases.
Warrior has no problem with hitting 100% uptime on burning and 20+ stacks of bleed, which is very potent (and better than necromancer builds typically put out). It also doesn’t need to dedicate runes to condition duration to get there, allowing those slots to be dedicated to either raw damage or utility. As an example build, this one has a bleed duration of 16 seconds per strike on the auto chain, which without interruption loops roughly 10 times. This means that the auto chain would maintain 20 bleed stacks by itself. Swapping to Longbow allows the player to use Pin Down and add 6 high duration stacks which make up for not using the sword auto for 5 seconds; it also grants the warrior access to burning, a fire field + blast finisher, and 5 100% projectile finishers to use in that field (making the burning last much longer if more time is needed using sword). Switching back to sword applies poison. This hasn’t yet taken into account the offhand sword skills, which both easily make up for their cast times with higher bleed stacks than the auto chain can put out in the same time, or the bleed on crit, or the sword F1 skill. This all simply goes to show how easy it is for a warrior to maintain a high amount of bleeds, 100% uptime on burning, provide himself with ~10 stacks of might and still have a high base condition damage stat. It’s potentially one of the best condition builds in the game.
The core problem with condition builds on a warrior isn’t the damage output compared to other condition builds, or the lack of condition types (bleed and burn are the only ones that really matter for damage in PvE) – it’s the damage output compared to the warrior’s own direct damage builds (doubly so when taking things like the stack cap into consideration in a group scenario). It’s not worth running in a group because there are better ways for warrior to deal damage, while other professions (necro especially) can deal more damage over time with condition builds than direct damage.
That said, I still made an asura warrior just today purely for running a condition build (I already have a maxed out norn warrior for zerking everywhere)
I am .. kind of eye glaring at the blatant lies of this thread.
Warriors can get ‘ok’ condition damage on one target if they completely dedicate themselves to it, however they will never have the condition damage of a necromancer nore the survivability of being in range of doing that damage, they cannot spread there conditions to multiple foes and pretty much double them.
Honestly, I would basicly kick a warrior for overstacking bleeds over my necromancer because hes honestly just lowering my damage (speaking as a necromancer.) I am saying all this in the nicest way possible.
They will also lack almost any sort of utility, less you go shouts or banners, but then you would have even less condition damage.
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(edited by Daecollo.9578)
I guess the best thing here would be to have 2 sets of armor and switch between the two… The condi build I have to say excels in solo play when doing map completion, the zerker warrior just dies too kitten much on his own to be a pleasant experience when PvE-ing. But I agree in dungeons if someone else is running bleeds that condi build becomes a lot less efficient. Blaaah.
There is no need for multiple sets. There are plenty of gear combinations capable of giving you good DPS, either direct or condi, and not leaving you as squishy as a full berserker.
Ve·ri·tas [English ver-i-tahs] A Latin noun meaning Truth.
I am .. kind of eye glaring at the blatant lies of this thread.
Warriors can get ‘ok’ condition damage on one target if they completely dedicate themselves to it, however they will never have the condition damage of a necromancer nore the survivability of being in range of doing that damage, they cannot spread there conditions to multiple foes and pretty much double them.
Honestly, I would basicly kick a warrior for overstacking bleeds over my necromancer because hes honestly just lowering my damage (speaking as a necromancer.) I am saying all this in the nicest way possible.
They will also lack almost any sort of utility, less you go shouts or banners, but then you would have even less condition damage.
I have a necro too, I’m aware of the mechanics of how necro’s apply conditions, but I don’t know if you’re characterizing warrior conditions properly. The main appeal of this build is its MASSIVE AoE potential, not single target dps. Warriors don’t have epidemic, true, but epidemic isn’t the only way to do AoE condition damage.
The bleeds you pick up with sword autoattack on single target isn’t the backbone of this build, it’s just there to pump adrenaline. What makes this build is the near constant application of the burst skills from the longbow (apply a wide AoE burn, create fire field for combo finishers in bow 3, sword 2, axe 5) and sword (which immobalizes and slashes in a cone to create ~16 stacks of bleed from this skill alone), combined with high crit chance (which has a 33% chance of applying bleed per crit — which syncs well with axe 5 and flurry).
In terms of support, you’re mistaken, the condi warrior offers as much if not more support than your typical zerker build. You would run FGJ anyway in this build, and as stated above the long bow “combustive shot” fire field is ridiculously wide (240 radius) and lasts for a good 10s with 5 pulses of 2s of burning. Also this field can be re-applied basically every 10s since the adrenaline fills so fast in this build. Try applying this fire field for a thief who will spam cluster bomb. AoE 12-15 stacks of might for 20 seconds anyone? Warr can also trigger 3 stacks of might from bow 3 even without anyone else’s help.
EDIT: This isn’t to say warriors can run toe to toe with necros for condition damage, that’s just false (I can say that from experience playing both classes). The point of this thread, however, was to find the late game viability of an alternate warrior build that has a lot more AoE potential than the standard zerker and is honestly more fun.
I guess the best thing here would be to have 2 sets of armor and switch between the two… The condi build I have to say excels in solo play when doing map completion, the zerker warrior just dies too kitten much on his own to be a pleasant experience when PvE-ing. But I agree in dungeons if someone else is running bleeds that condi build becomes a lot less efficient. Blaaah.
There is no need for multiple sets. There are plenty of gear combinations capable of giving you good DPS, either direct or condi, and not leaving you as squishy as a full berserker.
Juggling the weapons, the armor, the pinkies to get those totals you “feel” are right is also part of the finesse of this. What you want … is to have some of that raw impact power with the conditions ( if strong enough) becoming that second layer of damage that works while you do your thing,
There’s even ways to make the whole build non critty and still deliver the woopdown if you go doubledown on conditions.
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Beware, for Commander Kaga farms j00, ktrainer!
r.i.p [iLL] Maguuma
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(edited by Kaga.7629)
If fast enough you could use Impale>switch to Longbow before the Sword reaches the foe so you don’t have to wait 5-10 seconds for weapon swap. Use skill Pin Down/Longbow 2/Arcing Arrow. Then switch back to Sword to use Rip, possibly Riposte to block an attack and apply 4 more bleeds then go to town from there.
Lol I do that exact thing on mine. I started doing it in PvE to basically get 12+ stacks of bleed + burning on the foe before I started fighting them then proceed to smack them down or block their retaliation.
I started doing it in hotjoins and it catches people off guard, or they dodge the impale only to get pinned down then leaped onto.
With Fast Hands + Sigil of Doom or Asura Radiation Field, warrior can add poison with decent uptime. Even then, poison isn’t that critical in PvE to begin with (it’s only worth 2 bleed stacks).
For Radiation Field, poison is really only the icing. It’s the weakness that is the prize. And with a leap and/or blast, you got even longer weakness without needing a mace or hammer (or longer weakness with them). It’s basically a tanking tool.
Personally, I’d probably use a direct damage sigil on my build rather than doom. I’m quite partial to Air because it’s cheap and gives me more single target damage against boss mobs where I’m likely brushing the bleed cap and stacked burns.
The core problem with condition builds on a warrior isn’t the damage output compared to other condition builds, or the lack of condition types (bleed and burn are the only ones that really matter for damage in PvE) – it’s the damage output compared to the warrior’s own direct damage builds (doubly so when taking things like the stack cap into consideration in a group scenario). It’s not worth running in a group because there are better ways for warrior to deal damage, while other professions (necro especially) can deal more damage over time with condition builds than direct damage.
That may be the main problem with condition builds in general. There’s really few options when you’re looking into condition builds for various professions.
I am in the process of giving this a shot. I was previously using a full cleric’s regen build so I am liking the increase in crits/dmg with the rabid gear. The only issue so far is getting my hands on the trinkets. That’s a work in process.
At this point I mostly WvW, so we will see how it goes.