Guild Wars 2

Just wanted to gather some opinions on this.
The way I see it we have one viable condi mainhand – sword, sword and torch as OH and LB as a two-handed options.

Now I play condi war. I love it. With a strength sigil (+100%crit), fgj and rage signet you even get some decent might. However, despite Robert showing off zerker as a class that can use condi I’m a bit concerned.

In full sinister ascended I have 1494 cdmg which translates to 112bleed/tick/sec and 364burn/tick/sec.
Now to get the same amount of damage from burning as from bleeds I’d need around 35-40% of ticks/sec from that condition.

From the poi it looked like the burning uptime was high but the individual stacks had a very low duration, even with smoldering and 20% trait.
I can maintain ~25+ stacks of bleed with my current s/s-lb, meaning the bleeds and torment I lose have to be compensated by burning. My first impression was that the bleeds I lose from switching disc (fast hands and quickness) to zerk are overall more damage than the burning I gain from torch and zerk.

In addition there’s the case of the useless primal bursts. Sword primal is pretty useless as a condi user. The low burning is in no way comparable to the long duration high bleed stacks of flurry.The same goes for longbow since you’d want a long field duration + size, meaning that I probably will lose damage from going berserk as a condi user.

One last thing. I’m concerned that just AA’ing sword is more damage than spamming those low duration burns since sword has some amazing bleed application on its own.

Thoughts?

One thing with warriors burning isn’t that it has long duration, but you are applying it constantly, with berserker, I think gs sword torch would make a good condi or hybrid set, you can have a firefield on yourself, make another firefield with the new gs burst, wwa for more burning, sword burst for more burning, your going to be applying burning nonstop with pretty much anything you do

Crovax.7854:

Just wanted to gather some opinions on this.
The way I see it we have one viable condi mainhand – sword, sword and torch as OH and LB as a two-handed options.

One correction.

Sword/Sword and even LB can’t be considered pure condi weapons as the damage dealt by Sword bleeds is rather low, compared to other profession condi setups (torment, burn, confusion), and LB burning can be easily avoided to a large part (Combustive Shot AoE).

I expect condi Berserkers to play quite differently than current condi- or hybrid Warriors because it is way more bursty than when relying on bleeds as quite significant part of your damage.

However, I personally am way more interested in even burstier condi interrupt builds with Strengh + Berserker. I’m very undecisive, though, how to get enough survivability without dropping Discipline.

Old build with condi bunker from 3:55
Now it could be even more powerful since we will be stacking burning dmg instead of bleeds. Sword/torch + LB, Defense, Berserk, Discipline.
Sword use only for projectile defense (against rangers, dragon hunters etc) and fire aura. Build yourself into a tank and let the enemy kill himself due to the retaliation+burn

I think optimal condi will be Sword/sword – Mace/torch tbh.

OanSur.4590:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fV2iiFIMBdg

Old build with condi bunker from 3:55
Now it could be even more powerful since we will be stacking burning dmg instead of bleeds. Sword/torch + LB, Defense, Berserk, Discipline.
Sword use only for projectile defense (against rangers, dragon hunters etc) and fire aura. Build yourself into a tank and let the enemy kill himself due to the retaliation+burn

I was talking about PvE, sorry for the confusion. My point was: we are losing bleeds/torment and gain burns but for those burns to be as effective as the condis we lost, they need to have at least 35-40% ticks/sec of the sword OH condis and after seeing the incredibly short duration on PoI I’m not sure that’s possible.

Plus, sword AA is incredibly good in applying mass bleeds. Same goes for F1. The zerker mode will be completely useless for condi players.

The last thing: for most of those burns to be applied we need to combo stuff which takes some time. Time I could use to apply bleeds from sword and overall it seems like a rather complicated way that ends up doing less damage.

Crovax.7854:

In addition there’s the case of the useless primal bursts. Sword primal is pretty useless as a condi user. The low burning is in no way comparable to the long duration high bleed stacks of flurry.The same goes for longbow since you’d want a long field duration + size, meaning that I probably will lose damage from going berserk as a condi user.

Flurry only has a base bleed duration of 2 seconds and 12 stacks at max adrenaline, plus an average of 4 3 second bleeds assuming all your hits crit.

Assuming you have 93% bonus bleed duration (33% trait, 40% food and 20% sigil with Balthazar or Aristocracy runes), at your 112 damage per bleed that’s 7,781 bleeding damage (including the 4 stacks you’d get on average from precise strikes.)

Flaming Flurry (currently) applies 8 stacks of burning at 1s base duration, plus an average of 2.64 bleeds if all 8 hits crit.

If you have 100% bonus burning duration (from presumably swapping to Balthazar runes, 40% food and the 20% berserker grandmaster) and do 364 a tick that’s 5,824 burning damage. If you have 93% bleed duration the 2.64 bleedings stacks from precise strikes do another 1,711 bleeding for a total of 7,535 damage.

Since flaming flurry apparently takes 2.5 seconds to complete, it can also trigger the burning grandmaster trait twice for 2 additional base 3 second aoe burns, dealing another 4,368 damage for a new total of 11, 903. If you’d already set an enemy on fire with a longbow, then regular flurry could also trigger this, bringing it up to 12,149.

Considering the primal burst skill can be used more frequently, has 900 range, destroys projectiles and can arguably hit more targets that seems like a reasonable amount of damage.

I didn’t watch the livestream, and the tooltip for the longbow primal burst scorched earth doesn’t say how often it pulses, so I don’t know how it compares to combustive shot.

Note: I don’t know if Balthazar or Artistocracy runes would end up dealing more damage, I haven’t taken the direct damage of either skill into account because flurry does so little and I don’t know the base damage or coefficient for flaming flurry, but it presumably does just as little.

I don’t think any kittens were involved in my calculations, so I’d say flaming flurry is just fine.

Don’t forget Mace Primal Burst, it acts as an interrupt and provides a couple layers of conditions, including 4 stacks of confusion which will disrupt the opponent.

Sykper.6583:

Don’t forget Mace Primal Burst, it acts as an interrupt and provides a couple layers of conditions, including 4 stacks of confusion which will disrupt the opponent.

Mace is not condi weapon so i guess this is for interrupt warriors with perplexity runes. Not a majority of condition users.

OanSur.4590:

Sykper.6583:

Don’t forget Mace Primal Burst, it acts as an interrupt and provides a couple layers of conditions, including 4 stacks of confusion which will disrupt the opponent.

Mace is not condi weapon so i guess this is for interrupt warriors with perplexity runes. Not a majority of condition users.

I wouldn’t say that, since Warrior conditions have been more or less on the weaker side of things.

What’s interesting about the Berserker in general is the amount of CCs from slight CCs like half-second dazes to outright blowouts. This might cater to more Body Blow / Distracting Strikes interrupt type builds.

If you really want to get into it, Mace main-hand is somewhat hybrid, with Mace 1 being an chain into an unreliable weakness application, Mace 2 is a block to counter which is absolutely power. However, Mace 3 is a low-damage daze while the burst has been a long-term stun. Flipping the Burst into a Primal Burst, it becomes short-term daze with multiple conditions which makes it more of a condition weapon with interrupt capabilities.

So, if you wanted to go hybrid damage, I imagine SwSh / MaSw OR if you wanted condition, SwTr / MaSw OR LB would be your flavors.

I can probably mock up some builds, but overall I think testing everything live would give us a better picture. I do not intend to disregard Condition Berserker just yet.

Sykper.6583:

So, if you wanted to go hybrid damage, I imagine SwSh / MaSw OR if you wanted condition, SwTr / MaSw OR LB would be your flavors.

Ehm Sw/Sw with Ma/Tr maybe? Mace has a blast finisher and torch a fire field, if you wanna play a condition build, that should be obvious?

Fox.3469:

Sykper.6583:

So, if you wanted to go hybrid damage, I imagine SwSh / MaSw OR if you wanted condition, SwTr / MaSw OR LB would be your flavors.

Ehm Sw/Sw with Ma/Tr maybe? Mace has a blast finisher and torch a fire field, if you wanna play a condition build, that should be obvious?

SwTr provides synergy in Fire-LeapFin and mobility with potential to cripple the intended target before you even get close with your actual sword. Great for crippling foes on point without the need to actually be next to them, and the condition damage isn’t half bad.

MaSw is the bulk of your conditions, two high threat pressure between impale which is a consistent torment application IF IT HITS (Everyone hates Torment) or Primal Burst Mace which can be comboed with a weapon swap, Berserk into the Burst, the real pressure is the layers of really debilitating conditions (Just put a Sigil of Doom on it as well for another layer).

A lot of issues with the warrior is that we have been predictable with our weapon sets, the Torch adds an element we should probably exploit to make things difficult for opponents to predict, which has been our biggest downside.