Guild Wars 2

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQRApc8ejcOxwpQuQMxBCkCsUFjCjI+zjkoEyD-TwAAzCpIaS1krJTTymsNNqYVxujZHA

Primary Conditions applied include: Bleed, Torment, Confusion.

Apply torment early and use your stuns/daze to apply Confusion with interrupts. Bleeds come from sword and Riposte.

Be patient when using Mace / Sword and make sure you land your interrupts. Use Skull Crack and then swap to sword to apply as much bleed as possible. Stay on target after they dodge roll out of the stun with Leap and go right into a Flurry.

Counter Blow and Riposte can be used as adrenaline boosters if the situation requires a quick heal and you need to bump it up from a tier 1 to a tier 2 heal etc.

Use blocks with integrity because they have much more situational functionality than people give them credit.

The Adept traits are really up to you. If you want Shield Mastery, Dogged March, or Sure-footed then feel free to use them instead. I prefer Deflection because you have 3 blocks and even if a melee player is approaching you can reflect projectiles until they procc the counterattack with a melee swing. Also, apparently rangers got buffed so be prepared to see some flavor players out there lol.

You can really stack Confusion fast once you start recognizing what to look for in order to land an interrupt. After you play a while with Distracting Strikes it can really transfer over into your other builds because you practiced landing interrupts, and even if you don’t apply Confusion they are still important to land.

Same thing goes for blocks. Since you’ve been practicing landing those critical deflections even if you play a different build you are more aware of the combat and can recognize what is coming at you in different situations.

Im going to try this build with LB / Mace + Sword too just for kicks but I anticipate my sustain will drop off.

Let me know what you think. Just something a little out there. Definitely more skill intensive than a standard LB / Sword +Board condi build.

Have you considered using Runes of the Guardian + Mighty Defense? They synergise pretty neatly with missile deflection and make give your blocks even more utility (reflected damage, burn and might stacks) Also your Sigils cds will interfere with each other, I’d stick with Doom, swap one Earth with Corruption and the other with a condi duration one mayhaps?
All in all though in my experience a build like that is saidly not working that well, bow is just too strong an alternative. But who knows maybe it’ll work for you.

Mighty Defense only proccs off of an actual Block, not a reflection. So melee are the only ones that procc it. Also, you would have to sacrifice Distracting Strikes, Furious, or Cleansing Ire in order to get it which is not ideal.

If you use guardian runes you lose all condition damage from runes.

The Sigils of Doom do not interfere with each other because the CD is shorter than the CD on weapon swap, and as far as I can tell the Sigil of Earth will still procc on crits. Corruption is great for WvW where you can stack fast and avoid death with big doors, but I’d rather have the crit proc and poison on swap for pvp. You don’t need any more condi duration for pvp because you get plenty from traits and Deep Cuts.

This is just a fun spvp build for something different. I use it for dueling mostly or for soloing far node where you will likely 1v1 a ranger or engi.

I tried to make a similar build after this patch with almost the same traits as you, though I went with mace offhand instead of shield.

I would really like distracting strikes to be viable but, alas, its hard to work with. First of all, though the mace seems to fit the trait nicely with the daze and stun, the mace is not a condition weapon. This almost forces you into going hybrid power/condition. Secondly, in order for confusion to tick you need some sustain which forces you to spec rather defensively and the challenge is that the stat allocations do not really allow for such a build, in my opinion.

Third, you miss out on burn from the bow. Granted, the new torment helps as a cover and having poison on weapon swap helps too. Maybe going with Runes of Guardian may help but its only 1 sec burn per block (I would not go with Mighty defences though as it is only 7 sec might). In any case, a warrior condition build like this will have a very hard time in the current meta.

Fourth, your build has very limited condition removal, except cleansing ire, which is hard to use optimally with a melee build (in particular with all the blinds around).

As a final note, I was not really able to get more than 8 stacks of confusion on a target. I am not sure but there may be an internal cooldown (wiki does not give any info)?

I would love to hear more about the progress of your build and your experiences with it.

I agree with most of your concerns and they are all fairly accurate with regards to this build. Stat wise it has the same stat spread as a normal condition build. Undead runes + rabid is fairly straight forward.

As far as condition removal this is about as good as it gets for a condition warrior. You use berserker stance to protect against condi burst like necro aoe, and use cleansing Ire to keep the rest off of you. Don’t underestimate cleansing Ire with Furious. If you manage your adrenaline wisely you can prevent the conditions from building up before you hit that “oh kitten” moment when you realize you have 9 conditions on you and it’s gg.

8 stacks of confusion is pretty average. Torment is very powerful because even after it is cleansed Impale keeps reapplying. The same thing can be said for Combustive Shot from the LB though. Again, its just a fun build for the moment.

Idk how they could make Distracting Strikes better. Maybe reduce the stacks applied and change it to “every time you disable a target apply 2 stacks of Confusion”? Or maybe “30% chance to apply 2 stacks of confusion every time you apply a new condition to a target”.

Idk just spit ballin.

My mistake. I remembered it wrong which is likely due to the fact that both (Guardian Rune and Mighty Defense) do proc when you block a ranged Aoe like Barrage. In the heat of the battle it seemed they proc on all ranged attacks. My bad. In that case I guess the loss in condi damage isn’t worth it.

What I meant about the Sigils is that Earth and Doom interfere with each other. In most situations Doom will proc first. While it is on cd, Earth won’t proc. Likewise if Earth happens to proc a bit less than 2s before your weapon swap, doom won’t proc either. Imo Sigil of Earth on a 9s cd (more often than not) is a waste of a sigil slot or two in this case.

Matzepeng.1053:

My mistake. I remembered it wrong which is likely due to the fact that both (Guardian Rune and Mighty Defense) do proc when you block a ranged Aoe like Barrage. In the heat of the battle it seemed they proc on all ranged attacks. My bad. In that case I guess the loss in condi damage isn’t worth it.

What I meant about the Sigils is that Earth and Doom interfere with each other. In most situations Doom will proc first. While it is on cd, Earth won’t proc. Likewise if Earth happens to proc a bit less than 2s before your weapon swap, doom won’t proc either. Imo Sigil of Earth on a 9s cd (more often than not) is a waste of a sigil slot or two in this case.

Sigil of Earth has no CD. They will not interfere.

All on crit Sigils have a cooldown. Sigil of Earth has a two second one: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil_of_Earth

Edit: The bleed proc through Precise Strikes doesn’t though as far as i know, maybe you were mixing those up?

True enough, you got beserker stance. The issue with stances is they only give you a “free pass” for a limited period of time and with an attrition build you need… time.

If they were to move Distracting strikes to an adapt tier, maybe it would allow for more optimal builds around that trait, but I think the purpose of the trait is supplementary damage in a power build. Otherwise, one could try and build around physical interrupt skills, like kick etc., and drop the mace. However, by doing so you loose practically all your survivability. Something like this, using the bow as well:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-so-FF;0VKVM0U4oK-60;9;4T9T;01672;018B;4T-V6C;1TsW6TsW61Vc

In addition to confusion you have retaliation which seems to go well with the theme. It got one stun breaker but no stability and low adren gen. Decent condition removal with cleansing ire and mending (which now removes 3 cons). Just something I threw together real quick and will likely not work :-)

Matzepeng.1053:

All on crit Sigils have a cooldown. Sigil of Earth has a two second one: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil_of_Earth

Edit: The bleed proc through Precise Strikes doesn’t though as far as i know, maybe you were mixing those up?

Maybe. who knows. doesn’t interfere to a level of even recognizing it so its working fine. I get 100% poison proccs anyways apparently so im fine with it.

Superkav.5012:

True enough, you got beserker stance. The issue with stances is they only give you a “free pass” for a limited period of time and with an attrition build you need… time.

If they were to move Distracting strikes to an adapt tier, maybe it would allow for more optimal builds around that trait, but I think the purpose of the trait is supplementary damage in a power build. Otherwise, one could try and build around physical interrupt skills, like kick etc., and drop the mace. However, by doing so you loose practically all your survivability. Something like this, using the bow as well:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-so-FF;0VKVM0U4oK-60;9;4T9T;01672;018B;4T-V6C;1TsW6TsW61Vc

In addition to confusion you have retaliation which seems to go well with the theme. It got one stun breaker but no stability and low adren gen. Decent condition removal with cleansing ire and mending (which now removes 3 cons). Just something I threw together real quick and will likely not work :-)

You guys can talk all you want about how you need sustain for condition builds and I get it, but this is what you get for ANY condition build so please stop arguing moot points. Undead runes and rabid amulet, zerker stance and cleansing Ire. Anything beyond this and you’re not going to be min maxing very well.

Making it an adept trait wouldnt change anything. The reason it is hard to specc for is because you need the right weapons to stack confusion. If you move it to adept tree it doesnt change the fact that you still need more than a shield to make it viable.

Rabid is better than carrion imo because toughness scales better than vitality and you need the precision to crit proc bleeds.

Your build has no stability. Break a stun? Fine. Eat another. You’re dead.

Superkav, please test this build! It really looks awesome