Guild Wars 2

So I have a question for PvE folks out there. I love the Sinister stats and have been using it since forever in open world, dungeons and fractals, running a hybrid between power and condition using s/t & lb. I wanted to get into raiding for something new to do but everyone keeps telling me to switch to Viper. Is Viper really that big of a difference in DPS than Sinister?

I don’t really want to switch gears and waste so much money (not to mention I don’t even know where to get Viper accessories) just for one part of the game’s content that I wanted to try out. (Not to mention I use sinister for WvW too…)

Well i personaly like viper but mix it with other trinkets. You get viper trinkets from HOT raids.

The answer is yes, sorry. This is not debatable in high end pve content.

Viper has two major stats, power and condition. So you get some on extra on impact damage. Sinister has both, but only condition is a major.

The condition duration is a huge damage increase as the longer conditions are on the more ticks of damage a boss takes. At +100% condition duration, you’re essentially doing twice as many ticks of damage than you would otherwise. This becomes even more important if you have a necromancer who’s trying to bounce the conditions around.

I would however look at which builds you plan on running. Not all condi builds use full vipers. Some classes only need a few viper equipments for 100% duration on the condition they need.

All trinkets are available in raids. You can get a few in bloodstone fen. Rest will be released in future content.

PVE, Viper, PVP I like Sinister

As said i prefer viper(weapons + armor) adding trinkets (which can be sinister) to push precision a bit. So i say you don´t need viper trikets you can use sinister, rabid or even a bit rampager depending on what stat you want to keep high. I personaly use celestial trinkets on ele but this makes a full hybrid and not 100% condi fokus and must not fit warrior. Here i would go sinister trinkets if going for a condi berserker.

To be honest, I have run all fractals to 100 with rampagers. I have done raids with rampagers. With food buffs I was comfortably reaching 8k burn stacks+3k bleeds. The issue is that yoiu need to rinse-repeat the same attack patterns to achieve this and it can get boring.

I swapped to vipers with rampagers trinkets and the condition stacks don’t tick for that much higher or longer. They are only marginally better on huge HP/toughness bosses…however the base power damage is double, so essentially you’re increasing your bottom line and getting some better numbers on your top line.

However against trash mobs, vipers melt them infinitely faster. In saying that though, if you caught in a bind at fractals 85 or higher,..you’re dead in vipers, but could brush the whole thing off in dires.

Get dires and get good at high lvl bosses. Once you’re comfortable, swap to vipers.

So overall consensus, it seems I really need to switch my weapon and armor to Viper’s for raiding. Thanks guys.

This is the optimal build for raids: http://qtfy.enjin.com/warrior#Gear2
You get 33% condi duration from traits for bleed and burn, so you want to be as close to 67% as possible. However since you’re just starting you don’t need to get exactly this. You won’t have access to viper accessories until you complete some raids anyway.

Here is the optimal build in a build editor so you can mess with it more easily: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQNAT8fnckCVegdfA2eAEliFoA7t1Wb3tHJwAQKLZFkCydA-TRSFQB9TtnGqsbkKBJwTAAAXEAipUAO7PIMVBanuBSBsoyK-e

Here is what I came up with for what might be doable for you: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQNAT8fnckCVegdfA2eAEliFoALZFkCydHJwAQK7t1Wb3tA-TRSGQB+SVEA8EASoyi0pbAYK101FBgN7P4Rlg5TtDSBsoyK-e
I replaced the sigil of earth with a sigil of malice to get a source of condi duration outside of vipers. You’ll lose out on a bunch of bleeding stacks, but I think that’s fine for starting out. I kept the sinister pieces from the optimal build so that you could more easily transition to that if you choose to do so at some point. Also, the accessories and back are sinister since those are the harder pieces to get. You can get the viper ring and amulet from bloodstone fen. I kept all might stacking components to the build since that is the main role of warrior in raids.

I hope you find this useful and glhf