Guild Wars 2

So this is going to be a brain dump.

Current build I’m running (with analysis):
http://intothemists.com/guides/571-defektives_tpvp_gs_mace_shield_analysis

Other build I run:
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-sF7Bx;0RKVO0e4gLVQ0;9;499T-J4;03;0187;128-LJF6C;1sV2DsV2D5ki

tPvP Roles:

Bunkering:
Can’t really do this as effective as other classes right now. Regen bunker has its merits but in tPvP it falls flat against Poisen and burst condi or power.

Far Point Assault
We do this better than most, but if you’re running a thief then your better off letting them shadow trap mind game. Your time is best spent elseware.

Roaming
The class is best suited for Mid/Home or side point roaming. We play better in smaller fights (3v3, 4v4) than 5v5. Side points are a strong play for teams that run a Warrior.

A Warriors primary Job
Mid fight cleave and peels. Simple as that.
-Someone on your necro? Immobolize them, stun them, pressure them so much they have to get off your teammate.

If you down an enemy:
Don’t go for a stomp, let your teammates do that. Apply cleave damage (100b, whirlwind, Longbow Arcing Arrow etc.). On second stomp rotation (ex. against Ele or Thief). You now stomp since you’re burst has been used up.

Weapons:

Greatsword
I feel like its over hyped, but under utilized.
Don’t whirlwind as they move towards you or stand still. Whirlwind as they move away from you, this will trigger the most strikes and thus maximize damage. If they are against a wall, whirlwind into a wall so you apply more hits.

Mace
Can be paired with Offhand Shield, Axe or Mace. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of Sword offhand. The short cooldowns on all the attacks (F1, 2 and 3) are what makes this weapon a solid choice.

Sword
Great supplement for GS if you’re not into that sort of thing.
Leap has some great advantages in tPvP to get around Khylo and such.
Final Thrust is clunky, but if played a lot it can land rather often. It’s always sweet to see a 7-8k FT while wearing a Soldiers Amulet.

Warhorn
If the CD’s were shorter, and the condi removal did 2 at a time group wide. Then I’d like this a lot better in tPvP….

Longbow
The F1 is amazing but it does a few things I’m not fond of in a team fight.
1) The FireField is so large, and down so long that it will override most other combo fields. Most important of which is Water Fields. Your teammate Engis, Rangers and Stealth Thiefs will hate you for this since they wont get blast finisher heals.

2) Arcing Arrow is great damage, but the CD is to long to take full advantage of. It would be best as cleave, but a good guardian will throw up a bubble or shield before hand to stop ranged attacks. This results in more absorbed AA’s than you want, and reduces your overall cleave in a teamfight (like on a downed body).

Auto attack is weaksauce

Blind is on to long of a CD.

Immobolize is stronk.

Rifle
I feel that if you have it on while in tPvP someone can stomp you in and you don’t have many defenses.

The damage is underpar and you have to build so zerky to make it do any comparable damage.

Hammer
This is a sticky subject.

A lot of people love hammer (myself included).

It has these moments where it shines like a god kitten light from heaven.

But for me, it is also unreliable. It has great moments, but I cant rely on it at a specific time to do exactly what I need it to do. If I NEED a stun, a Mace F1 is so much faster and thus more reliable.

Hammer is highly telegraphed.

Axe

MH is strong, but no reason to use it over Sword unfortunately.

Axe OH is under rated.

Shield
Great weapon if you’re running kinda squishy. If you have enough toughness, HP etc. and don’t really NEED shield, you can easily run a number of other weapons.

These are my thoughts and my thoughts alone. They are based on tPvP and Warrior play.

Defektive.7283:

Axe OH is under rated.

It used to be really really good with condition damage setups but it’s been broken for more than a month! Check out https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/VIDEO-Anet-stole-the-pewpews/first#post2608412 ( and it’s got a video) for details…..

Dropping a fullon combo on someone ( combushot, pindown, leaping into it, firewhirl and flurry) was usually crazy damage in spvp (fav spot was from topside of clocktower to middle cap). Without the whirl tho you’re slaved to your combushot placement for most of the fire damage.

Also : Offhand mace is amazingly good with sword main…. you can use mace4 as a strong attack/FT fakeout, and the knockdown from tremor is a teamsaver (esp when enemies try for a stomp). It’s also a great setup for final thrust.

Kaga.7629:

Defektive.7283:

Axe OH is under rated.

It used to be really really good with condition damage setups but it’s been broken for more than a month! Check out https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/VIDEO-Anet-stole-the-pewpews/first#post2608412 ( and it’s got a video) for details…..

Dropping a fullon combo on someone ( combushot, pindown, leaping into it, firewhirl and flurry) was usually crazy damage in spvp (fav spot was from topside of clocktower to middle cap). Without the whirl tho you’re slaved to your combushot placement for most of the fire damage.

Also : Offhand mace is amazingly good with sword main…. you can use mace4 as a strong attack/FT fakeout, and the knockdown from tremor is a teamsaver (esp when enemies try for a stomp). It’s also a great setup for final thrust.

ArenaNet is aware of the bugs related to Whirl, it also is bugged with the Axe trait in discipline, regarding adrenaline regen – it doesn’t grant extra adren.

Just gonna sit and wait until someone comes in to rage about freaking Defektive using GS with Mace/Shield.

Olba.5376:

Just gonna sit and wait until someone comes in to rage about freaking Defektive using GS with Mace/Shield.

Not raging, just find it hilarious that he ended using the same build like everyone else =P.

Actually, this seems a lot more viable in tPvP, in which I haven’t used GS+mace/shield because it just feels so much better when you have a lot of condition resistance through runes/foods.

@ Defektive: Question, why use Dogged March over, for instance, the shield cooldown reduction? You seem to rely on cleansing movement impairing conditions more then reducing their time. Also, 33% reduction just seems less reliable if not paired with at least another 20% from hoelbrak/25% from melandru…

@ Defektive: just a couple questions, not trolling

didn’t you say you wouldn’t touch a GS against better/top teams? also, what’s your take on running mace shield/sword mace with knights/zerker jewel? Pretty sure you were running that setup for a little

still running longbow + sword/shield :-)

Some questions:

-Valkyrie jewel for the 45 healing? dunno if thats a big buff :-)

-Also not sure if you build enough adrenaline without Burst mastery (or furious.. but thats more for longbow builds)

-Healing surge? because the adrenaline?
Healing signet will heal you more, heals you when apply 4sec stun from mace and 2sec from shield bash. (thats another 2400 health)
+ healing surge is on a 1sec cast time, very easy to interrupt.

-ow btw your sigil of fire will not trigger..
Because you get a weapon swap sigil in your mace (9sec cooldown)
So if you swap back after 5sec.. you dont trigger sigil of fire for another 4seconds. (and that 4 sec is your mace stun > 100b comb)

I thought you were against running GS/MaceShield. Especially against any good opponent.

Olba.5376:

Just gonna sit and wait until someone comes in to rage about freaking Defektive using GS with Mace/Shield.

JoakimFA.4713:

I thought you were against running GS/MaceShield. Especially against any good opponent.

These questions deserve a long thought out response, so here it is:

I still don’t want to run GS. I still think sets like Sword Axe or Sword Mace ARE better.

The other night my team sat down and we analyzed our flaws. We found that in terms of getting an opponent down – we could do that in seconds running a D/P thief and a Necro. It didn’t matter if I was there or not, they could drop something very fast.

But what came after was hard for us. We lacked body cleave. So much so that we once had a fight where the enemy ressed 13 times. 13 TIMES!!! It was infuriating.

We started experimenting with our composition to fix this. At one point it got so bad that Steb our thief was starting to ask me to switch to Engineer since grenade cleave is ungodly powerful.

At the time I was running Axe to supplement 100b downed body cleave. Axe would also provide on-demand fury. Sword would have better mobility over tricky terrain, and Final Thrust had some amazing burst. In a fight I was doing things like Skull Crack, whirlwind for 2.5 seconds [CANCEL] -> Final Thrust while they are still stunned. It was doing like 15k damage.

But alas, our problem was body cleave, not dropping an enemy.

So we started testing Whirlwind. We actually found it has a number of bugs.
The obvious culprit:
-Whirl finisher does not work.

Other bugs:
-Sharpening Axe’s trait does not grant Adrenaline to offhand attacks (it should).
-Whirlwind is only doing on average 13-14 of the 15 attacks its supposed to, but in the same 3.5 second cast time.

Mostly because of the attack # bug we found that 100blades we pushing out a large percentage more of DPS. Something like 28% more.

Axe had one thing going for it:
360 degree attack radius, can dodge roll while doing it.

We soon found in team fights that it was a double edged sword. I took way to much retaliation damage against Guardian teams because I wakittenting everyone 13-15 freaking times. I would go from 20k hp down to 6k in 3 1/2 seconds while trying to down body cleave.

So we needed more cleave! Preferably that wouldn’t kill me in the process.

We tried running me as Mace Shield Longbow.

While it did well in smaller fights, my adrenaline regen wasn’t high enough to utilize both the F1 stun and F1 firefield all the time.
To counter this I started comming up with some crazy kitten builds. I found that the highest Adrenaline regen build is actually 30/0/20/0/20. With taking the Adrenaline every 3 second trait on Berzerkers Power.

It still wasn’t enough.

So I went back to axe and started min-maxing my DPS to hopefully figure out where the DPS loss was.

It wasn’t until 1am when we went back to basics.
My job is now downed body cleave and peeling.
I must excel at my job instead of doing it 72% as well.

We started testing the numbers in Excel – some interesting results:
With my build above:
GS auto attacks, on average, out-damages Whirlwind (by 17%ish).
GS auto attacks out-damage Sword auto attacks (sword did 40% less damage)
Whirlwind is an outlier so we couldnt use that in testing since its not consistent damage depending on enemy placement.

100b VS. WhilWind:

Pros:
(100b) 28% higher damage. 1/2 the cooldown.
(WW) 360 Degree radius = more targets to hit. Blinds effect output damage less due to number of attacks.
(WW) Can evade while attacking.

Cons:
(100b) Stationary, easy target. Resulted in only using it on a downed body.
(WW) 360 Degree Radius + Number of attacks would kill me from Retal.
(WW) Long CD meant I couldn’t chain down cleave if we back to back down an enemy.

In the end I took the weapon that fit my teams needs the most.
If we weren’t running a thief, but instead a Grenade Engi. Then my need for body cleave would be less. I’d be running the 2nd build above but with a Soldiers Ammy and Sword Axe or Sword Mace. In that circumstance, Body cleave is not as important bc of grenades. I need to be in the fight longer to make up for Thief map presence. Need to be more mobile in a fight.

While I still don’t like running GS because good opponents counter it well.
A downed opponent can’t dodge roll, or interrupt you. If your role is to body cleave, then GS is the absolute best choice for it.

Cygnus.6903:

@ Defektive: Question, why use Dogged March over, for instance, the shield cooldown reduction? You seem to rely on cleansing movement impairing conditions more then reducing their time. Also, 33% reduction just seems less reliable if not paired with at least another 20% from hoelbrak/25% from melandru…

Ok so everything Condi related works by rounding.

At 33%, you’ll be rounding up to 50% anyway.
If you stack Hoelberk then it’ll be 53%, which will round down to 50% again.

Overall, the gains I saw from Hoelberk didn’t outdo the 12% crit damage, 3% crit chance and 60 Toughness.

My job is downed body cleave, 12% crit damage will help the team by doing my job more so than making a 2 second Immobolize into a 1.6 (hoelberk).

However, I did run Hoelberk for an extended period of time.

nicknamenick.2437:

Some questions:

-Valkyrie jewel for the 45 healing? dunno if thats a big buff :-)

-Also not sure if you build enough adrenaline without Burst mastery (or furious.. but thats more for longbow builds)

-Healing surge? because the adrenaline?
Healing signet will heal you more, heals you when apply 4sec stun from mace and 2sec from shield bash. (thats another 2400 health)
+ healing surge is on a 1sec cast time, very easy to interrupt.

-ow btw your sigil of fire will not trigger..
Because you get a weapon swap sigil in your mace (9sec cooldown)
So if you swap back after 5sec.. you dont trigger sigil of fire for another 4seconds. (and that 4 sec is your mace stun > 100b comb)

-Valk Jewel is for the toughness, not the +Healing. Stack that with Dolyak Signet, 60 from Divinity Runes, and 200 from traits and you’re sitting around 1550 toughness in a Zerker set. It was meant to round out my stats in a correct fashion without reducing my Power or +crit damage.

-I build plenty of Adren between weapon swapping and Cleansing Ire, and Surge. Found that having 30pts in Disc was overkill.

-Healing Surge > Healing Signet in almost every sense.
Signet gets pounded on by Poison, where as you can time Surges around team condi cleanses and get full Surges off.
Signet is great in small fights, but more often than not your in big ones.
Signet can’t deal with Burst classes well since you lose health so quickly you don’t actually have time to recoup the healing.

-Sigil of fire WILL trigger.
2 perspectives:
1) You swap to Mace and gain Battle. Now you can’t use fire for 5 or 7 seconds w/e it is. But you’re on weapon swap CD so who cares.
2) You used battle, and now swapped into Fire. Fire is still technically on CD from battle for what, 2-3 more seconds hypothetically and in the worst scenario? You’ll be in GS long enough to see it proc enough times that it’s still extremely worth it for cleave.

You also assume it’s for Mace Stun 100b. When in actually I don’t do that as often since 100b needs to be ready for downed body cleave on demand.

Sigil of Paralyzation does not work on offhand weapons though, I tested it extensively a couple weeks ago when i was testing my new PvP build and noticed.

So you may want to update your build accordingly.

RagingDragon.9475:

Sigil of Paralyzation does not work on offhand weapons though, I tested it extensively a couple weeks ago when i was testing my new PvP build and noticed.

So you may want to update your build accordingly.

All sigils are cross-weapon set.

If I have Sigil of Fire on my mainhand, and attack with my offhand, the Offhand will proc it.

Same goes for +% sigils.

If you have +5% crit chance in your offhand, that means both weapon attacks (MH and OH) will receive +5%.

Same goes for Sigil of Paralyzation and Shield#4 / Skull Crack.

There’s actually a whole thread about this on the sPvP sub forum.

If your job is downed body cleave, wouldn’t an engineer still be better overall? The AOE pressure from a relatively safe position, in combination with more team support would provide an overall better level than the warrior.

I respect the fact that you are trying to use the warrior in spvp at higher levels, but they still don’t bring enough to the table.

When you dueled my friend and I in 1v1’s, you said that your role was roamer and lane aggression, but his thief solidly beat you, and at no point would you have effected him getting to a point. Against me, as a test, you didn’t put out enough dps to even make me move as my bunker ranger (not the spirit build), effectively making the build you were running unable to cap a point, or knock off a defender. Now, I will admit a 1v1 doesn’t measure much, but it still can shed light on some points.

I am not saying you personally don’t have the skills, as you may be one of the better warriors I have dueled, but that warriors still lack, and that even at 100%, you still are only roughly equivalent to another class at 70% who is better suited for the role. I commend your teams patience and your perseverance on attempting to make it work, but warriors still don’t have a well fitted role yet.

Sigils are cross weapon but Para is currently bugged check it out yourself…

Better yet I guess people have already posted about it:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/How-does-sigil-of-paralyzation-work/first#post2638467

TheLaughingMan.7951:

If your job is downed body cleave, wouldn’t an engineer still be better overall? The AOE pressure from a relatively safe position, in combination with more team support would provide an overall better level than the warrior.

I respect the fact that you are trying to use the warrior in spvp at higher levels, but they still don’t bring enough to the table.

When you dueled my friend and I in 1v1’s, you said that your role was roamer and lane aggression, but his thief solidly beat you, and at no point would you have effected him getting to a point. Against me, as a test, you didn’t put out enough dps to even make me move as my bunker ranger (not the spirit build), effectively making the build you were running unable to cap a point, or knock off a defender. Now, I will admit a 1v1 doesn’t measure much, but it still can shed light on some points.

I am not saying you personally don’t have the skills, but that warriors still lack, and that even at 100%, you still are only roughly equivalent to another class at 70% who is better suited for the role. I commend your teams patience and your perseverance on attempting to make it work, but warriors still don’t have a well fitted role yet.

Engineer downed body cleave is amazing sure. But in a team fight what usually happens in this:

Enemy goes down -> Enemy Guardian uses Shield #4 (knockback / Projectile stopper)
-> Engi grenade cleaves -> shield absorbs -> Enemy is ressed & fight continues.

Then there’s the merits of Banner res vs. Elixer R. Stuns on specific enemies vs. Engineer Knockbacks. Lastly, Warrior survivability is much higher than an engineer (unless bunker / bomb engi, in which case they aren’t going to do a ton of body cleave).

In terms of 1v1. Originally my role (3 weeks ago?) was to successfully hold off an opponent for a prolongued period of time until people rotated to me. In the 1v1’s we had against your friend, he was running a very selfish WvW style of play, in tPvP you won’t see as much as that so the validity of the 1v1 is up in the air when put into the context of a team game.

At this point, my survivability is indeed lower, but I can still fend off enough people.

Example: Last night against AL. My team 4 pushed to their close point, killed their bunker (engineer), capped the point and rotated back to me on home. While at the same time I’m fighting Shan, HMan (necro), and SupCutie (Thief) 3v1 at our home point, keeping it capped as the build above. I went down at the exact moment my team was able to reinforce, I was ressed, we won both points.

Against your ranger, there would be no circumstance where I would actively try to kill a Ranger. The build I run isn’t optimal for it, let alone the sheer amount of time it would take to accomplish such a task would be a detriment to my team.

Lastly, in regards to thinking Warriors don’t bring enough to the table.
We won both of our ML matches last night against some top teams, neither ran a Warrior, one team actively thinks the class doesn’t work.

RagingDragon.9475:

Sigils are cross weapon but Para is currently bugged check it out yourself…

I’ll double check the bug when I get home, but regardless it affect mainhand, and F1, which is still the important bits. So it doesn’t matter which weapon you throw it on.

Any reason why you’re not using healing signet?

Excalibur.9748:

Any reason why you’re not using healing signet?

Poison ruins the heal in a Condi meta.

Surge is a lot stronger when timed correctly and actively used when Poison goes down.

Surge is better against Burst pressure, helping to reset the fight. Where as if you’re bursted while wearing Signet you’ll have to wait 15+ seconds in order to be back in fighting shape.

Surge before a fight starts and you’ll start a team fight with full adrenaline.

Excalibur.9748:

Any reason why you’re not using healing signet?

Lol what?, your OP theory just crushed in your face or something?…

Fenrir.5493:

Excalibur.9748:

Any reason why you’re not using healing signet?

Lol what?, your OP theory just crushed in your face or something?…

Nah, sPvP is different cuz of the condi meta.

Excalibur.9748:

Fenrir.5493:

Excalibur.9748:

Any reason why you’re not using healing signet?

Lol what?, your OP theory just crushed in your face or something?…

Nah, sPvP is different cuz of the condi meta.

We also can’t get to super high level of stats like you can in WvW.

But it’s rather easy to counter Healing Signet as long as you have ample access to Poison.

If against Mace or Hammer then it will come down to reading your opponent, kiting when they are in Mace, attacking when they are in DPS weapon sets.

But the key portion to removing Signet from the game is intelligently re-applying Poison.

Defektive I look at you analysis and I can’t help but remember you telling me, " I will never run mace shield/ gs"
Whelp, I am still glad to see that I am not kittened.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

Defektive I look at you analysis and I can’t help but remember you telling me, " I will never run mace shield/ gs"
Whelp, I am still glad to see that I am not kittened.

I still hate GS, but at some point you have to recognize it’s dominance in certain areas.

Kudos to you for using it in team fights first, but I am playing a very different build than what you were, and different roles :P

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

Defektive I look at you analysis and I can’t help but remember you telling me, " I will never run mace shield/ gs"
Whelp, I am still glad to see that I am not kittened.

Falls faster a talkative than a crippled.

I am just looking like. Valk jewel in zerk amu. I am just salty. Do you, I have faded from this game. It is just reassurance that maybe I knew something. Which is not how it has felt the last year of playing this game.

I am looking for your swiftness generation? I figure your not banner cycling in fights anymore.

The way you have set up your build- would drive me crazy running gs w/out forcefull gs.
Also since your basically doing the body cleave here, wouldnt the might gained using forceful out damage the slashing power? It is a narrow window I know and I like building momentum too much so I wouldn’t change it but I am just curious.

The 4 or 5 warriors making builds, we all have our opinions but eventually we will all convergence to a similar backbone build.

@Fenrir what does that even mean?

I found Hammer Mace/Shield if played well to be much, much better than GS Mace/Shield in both 1v1s and as far as what you bring to team fights. GS Mace/Shield is an improved version of Bull’s Rush > 100B that was ran in beta and a couple of months after launch but still, the same 1 trick pony that solid players will be able to counter just fine. If you miss a mace stun or if your opponents have stun breakers you’re pretty useless for 8+ seconds each time your rotation fails.

With Hammer Mace/Shield you’re much more consistent, applying pressure all the time, not just during repetitive and predictable stun>100b rotations. You’re also able to help your team with the huge amount of interrupts and “gib” players since you can pin them down and together with your teammates kill them in seconds. You also bring a great benefit during rezzing being able to interrupt opposite ones and help with your own. My favorite part is that if you play this build right, you can literally lock opponents down that otherwise would hurt your team really bad such as engineers, necros and so forth.

I found that Hammer Mace/Shield has a higher skill cap than the GS version however once you get the hang of it you really feel strong and comfortable in any sort of situation and vs any opponent.

Hammer skill cap and gs skill cap are the same. Problem is that hammer is just more affected by the blinds. Honestly, a lot of gs users do not use it to its fullest potential.

Examples:
whirlwind when at approximately 400 range out and you get more hits on your target.
Rush at point blank and the attack connects.
AA is actually good.
Arcing slice to pull condi in conjunction with Cleansing ire

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

I am just looking like. Valk jewel in zerk amu. I am just salty. Do you, I have faded from this game. It is just reassurance that maybe I knew something. Which is not how it has felt the last year of playing this game.

I am looking for your swiftness generation? I figure your not banner cycling in fights anymore.

The way you have set up your build- would drive me crazy running gs w/out forcefull gs.
Also since your basically doing the body cleave here, wouldnt the might gained using forceful out damage the slashing power? It is a narrow window I know and I like building momentum too much so I wouldn’t change it but I am just curious.

The 4 or 5 warriors making builds, we all have our opinions but eventually we will all convergence to a similar backbone build.

@Fenrir what does that even mean?

Warrior sprint gets me around without having to even use Swiftness, never even need the boon anymore.

Each stack of might is 35 power. I believe I would need an average of 6-7 stacks of continuous might (ontop of what I get now) to meet what Slashing Power gives.

But as soon as you factor in the difficulty of that additional uptime and boon stripping, your better off with a straight damage modifier.
Also, if you want that style of mightstacking to work then you’d probably run Hoelberk for +20% duration, but in the end that means you’re missing out on +10-12% crit damage, so it’s a distinct loss of damage.

Forceful GS i feel like is only good for rush since it has a long cd.

I mean thats 10pts in a trait for -2seconds to 100b CD and -2 seconds for whirlwind…

Oh ya, I’m definitely still banner cycling

stefanplc.5234:

I found Hammer Mace/Shield if played well to be much, much better than GS Mace/Shield in both 1v1s and as far as what you bring to team fights. GS Mace/Shield is an improved version of Bull’s Rush > 100B that was ran in beta and a couple of months after launch but still, the same 1 trick pony that solid players will be able to counter just fine. If you miss a mace stun or if your opponents have stun breakers you’re pretty useless for 8+ seconds each time your rotation fails.

With Hammer Mace/Shield you’re much more consistent, applying pressure all the time, not just during repetitive and predictable stun>100b rotations. You’re also able to help your team with the huge amount of interrupts and “gib” players since you can pin them down and together with your teammates kill them in seconds. You also bring a great benefit during rezzing being able to interrupt opposite ones and help with your own. My favorite part is that if you play this build right, you can literally lock opponents down that otherwise would hurt your team really bad such as engineers, necros and so forth.

I found that Hammer Mace/Shield has a higher skill cap than the GS version however once you get the hang of it you really feel strong and comfortable in any sort of situation and vs any opponent.

I think of Hammer Mace Shield as the opposite.

You’re bringing two weapon sets that are hard countered by 4 things:
Stability
Blinds
Aegis
Evasion

If a team is intelligent enough to see you running both those weapons, they’ll simple slot more stability uptime.

Because it’s easier to mitigate your interrupts that means you won’t gain the + damage modifier for hammer, won’t be stunning as often and thus your cleave will be minimal.

We’ve fought a few Hammer X/Shield Warriors (Mace and Sword) and have found their pressure to be minimal. Once we focus them they panick, the stuns end. If they try to counter with an Earthshaker to stop the train, it’s animation is so large it’s easy to dodge for any high level players.

Edit: Not to mention, bringing Hammer Mace Shield severely limits your mobility and thus your ability to reinforce points or aggressively push.

And regarding your thoughts that hammer helps lock down specific opponents, Mace Shield does the same thing. So that’s not a distinct plus to hammer, but a plus to running consistent CC.

Blinds
Aegis
Evasion

These counter just about anything and really it counters GS mace/shield more because once you miss that mace stun, you’re pretty useless for a while. But really those 3 can be considered counters if you’re bad, I would say they’re more like temporary inconveniences. It’s really easy to look for them and use your abilities properly and not waste stuns. Aegis in team fights disappears in seconds and for blind you just need to swing your weapon once. There are plenty of pets, illusions and so forth around to lose blind.

To say your entire team changes their build because of 1 out of 5 players in the enemy team, while sure I suppose it’s understandable, it means a lot. You bringing more stability and stun breakers means you’re bringing less of something else, usually being damage and offensive pressure so your job as a warrior is done just from that perspective.

stefanplc.5234:

Blinds
Aegis
Evasion

These counter just about anything and really it counters GS mace/shield more because once you miss that mace stun, you’re pretty useless for a while. But really those 3 can be considered counters if you’re bad, I would say they’re more like temporary inconveniences. It’s really easy to look for them and use your abilities properly and not waste stuns. Aegis in team fights disappears in seconds and for blind you just need to swing your weapon once. There are plenty of pets, illusions and so forth around to lose blind.

To say your entire team changes their build because of 1 out of 5 players in the enemy team, while sure I suppose it’s understandable, it means a lot. You bringing more stability and stun breakers means you’re bringing less of something else, usually being damage and offensive pressure so your job as a warrior is done just from that perspective.

Or it means you just rotate your guardian to where the enemy warrior is fighting so that your team innately gains stability through shouts.

I think you’re mis understanding the style of GS Mace Shield I’m playing.

The damage isn’t based off getting a skull crack. I can easily land 6-7k whirlwinds and 10k+ hundred blades without the need for a stun.

But thats the nice thing about not running two stun weapons. If a team is going to spend 15-20 seconds hard countering you, you have a weapon set that still excels without the need to lock down an opponent.

Without disabling a foe, your hammer cleave is much less (-25% less actually).

BTW: Stability is a hard counter. You can’t run Hammer Mace Shield and say Stability doesn’t hard counter you since it’s the exact hard counter. When 6 of your 12 weapon abilities are stuns or dazes (Hammer Mace Shield), as long as they have stability up that means 1/2 of your attacks are far less effective.

The only weapon combo that is difficult for an enemy to read or see coming is Mace Shield due to the speed at which an attack executes. Hammer on the other hand has distinct and large animations that intelligent players can counter with a dodge roll or mid-cast blind/aegis.

Warrior’s Sprint + GS = no need for swiftness. I also agree Forceful Greatsword isn’t the bee’s knees, as you wind up buffing the S/D thieves who target you, requires a good base crit (doesn’t work well with Valk or Soldier), and is subject to general boon stripping. I prefer picking up Desperate Power over it, since I run with Healing Signet + Burst Mastery (keep Adrenal Health ticking).

I’m going to give most of your version of the build a go to see how I like it in comparison.

I would prefer sword over mace if you are using a hammer, for the movility, otherwise you are a sitting duck unless you have bulls charge but it has a high cd.

Fenrir.5493:

I would prefer sword over mace if you are using a hammer, for the movility, otherwise you are a sitting duck unless you have bulls charge but it has a high cd.

Agreed. Mobility is king in tPvP.

I haven’t tried war sprint with gs, but I felt like on the other sets I just could not keep up with swiftness. I would actually see people pulling away from me, like I could see the 8% difference occurring.

I just like the uptime on whirlwind, because I cycle weapons every ~6 seconds it was always there when I went to gs set.
Tried without forceful once before and my timings were just off. Its like blurred frenzy without the sword reduction trait, just feels weird. But two more seconds doesn’t change a lot in battle.

With your build I would go 5 scholar 1 divinity like I used to do. I will try it out sometime this weekend.
I am sure you did numbers, but I don’t see the 50 points in all other stats being build breaking.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

I haven’t tried war sprint with gs, but I felt like on the other sets I just could not keep up with swiftness. I would actually see people pulling away from me, like I could see the 8% difference occurring.

I just like the uptime on whirlwind, because I cycle weapons every ~6 seconds it was always there when I went to gs set.
Tried without forceful once before and my timings were just off. Its like blurred frenzy without the sword reduction trait, just feels weird. But two more seconds doesn’t change a lot in battle.

With your build I would go 5 scholar 1 divinity like I used to do. I will try it out sometime this weekend.
I am sure you did numbers, but I don’t see the 50 points in all other stats being build breaking.

I banner cycle when they are kiting me with swiftness soooooooooooooo xd.

Plus, with cripples, whirlwind and Rush, or Sword leap, it’s kinda difficult for them to stay ahead of you really.

As for the min-maxing.

Without divinity you have basically a 35% crit chance, which is lowish. With it you have close to 40%.

Without it you have 1390 toughness in combat, which is basically at the point of not bothering to run toughness.

Scholar will provide 165 Power.
That’s a gain of 105 Power, at a loss of 3-4% crit chance, 2% crit damage, 60 toughness, 600 hp.

Personally, the 2% crit damage and increased crit change counters the Power loss, and the rest is just icing on the cake.

Without forceful GS it feels a little weird at first but after a few games your rotations change and you make more educated decisions on when to use skills. Generally this results in educated DPS output oppose to using it on cooldown.

My 2c.

I would agree with you but evade frames win games, only reason we have s/d thief anyway. What I mean is if s/d thief still ripped boons but didn’t get the evade frames, it would be a different tool because it would melt.

I don’t doubt your arithmetic. As always I challenge your thinking because its my line of work. Who knows, your next spec may be something else I ran. :p

Defektive, why not use 30/0/20/0/20. if you want cleave downed people, you can cleave like a boss with Berserker’s power. when they are downed, +50% crit on stun doesn’t help much
i can understand its trait for peel, still overall damage output will be great. i run something similar these days and that damage is funny. still good job bringing this to top pvp

Jasra.3627:

Defektive, why not use 30/0/20/0/20. if you want cleave downed people, you can cleave like a boss with Berserker’s power. when they are downed, +50% crit on stun doesn’t help much
i can understand its trait for peel, still overall damage output will be great. i run something similar these days and that damage is funny. still good job bringing this to top pvp

Agreed DPS may be higher. Both Heightened Focus and Berzerkers power get this treatment from me:

Since we can’t guarantee +15% damage or crit chance (100% of the time), I can bare minimum average it out so I have a general feel for what I’m gaining.

so +7.5% damage (on average).

Since I’m still Skull Cracking ALOT (since it’s my job to peel) I may as well take advantage of it and have almost 100% crit chance during that. Especially since I’ll be out of Adrenaline for a short period of time.

IDK, I think its a very similar style and fits what you like, but I enjoy guaranteed crits when I expect to have them :P

JonathanSharp.7094:

The community also seems to feel that Warriors are in a good place right now in PvP.

I don’t feel like Warriors are going to get any buffs any time soon, even though we have a lot of problems and will not see competitive play.

At least we can still duel!

Defektive: a question about how your team anazyles itself.

When you look back and reflect on your flaws and triumphs, do you look through hours of recorded footage second-by-second or another method? When Team Legacy was still active we would record from 5 different perspectives on reset night (WvW not PvP, sorry xP. We did nearly the same during our short reign in PvP though, as well.) and slow down each video 6 times slower than it actually was in order to detail the enemy strategies, how to counter them and what to improve upon our own mistakes. I was just wondering if your team uses a similar approach.

Viking Jorun.5413:

Defektive: a question about how your team anazyles itself.

When you look back and reflect on your flaws and triumphs, do you look through hours of recorded footage second-by-second or another method? When Team Legacy was still active we would record from 5 different perspectives on reset night (WvW not PvP, sorry xP. We did nearly the same during our short reign in PvP though, as well.) and slow down each video 6 times slower than it actually was in order to detail the enemy strategies, how to counter them and what to improve upon our own mistakes. I was just wondering if your team uses a similar approach.

The recordings are a dead truth, but we don’t dwell on them. The first thing we do is recognize where we failed to do something correctly. We acknowledge what happened, point out why it happened and then analyze:

Was it a build problem? Did we put the wrong classes on that team fight? Did we over commit? Under commit?

Next time around we just mention it before a game starts (if it’s on the same map). We all yell at each other if we’re starting to do one of those flaws.

As for team practicing. We sit in a custom arena and do 2v2 drills or 3v3 drills (bring a friend in). We sit in separate mumble / ts channels for the team fights. There’s a 5th wheel that rotates the channels.

As we fight the 5th wheel calls out what we’re doing wrong:
Bad communication.
Over extending.
Wasting skills.

5th wheel rotates channels until we’re satisfied with the performance of the group.

When things feel solid, we change up the teams and do it again.

We do this 2+ hours every night if we can get away with it.

Once we’re happy we move into ladder matches for more practice.

@Defektive

I know you’re role in the team now is for body cleave, but just out of curiosity, have you tried LB/SS condi?

JoakimFA.4713:

@Defektive

I know you’re role in the team now is for body cleave, but just out of curiosity, have you tried LB/SS condi?

Tried LB condi but not sword. Found it didn’t do enough damage to justify bringing it.

The problem and benefit is a double edged sword:
+Lots of bleed stacks that a Necro can epi off of.
-Enemy necros can just condi transfer all those bleeds back to my team.

Then ontop of that if I wanted a lot of bleed stacks I’d have to be in a fight for an extended period of time in order to get an ample stack up. Which is hard in a fast meta like this where fights like 15-20 seconds or you’re over extending.

IDK, I don’t feel like Condi warrior isn’t viable right now, or Shout warrior for that matter. Or Healing Banner Warrior.

Althought I wish all of them were so we’d have more interesting / unique builds to play.

It’s ironic, after I posted a build with Mace + GS that got over 10k views…I don’t like using it anymore. Hammer + Sword/Shield has actually been working out a lot better for me because I enjoy its use more. I do agree with you on its limitations, however I think that if you treat it like the Guardian’s GS it can work wonders. GS on Guardian has a really obvious combo that hits hard but has a high CD, I feel like Warrior Hammer is similar. I’m actually going to post another build thread pretty soon so I can get feedback.

BurrTheKing.8571:

It’s ironic, after I posted a build with Mace + GS that got over 10k views…I don’t like using it anymore. Hammer + Sword/Shield has actually been working out a lot better for me because I enjoy its use more. I do agree with you on its limitations, however I think that if you treat it like the Guardian’s GS it can work wonders. GS on Guardian has a really obvious combo that hits hard but has a high CD, I feel like Warrior Hammer is similar. I’m actually going to post another build thread pretty soon so I can get feedback.

The thing about the guardians greatsword is its animations arn’t so obvious, they are immediate and much harder to dodge.

Daecollo.9578:

BurrTheKing.8571:

It’s ironic, after I posted a build with Mace + GS that got over 10k views…I don’t like using it anymore. Hammer + Sword/Shield has actually been working out a lot better for me because I enjoy its use more. I do agree with you on its limitations, however I think that if you treat it like the Guardian’s GS it can work wonders. GS on Guardian has a really obvious combo that hits hard but has a high CD, I feel like Warrior Hammer is similar. I’m actually going to post another build thread pretty soon so I can get feedback.

The thing about the guardians greatsword is its animations arn’t so obvious, they are immediate and much harder to dodge.

I disagree with that, Binding Blade is really obvious considering they spin in a circle then throw a sword at you. Even in close range that spin is hard to miss. Not to mention the Symbol and Whirling Wrath also have really easy to spot animations, some of the most apparent in the game.