Guild Wars 2

Has anyone considered running hammer/mace-shield with distracting strikes talented? plus using mobility utilities? its tons of interrupts with tons and tons of confusion! after doing a small search on the forums (nothing to extensive) i really couldn’t find any mention, thusly, was wondering the forums common consensus on doing so!

Youd need to build into condi dmg, but then your hammer and mace would hit like a wet noodle, so its a waste

Carpboy.7145:

Youd need to build into condi dmg, but then your hammer and mace would hit like a wet noodle, so its a waste

Ya +1 only way I see this working. Is a condi build with the Rampage elete skill. I have never seen this work I want to say but it worth a tray for somone who alrady runs a condi build to try the trait with that elete.

Distracting strikes works with;
1) shield bash
2) launch
3) kick
4) bulls charge
5) All mace knockdown/interrupts.

Running a condi build with perplexity runes or mixed perplexity/krait runes and a sword + x/longbow can be highly effective 1 vs 1 / 1 vs 2. In group situations though you share no boons, have no shouts and your point of focus in fairly narrow unless you can land launch in a clinch situation.

Good build for lone wolves..not so good for mucking round with buddies.

I think you could make a build that used mace/shield and hammer with the distracting strikes trait and be effective. As a condi build it would never rival mace/sword, longbow; sword/sword, longbow; sword/shield, mace/sword or basically anything using longbow.

You simply don’t have enough cover conditions to make it a condi build when the best you can do is confusion, maybe poison from a sigil of doom, weakness on mace 1 and cripple on hammer. One condition does not a condi build make.

Because of this, I think you should consider the confusion as an extra part of the lockdown of a power build. I’ll ignore gear for the moment, because what you take should depend on how comfortable you are with the class – it could be anything from beserkers, some kind of knights cavaliers mix, more soldiers pieces (someone other than me will know what’s the best mix). Anyway, power gear, potentially with some tankiness.

With no condition damage, each interrupt will deal 260 damage per enemy skill use. As you are making a build with a feature on confusion damage, that’s not very exciting. As much as I love Lyssa runes I would try running with perplexity runes, and would get two stacking weapons with sigil of corruption to build stacks before roaming. This would then mean that your standard interrupt dealt 390 damage per enemy skill use, and every 8 seconds your interrupt would deal 9 stacks of confusion, giving a respectable 877 damage per enemy skill use. If the 4 rune bonus procs, that’s up to 1170 confusion ticks from one interrupt. As most of your damage is still power based, that’s quite a bonus to add to your lockdown.

While some might suggest that long stuns such as mace and hammer burst skills are counterproductive with confusion, you will likely find that people need to pop their stun breakers before worrying about condition cleansing, giving at least two confusion ticks.

Anyway, something like a knights mix with perplexity runes, a 20/0/20/0/30 build, corruption stacking (don’t run it on your main weapons), and maybe condi reduction food as you have no lyssa will be pretty cool, I reckon. Still not as good as mace/sword, longbow, but maybe more fun for you if massive lockdown through stuns and confusion seems to be your style.

If you have any questions or have trouble following my text, feel free to add me ingame, or reply here.

PS. Learn to dodge necro dagger 4 and try to predict or zerker stance their staff 4, or you’ll die