Guild Wars 2

Now, I’m not the biggest fan of condi/hybrid builds…but it’s hard to deny their effectiveness. The basic setup is obvious enough, but I’ve been seeing a lot of build variation.

This version is fairly common.

I think the real strength behind this build atm is that Scorched Earth is bugged and removing 6 condis instead of 3. Hopefully this gets fixed soon. The build is strong but I find myself asking if this is the optimal choice.

While Cleansing Ire is very strong in this meta, there are other options for condi removal. I also think that Rousing Resilience is a really strong trait as well. Combining it with Carrion and ditching LB (along with a few other changes) can get you a fairly tough build that gains some strengths while gaining a few new weaknesses as well. The biggest one is that you lose Eternal Champion. You can take it instead of King of Fires but I’m really trying to push the burning damage in this version. You can also take Shattering Blow over EP.

Rousing Resilience Mace/ Shield + Sword/Torch

This is a bit more like the build seen from last season. I’ve been messing with both and it’s hard to say which 1 is superior. The first version is stronger vs CC and has stronger cleanse, but the second build has high health and good healing in addition to some toughness from RR. Mobility is also way better.

I want to encourage discussion and have people post their own versions so that we can debate the pros and cons of each version.

Ideally you play to your opponents. The fact that there’s no build saving actually helps us, since many of our builds have small variations that make big impacts on gameplay. I stopped skipping CI in favor of RR (and honestly don’t miss it much, stuns aren’t nearly as bad as condis in this meta), and instead just change around my utilities depending on what I’m facing. If there are Guardians (and I’m lower MMR so they’re kittening everywhere), I make sure I have Signet of Might. If there aren’t, I’ll usually run Shattering Blow.

However, I’ve also noticed that your MMR determines way too much of your actual build. For example, being lower MMR (I only played 6 days total last season in ranked, and have maybe 350 games total between ranked and unranked), I’ve found that running S+T/LB has a substantially bigger impact on fights than M+S/LB, because there is so much more offensive pressure, and my teammates can’t reliably press buttons or something and rarely do any meaningful damage.

If you have a competent team, M+S/LB is lightyears better because it still has decent pressure but also locks down targets so well, but can’t burst hard enough reliably to kill in teamfights if the other team has any form of support.

As for your M+S/S+T build, I can’t imagine it being effective without a good team that can apply pressure on their own. You should never lose a duel, ever, but you’re also not going to have the same teamfight presence as a LB war. I’d still put your build above S+T/LB because of how good mace+shield is if your team isn’t kittened, though.

Regardless of what weapons you run, I can’t imagine running anything other than CI with how many classes passively dole out tons of condis. Clearing them is just too easy with CI+LB.

I won’t lie, I have a bad habit of making my builds very 1v1 or small fights focused.

One thing though, I wonder if CI will remain as dominate when the Scorched Earth bug gets fixed. It’ll still be good, but there’s no denying the bug is making it as crazy good as it is.