Guild Wars 2

I describe my charr warrior build as a “glass cannon”, but it’s becoming clear that is not accurate. Sure, I go down fast enough, but it doesn’t look like I’m dishing out much damage. There are at least a handful of professions that hand my head to me in 1v1, including Thief, Ranger, Elemental, and Mesmer. I’m most comfortable fighting other Warriors.

I know, L2P. But I have seen times when I unloaded every CD I have and not caused discernible harm, while my warrior’s health has been reduced to 50% or less.

Don’t get me wrong, I love playing my Warrior. But the main lesson I’m learning is that when I fight one of the other professions, I need to bring a friend or two along.

My character’s attributes are:

Power: 2279
Precision:1224
Toughness: 1181
Vitality: 1643
Attack: 3390
Crit chance: 19%
Armor: 2392
Health: 25642

Armor is enhanced with 6 Superior Runes of Divinity.
Hammer and rifle each have a ruby orb.

Any suggestions more helpful than L2P or uninstall, and I’m all ears.

Cheers!

Well at first glance, you have runes of divinity with 19% crit chance. You aren’t getting hardly any good from the +2% crit dmg, may as well trash them.

Next, I’m not super keen on what the “accepted” stat ranges are, but 25652 hp suggests you are not a glass cannon.

Furthermore, your armor value is low so I’m guessing you either aren’t 80 or are in something other than exotics. If either of these is the case, you are an apple with a knife fighting an orange with a gun.

On another note, the hammer is not our best dps weapon. It’s our best CC weapon… although you can still dps with it but, arguably, not to the same degree as a GS or axe.

Keep in mind the “heavy armor/high hp class” will not also be the “insane burst class.” The 100b build makes that less true, but more often than not, it’s true.

My suggestion, pick a role. CC, Damage, Support, and build for that role.

And remember, this is GW2. Active defense (dodge, Endure Pain, Shield Stance) > Passive defense (Armor, Toughness, Vitality)

Veritas.6071:

Well at first glance, you have runes of divinity with 19% crit chance. You aren’t getting hardly any good from the +2% crit dmg, may as well trash them.

Sorry to be dense, but I’m not clear on your meaning. Are you saying get more crit damage into the build, or lose the runes?

Veritas.6071:

Next, I’m not super keen on what the “accepted” stat ranges are, but 25652 hp suggests you are not a glass cannon.

Meaning I’m not glass?

Veritas.6071:

Furthermore, your armor value is low so I’m guessing you either aren’t 80 or are in something other than exotics…

Nope. Level 80, full exo weapons and armor.

Veritas.6071:

On another note, the hammer is not our best dps weapon. It’s our best CC weapon… although you can still dps with it but, arguably, not to the same degree as a GS or axe.

Just started using it Friday, after a Norn warrior wore me out with his hammer. I’m having fun with it, and it seems to do better against mesmers than my GS.

Thanks so much for your advice & comments!

Obed.7629:

Veritas.6071:

Well at first glance, you have runes of divinity with 19% crit chance. You aren’t getting hardly any good from the +2% crit dmg, may as well trash them.

Sorry to be dense, but I’m not clear on your meaning. Are you saying get more crit damage into the build, or lose the runes?

Get more precision or lose the runes. Crit damage is ineffective when you don’t crit

Obed.7629:

Veritas.6071:

Well at first glance, you have runes of divinity with 19% crit chance. You aren’t getting hardly any good from the +2% crit dmg, may as well trash them.

Sorry to be dense, but I’m not clear on your meaning. Are you saying get more crit damage into the build, or lose the runes?

Lose the runes or bump up the precision… a lot.

Obed.7629:

Veritas.6071:

Next, I’m not super keen on what the “accepted” stat ranges are, but 25652 hp suggests you are not a glass cannon.

Meaning I’m not glass?

Correct. Our base HP is a tad over 19k. Somewhere, you have a good amount of stat points devoted to vitality.

Obed.7629:

Veritas.6071:

Furthermore, your armor value is low so I’m guessing you either aren’t 80 or are in something other than exotics…

Nope. Level 80, full exo weapons and armor.

I looked into this again. I made a mistake.

Obed.7629:

Veritas.6071:

On another note, the hammer is not our best dps weapon. It’s our best CC weapon… although you can still dps with it but, arguably, not to the same degree as a GS or axe.

Just started using it Friday, after a Norn warrior wore me out with his hammer. I’m having fun with it, and it seems to do better against mesmers than my GS.

Cool

hammers don’t benefit that much from the strength tree imo, you’re better off investing in arms/defence/discipline imo. I run 0/30/20/0/20 for both my WvW (hammer/rifle) and PvP (hammer/sword+shield) and I’m quite bursty… don’t expect me to burst down a guard, but just about everything else is fair game.

If you’re looking to be more supportish the tactics tree is where you want to go, though I’ve found there’s an overabundance of these sorts in WvW.

Oh, right, and I’d recommend a sigil of fire or lightning on the hammer if you go the crit route.

Your build isn’t made for dueling. Hell even another Warrior can destroy your build fairly easily.

TL;DR It isn’t a learn to play issue. Your build just doesn’t work out mechanic-wise, stat-wise, and trait-wise.

Willing to show you what I mean in-game if you’re in NA.

Imo the only way you can make a Glass Cannon warrior work is be a full-sniper or a treb-user in tPvP.

I would recommend using Longbow/Rifle + Sword/Warhorn for mobility. x/30/x/10/x if you would go Longbow or a solid 10/30/0/0/10 for a Rifle.

Glass Cannon doesn’t work whit Hammer.Hammer is for tanky builds as well as mace and shield.Greatsword and AXE is for power builds.

Jonwar.9205:

hammers don’t benefit that much from the strength tree imo, you’re better off investing in arms/defence/discipline imo. I run 0/30/20/0/20 for both my WvW (hammer/rifle) and PvP (hammer/sword+shield) and I’m quite bursty… don’t expect me to burst down a guard, but just about everything else is fair game.

If you’re looking to be more supportish the tactics tree is where you want to go, though I’ve found there’s an overabundance of these sorts in WvW.

Oh, right, and I’d recommend a sigil of fire or lightning on the hammer if you go the crit route.

I wouldn´t use arms with the hammer. You end up getting 300 condition damage that only benefits the auto-attack on your rifle, procs from bleed sigil, or weapon swap bleeds.

Stat points are a finite resource. Any fight you enter where you aren´t making use of your stats means your opponents character is outperforming you. Assuming his build is better.

Example: 30 pts in the arms tree while wielding a hammer = 300 wasted points in condition damage. One could argue, “Oh but I have the confuse on interrupt trait and a bleed sigil.” Interrupts are not a guaranteed thing nor are they a dependable source of dps, and the hammer´s painfully slow attack speed isn´t good for crit proced sigils.

Having said that, builds are highly subjective, and everyone has their own opinion… but keep in mind, just because they have an opinion, doesn´t mean they know what they´re talking about.

@Veritas: I’ve found in WvW I’m using the rifle the majority of the time, I realize the 300 condition damage may not be all that useful for the hammer, but I find the traits for the arms tree to be significantly better than anything you can find elsewhere.

10% increase to bleeding foes, +50% crit chance against stunned foes, quickness at 25% health. I’m not a hardcore number cruncher but I’d say 10% increase in damage is equal to quite a bit of power.

As for the crit proced sigils this is simply untrue thanks to frenzy and the fact that you’ll be between 70-100% crit chance depending on the state of your opponenet. That being said you of course wouldn’t be using frenzy as part of a zerg if that’s your thing in WvW, but the point stands on the fact that once you’ve entered melee you’ll likely be able to stun/strike multiple opponents, which gives you a 30% chance per opponent of greatly increasing your damage.

No build is perfect of course, and I’d gladly hear your ideas on a hammer build, I’m always looking to improve mine… I may be better off against skilled players with axe/mace, but the hammers just effin cool in my book.

Ultimately, it all boils down to mastery of the mechanics. You could have the most theoretically amazing build in all of GW2 but it will do nothing for you without the necessary experience behind it.

Jonwar.9205:

@Veritas: I’ve found in WvW I’m using the rifle the majority of the time, I realize the 300 condition damage may not be all that useful for the hammer, but I find the traits for the arms tree to be significantly better than anything you can find elsewhere.

10% increase to bleeding foes, +50% crit chance against stunned foes, quickness at 25% health. I’m not a hardcore number cruncher but I’d say 10% increase in damage is equal to quite a bit of power.

As for the crit proced sigils this is simply untrue thanks to frenzy and the fact that you’ll be between 70-100% crit chance depending on the state of your opponenet. That being said you of course wouldn’t be using frenzy as part of a zerg if that’s your thing in WvW, but the point stands on the fact that once you’ve entered melee you’ll likely be able to stun/strike multiple opponents, which gives you a 30% chance per opponent of greatly increasing your damage.

No build is perfect of course, and I’d gladly hear your ideas on a hammer build, I’m always looking to improve mine… I may be better off against skilled players with axe/mace, but the hammers just effin cool in my book.

When I read my post again, I thought I sounded like a jerk. I apologize for that. I´d be more than willing to theorycraft with you if you like.

Didn’t sound very jerky to me, so no need to apologize. It sounded like you had an idea for a hammer build, or perhaps knew of one that worked so I thought you may have one of your own to share.

I’m always open to theorycrafting, and will test just about anything that I come across if it can be justified by some line of thought. So far I’ve been quite happy with my hammer build’s performance in sPvP, but I still haven’t found the ‘sweet spot’ for the WvW version.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-ss-FwFCVKFQ0e4ZL-60N4oLVP0d4kG;5TJ-J;143B49;259-I;046;1sV2DsV2D5BB <-for the original poster if interested, for the rifle version you’d drop rending strikes for crack shot and mobile strikes for… something else, dunno, been giving thought to placing 10 points from discipline somewhere else, but it’s hard to give up fast hands. Mobile strikes loses a lot of usefulness with only one movement skill (unless you opt out of frenzy, which I’d recommend for larger fights and go to bulls charge).

Jonwar has a nice build, but I would make two changes to take more advantage of the setup. Drop Missile Deflection for adrenaline on hit (Embrace the Pain) , and take up Thrill of the Kill instead of Mobile Strikes.. There’s enough Condition removal in the skills, and more adrenaline means more bursts, which means more DPS.

Life in sPvP and WvWvW has gotten a lot better for me since I tried out the dual-axe build described here:

http://www.gw2db.com/skill-builds/929-schnieder88s-berserker-pvp-build

The build emphasizes precision instead of power; the author posts a crit chance of over 40%. I’ve got mine up to 34% — I need to get some different armor — but I’m still delighted.

A noticeable difference this build has made is that once in a while I down an opponent in 1v1 before he downs me; this is novel and surprising, but oooh so nice.

Run the basic glass cannon traits, use all ruby orbs have fun with your constant 25k+ hundred blades, Your crit chance is WAY to low with those divinity stats, that was a big waste of money lol.