Guild Wars 2

Here’s my take on a hammer & longbow build. This is primarily a PVE build, but does well in sPVP if perhaps only because you can catch people by surprise.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/c9e2b7c

This build focuses on swapping weapons and dumping adrenaline on cooldown. Your goal should be a fully powered longbow burst followed by a medium powered hammer burst while dancing between melee and medium range.

This build also runs shouts, but it is not a healing build. 30 points in tactics and shouts are used for boon duration, adrenaline, and condition removal. The healing is an added bonus.

Might & Fury Stacking (amplified by 30% boon duration)

• 2x blast finishers & fire combo field = 6x area might every 10 seconds.
• Weapon swapping on cooldown = 5x might every 10 seconds (From Sigil & Trait)
• Shout and Elite Signet = 100% fury uptime and 5-8 stacks of might

Adrenaline Management

• ‘Adrenal Reserves’ causes burst abilities to only spend a third of your adrenaline. This, combined with the ‘Versatile Rage’ trait allows you to easily chain burst abilities.
• Shouts gain nearly a bar of adrenaline each. Use all three at once or one at a time as needed. You can even use these during a burst skill animation. Adrenaline isn’t spent until a skill hits a target.

Chaining Bursts

• Longbow burst does both direct damage (which can crit) and burning. Adrenaline level increases duration. Might stacks amplify both sources of damage.
• Hammer burst has a fixed amount of damage regardless of adrenaline level. Adrenaline level increases stun duration by a small amount. Use this to combo with your fire field.
• Build full adrenaline and spend it on your longbow burst. Swap weapons in time to use your hammer burst. Use shouts as needed to rebuild adrenaline for when your longbow burst comes off cooldown.

Survivability & Trading Blows

• In PVE, enemies (usually) have a slow attack speed. Mobility results in survivability.
• Be comfortable with hammer as a ranged weapon, and longbow as a melee weapon. Hammer burst and #3 work at medium range. Longbow #2 and #3 is easier to land at point blank range.
• Use your hammer burst to leap into the fray and dodge out to medium range while swapping to longbow. Try to time your hammer burst just after a boss attacks and time your longbow swap for when you need to escape.
• When you need to kite, hammer cripples and longbow immobilizes.

Gear

• Because you invest so heavily in the discipline tree, I prefer gearing for precision with a combination of knight’s or berserker’s gear. This build is naturally defensive, so don’t worry about being a glass cannon. Just don’t forget to use soldier runes.

DPS Expectations

• On average, my auto attacks on my hammer crit for 2k, 2k, then 3k. Stacking might pushes those averages closer to 3k & 4k. Longbow’s auto attack crits twice for 0.8-1k. Longbow #3 often crits for 5-8k. This is in mostly berserker gear.

I was curious why you decided to go with healing signet. It seems that most builds are going with mending to get rid of conditions when you shouts are down..

Also, given that you went all the way into shouts heal, it seems like it would be good to take that 10 out of strength and put it into defense to get a little bit of compassion.

I have tried something similar, and liked it, it was fun. I might try it again tho.

timidobserver.7925:

I was curious why you decided to go with healing signet. It seems that most builds are going with mending to get rid of conditions when you shouts are down..

A certain part of any build involves personal preference, of course. I like having a balance of regeneration and burst healing — and with the signet and shouts I never have to stop what I’m doing to heal or remove conditions. No reason not to switch for condition heavy fights of course.

timidobserver.7925:

Also, given that you went all the way into shouts heal, it seems like it would be good to take that 10 out of strength and put it into defense to get a little bit of compassion.

Not sure on the exact maths, but I’ve always found the 3-12% damage increase to be noticeable once you have a few might stacks. With the amount of adrenaline this build produces you get a lot of use out of the trait despite how often you dump adrenaline.

I’m also a fan of survivability through movement and utility rather than survivability through stats. With all the dancing in and out, constant small heals and regeneration is more than enough for me.

Coherent build, similar core concept to what I was looking at for Hammer burst spamming. Didn’t consider using Longbow, but it fits well.

I forsee this becoming a common build template, although some tuning of gear, runes, sigils, and fringe trait points will take place.

I like it.

When I saw hammer/longbow I was like out out of here. But it looks pretty stong in the context of dungeon vets (Aka stuff without defiant)

Would provide good utility and cc and support. Although on a boss fight this build is weak and for that reason I would not run it.

How do you get 5 stacks of might at weapon swap ? I can only manage to get 4 at max

Is there any viability in using this for leveling?

It should easily be viable for leveling, but I doubt it will be popular due to lack of Warhorn/Sword/GS, e.g. the “get around the map” weapons.

Well I guess maybe my question on it for leveling is whether or not the build still works when missing 20 or so of those points. I’m level 58 currently and until 60 I wouldn’t be able to dump 30 in either tactics or defense, but once I’m 60 I still need to choose 1 to not have 10 points in, losing either Vigorous shouts, which is the biggest source of healing, or the might stacks on weapon swap. I’m assuming the latter vs the former would be the wisest choice but it does gimp the damage slightly.

Kazin.2073:

When I saw hammer/longbow I was like out out of here. But it looks pretty stong in the context of dungeon vets (Aka stuff without defiant)

Would provide good utility and cc and support. Although on a boss fight this build is weak and for that reason I would not run it.

It isn’t as bad as you’d think. The direct damage from your fire field (with 60-80% uptime) will prop up the lower damage from your Hammer. By aggressively weapon swapping you can spam hard hitting skills rather than auto attacks.

But I do agree with you, the build is definitely at its best while fighting trash. Running through Orr is a joke with this build.

graverr.6473:

How do you get 5 stacks of might at weapon swap ? I can only manage to get 4 at max

The trait fires on every weapon swap, the sigil fires every other weapon swap because of its internal cooldown of 10 seconds.

Sazdek.6830:

Is there any viability in using this for leveling?

With 15 points in Discipline and Inspiring Shouts you can get the basic play style. The build really doesn’t start to shine until you have Adrenal Reserves though.

have been playing this build for about a week now and I must say it is a blast. My question is would Sword/x be a viable alternative for hammer? The sword burst damage is not affected by adren lvls. as it also has a stun effect that the time is increased on per adren lvl. Just curious about how sword is affected by fire field. Thought it would be nice as a change with offhand gives even more flexibility.

This looks fun. I’ll give it a go sometime.

Found it very hard to run real Wpvp without the warhorn. Not only for movement, but the long range aoe on the weakness is a major debuff that is often overlooked.

So maybe a swap to axe/wh with this build so you max your power and zerker gear for the bigger hits.

I know you want the jump for the might combo, but the base axe is going to beat hammer with might.

Eviscerate would be counter-productive if you are focusing on high-yield Longbow bursts.

Sword/WH would be a better combo since you could still leverage the fire field.

Lighthorse.5164:

My question is would Sword/x be a viable alternative for hammer? The sword burst damage is not affected by adren lvls. as it also has a stun effect that the time is increased on per adren lvl. Just curious about how sword is affected by fire field.

Flurry gives more bleeds for every level of adrenaline and it immobilizes, not stuns. That said, you don’t get a lot more bleeds, so spamming L1 flurries is perfectly viable. Sword has a leap finisher so you can get fire armor leaping into your fire field.

Giving up hammer, you’re giving up a lot of interrupts. Although immobilize is nasty, it isn’t an interrupt.

Axe would add damage and lose control. Eviscerate has nice synergy with high adrenaline gain. The whirl, leap and projectile finishers are nice with a fire field.

This build could use Hammer/LB for packs and axe+WH/LB for bosses. Or axe+axe/LB for whirling fun with packs.

Manticore Five.9867:

Flurry gives more bleeds for every level of adrenaline and it immobilizes, not stuns. That said, you don’t get a lot more bleeds, so spamming L1 flurries is perfectly viable. Sword has a leap finisher so you can get fire armor leaping into your fire field.

Giving up hammer, you’re giving up a lot of interrupts. Although immobilize is nasty, it isn’t an interrupt.

1. Last I checked, Flurry only gives a longer Immob duration at higher adren, not more bleed stacks. Could be wrong, /shrug.

2. I think the concept of using Sword/x is more related to Sword/WH so the build could be more adaptable to the mobility demands of general WvW.

I think it’s obvious that Hammer provides more raw capability.

Lysico.4906:

Found it very hard to run real Wpvp without the warhorn. Not only for movement, but the long range aoe on the weakness is a major debuff that is often overlooked.

So maybe a swap to axe/wh with this build so you max your power and zerker gear for the bigger hits.

I know you want the jump for the might combo, but the base axe is going to beat hammer with might.

Most of your might comes from swapping weapons, so you don’t miss out on too much. I used to switch talents in WvW and use Sword/Warhorn with Quick Breathing and Stronger Bowstrings. However in smaller skirmishes I prefer having a Hammer.