Guild Wars 2

Hello. Since I have created a Warrior, I have constantly toyed around with gear sets, weapons, and traits. With the traits available to the Warrior, if I wanted to be all-out offensive it would be a sin not to use the greatsword. It was fun playing with its high numbers, but eventually it got down-right boring.

I’ve settled on using the sword|shield and longbow as this combo has become both fun and functional for me in dungeons and in soloing world champions. I want to trait defensively and gear offensively. I love being off-tank (a durable, damaging fighter) I’ve run into two area in which I really need opinions of others.

Firstly, the traits.

I am looking at:

10/25/30/0/0
Berserker’s Power – 12% damage increase on 100% Andrenaline.
Deep Strike – Gain +40 precision for each unused signet you have equipped. (with Healing, Rage, Dolyak, and Might Signet, suggestions would be greatly appreciated on a different trait)
Blademaster – Increases your critical-hit chance with a sword by 10%
Turtle’s Defense – Gain +200 toughness when crippled, chilled, stunned, or immobilized.
Shield Master – Gain +90 toughness while using a shield. Shield skills recharge 20% faster.
Defy Pain – Activates Endure Pain at 25% health.

This leaves 5 Trait points up in the air.

Or

10/25/25/0/10
Berserker’s Power – 12% damage increase on 100% Andrenaline.
Deep Strike – Gain +40 precision for each unused signet you have equipped. (with Healing, Rage, Dolyak, and Might Signet, suggestions would be greatly appreciated on a different trait)
Blademaster – Increases your critical-hit chance with a sword by 10%
Turtle’s Defense – Gain +200 toughness when crippled, chilled, stunned, or immobilized.
Shield Master – Gain +90 toughness while using a shield. Shield skills recharge 20% faster.
Heightened Focus – Gain a 2% critical-hit chance for 1 stage of adrenaline, 5% for 2 stages, and 9% for 3 stages.

Second area is equipment, I am looking at Rampager’s or Berserker’s. Both insignia’s give damage increases that the sword can use, however I have always wondered if it is a bad idea to use any insignia that give condition damage due to the fact that this source of damage has no variables, unlike power, precision, and critical damage which all benefit from each other.

Once again, any insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading.

For pve and dungeon i would change might signet for FGJ and Deep strike for Deep cut because with sword lot of bleeds, healing signet isnt also top of heal in dungeon imo, and i use dolyak only in specific situation so you can leave deep strike

Turtles defense i would change for Missile deflection its great skill.

And heigtened focus i would change for signet mastery because u get more average precision with more fury gained with mastery (also swif and might) then heigtened focus.

With Berserks power u cant get defy pain in second option, spread 10 points from berserkers power 5 to defy pain and 5 to rending strike in arm(more precision – more bleeds and vulnerability)

so conlusion:
0-30-30-0-10
deep cut, rending strike, blademaster,
misile deflection, shieldmaster, defy pain,
signet mastery

i hope that u find some usefull thing

Having fun:
Pure evil, full of sin! Greatsword or go home! LONG LIVE THE GSW’S!!!

Being serious:
Your second build is better imo for sword/shield combo, take Aurodus’ build into consideration as well. Both are good, his provides those additional 2 trait attributes though.

I run an “offensive support” build, and it looks like this is mainly what you’re looking to do here.

If you’re running dungeons as a warrior and you have all signets you’re doing it wrong imo, the reason being signets only affect you. Shouts and Banners are superior in every way when you consider they affect multiple players. They will also greatly improve your survivability – twofold when you consider they improve everyone else’s survivability as well. Rending Strikes is, imo, superior to Deep Cuts for the same reason when you consider that it improves everybody’s DPS. With Rending Strikes, On My Mark, and a Superior Sigil of Frailty you’re going to improve the entire party’s damage output considerably by stacking Vulnerability. Between For Great Justice, sword’s +10% crit, a crit sigil in your shield, and any precision you may have from gear, you’ll have more than enough crit chance to make good use of these things.

With sword+shield/longbow, you’re going to be using your adrenaline for your burst skills so you may not get a lot of mileage out of those adrenaline traits. I did away with them.

I would say either 0/20/20/30/0 or 0/25/15/30/0 – running a shout or banner build, with the only difference being the choice between Attack of Opportunity (10% more damage when target is bleeding, which it will always be bleeding) or Shield Master. Personally, I couldn’t really decide between the two so it’s really your discretion here.

Here’s my suggestion in detail:

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcRkcm0MzmRNaMmRNaM0GGx0VRVsokb

@Echo – Wow, i was looking for a sword/shield support build. This seems just like what i was looking for thanks. With your suggested build, what gear would you recommend? I’m thinking Knights gear but rune-wise i’m a bit unsure. Weapons, berserkers? For Sword i was thinking possibly sigil of earth or corruption and shield i was planning sigil of restoration. Longbow – unsure. What do you think?

I use Rampager’s. It is good because Precision increases how much bleed you apply, especially if you use a Superior Sigil of Earth. Precision also increases your direct damage so Rampagers is the natural choice for Sword.

I suggest you mix Rampager’s with Knight’s because you don’t need too much Condition damage. You can get a lot of it from Might if you use FGJ and Signet of Rage. You get a bunch of Condition Damage from Arms too.

I think you should just go 30 into Arms and get Last Chance. You’d be surprised how clutch it is. Sometimes that quick burst of damage makes the difference between surviving or not. However, take note that Savage Leap (all mobility skills actually) has half range during quickness. Sadly, this is intended.

Since everyone responded, I’ve been trying out different builds. Everyone’s responses has helped me realize the biggest factor in determining a build for dungeon play depends on what I want (and can) bring to the party.

Once again, thanks a ton for the help o/

Here’s what I’m using :

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQRAse8XjkOtwNP+OMxBE0jq4K2ijCoIJSKKjBE;TEACbA

Sword/shield as primary set and Sword/Axe as secondary. This hybrid build gives me good survivability and good bleed damage. Works quite well in solo PvE play, or groups even.

You can swap the sword/axe for a rifle and the rifle trait in the Arms tree if you want. Also swap Shield Master with Last Stand for hard fights.

In every fight I’ve got targets at 9+ level bleed all the time, or they’re dead lol. The signet is necessary for the regen, in addition to a full set of the Dolyak runes in my armor. That’s quite a bit of Toughness, Vitality & health regen. Might boon sigils on all 4 of my weapons is mandatory for even more extra damage.

Does the job just fine for me TBH.

Atm I’m using sword/shield+longbow combo with 0/20/20/30/0. I use full rabid(prec, cond dmg, toughness) armor with dwayna’s runes, and knight accesories with some minor boosts for healing power. On sword-earth sigil. With this build I find myself in nearly every situation. I don’t like shouts, because they provide only short-burst support and make you to fill utilities with them. As a condition dealer, I can provide nice bleed damage, even better in offensive situations when I can trade Adrenal Health regen for Flurry. I have nice mobility from sword 2, CC from sword 3 and Shield Bash, surv from traited Shield Stance. I find myself very tough if needed, you have increased boon duration, over 3200-3300 armor or higher, regen from banners/AH/ RNG regen from dwayna (50% increased duration) + you and allies get regen everytime you pop Mending/HS. You also have a longbow with nice condi damage and for ZvZvZ. I bring Banner of Defense and two optional utilities, depend of situation, great thing is, you’re free to pick whatever you want. Works nice

I never felt a sheild was any good, have you tried a horn instead?

I run sword & horn, rifle swap, full signets, and the following traits:

5
30-I/III/VIII
15-I
20-VI/IX
0

with knights armor with coral orbs, coral jewelry, lionguard weapons and a sigil of blood with a sigil of restoration.

This is a very survivable build, although there are times when I feel like a blade of grass in a weed-eater convention, but those are genarlly seldom and only specific solo situations.