Guild Wars 2

Hello all,

I have recently seen a lot of very tanky, very damaging warriors running around WvW with a build close to this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIEQNApeRjkOtwpQGPMxBE0DNsK2ijClgJUKmjNE-jACBYMCiUgQECBMBqIaslRFRjVZDT/iIq2eDQGAmtA-e

I am not sure of the exact traits/armor, but I assume that is the approximate setup b/c this build was very tanky and did very good damage, which probably means knights.

There were 3 of us (1 ele, 1 mesmer, 1 guard who joined in later) trying to pin this guy down and kill him, and we were unable to. I thought warriors were supposed to be weak to cripple/immob, but with this build, any kind of control just completely falls off like its nothing. It was hard enough even keeping up with him in the fight, and not even being able to control him in any way gave him free reign of movement. It seemed like old bunker ele out there, but with better damage + stuns with the way he zipped around at will.

In looking at this build, it has great mobility, a great amount of blocks/invulns, and very high access to damage through skull-crack/HB, as well as whirl, rush, and gs auto being respectable. It also can handle conditions very well with cleansing ire, balanced stance, and its mobility if it gets in trouble.

My question is, how can you handle this build. It doesn’t seem to have any weaknesses that we could figure out. We tried coordinating burst, but the invulns prevent that from going far at all (one is automatic, one is on-demand, one is on shield, and mace blocks 1 attack). We tried CCing and killing, but our amount of CC was unable to control him long enough, and there is access to stability on-demand. As mentioned before, crippling and kiting was useless as those condis just slide off instantly. The one strat we couldn’t try was condi-bursting, but I suspect Zerker’s stance+cleansing Ire would survive that. Anytime we worked this guy down low, he would simply outrun us with the GS amazing mobility.

What strategy were we missing for handling this. Yes, the build is very much a 1-trick pony, but its a 1-trick pony that doesn’t have a weakness I can figure out.

Any help from those with experience from the build?

Just keep damaging from range and rotate ppl if he trying to focus one. He is warrior, without protection and healing under constant damage he will wear off fast. Honestly i don’t understand why you having problems at all, this build is 1×1 duel-oriented, it’s pretty easy to kitten him in the group.

The main weakness of this build is that you have really poor mobility when you’re using Mace/Shield. Once you switch to Mace/Shield, you need to wait 5 seconds before you use your Mace Stun so that you can immediately swap to GS for 100B. Just keep all of your interrupts, blinds, chills, cripples and so forth for when you see the warrior swap to Mace/Shield and try your best to kite the warrior. Outside the “Mace Stun > 100B combo” this build does sub average damage so as long as you keep all you have in order to avoid the Mace Stun you should be fine.

Players that bring Bull’s Rush as one of their utility weaken themselves by not having either Ignore Pain / Balanced Stance / Berserker’s Stance so you can also exploit that too.

When I played this build in sPvP for the first time on a 1v1 server and had pretty much no experience vs great Engineers, I lost to one with no stun breakers because he used this exact strat. Obviously after a few more attempts I learned how to do better and win, but it was never a guaranteed win, with this build I had about a 50% win ratio.

^ that. and unblockable skills help alot if the warrior lacks SoS / vigor.

As stated, kite and range him down. If you don’t have a large amount of escapes, save your last stun break for when he starts casting 100b.

Sounds like you 3 were terrible players. If you make the war burn his utilities properly you could have bursted him down quite easily.

Lure their skullcracker out, act like you get to close by mistake and dodge roll or just run in circles around that warrior. He will miss skullcracker and you can keep on damaging him. Don’t waist low damage skills that root/chill because he is almost immune to those, just use the big damaging ones.

It is a strong 1vs1 build, not unbeatable. Good mesmers still seem to be laughing with warriors. And yea, a group shouldn’t have troubles with one. If he catches someone and starts to 100b, the rest of the group can burst him down.

Thanks for some of the great feedback, and no thanks to those who want to insult players so you feel better about yourself.

Our biggest problem with this guy in our group vs. 1 was that we were not able to pin him down before he could get to his keep when things were on cooldown b/c all kinds of CC were 100% useless. Also, the armor on that build is CRAZY high. I also had trouble as a D/D ele b/c his attacks (whirlwind, rush, shield bash) moved him around quite a bit so lining up my relatively telegraphed hits was hard.

While he wasn’t able to kill us in that situation, his build got WAY stronger in a small skirmish of uncoordinated players because its hard to stay focused on a skull-crack when other things are going on. When there are a couple of warriors in an area constantly stunning+100B-ing, you are gonna eat some tough damage.

Also, I am not sure that bursting him while he in 100B is a great idea as it has quite the aoe. Rotating people isn’t viable when the fight grows into a skirmish (6v6 or so). I suppose the best option is to force him to blow his stunbreaks and then coordinating one long burst (this build is VERY tanky). Alternatively, just have everyone kite him from range (although D/D ele is locked into close-range). It would have been much more reasonable had we had access to poison as well.

BlackBeard.2873:

Thanks for some of the great feedback, and not thanks to those who want to insult players so you feel better about yourself.

Our biggest problem with this guy in our group vs. 1 was that we were not able to pin him down before he could get to his keep when things were on cooldown b/c all kinds of CC were 100% useless. I also had trouble as a D/D ele b/c his attacks (whirlwind, rush, shield bash) moved him around quite a bit so lining up my relatively telegraphed hits was hard.

While he wasn’t able to kill us in that situation, his build got WAY stronger in a small skirmish of uncoordinated players because its hard to stay focused on a skull-crack when other things are going on. When there are a couple of warriors in an area constantly stunning+100B-ing, you are gonna eat some tough damage.

Also, I am not sure that bursting him while he in 100B is a great idea as it has quite the aoe. Rotating people isn’t viable when the fight grows into a skirmish (6v6 or so). I suppose the best option is to force him to blow his stunbreaks and then coordinating one long burst (this build is VERY tanky). Alternatively, just have everyone kite him from range (although D/D ele is locked into close-range). It would have been much more reasonable had we had access to poison as well.

Oh it’s in front of a keep….

Yeah it’s not gonna happen against a good warrior. We have notoriously good short timed utilities such as endure pain, balanced stance, berserker stance etc. you’re not gonna stop us entering a keep again unless we overstay. That’s not just the skull crack build. Any competent warrior will walk into that keep either way you want. The only hope is that you might be able to strip his stability boon and then stun him.l, but that doesn’t happen unless in big zergs.

the thing with this build is you can have very high toughness vitality armour, the warrior only needs 30% crit rate, +20% from signet of rage, +50% from skull crack (unsuspecting foe) and the warrior can crit every single hit in 100b in tank gear. Like others have said outside of the stun 100b combo it’s fairly average damage

peter.9024:

Oh it’s in front of a keep….

Yeah it’s not gonna happen against a good warrior. We have notoriously good short timed utilities such as endure pain, balanced stance, berserker stance etc. you’re not gonna stop us entering a keep again unless we overstay. That’s not just the skull crack build. Any competent warrior will walk into that keep either way you want. The only hope is that you might be able to strip his stability boon and then stun him.l, but that doesn’t happen unless in big zergs.

Well, the fight started about halfway between bay and the NW supply camp, so its not like it was a short trot into the keep. And this guy lingered out there fighting us for a good 30-kitten before running back into the keep, which we couldn’t stop. We really needed a necro or a strong condi build with us who could load him up after zerker’s stance wore off and his burst skill was wasted. Unfortunately, only necro and engie have the over-the-top condi builds needed for that kind of strat.

Understand that GS is garbage without CC backing it up. Main reasoning is that GS auto attacks are bad, whirl wind attack is clunky, F1 is bad, and HB is kinda bad without CC. That’s why everyone is using Skull Crack + HB nowadays.

The only reason why this build is working right now is because of Berserker stance.

1.) Kite Berserker stance. Do EVERYTHING that you can to get away from the Warriors attack range when you see this coming.
2.) The moment you kite zerk stance, spam blinds and abuse evade frames.
3.) If you have stab, just trade hits. GS CAN NOT trade hits due to having a bad auto attack.

Skull Crack + HB is the definition of a pub-stomper build. It does not compare to non-GS builds when you’re actually good with the Warrior class.

Amir.1570:

Understand that GS is garbage without CC backing it up. Main reasoning is that GS auto attacks are bad, whirl wind attack is clunky, F1 is bad, and HB is kinda bad without CC. That’s why everyone is using Skull Crack + HB nowadays.

The only reason why this build is working right now is because of Berserker stance.

1.) Kite Berserker stance. Do EVERYTHING that you can to get away from the Warriors attack range when you see this coming.
2.) The moment you kite zerk stance, spam blinds and abuse evade frames.
3.) If you have stab, just trade hits. GS CAN NOT trade hits due to having a bad auto attack.

Skull Crack + HB is the definition of a pub-stomper build. It does not compare to non-GS builds when you’re actually good with the Warrior class.

I’d say that melandru / hoelbrak is more important then berserker stance imho

You won’t be able to catch a GS warrior that has Last Stand & Mobile Strikes traited unless you’re a S/D thief.

peter.9024:

I’d say that melandru / hoelbrak is more important then berserker stance imho

I agree with this. Warrior’s main problem used to be that they had incredible damage, but were very bad at landing it. With the melandru+dogged march+lemongrass soup you get -98% reduction on movement impairing condis. In fact, using skills that impair movement just has the net effect of healing the warrior by giving him regen. This actually makes the warrior the one that is hard to pin down and land any damage on in the first place. The damage that does land is very ineffective because of the absurd amount of armor from signet+knights armor+runes and invulns. There is incredible synergy in this build without any real glaring weaknesses. The only downside, as has been stated is the damage is kid of one-trick-pony. However, the spammability of these skills is high enough that it is hard to miss all the time.

Zerker’s stance is very important for taking out condi-bombers such as the popular necro spec.

The best way to “fix” the build imo (and others) is to either nerf the soup or cap -condi duration so that certain condis aren’t trivialized. In the mean-time, I suppose the best option is to try and gang up on one with condi+burst bombs alternating.

GS can’t DPS either if its disengaging or it sucks trading hits vs. stability if it has no way to land HB. Also food buffs do need to get cut in half in WvW.

kekuso.5837:

You won’t be able to catch a GS warrior that has Last Stand & Mobile Strikes traited unless you’re a S/D thief.

*S/D thief with ~+70% condi duration. And even still, is not an easy catch by any means.

The thing about WvW is that there are foods with -40% stun durations you can use… With melandru its -65% stun duration… Tbh you s houldn’t care about a warrior in WvW in the first place because WvW is server vs server not the dude doing nothing for his server running 1v1 builds that do nothing for others around him in teamfights.

Like most mentioned, this is a 1v1 build and mesmers absolutely destroy this build that skull crack builds have very very poor chasing ability, you can literally just walk away and there’s nothing he can do about it.

Forestgreen.7981:

The thing about WvW is that there are foods with -60% stun durations you can use… With melandru its -85% stun duration… Tbh you s houldn’t care about a warrior in WvW in the first place because WvW is server vs server not the dude doing nothing for his server running 1v1 builds that do nothing for others around him in teamfights.

Like most mentioned, this is a 1v1 build and mesmers absolutely destroy this build that skull crack builds have very very poor chasing ability, you can literally just walk away and there’s nothing he can do about it.

Fighting in wvw is the central theme, and it is how havoc crews get things done (cap camps/control points, kill yaks, and maybe take a tower while fighting small enemy groups that come try to stop you).

I disagree with lack of chasing ability. With rush and whirlwind attack, as well as the complete ignorance of control effects, this kind of build has no trouble staying on top of a target.

Also, the food is -40% condi duration, which is still crazy when paired with Melandru (-25%) and the -33% control effects trait for a -98% total.

BlackBeard.2873:

Fighting in wvw is the central theme, and it is how havoc crews get things done (cap camps/control points, kill yaks, and maybe take a tower while fighting small enemy groups that come try to stop you).

I disagree with lack of chasing ability. With rush and whirlwind attack, as well as the complete ignorance of control effects, this kind of build has no trouble staying on top of a target.

Also, the food is -40% condi duration, which is still crazy when paired with Melandru (-25%) and the -33% control effects trait for a -98% total.

Believe me, he won’t stay on top of you unless you let him, turn ur back and just run away he won’t deal enough damage to down you. 100% melee character with bad gap closers like warrior can’t kill someone who doesn’t want to fight. Just save your stun breaker when you see him pull out the GS not before since its usually shield bash → skull crack → GS HB.
As for killing it really depends on what class you are using but this build is a very much 1v1 build like phantasm mesmers and is in fact very inferior to mesmer.

You are right, there aren’t many damaging skills that can be used on the run (the build relies on hitting skull-crack—>HB, so if you run and dodge any skullcrack, you should be able to get away. You might also need to cleanse the crippling sword-throw. In a skirmish, I guess its best to just try and destroy everyone else while kiting the warrior?

BlackBeard.2873:

In a skirmish, I guess its best to just try and destroy everyone else while kiting the warrior?

This is usually the case, yes. From my wvw and pvp experience, most players consider the warrior last when dealing with groups.

Rofl..at this thread..

Iv been running Mace/Shield & GS for awhile and it was top in beginning because nobody knew wtf was going on, but people are catching on. Second they see me drop GS for Mace they pop on stability and burst away, or just range kite. Its that easy, and if you cant for the life you fight a stun warrior then just run the other way.

I was personally being kited around to much today, tho granted i didnt die (<3 rush) i didnt kill much either. Its sorta meh. Or maybe i should try the hammer again, them clones got nothing on my hammer!.

BlackBeard.2873:

Also, the food is -40% condi duration, which is still crazy when paired with Melandru (-25%) and the -33% control effects trait for a -98% total.

I wonder why people keep saying warriors are almost immune to conditions because of the food, other players can use food too. Any class has access to the food, also condition duration food. So let’s say some condi necro uses Rare veggie pizza for +40% condition duration, +30% condition duration from a trait line and +10% from any rune set with condition duration. That’s +80% condition duration. So if the warrior gets -98% condition duration, it’s -18% from the original value.

PistolWraith.6732:

BlackBeard.2873:

Also, the food is -40% condi duration, which is still crazy when paired with Melandru (-25%) and the -33% control effects trait for a -98% total.

I wonder why people keep saying warriors are almost immune to conditions because of the food, other players can use food too. Any class has access to the food, also condition duration food. So let’s say some condi necro uses Rare veggie pizza for +40% condition duration, +30% condition duration from a trait line and +10% from any rune set with condition duration. That’s +80% condition duration. So if the warrior gets -98% condition duration, it’s -18% from the original value.

Thanks for explaining this. I was always wondering if it works that way. That’s very good news.
I also found a thread about it here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Condition-duration-vs-Condition-duration/first#post2214705

Also, people should understand that Dogged March affects only movement impairing conditions, not bleeds, burns or poison. So in terms of condition damage you can get 80% boost but only 65% reduction. I can rightfully demand a buff to get equal grounds!

I strongly disagree with reduce condition duration nerf. Especially with food.
Lemongrass counters Pizza in 1v1. Pizza affects AoE so it’s more valuable imo. You can’t expect everybody running with Lemongrass (have you seen the price on TP lately? It was around 25 silver per one. I wonder how many people actually use that buff all the time).

Rune of Melandru is a very defensive rune. You are sacrificing your dps or abilities from another rune set for more defense. It’s not like it was a 1-rune set.

The easiest way to counter this build is to constantly doing damage from range.

The main weakness of this build is the lack of mobility when swapping to mace/shield. The warrior has to catch up to you with GS, then switch to mace, wait 5s then skull crack → 100b. So you have kitten timeframe to get some distance + kite. Add dodge/ block/ stability for another 7 3/4s timeframe. Rince/ Repeakittens

all about timing. Force him to switch to GS to catch up to you. Then get away from him when he switches to mace.

I fought many of those warriors with my sword/shield + rifle warrior in WvW. Often they didnt land a single skull crack on me. Maybe they were all noobs, I dont know. ^^

Blackbeard’s solution of condi-bombing really works the best. Power damage is weak against this build because the warrior will have about 3.9k armor and be regenning around 450-750 hp/s due to regen sig + adrenal healing. And being full-glass against this build is dangerous, because the warrior still hits incredibly hard (with signet of rage and unsuspecting foe, the warrior will have near 100% crit chance after landing skull crack or shield bash).

You need to maintain perma-poison to cut the passive healing down and bomb him with burning, bleed, and torment for the damage. (He’ll cleanse once with endurance sig). People also need to learn to avoid the skullcrack, not only to survive, but to prevent cleansing ire from triggering (his main source of condi removal). Spamming CC (i.e. hammer warrior or flamethrower engy) also works to interrupt his 100b. The warrior only has that 8s of stab from the signet, and if he pops that he loses some of his armor. Weakness spam in theory would cut down the warrior’s damage, but he if he’s 100b-ing you then that means he landed skull crack, which means he’s just cleansed 3 conditions.

Finally, if he decides to run, there might not be a whole lot you can do to stop him. Your best bet is hard CCs of your own, combined with some sort of boon-stripping to remove his stability if his Dolly sig is up. What’ll probably happen is he’ll Dolly signet the first CC (thereby gaining stability) then whirlwind-evade away from you (dodging or getting out of range of the second CC), and then using rush (1.2k distance) to get out of range of the rest of your attacks. Then he’ll alternate beteeen whirlwind and rush to escape (nothing can currently catch up to this, except maybe a firey greatsword ele).

This build may be a one-trick pony, but it’s super-effective and extremely easy to play because of its high toughness (possibly the highest toughness of any non-bunker build in the game), high HP pool (tied with necros), high passive healing (highest in the game), and low-CD access to blocks+evades+stability. The main downside, again, is that most of its condi-cleansing is tied to landing its burst, which is dodgeable.

The skill floor of this game reached unexpected heights. Perma cc, plus absurd burst, melee cleave hitting 3k+ on each swing, plus ridiculous amount of self healing. At least they are hard to play… (insert trollface here)

Ya this specific build on warriors when using knights gear is kinda over powered in nearly all pvp situations.
This build is OP because
1)insane armor. Able to tank multiple people 1v? And barely get a scratch. Is absolute idiocracy when used in combo with the healing signet. (Only viable damage is condition when fighting it)
2)absolutely kitten kits damage in comparison to its survivability. There power, prec, and citical damage is high, and off the charts if they attack you when your stunned.
3) survivability besides armor. If the warrior is using the correct utility’s and off hand shield they will have tons of invulns and be very difficult to burst most of the time. This in combination with the already insane armor of 3.9k and absolutely idiotic mobility of the greatsword makes this build insanely hard to kill or catch. Even in a fight of 4v1 in your favor.
If you want to have any chance of killing this monster focus not on burst but sustain. So if you are a mesmer try and not shatter you phantasms as often. You will do much more sustained damage if you let your phantasms do the work.

Overall this build is by far the best warrior build out there for most situations mainly wvw roaming.
It has the best tank ability that the warrior can get (besides conditions).
Almost the best damage that a warrior can get.

It’s OP so don’t be surprised if they beat you if you are doing a melee regular damage build.

My advise for beating it is
1) stay ranged. AND OUT OF MELEE RANGE!!!!!.This type of war only has melee weapons. Also the warrior will switch to greatsword so as to use the mobility to catch up to you. At that point attack the war when he switches to greatsword for a quick burst. But get out of there before he switches to mace .

2)CONDITIONs!!!!!!! conditions kills this war very fast. This is because the war is putting all defence in to toughness and not vitality. The warrior will have some condition removal though so still be ready for a long fight.

And that’s about it. Really this build is the most OP warrior builds out there. It’s easy to use and yet SOOOOOO effective.
Any war that uses this and thinks their effectiveness is relative to their skill should be ashamed.

This is more likely what you came up against rather than full “Knight’s” gear.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIEQNApeRjkOtwpQyQMxBEkCNsKOKUCmQ9YO2w2A-jQyAYMBRSEAVAiQAm8ESTgSjVwioxqtxUxER1yAwsFA-e

Very little sacrifice in return for much higher bursts during Skull Crack.

BlackBeard.2873:

Hello all,

I have recently seen a lot of very tanky, very damaging warriors running around WvW with a build close to this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIEQNApeRjkOtwpQGPMxBE0DNsK2ijClgJUKmjNE-jACBYMCiUgQECBMBqIaslRFRjVZDT/iIq2eDQGAmtA-e

I am not sure of the exact traits/armor, but I assume that is the approximate setup b/c this build was very tanky and did very good damage, which probably means knights.

There were 3 of us (1 ele, 1 mesmer, 1 guard who joined in later) trying to pin this guy down and kill him, and we were unable to. I thought warriors were supposed to be weak to cripple/immob, but with this build, any kind of control just completely falls off like its nothing. It was hard enough even keeping up with him in the fight, and not even being able to control him in any way gave him free reign of movement. It seemed like old bunker ele out there, but with better damage + stuns with the way he zipped around at will.

In looking at this build, it has great mobility, a great amount of blocks/invulns, and very high access to damage through skull-crack/HB, as well as whirl, rush, and gs auto being respectable. It also can handle conditions very well with cleansing ire, balanced stance, and its mobility if it gets in trouble.

My question is, how can you handle this build. It doesn’t seem to have any weaknesses that we could figure out. We tried coordinating burst, but the invulns prevent that from going far at all (one is automatic, one is on-demand, one is on shield, and mace blocks 1 attack). We tried CCing and killing, but our amount of CC was unable to control him long enough, and there is access to stability on-demand. As mentioned before, crippling and kiting was useless as those condis just slide off instantly. The one strat we couldn’t try was condi-bursting, but I suspect Zerker’s stance+cleansing Ire would survive that. Anytime we worked this guy down low, he would simply outrun us with the GS amazing mobility.

What strategy were we missing for handling this. Yes, the build is very much a 1-trick pony, but its a 1-trick pony that doesn’t have a weakness I can figure out.

Any help from those with experience from the build?

to counter this build will require toughness stability or lacking htat stun breaks make use of invul frames to avoid damage. if at all possible keep him at range longer he’s down wind less damage he can do since he has no real ranged dps. make use of any cc skills you have perferbly with short cds remember 100bs is the bread and butter of this build as such it’s weakness are as follows.

clunky requires the use of cc or a player to stand still while he’s being attacked. close range and a long activation time of 3 seconds if he’kitten with in that time with cc it interrupts the skill.

Condition duration reduction
- 25 (6 melandru) 40 (lemongrass) = 65%
Condition duration increase
- 10 (2 mad king) 10 (2 lyssa) 4 (2 lich) 6 (sigil of malice) 10 to 20 (giver weapons) 40 (pizza) 0 to 30 (traits)= 80 to 120

Warriors, eng’g and eles can get 98% snare/root decreased duration
Everybody can get 80% to 120% snare/root increased duration

So how to handle a warrior geared to counter snares/roots? Gear specifically to counter it. Use all condition duration increase sources (giver, sigils, runes, food)

After the second post mentioning 3.9k armor I decided I had to get out of bed to reply. Stop exaggerating…

Seetoo.9316:

Condition duration reduction
- 25 (6 melandru) 40 (lemongrass) = 65%
Condition duration increase
- 10 (2 mad king) 10 (2 lyssa) 4 (2 lich) 6 (sigil of malice) 10 to 20 (giver weapons) 40 (pizza) 0 to 30 (traits)= 80 to 120

Warriors, eng’g and eles can get 98% snare/root decreased duration
Everybody can get 80% to 120% snare/root increased duration

So how to handle a warrior geared to counter snares/roots? Gear specifically to counter it. Use all condition duration increase sources (giver, sigils, runes, food)

+1

plus condition duration increase foods are dirt cheap anyone can buy em and keep it on 24/7

BlackBeard.2873:

Hello all,

I have recently seen a lot of very tanky, very damaging warriors running around WvW with a build close to this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIEQNApeRjkOtwpQGPMxBE0DNsK2ijClgJUKmjNE-jACBYMCiUgQECBMBqIaslRFRjVZDT/iIq2eDQGAmtA-e

I am not sure of the exact traits/armor, but I assume that is the approximate setup b/c this build was very tanky and did very good damage, which probably means knights.

There were 3 of us (1 ele, 1 mesmer, 1 guard who joined in later) trying to pin this guy down and kill him, and we were unable to. I thought warriors were supposed to be weak to cripple/immob, but with this build, any kind of control just completely falls off like its nothing. It was hard enough even keeping up with him in the fight, and not even being able to control him in any way gave him free reign of movement. It seemed like old bunker ele out there, but with better damage + stuns with the way he zipped around at will.

In looking at this build, it has great mobility, a great amount of blocks/invulns, and very high access to damage through skull-crack/HB, as well as whirl, rush, and gs auto being respectable. It also can handle conditions very well with cleansing ire, balanced stance, and its mobility if it gets in trouble.

My question is, how can you handle this build. It doesn’t seem to have any weaknesses that we could figure out. We tried coordinating burst, but the invulns prevent that from going far at all (one is automatic, one is on-demand, one is on shield, and mace blocks 1 attack). We tried CCing and killing, but our amount of CC was unable to control him long enough, and there is access to stability on-demand. As mentioned before, crippling and kiting was useless as those condis just slide off instantly. The one strat we couldn’t try was condi-bursting, but I suspect Zerker’s stance+cleansing Ire would survive that. Anytime we worked this guy down low, he would simply outrun us with the GS amazing mobility.

What strategy were we missing for handling this. Yes, the build is very much a 1-trick pony, but its a 1-trick pony that doesn’t have a weakness I can figure out.

Any help from those with experience from the build?

Good points from the OP

Many people have the misconception that winning means killing your opponent 1v1. I dont’t really agree to this because it stupidities the idea of fight where the 2 opponents are not necessarily built for a face to face brawl.

In my honest opnion of over 1100 hrs on a warrior:

1) If they are sword/x + GS do not expect to catch up to them easily but don’t expect to be stunned much either. They trade control for mobility.
2) If they are mace/X + hammer do not expect them to be able to catch up to you if you decide to run. They trade mobility for control
3) If they are using a mix of mobility and cc (ex sword/X + Hammer) then they are the jack of all trades, master of none, just like any class can be.

Some tips for M/sh + Hammer:
1) Kite the warrior until they are bored and they run away. To me that’s as good as winning.
2) kite them onto your zerg and watch them being unable to do anything while they die a horrible and gruesome death. If they were not smart enough to expect it, they deserved it.
3) If you want to stay and fight, mobility and ranged attacks are your best options.

If they use a GS, its hard to catch up to them.

Keep Taragon bread on hand.

You don’t. WvW’s inflated stats and food buffs make it overpowered as balls. Having fun?

Ill anyone money to make a guide on how to kill any ms/gs war using healing signet, with scepter/focus elementalist.

Ready to hear all the bs ways you people come up with.

Senjun I’d be interested in seeing that, just because of the fact that I’ve never seen any s/f ele clips.

Furajir.3815:

Senjun I’d be interested in seeing that, just because of the fact that I’ve never seen any s/f ele clips.

Well to be to be honest with you s/f ele focuses moreso on survivability but if you know how to stack might properly then you also get a decent deal of sustained damage with the help of conditions. I can 1v1 anything and win the majority of the time it takes a certain level of skill and experience with the focus.

But on warriors what is really ridiuclous to me is healing signet. Elementalist is a profession with no poisons at their disposal and s/f ele isn’t exactly lolburstyoudead. A warrior can sit still and shrug off all my damage i throw at him. It’s like i bring most other professions to their knees in 1 on 1s including thieves but a warrior can absolutely shrug off all damage because of their healing signet and still be specced and built for pure damage.

To me this is why it’s unfair, I’m lucky if i drop a warrior below 80% hp, often in a fight i rely on interupting a heal to bring it to an end but obviously cant interupt it, got no poison and have low sustained damage without my 16 stacks of might. What is a s/f ele to do?

alot of people look at me as an A class elementalist but there is nothing i can do to put so much as a dent in a warriors armor if he uses healing signet, he can be 100% new to the game while i have a year straight of elementalist experience and i cant do anything. It’s just to much.

are you saying you cant do more then 392 damage a second? how do you even kill.. anything? lots of warriors roll a lot of healing stuff alongside the healing signet – adrenal health, banner reg, shout healing, regen procs, mango pie, doylak runes.. dont blame it all on the signet because thats just that: 392 hps without healing power, and it even scales very poorly with healing power. just hold your QQ untill you see the new shout healing warriors xD

Senjun.8149:

Furajir.3815:

Senjun I’d be interested in seeing that, just because of the fact that I’ve never seen any s/f ele clips.

Well to be to be honest with you s/f ele focuses moreso on survivability but if you know how to stack might properly then you also get a decent deal of sustained damage with the help of conditions. I can 1v1 anything and win the majority of the time it takes a certain level of skill and experience with the focus.

But on warriors what is really ridiuclous to me is healing signet. Elementalist is a profession with no poisons at their disposal and s/f ele isn’t exactly lolburstyoudead. A warrior can sit still and shrug off all my damage i throw at him. It’s like i bring most other professions to their knees in 1 on 1s including thieves but a warrior can absolutely shrug off all damage because of their healing signet and still be specced and built for pure damage.

To me this is why it’s unfair, I’m lucky if i drop a warrior below 80% hp, often in a fight i rely on interupting a heal to bring it to an end but obviously cant interupt it, got no poison and have low sustained damage without my 16 stacks of might. What is a s/f ele to do?

alot of people look at me as an A class elementalist but there is nothing i can do to put so much as a dent in a warriors armor if he uses healing signet, he can be 100% new to the game while i have a year straight of elementalist experience and i cant do anything. It’s just to much.

sounds like your issue is your simply not doing enough dps you really don’t want to keep the fight going on against a regen warrior or it will end up as you said.

however there are few things that can be done to throw him off. a healing signet forget about it it’s heal spike is pathetic and you’ll basically out dps it by the time it heals. healing sig is not nearly as op kitten many wish to believe. warrior just has a lot of regen (while little protection such as aegis or protection)

basically yes you want to burst them down and do so quicly.

Steelo.4597:

are you saying you cant do more then 392 damage a second? how do you even kill.. anything? lots of warriors roll a lot of healing stuff alongside the healing signet – adrenal health, banner reg, shout healing, regen procs, mango pie, doylak runes.. dont blame it all on the signet because thats just that: 392 hps without healing power, and it even scales very poorly with healing power. just hold your QQ untill you see the new shout healing warriors xD

Well as s/f ele i have some experience to back up my argument.

I’ve 1v1’d ms/gs warriors not using healing signet and have won.
Every 1v1 with a ms/gs or even hammer warriors using healing signet, i eventually lose after escaping/dodging the first 5-8 stun attempts (can’t keep it up forever)

The heal makes to much of a difference, the fact i can kill ones who don’t use it with the same amount of effort and then i can’t even drop a war below 80% who do use it…. what does that tell you?

that you think they are running the same build, just different heals? if you look at the numbers the difference in healing per time isnt very big, yes its slightly higher on signet, but not that much, about 15%? if you interrupt them the heal doesnt tick btw, also poison helps a lot against signet since you can shrug it off before burst heal, making it useless.

20% crit dmg on that build lmao….tickle tickle.

I don’ think anyone on the forums can help you if you guys couldn’t 3v1 a warrior using that build.