Guild Wars 2

The Mad Swordsman

I’ve been really interested in the Arms line post patch. It undeniably has some of the coolest changes. However, I always run into issues whenever I try to make a build with it. Signet Mastery is cool…but you can generally only really afford to bring Heal Sig, Dolyak Sig, and Sig of Rage. Stamina is a poor substitute for Berserker Stance, and while potentially cool do you wanna drop Endure Pain for Signet of Strength?

The coolest thing about this build is how you can use a Amulet with no precision and still have good crit chance purely due to traits and boons. The Runes of the mad King also have some AMAZING synergy going on. Do not open with Signet of Rage! Save it until you’re on Sword and have maybe been forced to use your Dolyak Signet (for extra precision) and watch as your multi hitting birds deal ok power damage, apply multiple bleeds, and crit to the point where you may have 20+ stacks from Furious. Swap back to LB at close range and use Fan of Fire and watch your Burns do a surprisingly high amoutn of damage.

You CAN use offhand sword, but I find the sustain/might that shield offers to be much more useful and reliable. It also gives you a more reliable setup for Final Thrust which will actually do good damage in this setup unlike using Rabid where you’ll probably forget you have a skill 3.

I haven’t had the time to rigorously test this (really obnoxious work hours) which is why I’m posting this here. Some things I would like you all to look at:

• Using Burst Precision over Furious. In theory you could stack a lot more bleeds, but I feel like Furious is better.

• Fighting all the Meta Specs, with focus on PU Shatter, D/D Ele, and most importantly Cele Necro which I feel would be annoyingly good against this spec.

• Sigils other than Accuracy on Sword. I tried Sigil of Intelligence but it seemed wasteful.

• If any of you aren’t afraid to be bashed by your team if this ends up being terrible try running something like this here. You lose the hybrid aspect and double EP but I have been trying REALLY hard to find some way to bring some sort of useful team support that isn’t Shouts. In theory this might make you and your team more durable while still having the ability to land some nice condi spikes.

Hey Burr!

First of all I am glad to see that more people “dare” to venture into a path significantly less traveled which is … use of damaging Conditions. Note that I avoid, on purpose to characterize builds such as yours as “Condition” builds because they are actually Hybrid builds since they utilize Conditions along with Power using a both Sword and LB which are hybrid by nature for Warrior.

So, here are my personal opinion on this build :

Personally, cause of the nature of PvP (restriction to use specific ammys), I believe that warrior Hybrid builds are in a slight disadvantage there. I think that with the current stat combos available, in the form of PvP amulets, a Warrior can’t unfold its full potential in sPvP since there is no amulet that combines power, precison, condi and toughness. Lets hope to the addition of a similar amulet soon!

Apart from that, while I understand the use of shield, I would really like the sword off-hand. Maybe just a matter of personal preference but I feel that Sword OH will boost damage potential further while retaining some defensive capabilities.

A last thing I would like to point out is the use of Stances. I believe that Stances (berserker, endure pain), because of the immunities that gives you for a rather short while, benefits Zerker power builds more. I think we both agree that Hybrid builds aren’t capable to kill as fast as a Zerker GS build. So the short immunity advantage granted by stances (which comes with a rather long CD) is better capitalized by builds that unleash massive damage in a short period of time. A Hybrid build needs more sustain in order to survive longer.

Personally, again, I would make a few trait changes as well in the Defense traits.