Guild Wars 2

Hi,

My damage doesn’t seem anywhere close to what people on the forums are saying they get as a warrior and I just don’t understand why. I’m sure I’m doing something wrong, but it isn’t clear to me what that might be. Is it gear? Is it traits? Is it wrong utility skills? I’d like to be the best warrior I can be. I’m just not seeing the 1k (or 2k on crit) hits that people are talking about. Thoughts? My current build is below.

Armour:
All level 80. Rampager’s reinforced scale <whatever>.
Accessories: Coral Mithril Earring of the Rampager x 2
Rings: Coral Mithril Ring of the Rampager x 2
Amulet: Coral Mithril Amulet of the Rampager
My runes are not ideal (4xmajor sigil of the pack, 2 x minor rune of lyssa). Pretty sure I want 6 x Superior rune of <something> but not matter what I end up with it won’t make -that- much of a difference, will it?

Utilities:
For Great Justice
On My Mark
Shake It Off
Signet of Rage

Traits:
0 in strength
25 in arms (major=deep cuts, blademaster)
15 in defense (major=turtle defense)
30 in tactics (major=empowered, quick breating, vigorous shouts)
0 in discipline

Weapon Set 1: Rampager’s Sword of Battle (level 80, 802-866) + Warhorn
Sigils: Major sigil of battle, superior sigil of accuracy

Weapon Set 2: Rampager’s Rifle of Corruption (level 80, 873 – 1067
Sigil: Major sigil of corruption

With set #1, a typical fight looks like this (with signet of rage fired, and after using For Great Justice):
652, 624, 1320 – 665, 663, 1387 – 623, 655, 1420 – 627 [mob-dead]

With set #2, a typical fight looks like this (as above, and opening with brutal shot):
553 (brutal shot), 449, 478 (auto-attack), 697, 465, 697, 697, 465 (volley), 521, 358, 375 (auto-attack) [mob-dead]

So… what am I doing wrong?

That’s a condition build isn’t it? (or I’m going blind).. rampager means condition damage. If you want big numbers, you need axes/greatsword/rifle and berserker gear.

Rifle auto attack also will never do 1-2K crits, it does really low direct damage, it’s the other abilities that have high direct damage, volley and kill shot.

Only the engineer rifle auto attack gets 1500+ crits, since it is pure direct damage and no bleeding. Warrior rifle auto attack is more like 300-400 per shot plus a lot of bleeding, but the kill shot (burst ability) can go up to like 6-7K.

Since only one single rifle ability does bleeding, I don’t see any point in using the rifle with condition damage gear. Use swords with condition damage, everything else with berserker or knight or soldier gear. Rifle needs crit damage so the volley and kill shot hurts.

To be honest, engineer rifle is a lot more powerful in every way than warrior rifle. With an engineer shotgun you can do some insane burst damage that isn’t as easily dodged as warrior rifle shots. Warrior rifle is more meant to be a secondary ranged option, like the longbow not a main weapon. Warrior ranged efficiency is highly overrated by the other profession forums, just like the whole warrior class is overrated by people. We’re decent in pve, but in pvp we’re just practice targets, like golems.

Yes. Berserker’s gear. Though with a rifle build, strength and discipline don’t offer much in ways of major traits, they go a long way towards augmenting your damage with raw stats.

Power and +%Crit damage are what’s going to make your damage bigger. Just because you crit a lot, doesn’t mean you do more damage.

Well, the Rampager’s gear is power/precision/condition damage. For a sword build (which applies bleeds) it was my understanding that it would be ideal because the power would increase your attack, the precision would increase your crit rate, and the condition damage would help the bleeds.

With Berserker’s, I’d be sacrificing the condition damage (which might be fine) and replacing it with critical damage. The trading post seems to be broken, but at a guess it looks like I could increase my crit damage by 18% on gear, and 15% on trinkets for a total of 33% or so. That sound about right?

As for the rifle damage, Volley and Kill Shot tend to hit for around 4k max for me.

EDIT: With my current gear, my unbuffed stats are:
Power=1487
Precision = 1957
Toughness = 1166
Vitality = 1231
Attack = 2328
Crit Change = 54%
Armor = 2161
Health = 21522

It’s a great build, rampager and swords is just fine.. but you won’t get huge crits. Your auto attack and other sword abilities will do a ton of damage, but not in large spikes. Condition damage is about lots of bleeds that do +100 dmg x times per second, not about getting 2K crits.

In pvp you will be too squishy though to apply enough bleeds.. you’ll die long before the other will suffer any kind of bleed damage. In pvp most condition builds use carrion for the high vitality, which gives survivability.

I’m quite sure crit damage with full berserker gear will exceed 33%.

The burst trait line will also add up to 30% crit damage, depending how many points you spend.

Just gonna tell you strait up, people exaggerate like crazy on forums. Unless they have SS of combat logs, take it with a grain of salt.

Direct damage on rifle autos are somewhat low, since a portion of the damage is allocated to the bleed effect. IMO your best off just building gear towards strait direct damage, because it will be more versatile with other weapons, whereas a condition build is really only viable with rifle and sword.

I run a fairly tanky build 0/10/30/30/0 shouts heal in WvWvW, with about a 65-35% mix of tanky armor (either power/tough/vit or power/prec/tough) and berserkers for damage. My rifle autos are like ~500ish, sometimes on squishies ~700-800. The most damage i can get is roughly ~7k kill shot crit on a squishy. Damage isn’t amazing by any means, but i’ll always trade better survival in WvW over better damage.

Just give me a weapon that does the damage it displays of that level. For example: a weapon that displays 950-1100 should do just that, instead it will mostly do a lot less, 100-450 if that. Why give a display of damage if the weapon isn’t doing what it shows. Sure a crit hit may exceed the damage displayed, but Crit hitting is not constant, it will happen once in awhile.