Guild Wars 2

New to warriors/the game, just hit 45 and figured I’d ask this: Is stacking vulnerability worth it? Axe mh, mace oh with OMM. using Axe 2 and Mace 4 would give you 8 stacks, OMM would boost it to 18.

and one heal removes all of that putting those abilities on cooldown for no reason, if you stack vuln just try and throw a few on then when they pop some cd’s kill em like disco

What about pve? I’ve only tried wvw once and I was using swords then.

18% more damage for your whole party. How useful do you think it is?

Vulnerability is just in general a pretty bad condition (if not the worst), its not worth focusing on stacking at all. If you make some stacks while playing normally then its cool, a bit more extra damage but its not worth making a build around.

Plus, in PvP that kitten gets converted to a boon it’s now gone from nearly useless to a huge penalty to you because the dude you were putting vulnerability on now has protection.

I’ve never specced too much for vulnerability, but a convenient way of looking at it is a reduction in the target’s effective health.

For instance, a target with 10 stacks of vulnerability will take 10% more damage from direct attacks, meaning you’ve effectively reduced their effective HP by 10% (effective HP being a combination of actual HP with damage reduction from armor factored in).

This is, of course, only temporary, but it can cause an opponent to be pressured harder, causing them to use up more of their survivability tools faster. Since those tools get spent earlier, it effectively helps you outlast them.

It can also be very useful for burst setup. Mesmers often do this with their shatters. They will sometimes use diversion initially, which has the primary function of dazing the target. However, you can spec so that the shatters will apply vulnerability, thus using diversion will put a high number of vulnerability stacks on the target. After that, they will follow up with a mind wrack (commonly with blurred frenzy) to push the potential damage of their burst even higher.

So if you can apply a high number of vulnerability stacks prior to a set up for a large burst combo (i.e. tremor into eviscerate), you can make fairly effective use of it.

I usually just treat it as a side benefit to other skills that I use rather than speccing into vulnerability, which is probably how most people do it. The reason is that it doesn’t directly kill your foe, so it doesn’t matter how much vulnerability you apply if you still can’t burst them down.

It can be more useful in group play though since it indirectly benefits your allies as well as yourself.

The Rifle ability Brutal Shot + On My Mark = instant 18 stacks of Vulnerability. I think stacking vulnerability is fine as long as you don’t have to labor to do it. Vulnerability is a debuff that affects all incoming damage on the target. Think of it as buffing your entire team’s damage by 18% on the target. To me that is definitely worth it.

I use the Rending Strikes talent a lot in since I am going to critting a lot anyway.

In PvE, yes. Especially in large events with massive mobs and lots of people.

In PvP, no.

Drek Thalon.5490:

The Rifle ability Brutal Shot + On My Mark = instant 18 stacks of Vulnerability. I think stacking vulnerability is fine as long as you don’t have to labor to do it. Vulnerability is a debuff that affects all incoming damage on the target. Think of it as buffing your entire team’s damage by 18% on the target. To me that is definitely worth it.

This. It’s worth using skills that apply large stacks at once with a decent length. For other skills its more of just a side thing rather than the main purpose, so you shouldn’t really focus on that.