I changed my kill shot build to this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJIQNAsXUjMdQfHW4BOeAnIG6BKLAKgE4mjWY71Ev3DDA-TFCFwAPOlCAOCBXVCiU5ngHEAK1fqt/QG9NkCIilRA-w
Why? Because 5 signets… I can’t really give any better reason than that.
In any case, losing warrior’s sprint made me really sad, and I felt like greatsword was just being dumb. Also, I wanted a signet build, so I had to go into arms, so I figured I’d use the sword to replace the greatsword, and then I thought of offhand axe for some AoE damage and extra fury.
It’s been working an ok amount. I can perform an instant adrenaline fill with signet of fury, and the precision bonus on it isn’t as necessary since I can get a persistent precision boost from popping my signets. In fact, this build can get over 100% crit chance, so I don’t even need something like burst precision or intelligence sigils.
Obviously the kill shot damage is not maxed out, but that’s replaced with things like a large amount of quickness, which means easier to land kill shots and faster damage on follow ups.
The sword has also been surprisingly useful. The auto-attack is good at keep opponents crippled, especially with the enhanced attack speed, and the bleeds ensures the +10% damage bonus. Final thrust is like a Kill Shot Jr. that doesn’t rely on adrenaline, so I can kill shot->final thrust if I really want to. I can also do interesting things like flurry for a long immobilize, swap, pop signet of fury, and kill shot them while they’re still immobilized.
Axe 4 just helps for high crit chance, and the axe 5 more or less gets me from 0 to 100 adrenaline almost immediately, even on a single target. It kind of acts as a 100b Jr. as well, so I can use it on downed people being rezed and that sort of kitten.
Signet of stamina is also nice due to more dodges, and I can full condi cleanse when I need it. Of course it does have a bit of a long cooldown, so it’s only so useful against rampant condition spam.
Brawler’s recovery and restorative strength are also nice options as alternatives to death from above and destruction of the empowered. In particular, death from above is probably useless in everything outside of WvW, although I did once knock a thief out of shadow refuge in PvP with it once and he rage quit on me, so that was kind of worth it.
Have I been liking it? I guess. Kill shot is always kind of that fun “BOOM HEADSHOT” kind of build. I wasn’t liking it when I was still running greatsword, but I think switching to sword/axe made it a lot more fun for me since it was new and interesting.
I did try an axe/axe variant in PvP that seemed to work pretty decently, although I felt the lack of mobility would ultimately be too crippling (no pun intended). That and there was no good option for arms master if I wasn’t using a sword.
EDIT: Also forgot to mention that I get an auto signet of might proc which syncs with the auto quickness proc quite nicely, so I don’t have to run signet of might separately. Of course, it does mean I can’t specifically control it, but I can always swap out signet of fury for signet of might if I want to, for a fairly long string of unblockable attacks.
one thought: signet of dolyak not an option considering your food / no stance trait?