Guild Wars 2

I’m looking for a sort of “jack of all trades” dungeon build, mostly centered around dps with the longbow and greatsword. Right now I run a very tanky shout-heal build, but I don’t feel like I contribute that much and I’m growing weary of mace/shield and rifle.

I LOVE the longbow, and I figure greatsword would be a good non-condition damage option for inanimate objects like burrows, turrets, etc. I don’t want to end up a glass cannon, though.

Any suggestions?

well… Dungeonwise, I hate GS warriors but not as much as I hate longbow warriors.

Both are pretty much useless. One offer little to no support and group synergy in exchange of “OMG I CAN HAZ BIG NUMBERZ!!!1!!!”, the other offer some utility and fire combo fields with pathetic damage.

Worst thing is the mix… I remember this GS/Longbow warrior who claims to be good because “HE HAZ THA BIG NUMBERZ!” with a precursor and full COF after getting his face smashed 3 times he spent the whole run using a longbow at the bottom… at the end it was a 4 man run.

But then again… if you truly are great player you will make it work,…

My suggestion, find better synergy between your weapon sets and utility skills. I don’t find any situation where switching GS and Longbow gives you any extra than the 2 of them alone.

Hi Rhone,

Contrary to what Mesket complained about, Greatsword / Longbow warriors are definitely viable in dungeons!

I recommend starting with a build like this:
http://tinyurl.com/9vlnk2b

The basic premise here is simple, crits > adrenaline > longbow burst; rinse & repeat.

This build comes loaded with an oh-sh&$ button, some endurance regen, 2 -condition skills, and an AOE boon which also grants adrenaline.

You will want to keep both your signet of rage, and for great justice on cooldown, and liberally swap between your weapons as the need arises. With leg-specialist you will have a great multi-target immobilize with your greatsword, as well as some nice escape measures (rush & whirlwind attack + evades).

The key here is to understand when you can be in melee range, and when you need to stay back and shoot stuff. Both will provide ample DPS, while allowing for a good deal of escape.

Hope this helps.

DANGRYdan, please enlight me… Longbow main damage source is fire damage, amirite? How would you build your stats for such weapon combination? While on bow, straight damage stats are kind of meh since its autoattack and skills are very weak. While on GS, all condition damage is wasted because GS don’t apply conditions with damage… also, GS doesnt have Blast or Leap combo finisher to take advantage of the fire combo field that longbow applies. Please tell me how do you build that synergy between weapons?

If you truly like Longbow (and its perfect, its a nice weapon), I suggest you go with dual swords and build condition damage / duration. If you truly like GS, then you should stuck with melee weapons and take advantage of the GS mobility so you don’t need to go range.

There are plenty of fights where, given the choice between melee and ranged, it would be stupid to stay in melee. The endboss fights in TA explorabe mode come to mind immediately but there are definitely others. So an all melee build/weapons loadout is shortsighted.

On top of that, most builds I use for PvE include the traits in Tactics that reduce shout cooldowns and allow them to heal. If you’re in a ranged heavy group it makes sense to stay near them as much as possible when shouts are off cooldown so you’re giving your group members the benefits of your support characteristics. Typically on fights where there’s no heavy bias towards melee or ranged I’ll swap between both to take advantage of ability cooldowns. Swap to greatsword, Bladetrail, Rush in, Hundred Blades, Whirlwind away, swap back to Longbow and pop Combustive Shot with a full adrenaline bar.

I carry a rifle around at all times in case I need slightly better single target damage but anything with the possibility of AoE the longbow is superior.

One of this profession’s greatest strength is its versatility through weapons choice. Dismissing the longbow as terrible because you were in an instance with a bad warrior is silly. Inexperienced or poor players are always going to be around. A greater number might use a greatsword and/or longbow because they’re easy weapons to pick up but that doesn’t make the weapons themselves terrible.

I go Longbow + Sword/Axe warrior.
My single target damage may be weaker than a mosquito ramming into something but the aoe damage is great.

This is indeed true that there isn’t much synergy between how you would build a greatsword and how you would build a longbow. If you lean more towards a power build then you’ll mostly be using your longbow for the utilities it provides (aoe might, aoe blind, immobilize) and the times where you’d want to stay at range. Blast does good damage but it’s not something you can launch every second and the auto attack does suck.

I disagree though with the blanket statement “hurr durr if you run dungeons with greatsword you’ll die a lot or just range the entire time at the back because you can’t survive”

I haven’t min maxxed the build yet (mostly because it would involve transmuting dungeon exotics) but I do currently run a gs/rifle build (rifle for when those times you’d want to stay at range – most of the time for me it’ll just be against a single target so rifle definitely wins out against longbow, which I did use before, not to mention it scales pretty well with damage instead of conditions).

When I finally do get around to it I’d probably turn all my armor into knight traits but as it is now when I run dungeons am:

HotW Helm Mind of Koda (Pow/Tough/Vit)
Inquest Pauldrons (Probably transmuted to knight not on guild wars 2 now)
CoF BP (Transmuted Knight)
Orr Hands Legs and Boots (Knight – though I did make a mistake and buy the zerker’s boots even then I do just fine which means there is some lee way for damage and still get survivability)

AC Greatsword (Power/Tough/Vit) though since I rarely die even though I’m usually first one in engaging dungeon mobs and stay in melee range I might transmute this to zerker’s
Berzerker Rifle (Pow/Prec/Critdmg)

Exotic Accessories. Beryl Amulet and Ruby earrings and rings (though again with me not having that many survivability issues I kinda wish I went Ruby instead but anyways I’m fine with this)

Traits (now these are really what give professions an edge, my play experience drastically improved when I finally took a good look at this [since I built this warrior as an alt] and decided how I was gonna build items and what I wanted from traits to complement those items)
Went 0/20/30/20/0.

Might on crit for greatsword is just a great way to pick up damage even if you’re not built for it and reduced cooldowns for greatsword skills (more hundredblades, more evade and mobility whirling strikes, more cripples, faster disengaging and reengaging with 5 you get the picture). Tier one of this you can go Furious speed or Rending strikes (though I prefer rending).

Defense (man I love this tree). The passives are all great but what I love most is adrenal health (since I rarely use the greatsword burst skill [crappy fury] since I have fury up for most of the fight anyways). Pick up sure-footed, last stand and defy pain (you’ll be in melee range with tons of damage and cc’s flying around I don’t have to tell you why).

Tactics these are my team oriented traits. The passives are just a bonus (I run with great groups but I’m just built in such a way that it takes a lot to bring me down so I do get use out of faster revives and increased armor from reviving [since I’ll pull off revives even in right front of mobs – under lupicus dome is one epic revive I can remember]). I personally don’t use banners (they’re great just not my style – but if you do pick up the banner trait) so I pick up empower allies. Shrug it off, just like auto stability an auto-dispell is just too good to pass up (I only use FGJ as a shout, you can pick up appropriate traits if shouts are your style).

Heal and Utilities, Mending, Endure pain (traited this gives almost 6 seconds of invulnerability add that to it firing off at 25% hp as well it opens up a lot of tactical and survivability options), FGJ (great as a bare minimum to support your team and support yourself as well, there’s a reason this is spammed a lot it’s a great skill), Balanced stance (though personally I use the dolyak signet, since if you’re good you won’t need stability for every fight and thus you can benefit a lot from the passive of this signet). Signet of rage is arguably the best elite we have.

Now on the surface this might seem like you’re prioritizing your self (personal survivability and damage over your team) but it all comes down to playstyle. Dying a lot will not help your team so focusing a bit on your own survivability is already helping your team. Being the first one in and taking and shrugging off a lot of the damage mobs throw before they get a chance to launch those abilities at your team – is helping your team. Being able to pull epic revives helps your team. Doing respectable damage helps your team. You don’t really have to go full on support to help your team.

I play GS/LB, not full glass though. This is around the closest I got to my PvE stats with PvP calc. My toughness is higher (around 1.4k) and hp a bit lower in PvE.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQJARTjkOJvNP6OMxBAkCr8yooIgUPaDO5A;ToAg0CtoQygkAJbWOkkZtoYAB

I swap between signet of might/signet of stamina/CC as 3rd utility slot. Gear is full berserk except the earrings/rings, those are beryl and emerald for extra hp and toughness. GS has pow/prec/crit and LB has pow/prec/cond stats. Very flexible build with high damage, good for using a lot of different weapons and switching roles on the go without having to rebuild. You can switch to axe/mace+shield, rifle, hammer on the go and not feel hindered by it.
You can shake of quite a lot of damage, but your main playstyle with this build is to stay mobile and moving. When using melee weapons with lower mobility, I’d suggest getting a vit stat on them, helps a lot to have a turtle weaponset in your bag.

This build has almost zero support (except the AoE condi remove), but that can be increased with going full soldier runes. Your job with this would be the DPS and it brings a lot of it while not being too squishy to accomplish it. You can easily “tank” some of the dungeon parts when switching out some major traits and swapping to different weapons.