Guild Wars 2

Besides the mobility Final Thrust hits relatively hard. I realized this because I used to play S/D thief and the main DPS component of that set is the 3rd attack in the auto attack chain. I noticed the same thing with sword recently.

It’s also slower then the axe chain, but if they add a cripple on the third hit like thief, it’d be quite nice.

Final Thrust might hit good, but the weapon still lacks decisive burst. Even if you go all-out on condition duration, you’re only going to get Flurry to bleed for 5s.

Doing something like this still only gets you 175% total bleed duration, putting Flurry at 5s. With the associated 2105 condition damage (which won’t show in the link due to lack of buffs, but I put in 5 might stacks), that would mean Flurry would bleed for a total of 8,820 dmg over the 5 second period.

Which isn’t really that impressive.

Of course, the actual amount of bleeds would be a bit higher due to the 33% on-crit bleeds and it could be further bumped up with a Superior Sigil of Earth. But even with all that, it’s still not going to fare too well when compared against Eviscerate or 100 blades.

The burst skill is bad, i agree, if i ever using that its for immo. Except that direct dmg is on pair with axe+bonus bleed stacks. I were reading all time how mh sword is bad until i picked it up, if anything, axe needs to be buffed a bit. (well every wep do)

peter.9024:

It’s also slower then the axe chain, but if they add a cripple on the third hit like thief, it’d be quite nice.

Well its also got more mobility. I would expect it to be on par with axe but the DPS is still higher than GS auto which actually pretty low.

Olba.5376:

Final Thrust might hit good, but the weapon still lacks decisive burst. Even if you go all-out on condition duration, you’re only going to get Flurry to bleed for 5s.

Doing something like this still only gets you 175% total bleed duration, putting Flurry at 5s. With the associated 2105 condition damage (which won’t show in the link due to lack of buffs, but I put in 5 might stacks), that would mean Flurry would bleed for a total of 8,820 dmg over the 5 second period.

Which isn’t really that impressive.

Of course, the actual amount of bleeds would be a bit higher due to the 33% on-crit bleeds and it could be further bumped up with a Superior Sigil of Earth. But even with all that, it’s still not going to fare too well when compared against Eviscerate or 100 blades.

I think this s a mind set issue with many warriors. Not all weapon sets need burst. Sustained DPS on sword isn’t that bad. The Idea you need burst comes from 100B madness. You don’t have to burst everything down sustained DPS is alright also.

Another thing i wouldn’t be a fan of Sword and condition damage. It doesn’t stack up bleeds fast enough, consistent enough, or long enough. I would and do use it with more of a power build.

I wouldn’t carry over axe in PvE but outside if that I would.

TheGuy.3568:

I think this s a mind set issue with many warriors. Not all weapon sets need burst. Sustained DPS on sword isn’t that bad. The Idea you need burst comes from 100B madness. You don’t have to burst everything down sustained DPS is alright also.

Another thing i wouldn’t be a fan of Sword and condition damage. It doesn’t stack up bleeds fast enough, consistent enough, or long enough. I would and do use it with more of a power build.

I wouldn’t carry over axe in PvE but outside if that I would.

Except the entire point of flurry is a burst of bleeding damage. Even the Immob (which most warriors use creatively by canceling flurry itself) was designed for the entire flurry channel to go off.

And it’s terrible at it.

A warrior spec’d into direct damage would do so much more damage in one skill use with Eviscerate or Killshot. You can’t even fix this via the most obvious way because ramping up it’s damage component would involve stacking more bleeds which makes it immediately ram into the bleed cap.

Olba.5376:

Final Thrust might hit good, but the weapon still lacks decisive burst. Even if you go all-out on condition duration, you’re only going to get Flurry to bleed for 5s.

Doing something like this still only gets you 175% total bleed duration, putting Flurry at 5s. With the associated 2105 condition damage (which won’t show in the link due to lack of buffs, but I put in 5 might stacks), that would mean Flurry would bleed for a total of 8,820 dmg over the 5 second period.

Which isn’t really that impressive.

Of course, the actual amount of bleeds would be a bit higher due to the 33% on-crit bleeds and it could be further bumped up with a Superior Sigil of Earth. But even with all that, it’s still not going to fare too well when compared against Eviscerate or 100 blades.

Bleed duration is capped at 100%
Unless it was patched, which I believe it wasn’t.

This video is proof.

I sometimes run mainhand sword in WvW for the mobility it offers. My main complaint with sword is that it is boring to play in combat. Hammer, axe, shield, greatsword, and even a spec’d warhorn all seem to have much more interesting combat dynamics.

What I don’t get is how disjointed the MH sword skills are.

The first 2 parts of the chain are weak but cause bleed, while Final Thrust has heavy damage, and no conditions at all. In fact, it doesn’t do anything EXCEPT damage. The spammy jum kitten pammy, so that’s fine, 8 second cd is nice. The cripple confuses me as it does low damage, is melee range, and only applies cripple (+immo with trait of course). I mean, it’s bad to do weapon to weapon comparisons as roles may differ, but the Warrior Greatsword’s Bladetrail is

A) Ranged
B) Cripples all enemies in path.
C) Has 15 second cooldown, same as MH Sword.

Also note the MH Axe’s Throw Axe which is
A) Ranged
B) 1/4 seconds cast time.
C) 10 second cooldown.

At least make the MH Sword 3 do some extra conditions or something.

I do like the MH sword burst, but like every self root ability in the game, it just always seems to fall short.

Basically, I feel like the Leap is the main thing gunning for MH sword due to its 8 second cooldown. Perhaps the MH sword should be more of a finesse/speed type weapon for Warrior and the Axe will be the more power type weapon.

I’ve been thinking a lot about running dual swords with longbow as the other set on a banner/might-stacking build. Might loves a split-focus set as it helps conditions and direct damage. I would run Altruism runes, the healing signet, for great justice, that purple banner for boon duration/blast finisher/bonus healing, the Charr battle roar (as close as I can get to two FGJ), and battle standard. High fury uptime with large might stacks, great group support, and potential tankiness. Two of these standing near eachother could get really crazy.

i have been a supporter of mh sword/bleed specs basically since launch, but for the reasons you all stated i have basically shelved my warr in wvw for the time being (she has become my primary dungeon runner now hahah)

still, its quite funny to use flurry on dagger storm or tornado tho (you have to use balanced stance so you dont get blown away). thieves and eles basically cancel their escape abilities if they use those elites with a flurry warr around.

sword is almost there, but its just not quite good enough to be truly viable.

Necros are getting their own unique condition, it be nice to see Deep Wound return for certain burst attacks on warriors. It would reduce the targets maximum health for a certain amount of time, basically another form of poison because it would serve to reduce the effectiveness of healing skills. Giving it to lesser used mainhand weapons like sword and mace would make the burst much more useful.

Best weapon for exploiting.

The third hit on the autoattack sword definately miss something. Poison would be great.

Third hit is called Final Thrust. Make it do double damage to targets below 20% a la GW1 maybe?

Actually, I’m currently using MH sword in my berserker/knight warrior with shield, and rifle on switch.

I do believe someone did the maths, and auto-attack DPS from the sword is actually slightly higher than Axe’s, unless you cancel the Axe’s third chain, since Final Thrust, while slower at starting up, actually delivers a faster payload than the three hits from the final Axe chain.

It does lack Eviscerate’s burst and the axe’s ranged cripple, but what it lacks there it’s making up in mobility and utility. Savage Leap gives you another low cooldown movement skill, and Flurry isn’t there for the damage but for the utility of a 4 second immobilize.

At the end of the day, in a power build, MH sword is in between Greatsword’s mobility and Axe’s damage, and honestly quite underrated.

A nice change would be to move the cripple the cripple from 3 to 2. I’m not sure you’d ever use button 3 in pve and its not exactly the type of tactical decision that’s keeping you up at night in pvp.

then come up with something for 3.

If you build the MH Sword like you would the MH Axe, you’ll find that it puts out a surprising amount of damage. If you build for bleeds, you can put out good condition damage but your raw direct damage will be terrible.

Full berserker spec and Sword AA will do something like 1500/1500/3500 when you’ve got the appropriate boosts going (a few might stacks and Fury from something like Signet of Rage and FGJ, and a banner of discipline).

See video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=-L0NdxTZv6E#t=486s

(props to strife025 for the testing and vids)

It’s not quite as good as Axe or Greatsword for DPS, but it puts out good sustained damage, plus it has some extra mobility with the leap, etc.

Sword is on pair with axe in direct dmg. Bleeds are just a bonus like on rifle. Its lacking any real burst unlike axe (which count as 4 reg hits anyway) but instead got a 4sec immo+short cd leap.

Not having a damaging burst is always a strike against a weapon in my opinion, because at least one of your weapons should have that in its burst. Without condi damage, sword burst is weak. The fact that its 3 target helps though

But final thrust should have more going for it. And NOT vuln or bleed.

Spifnar.4712:

Not having a damaging burst is always a strike against a weapon in my opinion, because at least one of your weapons should have that in its burst. Without condi damage, sword burst is weak. The fact that its 3 target helps though

But final thrust should have more going for it. And NOT vuln or bleed.

Even WITH high condition damage, I still don’t like Sword’s burst ability. The bleeds from Flurry don’t last long enough (even with considerable condition duration boosts) to make Flurry worth using. The immobilize is nice, but I hate being rooted while you’re attacking. I honestly wish they would rework the Sword Burst Ability. I love having sword main-hand but it falls into the same group with Greatsword in that you’re much better off just stacking up stat bonuses from full adrenaline than actually USING your burst, IMO.

I also agree that Final Thrust should have a little extra something. I wouldn’t mind a +X% damage boost vs. foes under X amount of Health, something similar to how it was in GW1 (as someone else has suggested).

Does the bleed duration really even matter? If the damage done via the bleeds is sufficient then be happy that its on a short timer.

That’s if you think the damage is sufficient.

djtool.8372:

Does the bleed duration really even matter? If the damage done via the bleeds is sufficient then be happy that its on a short timer.

That’s if you think the damage is sufficient.

Well that really depends.

Full exotics plus 5 stacks of might leaves you with some 1,178 condition damage, making your bleeds 101 dmg/s per stack. That caps Flurry at 4,848 dmg over 4 seconds, and that requires that you get a total of +100% bleed duration.

Of course, you can get some additional damage if you get stacks from a Sigil of Earth (capped at 1 stack due to ICD) and Precise Strikes. But even then, with 100% crit rate we’re talking something like 0-1 extra stack for 10 seconds (1,010 dmg) and 0-5 stacks for 6 seconds (3,030 dmg). That’d still only total 8,888 dmg in a period of 10 seconds.

Naturally, by going 30 into Arms, you’d end up with 1,478 condition damage and the numbers would go up to 116 dmg/s per stack, for a Flurry that deals out 5,568 dmg over 4 seconds, or 10,208 dmg over 10 seconds with the sigil and trait.

Whether Eviscerate can consistently do higher than that on all classes in sPvP, I do not know.

THEmeltor.7295:

Spifnar.4712:

Not having a damaging burst is always a strike against a weapon in my opinion, because at least one of your weapons should have that in its burst. Without condi damage, sword burst is weak. The fact that its 3 target helps though

But final thrust should have more going for it. And NOT vuln or bleed.

Even WITH high condition damage, I still don’t like Sword’s burst ability. The bleeds from Flurry don’t last long enough (even with considerable condition duration boosts) to make Flurry worth using. The immobilize is nice, but I hate being rooted while you’re attacking. I honestly wish they would rework the Sword Burst Ability. I love having sword main-hand but it falls into the same group with Greatsword in that you’re much better off just stacking up stat bonuses from full adrenaline than actually USING your burst, IMO.

I also agree that Final Thrust should have a little extra something. I wouldn’t mind a +X% damage boost vs. foes under X amount of Health, something similar to how it was in GW1 (as someone else has suggested).

This is the weakness of a condi warrior. I really want it to work and I have been playing mine for months now. I’m doing a decent job so far and I’m enjoying it but my only issue is that you have to work a lot to have decent result. Flurry is hard to connect. Sometime you take a target,you leap then flurry and for some lagging reason or something else your target move 1 feet away while I flurry in emptiness. Best way to be 100% sure your flurry will connect is to use pin down.

Also my build started to be decent when I used a doom rune on offand. That is why I think that giving poison to auto attack would be great. It won’t make condi warrior invulnerable it would make it a more of an option.

I don’t think we was mean to run a condi build.. Looking at sword its more likely a hybrid weapon rathen than 100% condi

yanoch.7051:

THEmeltor.7295:

Spifnar.4712:

Not having a damaging burst is always a strike against a weapon in my opinion, because at least one of your weapons should have that in its burst. Without condi damage, sword burst is weak. The fact that its 3 target helps though

But final thrust should have more going for it. And NOT vuln or bleed.

Even WITH high condition damage, I still don’t like Sword’s burst ability. The bleeds from Flurry don’t last long enough (even with considerable condition duration boosts) to make Flurry worth using. The immobilize is nice, but I hate being rooted while you’re attacking. I honestly wish they would rework the Sword Burst Ability. I love having sword main-hand but it falls into the same group with Greatsword in that you’re much better off just stacking up stat bonuses from full adrenaline than actually USING your burst, IMO.

I also agree that Final Thrust should have a little extra something. I wouldn’t mind a +X% damage boost vs. foes under X amount of Health, something similar to how it was in GW1 (as someone else has suggested).

This is the weakness of a condi warrior. I really want it to work and I have been playing mine for months now. I’m doing a decent job so far and I’m enjoying it but my only issue is that you have to work a lot to have decent result. Flurry is hard to connect. Sometime you take a target,you leap then flurry and for some lagging reason or something else your target move 1 feet away while I flurry in emptiness. Best way to be 100% sure your flurry will connect is to use pin down.

Personally, I really love the mobility you get out of Sword/Warhorn. Sadly, I found that in WvW, people can just run off and you miss out on the actual killing. To avoid that, I carried Greatsword or Axe/Shield for a while on my switch.

For now, I am running Axe/Warhorn because I like Axe.

Also my build started to be decent when I used a doom rune on offand. That is why I think that giving poison to auto attack would be great. It won’t make condi warrior invulnerable it would make it a more of an option.

Well, Poison has its advantages. It starts at twice as high and scales twice as good as Bleeding. Of course, once you apply 3 or more stacks of Bleeding, the damage favors the bleeds, but Poison gets the -33% healing effectiveness, which is huge in some cases.

I don’t think we was mean to run a condi build.. Looking at sword its more likely a hybrid weapon rathen than 100% condi

What do you mean with that? There’s not much hybrid that you can go. Sword lacks damage to benefit much at all from high amounts of crit dmg%. Granted, due to Deep Cuts, we can get long bleeds very easy, but there isn’t much to do with the benefit other than get the condition damage anyway or try to go with more defense. And we know how the latter goes.

Scoobaniec.9561:

I don’t think we was mean to run a condi build.. Looking at sword its more likely a hybrid weapon rathen than 100% condi

Agreed. Going full condition damage is really taking away from something that the Warrior, as a class, is really good at: pure damage.

Bleeds on the sword should be looked at as an extra boost, not something to focus around, IMO.

THEmeltor.7295:

Scoobaniec.9561:

I don’t think we was mean to run a condi build.. Looking at sword its more likely a hybrid weapon rathen than 100% condi

Agreed. Going full condition damage is really taking away from something that the Warrior, as a class, is really good at: pure damage.

Bleeds on the sword should be looked at as an extra boost, not something to focus around, IMO.

Man, if they upped the direct damage and/or speed of the auto-attack chain and the burst, I’d be all over sword/warhorn. Love the playstyle, dislike the lack of direct damage. But that’s just a personal prerogative, as I like seeing big numbers.

I am having a suitable amount of success with the cond setup I have been playing (bow-s/s), I am not skill capped with the build either.

It may be a matter of semantics but I do not believe the rabid and rampager amulet “playstyle” is what is not viable. % 33 bleed on crit just doesnt hold up to the power damage carrion provides in my mind.

Shamans would be easier to pull off than rabid but I think you’d be relegated to mace/sword instead of sword/sword

I have been waiting for this thread for about 3 months now. I use almost exclusively Sword shield in a zerker setup in WvW, and it hits like a truck, great mobility, and with might and almost no cond dmg gear my bleeds still tick for 75-80. Throw in a three second block and a good stun or two (bulls charge) and this setup is tough.

Honestly i tried condi builds, and in my opinion the zerker setup far overshadows it. The sword reminds me of a weapon that you might think would be good for condi because of the autoattack, but is actually capable of great damage output….. kind of like the rifle….