Guild Wars 2

I’ve been playing around with a warrior build which uses a rune which apparently not many people use from what I have seen. The rune is the Svanir rune. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rune_of_Svanir

At first glance it seems pretty bad for a warrior since there is no Frozen skills but it has one great advantage: warrior stun breaks are very effective with it. Basically you should treat the 6th property of this rune as a 5 second invulnerability with 90s cooldown.

The basic idea is that you can run into a zerg and swing a bunch of melee attacks doing a crapload of damage or CC and then when you get targeted and super low you gain invulnerability. To combat your frozen state you use a stun break or have stability on you and can run off without any fear of death. Well, assuming you don’t have tons of conditions that sap your remaining <20% health as those bypass invulnerability if they were applied before you gained it.

I’ve used it a lot and it’s really fun. I can run out of a keep under siege and smack a few guys around and really have no fear of getting back to the door to escape them. Similarly when two large zergs are in the open field I can run up to the front and scare a few guys away or down a few guys while being able to run back to my zerg. In the rare 1v1 encounters I’ve noticed that people for the most part have no idea how to handle it because it’s a big surprise to them when a warrior is suddenly invulnerable and so close to death only to use his heal and to burst the crap out of him.

I’ve often dropped out of a keep, used endure pain, did as much damage as possible to targets of opportunity almost always proc Last Chance on someone, do as much burst as possible to down as many as possible, dropped to <20% health,, hit Frenzy (breaks stun and now 5 seconds of invulnerable + haste without caring about 50% more damage drawback) burst a few more guys and then use mobility skills to get back to safety.

It’s fun and in massive fights you can down a few people quickly before running to safety. Also as a bonus, I have noticed that you become target number 1 for almost everyone in the enemy zerg so for 5 seconds you are absorbing almost all of their attention while your teammates are free to hit them. I’ve combined this with Hammer / Greatsword glass cannon for maximum annoyance/carnage.

Give it a try if you really want melee. I may buy some other weapons and see how they work out with it. You only need one stun break for it to work but I actually run with 3 (Frenzy, balanced stance, endure pain).