Guild Wars 2

This is what I’m wearing and using in WvW and fractal 40s right now and have been for about a month:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQJASTjMdU5ZnHuewJaAtgAbQhu20dZfA-TRCBABGqrRLlBVqqyZKBxSp3U7PAwTKwS1KC4SKEA4AY4hT4hT4hHe4P/8zP/8zN8wPP8zDXGA8tA-e

I’ve been playing GW2 about 3 months or so, I been playing MMORPGs 6+ hours a day since 1999 and I felt right at home here on day one. I hit 80 within hours of buying the game with a combo of SPVPing and blowing the glory on tomes and chaining events in escape from LA. I literally sat down in front of GW2 for the first time and was 80 8 hours later. The first 2 months I played nothing but zerker GS meta. Personally I found it super boring and limited. When I got together enough gold to do my ascended crafting I decided to build complete nonsense that I hadn’t seen people talking about. I wanted a build where I felt effective in high level fractals but also never got downed in WvW. I played around with a lot of different setups in exotics until I found quite a lot of success and enjoyment in this setup. So I built it in ascended and so far I’m happy.

The only thing I change between fractals and WvW is the 3rd utility slot, which can be "on my mark, “fear me” or a utility banner as needed. I can output damage quite effectively with this setup, so much so that I can barely see a difference in the numbers versus wearing my zerker/scholar GS exotics which are collecting dust in my bank. Biggest difference is I’m healing the crap out of myself with the shout heals, defense 3rd trait (I have full adrenaline 24/7 even while spamming burst), and healing signet and AOE healing. And I have a bit of vit/tough between the uncommon runes and a few soldier’s pieces in the mix. The 3 second combat swap alone is enough to keep me thinking Warrior runes is best runes, Might Blast Ahoy!

Problem is I’ve been told repeatedly it’s complete laughable subhuman garbage even though I’ve had immense success in this build in everything from solo BL roaming, champ soloing, explorable speed runs, high level fractals, and coordinated WvW. Just wondering what I can change or if I should change anything to keep the zerker purists happy without significantly changing the synergy of the setup. I can’t seem to tweak anything from where it is without noticing my character power going down in some aspect. Maybe my view is just too narrow and I’m not seeing the bigger picture of what class building is supposed to be in GW2. I need lessons!

It is laughable subhuman garbage, at least for PVE. You cannot use the same build for PVE and WvW and be optimal. Theyre both 2 very different game modes and as such require very different things. Taking your WvW build into PVE works yes, but its far from optimal. In addition, having it “work” in 40+ fractals isn’t exactly very impressive as its one of the tankiest builds in the game. People run these same fractals in full berserker armor. With the way your able to reset traits whenever and wherever there really is no excuse for having 2 separate builds, 1 for PVE and one for wvw

No banners? They’re one of the best ways to buff your team in the game.
No Empower Allies? Yet another one of the best ways to buff your team in the game.
No Phalanx Strength? Hugely useful in Fractals to… you get it, buff your team.

This is a very, very selfish build for PvE: you’re stacking traits that help your survivability (all those points in Defense) and taking shout heals to improve survivability at the cost of the large potential damage boosts you can provide to your team. This is outside of the fact that hammer is poor DPS and rather “wild” control (knockbacks are awful in PvE, since they scatter mobs which are faster to kill when grouped up).

The “zerker meta” isn’t just about using full zerk with the best DPS weapon— it’s about using builds that support the capabilities of the rest of your team. Taking Phalanx Strength, for example, is a large hit to your personal DPS, but a large boost to the rest of your team.

The gear choice is kind of erratic, and full berserker would do better for you, but it’s not a bad configuration.

Depends. Phalanx is useless if you got eles stacking max might.

There’s also cases when you may as well take more defence. For example, on the Cliffside fractal, apart from the first and final boss, there’s not much of a point in going full zerk because you aren’t exactly killing stuff just to kill them, and getting spammed with vulnerability and poison makes Cleansing Ire very attractive.

But yes, in general, PvE is basically zerk or you’re doing it wrong.

In high level fractals, it’s hard to keep up 25 might stacks just from ele’s (especially if the eles are running D/F or something), which is why I mention PS at all. It’s definitely optional, but I find (as do many others, I think) that it’s worth the tradeoff in high level fractals.

The problem with high level fractals is that it’s also harder camp GS, which is what PS is the most effective on, especially if your party start running around like headless chickens in some cases.

If they ever decide to get around fixing how conditions and boons overwrite each other (which I honestly dont know why it was not in the feature pack) however, it might be very useful having ele and warrior both giving might.