Guild Wars 2

Hello warrior folks,

I tend to pvp with my necromancer more than any of my other characters. I usually don’t have a problem holding my own. Running a 30/10/0/0/30 death shroud build and being very strategic in my target selection, I usually end up somewhere in the top third at the end of a match. I’m generally pleased by my ability to not be useless. If I can’t outright kill a couple of medium or light armored characters, or a heavy armored character who I’ve managed to get the drop on, I am at least very, very annoying with the fears and the healing more with many conditions on me and the manipulation of the field and the damage.

Today I encountered many a warrior running with mace/shield or hammer. Sometimes they had both. It hurt. It hurt a lot.

To say I was stun locked was an understatement. When facing one of these guys, I was shut down. When the second showed up, it was just a laughably pathetic scene with me playing the role of a sad, kicked puppy. Probably one with only three legs. Maybe one of those stereotypical street puppies with a torn ear and a can-do attitude. My toolbar tended to just stay blacked out while I was knocked around. It was sad for my teammates to watch but probably pretty hilarious for everyone else. I felt very, very weak.

My warrior tends to be my pve character but being on the receiving end of these warrior beat downs has inspired me to at least try to start using my warrior in spvp, so I have many a question for you folks:

First, can you point me to post-December 10th pvp builds that make shiny shiny use of either mace/shield or hammer, (or both!) if possible? Given what these characters seemed to be doing to me, I’ve come up with this build (http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNApeSjcOxwtQyOMxBA0jr4aL1D6wLuUBxA) but I’m unsure if this would be a viable stun lock-y build. Might I get comments and suggestions, and perhaps rune/sigil advice?

Second, how well do these builds translate to pve and wvw?

Third, I’ve heard rumblings that hammer damage had taken a wee bit of a hit? If true, how has this affected stun lock builds?

Fourth and finally, how viable is the new healing skill in spvp? Absorbing all incoming damage for three seconds seems immediately attractive, but the low amount healed and the longish cool down make me wary. Adrenaline or regen still seem more useful for a survivable, smacking-things-around-with-a-mace build.

Thank you very much for any comments,
The sad, kicked puppy.

-Being stun-locked blows. Don’t fuel the fire by making a stun-lock build
-They translate even more brutally into WvW.
-Hammer damage decreases:
Earthshaker: Reduced the damage by 20%.
Staggering Blow: Reduced the damage by 23%.

As a necro to counter their entire build, you could have just picked foot in the grave over deathly perception.

Ma/Sh isnt commonly taken with hammer because you have literally no mobility. Theyre usually paired with a GS, for high mobility and high damage through 100b if you can get a stun off (or hammer #5). with hammer GS is more for the mobility, and with mace its more for the burst damage. maces f1 ability is a 3 sec stun in case you didnt know. The new heal is pretty bad, unless youre a commander in WvW and leading the charge. even then id still prefer signet. As a warrior, all you need to be unkilkable in spvp is healing signet, adrenal health and high toughness, with either hammer, longbow, Sw/Sw, Ma/Sh, or GS. This wont really help you in spvp, but the standard power build set up in WvW is knights weapons, knights armor, defensive runes like melandru or soldier, and cavalier trinkets. This leaves you with a really good mix of defense and offense.

Here are the tweaks i would make to your build. You NEED cleansing ire on almost any serious pvp build. If you don’t you’ll be destroyed by any condi build you encounter. Defy pain is pretty bad anyway. As youre heal, the signet is almost always better in any situation. It works while stunned and feared too, so you never have to worry about hitting it. Berserker stance is also one of the best skills in the game.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNApeSjkOpwFPCPMxBA0jr4qK1j5sLuUBxA-TsAA1CnIKSVkrITRyisFNIYRwEEA

Be wary of the lack of mobility. Very soon you may find you want a GS or Sw/Sh swapped with one of your weapon sets. However as a necro you may be used to being slow. (But warriors are melee so its different.)

A list of viable builds would be ham/bow (lockdown/might stacking build), GS + either Ma/Sh or Sw/Sh. (Using Ma or Sw f1 ability to stun or immob your opponent and quickly swap weapons to immediately 100b. I prefer Sw/Sh). Condi Sw/Sw + LB build. (By far my favorite, you can deal so much damage in such a small time frame.) Ham/GS (GS mostly for mobility, hammer is youre primary weapon) Axe/Sh + Hammer isn’t popular, but i really like it and its got insane amounts of burst damage.