Guild Wars 2

Sword-shield or sword, with Soldier gear and Berserker accessories. Rune set is Rage. Utilities are On My Mark, For Great Justice, Shake It Off and Signet of Rage.

0/30/0/10/30
Important traits include Deep Cuts, Rending Strikes and Blademaster on Arms and Empowered on Tactics.

If it means anything, secondary weapon is rifle.

Basically, I’m trying to think of a way to make a sword mainhand do as much solid damage as it possibly can, fully knowing that it’s supposed to circle around bleeds. The Soldier gear is so I can last longer in the front, but I guess I can switch those with Berserker. Doing this because I don’t really want to use a greatsword due to how popular that weapon is for facerolling, I find the mace too slow for my tastes and while I’m open to using an axe for mainhand, I’m really curious if a sword can do anything other than stack bleeds. And Savage Leap is such a fun skill to use.

Failing that, I can just make an axe-sword or shield setup that spams shouts or something.

Thank you for any feedback.

I’m finishing a run to 40 on a warrior (rerolled warrior 2x before deciding on an asura) that was a sword/horn + Bow build combined with signets – Yes, deep strike is noob later on but positively OP sub-40. Flurry can be pretty fearsome with Condmg stats.

If you don’t want to go for conditions, axe and shield are a better bet. For catching up to people, you’d want to bite the bullet and burn a utility slot for bull’s rush, since leap is only a 600 range skill.

If you DO want to go with conditions, might I suggest bow as a better ranged friend, for example savage leap is a leap finisher, which combos with the fire field for fire armor.

Sword is all about speed, AoE and conditions.

<Talking from a WvW perspective>

Sword simply won’t work.
It can’t spike targets fast so you’re getting a lot of deaths due to inability to kill.
Plus any decent player will just remove your bleeds or outheal them.

Axe is great tho.
10k evis crits for spike, the rest comes from the fast auto attack and immobicripple from throw axe with leg specialist.
I also grab bolas and bull for more CC in order to maximize the ability to land all this, rarely anyone is able to survive it.
Shield offhand of course, axe offhand is a complete joke.

As for second set I either use LB for walls or sword/board for running away after the kill(s).

I wonder why people are using GS still, as buggy, clunky and easy to avoid as it is.

Sword is great for WvW! Savage Leap is choice for closing or escaping and you have a cripple to keep people from running. It’s just not a 1v1 weapon. If you have people with you, it’s very good.

You can always carry other weapons for other situations. Personally I stick to sword for mobility anyway though. In WvW I want to get places, not duel random people.

I recommend Knight’s gear. You have plenty of base HP. The precision will help you more than vitality. You may want to mix this with some berserker’s or something. Sword DPS is good so it’s not a bad idea. The things that Sword lacks are CC and burst damage, but it does have DPS.

>Manticore Five
You do have a point with Deep Cuts. Should change that to a better trait. Also, I’m not really focusing on condition damage but rather try to see if I can get as much raw damage as I can with a sword; the condition damage is a bonus. I’m basically trying to rely on critical damage for this build, though the only turn-off with the sword for me is the burst skill.

>Red Falcon
It’s more for general purpose, since I do a little of WvW and dungeons, mostly dungeons. I was also considering on using the bola for Opportunist, so it’s worth looking into.

As for GS, I assume it’s because of Hundred Blades.

>Kristophoros
Huh, I never considered Knight’s gear. Though the main purpose why I would choose Soldier’s is because I have so many Ascalonian Tears lying around. Though all my accessories are gonna use Berserker stats, so I have that covered, at least.

I personally use Superior Runes of the Krait and 2x swords. Don’t underrestimate bleeds, if you got a hell lot of condition damage. I go for crit chance (due to traits, I get a chance to bleed a target on crits), my bleeds last 65% longer etc. etc.

I have tried using a GS, however I quickly learned (maybe due to my runes?) that using double sword simply did a whole lot more damage.

That’s just my experience.

Try s/s for bleed pretty decent sword has a great off hand skill that stacks Alot of bleed.
Also for spvp my from said he runs a m/s something about having counters. I personally like s/ warhorn for the mobility in wvw
I still like s/ shield. The ability to completely block some ones burst takes skill but it’s nice to see disappointment when they don’t hit at all. Takes Alot of skill and.ttiming

Do keep in mind that I’m trying to get as much burst damage as I can with a sword instead of focusing on condition damage. However, I do thank you for giving me ideas for in case I ever want to try a condition damage build for a Warrior.

I recommend moving the 10 from Tactics to Strength and picking up Berserker’s Power. Especially since you don’t like the sword burst.

12% dmg sitting on a full bar of adrenaline is better than Empowered. Plus, you get an additional 100 pwr.

I realize this is personal preference, but I don’t recommend passive defensive stats on a warrior (soldiers or even knights). I started as a tanky 0/10/30/30/0 shout Apothecary bleed build until I began to see how much more effective EP and dodging is when compared to toughness, healing, and vit. Since then, I’ve gone to a Sword/Shield Berserker warrior. I don’t have the raw power of an axe build, but I love the in-combat mobility and control of the weapon pairing.

My recommendation would be to pick your traits, which it sounds like you have, and add in exotic berserker piece by piece while feeling out the survivability over time. When your sword AA starts chewing people up, you’ll be hooked.

Veritas.6071:

I recommend moving the 10 from Tactics to Strength and picking up Berserker’s Power. Especially since you don’t like the sword burst.

12% dmg sitting on a full bar of adrenaline is better than Empowered. Plus, you get an additional 100 pwr.

I realize this is personal preference, but I don’t recommend passive defensive stats on a warrior (soldiers or even knights). I started as a tanky 0/10/30/30/0 shout Apothecary bleed build until I began to see how much more effective EP and dodging is when compared to toughness, healing, and vit. Since then, I’ve gone to a Sword/Shield Berserker warrior. I don’t have the raw power of an axe build, but I love the in-combat mobility and control of the weapon pairing.

My recommendation would be to pick your traits, which it sounds like you have, and add in exotic berserker piece by piece while feeling out the survivability over time. When your sword AA starts chewing people up, you’ll be hooked.

So what you’re saying is, because apothecary’s didn’t work out, anything with some defense stats on it must be bad?

Also, a good bleed build needs 30 in arms and heavy use of rampager’s gear.

Talking from WvW and PvP perspective, sword is a great utility addition(GS/sword+shield combo).
You have great leap, serious cripple in the melee and most importantly – explicitly long(almost 5 seconds) immobilize which is easily applied – and then you proceed to execute them with hundred blades.
But bleed build? I don’t like it. Obvious reason that sword is 50/50, it does solid amount of direct damage(lasthit on attack chain anyone? 2nd, 3rd spell so much bleeds too =/
and if you go off-hand RIP is a burst close to eviscerate and has nothing to do with bleeds).
So I don’t find it effective to squeeze the juice out of bleeds simply because if you do so, you end up inferior because you gimp direct damage abilities that come with sword and vice versa. If you dare to level both, you’ll end with less total damage just as well…