Guild Wars 2

Hi guys!

Just here to show you an interesting build I have had some success with.
This is my second build post June23 I am sharing.
To be clear this build will likely never be meta but if tanking is your thing, this build is pretty epic, even with the crazy damage output of the current state of PvP.
This build is also better with a team(premade) that understands your role, hotjoin or soloQ just does not compliment the build well unless you strike it lucky or explain well to them pre-match and hope they understand.

Uses and role :
AoE instant heals.
Team condi cleanse.
Decapping/bunker.
Great mobility.
Safestomping and rezzing.
CC machine.
Lacks range of any kind.
Very defensive with near zero damage output unless you get a good lockup and understand the counter attack I will explain.

BUILD :
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-wBxF-0-NKFO0X4BLkQ0;9;4fgh;0058137157;4SkG6T;1ZF18ZF183H

Right here we go for some more detail and reasoning behind choices.

Weapons :

Sword/Warhorn.
Sword : Used for mobility, executes via skill 3 because of the <50% damage and power scaling. Also a great immob tool. Mostly not going to use this much during fights.
Warhorn : Compliments mobility. Grants more team cleanse and support. Weakness is really useful to help you bunker.

Mace/Shield, you will mostly be using this weapon set.
Mace : Has a block! Dazes and weakness application.
Shield : Block and stuns.

Didn’t choose bow as we are not running Cele so condi damage is very limited, bow also does not provide worthwhile defense or utility.

Traits. we are going into Defense, Tactics and Discipline for a near full defensive build!

Defense :

Minor1, Thich skin. Gain toughness above 90% HP. Meh sucks but its free.

Adept, shield master, this trait got a major buff with 23rd patch. Reduces shield skill recharge by 20%, blocking an attack grants might, blocking reflects projectiles. Pretty self explanatory, more blocks, useful reflects and might for the counter burst that I will explain at the end.

Minor2, Adrenal Health, heal every 3 seconds based on adrenaline level. While not very strong after the nerf over a year ago, its still useful in this build due to our great healing power.

Master, Here you have options.
I picked Sundering mace, for the Cooldown reduction and vuln on mace skills. The daze and block really are up quite a bit more.
Alternatively Defy Pain can be nice for 4 seconds of extra invuln.
Armored Attack, add 10% of your toughness to power, less tanky but still worth a try for a bit more damage.

Minor3, Spiked armor, Gain 150 toughness when you have retaliation, crit applied to you grant retal. Useful for the build we are going.

Grandmaster, Rousing Resilience, gain 1000 toughness when you break out of stun, nice extra power dmg mitigation, especially with Shake it Off on such a low CD.

Tactic :

Minor1, Determined revival, gain 300 toughness when reviving, helps a bit.

Adept,another optional.
I chose Quick breathing for reduced recharge on warhorn skill, adds some condi cleanse and better uptime on vigor on your team and weakness on enemies.
Alternatively Leg specialist can help for some more soft CC, although I found this interfered with decapping when trying to fear people of cap.

Minor2, Revivers Might, gain 3might to all allies when you rez an ally, useful for more counter damage which is the best way to deal damage in this build, I will get into this in the notes at the end.

Master, Shrug it off, cast Shake it off when you have 1 condition on you. This trait benefits from all shout traits, so it heals for 2200, has reduced cooldown and removes an extra condition for allies.

Minor3, inspiring Presence, might you apply grants 10 healing power per stack, this is the main reason(and obviously extra damage) we are using Battle Sigil. It just synergizes really well with the build in general.

Grandmaster, Vigorous shouts, the defining trait of this build, this allows us to shout more because of reduces CD, it also allows shouts to heal. Also grants 5 adrenaline per shout, which is not that useful.

Discipine :

Minor1, Versatile Rage, grants 5 adrenaline on weapon swap. Meh…

Adept, warriors sprint, 25% increased movement speed when wielding a melee weapon, movement skill removes immobilize. REALLY useful when you need to get out and recover. Must have trait on this build as we have no range weapons.

Minor2, Fast hands, one of my favourate traits, Reduces recharge on weapon swap by 5 seconds. This helps you react much faster to enemy plays, it allows us to proc sigil of doom and use skill3 on sword for a quick damage proc before swapping back to our main set.

Master, Brawler’s Recovery, Remove a condition on weapon swap, only useful trait here and its not bad, just not exceptional because we already have so much cleanse.

Minor3, Versatile power, Gain 2might when you swap weapons and burst skills recharge 15% faster. The might once again is very useful to down enemies.

Grandmaster, Heightened Focus, Striking a foe below 50% HP grants quickness for 4 seconds. This is on a really short 15 sec CD.
A very helpful trait that makes stomping and finishing off enemies a lot easier.

Right! Now for some play style guidelines!

The idea is to be heavily defensive and support your team as much as possible.

To kill is quite difficult and requires some timing, you rely on might and countering after the enemy has used their big skills. Without might duration you have only small windows in which to deal damage. To pull this off you stack up the might by blocking and defending cap as well as supporting your team. Once the enemy has used most of their high offensive CD, for example a ranger LB2, you have quite a bit of short duration might, that is when you need to counterattack with a FOR GREAT JUSTICE! (so appropriate), close the distance with shield bash, use a skullcracker, mace skill 3 into Sword 3 if they are below 50% HP, if this does not drop them, the Doom sigil should keep their healing in check for the swap back to mace and rotation repeat, don’t worry too much about stacking adrenaline for skullcracker, the damage stays the same at all levels and the extra stun isn’t helping while you are on the offensive.
By the time your might and fury wears off, your defensive shields and shouts are back up and repeat the process.
Choose your targets well for this burst, Celestial Eles are too tough for this for example.

Rampager is a really strong skill but its important to use this at the right time. Its GODLIKE in teamfights, but burning it too soon means you lose out on rezzing teammates and secure stomping, those 2 are the main priority of Rampager in this build.

Well there we are ladies and gents! Hope you enjoy the build and let me know what you think, feel free to rip it apart, all feedback welcome!

Hi,

Thanks for sharing. I don’t play bunker, but I have a few remarks / questions:

• If you take Rousing Resilience why not take Balanced Stance (for instance instead of Fear Me)? Rousing Resilience procs each time you activate Balanced Stance, without needing to break stun, so that’d help you maximize the value of the trait.
• You could improve your burst rotation by selecting Cleansing Ire instead of Rousing Resilience. After all, your not hitting hard means you’ll get hit a lot, and supposedly have the toughness to endure the hits that your active defense will miss. Cleansing Ire would increase your adrenaline at a fast rate, thus allowing more regular Skull Crack / Flurry. Have you considered it?
• Your choices of weapons is fine to me. However, since you’re supposed to be a bunker, I wonder whether replacing the sword+warhorn by a hammer wouldn’t be more natural, bringing more value, increasing the area control. What do you think?
• While I understand your build template, I don’t understand your choice of sigils. Double battle sigils with Fast Hands means that you’ll lose on the uptime each time you swap weapons between 5 and 9 seconds (which is what we do, because of Fast Hands). Also, aside from Doom, I don’t see the point of Intelligence and Battle on such a build. Why not more defensive sigils, such as Energy, Hydromancy, Leeching (all pretty standard), or even Renewal or Paralyzation (on your mace/shield set, to optimize Mace F1 and Shield #4)?
• Have you considered using a banner instead of a shout, and slotting Inspiring Standard instead of Brawler’s Recovery? You’d be improving your group support, and since you have some control, would stall time sufficiently to actually benefit yourself from the regeneration. (further optimized of you take hammer; and if you take a banner, removing Fear Me, then I’d probably substitute Rousing Resilience with Cleansing Ire, to compensate for the loss of condition cleansing, as well as improve the burst rotation, especially Earthshaker).
• Finally, I’m a bit curious: what’s your damage with Sword #3 in cleric, with your current might stacking? I play Berserker, and I’ve hit up to 12k with it – coupled with Signet Mastery, it really is an executioner skill on offensive gears.

Regards.

• Fear me is a must unfortunately, without it you can not decap at all.
  You can swap out For Great Justice! but I honestly would not give up the bit of extra team support via heals, might and fury.

• I tried cleansing Ire, but as mentioned, don’t need the adrenaline, you are not using Flurry for damage, and Skulcrack CD is big for the adrenaline generation we have.

• Yeah the sigils are definitely up for debate. I sort of defaulted into that setup as I am not swapping to sword immediately after the swap CD is up. Leaching works well. Hydromancy feels useless, renewal works too, didnt try paralyzation.

• Regeneration really is the most useless boon in game, I can not see a reason to invest in a banner for it.

• Sword 3 hits for around 3K(under 50%HP) with 5 might I would estimate. Not that much, but you can have quite a bit more might and a lucky crit on Fury will push that to alot more.

• I like to be mobile and there are cases where you need to be able to escape, sword2 really does this well. Warhorn really is great too mainly for the weakness and team condi clear, since vigor got nerfed that part is not as strong, but still good.