Guild Wars 2

Who I am: Spunkdunk, Sylvari Rifle/Sword+Board (pvp) rank 33. The Scourge of Hotjoin and Emissary of the 10K Killshot.

Build http://tinyurl.com/baap7kw

Build analysis: Might stacking Roamer Support/Off Carry with potential for Full Carry (DPSer).

Strengths:

Non-typical build with underestimated damage.

Fast and mobile: almost 100% swiftness (33% movement) uptime? Coupled with Sword #2 Savage Leap, You’ll be literally leaps and bounds ahead of the competition.

Decent Control: 2 Cripples(7 & 5.5 sec), 1 Stun (1 sec), 1 Immobolize (2.5 – 4.5 sec), 1 Knockback (450). (See skill combo section)

Good to Excellent damage: Abundance of projectile and leap finishers. High critical chance rate (70%+) Both weapon set autoattack’s applies damage and conditions. The build achieves an impressive 4,029 attack (2,824 pwr, 1,205 wpn, 860 cnd) via near instantly accessible 16 stacks of might and max bloodlust (250).

If you (16 might + full adrenaline bar + fury) and your target is properly stacked (bleeding + 5% vuln from Brutal Shot) and not under the effects of protection, aegis, etc, this is the approximate range of damage you can expect to see from your Kill Shot: Light 8-10k, Medium 7-9k, Heavy 7-8k

Ease of Use: Probably the star of the build. Timing is also easy: Use your utility whenever they are on cooldown. Signet of Fury only exception to this rule.

Weaknesses: Why this build isn’t for everyone.

Considered Glass cannon. Light classes are envious of that 22,662 health pool, but it goes quick, especially without access to active defensive boons like protection, aegis, etc. or active defensive abilities like: blink, mist, stealth, distortion, etc.

Conditions. Absolute biggest drawback of the build. Warriors are notorious for being weak against conditions. This build is defenseless. This also means control abilities will pin you down hard. If you’re having too much trouble with conditions, go ahead and switch the healing skill to Mending. I use Healing Surge just to combat the burst tendencies common in most builds.

Limited Defense: So you’re getting bursted and or focused, wat do? Your only option to stop the damage is 3 second Shield Stance, or Knockback on Rifle Butt. Once those options are expired, either Heal and fight, or drop target and Savage Leap and run to the closest ally and try to peel. Honestly this doesn’t work too well against Thief’s.

No tournament viability: Rifle is simply not viable due to ranged weapon damage coefficients. The only way to beat a bunker is to interrupt their heal. Rifle only has Rifle Butt, but this necessitates being in Melee range, thereby nullifying any ranged advantage you would have while putting you at the mercy of superior melee damage and coefficients. Also good luck landing a Kill Shot against a tournament player. I believe viability could be improved by altering the Brutal Shot to a ranged daze instead of vulnerability stack. I’m especially interested in what people have to say about rifle suggestions in this subject.

Tips and advice, because tricks are what Asuras’ do for money:

Options -> enable show skill recharge. This helps you see your cooldowns. -> promote skill target. Lock target on that Mesmer? Yes thank you. -> enable use free camera, vision wont snap back to front, helpful -> Disable autotargetting. This is what allows you to escape with savage leap. I am not sure what exactly the melee attack assist does. help?
Control Options -> bind a About-face key, it is wonderful, save your wrists! -> bind a Look behind key, good habit to develop

If abilities that channel are activated before an enemy becomes invisible, they will still track. Volley and Killshot are my number 1 Thief/Mesmer killers.

Foefire: rotation to solo own Svanir: Aimed shot, Brutal shot, rifle butt, volley, dodge his charge, kill shot, weapon swap, shield stance, shield bash and slash till he drops. Receive 10 stacks of bloodlust.

Even though its a habit to switch to sword and board to collect bloodlust, once you hit that max bloodlust stack, go ahead and drop some spikes with the rifle out.

CC combo: savage leap, shield bash, weapon swap, rifle butt, aimed shot, volley. Very good cap closer, cc, and damage.

Savage leap, shield bash, flurry for when you want to make someone sit down and cry.

In emergency situations and you need a kill shot now, healing surge will max out your adrenaline bar.

Don’t underestimate the sword damage, I get 3k’s easy from Final Thrust all the time.

RenderBlender.8592:

I believe viability could be improved by altering the Brutal Shot to a ranged daze instead of vulnerability stack.

I LOVE this idea. Just get rid of the cast time on brutal shot.

Another suggestion might be to buff damage output in some way. Perhaps get rid of bleed on the auto-attack and just increase direct damage. Right now, you aren’t really doing any damage while volley is on CD.

I run a similar build, using the 10/30/0/0/30 build, because I gotta have my sweet revenge. Also instead of for great justice I use frenzy and instead of signet of might I use balanced stance, might switch that one out for pure sniping tho. I use bloodlust on rifle, and an axe/shield offhand using lust/air, therefor when my rifle damage is expelled I can swap for even better damage. Question tho, the trait Empowered, how much per boon does that buff your damage by? Also I like the idea behind your might duration stacking, but I cant seem to give up divinitys, I drop 10k crits all day and still keep that 12% crit damage.

Empowered adds 2% per unique boon. Meaning 10 stacks of might will only give 2% increase, whereas might and swiftness will give 4%.

I’ve tried Lyssa w/ Frenzy for quick Brutal to Volley to Killshot. Not really viable unfortunately.

I have swapped Signet of Fury for Frenzy, using my heal for adrenaline. I consider it a upgrade, but it makes the build that much more tricky to play. The burst is incredible, but you can only use it (semi) safely after a connected Rifle Butt knockback.

What is nice about the might stacking is that you act as a mobile might factory for your team. 42 seconds of might on a 25 second cooldown? Thank you very much.

@ Dante,
I think you’re limiting your damage output greatly by putting bloodlust on the rifle. I’m aware that the configuration enables ranged bloodlust acquistion, but the same can be accomplished by tagging a downed player a few times with the rifle then switching to sword/shield. The only thing that matters is what weapon set is equipped when the player dies. But consider how much damage you’re not allowing your rifle to deal. With Air on your rifle the volley effectively becomes 6 shots instead of 5.

ehehe don’t forget that you can also swap weapons in free’s so carry sword’n’board without bloodlust sigils after you stack them ^^