Guild Wars 2

I’ve been underwhelmed thus far so I thought I would check here to see if I’ve missed something good.

I am running this one, it’s quite standard I guess:

http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AggCuAW8A1g~

Sword-offhand / Longbow

ps: I use ShieldMaster because I like to use a shield in off-hand.

I was using primarily a condi build before the patch, I am dropping that. Not that Condi doesn’t do enough damage, its that people can cleanse them too quickly. I switch to a celestial hybrid with 2 x sword + bow + 00666, I do much better. In WvW similar setup will net you 2k power, 32+% crit, 3k armor, 24k health, 800 to 900 condi damage + 400 healing with rampager + celestial. Its not bad.

I’ve been trying 00666 tonight:

• Tactics: Leg Specialist, Burning Arrows, Powerful Synergy.
• Defense: Shield Master, Defy Pain, Cleansing Ire.
• Discipline: Warrior’s Sprint, Brawler’s Recovery, Burst Mastery.
• Sword (corruption) + Sword (torment), Longbow (Smoldering, Doom).
• Rabid gear with perplexity runes (only one interrupt though, but easy to use).
• Balanced Stance, Berserker Stance, Fear Me.
• Fully stacked (corruption, guards, no might), about 2.1k condition damage, 3.3k armor, 27k hit points.

It was quite solid, could win some 1v2s. The condition damage was strong, but not as insane as what you’d get on an elem or engi (their burning ticks at 7k+ sometimes…).

I’ll try soon:

• 60606, using Peak Performance, Body Blow and Distracting Strikes, leveraging mace/shield and sword/sword (so no Longbow) with physical skills and guardian/perplexity runes.
• 06606, trying many variations in Arms as several things look quite viable. When using Signet Mastery, then I’ll contemplate abandoning Stances for Signets (except Berserker Stance, quite necessary given all the new condition monsters roaming around: engis, elems, rangers…).

Have fun.

Sword is basically the same as it was before the patch, with a few buffs in the Arms line. Longbow got nerfed though. Longbow was designed to sustain a single stack of burn for long periods of time before the patch, and it did that well. But post-patch, we have hardly anyway to stack burns. Combustive shot is terrible now, and you will rarely have more than 1 stack of burn on anyone as the move in and out of the patch.

I have not tried the new condi traits in Strength line. They seem too conditional, and we have no good condi weapons that can interrupt enemies. You can try shield or mace offhand…but that’s probably not as good as just using sword offhand. And you have to waste an entire trait line for them.

Bear on the job.6273:

Sword is basically the same as it was before the patch, with a few buffs in the Arms line. Longbow got nerfed though. Longbow was designed to sustain a single stack of burn for long periods of time before the patch, and it did that well. But post-patch, we have hardly anyway to stack burns. Combustive shot is terrible now, and you will rarely have more than 1 stack of burn on anyone as the move in and out of the patch.

I have not tried the new condi traits in Strength line. They seem too conditional, and we have no good condi weapons that can interrupt enemies. You can try shield or mace offhand…but that’s probably not as good as just using sword offhand. And you have to waste an entire trait line for them.

I have no idea what you are talking about. Condition Damage stayed about the same for the bow, if anything burn got buffed since its stack-able. bow 2 does about the same damage but at 2/3 of the time. That is a close to 3k burst. If burn stayed stack-able by duration, we will be totally screwed, given the amount of condition clear out there.

If you have problem keeping people in the patch, then don’t, charge though it, to attack them, or stay in it and shoot, every single shot carries burn.

Hope condi warrior didnt get nerfed too hard since i wasted alot of resourses getting ascended trickets and crafting ascended swords

I guess it wont be so bad since i can still use it for the new pve map in HoT

My celestial/sinister/rampager 0-6-6-0-6 hybrid build got a pretty significant boost. Had to make a few modifications. Signet mastery allows me to get 100% crit chance on sword with just SoR and SoM. I put a a sigil of frailty on one my swords for some extra vulnerability. I can easily apply and maintain 9 satcks while in sword. Second sword has sigil of torment and the LB has the typical geo/doom setup.

Base not it combat stats. 2.2k power, 865 condi damage, 43% crit chance, 175% crit damage, 2.8k armor and 23k health.

In combat I get about 2.2k to 2.4k.power (I loss SoM but gain might stacks)
Condition Damage plays between 1000 and 1200.
100%crit on sword.

Elegie.3620:

The condition damage was strong, but not as insane as what you’d get on an elem or engi (their burning ticks at 7k+ sometimes…).

I was hitting 6.6K burn ticks with solo buff Guardian last night with Celestial amulet. If I had full might/vuln, then … But to be fair, Guard F1/JI insta-tele immobilize is better for landing the burn so 4K ticks is likely where it should be reliably for Guard. It’s pretty broken.

Warrior should be laying down F1 combustive and then using auto attack and all the other LB attacks to get the Burn stacks (projectile finisher) + trait. It’s “OK+” but not nearly as burst-like as other classes but definitely viable if you can approach and time Fan of Fire or after landing Pin Down.

//It’s all about Frenzy timing// It ‘feels’ a lot like Ranger LB burst actually.

I’m still struggling to use a condi build. so far I find myself more at ease with the usual GS/axe-shield

I think I need to L2P with a condi set up

why do you guys still play warrior?
if you want condi just go another class, it will be 10x easier with 10x result

lighter.2708:

why do you guys still play warrior?
if you want condi just go another class, it will be 10x easier with 10x result

Cause we play the class we like and not FOTM.

Julie Yann.5379:

lighter.2708:

why do you guys still play warrior?
if you want condi just go another class, it will be 10x easier with 10x result

Cause we play the class we like and not FOTM.

If getting reckt while putting way more effort is what you like, then go ahead.

lighter.2708:

why do you guys still play warrior?
if you want condi just go another class, it will be 10x easier with 10x result

this is a very good point. I’ll have another go with condi but I really think I should stick to what warriors (at least the way I play it) do best: big sword and axe/shield

I’m till interested and curious about new styles though

lighter.2708:

Julie Yann.5379:

lighter.2708:

why do you guys still play warrior?
if you want condi just go another class, it will be 10x easier with 10x result

Cause we play the class we like and not FOTM.

If getting reckt while putting way more effort is what you like, then go ahead.

Anet will end up nerfing the OP FOTM builds. In the mean time I’m perfecting my skills and when they are done balancing everything out I will be wrecking all the FOTM hoppers cause they haven’t learned how to play and only rely the OPness to carry them.

As far as I know, every single class is getting burst down, just that a lot of these classes are doing more of the bursting than the warrior.

In turns of 1v1 a celestial hybrid 00666 build should still do well, and should win most of 1v1s, 1v2+ would be very hard these days.

Julie Yann.5379:

lighter.2708:

Julie Yann.5379:

lighter.2708:

why do you guys still play warrior?
if you want condi just go another class, it will be 10x easier with 10x result

Cause we play the class we like and not FOTM.

If getting reckt while putting way more effort is what you like, then go ahead.

Anet will end up nerfing the OP FOTM builds. In the mean time I’m perfecting my skills and when they are done balancing everything out I will be wrecking all the FOTM hoppers cause they haven’t learned how to play and only rely the OPness to carry them.

It’s not about FoTM builds, it’s about warrior’s core functionality that will never be viable as a DPS.

Mesmer before was no where close to amazing, yet it was viable because of their core function, now with DPS buff they just become god.
now back to warrior, with DPS buff, you still suck for the exact same reason,
nothing changed nothing new

bigmonto.4215:

Bear on the job.6273:

Sword is basically the same as it was before the patch, with a few buffs in the Arms line. Longbow got nerfed though. Longbow was designed to sustain a single stack of burn for long periods of time before the patch, and it did that well. But post-patch, we have hardly anyway to stack burns. Combustive shot is terrible now, and you will rarely have more than 1 stack of burn on anyone as the move in and out of the patch.

I have not tried the new condi traits in Strength line. They seem too conditional, and we have no good condi weapons that can interrupt enemies. You can try shield or mace offhand…but that’s probably not as good as just using sword offhand. And you have to waste an entire trait line for them.

I have no idea what you are talking about. Condition Damage stayed about the same for the bow, if anything burn got buffed since its stack-able. bow 2 does about the same damage but at 2/3 of the time. That is a close to 3k burst. If burn stayed stack-able by duration, we will be totally screwed, given the amount of condition clear out there.

If you have problem keeping people in the patch, then don’t, charge though it, to attack them, or stay in it and shoot, every single shot carries burn.

Yes, burn in general got buffed because it is stackable, but Longbow damage overall got nerfed. While burns are stackable now, burn damage-per-stack was cut in half. Fan of Fire basically stayed the same (same amount of burn stacks, half damage, but double duration), but Combustive Shot got a big nerf.

The burn application on combustive shot pulses every 3 seconds. Previously, each pulse would apply 3 seconds of burning. After patch, it now applies 5 seconds of burning. So with burn at half damage, that is a direct nerf. But the other meta-problem is increasing condi duration is less effective in WvW than other parts of the game. There is so much cleansing available in groups, the increased duration is usually never fulfilled.

Instead, ANet should have increased the pulse rate of Combustive shot to 1 pulse per second (like it was before it was nerfed many patches ago), and reduce the burn duration to 2 seconds per pulse. With burns at half damage now, that would have been equivalent to the burn damage pre-patch. But it would allow for better burn stacking/bursting, and make it less liable to condi cleansing.

Overall, it’s just sad that some other classes got significant condi buffs (even guardian is a burn machine now…), and Warrior stayed about the same, with nerfs to a few skills.

@Artaz
Thanks for the feedback and advice. I was actually wondering how Guardian would fare in condition build, I’m quite willing to give it a try too!

@Rhaegar:
Conditions builds are indeed played differently, they’re not easier/harder than physical gameplays, simply different. They might work better though, because opponents often lack condition management.

If you run sword/sword and longbow, then you might initially be inclined to prefer the sword rather than the longbow. In fact, this would be a mistake: the key in winning fights as a condition warrior actually lies in spamming the F1 combustive shot as often as possible, and kiting the opponent(s) inside it (sometimes immobilizing with LB #5 or Sword #F1). As Artaz has put it, laying additional burning pressure with the other bow skills (traited #1, projectile finishers) is natural path to victory.

Also, if you pack in some confusion, then you definitely gain some edge. I had Perplexity runes with only one interrupt (Fear Me) and no Distracting Strikes, and confusion ticking at 1k+ was already significant.

I won all my duels and a few 1v2s two days ago, easily resisting condition pressure with Berserker Stance, Brawler’ Recovery and the infamous synergy Cleansing Ire/Burst Mastery (and now you even have the Resistance as an active effect of the Healing Signet). I went away from the build though, because it felt less “satisfying” to play: too “easy” since most opponents’ builds cannot consistently resist conditions, and too “slow” in regards of the high numbers of berserker bursts (although one can kill quite fast with condition builds).

I agreed that condi duration isn’t all that great, even in pvp and/or 1v1, many classes have access to more condition clear. Pure condition seems to be weak now. On the bright side a stats buff means we can build a hybrid with 2k power + 1k condi damage, I would say this increase the overall affective of the bow and swords, as some of the skills require a lot of power to be useful.