Guild Wars 2

I spend a lot of my time running instances, farming mats and map exploration but on rare occassion will do some WvWvW; this post, however, is stritcly about PvE. Currently, my build revolves heavily on condition damage (full exotic set) but the more I run instances and world events the more I feel like I’m kittening myself. If I can’t get 25 stacks, or a majority thereof, on a mob, my spec isn’t optimal. So I’m wondering if I should try a power, toughness & vitality build? I’ll ditch the sword and go axe/shield for my primary but I’m looking for some input before I farm an entire set of new gear.

Have any of you transitioned from condition damage to power/toughness/vitality? What’s your experience like? What sort of trait set up are you using? Any short comings?

I think the main thing is that P/T/V gear makes you feel really awesome, even if it’s about on par with Condition damage. Conditions do a LOT of damage, and it’s easy to not realize it because the numbers aren’t as big. Heck, my Flurry outdamages Hundred Blades on my Warrior, but when I got my first 12k crit today, I felt like a badA.

It’s a very different style of play, and both builds have their own weaknesses.

I went the exact route you are talking about, from condition to axe sheild. Felt a bit epic! I used axe to stack vulns, went berserker in accessories and pow/tough/vit in armor with soldier rune. Then I saw a video of a warrior running in and out of zergs in wvw, pushing the battle lines forward, healing with shouts, gave it a whirl and loved it, low damage, but kitten you can take a lot.

So now due to power tough vit being quite versitile, and accessories being easy to move about, I switch back and forth, axe/sheild for farming/wvw crit fun and mace/sheild healing shouts for wvw/dungeons/farming if I can find a spot that has a ton of enemies in a tiny spot. All I have to do to change spec is retrait and move jewelry around, from berserker to cleric and so forth.

In case you are interested, I will post the traits I use here
Axe/sheild
20/25/25/0/0/ Take axe crit damage, 33% to add vuln on crit, rest you can mess about with.
Mace/sheild shouts heal.
10/0/20/30/10 Adrenaline damage gain, turtles defense, sheild master, banner buff (use war banner) shouts 20% shorter cd, shouts heal, gain adrenaline from shouts.

Hope this was of some help.

Bish.8627:

I went the exact route you are talking about, from condition to axe sheild. Felt a bit epic! I used axe to stack vulns, went berserker in accessories and pow/tough/vit in armor with soldier rune. Then I saw a video of a warrior running in and out of zergs in wvw, pushing the battle lines forward, healing with shouts, gave it a whirl and loved it, low damage, but kitten you can take a lot.

So now due to power tough vit being quite versitile, and accessories being easy to move about, I switch back and forth, axe/sheild for farming/wvw crit fun and mace/sheild healing shouts for wvw/dungeons/farming if I can find a spot that has a ton of enemies in a tiny spot. All I have to do to change spec is retrait and move jewelry around, from berserker to cleric and so forth.

In case you are interested, I will post the traits I use here
Axe/sheild
20/25/25/0/0/ Take axe crit damage, 33% to add vuln on crit, rest you can mess about with.
Mace/sheild shouts heal.
10/0/20/30/10 Adrenaline damage gain, turtles defense, sheild master, banner buff (use war banner) shouts 20% shorter cd, shouts heal, gain adrenaline from shouts.

Hope this was of some help.

Thanks that does help a bit. I don’t mind trading off damage in order to be a bit ‘tankier’ but I can not stand banners, warhorns or shouts. I’m sure they’re good, but for now they aren’t my playstle.

Also by going 25 in Arms, isn’t that wasting talent points on conditions?

I would love to put more of my arms points into this sort of build, but i love my piercing shots to much…

Sounds like a great support build! especially the mace shield. what would you use as your alternate weapon? bow/rifle/other?

I’d go axe/shield & then bow/rifle depending on the situation. Maces have a high cooldown and low damage output for me.

Try 20/30/0/0/20 if you want to do more damage than a tankier build like shouts or banners, but if you get power/toughness/vitality armor, you’ll be a heck of a lot tankier than a glass cannon even with berserker jewels.

20 in Strength gets you Bersker’s Power and the axe crit trait, 30 in Arms gets you Rending Strikes, piercing rifle (if you want to go rifle, I guess), and Last Chance, which is completely fantastic in PvP, though I suppose a bit unnecessary for PvE, so you could switch those 10 points out for something else if you like. The 20 points in Discipline are, in my opinion, kind of indispensable. Tier 1 trait would be Warrior’s Sprint (which I love, but that’s just my opinion), and tier 2 would be Sweet Vengeance, which I guess if you don’t die a whole lot in dungeons isn’t that necessary, but in PvP, it makes Vengeance one of the best downed skills available. The 15 point minor trait is what I’d trait into discipline for mainly, though. The reduced cooldown (though kinda bugged) is really nice, since I like to swap a lot.

I use that, as well as axe/sheild/rifle.

Ridgeblader.7135:

Sounds like a great support build! especially the mace shield. what would you use as your alternate weapon? bow/rifle/other?

Well depends where I am. In dungeons I will keep rifle in the alt slot as I may need to go ranged at some point. In wvw I tend to have Sword/warhorn for mobility/gap closing and the swiftness, then in a tower defense or seige switch it out for the bow.

In tower defense, at full adrenaline you do ok damage, but the key is soaking up damage so half the attackers are trying to get you down, and not the squishies with the good aoe. Also helps in open battle fights, you can push the line forward, often making players focus you while your buddies take them down, very enjoyable and makes doing damage overrated imo