Guild Wars 2

needs more condi warrior

Also, I’m not sure where I might have screwed up, but I get pretty beat up by anything more than a standard enemy. Bosses/Champions down me in a hit or two. I know this build compared to my previous build lost me some toughness and vitality, but wow… I really get smacked around. Any ideas?

Aviston Darkstar.1278:

Also, I’m not sure where I might have screwed up, but I get pretty beat up by anything more than a standard enemy. Bosses/Champions down me in a hit or two. I know this build compared to my previous build lost me some toughness and vitality, but wow… I really get smacked around. Any ideas?

Dodge and use Riposte. Well that or try condi warr which is also good for soloing and is more forgiving (imo).

Aviston Darkstar.1278:

Which trait skills do you use?

This will help:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAR3cjMdU5ZfH2ewJaAgAx8hALuGKju2A-ThSBAB0s/Alq/YmSwrU+hnuBU0wswBUQjDCAAXog8eCAkCYUdVA-e

Aviston Darkstar.1278:

Also, I’m not sure where I might have screwed up, but I get pretty beat up by anything more than a standard enemy. Bosses/Champions down me in a hit or two. I know this build compared to my previous build lost me some toughness and vitality, but wow… I really get smacked around. Any ideas?

The idea is for you to avoid letting the mobs damage you most of the time. Instead of standing there and allowing them to hit you, make use of your dodge rolls, whirlwind evasion, or as Fenrir.3609 posted above me your blocks from either mace #2 or sword #5 or shield #5 (most of the time you’ll want to use sword’s block over the others).

It’s a lot more rewarding to learn how to play like this in the end, but will take practice!

As for condition builds, the one Nike posted is a fine build for soloing but it’s still not the best. It’s as he said, competitive and easy to play, but still doesn’t outplay direct damage in the majority of situations. Either way, a solid alternative.

Have you even tested it enough to confirm that? Condi DPS and direct damage DPS is almost identical on heavy armour targets, and the extra toughness enables you to take more of a beating before having to withdraw a bit to regenerate.

Nope, I don’t use condition builds nor do I plan to.

I admit now that I didn’t put enough thought into this statement: “it doesn’t outplay direct damage in the majority of situations” so I’ll rephrase it to “it doesn’t outplay direct damage in the majority of situations in Arah” specifically. There are actually a lot of encounters that the condition build would be a lot easier to play with in, Ginva the kitten from Hotw P1 being a pretty good example.

The calculated theoretical DPS that’s posted on your guild’s forums show them to be roughly 7k each correct? It’s very close, but it’s still slightly lower if I remember correctly from a conversation in whisper with Nike… could be wrong, but I think I recall him stating that the theoretical solo DPS with condition build is around 6,900 whereas with the berserker GS 66002 one it’s around 7,100 or so. Will need to ask him to verify that but I’m not keen on buying aristocracy runes just to test out something I don’t plan to ever use :P

There are situations in which it’d probably be a lot easier to play with than the standard direct damage build, but generally speaking unless it’s an encounter that’s similar to… this... I just don’t really see the point.

I not only despise being forced to range, but despise sword mainhand for any purpose other than savage leap mobility. Even if it’s almost as good for damage output, it would have to be not only better, but significantly better to justify using it…

For situations like the video I posted above, it’d be pretty ideal. For something like Lupicus or any Arah solo I certainly wouldn’t suggest it… especially for Lupi considering how awful condi builds are for phase 3 unless they perform flawlessly.

Like I mentioned above it’s a nice alternative especially for those who dislike the GS and struggle with their rotations on it, but I have yet to see anyone post a video of any encounter using the build that’s faster than I could do it with direct damage, so… :|

I have a 2:51 Belka direct damage solo on my computer and a 2:54 condition, and I think that may have been using undead runes. Either way, my rotation on the condition one could have been improved to surpass the direct damage. I also have a condition abomination solo which is a full ten seconds faster than my best on direct damage (2:48 versus 2:59). Because, you know, I actually like trying things out before knocking on them.

Feel free to condescend it as “probably a lot easier to play”, but I’d say preventing Lupicus from purging your conditions in phase 3 if anything makes it insanely harder to play, the lack of whirlwind attack, and having a sloppy rotation making your conditions drop off causing massive loss of damage presents its own challenges.

After checking my most recent highlight, I think I killed her in about 2:39. I considered this “decent” as in acceptable to not ragequit and restart. http://www.twitch.tv/purpleishawt/c/4444295

I believe my fastest one was over 20 seconds faster if I’m not mistaken. Goku has been prodding me to try to compete with him in Arah P2 full funs, and he’s told me that he’s normally able to DPS her out with only having to run ooc once… so clearly it can be done significantly faster. Just saying.

You also are getting defensive for no reason as I made it clear that my reasons for not wanting to try it are because I hate mainhand sword and try to avoid using ranged weapons the majority of the time. I specifically said that the build is a nice alternative. For the most part, it is probably going to be easier for the average person to play with considering…

maha.7902:

the extra toughness enables you to take more of a beating before having to withdraw a bit to regenerate.

along with the fact that it’s well known condition damage ticks even when you aren’t actually attacking the mobs. If a direct damage build needs to kite and spends the majority of the encounter moving around or breaking their 100b chains early to evade, they’ll likely do less damage than a condition build would. This is one of the things that people try to use to make the build more appealing to others to try out, I wasn’t aware that this was debatable? Lol.

Lupicus phase 3 purges conditions no matter what kind of build you’re using. Direct damage builds lose out on attack of opportunity and any vuln/torment stacks if they fail to evade, which is a pretty significant DPS loss. It may not be nearly as detrimental for them as it is for a condition build but the objective is still the same— to avoid letting him hit you as much as possible to get the fastest possible kill. There is no extra challenge added to the encounter unless you want to point out the fact that the longer the encounter is, the more opportunity there is to make a mistake. It’s simply a different build that performs well, but isn’t the absolute best to use in all circumstances.

So harp on me all you want for not wanting to use it, but I have no reason to. I don’t need it and don’t want it. ^^

The condi build has its uses but as long as the direct damage build does more damage and gives u more utility its better for solo imho.
Still with the added toughness of the condi build u have “training wheels” and more room for errors, but in my oppinion the best way to learn it is to get punished hard for errors.

After checking my most recent highlight, I think I killed her in about 2:39. I considered this “decent” as in acceptable to not ragequit and restart. http://www.twitch.tv/purpleishawt/c/4444295
I believe my fastest one was over 20 seconds faster if I’m not mistaken. Goku has been prodding me to try to compete with him in Arah P2 full funs, and he’s told me that he’s normally able to DPS her out with only having to run ooc once… so clearly it can be done significantly faster. Just saying.

OOC once with no ember? i’d want to see that.

You also are getting defensive for no reason as I made it clear that my reasons for not wanting to try it are because I hate mainhand sword and try to avoid using ranged weapons the majority of the time. I specifically said that the build is a nice alternative. For the most part, it is probably going to be easier for the average person to play with considering…

Your reason for not wanting to try it is completely asinine. You’re not even using the longbow at range, you’re using it point blank, and you’d know that if you literally spent two seconds playing with it. Condition lacks whirlwind attack as well, so I’d hardly call it easier.

Lupicus phase 3 purges conditions no matter what kind of build you’re using. Direct damage builds lose out on attack of opportunity and any vuln/torment stacks if they fail to evade, which is a pretty significant DPS loss. It may not be nearly as detrimental for them as it is for a condition build but the objective is still the same— to avoid letting him hit you as much as possible to get the fastest possible kill. There is no extra challenge added to the encounter unless you want to point out the fact that the longer the encounter is, the more opportunity there is to make a mistake. It’s simply a different build that performs well, but isn’t the absolute best to use in all circumstances.

Did you just compare the loss of a 10% modifier to basically getting burning, torment and 20+ bleed stacks removed? u srs m8? The whole challenge of using condition is maintaining both endurance and skill rotation at the same time, without a rotation you can’t maximise your damage, but trying to maintain rotation for me (since I haven’t got myself an energy sword yet) means that if I go longbow with full endurance and have to double dodge, I literally have nothing left if Lupicus decides to do something else.

So harp on me all you want for not wanting to use it, but I have no reason to. I don’t need it and don’t want it. ^^

This reminds me a little of when you started crying at someone because they suggested slotting in missile deflection at certain times – it’s legitimately useful at certain points but you flooded the whole thread with tears.

Well, sorry to disturb but had to. The whole condition thing is for when you can’t solo as zerk and do bad rotations and/or need practice or need more room for mistakes. Rabid gear can tank 1 full rapidfire from Lupi, thats enough proof to show the skill cap it requires. Not to mention that whatever comparison you might of did between zerk and rabid is unreliable. Goku, Dub, Miku and many more can prove that zerk with proper rotation outdps anything else you’d try. That’s it, end of story/thread/argument.

Video of rapidfire thing :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42YD0QBlQ0o&t=5m52s
Even without the few evade frames from 1st dodge i’d still be alive after.

maha.7902:

OOC once with no ember? i’d want to see that.

So would I. I’m assuming he meant once after resetting at the start so that she returns to her original spawn point but I don’t know. Will have to wait until he uploads because he doesn’t want to unless he gets a sub-26.

maha.7902:

Your reason for not wanting to try it is completely asinine. You’re not even using the longbow at range, you’re using it point blank, and you’d know that if you literally spent two seconds playing with it. Condition lacks whirlwind attack as well, so I’d hardly call it easier.

How is it asinine to not want to use a ranged weapon at point blank? xD

And Berserker builds don’t ALWAYS involve a sword offhand when soloing, so we don’t always use sword offhand for blocks. By the way, something else to note is that with a condition build you’re limited with weapon variety and should you need to use something like warhorn in an encounter without a massive loss of DPS (wraithlord crusher+hunter comes to mind), you aren’t able to. With a direct damage build you can have any weapon swap you want.

Does that necessarily make it easier? Sometimes, sure. I think the more appropriate word choice for a condition build in this sense is limited, or perhaps less versatile. When it comes to an encounter that neither build does need to do anything other than DPS, such as berserker abomination, I’m certain that the average person would find it easier to have more toughness, a blind, a block, and two dodges than 1 whirlwind while keeping him against the wall with 2 dodges… not to mention, being rooted in place.

maha.7902:

Did you just compare the loss of a 10% modifier to basically getting burning, torment and 20+ bleed stacks removed? u srs m8? The whole challenge of using condition is maintaining both endurance and skill rotation at the same time, without a rotation you can’t maximise your damage, but trying to maintain rotation for me (since I haven’t got myself an energy sword yet) means that if I go longbow with full endurance and have to double dodge, I literally have nothing left if Lupicus decides to do something else.

Lmfao, so you’re talking about challenge with speedkilling Lupi in comparison to direct damage berserker builds? If that’s the case, then you’re right it is more challenging to compete with berserker on Lupi… because it’s worse for Lupi. Your first post was specifically stating that the challenge is because he purges conditions, implying that it either doesn’t matter or isn’t worth acknowledging for a berserker build but it does for a condition build. If you weren’t so belligerent and blind with contempt, maybe you’d be capable of inferring that I’m well aware of it being more of a problem for a condition warrior than it is for a berserker?

Reading comprehension must be the endgame of GW2.

maha.7902:

This reminds me a little of when you started crying at someone because they suggested slotting in missile deflection at certain times – it’s legitimately useful at certain points but you flooded the whole thread with tears.

Please be my guest to share with me the useful situations for warriors to trait in defense for PvE then.

Enlighten us all.

Well, sorry to disturb but had to. The whole condition thing is for when you can’t solo as zerk and do bad rotations and/or need practice or need more room for mistakes. Rabid gear can tank 1 full rapidfire from Lupi, thats enough proof to show the skill cap it requires. Not to mention that whatever comparison you might of did between zerk and rabid is unreliable. Goku, Dub, Miku and many more can prove that zerk with proper rotation outdps anything else you’d try. That’s it, end of story/thread/argument.

So because rabid gear can do one thing (tank a spray) which will never even be done since you’ll always wall Lupicus if you want to push for times that means it has low skill cap, lol. And we have two whole years of berserker gear videos, so I don’t want to count rabid out which is why I’m practicing around with it so that I can come to actual conclusions, rather than premature ones – and my initial impression so far is that against heavy armour targets it’s pretty on par with direct damage – and that against light and medium targets, berserker would pull ahead. Without a wall, the difference gets even narrower.

How is it asinine to not want to use a ranged weapon at point blank? xD

It’s asinine because your reason for not wanting to try a build out is “I don’t like this weapon”. If you give the slightest toss about being efficient, you don’t care what weapon(s) you would be expected to use, hell if rifle became the ranged option of choice I’d use that. When pure axe became “meta”, I didn’t want to play it so I just didn’t bother playing warrior – but when doing group content I would play it because, well, it’s being efficient. If being an efficient warrior meant playing a rifle, well guess what I would do? I would either not play warrior or I would suck it up and use it.

And Berserker builds don’t ALWAYS involve a sword offhand when soloing, so we don’t always use sword offhand for blocks. By the way, something else to note is that with a condition build you’re limited with weapon variety and should you need to use something like warhorn in an encounter without a massive loss of DPS (wraithlord crusher+hunter comes to mind), you aren’t able to. With a direct damage build you can have any weapon swap you want.

Or you can trait for cleansing ire. Hunter/crusher are light armour targets anyway – this is where berserker pulls ahead.

Please be my guest to share with me the useful situations for warriors to trait in defense for PvE then.
Enlighten us all.

Final Jotun boss, Arah p1
Corner turret in the room before Lupicus
any point you feel you would pull an ele or hunter.

not sure if it has any applicable use for bosses for berserker builds since the traits are so tight, but you could probably mess around with it in condi, you score 9k reflects against Lupicus with it though you lose 10% condi duration which is pretty sketchy.

I already explained that I know the build produces close to the same damage output, but that it’s still not as good. As long as it’s worse, I don’t care. I would stop playing warrior too if it meant berserker/direct damage was suddenly worse and I had to use cond in order to be competitive. You aren’t paying attention to what I’m actually saying— I still wouldn’t use it even if the two were reversed and that condition builds were slightly better. I would require them to be significantly better to justify using my least favorite mainhand weapon in combat and a ranged weapon over my favorite one.

Erm sorry but I think I’d rather not clear the orrian turrets before Lupi except the one near the far wall by the aboms. Other ones are unnecessary unless you get absolutely dreadful RNG with the elite mobs hugging the wall :P

Jotun sure, albeit completely unnecessary and not easier at all. I thought the point of this was to show how it’s useful to trait in defense in some circumstances. I have no idea if this would be faster to do than just standing still with 1-3 reflect crystals, hitting 100-120k each reflect, but it’s certainly not easier to do, and unless it’s indisputably faster to do then I can’t see how that’s worthy of deeming as “useful.” I will try it to compare the time when I next do an Arah P1 solo.

I think I also need to post another video of me bursting down elite risen again maybe :P

So because rabid gear can do one thing (tank a spray) which will never even be done since you’ll always wall Lupicus if you want to push for times that means it has low skill cap, lol. And we have two whole years of berserker gear videos, so I don’t want to count rabid out which is why I’m practicing around with it so that I can come to actual conclusions, rather than premature ones – and my initial impression so far is that against heavy armour targets it’s pretty on par with direct damage – and that against light and medium targets, berserker would pull ahead. Without a wall, the difference gets even narrower.

You don’t have to worry about your health %age. No scholar bonus to lose and the extra toughness allows even more room for messups. No matter wether you wall lupi or not, rabid is way more forgiving. Warrior solos are already considered as the “easy mode”, adding more defense will just add to that. If you’re unable to pull of a good condi rotation you’re unable to pull off a good direct damage rotation too.

Or you can trait for cleansing ire. Hunter/crusher are light armour targets anyway – this is where berserker pulls ahead.

Which doesn’t change the fact that condi warrior is tied to exactly one weaponset lb+s/s no versatility unless you want to give up large amounts of your damage output.
Instead of giving a valid objection you just say “it’s light armor anyway” and avoid this whole argument.

Final Jotun boss, Arah p1
Corner turret in the room before Lupicus
any point you feel you would pull an ele or hunter.

not sure if it has any applicable use for bosses for berserker builds since the traits are so tight, but you could probably mess around with it in condi, you score 9k reflects against Lupicus with it though you lose 10% condi duration which is pretty sketchy.

Well any build is “thight on traits” if you want maximum damage output.
On top of that the warrior reflection is nowhere close to mesmer/guardian or traited ranger reflects. You’ll reflect barely anything compared to them, since the “search area” is way smaller compared to wardens/feedback or wall.

I already explained that I know the build produces close to the same damage output, but that it’s still not as good. As long as it’s worse, I don’t care. I would stop playing warrior too if it meant berserker/direct damage was suddenly worse and I had to use cond in order to be competitive. You aren’t paying attention to what I’m actually saying— I still wouldn’t use it even if the two were reversed and that condition builds were slightly better. I would require them to be significantly better to justify using my least favorite mainhand weapon in combat and a ranged weapon over my favorite one.

lol

Erm sorry but I think I’d rather not clear the orrian turrets before Lupi except the one near the far wall by the aboms. Other ones are unnecessary unless you get absolutely dreadful RNG with the elite mobs hugging the wall :P

Corner turret in the room before Lupicus

Corner turret

Corner

Corner turret

Jotun sure, albeit completely unnecessary and not easier at all. I thought the point of this was to show how it’s useful to trait in defense in some circumstances. I have no idea if this would be faster to do than just standing still with 1-3 reflect crystals, hitting 100-120k each reflect, but it’s certainly not easier to do, and unless it’s indisputably faster to do then I can’t see how that’s worthy of deeming as “useful.” I will try it to compare the time when I next do an Arah P1 solo.

Hypothetical -

You get crystals for Jotun. You get terrible RNG and they all bite the dust. You have block traiting so you can block projectiles then run around while the block goes off CD.

Alternatively – you don’t trait it, lose crystals and die.

You don’t have to worry about your health %age. No scholar bonus to lose and the extra toughness allows even more room for messups. No matter wether you wall lupi or not, rabid is way more forgiving. Warrior solos are already considered as the “easy mode”, adding more defense will just add to that. If you’re unable to pull of a good condi rotation you’re unable to pull off a good direct damage rotation too.

You don’t worry about scholar bonus when soloing anymore either, so I have no idea how that is even relevant when everyone is using strength runes.

When it comes to room for error – here’s how I see it:

spray – rabid can tank it
life suck – rabid and berserker can tank it
life drain – rabid and berserker can tank it
bubble – rabid and berserker can tank it

Spray is a non-issue if you dump him in the wall – both gear types are equally as forgiving – rabid is just less forgiving if pushing for times since you’re actually punished for making errors and getting life leeched – and the punishment is more than losing a modifier, you flat out lose your damage full stop.

Which doesn’t change the fact that condi warrior is tied to exactly one weaponset lb+s/s no versatility unless you want to give up large amounts of your damage output.
Instead of giving a valid objection you just say “it’s light armor anyway” and avoid this whole argument.

Let me just get something straight -

My argument for this is the following:

Condition warrior can get kill times on par with direct damage. Against light and medium targets, berserker is superior. Against heavy armour targets – this is the grey area. This is what I want to find out, and what I am currently experimenting on. I’ve condition soloed the abomination faster than every single video I have found except Goku’s 2:34 – and on my fastest kill (2:48) I made stupid errors and don’t even have maxed out gear. This is what I’m curious about. I want to push this build as hard as possible and get the fastest time I possibly can against what is basically a punching bag to see whether if in an almost-vacuum setting whether condition surpasses berserker against heavy armour.

Berserker warrior is tied to greatswords and axes, I don’t even see the difference.

Well any build is “thight on traits” if you want maximum damage output.
On top of that the warrior reflection is nowhere close to mesmer/guardian or traited ranger reflects. You’ll reflect barely anything compared to them, since the “search area” is way smaller compared to wardens/feedback or wall.

Every example I gave you will reflect just as much as a mesmer, guardian or traited ranger – the area has absolutely nothing to do with these examples.

Thanks, had no idea there was only one corner there with a turret nearby. You have fun traiting in defense for that specific turret xD

I’m sure it’s really practical and useful instead of just staying in a DPS trait point allocation to clear it, cause y’know… game’s too hard.

I think in around 100 or so Arah P1 solos that I’ve done I’ve maybe had to use 4 crystals less than 10 times. Majority of the time I’ll use 1-2. Sure, if you fear this scenario happening this much then go for it. I’m really not surprised this is the best encounter you can think of for it to be “legitimately useful” for lol. Once again, I’ll try it next time I do an Arah P1 solo and see how useful it truly is!

I dunno if I’m doing it wrong, but when I solo I am running a set with a bit of cavalier smattered into the zerker, and on that set I have rune of the pack. I find it great for fury uptime without necessarily needing full fury utilities, and the precision really mitigates cavalier stats a good deal. It’s working great for me!

Otherwise awesome guide, it helped me get my warrior on track a bit even though the main spec kind of comes natural once you’ve tried stuff (for pve damage, anyway). Superhelpful breakdown of utilities.

It’s quite a large loss in DPS, but you can do as you please. I suggest getting used to full berserker because at the moment you are hindering your own potential. If it helps you learn mechanics, good… but seek a different rune choice than Pack. I’d say the better alternatives would be Scholar or or Hoelbrak. Scholar is cheaper than Hoelbrak and they’re better anyways, so go for those.

Updated the guide.

-Added a lot of thorough information about food/nourishment that wasn’t available before, but was clarified thanks to Nike! Check it out.
-Added an entry in the useful consumables section for ‘Rock’ found in the southwest Harathi Hinterlands by escorting a giant named “Fen.” They cost 1s 60c each.

EDIT: Seems there are two different rocks that function the same. This one is cheaper: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rock_

Are the sigills up to date?
Btw. in arah is it day or night?

Arah is day.
The sigils are alright. It just comes down to personal preference aswell as how many bagslots you want to use for your weaponsets.

question to the experts:

i’m not good enough to solo “harder” dungeon/ certain orr champ content (not that you even can anymore due to megaserver) in pure power/zerk meta build.

how does a strength runes hybrid S/S +LB compare to the pure-condi solo builds?
something like tweaking the pure-condi to:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJQQNAscTjMdU5Z3H2dwJaghgyUAcuBChnX9YcGdBA-TRSBwA6Urg2+DeV+15QA0TVF86D0cCASrEEwTAgUAQMGA-e

dominik.9721:

Are the sigills up to date?
Btw. in arah is it day or night?

It’s day and I’m not sure if you follow me on twitch/youtube but you may have noticed I recently made an Eternity and put night+force on it, and made an ascended GS for undead slaying+force specifically for Arah.

The reason I suggest night is because the vast majority of the dungeons are all night (CM/HotW/Arah are the ones that are day) so you’ll have the damage modifier most of the time.

If you truly wanted an all-purpose GS that’s useful in all circumstances, you could do Force+Strength, or Force+Frailty. Force+Strength is lower DPS for a warrior than Force+Night/Undead Slaying in situations where those sigils are in effect but it will always work, and Force+Frailty would be absolutely fantastic for FotM.

Relshdan.6854:

question to the experts:

i’m not good enough to solo “harder” dungeon/ certain orr champ content (not that you even can anymore due to megaserver) in pure power/zerk meta build.

how does a strength runes hybrid S/S +LB compare to the pure-condi solo builds?
something like tweaking the pure-condi to:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJQQNAscTjMdU5Z3H2dwJaghgyUAcuBChnX9YcGdBA-TRSBwA6Urg2+DeV+15QA0TVF86D0cCASrEEwTAgUAQMGA-e

…it’d do noticeably worse damage by comparison, to answer your question :P

If you want to use a condition build to solo content, use the one that I was arguing with maha above. You can find it on Nike’s youtube channel or the DnT theorycrafting forums which I linked in my first post on page 1. That build is very good if soloing but only on bosses that are heavily armored, where it’s nearly equivalent DPS to that of berserker power builds are.

Year I follow you but I missed the last 3 days, so gz to eternety.
I think I’ll get a second greatsword to gain the 10% boost all the time.

It’s definitely worth it but a third GS probably isn’t needed. I could be wrong about this but I think the only fractals that aren’t night are cliffside, ascalonian city, and mai trin… maybe the underwater fractal too but you can’t use GS on that one anyways.

Basically, most dungeons/fractals are night. You will be fine using a Night+Force for everything and if you love Arah as much as I do then a second one with Undead Slaying+Force will give you pleasant results.

Actually most fractals are day.

Which ones are day then besides the ones that I mentioned? I forgot about harpy fractal so add that to the ones that I mentioned but I thought Thaumanova/Molten facility/Maw/Molten Duo/Dredge/Swamp/Snowblind/Volcanic were all night?

If I’m wrong about any of those lemme know… or I guess I’ll figure it out based off of what my GS looks like the next time I’m in them lol

Only Maw, Dredge, Swamp, Snowblind and Volcanic are night.

Edit: As pointed out below, Mai Trin is NOT night.

maha.7902:

Let me just get something straight -

My argument for this is the following:

Condition warrior can get kill times on par with direct damage. Against light and medium targets, berserker is superior. Against heavy armour targets – this is the grey area. This is what I want to find out, and what I am currently experimenting on. I’ve condition soloed the abomination faster than every single video I have found except Goku’s 2:34 – and on my fastest kill (2:48) I made stupid errors and don’t even have maxed out gear. This is what I’m curious about. I want to push this build as hard as possible and get the fastest time I possibly can against what is basically a punching bag to see whether if in an almost-vacuum setting whether condition surpasses berserker against heavy armour.

I question this. As far as im aware lupi has more armour than abom yet i havent seen a condi kill close to the berserker kill time. Getting your condi’s cleansed should not be an issue for warrior seeing as its entirely possible to avoid it completely on necro.

And its true you dont have as much flexibility with the condi build. You dont have the option to take cc without hurting your dps by a large margin. Direct damage builds dont suffer this as you camp gs and then have the second set for the flexible stuff. Just because you are having fun with condi and finding it refreshing doesnt mean its better or even equal.

The main reason berserker warriors get better time against Lupicus is the interaction of WWA and the wall, which is a very big DPS boost and evasion in one. Condition damage doesn’t have anything that is close to an evade that also deals 18k damage on a short cool down. Don’t believe me? Do a Lupi solo with the standard 6/5/0/0/3 build but disable your WWA. See what time you get compared to the best possible condi solo. I believe Dub has a 5:24 condi solo? I would be interested to see if a berserker solo without WWA can beat that.

Compare also the kill times for strong condi professions like Engineer and Necro with berserker vs condi and condi is significantly better. So the missing piece of the puzzle is what about warrior makes berserker gear significantly better, and my hypothesis is that the answer is WWA, though Reckless Dodge is useful but more minor.

Wethospu.6437:

Only Maw, Dredge, Swamp, Snowblind, Volcanic and Mai Trin are night.

Seriously? I didn’t expect Mai trin to be night and I definitely thought molten facility would be night.

Thanks for the clarification

Tree.3916:

The main reason berserker warriors get better time against Lupicus is the interaction of WWA and the wall, which is a very big DPS boost and evasion in one. Condition damage doesn’t have anything that is close to an evade that also deals 18k damage on a short cool down. Don’t believe me? Do a Lupi solo with the standard 6/5/0/0/3 build but disable your WWA. See what time you get compared to the best possible condi solo. I believe Dub has a 5:24 condi solo? I would be interested to see if a berserker solo without WWA can beat that.

Compare also the kill times for strong condi professions like Engineer and Necro with berserker vs condi and condi is significantly better. So the missing piece of the puzzle is what about warrior makes berserker gear significantly better, and my hypothesis is that the answer is WWA, though Reckless Dodge is useful but more minor.

You’re right about whirlwind being really important for a berserker warrior, but it’s not like if the fight was offwall we’d see condition warriors pull ahead massively or anything like that. I’m pretty sure it might not be possible anymore to get a sub-5 offwall Lupicus solo with a berserker warr, but both Der(p)y + Goku managed to get 4:49 and 4:48 offwall solos pre-ferocity and I’m sure they’d both agree they could have probably gotten times even faster had they wanted to put the effort into it. The time difference is roughly between 30-60 seconds (for the sake of simplicity, ~45s) in a full kill, and right now if you’d factor that into the best times right now between berserker and condition kills it’d put pretty close.

Basically, what I’m trying to get at is that an off-wall Lupicus solo with berserker warrior is still going to be around the same time as the best condition kill (currently), so yeah you’re right about WWA being a deciding factor but it’s not the interaction with the wall that makes ALL of the difference (at least on Lupicus). Take out the WWA altogether then well yeah I agree with you… the kill time will suck. Maybe someday someone will do a better time than Dub’s… but as of right now, I’m pretty sure no one is averaging condition kills as fast as his.

Wethospu.6437:

Only Maw, Dredge, Swamp, Snowblind, Volcanic and Mai Trin are night.

Mai Trin is day if i remember correctly, even Eternity proves it

The new fractals (Facility, Thaumanova, Aetherblade, Mai Trin, Molten Duo) are all day.

Alright yeah, after checking there are 9 day fractals and 5 night fractals according to Wiki. Thanks for correcting me.

I’m updating the guide to clarify a few things.

First of all as most people know, strength runes received a little bit of a nerf today. This does not change whether or not they’re the best rune set for soloing, but what it does change is what you should get for group play. Before this patch hit, it was reasonable for you to be using strength for everything because the difference in damage output between strength and scholar wasn’t too noticeable. In PUGs, this was even more of the case but in organised groups then you’d always want to be in scholar.

The change now does little, but makes the difference more apparent in groups. I now suggest that you use strength runes only in solos and scholar runes for essentially all group-play. It’s annoying, but you’ll benefit more so now from grabbing a second set so that you can swap between the two depending on the activity.

If you aren’t loaded, you probably want only one ascended set to use. If this is the case then make your ascended armor set with scholar runes and an exotic set with strength runes. My reason being is that unless you literally only solo and never plan to do high level FotM, it’s more practical and less limited to do so.

Another thing I want to clarify is that now since the nerf to strength runes, the DnT condition warrior build is the best DPS against heavily-armored bosses. Before today it was tough to tell because in a vacuum they’d end up with very close results and in practice it varied depending on the player/what they were fighting. While the two are still relatively close, it is worth mentioning that I’m confident that in a solo setting it will be superior.

However, I want to make sure that anyone who reads this understands that this only is the case with bosses that are heavily armored. Light and medium bosses berserker will be faster by a pretty significant margin. Because of this, it’s generally more reliable and practical for clearing through full solo runs to use the fast hands/berserker build. If you want to push for the fastest possible boss times on things like Berserker Abomination, Korga (untested — I’d love to see some tests with the condition build against this boss!), Lupicus (assuming a literally flawless phase 3), you’ll have the greatest potential with the condition build.

So, whether or not berserker was slightly better or not than condition on heavy bosses before today, it’s definitely not the case now. The strength rune nerf certainly isn’t nice for soloing to say the least.

There is new buffood. I think it’ll supersede the old one, am I right?

The new food you’re referring to is ‘Plate of Roasted Cactus’ which will give +100 ferocity and a 33% chance to cause might on crit, right?

I have certainty that with 66002 scholar runes, this will be the best.

I would not suggest using this food if you’re using strength runes, but I will certainly tweak the foods/nourishment section when I have numbers to compare to.

Hi everyone I’m posting with a small update on the trait point allocation.

So as a lot of you may have known, I previously suggested that you go 5 into Arms with deep strikes (I) and forceful greatsword (X).

I’m changing that to rending strikes (V), which is exactly what Nike has in his recent build video, because of a few reasons.

The first reason is that in group settings you contribute more by applying vulnerability stacks than you do by a small amount of precision for yourself. Not only is this beneficial in groups, but it’s beneficial when soloing as well as it’ll increase your outgoing damage.

The second reason is that along with what I mentioned above, we don’t actually need extra precision when we’re with fury, banner of discipline and signet of fury. However, unlike the 66002 trait point setup we’re not quite as close to 100% crit chance as we’d like to be so it’s overall a better idea to add up more precision since there’s a down period of 30 seconds after banner disappears until it’s off cooldown. The point is that while it is beneficial, it’s not necessarily always better.

And finally, my third reason!

While I still feel like deep strikes would benefit a 65003 GS warrior more so in a solo setting, I’m getting conflicting results with some of my solo times on Lupicus. I’m seeing myself more easily able to push times faster. Example of this in my recent Arah P3 solo, where I got a 5:10 despite attacking him before I even pushed him to the wall, didn’t use dragon’s breath buns on the grub transition, made an absolutely disgusting mistake by wasting my block on the phase 2 > 3 transition which caused Lupi to heal with two ticks in the first life drink on phase 3, etc.

So, I’ll need to test it a bit more.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_UdMUb11C0

It’s been a while since I’ve posted but here is a video where I demonstrate the default rotation that I use for GS and axe+sword.

The rotation changes when the target is on the wall— it is generally speaking better to camp GS if on the wall because of WWA stacking a considerable amount of might along with all of the hits landing on the target. Take bladetrail out of the rotation if the target is on the wall too since it’s not really a gain unless it hits twice.

Purple Miku… you are my favorite person ever (well within the GW community). All those red numbers popping up whenever I attack something. Uuuuuung. Not to mention I’ve been using your theorycrafting in WvW and it’s been working spectacularly. Thank you you god/goddess.

Glad to hear it’s working out for ya!

To be honest any rare time I go to WvW I pretty much do the same as well lmao. Any other build besides max DPS bores me to tears.

If I’m just coming into the solo-content community (if you can call it that), which build would you recommend for a newcomer to arah solos? I am in the midst of crafting ascended gear and have a couple pieces of berserker and a rabid shoulder piece atm. Would it be better to just go full berserker and learn from any mistakes I make in dodge and dps rotations, or go nike’s condition build even though its uses are limited in arah?
And if berserker is the option, should I put in strength or scholar runes?

Downey.5234:

If I’m just coming into the solo-content community (if you can call it that), which build would you recommend for a newcomer to arah solos? I am in the midst of crafting ascended gear and have a couple pieces of berserker and a rabid shoulder piece atm. Would it be better to just go full berserker and learn from any mistakes I make in dodge and dps rotations, or go nike’s condition build even though its uses are limited in arah?
And if berserker is the option, should I put in strength or scholar runes?

Berserker w/ strength for soloing.

As mentioned in my guide and as IvanTheGrey mentioned in the post above me, you should make it a plan to get strength runes and full berserker for soloing. The condition build briefly noted on the first post is overall much worse for full solo runs and only outshines berserker on berserker abomination in P2 (as far as Arah is concerned). Lupi would be included, but as of so far there’s only been one person capable of doing a fast kill with the build and he doesn’t play GW2 anymore sadly. Because of this, I suggest to stay clear of it. I know ascended crafting is expensive, but even if you spent the money to craft that piece (I’m guessing you got it as a drop?) it’d be much better to use an exotic or even a rare berserker piece than the rabid.

Yeah I got the rabid shoulders from a fractal chest. I’ll keep it anyways, just incase I happen to stumble upon any more after I get some practise with soloing (if not for warrior, then probs guardian). Thanks

Just so everyone is aware, my guide won’t change (much) once the balance patch hits. That’s at least what I’m predicting. I modified the traits once again, because I disagreed with myself again:

Strength: 6 (V IX XI)
Arms: 5 (I X) – change I to V if you’re in a group!
Defense: 0
Tactics: 0
Discipline: 3 (VI)

After loads of further testing, arms I is definitely best with 5 in arms in a solo setting, assuming full berserker. Especially with the soon-to-come balance patch where we’re getting our signet of rage nerfed, we won’t have as high of fury uptime (5 seconds less of it). Therefore, you want all the precision you can get.

Hello everybody!

Lots of small modifications to make things more concise and I added a few tips/removed some things that I didn’t see as necessary to mention or go into detail about.

In particular, posts 3 (mostly) and 4 received some changes.

Post 3:
- I saw no reason to discuss the best food/nourishment for 66002 builds, as I discourage use of it for both groups and solos, so it only mentions what I recommend for 65003.
- I added information about skale venoms, as they are widely-used and super useful for FotM and I simply forgot to include them in the guide up until now. Oops…
-I changed some of the details in the section about offhand weapons:

a) Mace – there are very few circumstances in which you should be using this when soloing! The only bosses that you will benefit more so from soloing with a mace are ones like berserker abomination, which is essentially just a meatbag with lots of HP that you don’t need to dodge from very often. In almost all other cases, fighting with either a sword offhand or warhorn is probably a better idea when soloing. Mace is great for an offhand in groups on bosses, but be mindful that it’s not better DPS for you or your team if you struggle to survive and need to withdraw often!

b) Warhorn is generally the best overall offhand for a warrior, and not much has changed here other than restructuring the paragraph/shortening sentences so that I could fit what I wanted to add to mace/sword/shield’s descriptions.

c) What I have listed for sword hasn’t changed much, but I added the fact that sword’s block combined with shield’s is a great combination for warriors to skip past mobs without having to engage in combat and makes things like Arah trash skips super fun and easy.

d) Check the third post of the guide to see what I have listed for shield, or alternatively check me out on my stream sometime to see me making use of it! It’s still overall a very weak offhand in PvE for any purpose other than trash skips.

Post 4:
-Added Skale Venom to the list of useful consumables that I recommend.