I find them to be capable, but not especially great. Their biggest problem is they’re obvious as hell, so you often have to bait out stun breakers and dodges before you can get most of your big hits to land.
I mostly duel in wvw, which brings a variety of things you don’t usually have to deal with in pvp. Food and utility buffs for one, but also the very likely scenario of getting interrupted.
I also run a gs, because I’m normally dueling on my regular roaming builds. Normally the other set is melee too (currently hammer, but axe+sh also), which means getting kited is the biggest risk.
Capable mesmers (whether power or condi) can be a real problem unless I catch them in a stun lock without a stun breaker, and some thieves can cause trouble (but I find the hammer mostly evens that out). The exception is p/d thieves, which are generally useless but effective at keeping you at range, blinded, or unsure where they are while they slowly whittle you away.
Trap rangers and well necros can be hard counters in a duel, mostly because they can force you to chase them or be whittled down at range (the ranger is better at it than the necro, because the traps aren’t visible till you trip them).
Longbow turns things around with all of the above. It delivers solid direct and condi damage, and the range keeps you from having to uselessly chase people around. Still, I personally find I do better overall with double melee.
I run full berserker gear with a very damage oriented build.
Iirc, shoutbow is the more common pvp duels build for warriors. Lb is just a ridiculously handy weapon in a confined arena because of the size of the fire field, the lack of things to block your line of sight, and the guaranteed condi cleanse. In wvw, it’s still decent, but not nearly as necessary, imo.
Beyond patiently baiting out stun breaks and dodges, switching up your behaviour is pretty important. Being such an obvious class, if you follow a rotation they expect (either because everyone else does it or because they’ve gotten use to your play style) then they’ll see you coming a mile away. So have a few alternate rotations in your tool kit for different scenarios.
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