Guild Wars 2

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQNAU5enMdA1dgVhAmhAElilrATpq16qBIBgEQB49zWaftA-TpRBABxXGQjDCAGHBAAuAAP8AAUa/BA

Alright, here’s the deal. I been solo-queuing non-stop, we are all aware of just how awful the matchmaking is right now, between having the best and the worst imaginable in a game.

That’s fine, however, I have found a fairly amazing build you should look into. I’ll explain some details, but I am afraid if this catches on, we might see some real salt coming. No joke, this build is actually working.

So, there are a few facets of play to this build, there’s an anti-bunk aspect, and a psuedobunker/lockdown. When you face say a Traphunter, Chronobunker, or even a Shield Rev, Signet of Might is crucial to interrupting their play. Normally these guys have a fairly set rotation, forcing them to play into their blocks while you have full adrenaline actually wins you the fight, Gunflame plus Unblockable interrupts Chronomancer block and cleaves their life, Shield Rev is already popping his heal at low health anyways, and Traphunter is likely glass enough to immediately start reeling back. What I am telling you, straight up is that you actually do extremely well against half the meta right now.

Whoa whoa hey now, I am serious. Don’t spread the word yet, let me continue. While you do a great job being an anti-bunk, you can run into some small issues with some condition heavy classes like ChillReapers or MalRevs. Berserker Stance, Healing Signet and some weapon swaps help a bit, but ultimately those matchups come down to skill. I have lost matches against those 1 to 1 when they had nearly nothing left, especially reapers after I killed off their shrouds at least twice. Truthfully though, those 1v1s always last quite a long time given both our health pools.

When you are rocking Marauder and Wurm Runes, your health is nearly 27k. The thing is, although you are losing about 20% crit damage not being full zerk, Blood Reaction helps ensure your Gunflames really pack a punch, and you are pretty much popping them off left and right with Smash Brawler. Did I mention your Mace? Ma/Sh and Headbutt are your lockdown, let’s say you land a solid Gunflame on a Tempest. Get in there, lock them down with CC after CC. In a teamfight if they don’t get a break or many stacks of stab you can keep on them and hold them in place for your team to follow up on and down. No questions ask, you float between ranged and melee in a fight. Your adrenaline can occasionally starve at times forcing an auto-attack but in your build even Mace autos are solid power pressure on a Diamond Skin Ele.

Finally, if you weren’t already aware, Shield Master applies reflect to all your blocks, even Mace 2. Counterblow’s damage is great when it hits, and you can reflect a lot of shenanigans coming your way without even having to shield. You..actually can stick on a point to contest for a good amount of time with all the mitigation you got, even in a 1v2 giving your team the advantage.

One downside is that you are slow, quite slow, you have no swiftness. Be ready to run around like a Guardian in this build.

I’ll let you guys know if things change, but if you want to start somewhere, this’ll work wonders. In our state we will kitten well need it. Cheers and good luck. Smash some heads.

meh, I don’t want to play warrior :P

Can confirm, signit of might + power/dps spec does counter meta builds.

Just don’t face premades who decide to focus the squishy war and you will be fine. Also hope your solo-q team has bunks to hold the points while you do your thang.

Best played with friends.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Can confirm, signit of might + power/dps spec does counter meta builds.

Just don’t face premades who decide to focus the squishy war and you will be fine. Also hope your solo-q team has bunks to hold the points while you do your thang.

Best played with friends.

Pretty accurate. You aren’t too squishy with this build however the natural thing for premades to do is focus you down, which is fine for them to try. You can totally mess around with them while in Berserk given all the stability you make for yourself so they can’t just stop you from blocking or dodging or whatnot.

Like I said, given the state of leagues right now this build I am doing much better than other builds as a whole for the Warrior. If meta builds were aligned as being ‘S-class’ this warrior build might be akin to a B+ or an A, it can turn the other teams comp on their head. Just be aware you gotta know what you are doing as a Warrior if you want to succeed with it.

Would the rage healing skill get some uses in this build?or you would be too squishy to fight back.

SenthRawr.7843:

Would the rage healing skill get some uses in this build?or you would be too squishy to fight back.

Unfortunately as much as you could heal up while Blood Reckoning is active, it is still reliant on sustaining off hitting your opponent, whom even outside of blinding or blocking you could evade/invuln, or even disengage while you run out of it.

I find simply using Healing Signet or disengaging with it keeps me sustained if I pull 1-2 off a neutral point to be a bit more useful, the Resistance is a handy tool when things go south.

Furthermore, Blood Reckoning only gives you ‘Critical Chance’ not ‘Precision’, it won’t scale your Critical Damage up with Blood Reaction.

Rifle is a terrible weapon outside of kill shot. It’s single target damage makes it a great ranged weapon, but makes it a terrible weapon when your opponent is in melee range.

Mace Shield is okish, however skull grinder is worst than Skull crack if when you are power based. A 4sec stun vs a 1 sec daze with a load of condis that do no damage.

It’s incredibly difficult to land on anyone paying attention. Like this build probably works find vs other scrubs with low MMR. Vs anyone good I think it’s not great. Anyone good who sees a rifle warriors automatically will focus you the same way LB rangers are always focused. When this happens your build with it’s zero mobility has no choice but to die, you can’t even run. Theres nothing secret here. move along.

BTW rifle mace shield was always known as a decent dueling build against some specs. That doesn’t translate into a great PVP build or even a group build.

/thread

The best warrior build I have seen so far is just a DPS GS AXE Shield build and it only works if you are duo Q to some extent.

viper with distracting strikes packs a better punch. skull grinder is ruthless.

needs baseline fast hands so you can run without discipline

I play Rifle Zerker. Way different build. I love it. Its truly a glass cannon though. Lays down serious carnage. Have to know when to run and how to position.

Interesting build. It does sound good for the current meta…however, this got me wondering:

If you use Shield Stance or Counterblow while traited with Shield Master, will you reflect things like Mirror Blade and Shadow Shot or do they still land since they’re unblockable?

Dahkeus.8243:

Interesting build. It does sound good for the current meta…however, this got me wondering:

If you use Shield Stance or Counterblow while traited with Shield Master, will you reflect things like Mirror Blade and Shadow Shot or do they still land since they’re unblockable?

No, unblockable skills pass through as normal. One fun thing, though a little offtopic, is when you reflect a Mesmer sceptre 3 and produce a clone of yourself. Confused the hell out of a bad condi member I came across. Irony… dope.

Warlord.9074:

Rifle is a terrible weapon outside of kill shot. It’s single target damage makes it a great ranged weapon, but makes it a terrible weapon when your opponent is in melee range.

No, Killshot is garbage. Gunflame makes Rifle worth taking, and recent buffs to Rifle including cooldown reductions and increased adrenaline gain on auto add filler to your rotation. Killshot is the least useful Burst you will pull off in the build, used only in very select circumstances.

Warlord.9074:

Mace Shield is okish, however skull grinder is worst than Skull crack if when you are power based. A 4sec stun vs a 1 sec daze with a load of condis that do no damage.

Those condis aren’t there for a heavy condi-bomb, we are talking Blind, Cripple, Bleeding, Confusion and Poison, those debilitate your foe pretty hard. And aside from the single proc of poison you could keep laying the pain with non-stop interruption while your Rifle CDs come back up. You want Skull Crack and Skull Grinder to be used in their respective circumstances, Skull Crack is the obvious choice when you really want to hold a guy still. Plus, those condis are still noticeable on a glass cannon.

Warlord.9074:

It’s incredibly difficult to land on anyone paying attention. Like this build probably works find vs other scrubs with low MMR. Vs anyone good I think it’s not great. Anyone good who sees a rifle warriors automatically will focus you the same way LB rangers are always focused. When this happens your build with it’s zero mobility has no choice but to die, you can’t even run. Theres nothing secret here. move along.

Good, that’s the intent, that’s what Ma/Sh is for, that’s why your health pool is massive. It’s why I run Discipline instead of YOLO arms. There’s a lot more mitigation than what you are saying, and it’s not difficult to trick your enemy with a sudden Melee Gunflame or flipping straight to Ma/Sh at range and closing the gap. Mobility is not always required when you get onto a small point, and when the other team is forced to send more than 1 to try to take you off the point, or if you last long enough for a +1 to come in, you are already doing better than any other Warrior build out there.

Warlord.9074:

BTW rifle mace shield was always known as a decent dueling build against some specs. That doesn’t translate into a great PVP build or even a group build.

/thread

Of course it has…before Berserker, now it is vastly improved.

/opens thread

PS: GS / AxSh is outclassed even by Power Staff Daredevils, you aren’t playing competitively with that build.

This is kinda the opposite of what everyone has been telling me lately. Vitality over toughness. Ferocity over power. Your crit rate is still a bit low to just go all in ferocity isn’kitten Can someone explain the logic behind ferocity with such a low precision to me? I’m not meaning to criticize, I just legitimately don’t understand based on what other people tell me.

Cerby.1069:

This is kinda the opposite of what everyone has been telling me lately. Vitality over toughness. Ferocity over power. Your crit rate is still a bit low to just go all in ferocity isn’kitten Can someone explain the logic behind ferocity with such a low precision to me? I’m not meaning to criticize, I just legitimately don’t understand based on what other people tell me.

I would actually say that vitality over toughness is a good idea for PvP since vitality helps against condi and gives you time to escape or get healed when needed.

The ferocity, however I agree on. I actually wonder if an int sigil would be better on the rifle.

Dahkeus.8243:

Cerby.1069:

This is kinda the opposite of what everyone has been telling me lately. Vitality over toughness. Ferocity over power. Your crit rate is still a bit low to just go all in ferocity isn’kitten Can someone explain the logic behind ferocity with such a low precision to me? I’m not meaning to criticize, I just legitimately don’t understand based on what other people tell me.

I would actually say that vitality over toughness is a good idea for PvP since vitality helps against condi and gives you time to escape or get healed when needed.

The ferocity, however I agree on. I actually wonder if an int sigil would be better on the rifle.

Int on the Rifle I actually went back and forth on.

Honestly, you could give up Force for Int and get away with free crits on swap.

Playstyle though, Force just nets you more consistent pressure from Rifle in general.

Go nuts.

Choppy.4183:

Dahkeus.8243:

Interesting build. It does sound good for the current meta…however, this got me wondering:

If you use Shield Stance or Counterblow while traited with Shield Master, will you reflect things like Mirror Blade and Shadow Shot or do they still land since they’re unblockable?

No, unblockable skills pass through as normal. One fun thing, though a little offtopic, is when you reflect a Mesmer sceptre 3 and produce a clone of yourself. Confused the hell out of a bad condi member I came across. Irony… dope.

Mesmer scepter 3 is a channeled ranged melee attack. You probably mean the third attack on the scepter AA chain XD

Ross Biddle.2367:

Choppy.4183:

Dahkeus.8243:

Interesting build. It does sound good for the current meta…however, this got me wondering:

If you use Shield Stance or Counterblow while traited with Shield Master, will you reflect things like Mirror Blade and Shadow Shot or do they still land since they’re unblockable?

No, unblockable skills pass through as normal. One fun thing, though a little offtopic, is when you reflect a Mesmer sceptre 3 and produce a clone of yourself. Confused the hell out of a bad condi member I came across. Irony… dope.

Mesmer scepter 3 is a channeled ranged melee attack. You probably mean the third attack on the scepter AA chain XD

Yessir, indeed I did!

The yolo rifle berserk build is the only reason I still play warrior, tbh. It is so much fun and those numbers are just priceless. If you have bad sustain, you need to kill fast I guess…
no condi cleanse except healing signet’s active effect, average mobility… but the fun and satisfaction level upon landing 9-18k gunflame is what keeps me playing this game…

EDIT: I play only WvW now.

Haha, I usually pvp as a gs/rifle warr, I’m down for trying this spec out.

Here’s something to assist:

What you do well against:
- Chronobunkers → Signet of Might and Gunflame on their block utterly destroys their set rotation, and nullfies their second block. In other words, in a teamfight you could shut them down fairly fast.
- PowerShiro → Unlike the MalShiro, your shield block literally lasts their entire UA, their shield is useless against your Signet of Might, and revs have a hard time with Stability uptime, you have about 5 different CCs and they can’t deal with a condi-bomb too well without popping Infuse Light. Go ham.
- Bunker Tempest: This is borderline your advantage, as your set of skills ends up beating them up just because of their cloth. They will try to Magnetic Aura, but Unblockable renders that pointless. If you land a Skull Grinder, they are forced to cleanse which then you can Gunflame and daze their healing.
- Support Druid: You see these guys typically in the back just barraging with dazes and blinds, most of them will back off if they get focused by you just once. The issue you see with them in most games is that players don’t notice them in a teamfight when they are casting from off the point, but you can absolutely pressure them for a few seconds and either outright destroy them or let them limp away with nearly no life.

Even Matchups:
- Scrapper → This one’s tricky, most Scrappers are fairly tough to get down, even a Gunflame Crit will dent their health pool with their protection uptime and sustain. You actually have to flip back and forth, penetrate their Hammer 2 and 4 with Unblockable, condition bomb them with Skull Grinder. It’s a very even match-up and a fun fight, literally the difference in skill makes or breaks this one.
- MalShiro → With access to conditions and resistance, MalShiro is tougher as conditions come in steadily from this guy. You should save the shield block for UA like before, but keep your evades and distance when he flips to Torment, and watch your distance. If you can avoid his Off-hand Axe closer, that is even better as it is unblockable.
- Fresh Air Tempest: Preface here, Fresh Air Tempest is never alone. They are a solid +1 position that can really deal insane damage to everyone on a point. The issue is that they daze enough to potentially stop your own combos, I would argue they are more impactful than Druids. They are your #1 target in a teamfight given their damage and utility, kill them before they kill your allies.
- Condition Druid: A different breed from the Support Druid, I won’t go into too many specifics but these are the guys who play around with you on poisons and bleeds, staying in stealth most of the time and healing up with Astral Form. You…may or may not win, but if you are on a point holding it against one, you might as well play defensively to waste its time. Depends on the matchup really, but if you want to kill them, you might be playing into their bleeds a bit much. Just be careful.

What you will suffer against:

- CondiReaper: The current Meta Reaper, or just necros in general will give you a bad time. You can melt their healthpools, but the condition damage you will be taking is just insane for the attritional fight. You won’t win a straight-up fight against one without a +1 for the slightest of support, I have had way too many close calls nearly killing them on my build. But I can safely say for what is out there right now, these guys are going to be what kills you most. Times sure have changed from when Warriors would destroy Necromancers.

I do not need to remind you all of this, but a lot of what I have been seeing in SPvP solo queue has been teammates staying on point until they die, taking heat unnecessarily when they can back off for about 10 seconds and come back in. Trust me, it would be better to temporarily leave the contested point to let your cooldowns refresh and come back in unfocused than dying, giving 5 points and taking a 50 second walk back.

Learn to disengage, this build like I said isn’t a full Bunker, but it can play around like one.

baseline fast hands and mending as physical skill would make this build great.

you can then drop Dis for Str and take distracting strikes and make your m/sh kitten. low CD mending with a potential 30% heal increase is better than heal sig. I’ve been playing with Str Dis Zerk and viper amulet. damage is excellent, the build just needs more sustain. 8 stacks of confusion on skull grinder rocks.

Absolutely.

Unfortunately we won’t see any changes right now for Warrior until after the season, but I do see massive potential for a Hybrid setup on this. I can only work with so much you know.

yeah, I’m loving playing hybrid gunflame for 1v1… but I just tired DH and I can run DPS and it takes 3 people to kill me in team fights. I’m stunned by how much easier it is, I think I’ll be queuing with it for a while.

Sykper.6583:

Here’s something to assist:

What you do well against:
- Chronobunkers -> Signet of Might and Gunflame on their block utterly destroys their set rotation, and nullfies their second block. In other words, in a teamfight you could shut them down fairly fast.
- PowerShiro -> Unlike the MalShiro, your shield block literally lasts their entire UA, their shield is useless against your Signet of Might, and revs have a hard time with Stability uptime, you have about 5 different CCs and they can’t deal with a condi-bomb too well without popping Infuse Light. Go ham.
- Bunker Tempest: This is borderline your advantage, as your set of skills ends up beating them up just because of their cloth. They will try to Magnetic Aura, but Unblockable renders that pointless. If you land a Skull Grinder, they are forced to cleanse which then you can Gunflame and daze their healing.
- Support Druid: You see these guys typically in the back just barraging with dazes and blinds, most of them will back off if they get focused by you just once. The issue you see with them in most games is that players don’t notice them in a teamfight when they are casting from off the point, but you can absolutely pressure them for a few seconds and either outright destroy them or let them limp away with nearly no life.

Even Matchups:
- Scrapper -> This one’s tricky, most Scrappers are fairly tough to get down, even a Gunflame Crit will dent their health pool with their protection uptime and sustain. You actually have to flip back and forth, penetrate their Hammer 2 and 4 with Unblockable, condition bomb them with Skull Grinder. It’s a very even match-up and a fun fight, literally the difference in skill makes or breaks this one.
- MalShiro -> With access to conditions and resistance, MalShiro is tougher as conditions come in steadily from this guy. You should save the shield block for UA like before, but keep your evades and distance when he flips to Torment, and watch your distance. If you can avoid his Off-hand Axe closer, that is even better as it is unblockable.
- Fresh Air Tempest: Preface here, Fresh Air Tempest is never alone. They are a solid +1 position that can really deal insane damage to everyone on a point. The issue is that they daze enough to potentially stop your own combos, I would argue they are more impactful than Druids. They are your #1 target in a teamfight given their damage and utility, kill them before they kill your allies.
- Condition Druid: A different breed from the Support Druid, I won’t go into too many specifics but these are the guys who play around with you on poisons and bleeds, staying in stealth most of the time and healing up with Astral Form. You…may or may not win, but if you are on a point holding it against one, you might as well play defensively to waste its time. Depends on the matchup really, but if you want to kill them, you might be playing into their bleeds a bit much. Just be careful.

What you will suffer against:

- CondiReaper: The current Meta Reaper, or just necros in general will give you a bad time. You can melt their healthpools, but the condition damage you will be taking is just insane for the attritional fight. You won’t win a straight-up fight against one without a +1 for the slightest of support, I have had way too many close calls nearly killing them on my build. But I can safely say for what is out there right now, these guys are going to be what kills you most. Times sure have changed from when Warriors would destroy Necromancers.

I do not need to remind you all of this, but a lot of what I have been seeing in SPvP solo queue has been teammates staying on point until they die, taking heat unnecessarily when they can back off for about 10 seconds and come back in. Trust me, it would be better to temporarily leave the contested point to let your cooldowns refresh and come back in unfocused than dying, giving 5 points and taking a 50 second walk back.

Learn to disengage, this build like I said isn’t a full Bunker, but it can play around like one.

I really like seeing those constructive feedbacks with real insight and experience in it.

100 times better than those whine post, and 100 times than someone who just plainly reject the build without trying and keep on whining.

Dahkeus.8243:

I would actually say that vitality over toughness is a good idea for PvP since vitality helps against condi and gives you time to escape or get healed when needed.

The ferocity, however I agree on. I actually wonder if an int sigil would be better on the rifle.

I thought toughness was said to be > vitality on the basis that warriors don’t have good sustain. And with toughness if we have a smaller health pool our sigil of healing and regen from adrenaline allows us to stay in higher ranges instead of being whittled down. That was my understanding. I was always told vitality is better for conditions in general. But for warriors to stack toughness and condition duration decreases. Although condition duration decreases lesser than 50% never made sense to me either….you have to clear them before they do 50%+ of their damage or you are gonna die.

this is the exact same build i ran except for the rune. Unfortunately it just doesnt stack up there for me.

I used in the same way to since i only tried to engage in mostly 1 vs 1 and 2 vs 2. In 3 v plus fights and trying to escape this build kind of gets ran threw the mud and also the staff tempest you will see with any premade will make life seem unfair.

Cerby.1069:

Dahkeus.8243:

I would actually say that vitality over toughness is a good idea for PvP since vitality helps against condi and gives you time to escape or get healed when needed.

The ferocity, however I agree on. I actually wonder if an int sigil would be better on the rifle.

I thought toughness was said to be > vitality on the basis that warriors don’t have good sustain. And with toughness if we have a smaller health pool our sigil of healing and regen from adrenaline allows us to stay in higher ranges instead of being whittled down. That was my understanding. I was always told vitality is better for conditions in general. But for warriors to stack toughness and condition duration decreases. Although condition duration decreases lesser than 50% never made sense to me either….you have to clear them before they do 50%+ of their damage or you are gonna die.

Depends what you’re encountering.

If you’re mostly coming across direct damage, then yes, toughness probably wins out in that it mitigates the incoming damage thereby reducing the amount of healing you need.

If you’re encountering a lot of condition damage though, that toughness is doing nothing for you and so vitality is clearly better.

A third school of thought (the one I personally subscribe to) is kill your enemy fast enough and you don’t need to worry about whether vitality or toughness would have been more valuable. The key to this style is avoiding the damage altogether (condi and direct) through effective dodging, movement, and stances while maximizing the pain train. Choo choo!

Choppy.4183:

Cerby.1069:

Dahkeus.8243:

I would actually say that vitality over toughness is a good idea for PvP since vitality helps against condi and gives you time to escape or get healed when needed.

The ferocity, however I agree on. I actually wonder if an int sigil would be better on the rifle.

I thought toughness was said to be > vitality on the basis that warriors don’t have good sustain. And with toughness if we have a smaller health pool our sigil of healing and regen from adrenaline allows us to stay in higher ranges instead of being whittled down. That was my understanding. I was always told vitality is better for conditions in general. But for warriors to stack toughness and condition duration decreases. Although condition duration decreases lesser than 50% never made sense to me either….you have to clear them before they do 50%+ of their damage or you are gonna die.

Depends what you’re encountering.

If you’re mostly coming across direct damage, then yes, toughness probably wins out in that it mitigates the incoming damage thereby reducing the amount of healing you need.

If you’re encountering a lot of condition damage though, that toughness is doing nothing for you and so vitality is clearly better.

A third school of thought (the one I personally subscribe to) is kill your enemy fast enough and you don’t need to worry about whether vitality or toughness would have been more valuable. :D The key to this style is avoiding the damage altogether (condi and direct) through effective dodging, movement, and stances while maximizing the pain train. Choo choo!

I subscribe to the same magazine :D

Can anyone give testament to this build? Aside from the OP I mean.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQNAU8ejMdQdHWFCehAnIGmCq7ICgWX76avGwEICaAA-TZBFwAx2fgxBBgwFAoaZAAPBAA

This build is better bro

Sykper.6583:

Here’s something to assist:

What you do well against:
…
- PowerShiro -> Unlike the MalShiro, your shield block literally lasts their entire UA, their shield is useless against your Signet of Might, and revs have a hard time with Stability uptime, you have about 5 different CCs and they can’t deal with a condi-bomb too well without popping Infuse Light. Go ham.
…

Revs have 2 stacks of stability for 6-9 seconds after dodge, so almost perma stability during the fight. I know many Revs pick the auto shield block trait instead but any half experienced PvP player uses the stability trait. Shiro also has Unblockable for 5s after Phase Traversal and a trait to give it after a blocked attack, too. So your shield is just as useless against them as is theirs against you.

ulchanar.4309:

Sykper.6583:

Here’s something to assist:

What you do well against:
…
- PowerShiro -> Unlike the MalShiro, your shield block literally lasts their entire UA, their shield is useless against your Signet of Might, and revs have a hard time with Stability uptime, you have about 5 different CCs and they can’t deal with a condi-bomb too well without popping Infuse Light. Go ham.
…

Revs have 2 stacks of stability for 6-9 seconds after dodge, so almost perma stability during the fight. I know many Revs pick the auto shield block trait instead but any half experienced PvP player uses the stability trait. Shiro also has Unblockable for 5s after Phase Traversal and a trait to give it after a blocked attack, too. So your shield is just as useless against them as is theirs against you.

This is actually true, started to notice the impact given I know what Unblockable means and seeing better revs come forward. But there are still an excess of bad Revs not taking the Stability for some reason, albeit you will strip through those stability stacks like they were nothing with this build.

I still hold this build in a better regard than most, especially given our current state, with what we have to work with.