Guild Wars 2

Skullclamp’s Mistfire Wolf – WvW Roaming Build

This build is highly experimental roaming build. I’ve been running it over the last couple of days and it’s quite effective.
Its base is the standard GS + Mace/Shield builds that have been floating around with the twist that it doesn’t need to use Signet of rage to achieve almost the same effectiveness.

Link to build:
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-s;4RKVP0S4NLV83;9;5TJ-J;139A18;227-n-F7C;1qObSqObSm-FW0-HXO0;1kVq0u1zY4_A52i-HV1k;9;9;9;9;9;9;14k3O

This build aims to keep your crit chance at 50% without fury and uses warrior sprint instead of your reliance on swiftness from signet of rage. The toughness can go 180 higher (using dolyak) and it’s currently not reflected in the build editor.

Why not Signet of Rage?
Signet of rage is good, but I wanted to see if there is any viability not running it. There are a couple of good reasons why not having to rely on signet of rage can be good:
- Corrupt boon
- Giving your neighbor S/D thief fury, might and swiftness for 30s instead
- Minimum of 18s downtime, during which you are oh so slow… and less crits
- Sometimes you engage with Signet of Rage almost over since you used it as movement skill before
- Boon stripping in general greatly reduces your killing power

Elite slot options
- Mist fire wolf is used right now (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Summon_Mistfire_Wolf). It makes you a ranger for 30s :p. The pet has quite a high amount of chill, along side some pretty decent DPS. The chill especially synergizes with the mace, as it helps with catching up to hit your stuns. The wolf also baits more dodges from enemies, which means they have less dodges for your cc!
- Warbanner
- Rampage (good for running away)
- Norn elite (good for running away)
- Warband support (decent DPS + a knockdown)
- Hounds of Balthazar (Good DPS)
- Others (don’t really know much about Sylvary / Asura)

Sadly I don’t have a PC good enough of taking vids.. Maybe someone else could add some?

Sylvari skills:
Summon sylvan hound – pretty much the same only with bleeds and poisons instead of chill and burn.
Summon druid – an oakheart that applies regen to allies and takes away conditions. Also immobilizes and AoE enemies. Lasts for 60 seconds. Would be the most viable option if it wasnt for the enormous countdown, till more viable than the others.
Take root – Immobilizes you for a few secs and spawns 5 turrents.. kind of nice for pve sometimes, cant really see how it fits anywhere else

afaik unsuspecting foe only sets your critical chance to 50%, so you would get only 1% crit chance from that trait, would be awsome if someone could prove me wrong

Penguin.7906:

afaik unsuspecting foe only sets your critical chance to 50%, so you would get only 1% crit chance from that trait, would be awsome if someone could prove me wrong

I’m pretty sure my all critting 100b would like to disagree.. You can check for yourself in spvp. Just use a berserker amulet to get close or so.

Take Root makes you invulnerable for 3 seconds too. Quite handy on ele/mezz/thief, if you are in a clutch situation and still need a couple seconds for your get out of jail-free-card to come off cooldown.

As for my asura warrior…
Scratch it, Asura Elites suck
Asura got the best racial utility skills(PI, Technobabble, Rad Field) and the worst racial Elites(some say, there is only one elite in the gane which is worse than mortar and that’s the Asura Power Suit)

Best Elite in my opinion is still the Warbanner… Well, my mate often times runs some upleveled guardian(60) alongside my warrior, so the rezz comes in handy.

I’m not so sure one of your cons for having SOR is actually fully true. I run a 0/20/20/0/30 build with GS/Mace and I pick up warrior’s sprint and use signet of rage as well. Why? For the might stacking. I too have Hoelbrak runes and stacking might with sigils on my weapons (strength and battle) PLUS the greatsword might stacking on critical hits it helps because you get 5 from SoR. FYI – swiftness is 33% speed and warrior’s spring is 25% speed; although not significantly higher it certainly adds up.

My point is we are down power in this build so to offset it you will use bloodlust of course, but the way to further offset it is by might stacking. I also sometimes pick up the might on block but I find it not stacking too much to be worthwhile in every case.

Signet of rage is not bad, it’s a very good elite overall. It’s just most of the time you’ll find that warriors overly rely on it. For example a majority of people take signet mastery just so that signet of rage goes down to 48s cd (myself included). Also most recent mace builds keep crit chance at 30% instead of 50%. Swiftness is of course better then warriors sprint, but usually it’s the downtime where you get started to get kited really hard.

So in this build specifically, it wasn’t very beneficial to take signet of rage, as the fury is not overly useful (majority of the damage comes from mace/100b combo). Swiftness is replaced partly by 100% uptime warrior sprint and you’re left with only 5 might. In my opinion, some other elites are worth trying out for 5 might and I personally love the new Mistfire wolf. Also if you wanted to you could still run signet of rage with this build, there are just some redundancies.

By the way, newb question – this elite is a free unlockable elite? Never noticed it before but I wasn’t actively looking for it. I know I haven’t unlocked all utilities and elite skills.

Tyrion.4259:

By the way, newb question – this elite is a free unlockable elite? Never noticed it before but I wasn’t actively looking for it. I know I haven’t unlocked all utilities and elite skills.

It comes with the deluxe edition.. Might be a bit pricey

I really like the concept of this build and made my own variant of it with a bit more armor and slightly less power;

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=Vt;4RK-Q0_4cL-w2;9;5JJ-T;139-18;227ACwW9;26TsW6TsWm-kZNL35;2Vn-w0x1237_E53o-GV1i;9;9;9;9;9;9;14k3H

I think both Reaper of Grenth and Mistfire Wolf are interesting choices
18s of chill should guarantee you a kill in most situations, the only counter i see to it is running away which still would be hard seeing you are a warrior x)

Really need to level a human warrior to test this out

edit: tweaked build to end up on 50% critical chance flat
second edit: just to clarify Reaper of Grenth is not a transform so you still regain all of your weapon skills.

Penguin.7906:

I really like the concept of this build and made my own variant of it with a bit more armor and slightly less power;

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=Vt;4RK-Q0_4cL-w2;9;5JJ-T;139-18;227ACwW9;26TsW6TsWm-kZNL35;2Vn-w0x1237_E53o-GV1i;9;9;9;9;9;9;14k3H

I think both Reaper of Grenth and Mistfire Wolf are interesting choices
18s of chill should guarantee you a kill in most situations, the only counter i see to it is running away which still would be hard seeing you are a warrior x)

Really need to level a human warrior to test this out

edit: tweaked build to end up on 50% critical chance flat
second edit: just to clarify Reaper of Grenth is not a transform so you still regain all of your weapon skills.

Hmm I never tried grenth, but 18s of chill sounds pretty good!

So I’ve tried running it with Signet of Rage as well now and it feels really good. The pressure is kinda similar to the old Axe / shield + GS builds, except instead of eviscerate, you have constant Stun pressure on them.

mace was great last week, when it was a surprise to people.

finding new ways to catch people off guard and 100b has run its course, i wish we had devs that got involved.

Anything thats got you standing still and channeling is rough in coordinated game play, esp in a game with no concept of diminishing returns on cc.

Fear spam alone makes stability becoming a required part of setting up the “one attack.” Been going back through the discard pile of hammer/longbow and sword, and axe builds

I think you shouldn’t see it as just setting up 1 attack. I rather see it as continuous stun pressure these days. Based on the rotation, you can literally try every 10s again. And you can force a lot of dodges / stun breaks using shield bash, mace daze And bulls charge. I basically never expect to down the enemy on the first mace bash. Rather I expect them to blow some of their defences so that the second mace stun is much more devastating. With 70 % crit chance (if you use signet of fury) you’ll actually do quite decent damage on GS already. The mace stun is kinda like the eviscerate that axe provided before.