Guild Wars 2

As the topic says, I’m a dual axe warrior that spends a lot of time in WvWvW.
I’m going to start spending my karma points for armor from the gods, but I was curious on two things.

1) Should I get gear that focuses on 2 to 3 primary stats (Say all power and perception/perception & condition damage/etc..), or get a good balance of stats (a few peices with toughness, a few with vitality, etc..)

2) Would you consider going for an increase in condition damage (I set bleed on crit) or an increase in crit damage more important? Especially for WvWvW?

Any other advice on wanting this setup is definitely appreciated.

Thanks

I personally wouldn’t go for condition damage with axes, that’s not their main focus even when having the according trait.

If you want to go like that in WvWvW though…well, power+vitality+toughness seems to be the only way to go, because if you really want to go melee against zergs,then you’d better have the survivability to back up that courage.

If you’re focusing on Axes, then odds are you’ll be in the thick of it, and if you’re in the thick of it, dedicating to some Toughness/Vitality will be your friends. The only glass cannons you’ll see are those who have escapes (thieves are good at this), those who opportunity-strike (such as when a surge changes directions and there are stragglers), or those who dedicate multiple utilities to burst-survival to get in, cause mayhem, and get out.

If you don’t want to stand around 95% of the fight, focusing on some survivability stats can mean the difference. You’ll still want to get a few survival utilities (Endure Pain comes to mind, and Balanced Stance has served me well as well), but at least you can do some hit-and-runs more frequently than focusing purely on damage.

If you only set bleeds on crit, it really depends on how much you’re critting, which depends on how much you sink into Precision. I would think that a 33% chance to stack 1 bleed per crit isn’t enough for focusing condition damage, so you’ll want the power/high crits instead with your Axes. Naturally, I could be wrong, especially if you’re going with Swords in your off-weapon or something. However, with 10% inc crit damage traited with an Axe MH, I think you’ll find power/precision/crit damage synergizing with your weapon of choice much better than condition damage.

Also, please note that survival stats won’t make you a tank. If you focus half of your stats on survivability, you still need to play smart. Many people think they should be able to tank loads of damage because of their armor, but you can’t, especially in the ZvZs that occur in WvWvW. You will find it helps in smaller-scale fights, and if you escape with a few thousand health every once in a while, you’ll be able to thank your survivability stats.

However, I encourage you to test as much as your Karma allows. As you make more, try stacking the heck out of a few and see how it changes your gameplay. Maybe it’ll make more sense to your style. At the end of the day, choosing stats that fit your gameplay is more important than choosing the stats someone tells you that you should use.

Thank you both. Great information.
My main play style (at least for now – probably should have mentioned this in my original post) is to usually stay back and shoot the front line with my rifle, build up adrenaline, and F1 them till they are dead or close to dead. That eventually gets them dead and then I move on to the next front line target. In the smaller packs is when I usually switch to axes and whirlwind in there + F1 my target, then scat back to the ranged area, switching back to my rifle. Rinse and repeat.
That being said, I guess I rarely get into the mix of things where I’m getting blasted by multiple people, so toughness may be lowest on my list of what to get.

Based on this conversation and others I’ve read, I think I will focus on power + perception + crit damage for now.

I’m in this for the long haul, so I will definitely end up trying out different stat groupings as karma presents itself to me.

Thanks again to the both of you.

I can’t immagine dual axes to work in WvW, especially when joining the zerg swarm.
Even if you’d pick up some durability you’d die in splitseconds when trying to engage at melee range due to focus fire.

At best you can down someone with your burst after he allready took a beating, isn’t standing in the midst of things and you build up your adrenalin with your rifle

You usally use double axe to quickly build adrenalin with high crit, wirlwind hitting multiple opponents and traits giving you extra adrenalin for this so you can make good use of your eviscerate. In pvp and WvW especially you can’t build adrenalin like this.

When you want to play with Axe/Eviscerate I suggest you put a shield, mace or warhorn in your offhand because it will be much more usefull in these situations.