Guild Wars 2

I always thought swords were condition weapons, how much damage would I lose going over a sword vs axe? Other than the auto attack, axe feels kind of underwhelming and sword appeals more to me. Any builds for swords or is it just all condi?

You can if you want to I did it for about 5 months at release of the game. You can easily get 90% crit chance with a sword with minimal effort in trying to get it with berserker gear. You can get 100% crit chance with a sword easily with berserkers gear as well

In spite of what people will tell you, it’s not too bad as a power weapon or as a more defensively-based power weapon (if that makes sense :P). It has some really great mobility with #2, and constantly applying condis is going to start to burn out your opponent after a while. Also, under the 50% threshold, Final Thrust becomes fantastic.

Sword main hand can totally work as a power weapon, especially when you have some Might stacking, which helps normal and condition damage. Off-hand sword is more of a CD weapon. I posted my build about 20 topics back (“How’s My Build” post). I get a chance for Might on Crit w/ both Sword and GrSw, extra 10% dam to bleeding foes and a 90% crit, which does plenty of damage. I coupled it with a High Immobility which allows me to land the “haymakers” (Flurry, Final Thrust, and 100B). If they pop their condition clears too early, the bleeds get ‘em. I have zero CD gear – all power/crit. It’s been quite effective for me – and fun with all the leap attacks, haymakers, and really short cooldowns.

Its even better in a hybrid setup :0

Swords are a decent power weapon, not really any worse or better than a greatsword TBH. They are very much similar to longbows in the sense that both can be used as condition weapons but have skills that scale decently with power and do a considerable amount of damage.

The auto attack is decent (although weaker than any melee autoattack but not that much weaker) however, it does do its 3rd attack in 1/4 seconds which can make it comparable to say a greatsword and hammer. The #3 hits like a truck as well in a power build.

What are we talking about here? PvE or PvP?

For PvE: Not really worth it. Not that you can’t do well with them, but there’s no real reason to use any weapon set in PvE other than GS (Hundred blades + WW), Longbow (High AoE damage) or Axe/Mace (Highest auto-attack damage + vuln stacking).

For PvP: Completely worth it. One of our best 1 hand weapons for condi OR power (or both). Yes, the auto-attack damage is relatively lower than most, but not that much (specially since you attack fast), and your ability to stay on target due to constant cripples, burst immobilize and savage leap means that your “actual DPS” (i.e.: damage you’re going to put on the target) will be much higher than with most other weapons.

Additionally, while Final Thrust is fairly lacking for PvE (not useful on waves of trash mobs, and too high cooldown to “DPS” a big mob) It’s a fantastic “executioner” move in PvP. Get a target bellow 50% and any burst immobilize/shield bash/Earthshaker/whatever CC over 1 second you land gives you a free Final Thrust, which is damage comparable to a full eviscerate.

Additionally, even on a completely no-condition damage build, don’t underestimate the extra damage you get out of the constant stream of bleeds on the sword. Yes, you won’t kill anyone with the bleeds alone if you have no condi damage, but it’s not uncommon to get 5 or 6+ stacks of bleeds on someone while fighting them normally which, at 8 seconds a pop, is still 1700 – 2040 damage if they’re allowed to run their course… It’s not uncommon to see a target trying to run away be finished by the bleeds you didn’t even realize you put on them.

It’s my weapon of choice when running hammer on a warrior. Earthshaker means a free final thrust + a an auto attack or two, and savage leap gives me the mobility hammer sorely lacks.

Other than that, I’m trying to make it work in a soldier build in spvp.

That’s because with Blademaster you can still keep a decent crit chance without giving up too much armor. I used it before sword rework, I stopped after buff, now I’ll try it again.

Maybe with Might Stacking to beef up all damage.

redslion.9675:

Other than that, I’m trying to make it work in a soldier build in spvp.

That’s because with Blademaster you can still keep a decent crit chance without giving up too much armor. I used it before sword rework, I stopped after buff, now I’ll try it again.

Maybe with Might Stacking to beef up all damage.

Honestly, if you wanna do sword and soldier stats I’d recommend hammer on switch and something like 0/20/20/0/30 (at least 0/20/20/0/20, last 10 points can be moved around at will). That way you can take advantage of unsuspecting foe + Earthshaker to guarantee a 50% crit chance Final Thrust when you land a hammer burst. It’s what I’m running on my War in WvW with great success (although I have mixed stats, not full soldier’s… which you can’t do in sPvP).

ProxyDamage.9826:

redslion.9675:

Other than that, I’m trying to make it work in a soldier build in spvp.

That’s because with Blademaster you can still keep a decent crit chance without giving up too much armor. I used it before sword rework, I stopped after buff, now I’ll try it again.

Maybe with Might Stacking to beef up all damage.

Honestly, if you wanna do sword and soldier stats I’d recommend hammer on switch and something like 0/20/20/0/30 (at least 0/20/20/0/20, last 10 points can be moved around at will). That way you can take advantage of unsuspecting foe + Earthshaker to guarantee a 50% crit chance Final Thrust when you land a hammer burst. It’s what I’m running on my War in WvW with great success (although I have mixed stats, not full soldier’s… which you can’t do in sPvP).

I’d rather not touch hammer to avoid trashtalk.

Longbro is as imba, but it’s less anoying because it doesn’t stunlock.

I realized that against enemies such as s/d thieves you need some hard cc, though. If not, they’ll just keep evading, and you won’t hit reliable damage.

redslion.9675:

to avoid trashtalk.

…wat…?

… You’re intentionally under-performing so some random idiot on the internet doesn’t call you names or something?

…whatever floats your boat I guess…

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redslion.9675:

to avoid trashtalk.

…wat…?

… You’re intentionally under-performing so some random idiot on the internet doesn’t call you names or something?

…whatever floats your boat I guess…

But… but hammer feels so OP…

I’ll get even worse than I actually am if I use it(

redslion.9675:

ProxyDamage.9826:

redslion.9675:

to avoid trashtalk.

…wat…?

… You’re intentionally under-performing so some random idiot on the internet doesn’t call you names or something?

…whatever floats your boat I guess…

But… but hammer feels so OP…

I’ll get even worse than I actually am if I use it(

Hammers not even OP. nothing to it has been changed from launch other than the dec 10 nerf.

redslion.9675:

But… but hammer feels so OP…

I’ll get even worse than I actually am if I use it(

Warrior weapons have literally been the same since the launch of the game except for the sword which had a minor switch up a few patches back along with the stun on Skull Crack getting a 1 second increase. They just recently lowered the damage on Hammer (didn’t change any skills minus the mobility aspect of 4) which effectively did nothing.

People just wanted something to yell at and Warriors are the easiest to hit since we don’t’ have perma vigor. We might have immunity to things every 60 seconds for 4-8 seconds but that doesn’t compare to being immune to everything for 1 second every 5 seconds.

even in power builds if you consider the bleeding damage then Sword Auto is not bad at all with more bleed stacks it can surpass GS auto damage, plus the cripple on auto makes it way better than GS/Axe auto.

Savage Leap a gap closer and a cripple, flurry beast immobilize skill ,Final Thrust an Eviscerate that doesn’t consume adrenaline and you wonder why people use Axe instead of Sword.