I’ve been using this build for about a week now in PvP and a slightly modified version(which I’ll go over later) in PvE: gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fIAQNAscUngOk8YzDSBxEZABVALOPSipYJSPEjBMNA;TsAAzCpoyyklILbWuskZtqYUxsCA
I seriously can not recommend this build enough. Let’s go over what it can do for you in bullet point form, eh?
- A solid 23k health pool with an incredible 3k armor
-Can remove up to 7 conditions in a short time period and with a fairly low cooldown
-Can heal for about 9k every 25 seconds
-Offers a block ability that also reflects projectiles
-Bleeds that tick for 118 when self-buffed
-Can stack up to 3 bleeds with a single auto attack about 15% of the time. That is 354 dps for 7 seconds, and then 118 dps for five seconds after that, for a grand total of 3.35k including actual attack damage. Almost every attack with stack at least two bleeds, which is still 2.6k.
- Can stack up to 25 bleeds in about 5 seconds by using impale, riposte, two auto-attacks, and the burst skill. Almost all of those bleeds would be 7+ second bleeds. That’s just shy of 3k dps for 7 seconds, or 21k damage not including white damage, which would add another 1.5k or so. Oh, and most of this damage is AoE. Holy cow!
-Three immobilize abilities on fairly short cooldowns that also give you fury
-Almost as good at range as in melee
-Gives you completely unparalleled group dance-off leadership abilities, as you can shout, “On my mark – shake it – FOR GREAT JUSTICE!” before dropping some phat moves.
That sounds pretty sexy, right? Incredible sustained damage and incredible survivability, healing, and condition removal.
Here’s some tips to use this build effectively in PvP:
-Kite and LoS. The less condition removal your foe has, the less time you need to spend face-to-face with them. Once you’ve stacked up 10+ bleeds – which should take five seconds, tops, try and get out of range or out of sight for the remaining 5-10 seconds of your bleed duration. Use the sword 3 and rifle 2 to immobilize your foe and make this easier.
-Meter your condition removal. If you’re fighting a mesmer, bleed ranger, or another bloody shout warrior, don’t remove a stack of bleeding until it’s over 5 stacks and don’t remove confusion until it’s over 2.
-Against mesmers, LoSing is even more important. It will force their illusions to run at you. Dodge right as they come around the corner and laugh as you evade their entire mind wrack.
-If you can’t LoS a ranged enemy, put the pressure on. You have lots of immobilization abilities and a charge. Use them all to keep the enemy panicking and unable to bring their full artillery to bare. Or to bear, if they’re a ranger, I guess.
-If you’re going ranged against someone, try to open up with impale and then switch to rifle. The rifle has relatively slow bleed application and those extra 4-6 bleeds will matter.
-Remember that you can use your block ability on pulsing AoEs to get that easy riposte off. Also remember that you can reflect projectiles and laugh as a longbow ranger or pistol rogue unloads on themself.
-Learn when to use your shouts. You might want to save ‘For great justice!’ along with your sigil of rage for when you get a high bleed stack up on an enemy that is out of cleansing abilities in order to get that 105 tick bleed up to a 118 tick bleed. Other times, you’ll want to unload all your shouts at once in order to counter some rough burst you failed to dodge.
-Remember to use combo fields. If you can sword-charge through a fire field, you’ll be doing fire damage in addition to bleeds. That’ll take you from 3.35k dps to over 4k dps. As if you didn’t need nerfed already.
-You can drop “On my mark!” for “Fear me!” and try that out. It trades off frequency for quality. Remember that most cleansing abilities can’t be used while the enemy is fleeing, so that’s up to 12k damage you can keep the enemy from preventing. Tasty. “Fear me!” can also be used to save an ally’s life.
-Don’t use your downed 3 ability unless you have a good feeling about being able to use it effectively. It is often more productive to just die and come back faster than it is to take a couple potshots that your foe will recover from before the next fight.
And what’s more! You can convert this guide into an even more effective PvE build with just a couple changes! First, drop the runes of the soldier and replace them with runes of the undead. Because why not bring those 118 ticks to 130+? You can replace one of your shouts with the banner that gives you malice if you hate friendship, but the AoE heals are just so good. You can also replace the 10 points in defense with 10 points in tactics for the 9% increased crit chance or 10 points in strength for the condition duration because 12 second bleeds clearly just aren’t enough.
Any questions, comments, criticisms?
(edited by Daemer.1605)