Guild Wars 2

Hey guys !

Just wanted to introduce you to this post-patch version of the good ol’ axe shield greatsword build. Here’s a video of the build in action in wvw, and I’ll go over the build itself really quickly down below.

The build is a 6 0 3 1 3.

It takes advantage of the new strength grand master trait. With the critical damage nerf, and me not willing to invest into a more glassy mix of gear, this trait comes in really handy. I have a heavy mix of cavalier with a few pieces of berzerker mixed in, as well as one knight and one valkyrie’s piece, thus having fairly low crit chance. It allows me to deliver high damage eviscerates while having 1850ish toughness and 24k hp. Overall, this spec is really poke-oriented and can sustain itself through most situation, and get away, in needed, while having a few deadly combos and single target counter pressure, as well as a rather high cleave damage. However, it lacks condi removal. It has indeed NONE ! Berzerker stance and lemongrass poultry soup are enough in most cases, as you have to play very agressively in general, in order to keep ennemies at bay.
Finally, as with any poke oriented spec, good positionning is key. Know when to go in and deliver your damage, and know exactly when to go out and kite (abusing line of sight if possible) and ennemies will have a very hard time getting rid of you.

A few explanations for the trait choices :

You wanna grab 3 in defense for adrenal health, which, coupled to your healing signet, is a very strong sustained passive heal, even after the nerf of healing signet. It synergizes also well with the weapon set as the only burst skill you will use is eviscerate, ideally to force people on the defensive, thus less preoccupied by damaging you.
It also allows you to take dogged march in adept which, coupled with lemongrass poultry soup and melandru runes, will grant you a snare, chill and immobilize duration reduction of 94%.

1 point into tactics will grant you leg specialist, which is what makes axe warrior work. Bladetrail and Throw Axe allow you to set up nasty combos. For example, a very simple one : Bladetrail into eviscerate. Simple, and kitten effective.
Use your cripples smartly and nothing will get away from you.

3 discipline is self-explanatory. I can’t imagine a single good build not taking fast hands. It’s just way too good. The adept trait trait there is up to you, I personnally like Warrior’s Sprint alot, and use it in every single one of my builds.

A quick word about endure pain. In my own opinion, bullrush is needed for axe shield greatsword to work. You can do a lot of different plays with bladetrail and bullrush timings, into rush/eviscerate, or just hundred blades, etc. Having shield makes up for not having Endure pain. The gear mix also explains why this build doesn’t deliver as much damage as you could potentially get with a very offensive mix. In my opinion, having strong defensive stats are the backbone of any good roaming build for warrior. It also allows you to take more fights, which would result in your death if you had a squishier set.

Here’s a link to the complete build, also featuring the gear I use :

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAR3ejMdU2ZZIWhwJigfgC3tbOAGgqXXak6IA-TFTBABWqCSQ7PQpqGRcBAQTJ4VKN8UlguUm1xRAAT1A04gAAwDAgMAMjB-w

Finally, you can adapt this build to sPvP. I personnally like to go 6 0 0 1 6 however, going full glass and dropping the 3 points from defense into discipline. Not having to worry about any potential zerg chasing you down, and not having buff food, I don’t see the point of going 15 defense only as you don’t get any of the huge benefits you gain from it in wvw. It’s a really good build for punishing mistakes by delivering tremendously high damage eviscerates and cleave.
However, this type of assassin warrior is way harder to pull off than a standard hammer longbow build, while also being outshined by better assassins, such as thief or mesmer, and thus won’t be as worth having altogether.

There you go guys, hope you enjoyed and will try this build yourself. If you have any question, feel free to ask and I’ll do my best to answer.
Peace !

KarsaiB.9475:

If you have any question, feel free to ask and I’ll do my best to answer.

Why not just use a Sigil of Intelligence that gives three guaranteed crits and put those 30pts into a line that actually has useful traits; Burst Mastery, Cleansing Ire, Mobile Strikes, etc.

Because first of all, the idea of the build is to utilize the new trait.

Next, because untraited greatsword deals terrible damage and I don’t want to utilize it for mobility only, esp considering how low my crit chance is. Also, just applying an intel sigil would make the build a super one trick pony that has no flexibility and is boring to play. I’m playing hambow enough in tournaments to not play with that kitten. And I’d lose battle or energy which would lower my overall damage outside of eviscerate, which, again, I don’t want to happen, or hinder my survivability by alot.

Next again, because all those 0 0 6 2 6 schemes are used over and over and over and over and over and over and I’m sick of it. Trying different alternatives. Also, there’s no reason to go past 20 in defense with this and then again, I tend to dodge rather well so I don’t feel like I need cleansing ire with this build. I find it even rather useless with full melee builds. Also, concerning discipline, going past 15 only gives me damage multipliers that I also get in strength. And the adrenaline cost reduction is useless as I only use one of the 2 burst skills.

As a side note, going that deep in strength allows for the great fortitude trait to actually make a big difference, as I reach 24k hp with just valkyrie boots, the rest being cavalier and zerker.

Finally, before you make a judgement on how useful traits are, please try them for yourself.

While I do appreciate you trying out the new grandmaster trait (in which we seem to be void of any good ones) I think this is just another one of those traits that in theory it could be good, but however it doesn’t pan out in the end. I tried to make a good build utilizing this trait, testing it out and what not but quite simply there are better builds.

You also mention having great defensive stats being the backbone to a good roaming warrior build, but you justify not having Cleansing Ire by having great dodge timing and positioning, just found that a bit odd ... but anyways.

To me, this build is already a one-trick pony build as it is, with little flexibility. You rely on critting eviscerate to deal most of your damage in a fight and justify having a low crit chance because of it.

Other possible options include going 20 into arms for Unsuspecting Foe. Since I notice you Shield Bash -> Eviscerate quite a bit, getting the 50% crit chance on stun, 10% crit chance on burst, 20% crit chance from fury and 20% base crit chance will give you a 100% chance to crit. You are free to put the 10 extra points into Defense, Strength, whatever which would allow you to drop some precision from your gear due to the innate precision you get from Arms and invest in some more power.

And you could also put a Sigil of intelligence in your axe (just replace the 5% sigil of force, put the energy/battle sigil in your greatsword instead). You can just use bladetrail -> switch weps -> (throwing axe/shield bash) -> eviscerate or w/e combo.

However, I would never run any build that relies on one skill to do the truckload of damage, but that is personally just me liking have more well-rounded versatility. Not saying that you can’t have success running this build (which you have seemed to have), but to me there are better builds. The adrenaline you get from Cleansing Ire is huge as well in addition to condition removal. Just going 10 into strength instead of 30 is like a 140 HP difference. Even then, you could switch out melandrus for Hoelbrak/Strength. I also disagree with the notion that untraited greatsword deals terrible damage, maybe for this build however because like you said you have low crit chance.

I personally run a 10/0/30/0/30 build, but that is a totally different wep set, but with axe I would run a 30/0/20/0/20 with Berserker’s Power, or 20/0/30/0/20, or if I wanted leg specialist 20/0/20/10/20. But to me Leg Specialist isn’t all too necessary as I either like to wait for the opponent to dodge then use eviscerate, bulls charge then eviscerate or shield bash into eviscerate. You can have similar tanky stats without having to give up so much critical chance.