Guild Wars 2

I recently just got 80 and I’ve been grinding dungeons randomly for items and currency. I honestly want to choose a build or two and stick with it. I’m looking to do DPS in PVE, which seems like GS/, axe/mace is the only good option. Is there alternatives just as good? Or perhaps I’m looking to play a ?/warhorn support. But I haven’t quite found a steady build yet to follow. So I’m looking for some alternative strong DPS build and a support. Thanks in advance.

Axe/Warhorn or Sword/Warhorn with 30 in Tactics, use 2 banners, FGJ, Deep Breathing, Inspiring Banners, and Empower Allies. Wear full berserker gear. You’ll add huge amount of DPS to your group with the banners, EA, and FGJ. Your personal DPS will be fairly decent, and you’ll do excellent condition removal/conversion with the warhorn as well as providing nearly permanent vigor to your group.

I used to go healing shouts with soldier runes but then I found that I was switching out of shouts so often to use the banners and stability utilities that it was wasted. Other than FGJ none of the shouts are all that great.

Whatever you do don’t wear cleric’s gear on warrior in PvE!

Yaki.9563:

Axe/Warhorn or Sword/Warhorn with 30 in Tactics, use 2 banners, FGJ, Deep Breathing, Inspiring Banners, and Empower Allies. Wear full berserker gear. You’ll add huge amount of DPS to your group with the banners, EA, and FGJ. Your personal DPS will be fairly decent, and you’ll do excellent condition removal/conversion with the warhorn as well as providing nearly permanent vigor to your group.

I used to go healing shouts with soldier runes but then I found that I was switching out of shouts so often to use the banners and stability utilities that it was wasted. Other than FGJ none of the shouts are all that great.

Whatever you do don’t wear cleric’s gear on warrior in PvE!

Thanks, that’s exactly the information I was looking for. Other than 30 in Tactics, where should rest of the points go? Can you use the into the mist calculator to show me? Thanks again.

30 in tactics is a waste. 30/0/0/10/30 is enough offensive support to your team through empower allies, FGJ and banners (of disc/strength).

banner CD trait is not worth it because most fights shouldn’t last long enough for banners to recharge and between boss /important fights there are normally long enough gaps for banners to go off cd.

the only support that you’re missing is the condition removal/cleansing through warhorn skills. normally the guardian takes over the role of party-wide condition removal because the condition cleansing traits are located fairly conveniently in lines that are already attractive.

however, if you are hellbent on taking warhorn condition removal I would probably suggest a build like 30/20/0/20/0 (which lacks fast hands + loses out on a lot of damage bonuses) or 30/0/0/20/20 (which has terrible crit chance). I’m not sure which is less detrimental to your personal DPS.

Roll 30/25/0/0/15 if you don’t have a proper group, you’ll get might stacking off of greatsword.

Use your sword and warhorn for skipping sections to move faster (swapping to gs for whirlwind/rush) and if you are pre-fight might stacking then warhorn 5 blasts fire fields, same for longbow 3, just make sure to swap back to gs + axe/mace before the fight actually starts.

Full berserker too, don’t use cleric or some crap like that.

30-0-0-20-20
Warhorn is awesome condi removal, and gives booms everytime you remove something.
also insipiring banners is good.

iWinter.8496:

I recently just got 80 and I’ve been grinding dungeons randomly for items and currency. I honestly want to choose a build or two and stick with it. I’m looking to do DPS in PVE, which seems like GS/, axe/mace is the only good option. Is there alternatives just as good? Or perhaps I’m looking to play a ?/warhorn support. But I haven’t quite found a steady build yet to follow. So I’m looking for some alternative strong DPS build and a support. Thanks in advance.

gs is great for dps in dungeons. also rifle is extremely good for dps as well and it’s ranged.

guanlongwucaii.3162:

the only support that you’re missing is the condition removal/cleansing through warhorn skills. normally the guardian takes over the role of party-wide condition removal because the condition cleansing traits are located fairly conveniently in lines that are already attractive.

Warhorn is far better than guardian condition removal. I’m also slightly amused that you expect Guardian’s to sacrifice their DPS while you aren’t willing to sacrifice yours.

however, if you are hellbent on taking warhorn condition removal I would probably suggest a build like 30/20/0/20/0 (which lacks fast hands + loses out on a lot of damage bonuses) or 30/0/0/20/20 (which has terrible crit chance). I’m not sure which is less detrimental to your personal DPS.

15% less crit is terrible? You’re not into exaggerating at all are you?

Yaki.9563:

guanlongwucaii.3162:

the only support that you’re missing is the condition removal/cleansing through warhorn skills. normally the guardian takes over the role of party-wide condition removal because the condition cleansing traits are located fairly conveniently in lines that are already attractive.

Warhorn is far better than guardian condition removal. I’m also slightly amused that you expect Guardian’s to sacrifice their DPS while you aren’t willing to sacrifice yours.

however, if you are hellbent on taking warhorn condition removal I would probably suggest a build like 30/20/0/20/0 (which lacks fast hands + loses out on a lot of damage bonuses) or 30/0/0/20/20 (which has terrible crit chance). I’m not sure which is less detrimental to your personal DPS.

15% less crit is terrible? You’re not into exaggerating at all are you?

15% less crit is huge in PvE losing that much is a big drop in warrior damage and is therefore quite terrible.

guardian loses less dps by taking condition removal (particularly through absolute resolution) than warrior does by taking it. right now the 30/0 build is extremely tight for trait points, and taking 10 points out of any line will wreck your DPS.

on the other hand, taking virtues line in guardian is actually good for damage because of the 25 minor trait (and because you’re already taking points in virtues for consecrations), and if you go 30 virtues you can take unscathed contender, which is a situational but pretty strong DPS boost.

Or you could bring an engineer, which has a wide-range 2-condition removal that also heals and applies regen, on just its heal skill. Add Elixir Gun and you have another AOE condition removal on 20s CD that also heals.

If you need more condition removal than that, consider taking a mesmer with Phantasmal Disenchanter or something. Guardian condition removal really isn’t that good.

Heiltdo.2891:

30-0-0-20-20
Warhorn is awesome condi removal, and gives booms everytime you remove something.
also insipiring banners is good.

I love this build, call it my skald build, I’m never in these perfect groups with perfect scenarios, with perfect players, this is a great combo of solid deeps and tons of condi removal, I really do love it =)

GS / Axe + Mace is the way to go for DPS build.
If you need a guide:

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/83915-axemace-dps-build-for-dungeons-and-fractals-62513/

Where are dungeon posters who will immediate tear apart people who claim to have “good” DPS on their builds? I mean Banner Healing? Main Hand Sword? Is this a joke?
The worst part is you spread this cancer to new players who don’t know any better.
If you’re that worried about conditions then slap on Shake It Off or Signet of Stamina, hell you could even go Lyssa Runes and spam Signet of Rage on a reduced cooldown.

Agree. People should stop posting about “DPS builds” when they are not. I keep sawing Warrior with builds that make me cry but I stopped explaining, people are to stubborn to change their mind.
(I was stubborn about shout-healing too but at the end I saw the light and woke up XD)

Dolan.3071:

Where are dungeon posters who will immediate tear apart people who claim to have “good” DPS on their builds? I mean Banner Healing? Main Hand Sword? Is this a joke?
The worst part is you spread this cancer to new players who don’t know any better.
If you’re that worried about conditions then slap on Shake It Off or Signet of Stamina, hell you could even go Lyssa Runes and spam Signet of Rage on a reduced cooldown.

I guess OP’s question falls inline with what I’ve been wondering about my warrior. Is pure DPS build the only way to go for warrior? I have a DPS guard, and blasting fire field, buffing ageis, stack blind/vuln and etc feel a lot more fun and engaging than my warrior’s spamming GS/axe attacks. I guess my problem with warrior is that going full DPS just puts me to sleep.

My build have “terrible” DPS, I think 0/20/0/30/20. I’m enjoying the horn condition removal and my banners. I do have full zerk gears. I was a brainless noob that went full offensive and kept downing before I switched to vit build. The last 20 points were added as a crutch a year ago to let me vengeance res, which I’m probably going to take out. I’m just not looking for a pure DPS build since I have guard for that, maybe 20/20/0/30/0?

The most important question is with whom will you be playing. If you are playing within an organized, predictable group – like a consistent set of guild people – you should be maxing your own DPS and leaving most support to guards, just throwing down a banner and FGJ now and then. The build for that is 30/0/0/10/30, the axe/mace build people have been linking.

If, however, you are not playing with a predictable group – you are just PuG’ing dungeons, or playing with a casual guild not running min/max builds – then the all-out DPS builds will leave you doing more damage but your party overall doing less. 30/0/0/20/20 makes more sense there. You lose 10% crit damage and 15% crit chance (plus access to fast hands, making it slower to switch to GS for 100b) by taking the 10 points out of discipline and putting them in tactics. In exchange you get:

- Teamwide condition removal/conversion on two separate skills. If you don’t have a guard in the group, or you do but the guard is dumb (not uncommon) this is tremendous.
- A freed up utility slot for a second banner. If your group has no dedicated condition remover, you are stuck with shake it off for everything except immobilize and cripple (assuming you are running with warhorn.) With warhorn condition removal, you can safely run both banner of discipline and strength yourself, plus For Great Justice.
- A little bit of boon conversion if your party is taking a lot of conditions, though this is nothing special overall because most of the boons you get aren’t great.

Party condition removal plus two banners instead of one for your average PuG group with sub-optimal builds, in my experience, gets you more speed than doing a little more critting yourself. (Though the people calling the drop “terrible” are exaggerating – the difference will be large only in groups where you always have high might stacks and perma-fury, which is to say not in PuG’s.)

^ Fast Hands is the 15 point minor trait so you would still have it with 20 in Discipline.
You don’t need a dedicated condition remover as most conditions are harmless, like I’d rather just suffer through Subject Alpha’s burning than drop Banner of Strength, Discipline and FGJ which would kitten my party’s damage and make him take longer. Other professions have much lower trade offs as far as utilities go, but a Warrior just can’t afford to waste utilities on such things.
Also you shouldn’t even be using Warhorn during combat because you lose the damage boost from Dual Wielding.
20 points in Tactics won’t be viable until they push Empower Allies up to Master tier, and even that’s very much debatable.

@ Okeana, full DPS is the way to go for any profession. Building for survivability makes the encounter take longer which means more chance of botching a dodge or running out of “oh kitten” buttons which is more detrimental to party survivability than building to burn down bosses in seconds.

Dolan.3071:

Where are dungeon posters who will immediate tear apart people who claim to have “good” DPS on their builds? I mean Banner Healing? Main Hand Sword? Is this a joke?
The worst part is you spread this cancer to new players who don’t know any better.
If you’re that worried about conditions then slap on Shake It Off or Signet of Stamina, hell you could even go Lyssa Runes and spam Signet of Rage on a reduced cooldown.

Someone didn’t read the OP….you.

Conditions are not necessarily harmless if you’re not in a situation where you burn bosses down in seconds. The only place where PuG’s ever did that was in CoF p1 groups, which is kind of moot now. I’ve seen people go down to burning in SE, poison in TA, and immobilize/cripple type conditions can wreck parties in skipping situations. I have run with warriors who don’t bring a condition removal – if they are not good at timing their heals it can go very badly.

Good point about dual wielding, and there isn’t a great trait to slot in there otherwise. I’d still maintain that with totally random groups – have you used the LFG tool, lololol? – that being able to team condi-remove, blast finisher, help swiftness through skipping trash mobs, etc. is a reasonable trade for less DPS yourself. I only bring it up because I see far too many people – of all classes, not just warriors – consider nothing but themselves and don’t think about their role in a team. Guards with no condition removal who never pop virtues, ele’s who don’t stack any might, etc.

You’re right also that the Empower Allies tier change will certainly shake up any recommendations for the best dungeon builds. It was bound to happen – the equivalent of almost another full banner’s worth of support on a Tier 1 passive trait while still being compatible with the highest DPS build never made sense. And I don’t like shout heals – too much DPS loss, the shouts themselves aren’t great, and you can’t really heal a bad party through an encounter anyway – so I don’t really care if shout traits are buffed. I expect OP will have plenty of theories to read come October 15.

Dolan.3071:

.
@ Okeana, full DPS is the way to go for any profession. Building for survivability makes the encounter take longer which means more chance of botching a dodge or running out of “oh kitten” buttons which is more detrimental to party survivability than building to burn down bosses in seconds.

I’m aware of that now. Back then though, I didn’t know how to dodge and went down all the time. Tho I’m probably still going to keep horn cleanse, and possibly banner heal too. I’m just looking for a more variant I guess, since my guard is already full zerk DPS build.

@ Stinson,
I’m actually very ‘pro Warhorn’ in organised runs because of the consistent fire fields to blast and you don’t have any Might stacking issues so Greatsword isn’t necessary. That and on demand swiftness is amazing for running sections. Though even in PuGs I just swap out Greatsword for Warhorn, something I only started doing when I realised just how rough other classes have it in terms of mobility, then switch back before combat. Also yes that LFG tool! I posted like an elitist scumbag to try and filter out the baddies, still had PVT carebears joining me <_< And then of course I took my no vigor, no weapon skill evades Lightning Hammer Ele into CoE and was surprised that Alpha didn’t die before I ran out of dodges xD that’ll teach me.

@ Yaki,
You support your team by helping them kill things quickly

@ Okeano,
Sorry for getting your name wrong xD
I think if you’re looking to try something different then maybe a new profession? There are good viable damage builds out there for pretty much everything other than Necromancer, all of them with their own unique playstyle (obviously the ultimate goal is still DPS though, because that’s all dungeons are, DPS checks.)

Dolan.3071:

@ Okeano,
Sorry for getting your name wrong xD
I think if you’re looking to try something different then maybe a new profession? There are good viable damage builds out there for pretty much everything other than Necromancer, all of them with their own unique playstyle (obviously the ultimate goal is still DPS though, because that’s all dungeons are, DPS checks.)

Yeah, I made a Mes, was liking it at the start messing around with my scepter/staff , go on the forum… s,s/s,p wuuuutt??? facepalm

Dolan is right, DPS is the way to for go all classes.
I run the full DPS in any party, PUG or organized. Faster you kill, safer the fight.

About conditions: you have Guardians for that. If not, then take SoS as third utility or Mending as healing skill (I like Mending a lot in TA for example).

Yaki.9563:

Axe/Warhorn or Sword/Warhorn with 30 in Tactics, use 2 banners, FGJ, Deep Breathing, Inspiring Banners, and Empower Allies. Wear full berserker gear. You’ll add huge amount of DPS to your group with the banners, EA, and FGJ. Your personal DPS will be fairly decent, and you’ll do excellent condition removal/conversion with the warhorn as well as providing nearly permanent vigor to your group.

Why do you need 30 in tactics to use Banners, EA and FGJ? This is absolutely horrible advice.

I’ve read your Guardian forum posts and it’s clear you advocate people bringing useless support stats/traits/gear. Then when someone points out youre wrong, you say, “i know dps is better but that means the game is broken.” Whether or not you think the game is broken, if you know dps is better why do you advocate support stuff? And why do you continue to support it after being shown to be wrong?

Perplexing.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Yaki.9563:

Axe/Warhorn or Sword/Warhorn with 30 in Tactics, use 2 banners, FGJ, Deep Breathing, Inspiring Banners, and Empower Allies. Wear full berserker gear. You’ll add huge amount of DPS to your group with the banners, EA, and FGJ. Your personal DPS will be fairly decent, and you’ll do excellent condition removal/conversion with the warhorn as well as providing nearly permanent vigor to your group.

Why do you need 30 in tactics to use Banners, EA and FGJ? This is absolutely horrible advice.

I’ve read your Guardian forum posts and it’s clear you advocate people bringing useless support stats/traits/gear. Then when someone points out youre wrong, you say, “i know dps is better but that means the game is broken.” Whether or not you think the game is broken, if you know dps is better why do you advocate support stuff? And why do you continue to support it after being shown to be wrong?

Perplexing.

With mantras getting a super buff next patch for AOE condition removal and stability, there’s no reason to take a guardian anymore except as raw DPS. Rip guardians. They had a good run I guess.

Replace Guardian with Ranger.
This thread is pretty much over so completely off topic question. Despite being my first toon I’m only gearing up my Ranger now. I read through the traits and pets, asked around and ended up going 20/15/25/10/0 – I ,VII/I/VI,VII/IV with Sword/Warhorn + Torch w/ Quickening Zephyr, Flame Trap, Frost Spirit and Rampage as One. Going with Jaguar + Jungle Stalker. I was going to practice with PuGs as there isn’t really an established place for one in guild runs, and was just hoping for some insight or something I’ve overlooked when trying to min/max (I thought torch + flame trap for the fire fields though I seem to only have one blast finisher myself.)

Dolan.3071:

Replace Guardian with Ranger.
This thread is pretty much over so completely off topic question. Despite being my first toon I’m only gearing up my Ranger now. I read through the traits and pets, asked around and ended up going 20/15/25/10/0 – I ,VII/I/VI,VII/IV with Sword/Warhorn + Torch w/ Quickening Zephyr, Flame Trap, Frost Spirit and Rampage as One. Going with Jaguar + Jungle Stalker. I was going to practice with PuGs as there isn’t really an established place for one in guild runs, and was just hoping for some insight or something I’ve overlooked when trying to min/max (I thought torch + flame trap for the fire fields though I seem to only have one blast finisher myself.)

20/30/5/15/0 is what I have found to be the best combo in general for rangers. Sw/Wh and Sw/Axe, and swap in GS if the boss is one that needs to be circled constantly, like the Berserker Abomination in Arah P2.

Also, if your party is lacking in Fury, Moa is a very good addition instead of Jaguar. It is also a super tanky pet in general and has decent DPS to boot, so it’s not a bad pet just to have on hand.

Oh okay is that any Moa that does that?

So what’s the go with Axe? Does #5 out DPS auto attack or is it #4/both :/

Edit: Trap potency I completely missed that one!

Axe whirling defense offers projectile reflection and looks cool.

When I asked obal on his ranger DPS youtube video he said it doesn’t out-DPS auto though.

So it’s about as good at damage as Warrior OH Axe? Though I can see the benefit of a projectile absorb in some situations for yourself (and your stacked up team too?)

Also I tend to agree that 15% crit damage and 150 precision w/ trap CD reduction is better than another scholar buff + OH CD reduction + Survival CD reduction for Quickening Zephyr and a bunch of useless stats. Well maybe in long drawn out fights the more frequent quickness and Warhorn blasts might come out on top, I don’t really know.

Dolan.3071:

Oh okay is that any Moa that does that?

So what’s the go with Axe? Does #5 out DPS auto attack or is it #4/both :/

Edit: Trap potency I completely missed that one!

You use it for Path of Scars, which is guaranteed to hit twice (it automatically bounces back once it hits an obstruction, unlike most “returns to you” skills). It’s a free CC and good damage. Whirling Defense is only if you want to stack vuln for your party, the damage is pretty bad.

I’ve tried the 30/0/0/20/20 build because it doesn’t sounds too bad on paper.
However when I’ve played it I’ve realized I’m not only losing the 5% damage from Dual Wielding, 10% crit damage and 15% crit chance but when I’m using the Warhorn skills I have to stop attacking, losing even more damage, something a Guardian with Absolute Resolution or Pure of Voice doesn’t have to.

Tactics 20 may become useful when Empower Allies becomes a Master trait, but right now it seems as a waste to put so many points in it.