Guild Wars 2

When I started playing this game, I already knew what build I wanted to have when I got to endgame: the tanked-out shout warrior that specializes in lockdown in favor of actual damage. Basically, the support/lockdown warrior that is a pain to kill.

I’ve recently arrived to a problem in my build, though, being that the only two weapons I’ve decided I REALLY like are the mace/shield. I actually leveled from 1-80 with this weapon set always present and my secondary set varied. That being said, I have general problems selecting my traits in the toughness line because the only mace trait and both shield traits reside there and I would like to have all three… But I would be using that grandmaster slot on something, well, not grandmaster.

Would you guys think that me selecting Sundering Mace over Defy Pain or Spiked Armor would be a bad idea? I am toying with the idea of playing in sPvP and WvW with my secondary set being sword/mace in order to maximize the “wasted trait” by having it active in both sets.

On another not, I have a very similar problem with the fact that I like a warhorn in my secondary in WvW, but I’ve already come to love shouts…

It seems to me like the shield and block traits are more important to you than your mace.

I would take the retaliation and not worry about the mace skill. Yeah, cooldowns on mace 2 and 3 would be nice, but are hardly necessary. Your 2-3-4-5-F1 probably covers the 10 seconds between the first bit and second bit of retaliation, so anyone who gets in a fight with you has 20 seconds in which it really sucks for them to try and damage you.

Personally, I did go for the mace skill, but we’re trying to achieve different things with our builds. I have the warhorn and mace traits, alongside the two banner traits in tactics, so my build is more support-oriented than purely defensive/lockdown.

It’s weird how people say there’s very little diversity in GW2 builds, when we have most of our points in the same places and even use the same mainhand but have very different playstyles.

It’s not a problem to use the 3rd slot for a non-Grandmaster trait that you feel synergizes better with your build. I do so in another trait line in my main build.

Why is Defy Pain quite highly recommended for many builds? I think most of all it’s because the warrior profession has very few defensive mechanics that scale well to being under focus fire. Essentially only Endure Pain, Defy Pain and blocking. Of these, Defy Pain is the worst. It cannot be used pre-emptively or to cover a vulnerable moment when you desire to do so. I’m not sure if it functions as a stun breaker as one might expect from the description but in practice it rarely happens to break a stun. It is also predictable yet a little unreliable unless you can keep track of the invisible cooldown. I kind of want to avoid the trait because I feel it’ll take a lot of practice to avoid wasting my other defenses when it pops.

How do the different warrior builds make use of Defy Pain?
– Extra seconds to burn the enemy’s health down. (Mostly not relevant for your sustained build.)
– Extra seconds to use high mobility to escape or set a kiting distance. (Unlikely without Greatsword in your secondary set and even then seems to not be your aim.)
– Extra seconds to reach another defensive cooldown and keep cycling your sustain.

That last one could be very relevant for you. However as I believe you’re going for high toughness, how much damage is Defy Pain mitigating for you? Less than for low toughness builds because some of the damage would’ve been reduced anyway. Meanwhile any interrupts and conditions are still getting through. Also if you happen to stunlock the main damage dealer, shield stance or use up your dodges during the Defy Pain then it wasn’t very effective. You’d have get very used to relying on it or you’ll be faced with the same problem that I have, yet keep the internal cooldown in mind.

Spiked Armor is generally considered a bit lackluster though I haven’t tested it very long personally.

I cannot speak about how important the cooldown trait is for the mace but depending on how willing you are to use the other weapon set, they aren’t generally must-haves – at least for the cooldown part alone.

Hah, no kidding huh Corrian? That, in my opinion, is one of the strengths in this game as playing one of a possibility of three approaches to your class has never been fun for me. But I will try out Spiked Armor for sure, your point about the lockdown gaps is actually very good and I hadn’t thought of it that way. As an auxiliary question, does retaliation scale with power or cond. damage?

Ksielvin, your post was also very helpful, I guess I always took Defy Pain because it “made the most sense,” and what you said about not being able to rely on it consistently is pretty much my problem with it exactly. It does function as a stun break, I sparred with my brother and it did happen to break a stun once, but that factor is an order of magnitude lower than our other issue with respect to its reliability. With your info I’m just going to have to go ahead and try out the mace/shield and sword/mace idea to see if it feels right. If the cooldown reduction is as useful as the similar trait for shields, I may find that I really like it. Of course, at the expense of the warhorn in my secondary set… Unless I take the mace trait and then use the warhorn for weakness then switch back to primary… Bah, the tweaking will never end.

Thanks, guys.