Guild Wars 2

With the buffs to offhand sword (torment, the reworking of riposte), I was wondering if it was a definitively better offhand than the shield. Any thoughts?

I use it for fun but at most times the shield will be a far superior offhand.

I’ve a Sw/Sw – Mace/Shi Spec condy spec I run in WvW for a Condy set. I love it.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-t;4NKkP0XEkL-60;9;4J9J-J26-2;048;229-TJW6U;1bUytbUyt10kw7EN1U0;0Vw5xax5y5zay52HWAN2s;5V0;9;9;9;9;9;2V6s5u

Half the CD on the block, and triggers Dual Wielding trait.

Yup.

It really depends on how you want to play.

Off-hand sword will give you a nice bleed + torment. Great for sustained damage.
Shield will give you a stun. It locks the enemy player from moving, dodging and attacking. Great for burst.

Sword is best paired with Sword. MH sword has tons of cripple. MH sword’s adrenaline does immobilize as well, so you don’t really need the stun.

Axe is best paired with shield. The problem with axe is that the adrenaline skill is easily dodgable. You need a stun to go with it.

runeblade.7514:

It really depends on how you want to play.

Off-hand sword will give you a nice bleed + torment. Great for sustained damage.
Shield will give you a stun. It locks the enemy player from moving, dodging and attacking. Great for burst.

Sword is best paired with Sword. MH sword has tons of cripple. MH sword’s adrenaline does immobilize as well, so you don’t really need the stun.

Axe is best paired with shield. The problem with axe is that the adrenaline skill is easily dodgable. You need a stun to go with it.

This is pretty much what I expected to hear, although I think this is still a worthwhile discussion to be having. Lately, I have been running sword/sword + longbow to pretty good effect. I have played axe/shield in the past, but I find the lack of mobility with axe to be problematic in some situations (e.g. running away from a zerg or locking-down a single target), even with the shield offhand. Still, I agree that it is a viable setup for the reasons you state above.

I guess one other question is whether sword/shield is as versatile as sword/sword, or if sword main-hand’s better pairing is simply the second sword.

@Ath: I am curious as to why you think the shield would be superior in general. Could you say more?

I think Shield will be overall more useful SPvP speaking:

• 3s of block rather than one attack
• 2s stun (with Sigil of Paralyzation) which will go down to 1,15s BUT it is a small but useful gap closer with a short stun that helps you to start the combo
  I would to see dual wielding Sword though :P

Oni Link.4621:

I think Shield will be overall more useful SPvP speaking:

• 3s of block rather than one attack
• 2s stun (with Sigil of Paralyzation) which will go down to 1,15s BUT it is a small but useful gap closer with a short stun that helps you to start the combo
  I would to see dual wielding Sword though :P

On your first point: It is true that the shield has a longer, solid block. Remember, however, that the reworking of riposte is such that the blocking with offhand sword is now no longer canceled until you block a melee attack. I think you still make a solid point, but I also wonder in what situations you would place yourself where you are going to be blocking a slew of melee (as opposed to projectile) attacks and not trying to kite. Perhaps when being pursued by HS-spamming thieves?

On your second point: This is a huge selling point of the shield, imho, and not to be overlooked. The only reason this point might receive less attention is that, given the stun-heavy warrior meta, you might expect opponents to carry tons of stun-break. In PvE, you also have to worry about stun-resistant/immune mobs. In these cases, you get a gap-closer that deals decent damage, but that is about it. On the other hand, one might question if such niche cases weigh heavily enough against this point in the shield’s favor.

Good notes!

I use to love running Sword(or mace. I loved having two parries while out of endurance)/ Sword + Longbow. The amount of bleeding and burning damage you could put out with sword 4 and longbow 5 into F1 combo was a lot of fun. I think switching it to torment was a big damage nerf. Also, needing to go into tactics for the increased longbow range(pretty necessary for WvW. You could probably get away with skipping it in sPvP) just makes any possible build combination lacking in some form or another. If they moved longbow traits to the power/ condition duration line, then it would have good build opportunity, but for now it just doesn’t do enough damage compared to other condition professions to warrent not going tanky/ CC bot with condition removal.

You’re better off going berserker and axe/shied + rifle or something. Condition warriors (with longbow) are kinda messy right now.

I know a lot of people use the longbow to great effect in WvW/ sPvP, but my bottom line is the trait build for sword/sword + longbow is really clunky, so you either just bring longbow for the utility/ pressure and use a hammer with it and forget condition damage all together or just use sword/shield and set up other people for kills. My opinions.

Etaoin.4362:

On your first point: It is true that the shield has a longer, solid block. Remember, however, that the reworking of riposte is such that the blocking with offhand sword is now no longer canceled until you block a melee attack. I think you still make a solid point, but I also wonder in what situations you would place yourself where you are going to be blocking a slew of melee (as opposed to projectile) attacks and not trying to kite. Perhaps when being pursued by HS-spamming thieves?

On your second point: This is a huge selling point of the shield, imho, and not to be overlooked. The only reason this point might receive less attention is that, given the stun-heavy warrior meta, you might expect opponents to carry tons of stun-break. In PvE, you also have to worry about stun-resistant/immune mobs. In these cases, you get a gap-closer that deals decent damage, but that is about it. On the other hand, one might question if such niche cases weigh heavily enough against this point in the shield’s favor.

Good notes!

I’m aware of the reworking on that block, it was a good thing (wondering why ArenaNet didn’t do the same on Mace #2…). The most common case for me to like the 3s block is against a Thief that is coming in stealth, ready to burst me down. It’s nice to see all his attacks wasted against my shield.
Another situation may be if you have to play for time. In this case it is “3s of pause”, to wait for your CDs.

It’s true that a lot of people now carry more than one stun-breaker and that’s not a disadvantage to Shield #4, the opposite: if they use a stun-break for Shield stun, they won’t have it for Mace F1 ^^

@Shinoobi: I highly recommend to NOT take the Longbow trait (number IV on 4th line). As you can read on the Wiki, it has a bug since long time ago: you get more range , all of your arrows become 100% combo finishers (not written in trait tooltip) BUT you lose ~10% damage on auto-attack. However Smoldering Arrows (skill #4) gets double damage.
For more detailed info you can check this:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stronger_Bowstrings

Oni Link.4621:

The most common case for me to like the 3s block is against a Thief that is coming in stealth, ready to burst me down. It’s nice to see all his attacks wasted against my shield.
Another situation may be if you have to play for time. In this case it is “3s of pause”, to wait for your CDs.

It’s true that a lot of people now carry more than one stun-breaker and that’s not a disadvantage to Shield #4, the opposite: if they use a stun-break for Shield stun, they won’t have it for Mace F1 ^^

Right on, that is more or less my thinking when it comes to the shield. It does give you a few seconds of total downtime (except when matched against unblockables), during which you can also regenerate a lot of health if you trait for it. Of course, running an opponent out of stun-breaks does assume that you carry a mace main-hand (or hammer on swap), but I know that is pretty common with the stun-meta right now, so I think it is sound advice for warriors running that kind of build.

Also, is trait IV for longbow still bugged? I thought they fixed that in an earlier patch, but I may be remembering inaccurately. Just to play devil’s advocate: it may be worth it to take the trait (even with the reduction of auto-attack damage) if you make it a habit of throwing down the combo fire field repeatedly, then using Arcing Arrow to deal a nice AoE spike.

You’re right, if you’re aiming for “fire projectile finisher” then it may be a good choice.

@Shinoobi: I highly recommend to NOT take the Longbow trait (number IV on 4th line). As you can read on the Wiki, it has a bug since long time ago: you get more range , all of your arrows become 100% combo finishers (not written in trait tooltip) BUT you lose ~10% damage on auto-attack. However Smoldering Arrows (skill #4) gets double damage.
For more detailed info you can check this:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stronger_Bowstrings

That is the entire reason condi specs take it. The combo finisher from within your fire field is really good. If they want what you have, they have to come to you to get it. If they are consistently burning the entire time it makes them rush you (probably what you want), or it makes them back off (you win).

It works really well for condi bunker specs. You plant yourself on a node, or camp in wvw, and then they have to come to you. Pin Down gives you bleeding/cripple, and then you cover with spam burning. If they poke back healing up isn’t much of an issue.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/warrior/?8.2|c.1q.h9.c.1q.h1k.0.0.0|3.1q.h9.0.0.0|1f.718.1f.718.1f.718.1f.718.1f.718.1f.718|1f.66.1f.66.1f.66.1f.66.1f.66.1q.62|0.a3.u29b.u45b.0|0.0|0.0.0.0.0|e

That’s what I have been running to bunker with mostly. It’s not the best, but it seems to work well in the usual 1v1s I end up in. That’s my (pve) setup for wvw. Passive regen from hs/adh, actual regen from banners, I change out the signet of course, o.k. condi damage. I can hold out and win against 2/3 people. More than that and they kill me too fast for me to regen though. I think that’s the right build, will check it after posting.

@Ath: I am curious as to why you think the shield would be superior in general. Could you say more?

Sure thing. As it has been already mentioned above, the shield can prove to be an invaluable defensive weapon due to the fact that it provides both control and defense. The stun can be used defensively or aggressively as well, especially when you expect someone to heal. I have scored numerous kills by preventing my enemy their heals and the shield was the only stun i had off cd. Sword offhand has absolutely no control and very limited defense. It does come with a nice condition though. Still, sword OH is more situational whereas the shield pretty much fits in almost everywhere, whether it is 1v1 or 1vx.

Having said that i am looking around checking out the S/S M/S build mentioned by Ajaxx because it looks like its really fun

Ath.2531:

As it has been already mentioned above, the shield can prove to be an invaluable defensive weapon due to the fact that it provides both control and defense. The stun can be used defensively or aggressively as well, especially when you expect someone to heal. I have scored numerous kills by preventing my enemy their heals and the shield was the only stun i had off cd. Sword offhand has absolutely no control and very limited defense. It does come with a nice condition though. Still, sword OH is more situational whereas the shield pretty much fits in almost everywhere, whether it is 1v1 or 1vx.

Good points, Ath! This is actually the reason I raised the question about sword vs shield as offhand. In general PvE, you can (probably) get away with using either and do quite well. So I suppose we should focus the discussion more upon PvP and WvW(vW).

Now to offer some thoughts about sword – As you note, OH sword does provide a nice added condition (torment) and some defense with riposte. The cc from Shield Bash is very nice, especially in PvP when you can use it as a gap-closer or as a way to interrupt a crucial heal, burst, or finisher (I love saving teammates). The sword lacks a hard cc, and that is a downside, but torment almost makes up for it. A single Impale can grant up to five stacks of torment plus a nice damage bonus from Rip. This damage is only increased if the target chooses to move while afflicted with torment (a point many players still do not seem to grasp). This leaves your opponent with a handful of options: either cleanse the conditions, stay mobile and accept the added damage, or stay put. If forced to adopt the second or third of these options, then his/her HP will start to rapidly decline, all while you continue to pile on the pressure. Having a sword main-hand to stack bleeds or a longbow or rifle to dole out more conditions (bleeds and/or burning) can also help to add pressure.

Why mention this as a counter-point to Shield Bash? In my experience (and feel free to correct me), stunning an opponent provides a nice setup for a burst and/or interrupt to change the tempo of combat. In both cases, however, it is optimal that you be running a build that either focuses on stun-locking an opponent or bursts the ever-living-daylights out of them (or both, if possible). These are totally viable tactics, but it also places some constraints on the rest of your build that may reduce your overall versatility (stun-lock and burst-heavy warriors tend not to fare so well against highly-mobile and/or careful opponents, especially when there is more than one). In some ways, then, shield might be more niche than sword.

Of course, this is not to suggest that sword is superior to shield. I just want to offer up a counter-point. Another big selling point for shield, to me, is the huge defense boost you can get from traiting for it; that is built-into a typical tank-y spec, whereas offhand sword bonuses might not be.

Yet another thing to consider is how viable condition or stun builds will be within the next month, given the incoming nerfs to conditions (stacks capped at five) versus nerfs to sigil of paralysis (however that plays out).

Just posting to let OP know that i have gone over an experimental and extremely viable S/S LB build which offers amazing condition damage and enough Survivability/mobility to 1vX

I will create a new post with more details and build information.

Riposte blocks umlimited – non melee attacks and has only 15 sec (or 12 with trait) cd. Also if you take the Trait Missile Deflection (Defense – Adept) you will reflect the missiles like a Jedi (or Sith, whatever)
Conclusion (Offhand Sword vs Shield)
-1 sec duration
+50% faster cd
-Blocks only 1 melee attack
+Does not ends by blocking projectiles
+Better damage maintaince (with Conditions: Bleeding and Torment)
-No Stun

If you focus on bleeding then rather Sword/Sword. Also, the burst is better.
Secondary set? Well…..my favourite is the rifle. Bleed them to hell, then light them up with a Charrzooka. :P Even in PvE (on higher level fields) it is strongly recommended to bring a stunbreaker, but in PvP it is “essential” (as Warrior, “Shake it off!” is a great deal: Low cd and also removes a condition, but there are others)
With fully adrenaline and against a bleeding foe, you deal heavy damage – with attacks and with conditions too. (Also the sight of thieves, downing from 25 stack of bleeding after they used all of their savers, is pricelesss…muhahahahaha)

There is no trait to reduce Sword skills cooldowns…

Posted build as promised:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Athrael-s-Master-Impaler-S-S-LB/first#post2880762

Flissy.4093:

Half the CD on the block, and triggers Dual Wielding trait.

Yup.

Shield blocks all melee and projectiles for 3 seconds, sword only blocks 1 melee and all range.

I had some fun with mace/sword and sword/shield with missile deflection XD but that only lasted so long :/ lol