Guild Wars 2

From what I have been reading on the forum it seems that 30/25/0/0/15 is widely accepted as the best PVE build. I have been running 30/0/0/10/30 because it seemed like it would be better for dungeons. I can trait for banners to help the group a little better. I’m wondering which build is better and why.

I run 30-10-0-0-30 Axe/mace.

Good auto attack damage and cleave, and great for stacking Vulnerability.

30/25/0/0/15
GS + axe/mace
Highest damage without trying to use cheesy traits like desperate power.
Traiting banners is nice, but you don’t really need it, most of the boss fights are over before your banner time would run out. The 25 points in Arms give you the possibility to get Might via GS crits, which is useful unless you have around 20 stacks of might buffed by your group (which is rare in pugs TBH).
TL;DR 30/25 will deal more damage, Banners don’t need to be traited since bosses will fall before banners run out.

30/0/0/10/30 won’t be as useful as 30/25/0/0/15 for pure PvE experience, especially if you’re getting those 10 points only because of banners, because you don’t really need banner to be up 100 % of the time and 600 range is usually good enough.

Thanks guys. I do have to admit that it’s easier to keep my might up with forceful GS in a PUG when other members aren’t contributing to the party’s might.

30/0/0/10/30 used to be the best but once they moved Empowered Allies to master tier it kinda fell apart. 30/25/0/0/15 is better (mostly because you cannot count on pugs to stack might).