Guild Wars 2

Evening my fellow warrior brothers. I’ve been checking out some of the sword/sh + hammer builds and videos recently so I thought I’d give them a little whirl in sPvP.

Please can someone explain to me why most people seem to use stances for their utility slots? In my WvW build I run with Signet of Stamina, Dolyak Signet, for Great Justice and Sig of Rage, with Signet mastery so I have perma might and perma fury.

Anyway, with Signet Mastery, the cooldowns for Signet of Stamina and Dolyak Signet seem almost the same as the stances. I don’t even get Berserker Stance, it doesn’t remove the conditions it just shortens their duration?

Signet of Stamina is a complete cleanse with 36 (I think) second cooldown and Dolyak Signet is (48?) second cooldown for stability, not to mention their passive effects.

So I’m obviously missing something here and I’m curious, please enlighten me…..

balanced stance has only 40 sec cooldown and give on top 8 sec swiftness.. but i dont use it as well i prefer the dolyak with reduced cooldown.. even when i only run one signet that has to be activated because i rarely need this stabilty form the dolyak signet.. because i love the rampage elite

Stances have certain advantages over Signets, at least the 2 you mentioned.

Balanced Stance has a shorter cool down than Dolyak Signet, but doesn’t give the Toughness boost (which I prefer), and gives Swiftness (movement is important in PvP)

Berserker’s Stance compared to Signet of Stamina is a bit different. Berserker’s Stance is 8 (10 traited) seconds of 100% reduction in condition duration when they’re applied to you. So only conditions with increased duarion can get through. It has a somewhat long cool down though but it lasts a good while.

Signet of Stamina however cleanses all conditions, then you gotta wait 36 seconds for it to come around again. I don’t go into WvW much but I do like using Dolyak Signet for Stability, Signet of Stamina for condition removal, and Berserker Stance to keep conditions from being applied

Signets are quite useful if they are traited, although that takes quite heavy investment in disc while dropping some useful traits.

The thing with zerk stance vs signet of stamina is their difference in usage.
Zerk stance is mostly used as an aggressive tool (you can still use it defensively), the main idea is creating a gap for you when you’re buffed up with adrenaline, ready to burst with lbow and hammer in quick succession while at the same time you ignore any effects from the enemy trying to stop you from reaching him. For example in that 8 seconds you have full immunity against blindspamming thieves, neccys, engys who have no way to slow you down except pop plague to try and stall you or try to CC you to buy some time.
Signet of stamina is pure defensive tool, it gives you “vigor” in it’s passive state and it’s purely a tool against condioverload similar to lyssa.

Same thing with balanced stance and dolyak signet. Signet suffers from longer cd, but has better defensive usage, while stance is more mobile and can be used both offensively and defensively.

The reason why in spvp most people prefer stances are due to the lower CD on stability and in the case of zerk stance. It’s better to ignore condis for a brief time so you can setup your damage than to cleanse one overload just to get overloaded 2 secs later.

People use Balanced Stance instead of Dolyak Signet when they have enough armor.

For instance, if you play with Soldier’s Amulet and have 2800+ armor you’ll barely feel Dolyak’s boost.

And not to forget you can take Endure Pain and Defy Pain, for immunity to power damage 20% of the time traited. (Endure and Defy Pain last 6 seconds each traited, 12 seconds total every 60 seconds)

Psybunny, that explanation was perfect and now I have a much better understanding, thank you for taking the time to type that up.

Also thanks guys, makes sense. I might have to try the endure pain setup. Although wiki states that endure pain lasts 4 seconds and the trait increased it by 25%, so I work that out kitten seconds of endure pain?

stances have better synergy from traits, etc and like someone else said you lose the dolyak passive when u pop it where as you gain an active when you use balance stance. I use to be dolyak but once i got to 3200 armor i switched to a stance build and never looked back.

I use balance stance, Dolyak signet and rampage for spiking for the sole reason I just don’t get enough of that 8 bit explosion…