Guild Wars 2

Hi,
I am currently in the process of finalizing my Warrior Build and I would like you to take a loot at it. Also, I love min-maxing and looking behind mechanics in mmos.
Bear with me, this is going to be a longer post.

Without further ado, here we go:
Its a Warrior built for WvW primarly. A quick weapon swap makes it a viable for PvE due to the almost Zerker-warrior stats it has.

Exotic Version (current):
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAseSjMdUFaZIOewJigfgC7tvDmCgjjwFoLNA-T1CCABCp0b4HAQNq/cgpPAOEAOoEUjTAQVKDKRfACHBgc2fIAACA7MQGAmJA-w

Acended Version:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAseSjMdUFaZIOewJigfgC7tvDmCgjjwFoLNA-TlCCABD/AAGTJIAHBAqUiVlyDJV/RjTAQd6DQ4QAkz+DBAQAuZb2m3Mw6Vv6Vv5NP38m38m7cnlBYZBA-w

I encourage you to look at the stats.
Please put the bloodlust stacks to full and the might stacks at a value of 10, since this build runs with 8-11 mightstacks on average.
I am still fairly new to the game, but after comparing warrior builds for over 2 weeks I havent seen a single one with stats comparing to this.
Of course some might have more offense or defence but not without hurting other stats significantly.

Currently running around with:
3000 Attack
3000 Armor
24.000 HP
200% Crit damage (almost)
-56% Condition Duration (Without dogged march)

50% Crit chance by default
70% with fury.
100% when the enemy is stunned. (Notice we run stun duration)

These stats are overall so beautiful and well rounded a lot of Weapon sets are viable. (Trait switch optional)

The weapons:
In both build version posted I run Sword/Shield and Hammer.
I carry around with me a zerker Greatsword with the same sigils the Sw/Sh has.

Sw/sh – Hammer -> Zerg or organized group fights:

Having a Shield in a group fight is golden. In Zerks it saved my life a million times blocking 20+ Attacks in 3 seconds looks and feels amazing.
Flurry cought a lot of people trying to escape a zerg allowing my group to focus them down.
Dont forget about Final thrust. This skill is seriously underrated. With this spec I crit people with 8-9k damage. Most seem to forget that this is a higher DPS than the beloved hundred blades. (100b cast time is long as kitten compared to a single stab)
Mobility of the sword is obvious, such is the hammer in WvW. No need to explain those.
I just want to highlight that the sword can indeed be a powerful weapon in a power spec.

Greatsword – Hammer -> Roaming or small group fights:

The Greatsword/Hammer setup is nothing new, everyone knows its powerful combination.

Greatsword – Sw/Sh -> PvE content:

Greatsword is mandatory for PvE. You cannot go withouth those high numbers. and the sword as our second weapon gives us the most mobility possible to jump around areas quickly.

The Skills:
Healing signet and Signet of Rage are pretty much the only viable options for those slots imo.
Currently I am still running the Dolyak signet to reach the 3k armor and the 50% crit chance with the trait “Deep Strike”.
I’d really like to change that to an offensive skill like bulls charge but the 50% crit chance is a must since it give us a 100% crit on earthshaker, shield stun, 100b and final thrust!

Traits:
“Armored Attack” can be swapped for the 4th point in dicipline. Either for “Mobile Strikes” or “DotE”

Zerker Gear:
I do not get the appeal of running full zerker Gear. Please feel free and swap all gear in one of those two builds for Zerker pieces. You’d only gain 10%~ crit chance which is unneeded. We dont need more than 50%. and you’d get crit damage up to 210%, but Loose almost 3k Health and 300 armor. Thats not worth it at all.

General Question: How important is it to hit 210%+ crit damage ? Does it scale well? How do people get 25k 100b damage with only around 10might stacks?!
If its the crit damage I might opt to sacrifice a bit of vitality for it.

To Do and Other Information:
I hope you get a general Idea of this build by now.
If possible (and this is where you might help me, too) I’d like to push the HP into the 25k and the crit damage over 200% without loosing other stats. This would give the build almost 27-28~k HP with the fortitude buff in WvW. That’d be kittening insane compared with the Zerker like stats.

I am hoping to get a lot of feedback and encourage anyone to improve this build.
If you change something, please explain why you did it and dont forget to not go under 50% crit chance + unsuspecting foe. Its what makes this build so strong and a sword thrust viable. (We all want a vialbe sword/board build since forever, no?)

PS:
In the future I’d like to push the final thrust damage to 10k. Anyone got a spec where they achieved this without intense might stacking and only selfbuffs? Please share it with us and I’ll try to integrate it into my current build.

Thank you for your time.

Flitzie.6082:

Dont forget about Final thrust. This skill is seriously underrated. With this spec I crit people with 8-9k damage. Most seem to forget that this is a higher DPS than the beloved hundred blades. (100b cast time is long as kitten compared to a single stab)

Quote of the century.

One day Miku will jump off one of the Mountains in Arah, after reading on the forum ._.

DPS=/=DMG

I have expected such replies.
But instead of just guessing numbers out of random assumptions I’ve actually run multiple test on that.

On my current setup 100b hits for 12-13k damage in 3 1/2 seconds.
That is 3700 damage a second.

Final thrust hits for 8k in 3/4 seconds.

The actual Damage per second is higher on final thrust.
Even if 100b hits for 25k and above.

Of course that is only correct when the enemy is below 50% health which is doable with the hammer. in PvE 100b is of course better.

Edit:
Ooohh, I know where you guys are comming from. Its the cooldowns right?
The thing is most players are dead after 1 or at max 2 hundred blades/thrusts.
In PvE 100b remains the strongest, but I already stated that…

If I am still wrong, then please enlighten me I started this game ~2 weeks ago

You rly should not use one armor set for both PvE and WvW though
Same with traits, but they are easy to change

If you prefer WvW, just get a full exotic berserker set, a GS with force/night and Axe/Mace with force/battle

Also, Crit Dmg is not as important as dmg multipliers in traits

Acotje.5689:

You rly should not use one armor set for both PvE and WvW though

Gotcha. I just changed the title to WvW only then.
I do a daily fractal run or two with friends, thats about the extend of PvE I will do anyway.

I still believe its vialbe for PvE since the only thing you’ll really be missing out in comparison to the zerker is a bit of crit damage. Or is there some kind of magic I have not understood yet? I am just comparing stats in the build editor for the moment.

Running full zerker in WvW seems to be a bad decision imo, though. I rarely see WvW builds in zerker gear anyway.

You are not missing only a bit of crit damage, you are missing the damage multipliers too. In the current pve meta build you get +15% damage when with full adrenaline, +10% against bleeding foes, +10% when your hp is above 90% and so on. And in gw2 those damage bonus are multiplicative, which means its 1.15*1.1*1.1 just from these 3 bonuses i listed. Also the current meta build can stack might pretty easily from greatsword hits.

This spec is horrible. Every single fight you play against someone geared for condis you will lose off rip since you don’t even have cleansing ire

Whats this build? Its not good for zerging/guild fights, not good for roaming

Flitzie.6082:

DPS=/=DMG

I have expected such replies.
But instead of just guessing numbers out of random assumptions I’ve actually run multiple test on that.

On my current setup 100b hits for 12-13k damage in 3 1/2 seconds.
That is 3700 damage a second.

Final thrust hits for 8k in 3/4 seconds.

The actual Damage per second is higher on final thrust.
Even if 100b hits for 25k and above.

Of course that is only correct when the enemy is below 50% health which is doable with the hammer. in PvE 100b is of course better.

Edit:
Ooohh, I know where you guys are comming from. Its the cooldowns right?
The thing is most players are dead after 1 or at max 2 hundred blades/thrusts.
In PvE 100b remains the strongest, but I already stated that…

If I am still wrong, then please enlighten me I started this game ~2 weeks ago

You’re forgetting about the cooldowns.

Final Thrust has a 15s cooldown, putting you at 8000/15 = 534 dps.
100 Blades has a 10s cooldown, putting you at 12000/10 = 1200 dps.

You can’t just ignore the cooldowns by saying that most enemies will be dead before the cooldowns are over.

As for your build:

• Great Fortitude is a waste of time
• Unsuspecting Foe is not worth the 20 points in Arms
• You have no Cleansing Ire. You have zero condi cleansing.
• Sigil of Impact doesn’t make sense on your Sword as it’ll only add damage if you burst on your hammer and swap over.

If you want to use hammer, you’re pretty much down to a single setup. You’re going to want 6 in Defense to get both Cleansing Ire and Merciless Hammer. You’re also going to want 6 into Discipline for Burst Mastery to maximize the effectiveness of Earthshaker. The remaining 1 point is put into Tactics to get Leg Specialist so that Hammer Shock has an Immobilize.

Thanks for the replies. I should have mentioned to swap traits before you head into pve dungeons. I thought thats obvious. I had no idea however, those percentages are multiplicative, thats pretty intense.

About Cleansing Ire:
I’ve been reading a lot about it, even Threads in this forum and I thought we came to the conclusion that its not reliable and you are better off with sigil of stamina (I do swap skills a lot between combat).
Getting those burst-shots to land is not always guaranteed because of telegraphing animations, no ?

About Great fortitude:
Is it a waste of time because the bonus is to weak? Should I rather get the offensive version?

About Merciless Hammer:
This is actually why I forced myself to get 50% crit chance. This is the entire Idea on what this build is based on.
Earthshaker -> swap -> thrust/100b. 100% crit chance.
And it works like a charm in almost every fight.
I believe it is one of those things superior to most builds, no?
I do not understand why it is bad, rather -> what is better?

That is also the reason because of the sigil of impact. I could have gone with sigil of fire or something but honeslty, I only swap for the high damage skill, maybe shieldstun and swap back to hammer.

>Whats this build? Its not good for zerging/guild fights, not good for roaming
with weapons/trait adjustments its viable in all of them with an effectiveness of maybe 80-90% comapred to builds built specifically for a single situation. And honestly that is the sole reason of this thread.

With min-maxing I was talking about the Gear. Gear, especially in acended is usually a one time investment for most players as they wont have 3 different ascended gear sets for a single character. (I know they are accound bound)
And I could not achieve better overall stats with other gear for any of those playstyles in WvW

Flitzie.6082:

About Cleansing Ire:
I’ve been reading a lot about it, even Threads in this forum and I thought we came to the conclusion that its not reliable and you are better off with sigil of stamina (I do swap skills a lot between combat).
Getting those burst-shots to land is not always guaranteed because of telegraphing animations, no ?

It’s not guaranteed unless you have a Longbow, but it’s better than nothing. And trust me, you’ll definitely want to have some condi cleansing because if you think that you’ll be killing all condi builds in a single perfect burst every time, you’re dreaming big time.

About Great fortitude:
Is it a waste of time because the bonus is to weak? Should I rather get the offensive version?

The extra HP that you get isn’t going to change much. And the extra damage from the 100 Power isn’t worth the investment if it comes at the cost of Cleansing Ire or Burst Mastery.

About Merciless Hammer:
This is actually why I forced myself to get 50% crit chance. This is the entire Idea on what this build is based on.
Earthshaker -> swap -> thrust/100b. 100% crit chance.
And it works like a charm in almost every fight.
I believe it is one of those things superior to most builds, no?
I do not understand why it is bad, rather -> what is better?

Some time ago, Hammer used to be a very popular weapon. People did exactly what you’re trying to do: they ran Merciless hammer with Unsuspecting Foe and beat teh crap out of everyone.

However, that was all changed when Unsuspecting Foe was put into Master tier. The conclusion that the players came to at the time was that Burst Mastery was far more integral to the success of hammer than Unsuspecting Foe. So the build changed from 0/10/30/0/30 to 0/0/30/10/30, or 0/0/6/1/6 in the new approach.

The 6 in Defense has always been something that a Hammer build uses. Even if you don’t use Cleansing Ire, you could use Defy Pain, Spiked Armor or Last Stand. Other than that, if you really insist on going with Unsuspecting Foe, you’re going to end up with 0/4/6/0/4. Most people prefer 0/0/6/1/6 because Burst Mastery works wonderfully with Earthshaker and various other burst skills.

That is also the reason because of the sigil of impact. I could have gone with sigil of fire or something but honeslty, I only swap for the high damage skill, maybe shieldstun and swap back to hammer.

So you insist on Merciless Hammer and yet you put a damage sigil that only works with your hammer on the other weapon? That doesn’t really make sense.

Hmm, i’ve run the sword/shield hammer build for a looong time and i think your trait setup is abit weird. It’s like you’re forcing yourslf to be unique amongs others but in the end you’re dragging yourself down in both team fighting aswell as solo roaming. A 0/0/6/2/6 build like others suggested above me will do far better at both situations. But i’ll try help you improve your current setup with unsuspecting foe since you are half soldiers afterall

As for cleansing ire, looking at your build i’d say its not too bad to go without it as you are using hoelbrak with dogged march and lemongrass, but I personally use it for the secondary bonus which is the adrenaline gain on hit. Hammer needs this because it’s attacks are so slow, and since the dmg nerf on earthshaker it NEEDS to be a 3bar hit for it to pack a decent punch. Especially for you who runs half soldiers.

Get rid of deep strikes if you are using unsuspecting foe. If you do plan on using signet of stamina and signet of rage then I will assume that you’ll be using their active effects alot and you’ll only benefit off of deep strikes through healing signet which is like only 2% crit chance. Furious reaction is probably better for more fury uptime and a little extra vigor.

The 2 pts in the strenght line is kind of weird. That trait is like a filler trait. People use that because there isn’t anything else useful in that slot except that fall dmg reduction in some situations or dual wielding but thats not flr here. Take those out and put 1 in defense and 1 in discipline, your build would be 0/4/6/0/4.

Arms line: furious reaction – unsuspecting foe
Defense line: dogged march – cleansing ire – Merciless hammer (absolute must now)
Discipline line : warriors sprint – destruction of empowered (such a strong trait)

I’m not telling you what to do, but this variant is what I ran when i was experimenting hammer/sword/shield and I think its a step better than your build in every aspect in both solo roaming and team fighting. But i thing 0/0/6/2/6 is truly the best for hammer

Anyways good luck, ignore my perspective or take it to heart, up to you.

Holy crap, I had forgotten you do not get the crit chance bonus when signet have been used and are on cooldown. Thanks for reminding me! This changes alot of course.

I understand the importance of traits now, and trait damage scaling.
I’ll try all of those suggestion you guys gave me and report back with an updated version.

I am wondering why no-one commented on the gear though. I have no problem in buying/crafting a few exotic gear sets to try things out.
What are other warrior running in wvw? Is Soldiers a good choice?

Flitzie.6082:

Holy crap, I had forgotten you do not get the crit chance bonus when signet have been used and are on cooldown. Thanks for reminding me! This changes alot of course.

I understand the importance of traits now, and trait damage scaling.
I’ll try all of those suggestion you guys gave me and report back with an updated version.

I am wondering why no-one commented on the gear though. I have no problem in buying/crafting a few exotic gear sets to try things out.
What are other warrior running in wvw? Is Soldiers a good choice?

Tbh a warrior can easily get away with full zerker because they have high innate armor and health, but if you aren’t comfortable with that you could go with some cavalier jewelry or what I did for awhile, knights armor and berserker jewelry.

Im not rly a number cruncher, I just set “must haves” and test till i think it feels right. For example, must have atleast 2800 armor through gear, and minimum of x% crit dmg etc. then you work your gear towards those must haves.

Quick question to you guys.
If I do not run “Unsuspecting Foe” and use a GS/Hammer combination, how high should the crit chance be at a minimum? How high is average/recomended and what is considered amazing?

Without fury buff of course.

edit: For WvW of course

Sigil of intelligence > unsuspecting foe

Use it.

Flitzie.6082:

(100b cast time is long as kitten compared to a single stab)

Thanks for clearing this up.

Alright guys. I went through all of what you suggested and here I am now:
It is aimed towards roaming/small group fights.

Exotic:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQJARSjMdUFaZIOewJigfgC9tvDtgpAQZak7pOCA-TlCCwACV6VT9nDm+AcIAcoEsqyANPBgS6CQcBAyt/QAAEA2ZgMAMTA-w

Acended:
http://de.gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQJARSjMdUFaXIOewJigfgC9t3C7gpAQZak7pOCA-TVCCABjpEEgjAAVKxqS5hkq/oxlAoOdBI8AAyZ/hAAIA7cnpzdGY9qX9qX9qnduzduzduzyAsMBA-w

I was still able to maintain the best stat balance with the gear I had chosen before but the traits and a few other minor things have changed.

Now, those two points in “strength” can be swapped for burst mastery if you feel you need it. I tried it a lot and I think the 7% extra damage is not worth it and I have more adrenalin than I can spend anyway.

Also you could swap it for quick breathing if you run with a zerg and take a sword/horn combination.

If you like Furious reaction you might want to take that aswell. For now I’ll stay with great fortitude since it provides me with almost 2200 HP.

Besides the greatsword I still carry around a sword and shield with me. With a Battle and Intelligence Sigil for guaranteed crits.

To do:
Because of the super low crit chance I was thinking of going for intelligence sigil on all weapons but I feel it is a waste. Having Might on both is adding up to high numbers of Might stacks for awesome damage.
Another thing I could do is swap some pieces for knights. Ill loose a lot of other stats though, which I dont like that much. Maybe you have a suggestion for me.
35% crit chance seems really low to me. In the Current acended version you’ll need full precision infusion to even hit 35% (With bufffood!) Thats expensive!

In addition I am now questioning the stun duration sigil. It was usuful before to set up those 100% crit final thursts but we now have the intelligence sigil for that. Maybe I’ll swap that for intelligence now, too? Or Sigil of fire? (I dont like the cooldown on it)

Questiontime:
Burst mastery trait: Will I be getting the full effect of it on only 2 bars of adrenalin now, or will I still have to get all 3 bars filled and only spent 2?
It was dificult to test and observe the stun duration but for what I have seen you still need to fill all adrenaline bars and if this is the case I do not understand why this trait is loved that much ? :S

I guess that is it for now. Thanks.

Edit:
Alternate Version:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQJARSjMdUFaXIOewJigfgC9t3C7gpAQZak7pOCA-TVCCABXpEbMlgAcEAqS5hkq/oxlAoOdBI8AAyZ/hAAIA7cnpzdGY9qX9qX9qnje0duzdezyAssAA-w
+5% Crit Chance
-8% Crit Damage

I believe eartshaker stun has a cap at 2 seconds so the sigil of paralyzation doesnt work if you have full adrenaline. atleast this was the case 2-3 months ago

2 sigils of battle with 9 sec cd and 5 sec weaponswap is not optimal

You might be right. I could not see any difference in the stun duration on a few test I just did. I’ll look this up later to be able to confirm it.

Edit:
All right, seems to cap out at 2seconds. Ill use another sigil. maybe leeching.
Any other suggestion. Was not able to improve the build beyond the mentioned yet.

Btw, has anyone experience inaccuracy with the gw2skills.net editor?
My ingame stats are a bit lower or higher one some stats. I know about the wvw bonus, thats not it.

Btw, has anyone experience inaccuracy with the gw2skills.net editor?
My ingame stats are a bit lower or higher one some stats. I know about the wvw bonus, thats not it.

I found the error.
The toughness from the dolyak signet is being added to power in the build editor, but it is not in game. (If the trait is selected)
Results in having 25~less power ingame.
Oh well.

Also, improvement:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQJARSjMdUFaXIOewJigfgC9t3C7gpAQZak7pOCA-TlCEABRcEAWUlinUitlSwmUeoo6KScJAaTXAAPAgY2fIAACwO3Z6cnBWv6Vv6Vv65oDdn38m3sMALLA-w
- 1% crit chance
+ 9% crit damage
when calculating power+ferocity we previously had 5600~damage now its 5900~ which is actually as much as full berserker. (They have 20% more crit chance though.)

- 100 armor (Only around 1,5% less damage reduction as before)

Stun sigil exchanged for leeching atm.

Don’t even ask my why I do this. The numbers-game is half of the game for me in every mmo.

As always, any suggestion greatly appreciated.