Guild Wars 2

Yojack, what are your thoughs on Axe MH, with 25 points in Strenght and using Soldier’s gear for Power/Toughness/Vitality? I’m just spitballing things while I’m bored at work.

Hmm, I do enjoy specs like this, and have used the soldiers rune set extensively before. But have you taken a look at using the higher quality gems instead of the soldier’s rune set. From what you have posted, you only use 2 of your shouts for as needed cleansing, which balances out with the mending healing skill.

The other benefit from the rune set is vitality, and some toughness, which is also obtainable through gems, but with the benefit of offensive stats as well.

Good to know someone else likes this particular weapon set + playstyle with shout support. Been using it since beta and haven’t switched in 150 hours on my Warrior. I like most of your build except for Healing Signet and the choice of gear.

Healing Signet is nice and all, but it doesn’t have the burst heal I’m a fan of.

I’m more of a fan of the Carrion set because it makes you even beefier, and is more consistent. You lose crit chance, but you gain a nice ‘tankiness’ buffer that lets you stick in the fray even longer with your sword.

I gotta try out Empowered for sure though, I just assumed the damage was so minuscule that it wasn’t worth taking over Empower Allies.

Ironzerg….totally different build so I won’t comment other then sorry i like my build better

Khalous I have been experimenting with other healing skills, and i do like mending for even more heal burst and condition removal, healing signet is just more dummy mode =)

another idea, whats your though abount the Sigil of Superior Earth(apply bleed on crit, 60%) for more bleeding?

Tried it out last night, minus the soldier’s runes and using a longbow instead of a rifle, which is what I had available(broke donating to pvp commanders training book for guild) and it worked pretty well in EM Arah.

I have used this exact weapon set in WvW before, and I love the ability to bug out when being chased by a zerg. Hopefully the extra healing will keep me on target longer.

Any good recommendations for a sword skin? I dislike the crafted exotic look, and accidentally sold my centaur’s sword. Hopefully the nude bot farmer will leave the event location so it can progress to the vendor. Until then, I am looking for something good.

@Yojack – Thank you so much for posting this, I absolutely love this spec, although I do need to do some work on my armor and stats now.

What Priority of stats would you suggest to go for with this build ?

Khalous.7430:

Any good recommendations for a sword skin? I dislike the crafted exotic look, and accidentally sold my centaur’s sword. Hopefully the nude bot farmer will leave the event location so it can progress to the vendor. Until then, I am looking for something good.

I like “Glyphic Edge” type of sword skin. It also costs just few coppers for low level model

I’ve fallen in love with this build. You become so hard to kill that dps is largely irrelevant. My best achievement so far was winning a 1v7. Spent the entire fight with almost all buffs up simultaneously. I haven’t lost a 1v1 since swapping.

My guild also loves it because of how powerful the condition reversal is when the enemy carelessly throw out AoEs with debuffs.

My stat priority is:
Pow
Vit
Precision

Shhh Dwok, we know they are going to nerf greatswords, but don’t tip them off to how powerful this spec is

Oh, right. >.>

This spec is awful! I can do far more damage with my greatsword! Buffs don’t last long enough to make a difference anyway!

I got group member comments saying they were going to spread the word about range warrior being awesome ,but they don’t know the build lol.
Hope they don’t see the thread lol

Thank you for posting this! I use a very similar build but with sword/sword instead of warhorn. I am excited to switch it up and try this out in a dungeon.

I also tend to use 1 banner with the regen trait instead of shout trait (but I still use 2 shouts) because I am lazy and like the passive regen better, plus it uses 100% +healing where shouts only benifit from 80%.

Another thing I am doing a bit differently is using all rampager gear but using clerics accessories, rings, and amulets, along with the gems inside. But I am placing rune of the undead in my rampager gear to keep my condition damage at ~1000 and having ~800 healing power. The only thing I am lacking is the shouts removing conditions from soldier gear.

How does this look? is it a decent enough trade-off? I am thinking with warhorn removing 2 conditions every 16 seconds and shake it off, I will have enough condition removal.

How much condition damage are you running with? I was hearing that it takes a ton of +condition damage to increase the damage but I haven’t ran any tests.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fIAQNBMhRak0p5N5RACHOAgPY1lRSTleEGbrB;T0AZTCmkMpaSxEVTmmENZby1kspBGzKA

edit: you have to cope/paste the link in a new tab for it to work… sorry about that

Rulem.5720:

Thank you for posting this! I use a very similar build but with sword/sword instead of warhorn. I am excited to switch it up and try this out in a dungeon.

I also tend to use 1 banner with the regen trait instead of shout trait (but I still use 2 shouts) because I am lazy and like the passive regen better, plus it uses 100% +healing where shouts only benifit from 80%.

I tried the banner mod for the same reason, but in practice, i found I had enough uptime on regen from conversion that it didn’t make a difference.

Couple of minor tweaks/comments -

1. I’ve been going back and forth with Turtle’s Defense (Toughness talent). The reason is with so much condition removal (Warhorn 4 especially) that this talent “seems” wasted. The only time I find Turtle’s Defense useful is when all other condition removal is on cooldown (sort of rare since I tend to “save” Shake it Off as the last ability used after everything else anyways).

There isn’t a lot of great Toughness tier 1 talent alternatives though but Embrace the Pain can be useful depending on your playstyle to use the burst skill more often (and helps when being enemy focused by getting you to the higher Adrenaline levels quicker for the increased Adrenal Health heal). Vigorous Return/Sure-Footed are just garbage talents (even if spec’d for them). Missle Deflection is great if you use blocks (but this build uses dodge instead).

2. The build really only works at level 80 as it relies on the allocated point spend noted.

I’d recommend a full signet/Deep Strike (not sure why this talent isn’t scaled with level yet) build until you can acquire the gear using the Greatsword variant.

3. Fear Me is a suitable alternative to On My Mark. Personally, I prefer On My Mark in PvE and Fear Me in WvW although Fear Me is still good in PvE if you find yourself alone/exploring/don’t like to die.

worked pretty well in WvW over the weekend, but I ended up being over-extended in the front lines a bit too often for my liking.

Ranged damage on either the rifle or the longbow was substantially lower than I was used to, which also caused me to leap ahead of any pack. Granted, in smaller skirmishes, my group of 4-6 could take down up to 12 others, but I would probably attribute that to fighting poorly leveled/geared enemies.

A four man zerker stated team with 2 GS warriors, a 2 bow ranger, and a GS/staff mesmer would annihilate us in less than 6 seconds, first time we have lost in equal numbers fights…. I admit, it gave me a few doubts.

Timing your stun removal and shouts in a 6 vs 6 is obviosly crucial. If you have teamspeak or ventrilo and can coordinate your cc with massive burst….well yeah you are going to be prettykittengood regardless.

is this build ok for dungeons?

Yojack.7082:

Timing your stun removal and shouts in a 6 vs 6 is obviosly crucial. If you have teamspeak or ventrilo and can coordinate your cc with massive burst….well yeah you are going to be prettykittengood regardless.

I’ve noticed there seems to be a bug with ability 4 on the warhorn. Occasionally it will use both condition removal ‘ticks’ on one immobilize, instead of using the stock ability to strip the immobilize, and then converting one of the remaining buffs. My guess is it has something to do with the priority code that the conversion uses though.

On that note, have you figured out the details on the priority code yet?
From what I can tell, from first cleared to last:

• Immobilized
• Chilled
• Burning / Poison / Bleeding (Whichever is stacked higher)
• Vulnerability

I’m also trying to get a good video of this spec in action, but I keep forgetting to start recording before giggling like a schoolgirl upon seeing enemies.
The amount of people on this forum running glass cannon builds and then complaining about no survivability, and that they can’t get close enough to melee are getting ridiculous.

Yeah how does this build do in explorable dungeons?

While argueably not the optimal gear or build for explorable dungeons if thats all your going to be running, the build is so versatile that I use it exclusively for wvw, dungeons and pve exploring for my 100% map completion. I love not having to resepc and this build does it all really really well.

You’re missing the Signet of Rage which grants 30s of swiftness on a 60sec timer. Swiftness stacks in duration, so with Signet of Rage and Warhorn #4 being hit as soon as they are up, you should be able to keep swiftness up permanently.

And you have extra boon duration with this build, so it’s even easier to keep swiftness up.

Morthur.3894:

Great thread, I really look forward to trying this build out. Thanks for putting so much effort into this thread and thanks for sharing your wisdom in the first place!

I do have a question though: what exactly gives you perma swiftness in this build? As far as I can see from the online build creator the warhorn #4 skill (Charge) only lasts 13 seconds (10 sec base + 30% from boon duration bonus) and has a cooldown of 16 seconds (20 sec base – 20% cooldown from the trait).

What am I missing?

Cheers
Morthur

Excluding any other choices beyond traits, the build already increases Signet of Rage to 40s, and warhorn swift to 17s. This lets you chain Might, Vigor, and Swift indefinitely. If you get in the rhythm of refreshing them when not in combat, you can often go into a fight with over 3m worth of Swiftness.

Dwok, with “For great Justice” you have fury chained as well =P

I really like the build and plan on giving it a shot when I get home from work tonight. One thing though, I’m very surprised that you are taking Blademaster over Crack Shot. When your crit rate is already naturally so high it’s hard to see much value in 10% more crit for your sword especially when compared to the AE utility of piercing shots as well as getting to use volley 20% more often.

Last I checked, crack shot was still bugged and not lowering gun skill cds by 20% =( Otherwise it is an excellent substitute but man i like having 98% crit

So strange. Just checked and you are partially right. Cracked Shot is definitely bugged (didn’t know that till you said it) but not entirely. The cooldown reduction appears to affect everything as expected except for Volley. Volley’s cooldown remains 10 seconds with the trait or without it.

Still a 20% reduction in aimed shot, brutal shot, rifle butt and the AE utility of piercing shots seems like a much better trait then the tiny bit of additional dps attained by going from an 88% crit rate to a 98% one.

In my experience I felt that 800 was still too little malice to warrant focusing on bleeds. The spec itself really isn’t that bad but I’m not too certain about the armor and attack. They both seem kind of low for what the build is meant for, but it would be hard to get them much higher while retaining the amount of malice you have. There might be some other jewelry you could work with since the builders normally don’t show past sPvP.

“Last I checked, crack shot was still bugged and not lowering gun skill cds by 20% =( Otherwise it is an excellent substitute but man i like having 98% crit”

It’s also great when synced with crit based sigils, like Might, Lifesteal, or Condition Removal.

I feel the build a bit over the place. I have not tried it…I just read through it. Maybe your shouts are healing for 1.1 k?
I feel you could have more cannon capabilities if you spend the last 10 points in tactics somewhere else, perhaps in power to get the adrenaline-damage bonus?
Perhaps in arms to increase condition damage even more?

You will not heal with shouts, but without stacking healing, healing shouts is not as effective. Other than that I like the weapon choices, the only thing that you miss here is CC other than that the build seems like it could turn into something great.

Dwok Immortalus.2763:

“Last I checked, crack shot was still bugged and not lowering gun skill cds by 20% =( Otherwise it is an excellent substitute but man i like having 98% crit”

It’s also great when synced with crit based sigils, like Might, Lifesteal, or Condition Removal.

Just keep in mind that all those crit based sigils have a 2 second cooldown, one that is shared with all other sigil cooldowns. So there really won’t be much of a difference in the proc rate at 88% crit vs 98% crit. Besides crit is one of those things that loses value the more of it you have in terms of straight dps increases. While the utility of being able to target a mob far away and hit it along with targets that are between you and it, isn’t something that should be so quickly discounted.

Rouncer.7569:

Besides crit is one of those things that loses value the more of it you have in terms of straight dps increases.

Is that still the case when crits proc things like bleed?

As far as I know that shouldn’t change the math significantly. Going from a 50 to 60% crit rate is more of a relative dps increase then going from 90 to 100% and that should be regardless of procs associated with those crits.

I’m not saying that going from 88% to 98% has no value, just that the trait isn’t as strong as it would be if starting at a lower crit rate. If we start from an assumption that the traits are roughly equal in value (yes, it’s one hell of an assumption) then the decreased value obtained points to Crack Shot being the better option.

I also think that Yojack isn’t giving enough value to the utility of being able to shoot through people because it’s a cool thing to get that close to a 100% crit rate. It’s also why I think he took accuracy for the sigil on the horn instead of force. Even though force is very likely the stronger option as bleeds can’t crit and he has no crit damage increases in the build so crits are only at 150%.

Fun build, but it struggles against heavy burst builds.

I dueled about everyone I could find, and while GS warriors are wildly predictable, triple axe/eviserate builds chewed through me because I couldn’t really exploit their lack of defensive CDs because of the wild burst they were capable of.

Obviously in normal pvp situations I could just run away — but it’s certainly something to be aware of in that your lack of damage against a class with heavy burst can put you in a bad way quickly.

Yojack,

Thank you very much for sharing this.

Have you considered the Knight’s Draconic set? It seem’s to add a lot more durability to the Warrior.

Yojack (or anyone else, for that matter), how successful is this build in DEs against a single target boss? (ie. dragons..) I feel like it wouldn’t be too great because there are so many stacks of conditions on the dragon, which hurts your condition damage (or does it?). I’ve been interested in a bleed/warhorn spec for a while but didn’t want to lose single target, large group DPS.

I’m not sure why people are asking about pve here — you can look at the build at see very quickly it’s built around mobility as opposed to damage.

So, the answer is play whatever you like, but this build is not remotely optimized for pve.

It may not be “optimized” for pve, however, with the mobility and the damage it does dish out, it is quite respectable. I tried it as is, and loved it. I made a few tweaks for personal preference and it is fantastic. The synergy between the weapons and traits is very good.

Thanks for sharing!

Dwok Immortalus.2763

Excluding any other choices beyond traits, the build already increases Signet of Rage to 40s, and warhorn swift to 17s. This lets you chain Might, Vigor, and Swift indefinitely. If you get in the rhythm of refreshing them when not in combat, you can often go into a fight with over 3m worth of Swiftness.

I only see 13s on Vigor/Swiftness via warhorn not 17, what am I missing? Signet of rage is also 39s vs 40s (not much difference there).

Might from “For Great Justice” is the only thing that outlasts the cooldown (31.5s vs 25s). You can still chain them, just not sure where you got 17s from.

It’s because you can use warhorn’s swiftness while the swiftness from the signet is active and they stack in duration allowing you to keep swiftness up indefinitely provided you use the signet and that warhorn ability frequently.

Rouncer.7569:

It’s because you can use warhorn’s swiftness while the swiftness from the signet is active and they stack in duration allowing you to keep swiftness up indefinitely provided you use the signet and that warhorn ability frequently.

I understand that, I did state that you can still chain them. I’m just not sure where he got the 17s duration from that he listed. Wanting to make sure I didn’t miss a trait or something along the way.

Yojack do you mind either screencapping what you’re wearing on your hero’s page or taking a short video?

Wow, tons to answer tonight but thanks in advance to all who continue to reply and add to a great discussion.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/824/gw001vi.jpg

The above is my character currently, a mix of crafted and COF gear for what I think is a very intimidating dark look without going to overboard with the fire graphics

In my original build I had muskateer at the time (now crack shot) back in beta. With volley being our highest single target dps move with rifle it is a shame it is bugged right. That being said….rifle is NOT aoe. Seriously might as well move some traits and go longbow tbh. The only time piercing would be decent is if you are trying to kite a ranger ( ? lol) and you are able to hit him and his pet simultaneously. For all other occasions I want high single target burst (volley) and 90% of the time it will be just that….single target.

For the arguements of to much crit: First it is sword and warhorn only at 98% and rifle is at 83%, so the argument to drop 5% crit sigil and the 10% trait for sword is like I have said before a very viable substitute and I will not argue the merits of either based on how heavily it would be judged on effectiveness by what your trying to accomplish, pve, spvp, wvw etc. With so many things relying on crit in this build, both dps, procs of bleed, and lifesteal, I think the only level of too much crit would be anything over 100%. In an optimal setting with completely customizable gear, I would still go power/prec and then argueably vitality over con damage for overall pvp effectiveness.

Overall excellent feedback from all and great ideas here guys with very limited troll posts etc. I thank you for your suggestions and remember there is no right or wrong answers in a Yojack Build thread, just math, fun, imagination and an open forum to discuss and tweak to peoples liking. Thanks for all the kind words so far.

I’ve been running around with different variations of this build trying different things.
I would like some input/opinions about the following:

My current gear is Draconic Knight (power/prec/tough)
My current build is 10/0/30/30/0
2.5k power
3.2k armor
1.3k vitality
950 precision (31% crit)

At the moment I’m having absolutely no problems whatsoever in exp mode dungeons, in WvW you could easily survive against 2, maybe even 3 if you’re lucky. In Spvp survivability is also high. However I find my damage output to be really low in all of the 3 I just mentioned.

I’m considering dropping the warhorn for a sword off-hand.
Using the soldier rune to kind of compensate for condition removal from warhorn, but we still lose the conversion to boons.
And switching from draconic knight to draconic rampager or maybe draconic berserker; probably rampager since its a dual-wield sword build.
Also, I would be adding superior sigil of blood on the main hand sword. Undecided on what sigil to put on the Off hand sword.

The build would obviously change from 10/0/30/30 to what Yojack has in his first post the 0/25/15/30.

The alternate weapon if you’re wondering is a rifle. I’m considering testing the longbow though as I haven’t yet.

The purpose of this would be for general use, being Spvp/exp dungeons/WvW.
I understand condition based builds such as the sword/sword are not the best, I also understand that 1 build for spvp/wvw/pve is not optimal; but it is simply a choice of style nothing more.

Any comments/criticism/input would be great.

I’ve just leveled up to lvl 80 (last night) using GS/Sigil’s and brought myself a set of yellow Knight’s gear to celebrate (yes, I’m still poor). Then I discovered this thread and thought I’ll give it a go, I purchased green rampager gear, rampager sword and warhorn and stuck a few gems I’d collected in it (pre/pow/tou).

My stat’s arent great but even in green’s I’m sitting with 54% crit chance, I’m not sure I’m playing it right, but I’m finding that I never even notice my health bar anymore, I keep fury up with FGJ & SoR when that’s out, and constantly spam 5 for warhorn debuff. So far I am VERY impressed! This is a breath of fresh air, I can’t wait to try it out in a dungeon and watch my guildmate’s look of amazement when they realise a warhorn warrior is awesome

Yojack: “In my original build I had muskateer at the time (now crack shot) back in beta. With volley being our highest single target dps move with rifle it is a shame it is bugged right. That being said….rifle is NOT aoe. Seriously might as well move some traits and go longbow tbh. The only time piercing would be decent is if you are trying to kite a ranger ( ? lol) and you are able to hit him and his pet simultaneously. For all other occasions I want high single target burst (volley) and 90% of the time it will be just that….single target.”

Sure, I can buy that argument for sPvP but it falls a bit flat in general world, dungeon, and WvW play. Even for something as simple as killing a turret along with a mob cracked shot has a lot of value.

Actually even for sPvP the trait has a lot of value but you have to look a bit outside the box to see it. Most of rifle’s shots have a long windup, telegraphing your intent to the other players. Body blocking works in this game. Hitting a mesmer clone or a hunter pet that gets in your way is much more of an issue without the trait.

Even outside of those two professions the trait can have value. You’re working down an enemy at a node and have just gotten him downed when one of his allies shows up and starts to revive. If that enemy player is smart he will position himself between the downed player and you forcing your rifle shots to hit just him. Then the downed player’s 4 skill will be uninterrupted, the downed player’s 2 skill can still be used against you, the blocking player’s revive isn’t interrupted by damage anyway, and you are likely about to get shafted with a 2 on 1. With cracked shot you can just keep firing through that blocking player, taking the downed player to zero and on the good side of a 1v1. Even if that other player comes after you instead of reviving you can keep the downed player targeted and position yourself so the other player is between you and the downed player and just keep working on taking that downed player to zero while damaging his ally at the same time.

I use the trait that way a lot in PvE by targeting the ranged mobs while keeping the melee ones in between me and them. Real fun to smack the untargeted melee pack with a rifle butt, barely interrupting the damage you are applying to the ranged mob. Really love the trait for things like that.

Not saying that will be a common situation or that cracked shots is straight up better then blademaster. Just saying that one trait gives you damage while the other gives you potentially very powerful utility. Personally, I lean towards the utility when compared to the modest dps increase involved.

Even outside of those two professions the trait can have value. You’re working down an enemy at a node and have just gotten him downed when one of his allies shows up and starts to revive. If that enemy player is smart he will position himself between the downed player and you forcing your rifle shots to hit just him. Then the downed player’s 4 skill will be uninterrupted, the downed player’s 2 skill can still be used against you, the blocking player’s revive isn’t interrupted by damage anyway, and you are likely about to get shafted with a 2 on 1. With cracked shot you can just keep firing through that blocking player, taking the downed player to zero and on the good side of a 1v1. Even if that other player comes after you instead of reviving you can keep the downed player targeted and position yourself so the other player is between you and the downed player and just keep working on taking that downed player to zero while damaging his ally at the same time.

Why would you even use ranged in this case? Leap into melee and get the free kill on both of them.

Very interesting build, might take some parts of it.
Although, why not using Healing Cure if you’re searching heal over condition removal (Mending).
Healing Signet does 200hp/s (passive), 166hp/s (active + cooldown), 199,2 (active + disc signet trait + cooldown 16s).
As you are nearly always full adrenaline (adrenal health, disc crit trait), Healing Surge would make max heal, so 288hp/s.

I’ve been trying this out for awhile and loving it! Thanks for the info, Yojak. I just wish the was a way to hide a warhorn or use a shield with this build because I just don’t like holding a warhorn even though it’s vital to surviving. =(

I guess I’ll have to roll a guardian soon.