Guild Wars 2

This build failed in practic, but maybe someone will be interested in it, was fun to play though. Got pretty bored by tpvp so I started doing skirmishes with rare builds.

After reading some forum posts about pvp rifle builds and generally in my opinion rifle being super useless in pvp I started to think about possible builds that could be made.
So, I was trolling a little tonight doing pvp skirmishes trying to tailor some rifle build that would be suitable for pvp and came up with this (atm this is a fun build as I keep on tweaking it):

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNAneUjcO5utOGPMxBEUBN08wICiiQ9wOqj4A-TsAA0CvIqRVjrGTNyas1M4YxxsAA

The bread and butter of this build are Sigils of Intelligence (100% crit chance on weapon swap). The description doesn’t mention the internal CD but from my research it seems it has an internal CD around 10s.

Weapons:
Axe + Shield
Shield for def and stun. Axe for its Eviscerate, vulnerability and cripple.

On swap Rifle for Kill Shot mainly, as well as some other useful skills like cripple, vulnerability, barrage and pushback if we need it.

Utility skills:
Heal- I always choose Healing Surge
Signet of Might- you might be surprised why this one. Well, Rifle’s Kill Shot can be easily dodged or blocked so I chose it to buff up the dmg and it can be casted while channeling, so when you see block on enemy you pop the signet and they get entire damage. If enemy doesn’t have block on you still get the extra power. Super useful vs guardians.
Throw Bolas- other disadvantage of Kill Shot is that it is easily evadable, that’s why we need bolas. On the other hand I noticed that people dodging are not a big problem so I am planning on changing it to Signet of Stamina for condition removal since conditions are quite a big problem so far.
Dolyak Signet- for extra toughness and stability.
Signet of Rage- most reasonable choice for warrior imho.

Traits:
As for traits I went for 30/0/10/0/30 for maximum power and frequent weapon swap, 30 points in Discipline also increase crit dmg by 30%. 10 in toughness to get Dogged March.

From Strength tree X and XI are important. From first tier I’m not sure if you could go anything else so I chose Restorative Strength.

From Discipline tree Signet Mastery, Mobile Strikes (affects Eviscerate and Shield Bash) and Burst Mastery. Mobile Strikes could be swapped for something else, but since sharpened axes are not needed I went with this one.

Sigils and Runes:
From Sigils I went 100% crit chance on weapon swap on both rifle and axe and 5% damage on shield.
From runes I chose Runes of Divinity for +all stats and extra +12% critical strike damage. Runes with flat +crit dmg offer only +10% crit dmg and have quite poor additional bonuses.

Amulet:
Valkyrie’s- for its primary power and +crit damage, also healing and toughness not offered by berserker’s. Berserker’s also offers precision which is not needed in this particular case.

Ok, so how to play it? At start of the game I cast heal to get max adrenaline, by the time you will reach the enemy cd is almost refreshed. You have to keep in mind the internal CD of Sigil of Intelligence. I open with Rifle when there are many opponents and with Axe+ shield when facing 2 or 1. After few rifle shots go cripple, barrage and vulnerability. If you have Signet of Rage on switch to axe shield and cast Burst- insta kill.

Opening with axe is similar but you switch to rifle when enemy is around 60% hp. Switch to rifle and cast kill shot, if they are out of endurance it’s insta kill (evade is such a big problem for this ability).

Today I opened with kill shot on bunker eng for almost 11k and managed to ninja one shot a thief. Axe’s burst hits for around 8k. They key is to apply vulnerability and stack might. Weapon swap is very important- it gives additional adrenaline and might, in this case it is 5s CD, but due to sigil of intelligence being on internal CD you can swap from rifle to axe, harass with axe and apply vulnerability switch back to rifle and execute kill shot.

Blocking the kill shot and conditions are a problem, but this can be solved with signets, disadvantage is you lose skill slots. I thought gaining adrenaline will be an issue but with internal cd on sigils it is just ok.

So far I consider it a fun build. If anyone would have any suggestions or constructive feedback that would be glade. It’s doing quite well in structured pvp, but I haven’t tested it in tpvp yet.

Disadvantages:
Here list is very long, some of the disadvantages are:
-Blindness
-Facing bigger group everyone expects you to jump in and havoc around the enemy team. If you don’t do that and team has no tanky initiator you all will die.
-Very squishy.

I don’t think rifle could be ever viable but after playing a little with sigil of intelligence I see there might be a hidden potential in it as it easily can pull of 11k crits. Going same sigil on axe to get 100% eviscerate crit was a mistake. I will try different setups like hammer + rifle, for cc when sigil’s internal cd is ticking. Right now I’m working on maximazing Kill Shot’s crit dmg and some survival second weapon swap. Probably changing runes as well.

If someone has any opinions, thoughts, etc. you are welcome to post it.

Sigil of Intelligence tends to bug a lot, I personally don’t like it. I prefer to get damage and crit from amulet and traits, and defense from runes (malandru) and utility skills. Also when it comes to utility skills, Berserker Stance would fit better cause of adrenaline loading and counter vs condi meta. I think destruction of the empowered would be better choice instead of mobile strikes.

something like this : http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-s707wBFWKFQ0f4NL-60;9;5T9-T;146A1;357AL-V46NV0TsW6TsW65kl