Guild Wars 2

anyone got a good sword/shield build?

You could take the standard GS warrior meta build and then add your S/SH to it, season to taste. I did that after watching a video someone linked in this forum. This particular player made a sword themed warrior, It looked like it played well, just not the strongest kit out there. They switched between Vanilla and Bersker depending on what they were trying to do. It was pretty cool seeing them hit with sword 3 all of a sudden during a fight.

I do have some experience playing the GS/S/SH build as I have it set up on my third level 80 warrior. The mobility is very good. Its also nice to hit with Shield 4 and set up the thousand blades, instead of missing like a chump. Downing a player using a well timed sword 3 is indeed satisfying.

My only complaints are the sometimes clumsiness of the GS , and the very low damage of S/SH. There are some advantages however, just comes down to how much you can leverage them during a fight.

I am referring to a power warrior.

I personally fell in love with Axe-Axe/Longbow, so I admit I am a bit biased when dealing with swords.

As above, I’ve been running that setup as a vanilla warrior to roam in Wvw. Been going on a year or two with that general build, and the key is to leverage the mobility to offset the damage lost by not running axe.

My guess is the video sneakytails is referring to is the one (or two) made by Holtz. Should still be on YouTube.

Sword three hits as hard as an eviscerate on foes under half health. Sword two I find has tremendous utility for movement and chase downs in WvW if you in the arms line. The AA for power is weak compared to axe. With GS and Sw/sh and sword on the low cooldown you can get great mobility with 5 and 2 rotated.

What I like to do is stick in GS until I use my Burst (Arc divider or arccing slice) switch to SW/sh stun with shield smash then final blow. Make sure the latter when you unblockable mode either with signet of might or the built in on signet mastery if you took arms. It sort of like two Bursts in an instant.

This the power version . It of course works quite well in condition builds if you wish to go that route (some like mace/shield then sword/torch in condition i lean to sword/shield mace/torch.)

babazhook.6805:

Sword three hits as hard as an eviscerate on foes under half health. Sword two I find has tremendous utility for movement and chase downs in WvW if you in the arms line. The AA for power is weak compared to axe. With GS and Sw/sh and sword on the low cooldown you can get great mobility with 5 and 2 rotated.

What I like to do is stick in GS until I use my Burst (Arc divider or arccing slice) switch to SW/sh stun with shield smash then final blow. Make sure the latter when you unblockable mode either with signet of might or the built in on signet mastery if you took arms. It sort of like two Bursts in an instant.

This the power version . It of course works quite well in condition builds if you wish to go that route (some like mace/shield then sword/torch in condition i lean to sword/shield mace/torch.)

You’re giving up Discipline (or Defense) to take the Arms line on power gs/s+sh? That seems like a hell of an expensive trade to get signet mastery and blademaster. Arms would be ranked below Strength for me as well on a Berserker setup.

Choppy.4183:

babazhook.6805:

Sword three hits as hard as an eviscerate on foes under half health. Sword two I find has tremendous utility for movement and chase downs in WvW if you in the arms line. The AA for power is weak compared to axe. With GS and Sw/sh and sword on the low cooldown you can get great mobility with 5 and 2 rotated.

What I like to do is stick in GS until I use my Burst (Arc divider or arccing slice) switch to SW/sh stun with shield smash then final blow. Make sure the latter when you unblockable mode either with signet of might or the built in on signet mastery if you took arms. It sort of like two Bursts in an instant.

This the power version . It of course works quite well in condition builds if you wish to go that route (some like mace/shield then sword/torch in condition i lean to sword/shield mace/torch.)

You’re giving up Discipline (or Defense) to take the Arms line on power gs/s+sh? That seems like a hell of an expensive trade to get signet mastery and blademaster. Arms would be ranked below Strength for me as well on a Berserker setup.

The only traitline really required is defense. What I like in the Arms is having up to 12 seconds of unblockable attacks. You can also use arms to build to one hundred percent Crit chance with low precision gear quite easily either via signet mastery or the guaranteed crit on burst.

The Discipline line offers things I just do not need. If I have full uptime swiftness, warriors srpint of no use. I have high resustance uptime coupled with ample cleanses for the periods in between meaning little use for brawlers recovery.

Just as people take the new 4 stat armor for the overall increase in stats you get compared to the 3 stat stuff , a traitline that offers the equivalent of 900 “for free” precision is well worth considering.

At the end of the day the only clear advantage in Discipline for the type Of build I wanted here is burst mastery and maybe fast hands but I like the potential of twelve seconds in every 20 of unblockable attacks. This coupled with the +20 percent added percentage to crits ( like a double fury) goes a long way to a high crit rate with no crit traited gear.

Since that crit rate so high I usually take furious over Burst precision since my bursts tend to crit anyways and 1 adrenaline on every hit helps make up for the lower adrenaline gain in arms versus discipline.

In WvW I solo roam a lot and rely like savage leap at 6 second cooldown to move fast or chase down. I was using Discipline prior and only just recently changed over.

Baba are you on an NA server, by chance? It’d be good to roam around with you to see how your playstyle works, or just get a few duels in.

Seeing you run it is probably better than me grafting my playstyle to it (which makes heavy use of Fast Hands)

Choppy.4183:

Baba are you on an NA server, by chance? It’d be good to roam around with you to see how your playstyle works, or just get a few duels in.

Seeing you run it is probably better than me grafting my playstyle to it (which makes heavy use of Fast Hands)

Sorry for the late response but I tend not to read warrior boards as much as Thief and WvW.

In any case I have been making a few subtle tweaks to this build and am having lots of fun with it in WvW. I find no loss in combat power compared to the old Discipline build I used. I took a little less precision so i tend to get 88 GS and 95 with sword/board will running with 213 percent to crits outside zerk mode.

I generally take healing signet , endure pain , berserker stance signet of rage and have been playing with that last spot between a number of signets .

Any one of the signets can work here in that last spot and the past few nights I was going with precision. It would seem counterintuitive to “give up” 180 precsion to get the 100 off signet mastery but it works quite well because of the uber low cooldown. (you sacrifice 80 precison for 16 seconds and get full adrenaline bar and for the rest of remaining 44 seconds this now gets you 280 precision) What nice here is you can use it just as you enter battle, you really do not lose 180 precision in using it since you get 100 back and your adrenaline bar starts full. You can start off with a burst much as you can when using a rage skill but even faster and all it costs is about 4 percent crit chance for the time it on coolown.

In any case yes I play NA. I am west coaster and usually play later at night as I tend to like it better when populations drop. I am just not a big fan of the blob fights though this build does very well in them.

I play every profession to a degree though most of my time is Thief and Warrior. I have 2 different warrior builds as well one on an alternate account.

babazhook.6805:

In any case yes I play NA. I am west coaster and usually play later at night as I tend to like it better when populations drop. I am just not a big fan of the blob fights though this build does very well in them.

Good stuff. I play on Ehmry (currently linked to HoD), and that sort of timing might work out, depending on how late is late.

Will shoot you a pm if I see you online, just in case we’re paired up or against you. Failing that, I guess there’s EoTM, though I’ve only been there for duels.

Choppy.4183:

babazhook.6805:

In any case yes I play NA. I am west coaster and usually play later at night as I tend to like it better when populations drop. I am just not a big fan of the blob fights though this build does very well in them.

Good stuff. I play on Ehmry (currently linked to HoD), and that sort of timing might work out, depending on how late is late.

Will shoot you a pm if I see you online, just in case we’re paired up or against you. Failing that, I guess there’s EoTM, though I’ve only been there for duels.

I am on HOD and always have been. We likely hsve run together before albeit I on my thieves more and only went back to warrior when I decided on this build. I am more a roamer and home BL guy then a EBG person running with the zerg albeit I will zerg run time to time.

I rarely duel but have done on rare occassions.