Guild Wars 2

Joxer.6024:

So, question is wouldn’t it be “better” to have more crit (be it food, gear, etc.) so that I can have more adrenaline and thus longer berserk mode and therefore better dps?

For a Condi Build, you should use food with +condi damage and +condi duration (rare veggie pizza/bowl of garlic kale sautee and toxic focusing crystals being the best there). Basically any other food choice is a hefty loss in overall damage, so if you’re looking to increase your crit chance, focus on gear not food.

That being said, it would help to see what build you’re using, but if you’re specced into the Arms tree ‘Furious!’ causes you to gain extra adrenaline with crits (as mentioned before above me). That is the only way to make all crits generate adrenaline, but its also a strong talent for condi, so I can see why someone might have told you your build generates adrenaline faster with crits. If you ARE talented into ‘Furious!’, then yes, you’ll want to look over your gear and see about getting more precision.

Also, look over your talents and utilities, and see if you have any room to swap to something that might help your adrenaline generation. Arms also has ’Berserker’s Fury’ which generates adrenaline passively in combat, and can be a nice option if you don’t have the signets equipped to make use of ‘Signet Mastery’. You probably don’t have much room to pick up any of the rage utility skills, but if you aren’t using it already ‘Blood Reckoning’ is a heal skill that will let you get off back-to-back primal bursts while in Berserk, which can be another way to help your rotation.

At least in WvW, condi Warr has the advantage of having more ‘free’ gear stats for defense. Viper’s nice, but trailblazer, rabid and dire offer you significantly more survivability without the kind of damage loss you’d see if a power Warr tried something similar.

Spvp’s a bit of a different story thanks to the limitations on available stats and how you can spread them out. Condi can offer more area denial and pressure on a point, but power has a better chance of securing kills on lower-health targets when you have cleanses being thrown around.

Personally, I prefer power for the weapons and immediate damage, but find both to be fairly tied in pvp effectiveness. Condi can gear for better defense, but power can talent for it, and both have terrifying damage potential against unsuspecting opponents. If you’re finding power both more effective and fun, roll with that. It’ll do you just fine.

Killshot being unblockable would be a nice change. Every other vanilla burst skill has some utility that makes it usable at all adrenaline levels if needed, and there really is no reason to use Killshot as a Berserker at the moment. As one of our longest skills to channel and now ONLY skill that locks you in place to use, a little something to make it a more appealing skill would be appreciated.

Actually, allowing you to move might be change enough, though that might also kill some of the feel of the skill. Outside of that or Killshot being unblockable I’m not sure what other change might be helpful. Rifle has plenty of vulnerability application already, boon and CC application are well covered by other weapons, and velocity increase only helps if your opponent doesn’t notice you channeling the skill.

Arkanis Drako.5169:

But doesn´t not beeing stunned make this trait useless? I think rousing resilience AND eternal champion work against each other.

I was not able to test the berserker yet, so can someone tell me how to mitigate conditions without cleansing ire or shouts? I guess mending and the ne torch may work somewhow, I cannot say I like either though. I mean in my head it seems like a great idea to take rousing resilience as a berserker, especially with headbutt and outrage, but with all those conditions, first and foremost burning spikes, I´m concerned the armor and healing won´t outweigh the heavy condition pressure.
I´m talking about pvp now, no idea how many conditions will fly around in the expansion areas.

Grabbing Brawler’s Recovery in Discipline gives solid Condi cleanse on it’s own (1 cleansed every 5 seconds if you weapon swap constantly). In WvW, that combined with reduced Condi Duration food and Runes (along with a decent health pool) go a long way to mitigating condi builds on their own, without the need for CI or shouts.

In Spvp you don’t get the food, of course, but your opponents don’t get their own food, so runes alone can help you out tremendously. You ARE still weak to getting condi bombed (since you can only pull off one condition at a time with BR) but grabbing Berserker Stance/using Healing Signet can help you avoid getting hit by multiple conditions at once.

Closer to topic: I do agree that Rousing Resilience is the weakest option of the three, especially since Last Stand now combines most of the stance traits into one. It does work well with Outrage and Savage Instinct, but Eternal Champion DOES ruin that synergy.

I personally might prefer a trait that gives a static amount of toughness as long as you have stability (less than the current 1000 of course), or else maybe an added, ~40cd stunbreak as mentioned before. Of course, it could be that the idea behind the trait is to fill a niche roll, to not be as generally powerful as the other options, but have one or two builds that can truly take advantage of it. If that is the case, then the question becomes what, if any, builds could take advantage of Rousing Resilience as it is.

+ removed some aftercast on AA(Anet you ever looked at mace/hammer AA on war?)

There was a pretty major patch a while back that reduced the AA of all Hammer abilities, in addition to buffing Hammer in other ways (the same patch that initially buffed healing Signet, iirc)

I feel I should note that having one ability on a weapon that can be compared to one ability on another weapon != those two weapons being the same. Your comparisons also… don’t really do that…

+ block + 10 vuln + high dmg!
warrior: shield
warrior: rifle brutal shot

You’re saying that because an ability blocks attacks and causes vulnerability, it’s the same as having warrior shield AND rifle? You’re ignoring the other abilities and utility those two weapon sets offer with this comparison.

On a different note: Yes, Scrapper Hammer looks like it offers quite a lot, especially considering the numbers on all those abilities. However, most of those skills look like they deal that damage over time, meaning you should be able to dodge/block/sidestep a good amount of that damage if the Scrapper isn’t careful. If Anet is pushing for a high-risk, high-reward setup for Scrapper Hammer, then those abilities make sense to me, at least in a vacuum. I would say reserve any complaints for after we’ve had time to see this hammer in action, instead of drawing iffy comparisons between it and warrior weapons.

MH Axe is a powerful PvP weapon, and Axe+Shield/GS is a powerful alternative to GS/Hammer.

Axe’s auto-attack hits very hard if you can get the entire chain off on an opponent, and it’s cleave makes it a perfect synergy with Hundred Blades for clearing camps. Cyclone Strike and Throw Axe are somewhat lackluster (though vulnerability and cripple are always nice to have) but Eviscerate is where MH Axe shines. In an offensive power build, it’s not uncommon for Eviscerate to deal most of a low-armor target’s health. It’s a telegraphed ability that can be tricky to land, even with the short leap, but if you’ve practice landing earth-shaker consistently, it shouldn’t be long until you’re landing Eviscerates left and right.

Shield OH allows you additional defense, as well as some cc to help land Evis, and is a popular weapon to pair with MH Axe. Like the GS/Hammer build, you have great mobility, solid defense and impressive damage, but you trade out the individually powerful attacks and CC of Hammer for higher burst from Axe’s auto-attack and Eviscerate.

I’m… not sure how well a sword/shield+axe/axe build works in WvW, as it sounds like a GS+Axe/shield build that sacrifices some mobility and aoe damage for… extra condi application and fury uptime, which I’m not sure is a fair trade. It’s quite possible the build can work and work well, but I believe GS+Axe/Shield is more powerful numerically.

Wisely.4819:

A condition warrior will most likely be maining a sword, and will always pick Blademaster over Deep Strike, making Deep Strike obsolete in that tier, even though it could be very useful to condition warriors were it put in a different tier. Why are they in the same one? Design mistake?
(Correct me if I’m wrong and there’s another weapon set for condi warriors that could benefit from Deep Strike but not Blademaster. Main longbow?)

Blademaster is a great talent, but sword skills already have rather short cooldowns, and the most important skill to use more often (Riposte) currently doesn’t get reduced by the talent, limiting how nice it is.

If you have high fury uptime and are weapon-swapping often (which you probably are as a warrior) Deep strike starts to become more attractive thanks to the increased output it offers. That’s a fair bit of Condi damage to have most/all of the time, and useful no matter what weapon set you have out.

Mor The Thief.9135:

Axe Mastery is suffering the same problem as it has to compete with Berserker’s Power, which in 90% of the time Berserker’s Power is the better choice.

Personally, I don’t mind Axe Mastery in the same tier as Berserker’s Power, as both traits tend to benefit different kinds of builds. A busty axe setup focusing on landing Eviserates benefits tremendously from the extra ferocity and increased adrenaline gain, while a build focused on sustained damage or chaining multiple abilities together for their burst benefits more from a % damage increase.

Now, yes, Access to Axe Mastery AND Berserker’s Power would make the bursty axe build even stronger, but without a similar ‘hard choice’ to make (ex: moving AM to another tree, forcing the above build to possibly sacrifice a tree they’d usually specialize in to grab both traits) it seems a little powerful to me.

Sich.7103:

Defend supply camp > useless, upgrade will continu.

Attack supply camp > useless, upgrade will continu.

Wich upgrade should I start first ? Should I keep supply before upgrading ? Should I use the supply in the keep to siege before upgrading ? Should I build canon before wall ? > Useless, the upgrade is automatic.

This will just kill scouting and roaming, and all people will just join the zerg..

Taking a supply camp will still increase the amount of time it takes for towers/keeps to upgrade.

Holding supply camps will still decrease the amount of time it takes for your towers/keeps to upgrade.

It sounded like they will keep supply caches in towers in keeps, just at reduced levels. If I read that right, then yaks will still bring needed supply to help siege/repair/defend towers. It will also become easier for solo players/small groups to defend towers, as the supply inside won’t be going away to upgrades.

The changes to sentries could either be a boon to roaming or do nothing at all. In theory, making them more important means you can keep an eye on the sentries you have, and try to jump people who go to flip them. It’s possible to see small scale fights jumping up around sentry spawns with this change.

I will admit, there’s a strange kind of enjoyment from running around upgrading and building siege in your structures. It’s fun to see your towers grow thanks to your efforts, even if it’s frustrating to see that work undone by zergs/larger roaming groups who flip your camps or steal your yaks. I’m not sure if I’ll prefer the current system or the new one, but I don’t think the changes are going to ‘kill’ roaming.

I believe one of the largest reasons to use Sword over Axe for shoutbow is that Shoutbow uses a Celestial amulet. Cele gives you a solid mix of defense and offense, but that offense is spread out between power, condition damage, crit and ferocity. When your damage is that spread out, you want to be able to take as much advantage from it as possible.

That’s where sword comes in. Warrior Sword is a hybrid weapon, with both a high-power attack (final thrust) and solid Condi application (auto-attacks+Flurry). You don’t have the pure, reliable burst of Axe with this setup, but you can take full advantage of all the stats a cele amulet gives you.

In addition, Sword offers more group utility than Axe. While you’ll spend most of your adrenaline on Combustive Shot, Flurry remains a powerful AoE root that can pin opponents in place to let your teammates burst them down, or set them up for additional damage of your own. Axe is very much a ‘selfish’ weapon, in that it really doesn’t offer much of any group support/utility. For shoutbow, group support is largely what you’re about, so you want to stick with weapons that work well with that idea.

nicknamenick.2437:

I wonder what traitline we can drop for the elite spec..

It will depend largely on what we get from our Elite spec.

While Dogged March and Adrenal recovery are both quite nice, the main reason Defense is ‘mandatory’ is Cleansing Ire… We really don’t have access to decent Condi cleanse without it.

However, we can already see that changing with the revised trait lines. Brawler’s recovery is being dropped down a tier in the Discipline tree, and it’s quite possible Mending will become a viable option as a heal skill for some builds. If our elite trait line offers more/other forms of condi cleanse, you may be able to sacrifice Defense for it.

The same goes for almost every tree we have, especially since Trait trees won’t grant stats anymore. Why use strength if you’re running a hammer, and get get the damage you need from Discipline+elite? If you’re going to be using most of the utilities we will gain from the specialization, or primarily use the weapon it provides, then many of our vanillia lines (which will each focus pretty much on one weapon and one set of utilities) become less attractive.

That being said, of course, it is unlikely Discipline will ever not be considered ‘mandatory’ for warriors. Fast hands, more than being powerful, is just a very nice passive to have… and very hard to abandon if you’ve played warrior for a while. Buffing warrior’s sprint won’t help, either. But until we actually see what our specialization offers, and what the traits it’s tree will have, I would argue there’s a strong possibility one of our other ‘mandatory’ trees will end up being replaceable.

dank.3680:

Oh god heres the first step to getting our very last way to communicate with enemies removed.. I don’t get it nobody cries about it in spvp..

Get some thicker skin jeeze you can just right click the name in chat and block them!

SOME of us like to make friends and compliment our enemies on a good fight…

And having someone whisper you after a fight to compliment/ask about build/etc is great when it happens.

Unfortunately, that seems to be the vast minority of cross-server whispers in WvW. It gets hard to tell if someone whispering you is being bitterly sarcastic or complimentary, and you can ignore people who just want to start a friendly chat because it’s hard to believe that’s actually something that happens.

There are definite benefits to having cross-faction/cross-server chat available, but the number of times its abused is unfortunately why it’s taken out/never implemented in other MMOs.

Sword/Shield+Hammer is a solid choice. Similar to GS+Hammer but trading some mobility and burst for defense and utility. You have a ton of CC with this setup, both in the form of hard stuns and immobilizes (Especially if you grab Leg Specialist, which I’d recommend for this setup). Most of your damage is on Hammer, but Final Thrust is still decent burst (you have the CC to reliably land it) while Savage Leap and Shield block give you the mobility and defense to stay in the fight.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAseCjMdWFiZIciGoKoQv4BwDouHa8cI1GA-TpBHABveIAA4IAYwDAYgTAQJ7P0UZAA Theoretical setup for this kind of build. I don’t know your gear setup for WvW/PvE, so I just used Spvp for it.

Sword/Shield+Greatsword is another option. It has tons of mobility and solid defense, but lacks in CC and burst. More of a WvW/PvE option than an Spvp one, while Sword/shield+Hammer performs well in all 3. I did find some use for this build during the stronghold beta, as it is great for jumping between lanes/getting to objectives, and the PvE damage is solid when running lane defense.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAseRjMdU2ZVImhwJigfgC5t3CGDgBQZak7pOCA-TpBFwAOeAAEOCALOBAt2foaZAAHCAA Theoretical setup for this kind of build. Points in tactics are a personal choice of mine, move them around as you see fit.

Hope that helps some

Glad I could help

fullren.6031:

-> Abandoned “Mobile Strikes (MB)” for “Cleansing Ire” which both of you recommend (so I guess it’s pretty important, even though I don’t totally get why, i’d love to hear some explanation about that)

Cleansing Ire is good for 3 reasons.

1) Extra Adrenaline when you’re struck: This allows you to build up to full Adrenaline much faster, allowing you to Burst more often and get more benefit from Adrenal Health (Defense Master Passive)

2) Adrenal Health: Not really a benefit of CI itself… but the two do synergize very well. More passive health regen makes you harder to kill and punishes opponents who swap off of you, benefiting the playstyle you’re looking for.

3) Condi Removal: 1-3 conditions removed when your Burst skill hits. Best case scenario (Using a 3-bar Bust skill that hits every ~9 seconds or so) you’re removing an average of 1 condition every 3 seconds… that is powerful.

Even outside of the best case, that removal helps a ton when fighting condition builds… or even power builds that happen to apply conditions (Usually cripple, chill or Immobilize… sometimes weakness or damaging conditions) Combine that with the fact that Longbow’s Burst skill cannot miss (Literally. It can be interrupted, it’s effect can be avoided, but the skill itself cannot miss) taking CI with a Longbow gives you guaranteed condition removal pretty much on demand.

Yes, condition builds tend to be less common than power builds, but even then CI is useful for the increased Adrenaline gain. Also, what condition builds you will run into while roaming tend to be very powerful and annoying. You will want that condi cleanse against them.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAscTjMd0FaVImhwJigkgC7onBHDgCQXVkaGA-TFSEwAIUCKSfAAzf82fIm6PNeAAMODABV+RKgFVWB-w

The build I’ve used for Condi Roaming in WvW, the last point in Defense can be moved around wherever you like, I just prefer the extra raw stats it gives.

One of the interesting things about Warrior condi is that their weapons still have skills with solid power coefficients, making gear like Carrion a very solid choice. You don’t lose out on Condi damage, but pick up some raw power at the cost of precision (leg specialist+Opportunist helps with that anyways)

In terms of how you are looking to play the spec… it sounds pretty much exactly like how I’ve enjoyed it. You’re a terrifying threat if people ignore you to focus a teammate, and anyone who lets you start stacking bleeds and burning is going to end up downed pretty quickly without a fair amount of Condi removal on their part. You do need to be a bit careful when they focus you, especially if they have conditions of their own (One reason to take Cleansing Ire, it’s just too good with a longbow.) But as long as your friends peel for you and you peel for them, you should have quite a bit of success with your setup.

In short: Yes, for what you want to do your build will work. There are a lot of variations and changes you can make to it, but the core idea you have is exactly the one you need for Condi Warr Roaming.

Sharpened Axes, probably. If you have the points to spare, getting both is a solid option, but 20% CDR on your skills and extra adrenaline gain will help you more than extra ferocity. It allows you better uptime on both vulnerability and fury, which is a lot of extra damage.

Dual Wielding over Dual Wield Agility, flat 5% damage is a great bonus for an Adept trait, and given you’re probably going 4-6 points in Tactics to buff shouts, the lower point investment makes it a much better option.

Lung capacity is hard to pass up for a shout build. Higher uptime on the buffs and debuffs your shouts grant means more damage and utility for you and your party members. Bonus Adrenaline is nice, but if you have Sharpened Axes it becomes less necessary.

Dual-wield with shouts or banners, contribute to the group through utilities that give AoE buffs or debuff opponents.

Have a dual-weild main set, with a more support-based offset (longbow, weapon+Warhorn, etc) Swap between the two to balance damage and support.

See what flexibility you have for your trait setup, look into traits that buff allies (Rending Strikes, Empower Allies, Phalanx Strength, etc).

Weapons are only one part of a class’ toolkit. If you have a weapon set(s) you want to use, mix up your utilities, traits, or even Runes and Sigils to help benefit the group. You CAN have both dual-weilding and group support, it’s up to you to find out how to do that in a way you enjoy playing.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAscTjMd06ZlHeewJagqgA5Rgy+70nSB-TFSHABupPgR1fC4EAcnSwjU+Fy+DA8EAE4QAQKgFVWB-w An option for a condi shout build. You have some choice in Master Traits for Tactics, with Burning Arrows or Shrug it Off! Being your strongest choices. If you run warhorn, go Quick Breathing, or take Empower Allies as an option when running with a group of power builds.

You can swap Missile Deflection for Dogged March if you’d prefer, though the low CD on sword’s parry makes MD a very strong counter to ranged builds. You can also change up your runes to preference. Sunless runes give you more defense against other Condi builds, Undead gives you raw Condi Damage, while Traveler’s offers a more rounded setup while freeing a trait slot in Discipline (You really should get +25% movespeed from somewhere, it’s too powerful to go without)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAscTjMd0FaVImhwJagkAB7nMXDURZ1vA-TVSHABEq+iRK/K4QAwoKEnpPIgTAQI7PAwTAIKlgkCYRlVA-w An option without shouts, balancing Condi damage with a little extra power as well. You can move 3 of the points in Arms around as you like (Max out Defense for Defy Pain or max out Discipline for Burst Mastery are typical choices) And again, you can change missile deflection to Dogged March, and change out the runes for most other Condi if you’d prefer.

The second link is the build I’ve used while roaming, and found it quite powerful. You ARE vulnerable to projectile reflection, and will find that Impale can be tricky to land. Either way, hope this helps you out.

EDIT: Wow, I can’t believe I forgot Soldier Runes >< I’d definitely suggest considering Rune of the Soldier for a shout build, the AoE condi cleanse it offers is very, very powerful.

Of course, if you’re mostly solo-roaming/think you have enough condi cleanse as it is (You might, actually) go back to my other suggestions to maximize your damage.

A big problem with Burst Precision is that Sigil of Intelligence does almost the same job without taking up trait points. By putting SoI on your Axe you can guarantee a critical Eviserate on weapon swap and also be able to grab Burst Mastery to make it hit even harder. If you’re looking for a high power/high ferocity build, that’s probably a better option that traiting Burst Precision.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAneTjMdUFaZImdwJagfgCZM0CGDgCQdak7lBA-TpBHwAMLDQ4IAY4EAA4BAwa/hBHCAA something like that might work better (Go back to Cav amulet if you want more ferocity, though you will lose out on a lot of power)

EDIT: If you ARE dead-set on using burst mastery, why not go all-out? Run Axe+shield/Rifle for a risky burst-build. You likely won’t be casting Kill Shot all that often (Evis is easier to land) but it gives you a ranged burst option, and Rifle Butt combined with Bull’s Charge and Shield Bash make it fairly easy to set up for an Evis/Kill Shot

DarkSyze.8627:

Their trait need to be redesign to prevent that. Why put too many damage in one trait and one build? It do not make sense at all!

You can not balance Power+Power

You can. High burst damage is typically balanced with low personal survivability.

The build in that video, for example, has 12.3k health and 2.1k armor without guard leech. In fact, the discussion thread that video links do describes the build as “Trading sustain for insane burst potential in very short periods of time”. This is a build that can drop a player in only a few seconds, but can have the same done to them if they aren’t careful.

Moving away from that build on it’s own, Burst and bursty builds have as much a role in WvW as any setup. They are excellent roaming builds, helping their server keep opposing players out of an area of the map, protecting yaks and camps, and picking off stragglers trying to catch up to an enemy zerg. They’re built for catching opponents unawares, for quickly downing+stomping someone then moving on. They’re good at that -some builds maybe too good- but those strengths have weaknesses.

Bust builds like that tend to fail in large group combat. With 20+ players throwing out AoE your small health pool and low armor will punish you every time you try to jump out and drop someone. Not to mention that the more people in a fight, the better chances someone will target you, and the better odds of you being caught unawares and quickly downed.

They also rely too heavily on a quick flurry of damage. If someone survives their initial barrage, a burst build has to play defensive until they can find the opportunity to burst again… and that gives their opponent time to drop them. Also, with the element of surprise gone, better players can anticipate their burst and mitigate it, partially or completely. With a build like that, all you need is for a savvy opponent to find an opening, and it’s you being one-shot, not them.

Heavy armor is nice. Light and medium have some decent models, certainly, but Heavy seems to have the largest selection of models that I like to use. Do I want to look like a bruiser, covered head-to-toe in thick plate? Done. Do I want to look like a skirmisher? Lightly armored and mobile? Done. Heavy armor is the only set where I keep finding more appearance combinations that I like and want to run around in, instead of finding one or two and only sticking with those.

Along with that, I find it hard not to enjoy the straightforward aesthetic of being a Warrior. From weapon skills to utilities, our abilities seem to stick to a ‘simple but effective’ ideal. No stealth, no real combat tricks, no magical/pseudo-magical abilities, just staying alive while trying to beat your opponent into submission. It’s cathartic, and I’ve yet to have any other class in GW2 match that kind of enjoyment.

In general, the strengths of a Warrior are the kinds of things I want for what I like to do in this game. I like the balance of power and durability, I like their options for self-healing and defensive abilities, and I enjoy how their weapon skills look and feel. Their weaknesses don’t really bother me, either. Even the bugs and problems with some of their mechanics fail to break the class for me. Warrior was the first class I rolled in GW2, and I keep coming back to it no matter how many alts I raise to 80. It’s just a lot of fun to run around on.

choovanski.5462:

necro can trait for +50% crit in death shroud, so it’s not like other classes cant get simmilar things. all the OP is suggesting is having more of the warriors own skill, mostly knockdowns work for this trait also. im not sure if dazes should work with this trait, but knockdowns should.

Except when a Necro jumps into Death Shroud, they can still be CC’d, dodged or simply bursted out of it. Not to mention the Necro talent is at the END of a tree, a popular tree for power builds, certainly, but it still poses a limiting factor. Comparing that to Unsuspecting foe isn’t fair, they’re meant for completely different build ideas for completely different classes, of course they won’t do the same thing.

Using Sigil of Intelligence as an argument is rather silly, also. Critting with 3 abilities after a weapon swap =/= being able to auto-crit a stunned or knocked down target. A warrior alone could chain auto-crits for far more than 3 hits with a change like that, even more so if you add in CC from other classes.

Not to mention those 3 auto-crits from Intelligence can be dodged/blocked/etc. In order to make the most out of that sigil, you need to couple it with CC or be careful in timing your swaps and attacks. With your proposed changes to UF, once you land one CC effect you can chain into as many as your build allows, worrying only about stun breaks. The strategy and counterplay is different between the two, it’s not really fair to point at Sigil of Intelligence and say “see, that makes this a good idea”.

Personally, I don’t dislike the idea of changing UF to grant crit from more kinds of CC, but in practice I think it’s too powerful a change to really implement. Hammer warriors are already powerful in WvW, Mace warriors are powerful in WvW and Spvp, those aren’t the builds we need to look at to buff. If we’re going to draw Anet’s attention to traits that need changing, lets look to traits that could help improve weaker builds to promote variety, or that would improve QoL for warriors as a whole.

Sword/Shield+Longbow

Pin down, Fan of Fire and Combustive Shot give you ranged Condi pressure as well as exceptional condi cleanse when traited into Cleansing Ire. Combustive Shot’s fire field also allows you to blast might with Arcing Arrow, as well as stack fire shield with Savage Leap and Shield Bash.

Since you’re planning to run Condi anyways, you can build fairly tanky in WvW thanks to Dire and Rabid gear, and either run a support build in zergs (Banners/shouts to back up your condi pressure) or build more aggressive for roaming (run stances, more points into your Arms tree)

For a heavy Condi build… you don’t really have more options than that. Offhand sword offers more condi pressure than shield at the cost of CC and some defense, but no other weapon brings enough conditions to the table to be worth it. There was a perplexity-based celestial/condi build using Hammer and Distracting Strikes, though I don’t think I’ve seen anyone use it in a while.

I wouldn’t be suprised to see Balanced stance changed to something similar to Hollowed Ground for Guards, periodic pulses of short-duration stability (1 2sec stack every 2 seconds, maybe?) Less CC resistance than a transform, but still something. With the change, one stack on a 40sec CD seems a little too weak not too alter.

Caedmon.6798:

Juba.8406:

^^^

wow so rare to see GS/Sw warriors although its a pretty effective roaming set , salute to you m8.

That’s a build purely made to run away,not to fight.

It fights fairly well though. For a WvW roaming build it offers great camp clearing and solid damage output. Yes, the mobility it offers means you can run away rather well, but it also allows you to move from objective to objective quickly, as well as stick on a flighty opponent during a fight.

For OP: Shield does find a use in a few PvP builds, at least. Axe+Shield/Greatsword, Sword+Shield/Greatsword and Sword+Shield/Longbow are solid WvW options that you can try out (A/S+GS and S/Sh+GS are power builds, S/Sh+L is more of a cele/condi build).

Mace/Shield+GS is another option that was very popular a little while back (Again, a power build). Shield is a solid PvP choice thanks to having both a block and a leap finisher stun, both of which are very useful in a fight.

PvE tends to focus a bit more on raw damage output, but then again a downed player doesn’t do much damage. If you’re learning fights or feel like you’re taking too much damage, you could probably run a shield in PvE without sacrificing too much output.

Killshot hits harder than Eviscerate as it is now, I don’t think it needs a damage boost. I don’t agree with having it ignore protection/blocks, either. There needs to be ways to avoid/mitigate/prevent heavy burst abilities like that.

Reducing it’s cast time, however? Completely on-board with that idea. It’s cast time currently is the biggest problem Killshot has, and being able to more reliably Rifle Butt>Killshot may be the boost Rifle needs for PvP.

Your ideas for Volley and Brutal shot make some sense too, though given Volley is kittens now (and on a very short cooldown), I’d think only applying 5 stacks of vulnerability for 8-12 seconds would make more sense. Brutal shot removing boons is a solid idea, especially with the increased CD.

Fire and Air do stack iirc, leading to some decent extra damage if you want to go that way.

Sigil of Battle is a very good option. As a warrior you should be constantly swapping weapons, so Battle on at least one weapon set leads to a lot of might uptime. Strength can give more might, but less reliably. Might is a flat damage increase to everything you do, while Accuracy can help you get those nice crits a bit more often. I’ve always been a fan of Bloodlust as well, 250 power is very nice, but it’s a pain to rebuild if you find yourself dying/swapping BLs often.

Air/Battle is probably the most powerful option, but there are a lot of solid Sigils to use in their place as fits your preference.

You have blinds, stealths, evades, and abilities to easily jump in and out of melee range. Even if you don’t take all of these into your build, most glass Thieves are hard to deal with 1v1 because you can’t pin them down long enough to land any useful amount of damage.

Of course, if you can pin a thief down long enough, they’re glassy enough to drop in just a couple hits or solid crit.

That’s how glass thieves have been for a while. You got hit by a hard-hitting skill with a telegraphed wind-up that managed to crit you while you were under 50% health, that’s fatal to a build like yours.

Short answer: No. Longbow is quite good, but rifle falls behind too much in PvP to help you much.

Long Answer… If you want to try for it? It’s… possible.

Rifle is a burst weapon, it has two skills (It’s #3 channeled skill and it’s Burst Skill) that hit very hard, a melee-ranged knockback (#5 skill) that does decent damage… and that’s it. It’s other skills do very low damage and it’s auto-attack, while good for building adrenaline, doesn’t hit hard enough to warrant continued use most of the time.

On top of that, it’s main damage is easily mitigated/avoided. Volley is channeled and roots you in place, meaning it can be dodged/ranged/blocked/immuned for part or all of it’s duration… or they could simply CC you and ruin your fun that way. Similarly, Kill Shot has a long wind-up time before it fires, telegraphing to the world what you’re about to do.

Some people have had luck running Rifle+axe/shield or something similar in WvW, usually running with a zerg with the express purpose of getting as high crits as possible with their burst skills. Fun in a way, but in the end not very useful.

That being said… Longbow helps Rifle some thanks to Pin Down, which applies a hefty immobilize. Pin Down>Weapon swap>Volley/Kill Shot is a combo that can work, and can lead to some solid burst… provided you land it. It’s worth noting that Longbow’s damage in a power build is somewhat decent, with Arcing Arrow hitting very hard -but can be tricky to land- while Fan of Flames does solid damage at point-blank range on a target.

If you want to try a pure ranged build… run with a group. Support them with Arcing Arrow’s blast finisher and Combustive Shot’s fire field, have them help keep melee off you, and drop your rifle burst when the right target presents itself. Other classes -and indeed, other warrior builds- can do this job better than rifle/longbow… but it ‘can’ be done, and you ‘can’ have some degree of success.

Fast hands is a tough one, and we might just have to suck up being forced to put 3 points in Discipline (personally, I don’t mind that, as it gives access to nice passives and traits). As for Cleansing Ire and being forced to put 4-5 points in Defense… Perhaps adding condi removal to other trees could be an option?

Take the recent change to Brawler’s Recovery, that now lets you clear 1 condition as often as every 5 seconds if you weapon swap on cooldown. It doesn’t offer the burst cleanse that CI does, but it’s more reliable and constant, offering a different way for a warrior to get their condi removal if they choose.

Quick Breathing is another example, allowing the warhorn to convert conditions to boons. These and CI are all in different trees, and while you could grab more than one for even more condi removal, alone they remain decent options for a warrior to pick and choose from, depending on the build they’re trying to make.

One answer could be to add more traits that cleanse conditions in other trees. Maybe a grandmaster trait in strength to cleanse conditions on a timer, or reduce the duration of some kinds of conditions. You could even do something more niche, like burst condi cleanse when you gain Quickness as a trait in Arms.

Personally, one of the major problems I have when playing with build ideas is that CI and Armored Attack (5-point passive in Defense) are so good for most builds that it’s not worth trading them out for anything. If you have more options for alternate forms of removal, power/condi damage increase, etc. Then it becomes easier for a player to go “Hmmm, I want to make a build like this… so I can grab this trait instead of CI and still have condi removal.”

The traits don’t have to be objectively better than CI, or worse, or even balanced against it to begin with. They simply need to offer a way to purge conditions, so warriors have options and don’t feel forced into a certain trait.

As the title says, there appears to be a bug where camps and towers (possibly keeps, haven’t checked them) show an upgrade at 99% completion… when no upgrade is actually queued.

Buying an upgrade resets the progress event, but often the bug returns after the upgrade is complete.

John Corpening.9847:

Hey Guys,

• 24 hour coverage
  • How do we make play time in off hours valuable without blowing out the score?
• Snowballing
  • How do we give worlds a fighting chance throughout the duration of the match?

Gonna group these together as I realized my first suggestion for question 2 also applies to question 1.

More buffs to Outnumbered, increasing buffs to outnumbered the longer it’s applied to a Battleground, or realm buffs based on score difference?

Not sure how viable that last one is, but the first two, maybe? Have outnumbered grant more score on kills, or grant score when capping/defending a camp/tower/keep? If you can keep track on how long a realm is outnumbered in a borderland or EB, you could scale those buffs up, starting at 0 and moving up every… hour? 30min? Every time points tick over? Timing would depend, but that way underpopulated realms (or people playing in off hours) would find it easier to gain points.

As for unbalanced matchups (Rank 12 realm against rank 6 or something like that)… not sure? Maybe buff Siegerazer? Make it easier to use him to take back close towers? If you can do something based on score, make it easier for a team lagging behind to recap their own keeps and garrisons? Realm buff to siege damage, more Siegrazer-esque NPCs to help assault them, longer sword timers for high-scoring realms to keep them from easily waypointing back?

John Corpening.9847:

• Stagnation
  • How do I feel continuously challenged when my world is ahead?
  • How does my world break the hold that other worlds have on me when I’m behind?

Oh, either these questions are just very similar and I only noticed now, or I’m terrible at answering the question I was actually asked… anyways…

Changes based on score is starting to seem more-and-more the answer to these problems. I don’t know how easy such a thing would be to implement, but buffs to reduce siege costs and assault timers for realms that are behind, increased timers and reduced RI for realms that are ahead… The easiest way I can think of to keep the challenge is to make it harder for realms that are winning to hold camps/towers/keeps, and easier for losing realms to take and hold them for themselves.

As someone who roams solo/with a very small group (2-4) most of the time, you can take camps and towers fairly easily… so long as you don’t get chased out by a zerg. Any changes that help those small groups for losing realms could make it easier for them to stay competitive even when outmatched, especially since it would improve how well their zergs could take things, by extension. Give losing/outmanned realms longer grace periods to assault camps and towers before swords appear, make it easier for a couple people to quickly knock down a tower wall or gate and kill the lord, and reward them for it. Make it easier for losing realms to claim Bloodlust, or make the ruins in their borderland unflippable by other realms until their points are closer.

In most cases, making things easier for small groups unfortunately makes things easier for zergs, but if you can have buffs and nerfs apply ONLY to one realm or another, based on score, you could help the roamers and zergers in just the losing realm(s), which might go a long way to helping the point disparity.

InfernoHero.5687:

Derren.8724:

-snip-

Would something like this work?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAseTjMd0Fa3HOeQHagpgCXCcdACg0dQYHDA-TBSBwAXOlCGV+hT9nU6bkoEkt5vY7PA4JFAA-e

Depends a bit on what you’re aiming to do in PvE. For group play, high toughness will mean mobs will initially target you first, but there’s no way to keep them on you, so you can’t really fill a ‘tank’ role (which your build seems made for). It will certainly be very, very hard for mobs to kill you in PvE with that setup, though I’m not sure if that makes up for the reduced damage if you’re aiming to run dungeons. Hearts/events/world bosses? That will work just fine. Group dungeons? I might suggest Berserker armor, weapons and trinkets to boost your damage.

What you linked is close to a solid PvP-tank build, however. If you’re interested in running around in WvW with a build like that, move one point from Arms to Defense in order to grab Cleansing Ire (gain Adrenaline when hit, burst moves cleanse conditions) In PvE you might get away with only using Shrug it Off, but in PvP you’d want the extra condition-cleanse. You’d lose more damage that way, but in the end you’d have a very tanky build that could run along with your realm’s zerg group, offering support with your banners and some damage with sword and bow.

Shanks.2907:

When I play sword/shield and greatsword in pvp, I use something like this.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAseRjMdUFaZHmhwJagqABdlAJUfMYuUbA-TpBEwATOEAGOBA52fAwRAIbZACPAAA

You can use bull’s charge and sword burst to set up 100 blades and use shield #4 to set up final thrust burst on sword. I use bladetrail to cripple and immobilize (leg specialist trait) to set up bull’s charge since it misses so often.

I wouldn’t call it competitive, but it’s fun.

Oh nice. I suppose I should revise my last post, that is a good way to make sword/shield+GS work in PvP.

I don’t run around in PvE on a warrior often, so I’d recommend looking up popular PvE builds and seeing what -if any- changes you’d need to make to fit in sword/shield.

That being said, personally I’d suggest at least 5 points in arms, which gives you Attack of Opportunity. You’ll always be fighting bleeding foes, so that’s a flat 10% damage you won’t want to overlook. That also gives you access to the Rending Strikes adept trait (apply vulnerability on crit) and either Blademaster (+10% sword crit) or Forceful Greatsword (GS grants might on crit, reduced GS cooldowns) for Master traits.

You’ll probably want at least 3 points in Discipline as well, because fast hands is very good. You have more freedom in what adept trait to take there, though Warrior’s Sprint (+25% movespeed with melee weapon equipped) will help you a lot while running about.

After that you have some more freedom, depending on what other weapon set you use, and the role you want to play in your group. For a more support-based build, you could go a full 6 points into Tactics, grabbing Inspiring Banners (reduced banner CD, increased range) Empower Allies (AoE power in combat) and probably Phalanx strength (When you gain might, grant might to allies)… this would probably work best with a sword/shield+GS build, where GS would end up being your primary weapon (Forceful Greatsword+Sigil of Strength = a fair bit of AoE might) In this build, Sword/shield would be there to help keep you alive with the block, and would be worth swapping to once mobs dropped below 50% for the damage from Final Thrust.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAseRjMdUGalH2ewJaAmg6aEEA6ei0rQME8A-TBBXgAA7PK/C1H0r+zjSQSBExyI-e (Theoretical trait setup for this kind of build)

Another option would be a Sword/Shield+Axe/Mace, putting those 6 points into… Strength, possibly. Dual Wielding (5% damage with sword/mace/axe in OH), Axe Mastery (+150 ferocity with MH Axe) and Berserker’s Power (5/10/15% damage based on Adrenaline) would lead to significant damage output with your Axe/Maxe set, which also offers AoE-CC and additional Vulnerability stacking. You could grab Blademaster with this setup as well, helping both increase the output of your sword/shield set, as well as help guarantee that your final thrusts crit.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQRAse3ZjMdUGalH2ewJaggAxchAJueqkuyA-TBBXgAA7PK/C1P0r+zjSQSBExyI-e (Theoretical setup for this build)

In both, sword/shield is -unfortunately- your backup weapon set. Final Thrust does have potential when groups of mobs (and especially boss mobs) are at low health, but aside from guaranteeing bleed stacks on mobs, it’s damage is lower than most PvE-favored weapons. That being said, the block could very well save your life on some encounters, and Final Thrust is nothing to scoff at.

In general, warrior sword is something of a jack-of-all-trades weapon. It’s auto-attack chain applies bleeding and cripple, which makes it attractive to condi builds. Sword #2 is a low-cooldown leap that gives mobility, and Sword #3 is a heavy-damage attack to benefit from power builds. It’s burst skill benefits condi builds more than power, applying a LOT of bleed stacks, but it can hit decently hard with good power and crit chance as well.

In PvP, sword/shield works as a sort of substitute for a greatsword, offering less mobility, but more defense. You still have a leap to close gaps/cover ground, your auto-attack hits reasonably hard and fast, while shield bash’s stun helps you hold low-health targets still long enough to hit them with Final Thrust (and likely kill them, if it crits). Lots of warriors in zergs will run sword/warhorn for more mobility and group support, while condi builds might prefer sword/sword for the ranged torment and a block that counters with bleed stacks.

In general, it’s a weapon you’ll see a lot of warriors using in PvP. It works well with pretty much any build and pairs well with pretty much any other weapon set (I probably wouldn’t go sword/shield+greatsword in PvP… but you might be able to make it work). If you’re thinking of using it for PvP… go for it. Find a build that you like to run around with and have sword/shield be one of the weapon sets you use.

For PvE, however… it’s not really that useful. Again, a condi build can get a lot out of warrior sword (and more from sword/sword), but condi tends to appear lackluster in PvE, and most classes can outperform a warrior in condition-application where it counts. The mobility and defense can be useful if you want to pair it with axe/mace or axe/axe (or greatsword in this case), but in terms of raw damage output you will fall behind.

Try it out in PvE, though, maybe you can find a build to take advantage of it. The point of a game is to try and have fun, and sword/shield is by no means a ‘bad’ weapon set for warriors at all.

One melee weapon is recommended, usually a greatsword or else main-hand sword+other (shield, sword, warhorn are typical choices, depending on build)

Both GS and MH Sword offer you mobility to travel faster, leave fights you don’t need to be in (to get to an objective instead of fighting in the road, for example) and can help you kite melee opponents to get the most out of your ranged weapon. While both Longbow and Rifle have damaging ranged skills and some control options, they don’t work together well enough to make up for not having a GS or sword.

Also, Rifle… isn’t all that good in PvP right now. The bleed on auto-attack would be nice, but the rest of it’s skills support a power build over condi, and it’s auto doesn’t do nearly enough sustained damage to fill in the gaps between Volley and Snipe. (I don’t remember what the Rifle Burst skill is actually called, but Snipe seems close enough) Both of those skills have the potential to deal out a LOT of damage… but are unfortunately very easy to interrupt, avoid or mitigate. Since it’s main strength is unreliable at best, it gets overshadowed by pretty much every other weapon a warrior has.

Longbow, on the other hand, is fairly good. It supports Condi and Bunker builds mostly, but has solid enough options to be alright in a power build. But it helps to have a reliable weapon set as backup… and I just mentioned how the Rifle isn’t reliable.

Grab a GS or Sword+x to replace your rifle, or grab a hammer and defend nodes, or Axe+x for some melee burst. You’ll lose the pure-ranged ideal with I admit could be a lot of fun, but you’ll find you’re much more effective in PvP.

Juba.8406:

yes the adrenaline nerf is a bit harsh, but its time to break Cleansing Ire chain surrounding warrior’s neck, for too long we were dependent on that trait.

I’m curious if the adrenaline change will actually make Cleansing Ire less attractive or not.

Currently, Cleansing Ire cures conditions based on Adrenaline spent, and one of the major mechanics that keeps it ‘balanced’ is that missed Burst skills don’t spend adrenaline, and so don’t cure conditions. Currently, a warrior needs to be careful on how he uses his burst skills -or carry a longbow- to maximize condi removal.

But if burst skills drain adrenaline regardless if they hit or not… won’t that mean it always procs Cleansing Ire? You’re still spending 1-3 bars of adrenaline, even if the skill doesn’t hit. To me it seems that would make the trait more useful, since even if you miss you’ll still purge conditions.

A while back, someone posted a Celestial Perplexity build for warriors here. Mace/Shield+Hammer with Distracting Strikes, Death From above, and Merciless Hammer iirc. Don’t recall the full setup, but the idea was to mix sustained damage output with confusion stacking to lockdown and kill opponents, so that’s something you could try playing with.

-Sword/Sword+Longbow is a strong condi setup, running mostly Dire gear with enough Rampagers to hit a decent amount of crit for proccing additional bleeds.

-Sword/Shield+hammer gives you decent mobility with very strong CC, which would be strong both in a zerg or roaming in a small group.

-Sword/x+Greatsword grants you the most mobility (especially if you run sword/warhorn) but the least reliable burst (hundred blades and final thrust are both tricky to land, and need to be proceeded by skills/utilities to lock an opponent down.)

-Sword/Shield+Hammer can make for a decent interrupt-based condi build, similar to the one I mentioned first, but with more mobility and less CC than if you used a mace.

In terms of trait/utility setup… the typical trait build for pretty much every warrior is 0/4/4/0/3, with 3 points left over to move around as you see fit. If you use a greatsword, you almost always want to grab Forceful Greatsword in arms, and similar for Hammer with the Merciless Hammer trait in Defense.

For utilities… Personally I love stances, and always use Endure Pain, Balanced Stance and Berserker Stance. Bull’s charge is a good option if you’re using a Greatsword, and the perplexity-celestial build might have toyed with Bull’s Charge and Stomp. Dolyak Signet and Signet of Stamina are popular replacements to Blanced Stance and Berserker Stance… but if you go that route make sure you take the Signet Mastery trait in Discipline.

Healing Skill = Healing Signet. Ultimate Skill = Signet of Rage. Feel free to experiment with others, but those two are currently the most powerful.

Daishi.6027:

That you for a great and quick response, I’m sorry I was not lurking more to have seen it sooner.

What would be a suggested gear to make this work? I was already going down the berserker path but I’m considering soldier or a cavalier/knight(lil bit of zerk) combo.

I believe the ‘ideal’ gear setup for WvW is Soldier Helm/Chest/Legs, with Zerker in every other slot. You get a decent amount of survivability to combine with points in the Defense tree without sacrificing much damage.

Cavalier or Knights in place of Soldiers works as well, and given the changes to crit damage with Ferocity, Cavalier might be the better option to help get back some of the damage we lost. See which setup works best for you, but I do recommend mixing some pieces with defensive stats along with Zerker. WvW allows for much higher damage spikes than Spvp, and classes that are typically bursty (thieves especially) have a builds dedicated to hunting down lone players in WvW and dropping them in only a couple hits.

As a warrior, your damage won’t spike as high as a dedicated burst build, but I’d say it’s more reliable, and you have the toughness to take the hits other classes can’t. Capitalize on those strengths when gearing and when playing.

GS is primarily a mobility weapon in WvW. Hundred Blades is great for clearing camps or if you can get someone to hold still long enough to hit them with most of it, but generally you’ll pull more use out of Spinning Slash, Bladetrail and Charge when fighting other players.

With that in mind you typically want your other weapon set to be the one you get most of your damage from. Bow is a decent option if you’re running with zergs most of the time, with Rifle being a bit more fun in the same scenario, but less effective. Hammer is useful both in zergs and roaming solo/with a small group, and it’s plethora of CC gives you plenty of chances to land Hundred Blades.

If you’re planing to mix roaming and zerging, I’d suggest a GS/Hammer build probably, using similar traits/utilities as this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQJARSjMd0FaVImhwJaAmgCdnPBhwx0OA09EA

As for running MH sword… you’ll pick up more mobility (especially if you offhand a warhorn) but lose out on a fair bit of damage. Final Thrust is solid burst (especially if your opponent is at low health) but tricky to land, and it’s burst skill is only really useful if you have solid condi damage. Sword/shield or Sword/Sword gives you a block for more defense, with shield also giving you a stun and OH sword giving you a ranged attack that can be re-triggered in melee for some nice extra damage.

I’d suggest almost the same build for GS+Sword/X as GS+Hammer, except with the choice to either grab a different end-tier trait in Defense, or take a point out to put somewhere else.

nekretaal.6485:

No ability in the game should require more than two traits to max.

So, you are on to something with your critique. The more traits that can improve Deathshroud, the weaker the base Deathshroud must be balanced at.

Almost every Profession mechanic or suite of utilities (signets/shouts/minions/etc) Has more than two traits to improve them, for every profession. It’s part of what allows you to make a ‘minion build’ as a Necro or a ‘Shout build’ as a Guardian.

Every profession mechanic has a Trait tree that improves an aspect of it, along with traits and passives scattered throughout all of their trees, granting it additional utility or effectiveness. Roll a mesmer, look at their Traits and notice just how many buff Clones, phantasms and shatters in one way or another. Do the same for Thieves with steal and initiative, or Warriors with adrenaline and burst, or Elementalists with attunements.

If you want your profession mechanic to be powerful, you need to trait for it, regardless of profession. If you trait for something else, then you sacrifice how strong your profession mechanic can be. DS is okay untraited and can be very powerful with traits, just like every other profession mechanic, I don’t see a problem with it.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

If the D/P set is the problem, then only fix D/P.

^ This.

Changing Heartseeker so that it is no longer a leap finisher (make it a teleport-to-target, for example) would go a long way to fixing most of the problems with stealth, at least in terms of how powerful it is. The only spammable finisher left to stealth with would be shortbow 2, and blackpowder-weapon swap isn’t something a thief really wants to be doing in combat (however, it would still allow a thief to stack stealth out of combat to set up an opener, which personally I think is fine.)

That change would negate the need for a revealed debuff after leaving stealth I feel, as the ease of entering stealth in combat would be much more limited. Personally I don’t have an issue with thieves wanting to play a build based heavily around stealthing, but I do feel it’s current incarnation is a bit too powerful.

As for your suggested #3 and #4… yeah, both make sense. #4 is a bit iffier because sPvP is intended to be more competitive than WvW, and making thieves really have to keep the revealed debuff in mind runs in line with the more competitive mindset. I completely agree with stealth breaking channels, however. If stealth becomes harder to re-enter in combat, then the counter-play of using channeled abilities against thieves become less necessary.

CrazyRabidSquirrel.9274:

only pugs duel. dueling is generally is a pretty good sign that a player doesnt really have anything better to offer a team. theres a reason its called “world v world”. might consider changing to svp.

Dueling is the best way to test your skill against that of another player. It’s hard to tell just how well your build works -or just how well you play it- if you’re constantly in unbalanced fights.

Also, while it is called “World vs World”, that doesn’t mean it’s all about large group fighting. A single person can take camps and disrupt supply lines. 2-4 people can do that faster, while also stealing towers and poking keeps. Conversely, a single person/small group can defend camps, yaks and towers from similarly small groups, leading to duels and skirmishes when the two meet.

So just because people duel in WvW, does not mean they aren’t contributing to their team, it’s just a different way of contributing.

So a little while back I heard a rumor about classes potentially gaining access to new weapons, and loved the idea. I’m not sure if/when this will happen, and I know that our current utilities and weapons could still use some tweaks, but I thought it would be fun to guess at what weapons we might get anyways. At the very least, hopefully, this might encourage some discussion about what weapons people want, or what niches people feel still need to be filled.

Also, small disclaimer: While I enjoy the Necro class quite a bit, and plan on maining it for the foreseeable future, I’m still relatively new to the class in general. These ideas stem largely from my sPvP and WvW experience with the class, both playing as a Necro and fighting against them. More than claim that ‘These should definitely become our new weapons’ I’m hoping instead to inspire some discussion from more experienced players on this forum. Do you like some of these ideas? Do you think others should be altered slightly? Are there some that should just be removed? Is there something we as a class desperately need through our weapon sets? Is there a different weapon set you’d rather us have?

With that said and those questions in mind, here are two weapon examples, courtesy of me.

Torch: (Mainhand+Offhand)

Auto-attack:
-Burn deals ~300 damage to your target (range 1000) – restores 2% LF
-Sear (1/4 sec) deals ~300 to your target (range 1000) – restores 2% LF
-Ignite (1/2 sec) Set fire to your opponent, dealing ~200 damage and applying burning (1s) (range 1000)

Torch #2:
-Curse of flame (1/2 sec) (12 sec CD) Curse all enemies in the target area, dealing ~300 damage and applying burning (2s) (1000 range, 480 aoe)

Torch #3:
-Scorched earth (3/4) (20 second CD) Ignite an area into an expanding wave of flame, dealing extra damage to burning opponents, leaves a ring of fire at the end (4s).~600 damage (normal) ~800 damage (burning) (range 1000, aoe 480)

Torch #4:
-Coldflame Strike (1/4) (15s CD) blast your opponent with frozen fire, dealing ~400 damage, blinding and chilling them (4s ea) (900 range)

Torch #5:
-Corrupting flame (1/2) (20s CD) Corrupt your opponent, dealing ~400 damage and converting up to 2 boons to conditions. (900 range)

—The idea I had for the torch was to provide an alternate weapon choice for condition builds, either as a new offhand option to go with a scepter, a potential replacement for the scepter+x set, or to replace the staff for those who aren’t so fond of it. To that end I gave main hand torch targeted AoEs, while the offhand remained largely single-target utility.

This would… probably combo too well with Dhuumfire currently. But as it seems people spec into Dhummfire because they feel they have to in order to deal damage, maybe it would open up other build opportunities instead.—

Greatsword:

Auto-attack:
-Cleave (1/2s) ~650 damage in front of you
-Great Cleave (1/2s) ~700 damage around you
-Corrupting wave (1/2s) Release a cone of death, dealing ~900 damage to enemies in front of you – Restore 1% LF for each opponent struck (480 range, cone)

Greatword#2:
-Death’s Call (1/2s) (8sec CD) Hurl a shadow of your blade at a target, dealing ~600 damage and crippling (4s) all targets in it’s path. The blade then returns, pulling any target struck towards you (600 range) —Projectile finisher--

Greatsword #3:
-Shroud of Dread (3/4s) (30CD, 10s Duration) surround yourself in vampiric energy, gaining vigor (10s) and causing all attacks to siphon health for the duration (siphon damage: 40, Siphon Healing: 60)

Greatsword #4:
-Unearthly Wail (3/4s) (20s CD) Summon a banshee that releases a horrifying cry, Weakening (4s) opponents and fearing (1s) those close to you. Deals ~500 damage (0-180: fear, 0-600: Weaken) —Blast Finisher-- -Restores 5% LF

Greatsword #5:
-Flourishing strike (1s) (15sec CD) flourish your blade, briefly evading attacks (3/4s evade) before delivering a heavy strike of your own, dealing ~1200 damage. If the strike hits, restore 10% LF and the cooldown on Flourishing Strike is reduced by 5 seconds. —Whirl Finisher--

—The idea I had for Greatsword Necros was a close-mid range power build focusing primarily on sustain, though with more AoE options than the dagger. Decent for AoEing camps, strong single-target against boss-type mobs, and good PvP utility was my hope. Potentially nice to run with Axe+X, a MM build, or a bunker setup (which could, admittedly, include the previous two as well).—

Aaaand that is what I came up with, anyone else have some ideas? Feedback? Rage?

So you want your warrior to be as hard as possible to kill, while also being able to do something on the front lines of a zerg vs zerg? Hmmm…

I get the theory behind your setup, at least. Shake it Off and Shrug it Off provide decent condi removal, even more when you factor in Cleansing Ire.

In fact, given the group support Shake and Shrug grant, I might suggest grabbing Empowered Allies instead of Desperate Power, for more flat damage for yourself and more damage for your allies as well. Points in Tactics also gives you options to swap to a more supportive build, as you could trait for improved banners and grab Banner of Strength and/or Warbanner. I wouldn’t use Bull’s charge in your build, so there is definitely an option to grab a banner to replace that. Alternatively, you could grab Endure pain for some more defense.

I do feel that the points you put in Strength would do better somewhere else. More points in Discipline, for example, will let you swap weapons faster and let you grab Destruction to the Empowered or Mobile Strikes.. or even Signet Mastery. You could also max out Tactics if you’d prefer, allowing you to grab Inspiring Battle Standard if you really wanted to support your allies on the front lines.

As for your weapons… Personally I really, really like Sword/Shield+Hammer, so rock that as long as you can. I don’t really understand why you’d put a Sigil of impact on your sword and not your hammer though… given it’s stun is a decent length already, it’s your main source of damage, and that sigil ‘should’ work quite well with Merciless Hammer. Using the same Sigils you have, I would put Paralyzation on your shield, Bloodlust on your sword, and Impact on your hammer.

For armor, Soldier certainly seems to be what you want. Personally I’d look for a little more crit, maybe grab some Knight’s trinkets or something, but your setup should work just fine for what you seem to want to do. Dolyak runes do present some synergy with Healing Signet+Adrenal Health+Banner regen (If you take that), but Olba had a good point in the fact that there are better rune options for defense. You have a lot of condi and stun breaks, but Melandru remains a strong option all the same.

*nods * I’ve been running sword/sword for a while in Spvp/WvW for pretty much those reasons. The immobilize on flurry allows you to swap for a free 100b if you carry a greatsword, or can apply 20+ stacks of bleed between it’s own with Precise Strikes and Sigil of Earth.

Most classes have ways to mitigate/escape the root, but in general I’ve found it a fairly effective and fun build for pvp, as well as a bit of a break from the more common mace/shield+GS or Hammer+GS builds.

Not sure comparing warrior and elementalist healing signets is fair. Healing signet is one of the more powerful options for a warrior to take in PvP… but how often do elementalists take theirs? Could it be easily argued that Elementalists are in general underpowered in PvP, and in need of some buffs on their own? If so, comparing abilities between a recently-buffed class and a potentially-underpowered class is bound to show a disparity.

On another note: In theory, I would consider Warrior Healing Signet to be powerful, but not OP. It’s passive healing is ~2% of a warriors max health pool if he isn’t stacking vit, can be countered by any sustained damage or poison application, and can be burst through without really being noticed. Of course, warriors have ways to mitigate those factors through condition cleanses, dodging, blocking, and cooldowns like Endure Pain, but on it’s own that’s pretty much on-par with the defensive options of most classes.

However: In practice Healing Signet has led to a lot of warriors playing as if they were Thieves… Only attacking when they can lockdown and burst their opponent, and using mobility and defensive options to prevent themselves from taking damage should their burst fail. It’s cowardly and abuses both healing signet and warrior mobility (each, on their own, have solid arguments as to why they’re needed for the class). But unfortunately it’s also effective, and Healing Signet is one of the reasons why.

Personally, I’d like to see changes promoting build diversity FIRST, and then have Anet start looking at Healing Signet to see if it is still ‘overpowered’. Let’s see warriors in WvW/Spvp running Rifles or combinations like sword/axe or axe/mace instead of mace/shield+greatsword. Let’s see more useful traits and passives that aren’t all in the Crit or Toughness trees so that every Warrior with healing signet doesn’t automatically have Adrenal Health as well. Let’s see classes that haven’t gotten improvements lately brought up to par if need be, and THEN let’s look back at individual abilities and see if they are what’s OP, or if it’s the cookie-cutter build that uses them.

The Sigil was bugged, adding too much duration to stuns. It’s not so much a ‘nerf’ as fixing an issue that happened to benefit warriors. We don’t need ‘compensation’ for Anet fixing a problem with their math, we just need to adapt to having slightly shorter stuns.

For your example, slows and roots work almost as well as stuns, or you could always play around with Offhand mace for the strong knockdown it provides… or run hammer in your offset, and lead Earthshaker stun→ final thrust.

And… while I could get behind the idea of reducing Final Thrust’s cast time… are you really trying to claim that sword’s auto-attack chain can do 7k+ in .45 seconds? It can’t, not even close. Is Final Thrust a bit slow? Maybe, but it remains a very strong source of burst damage, one that -if it connects, admittedly- is beaten out only by Eviserate, Hundred Blades, and Killshot.

A lot of rage for just one SM flip, don’t you think?

Glitch or not, if we lose something, then we just need to take it back, right? More siege-building less forum-raging.

Sol.4310:

SoS, do you guys have any Roaming guilds? or is it all PvD Zerging? and please don’t say taking a massive zerg into supply camp killing 1 person is your idea of roaming.

We typically roam with a group of 2-3 guildies, or sometimes sneak around solo when no one else is on. You might find us flipping some camps in one BL or another from time to time, or running from your own home defense zergs O.o

It’s rare to find another squad of 2-4 to play with, unfortunately, no matter what the server matchup is. When they happen it’s a lot of fun, win or lose, but those few cases are overshadowed by all the time spent fleeing an overwhelming force, or feeling guilty for jumping that one guy who only wanted to play with our dolyak.

True, a spear would fit warriors much better, but I haven’t heard of them letting us use underwater weapons on land yet : (

If they decide to, then spear all the way (I’d think a similar setup to what I had for staff, but maybe some bleed application on one of the attacks). Staff is the closest we can get to that for now, though.