Guild Wars 2

Thanks for the replies. In the meantime I levelled my Warrior to 40 and fully specced into Forceful Greatsword. I must say my damage has exponentially increased thanks to the number of Might stacks it comes with but as I feared, it really still is the glass cannon that shatters on a boss fight or large encounters.

I did take the advice to use Whirlwind Attack to evade attacks, heal back, and get back in the fray which has improved my survivability but overall I just die less often in my Axe/Mace combo. Perhaps its something to do with my inherent playstyle that GS does not mesh with. I’ve decided to pick up Axe/Mace in longterm for now and thinking about returning to GS once I get my Grandmaster specs so I can fully try out the Sonic Boon build in PvE.

Thanks again all

Good day Tyria. I recently started playing GW2 as Warrior and was charmed by the aethetic appearance of Greatsword so I started from it with day 1.

However, the more I progress the more difficult the game becomes with the Greatsword that it has nearly become unplayable without dying every large encounter at level 38. My general strategy is to use On My Mark, For Great Justice, and Signet of Rage, for burst damage while stacking vulnerability with auto attacks and throwing in Hundred Blades for the big hits. When things get out of hand I usually switch to Sword/Warhorn to use Charge and Call to Arms to heal while my Wurm can do the decoying. It’s a lower version of the Sonic Boon build that appeared like a good guide for GS.

The problem about this build is that things die, and things die so quick that once I pop my CDs they die half way through my HS anyway and it’s not very statisfying. And the bigger problem is that I can handle things to a maximum of 2 maybe 3 mobs and from then on my Warrior just shatters with anything bigger. Ideally, I tend only to pick mobs I can handle but with dynamic events happening all over the show sometimes there’s no escaping of fighting large scale of mobs.
During my research I came across the Axe/Mace build which supposedly has similar GS output in DPS, which I’ve tried and found that it works well. Since there’s no damage counter I can’t actually measure if I’m doing more damage but things tend to die fast enough and I can actually dodge stuff and walk around, have a stun up my sleeves and generally… never die with this build.

However, as much as the Axe/Mace fits my playstyle and is an effective build, I don’t like the appearance of it and would like to get back using GS. There’s just so much more satisfaction in throwing around a huge GS than using the Axe/Mace.

I know that GS is the more popular build, so I would like to ask how people manage to survive using GS at lower levels. I tend to be solo and mostly PvE orientated currently and I cannot seem to survive long enough when HS demands me to stay at one position.