Guild Wars 2

Hard to really “abuse” it. It’s a bit of a binary skill; it’s either active or not. You can’t really do anything else with it. In other words, I am unaware of any mechanism that, for example, allows you to gain the buff but the skill not go on cool down. Should people refuse to use any bugged skill?

Is it bugged? I believe so but that is based on my reading of the tooltip. It should reduce condition duration by no more than the unmodified condition duration. A 10 second condition is 0 if the applier has 0 condition duration bonuses. If the applier has 40% (say from food), condition will have 4 seconds of duration.

I do know it has been reported. So either:
1) Anet intended it to be a flat condition immunity and the tooltip is poorly worded
2) Anet hasn’t figured out yet it is bugged
3) Anet knows it is bugged but it isn’t high priority to fix
4) Anet knows it’s bugged but is leaving it for now to help break the condition meta
5) Anet purposely bugged it to help break the condition meta

Hunter.4783:

galandor.1059:

Hunter.4783:

Dogged March 33% reduction
Melandru runes 25% reduction
Lemongrass soup 40% reduction

Add them up and you get 95% of CC immunity. Note that the warrior build in question always take Dogged March.

You have 65% reduction to condition dmg and 95% reduction to chill and immobize effects. Explain to me dear sir how the kitten are you supposed to kite a warrior with 95% CC immunity?
How many stun breaks do you have to bring to counter a 4sec stun on a 7.5 sec cooldown.

Dude, please stop trying to post on these forums defending this broken spec, every single one of your arguments is pathetic and baseless and you have been shot down each time so far.

I didn’t know you needed a stun break every single time a warrior attempted to stun you, honestly that sounds like a personal problem bro. As for lemongrass, use Pizza if you want to counter it, yeah I know, great idea. Every other class has the ability to use Melandru runes, many other classes also have the ability to use abilities like dogged march, like Engineer leg mods for example, that would fit pretty nicely into a SD build that has huge burst potential as well, but yet, your here, complaining, because you got kittened by a Warrior and need to cry about it.

You see brah, every single warrior stun lasts 4s and is followed by a 100b which can 100->0 me ye im going to need to stun break it. Logic 101

I can’t believe I am even taking the time to answer your posts now considering how stupid they are. Please stop posting, you have no clue wtf you are talking about

What exactly in the response did you have a problem with? He is 100% correct that ANY class can use Melandru Runes. He is 100% correct that ANY class can use the Lemongrass food. The only Warrior specific trait is Dogged March, a trait whose effect on CC conditions is shared by an Engineer and a Mesmer trait, though it is a Master level trait for both of those classes. Thus, 98% reduction in CC conditions is not a Warrior only ability.

How do you kite a Warrior (or any other class) with such a build layout? Exactly what was said; use Veggie Pizza, condition duration Runes/Sigils, and/or even trait into the line giving condition duration. A Warrior’s ability to be almost entirely immune to CC conditions could be negated if a build was built around it. Is that fair? Should a build have to invest so heavily to negate another build’s setup? Absolutely. What do you think the Warrior did? Invested heavily to negate CC conditions and a large portion of condition damage. All of those investments could have gone to more damage, other utilities, etc… but instead the investment was made in a very specific area.

Your other question was about many stun breaks one needs for a counter. It depends. Every class has two dodges with a full endurance bar; that could be 2 attempts that are wasted, With good dodging, not a single stun break would be needed. However, it is by no means realistic to expect someone to dodge every single Skull Crack. Hence, stun breaks; carry as many as is inversely proportional to your dodging ability.

The build can be countered. It’s called defense in depth.
1. Stay out of melee range. Either by actively putting distance between yourself and the Warrior or preventing the Warrior from reaching you (i.e., CC conditions). Warrior has built for near CC condition immunity? Use condition duration bonuses to negate it. If available, knock backs/downs, counter stuns, etc could also be used. Negate the range, negate the build.
2a. If the Warrior eventually gets into melee range, dodge the Skull Crack. Either by actually dodging or by using evade skills on a weapon set. Negate the hit, negate the build.
2b. Use stability to negate the stun. Negate the stun, negate the build.
3. If you fail to dodge/evade the stun and didn’t have access to stability (because of either limited class access or a skill on cooldown), use a stun break. Break the stun, negate the build.
4. You’ve failed at 1, 2a, 2b, and 3: Stunned with nothing left to do but eat a 100 Blades. You’re last line of defense: trait defensively. Investments in toughness and/or vitality. It could be via a class trait or a food that reduces damage while stunned, or it could be good timing of applying protection. In short, try to mitigate the damage. Mitigate the damage, and potentially negate the build.

I don’t expect every class to have equal access to abilities that easily provide tools in each layer of defense. I don’t expect anyone to dodge every single Skull Crack, or apply stability every time they go into melee range, or have enough stun breakers to be able to eat each stun and be able to break out of it, or trait defensively. What I do expect is for people to have the insight to realize that it is up to them to decide which layers and how deep they want those layers to be.

Daecollo.9578:

How can you use berserker’s power without getting heightened focus and the 30% critical damage? It makes absolutely no sense to me to go that far into power. You would gain more damage from just going 0 into power and 30 into discipline.

I realize this thread isn’t focused on this, but I have serious issue with this statement. First and foremost it is a blanket statement and blanket statements too often have too many exceptions.

Second, and more importantly, is that I believe the statement to be wrong in most cases. Here are a couple reasons for my thinking:

• Critical damage is a diminishing return stat; the more you have the less effective additional amounts become
• Critical damage only affects critical hits
• Base damage percentage bonus are not affected by diminishing returns; in this case, Berserker’s Power will always give a 15% (at max adrenaline) damage bonus
• While Power is a diminishing return stat, 300 Power (from going 30 points into Strength) is still a very significant amount of power. Even if you had a base of 4000 Power, 300 Power would represent a 7.5% increase in across the board damage which is very significant

Really though, the comparison of 30 Points in Strength and Berserker’s Power versus 30 Points in Discipline and 30% critical damage boils down almost solely to the effect of the 30% critical damage. When looking at the increase in damage that 30% critical damage will provide, the current critical damage must be taken into account. If 30% critical damage is added to a build that otherwise has no additional critical damage (i.e., just the base 150%) then the damage bonus, only on critical hits, would be 30% / 150% = 20%. Since this will only affect critical hits, to determine where the break even point is between 20% damage bonus on critical hits and 15% base damage on all hits, simply divide 15% / 20% = 75%. In other words, at a critical chance higher than 75%, a 30% critical damage bonus should out damage (over time) a 15% base damage bonus.

However, if we’re talking about maximum damage, it is a fairly safe assumption that the build will be utilizing all Berserker’s gear and perhaps even Ruby Orbs on the armor. If we assume all exotic Berserker’s weapons, armor, and trinkets with Ruby Orbs, the build would have a critical damage bonus of 74% for a total 224%. Now, that same 30% critical damage bonus (from 30 points in Dicipline) represents only a 13.3% damage increase on critical hits. As you continue to add more critical damage (from traits, Ascended gear, consumables, and/or banners), the 30% critical damage from the Discipline continues to loose effectiveness relative to the 15% base damage provided by Berserker’s Power. If you work the math backwards, you find that at a bonus of 50% critical damage or higher (i.e., total of 200%) it is impossible for 30% critical damage to out perform (on average, over time of course) Berserker’s Power 15% base damage bonus.

TLDR: 30 Points in Strength and taking Berserker’s Power almost always trumps 30 points in Discipline and the 30% critical damage bonus.

jubskie.3152:

@phantomfury I’m assuming this is with a balanced weapon?

Very interesting find, this has the potential to be ground breaking! :O

That is a correct assumption and something I should’ve mentioned as it is a key variable to the the test.

Just as an FYI, I had done some testing on my Warrior related to percentage based damage bonuses and found that they stack multiplicatively and not additively. This means instead of simply adding the bonus, multiple them. When stacking several bonus together, this bonus grows larger.

I tested this as well on my Ranger and found the same. Here’s the basic laydown of my test:

• Ranger with pet on Passive in The Mists
• non-damage boosting Runes (just didn’t bother changing them since they had no impact)
• Soldier’s Amulet (to minimize crits)
• Testing at 1000+ range
• 20 Pts in Marksminship initially added (no traits)
• Points in Skirmishing and Wilderness survival added for testing a specific trait and then removed as needed (as they otherwise don’t affect damage)

Data:

• Longbow AA: 185
• Eagle Eye: 194
• Hunter’s Tactics: 203
• Peak Strength: 203
• Eagle Eye + Hunter’s Tactics: 213
• Eagle Eye + Hunter’s Tactics + Peak Strength: 235
• Eagle Eye + Hunter’s Tactics + Peak Strength + Steady Focus: 258
• Eagle Eye + Hunter’s Tactics + Peak Strength + Steady Focus + Sigil of Force: 271

Take any example, and you find that if damage bonuses stacked additively, the damage numbers would be higher than expected. Take the final example:

• Additive stacking: 185 * (1 + .05 + .10 + .10+ .10 + .05) = 259
• Multiplicative stacking: 185 * (1.05 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.05) = 271.47

Long story short,in the OP’s setup, the damage bonus applied will end up being ~61%. Percentage based damage bonus are extremely powerful in this game.

3600 Armor will further reduce the incoming damage by 5.55% compared to 3400 Armor. In other words, if you took 100 points of damage in 3400 armor, you would take 94.45 points in 3600.

A simple formula to calculate this percentage (this assumes new Armor is higher):
(1 – (Current Armor / New Armor)) x 100

As for 180 power… The additional damage as a percentage depends on you current Power rating. The formula would simply be: (180 / Current Power) * 100. An example: if your current power is 1800 and you add 180: (180 / 1800) * 100 = 10% damage increase.

Hope that all makes sense.

Blackhat.4016:

Crit chance / crit damage:

55% chance / 70% damage:
(1.5+0.7)^(0.55+0.2) = 2.2^0.75 = 1.65

80% chance / 30% damage:
(1.5+0.3)^(0.8+0.2) = 1.8^1 = 1.8

Unless I misunderstood anything the 80% crit chance / 30% crit damage build deals more damage on average. Besides that your traits benefit from a higher crit chance which means it would be even better.

^ = multiply by since * is used for formatting

I would argue that the flaw in your math is that you are only considering the damage from crits, and in your particular example, you have one situation that always crits. Thus, you are comparing every attack of one example (i.e., having 80% base crit chance and 20% fury) against a subset of attacks of another example that doesn’t always crit (i.e., having 55% base crit chance and 20% fury). In other words, you have compared the damage of 100 hits versus only 75 hits. The comparison is not fair.

My preferred way of comparing, and I believe a more accurate way is as such:
(1 – Crit Chance) + (Crit Chance * Crit Damage)

To use your examples:
(1 – (80% + 20%)) + ((80% + 20%) * (150% + 30%)) = 1.8
(1 – (55% + 20%)) + ((55% + 20%) * (150% + 70%)) = 1.9

Thus, over time, having 100% uptime of Fury, a base crit chance of 55% with a 70% crit damage bonus (220% total) will out damage a base crit chance of 80% with a 30% crit damage bonus. This of course assumes that all other damage related stats stay the same.

Dardamaniac.1295:

So 50% crit dmg it means that if you make 100 dmg with an attack you will do now 200 and 100% crit dmg means that you will do 250 when you crit…

In pvp you cant achieve more than 65% crit dmg,so if you do 100 dmg non crit,with crit you will do 215.

while if you have 55% crit dmg and 40% dmg increase you will do 205 + 40 = 245

Am i doing wrong calculations?

For what it’s worth, based on my testing on my Warrior, I have found that damage bonus (i.e., no crit damage) do not stack additively, but rather multiplicatively. In other words, if you had traits that gave, for example, a 5%, 20% and 10% damage bonus, the total damage bonus would be 1.05 * 1.2 * 1.1 = 1.386, or 38.6% vice just adding the bonuses for a 35% damage bonus.

When adding crit damage, they stack multiplicatively as well. So, if you have a 40% damage bonus and 55% crit damage (for a total of 205%), and your base damage (i.e., non-crit, no damage bonus) is 100: 100 * 1.4 * 2.05 = 287.

Again, this was based on testing with Warrior traits. I would hope the basic mechanics for calculating damage with respect to damage bonuses would be the same across classes, but I can’t say 100%.

An important aspect of this is that, if my testing was accurate, base damage modifiers are far more valuable than crit damage bonus.

I did some testing with Berserker’s Power this morning and can confirm that in The Mists, the 15% damage bonus is not correctly applied. The easiest weapon to see this on is the Sword because all three hits of the chain hit for the exact same amount. Damage dealt was 122 and 137 with and without Berserker’s Power, respectively (and ignoring critical hits). That represents a 12% delta.

This has been reported in the Game Bugs sub-forum as well, albeit not by me; https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/POST-PATCH-WARRIOR-BUGS/2364699

I did some further tests against target dummies in Lion’s Arch (to do a PvE test) but given the RNG nature of attacks without a Steady Weapon, the results were not conclusive. My first round with a Longbow and about only 20 samples each with and without Berserker’s Power showed a 14.5% damage delta. However, with a Sword I had one test find only a 9% damage delta. I would like to try a larger sample size as well as a few other tweaks and will try and report back. The hardest part is that target dummies don’t register in the combat log for easy review and as such, requires trying to track the damage numbers in real time.

UPDATE/EDIT: Just finished gathering 100 samples each with and without Berserker’s Power. This time, was stripped down, no trinkets, and only 30pts in Strength. Damage delta between the average damage for each set of samples was 11.3%. So, still not conclusive. Ugh… if only we had steady weapons in PvE. Trying to detect a damage delta bonus that is smaller than what naturally occurs with a weapon’s attack range is quite annoying.

My guild was testing out things with the new patch (6/25/2013) in our custom arena. We noticed something odd about Berserker’s Stance, that may or may not depend on the interpretation of the text in the release notes.

Release notes: “Increased the recharge to 60 seconds. Reduced the duration to 4 seconds. This stance now reduces incoming condition duration by 100%, so only modified conditions can get through.” Emphasis mine.

The difficulty is interpreting the two parts of the bolded test. Reducing anything by 100% means reducing it zero. So, this first part implies you are immune to condition damage. The second part implies that if traited for condition duration bonus, the warrior would not be immune to those conditions; only the ‘buffed’ duration would be apply. Otherwise, how else do you have a “modified condition”???

Well, in our testing, I was running a hybrid Warrior Longow build. I have:
- 30 Points in Strength for 30% Condition Duration
- Trait III in Arms for 50% Bleed Duration
- 5 Runes of the Afflicted for 15% Bleed Duration

Total bleed duration bonus should be 95%. Longbow #5 for this layout applies a 23 1/2 second bleed; up from a base 12s. Yet, when a warrior guild mate popped Berserker’s Stance and I hit him with Longbow #5… IMMUNE and NO conditions applied.

So, is this a bug, a misinterpretation of the patch notes, or a misunderstanding of what a “modified condition” is?

I posted in the Game Bug forum about the conditions as well: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Subdirector-NULL-Conditions

As mentioned, he will take conditions before his first application of the shield. I can certainly understand not taking conditions while the shield is up, but even when down, no conditions could be applied.

http://youtu.be/OxaJ5A1toIw

My party and I may well be missing something obvious, and if so, then so be it…

That said, we had a party of four, myself as an Apothecary BM Ranger, a Guardian, a Warrior and an Elementalist. Took a bit to get a groove going for pinging the mines, disarming them, and getting Subdirector NULL onto them to remove his shield.

Once we did though, and I was finally paying attention, I noticed he had zero conditions. Okay, I get it, he can’t have conditions applied with his shield up. Shield goes down, pet is ripping into him, I start stacking… or more appropriately, trying to stack conditions. NADDA. No weakness, bleeding, poison, vulnerability, chill… nothing. Not a single skill across my Sword, Dagger, Axe, Torch, Sharpening Stone skill, Entangle… not even my pet or any other party member could apply a condition. Again, this is AFTER his shield is removed.

We wipe… we start again. HEY! I can apply conditions, sweet. There’s his first application of his shield, it’s gone… stack conditions! Wait… WHAT?! Once again, couldn’t stack conditions. Four tries, same story…

Since I don’t know how exactly that window presents the data… does that “105 hits” really mean 105 ticks of bleeding, or does it means 105 skills that applied bleeding and total bleeding damage was 22k. If it is ticks of bleeding, then certainly each tick would have to hit for around 217 damage. Otherwise, it simply means that the average skill which applied bleeding counted for 217 damage from bleeding. This seems more reasonable.

Again, depends on what exactly the UI means by “105 hits”.

From a DPS perspective, and based on numbers from the wiki, I would surmise the Drakes would out-DPS the Canines. The Drakes’ damage numbers (non-F2 skills) are: 122, 240, and 647. The second and third damage numbers have 20 and 30 second cooldowns, respectively. The Canine damage numbers are 122, 247, and 248. The second and third damage numbers have 20 and 40 second cooldowns, respectively. Further, generally speaking, the Drakes’ F2 skills have higher damage numbers than the Canines. So, since the Canines and Drakes share attribute numbers, from a simplistic perspective, the Drake should out DPS the Canines.

What this doesn’t take into account are the additional abilities of some of the particular skills within each family. In general, the Canines’ F2 skills are more utility focused (e.g., Fear) vice being damage focused on the Drakes. The Canines’ regular attacks also have some utility with cripples and knockdowns. It is quite possible that these could help the Canines land more hits and surpass the Drakes in DPS; it would depend on the playstyle of the Ranger (i.e., ranged or melee).

As to which I would pick between the two… in general PvE I would take the damage of the Drakes. For Dungeons, I would take the Drakes or one of each; Drakes for the damage, the utilities of the canines for the non-Defiant enemies. For WvW, Canines for the utility.

I am curious what the basis is for the assertion that the 1H Sword hits harder than the Greatsword?

According to the Wiki, the 1H Sword’s chain has coefficients of 0.6, 0.6, and 0.7 respectively. The Greatsword has 0.55, 0.55, and 0.65 respectively. However, the damage formula also uses a weapon’s strength, and the Greatsword has a higher strength rating than the 1H Sword.

So, doing the math, using the average of the weapons’ strength, multiplying it times the skill co-efficient:

Greatsword
1 & 2: 0.55 * 1047.5 = 576.125
3: 0.65 * 1047.5 = 680.875

1H Sword
1 & 2: 0.6 * 952.5 = 571.5
3: 0.7 * 952.5 = 666.75

Thus, it seems that a Greatsword will hit harder than the 1H Sword. So, one the D side of the DPS equation, the Greatsword takes the win, but barely, as far as it related to the Ranger’s output. It certainly gets more complicated when attempting to account for additional damage the pet will deal from the Might granted by the 1H Sword’s third step in the chain.

For the S side of the DPS equation, I don’t have the total time for the auto-attack chain, but the 1H Sword at the least as a slightly lower activation time on the second step. I would venture to guess though the overall time isn’t vastly different, and as such, wouldn’t expect either weapon to have a significant advantage in the overall DPS from the auto-attack chain.

So, really, my opinion would be to pick one or other based on personal preference and other elements from each weapon.

Based on my own testing, Earthshaker is the ONLY Hammer skill that applies a control effect before the damage. This means only Earthshaker automatically gets the 25% damage. All other skills have to be combined with another disabling skill (from yourself or another person) for the damage bonus.

The most powerful options to self-utilize this trait would be:
1. Earthshaker followed by Fierce Blow or Backbreaker
2. Backbreaker followed by Fierce Blow

Attached are the damage numbers I got in The Mists when testing the Merciless Hammer trait. Pretty clear that the control effect does NOT come before the damage, except for Earthshaker. I tested this with:

• PvP Steady Hammer
• No Might/Fury
• No Amulet
• No points other than the 20 points in Defense to turn the trait on/off for testing

saurus.8290:

maybe lets talk about that when you have quickness on healings doesnt works?

increasing the time of quickness just make you die faster

We can certainly discuss that, but it wasn’t the point of my post. The same (i.e., the additional effects beyond Quickness of a particular skill) goes for Warrior’s Frenzy. At least we simply stop healing… they get to take 50% more damage for another second. Is not healing for one additional second going to cause death? I guess it could…

ahurtcorncob.7652:

You need equivalent time frames don’t you? You can’t compare the number of actions performed over 4 seconds with the number of actions over 5 seconds.

In 5 seconds with the old quickness you’d get 4 seconds of doubled speed, and 1 second of regular speed compared to 5 seconds of 1.5x speed. If you compare that then r=7.5/9, which is a 17% drop.

It depends on how we do the comparison, but your point is an excellent and completely valid one, and really the more “fair” way to compare the change; I had actually done some of the math in my head taking that into consideration, but failed to include it in my original post.

Chopps.5047:

Let me comment on this: this is a subtle point. What is the proper time from to measure it over? Maybe there isn’t one and we have to accept that any DPS comparison would be flawed in that it cannot account for intangibles like stun break and we can’t even decide on a good way to “solve the problem”.

And the guy that said “you have to compare over 5s”, well, why not 6s? And what is the actual number of skills? There are a lot of a priori assumptions being tossed around.

Emphasis mine. The larger the window that is included the lower the delta becomes, which should be no surprise. If we looked at just an untraited QZ (and no additional Quickness from pet swap), we used to get 4 seconds at double every 60, now we get 5 seconds at 1.5 every 60, a ~2.34% reduction in DPS. Traited, it is ~2.88%. (Assuming I did my quick calculations correctly).

Bottom line… yes, it’s a reduction in the theoretical amount of damage and DPS a QZ utilizing Ranger was capable of. Is it half? No where even close. The more significant impacts, in my opinion, would be the non-damage related impacts, one example being finishing off a player, reviving teammates, etc.

TLDR: The Quickness change means a 25% reduction in damage per second during Quickness, but only a 6.25% reduction in damage over the duration, given the increase in duration. No where near the many comments that I’ve seen that state ‘this change cuts my damage/DPS in half’

I’ve seen a lot of comments regarding the impact of the change to Quickness, and how it affects damage output. I’ve seen it said numerous times, roughly paraphrased, that the reduction in speed (from 100% increase to 50% increase) will mean the damage/DPS will be cut in half. I think this is being a bit dramatic, and to that point, let’s do some math to clear the air. I am curious other people’s opinion on this is.

Assume current DPS (and I literally mean damage per second) is P:

• The DPS with the old quickness (double attack speed) is: 2 * P
• The DPS with the new quickness (50% attack speed) is 1.5 * P

So, to determine the DPS nerf, the old quickness must be multiplied by some factor, r:

• 2P * r = 1.5P
• 2 * r = 1.5
• r = 1.5 / 2
• r = .75

So, to determine the reduction in damage, we subtract r (.75) from 1:

• 1 – .75 = .25

Multiple by 100 to get a percentage… 25%. So, algebra just proved that the change to Quickness, at a simplistic math level means, on average, a 25% reduction in your DPS during quickness. I will fully admit that a 25% reduction in DPS is nothing to sneeze at, but saying ‘it cuts damage/DPS in half’ exaggerates the damage impact twice what it actually is.

Next consider that the duration was increased. So, let’s now look at too elements of this, closely related.
1. The amount of skills that can be executed during Quickness
2. The damage (not DPS) done during Quickness

For the first, consider this:

• Duration of Ranger’s old QZ = 4s
• Skill speed was twice as fact, i.e., a factor of 2
• 4s * 2 = 8s
  Ergo, QZ allowed a Ranger to execute 8 seconds worth of skills in 4 seconds.

For the new Quickness:

• Duration of Ranger’s new QZ = 5s
• Skill speed is 50% faster, i.e., a factor of 1.5
• 5s * 1.5 = 7.5s
  Ergo, QZ allows a Ranger to execute 7.5 seconds worth of skills in 5 seconds.

So, using the same approach:

• 8s * r = 7.5s
• 8 * r = 7.5
• r = 7.5 / 8
• r = .9375
• 1 – .9375 = .0625
• .625 * 100 = 6.25%

In essence, the amount of skills that can be executed during the duration of Quickness has been reduced by 6.25%. Do the math related to the damage done during the duration of Quickness, and the same reduction applies; the new Quickness will see a 6.25% reduction in damage dealt over the duration compared to the old Quickness. I will re-acknowledge that the damage per second was reduced by 25% and this is certainly not insignificant, but let’s not blow things out of proportion.

I carry a huge arsenal with me at all times.

Berserker’s:

• 1 Greatsword, w/ Major Sigil of Bloodlust
• 1 Hammer, w/ Major Sigil of Force
• 3 Axes; 1 w/ Sigil of Strength, 1 w/ Sigil of Force, 1 w/ Sigil of Perception (all superiors)
• 2 Swords: 1 w/ Sigil of Strength, 1 w/ Sigil of Force (all superiors)
• 1 Shield, w/ Major Sigil of Force
• 2 Warhorns, w/ Major Sigil of Force, 1 w/ Major Sigil of Accuracy
• 1 Rifle, w/ Major Sigil of Force
• 1 Longbow, w/ Major Sigil of Force

Knight’s:

• 1 Hammer, w/ Major Sigil of Battle
• 2 Swords, can’t remember Sigils
• 1 Mace, can’t remember Sigil

Soldier’s

• 1 Mace
• 1 Warhorn

Every single one is transmuted with the corresponding Ebon Vanguard skin. That’s JUST what I carry in my inventory. I also have some stuff stored in my bank.

Phira.3970:

+10% for axe

Why this (Axe Mastery) over Dual Wielding for 5% base damage increase? If your crit damage bonus is around or above 50% (for a total critical damage of 200%+), Dual Wielding should have a higher damage output. If we’re talking about Glass Cannon Berserker’s Warrior for CoF runs, I imagine crit damage bonus is up near 95%, Dual Wielding should easily outperform Axe Mastery.

Taril.8619:

Adrenal Health (125/240/360 HPS)

No.

Adrenal Health is 360 Health every three seconds at max adrenaline. Which works out to 120 HPS.

Soyuchi.5638:

Im currently running zerk gear with ruby orbs but i was wondering if there was something better to use? Any suggestions other than divinity runes? (overpriced and doesnt seem worth it to me)

Thanks in advance

Depends on what you want you want to do. If you want maximum damage, Ruby Orbs are very hard to beat out in terms of damage output.

If one takes a typical glass cannon Greatsword focused build using trait layout of 20/30/0/0/20, running full Berserker’s gear, with no other Sigil bonuses, consumables, etc…

• 6 Ruby Orbs gives a 13.57% damage increase
• Rune of Strength gives 11.88%
• Rune of the Ranger gives 12.56% with a banner, 8.45% without banner
• Rune of the Ogre gives 12.36%, not accounting for any damage from Rock dogs
• Rune of the Scholar gives 19.59% when you health is above 90%, otherwise 11.17%
• Rune of the Pack gives 11.07%
• Rune of Rage gives 7.85%
• Rune of Divinity gives 9.71%

This is probably most of the more damage focused Rune sets. Again, these numbers are based on a very specific state. The numbers probably won’t change too significantly with consumables and other minor tweaks, so the general comparison should be close enough.

From a money perspective, you really can’t go wrong with Ruby Orbs. Also, I should point out that secondary effects of Runes are not accounted for, like boon duration times and how that might affect damage output. Off the top of my head, I don’t think any of them would be significant, but every build is different and can be affected differently.

TLDR: If money is tight, don’t worry about switching out the Ruby Orbs. Most likely, you’ve already maximized your damage output. I would consider Runes only as a way to synergize with other specific aspects of a build.

Red Falcon.8257:

Go with a max DPS+offensive support build imo.
I suggest a 20/20/0/10/20 like this.
With this build you have extreme DPS and give 370 power to every member in your team permanently.

So, I may be missing something, and if so, please point it out, but not sure how you reach 370 Power being the bonus to allies. I see:

• 105 Power from FGJ
• 70 Power from Empower Allies
• 90 Power from Banner

Total being 265 Power. Am I missing something?

harbinger.2698:

Redscope.6215:

“Fury” is a boon that increases crit chance by 20%. The “Fury” boon stacks in duration.

Both skills grant you access to the “Fury” boon for a period of time listed.

So, if I understand you correctly, If I were to activate both concurrently, I’d expect to have a 20% higher Crit chance for 39 1/2 seconds? Not sure if that’s an effective means of upping my crit or not. I’m trying to get my Crit as high as I possibly can. I already have 30 points into Precision. I’m obviously using 2 Skills to boost that as well getting precision on some of my gear.

Any other suggestions on how I can maximize my crit chance?

You should consider yourself lucky to have such easy access to Fury.

Maximize your Critical Chance (in PvE/WvW):

• Keep Fury up at all times (between just FGJ and SoR, you should have Fury up near 95% up time) = 20% Critical Chance
• Take Precision as a secondary stat on ALL gear (Armor, Weapons, Trinkets) = 697 Precision (assumes Exotic gear with Rare backpack)
• Ruby Orbs in Armor upgrade slots = 84 Precision
• 30 Points in Arms = 300 Precision
• 10 Points in Discipline and take Heightened Focus = 9% Critical Chance (when adrenaline is full
• Base Precision = 916 Precision
• Use Omnomberry Pie or the Ghosts = 70 Precision
• Use Maintenance Oil as your secondary consumable = 91 Precision (minimum, more with additional toughness/vitality)

916 + 300 + 697 + 84 + 91 + 70 = 2158 Precision ~ 63% Critical Chance
63% + 20% (Fury) + 9% (Heightened Focus) = 92%

This allows you to use a Bloodlust stacking Sigil (if so desired) for more Power. If using 1-handed weapons, you could use a Sigil of Accuracy for an additional 5% to hit 97%.

Alternatively:

• Drop Maintenance Oil
• Use Sigil of Perception = 250 Precision (once stacked)

2158 – 91 + 250 = 2317 Precision ~71% Critical Chance
71% + 20% (Fury) + 9% Heightened Focus = 100% (the formula on the wiki has changed slightly, so this may actually calculate out to 99%).

If you didn’t want to go full glass, you can use Knight’s piece which trade Power as a primary stat for a secondary stat, drop Critical Damage and pick up Toughness as a primary stat, without affecting your Critical Chance rating.

TLDR: Hitting high 90s or even 100% Critical Chance for even a level 80 Warrior is rather easy. If you focusing on damage, this approach (Ruby Orbs, etc) will do wonders for your damage.

I don’t know if this is a bug or intended behavior, but I would lean towards intended behavior. This allows you to share a weapon between the two sets of 1-handed weapons while switching only one. In other words if you want to have Axe/Axe in one weapon set and Axe/Warhorn in the other, you could do so with only two axes instead of three.

ebrum.7413:

I’m having a hard time believing that 10 or even 20% less crit chance wouldn’t make a significant difference to DPS. Having 90% crit chance doesn’t mean what some people think it means. It’s not absolute like 100%. At 90% crit you may crit less than 90% of the time because each hit has a 10% chance to not crit. You are not guaranteed to crit 90% of the time. At 100% you are guaranteed a crit 100% of the time (unless using an ability that doesn’t crit or the crit is somehow mitigated).

I got 5 numbers out of a random number generator from 1-100 and two out of the 5 were over 90 and three were over 85. This means that if this were me killing something in 5 hits, and I had 90% crit chance, 40% of my hits would not be crits, not 10%. That increases to 60% if my crit chance was 85%. Now I understand this is going to be different every time, but there’s going to be a difference in DPS vs guaranteed crits.

Using the following stats:

• 2300 Power
• 2313 Precision (which, with the addition of 29% crit chance from FGJ and Adrenaline based, should be 100% crit chance)
• 93% Critical Damage bonus
• 32% Damage bonus

I calculate that the average damage loss is 5.88% with a 10% loss of critical chance. A 20% loss of critical chance would be an average damage loss of 11.77%. [EDIT] This assumes that the loss of the critical chance is without some other gain that affects damage.

In your example of five random numbers, with two being above 90, well, it’s not impossible. It’s just a rare event. Yes, there will be cases where out of five hits two don’t crit and yes, your damage output would suffer. If you’re taking on an enemy that would go down in five critical hits, and you only crit on three, well, sure, they’re still standing… until you hit them a sixth time. However, an enemy going down in 5-6 hits probably doesn’t pose much a threat so what’s one or two more quick hits?

The question comes down to what does it cost to reach 100% critical chance and is that trade off worth it. If you are trading power for precision, I would argue that a large majority of the time it is not worth it. If you want maximum damage, you maximize first your power, then your precision and critical damage.

Whether or not a player is willing to trade off power for precision has to be in conjunction with what the additional precision (and thus critical chance) brings to to the table.

Some math, with these assumptions:

• Full Exoctic Berserker’s gear
• Ruby Orbs on armor
• 20/30/0/0/20 stat layout
• 70 Precision from Food (Cause what glass cannon doesn’t run Omnomberry Pies or the Ghosts?)

That leaves a Sigil of Perception vs. Sigil of Bloodlust and Maintenance Oil vs. Sharpening stone. With no Toughness/Vitality additions, the secondary consumable is worth 91 points. So, we can either get 341 Power or 341 Precision (or a mix):

• 341 Power gives a 14.55% average damage bonus
• 341 Precision gives a 10.53% average damage bonus
• 250 Precision / 91 Power gives a 11.9% average damage bonus
• 91 Precision / 250 Power gives a 13.77% average damage bonus

Let me point out, that as you move away from full Berserker’s gear, (say to Knight’s), the delta between Power and Precision becomes greater. This should make sense because Knight’s gives up critical Damage (and a small bit of power) to gain toughness.. As your critical damage is lowered, the ‘reward’ for a critical hit is not as high making precision less and less valuable. Where a critical hit may have hit for 243% your base damage now it hits for only 226%.

All this math is obviously focused on ONE thing, the pure raw damage from the simple swing of the blade. It does NOT take into account any additional damage that might be found from Sigils or skills that rely on a critical hit. But consider this: If you go from 100% to 90% critical chance, out of a 100 hits, that means you would (on average) have 10 fewer critical hits to activate an on-crit skill. If you had a 60% chance to gain, say Might (i.e., Sigil of Strength) of crit, you would los (on average) 6 stacks of might over the course of 100 hits.

TLDR: For a damage focused warrior, power trumps precision for damage. Make your own decision if the cost of more critical chance is worth it.

Boon Duration: Let me first say that my first few builds after level 80 were focused around boon duration. I have two sets of exotic armor (one with Soldier’s stats the other Knight’s) with boon duration extending Runes, nearly identical to what you have on yours. I had a third set (Berserker’s) that did have those Runes, but I actually replaced them yesterday.

Here’s my take on why I started to shy away from boon duration as such a focus:

Swiftness: In your particular case, you are already using Warhorn. So, with zero boon duration, your Warhorn provides 10s and SoR provides 30s. Since Warhorn’s Charge skill is on a 20s (untraited), that is less than half of SoR’s traited cooldown of 48s. As such, if you pop Charge then SoR, you can get two more activations of Charge before SoR comes off cooldown. Bottom line, for every activation of SoR, you get 2 activations of Charge. In the end, that’s 50s of Swiftness during SoR’s traited 48s cooldown. With zero boon duration. Obviously, when not using the Warhorn, your uptime drops significantly. Even then, a traited SoR gives 60%+ uptime on Swiftness alone. TLDR: untraited Warhorn + traited SoR doesn’t really need any boon duration.

Fury: Being such a huge bonus to crit chance (and by extension, damage) this is important. Untraited, FGJ provides 8s on a 25 second cooldown and SoR provides 30s on a traited 48s cooldown. So, you can’t quite activate FGJ often enough to keep two activations per activation of SoR, but it’s very close. You would have a few seconds of gaps of Fury. Obviously, traiting for a Shout cooldown reduction gives at least 20% boon duration, so that alone ensures Fury is up constantly. TLDR: Some minor boon duration would be helpful for truly permanent Fury, but the gap is minor.

Might: Might is a bit different story, since it isn’t a duration stacking boon like Fury and Swiftness. With a reduced cooldown FGJ, a ~60% Might duration bonus can be permanently double up FGJ. Traited for FGJ cooldown reduction guarantees 20%, so another 40% would be needed from additional points in Tactics or Runes. FGJ already has an ability to keep 3 stacks of Might up 100% without boon duration bonuses, so in essence the cost is to get the additional 3 stacks, worth 105 Power. You could simpy pull 10 points out of Tactics and place them in the Strength line instead and just about be equal (yes, discounting other effects like minor traits, vitality gained, etc). Now, for a traited SoR, it already has >60% uptime on the 5 stacks of Might. The heavy investment in boon duration can extend that to 100% (and you’re particular case, ever so slightly beyond). In the end, you can have 11 Stacks of might up permanently, with a few seconds of 16. TLDR: The investment in boon duration yields a permanent 105 Power and higher uptime on an additional 175 Power (with very short bursts of an additional 175 Power).

Vigor: What can I say… 100% uptime on vigor, what’s not to love? Seems like a heavy investment though.

Stability: A few extra seconds of stability could be difference between life and death, but again seems like a heavy investment.

So, I say all this from someone who has used boon duration builds and enjoyed them. I just am starting to wonder if the boon duration drug is overly addictive and lures folks in for ever more boon duration regardless of the cost.

Let me do a comparison:

• Replace all your Runes with a set Rune of Strength: You still get 20% Might duration, but gain 140 Power and 5% damage bonus. You wouldn’t quite be able to sustain double FGJ and a single SoR worth of Might, but the uptime is over 90% for both. The 140 additional Power and 5% damage bonus from the Runes should easily make this up from a damage perspective and I am quite convinced your average damage output would be greater. By giving up the 2x Water and 2x Monk Runes, you’ve lost 30% boon duration (the additional healing power is almost trivial), but as I showed above, this would really only have an impact on Vigor and Stability with a loss of 3s and 2.4s respectively.

So, I don’t mean to be negative-nelly, if you like the build, go for it. I enjoyed my boon duration builds. What is NOT discussed here is the impact to your allies as boon duration is based on the giver of the boon. So, if you’re playing with non-warriors, your build and activation of FGJ can give maintain 6 stacks of Might and have high uptime of Fury which could be very beneficial to your party. If you are playing with other warriors, the cumulative effect of stacking FGJ’s means lot of easy Might.

Bottom line, TLDR: I would say don’t worry so much about the points spent in Tactics as it unlocks traits that can be beneficial. But, at least consider a different set of Runes. I think the damage delta would be worth the loss of duration on Stability and Vigor myself.

Marengsen.1634:

By the way – Can I just use one CoF armor piece to transmute skin to 3 crafted pieces?

Afraid not. A transmutation stone is considered a consumable. So, one stone gets you one transmutation. Also, transmutation only works for two like items (e.g., Heavy Armor Helm with Heavy Armor Helm or Greatsword with Greatsword).

I don’t know 100%, but I don’t think the Golems count as kills (you’re in The Mists, right?). You don’t gain experience, you don’t stack on-kill Sigils, so it may be the game doesn’t treat it as a kill for opening strike.

Jazenn.7526:

SilverWF.4789:

What about press ‘K’, look at the ‘Vitality’ string and multiply that number by 10?

Lol, seems legit. But yea seriously guys, just do this.

Based on what? Player health doesn’t follow that pattern, do pets? Do different pets/pet families have different base health pools?

I have searched on several occasions and can’t find any information. Same kind of questions go for other stats. Do we calculate a pet’s critical chance the same way we do for a player? What about Armor? Is it just the toughness value or do pets have some intrinsic defense value (and is it unique per pet/pet family)?

Most of my warrior builds are centered around the tactics line for the boon duration. On top of that, my various sets of armor use a mix of boon duration Runes. On one build, Might has a bonus of 65% duration, Swiftness has 65% duration, and everything else has 50%.

It boils down to:

• FGJ’s Might has a 41.25s duration on a 20 second cooldown
• SoR’s Might and Swiftness have a 49.5s duration on a 48s cooldown and 1s cast
• Between FGJ, SoR, Fury eventually maxes out

So, 11 stacks of Might, Swiftness and Fury permanently. I normally take Empowered for the extra damage per boon, which is even more fun when my guardian shout/altruistic healer is around… BOOOOOOOOOONS!!!!

So, pardon my ignorance, but what’s the basis that SotW heals for exactly 1%? FWIW the wiki indicates the healing on the pet is a flat 125 + 25% of the player’s healing power.

So, it is very hard to say across the board that one set of Runes (or even Orbs) would do more or less damage than another set, because it it highly dependent on the particulars of a build. Let me clarify and say, I mean comparing Rune sets that focus on increasing direct damage (whether directly or indirectly). Obviously, for a melee warrior, Rune of Strength will out DPS Rune of the Forge.

That said, if we took a somewhat run of the mill baseline (i.e., no consumables, no stacks on Sigils, etc, and consider only stat bonuses from gear and traits) glass cannon DPS build which for this purpose would consist of:

• 20/30/0/0/20 Traits
• Full Berserker’s gear (and assume level 80 exotics)

Then, if my math is accurate, placing 6 Ruby Orbs in your pieces of armor would have a higher DPS than a set of the Rune of Strength (this even assumes the 5% damage bonus is working correctly). However, it takes VERY little change to the base aspects of the build for the winner in DPS to change.

For example:

• The Rune of Strength set, on the second Rune, gives a 20% Might duration bonus, and the fourth Rune gives a chance to gain Might on being attacked. If those bonuses were able to provide one additional stack of Might (worth what seems like an insignificant 35 Power) more than you would otherwise be able to without the bonus, the Rune set would gain an ever so slim margin of victory over the Ruby Orbs.

This is just one very specific example, for one very specific setup. As soon as the numbers get tweaked, the ‘winner’ has to be re-calculated. The moral of the story is… there are a few things that must be considered when selecting the upgrades for your Armor:

• What is your goal for your build?
• How would the upgrades mesh with other aspects of my build?
• Is the cost (gold, tokens, karma) of upgrade A worth the gain over upgrade B?

My advice: if gold is tight, gets Orbs and don’t look back. If you’re awash in money, buy Runes based on what meshes best with your build and your play style.

P.S.:

• Rune of the Ogre has a slight edge in DPS over Rune of Strength; but assumes no bonus from additional stack(s) of sustained Might and also doesn’t account for any damage inflicted by the Rock when/if summoned
• IIRC, banners count as a “companion” and if so, Rune of the Ranger beats out Rune of the Ogre, but the damage from the rock dog and the potential damage increase from a banner (e.g., Banner of Discipline) is hard to compare.

So, I threw the following setup together while the kids were watching Dora…

Gear (assumes exotic gear, level 80 for final calculations):

• Armor: Your AC Gear, effectively Rampager’s Gear (Precision, Power/Condition Damage)
• Weapons: Dual Swords and Longbow, using Carrion specs (Condition Damage, Power/Vitality)
• Trinkets: Knight’s Gear (assumes exotics, except rare back piece; Toughness, Precision/Power)
• Jewels: Replace standard jewels in the trinkets with Coral Jewels (Precision, Power/Condition Damage)

Runes: Superior Rune of the Undead

• 183 Condition Damage
• 50 Toughness
• 5% of Toughness = Condition Damage; should be 66 Condition Damage

Traits: 20/30/0/10/10:

• Strength: V, VIII
• Arms: III, V, VIII
• Tactics: VI
• Discipline: VI

Baseline Stats assuming I did my math right:

• 1813 Power
• 2086 Precision (60% Critical Chance)
• 1322 Toughness (2533 Armor)
• 1114 Vitality (20,652 Base Health)
• 1043 Condition Damage (94 Tick Bleeds / 588 Tick Burns)
• 10% Critical Damage Bonus
• 33% Maximum Total Damage Bonus

Buffs:

• 20% Critical Chance (Fury from For Great Justice and Signet of Rage)
• 10% Critical Chance (When using swords only; Arms Trait VIII)
• 105 Power (For Great Justice; 100% Uptime)
• 105 Condition Damage (For Great Justice; 100% Uptime)
• 175 Power (Signet of Rage; ~67% Uptime)
• 175 Condition Damage (Signet of Rage; ~67% Uptime)
• 250 Condition Damage (Sigil of Corruption)
• 123 Precision (Maintenance Oil)
• 70 Precision (Omnomberry Pies)

Buffed Stats (only changed stats):

• 1918 / 2093 Power (Depending on Signet of Rage)
• 2279 Precision (99% Critical Chance with swords, 89% with Longbow)
• 1398 / 1573 Condition Damage (depending on SoR) —> 112 / 121 Tick Bleeds // 677 / 721 Tick Burns

Additional Notes

• Sword auto-attack would be applying 13s bleeds, off-hand sword would apply 20s bleeds
• Sword auto-attack should be capable of sustaining at least 10 stacks of bleed by itself, worth 1100-1200 points of damage a second, _once you get this many stacks)
• You sword auto-attacks will not be great, but I think the damage will actually be respectable; the first and second part of the chain should be hitting for 750ish on a 2600 armor opponent (i.e., heavy armor golem equivalent), upwards of 1000 on a 2000 armor opponent (i.e., light armor golem equivalent), and the final thrust of the chain should hit for 1600 and 2000 on those same level armor levels, respectively.
• Would still have to decide what additional Sigils to run; Oreoginal has some great suggestions on options. Could either extend bleed duration (Sigil of Agony), apply more bleeds (Sigil of Earth), try and stack more Might (Sigil of Strength), apply some other condition (various Sigils), etc. Whatever you select, DO NOT select two Sigils that both rely on activating on critical hits as all Sigils share a common cooldown.
• Oreoginal also has a great series of steps for attacking and enemy to maximize your skills and damage. The only change I would say is try to time a Riposte just after the Impale and Leap; if successful, this means you have a ‘passive’ application of bleeds over time from Impale, and Riposte will apply 4 bleeds if an attack is successfully blocked.

I don’t mean any disrespect, but why did you buy an entire set of gear from a dungeon without first deciding what your build focus would be?!?

In general, condition damage is frowned on for the warrior class, because the only damage causing condition a warrior can reliably and quikcly apply is Bleed. To do so requires using a Rifle which is a terrible weapon (IMHO) when focused on condition damage or Swords. Using Swords means you have to be in melee combat which means you have to either focus on survivability in some form or another or be very good at avoiding damage all together (e.g., dodging).

Now, that said, I have a set of gear and setup for my warrior that is a hybrid direct damage and condition damage (utilizing lots of Might since it buffs both power and condition damage). The build is fun, does some respectable damage on both ends of the spectrum but I’ve since ‘retired’ the gear to my bank because I just couldn’t justify using it over my direct damage gear / setups. However, I didn’t use any Ramapager’s gear (which is the equivalent to the gear I assume you got from AC, which is Precision, Power/Condition Damage).

Most folks will tell you if you’re playing a warrior, focus on direct damage. It will rarely, if ever, let you down. That means focusing on Power, Precision, and Critical Damage. Sprinkle in survivability as the situation or your play style warrants.

So, long story short, to get the best out of that gear, look into builds that utilize lots of Might, and that mix in both direct and condition damage, focusing on bleeds.

• I leveled with dual Swords, as a bleed/condition damage warrior
• I then switched to a Boon Duration / DPS build using dual Axe with Longbow
• I have recently been running around with a Greatsword and Axe/Shield
• I also have tank / Hammer build

I can’t pick a favorite, I don’t think, because it’s largely situational. That said, I tend to always go back to Main-hand axe because of the attack speed and damage all the while being mobile is hard to turn down. The triple chop animation is a also one of my favorite animations; such rage!

I have a rather large cache of exotic weapons; counting in my head it’s up to about 15 exotic weapons. Most of the weapons are Berserker’s stats, with some Knight’s thrown in, and two Soldier’s stats thrown in (from AC vendor). I have at least one of every weapon the Warrior can utilize. So, right now, I think I can equip every weapon combination possible for the warrior. My only non-exotic weapon would be a Warhorn.

Torrad.1075:

Since its divided directly, having 9% more armor is 9% less direct damage.

Eh, not quite. For low percentage deltas the rough math works. To calculate the damage reduction from an increase in toughness/armor:

1 – (1 / (New Armor Value / Old Armor Value))

A little algebra simplifies this to:

1 – (Old Armor Value / New Armor Value)

So, a 9% armor increase would yield ~8.26% reduction in damage. A 50% increase in armor (e.g., going from 2000 Armor to 3000 Armor) would see a 33% reduction in damage.

Red Falcon.8257:

I’m not seeing a single reason to go offhand axe in any setting.
WA might be half-acceptable on a zerg but it’s not like it achieves anything; I’d rather 100B into a zerg or even Axe auto.
Tremors and Shield Block are also much overall better skills than Axe’s.

Sure one might go for “kitten double axe looks” but from a gameplay perspective it isn’t a good setup imo.

Off-hand Axe + High Crit Chance + Omnomberry Pie + Zerg = Healing Skill + Lots of Damage across the zerg.

I’ve seen Whirling Axe do ~13k healing to a warrior while putting out a cumulative damage across 5 enemies of 48k+. I’d call that more than half-acceptable myself. But, the point is completely valid that without the zerg (e.g., standing in front of a single boss), Whirling Axe is out DPS’ed by the auto-attack.

Evalia.7103:

You should start doing math…

Let’s remember this statement…

Evalia.7103:

You valued 130 precision over 90 precision plus 10% critical damage plus a trait to apply vulnerability stacks. It is your choice, I can’t argue about it. But your team would be grateful, as your total output would be just 450 precision, 50% critical damage and 3-4 extra vulnerability stacks on that boss compared to 130 precision from sigil.

I am confused by your comment on the extra vulnerability; are you referring perhaps to Rending Strikes? Maybe I am missing something? I specifically stated I took Rending Strikes… did you not read my post or do you not know what the trait Rending Strikes is? (Here’s a hint… it applies vulnerability) I never said I took Deep Strikes in lieu of Rending Strikes; I take both.

Any ways, I believe with the numbers you gave, you’re either purposely dumbing this down to make your argument look stronger or you don’t understand the math. The implication from your statement would lead some to believe me placing a Banner of Discipline would increase the party critical damage by 50%. Well, certainly who wouldn’t take 50% more critical damage; this guy must be nuts! Just… no. The math behind what effect banner would do per party member is complicated as it would depend on their current critical chance and critical damage prior to the bonus of 90 Precision and 10% Critical Bonus. The damage increase is quite good in certain situations, I don’t dispute that.

Evalia.7103:

It’s also probably a lie that everyone in your party can keep up swiftness. I would never believe that, so stop telling me it’s useless.

What was that I said about being close minded? But hey, you mix closed mindedness with poor reading comprehension. Never said my whole party has permanent Swiftness; please read my post. I certainly do have 45s of swiftness on a 48s cooldown. Here, I’ll do the math for you:

• 20 Points in Tactics for 20% Boon Duration
• 2x Runes of Water for 15% Boon Duration
• 2x Runes of Monk for 15% Boon Duration
• 20% + 15% + 15% = 50% Boon duration bonus.
• 30s default swiftness duration on Signet of Rage; 30 * 1.5 = 45s.
• Signet Mastery, 20% reduction in Signet cooldown; 60s default cooldown on SoR * .8 = 48s

45s of Swiftness on a 48s cooldown FOR ME. I guess if we want be overly technical, the cast time of SoR would make an effective cool down of 49s.

For my party, if needed:

• 50% Boon Duration
• 10s default Swiftness duration on Warhorn * 1.5 = 15s
• Default cooldown on Warhorn is 20s

So, 15s of Swiftness on a 20s cooldown for the party if they need it. Now, yes, with my current boon duration, I could give 15s of Swiftness on a 15s cooldown, but I’d have to run around with the Banner in my hand.

I specifically know one other warrior who I frequently run with has an identical boon duration and Signet Mastery trait, so he has the same 45s swiftness on 48 second cooldown from SoR.

In sum:

• Fury from the Banner isn’t needed
• Swiftness from the Banner isn’t needed for myself, and I have other ways to apply party swiftness if they need it, but do acknowledge it would have higher uptime
• Banner’s Sprint seems trumped by Greatsword’s Rush
• Blast finisher requires a field… and to stop attacking with a weapon, move to a banner, pick it up, smash it, and re-start attacking with weapon. Sure, if we bring along a profession with plenty of fields, it might be worth it.
• 10% Critical Damage… the only thing going for the Banner (for me) and output highly dependent on other builds, but yes, it would be stronger than my selection of the Signet of Fury

Evalia.7103:

I would’ve run similar utilities if I would be bad at math, I guess.

So says the person with basic reading comprehension problems. I never said math was the sole reason I selected the Signet over the Banner. A good chunk of it is personal preference and not liking the play style of banners. My argument is that most of the benefits of the banner you keep touting are largely negated by other aspects of my build and dynamics of my parties. So, the only bonus of any significance is the critical damage bonus. What I am saying is that the math of the delta between the two isn’t enough for me to change my play stlye. I tried banners previously and it just wasn’t for me. That decision with full awareness with what I am giving up.

Never once have I suggested my selections on my utility bar were optimal for everyone. My goal was to merely point out that it is quite narrow, to use your description, to insist that your way is best and anything else is idiotic, again your word.

SpreadCheeks.3801:

Leveling a ranger is misleading cause you have a pet to tank for you while you pewpew but once you do Dungeons, WvW or S/Tpvp, your pet dies before it can actually do anything which kills your overall dps.

This is what happened to me. Played a little Guardian and Warrior during the beta weekends, but decided on Ranger on release. Ran with a Brown bear and longbow and everything pretty much pre-Orr, stayed focused on my tank bear which never seemed to die. Just ran from enemy to enemy.

Then came Orr… find a target, have bear attack, start my attack pattern…. wait… why is this guy attacking me?!? Leave me alone! No, seriously, go away! Attack my bear, attack my bear! WHY OH WHY WON’T YOU LEAVE ME ALONE!!!

I went full class cannon (30/30/5/5/0) once I reached level 80, with full Berserker’s gear. and Ruby Orbs on the armor. I could normally down an enemy long before they ever reached me, but if I got too many on me at once things got hairy. The annoying would always be watching my bear run to the enemy, hit once or twice, enemy run towards me, bear finally take chase, I knock the enemy back, bear stops, turns directions, starts running, enemy gets up runs back towards me and past the bear, bear stops, turns, starts chasing… Ugh.

I quickly realized it was time for a change in my approach to which pet and how I took on enemies with my pet.

Evalia.7103:

I don’t even.
Somebody just exchanged a healing spell for 2% crit chance in front of my eyes.

Once again, close minded and utterly incapable or unwilling to consider anyone else’s build, configuration, play style, and/or situation. Yes, I did make that change, because I’ve said numerous times, the frequency that I need a big heal is very low. So, I may as well make that trade. I am turning a slot on my utility bar from doing nothing for me most of the time (but yes, could do a LOT for me when and if needed) into something that gives me an acknowledged small increase to damage and health regeneration. That’s a choice I made completely aware of the positives and negatives regarding that choice. You think it’s idiotic because you keep making assumptions, and poor ones at that, about my build.

Therefore, since you keep making poor assumptions about MY build, I’ll lay out the basics.

Traits: 10/30/0/20/10; taking Berserker’s Power, Deep Strike, Rending Strike, Forceful Greatsword, Empowered, Lung Capacity, and Signet Mastery. Primary weapon is Greatsword, no surprise with secondary being situation dependent. Utility slots are HS, FGJ, SiO, SoF, SoR; FGJ & SoR are kept on permanent cooldown. As needed, I’ll adjust them, same thing with the traits.

Evalia.7103:

Signet of fury is a lame choice of utility anyway because the second you compare it to a banner of discipline(90 precision versus 90 precision and 10% crit damage AOE with pickup for swiftness,fury, and dash, is this real?), you’ve got to realize how cheesy it is unless you aim for active of it – which you don’t.

Again, you made assumptions about my build and play style. I am fully aware of Banner of Discipline, I just prefer not to use banners as I’m constantly mobile & partially because I am lazy, I can admit it. I don’t want to have to keep picking up a banner & carrying it with me. Further, I don’t need additional Swiftness & Fury; already have permanent Fury & Swiftness is at 45s on a 48s cooldown with this build. If my party is that desperate for Swiftness, I could throw on a Warhorn in my secondary weapon set and grant 15s of swiftness on a 20s cooldown, and cure some conditions to boot!

Oh, and to be exceedingly technical about it, passively, Signet of Fury would be worth 130 Precision with Deep Strikes.

Evalia.7103:

I don’t need to prove to you that 90 precision and 10% critical damage, as well as extra swiftness and fury, all AOE, then dash on top of that and double burst finisher are better than 90 precision, now do I?

If you want me to change MY build you do. My preference is to not run banners. As I already mentioned, the Fury and Swiftness of the Banner don’t provide me anything, I’ve already got them. From a team perspective, my typical guild dungeon party has 2-3 warriors also running FGJ and SoR, so no issues with Fury uptime, and generally, neither would anyone else in my party as I apply 12s of Fury on a 20s cooldown plus at least 8 seconds from any other FGJ. Dash doesn’t seem like anything special, I already have Rush on the Greatsword, which I believe has longer range and better damage. So, whats left? 10% Critical Damage and Blast Finishers. Maybe that’s enough for you, but not for me. The Critical Damage would be passive, if I am in the AoE, the blast finisher would require explicitly activating it. With 2-3 warriors, we don’t have lots of fields available, so that is minimal appeal.

The mistake you keep making, is to compare, in a vacuum, two skills with nary a thought about my build. Yes, in that vacuum the skills you advocate are generally better than the skills I am using. Yet, I keep providing you reasons for why those particular skills don’t mesh well with the particulars of my build, my personal preferences, typical play style, and/or area of play. Why are you so resistant to simply consider that your approach isn’t everyone else’s approach?

At the end of the day, I made the decision to run Signet of Fury as my *_baseline*_ utility for this slot. I change it up as needed based on the utility provided by particular skills (e.g., if I need stability). I did the same process with my healing skill. The benefits of Healing Surge over Healing Signet aren’t worth the slot on my utility bar in this build. It is in other setups.

Why is this so difficult for you to understand?

crow.2709:

Shouts are easier to use in moving battles…
…
Banners are much better when holding a position or fighting in close quarters…

This is my exact mentality. My play style tends to be very mobile, constantly moving from place to place, so banners don’t appeal to me so I go with shouts. I do love though that Shouts and Banners are on the same tree; if I am traited for healing shouts, I can always switch over quickly to healing banners and swap slots on the bar.

Causic.3798:

Plus you get to hear your character yell stuff during battle! There’s nothing better than that

I love hearing FOR GREAT JUSTICE every 20 seconds… some of my non-warrior teammates, not so much. I always remind them though, that they at least get a bonus from having to listen to it. For my necro condition damage guild mates, I can take credit for up to 10 points of each tick of bleed.

It’s also fun to mash shouts together…

FEAR ME… FOR GREAT JUSTICE!

FOR GREAT JUSTICE… SHAKE IT OFF!

ON MY MARK (get set…) SHAKE IT OFF!

Evalia.7103:

phantomFury.9168:

BLAHBLAHBLAHBLAHBLAH I DIDNT READ YOUR POST I JUST WANT TO WRITE SOMETHING
(gag on you)

No, I actually did read your entire post. I have no issues with your points, except your apparent unwillingness to consider anyone else’s playstyle, situations, etc and why one healing skill may be better than another.

Evalia.7103:

Want healing? Get HEALING SURGE

So, did you read my post? Newsflash… Most of the time, I don’t need healing. Omnoberry Pies do a perfectly fine job of keeping my health up. So, for me, placing Healing Surge on my utility slot is a wasting a utility slot because I will never use it. (EDIT: For my current build.)

Isn’t there another popular trait in the same spot that gives you 9% crit chance?

I am assuming you refer to a full adrenaline bar mixed with Heightened Focus. I am quite aware of that. But again, you have once again seem to fail to consider any counter argument. I only trait 10 points deep into the Discipline line. Part of my build is a focus on boon duration. So, with only 10 points in Discipline, I take the Signet cooldown reduction for 100% uptime on Signet of Rage boons. Could I pull 10 points out of Arms and instead put them in Discipline? Obviously yes. However, then I would lose 180 Precision (~8-9% critical chance, lose the 10% damage bonus on bleeding foes, would gain 9% critical chance from a full Adrenaline bar, and 10% critical damage. Bottom line, it would be about a zero sum game.

Evalia.7103:

Are you stupid or something?

Clearly. I’ve presented perfectly logical reasons why Healing Surge is not of any value to me and why in some situations Mending’s condition removal is not of any value to me, but sure, that makes me ‘stupid’. EDIT: I do concede I didn’t specifically mention Healing Surge in my previous post, but was certainly thinking it in my head when discussing Omnomberry Pies; my fault.

Evalia.7103:

but mending is hurr durr for removing conditions.

What was that about reading someone’s post? I don’t need to worry about condition removal

Evalia.7103:

Go compare it to healing surge and puff if you really want it.

Healing Surge is a great healing skill, I never said it wasn’t. I never once said in any absolute term, one skill was better than another. On another of my builds (a 0/0/30/30/10, using Hammer and Axe/Shield) I normally take Healing Surge because I want easy quick access to Adrenaline as well as an amazing heal.

I simply presented a case, that for one of my setups, play style, and party dynamics, how Healing Surge and Mending don’t offer me the value that Healing Signet does. Since I don’t tend to need either condition removal or burst healing, I might as well take the passive healing and precision, though insignificant it is, over two skills that will be ignored 90%+ of my time playing.

EDIT – The 9% critical chance to which I referred in my previous post was NOT from Heightened focus. Instead it was the combination of the Deep Strikes trait (in Arms), plus having Healing Signet and Signet of Fury on my utility bar. In total, that is worth 170 Precision or roughly 8% critical chance. I never said I got 9% from Heightened Focus.

Evalia.7103:

…[Mending] clears 2 conditions as well every 25 seconds.

I don’t disagree that Mending CAN remove 2 conditions every 25 seconds, but if used as a condition removal technique, then you could potentially be wasting the healing aspect of the skill, and put yourself in a position where you’re waiting 25 seconds for another desperately needed heal. To me, the condition removal should be viewed as a bonus and not so much as a hard condition removal skill every 25 seconds. So, give credit to it’s additional ability, but I think you’re giving it too much credit, per se.

Evalia.7103:

Signet: 200 HP/S – passive. 166 HP/S – active

So, based on your math I assume you are using the base cooldown times for the Healing Signet. That’s fine, it isn’t inaccurate, but to be fair, at least include both sets of numbers. With the reduction in cooldown, the Healing Signet’s ‘active’ heal becomes 207 (a ~25% increase); that certainly looks a lot better than 166, and gets close to matching Mending, though, yes without condition removal.

There is also an aspect of the math you didn’t touch on in your post. Assume you have two warriors equally configured, except one has Healing Signet and the other Mending. As they begin to battle and take damage, one is receiving a passive gain of health. Assuming each are taking the same damage, thus for every second the fight continues, the warrior with Healing Signet will be up at least 200 health points. So, 10 seconds into a fight, the Healing Signet warrior has a minimum 2000 more health points left. If they were to both then activate a healing, they would be both be sitting back at roughly the same health. So, long story short, the rate of taking damage and the intervals of necessity to activate a healing skill will play into which is the better option; Healing Signet could prevent you from needing to heal. It’s all situational.

Evalia.7103:

Want to be a noob – Healing Signet is the winner.

Sigh…

I am amazed at the complete blindness to so many people on this forum / in this game. People who absolutely refuse to believe, consider, accept that not everyone plays in the exact same situations as everyone else, or values the same abilities as everyone else.

For me, and the content I normally do, I do not need additional condition removal. In general PvE roaming, conditions are a joke, so who cares. In those situations, Shake it Off is enough for me to clear a nagging condition keeping me in ‘combat’ and keeping my movement speed down. In dungeons, one of my guild mates runs a Shouts/Altruistic Healing guardian build. As such, he’s the Dyson of team condition removal vacuums. I just don’t care about conditions when he is around, so Mending doesn’t really bring anything to the table for me.

For me, and my current GS build, my goal is the maximum critical chance possible, for both damage increases as well as more effective healing from Omnomberry Pies. Since I traited 30 points into the Arms line, I take Deep Strikes for the added precision from inactive Signets. I then dedicate one slot for Signet of Fury to remain inactive as well. Between those two Signets and the trait, I gain 170 precision worth ~8% critical chance. With my critical damage rating, that 8% critical chance equates to a 8% average base damage increase; the Healing Signet worth ~2% of that. 2% Damage isn’t huge by any means, but its worth more to me than being able to shed two conditions I rarely ever have or even worry about.

Does this mean I always run Healing Signet? Of course not… I am perfectly aware that the utility slots can be changed at will. FGJ and SoR are generally permanent fixtures in my utility slots, but the other two are dependent on the situation.

kKagari.6804:

You do raise a good point about using orbs though. Currently Rune of the Ranger gives:
165 Precision, +8% Crit damage, +5% damage

Against Beryl (valkyrie) orbs:
120 Power, +12% Crit damage, 84 vitality.

If you’re willing to take Precision from Runes, why not Orbs? You could run Ruby Orbs for the same Power bonus, same +12% Critical Damage, but instead of the Valkyrie, take Precision from Ruby Orbs.

Between the Rune of the Ranger and Beryl Orb, the rune will have better damage, as you’re giving up ~8% Critical Chance while gaining 4% Critical Damage. With the runes, full exotic gear, and your traits, you’re looking at 100% critical damage bonus, for a total of 250%. Thus, for each 1% of critical chance you gain, you will see an increase of 1.5% in average damage. So, that 8% critical chance will result in an average damage increase of 12%. The 120 Power is going to be almost a 1:1 change, although the rune is dependent upon on having a banner out.

Between the Rune of the Ranger and Ruby Orb… the delta is probably in the noise (the cost certainly isn’t!!!!). This is, again, because the 5% damage and 120 Power bonuses are roughly equal with your setup. The Critical Chance delta is ~4% worth ~6% in average damage increase versus the Critical Damage delta of 4%.

FWIW, the wiki indicates that the Signet of Healing’s “regeneration” is different from the regeneration boon.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Healing_Signet

So, I really hate to say it… but it just seems if one is going to give up such a HUGE amount of damage by going full out Cleric’s gear to play a party support role, why play warrior? Cleric’s gear sacrifices two of three legs of the direct damage table; Precision/Critical Chance and Critical Damage. It then sacrifices a chunk of Power, the third and most important leg, by moving Power from a primary stat to a secondary stat on the gear.

I guess if your group has several other high/glassy DPS builds, overall damage loss isn’t huge and made up in keeping the DPS’ers alive. I may be biased, because when running AC with my guild, health is typically not a problem for our group; we normally have 2-3 very high crit chance warrior DPS’ers running Omnoberry Pies; we’ve got our own health taken care of so long as we avoid the freight train hits from the bosses. Our issue is normally condition removal. That’s where… our Guardian comes in with his Shouts/Altruistic Healing build, with Soldier’s runes. He keeps up clean, and he is nearly unkillable.

Soeki.9643:

Healing signet is a good choice, since with high healing power the passive becomes quite strong and due to low cooldown it is the most spammable for these extra effects

Errr…. passive becomes quite strong? A full blown healing power build can net maybe 1600ish healing power? This means Healing Signet goes from a base of 208 Health per second to 260ish Health per second. I’d hardly call 52 health points a second “quite strong”. Also, if you’ve got it on cooldown, you aren’t getting the passive healing effect.

No issues with the approach of the build… certainly an innovative approach.

I will say that I find the assertions that the Arms tree to be a bit bleeds focused a little odd. There are two Minor Traits that are bleed related and only one Major trait. The beauty of the two Minor Traits is that together, it equates to an easy 10% damage bonus, assuming your critical chance is high enough. Hard to argue with getting a 10% damage bonus without using a trait slot on the tree.

The Arms is a wonderful tree if you’re going bleed focused, especially if you use cswords/rifles. But it is also a great tree for Greatsword DPS builds.

IDarko.4709:

One of the best skills for WvW when using Signet Mastery and boon duration runes!

Don’t listen to these trolls. ~13 seconds stability, every 48 seconds is bad?? mmkay.
It’s better than balanced stance imo (Plenty of stun removal when running shouts). Sure the +90 toughness is not that great, but that’s not the point of taking this skill!

Oh, it could be less nice when you run no boon removal, signet trait and no other stun breakers ;P

Um, if you’ve traited boon duration to get the Signet’s stability to 13 seconds, since Balanced Stance also has a base 8 second stability… wouldn’t it also have 13 seconds? So, Balanced Stance gives 13 seconds of stability every 40 seconds.

Also, curious about the implication that there are “plenty of stun removal when running shouts”. The only shout that is a stun breaker is Shake It Off. Am I missing something?

Yeah, in my first reply totally glossed over the fact you were still leveling, which definitely changes the numbers. As you recognized, the passive Signet build will begin to lose effectiveness as you continue to level, but is definitely very effective during leveling. And for all practical purposes, it’s hard to have a build so bad as to make leveling difficult.

Knighthonor.4061:

So how much damage reduction is this for a typical endgame warrior? is it worth the slot?

The damage reduction, as a percentage, would be maximized if a Warrior has taken no additional toughness / defense. In this case, damage reduction would be around 4%. As additional toughness is added from gear/traits, the reduction as a percentage would drop.

Since 90 Toughness can added so easily from gear/traits, the only reason to take the Signet would really be for the active trait which is 8 seconds of Stability. Balanced Stance would be a better option if there is a desperate need for on demand Stability, as Balanced Stance has a shorter cooldown than the Signet (even if the Signet cooldown trait is taken) and Balanced Stance breaks stun which can be a life saver in many situations.