Guild Wars 2

I might run Might Sig instead of Stamina to see how I like it. Tbh, I think I already have too much power (for my crit chance and damage) when I hit 17 might stacks, which is almost all the time. Still, it might help at the beginning of a fight. More importantly, I’ll have access to unblockable, which is nice.

But I’m still betting Stamina Sig is the better choice. When you yolo roam, a single dodge can protect you against thousands of damage. Meanwhile, Reckless Dodge well do 5k aoe damage when the stacks are up. I watch my endurance, and never have a problem not taking advantage of Stick and Move.

Obindo.6802:

Poorly worded; Pack and strength runes are about as good options (pack better for teamfight – without signet of rage (also fury to allies) and strength better for solo – with signet of rage)*

No, I understood what you meant the first time. I was more saying this build has you using Arcing Slice so much that you don’t need the Fury from Pack runes (whether you use Signet of Rage or not), and that so many revs and thieves (running thrill of the crime), and others, plus most builds’ own personal Fury, means the group benefit of Pack runes isn’t as valuable as it used to be.

Pack’s still a good rune and all, but for a gs reliant warrior build in a world where everybody seems to have tonnes of Fury anyway, they’ve lost some value.

Obindo.6802:

Pack or Strength runes, both are about as good imo (pack slightly better for teamfighting tho – without signet of rage).

I used to run Pack runes with this too (still have the set), but since HoT I find Strength (and others) way better. Arcing Slice is enough to maintain permanent Fury uptime, even without SoR, because it’s your go-to burst on this build. HoT matters because it seems everyone and their dog has tonnes of Fury anyway, and many share their Fury too.

The extra precision and swiftness on Pack are nice, but they don’t compare to the +45% might duration, extra might stacks, and (if it works) bonus damage from Strength. Scholar, Scrapper, Defender (though less so when not traiting Berserker) seem better to me.

As for Stamina Signet, I just tested it and it does indeed stack with Vigor. So, the net result is you get the effect of having an unstrippable vigor-like buff 100% of the time, and for about 25s/min you have +100% endurance regen, which is amazing (especially when combined with an Energy sigil and Reckless Dodge).

As Cygnus said, this is a pretty standard lsetup for s+sh/gs, and I use it myself (with slight differences).

• Might Sig is good, and sometimes optimal. But I’ve been going with Stamina Sig for the last while because (thanks to a recent patch) it stacks with the Vigor you’ll get from Last Stand, which is awesome. Plus, it can give you an emergency condi cleans when BStance is on cd and you just got bombed.
• I don’t favour Hoelbrak at all anymore. I personally use Strength (mostly because I had them already) but Scholar (even when below 90% health), Scrapper, and others are also very good (and better than Hoelbrak, imo).
• Intelligence sigil on your sword set would be a good addition.
• I run full zerk gear and think I prefer it overall (I regularly have opponents pm’ing me (even in group fights) commenting on how hard I hit). Though my perma 25 stacks of might help with that. That said, sometimes fighting slightly tankier/more-regen warriors seems like I’m putting in more work than they are (not sure why)
• I use Golden Fried Dumplings, but the Pie also looks good to me too

As for competent Daredevils, yeah, they can be rough to fight. When they’re glass, getting that lucky big hit in is what it comes down to, and surviving long enough for that opportunity. That they can escape and refresh easily if you don’t finish them off when you get that chance is a real drag,

I actually find some ele, scrapper, and druid (to a lesser extent) builds worse, the first two because they hard nerf my damage output with all the uptime of protection ,etc., while still maintaining respectable damage output themselves. Some ele builds can manage upwards of 70% damage reduction, which just ruins a build like this that is based on achieving high damage pressure and killing fast.

Necromancers aren’t as bad for me, but it all comes down to whether they can survive the 15-18s before my condi defenses where out. I’ve gotten better about bailing on them if I think it’ll get ugly after that.

EDIT: I just checked and the wiki says Stamina Sig does NOT stack with Vigor, but I’m not sure if it’s old text or not. The reason I figured it did is because of this note from the late January patch,

“Vigor and other endurance-regeneration effects (such as traits) now stack up to a maximum of 100% bonus regeneration rate.”

I guess I’ll have to do some testing. If it turns out it doesn’t stack, I’ll either go back to Frenzy for that place or go with Might Sig, as you have.

Tested. Stamina Sig does stack with Vigor, despite what the Wiki says.

Juba.8406:

While I agree that 100b should never go Mobile, but I think 100b need a serious damage buff.

(Hard to setup -> High reward) concept is not working properly, the reward is just not high enough and the setup is much harder than it was before HoT.

I agree the risk (or cost)/reward ratio is too high in a pvp/wvw situation, but I suspect part of the motivation for damage downgrades over the year was pve, where no setup is generally required.

If that is a concern, then simply reducing the channel time would boost 100b in pvp/wvw without greatly affecting pve.

BurrTheKing.8571:

That’s personal taste I guess, but I think there’s a reason you almost never see LB in PvP.

The lack of condi diversity making it fairly trivial to manage the burn, on top of the easily avoided red aoe indicators are major reasons. The damage output against a conscious opponent is just too low.

Fivedawgs.4267:

Speak for yourself friend. I mean a few people include myself who can down 2 necro let alone one. And I always go mid/tf because of my build. So yeah, try to adjust a few things on your build.

I predict some challenges to duel coming your way. If you’re regularly downing two competent necros on your own, then you’ve either discovered something nobody else has or the necros aren’t being played competently.

If they’re both condi necros who group up and forget to boon corrupt and kite against your Berserker Stanced power warrior, then sure. But, beyond that, the size of their health pools combined with their damage output (including from range) shouldn’t allow you to down them both (and that ignores their debuffing outside of Berserker Stance).

Fivedawgs.4267:

FYI. .. final thrust or sword 3 can hit 3 target so in tf that 5k dps.. or 7k dps if all of your oponents are under 50% Hp. Well, I guess it’s pretty subjective from there. If you mainly solo than u should mace … in tf sword is strng er than mace dps wise.

It’s not though. That setup, getting three targets below 50% in a position to be cleaved with the same FT and without them seeing the large telegraph to mitigate, is not a common occurrence. It does happen (I downed two people in a 3v1 that way just last night), but it’s rare. Catching more than one person without the expectation that they’re below 50% is more common, though.

Meanwhile, the 3rd hit on the mace auto chain hits for more damage than Final Thrust when targets are above 50%. It can be used every 1.75s, it applies 5 stacks of vulnerability, and nobody tries to dodge it because it’s an auto.

Keep in mind that, despite this, I choose sword over mace pretty much every time on a power build. But it’s not for the damage, it’s for the utility.

Fivedawgs.4267:

Well, it wasn’t an attempt but sword does more dmg than mace that’s just a fact sword 3 does more dmg then mace 3 and all the mace auto when your enemy is under 50% Hp; and we are not even accounting for the bleed. Mace 2 is pretty much defensive it only does dmg when hit whereas sword 2 always land. So yeah, sword does more Dmg than mace on a power build.

Even accounting for FT below 50%, which is situational and on a 12s CD (and the bleeds, which are non-factors), mace comes out on top on a power build. Go ahead and look at all of the skills and their power coefficients. It’s not even debatable.

Fivedawgs.4267:

Lol this made me laugh (your adrenaline on auto) ?? And Mace deals more dmg than sword?

Mace does do more damage than sword on a power build.

Crush my enemies. See them driven before me. Hear the lamentations of their women.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PQ6335puOc

Straegen.2938:

Every other Elite spec is abusing the hell out of their trait lines and skills so no reason not to do the same. I would add the warrior has far more reasons to abuse Gun Flame as the rest of the class is pretty subpar currently. I would add that Gun Flame is very OP but in a strange way it is sort of balanced out on the warrior in PvP. In WvW, Gun Flame is just straight up evil.

But rifle isn’t balanced in a good way. Excluding the few that play it skillfully, it’s an OP tool for scrubby players making the game practically unplayable from relative safety or squishies that are total liabilities for their teams.

Keep in mind that warriors aren’t just the class that have the opportunity to abuse this awful (but by no means most powerful) spec, we also have to confront it with everyone else. Keep in mind that our sustain isn’t great, we’re principally melee oriented, and we rely on block more than most classes.

Our rifle needs to move away from the “big burst but useless otherwise” concept because it’s bad for the game. It doesn’t need a power nerf though… just a redistribution. Other skills like True Shot on the DH should be adjusted for the same reason.

Phaeton.9582:

It’s not a bad idea though, something that doesn’t reward spam. It gets to the core of what warriors used to be about pre shout-bow; as much about when you don’t attack as when you do.

Besides the main idea was 100% quickness in zerk stance. Especially now it doesn’t affect stomp/ressing.

I honestly think those days are over.

In the old days, Anet briefly designed the traits to have opportunity attached to bursting or not bursting (e.g. the old versions of Berserker’s Power, Heightened Focus, etc).

Since then, they’ve put a much higher cost on missing or not using our burst during combat (lost adrenaline), and all of the adren traits have been redesigned to have effect on hit (excluding Adrenal Health, the last holdout). The new adren mechanics are supposed the thing inhibiting burst spam now.

Also, I don’t think 1000 bonus toughness is worth not attacking, especially with the amount of damage flying around these days (including much more lethal conditions than there used to be). Troll or rez builds might do ok with it, but even those wouldn’t have much of a place.

As for quickness in zerk stance, it’s not really the point of the stance. Frenzy, maybe, but then you can achieve double speed with Frenzy (and Stamina Sig) now.

KhainPride.3987:

I ran axe shield gs frontline warrior in zergs couple years back with rousing resilience and full zerker armor

ATM i roam with axe gs shield but not with rousing resilience, it was nice on my viper mace build for roaming but I like last stand better since vigor OP.

Here is a quick video I made yesterday using marauder armor + durability runes and zerker trinkets. Using strength def/dis lines.

Haha, you traded up your first slot for Stamina Sig for the (new) stackability with vigor! I tried it for about an hour but missed ma Frenzy too much (for the stun break, 8s quickness and 11s of (5) might). Didn’t give it much of a chance though… how do you like it?

Sounds a lot like Cygnus’ configuration, though he used Mace instead of Axe. Truth be told, I think mace, axe, or sword could be used interchangeably depending on what was called for at the time.

Defender runes are key to his build, and so you should check into them if you haven’t already. The closest thing to them in pvp would be Tempest runes, I think.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Video-Berserker-WvW-Roaming-Build/first

EvilHero.1248:

Not sure if it’s just happens to me, i got laughed at when i kind of voice out that reapers are ridiculous be it in terms of condi-management or outright smashing people’s head in with their power builds. Not to mention the humiliation i suffered from druids where they can leisurely talk to me while i’m putting in serious effort trying to down them, just to be rewarded with a few daze and knockback + full hp recovery in less then 5 sec…

Nah, you’re not alone. You have to work like James Brown to drop a competently played druid while they can more or less watch cat videos on the youtubes.

Reapers largely depend from my experience… I actually find our stances to be very useful against them, despite other’s experience. If they can outkite your stances though, RIP.

Dragon Hunters and Scrappers can also mess you up unless you’re running some unblockable traits/utilities… Gun Flame stands out here.

Valik Shin.9027:

For pvp warriors just need some way to survive. All they have is stances which is only short duration. With the bezerker stance change its even worse cause boon strip removes resistance and then condi eats u alive

Only for 3s or less, provided your opponent gets lucky and actually strips the resistance.

I was discussing this with an experienced condi reaper who I absolutely wrecked today, and his opinion was the old version of the stance at least required some skill from the warrior (use it before the burst, don’t waste it, use your time well) vs the new version which was basically “fire and forget” to enjoy your new, longer immunity, which any monkey could pull of.

Stripping resistance from among the other boons is already random. Doing it every 3s would be like winning the boon strip lottery.

Fivedawgs.4267:

BTW you are stowing your weapon by swapping right or is there another way to do it?

If you go into options to where you can set your keys, there’s one called “Stow Weapon” that allows you to put your weapon away as though you weren’t in combat (or draw it as if you were). Bind a key to that.

Swapping weapons will sometimes interrupt a skill and sometimes it won’t. With Flurry, for example, I find weapon swapping doesn’t interrupt the skill about 20% of the time. Swapping also doesn’t help you if you’re trying to bait out a dodge because it’ll make your burst unavailable for a full 5s because you’d be on the wrong weapon.

Fivedawgs.4267:

Oh thanks, I didn’t know weapon swap could interrupt sw burst skill (flurry). And thanks again mate.

No problemo. As a tip, stowing your weapon is a great way to bait out dodges from your opponents as well.

For example, Kill Shot (and Gunflame) have fairly obvious animations that a skilled opponent will attempt to dodge. If you start to channel the skill and then stow your weapon before it fires, they’ll generally use a dodge and you’ll still have all of your adrenaline to initiate the burst again.

Fivedawgs.4267:

Loading.4503:

Maybe I’ve been playing it wrong… But usually with sword gs, don’t people use flurry swap to hb? Don’t see any autos in there…

Flurry swap to hb?? What do you mean I can5 read you there.

Flurry applies a 4s immobilize on the first hit, but the remaining hits just apply some really crappy damage and bleeding (crappy even if someone’s using condi gear).

So the best thing to do is use Flurry for the first hit to apply the Immobilize, and then interrupt the skill so you can do something more useful like a full 100b, or some other burst. The sure-fire way to interrupt Flurry is stowing your weapon, but sometimes just swapping weapons will do it.

Kicker.8203:

It can be pressured easily, exactly. If people don’t focus him they deserve to die. To be viable you have to play it like a mesmer(excep you dont have teleports). You climb up to places and kite people around jumping puzzles which is not a lazy playstyle in my opinion.

To be clear, I’m not saying people who use gf inherently use a lazy playstyle, I’m saying gunflame rewards a lazy playstyle about almost as much as it rewards skilled play. It’s the reason I hate it.

But climbing to places out of reach to shoot unbockable gunflames into fights in progress, especially with the invulns we can pop, doesn’t require much skill either. It might be smart (because it works), but anyone could do it just like a new player spamming longbow 2 on a ranger.

Doing what Vaans has done in some of his wvw videos would count as skilled in my book though… where there’s straight on melee engagement, often outnumbered, baiting out dodges, etc.

Hoaxintelligence.4628:

I didnt knew this topic was about pvp only. Ofcourse the bow makes me struggle. Its slow as hell. You said 1v1 doesnt mean a thing VS wvw players. But when I slay people in pvp its suddenly have a meaning? xd you have allot of noobs in pvp aswell. People that achieved dragon finisher and legendary icon think they can beat everything x Im sure you faced those allot aswell, anyway I Im that kind of roamer that roams with tons of builds. I dont like to run what everyone runs. Thats boring. Ofcourse every build has its weakness. You are right about me hoping that my enemy dont have massive burst. High dps burst is a weakness for that build. Some high burst I can handle better then other high burst. VS thiefs its oke. VS beserker warriors I get recked. If you see the people in the vid I do fight some that have allot of sustain to, so what you said about hoping that my enemy dont have allot of sustain is not correct. But yeah, that vid was more to share 1 of my roaming builds I have fun with, and to make a point that longbow is not weak thats all. Im still hoping on a apothecary amulet in pvp one Day.

Great post, and right on point.

Fivedawgs.4267:

You mean cripple every now and then with chill ( if you have hydro on your gs, given that you are using sw shield /gs) added on top of that wouldn’t help you land 100 b more often??

I’m not sure what you mean. I’m saying the sword auto could use a bit more direct damage to shore up the non-condi side of the weapon, and that you’d know if you went to far if its damage output was crazy when using Viper gear.

The cripple on the sword auto isn’t huge (valuable, but not excessive), and I wouldn’t advocate adding another condition (chill or anything else) to the sword auto either.

Gaile’s a gem who’s been around since gw1. Having more people like her around who are skilled in community relations would go a long way, but there are always limits to what can be done. Glad you got a response.

Fivedawgs.4267:

Idk about lb but sword has condi attached to it… so boosting sword aa would be OP as you would cripple or bleed folks way too often.

The numbers would have to be looked at, but I don’t think a damage increase would make it OP. The bleeds don’t do anything unless you’re running condi gear, and a lot of condi gear won’t make much of the increased direct damage. The set to watch to make sure you haven’t overtuned would be VIper’s.

Depends on the weapon. I think lb and sword could use a buff… more direct damage for the latter and a speed increase on the former.

The others, not really. Rifle’s auto is pretty lackluster but it has that bloody gunflame attached to it, so boosting that weapon further just throws more grease on the fire, and hammer is too slow overall for the risk:reward of the current state of the game, so it’s not exactly an issue with the auto. Gs, axe, and mace auto seem fine to me.

@Fivedawgs
I’d generally agree in terms of the damage our skills can do. But our dps does get dropped quite a bit due to our susceptibility to being kited, blinded (less after the Berserker Stance change), dodged, etc.

Run a high damage r/gs gunflame build thta includes Signet of Might and/or Signet Mastery for the DH and Scrapper fights, who’ll try to use blocks to foil you, and you’ll go right through them.

It still might be your best chance against the other three, but you can drop (or lessen) the unblockable stuff in favour of other tools in these fights.

You’ll have to get lucky with the thief, who’ll use a mixture of blinds, stealth, cc, and reflect to cause you grief, plus he’ll be able to hit you hard. The good news is, if you hit him with one gunflame (and don’t get it reflected on you), he’s dead. Your whirlwind attack on the gs will be tricky for him too. Another approach may be a Viper based cc build that incorporates Distracting Strikes in some way, I’m not sure.

Despite a lot of posts to the contrary, Berserker Stance will work spectacularly against the Reaper, and your HS active less so. If you Berserker Stance and then spam gunflame, he’ll be in real trouble. Or you could try to lock him down with a hammer, but gf is better, imo.

If you’re running this in a pvp arena, then you might stand a chance against the Druid. If it’s in a guild arena and the Druid’s is celestial and skilled, I have no idea how you’ll defeat him.

Rampage is an option, but I think Headbutt’s probably a better choice.

The Endure Pain bug might even be in their dev queue, who knows. I worked for a SaaS company for a while and we often struggled to find the right balance between fixing some problems now, folding those problems into bigger fixes, and how much/what to communicate to stakeholders (other staff, customers, etc) in terms of what was in the development pipeline.

Maybe if there was a way to give a general sense of what they were planning to work on in advance of their development sprints, or have some way for the player base to easily identify if the issue they were experiencing was a known bug, it would help. Or maybe it would be a bad way to go for different reasons, I don’t know.

Could a customer service person or project manager (rather than a dev) get some good community management points by occasionally engaging on the forums? Yeah, probably. Whether it would speed anything up or not is another matter, but it might reduce frustration levels among the player base if people felt as though someone was listening.

In the interests of self preservation though, it’d probably better to find the parts of the game that are still fun for you (other areas of the game, other classes, etc), still noting the issues on the forum (and elsewhere), but having fun while waiting for them to get sorted out. You probably do this already (you seem like a pretty balanced poster, tbh), but I’ve seen some people flame out in outrage here too. It’s just not worth it!

I’ve got to think Anet knows the population has dropped (it has in wvw at least), so they must be motivated to find ways to keep people happy (and kicking in more money through the gem store). Maybe they read the forums more than we think.

Your post does technically breach the forum code of conduct in a pretty mild way (imo), and it was probably for that reason that it was deleted. I think they could have let it ride, and the mods may be letting this thread ride because they recognize it’s not aggressive against Anet staff and it’s probably better for everyone to just let the discussion occur in the interests of community relations.

I get the frustration, and even share it a bit. But I think seeing the dev’s side of the equation would answer some of your questions. According to a recent post (or vid or something), it was mentioned that there are something like 1000+ bug, fix, or customer service reports per day.

When you consider how many of those will be duplicates, low quality or, and let’s be real, really bad ideas/serious QQ, the signal to noise ratio (useful stuff to not useful) would be overwhelming. Combine that with every change will impact some people negatively and others positively, there really is no winning for them.

They probably don’t read the warrior forum very much, if at all. I don’t really blame them either… it’d probably be soul crushing for even the most dedicated and earnest dev.

Yeah, I think so. I assume you were running a Gunflame build which, tbh, supports a really lazy style of play (not to say that’s your style), which basically has you destroying people on a point from distance but otherwise being near useless if pressured.

I wish Anet would make it so the rifle was more rewarding of good play and less of crap play, but I agree with emkelly despite all of the above. Warriors don’t have many good alternatives.

Is it just the tooltip or is it confirmed to affect the damage done too?

@nicknamenick
I kind of feel like the bug section of the forum is a black hole because I don’t think anet checks the forums much (could be wrong). Ever since I read a blog post by them mentioning the in-game reporting tool (and their ability to easily reproduce what you’re seeing with it), I’ve convinced myself that it’s the only thing they actually check when it comes to bug reports, rather than the forum.

You should replicate the bug and then use the in-game reporting tool so the dev team can easily reproduce it themselves.

Azalis.5142:

I would like to use GS/Hammer but I can’t seem to make that work. Maybe I just suck but I switched to GS/sw+sh and, keep in mind, this is my first attempt at a build, ever:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQNAR8ejEdQXIW2BmhApIGICKLAigBQ/iXfLwWvvHBA-TpBCABS8AAyZ/BAOIAuXGohjAwFXAAA

I know for sure it could use some help but it’s the first thing I have had any success with since returning to GW2 about a week ago, anyone teach me the ways of the warrior?

It’s for spvp and I’m not going to try to climb ranking or anything.

Side note: is hammer/sw+horn “frontliner” the only “melee” build for big wvw fights?

Thanks!

Take Shield Mastery over Dogged March, and I recommend Heightened over Burst Mastery too, at least for this build. The build doesn’t revolve around a particular burst skill, so take the Quickness.

I’d also take Brawlers over DotE personally and then go for HS over Mending, but that’s new. Some people swear by DotE.

I haven’t tried the Paladin amulet, but Mauraders works well for the build, or Zerk.

@Cerby
The thieves are hitting you with Basilisk Venom, which is unblockable now. Freakier still, they can share it with allies (most don’t run venom share though), which gives all of them the same advantage.

Rekt.5360:

I respecced back to hammer GS (no rampage) a few days before the patch hit and I run merciless hammer with berserker ammy and runes of strength. Holy hell it hits hard and the reduced CD gives me pretty crazy low CDs on skills, I played berserker greataxe from the day HoT came out to a few weeks ago exclusively and hammer feeeeeels niiiiiice. D/p thief kittens on me hard though, very hard, even with berserker stance bypassing the blinds they can still stall until its completely over and then just crap on hammer with shadow shot and black smoke :S

I regularly dust off h/gs for duels in wvw, and it sounds like we have the same thing going (high dps, merciless hammer, zerk gear w/ strength runes). Works well against some builds that greataxe struggles against, but high ranged pressure is worse, obviously (thus, it’s not ideal for roaming). Greataxe, h/gs, and gs/r are my main go-to builds in duels, and they collectively cover the basics in most fights.

Well played daredevils are the exception due to all of the evades, ports, stealth, etc. vs our slower moving big hits. I find we have to rely on getting one of those disabling or high damage lucky hits, otherwise they’ll outlast our defenses. I haven’t tried a berserker condi build against them though… not sure if that would work better or not.

That isn’t to say daredevils are the most difficult fights (they’re not). Just saying I haven’t found a good avenue to somewhat undermine their core advantages like I can against other builds.

My toughest duels in wvw have probably been against celestial eles with crazy high damage reduction, though probably mostly because of my preference for high power builds. Celestial druids can be rough too, though I find the rifle helps those fights a lot.

Yeah, it’s been mentioned several times over the past year. It’s probably the best tweak for people who want to use PS in pve but who have a general aversion to gs.

Do know that if anyone is pressuring you hard to use gs now, it probably wouldn’t stop even if the trait was changed as suggested because gs would still be the better might generating weapon.

It wouldn’t be a power creep for the class at all, so I can’t see anyone being against it really.

Warlord.9074:

MY link is the way to improve it if he wants to run condis. Trust me choppy. I name his build “Condi Experiment X2000.” Looks a lot like somthing I tried that didn’t work as well as the link i pasted.

Haha, suit yourself. “One build to rule them all, one build to find them…” and all that?

Warlord.9074:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/My-Build-PVP-BEST-Condi-Build/5978263

The OP was shooting for a hybrid build, afaik. Specifically, presenting one he’s made and then asking for suggestions to improve or a name for it.

ZombieLeach.5862:

I went the route I did simply because of the Opportunist, Leg Specialist combo giving not only a immobilize every 3rd hit or so, but fury as well improving crit chance. I chose Healing shouts because of my preference for “Shake It Off.” I’ll have to try that variant though.

I figured you were going for the immob-fury combo, it’s just that (imo) it’s a lot to invest for limited benefit in this case (i.e. you’re not getting a tonne of value from those crits compared to what you’re giving up).

That said, two simple improvements to your current build: swap Blademaster for Deep Strike, and Burst Precision for Furious. Again, you’re not getting a huge amount for critting over not critting, and you don’t need cd reduction on sword. But getting +150 condi damage off of that Fury, plus bonus adren and condi damage from crits (which will still be high), will bring more to the table.

Note that in the variant I linked you have better stun breaking, condi removal, and group healing than what you’re getting form the Healing Shouts/Shake it Off route. Provided you’re getting hit with regular ccs, which, from my experience, is almost guaranteed.

EDIT: Made a couple small changes to the variant (swapped the offhands for better synergy (since it has FH) and changed the sigil on the mace to help land the burst).

It looks like a variant to a build that’s been floating around since HoT launch, but I haven’t seen someone go healing shout before. Others would know better than me, but I think the more common (and stronger) variant looks more like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQRApe8fnMdAdhgVhAmkCElilrATJH06qBvj2UbrFJAkASdA-TpRAQBc4EAovyAf4BAAgDCwC3fIAHBAA

With that you should do better on your +1 engagements because you’ll have more armor, more invulns, better healing for yourself and your team, and your damage will still be about the same.

See if you like it, or any of the variants suggested by others, better than your current version. You might not, but it’s worth a try.

No idea about a name.

1k burning isn’t much damage to compensate for such a long aftercast, especially since you have to trait for it on a line that few builds can afford.

Also, rifle now has better control than bow.

Tumult.2578:

The immobilize and the vulnerability by itself, is enough in PvE. What possible use can a forced backwards roll have in PvE? (or even a directional dodge?) What are we supposed to be afraid of there? I just don’t get it. It just makes location pointless and potentially dangerous.
A rifle is a ranged weapon. Why retreat? If anything we could use a fast closer to go with the immobilize instead.

Because pve isn’t all there is to this game?

bladex.9502:

Did you know warrior has 2 mobility skills on greatsword and another one on sword, and is basically the most mobile class in the game after thief? :o

This hasn’t been true since June or so. Even running gs and sword, warrior is on the high side of the middle. And that’s speaking only of out-of-combat mobility. In combat, they’re on the lower side of mobility.

That being said, I disagree with the OP.

Rage runes are definitely a great choice for a damage oriented gs berserker build.

Beyond the ferocity and 5% bonus, you’ll be able to maintain pretty good Fury uptime despite losing SoR for Headbutt. A couple of Arcing Slices when not in Berserk mode would help full the gap.

Oh, and rekt, I think the thread had been commandeered….

If by overtuned you mean more power (via might) than needed, you might be right. It could be a case for adding in some assassin gear, but it’s probably not worth regearing over. I think I calculated crossing the threshold at 17 might with my current build.

If you’re just looking for more staying power, consider Scrapper runes. It’s a solid bit of protection in the zone in which you’ll be spending most of your time.

As for Endure pain, try to use it earlier in the fight. It’ll reduce the risk of overwriting, and you may get a second use out of it too. I find Defy Pain can help fool people into over committing and losing, and Armored Attack only gives you about 100 power with zerk gear, iirc.

Aurugal.6954:

You know despite the verbal exchanges this thread has turned out to be quite productive so let me ask you guys some more questions. I’m personally more of a fan of strength war and want this do be about wvw rather than spvp. Defy pain or armored attack? Heightened focus or burst mastery? And lastly, strength runes vs durability vs defender runes; what do you guys think is best and why

Depends on your build, gear choices, and what you think you’ll be doing.

I run a full zerk gs/s+sh roamer, so for me it’s entirely: Defy Pain, Heightened Focus, and I currently run Strength Runes (because I had them, and because I’m very damage oriented).

Defender Runes are very good for us but, for me as a roamer, not gaining the regen on ranged attack when using Shield Mastery is a deal breaker. I think the trade off damage-wise is too much. If you think you’ll be wading through lots of melee attacks or just need the sustain, Defender is a good option. I think running it with Rousing Resiliance and Outrage is pretty important for the overall sustain approach though.

Imo, Durability runes are inferior to Defender runes for sustain. They might be ok for a build aiming to be more support oriented, but there are probably better choices for that too.

If you run Knights gear and don’t have to worry too much about incoming bursts (e.g. you’re in larger group fights, staying on tag, etc), then Armored Attack may be a better choice over Defy Pain.

I’d personally only choose Burst Mastery over Heightened if Bursts skills were central to my build (i.e. Gunflame). That being said, now that you can’t get a quickened stomp, the case for Burst Mastery’s stronger than it was.

I’m finding thieves/daredevils more difficult than I did before (in wvw), but yes, a bit easier overall I think.

Aza.2105:

The worst change in history. Zerker stance is a LOT worse than it was before. It doesn’t matter if you are immune to condition damage while resistance is up. That is not the problem. The problem is duration. If a condition lasts a long time, it might be present after the immunity has ended. Before the change, you were immune to incoming conditions so that wouldn’t happen.

At worse, you might have to deal with condi that was applied to you before hand. If a necro transfers condis, then you were immune. Its much worse now, necro can transfer conditions and you might not take damage initially but if the duration is long enough you will afterwards.

The change makes no sense really. I don’t think anyone was complaining about how strong warrior was.

Before, you had 8s in which a mildly experienced player wouldn’t attack you with his condi burst, then he would and you’d be doomed. Now, he’ll drop his entire bomb on you and you have 12s of no effect for that clock to wear down and for you to clear using whatever mechanism you have available, bursting him while his major skills are in cooldown.

What’s the problem?

There are just better trait and gear options available throughout each build. As well, none of the builds fit a particular role especially well. Below’s some brief commentary on each build’s shortcomings:

Build 1:
You’re relatively glassy, have no defense against ranged (except 5s of EP on a 60s cd), and have no mobility to escape (except BC on a 40s cd). Lyssa runes are terrible, especially for a build that’s not condi oriented, Mending is our lowest performer healing-wise (though I know you’re using it to deal with condis), you have an over investment in precision to bother with Unsuspecting Foe, and Dual Wielding doesn’t stack with the attack speed bonus from Berserk mode.

You won’t be able to hold a point, you won’t be able to move well between points, kiters will have their way with you, as will condi bombers, and as will gankers.

Build 2:
Your defense against ranged and condi is better than the previous build, but you lack the burst to get the job done before your defenses run out, and the mobility to get out of dodge when that happens.

Again, you won’t be able to hold point and you won’t be good at moving from point to point. You’ll last longer in a fight, but opponents will be able to kite out your limited defenses and then burn through your considerable health pool without much trouble.

Build 3:
You have a lot of crit oriented traits but there’s no real value there if you do manage to crit (three of your traits are there just to get your chance up from 4%). You don’t have very much condi application and, like any warrior that doesn’t use gear to make up for it, little condi diversity so pretty simple to clear.

You have no defense against ranged, condi, or cc. Burst builds will annihilate you despite your large health pool.

None of them are optimized. Every one would get rekt against experienced players.

EDIT: If you’re trying to decide if you should create a warrior (by deleting one you have or buying an extra slot), you’re probably better off not trying to invent builds without experience and then relying on strangers’ advice on them. Just know that warriors aren’t currently in a great place in terms of pvp before you jump in.