Guild Wars 2

Daendur.2357:

So please teach me. How can I dodge something I cannot see?

Did you ever fight a thief? Or a Mesmer?

Same principle, really. They just have defense, whereas the rifle warrior does not.

Not trying to flame you here bud, killshot is indeed hard to see when zerging. But, don’t you find it strange that we don’t see armies of rifle warriors in WvW, if it’s supposed to be so strong?

Daendur.2357:

RJMazz.6798:

No. Learn to dodge.

What an answer. Awesome

Yet, he said it all.

The problem with this is twofold.

You will lack defense. Just one EP and Zerk stance won’t save you. No auto Endure Pain, not even Dead or Alive, and you don’t have shield to absorb damage.
As soon as you get focussed, you will die. You can run, but you are still susceptible to soft CC. If you get interrupted while leaping/rushing, you just don’t have enough defenses.

The other problem is that you lack burst. Where you will have incredible sustained damage, your burns and heavy direct attacks will not deal high damage. You will have 0 chance against anything that can heal a lot and often, like guardian, elementalist, engineer or ranger.

I don’t think S/T GS will be good enough. You don’t have ways to abuse the mobile fire field enough with these weapons, only the sword leap. A hybrid becomes good when you can stack a lot of might, because that allows you to deal burst damage.

Sword/GS has always been a hit and run spec. The thing is, the shield variation allows you to survive just long enough to deal insane burst damage and get out.

I agree, but still, the glaring problem with Fast Hands, limiting us to just 1 free traitline (if we want to even try out Berserker) is not being adressed.

Pretty much what you said nick.

I don’t know if DOA is better then Auto-EP, obviously it’s better against conditions though. My guess is that it’s a little weaker against direct damage. But I overall really like to see where this trait is going.

Actually, Berserker will encourage me to try builds without Defense.

I will never play a build without Fast Hands, so Discipline is the only mandatory traitline for me.

Then I’ll take Strength for the third one for both power and hybrid builds.

Berserker actually gives us what seem to be a few viable surviving options. Dead or Alive is particularly good, but even the stability procs in Berserker might open up a utility slot for something else. Condi clear will be manageable, in fact, I have already been dropping Cleansing Ire in favor of Balanced Stance. Brawlers Recovery does a good job already. And as for Adrenaline build-up, it’s fine as long as you get Berserker Stance, and the new traitline adds even more adrenaline gain.

DeceiverX.8361:

I fear that an over-abuse of burning is going to make the class overpowered.

This made me laugh a bit buddy.

To be fair, what class do you mean here?

Well there is our problem. If you want to run this build, you must go Str Dis Zerk… There is no other option. Discipline is mandatory for every build, as str is for most. Zerk is needed to get the torch in the first place.

The good news is that you will pick up extra condi cleanse with torch also, and maybe even more from the Zerk traitline.

But direct damage mitigation will be difficult without blocks. Weakness is good, but can be cleansed. 1 Endure Pain won’t save us.

Dude, your build just got viable with Torch.

Btw, the build you posted looks similar to what I’d run. You can also select condi duration increase food instead of reduction, to get 40% on everything including confusion and 85% on bleeds.
Also, take geomancy instead of earth. It will immediately proc doom if you land it, it’s AoE, and swapping to hammer will often be close to your target thanks to sword leap. The duration is 10 seconds base, which is a lot better then earth on a slow hitting weapon, especially if your crit chance gets lower.

It might be worth it to go celestial after Berserker goes live. Sword Torch Hammer will be very strong I believe. The reason being that one can use the Torch 5 to stack might with Sword Leap and Earthshaker.

And then we don’t even know yet what the primal burst will bring us.

If you can set yourself on fire, I want the Saiyan hair for humans.

I like the idea, but in roaming I found this setup not to work as I hoped.

You only have 1 block that can be countered by a melee hit (unlike the blocks from say, an engineer). You have less regen then a warrior picking Defense, and no auto-EP. And on top of that, your own condition mitigation is very lackluster after Zerk stance runs out. In short, you have no survivability. 3400 armor is nothing in the current meta, and is also completely outclassed by protection uptime (which we can’t get). Double Endure Pain and a lot of weakness application are better options here.

You will be missing out on the strongest condition there is; burning.

You don’t have movement condi mitigation either, except for immobilise. But chill and cripple will almost completely nullify your damage application if your leaps are on cooldown.

Some advice then.

I actually did have more success with Carrion gear. Hammer and sword both have great power skills, and you get a lot of flat damage boosters in this build (up to 35% with hammer, and 15% with sword, not counting vulnerability application). With decent crit chance (get some sinister), your auto-attacks will often crit for a noteworthy 1,5-2k.

Krait runes, thus taking out Rampage for SoR and taking restorative strength instead of Peak Performance allows you to stack insanely long lasting bleeds. This is what gives you pressure, even if you’re fighting a kite-heavy opponent. Perplexity can give you a confusion burst, but half the rune is worth nothing when your opponent has stability, whereas Krait always performs. And if you’re opponent can cleanse the high confusion stack, you just wasted a rune.

I also found Defense to work better with this set-up (instead of Arms), as you can completely ignore toughness, picking up auto-EP and even Last Stand. I used Triple Stance, sometimes switching out zerk stance for Bulls Charge and Cleansing Ire (depending on how much I needed the extra mobility). BC is used for mobility more then anything on this build IMO.

It’s a fun idea, but for roaming, it didn’t work out for me.

Such a lively forum this.

Domination
Chaos
Dueling
Domination
Chaos

The problem with Rage in my opinion is that you need GS to do any kind of sustained damage. When fighting a mesmer, for instance, they will GS auto attack you to death if you are on mace, so you have to utilize GS more. Getting the Rage proc on a bladetrail sucks. This makes Rage inferior to AirFire IMO.

Also, Rush with quickness is stupidly bad.

Around 5:35 he hits a dodge for 7617 damage. 18 stacks of might, no vulnerability on the necro, no food or stacks on the warrior. I think you can reach well over 10k with vulnerability, stacks and might.

Nerf inc.

It looks decent. I wonder if it functions in any way better then an elementalist though.

Been running S/D with withdraw, RfI and Daggerstorm with Trickster, works quite well.

I’d also say GS Hammer still, even more after the patch. It receiver many buffs (Zerker’s power, Stick and Move, Forceful GS, Warrior’s Sprint) as opposed to only one nerf (not being able to pick MH and BM). Other warrior roaming builds did not get buffed near as much IMO.

GSHam is also a bit easier to play in full zerk right now IMO, because you get the double EP.

Right now, either insanely high Protection uptime/blocks (elementalists, guardians, engineers) or insanely stupid cheese mechanics (PU) are the most effective. A mesmer can basically stealth up for 10 seconds with 1 skill, then burst another glass cannon 100-0 from stealth, near-instantly. You can not reasonably react in time for you not to be so far behind that you won’t lose the fight, and if you can, you should make money off of it.

This is where I think warrior has a niche right now. We can get highish damage output while retaining clutch and stupid automatic survivability through double EP and GS running away. You also bring a little AoE CC to the table which helps in a teamfight. That’s it though.

I think we do better then thieves right now, as they either get one shot by anything or don’t do enough damage. AoE stealth is nice, but there is another class that gets that now, for a 10 second duration…

and they just take the cake with their infinite stealth and ridiculous control+burst. The PU buff showed again that Anet has no idea what’s going on in a large portion of their game.

BurrTheKing.8571:

As an aside to all who read this, if you’re using it please try and compare it to Greatham when you get the chance. I know that Hammer has the edge in terms of AoE CC but this build seems to have a leg up in sustain due to blocks. Hammer also can’t deny stomps for as long. Nothing more amusing than hitting a Crack on a stomper and just reviving your teammate to full while they have to stand there and watch.

I wish that instead of the vulnerability on the Mace trait it gave Skull Crack the ability to bypass Stability on a fairly lengthy ICD, like over a minute even. That might be imbalanced I’m not sure (the trait DOES compete with Defy Pain though) but the idea of giving the Mace the ability to do something that no other weapon in the game can is interesting. It would give you the ability to be the ultimate stomp denier. If you wanted to get ridiculous make it unblockable and hit you while Invuln as well.

This won’t happen, but man does it sound cool.

I wouldn’t know about PvP as I hardly play it anymore, but in WvW, I think Hammer GS is still a bit favored. Hammer GS does not rely as much on one combo to succeed, whereas Mace/Shield always struggles with steady DPS. Something like an elementalist or a guardian simply and only has to avoid the skullcrack to win, whereas an avoided Earthshaker or Whirlwind does not mean a loss on GS/Hammer.

In outnumbered, it depends. Against ranged, Mace/Shield beats Hammer easily. When you are up against say 1 ranged and 1 melee, hammer probably wins, as you can stun and thus stop both attackers if you stay on the ranged enemy.

Maybe giving the mace trait the buff that any CC used while wielding a mace (main or off) removes double or triple the amount of Stability stacks? Sounds a bit less OP, maybe UP, I don’t know. The choices in that line probably still beat it. As cheesy as auto-EP is, it’s still good.

Spartacus.3192:

@BurrTheKing. Ive played GS/Hamm and i would say i prefer Skullcrack GS M/Shield. However as i wrote above im leaning towards ARMS (thanks @Cygnus!)

Your welcome ^^

Though Strength will likely be better if you can manage the more zerky playstyle.

ulchanar.4309:

I tried the build with Last Stand instead of Cleansing Ire last night, Sigil of Rage instead of Energy (vigor from Last Stand allows enough dodges anyway), Berserker Stance, Balanced Stance, Frenzy. The high stability and quickness uptime is great and – although I was really doubtful – I didn’t miss CI much.

I tried this also, and I must say I liked it as well. The downside is not so much the condition cleansing though (not if you take Arms instead of Strength), but the adrenaline build up. If you get kited, you really only have zerk stance and adrenaline on swap to build up adrenaline, which is lackluster. Furious helps with this, but again, if your opponent kites you really well, it’s still a problem.

Spartacus.3192:

Cygnus.6903:

Arms just offers a lot more survivability because you can slot cavalier trinkets, something I always found to be one of the upsides of this build. In WvW, I have to say I like the Arms version a lot more in this gank and condi heavy meta.

Quick question why are Cavalier trinkets impossible to find in TP? Are they only craftable?

Thanks

What thuggernaut said.

Although there might be some named exotic cavalier trinkets, try searching those by hand if you didn’t already.

I generally find Cavalier to be a very good stat spread to have on trinkets to balance out your stats on warrior, so it wouldn’t be a waste to get a set.

That ‘enemy always runs away’ part is what makes this build bad in WvW. You need mobility. Even in 1v1 your enemy can always kite you to reset and wait for you to make too many mistakes.

Try Hammer+Sword/shield or sword/mace. Also, this build would be better if all your stats were celestial I think.

BurrTheKing.8571:

Cygnus.6903:

I expressed myself a bit wrong, I think Air and Fire are very good on this spec. But when you lose the Strength DPS boost, AirFire provides enough DPS with Arms (unsuspecting foe) and Heightened Focus.

I would still say that the damage on roll and 20% from Berserker’s power does more damage after messing around with both. At the very least, with the GS trait and Physical trait your DPS when you aren’t using Skull Crack is higher. If you miss with arms…chances are your DPS is gonna plummet.

Oh, for sure Strength offers higher DPS. The difference is more noticable on other builds though, thanks to Unsuspecting Foe.

But if you miss with Strength, you have less survivability to fall back on.

totally agree with this, and the solution.

Not having short temper anymore is also very unfortunate.

Is this guy saying condi builds are dead?

maha.7902:

Cygnus.6903:

maha.7902:

how is fast reaction time not a skill?

you might as well have just said “the game isn’t fun when i’m losing”, it would make you come across a lot more honest.

Fast reaction time is a skill. I just don’t like a game where fast reaction time is the only skill.

you don’t like an action game having fast reaction time being one of the big skills required

then why are you even playing?

I am gonna disregard your obvious attempt at drawing me out and hopefully enlighten you a bit.

What about knowledge of classes and skills?

What about positioning? Using terrain to your advantage?

What about crafting builds?

These are all very important skills in every other action game I play. Yet in the current version of GW2, all these are so inferior to reaction time that it is becoming less fun to play, to me. And to a lot of other people as well. I do talk to others about this. I am no MLG player, but I always managed to do alright in the area of the game that I enjoy. I used to be able to compensate my inferior reaction time with above stated skills along other things. That seems less and less possible.

IMO it is not ‘one of the big skills required’, it is by far most important skill to have right now, too important.

maha.7902:

how is fast reaction time not a skill?

you might as well have just said “the game isn’t fun when i’m losing”, it would make you come across a lot more honest.

Fast reaction time is a skill. I just don’t like a game where fast reaction time is the only skill.

It is the same with me, but I have faced some roflstomp specs already. Engineers, Rangers and to some extent guardians have a few setups right now where they have answers to anything along with very high built in sustain and absolutely insane burst. Like I said in another topic, 100-0 in 2 seconds from condi has happened to me.

I expressed myself a bit wrong, I think Air and Fire are very good on this spec. But when you lose the Strength DPS boost, AirFire provides enough DPS with Arms (unsuspecting foe) and Heightened Focus.

To be fair, everything dies to a condi build right now.

We all need to wait until the dust settles. But I got condibursted by some burning spec yesterday, literally 100-0 in 2 seconds. Waiting is no fun.

I have not purchased the expansion, and I won’t until I know what direction they are taking the game. Right now, it is purely based on how good your reaction time is, which is less enjoyable to me.

Much hate in this topic lol.

One piece of unrequested advice, try putting the energy sigil on your GS. Having it on hammer means sometimes your endurance will fill up when you actually want the 10% damage boost from Stick and Move. Most burst comes from hammer, so you would want energy on the other weapon imo.

I liked it.

Zygil.1276:

Burst Precision
Burst skills always critically hit. Burst Skills are unaffected by Blind when you have Fury. Gain Berserker’s Perception after a successful Burst skill attack based on Adrenaline Level.

Berserker’s Perception: Your attacks are unaffected by Blind while under Fury.
Adrenaline Level 1: 3 seconds
Adrenaline Level 2: 5 seconds
Adrenaline Level 3: 7 seconds

I really like this, but burst skills being unaffected by blind when you have fury sounds completely OP still. We can easily have 100% fury uptime, meaning our earthshakers, eviscerates and killshots can never miss due to blind. Give us counterplay, not hardcounters.

The entire suggestion would be GM material without the burst skill blind immunity. The immunity to blind while having Fury if you land a burst skill sounds very good, balanced also.

Really fun build, I think warriors should investigate on going full DPS a bit more now that we got Heightened Focus.

Well done, and entertaining vid!

I have actually been running Arms instead of Strength in WvW the past few days, this is what I found to be the main advantages and disadvantages. When compared to Strength, Arms offers more;

-survivability. You can use Dolyak Signet instead of balanced stance with an almost equal cooldown, so that’s 180 free toughness, and
-Signet of Stamina, which, through vigor nerfs and condition damage buffs, actually is superstrong now, and
-a lot of cavalier items, which maintains crit damage, whereas you still have an extreme crit chance thanks to Signet Mastery, which
-IMO is the real selling point of Arms right now. The unblockable attacks against 50%- foes ensures heavy hitting attacks and you get another ~5% crit chance boost from the trait activation.
-Unsuspecting Foe further equalizes the damage difference you get from moving to Arms.
-Finally, Furious allows you to rebuild adrenaline much faster should you miss the skullcrack.

Strength, however, still offers;
-More damage, lol. 10% from the GS trait, 10% from the GM minor and another 10-20% should you land a burst skill. <nerfs inc
-CD reduction on Rampage and optionally Bull’s Charge, which has become a lot stronger in WvW thanks to the extreme mobility nerfs.
-CD reduction on GS, which is also stronger now due to the mobility nerfs.

I find Sigil of Fire and Air along with Heightened Focus to be way more burst then we actually need. Along with a 100% crit chance on stunned targets and the high precision thanks to Signet Mastery, Arms just offers a lot more survivability because you can slot cavalier trinkets, something I always found to be one of the upsides of this build. In WvW, I have to say I like the Arms version a lot more in this gank and condi heavy meta.

Yeah, been running mace gs also. I don’t really see why you would ever pick Sundering Mace over the other stuff you can get there, but w/e floats your boat.

Also, sigil of rage is bad, it doesn’t proc reliably enough.

Heightened Focus is kittening awesome though.

Game is in complete disarray, I only play for lolz right now.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

aye, Cygnus, i’m glad to hear that my topics put a smile on your face!

anyway, thanks for the feedback!
i have a new proposal! what do you think?

Burst Precision
“Burst skills have an increased chance to critically hit and immune to blindness based on adrenaline level.”
Adrenaline level 1 Critical Chance Increase: 50% Blindness immunity duration: 3 s
Adrenaline level 2 Critical Chance Increase: 75% Blindness immunity duration: 6 s
Adrenaline level 3 Critical Chance Increase: 100% Blindness immunity duration: 9 s

I would definitely pick this trait. Would have to make it so that you only get the immunity if you land the burst skill. The duration might also be a bit long.

Well I was dueling a pretty decent thief yesterday. He was all offensive, but when I made him run out of utility, he literally got dropped in a second. Was a fun clip lol.

So yeah, we are entering a phase of the game where a little more sustain is needed, especially if you don’t have thief/mesmer tricks.

I Always get a smile on my face when I read your topics. But everything you suggested here seems incredibly overpowered.

We could use some help with the blind spam though. So I guess that this worthless GM trait might be the way to go.

Harper.4173:

If you use Furious you and burst mastery you can spam your F1 on cooldown without even having to manage your adrenaline.
Signet Mastery is also a very strong choice.

I feel the master traits are really really weird and could use some looking at.

I can do that without Furious. No problem.

At least the Master traits offer something for both worlds and they fit the crit-theme pretty well IMO.

Dinsy.2491:

You need arms for hugs <3

But I also need the Strength to lift my Arms…

But if you take Axe/Mace you’d do better with Dual Wield, and with Shield as offhand Unsuspecting Foe can give you a 100% crit Evis. Not to mention Intelligence sigil is a less costly investment.

teegees.9638

Cygnus.6903:

How can you complain so much about shouts when you can:

-get all the nessecary traits by spending 1 trait slot, and get a bonus adrenaline boost for free,
-have a new shout that completely refills adrenaline and heals you for more then 300 HP/second, and
-get Quick Breathing/Leg Specialist and Shrug it Off together (more shout, more heal), or slot Burning Arrows for way more damage.

Honestly, Shouts seem better then ever to me.

Then I can only assume you never actually used shouts before the patch.

There is no talent cost savings here. If you wanted healing shouts before the patch you had to commit to the entire tactics line. Same as you do now.

The new shout your rave about is a nerfed version of an old skill. Before the patch it healed 9k baseline and fully restored adrenaline. It now heals 6.5k and fully restores adrenaline. Even traited for shouts its worse than before. (And healing signet was, most definatly still is, a better heal.)

You could combine either of those with shrug it off before the patch. (And still get healing shouts too.)

Burning arrows isn’t way more damage. It’s a better skill and a viable alternative to shrug it off. A moderate side grade in the tactics line is hardly justification for a large nerf to shout healing.

And lets not forget. Anyone going for shout healing pre-patch benefitted from 30% boon duration. Which is gone and was not offset by stat changes.

I agree on the boon duration, however, that was an across the board nerf to all classes.

The rest of what you’re saying makes no sense to me at all.

About your assumption, we know what she mothered.

By definition there is a talent cost savings here. You still have to trait tactics, duh, but you get to pick at least one other trait in the Adept slot. And for most builds there is a solid option there (warhorn for shoutbow and leg specialist for hammer, gs, axe, sword, w/e). Before the patch, you were somewhat forced to take the -20% cooldown, or your investment in tactics for shouts was worth a lot less (about 20%, lol).

It was impossible to get Quick Breathing and Shrug it Off together, same goes with Leg Specialist and Burning Arrows (because you had to pick the cooldown reduction on shouts). This is now all possible without losing shout effectiveness.

About the former Healing Surge, you have to be kidding. Don’t forget, shouts heal your allies as well, so another shout means another groupwide heal. You forgot to mention the endurance regeneration too. A reduction of 9k to 7,5k personal healing to get endurance regen and groupwide heal in return, along with every other shout synergy you can get, seems well worth it. Also, Healing Surge did not have the option the reduce the 30 second cooldown, so that makes the current version heal you for more anyway.

Healing Signet will be better on most non-shout builds, but that seems only logical.

And yes, burning arrows is way more damage. Double stack of burning on auto attack, more might stacking, more pin down, etc. Cooldown reduction is very strong on any weapon.

I just gave my opinion, I wouldn’t ‘rave’ as you call it (out of frustration?) about something I really cba with too much.

I made a topic for this, but can’t hurt to add it to this list.

Arms GM traits are completely lackluster for power builds, whereas the rest of the traitline offers a lot of incentive to pick it over Strength. The fact that the GM traits offer little to no benefit makes the Arms traitline very unappealing to direct damage build users.

Two possible solutions; have Furious also give you power stacks (the same way it buffs condi) or rework Burst Precision into something useful (when it’s in a line that can boost your crit chance to obscene levels, why would anybody ever pick it for any build, ever?).

If you simply compare the Arms traitline to Strength, you quickly see that Strength has a better design, as both condi and power builds can get a lot of benefits from every traitline.

Choppy.4183:

Yeah, the grandmaster choices aren’t great for the direct damage builds I strung together, but I went with Furious for the adren gain because I didn’t trait Defense/CI when I was in arms.

Signet Mastery is the real star of that line. No joke, I actually ran a signet warrior last night (4 signets plus bull’s) and was doing unreal damage, but was thin on sustain and error margin.

This is the thing, you would go Furious because the other two traits just don’t give you anything really. Whereas more adrenaline usually doesn’t hurt.

Now if they would give power builds just a little bit more incentive to pick Furious, the traitline would actually be great for certain power builds (Mace, Sword, even Hammer).

I also ran both Arms and Strength thusfar, and trust me when I say Arms does not compare well to Strength in terms of damage. Like Sebrent said, the raw damage modifiers from Strength are incredible.

Right, so the patch just hit and the game is in complete chaos. I have not been able to play a lot due to RL stuff, but I am at work theorycrafting a bit.

Something that really bothers me is what they did to the Arms Traitline.

On one hand, they gave it great ‘unbiased’ traits in the first slot. All three traits can be used effectively on both direct and condition damage oriented builds. Kudo’s.

Then comes the second slot. This one offers you a fine choice between the direct damage route (Unsuspecting Foe), condi (Deep Strike, although this seems a bit UP) and even a hybrid option, useful for both (Blademaster).

So far, so good, right?

Then in with the third slot. You can get a semi-ok trait for condi builds in this line with Furious. Dual Wielding might be decent with sword sword condi as well. Burst Precision is just bad all around.

This leaves you with no real option in that third slot should you pick Arms on a direct damage build. I think this is a missed opportunity. Honestly, I would really like to toy around with Arms (on Mace/SH GS for example), but the complete lack of a good trait in the third slot really makes Strength the better option for boosting my damage.

A fix to this could probably be to incorporate a power boost to Furious similar to the condistacking. This would not break the trait at all, just make it slightly stronger on hybrid builds mostly.

Burst Precision could also do with a buff, as I can not see any reason why anybody would spec so deep into Arms to get this trait. If you can already get epic crit chance boosts in the first two slots (Signet Mastery, Fury generation, Blademaster, Unsuspecting Foe), then why would you need a slightly higher crit chance on just your burst skills? This trait was way better off in Strength.

tl;dr: the third trait option in Arms is completely lackluster for direct damage builds right now, and I don’t think this is intentional, seeing as Arms does have great traits for direct damage builds in the first two slots.

Just some thoughts.

Actually, it was 12k+ before the patch on a semi-squishy target. Now with the improved 10% damage when your endurance isn’t full, I’ve gone as high as 20k with earthshaker>hammer2>backbreaker>auto attack.

I don’t see the problem still. People need to realize that everything just got buffed to an obscene level, and that nerfs are inevitable. Shouts might get nerfed a little less if the power creep is not as bad.

Last Stand seems pretty good on zerg warriors.