Guild Wars 2

I bait with sword F1 or shield bash and then catch them with longbow immob, usually.

redslion.9675:

Mmmh, looking from your last twitch… seems like landing Arcing Arrow is actually hard. So it’s not just me… (even if sometimes I mess up even on placing the circle… my bad.XD).

I’m starting to think the warrior might be strong, but he has to choose the right terrain.

For instance, sometimes I duel mesmers in battle of Khylo. If I fight them in narrow spaces, like the grouned around clocktower, I can manage to down even good mesmers. If I fight theme on open places, like near spawn points… no chance. Maybe one of our worst enemies is teleport. And in narrow spaces teleports are weaker.

Arcing Arrow is difficult to land without immob or being right ontop of them, granted.

But yesterday I was also playing at 9pm with only 3 hours of sleep and a full work day under my belt, wasnt the best representation of skill on my part lol

alcopaul.2156:

will i get banned? since this is a third-party “program”?

no you should be more than fine. like 1000000000% ok.

no its not op, but it doesn’t help anything either.

2-3 seconds of quickness solves no problems. if they are going to change a weapon skill then i’d like them to change it to something useful

axe 4 should be a pull, axe 5 should have its damage bumped another 50% and reflect projectiles.

no one should have access to quickness on a weaponset

i thought you gave up and switched to guardian

Dirame.8521:

Warriors need to find a new way to run Greatsword or just accept Rifles and Axes as the new meta.

wat

ArcTheFallen.7682:

They should allow warriors to chain combos more often like in fighting games. They could be the masters of cc.

Quarter circle forward, staggering blow.

I’m going to chime in here real quick:
I think Necros are ok to deal with when you only have one of them on the table.

But as soon as multiples of them enter the fight, as a player you just don’t have enough stability to deter fear spam, condi removal etc.

It’s also rather unsatisfying to get feared, pop stability, have stability stripped (mesmers, thieves or necros), get feared again, get feared again. All the while having a number of Condis on you.

I think there’s just a breaking point and we found it with necros this patch.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

I am sorry I could not make the event. I was presenting at a conference. I focus more on 1v1 encounters and Defektive was supposed to organize the team fight perspective. I consider him more productive in the team fights then myself.

In terms of builds, we do not want to change your build because we think a build is bad. We just have to think in terms of team composition. For example 5 longbow warriors will not work well together. We have to run different specs to compliment a team. So do not take it as you have to change your build because we don’t like it.

Wasn’t to dog on you babe, work comes first, hence why I was late as well.
Just wish we had more time. But oh well.

Lordrosicky.5813:

HPLT.7132:

Seriously you link buff food in pvp section. Go out of here Mr. Troll.

So what. Why cant he? Stop being so arrogant.

Not WvW section, sPvP section.

Food is irrelevant in discussions here regarding PvP.

Though I see both of your points.

Viking Jorun.5413:

Defektive.7283:

Granted, but you certainly did not work with me 1v1 or in any serious manner as your OP suggested.

I never said I worked with you 1v1. My intention was to say that I hadn’t just read one of your build posts or watched your twitch and decided that you were amazing. I explained that my perspective was of you as a coach, not as a player. Just because someone is an excellent player doesn’t always mean they can convey that excellence in their teaching, and that’s what I’m trying to get at. I won’t deny that you play the DPS and control roles very well, but there will always be someone better. That person may not have surfaced yet, and that’s why I’m not going to sit here and worship you like some warrior godsend that the OP seems to think.

Viking Jorun.5413:

..wouldn’t let any of us use our own builds… It’s just my opinion, but please don’t praise him until you’ve worked one-on-one with him.

But to an extent you are correct. There’s always a bigger fish. And I’m not the greatest coach (or player), but thats why this was supposed to be a dual-coach event.

I lose 1v1’s all the time (not because they don’t matter to me, but I like to think I’m better at playing as a team member).

I lose team fights all the time. Who doesn’t?

I’m just a guy with Microsoft Excel 2007, a good computer that can run twitch, and a willingness to sit down with players and dissect builds and strategies. Just like last night when I sat down with a random guy who messaged me for an hour an showed him how to combo effectively.

Kaz.9376:

Defektive.7283:

Kaz.9376:

Caedmon.6798:

dominik.9721:

Because of that please post here all your tested builds. Think would be nice for other people, either.

Because you cannot figure out a build on your own,and have to rely on using the builds from other people… ? And therefor thinking,that the people that bost these builds have the best builds..? The best builds arent being shared you know.

I doubt this. In pretty much every MMO the highly skilled players like to put up videos/streams with a link to their build, and I don’t see why GW2 would be any different. A secret society of pro players who only give their god-tier builds to friends seems unlikely.

As unlikely as that sounds, in the NA tPvP scene has a lot of players who hover around a ‘clic’.

They don’t share, they argue, they act childish. It’s unfortunately all to common.

It’s the player base size, there’s not a lot of tPvP players so people are keeping to themselves.

I’m not an expert of tPvP by any means, but you’d assume there’s only so much you can do with viable builds in this game when picking a certain role to play in your group.

I just can’t see players inventing builds that are so much better than the one’s that become available to the public by already skilled players. shrug

100% agree.

Most ‘new’ builds are slight changes to existing builds that provide marginal differences.

Kaz.9376:

Caedmon.6798:

dominik.9721:

Because of that please post here all your tested builds. Think would be nice for other people, either.

Because you cannot figure out a build on your own,and have to rely on using the builds from other people… ? And therefor thinking,that the people that bost these builds have the best builds..? The best builds arent being shared you know.

I doubt this. In pretty much every MMO the highly skilled players like to put up videos/streams with a link to their build, and I don’t see why GW2 would be any different. A secret society of pro players who only give their god-tier builds to friends seems unlikely.

As unlikely as that sounds, in the NA tPvP scene has a lot of players who hover around a ‘clic’.

They don’t share, they argue, they act childish. It’s unfortunately all to common.

It’s the player base size, there’s not a lot of tPvP players so people are keeping to themselves.

Granted, but you certainly did not work with me 1v1 or in any serious manner as your OP suggested.

Viking Jorun.5413:

I didn’t exactly think he was the best coach in the world during the SOAC profession tournament. He literally told me to “zerk it up” and wouldn’t let any of us use our own builds, then everyone wondered why warriors were the first to drop out of the tournament. It’s just my opinion, but please don’t praise him until you’ve worked one-on-one with him.

There’s two sides to every story:

-Came home from work 10 minutes after the tournament started.
-Didn’t have my co-coach there (K Pop came late).
-Strat was to run 2 hammer support (tanky), 1 longbow, 2 melee zerker warriors.
-What you (the players) wanted to run:
-> Condi longbow (…)
-> Shout Healing
-> War banners
-> Knights amulet GS builds

When I gave out builds this was the feedback I got
“Maybe we should just play the builds we like to play”
At which point I conceded. Not going to argue with people over builds when we have 5 minutes before a match starts.

Considering we had 10 minutes to get ready, there wasn’t a ton of time to refine things.
—————————————————————————————————

Enter Match 1:
-Half the players wouldn’t listen to me as to where to go, what points to take.
-Two specific players would try to do 1v1’s between points (for reasons I don’t understand).
-People wouldn’t fight together and often left others alone.

Match 2
-I pointed out before the match where we lacked (team fights, sticking together).
-One warrior dropped out (had to leave) and we received another GS zerker warrior that performed better.
-Match end results with people being more focused was like 430-500 with almost a lord kill.

I’m sorry that it didn’t go the way you wanted, but for someone who can’t play the game with you guys and only give verbal suggestions, I was edged out on a number of things. So please, don’t come in here and sully my good name because of it.

To top it, at the end of the tourny I offered to sit down with anyone if they’d like and we can talk about builds, strategies etc.

Supcutie.2538:

Ladies and Gentlemen, Charr and Asura, Sylvari and Norn! The July State of the Game is upon us!

• Tuesday, July 2nd, 4:30 pm PST with Jonathan Sharp!

I will be joining Grouch, Zombify, Battosai and the developer Jonathan Sharp in discussing what is going on in the PVP realm of Guild Wars 2!

… Did Warriors get enough love?...


*We can’t talk about that right now.

I want to be a guest one day.
I promise to be nice.

My 2c:

Even if your opinion on a build is below the belt (you don’t like a build), we’re better off as a community to help them fix it than to blast them for it.

GS served us well (and still does) for a long time, it’s our most proven weapon. Just because he made a version that suits his needs shouldn’t incur the wrath of the forums.

Personally I think everyone is up in arms because this is ‘more of the same’, which we all know can be REALLY strong, or REALLY weak.

Holland.9351:

PRE-PATCH

dungeons/fractals

WvW

Shame on you ANet. Shame on your for only looking at sPvP. You don’t even deserve this post I’m making to you as a warning for how bad you’re handling your game.

I would appreciate it if we remained on-topic in terms of an sPvP tier list.

If a tier list for WvW and PvE is something you’re interested in then I implore you to make a thread regarding that in their respective forums.

Thedenofsin.7340:

How about one for WvW? It would go something like this:

A) perma-stealth Thief

B) no class/spec this close to A
C) no class/spec this close to A

D) other thieves

E) Mesmer, elementalist
F) Guardian, engineer
G) everyone else

While I appreciate any and all feedback in this thread. I would prefer this be kept specifically for sPvP.

Thanks for the feedback everyone!
Hammer is viable RIGHT NOW but only for a limited time:
Everyone is rerolling or trying necros which hammer is great against.
I think in this limited window it can be used well, however when things even out again it will be more difficult to run competitively due to lack of aoe and the sheer amount of stunbreaks other classes have.

I agree that longbow wasn’t the method I expected to play when I picked up GW2, but when life gives you lemons…..

Apologies for the poor grammar, wrote this on my tablet.

Streaming a bit
twitch.tv/Defektive

How do you not land Flurry! It’s my go to F1.

I find it amusing that I made this thread 4 months ago and it’s still going strong.

I guess I’ll update the OP list this Sunday, 5pm eastern.

RNG = Random Number Generator.

It’s a reference to a skill proccing random (%chance to occur).

JoakimFA.4713:

Just played a few games with this build, and I must say it is quite solid.
I ended up switching sword to mace though…

Can I ask why? I feel like without Sword your mobility would be so so poor.

elster.7495:

So Defektive with which Sigil are you going on shield now?

Sticking with Bloodlust until I can do testing on the others. I’m still at work so I can’t fire up the client and get cracking just yet.

Masternewbz.4953:

They have no idea how to balance this game in my opinion.

Lets all reroll the same class so the game feels balanced.

Lyonell.1753:

Defektive.7283:

Lyonell.1753:

Tested your build, so far so good, other than pure condition necros the build seems to deal well with everything as long as I’m not outnumber. Even then I can at least last a few moments to deal some damage for my group and sort of hold the point I’m defending at the time.

If you notice the other team is running a Condi heavy build, switch out Endure Pain for Berserkers Stance and you should be able to hand Necros their hats.

Good advice, will try that out.

My general rule of thumb:

Teams with Mesmer + Thief = Endure Pain
Teams with Engi + Necro (or double of each) = Berserker Stance

In the off chance that it’s a combination of both, I’ll slide in the direction of Berserker Stance just because I have shield 5 incase something hits the fan.

Brigg.6189:

Good post, I’ll try this out tonight. I’ve been running similar traits but with GS, and I think it’s also viable. The fun thing with GS build for me is you can run stances or signets effectively depending on what comp you’re against.

Sword #3 has felt clunky to me so far, but I’m also not used to using it. I’ll give it another chance.

The first day of using it I kept thinking it was hamstring and would randomly use it and only deal like 800 damage. It was heartbreaking.

Lyonell.1753:

Tested your build, so far so good, other than pure condition necros the build seems to deal well with everything as long as I’m not outnumber. Even then I can at least last a few moments to deal some damage for my group and sort of hold the point I’m defending at the time.

If you notice the other team is running a Condi heavy build, switch out Endure Pain for Berserkers Stance and you should be able to hand Necros their hats.

peter.9024:

The warrior forum might not be the best place, seems like they only read it only once per month.

I’m betting they monitor it to move posts or delete posts. so they’ll come in here to infract or delete me.

And then out of the kindness of their hearts they’ll just run a “delete from messagetable where UserID = Defektive.7283”

Daecollo.9578:

I have 180 out of 100, same difference, people ask more for advice ingame all the time. (I bet thats quite scary to most posters…)

you alone are accountable for 20 of them in one day.

People have been sending me mail in-game to ask me questions:

Reason – “your forum inbox is full”

After checking my forum inbox, apparently im at 150+ out of 100 allowed messages. (wut).

Can a mod please just… delete all my messages? It would approximately take 1.5 hours to delete them all due to latency (can only delete one at time).

PLEASE

This way I won’t be getting destroyed in game, it would be nice.

<3

Oni Link.4621:

Yea Defektive, but compared to Endure Pain, EP is way more useful. Imho its duration should lengthen and it has to remove all conditions and activations, otherwise I prefer SoS.

I’ve been using both EP / Serker Stance (depending on enemy comp, more condi heavy then I dump endure pain). as well as SoS.

The only gripe I have with serker stance is that it was originally intended to be a stun break as well.

IDK, what I usually do in a tight situation is use SoS to wipe all condis and then immediately activate serker stance to give me breathing room to apply pressure again.

Use it to pre-emptively stop conditions from comming in.

Example:

Perform hammer stuns.
Necro is about to be able to attack.
Pop Berserkers Stance
Necro condi’s have no effect.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

Defektive.7283:

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

Defektive.7283:

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

Mid fight thieves are prolly losing popularity so I will consider it.
Reason for blood suggest is that your running bleed extension and it will hit everything. Fire will only proc on one person in the field so unless they are right next to each other I would imagine you would hit one person per field duration of 8 secs.

Oh btw, I haven’t used coalition gaming because I have not figure out how to get it working. I don’t see the sub where we post.

The +50% bleed duration isn’t to make the most out of the bleed damage, but to have the highest uptime of +10% damage against bleeding foes.

Lets say you Longbow F1 and then it applies bleeds, the F1 has already been casted so it doesn’t gain the +10% during each tick.

I think of the Fire on Longbow in these terms. Most of the time im pointing the F1 at their node. Generally 1-3 people in a team fight are also on the node. There’s a high probability I’ll be hitting more than one with it. Plus the spike makes bunkers a little nervous.

and don’t worry about the Coalition thing, it kinda fell flat because everyone else is lazy.

For the ignite hits, it should make a difference. They will be bleeding so you should get +10% bonus. Don’t get me wrong I see your point. I think just my playstyle I like on swap sigils, so fire would cramp me. But I will try this out tonight. Just theory crafting on your crafting.

I don’t like conditions. IDK why, I just don’t feel like they aren’t super effective unless you can blanket cover someone in them. Hows the conferences today?

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

Defektive.7283:

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

Mid fight thieves are prolly losing popularity so I will consider it.
Reason for blood suggest is that your running bleed extension and it will hit everything. Fire will only proc on one person in the field so unless they are right next to each other I would imagine you would hit one person per field duration of 8 secs.

Oh btw, I haven’t used coalition gaming because I have not figure out how to get it working. I don’t see the sub where we post.

The +50% bleed duration isn’t to make the most out of the bleed damage, but to have the highest uptime of +10% damage against bleeding foes.

Lets say you Longbow F1 and then it applies bleeds, the F1 has already been casted so it doesn’t gain the +10% during each tick.

I think of the Fire on Longbow in these terms. Most of the time im pointing the F1 at their node. Generally 1-3 people in a team fight are also on the node. There’s a high probability I’ll be hitting more than one with it. Plus the spike makes bunkers a little nervous.

and don’t worry about the Coalition thing, it kinda fell flat because everyone else is lazy.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

Give Hoelbrak credit where its due gosh lol.
Make this better by putting sigil superior earth on lb. It has no icd and the ignite procs will give more blood chances in aeo fashion.

My question to you is can I run this with Warhorn or offhand mace instead of shield?
Without shield I would go with dogged march.

I’ll stick with fire :P 1k dmg to everyone or 2-3 ticks of bleeds that can get removed.
Plus LB #3 + Fire proc = omgthedmg.

You could probably run it with warhorn and dogged march, your survivability against say Thiefs would be lower, but against Necros and Engis it would be higher.

nicknamenick.2437:

still 1 thing:

why use Dolyak Signet over “Balanced stance” ? balanced stance got 20sec less cooldown. and gives switfness.
(yes you use trait for signets cooldown, see below)

Why use Signet of Stamina? we can clear 3 conditions every 8 second now.

So if you get balanced stance instead, and something else for signet of stamina like fear or stomp (both very strong now) you also dont need the signet trait and you get something else.

So this one took some time for even I to go with. I’ve been a balanced stance guy forever.

I’m trying to build tankier (1500 toughness remember). Dolyaks passive is +toughness.
Most of the time I’ll have swiftness up anyway (Signet of Rage) so that isnt an issue when comparing balanced stance. I will gladly take +8seconds to a cooldown for toughness, than an a -8 second utility that has an added affect of overlapping a boon I probably already have.

Signet of Stamina is just amazing I can’t let it go anymore.
The Necro tears when I wipe all my conditions. The passive +33% Endurance regen.
Cleansing Ire is for Sustain, keeping us going during a fight. When we get bursted with say 7 different unique condi’s Cleansing Ire isn’t going to help us. Thats where Sig of Stam comes into play.

crizpynutz.9062:

Just out of curiosity how do you feel this would play in PvE?

I have no idea. Honestly.

nicknamenick.2437:

Maby i should give it a try, but i really cant miss whirlwind :-P

GS is definitly viable, but is it optimized? ehhhh.

Take into account the PvP landscape, mostly condis right? Lots of cripple, and chills.

Whirlwind, while an evade. isn’t going to send you far from your original position when in normal combat (IE you most likely have cripple or chill on you a decent amount of the time).

Leap fortunately isnt affect by that (nor is shield block) so it’s a more consistent and measurable means of protecting yourself.

It’s like walking home in the rain with an umbrella. Sometimes a gust of wind can invert your umbrella and you’ll get wet. Or you can wear a poncho and feel consistently dry.

Plus an on-demand stun is nice to stop heals or stomps.

JoakimFA.4713:

thoughts on taking Burning Arrows? or is the vit tree really not worth putting points into.

Tried it, you don’t need Destruction of the Empowered as much as you need Fast Hands.

So theres 5 pts out of 20 needed.

If you take 15 points out of precision then you’ll lose alot of adren recoup.

take 15 points out of defense and now you’re squishier and have limited condi removal.

It’s doable, I’m not sure if you’d see a huge DPS increase or not (I would think not tbh).

But you’d have to pick your poison to obtain it.

30pts precision is pretty crucial to this build working unfortunately.

Rush is easier to land if your enemy is unaware of their surroundings. Coupled with pathing issues, it’s unreliable.

Sword F1 into Sword #3 is a gauranteed crit of 6k+ with this build.

Hell I hit a bunker guardian last night for 3.8k (hit).

Sword Auto attack is much faster than GS, with crits in the 1100’s and hits in the 600s.
Mathematically, if a GS is critting at say 2k (reasonable if you’re straight up bunker), in the time it takes to attack you could hit twice with Sword and equal the damage if not exceed it if you count bleeds (which I’m not).

While the evade on whirlwind is nice, I’d rather have on-demand block.

You also need to consider this. When a Warrior runs a GS build in PvP, they are straight up zerker. They lack damage mitigation besides Whirlwind and Rush (escape). It’s one of the main reasons why I moved away from GS, in a real scenario you’ll be focused down if you’re running GS because it’s very easy to lock a Warrior down with a single chill.

In my mind, the age of GS is over.

peter.9024:

robocafaz.9017:

peter.9024:

Why are you taking sword instead of axe? Considering that you are still in a heavy power build the axe burst is superior to the sword bleeds.

Kaga.7629:

If you’re serious about bow dps, you need the 1200 bow trait to convert your basic shots into 100% finishers ( that you do, of course, thru combushot.)

This build is not cased on condition damage, it’s based on AoE burst (longbow) and mobility (sword.)

If we are talking mobility wouldn’t the GS be a better fit then sword?

Barely more mobility. Sword Leap isn’t affected by cripple or chill (GS is) means it’s a better escape.

Sword Leap you can vault over walls, across bridges etc.

Sword #3 Can crit as high or higher than a full whirlwind (one that hits all attacks).

Sword Has a useable F1, GS doesn’t. (More Cleansing Ire procs).

Sword allows you to pair shield = 3sec block, or Mace for a stun etc.

Sword auto attack does on-par damage to GS (some would argue, better).

Jae.5138:

my god. watching him play single handedly made me ignore all those QQ posts on the forum and consider rolling a warrior.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone that comfortable with his class

Thanks for the kind words :P
But I’m pretty sure it’s only because I have like 99% of play time on a Warrior XD

Mist.8569:

Defektive.7283:

Mist.8569:

LOL
Thanks, Defektive! As soon as the kids grow a bit more (2 years old and 6 months old) I’ll get them into grinding/farming/theoricrafting me into awesomeness!
I’m going to take your build out there and see how it goes, temple zergs and events is all I’ve been doing lately, probably going to be better than my old GS build due to the AoE capability!
And get your fiance in gaming, we need more girls around

She doesn’t mind me gaming but the most she ever does is Angry Birds. But she’ll do that for hours. I’ll be picking up a PS4 when it comes out, hopefully she’ll enjoy Knack because ‘that looks cute!’.

I’m lucky enough, when we got a place together she ‘allowed’ me to have a man cave. Can’t rock the boat to hard!

Kaga.7629:

Defektive.7283:

Mist.8569:

So, what armor are you guys using with this build? Straight up zerker or you’re going for Rampager/Carrion for more condition dmg?

I don’t recommend going Condition damage.

Honestly, with this much in arms you’ve already got some respectable condition damage, why not use it? Hence my suggestion for 1200 bow.

I see Warrior conditions as a side thing, not a primary thing. (reason: There’s wide spread condi cleanse against good players, putting all your eggs in that basket results in lower overall damage output.)

Based burst damage (straight up attacks using power and +crit) scale and land on targets for a much higher effect.

If I take 1200 Longbow, all Longbow base damage decreases. Sure I may gain an additional fire tick here and there, but is it worth it since I have an AoE fire field? not really.

200 Range increase for a nominal combo field proc doesn’t outweigh losing overall damage and having to go 10 points in vitality just to grab it. Traits are better spent elseware.

Talonblaze.3175:

Defektive.7283:

Made this in my spare time this morning over coffee.

I think you used that meme improperly…

It does seem a tad counter productive that they made blind stronger to counter their new ‘feature’ to ‘help’ warriors even more so than before. It wasn’t so bad when it was ONLY burst to do damage, but now some rely on it for that removal.

You sir may be correct.

Mist.8569:

I’ve been playing the class from day 1, but I’m no warrior specialist so I usually lurk the forums for good advice/builds.
Do you think this build could translate into PvE? I’m not looking to excel at PvE using a PvP build, just to avoid having to respect for roaming PvP (Causal PvPer here) or to learn the playstile before joining sPvP matches. I’m very monotask (stay home mom) so I’d rather have one build going for playstile.
Thanks in advance for any feedback!

Respect for stay at home moms.

Yes and No, I’m no PvE machine so maybe that advice is best left to someone else.

Longbow damage could get pretty crazy in PvE, im sure in multi-mob fights it could compete if not do better than some zerker builds. But in a single target I’m unsure of the numbers.

Teach your kids Excel and basic math, force them into theorycrafting.

Make a margarita and reap the rewards while simultaneously touting your childrens adept mathematics skill.

PS:
I hope my fiance doesn’t see this.

I think the trait movements and Cleansing Ire is allowing us to get more toughness and consistent Condi removal, these are two things we couldn’t have done in the previous patch.

I’m sure it was partly ignorance towards other concepts. But the trait changes did greatly enhance atleast my own confidence that there are more balanced but dangerous builds out there.

I’d love to see a great Mace build, but it’s unfortunately my worst weapon, it just feels so awkward to use (mainhand).