Guild Wars 2

Captain Beeftits.8749:

Lawl this is funny all these troll threads keep on traaawling. I’ve can beat most DH 2 v 1
learn to trap dodge and not spec glass cannon. If you waste dodge tokens and you do not know what your dodging ? Sorry your bad and you need to play some other classes and learn there mechanics. For real sick of the qq. I have also played against Bunker Necro / Ele / Rev / Guardians / Warriors that unskilled 5 man teams cant kill. Why not cry about something relevant like that lmao.

LOL show me those wars a 5 man team can’t kill, I’m absolutely dying to see one. From what I’ve read it seems you claim you can beat 2DH’s going at once against you…well dang bruh, I think you should go for ESL, heck you could probably win the WTS by yourself without a team.

DrDivine.5378:

Rekt.5360:

I’ve been running

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQNAR3enMdAlkiVhAehAElilqATpHE7yBIFgGQA4d0mantA-TpBBwAG3fAwRAozFAgzDAYzBBocZAA

since a few days after the start of HoT and I really enjoy it. It’s essentially normal GS/axe+shield with very good anti-CC tools and arc divider is now reliable burst too, not to mention the crits are real.

I’m gonna try this, I know this is going to sound weird but I’ve never been a huge fan of gs warrior builds, but this one looks fun xD

I’ve seen you post a lot around the warrior forum so I expect you know the class very well so it might not be my place to say this to you but don’t forget to break the headbutt stun with outrage eh xD A rather devastating sequence I’ve found is to close the gap with GS swap to axe and wait till swap CD is over (you can use eviscerate, it doesn’t matter since you’re about to refill your adrenaline with a headbutt), then go Headbutt->outrage->Berserker Mode->Decapitate->swap->100b->arc Divider. I can usually reliably land everything up to the end of 100b (I play on 60-70 ping max though :S) and the dmg is amazing, the number of reapers I’ve downed before they can pop reaper shroud is serious xD

I’ve been running

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQNAR3enMdAlkiVhAehAElilqATpHE7yBIFgGQA4d0mantA-TpBBwAG3fAwRAozFAgzDAYzBBocZAA

since a few days after the start of HoT and I really enjoy it. It’s essentially normal GS/axe+shield with very good anti-CC tools and arc divider is now reliable burst too, not to mention the crits are real.

Skyline Crash.6254:

glaphen.5230:

Skyline Crash.6254:

You have crap survivability when you opt for traps. Not to mention they are: casted under you and require a trigger.

Ignore all the boons they give, the CC, the double stun break and the 11 stacks of Aegis along with F2 and F3 being amazing defenses. They only require a trigger if you didn’t place them while near someone, regardless of whether they were moving or not. Is this a thread about Thief and Ranger traps?

aegis doesn’t stack

Doesn’t change the fact that he can get it repeatedly by walking over them? :O

glaphen.5230:

F3 being [an] amazing defense.

Lol nuff said. Shield of Courage is absolutely hilarious right now.

online.1278:

no. Problem is not on warrior but relies on other classes.

They do too much blind, too much block, too much attack while dodging, too much invisible traps stuffs.

And i am sure that is what should be nerfed and it will make warrior viable again.

Yes lol, people shouldn’t ask for buffs to wars we should be asking for a more level playing field, which currently isn’t the case at all. Srsly OP’s post made me cringe a bit, 2.5k hours on war and he can’t make it work, what? if in 2.5k hours you haven’t gotten completely familiar with the great majority of your class, no scratch that, if you haven’t become practically a MASTER of your class then there’s a problem. I personally feel like berserker is far from being as bad as people make it out to be. It’s warriors that are in such a state, not berserker.

Potato Slayer.3107:

You don’t need to lose any of that if you take discipline, which you still should. berserker/discipline/defense works much better than people think if you get a substantial amount of crit dmg. so forget pack/hoelbrak runes. You can get pretty much perma fury with only rage runes and without even using arcing slice (since fatal frenzy gives you 6 seconds that become 7.8 seconds with runes of rage). I’m running 230% passive crit dmg and 240% inn zerk mode and my primal bursts hit like effing trucks when they crit, I also cleanse condis A LOT more often since I essentially get the equivalent of a lv 3 cleansing Ire every 2.5sec…

you lose 20% dmg boost from not taking strength, AND taking runes of rage you lose alot of power from both might stacking and the runes themselves, thus making your crits hit for even less[/quote]

In theory yes, but I still get 8k arc dividers on squishies and easy 6k+ decapitates…and that’s what I can pump out every 2.5seconds.

Edit: Holy hell what happened to my previous post. Might as well reanswer Choppy.

Choppy.4183:

Remember, he said his pvp build is, “strength/arms/berserker, with mace/sword and hammer, exploiting body blow and confusion on interrupt.”

Do you really think that will beat a standard warrior? I don’t, even assuming he’s got near cc immunity. That being said, I’m certainly willing to try my hand against it if anyone’s up for duels.

Yeah with his build he’s probably get used as a floor mop. But I’ve personally have had a lot of success with a GS/axe+shield build I’ve been running, I mean it has the same faults as a normal warr, but its far from being AS BAD as people claim berserker to be. I mean if we’re comparing ourselves to crap like reapers, dh and scrapper then yes, it’s pitiful, but those elites aren’t something we should be asking to get buffed to as a goal in mind; they’re overtuned and they need to be toned down, not us brought up to their level. And as long as we have our inherent lack of fancy mechanics which Anet seems to be dead set on maintaining, the only thing we can hope for is fixes to the core class in terms of traits and synergy between traits in the same traitline. We could add as much stuff as we wanted to berserker but unless it’s essentially a copy paste of another existing traitlines + other stuff added to each trait, we won’t see something that will feel like a clear “upgrade” unlike what other elite specs essentially are to their respective core classes.

[quote=5725473;Azure.8670:]

Choppy.4183:

Sure, I can see why someone who ran condi warrior in pve before Berserker would be happy about it now, no question. But remember that condi warrior was suboptimal when compared to both condi builds on other classes and direct damage warrior builds.

But in pvp or wvw, dude, a standard warrior of equal skill should wreck your face if you’re running the build you’re describing. And that’s a warrior… most other classes should too as long as they know how to recognize an incoming skull crack or earthshaker (or their berserker equivalents)

Again, I’m really happy that you’re happy because your play style has been buffed in the area where you like to play, but that has nothing to do with what most people are talking about.

After some extensive playing of berserker in PvP im of the opinion that a normal warrior is gonna have a very hard time with a berserker warrior in a 1v1. Here’s why: Eternal Champion. A major portion of a warrior’s burst regardless of his build comes from being able to CC his opponent and land his relatively slow telegraphed heavy hitters. Eternal Champion trolls the kitten out of normal warriors because every time you’re going to go for a CC it gets eaten by the stability, and even if you do catch the berserker out of berserker mode any smart one will have Outrage with them and just stunbreak your CC and give himself stability on top of that, preventing you from chain CC’ing him. On top of that the frequency at which a berserker can dish out primal bursts is wayyy bigger and the dmg isn’t all that lower (I hit 6-7k+ arc divider and decapitate crits on low armors and up to 6k on heavy armors in Spvp and that is when running disc/berserker/def, If I run strength instead of defense I could probably reach 9k without issues on lighties) no matter how hard people try to make them out as bad.

On top of that a few of the berserker primal burst give low duration dazes which are annoying because they tend automatically trigger traits like “Hard to Catch” on teef, or “Last Stand” on warrs when nobody would want their last stand to get triggered by a 0.5/1 sec daze which unfortunately can be used pretty much every 2.5 seconds.

online.1278:

hm very interesting different point of view.
It seem like only I feel it as nerf.

Thx for helps!

I actually feel it’s like a buff. 7% might not seem like a lot but I’ve hit an 8k arc divider today (I run berserker/Def/Disc) which never would’ve happened before xD other than that I started running headbutt instead of signet of rage since I also took runes of rage which essentially give me perma fury thanks to Fatal Frenzy and boost my crit dmg to 240% while in berserker mode. If anything now that I run headbutt I don’t really feel like the old always angry would’ve been of any use :S I mean after I close the gap, the first thing I do (if I haven’t popped Berserker stance to avoid condis if I know I’m fighting a condi heavy class) is look for an opportunity to land headbutt, so the extra adrenaline I would’ve gained from Always Angry is sort of irrelevant. Other than that the small 7% dmg increase helps maintaint some better dps after berserker mode ends so I guess it’s good. If anything I was surprised at the dmg I was dishing out in berserker mode after the buffs, I was regularly hitting 6k+ decapitates and my axe auto hits were easily going for 1.8k+/hit.

#Inb4GetsMovedToThiefForums

Idk about you but I tried running a berserker GS/axe+shield with runes of rage and headbutt after the changes (which didn’t really seem to add anything) and its working great (great as in “as good or better than normal warr with the same build”), Decapitate and Arc divider hit like trucks when they crit and I can’t really say I’ve had trouble fighting anything 1v1, it still has the same issues as normal warrior, nothing we can do about that, but at least I feel like power berserker builds are a lot more viable now that I can hit like a semi noodle outside of berserker mode thanks to the 7% dmg increase rather than a complete noodle and get some might when stun breaking. We still get nuked in team fights if Shield stance and EP are on CD tho :P

Angelos.4539:

You don’t have Stability on demand , you get Stability only after you get interrupted which you don’t want since your skills have high value and getting interrupted destroys the pace , your Finish etc.

Vanilla builds are way better right now but sadly even those aren’t enough vs the new necros/engis etc.

Vanilla builds are not better at dueling, and playing against a good DH or Druid will illustrate that for sure, that much I can tell you from personal experience. The pulsing stability every 3 seconds in berserker mode is literally the ONLY thing that will give you a chance to beat a DH who uses traps while you run a full melee build in a 1v1 (if you run ranged well RIP, Longbow on guard trumps all ranged war weps by far, you can even argue gun flame is amazing and crap like that but a DH has more than enough projectile blocking to make sure you won’t deal any significant damage with it).

Other wise even with last stand and balanced stance you still get knocked around all over the place once those two are on CD, berserker mode actually allows you to get in the DH’s face and stay there for a while, also unlike last stand which will proc at the first knockback/pull/daze and will essentially go on cooldown in situations you wouldn’t have wanted it to pop, you lose nothing by having the auto stability + stability on stun break. Since that means you can just shrug off most CC while in berserker mode and use Outrage which is crazy good for a 10 sec stun break anytime. Heck getting caught in dragon’s maw is nothing fatal on berserker. If berserker mode is active you just walk out even if you’re out of dodge rolls, if it isn’t bump once in the barrier and break the CC immediately with outrage, get stability and get out, then your stun break is off 10 seconds later, if you were running a vanilla war you’d have to use balanced stance…then wait its relatively long CD.

Berserker also majorly screws regular warrior in duels pretty much because of the same thing. Normal war requires CC to land its burst, try landing a hammer CC chain on a berserker or a shield bash→eviscerate lol your first cc with get eaten by stability and he’ll dodge the rest. Meanwhile you have at most 2 reliable sources of stability which have relatively long CD’s.

HatSimulator.9362:

This is better than anything else right now.

Eh I disagree, This:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQNAR3enMdAVhglkCehAElilqATpHE7iBIFgGQA4d0mantA-TpBHwAu2fgwFAowDAAwRAYwBBoZZAA

works far better I find. Pretty much perma fury with the runes of rage and the new buff to fatal frenzy without using arcing slice even once. The build has ~240% crit dmg in berserker mode and you can whip out 6k+ arc dividers and decapitates on light armors easily(arc divider crits hits heavy armors for up to 6K when they’re above 50% HP and when under 50% hp it just mows stuff down lol, I’ve hit a reaper necro for 7.2k with arc divider). You can immediately stunbreak headbutt with outrage into berserker mode and land a full 100b while they’re still stunned thanks to quickness. When they near 50% you can shield bash->swap->100b with heightened focus proc or keep cleaving with axe auto for some good dmg.

The same setup works great with mace+shield too. It’s essentially 1 sec daze every 2.5seconds that also blinds and applies 8 seconds of cripple lol you absolutely destroy classes with no stability in 1v1’s because of the daze spam. You also have 2 reflect on mace+shield. I played GS/ham for 2 days before hammer got buffed and found it really underwhelming compared to regular hammer warrior, but Idk it may be just me, I’m not rly a fan of hammer.

Tbh the only thing I see this being good at is stacking AoE might with Rupturing smash into scorched earth :/ I mean sure the 2 sec Immob might help u land a CC chain but you could do much more if you swapped the LB for a GS and used that 2sec immob to land a partial 100b instead. If used at the start of berserker mode with quickness you could theoretically land a full 100b with a 2sec immob, still idk :S scorched earth is very bad, you can just walk out of it, unlike the small constant pressure Combustile Shot provides by covering the whole flipping point Scorched earth does very little. I mean the daze duration isn’t even long enough to hit with 1 hammer attack too.

LOL the rage in the posts is soooooo hilarious. Were any of the 4 decent at all or try hard bads?

You guys running non-defense zerker specs have yet to face a condi bombing necro or Mesmer it seems…you’ll see how bad you’ll get rekt then xD

The only thing berserker is better than normal warrior at is condi cleansing trough cleansing ire and maybe cleave dmg through arc divider, since it actually hits hard (I’ve got 7.2k hits on necros O.o).

Berserker is also surprisingly good at dueling OTHER warriors, and tbh that’s really the only thing its really good at. Notably because of the pulsing stability, it’s nearly impossible to properly land a hammer CC chain or a shield bash→Eviscerate combo on a berserker warrior because of Eternal Champion. Forget about landing a successful skullcracker→100b combo when the other guy is in berserker mode. Not to mention zerker condi wars can be quite a pain to fight on normal power war since mace primal burst is by far the best primal burst skill, 5 sec blind, 8 sec cripple + bleeding + confusion stacks on a 2.5sec CD which also happens to daze for 1sec while closing a 300 range gap is a serious annoyance to deal with since it autoprocs Last Stand on the first hit (if the other war is running last stand) and it applies condis much more often than they can be cleansed by a normal warrior’s cleansing ire. Not to mention the blind on mace primal burst is a nice way to ensure the other guy’s burst skill will miss and not cleanse anything.

Ehhh, Idk in 1v1s I don’t rly have trouble with DH’s since the traps aren’t instant and you can dodge roll them as soon as you see the daze. So if you spot a DH get rdy to press ur dodge roll and roll backwards not forward since you’ll still be in the trap when you roll is over. Other than that dodge the true shots and you should be good. If you run shield reflecting 1 single true shot can often be a game changer. My only problem with DH is rly them teleporting into group fights and dumping traps when I’m trying to rez/stomp somebody or just plain fighting because you get nuked in an instant.

If you ever win against a DH in a 1v1 on a point make sure to hop on top of them tho, that’s a necessity.

Jzaku.9765:

Someone didn’t watch fate/zero, that berserker is insanely fast, agile, and while completely nuts had excellent battle strategy

Lancelot OP, nerf plis. :P

Tbh, Idk, I find war to be OK in 1v1’s still, most of the new elites aren’t as kittened in 1v1s as in group fights, but holy crap in group fights is it painful ><

glaphen.5230:

Rekt.5360:

DrDivine.5378:

Serious Thought.5394:

If they fix Warriors and ignore Thief I’ma be salty. Let’s get fixed at the same time? =D Like bros?

I think D/P thief still gets played, but daredevil is a little bit like berserker lol. Who knows, maybe they will buff DD first, but I would like to see more berserkers and daredevils xD

Have you actually seen DD/DA/Trickery condi daredevils? Its absolutely ridiculous caltrops on roll + Lotus training with sleight of hand, and signet of agility. U can dodge spam while dumping condis on you enemy while they can’t hit you. It’s pretty infuriating to play against considering they can dodge 6 times in a row when relying on endurance alone, without considering some built in skill evades xD and they can run d/d for even more ridiculous bleeding.

Did you try moving away from them while they spin, it has no range and is slow, same counter as since launch.

The dodge roll bleeding has awesome range actually…and if they trait in acro instead of trickery then there’s even more dodging. Not to mention they open by channeling caltrops and dropping it on u with steal, that cripple can be more or less costly if you can’t get rid of it fast enough. Not to mention every dodge roll leave more caltrops that cripple lol

DrDivine.5378:

Serious Thought.5394:

If they fix Warriors and ignore Thief I’ma be salty. Let’s get fixed at the same time? =D Like bros?

I think D/P thief still gets played, but daredevil is a little bit like berserker lol. Who knows, maybe they will buff DD first, but I would like to see more berserkers and daredevils xD

Have you actually seen DD/DA/Trickery condi daredevils? Its absolutely ridiculous caltrops on roll + Lotus training with sleight of hand, and signet of agility. U can dodge spam while dumping condis on you enemy while they can’t hit you. It’s pretty infuriating to play against considering they can dodge 6 times in a row when relying on endurance alone, without considering some built in skill evades xD and they can run d/d for even more ridiculous bleeding.

SlayerSixx.5763:

Ranger is arguably easier to play than DH.

ROFL, This guy, ranger is FAR from being nearly as ez as guardian alone, forget even dragon hunter, a standard medi guard has more sustain than any power ranger while being just as easy and in some cases much easier to play. Playing a DPS guardian is EXTREMELY forgiving for a class with such high burst. Got condi bombed? No probs, pop CoP and nothing happened, getting focused hard? All gud, shelter is a 2sec block or just pop RF. Screwed up and didn’t dodge the stun? No worries, retaliatory subconscious will take the hit if its a big burst attack or you can just pop VoC for aegis + stun break if running virtues, VoJ for blind if running Radiance, SoW if using a focus or either one of JI or CoP if running one of them (which you should, trapper or not). Dragon Hunter further exacerbates the issue of the class being too forgiving while having access to very high dmg to an entirely different degree. Arguing that DH trapper is remotely close to anything a ranger trapper offers is ridiculous.

Edit: I was of the opinion that Reaper is the ultimate facetanking skrub carrier but now DH is actually much worse.

Only thing that’s anywhere near “non-mediocre” for me is GS/mace+shield with arc divider spam for good cleave dmg and skull grinder spam on single target for the daze blinds and cripple…Gunflame works too until your opponent realizes the animation and the cast time.

Azure.8670:

Romgaard.1965:

Azure.8670:

just gonna state the obvious.

If rev sword was weaker than warrior axe, rev would be in a TERRIBLE place.

Sword AA
Hammer
Glint heal

if any of those get (further) nerfed ever, Rev is done

Why is that obvious??
warrior axe is suppose the be pure and raw damage, has nothing els going for it….so why is it weaker than the rev sword?

because warrior “is” based around Fast hands. Warrior is a weapons master, and also has the burst of Eviscerate. Warrior can switch between Axe/GS and maintain its dps. Rev has no other power based melee weapon, just sword

Lel, sure meanwhile 2-4k hammer auto ranged crits, wont even mention other hammer attacks ¯\(>.>)/¯

StanleyJohny.8047:

Rekt.5360:

Holy hell since when is the arc divider base dmg so high!? Skull Grinder hits pretty dam hard too and you can use them back to back thanks to outrage so u can actually stack aoe might. SHET HYPE!!!!

20% dmg increase from previous Burst + 25 stacks of might + Blood Reaction trait (14% precision to ferocity) + Burst Mastery grandmaster (7% more dmg from burst) + foe below 50% HP

And im pretty sure 14,7k isnt highest i can get. Need more luck with rolls and I bet it can be 16k+.

So screw condition berserker. Keep it up with name Berserker = Berserker gear

That means you’d have to ditch the defense line though Either way, I have tried zerker Ham/GS it ain’t bad at all, heck, Arc Divider has more range than eviscerate and hits nearly a shard while having a much faster animation AND ITS kittenG AOE! This thing is a seriously good mg dealer, you can use it against ppl trying to kite u who think they’re out of range and still hit em lol. Also, that fire field for AoE might. Mace primal burst also aint bad at al, thing can hit like a truck and dazes.

StanleyJohny.8047:

I wans’t hyped at all before launch. Nom I’m hyped as hell.

http://scr.hu/4nfc/64gp3

I have no idea why ppl are talking about conditions and Berserker over and over when there is ABSOLUTELY INSANE BURST POWER with Greatsword.

Entering Berserk mode
- gain quickness
- using Arcing Slice – gain 20% more dmg
- using Hundred Blades
- Arcing Slice (it should be easily filled again after blades)
- some auto attacks and Hundred Blades again
- Arcing Slice
Also you can use your Arcing Slice first and then turn on berserker while casting. It will use burst and berserk mode at the same time.

Also check this out and say it is not OP:

Outrage
+Traited with Grandmaster Berserker – Eternal Champion
+Traited with Grandmaster Defense – Rousing Resilience
=10s cd Stun Break, Gain Stability, Gain 1000 toughness, Heal yourself ~2,5k, Gain Adrenaline

Berserker WvW Builds HERE WE GO!

Holy hell since when is the arc divider base dmg so high!? Skull Grinder hits pretty dam hard too and you can use them back to back thanks to outrage so u can actually stack aoe might. SHET HYPE!!!!

Shaogin.2679:

virus.4370:

Jasher.6580:

Rangelost.4857:

Necromonger.4970:

So it’s possible to use the elite specs in pvp without purchasing the expansion ? I’m asking, because I have gw2 uninstalled.

No, it is not possible to use elite specializations in PvP if you do not own Heart of Thorns.

Yes, elite specializations are far superior to normal professions, and have no drawbacks whatsoever.

No, you cannot choose to join matches with other players who do not own the expansion.

Yes, this does mean Guild Wars 2 is now technically Pay-to-Win.

Right now, most of the Elite specs are not good.

As a matter of fact, I have no idea why they even refer to them as “Elite”.

The intention is to balance all the new “specs” to be EQUAL to all the base specs. So if people without the expansion can’t beat them then they will get nerfed.

Right now however, most of the Elite specs suck. So I have absolutely no idea what you are complaining about.

well i was fighting a druid character with my ranger and had no effect on him.. he instantly heals ..no matter what i hit him with..yesterday..was killing players left and right.

Pst…. try some cc. I swear, this thread is so funny. Just because something is new and people don’t know how to fight them yet, everyone is screaming “OP” and crying that it is all pay to win now. So sad…..

Yes its absolutely ridiculous. God forbid ppl have to learn the new specs to be able to counter them, but w ecan’t have that right? The moment something I don’t understand beats me it’s op. The amount of crying bads is absolutely ridiculous.

Rangelost.4857:

Saiyan.1704:

If you can only play with other players who don’t own the expansion, then how can it be pay to win?

Kalriostraz.6819:

How is it pay to win if you can’t use those new specs against players without the expansion? Even IF every elite was strictly better than base, you don’t/can’t fight against people without the expansion. Ergo, it cannot be P2W.

A Berserker is far superior to a Warrior.
A Reaper is far superior to a Necromancer.
A Scapper is far superior to an Engineer.

Bullkitten, Berserker is absolute garbage compared to normal warrior and a condi oriented reaper is not rly better than a condi necro. I don’t own the expansion and still wreck ppl, with elite specs or not, just fine on my GS/Axe+Shield warrior, thank you.

DeceiverX.8361:

As others have mentioned, D/D is a pretty bad set relative to D/P. Shadow Shot and the stealth uptime from Black Powder are why the set is considered so well; you need the stealth from BP + Heartseeker because you don’t want to be seen traversing the map, whereas D/D needs to be in combat and land a hit with CnD to get it, and getting that close in anything but a + 1 is pretty much asking to die because of how fragile you’re going to be, even when building tankier. Shadow Shot is just a blatantly overpowered skill for the initiative system; sorry for any D/P players out there, but this skill is just too good to make D/D ever viable, even if Death Blossom and Dancing Dagger get reworked. Unblockable blinding high-damage teleport on 4 initiative is so ungodly strong for skirmishing that there’s no reason to ever really even waste the initiative for CnD or BP+HS when instead you get the same damage out of spamming 3 twice with free gap closes, blinds/safety from a next hit or for your ally, and a very powerful attack.

D/D has one benefit; you’ll be a better thief, given the time and effort to become better. If you play to even make someone even slightly afraid of you or kill some D/P thieves, you know you’ve got a skill leg-up on them. Every time I’ve been called out by another thief for losing as D/D against D/P and they’ve been willing to fight again with me as D/P, I’ve won. Messing around with some guild-members, I stayed in the middle of our “thief list” as D/D, and when one got arrogant after beating me a few times, I fought him as D/P around twenty times and he never even landed a hit against me in any of the games, while I continued to play DA/CS/Trickery signets. D/D might suck, but learning to do remotely well will teach you how to play the class and use your resources.

My advice? If you want to learn how to play the class well, play D/D for a while in hotjoin, and ignore the flaming from people telling you to play another set/calling you bad/names, etc., then if you want to get competitive or just slightly bolster your chances of winning, play D/P and press 3 to victory whenever you get in a fight because Shadow Shot is literally the only skill you should ever need if you use your dodges and utilities properly, and you may never get hit.

As a side note, while I am not much of a shortbow fan (I play D/D and S/D in WvW), it is pretty much a requirement for sPvP. The vertical mobility is just way too important for escapes.

Source: ~2.5k hours of D/D thief near-exclusively since launch.

Tbh, I feel like s/d is even worse off than d/d. The dmg is sooo low for the survivability that it’s hilarious. At least im happy daredevil will fix A LOT of the problems with s/d and essentially give you the choice of either having a stupid amount of dodging with lower dmg output but better survivability than currently with DD/Acro/Trick or it will allow you to have better dmg output while still maintaining good survivability by running DD/DA/Trick or DD/CS/Trick.

Hannibal.5739:

Hello fellow thieves

I am a inexperienced thief trying to get into pvp and would like to know if you guys/gals would be willing to help a newbie understand this class a little better. First let me state that I’m not looking for fotm builds and I know pvp takes a lot of practice before I will become somewhat decent lol. I’m looking for any tips you can spare that will help ease the frustration a bit and hopefully in the near future I’ll become a pain in the kitten for the opposition :-)

I plan on using d/d as main and maybe p/p as my secondary weapon set (hate shortbow). For traits i intend to go with DA/SA/Tric. The problem for me is idk if i wanna make my thief a trickster, trapper, deception or venom thief.

Are their any synergies with these utility skills and the weapons/traits i plan on using or any tips i should be aware of? Also I haven’t read anybody talk about tricks or venom skills lately (maybe never) and was wondering is something wrong with them or people just don/t use them that often.

If you insist on playing d/d then get ready for a VERY rough ride. It’s what I run since I can’t stand d/p and since I feel s/d to have terrible damage output compared to survivability, butby running d/d you’re gutting yourself so bad you have no idea. D/p can easily handle 1v1s you won’t even stand a chance in and is much better in practically every other way, from CC, to stealth uptime (on demand stealth is something d/d does NOT have, having to use cloak and dagger for a stealth is extremely punishing in some cases, like vs good warriors), to shadowstepping to your foe, to damage mitigation, to practically everything. I also don’t recommend p/p as a second weapon set. Shortbow is godly in that it allows you to disengage somewhat well on a build with terrible disengage potential on its main weapon set (d/d). If you insist on running d/d + p/p then you WILL die nearly for sure the moment you’re caught with your pants down or outnumbered; situations Shortbow will allow you to escape, sometimes with relative ease. Shortbow is also not a weapon set you camp, you don’t pew pew with it, only reason you use it is for the mobility #5, The poison to counter rezzing #4, the evade shot #3 and the nice burst #2 can provide but standing far away and pew pewing is NOT what a shortbow teef does.

For D/d I run DA,SA and CS for maximum damage potential, as that’s the only good thing you can do. Get in there crit a lot, crit hard and get out before a Mesmer or nearly any other burst class decides to sneeze at you because you’ll realize it’s too late by the time they do since you can’t disengage.

My apologies if I came out as rude, that wasn’t my intention I’m just a bit exasperated with the state of d/d and s/d right now ><

Or just stop being a group of a 3 kitten s that ALL stand in axe cleave and end up taking 5k+ dmg when they can limit that to much less. Seriously look at how the groups of people play in these clips, they just rush like kittens without popping anything and then by the time they realize they lost too much HP they’re dead.

Velimere.7685:

Rekt.5360:

No Pulse.2967:

Maybe it’s just me, but I still don’t see axe/shield being better than hammer. It’s a one trick pony set and can be kited extremely easily. I tried it multiple times, but always switched back to hammer afterwards.

Lol the way you describe axeshield is exactly how I feel about hammer xD though hammer has undeniably more utility in team fights. Landing CC on targets who can’t just pay attention to you is much easier and a 2sec stun/knockdown is wayyyy more useful in a team fight than eviscerate or axe’s auto cleave.

Shield has a 2-second stun, though it’s single-target only. What greatsword & axe/shield provide is superior defense and sustained DPS (axe cleaving is amazing) on a point.

Yeah that is true but idk, I personally run AxeShield but if I were grouped with another war I’d rather have him play GS/hammer I value the hammer CC and good weakness uptime much more than a cleave. But then again I don’t really do much group fighting on my war and usually go for far or points with only 1 guy on them so I can’t exactly comment on how effective the cleave would be in a group fight.

online.1278:

Nah, you can’t compere that zerker warrior build to support warrior build. the job is totally different. Zerker is to kill fast, Support is to support people + CC to let people kill fast.

Both ShoutBow and GS/Axe-shield are decent build and what you have is just choice between them. Going support or zerker? it depends on your team comp or play style.

ShoutBow isn’t braindead build, it is one of decent build of many warrior builds. What you’re doing with any build could be braindead, or wise, but build itself isn’t braindead. plz don’t call people using ShoutBow braindead. that is just self-conceit.

And ShoutBow isn’t 1vs1 build. it is team support build in fact.

I think the guy was saying Shoutbow is braindead because it involves much less care when playing that the squishy zerker builds. I mean I have 2 friends that started playing recently and on any zerker war build or any DPS roamer build on the other classes, they get absolutely destroyed, but the moment they switch to shoutbow the sustain carries them so badly that they can actually fight on points for extended periods of time without dying in less than 15 seconds even if the other player is better than they are. I can sort of understand why he’d call shoutbow braindead since its so newbie friendly of a build.

Oh maaaan the name of you elite shout killed me sooo bad. Left me laughing for a good 30seconds. I agree with everything other then elite stance tho, 4 seconds for that CD is rly bad….like rly rly bad. the 30% condi duration and boon duration for 4 seconds is practically insignificant and 300 of each stat is not rly that much. I mean 300 power is 10 stacks of might, that’s hardly a significant damage increase. I’d rather give pulsing stability, fury and resistance for like 8-10sec on a 1 min CD. This basically combines the effects of zerker and balanced stances on top of giving fury but it’ll be able to free some spots and hopefully open up for more builds that don’t use 3 stances but rather take the elite for the combined utility.

No Pulse.2967:

Maybe it’s just me, but I still don’t see axe/shield being better than hammer. It’s a one trick pony set and can be kited extremely easily. I tried it multiple times, but always switched back to hammer afterwards.

Lol the way you describe axeshield is exactly how I feel about hammer xD though hammer has undeniably more utility in team fights. Landing CC on targets who can’t just pay attention to you is much easier and a 2sec stun/knockdown is wayyyy more useful in a team fight than eviscerate or axe’s auto cleave.

dominik.9721:

@online: Tarcis never “pwnd” any DD-Ele in his video. He did reset the fight two times and killed one ele with rampage and the other ele with 3k~hp left because of a lucky eviscerate combo in the last second. Every random blind/dodge ,updraft,blink, right the lightning would have made him lost.

Lol ^This. I actually went on his stream to look for this video where he pwned 2 d/d eles non-stop and what I saw was him having to reset twice before getting carried by rampage in order to kill an ele. Idk where this kittened exaggeration came from but ppl need to tone kitten down.

online.1278:

Rekt.5360:

You won’t be pwning any decent D/D ele with that, even ok ones unless you catch them with nothing left or if they’re drooling on their keyboard and don’t pay attention. Ham/GS even with its bigger telegraphs gives you a much better shot at killing d/d simply because of the lockdown potential you have and the ability to stun lock them .

If they take fire prepare to get your burst kitten up by blinding ashes, if they take earth prepare to do garbage dmg eviscerates because they won’t crit. People need to stop hyping this build as being OP (something I’ve seen a lot of on the forums since shield got buffed) it was good before shield buffs, its still good now and it still suffers from everything a warrior normally suffers from; a.k.a huge telegraphs, very weak to constant blinding due to many attacks being single hit big dmg abilities and easily avoidable burst. Not to mention this build is pure melee so you know what pros and cons that comes up with. that being said no you will not be easily pwning any d/d eles if you’re equally skilled but if you run full glassy with zerker ammy you will get pretty amazing crits on eviscerates (my highest hit was a 13k on a p/p teef lol).

I also wish the name “GreatAxe” just got disposed of, it sounds so terrible.

if your words are true, then why did that top warrior whose name starts with An*s**rci* advertised it that he can likely & always pwn any dd cele ele with his video demonstrstion of owning non-stop 2 dd ele or are you better than him? I just cannot understsnd..

Like, who should i believe? What is real truth?

Believe who u want lol but “Always” is a terrible exaggeration. Tarcis is a great player, we know that, what we don’t know is how good the 2 d/d’s were…I mean anyone can film a vid of themselves kittenting on 2 bads running meta builds and claim the build they’re using is super great correct? Though my points still stand, the build has the drawbacks of “huge telegraphs, very weak to constant blinding due to many attacks being single hit big dmg abilities and easily avoidable burst” as I mentioned, people can hardly deny that. How it plays out in a fight is entirely up to both players’ ability. Now axe auto HURTS a lot but I’m still confident that a d/d ele is not something you will easily and reliably pwn if he’s of the same skill lvl and if he goes into earth line then you’ll have more problems that if he goes in fire.

You won’t be pwning any decent D/D ele with that, even ok ones unless you catch them with nothing left or if they’re drooling on their keyboard and don’t pay attention. Ham/GS even with its bigger telegraphs gives you a much better shot at killing d/d simply because of the lockdown potential you have and the ability to stun lock them .

If they take fire prepare to get your burst kitten up by blinding ashes, if they take earth prepare to do garbage dmg eviscerates because they won’t crit. People need to stop hyping this build as being OP (something I’ve seen a lot of on the forums since shield got buffed) it was good before shield buffs, its still good now and it still suffers from everything a warrior normally suffers from; a.k.a huge telegraphs, very weak to constant blinding due to many attacks being single hit big dmg abilities and easily avoidable burst. Not to mention this build is pure melee so you know what pros and cons that comes up with. that being said no you will not be easily pwning any d/d eles if you’re equally skilled but if you run full glassy with zerker ammy you will get pretty amazing crits on eviscerates (my highest hit was a 13k on a p/p teef lol).

I also wish the name “GreatAxe” just got disposed of, it sounds so terrible.

Tipper.6973:

The cooldown on Berserking also feels really bad. I think it should be reduced, or preferably just removed entirely. If the spec is all about going Berserk, I want to be able to do it as often as possible. If I have the 30 adrenaline, I should be allowed to transform regardless of an arbitrary cooldown. Limiting the transformation uptime via adrenaline instead of a timer feels better because it is more dynamic. In heavier combat situations you are able to get angry faster and go Berserk more. Yes, this means you could chain Berserk modes together. Is that really a problem, though? The attack speed increase is marginal, and other than that all it is doing is changing your F1. Why does that need a cooldown?

THIS THIS THIS AND THIIIIIIIS! As things stand berserker is pretty much always inferior and barely equal to normal warrior at best (when you’re in berserker mode), fixing a CD AND a resource limitation to go into a state that effectively does not make us perform better (actually makes us perform worse if you’re running a power build) is absolutely nonsensical. If berserker is to remain as it is currently and not be majorly revised (big emphasis needs to be put on the word majorly there) then at least we should not have a cooldown on it. Some traits like Eternal Champion might need reworking if we manage to maintain near 100% uptime but other than that the elite spec is far too underwhelming to even be close to overpowered EVEN WITH a near 100% uptime.

online.1278:

yeah, hope this Gs/axe-shield (GreatAxe) build or some other new rage zerker wattior builds become meta replacing ShoutBow :p

Seriously I wonder who the hell comes up with these garbage kitten names for builds “Greataxe” “Greatbow” wtf srsly…I wonder if they’ve ever tried saying them to see how terrible it sounds.

runeblade.7514:

I gave it a try. Its awful. I end up in downed state more than doing burst damage.

Yes it is. I tried running axe/shield + rifle a while ago to mess with burst precision and it is on another tier of garbage altogether.

Ione.4621:

Thanks mate, just what I thought then

Guess I’ll stick to leveling the Necro and wait for the reaper then, that looks like fun in all the videos that I have seen and it’s got pretty good reviews, previews..player experience thus far

Don’t let the down sides discourage you, warrior even with the limited build diversity (which isn’t limited at all compared to say…dps guard) it’s still a blast to play and you can blow people up in seconds. Of the classes I’ve played a decent bit its by far the one that I find the most fun and immersing (teef comes close). There is no mandatory weapon set in sPvP. In WvW GS is recommended because its mobility is amazing compared to our other weapons but ditching it for sword is just fine.

Trepidation Lost.3469:

nicknamenick.2437:

Trepidation Lost.3469:

They just have, insane mobility, insane escapes (especially using sword and shield and gs) it just feels like a class to playw hen youre too tired to play somthign that requires some thought and not just baiting dodges then pressing one button to land 12k( Axe f1 or sword 3 or gs f1)

Then play mesmer in wvw, problem solved.

About your insane mobility argument:
Ranger swoop alone does the same as Warrior GS + Sword together..
So thats not so valid to say warrior has insane mobility.
Most classes have the same if not more incombat mobility, warrior just have a bit more landspeed skills.. but even that issnt always the case because even mesmers can be king of landspeed travel.

and about:
“requires some thought and not just baiting dodges”

So baiting dodges doesnt requires some tought?? wut? wow..
You know you can do the same to warriors right? bait there stances and strike them after it. dont charge if they pop them.. kite them.

Kite! just DO IT! and stop crying that you cant facetank a warrior and when you kite well you WILL win.. and when the warrior runs away? then /laugh

All i see are posts from you crying about this build or the axe/shield+gs build.. ow wait there you say ALL warriors run Axe+shield and now you speak about sword/shield+Gs wut? haha anyways, it all comes to:

L2p

Feel sorry for how much time you wasted posting that kitten puss.
I playw arrior, and im saying its OP from my point of view hahahahaha, i play mesmer aswell? L2p? learn to read m8
<3

Feel sorry for you probably being a kittenter and getting rekt by warriors then coming here to complain. If it’s from your point of view then don’t come trying to hammer it in people’s heads that IT IS what your point of view is. If you’d have played enough warrior you’d know that it’s far from OP in 1v1s, but it seems u haven’t. Pro-tip if you’re playing a condi build don’t waste ur kitten when the war has zerker stance up, just disengage. The number of bads who facetank me while I have it up then get rekt and ask me how I took no dmg from their condis is ridiculous.

dominik.9721:

Further you confirmed tarcis post that zerk warr has a 50%/60%/70% winchance against eles which implies that zerk warrior should ushually win against cele ele.
so pls….

Lol, mang we all know that’s BS without somebody even mentioning it. If you happen to catch them out of earth attunement with rampage then yes you might kill them if they don’t manage to gtfo before, but if you don’t run rampage then that they’d have to be quite bad to lose.

choovanski.5462:

Rekt.5360:

choovanski.5462:

lighter.2708:

Kaizoku.1298:

choovanski.5462:

kek. run X. use moa. stunlock. evade. stealth. blind. block.

if you cant land rifle 4 & use cc on stab that’s you playing badly. i have no issues vs warrior on any engineer build i play, provided im playing well. practice landing cc & damage chains.

Honestly, in my build I only had rifle #4 and turret detonation as CC.

Honestly, in my warrior build, i have no endure pain, engi kills me all the time, thanks who ever made engi dev.

why you are not running endure pain at 25% is beyond me. double endure pain for stances, & single for shouts is the norm. defense doesn’t have a better trait in that slot, & builds without defense are rarely successful.

beating engi on warrior is easy. they have ~1 stunbreak & you have a lot of CC, it’s not hard to figure what to do; land CC to secure damage & disable the engineer.

Tbh Knight’s amulet + armored attack gives you such a crapload of power you actually end up having more than when using mara amulet and the amount of armor you have is so big you don’t rly need the 2nd endure pain :O Granted with the 2nd endure pain you can carry 2v1’s all day but you dmg is somewhat lower :S

if you choose to yolo, complain not about your yolo

that builds sounds gnarr btw, will give it a jam.

Yeah I tried running it with axe +shield/Longbow and its essentially 25might stacks all day and since we can apply a surprisingly good amount of burning we end up doing nice condi dmg thanks to how broken burn dmg is despite being a power build x) it’s really amazing vs power builds, that amount of armor is miraculous.

yanoch.7051:

I think it’s Axe Shield /GS was over shadowed by hammer/GS of late. People forgot about it and now it seems that the shield buff pushed it back into the spot light. The truth is that this build wasn’t very far behind.

To me the riffle buff is much bigger but it’s our single target range DPS weapon and it’s extremely telegraphed.

Idk tbh I’ve always somewhat hated hammer and couldn’t see how it could become meta given how ridiculously predictable it is…I mean…the telegraphs are just insane. Whenever I fight a hammer war I feel like I’m fighting somebody who’s playing in slow motion. I guess in group fights its decent since you can stunlock enemies that aren’t paying attention to u but when hitting the far node and getting in a 1v1 I just feel its terrible if the other player knows what to do.

choovanski.5462:

lighter.2708:

Kaizoku.1298:

choovanski.5462:

kek. run X. use moa. stunlock. evade. stealth. blind. block.

if you cant land rifle 4 & use cc on stab that’s you playing badly. i have no issues vs warrior on any engineer build i play, provided im playing well. practice landing cc & damage chains.

Honestly, in my build I only had rifle #4 and turret detonation as CC.

Honestly, in my warrior build, i have no endure pain, engi kills me all the time, thanks who ever made engi dev.

why you are not running endure pain at 25% is beyond me. double endure pain for stances, & single for shouts is the norm. defense doesn’t have a better trait in that slot, & builds without defense are rarely successful.

beating engi on warrior is easy. they have ~1 stunbreak & you have a lot of CC, it’s not hard to figure what to do; land CC to secure damage & disable the engineer.

Tbh Knight’s amulet + armored attack gives you such a crapload of power you actually end up having more than when using mara amulet and the amount of armor you have is so big you don’t rly need the 2nd endure pain :O Granted with the 2nd endure pain you can carry 2v1’s all day but you dmg is somewhat lower :S

Azukas.1426:

Got a link to the build so we can all test it out and see if we agree?

This is what I run : http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQNAR3ejMdQZHWFCehAnIGICK9Lm+pwCgIYAwT4FGBA-TpBBAByXGAgjAQHXAAOeAAbcQA6Z/BA

I swap out sigil of int on axe for sigil of accuracy to boost my crit chance on axe up to 81% with fury. I just find it way better than sigil of int since it somewhat limits you to having to use eviscerate within your first three attacks which then makes you even more predictable than you already are. Int is still viable and fire works well too. You can swap mara amulet for zerker amulet but then better grab sigil of int for the bigger much bigger crits you’ll be getting. I find the difference in survivability pretty much non-existent but zerker has less passive crit chance which somewhat annoys me for some reason :S

Nier.8741:

Talking about PVP.

I hope berserker changes everything, atm it’s just disgusting. Warrior is reduced to a one spam class cause of the last stand buff and shield buff which indirectly buffed axe + GS. And what does axe + GS do again? It just baits dodges spamming auto attacks and flat out kills people who runs out of dodges and stun breaks. Boring playstyle yet they buff the boring easy effective build.

I don’t know why dumb down classes such as giving ele an evade on dagger main hand instead of making classes fun and challenging. ANET just did the pattern with spirit ranger and d/d ele into warrior again.

It’s just not fun to play this game anymore when things can’t be hard and op. They have to be easy and op.

I miss playing Mace, I miss playing builds without GS in it, but ANET is literally on the wrong with this change.

Like it’s a mix of bad balancing decisions and maybe the blueprinting system of this game is just so bad that you can’t develop things like “three weapon swap warrior” or ’controllable pet ranger."

I don’t think believe this game will change for the better with HoT that being said.

Wat? OP? Are you freaking kidding me, this build is so ridiculously predictable that you really shouldn’t have any problems with it if you have a ranged weapon option and know how not to waste dodges. I mean the build is full melee with its biggest burst being super predictable and only having a reliable setup every ~20 seconds with shield bash so if you get into melee range and eat its burst it should wreck the flipping kitten out of you. Thank god the range on evi got nerfed a while ago or else who knows how OP it’d be right?

online.1278:

StonePower.8321:

online.1278:

GS/Axe-shield is very strong. I am using cleric + shield but this build sometimes inflict me like 15000 dmg in just 1~2 sec (when all combo inflicted succesffuly, quickness -> shield bash-> evis-> weapon swap to invoke hydro->100b or arcing slice -> whirlwind attack). I am not doubt that this build can pwn dd cele ele because even cleric + heavy armor + shield which is tankier than dd cele ele would get damaged like that.

lmao are you for real

Real. when I using cleric ammy + shield and above combo successfully inflicted on me, I get minimum 10000 to maximum 15000. Toughness in these days is like least attribute.
You can try above combo on target golem in HOTM. you will see that light and medium target golem will get rekt by just one combo above, and heavy type target golem will have around 15% of entire HP when combo ends. You better think you are already dead body if you got all of this combo on you unless you are bunker type.

be sure having zerker ammy, not mara.

Idk I’ve recently been running axe+shield/LB with knight’s amulet over Gs axe+shield and I really don’t eat such numbers from other wars. I mean sure if I eat a lv 3 evi crit + a full HB when the warrior already has a decent amount of might + lvl 3 berserker’s power buff then it will do that much damage but then again you’d have to be pretty bad or get stunned repetitively or be entirely out of dodges and immobilized or something.

Axe+shield has a somewhat hard time pwning a (properly played ) d/d ele because blinding ashes by itself can be used to screw up our burst so badly it isn’t even funny. This becomes a real problem since this build needs to hit the target with its burst skills to cleanse condis, and once your zerker stance is over you can’t really go into ring of fire or else the burn stacks pile up and if you miss you burst skill well your in pretty deep shiet since “lolburnz” will eat ur HP like crazy. You not being able to be aggressive while RoF is up then gives the ele a break from the possible pressure you could be putting on them and effectively allows them to regen quite a bit of HP.