Guild Wars 2

Thought this was going to be the big balance patch. Needless to say, extremely disappointed.
/the end

Hambow is a joke.

Hate: How grindy the game is. Good quests are far more interesting than hearts.
Love: Pvp

Like: Combat.
Dislike: Lack of true build diversity like there was in GW1.

milo.6942:

drop chance: me getting with mila kunis

This made me lol. Well played.

I was trying to make a humorous post. Humor isn’t bad. You’re making serious responses saying that it’s a bad suggestion and trying to point out the faults with the idea of removing toughness, vitality, and healing power. How in the world is that not completely missing the entire point of this thread? It was created for amusement, which some people got out of it. Why seriously respond to it?

If you couldn’t get the fact that this post was written in a satirical manner out of the context, then that is not my fault, nor yours. To myself and some others, it is quite apparent in the way it is written. And if you complain that I’m taking space up in the forums by writing out something I believe to be humorous to lighten one or two people’s days, then that is your right, but by no means do I agree with your opinion. Because that’s all it is, an opinion.

~Facepalm~
Thank you eccentric and redenaz. There are at least some people who aren’t 200% brain dead on these forums.

I am assuming that the two people who posted above me are either completely humorless or that they only read the title.

We don’t need your training wheels anymore A-Net. We’re good at your game now.

But what? You like to build bunkers? Well you don’t have to anymore when everyone is nuking. Don’t build a bunker. Fight nukes with nukes.

Look at it this way. Have you ever seen a firefighter who stacks tons of defensive stats and goes into a building through hellfire and worse while evading burning debree? No. If there is a fire, they nuke the place. The fire no longer spreads. The fire no longer exists. No fire – no problem. Nukes work.

But you like supporting? Support your team with damage.

Look at it this way. A young girl is being attacked in an alley by two thugs. What do you do? Throw out heals, might, protection, and support the girl? Do you build defensive stats so you can safely watch her be attacked from a safe distance? Or do you just down and stomp the two thugs. That’s right. Damage. Nukes work.

Nukes work.

Wait, what’s that you say? Your bunker chains evades and wears his opponent out instead of stacking defensive stats? Well guess what. Your opponent got bored of punching at you and missing, so he takes out a gun. He shoots you. You’re dead. You can’t evade a gun, this isn’t the matrix. But imagine if you had a nuke instead of those evades. What’s a gun compared to a nuke? No one is going to shoot at you if you nuke them.

That’s why toughness, healing power, and vitality should be removed from all gear in guild wars 2.

Well, at least we can still look at the pvp leaderboards if we want to see if anyone is good. Amiriteguys? lol.

Excellent read. Very enlightening. I never actually took the time to think about the way traits in this game are designed, but I suspect that it is much easier for ANET to balance a game where there are fewer builds.

Back on topic. Let’s take a trait that passively increases your damage by 5% while wielding a certain weapon. That’s a boring, lackluster trait. Now let’s take a trait that increases your damage by the % of health you are missing while also increasing the damage you take by 20%. While in essence, that may seem like a passive trait because you don’t need to do anything to activate it, it is an active trait because it forces you to actively make decisions – do I want to stay at low health in order to do massive damage and risk dying? Or should I heal up so that I can continue dpsing with no bonus damage. Those kinds of traits make the game exciting and create unique styles of gameplay.

I support the addition of more active traits. Without a doubt, the addition of more active traits would increase build diversity and vary the gameplay between people of the same class quite considerably. It would also make people who like making new builds very happy.

The addition of more active traits would also raise the skill cap for classes as you would have to meet certain criteria in order to benefit from the active trait you have taken. I really, really like this idea because for starters, having more things that you can do within a given situation allows you to be creative and flexible with your skills. It also means that if you’re really proud of your build, people who haven’t played it as long as you have will not be nearly as good at it.

If my example of traits was terrible and I deserve to be smacked, it’s 4:30 am here. Cut me some slack, you get the gist of it.

Edit: I can also vouch for Lord Earle. He is very knowledgeable and is exceptionally good at playing the Elementalist class.

#Mag Swag

/15 character

Let me clarify something. This infusion could be like the agony resistance infusion that you gain via the mystic forge. It wouldn’t go in an infusion slot.

I agree that it would be strong, but my whole point revolves around the fact that this is already in game. Whether intended or not, people simply have two sets of weapons.

For instance, a thief is wielding dual daggers and a shortbow. Both of the daggers have bloodlust. He kills mobs to max his stacks. He then replaces those daggers with a different set of daggers. The new main hand dagger is a dagger with a fire sigil and the off hand dagger has force on it. This thief now has 25 stacks of bloodlust AND a fire sigil as well as a force sigil.

My point is that people already gain the benefits of bloodlust while using other sigils. I would like this to be implemented to make the process easier.

Or this could be identified as unintended and fixed, but it has been around since release. More likely than not, it’s intended.

I don’t feel like it’s really giving you much of an edge. Most people do the following before starting to do anything in WvW.

-Switch to two weapons with Bloodlust sigils.
-Kill coyotes until max stacks are reached
-Switch to actual weapons

This infusion saves you the trouble of always switching weapons to build stacks every time you get downed. Seems to me as more of a “comfort of daily life” upgrade and that is exactly why I would like to see it in the game.

My suggestion is that ascended weapons should be able to get an infusion that works just like a superior Sigil of Bloodlust/Corruption/Accuracy/Healing etc. I’ll refer to it as Bloodlust for the sake of being concise. Most people dislike switching to a separate weapon set just to build stacks of Bloodlust. This would be a simple upgrade that doesn’t truly unbalance anything – it pretty much only saves you the trouble of having to switch weapons to build your Bloodlust stacks. I suppose it will shine in battle as it will allow you to rebuild Bloodlust stacks after being downed in PvE/Zerg v. Zerg fights, but that would just be an incentive to get the upgrade.

The upgrade could be the same or similar as putting agony resistance on an ascended piece of equipment. For instance, 1 shard of crystallized mist essence + 250 globs of ectoplasm + Gift of Bloodlust/Corruption/Accuracy/Healing etc. + the weapon you are upgrading in the mystic forge to have an ascended weapon with Bloodlust attached to it.

Example weapon
Zoija’s Bastion
+94 power
+67 precision
+5% critical damage
Unused Upgrade Slot
Unused Infusion Slot
Infusion of Superior Bloodlust(Gain +10 Power each time you kill a foe. [Max 25 stacks; ends on down.])
+5 agony resistance

Personally, I think you should be able to have the Bloodlust infusion AND agony resistance infusion on the same weapon because switching weapons for fractals is also a hassle. However, I would be satisfied if we just got the choice between infusing a weapon with agony resistance or Bloodlust/Corruption/Accuracy/Healing etc.

To be clear, the advantage of this is that you can have Bloodlust AND your ruby orb or sigil on a weapon at the same time. You would also have your regular infusion(+5 power etc) and +5 agony resistance if you applied the agony resistance infusion.

TLDR: Hate switching weapons to get Bloodlust/Corruption/Accuracy/Healing etc stacks? Make it so that ascended weapons can have Bloodlust on them as an infusion just like the +5 agony resistance infusion. This way you can have your preferred sigils on your weapons at all times alongside Bloodlust.

Let’s hear your thoughts on this!

Edit: On a side note, I think the loss of Bloodlust stacks upon zoning should be removed. But that’s just me.

You, sir, are amazing. I never get on my forum account and I got on just to up-vote and write this!

Never had lag before while playing gw2. If anything, the issue was actually with my internet rather than GW2. Now, I’ve been having constant mini lag spikes, disconnects, and skill delays. It all started up a few days ago with the new patch.

That actually sounds like a pretty neat idea. I have a difficult time choosing a heal that I would use when I look at these. Normally, I just run healing surge and I have never looked back.

Let’s replace the 3% damage boost from discipline with 3% cooldown reduction! Trololol.

No but seriously I agree with the OP. Make the stat something that isn’t total garbage.

Lord Titan.3791:

Warrior Traits:
42) Berserker’s Might: This trait now passively builds 2 strikes of adrenaline every three seconds, while they are in combat.
- Awesome buff.

Unless they kept the original function of berserker’s might, which is to grant berserker’s stance, this is a painful nerf. Let’s do the math.

Berserker’s might granted berserker’s stance, which gave 40 strikes of adrenaline (four full adrenaline bars) over 8 seconds. The new berserker’s might grants 2 strikes of adrenaline every 3 seconds. That means that you get 40 strikes of adrenaline over the span of a minute instead of 8 seconds. Lol anybody?

The axe main hand auto attack was powerful. But it just got nerfed to the ground considering a lot of damage comes from one hit that is difficult to land as triple chop is dumb. They should have changed the auto attack of the axe to do simple attacks like first chop, second chop, final chop, instead of one chop, two chops, three chops if they are going to implement this. This is coming from a wvw/pvp perspective as your enemies can now evade a lot of your damage, blind, block, etc. It was spread out nicely before and the fact that the auto attack chain was made up of a lot of hits wasn’t bad.

Healing signet should be made into an instant cast.

Off hand axe was complete crap and I’m pretty sure it still will be.

Pretty cool idea.

Woutan.5934:

Strong build.

Just a few remarks: no stronger bowstrings traited means poor range on your lb, I personally cant play a lb without the trait. I would take* bc over fear me* for lower cd and gap closer. And fighting a mesmer i wouldnt risk wasting one of my precious interrupts on a blurred frenzy after his sw3: I just use shield5 after the immobize and let him waste shatters on the block.

I’ve never had problems with the range on the lb, personally. You want to be close to your enemy to land arcing arrow as its travel time is very long. You want to be close to land number 2, fan of fire, as the 3 arrows won’t all hit your target if you are not close. Also, you want to be close after landing a pin down so you can start dpsing with axe while they are in it. What do you use the extra range for?

While bull’s charge does have its uses, it is a single target skill. On top of that, it is extremely telegraphed and not instantaneous. Not to mention the knockdown is only 2 seconds as compared to the 4.25s fear of fear me (in ideal conditions of course). Also, if you are crippled or chilled, your bull’s charge will only travel like 3 feet and it will be completely wasted. You can’t use bull’s charge on a thief or mesmer while they are in stealth (well, not reliably since you need to target them). You can’t use bull’s charge to stop an ele who caught you with your stun breakers on cooldown to fear them away while you are on the ground. Bull’s charge won’t cc the phantasms around a mesmer, the spirit weapons of a guardian, nor the minions of a minion master (unless you specifically target them, which is a waste).

Overall, I find that fear me simply has more utility. It is useful in more situations than bull’s charge. However, I do agree that if you have your number 5 shield block up, it is a good idea to use it while immobilized by a mesmer.

This is a relatively comprehensive guide and I did my best putting it together over the past couple of hours. This build has worked very well for me and I hope it works for you guys as well. Try it out and let me know how it goes.

Edit: Just noticed I didn’t include warrior in the 1v1 scenarios lol. Maybe I’ll add that some time. It’s 6 in the morning and I haven’t slept yet after making this guide.

These last two are your most difficult matches (alongside a pistol/dagger or sword/dagger thief)

Guardian: Sword/focus greatsword is the most difficult to fight with this build. Other guardian setups aren’t nearly as bad. If the guardian uses a hammer, you can pop balanced stance and walk right out of their magical circle or walk into sanctuary. To be honest, unless they banish, you may not even want to waste balanced stance. You out dps them while they are in the hammer. You can just facetank them and attack.

While they are in greatsword, stay the hell away until after they have popped their whirling wrath. Their leap will blind you, so don’t waste a cc or eviscerate after it. Watch out for their number 5, which is an attack that will let them pull you to them (a perfect way to set up a whirling wrath, which will really hurt; you can balanced stance out of it though). And stay out of their red circles (as with all classes). Those hurt.

A meditation build guardian who doesn’t suck will kick your behind. You have a decent chance if you outskill the guardian or surprise them. Typically, they will have two stun breaks, lots of blinds, and plenty of blocks. Not to mention burn. The longbow 2 is a 3 hit and the axe 2 is a 2 hit attack. These are great attacks to break a guardian’s focus 3 block shield that they pop. If you can feel out the duration, you can evade it(as it explodes if you don’t break it) if you have the endurance. You will want to autoattack a lot so that their blinds are slightly less effective and try to force them to use their stun breaker meditations to heal before popping a cc chain.

A spirit weapon guardian will get facerolled by this build. They will hurt, but they will die. You can destroy the weapons very quickly, and please do as they will stack a LOT of burn on you. That burn will kill you very fast. The hammer will knock you down and knock you back (3 hit animation, the third hit of the chain will knock you back). The sword just dpses. Balanced stance is a perfect counter to the hammer.

Ranger:
These guys can be the toughest of them all for warriors. In short, if you can avoid it, don’t start a fight if they have rampage as one ready to go. Melee rangers will be more difficult than ranged rangers due to the evades and blocks. If they are running traps, that makes it even more difficult as there is not much you can do about them (unlike marks). Their pet will dps you hard.

Your best bet vs a ranger is to run at them so they pop rampage as one and come back when the duration is out. If that doesn’t work, and it probably won’t, then your best bet is to try and stay up in the ranger’s face and get on their back as often as possible. While you are on someone’s back, they usually will not be able to cast/shoot etc. Try to land pin down and save your crowd controls until after their stability has run out.

A ranger using the spirit elite will use it to self resurrect. That means that when they are almost down, they will activate the skill and the spirit will do a little stomp animation that normally rezzed allies from downed state (including the owner of the spirit). So when the ranger is almost dead, simply wait a second as they activate their spirit’s stomp. They will waste it and you can just finish them off. Or you can kill the spirit.

Entangling roots is simple. Break the roots or evade them (usually by luck). You can pop shield stance, block, and walk out of them as well I believe. Not sure on that one though.

Pro tips: Get to know ranger pets. A (black cat) jaguar will go invisible and do lots of damage to you. A lynx(orange cat) will leap at you and do lots of damage + bleeds. Owls will chill you(birds in general do surprisingly large amounts of dps). K9s will knock you down and either immobilize(krytan drakehound, looks like a dog), or fear you(wolf). Drakes have stationary, high damage attacks. Spiders immobilize. Sharks fear. That about covers the important ones I think.

Mesmer: For glassy mesmers just avoid their illusionary leap which will immobilize you. It is pretty easy to see it coming. You have balanced stance if they stun/daze you. If the mesmer runs a staff, you will have a hard time. Chaos storm will blind you and put aegis on the mesmer so do not waste your ccs, eviscerate, or arcing arrow while it is up. Frenzy can really turn a bad fight around vs these guys. It can also get you killed very fast.

You will want to engage the mesmer by pinning them down. If that fails, lay down a combustive shot and an arcing arrow so that their clones die off. Also, mesmers get hurt a lot in combustive shot while they are stealthed. You won’t notice the numbers, but that skill really hurts them.

Pro tip: When a mesmer swaps places with their clone after using illusionary leap, they will immobilize you. You have a short window to cast fear me or shield bash(you would be better off casting it as you are seeing the clone leap at you) before they actually cast blurred frenzy.

Engineer: Depending on their build, they won’t be too difficult. I don’t think an hgh engi will be your biggest nightmare. The worst engi you will run into is an engi that has like 5 immobilizes. You will want to end that fight as quickly as possible. No pro tips here, really. Just stay on them and try to evade immobilizes. Oh and if you keep missing, that means they dropped a smoke bomb which you can’t see. It will be there blinding you like a necro’s blind well for 4 seconds.

Necromancer: BEWARE OF CORRUPT BOON. That skill will rock your world. If they are not running it, you are in great shape to kick just about any necro’s behind. Just end it quick and stay out of their wells (wells leech life if traited for it, convert boons to conditions, blind and damage you. Not to mention the fact they give the necromancer protection.)

Pro tip: Evade through their marks. That will trigger them without you taking the damage.

Elementalist: Glass cannon d/d eles aren’t a big issue for you. They will typically start off with updraft (launches you backwards) and follow it up with burning speed(the skill that leaves behind a line of fire and explodes in fire at the end; you don’t want to be caught at the end of it). A simple counter is to pop balanced stance (when you hit the ground) and evade as they burning speed and waste their attacks. Just kill them afterwards. They may knock you down after they go into earth. They may also use churning earth, which is the skill that makes them stand there and channel a large aoe around them that activates after 3.25 seconds. You will want to get a good feel for when that time is. They may use their teleport utility and teleport on top of you right as it is about to go off. Be on your guard and evade it. OR you can cc them out of it and laugh.

Scepter elementalists: They can be difficult, especially if they kite you. Try to watch for their stun breakers, get them in a cc chain and dps them. They will likely have high burst damage. Also, while they are in air, they can blind you. Watch for that so you don’t waste an eviscerate. In short, the longer the fight drags on, the more likely you will die.

Pro reminder: USE STUN BREAKERS AFTER YOU HIT THE GROUND. If you use a stun breaker while you are still in the air, you will waste it.

Pro tips: Elementalists are generally tanky in earth attunement and heal in water. Try to burst them down just after they have exited water attunement (prefferably after they have wasted stun breakers). If they are low in water attunement, try to finish them off. Don’t just wait for them to get out of it. Keep the pressure on.

Some 1v1 scenarios

First note: Given an infinite amount of time and smart playing, you can solo any bunker. I haven’t met a bunker I couldn’t kill. HOWEVER, some bunkers just take too long to kill by yourself and it is not worth fighting them alone. You would probably be more useful elsewhere. Use your own judgement for killing bunkers.

Thief: Glassy thieves will kill you fast and you will kill them fast. You want to catch them with a pin down or cc and burst the hell out of them. A good s/d is very difficult to beat with this build. An average s/d will probably just die.

S/d: Pop combustive shots where you will be fighting but avoid staying in the longbow for long. Fighting s/d is all about timing and speed. You have to hit them with eviscerates and pin downs just as they finish the first part of their number 3(the evade attack). Autoattack at will (with an axe), a large amount of it will surprisingly hit them. Evade basilisk venoms. Watch for lyssa(gives them aegis and stability) after they use their elite as it will really mess you up.

Two key things. Watch your buffs. Popping that signet of rage at the beginning of the fight is probably not a good idea when they can steal it all. That doesn’t mean don’t pop it at all, but use it wisely. Watch that balanced stance. If a thief steals it, you are probably dead.

Second key thing is that if an s/d thief has infiltrator’s strike up (you can see it up in the same place conditions are displayed on them), they have a stun break. It would be ideal for you to cc them when they do not have this up (after they teleport back or before they have used the teleport).

Pro tip: Do not rely on blocks to cover your boons. Larcenous strike (the one that steals boons) is actually unblockable. Yeah. It sucks.

D/p: Thieves are pretty easy when they run this build unless they are really good at it. It is extremely predictable. What you want to do is time your eviscerate, pin down, and/or shield bash just after they leap out of blinding powder. That way you stun them/immobilize/damage them outside of it. They will not be able to leap back for more stealth if you caught them with the stun or immobilize. Some thieves will shoot you to blind you right before they leap so watch out for that.

Pro tip: If you quickly got rid of that blind, and they just stealthed, you can more or less aim your camera at the spot they were at and still nail them with a pin down. Try it with any ranged weapon, you can manually aim where it shoots depending on where you point your camera.

If you didn’t catch them with those, drop an arcing arrow between their blinding powder and the direction they leaped in. D/p thieves typically heartseeker back and forth through the blinding powder so they will eat that arcing arrow. On top of that, you can drop a nice combustive shot so they eat more damage.

In short, just cc them and catch them out of stealth. While they are standing in blinding powder, just stand outside of it and auto attack or drop an arcing arrow on them.

Pro tip: You can use fear me (preferably in close range) when a thief pops shadow refuge to make them run out of it. Or you can drop an arcing arrow or combustive shot on it. You can also use fear me to fear a thief out of blinding powder if you really want to. Just make sure you aren’t blinded.

If you learn to fight these two thieves, you will have a good idea of how to fight other thief builds.

Shameless add: P/d Save your lyssa to clear conditions!

Your weapons and basic outline of rotation

Typically, you will want to start out with a longbow number 5 (pin down) for immobilize. Follow that up with an arcing arrow/combustive shot or both, switch to axe and dps with autoattack. People typically roll after being ccd in any way so don’t waste your shield bash until after they do that (or just use it if they don’t roll at all). Eviscerate, autoattack. Fear me, frenzy, autoattack. Typically dead at this point.

This is an idea of how you can fight a battle. You typically won’t do this every single time. However, the number 5 on longbow IS a great opener for almost any fight. You may want to pop the number 4 (blind) on longbow first, wait a little after (possible evade), and then pin down if they were expecting the pin down earlier earlier. You can also open the battle with an arcing arrow. It really is up to you.

Important note: Arcing arrow is like a slightly weaker, aoe eviscerate when it crits. Combustive shot deals a massive amount of damage over time. Don’t think it is wasted adrenaline. Test it on your glassy mesmer friend. Let them roast in it for its entire duration. See how their health bar likes it.
———————-
Basic engagement

I go by the saying that if the fight isn’t over in 10 seconds, I’ll probably lose. It may be a little exaggerated at times, but it has a very key idea in it. You nuke and you get nuked. You need to pressure your enemy so that they can’t just sit back and kill you. The more an enemy drags a fight out, the bigger of a disadvantage you put yourself in. This build has very little sustain. You blow someone up, fight to the death or get out (reset and come back or go to another point).

People do not expect your damage. You have the element of surprise when a glassy mesmer strolls up to you and you eviscerate them for 10k. Use that to your advantage while you can, because people start to play more carefully when they realize what a powerhouse you are.

Never fight a 2v1, unless it’s hot join. Anything is permitted in there. Obviously, if your teammate just died, your enemies are both at full hp and the point is neutralized, you may as well die on it to keep it neutralized for a little longer. But if you see two people on a point while you’re roaming alone, don’t bother trying to solo them.

Do not try to rez your fellow teammates when you know you will be focus fired. You will just die. On that note, focus fire will drop you very fast. Beware.

To add to the above, you can use fear me to cover yourself while rezzing. And you certainly can rez other teammates, just be smart about it.

Those are just some basics to get you started.
————————————————-

Utilities

These aren’t set in stone. You can make these whatever you like them to be. However, these are the ones I have found to work best for me and I will explain how I use them below.

I like to save my balanced stance as a stun breaker. Or use it when I know someone will cc me. You can use signet of rage for the same effect since it grants stability.

Fear me is an extremely powerful skill. With 30 in power and lyssa runes you get another 40% condition duration on this bad boy. That means it lasts 4.25 seconds when you are in the face of an enemy and cast it. That’s about enough time to kill anyone without a stun breaker. Follow this skill up with frenzy for absolutely broken damage while they are helpless for nearly 5 seconds.

HOWEVER, keep in mind that if you are crippled or chilled, you will have a difficult time following and damaging a feared enemy. Crippling an enemy during or ahead of this skill helps (number 3 on axe) Also, an enemy who has swiftness while you don’t will obviously out run you, so it really does help to cripple them.

ALSO, fear me can be blocked, blinded, evaded etc.

Because fear me is such a powerful skill with a long cooldown (80 seconds), you will want to try to bait out an enemy’s stun breaker. To do this, you have shield bash(shield 4) and pin down (longbow 5).

“But what if they have more than 2 stun breakers? Shield bash is only a 1 second stun. WAIT. Pin down is just an immobilize, why would they even waste a stun breaker on it?”

Well, pin down is as long as fear me: 4.25 seconds of immobilize. That’s a very long time to be sitting still and taking damage from a killing machine like yourself. They will likely use a stun breaker like shadow step, roll for initiative, lightning reflexes, blink etc. just to get the hell away from your massive damage.

Also, a little dirty secret that I didn’t mention earlier. When sigil of paralyzation is used with a hammer or shield, the stuns don’t go up by just 15%. Earthshaker normally lasts 2 seconds. With this sigil, it now lasts 3 seconds. Shield bash will last 2 seconds instead of just 1.

Frenzy: Use this skill at your discretion. It can turn hopeless fights in your favor and it can also wreck you. Also, using this as a stun breaker is a really, really bad idea. CC is usually followed by damage. Taking 25% more of it is not good for your health.

Healing surge: This skill gives you full adrenaline mid fight when you use it. It also heals more than mending does. I somehow find it more valuable than curing two conditions(or practically all of them if you have the trait to remove cripple etc. in strength). That’s just me though, feel free to experiment.

Why not endure pain? Feel free to use this. I have tried to get this out of my build because I feel that frenzy and fear me have more utility. You are a glass cannon. You cc and do damage. Endure pain may help you stay in the fight longer, but it usually won’t due to the fact that conditions still damage you while you are in it. A well placed fear me can actually do more than an endure pain in my opinion.
———————————————

TLDR; 30/0/0/10/30
Strength: V, X, XII
Tactics: VI
Discipline: V, VI, XI
Longbow(fire sigil) + Axe(fire sigil)/shield(sigil of paralyzation)
Berserker’s amulet
Lyssa runes
Utilities: Healing surge, balanced stance, fear me, frenzy, signet of rage
—————————————————————

Major traits
Strength V, X: Damage.

Strength XII: Popping signet of rage grants you berserker’s stance. This grants you a little over a full adrenaline bar in combat. If used outside of combat, it will get you exactly up to a full adrenaline bar.

Tactics VI: Increased damage per boon is great as you will constantly be getting a bonus 6% damage. Here is the real kicker though: when you pop lyssa, you get all 9 boons in the game. That means 18% more damage while aegis is up, 16% while it is not. Having that kind of burst for 5 seconds can be really quite painful for your enemy.

Discipline VI: Having your elite up more often is great. Fury is amazing for damage, and swiftness is great for mobility and staying on your enemies. You don’t realize how good these two buffs are until you have your elite on cooldown. 5 stacks of might is good too. This trait also means that your runes of lyssa will get more chances to proc.

Discipline V: Damage. This trait is especially flexible. Here are some things you can replace it with: VI(100% rally on vengeance kills),VII (vigor on stance usage). You aren’t limited to these.

Discipline XI: This trait is not to be replaced with any other one. Please. For the love of god, do not replace it. Having your MAX burst skills cost only 2/3 of your adrenaline bar instead of 3/3? Yes please. Having them recharge even faster? Even better.

Minor traits
Strength
You damage foes at the end of a dodge roll. This can be pretty decent damage. Nothing spectacular, don’t worry too much about landing it.
Burst skills restore endurance This trait is often overlooked. This is a free energy sigil every time you pop a burst skill. I personally don’t keep track of this, but it is nice to pop combustive shots while running the orb in spirit watch so that you have more dodges.
Get a damage bonus when endurance is not full Nothing spectacular, but it’s nice anyways. It’s a 3% damage boost.

Tactics
Gain 5 extra toughness per level while reviving It can’t hurt to have an extra 400 toughness while reviving, right?

Discipline
Gain 5 strikes of adrenaline on weapon swap Nice passive trait.
Fast hands One of the best minor traits in the game. Combined with the adrenaline on swap minor trait, you will simply gain adrenaline by swapping weapons as often as possible in a fight (which you will likely be doing).
Gain might for 10 seconds on weapon swap Again, nothing spectacular, but it doesn’t hurt either. Until someone uses corrupt boon….(I’m looking at you, necromancers)
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Sigils

My sigil choice was meant to produce the most damage. Fire has only slightly less damage than air while being a large aoe effect instead of single-target. That makes it better than air in my book (even if it is a duel. It means minions and clones take more damage).

The sigil of paralyzation is meant to make shield bash last longer. It is explained a bit later.
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Rune choice

Lyssa runes are fantastic as they give you all the boons in the game for 5 seconds every time you pop your elite. They also clear all of your conditions.

The fact that this rune is so good makes your elite very versatile. Your elite now grants you 5 seconds of stability, a full condition clear, over a full bar of adrenaline in combat, swiftness, fury, might, and a few other boons. Use it wisely.

Just as a side note here, aegis combined with stability and a full condition clear mid fight is really powerful. An aegis can block something crucial like an earthshaker or a cloak and dagger, even a kill shot. You know what I’m saying. The 5 seconds of stability is unexpected and will make people waste ccs on you.
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Vidal.5384:

I would have to disagree with the above. I think the spirit weapons all have their uses in specific situations. I have used spirit hammer since release in spvp and it has never done me wrong. Sword is not worth it unless you go for burning spirit weapons. Shield works amazing against all range and will force them to play on your terms. Bow is a little eh but maybe for a support build.

I love activating spirit hammer to stun a reviver while I finish off his buddy.

I think most people just don’t know how to use them effectively like the above post. You expect it to do your job perhaps? It is not a pet that can tank your enemy. That’s your job.

This is true. A good spirit weapon guardian is very, very powerful in tpvp/spvp. People just aren’t playing them well. However, I would probably not use spirit weapons in pve groups (other than the shield). There are many more useful skills that a guardian has for that.
For WvW (not speaking from experience), I would still use spirit weapons for smaller battles, but I would likely swap them out for zerg fights. Sanctuary and wall of reflection are amazing.
Personally, I believe that spirit weapons should be invulnerable (or at least much more tanky) in WvW and Pve.
Also, the sword spirit weapon’s “command” ability is useless. Using it actually decreases the dps of the weapon as it will simply sit there for a while doing nothing after activation.