Guild Wars 2

I target warriors first because a downed warrior is a dead warrior. We have a garbage downed state. So do necros, engies, and rangers.

Brutalistik.6473:

Should I spec points into strength for DW swords instead of arms since condition damage kind of suck for warriors in pvp?

The traits in the Arms tree, 20 and 25 pts in, are pretty solid. If you are going swords, the condition damage isn’t wasted and 10% chance to crit with swords is basically like adding 210 stat points to your toon when you attack with MH or OH sword. If you are running swords, I wouldn’t be afraid of the Arms tree. Just don’t run any cond dmg on your amulet or jewel.

Lokheit and Drawing Guy are blowing smoke. Let’s look at it from a perspective that actually matters.

1200 condition dmg
Bleeding +60dmg/sec/stack
Burning +300dmg/sec

Burning gains 5x the dps from condition damage. .05… .25… the math works out!

But wait! what about stacks?

1 stack of burning = instant max dps from that condition
Bleeding has to be built up.

Damage done over time Bleeding-Burning assuming each row is a 1 second tick with an additional bleed application
1)60-300
2)180-600
3)360-900
4)600-1200
5)900-1500
6)1260-1800
7)1680-1900
8)2160-2200
9)2700-2500

So, taking into account the dps gained from condition damage stacking, it would take you 9 seconds, building up to 9 stacks, and the assumption that no bleeds run their duration or are cleansed, in order to eclipse the dps increase to burning.

But wait! There’s more!

Maybe adding in base damage will help?
Same format

1)102-628
2)306-1256
3)612-1884
4)1020-2512
5)1530-3140
6)2142-3768
7)2856-4396
8)3672-5024
9)4590-5652
10)5610-6280
11)6732-6908
12)7956-7536

With the same assumptions as listed above, you need 12 maintained stacks for 12 seconds before bleeding > burning. No thanks.

And all this discussion to defend a less competitive play-style.
You two are misrepresenting the numbers for the sake of looking smart. Stop misleading the community.

Good video. Very entertaining.

I used to love it. Then I tried the DPS trees. No more tactics for me. Ever.

Saltz.2491:

I liked GW1 skills a lot better than GW2. One had many different weapon skills to choose from to mix and match to make great hit combo’s. Also, ANet should make WvW less zerg combat and more group combat. Example groups of 10 people, so when a buff is hit those 10 people get the buff. Or even guild groups Where if a buff is applied guildies get it first. Plus I feel no guild enteraction at all, really whats the point of a guild. We have no guild keeps no land to call our own just take a keep or tower and move on. Sorry I’m getting off topic. Warroirs should be able to tank 5 people at once. May not be able to kill those 5 but stay up and causing Havoc….Also where is “I will Avenge You” that skill was awesome in GW1, but its not in this game. I bought the game guide and it is in there, but apparently they forgot to put it in the game. Also, why does Great Sword, Axe, Sword and Long Bow get 2 trait skills each, but Rifle, Mace and Hammer get only one……….And Where Is My Great Axe!!!!!!!!!!

“I Will Avenge You” was removed and replaced with “On My Mark”

Stanholo.5394:

Well, here’s the thing about the warrior horn – the Quick Breathing trait, which he almost definitely has, converts one condition to a boon, poison > regen, vuln > prot, weakness > might, confusion > retaliation, etc., and he can do it every 8 seconds. Throw on Soldier runes, and a condition-heavy class is going to have a tough time.

A trick (and I’m not sure why I’m telling you this), make sure that you keep the war crippled/immobilized/chilled, it completely screws up the boon conversion – the conversion will always convert the CC, and the bleeds etc never get removed.

I agree with Stan on that. However, because you are running P/V/T, I’m hoping you don’t count on conditions as your primary damage source. Therefore, it wasn’t his condition removal that beat you. It was more than likely because you matched up your low dps against his naturally high toughness and moderate healing. Vitality is great for countering burst, but against someone who has longevity, it becomes less effective over time than the ability to heal, and you will lose to attrition; if you don’t bring him down. I think the culprit here is your build.

We need your full build. Traits, weapon sets, utilities. Honestly, it sounds like you are too tanky. If he was running something like a dps healing shout build with soldier runes, he’s pretty much your counter. This game is nothing more than a race to 0; if you are tanky and run up against someone with enough heals, you may as well sit down.

Watch these clips. All your statements are addressed in a single video.

http://youtu.be/hByqoWsnz-I?t=7s
Watch 00:07 – 00:30

http://youtu.be/hByqoWsnz-I?t=18m55s
Watch 18:55 – 19:10

So, having seen that, I’m taking away from many of the above posters that:

-Jonathan Sharp has no idea what he’s talking about.
-Some of the top players in the world don’t know what they are talking about.
-100b is OP

Guys, I don’t know what else to say in this debate. There are so many knowledgeable players contradicting what you say. Everyone deserves an opinion, but honestly, not all opinions are created equal.

http://youtu.be/hByqoWsnz-I?t=18m43s
Watch 18:43 – 19:09

http://youtu.be/hByqoWsnz-I?t=20m4s
Watch 20:04 – 20:18

http://youtu.be/hByqoWsnz-I?t=21m24s
Watch 21:24 – 21:44

Let’s ask someone who knows.

Veritas.6071:

http://youtu.be/hByqoWsnz-I?t=18m55s

coglin.1496:

Veritas.6071:

I only had to watch 2 seconds to come back and post this. I don’t think he is referring to rolling around with the LoD hammer train. That is a situation few few few GW2 players will ever have the opportunity to experience. Those warriors are also backed up by their guildies. They aren’t rolling around unsupported.

Complaining about your effectiveness while rolling around unsupported is a crap excuse anyway. That can and will make any class of minimal value in WvW.

That doesn’t change the fact warriors suffer from survivability issues or damage issues depending on which way you build. The reason they work in zergs is because they are able to disengage from combat. However, so can any other class in that situation. Put them in smaller scale stuff and they become much less effective if they are running a balanced build.

Dyroth.5063:

If you are finding you are having a hard time revise how you play.

I only took issue with this statement. The guy comes in here venting about an issue which is pretty legitimate and you say that ^^^. That is basically a polite way to say L2P, and you didn’t offer any help or advice; just snubbed your nose at him. Then you throw up a video based around a niche build in a niche guild as if it means something to more than a small percentage of the warrior community. Lots of guys come to these forums looking for help and they don’t have time to devote to a hardcore guild like LoD, nor do they want to play stun-bot in a PuG zerg. Does that mean they are wrong? No it doesn’t.

Dyroth.5063:

If you are trying to WvW solo you should probably play a thief or maybe a shatter mesmer. Classes excel differently in different areas of WvW. It’s one of those things and find the niche where you can play the class you want to play or find a class to fill the niche you want. Don’t complain when your soup spoon isn’t a better shovel when you try to dig a hole with it.

Good point. So, play a hammer CC warrior or reroll.

@OP I play Axe/Shield/LB and roam with a tanky mesmer. It’s rough sometimes but it can be done. Don’t forget the game is still young. Balance is still being worked out. A month ago everyone played BS thieves. Now it’s D/D eles, venom thieves, and mesmers. Just stick with what you like and let the devs work out the rest. They’ll get it right.

I had never messed with this trait. After reading this post, I went and tried it. My banner hit for 941. I laughed… and I normally never laugh except at Family Guy.

Soooo 941/120s cd = ~7 damage per second from that trait. I know I’m ignoring the comboing, but that doesn’t make it much better.

Sometimes I wonder how when a dev throws out an idea like this someone doesn’t ask, “Are you serious?” I mean honestly, do they even play their game? lol

I only had to watch 2 seconds to come back and post this. I don’t think he is referring to rolling around with the LoD hammer train. That is a situation few few few GW2 players will ever have the opportunity to experience. Those warriors are also backed up by their guildies. They aren’t rolling around unsupported.

Could have been difference in trait point distribution, major trait selection, stats, weapon level, mob type, mob level, mob stats, maybe the mobs got more crits. Lot of variables there.

One thing I can tell you for certain, Axe attacks faster and hits harder than sword with the exception of the sword’s 3rd auto-attack chain. That hits pretty hard. However, the axe just attacks multiple times. So it’s a less bursty attack but you do more damage if you land all 3 parts of Axe’s 3rd auto-attack chain.

Haha it is a rough to earn a living out in wvw. Maining my warrior is a labor of love =)

The only thing that sticks out to me is a flavor difference. OMM is a great single target skill, but if you spend most of your time fighting groups of mobs, you may do better with Signet of Fury or Signet of Might. This will give you more damage to all mobs instead of just the one.

Vulnerability is a great group support condition, but make sure you keep it in perspective if you solo a lot. If you are hitting for 1000, vulnerability is only contributing 10 damage per stack. Not a whole lot.

Well it certainly helps. I only made that suggestion because unless you have a static group where boons are a keystone of your gameplan, it is better to buff everyone’s damage than to add .3 seconds to your 3 second regeneration pulses. In fact, you probably are hardly benefiting from that banner at all. 10% boon duration looks good on paper, but when you do the math, unless you are modifying an already substantially long boon or applying tons of boons, it tends to be a wasted stat.

redcomyn.4651:

I have played both dual swords and dual axes, and for each I had traited for it. I like dual swords better because it was far more survivable than dual axes.

Let’s say I was facing 4 trash mobs. With dual axes, it is mostly single target. It takes time to kill all of those mobs. With dual swords, I can hit 3 of them at once. As a result, I would kill all of the mobs much quicker. Which means I took less damage.

I died a lot more often with dual axes than I did with dual swords. Personally, I am completely convinced that dual swords is far better.

I better add that I am only talking about open world pve, here. I don’t do dungeons or pvp, so I don’t care what works or not with them.

Axes definitely don’t attack single target.
Axe 1: Frontal cone AoE
Axe 2: 360 degree AoE
Axe 3: Single target cripple
Axe 4: Frontal cone AoE
Axe 5: 360 degree AoE
Burst: Single target

Sword 1: Frontal cone AoE
Sword 2: Single target leap
Sword 3: Frontal cone AoE
Sword 4: Single target bleed w/ single target direct damage on rip
Sword 5: Frontal cone AoE if you block
Burst: Frontal cone AoE

You won’t hit those #s in the mists. Just so you know =) You get more stats in WvW and PvE. Just pay attention to what does more damage. Take into account also that Combustive Shot is a DoT field. It isn’t difficult to evade out of it, and you only get max damage if the target stands in it for the duration… which hardly ever happens. It’s great against downed players haha

Damage is calculated by:

Damage done = (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)

Wiki is only showing you a piece of the picture. Beyond that, it gets modified heavily if you have +% dmg traits and gear.

Eviscerate hits hard. It’s a game changer. I hit for about 5k against tanky builds with protection up and 9-11k reliably against more dps focused builds. I’ve reached into the mid-15ks a handful of times, but again… probably just lowbies.

As a side-note, it works wonders against thieves. You can take a bite out of them so big it’s difficult for them to recover. The exception would be p/d venom builds.

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

Veritas.6071:

Stay away from conditions as a warrior. The only damaging condition we apply with regularity is bleeding which has a 5% scale. 100 condition dmg stat = 5 damage per second per stack = bad. Sword does more damage with berserker gear than rampager. That is indicative of condition damage being terrible for us. Don’t go hybrid.

Without condition damage , axes will be much stronger than sword , won’t it ?
Long Bow has the strongest AOE damage , so has its burst.
What are the strongest weapons can I equip ?

Your most damaging weapons will be the axe or GS. I don’t go GS because it relies heavily on 100b to do it’s best damage. Whirlwind Attack is a nice skill but not enough to pull me away from MH axe.

MH axe has all of its damage loaded into its auto-attack. Axe 2 and 3 are just tools to increase damage and control the fight, respectively.

Rifle is the most bursty ranged weapon with its volley and kill shot, but the bow does respectable steady damage with its auto-attack. The bow 3 arching shot can be devastating too. I crit a lowbie once for 11.5k. He was probably a level 1 or something haha, but I was totally unaware that skill was even capable of damage like that. I use the bow 5 immobilize to set up for the bow 3 arching shot and weapon swap to eviscerate. IMO, these two weapons are all about flavor. I actually run a longbow, but I believe myself to be in the minority. I used to use the rifle, and closing with a volley >weapon swap >eviscerate is equally deadly.

If I had to recommend a ranged weapon, I would probably say rifle. I believe it to be a more forgiving weapon. I started with the rifle and played into the bow and still make mistakes with it. I’ve even lost fights because I use the bow, but I’ve also won some fights because I use the bow. The rifle is just a good dependable weapon but a little outside my playstyle.

If you elect to go MH axe, you have to be creative about closing distance due to its lack of a significant gap closer. While I have SPvPed in the past, I mainly WvW. Using terrain mask your approach and holding your SoR til just before you expose yourself go a long way in catching your target in an unprepared state. If I’m unable to pop up within a comfortable distance, I’ll swap to bow, immobilize, arching shot, and I’m on target. If you are zerging, look for players who will need to retreat soon and head that direction. If you can arrive with full adrenaline just before they turn back in retreat, often times you’ll down them; the exception would be if they have a defensive CD in pocket.

If you aren’t stacking any kind of condition damage, I recommend staying away from the bow’s burst. It’s good for area denial, but it isn’t anything great. I run full berserker’s and 0 in arms so my damage with it is pretty meh, but that plays into my build because I hold all my adrenaline for +12% damage and +9% crit so I can crank out melee damage and finish with a shield bash > eviscerate.

And yes. He is referring to mace 5 kd. I’d recommend trying shield. 3 seconds of block and a 300 range gap closer/stun. I often use axe 3 to cripple then shield bash while out of range and immediately que up the eviscerate for a quick 600 range gap closer that crushes a runner. To be clear, I’m not using it to chase. It’s just enough for that last little strain when someone is juuuust out of reach. That technique isn’t preferred over landing the shield bash, but it’s something the mace can’t do.

Stay away from conditions as a warrior. The only damaging condition we apply with regularity is bleeding which has a 5% scale. 100 condition dmg stat = 5 damage per second per stack = bad. Sword does more damage with berserker gear than rampager. That is indicative of condition damage being terrible for us. Don’t go hybrid.

Sounds like you are running the compassion banner from your last statement, “pick it up give a small regen or boost [of] swiftness.” I’m obviously ignorant of your group composition, but you may get more out of the power/cond dmg or prec/crit dmg banners because you are adding to everyone’s dps while maintaining regen vs slightly increasing heals and boon duration.

If you want healing/defense oriented support, just re-roll now to guardian. The best group support a warrior can give comes from heavy CC and making people dead really fast; which I consider great because you are entirely removing a source of DPS from the fight.

Healing shouts are okay, but the only shouts you’d really want to consider blowing on CD are FGJ and OMM. SIO and FM are extremely versatile shouts best saved for certain situations. Also, with heavy healing investment, you are only looking at + or – 2000hp heals per shout. That divided by FGJ and SIO 20sec traited CDs assuming you use them ASAP comes out to roughly 200hp per second per shout. That’s hardly gamebreaking. I’ve fought some good hammer/shout warriors and they definitely fill a nice role, but I’ve never seen one who can heal through my dps, damage me fast enough to scare me off, or CC me away cause I run with BS. That considered, it is my personal opinion, healing shouts are best left alone in favor of more dps or CC.

But to all you shout warriors, I love you guys! Keep on keepin’ on!

I’ve experimented with both. Axes are by far the most damaging for us because their damage is not halved between direct and condition. Therefore, when you get +% damage modifiers, you are maximizing gains. Also, eviserate in a glass cannon build is absolutely nasty! Having said that, I have 1 idea for a sword build, but I know it will never rival what the axe can do. Pros for axes: I’m going to kill you RIGHT now. Pros for swords: mobility and a CC burst. I’m not a huge fan of either off-hand. Axe 4 does some nice damage with a short duration fury and 5 is the whirl finisher good for building adrenaline. Sword 4 can give nice burst, but on a 20 second CD, and accompanied by a 1-block 5 skill, the off-hand sword becomes extremely useless in the event of an evade, blind, block, obstructed, out of range… well, you get the point.

I wouldn’t recommend this. If you want to use a bow without a pet, go shortbow thief.

I haven’t read the whole thread so forgive me if I restate something.

Bleeds only benefit from 5% of your cond dmg stat. So, 100 cond dmg = 5 dmg/sec on your bleeds. That is by far the poorest scaling damaging condition.

Having said that, I recommend gearing for direct damage.

Flurry isn’t a total waste for a direct damage focused build. People seem to ignore the 4s immobilize on full adrenaline. Sure, we have better hard CC in the form of knockdowns and stuns, but I’ve sealed the fate of plenty of invaders with a well timed shield bash followed by a 4 second stay in immobilized-ville.

If you guys inflict many bleeds, 5 more points in Arms can net him 10% more damage. Not terrible, but again, players and traits have a tendency to fall in love. =p

Silly Gaurdian.

1) I’d recommend Bowl of Curry Butternut Squash Soup and Master Maintenance Oil to start.

2) Next, Superior Runes of Rage and 10 points into Discipline for -20% Signet CD. Combined with SoR, this should turn him into a beast for 36 seconds with a 5% chance to gain fury for 30 seconds on being hit. Odds are, that will proc with his survivability and give him about 1 min of good crit chance.

3) Berserker Jewels in accessories for more damage and higher base crit chance.

I would definitely do #1. #2 and #3 could be switched depending on his attachment to traits.

In WvW

I won’t go into detail, but the big problem I see right off the bat is that your best adrenaline gain comes from shouts and EtP. First, in your build, Shouts = 14 adrenaline/25 seconds if you use them on CD. Because your SIO is your only stun break, you won’t want to be popping it all willy-nilly nor when you aren’t conditioned. Second, EtP won’t help you unless you are getting attacked. Therefore, if you aren’t getting hit, wasted trait and lower dps. Additionally, some builds will hit you for substantial portions of your HP pool. In this case, you are screwed because they will burn you down before you get to full adrenaline.

Also, I’m an advocate of Quick Bursts because sometimes you whiff that burst. You want it back up ASAP. Having said that, that trait caters to my build because my Evis is how I take the opponent out of his game-plan. It may not be as useful in your strat.

My advice, find a build that doesn’t need to build steam. You want to go into a fight at 100%; not let some dude beat on you so you can perform at full potential. Range and slippery classes make it difficult to make a living in WvW. Find your playstyle and develop your own build that punishes players who allow you to close distance one time; because sometimes, you’ll only get one shot.

I use Berserker’s Might which puts me in Berserker Stance when I activate my elite. It has been nice so far, but when I’m moving to a fight, I hate watching all that adrenaline bleed off and be wasted.

I’ve tossed this idea around in my head trying to think how it could upset balance, and now I wanted to see what you guys think.

Would it be appropriate and fair if, when we activate an adrenaline gaining skill such as Berserker’s Stance or Signet of Fury, that we have… let’s say a 7-10 second window before we start to see adrenaline degeneration?

I’m hoping a dev will chime in also.

The skill isn’t bugged. The tooltip is wrong. EP is only 3 second duration now, by design. It was in the patch notes.

serivahn.9751:

It is not a completely useless stat; as such, you wouldn’t want to abandon it.
First points in vitality are the ones that give you most benefit. Raising your health by 1 thousand when you have 10 is a 10% increase, while raising your health by 1 thousand while you have 20 is just 5%.

Wait — do all stats have diminishing returns like this?

It isn’t a diminishing return. People represent it the wrong way. 1 vit is always 10 hp. That never changes. Because we have a large base healthpool, people say, “Oh, vit is less helpful for us.”

Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.

One among many “meh” traits/skills/weapon-sets. Luckily, all classes are in the same state.

http://youtu.be/hByqoWsnz-I?t=18m55s

I ran an apothecary shout warrior for about a month in wvw and thought it was the stuff. On a whim, I bought all berserker rares just to try it out… I’ll never go back to a condition build, and if I had a friend who wanted to play a bleed warrior in wvw, I’d do my best to dissuade him.

You have Signet of Rage, activate it. Greatsword is our most mobile weapon followed by 1H sword.

All melee weapons attack in an arch. The only one to my knowledge with something similar to a PBAoE is the 3rd chain on hammer auto-attack. Axe 5 does very little damage, is on a long CD, and doesn’t do hardly any damage compared to axe auto-attack. Mace 5 is a line AoE on a long CD so hardly counts as AoE at all cause you won’t be killing anything with it. And the greatsword? well… it’s the greatsword. Just go with the hammer.

Disclaimer: I only WvW so this may not apply as well in spvp

OP, I was having a similar experience. I tried axe/shield knight, hammer knight, gs knigh, apothecary sword/shield. Each one was okay, but I felt like I was always fighting an uphill battle. I did well enough in a zerg/medium group setting, however that isn’t an indicator of a strong build. Being dangerous 1v1 and small group is.

I always felt like I was just a little out of range, a little too slow, or a little less dpsy and always less survivable. The exception was the gs/fenzy/100b build, but we all know what the deal is with that thing as far as CDs, counters, and flexibility.

Since then, I’ve shifted to full serkers and X/shield. I’ve pretty much ruled out mace because, although with some good traiting, it hits like a truck, you are greatly hampered by blinds, blocks, and dodges due to its slow attack speed. Next, I’m looking at sword and axe.

Basically, I decided, our passive defense is worthless when compared to range, stealth, or insane mobility. Damage avoidance is just wildly superior to mitigation in this game.

Now, I try to achieve damage avoidance through just burning people down. Once you get someone, “on the ropes”, a warrior can be pretty frightening because of our mobility or cc.

You are playing the most bleh class in GW2. Little availability to various conditions, few damage avoidance options, mediocre burst aside from 100b and evis. We are a well rounded class, but in the world of videogame balance, being good at everything means whoever you are fighting is better than you at something. The ones who don’t exploit that advantage… you will probably kill. The ones who do… will probably kill you.

I play the warrior out of love and a past massive time commitment I don’t want to squander. In the current state of the game, if I wanted to always win, I’d play a thief.

This is my biggest issue with Arenanet. They release content, content, content, but much of it is riddled with bugs, and there are still bugged traits and runes which directly affect the competitiveness of unconventional builds in an already narrow meta.

It has only been 3 months, but when flaws with character development in the form of broken traits and runes, poor balancing decisions (meaning viability of weapon-sets and builds; not class balance, as I believe they are working on that) seem to be taking a backseat to the implementation of new buggy pve content.

Having said all that, the fact remains, Arenanet has developed a beautiful product with pretty solid gameplay. That alone will probably keep them alive, but they won’t be getting anymore of my cash. However, I’ll be taking advantage of a free service until the servers go down.

Let’s hope they readjust some of their priorities to include fixing rather than loading us up with mediocre content so I can start monetarily supporting the company again.

Go with Runes of Dwayna for AoE healing and even self heals. Dolyak runes are a waste.

I think it really depends on if you want more damage or survivability. My recommendation, decide which of the two you want and go from there. I have some ideas based on which you choose.

I don’t see a huge problem with your utilities, although I agree with Kyma, a stun breaker is good to have. Balanced Stance is fantastic for breaking stuns and guaranteeing stomps, but that’s personal flavor.

On your traits, if you drop the 10% run speed from Discipline and shift those 10 points into Strength, you gain 100 power and 10% damage all the time from Slashing Power. Although fighting with your rifle isn’t ideal, between it and your CC utilities, I bet you won’t even miss the movement speed.

Finally, I vote for Sigil of Earth on your GS.

I wish they would speed the casting up also. Sometimes I lose positioning in the 3/4 second it takes to fire. That’s partially a L2P issue, but the long cast seems to further complicate a skill which loses lots of it’s lethality at ranges just outside of melee.

With your 20 pts in Discipline, you want some crit. Berserker’s or Knight’s is what i recommend.

Stay away from carrion. You aren’t using much bleeding, and bleeds only increase 5 pts per 100 condition damage. That’s a bad return on stats.

Personally, I’d go berserker’s. You won’t be tanking anything above trash mobs and toughness increases at a flat rate. On top of that, you aren’t healing so your longevity won’t be great in a drawn out fight where you can’t get separation from the enemy. You may as well go offensive and turn up the heat.

Just saw your edit. Survivability wont increase dramatically with stats like tough, vit, healing unless you really load up, and in that case, you won’t kill many players in small scale stuff. If you want to tank, maybe take hammer or mace with some CC utilities so you aren’t totally worthless.