Guild Wars 2

I’m running MH sword with Leg Specialist and Bolas. Tonight, I noticed when I landed Bolas and closed with Savage Leap, the Leg Specialist proc reset the Immobilize to 1 second… it didn’t add to the duration like I expected it should. Can someone else give this a test to make sure I’m not crazy? Bug reproduction is easy. Just Bola a target then Savage Leap into it with your Leg Specialist proc ready to go.

Thanks for the video! The last fight made me happy, then sad. =(

Daniel Warren.4968:

Veritas.6071:

Here is a chart I made. It may be helpful since the discussion has touched on toughness mitigation levels. Horizontal = Armor Vertical = Damage received. 100 – the number shown will give you % mitigation at that Armor value.

Also, a question for you because I’m away from my PC and can’t test for a couple more weeks. Does the burning block add 1 second on every strike? Or does it refresh the current stack to 1 second? From what you said, it adds 1 second, but that isn’t how I remember it working.

Thanks for the graph. So going by this, if I pop my dolyak signet and lose my thick skin, I’ll still be around 3200 toughness, which seems to be the ideal level others have mentioned.

And from the tests I’ve done (pve and wvw), multihit attacks stack burning for every strike. So a zerker warrior frenzying with hundred blades should add about 8 or 9 seconds of burning. This is also true of any wells or fields you might be standing in. But again, I’m not sure if the burning damage is being increased as my might stacks increase, so I need to do more testing.

Sure man. I should have been more specific. 100 – the number shown will give you the % mitigation above 2127 (base heavy armor), not overall mitigation.

As balance changes and armor skins continue to trickle in, are we going to see any adjustments to the ability to alter Legendary weapons? Maybe the ability to dye or some kind of transmutation system? Some players invested a lot to achieve these pieces of gear. It seems like the fruits of their labors should be given some flexibility to remain aesthetically pleasing and effective in an ever changing gaming environment.

Here is a chart I made. It may be helpful since the discussion has touched on toughness mitigation levels. Horizontal = Armor Vertical = Damage received. 100 – the number shown will give you % mitigation at that Armor value.

Also, a question for you because I’m away from my PC and can’t test for a couple more weeks. Does the burning block add 1 second on every strike? Or does it refresh the current stack to 1 second? From what you said, it adds 1 second, but that isn’t how I remember it working.

Good advice from Brigg. I understand his advice to have Power be your secondary stat, but I suggest Precision. Having a high crit chance on Sword and Longbow 3s will help you out a lot with landing them for big damage. Plus, you’ll get more opportunities to proc bleeds/sigils. I can’t use gw2skills.net here otherwise I’d review your build in detail. Sorry. If you want to post it with another site or outline it, I’ll gladly take a look.

Warlord.9074:

Its pretty good damage. The vid is pretty cool but your only telling half the story. I remember a few times seeing your run away I think it was you from my rifle warrior. Id get the jump on you from range and your so glassy that one of my single vollys destroyed your HP. Ive run a similar build with the burst mastery its pretty good, but Ive ran will all zerker gears and all ascended zerkers, and I havent hit numbers like that except on Robes, or glassy medium armor tagets. Never hit that high on a tanky guardian with protection or even a really tanky warrior with over 3k armor.

I want to say your build is very bad dude, not because i troll or flame, but your bigest weakness is getting CC and snared if that happens your going down especially if you get ganked. After seeing your build in the calcualter, im confident to say that the majority of the players you killed were bads, knowing that CC would of shut you down. You also are not even using mending so you have no condi removal whatsoever. If you actually ran into a good bunker ranger or anygood bunker Condi class i think you would drop pretty fast especially if they were ranged and snared you and droped a ton of condis on you. You dont even have stabilty, so if you get knoced down in a good hammer chain or anything like that your dead. You got one stun breaker, and a shield. Maybe you can break the stun then block then shild bash and evescerate and hope that kills the enemy. But shield bash only works against bad players. Most people that are smart trait for an automatic stability or somthing if they get stunned.

I think it’s important to remember that no build walks into every fight at an advantage. We could “what if” every build on every class because they all have a counter. If they don’t, they get adjusted because counters are part of balance. Otherwise, there is no build variety.

From what you’ve said, really the only accurate recommendation anyone could give is go with Knights gear mix for power or Rabid mix for condi. It’s best if you post a link to a build and ask for a critique. That way, we have something to go off of. I could throw out 10 builds, and it’s quite possible none of them would be close to what you want. We’d just be wasting our time.

I ran Healing Signet and Dwayna Runes(Rune of the Water works well too) in the past. Those paired with a traited 16 second CD make it one of our strongest heals provided you are popping it every 16 seconds, which is the problem. That means that every 16 seconds, you aren’t DPSing for 1.25 seconds… it gets very tedious in an offensive role.

Contrary to popular belief, the best way to get healing outside of a full support role is to take the base source. We don’t have anything with a coefficient over 1.0 so it’s a weak stat to invest in. Meanwhile, Vitality provides 10 HP for every 1 stat point which is equal to a coefficient of 10.0 (I’m not advocating Vitality, just merely illustrating the low value of Healing Power outside of a heavy heavy support build). I made an adrenaline sitting build once that used Adrenal Health, Healing Shouts, and Runes that proced a heal and it still took me 30 seconds for my heals to surpass an equal investment in Vitality.

I honestly think your build is too defensive but since you said you wanted to role play, I tried to preserve most of your choices and only made tweaks that would yield legitimate improvements, not, “I think you should do this improvements”.

If you don’t want to run Berserkers, I think you should focus on Power, Toughness, and Precision while avoiding Vitality. I’m not a fan of Vitality because it once it’s gone, it’s worthless and you’ll never have enough HP to simply eat damage. Avoidance is the key in GW2. I only take Vitality when it is an unavoidable by product of Valk or Soldier gear.

Regarding Cull the Weak, you won’t be dealing with a bunch of movement impairing CC in PvE. Meanwhile, both your Hammer and Warhorn have weakness attached to one of their attacks for an easy to achieve +5% damage with either set. If you want condition removal for PvE, I recommend Runes of Lyssa, Signet of Stamina, Mending, Cleansing Ire, or Lemongrass Poultry… not necessarily in that order.

Another change you may consider is Healing Surge -> Mending or Healing Signet. From the looks of your build, I’m guessing you will make liberal use of Earthshaker. Running Healing Surge works in PvP where sometimes you need a burst on demand, but in PvE, where mobs are brimming with HP, sustain is the name of the game and that comes best to warriors through avoidance and lots of HPS… and a below stage 2 heal with Healing Surge is weaker than both Mending and the (Healing Signet passive assuming little Healing Power investment).

Few healing sources without significant investment and limited options for access to burning make those two stats less useful to us than other classes, and without making good use of those, you’d be better served specializing by going Knights, Clerics, heavier Condi or something with Critical Damage. That said, I believe we can make good use of that type of gear but not the the degree of Eles or Guards. I expect to see some really strong builds from those two classes and probably Engies.

If I was running X/X/15/30/x in an off DPS/off Support role, I’d use them, but what I’ve learned from most MMOs is that an off/off class is usually just getting carried. You’re good enough to take some pressure off the mains but ultimately, success and failure is tied to them; not you. This is all in a pvp setting of course. In pve, anything works for most people unless they are doing top top top tier content.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-u;4RKVM0U4cL-60;9;4JEO-927-3;059;25;0L-F8SJF1t_MTt_MTNoFd0-NW9WYT8vV0X5Y8ZG4La6g0Q-5VW5PcW5P;9;9;9;9;9;4VH-6M

Helping someone carve out a build based solely on effectiveness is pretty tough… balancing that with the flavor of role play makes it even harder. I did my best to leave your build mostly intact. Feel free to ask for any clarification on choices.

dooger.2640:

I tried a build in spvp, that I would normally dismiss as garbage and not even look at.

To my surprise it worked better than I thought it would.

A lesson for many

Thanks for the video. It’s always fun to drop a guy who’s not expecting to take 11k+ damage.

TheGuy.3568:

You know what i do not even disagree, but too my knowledge most if not all auto attacks that chain use their third hit for the big DPS skill in the chain. While I do agree it’s a nerf it seems more like they just brought it inline with other skills.

Before, looking only at 1H weapons, Sword had mobility, Mace had CC/defense, Axe had high flat damage. Axe still does more damage than Mace and even Sword, but the flat damage is what helped alleviate the problem of its atrocious mobility. To me, Axe said, “You made the mistake of letting me close. Time for you to die.” Now, it says, “You made the mistake of letting me close. Please hold still.” That relatively flat damage across the entire auto-attack did a lot to offset its inability to guarantee high time on target; because when you were on target, you got guaranteed results. That’s not exactly the case anymore.

There are quite a few options for getting Warriors to move quickly now. Signet of Rage, Warrior’s Sprint, GS, Sword, Warhorn, Dogged March + Melandru/Hoelbrak + Lemongrass. If you run up against a warrior running all of these, you can probably catch him, but you won’t hold onto him, and you’ve only got so many movement cooldowns.

They each have a purpose. With full adrenaline, Healing Surge is our strongest heal. Below Stage 2, the only thing weaker in HPS is the active on Healing Signet. If you are running a build that sits on adrenaline, this will most likely be your heal. If you are running something built around lots of bursting, there are better options unless you are using it to fill your bar. I’ve seen some videos where warriors initiate a fight with the heal just for the full adrenaline. If you can avoid heavy damage for the first 30 sec, that isn’t a bad tactic.

Conversely, Mending is probably our safest and most versatile heal that serves well in just about every build. It is especially strong when paired with Restorative Strength because CC condis are removed first; which often helps Mending get to those groovy damaging condis.

Even Healing Signet has it’s merits, but that’s probably best saved for another post.

Rifle is single target burst (line AoE w/ Crack Shot).

If I’m with a Zerg, I auto-attack someone close and mouse over their players til I find someone hurting. Next, Volley or Kill Shot depending on the situation.

However, I’m typically roaming. I’ll usually go SoF -> Volley while closing. How they respond is what dictates my next decisions. If they try to run, I switch back to rife, Volley to bait dodges -> Cripple and pursue.

Most of the recommended numbers people throw out are just that, recommended. There are Warriors that play at 2127 armor who do well, and Warriors that play at 3300 armor that do well. Different builds succeed in different areas, but in a non-competitive WvW scenario, you aren’t building around one another, and if you get focused, no one is there to support you, so just play how you like.

Anyway, I can’t see Olba’s build because it’s on GW2skills, but if you want to buff up your precision, there are ways to do it without totally altering your build. Examples: Take Heightened Focus over Burst Mastery, Precision Oil instead of Power Stone, swap in Knights trinkets for your Soldiers, take Deep Strike over Furious Speed.

Lots of these changes have solid arguments for why they may work:

Running Crack Shot and Furious at high crit will allow you to crit multiple targets for huge adrenaline gain. It’s possible that you will still be able to use Kill Shot as often as you like but with a 15% increased crit chance.

I could do the math for the switch from Power Stone -> Precision Oil, but if your build is centered around 100% crit with Kill Shot, having max effective power is secondary to having 100% burst crit, and this is an easy change.

Knights over Soldiers will be a significant change to your build. You’ll have lots more Toughness but at the expense of Power, and with Kill Shot’s roughly 2.05 skill coefficient at level 3, you’ll see a significant drop in spike damage, but that loss could be offset by using Power Oil.

— More on Knights Trinkets/Power Stone later

Take Deep Strike over Furious Speed. This is another easy change. I run 4 Signets and they are so situational, it isn’t difficult to maintain at least +80 precision. I think your build could easily maintain 120. If you want to make up for losing that Swiftness, grab a Warhorn.

If you do decide to go for a 100% Kill Shot build, my recommendations are:
-Furious Speed -> Deep Strike
—Shield -> Warhorn if you want to recuperate the Swiftness availability.

-Power Stone -> Precision Oil
—*note mentioned earlier: If you won’t always be running the Oil, getting Knights Amulet and Rings over Soldiers can replace this step. You’ll have 100% burst crit with or without food but can use a Power Stone to buff spike damage.

-Burst Mastery -> Heightened Focus

These changes will give you a 91% flat crit chance with Fury and 3 Signets up; very do-able in your build, and combined with Critical Bursts minor (+10% burst crit chance), 101% crit chance on Kill Shot.

All of this while maintaining your previous build’s exact level of tankiness.

Ogre.1750:

Veritas, I used to rant a lot about this, b4 the Lemongrass poultry was introduced (flat out best choice atm on current wvw meta imho). Thing is the mango pies are the safe bet food… and especially good if you are piling regen effects on your char (88+world buffs per second is BEAST) Think about it… they have no condition to give u benefit, theyll always be there, ticking, whereas your on kill food will fail you when kitten hits the fan, or when you are using siege/banging a door. But who can beat the mitigation of -40% cond duration honestly :/

PS-Dolyak runes SUCK, in case someone had a brainfart. Its known to happen to the best of us, chill. 30/s not worth it vs other choices.

Haha sounds good. Thanks for the reply. -40% condi duration is insane. I’m hoping it doesn’t go the way of the Omnoms.

Hey Ogre, I really enjoyed this video as well as some of your others. You mentioned you used to run Mango Pies. I run them also. Would you mind elaborating on why you ran them? I’d be interested to hear what you have to say.

Having different stats on only your weapon isn’t going to make a significant impact. It would be more beneficial to choose weapons stats that have synergy with your entire build.

literalirony.7591:

So with all the debate between 30/0 and 30/25, I have a new favorite build in the patch- 30/30/0/10/0. It mains GS and on swap is the rifle (obviously taking that 5 points and getting rifle mastery). The reason is that I just love the warrior’s rifle skills- it’s incredibly handy to be able to back off and ranged down a foe and though my volleys don’t hit for 30k I have seen them do 20k.

All that aside I have a mathematical question. Per the title, when using a rifle and with 3 bars of adrenaline for 15% higher damage, is it worth it to kill shot? Kill shot has a moderately long cast of 1&3/4 seconds but I have seen it hit for upwards of 20k. To further complicate matters is it worth it to kill shot at 1 bar of adrenaline, 2 bars? There might not be easy answers but I’ll be happy with any feedback, thanks

Edit: forgot to mention this is PVE.

Haha, nice edit.

Puandro.3245:

To answer your PvE question, no its a damage loss unless you instantly refill your adrenaline with your heal or signet of fury.

What he said ^^^

Aside from Signets, you’re left with just Banners, Shouts, Stances and Physicals. I would recommend you try out shouts. FGJ is super popular; as well as SiO and OMM. Additionally, Fear Me is a fantastic “oh crap” button.

As far as weapon choice, it’s so personal that it’s difficult to say. If you want to play with condis, you can try Sword/X and Longbow; those also work well in power builds.

Maybe revisit the Hammer but don’t go so deep into the Defense tree.

If you decide to go with shouts, 30 points into Tactics can get you healing shouts, but you can also take Empowered/Empower Allies/Desperate Power in your Adept and Master slots so your damage isn’t terribly handicapped. Also, Inspiring Shouts in the Discipline tree can help you generate some extra Adrenaline for managing our mechanic.

That looks a lot more competitive.

It’s 93% reduction to Cripple, Chill, and Immobilize; 60% reduction to everything else. So ya, it’s a considerable reduction to incoming conditions; both damaging and impairing.

Stasticeel.2745:

Thank you for your feedback. The message i get is that the biggest survival problem is in sPvP, this part is the least interesting to me, as i focus on pve, wvwvw zerg maybe some roaming with a few people. So the latest may give me some problem if i do not pay attention.

I played some mesmer in pve, they are in the same boat i guess? They can handle themselves but it is hard work?

Anyway, i don’t mind active dodging and playing around with my skills kiting, etc… Way more fun then just standing and press 1.

Also, are there any traits i should go for in my early levels as i will just be doing personal story and map completion in pve? Or point me to a guide, if it aint to much trouble.

Cheers~

All of our low level “cheats” have been adjusted. The two things I would recommend for low level PvE are mobility (Warrior’s Sprint, Sword, Warhorn, GS, Signet of Rage) for travel and high damage for killing. Those two things and experimenting with all the weapons/utilities/traits will help you have a smooth ride to 80 and also to be prepared for focusing on refining your build since you’ve, hopefully, discovered a preferred playstyle.

Nekroseth.5186:

Now that you mention it, i misght should have done that.
Whell i think…my priority is a bit complicated.
1, I think i want something, that gives me the feel, i am a part of the Gw world. When i see the Norn intro and the Guy with the axe and shield, i can picture myself as part of it.
Or when the krati swim up in hordes and you have to defend the beach…not sure what class can i picture there. But i think its a tipical stand alone hero tipe character, like warrior or guardian. ( the thing is strange, trough i find those 2 best as theme for that, but in gameplay ele,necro and mesmer offered the best as stand alone to me)
2, As second i would put the looks. The whole reson i dont play engineer is the “kits” and because they dont realyl even use the weapons they can. (not like they have so many). While warriors can use a lot of weapons, and you can create a lot of styles and themes for your character. Not to mention the heavy armor. And warrior is the only class (besides engineer) that can use rifles.
3, My third place is the gameplay. My priority is world map events, dungeons (but only for obtaining gear and item skins) but i am sure i will spend a lot of time in those “random arena”s. Or how you call them? Spvp? Where its 10v10? Propably…Maybe later when i got my character a bit maxed ill participate in gvg that is coming soon.

I guess thats all. I wanted to say :“ranged support” but i realized since bynow, thats not the same like in Lol or other mmorpgs.
There are many things i like in other classes like, collectible pets on ranger, or the fast phased combat on rogue, or the engineers all araund support, but in the end, i keep ending up rerolling anything i start.

Well the warrior can bring nearly unparalleled offensive support to a fight. So if you want to play an Axe/Shield Rifle wielding warrior passively increasing your allies’ power, bellowing offensive shouts, and tactically choosing banners; all while simultaneously healing your party, you can do that.

If you want to run something more standalone, we have great damage which helps dispatch your foes quickly; combine that with a few additional sources of healing (shouts, sitting on Adrenal Health, Mango Pies) and you can be a regenerating Axe/Axe Berserker that grows more damaging as he gets closer to death.

Or a Sword/Shield Knight who knocks his foes around the battlefield inflicting deep wounds which slowly bleed your opponents dry until you deliver the Final Thrust.

Or a combination of all of these, or something totally original.

The only limitations in PvE are those that are imposed on every class. We can only have so many stats and so many traits. It isn’t until you get into PvP where some builds become preferable, but that holds true in every MMO I’ve ever played.

Also, I don’t know if you’re a member of a community/guild, but if you aren’t, I’d encourage you to shop for one. Sometime it’s hard to feel like a part of the world when you have no one to quest/dungeon run/pvp with; no group to bolster, no friends to defend, no heros to lead.

Okay, so a couple guidelines:
-The most efficient source of critical damage comes from upgrade slots on trinkets. For that reason, I would run something with Critical Damage in your trinket upgrades, and if you want to makeup the toughness, find points somewhere else. I can help you with that if you want.

-Healing Power works if you have multiple ways of using the stat, but this build doesn’t. Let me do some math for you:
Healing Signet has about a 3.3% passive scale with healing power and an approximately 50% active scale.

So, your investment into Healing Power will net you 569×.033 = 18.7 passive hp per second.
and an addititional 569×.15 = 85.35/3 = 28.45 hp per second from Adrenal Health. For a grand total of (rounding up) 19+29 = 48 hp per second. (even activating the signet on cooldown will put you at about this number)

An equal investment in Vitality would net you 5690 hp. It will take your healing 5690/48 = 118.5 seconds or nearly 2 minutes to equal the amount of hp you’d gain from putting those points into Vitality.

I’m not saying put them in Vitality… I’m saying the Healing Power isn’t helping your build. You should either pick different gear or pick up more sources that utilize that stat.

As far as your traits, I’ll point out:
If you trade Crack Shot for Opportunist, you’ll easily have 100% up-time on Fury, but some players don’t mind the down-time so that’s personal preference.

Also, I’m not a huge fan of Destruction of the Empowered. You could use those 5 points to get something like Last Stand, Cleansing Ire, or Furious, but again, that’s personal preference.

Beyond that, nothing else is popping out at me.

So to sum it up:
Strong recommendations:
-Get Critical Damage trinket upgrades
-Drop your Healing Power

Considerations:
-Crack Shot -> Opportunist for 100% up-time on Fury
-Destruction of the Empowered -> Last Stand for extra hard-CC prevention, Cleansing Ire for Adrenaline gain/condi removal, or Furious for more Adrenaline gain.

Warrior has some pretty good build variety. I didn’t see you mention what you’re looking for in a class; otherwise I’d offer you my opinion and some direction. So what exactly are you wanting to do?

To mathematically show you the decrease in effective power when you expend your adrenaline, we’d need your entire build. Traits, gear, food. Everything. I can only use this build site.

As far as my opinion without math, I only use Killshot on runners, distracted targets, or thieves in anticipation of stealth. It’s a strong skill if you can get it to land, but against solid players who are still “in the fight”(not distracted or overwhelmed), you’ll commonly see it avoided or even reflected; in which case you could have used that time to DPS and move into better position to use your GS. So, to answer your question directly, I wouldn’t use it as a part of a damage rotation. I would only use it on targets of opportunity and never below level 3 unless I know the shot has a legitimate chance of downing the enemy.

The one exception to not using it in a rotation comes against D/D serker thieves. If I see them doing their “thief” thing to another player, I SoF -> Volley -> as soon as he starts to break off his attack -> que Killshot in anticipation of Hide in Shadows.

I would stay clear of Healing Power unless you have several sources such as healing shouts, Adrenal Health, or reliable access to Regeneration (which you won’t at 11). With our strongest Heal(#6 skill) coefficients being around 1.0, you’d have to use your heal 10 times to get the amount of HP equal to 1 point of Vitality. The best way to stay alive on a warrior is to not get hit at all. Unless speced heavily into support, we don’t have the tools to facetank anything above trash mobs, and even with significant investment, you won’t be laughing at Champions… maybe a chuckle here and there against Vets.

Check out this guy’s video. He has a pretty neat support build that might give you some inspiration. You can always do some tweaking to get it to fit your personal style.

Silver.4798:

I guess the best thing here would be to have 2 sets of armor and switch between the two… The condi build I have to say excels in solo play when doing map completion, the zerker warrior just dies too kitten much on his own to be a pleasant experience when PvE-ing. But I agree in dungeons if someone else is running bleeds that condi build becomes a lot less efficient. Blaaah.

There is no need for multiple sets. There are plenty of gear combinations capable of giving you good DPS, either direct or condi, and not leaving you as squishy as a full berserker.

We’d need to know your full build to give you effective power. Power, Precision, Crit Damage without traits and then tell us exactly what traits you want in each setup.

The way the increase in bleeding damage is represented here can be misleading, and the author is using different numbers than the wiki. However, because I’m away from my gaming PC, I cannot test who is right. The wiki says base bleed should be 42.5 dps, his post assumes 40 dps. So let me use his numbers to give an example.

Level 80 toon, base 0 condition damage, adding 100

Bleed: 0.5 * Level + 0.05 * Condition Damage per stack per second
0.5*80 + 0.05*CD
40 + .05*100 = 45
45/40 = 1.125 which is where he gets a 12.5% damage increase. However, it is in relation to the base damage.

Bleeds scale at 5% of condition damage. It is a linear increase. So with an investment of 1000 condition damage, your bleeds will do an additional 50 damage (90dps/stack).

The guy knows what he’s talking about but for someone who just glances at the math, it’s easy to assume 100 condition damage will increase current bleed damage by 12.5% which isn’t the case.

To reiterate, 100 condition damage will always increase bleed damage by a flat 5 dps per stack… or 12.5% of 40(base bleed damage assumed in the post).

Gabesz.3895:

I love your new roaming, but i cant see your build at the end of the video.

Build is here.

I agree with Kaga that Dontain’s build was a little wonky. If you want to play condis, go for it. I recommend feeling out what you like (weapons; utilities; balance of crit, power, condi dmg) then putting together a rough build idea and running it by some of the guys here if you’re interested in hearing some constructive criticism.

The one thing I would caution against in running a pure condi build is that, if puging, you sometimes get thrown into the mix with another condi heavy build. When I ran a condi warr, it happened to me a few times, and it made the dungeon really boring and slow because we were condi capping everything. When I switched to a more hybrid build, I still got the same AoE gameplay, but in the event that I got paired with another condi user, I didn’t feel as useless and was able to enjoy some flashy crits.

Okay, well before I start, let me just say this is all just my opinion. Although I don’t PvE now, I spent enough time in dungeons and fractals to grind out a legendary and 4 ascended pieces. In all that time, I never found I needed more than a Mango Pie, 15 points in Defense, and a ranged weapon to stay up in pugs… and I mean faceroll easy stay up. With that amount of regen combined with effective dodges and the ability to DPS at range if needed, you’ll rarely feel any pressure unless your group is on the verge of a wipe.

However, I encourage you to play the way you want, so I’ll only offer changes that will net you substantial gains.

Since you mentioned DPS is important, I think you’ll be happier with something more offensive. For instance, dropping 5 points from Defense and moving it to Arms will net you additional crit chance and 10% more damage to bleeding targets, which is easily achieved. That is no substantial loss to toughness, and you gain a lot of damage, also to be quite honest, I doubt you’ll get much use out of Defy Pain. Note that % damage traits will be modified by critical damage, so on crit they add even more damage.

The only other suggestion I would make is to switch from Warrior’s Sprint to Signet Mastery. I understand your choice there, but Signet Mastery will give you 3/4 uptime on Fury, 5 Might, and Swiftness. That will help you keep your peak damage longer but if you want to run anywhere, you still have the option of just flopping Warrior’s Sprint in for travel purposes.

One last thing, our most effective means of gaining critical damage comes from the jewel slots on our trinkets. For that reason, in the future, I would recommend going with Ascended Trinkets and Backpack that have critical damage as an attribute if you have any interest in DPSing.

Math on some of the most damage PvE builds here.

There is still somewhat of a stigma associated with signet builds, but in my opinion, they are a great way to get lots of crit so you can free up some resources to go defensive.

As far as your build, am I understanding correctly that you will only be using it to run dungeons and other PvE content?

I can only see this site. If you decide to repost, I’ll gladly comment.

Cempa.5619:

I came across a LB warrior in WvW who seemed to be doing well but refused to share his build, he said Anet will nurf the build…

I tried to guess his build from watching him play but not sure:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNAT8ejcONvJPCPMxBE0jroKEwzjkYKIPVh5A-jUCBIMCyUgBiKAO5Jj5QDRteqIas6FYqTER1+DFRrWKgIGDA-w

I think you were getting trolled. There are enough warriors theorycrafting and sharing that some “super secret build” is unlikely to exist. Sometimes players find little nuggets of coolness that may slightly enhance a build, but it won’t make or break you.

One example was the Sundering Mace bug that was recently fixed. Although the tooltip had been changed from beta, they never removed the apply weakness on crit effect, and therefore, it went unnoticed by many warriors that, in a high crit build, mace could easily maintain +15% damage and 100% uptime on weakness. The fact that a lot of people never talked about it is a testament to it not being a game changing tidbit. Meanwhile, mesmers porting through tower walls started as a trickle and within days became the hottest thing since sliced bread because it WAS game changing. If there really is a “Loch Ness” warrior build out there, it’ll pop up.

I think both those builds look really solid for dungeons. Unless you are wanting to min/max, either would work great, and in my opinion, it would come down to, do you want to run sword or axe?

The only thing I notice in the axe/wh axe build is the lack of a ranged weapon and healing sources. If you ever get tagged and you don’t have a party member able to help you heal back up, you may have to leave melee range.

I think another mechanic that plays off of adrenaline would be appropriate. I posted a thread about a second mechanic that could be activated which drained adrenaline over time and halted adrenaline gain while providing a significant boost to toughness. However, from what Sharp said in SotG, it sounds like Anet is thinking about changing up our heals and buffing our HP so I think they’re headed more in the direction of us just eating tons of damage rather than surviving through mitigation.

If you are hanging out in the back with a hammer, you’ll want a sword/GS/reliable source of swiftness for mobility to avoid getting separated. The rear of a zerg is commonly skirted by thieves and roamers looking to pick off stragglers. The hammer alone won’t give you the mobility to keep up and is in a tough spot against good thieves. You’ll either want to disengage or bring utilities/a 2nd weapon set that will help you deal with them.

What Artemis is getting at with staying close to the commander pretty much eliminates your lack of mobility due to AoE swiftness and puts you in a position to use your hammer CC offensively or defensively. As far as targeting the enemy commander, once that blue tag disappears, zergs have a tendency to port back to the commander or fall apart.

ArtemisEntreri.4138:

deadhunger.1290:

should still be ~5secs of retal or more.

personally, im more into passive %dmg reduction than protection (can’t be stripped and possibility to gain protection from external sources)

They could offer a similar trait like Heightened Focus granting 5,10, and 15% damage reduction based on adrenaline levels. The only problem I could see with this is that warriors would feel pigeon-holed into the Defense Tree even more so now for spvp and WvW aspects.

I have more interests in to active ways to mitigate damage. We had passive damage reduction in past other MMOs and feels dubbed down. Anet prided themselves on active combat (evades, dodges, and blocks) so they should maintain that idea.

I’m with you when it comes to being a little apprehensive about putting our sustain in a trait tree. The one thing that seems to be affecting all but the tankiest warriors is difficulty sustaining. By attaching survivability to a tree, especially at the Grandmaster level, we end up in a situation where a large portion of the community would, arguably, feel forced to go for that trait, which for builds not already running 30 in Defense, will come at potentially significant penalties to damage, flexibility, or group support.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about “give this to get that”, but with some of the recent trait changes, the DPS and Hybrids, have already had to give a little. Placing sustain deep into a tree that typically sees a max of 20 points invested by non-tanks has the potential to make the very builds that suffer from sustain issues sacrifice even more of what they need to fulfill their role, damage and flexibility.

Additionally, because warriors don’t have a viable bunker, I would argue that we need sustain across the board, and for that reason, I believe we need a solution organic to the class that comes to all builds without sacrifice.

There are a lot of hammer users on these forums. If you search Hammer, you’ll definitely have a lot to read.

Another option would be, go here and show us the build you’re considering. Also, let us know if you have any “must haves” (3k armor, certain traits, crit chance,…) and a little about how you intend to play the build. For example, if you are ZvZing, are you wanting to be in hammer range as often as possible? or will you stay at range and only push to CC runners?… There are a million variables, so the more info you provide, the more accurately we can respond. I promise you’ll get feedback.

Where you put your points looks fine, but you should tell us what traits you’re taking so we can give better feedback.

I think your traits are fine. I’m not sure what armor you’ll be running, but I’d definitely recommend Berserker or Knight gear with Berserker Trinkets and Exquisite Rubies. You’ll want to get that crit chance up to 50% for 100% crit against stunned foes. You’ll also want one of those to achieve the serviceable damage you mentioned. Another more tanky option would be Soldier’s gear, but you won’t have as much crit.

Also, running boon duration runes(Sup Water Sup Monk Maj Monk or Water) will allow you to get up to 70% duration including your tactics tree. That will have some great synergy with your Defense tree potentially providing 2 additional unique boons, and simultaneously increase your support while maintaining that damage boost from Empowered. Or you may want to go with Melandru / Hoelbrak

Two sigils you may want to check out are Sigil of Impact and Sigil of Paralyzation. Also, Sigil of Fire is popular.

Food, I swear by Mango Pie. Or for conditions, Lemongrass is huge right now.

Your build reminded me a lot of this guy’s build found here. I would definitely hear what he has to say.

I can’t see gw2skills.net, but if you’re willing to build here I can give you some input.

wads.5730:

increasing armor does NOT have diminishing returns.

what you are seeing in the graphs are relative decreases in percent mitigation between every 100 armor.

notice that the armor scale is linear, and the % mitigation is not.

a better way to see this point is that going from 0% to 20% damage mitigation is a 20% increase, going from 80% to 100% is also a 20% increase, however the effect of going from 80-100% is dramatically different.

the higher your % mitigation is, the more you’re getting out of it. percentages can not be compared to linear gains in armor and conclude that you get diminishing returns.

If there were no diminishing returns, X armor would yield Y % mitigation. In GW2, you have to double your armor to halve incoming damage.

212700/2127=100

212700/4254=50

212700/8508=25

Looks like diminishing returns to me. Adding 2127 armor cut incoming damage by 50%. An additional 4254 armor was needed to reduce incoming damage by another 50%.