3
This build focuses entirely on dealing damage, primarily via conditions. Some effort was taken to make sure you can survive more than one direct hit in a Dungeon, but the primary goal of this build is to just dish out as much damage as possible.
This guide will walk you through the construction and reasoning behind my Sword & Axe build. It can readily be used with an Off Hand Sword or Mace if you prefer, but I'll get into why I chose the Axe as my primary pick later. Be sure to read it all the way through before asking questions.
Build Calculator
GW2DB
GW2Skills.net
GuildHead
All Skill Calculators are flawed if you are making a PvE build. They only factor in PvP Amulets for gear, which does not tally up the same as PvE gear. For example, the PvP Amulet shows you get +798 for a Major stat. In PvE or WvW, using Exotic Level 80 gear, your Major stat tallies up to +651. More if you count from the Weapons.
Factor in the fact you can't mix/match and the build calculators are not that helpful for PvE outside of your Traits and Skills.
Skill Build
Weapon Skills
Burst Skill: Flurry
Chain Skills: Sever Artery, Gash, Final Thrust
Savage Leap
Hamstring
Dual Strike
Whirling Axe
This build relies on condition damage to help bring down foes. As such, the Sword for a main-hand weapon is a no-brainer.
The Axe as an off hand is not very popular, but I feel it is important for this build. Being able to rapidly hit 15 times gives us many chances to apply our 'on crit' effects, and it also gives us another source of Fury, which is even more important for all our 'on crit' effects.
You can use this build with a different off hand. I just don't feel they are as useful for your damage output as the Axe will be. Later, I'll show you the numbers to back that up.
Healing Skill
Healing Surge
In my opinion, Healing Surge is the better healing skill for this build. It allows you to quickly build up Adrenaline between bouts of Flurry, and if you already have Adrenaline Level 3 it heals for a superior amount than the alternatives.
You may however, find that the additional Condition removal with Mending to be more useful. As always, adapt to your surroundings.
Utility Skills
"For Great Justice!"
"Shake_It_Off!"
Endure Pain
"For Great Justice!" is an awesome skill for a few reasons. First, it gives you a perpetual bonus, for yourself and all your Allies, to Power and Condition Damage. Then it also gives you a large boost to your Critical Chance for a short time. It also stacks with other instances of itself.
Condition removal can be very important. I personally prefer to bring "Shake_It_Off!" as it affects all nearby Allies as well. Seeing as it also cancels the effects of Knockdown I just find it too useful to leave at home, personally.
Finally, damage mitigation is key to surviving fights against powerful enemies like you will find in Dungeons. Endure Pain is useful in that it gives you a short duration of invulnerability. Between it and Shield Stance you can outright nullify quite a lot of damage before you even have to worry about your Armor rating.
Elite Skill
Signet of Rage or Battle Standard
Signet of Rage is a core skill for most damage builds, and this one is no exception. Fury is an important Boon, and Might is never something you want to pass up. Keep in mind your team however. If players keep going Down, it may help to bring the Battle Standard instead to keep the group moving.
Item Build
For accessibility, I used the generic versions for these items wherever possible. If you are so inclined, you can pick up some of these items (such as the Armor) as Dungeon Rewards. The important thing is the stats on the item, as well as the Runes and Sigils.
Also, it is important to note that you gain the benefit of the set bonus with Runes from your Aquatic Helm even when on launch. I do not know if this is a bug or working as intended, but its been the case since launch and has never been changed so I assume its the latter.
This guide assumes you will have 7 Runes (2 from 1 set, and 5 from another).
Arms
Rampager's Sword of Blood
Rampager's Axe of Earth
Warhorn of Doom or Hydromancy
Armor
Berserker's Armor The Precision, Toughness, Condition Damage version linked here
Gavbeorn Breather
Runes
Superior Rune of the Nightmare x5
Superior Rune of the Afflicted x2; I prefer putting them in my Helmets
Trinkets
Rampager’s Spineguard of the Rampager
Coral Orichalcum Amulet with Exquisite Coral Jewel
Coral Orichalcum Earring with Exquisite Coral Jewel x2
Coral Orichalcum Ring with Exquisite Coral Jewel x2
Total Attribute Bonus from Items
Defense: 1211
Power: 471
Precision: 908
Toughness: 224
Vitality: 0
Condition Damage: 997
Condition Duration: +10% (+15% additional for Bleeding)
Trait Build
Strength (20 Points)
Attributes:
+200 Power
+20% Condition Duration
Minor Traits:
Reckless Dodge
Building Momentum
Major Traits:
Berserker's Power
Dual Wielding
Strength increases your Power and Condition Duration. The latter in particular is of great importance, as your sources of Bleeding are relatively short in duration on their own (typically only 2 seconds base).
Of course, with Bleeding only being a portion of your damage output it pays to increase your Power as well so your direct damage is high enough. For Traits, we focus on increasing this direct damage.
Arms (30 Points)
Attributes:
+300 Precision
+30% Condition Damage
Minor Traits:
Precise Strikes
Critical Burst
Attack of Opportunity
Major Traits:
Deep Cuts
Rending Strikes
Blademaster
Arms increases your Precision and Condition Damage. The latter is important for obvious reasons, but the former is possibly just as important. Critical Hits are essential to most Warrior builds, and this one is no different.
Discipline (20 Points)
Attributes:
+20% Critical Damage
+2% Burst Damage
Minor Traits:
Versatile Rage
Fast Hands
Versatile Power
Major Traits:
Heightened Focus
Signet Mastery or Inspiring Shouts
Probably an unexpected turn, going down the Discipline Trait Line. There are reasons however. For one it gives us a 48 second Recharge on our Signet of Rage, which means perpetual Fury (more on that later) and more Might more often.
It also lets us increase our Critical Hit chance and effectiveness, and most importantly allows us to really take advantage of spamming Flurry.
I should note that if you opt for the Battle Standard over the Signet you will want to take Inspiring Shouts instead. Being able to instantly go to Level 3 Adrenaline by using "For Great Justice!" and other Shouts. With Heightened Focus and Berserker's Power, it can make a huge difference in DPS by keeping your Adrenaline full even after using your Burst skill.
Total Attribute Bonus from Traits
Power: 200
Precision: 300
Vitality: 0
Critical Chance: +10% MH (+10% additional for Burst skills; +2%/5%/9% depending on Adrenaline)
Critical Damage: +20%
Condition Damage: +30%
Condition Duration: +20% (+50% additional for Bleed)
Damage: +5% (+10% additional if target is Bleeding, +2% additional for Burst skills, +12% additional if Adrenaline is full)
Attributes
Base Attributes
Power: 916
Precision: 916
Toughness: 916
Vitality: 916
Crit Chance: 4%
Armor: 2127
Health: 18372
Final Attributes
Note: Includes 3 stacks of Might from "For Great Justice!" and static bonuses from Trait Lines, Traits, Weapons, Armor, Sigils, and Runes.
Defense: 1211
Power: 1587 base, 1692 w/ FGJ
Precision: 2124
Toughness: 1140
Vitality: 916
Condition Damage: 1296 base, 1433 w/ FGJ
Condition Duration: +30% (additional +65% for Bleeding)
Crit Chance: 62% (additional +9% if Adrenaline is full, +10% with main hand Skills, +10% with Burst)
Critical Damage: +20%
Damage: +5% (+10% additional if target is Bleeding, +2% additional for Burst skills, +12% additional if Adrenaline is full)
Armor: 2351
Health: 18372
Mechanics
Be sure to check out my guide on calculating damage found here.
Fury
Perpetual Fury is an option here. Let's look at our sources:
Dual Strike: 2 stacks of 2 seconds each
"For Great Justice!": 1 stack for 8 seconds
Signet of Rage: 1 stack for 30 seconds
Fury stacks in duration, so by opening up with our Signet and FGJ we start off with 8 stacks of Might (or 280 extra Power and Condition Damage) and 38 seconds of Fury.
The first attack skill you want to use is Dual Strike. It has a 12 second Recharge and gives us another 4 seconds of Fury. So we should be sitting at 41-42 seconds of Fury at this point.
In another 12 seconds, use Dual Strike again. We should have 33 seconds left on the clock. 12 seconds later, FGJ and Dual Strike should both be coming off cooldown, so pop both to bump the time back up to 33 seconds remaining.
12 seconds later Dual Strike is recharged and we hit it again. 25 seconds are left on Fury once we use it. 12 seconds later, FGJ and Dual Strike are both once again off cooldown. Pop both to give us 25 seconds back onto the clock.
At this point, when Dual Strike comes off cooldown, the Signet of Rage is off cooldown as well.
Decision time. You can just pop Dual Strike, and make the time remaining 17 seconds. In 12 seconds you can pop FGJ and Dual Strike yet again to make the time go back up to 17 seconds, then in 12 you can give us 9 seconds remaining. Which means you have 33 seconds after your Signet of Rage comes off cool down before you run out of Fury.
Its up to you if you want to spread out the Might bonuses and keep Fury rolling forever (I would) or if you want to wait to start the cycle over again.
Bleed Damage & Duration
Before taking Might into consideration, your Bleed stacks are already ticking over for ~107 damage. With a massive +95% duration for Bleeding (and remember, duration rounds to the nearest quarter second!) your shortest Bleed stacks are ticking over 4 times, and your longest are ticking over 15.
So Gash and Sever Artery are causing 1605 damage from Bleeding before taking things like Might, critical hits (which can give additional bleeding stacks) into consideration. Not bad at all!
Flurry
Your Burst skill of choice. Just how effective is it with this build? I'll show you, both with and without your guaranteed Might bonuses. I'll assume you have a full Adrenaline bar:
Without Might:
Base damage is 442 per hit, 570 after Traits are factored in. But wait, we have a 91% chance to Critical, 111% with Fury (which we'll have from Dual Strike at the very least). That means each hit from Flurry is hitting for 969 12 times against a target with 2600 armor!
With a full Adrenal bar, that's 12 Critical Hits. Several things are going to happen then:
- 4 hits are going to pop Precise Strikes and Rending Strikes.
- 7 hits are going to pop your Superior Sigil of Earth
- 3-4 hits (3.6 hits, lets be conservative and round to 3 instead of to 4) are going to pop your Superior Sigil of Blood.
The Sigil of Blood is giving you 1300 Health, and presumably doing 1300 damage (via Life Steal). Its got an internal Recharge of 2 seconds though so at most its going to go off twice during Flurry.
So total damage, and granted this is spread out over 10 seconds from various sources, the total damage done by Flurry is 26517.
With Might: (FGJ, SoR)
If you popped FGJ and your Signet, things are even better. You are looking at 520 damage base, 670 with traits. Factor in your over 100% critical hit chance and you are looking at 1139 damage per hit.
Your Bleeding stacks hit even harder as well, with a whopping 2049 Condition Damage if you have 8 stacks of Might on. Each stack of Bleeding is ticking over for 145 damage each!
Doing the math as previously done, we're looking at 9280 + 9135 = 18415 damage from Bleeding.
Putting it all together you get a whopping total of 33383 damage from Flurry.
Note that I left out any modifiers from your Rending Strikes in both cases because I'm lazy, so you are likely doing even more damage against heavily armored targets. And you can reliably do this every 10 seconds (especially if running Inspiring Shouts instead of Heightened Focus, which still leaves you at 102% Critical Chance with Flurry).
Secondary Weapon
I prefer a Warhorn for a secondary weapon with this build, though sometimes you will need to bring a ranged weapon (I suggest Longbow as per usual for condition builds). Because of when you would be using the Warhorn, a Sigil of Doom or Hydromancy would work best.
Hydromancy Freezes enemies, reducing their attack speed and movement speed and so on. Given you'll generally switch to the Warhorn when you need to run or cause Weakness, it is a good pick I feel.
Doom causes Poison for 5 seconds. With our Duration bonus that ends up being ~6.5 seconds and a base tic of 213.6 damage (more with Might). Since it ticks every second, you are looking at about 1300 damage caused to each enemy near you just for switching to the Warhorn. Not too shabby.
Notes
This build is still a work in progress. I want to lower the Precision by about 130-140 (137 to be exact). This will give us a 51% base critical hit chance, which lets us take full advantage of ever Trait taken in this build to increase the Critical Hit chance.
The alternative is to drop Heightened Focus for Inspiring Shouts, so that we can keep the Adrenal level high for Berserker's Power essentially all the time
I haven't decided where to go with that yet..
Edited by Cowmonaut, 25 October 2012 - 09:46 PM.
