657 replies to this topic

[Lilitu]

Sorry for getting a little snappy with my reply, I anticipated a more heated reaction..
I will give you a proper reply tomorrow when I'm not on my phone

[Dirk Hardpeck]

Brand, on 14 November 2012 - 09:52 PM, said:

Sadly I don't have the equipment for this, nor the time at the moment.
What do you say my faithful thread dwellers? Any chance one of you can post a video showing off the build? (Please have a silky smooth voice! ) I will obviously credit you for it and if several of you make videos I will pick the one I think is best, and you will get credit for the video!

I have also been short on time, but finally acquired the equipment today. I'll see if I can't capture some gameplay footage.

[Brand]

Dirk Hardpeck, on 15 November 2012 - 01:07 AM, said:

I have also been short on time, but finally acquired the equipment today. I'll see if I can't capture some gameplay footage.

Dirk, every time you talk I read your words in Nicholas D. Wolfwood's voice, and it is always the best. I'm not even sure if that is who your profile picture is, but it looks a lot like him.

You have my gratitude sir ^^ Here's hoping your voice is as silky smooth as I keep imagining it to be!

[Brand]

Lilitu, on 15 November 2012 - 12:25 AM, said:

Sorry for getting a little snappy with my reply, I anticipated a more heated reaction..
I will give you a proper reply tomorrow when I'm not on my phone

I have another question, do you think if I were to take the 10 points out of Disc, and put them into Arms, that I would see a dps increase? The Crit from Disc is 9%, and the Crit for 100 points in arms should be about 5% (100/21 = ~5) if I am not mistaken. So then do you think the extra 10% damage from bleeds, and another trait (Probably Deep Cuts or Last Chance) would make up for the loss of 4-5% crit and 10% crit damage? (Not to mention the Condition damage in Arms now helps us a lot more, whilst Brawn still does nothing for us) This is of course assuming that when dropping our crit by 5% that we can still keep up 25 stacks, which I believe is possible since I think there was a little extra crit in the build.

If that works out, perhaps you would see a lot of the dps increase you were looking for, especially when we see how the math comes out for the FGJ/OMM thing (Compared to the 10% increase in damage for GS only in Strength) perhaps you might even use the build!

Also, what do you think of giving the Rifle a Sigil of Bloodlust? Frailty is nice, but in the end the build is geared towards supporting the Greatsword parts of the build. Do you think Bloodlust would be best?

Edited by Brand, 17 November 2012 - 12:37 PM.

[ohs]

what about taking the 10 points out of disc and putting them into strength to get the master trait slashing power (10% more greatsword dmg).  Would that be better than 9% crit chance and 10% more crit dmg?

[ramwee]

Anyways I tried the build, I would say it really good and I would definitely recommend it to people about this build
But maybe it's me but I'm having a hard time serving.
Maybe it's because of the back pack that I didn't had.

[Lilitu]

Just going to explode all over this here post... apologies if it's not very well laid out..

If at base stats and no traits you do 102 damage (4% crit, 150% crit damage)..  (This means for every 100 power you gain ~11% of your base damage, which I refer to as 100).
With pve knight gear & zerker trinkets (roughly 26% crit +4% base = 30% crit, 50% damage. Call it ~+614 power, or +66% of base. +15% crit damage.  This is from memory so it'll probably be a bit off) and you get ((166*0.3)*1.65))+((166*0.7)*1) = roughly 200.
Add the ~10% crit you're getting from 20 points in arms, the 9% crit from heightened focus, 10% crit damage from disc, 20% crit from fury, 100 power from traits, 12% damage from zerker...
((177*0.69)*1.75))+((177*0.31)*1) = ~270.
Compare to 10 less crit damage and 9% less crit for the 10% dmg greatsword trait as suggested above:
((188*0.6)*1.65))+((188*0.4)*1) = ~261, plus the 10% from the greatsword trait, 287.
Compare to 10 less crit damage and 9% less crit for the 10% on bleed and +~5% crit from arms as suggested above:
((177*0.65)*1.65))+((177*0.35)*1) = ~261, plus the 10% from the greatsword trait, 276.
The difference here is pretty close. When you factor in longer bleeds and slightly higher bleed damage % might proc chance it's probably in Arms favor, especially since the 10% dmg applies to all weapons and not just greatsword.

For fun; taking those 20 trait points from tactics and picking up the two +10% damage traits while also keeping the heightened focus buffs.
((188*0.74)*1.75))+((188*0.26)*1) = ~292, plus 20% from traits, ~350. That's somewhere between 20 and 30 percent more damage than the two above builds, but at the cost of healing shouts and 20% cd reduction.



Some probability on might:
With 75% on swing (a crit) giving 5 secs of might (9 secs after boon duration) and 30% to proc might while critting (75% chance * 30% chance) for 18 seconds you average out at 10.8 seconds of might per swing (I'll round it to 11).
If you plot this on a timeline whereby each strike grants a stack of might for 10.8 seconds the average stack size is just over 13. (Graphs attached.. yes I actually bothered to calculate this! One is just a closeup of the other).
A drop in crit by 9% dropped that to 11.4 average stacks because the amount of might grained per strike dropped from 10.8 to 9.5 due to the lower chance of proccing.

If you don't have the extra 20 points in tactics, your average length drops to 9.6 from 10.8 (which makes sense, going from 8 to 9 in duration was a 12.5% increase, 9.6 to 10.8 is also a 12.5% increase).
With the duration of 9.6, the average stack drops to around 11.4. Strangely enough, going from +80% boon duration to +60% boon duration (cost: 20 trait points) had pretty much the same impact on the average might stack as the 9% crit (which funnily enough would cost you 200 prec, or 20 trait points).

Anyway, to conclude, I reckon ditching 20% of that boon duration would cost you between 1.5 and 2 stacks of might on average over time.
Side-note, dropping ALL boon duration will reduce the average stack size to around 7. So let's say the benefit of these armor runes is 5 stacks, or around 175 power/condition damage (not bad for armor runes, but not amazing).
Now consider all this math was done on auto attacks (3 strikes per 2.5 seconds) not 100b or whirlwind attack. Also consider more targets = more stacks. Frenzy? Might procs suddenly start to scale very very well. I'd keep the armor runes, but the shout traitline is debatable and rests entirely around whether you want the extra damage or the extra group support.
Final comment on might... if you want to go all out gsword might, consider the 'on weapon swap, gain 3 stacks of might for 20 seconds' sigil and equip 2 greatswords for the lols. Bloodlust on rifle is a great choice though because I believe wvw fights are often won in melee, the ranged dance is just foreplay... an ideal time to build up bloodlust. Pve is probably similar, you need ranged attacks while you play it safe. Build bloodlust stacks and save the real damage for melee.

FGJ might goes from being 25 secs duration out of 25 secs cooldown (100% uptime, 105 power/condition) to:
40 secs out of 25 secs (160% uptime, 168 power/condition) with the +60% boon duration, non shout build.
45 secs out of 20 secs (225% uptime, 235 power/condition) with the +80% boon duration, healing shout build.
If you assume your group mates are sitting at an average of 2100 power (power gear, 300 trait) , then the 168 power will take 233% base damage up to 252% abd tge better +235 power version will take it to 259.5% or so if you assume ~900 power is 100% of base damage. That's ~3% extra on top of a group members damage you've just added to your group by going shout spec, or 12% of a whole person in total, which is actually pretty sweet. Add on top of that On My Mark and you're contributing a lot of damage to your group. That's not including Fury.  This is assuming direct damage rather than dots. Note that just by taking FGJ with you whether you're shout spec or not, you increase their damage by over 10% each as long as you have some good boon duration, but imo the difference between runed FGJ and runed FGJ with 20% cd and an additional 20% duration isn't huge.
All in all,  (that extra few % also applies to yourself), I reckon the shout traits probably add ~15-20% damage to your group. This is a lot closer to the increase to your own personal damage through those damage traits than I thought it would be, but you do have to make sure they're in range of your buffs which can be tough at times. Finally, if you feel you outskill your group mates... being selfish can be a good thing.

Imo... overall..
Personal damage : 20/25/0/10/10 (5 spare)
Group damage : 10/20/0/30/10   Might be less effective on overall group damage output than increasing your own damage via the build above, but the heals will be handy as well & there's really not a huge difference.

On my comments about soldier gear in other threads: without the boon duration increase, the benefit from might is lower, to the point where soldier gear (which has higher power than knight) is actually almost the same damage as knight with a little more survivability excluding might procs, which as I just said, would be several stacks high with base duration and ~75% crit. Keep in mind ~50% crit is easily doable with soldier gear and zerker trinkets, so our stacks don't drop a huge amount... which is why I still say soldier is almost equal to knight in terms of dps for a non boon duration gsword warrior. Note I said almost.. Personally I no longer want the extra vita as I'm comfortable with hp, so I take knight gear on a damage dealing gsword, if i'm earthshaker spamming it is soldier gear due to not bothering with crit and is a whole different build. Often you'll see me saying I go without crit because I don't think it is an efficient stat. That  holds true - I believe power gives more damage point for point than precision, and I think you gain more effective HP from a point of toughness than you gain in damage from a point in precision. However there comes a point where it does not matter how minmaxed your defenses are because nobody is going to kill you, and what matters is the extra damage you can squeeze out. Straight 1v1 attrition fight will see toughness win, but that's rarely the case in pve and wvw. If I am going to play a crit build, gsword is how I would do it. The might proc is just too good.

Attached Files

•  might_timeline.JPG   56.12K   43 downloads
•  might_timeline2.JPG   27.62K   44 downloads

Edited by Lilitu, 15 November 2012 - 07:27 PM.

[Brand]

This is some great info and thank you for taking the time to do it.
I think you missed some detail here, the point of switching those 10 points to Arms was to gain 10% damage, 50% bleed duration, 100 Condition damage, and 100 Precision.
Did you forget those other variables, or did you just not represent them in the text?
Loving all this math by the way

Edited by Brand, 17 November 2012 - 12:34 PM.

[Lilitu]

I took the suggestion above to mean 100 more power and 10% more greatsword damage rather than 100 more precision/condition and 10% more damage when bleeding (note the base damage rose from 177 to 188 as a result of the 100 power). You are probably right, finishing the arms tree would be preferable to going to 20 in the strength tree.

Note that the proc is 3 seconds, and dots work in whole seconds.  +50% takes it to 4.5, which unfortunately is rounded down. So it works out as +33% damage to your crit bleed.

Unless of course you also/alternatively have +20% condition duration from 20 in strength, meaning 3 seconds +70% = 5.1.

Edited by Lilitu, 15 November 2012 - 07:05 PM.

[Brand]

Do bleeds always round down?

Also, just to clarify, are you in fact saying that finishing out the arms line will be a damage increase?

Edited by Brand, 17 November 2012 - 12:29 PM.

[Lilitu]

It's always rounded down as far as I know, so you need 50% from the bleed trait and 20% condition duration to cause 3 secs to turn into 5.

I've updated the first paragraph to compare the 10 in disc to moving those 10 to either arms or str.


If at base stats and no traits you do 102 damage (4% crit, 150% crit damage)..  (This means for every 100 power you gain ~11% of your base damage, which I refer to as 100):
With pve knight gear & zerker trinkets (roughly 26% crit +4% base = 30% crit, 50% damage. Call it ~+614 power, or +66% of base. +15% crit damage.  This is from memory so it'll probably be a bit off) and you get ((166*0.3)*1.65))+((166*0.7)*1) = roughly 200.
Add the ~10% crit you're getting from 20 points in arms, the 9% crit from heightened focus, 10% crit damage from disc, 20% crit from fury, 100 power from traits, 12% damage from zerker...
((177*0.69)*1.75))+((177*0.31)*1) = ~270.

Compare to 10 less crit damage and 9% less crit for the 10% dmg greatsword trait as suggested above:
((188*0.6)*1.65))+((188*0.4)*1) = ~261, plus the 10% from the greatsword trait, 287.

Compare to 10 less crit damage and 9% less crit for the 10% on bleed and +~5% crit from arms as suggested above:
((177*0.65)*1.65))+((177*0.35)*1) = ~251, plus the 10% from the bleed trait, 276.

The difference here is pretty close. When you factor in longer bleeds, slightly higher bleed damage and increased might proc chance it's probably in Arms favour, especially since the 10% dmg applies to all weapons and not just greatsword.

[Brand]

Excellent.
Changes have been made accordingly.

Edited by Brand, 17 November 2012 - 11:43 AM.

[MacG]

I’m not convinced that moving 10 points from Disc to Arms is a good idea when you are with a group. With the bleed cap at 25 you are going to be fighting your party for a bleed “slot” and may be reducing your party’s overall damage. Note that I don’t have any math to back this up, so I’m open to being shown to be wrong. Am I missing something?

[Bluetalon_TOG]

Howdy,

I like your buiild... I've been using a variation now for a while (funnily enough, you beat me to a post by about 3 days but oh well).

In my build I take a full 30 point in Arms to get Last Chance - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) and Attack of Opportunity - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W), which I find is a btter choice over Berserker's Power - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W). Given the high crit chance (I reached 62%) and the on crit bleed chance of 33% (giving an average of 20% per hit), you will always be fighting a bleeding target and the quickness proc is great to finish off a target. So its basically 12% bonus damage always (assuming full adrenaline, which is given in GS builds) and damage at the end of a dodge roll or 10% damage vs bleeding targets (pretty much a given) and 4 seconds of quickess every 90secs vs dying targets (25% health). I prefer the second option.

Build
Build Editor :: Guild Wars 2 Skills

The build is basically a hybrid of "Might-y GS" (cookie cutter berserker GS build) and my guildies "Warrior Bard" (full cleric shout heals). Im calling it "Warrior Poet" for now, until I find a better name.

Heals should reach about 1200-1300 with around 200-300 compassion, whilst maintaining 62% crit, high power, decent crit damage (around 40% depending on gear) and on crit might stacks (my record is 25 for now, average of 15 after 100 blades - thats an extra 225 power on avaerage for a spike of 375).

For comparison, the "Warrior Bard" build, heals for around 1800 for each shout, so 5400 max burst. "Warrior Poet" heals for around 1400 for each shout (with Cleric chest, head, legs and boots), so 4200 as a burst on the same average cooldown. So thats a 28% difference in healing in exchange for extra Power, might stacks, and 62% precision. So, a AOE condition removal healer than can kill quick basically.

Gear
Knights armor with Rune of the Soldier (shouts remove conditions)
Cleric/Sapphire Amulet, 1 Ring and 2 Hooks - gems have been replaced with ruby gems
Ruby/Berserkers ring

Note- The reason for the Sapphire gems being replaced with Ruby is that it is the most efficient way of gaining extra crit damage per upgrade slot.... (I got this from you sonic boon build - brillant idea btw)

Mystic Claymore with Sigil of Nullification (remove boon on crit) and will swap to Sigil of Strength (might on crit) when I finally get round to it, Axe/Warhorn as secondary and a rifle in the kit bag for seiges.

I use Omnomnom Chocolate Cake (+40% magic find under a boon and 20% boon duration). I always have swiftness or fury up so its always +40% MF

This gear is about 30 gold worth in total if bought from scratch.

I use Signet of Rage on CD. This gives 45 seconds of Fury, Swiftness and 5 stacks of Might on a 60 second cooldown. With 'FGJ' and Warhorn swiftness I can keep fury and swiftness up permanently. The shouts are used like a shout heal build.

Stats end up being (at 80):
Powr - 1,748
Prec - 1,706
Toughness - 1,487
Vitality - 1,410
Attack - 2,848
Crit chance - 42% (+20% from fury) = 62%
Crit dam - 40%
Armor - 2,698
Health - 23,312.

Edited by Bluetalon_TOG, 15 November 2012 - 10:18 PM.

[Brand]

MacG, on 15 November 2012 - 08:16 PM, said:

I’m not convinced that moving 10 points from Disc to Arms is a good idea when you are with a group. With the bleed cap at 25 you are going to be fighting your party for a bleed “slot” and may be reducing your party’s overall damage.

It's not like we're adding more bleeds, this build already had bleeds, we're just making them last longer and by extension do more damage.

Edited by Brand, 17 November 2012 - 12:27 PM.

[Brand]

Edited to clear space, proper response to Bluetalon_TOG is two posts down.

Edited by Brand, 17 November 2012 - 12:26 PM.

[Bluetalon_TOG]

^ in response to Brand above.
Gear
The crit chance comes from precision from gear and the 300 from traits.
40% crit damage comes from ruby jewels in my trinkets (total of 15%), 10% in discipline, 6% from ruby trinkets, 9% from weapon. = 40%
Armor is all Knights, 3 trinkets are Cleric/sapphire with Berserker/ruby jewels, and 2 are Berserker/ruby

The runes aren't for survivibilty. Its for the additional condition removal.

The Build
And I think you miss the point of the build. I wanted unselfish DPS. And I like the GS.

I understand that the best support build is a 3 shout warrior (traited to heal), with a warhorn (traited for CD and conditon->boon), but that build does very average dps. I generally run with axe/warhorn as a secondary, with a rifle in the kit bag for WvW seiges (mainly defense if all the seige is taken). And the Banner builds are too immobile for my tastes, not to mention that regen isnt designed for burst healing.

I get what your saying, but my build gives me decent (not great DPS) whilst keeping people alive. It may work in a dungeon, I dont know but it works for WvW.

[Brand]

Well this is a dungeon build, but I'm not even sure if yours is optimal in WvW. You really need to think about how you define selfish though. This build is meant for maxing the damage you can get, while still supplying non-selfish support. The only difference between our builds is that yours provides significantly less damage (Because there are little faults around and it isn't optimized) for YOU and YOUR TEAM (As boon duration runes help out your team buffs a lot), in exchange for the ability to remove 3 more conditions every 22 seconds (Which your group probably doesn't need, and they will be wasted).

The Warrior's primary focus with a Greatsword is to deal damage, but when you use Sonic Boon you are also supplying lots of support. With your build, there is no reason to even use the Greatsword really, as your might stacks and boon duration just aren't high enough to maintain the might stacks at 25. You're supplementing your loss of boon duration by throwing in lots of crit and crit damage, which isn't going to help you in the long run (And is way less optimal than Power).

As I stated earlier in the comments:
The great thing about this build is it's ability to provide support and good damage, while neither of these aspects are wasted in a way that makes you want to lean towards total damage/total support. You can keep both areas without sacrificing so much from one side or the other that you would be inclined to go full damage or full support. When you start to take out traits from tactics and turn them into more damage, your shouts become so much less useful that you don't need them, and whole sections of the build would be better suited in other places to increase your dps.

If you take away from the support aspects you start to make having shouts less useful etc etc until you come up with a new build entirely.

This same argument can be used here, substituting more damage for more support (Which you are trying to achieve). When you start pulling points or swapping gear choices with this build, it ultimately leans towards one side of the equation and you end up being more optimal as a full support.

This build is a finely tuned balance, and the reason for this is that in order to maintain the build, you need those 30 points in tactics for the boon duration. This means that you "might as well" take shouts and shout healing, and then once we were done putting points into precision (To a soft cap so that not very many might stacks were wasted during combat) we put in some cleric's gear in order to give ourselves more healing, a good amount of power, and NO WASTED PRECISION (Power scales better than precision anyway).

I've been balancing this build for some time now, and I have the math of Lilitu and Sithicus Dias on my side. Sithicus knows as well as I do (You can go ask him) that going for a "AOE condition removal healer than can kill quick" just isn't optimal.

In fact, I ASKED HIM about the very same type of build when we were swapping ideas. I will post some of that conversation:

Sithicus Dias, on 03 November 2012 - 11:03 AM, said:

It is becoming very difficult to understand what you are trying to achieve. You "want the sacrifices you make to each to be more beneficial to the other side of the spectrum." I'm not sure I understand why you want to achieve such a "balance", I fear you might reach an unruly compromise if you do. Why don't you want to build as IBS with a GS and push massive DPS? The problem with balancing this is that to truly "balance" would probably mean you're not going to be too great at anything. Cleric's gear cripples your damage so much.

Brand, on 04 November 2012 - 06:53 PM, said:

Now if I go into a cleric's build with VS (That would be something like 10/20/0/30/10) I could take say the 10 points out of Strength and put them into something that would increase my ability to support, say something like Turtle's Defense(II) in the Defense traits. However, the damage I would lose is significant, and likely not worth it (Especially since conditions should be getting removed often, lowering TD(II)'s usefulness). I'm mostly talking of traits and accessories here, the armor would remain cleric's, the amulet might change, a few traits would be given to damage because putting them into support would not be as beneficial as that extra damage. I want the amount of support I lose to be less than the amount of damage I gain in terms of usefulness.

Sithicus Dias, on 05 November 2012 - 09:55 PM, said:

Hey, I like your spec, probably the highest damage one you can be (this is what the Warrior who runs with me builds as), I filled some runes in, it's a little gimmicky, but i'd be really interested to see how 60% Might Duration could work out http://goo.gl/7rjYH

In addition to this, annoyingly with that build editor, I never understand how those "gems" work, they don't seem to offer you "Knight's", just a bunch of weird stat combos. But here is what I think (and there are two sides to this):

Firstly, you are already leaning towards offense, hence you should use your weapons/armour to lean that way, i.e. Knights instead of Clerics. Since if you chose Cleric's, you don't have the 300 from Defense, so at best it would be a slightly watered down build.

Conversely, you are already leaning towards offense, which means you could still capitalize on some of the early benefits of stacking a little bit of Healing Power, since any damage you gain on top of what you have won't be too much. I added a chart to the google sheet: http://goo.gl/pj0CC

The chart shows Healing done over 100 seconds (look in the "Convergence" sheet), with Healing Power on the x-axis. The blue line is what you want (3x Shout). You could get 461 Healing Power with Clerics Armour/Weapons (note, NOT accessories at this point) and your healing would go from ~20000 Healing over 100 seconds, to ~26000 over 100 seconds. If you chose Knights Armour/Weapons instead, you'd lose that healing, but gain 352 Precision. 352 Precision equates to ~16.8% critical chance. 21 Precision = 1% crit chance, with this in mind you may almost want to get the Sigil that stacks +10 Healing OR Precision, for extra stat boosts.

Those back of the envelope calculations in the paragraph above are an attempt to show how much more healing you could get compared to how much crit you could get with two different sets (note however you'd have roughly similar Toughness, but slightly more with Knights). What do you make of those numbers? It all comes down to how much crit chance you think is ok, and then how much healing you would conversely stack into your build instead.

Sithicus Dias, on 05 November 2012 - 11:24 PM, said:

At the end of the day, GW2 has no particular character "roles" and that holds up very well, but what you can do is enhance your effectiveness in one or two areas (i.e. I heal and withstand a lot of enemy pressure).

As for VS being viable at 0 HP, my calculations showed that VS heals 54% more than Banners at HP=0, which is quite a margin, meaning VS at 0 HP is perfectly viable. Just remember, giving yourself Cleric's armour instead of Knights armour only improves Healing by 6000 over 100 seconds, is that really worth it? When realistically your damage enables things to die faster. One of the biggest banes to a team I have seen is when a boss is just taking too long to kill, due to other profs running gimmicky builds. By putting out a lot of damage, you ARE helping the team.

I'm starting to return to my old mentality here, you should either go all Knights or all Clerics, you just water yourself down too much otherwise (plus, losing 300 HP from no Defense is a big loss really).

As for Runes, when you decide what armour to go for, (or rather when you pick "damage" or "healing", choose a rune to mesh with that) Soldier is a solid choice if you're serious about Shout support though.

Brand, on 06 November 2012 - 01:01 PM, said:

So, at the point that I get rid of soldier's for the might duration build, is VS even worth it?

Sithicus Dias, on 06 November 2012 - 01:50 PM, said:

Well, VS is viable without Soldier Runes, all Soldier does is provide condition removal, it doesn't affect the healing in any way.

If you're building like that with Might Duration then there is no point. As i said before, Might Duration is an idea extending from offensive Greatsword. If you want to use a similar build to me, why go Greatsword, when you could just get a shield and block? Remember that if you go far enough into Defensive builds, to use a Greatsword with no traits that augment it would be a waste.

Just try and remember that there are many individual facets to this build, Vigorous Shouts is the foundation, as such things like your Rune Choice don't directly affect it too much (except for Soldier with Cond Removal), so VS is always viable. Your Sigil is independent of VS too. By choosing Might Duration you're not making VS un-viable. However by choosing defensive traits or runes, you ARE making GS + Might duration un-viable.

Choosing Greatsword with a defensive/healing build would be at the loss of maximizing your defense. It would water it down. Shield Stance is so good for tanking, and to be honest, so many boss fights I'm the one tanking him the whole time. Aggro-theorycrafting aside, you need to aim for one extreme or the other. Taking Greatsword for a defensive build is like running a race, you're so close to the finish line, but you've taken a wrong turn. Imagine the reverse too, if you specced into the Offensive Build, but took a Mace and Shield, you'd just be limiting your potential to deal damage. Just as taking a Greatsword limits your potential to absorb damage.

Ultimately we came to the "Vigorous Greatsword" build, that I remodeled into Sonic Boon. You're going to end up wasting stats, wasting procs, and overall wasting the potential of your build. Sonic Boon is a high damage build, that just happens to also be able to heal, and remove conditions. It is not specifically designed to be able to support, it is specifically designed for damage and might stacks, and as a bonus we get support.

Your build is specifically designed to remove conditions while you do high damage. In your build nothing is a bonus, it's all specifically planned for. As such, you aren't getting anything "extra" you're basically taking the damage aspect of Sonic Boon and cutting off a third of it so that you can maintain decent condition removal that a guardian or mesmer or etc in your team/WvW match already has.

I cannot stress enough how important it is that you DO NOT water down your build.

If you want to support, build for great support.

If you want to do damage, build for high damage and get a BONUS of team support. DO NOT build for condition removal, which will end up hurting your dungeon team, and it won't be more useful than the damage you could have when in WvW.

I do understand the point of your build, but the way you want it just isn't optimal. Just because you don't run Soldier's runes in your shout build doesn't make you selfish! In fact, as I stated, running condition removal can actually hurt your team if you aren't "THE SUPPORTER", and the times it doesn't hurt your team, it will be wasted or the damage you could have would be better suited in the situation. Sonic Boon is geared towards those who want to deal very high damage with a niche build that also allows them to support their team. You're actually doing a lot more for your team and yourself by running Sonic Boon over your build 90% of the time.

I hope this is enough explaining!

Edited by Brand, 17 November 2012 - 12:24 PM.

[Fangz]

Hi I have been using this build for sometime and I am really enjoying the good mix of support and dmg. It is easy to use as well, would recommend anyone reading this to try it.

Anw i've noticed that you use 2 sets of runes that boosts Might Duration 20% and a set of Boon Duration 15%. Is that the optimal rune combination? I don't really want to do the Math but can you just let me know if

ie. having 2 sets of +15% boon duration and 1 set of +20% might duration or
                1 set of +15% boon duration and 2 sets of +20% might duration
Which is better since boon duration covers all boons that gives you all sorts of bonus and is beneficial to the trait Empowered as well for dmg increase. Or do we have to use 2x might duration to make the might stacks last long enough?


Secondly, for the above discussions  wouldn't having 10pts in Discipline for the 9% crit be more versatile (rifle crits) as well as faster might stacking be more practical for actual usage where players run in and out etc. Along with the fact that it is possible to stack more vulnerability as compared to the dmg increase from 10pts in Strength for the Slashing Power and Power stats.
I'm not sure if the 100pwr + 10% greatsword dmg actually outweights this difference.

I don't really know the Maths so forgive me if i'm stating the obvious.

Thank You!

[Brand]

I'm not sure what you're saying for the first part, the build uses Monk, Water, and Fire. Thats 15% Boon duration x4 and 20% might duration x2. two sets of boon and 1 set of might is the optimal choice and that is why it's in the build.

Your second statement is also defunct as the debate was not whether to use 10 more points in strength, but to use 10 more points in arms (At the expense of the 10 points in disc). We proved this to give more damage as you only lose 4% crit and 10% crit damage in exchange for 10% more damage overall, 100 condition damage, and 50% longer bleeds. You still retain your ability to get/keep 25 might stacks, your bleeds last longer and do more damage, and you get 10% increased damage.

Thanks for reading the guide and supporting it.
Hope this answered your questions!

Edited by Brand, 17 November 2012 - 12:36 PM.

[Black Autumn]

Brand, on 15 November 2012 - 05:11 AM, said:

Dirk, every time you talk I read your words in Nicholas D. Wolfwood's voice, and it is always the best. I'm not even sure if that is who your profile picture is, but it looks a lot like him.

You have my gratitude sir ^^ Here's hoping your voice is as silky smooth as I keep imagining it to be!

It's Spike from Cowboy Bebop.  Steven Blum is the voice actor.  And it's a pretty sexy voice.

[Lucav]

I like the new setup and the build, thanks for all the hard work you put into this. I use a variant with a warhorn, but this is an extremely solid foundation for a lot of warrior builds.

[Brand]

Glad you like the new setup, it took me a good 16 hours between the graphics and the formatting.
You're welcome for all the hard work Thank you for using the build and encouraging its use!

Edited by Brand, 17 November 2012 - 12:39 PM.

[laek]

I've created a tidy spreadsheet to reflect my gear choices and to automate the bonuses given by each piece. Feel free to make a copy and use it for your own testing.

https://docs.google....S2ZFb3lHZFV0MWc

I haven't had the chance to play with this build in game as I've completely shelved my 450hr Warrior for a new Hammer Guardian (I am very saddened by this), so I am missing all the gear; but on paper, it looks right up my alley. Nonetheless, I appreciate all the work and testing put into this build and would like to see the same effort put towards builds for every class.

[Brand]

So tidy.
Anywho, just a couple of things here...

Guild Backpack: You should really use the Caretakers, you are essentially trading 6 power and 14 toughness for 20 compassion (From Defenders -> Caretakers), and the compassion comes out on top.
Accessories: You use 2x Cleric's Earrings and 1x ring in your sheet, and honestly we have enough precision so you should really go for 2x Cleric's rings and 1x earring (Not to mention this puts you at exactly 260 = 1400 heals which is sexy and as I said, a good number to shoot for, it's right on the edge of "too little" and "too much". Reason being that in order to get a 100 point healing increase (1500) we'd need 385 Compassion, which is more than we can afford)

Now I hope you agree with these points and change your spread sheet, because I'd really love to use yours instead of mine. (I'd have to copy over mine on my account though, for clarity's sake.) Yours is frankly a lot better and neater xD I'd love to use it and credit you for it.

I'd also ask that you add in a Condition Damage column and have a full 25 stacks of might listed for the "Synergy" bit there, showing 875 might/condition damage increase to the final numbers (I've been meaning to put this in mine as well).

Also you have "Regen tick" listed there, I'm unsure what that means. I think you put it there to show our Compassions effect on regen, but we DONT give any regen as far as I know. And any regen we get is almost definitely based on the "Granter's" Compassion, not ours. (I haven't tested this, but that's how Boon duration works and I doubt it's different)

Anyway I'm glad you like the build as I worked pretty hard on it o3o and I'd love to credit you and use your spreadsheet in the main post since it looks like you worked pretty diligently (At the very least on making it look sexy )!
Love to see people coming and adding to the build!

Edited by Brand, 17 November 2012 - 12:39 PM.

[Brand]

Lilitu, on 14 November 2012 - 04:38 PM, said:

I don't think the 20 points in the shout trait line are worth the 10 percent damage buffs you could be having in both the arms and strength lines, especially since you aren't cleansing .  That's an awful lot of damage you're missing out on.

Hey, I wanted to touch back on this for a moment. Now that we have the 10 points in Arms, do you think this build (In terms of all damage sources combined, like boons you give to allies, bleeds, etc) Is actually superior to a full out damage build (20/30/0/10/10) with Boon duration runes? How about a full damage build with some other type of effective rune combination?

What I'm really asking here is:
"How much damage do you think we are losing compared to other high damage/survivability builds? Do you think the damage we are losing (If there is any) is supplemented by the additional support? If so, are we getting more support/survivability than that build's damage? Or are they on par with each other?"

Edited by Brand, 17 November 2012 - 02:17 PM.

[Lilitu]

Don't forget that while we proved the arms points were an increase over the disc points, we also proved the difference wasn't huge. Those 20 points would likely go into str and then back into disc (since you already filled arms), so you wouldn't gain quite as much as you would have done by going from 10/20/0/30/10 to 20/30/0/10/10 but the end build would be the same.  It's less of a damage increase between sonic boon and straight up damage than I first thought it was, as for the age old question of "my dps vs my group's" well that's just dependant on too many things such as group composition and skill to argue a case for or against

[laek]

Quote

Guild Backpack: You should really use the Caretakers, you are essentially trading 6 power and 14 toughness for 20 compassion (From Defenders -> Caretakers), and the compassion comes out on top.
Accessories: You use 2x Cleric's Earrings and 1x ring in your sheet, and honestly we have enough precision so you should really go for 2x Cleric's rings and 1x earring (Not to mention this puts you at exactly 260 = 1400 heals which is sexy and as I said, a good number to shoot for, it's right on the edge of "too little" and "too much". Reason being that in order to get a 100 point healing increase (1500) we'd need 385 Compassion, which is more than we can afford)

I won't claim to be the arbiter of min-maxing, or frankly even any good at it (my results usually come by accident), but I hope I can explain how my previous gear choices affected the final stats of the build.

I chose to use a Cleric's Shoulder Piece over Knight's and as well as you've already pointed; Guild Defender's over Caretakers, finally 2x Cleric Earrings & 1x Cleric Ring over 1x Cleric Ring & 2x Cleric Earrings. I've shifted equipment around while keeping in mind and trying to maintain 260 Compassion. These changes have managed to squeek out an extra +20 Power, +7 Toughness, and an incidental +3 Healing Power which has disturbed the golden 260 Compassion rule, at the cost of 1% crit chance. Honestly seemed like a good trade to me. I'd like to hear your thoughts.

For the sake of clarity, I've included shots below:
Your setup vs. mine

Quote

Now I hope you agree with these points and change your spread sheet, because I'd really love to use yours instead of mine. (I'd have to copy over mine on my account though, for clarity's sake.) Yours is frankly a lot better and neater xD I'd love to use it and credit you for it.

I'd also ask that you add in a Condition Damage column and have a full 25 stacks of might listed for the "Synergy" bit there, showing 875 might/condition damage increase to the final numbers (I've been meaning to put this in mine as well).

Done. Updated Sheet

Quote

Also you have "Regen tick" listed there, I'm unsure what that means. I think you put it there to show our Compassions effect on regen, but we DONT give any regen as far as I know. And any regen we get is almost definitely based on the "Granter's" Compassion, not ours. (I haven't tested this, but that's how Boon duration works and I doubt it's different)

You are correct, I initially added that little tidbit because I was interested in the formula to see how it would affect Banners and also because I wanted to use this sheet as a base for other classes, hence the addition of the Defense column as well. As the information has no relevance to this particular build, I've hidden it.

Edited by laek, 17 November 2012 - 05:48 PM.

[Brand]

Whether your setup is better than mine will be determined by if crit is rounded up, down, or just a set value (Ex: 48.8% crit = 48.8% crit, not 49 or 48). I think I'd prefer to keep that 1% crit chance to be honest though. Since we moved the traits out of Disc we were down 4-5% crit, with the Omnom pie and the 30 points of precision, we get all of that crit back. Not to mention the gear choices are better (Having 1 piece of cleric's armor seems kinda silly ) AND we get even numbers (Which I am a fan of for math and etc (68% crit instead of 67%, 260 and 1400 instead of 263 and 1402). The difference wont be huge either way in the long run, but I'm more comfortable with the crit chance (Since we did lose a bit) and the nice even numbers

Regardless, I'll update that and credit you right now, just so you know I am putting it in my drive for sake of clarity and what not

Edited by Brand, 17 November 2012 - 07:48 PM.

[Impmon]

I'd have to say that of all the warrior builds I've tested thus far I like this one the most.  I've been using it this week and really like it.  Decent dps, with support, heals, buffs and you won't insta die like a glass cannon.