*****************Last Updated 7/17/2013****************
The Foe Hammer: This build uses the Hammer for offense, and sword+shield for mobility and defense. The build's purpose is to be a front line fighter that can stand up on its own and in team fights by using a lot of crowd control and burst damage to keep your enemies on the defensive. A lot of people build by making a DPS warrior and then adding as much survivabilityas they can without giving up too much DPS, but ive gone and done the opposite. This build is a Tank at its very core with some alterations made to it to maximize DPS without sacrificing too much survivability. It rely's on high toughness and the ability to crit hard and often against stunned foes with the unsuspecting foe trait and use of a hammer in order to squeeze out as much damage as possible while spending as little points on precision as possible.
In the Link below you will find the complete build. Traits. Gear. Weapons. The rest of this page explains the reasoning behind each trait and how to play the build to its best.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNAseSjcOtw1QGPMxBE0DNsK4iTBlQ9wO2w4A-jQDBocAoLg4LQ0yA0HgEBQJQFRjtMqIasabYKXJVFTQ2mbIaWfpWGAmxA-e
TRAITS
Traits are 0/10/30/0/30. Every trait here has a purpose, which i will explain.
Arms
The minor trait here isn't really that important, 33% chance
to cause bleeds on crits is nice, but this isn't a bleed build, although you
will be critting a lot so this just adds a little damage.
IV – Unsuspecting Foe: This is the core of the build's offensive half.
Contrary to what some people think, this trait ADDS 50% crit chance to foes
that are stunned, this allows you to get 100% crit chance on some people,
sometimes even more. The goal for my build is to have as close to a flat 30%
crit chance as possible without going under, add another 20% from fury, and then stun people to add
the final 50%, bringing the crit chance to near 100%, sometimes more depending of gear and food. This means that every hit against a stunned foe is a GUARENTEED CRIT. all this with only a flat 30% unbuffed crit chance. Since you
are spamming Earth shaker as often as possible on its reduced cooldown, you will be using this trait multiple times a fight
to land big hits,you can also use shield bash to setup a 95% chance to crit for the new final thrust ability as well. Follow hammer stuns with frenzy to increase the amount of hits you land while you have your enemy stunned.
Defense
Minor Traits
Thick skin is great, extra armor above 90% health is nice
against opening bursts from enemies. Note that the extra 100 toughness added from this does not show up in the build editor but is correctly displayed in game.
Adrenal health is a pretty decent regeneration, enough to
make it worth hanging onto your adrenaline in near death situations especially now that it scales with healing power. I'm getting around 400hp per tick at full adrenaline.
Armored attack gives 5% of toughness to power. Since you
have a ton of toughness that’s a nice boost to damage and helps to make up for not having power as the major stat on most of your gear.
Major Traits
II- Dogged March: This trait is insane! -33% time on chill, cripple and immobilize and adding regeneration every time you suffer from one of them. Granted, the regeneration isn't very powerful, but it's still nice. But regeneration aside, the shorter cooldown is what really gives you the edge here. If you combine this trait with melandru runes ( which give -25% on ALL conditions) , and add the Bowl of lemongrass poultry soup (another -40%), you now have -98% time on all movement impairing conditions. They literally just fall right off you to the point where you may not even know you where hit by one until you see that you have a random regeneration boon. and because of the food you will now have -65% duration on all other conditions. I dont even use a condition cleansing utility anymore for wvw because of this combination in addition to the trait mentioned next.
IX – Cleansing Ire: I have picked up cleansing Ire and dropped shield master. I'm using this new trait now more for the adrenaline gain then anything else. With the changes from my last build, extra adrenaline management was needed to compensate for the loss of berzerkers might. The condi cleanse is also excellent and even on top of the food and runes makes a big difference especially against enemies that have extended condition duration's. Note that burst mastery will not reduce the amount of conditions cleansed at full adrenaline, even only losing 2 bars from the burst you will still remove the full 3 conditions.
X – Merciless Hammer: This is an awesome trait, the
additional damage against disabled foes will be available to you very often
because you are stunning all the time and backbreaker gives you a 2 second
knockdown. Shortening the cooldowns also allows you to use big skills
like backbreaker a lot more often. This also gives unsuspecting fore and your 100% crit window an additional 25% damage, making you all the more deadly.
Some alternatives are to replace cleansing ire with defy pain although i choose not to. A lot of people think defy pain is essential, but
I don’t think its that useful at 25% health. Endure Pain is best used early in
the fight to stop an enemy from bursting.
Discipline
Minor traits
Versatile Rage gives 5 strikes (or half a bar) of adrenaline on weapons swap. Since you will also be using this with fast hands, the adrenaline will ass up quick.
Fast Hands brings your weapon swapping down to a 5 second cooldown, giving you freedom to switch between you damage/cc setup and your chasing/retreating setup. the constant swapping will also trigger versatile rage and keep your adrenaline refilling.
Versatile power isn't as useful as the other two minor traits by any stretch of the imagination but an extra stack or two of might is still useful.
Major Traits
VI - Signet Mastery: Signet of rage having a shorter cooldown is essential you make your 100% crit change window open more often and keeps you with might, fury and swiftness for 30 out of every 48 seconds. Now that i've started using this i cant imagine ever going back to 30 second downtime on my elite. Also with the addition of dolyak signet breaking stun this now reduced the cooldown to 48 seconds from 60 and under these circumstances makes it superior to balanced stance.
VIII - Destruction of the Empowered: Now that this is down in the master trait slot it's much more practical. 2% additional damage for every boon on your enemy adds up .
XI- Burst Mastery: Now gives 10% additional damage to earth shaker while reducing the cost by 33%. every time you drop an earth shaker with full adrenaline you will retain 1 adrenaline bar, allowing you to refill faster. In addition to the new discipline passive that reduced the burst cooldown to 7 3/4 seconds. Earth shaker just got a whole lot more dangerous
SKILLS
Healing Surge: Still the best even without restorative strength. With this build it trumps mending because you have a constant condi reduction and cleansing ire flows perfectly with this healing skill. refill your adrenaline and use earthshaker to clear 3 conditions as opposed to 2 conditions from mending. Allows the biggest heal and adds an extra source of adrenaline.
Endure Pain: A no-brainer for anyone fighting large numbers. Just make sure to use this early to stop the enemy's burst rather then at 10% hp when conditions are probably going to eat through the last bit of your health anyway. Also good for covering frenzy, not to mention it's a stun breaker.
Frenzy: Seems like a strange choice on a tanky build, but with all the bonuses from unsuspecting foe and in combination with the hammer, this is a lethal skill. You want to maximize the amount of hits you can do when you have someone stunned, and this will help. As if more hits and damage wasn't enough, perhaps the best party about using fenzy with the hammer is the fact that all those slow moves that are very easy for an enemy to spot are now hard to see because you are using them faster, greatly improving your chance of landing that stun chain. When you use frenzy, chances are you are spamming all your stuns and knockdowns anyway, so whoever is attacking you wont be able to take advantage of your 25% increased damage taken.
Dolyak Signet: has now replaced Balanced Stance because the cooldown is only slightly higher with signet mastery but gives you 180 additional toughness when passive.
GEAR
With full ascended i am sitting at about 2500 toughness with sword/shield
30% crit chance with the hammer (unbuffed), then add fury for 50% and unsuspecting foe for perfect 100%
Critical damage is at 83% with the hammer. I hurt people.
and just over 20k health, which may seem low, but with all that toughness and condition reduction you will get more out of that 20k
Use Sharpening stones to beef up your power and makes those hammer hits more deadly and bowl of lemongrass poultry to create that great condition stopping combo.
I have chosen an accuracy sigil in the hammer to further cheat adding any precision. 5% crit equals about 105 precision and is a much more effective crit source than adding more gear with precision.
Endurance sigil in the shield will be available more often now with fast hands as it will take you 5 seconds after switching to the shield and another 5 seconds to switch back for a total of 10 seconds before the sigil proc is available again with it's 9 second internal cooldown. Don't underestimate this endurance regeneration.
I use bloodlust stacks in my 1h sword and switch out for another sword with a sigil of impact to give final thrust an extra 10% damage after a shield bash.
Use Sharpening stones to beef up your power and makes those hammer hits more deadly and bowl of lemongrass poultry to create that great condition stopping combo.
I have chosen an accuracy sigil in the hammer to further cheat adding any precision. 5% crit equals about 105 precision and is a much more effective crit source than adding more gear with precision.
Endurance sigil in the shield will be available more often now with fast hands as it will take you 5 seconds after switching to the shield and another 5 seconds to switch back for a total of 10 seconds before the sigil proc is available again with it's 9 second internal cooldown. Don't underestimate this endurance regeneration.
I use bloodlust stacks in my 1h sword and switch out for another sword with a sigil of impact to give final thrust an extra 10% damage after a shield bash.
