What are your favorite WvW builds and why?

[rwknoll.7824]

I have been loving WvW since returning to this game after years away, but I am still struggling to find my stride with a build that feels powerful and also doesn’t get splattered constantly. My favorite type of build in WvW is ranged DPS, preferably with lots of cleave and big AoEs because I love feeling like I directly contributed to downing a big group of people. I prefer playing with medium to large groups, not solo roaming/dueling play.

So far I have primarily been running a power DPS Tempest with the staff as my main weapon and a full berserker’s gear set. I like being able to run Fire Overload to stack a lot of Might, throw down Meteor Shower + Feel the Burn with Tempestuous Aria and Transcendent Tempest, then throwing down large CC fields in other elements. Sometimes my arcDPS shows me in the top few spots for raw damage output in my squad for periods of time, which feels nice.

My issue is that I die very fast, even if I’m in the back line, and if I get separated from my group I die very fast to pretty much any roamer, which means lots of wasted time traveling back across the map. Overloads are also kind of wasted DPS unless I’m right on top of a target or with a commander tag.

Are there other builds, weapon setups, or trait lines I should try instead that I might like based on this info above? Do I just need a different stat set for my gear like marauder’s for extra vitality? Should I try Weaver or Catalyst for this play style instead? What am I missing? Would love to hear other suggestions so I can get more fun out of this gameplay. Thanks!

[Jackthetripper.9035]

Staff Weaver and catalyst are the best for the playstyle you are describing. The only way to stay alive is through practiced positioning and preemptive evasion. If a roamer manages to suprise you with their burst you will probably die unless you manage to respond correctly in under a second.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

Definitely go with Marauder.  90% of the damage of berserker, but that extra health is always a life saver.

When it comes to zerg builds, I hate to invoke the term personal preference, but a large part of it comes down to that.  Each of the elite specs has their own toolbox that has value in different ways.  Tempest has the best group support utilities, excellent skills for tagging and downstate play, but the gimmick is cumbersome and the traitline is lackluster otherwise.  Weaver has extra weapon skills, the stances for barrier/evade and good mix of offensive and defensive traits, but weaver's dual attunement locks you out of some important skills sometimes.  Catalyst has the best elite skill, and staunch auras for a lot of stability, but otherwise Catalyst lacks a lot of power and utility that the other two specs have.

Personally, when I'm running staff zerg build, I'm running Lightning Rod weaver.  While Meteor Shower can end groups, I've found a far better utility for zerg combat is control.  Lay down Unsteady Ground and Static Field, scatter the push and catch a bunch of players without stability, do large amounts of damage and spread weakness with Lightning Rod, and pick off the stragglers with Pile Driver.  Shockwave, Frozen Ground, and Lahar are also good as soft-CC's to follow up after the hard ones.  Biggest weakness is the lack of ready access to magnetic aura, which would really help with the longer cast times and wall defenses.  

[rwknoll.7824]

3 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

Definitely go with Marauder.  90% of the damage of berserker, but that extra health is always a life saver.

When it comes to zerg builds, I hate to invoke the term personal preference, but a large part of it comes down to that.  Each of the elite specs has their own toolbox that has value in different ways.  Tempest has the best group support utilities, excellent skills for tagging and downstate play, but the gimmick is cumbersome and the traitline is lackluster otherwise.  Weaver has extra weapon skills, the stances for barrier/evade and good mix of offensive and defensive traits, but weaver's dual attunement locks you out of some important skills sometimes.  Catalyst has the best elite skill, and staunch auras for a lot of stability, but otherwise Catalyst lacks a lot of power and utility that the other two specs have.

Personally, when I'm running staff zerg build, I'm running Lightning Rod weaver.  While Meteor Shower can end groups, I've found a far better utility for zerg combat is control.  Lay down Unsteady Ground and Static Field, scatter the push and catch a bunch of players without stability, do large amounts of damage and spread weakness with Lightning Rod, and pick off the stragglers with Pile Driver.  Shockwave, Frozen Ground, and Lahar are also good as soft-CC's to follow up after the hard ones.  Biggest weakness is the lack of ready access to magnetic aura, which would really help with the longer cast times and wall defenses.  

This is really interesting and helpful advice. I tried Weaver first and struggled with unlearning years of muscle memory. When it comes to trying to lay down CC on skills 4-5 and getting the wrong stuff. Tempest has come much more naturally but I feel better about it in open world than WvW and I haven’t been able to figure out why. I saw someone talk about Unravel recently and how to get some really great combos in your rotation with that, plus I can practice my rotation more intentionally for WvW like this, and maybe it will help more. Plus switching to sword/warhorn when split from the group might help me with roaming or dueling and having better damage. I’ll try it again and see if I can figure out how to make the build shine. Thanks for some neat ideas!

[Mevelios.4809]

22 minutes ago, rwknoll.7824 said:

I saw someone talk about Unravel recently and how to get some really great combos in your rotation with that

As a weaver utility it's convenient at forcing a full attunement & reseting all attunement CDs for a quick access to several key utilities, but don't forget what might turn into an obstacle: you're unable to use dual attacks for 5sec! Lahar, Pile driver and so on will have limited access if you have trouble anticipating what'll you need next to deal with the opponent.

[Atoclone.4810]

D/d aura share tempest. Feels like an absolute bruiser sat on tag during the crunch and the off hand dagger allows you to zoom after that straggler and pop them on their backside 

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

Catalyst needs some experience of zerg fights, and on "pre-buff / combos" ; it's all about the timing and position to place your jade sphere for boons and augments, to cast meteor shower etc.
If you don't use catalyst's jade sphere on yourself or you can't position yourself / the zerg is too mobile, it is relatively useless to take Catalyst. I Think it's better, easier to handle, for defense on structures for example.

Weaver is more fluid in practice ; sure the 2 elements could suggest you lack proactiveness at first, but with staff it's really easy anyway and you'll find the rotation naturally. You can also play with Arcane traitlane, unravel, weaveself if you have some issue or you want to trigger Elements of Rage and Polyphony more easily, you need Magnetic aura, Geyser etc.
However weaver really lacks boons; fury, mights, quickness .... you need to cuddle your own zerg, be almost front-line / mid-line for buffs, which can be risky in comparison to catalyst or tempest.

Fire/Arcane/weaver, with Lightning Flash, armor of Earth (or twist of fate) is a good start to learn about the mechanics or leech some bags if you're not in squad / or pug squad.
Then Fire/Air/Weaver, with Glyph of storm, ice bow, FGS... Then Catalyst.

About tempest, I feel sad we don't have alacrity anymore; and I can't stand the kitten overloads as DPS, so I don't play the spec in WvW.  I think its better for support/control on frontline.

[igmolicious.5986]

I don't do nearly as much zerg as I do small scale and roaming, so these probably wouldn't be great fits if you primarily do zerg, but I use:

This build for roaming. Primarily focused on self aura generation for cleanse/healing, but also has useful auras on demand (magnetic/shocking) to help deal with projectile-heavy and melee-heavy fights. Rebound is virtually useless as a death-protection, but does a great job of queueing up an aura of your choosing (depending on the attune you are in when the 5s is up). Fire will always be your biggest damage attune since it has the burning, but earth does a decent job of dumping bleed as well. This is a VERY tanky build (both power and condi) if you're good at swapping attunes for sigil cleanse, and not overusing auras from signets when you don't need the healing/secondary effects.

This build for smallscale. Primarily focused on aura sharing for small group cleanse/healing, but depending on what skills you choose, you can provide focused auras/boons (I uses Feel the Burn and Aftershock for faster might generation and extra projectile reflect/protection). As with the roaming build, fire attune is your primary damage attune, but water does a passable job of dealing damage while attuned for healing/cleansing. If you're good at anticipating what auras you might need in a smallscale fight, it does an excellent job at boon generation, projectile reflect/melee stun, and minor healing (about 1k per aura you push out). For a decent burst of healing/cleanse you can swap into fire (aura on attune), get your aura from starting overload and finishing overload, or swap to water for aoe minor cleanse + mist healing over time, and if you're using offhand dagger, apply/transmute frost aura as well as cleanse with dagger 5 before overloading for extra healing/cleansing. Earth and Air are mostly just used for aura application through the overloads, tho the air overload's aoe field is helpful for teammates to combo for things like dazing strike. Any aura you get is also applied to others around you, so blasing frost/chaos fields is usually a priority for me, and if you're using main hand dagger, pistol, or sword, leaping in dark/chaos/fire/ice/light fields will apply aoe auras as well.

You do have wiggle room with traits, skills, and weapons, depending on your playstyle, tho since both builds are very aura-centric using weapons/skills that apply those is helpful overall. For traits, on roaming, you can definitely swap out first fire and second earth traits, and even third earth trait if you're not using signets for the passives/aura generation, and on smallscale, you can swap out first fire, first and second water, and second tempest (if you don't need the extra stability).

Edited June 13 by igmolicious.5986

[Dreamonology.8362]

for zerg prob staff cata, not very good in organized groups, but double meteor feels good when it works, for roaming prob scepter/dagger cata

[Atoclone.4810]

On 6/13/2024 at 7:35 PM, igmolicious.5986 said:

I don't do nearly as much zerg as I do small scale and roaming, so these probably wouldn't be great fits if you primarily do zerg, but I use:

This build for roaming. Primarily focused on self aura generation for cleanse/healing, but also has useful auras on demand (magnetic/shocking) to help deal with projectile-heavy and melee-heavy fights. Rebound is virtually useless as a death-protection, but does a great job of queueing up an aura of your choosing (depending on the attune you are in when the 5s is up). Fire will always be your biggest damage attune since it has the burning, but earth does a decent job of dumping bleed as well. This is a VERY tanky build (both power and condi) if you're good at swapping attunes for sigil cleanse, and not overusing auras from signets when you don't need the healing/secondary effects.

 

any experience of this with d/d? might have to give it a bash

[igmolicious.5986]

8 minutes ago, Atoclone.4810 said:

any experience of this with d/d? might have to give it a bash

Yep! d/d works great with the leap (combo with your overloads for extra heal/cleanse on aura gain) and extra shocking aura on air IF you're not trying to kill people on walls/ciffs. Also of note is that you don't get as much burn (which is the big damage on sceptre) or the on-demand resistance from earth from sceptre, but you do get much faster attacks as well as more immob/stun in exchange. If you're more comfortable with d/d and are focused on dueling/1v1 fights, d/d is definitely good with this, and main hand dagger is getting some minor damage buffs (and an extra frost aura application with water 3) with the patch on the 24th.

Edited June 15 by igmolicious.5986

[Atoclone.4810]

16 hours ago, igmolicious.5986 said:

Yep! d/d works great with the leap (combo with your overloads for extra heal/cleanse on aura gain) and extra shocking aura on air IF you're not trying to kill people on walls/ciffs. Also of note is that you don't get as much burn (which is the big damage on sceptre) or the on-demand resistance from earth from sceptre, but you do get much faster attacks as well as more immob/stun in exchange. If you're more comfortable with d/d and are focused on dueling/1v1 fights, d/d is definitely good with this, and main hand dagger is getting some minor damage buffs (and an extra frost aura application with water 3) with the patch on the 24th.

Thanks, I really should try and learn sceptre at some point but I just find d/d the most fun. 

[Atoclone.4810]

On 6/15/2024 at 6:44 PM, igmolicious.5986 said:

Yep! d/d works great with the leap (combo with your overloads for extra heal/cleanse on aura gain) and extra shocking aura on air IF you're not trying to kill people on walls/ciffs. Also of note is that you don't get as much burn (which is the big damage on sceptre) or the on-demand resistance from earth from sceptre, but you do get much faster attacks as well as more immob/stun in exchange. If you're more comfortable with d/d and are focused on dueling/1v1 fights, d/d is definitely good with this, and main hand dagger is getting some minor damage buffs (and an extra frost aura application with water 3) with the patch on the 24th.

Gave this ago on Sunday and much fun was had. Thank you. Might try swapping it that last tempest trait to the DPS boost one next time. Any experience with that?

[igmolicious.5986]

I used it for a while, but for most WvW fights, having the extra sustain (1k heal every aura application) was much better than the 7% power/condi damage buff after an overload. That said, if it suits your playstyle more, definitely give it a try (though I'd probably suggest running something like mist form, conjure earth shield, arcane shield, or armor of earth instead of aftershock, for a little heavier active defence option while water attune is on cooldown).