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Itching to know the best open-world build for your Gunsaber-wielding samurai in Guild Wars 2? You're in the right place, let us show you how to maximize the open-world potential of the Bladesworn Warrior and master both the way of the gun and blade.
The Warrior is the brute force specialist of the Guild Wars 2 professions. The Warrior tackled problems head-on and with brute force, they are the master of nearly all available weapons. While other professions use magic, the Warrior relies on strength, skill, and good equipment (nobody said they can't use magically enhanced armor and weapons).
In the End of Dragons expansion, the Warrior gains access to the pistol, a flashy new Gunsaber, and some new martial techniques to kick the Skritt out of more bad guys.
The Bladesworn Explained
The Bladesworn gets access to a new offhand weapon - the pistol, which gives the Warrior access to 2 short-range damage-dealing skills. You also gain access to the Gunsaber, which works a bit like an engineer's toolkit - it basically acts as its own weapon set, this gives you access to a combination of melee, ranged, and leaping finisher skills. In the open world, the Gunsaber is an adaptable weapon that has very high DPS.
You also gain access to Armament skills, which carry charges or ammunition - enabling you to build up stacks of ammo and then spend them as you need them. It's a very active gameplay experience - you're a lethal fighter, but thanks to trait synergy, you're very hard to take down.
How Does The Gunsaber Work?
The Gunsaber is an adaptable, hard-hitting weapon that works incredibly well in the open world. The trade-off however is that the Bladesworn elite specialization loses the ability to swap weapon sets while in combat - you can only toggle between your currently equipped weapon set and the Gunsaber.
While normally the Warrior builds up adrenaline and then unleashes it in a hard-hitting attack, the Bladesworn works a bit differently. Instead of building adrenaline as you attack, you'll gain flow at a constant rate in combat, also any skills that would gain you adrenaline instead give you flow. Flow is then used to fuel the Bladesworn's most deadly attack - Dragon Slash. This attack will deal huge amounts of burst damage and can be modified with traits.
The Best Bladesworn Traits For The Open World
The image above is the trait lines and the specific traits that you'll be investing in. We'll examine the selection in more detail below, where we'll also be looking at the gear choices as well. The trait lines are as follows - Strength, Arms, and Bladesworn. These traits all give us a nice combo of damage and survivability, this build offers little in way of support, but you're in the open world and you've been providing banners for years - it's time to samurai slice the baddies instead.
Strength
We'll be putting points in Strength to get the following traits: Brave Stride, Forceful Greatsword, and Berserker's Power.
- Brave Stride - gives you stability on movement skills, which is nice if you need extra stability as you can just add a movement utility skill.
- Forceful Greatsword - gives you might every time you score a critical hit, which has synergy with your traits and equipment. It also gives you extra power, upping your overall damage.
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Berserker's Power - gives us extra strike damage depending upon how much Flow you've used, you'll be using Dragon Slash often, which means this buff will regularly be active.
- At three stacks this gives you a whopping 21 percent bonus.
Arms
Arms is usually considered a good trait line for conditions builds, but it can also greatly enhance the power of your Dragon Slash. We'll be taking the following traits: Signet Mastery, Sundering Burst, and Burst Precision.
- Signet Mastery - gives you a ferocity bonus on signet use, if you stick just one signet skill on your utility bar you'll get tons of extra damage from this trait.
- Sundering Burst - gives you roughly ten stacks of vulnerability on using Dragon Slash (five if it doesn't crit - but our Dragon Slash will always be critting).
- Burst Precision - makes it so Dragon Slash has a 100 percent critical hit chance, so it'll be hitting for brilliant amounts of burst damage and it'll allow you to cut down entire hordes of lesser foes.
Bladesworn
The backbone of the build - this trait line gives you access to the Gunsaber, allows you to use pistols as an offhand weapon and replaces Adrenaline with Flow. You'll be getting the following traits: River's Flow, Fierce as Fire, and finally Immortal Dragon.
- River's Flow - ups your overall healing by ten percent, it also gives you extra flow whenever you heal yourself
- Fierce as Fire - gives you one percent extra strike damage every time you use ammunition (stacks up to ten times for a maximum of ten percent extra strike damage)
- Immortal Dragon - heals you for eight percent of the total amount of damage done by Dragon Slash (this will be a lot of healing, as your dragon slash can hit for a lot of damage) it also gives you protection as you charge your Dragon Slash.
The traits from these three lines all synergize incredibly well, they'll allow you to decimate enemies in the open world while having great survivability thanks to Immortal Dragon and Dragon Slash.
The Best Gear For The Bladesworn Open World Build
You'll be taking a full set of Cavalier gear for every armor, weapon, and jewelry slot available. Cavalier boosts your Power, Toughness and Ferocity, making you hit hard, stay alive and crit for huge damage. There's not much precision as you'll be critting every single Dragon Slash thanks to the Burst Precision trait.
Weapons - Axe and Pistol
You'll be using an axe, as it's possibly the hardest hitting weapon in the Warrior's arsenal, combing this with offhand pistol skills leads to some very high damage numbers. You'll be running a Superior Sigil of Vision on the axe as it allows you to crit every time you swap back to your axe (which you will be very often).