Berserker - Quickness Support Condi DPS

This is a rough draft. Once adequately written, it will progress to the testing stage, where it can be rated by the community. You can help by proposing changes with a comment.

Focused on: Condition damage and Support

Designed for: Raids and Fractals

Difficulty:

TBD

Overview

Once a meta-defining DPS-support, Bannerslave has returned as a Quickness provider. Banners provide a large amount of Quickness up front and then pulse supplementary boons for a while afterwards. This makes warrior excellent for handling mechanics as it can spend long times off stack, and can provide its boons up to 960 units away. As banners cannot be moved once placed, it does struggle to maintain uptime on encounters with lots of movement.

This build provides permanent uptimes of Quickness and Fury, along with around 80% Resistance.

Skill Bar

Longbow

Sword/Torch

Utility

Skill Variants

Banner of Tactics is essential for Quickness uptime, but shattering blow can be swapped out if needed (though it is a significant DPS loss to replace it with anything but another rage skill):

• "For Great Justice!" if your group requires some extra Might.
• Wild Blow for more CC.
• Banner of Discipline can be swapped out for Banner of Defense to gain access to Aegis and Barrier.
• Battle Standard can be used if CC is unimportant, and the fury or res power will be beneficial.

Template Code

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Equipment

Head
Viper

Shoulders
Viper

Chest
Viper

Hands
Viper

Legs
Viper

Feet
Viper

Backpiece
Viper

Accessory
Viper

Accessory
Viper

Amulet
Viper

Ring
Viper

Ring
Viper

Longbow
Viper

Sigil

Sigil

Sword
Viper

Torch
Viper

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Infusion
x18

• Getting use out of the Stability or Aegis from Banner of Tactics or Banner of Defense, respectively, can be difficult as you need to use these skills nearly off cooldown to maintain Quickness. If you want to be able to use them more reactively, then swapping in Ritualist stats gear is an efficient way to gain a lot more boon duration.

Equipment Variants

Sigils

• A Sigil of Superior Sigil of Bursting can replace the Sigil of Superior Sigil of Earth for more consistent DPS, that should be slightly higher. The difference will be small though.
• The exact arrangement of sigils is not vital, but the on-crit sigils are chosen to be on longbow as Fan of Fire has a ~98% chance of critting at least once, making it more likely that you will get a second proc of Sigil of Superior Sigil of Torment or a third proc of Sigil of Superior Sigil of Earth.

Consumables

Food:

• , or

Utility:

• or

Usage

Banner Usage

In general you want to use your banners off cooldown, though you can afford to delay them by a second or so if it means not delaying your berserk rotation. If you land your banners in one of your many fire fields, you can also provide some incidental Might. If you anticipate needing to delay your banners to deal with mechanics, or just find that you need higher boon duration to maintain Quickness, then swapping in Ritualist stats gear is very efficient.

Rotation

Condi Berserker does not have a perfect loop as Berserk length and cooldown align differently with key skills. This means skill ordering can vary depending on how much time you have left in Berserk.

Opening Berserk Section

1. Cast both banners on the group (after the boon strip, if there is one)
2. Flames of War
3. Weapon swap
4. Fan of Fire
5. Pin Down
6. Head Butt
7. Berserk as soon as the self-stun wears off
8. Scorched Earth
9. Blood Reckoning
10. Scorched Earth
11. Shattering Blow
12. Fan of Fire
13. Weapon swap

Sword section (berserk)

After the opener, you will switch between sword and longbow sections until Berserk runs out

1. Blaze Breaker
2. Savage Leap
3. Final Thrust (only when target is below 50% health)
4. Flaming Flurry - use this as the second skill if Berserk is about to end
5. Auto until Weapon swap is off cooldown - don't worry about finishing the auto chain
6. Weapon swap

Longbow section (berserk)

1. Fan of Fire
2. Scorched Earth
3. Blood Reckoning ⇒ Scorched Earth ⇒ Pin Down, if available
4. Arcing Arrow
5. Auto, Banners and Arcing Arrow until Scorched Earth is off cooldown
6. Scorched Earth
7. Fan of Fire
8. Weapon swap
9. Return to start of sword section

Outside berserk section

Assuming you're fast enough, berserk should run out shortly after step 4 in the third sword section

1. Auto until Berserk has ~4s remaining on cooldown - finish the auto chain this time
2. Final Thrust (only when target is below 50% health)
3. Savage Leap (optional)
4. Weapon swap
5. Fan of Fire
6. Auto until Berserk is off cooldown
7. Berserk
8. Scorched Earth
9. Blood Reckoning
10. Scorched Earth
11. Pin Down
12. Fan of Fire
13. Weapon swap
14. Return to start of sword section

Video Example

General Tips

• While in Berserk, you want to weapon swap off sword as soon as you can.
• While in Berserk, always start longbow sections with Fan of Fire → Scorched Earth and always end them with Scorched Earth → Fan of Fire.
• Use Flames of War and Shattering Blow whenever they are off cooldown.
  • Try to fit in Flames of War before Flaming Flurry so that it is not delayed too much.
  • Shattering Blow extends the duration of Berserk if used while in Berserk, so make sure you use it as soon as it's available to prevent Berserk ending early. Try not to use it during steps 1-3 on longbow though, as this will delay your entire rotation.
    • Continue using Shattering Blow outside of Berserk, but you can delay it a couple of seconds if berserk is about to become available.
• Flaming Flurry is your lowest DPS skill aside from auto attacks. This means you can easily delay it to fit in other key skills, or even weapon swap in the middle of the cast to prevent slowing down your rotation.
• Follow the rotation as much as possible but stay on longbow if you can't make use of your sword skills in melee range.
• You can provide extra might for your group by using Arcing Arrow inside your Scorched Earth or another fire field.
• Try to drop your banners when you would otherwise just be autoattacking on longbow.
• Some bosses have attacks that are harmful to the group if they're reflected (Primarily Matthias Gabrel and Cairn the Indomitable), make sure to familiarize yourself with these and avoid reflecting them with Shattering Blow.

Advanced Tips

• If you get a fire aura from source other than yourself, then you should delay Savage Leap.
• You can stow-cancel the aftercast of Flaming Flurry, as well as the aftercast of the auto-attack that comes before the Scorched Earth in step 5 of the longbow section.
• Getting the very last Flaming Flurry requires being very fast with the rotation. If you are not quite fast enough to consistently fit it in, you can use it as the first skill of the final sword section in Berserk.
• For most of the rotation, the order of Blaze Breaker, Savage Leap and Final Thrust is unimportant as you will use each of them only once per loop, and the loop is longer than their cooldowns. The order used is to make the rotation easier to remember, but informed by the following:
  • On the second sword section after the opener, Flames of War is not quite off cooldown when you swap to sword, but using Savage Leap first would delay it slightly (Flames of War is a very high-damage skill). Thus Blaze Breaker is used first.
  • During the sword section where Berserk ends, there is time to use Final Thrust twice without delaying the rotation, but only if it is used before Flaming Flurry.

Breakbar

• Your most easily accessible strong CC is Head Butt.
• If your team needs strong CC, on Mathias Gabrel for example, you can switch Shattering Blow for Wild Blow, your strongest CC option.