Bladesworn - Defense Bladesworn Roamer
The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great
Focused on: Strike damage, Control and Mobility
Designed for: WvW Roaming
Difficulty:
Easy
This build was last updated on February 20, 2025 and is up to date for the February 11, 2025 patch.
Overview
A Power Bladesworn WvW roaming build that abandons Tactics in favor of
Defense, picking up powerful new tools such as
Resistance on dodge and projectile reflect on
Aegis.
The addition of
came to the rescue of this build, significantly upping its damage.
Skill Bar
Axe/Pistol
Utility
Skill Variants
Heal
- - better condition cleansing. However both on Strength and your elite skill lose some value if you take Mending.
Template Code
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Specializations
Variants
Stability.
trades a bit of damage and healing for more - could be a significant damage increase at the expense of sustain but also requires you to hit highly charged Dragon Slashes consistently, which might be difficult against better players or builds with lots of mobility skills/CC/evade frames.
Variants
- improves your healing but could make the build too sluggish to chase enemies or disengage from fights.
Equipment
Head
Berserker
Berserker
Shoulders
Berserker
Berserker
Chest
Berserker
Berserker
Hands
Berserker
Berserker
Legs
Berserker
Berserker
Feet
Berserker
Berserker
Backpiece
Demolisher
Demolisher
Accessory
Demolisher
Demolisher
Accessory
Demolisher
Demolisher
Amulet
Demolisher
Demolisher
Ring
Demolisher
Demolisher
Ring
Demolisher
Demolisher
Axe
Berserker
Berserker
Pistol
Berserker
Berserker
Sigil
Sigil
Rune
x6
x6
Infusion
x18
x18
Relic
Equipment Changes
Runes
- - if you want some boon duration without giving up too much damage.
Assassin gear.
- if you can't afford Demolisher stats, just use this rune and replace the Demolisher pieces with
Consumables
Food options
- - passive damage mitigation and great stats.
- - extra Precision and armor ignoring damage procs that also heal you. It's cheap too.
- - a very strong defensive option which improves your already great endurance regen. Even has synergy with
Might related traits and the Strength line in general.
- Budget version:
Utility
- or , whichever is cheaper at the moment.
Usage
Elite specialization basics
- Warriors who spec
Bladesworn lose access to weapon swapping in combat but gain access to the Gunsaber, which works a bit like an Engineer kit (F1 by default).
- Instead of Adrenaline you build Flow in combat. If you have enough Flow you gain access to (F2), which roots you in place and starts consuming Flow when used. Dragon Trigger empowers your Gunsaber skills. The more Flow you consume, the stronger the first 3 skills get. These 3 skills are the main source of your burst damage.
- While swapping in and out of Gunsaber has a 10s CD, this can sometimes be bypassed. is on a separate CD and using it puts you back into Gunsaber mode.
General
- Gunsaber isn't a very complicated weapon. 1-4 are damaging skills and 5 is for mobility/
Fury application. Skills 1-3 are ranged, 4 can be both melee and ranged. Spam them in whatever order you wish if they're not on CD.
- The 3 Dragon Trigger burst skills are:
- Dragon Slash - Force: replaces the autoattack, melee cleave.
- Dragon Slash - Boost: replaces skill 2, a gap closer/mobility skill with good damage. This is the most commonly used Dragon Trigger skill as it deals high damage and has the reach to hit enemies that are farther away.
- Dragon Slash - Reach: replaces skill 3, ranged projectile attack.
- While Dragon Trigger is active, Gunsaber skill #5 turns into a ground targeted teleport. While the range is short, this could still allow you to reposition yourself in a way to hit targets who escaped to the highground or are hiding behind a pillar.
- When playing with
Stability that could help you avoid being interrupted.
this could also act as an instant source of
- When playing with
Blind immunity and unblockable attacks.
- Skill #4's
Aegis application could also come in clutch if your timing is good, potentially blocking a CC skill that would otherwise interrupt the channeling.
makes it easier to land Dragon Trigger skills by giving you - Skill #4's
- Axe/Pistol has plenty of burst damage and could act as a quick finishing move against low HP targets, but it's also an excellent set for barrier stacking (more on that later).
- is both a defensive and offensive skill. You can either use it to heal/cleanse yourself and your team or boost your damage depending on the situation.
- Mobility skills give you
Swiftness.
Aegis to reflect projectiles. This is way more impactful than it sounds because attacks you reflect don't consume the Aegis, allowing you to block far more than just 1 attack as long as you don't get hit in melee.
- Skill #4 on both sets (Pistol and Gunsaber) are
Aegis sources.
causes - Skill #4 on both sets (Pistol and Gunsaber) are
- Dodge rolling grants
Resistance which is especially useful against
Blind and
Weakness spamming specs. With this trait you can keep on pressuring targets by sacrificing a dodge, or end up getting it as a passive bonus anyway when dodging attacks.
Sustain
- Every source of
Might application heals you thanks to , turning otherwise damage focused skills like into healing skills.
- is a very important part of your survival kit, giving you barrier whenever you use the last charge of an ammo skill. This includes your shouts, , Gunsaber skills and even .
- Skill #3 on Gunsaber is an exception, you might want to consider building up ammo on that one because it makes the skill significantly stronger, even adding a
Daze to it.
heavily encourages you to spam Gunsaber skills to make sure that you don't build up multiple charges. If every charge is your last one, this trait keeps the procs rolling.
- Skill #3 on Gunsaber is an exception, you might want to consider building up ammo on that one because it makes the skill significantly stronger, even adding a
- Pistol has amazing synergy with , as both of its skills are ammo skills and recovers charges very quickly which keeps the barrier rolling.
- Simply chaining ⇒ ⇒ on repeat as much as you can will give you lots of barrier. You can extend the combo with , restoring ammo to both Pistol skills, allowing you to use Gunstinger once and Dragon's Roar twice.
- gives one charge to all Bladesworn ammo skills and makes your next Dragon Trigger charge faster. It's primarily a defensive skill best used to recharge your healing skill and Gunsaber #5 for extra mobility. To get full value out of it make sure that all of your Gunsaber skills are on CD and your heal doesn't have more than 1 charge. This is especially important because of the synergy, as going from 0 ammo to 1 will proc the barrier on the next cast, but going from 1 ammo to 2 doesn't.
- Be careful with the timing of ! The charges don't stack, if you use the second one before the first heal goes off the first one won't heal you.
- Your best source of condition cleansing is also one of your only stun breaks: so plan your CD management accordingly.
- This skill could also be used offensively, using the
Stability to protect your Dragon Trigger casts.
is the best skill in the build for surviving Power based damage, even allowing you to tank some enemy burst while counter pressuring them. It's also a stun break, so if you're not under any condition pressure you might want to use this first before resorting to later.
- This skill could also be used offensively, using the
Related Builds
- Defense Bladesworn - sPvP version of the build.
Ratings

Honestly, this might be a 5 with the new relic. The sustain was always good, but it had trouble getting kills after the nerfs. Stormsinger is already a very strong relic, and this build has insanely good synergy with it because of how many movement skills it's got. Mobility, damage and sustain are all top tier. CC is weak and it can have a hard time against conditions, but I think with good use of Cleansing sigil and Shake It Off + all the Aegis and Resistance uptime it's not as bad in condi matchups as it looks. Cele nerfs actually helped this build a lot, I'm mostly facing power specs these days and Bladesworn eats those.
Comments
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