Spellbreaker - Spearbreaker Roamer

This is a test build. You may comment and rate it.

Focused on: Strike damage, Control and Sustain

Designed for: WvW Roaming

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

Easy

This build was last updated on October 06, 2024.

Overview

A high damage, high sustain Power Spellbreaker build for WvW roaming built around the recently introduced Warrior Spear.

Skill Bar

Spear

Dagger/Shield

Utility

Skill Variants

Weapons

• Offhand Sword over Shield - a worse (albeit more frequent) block and higher damage in exchange for a CC.

• Staff over Dagger/Shield - Staff is a really strong defensive set that still does some damage, but you might have trouble killing more tanky builds with it.

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Specializations

Variants

• Shield Master could be useful against ranged enemies. Whether you've picked Staff, Shield or offhand Sword, this trait will get you some value against projectile users.

Variants

• Destruction of the Empowered could be a significant damage increase if you can afford to play with fewer cleanses.

Variants

• No Escape makes it easier to set up bursts, but costs quite a bit of your sustain.

Specialization Variants

Strength over Defense also works. This is seen as less viable, but skilled players can make it work and it offers higher damage:

Equipment

Head
Marauder

Shoulders
Marauder

Chest
Marauder

Hands
Marauder

Legs
Marauder

Feet
Marauder

Backpiece
Berserker

Accessory
Berserker

Accessory
Berserker

Amulet
Berserker

Ring
Berserker

Ring
Berserker

Spear
Marauder

Sigil

Sigil

Dagger
Marauder

Shield
Marauder

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Infusion
x18

Relic

Equipment Variants

Sigils

You're free to experiment with the sigils, various combinations have their pros and cons. We've arrived at the current setup because:

• Hydromancy makes the most sense on a weapon you swap to when you're already in melee, so going from melee to ranged set.
• Vision doesn't have to be on Spear to cover spear's highest damage ability. You can cast Spearmarshal's Support right before a weapon swap to Dagger and the entire sequence will crit, while Dagger has several skills that benefit from it too.
• Dodging has several synergies tied to it so we definitely wanted to include and Energy sigil. Spear also has lots of evade frames so we moved it to Dagger.
• Cleansing had to go somewhere, so Spear it is.

Other sigil combinations would also be fine:

• Moving Vision to Spear would go well with Hydromancy in creating a burst window after weapon swapping. With Energy/Cleansing on the Dagger set both sets bring strong defensive and offensive value.
• You could even swap those around. Having Energy/Cleansing on Spear would creat a very strong defensive set while Vision/Hydromancy would prop up your Dagger burst even more, if you prefer that playstyle.

Runes

• Rune of Superior Rune of the Pack - it's like Reaper but a bit less tanky in exchange for offering higher boon duration.

• Rune of Superior Rune of the Scholar - higher damage.

• Rune of Superior Rune of the Brawler - better sustain without sacrificing much damage.

Relics

• Relic of the Daredevil - more consistency on your hard hitting skills.

• Relic of Isgarren - higher burst potential.

Consumables

Food options

• - a very strong defensive option which improves your endurance regen and adds a bit more damage. Highly recommended due to relic and trait synergy.
  • Budget version:

• - passive damage mitigation and great stats.

Utility

• or .

Usage

Elite specialization basics

• Full Counter (FC) recharges your Burst skills Path to Victory and Harrier's Toss. Always try to use it when you can refresh their duration, except if you're under heavy pressure in which case you can use FC purely for defensive means.

• Always try to make sure Full Counter goes off: briefly move into hostile AoE spells, tank Mesmer clones or Ranger pets, cast it in the middle of an enemy's attack animation, etc.

• FC is both one of the best defensive and offensive skill in the build as it blocks, evades, grants Stability, and performs an unblockable AoE CC attack when triggered.

• Both burst skills and Full Counter cost adrenaline. If you only need a little more until you can use them then Versatile Rage with a weapon swap can get you there.

General

• Settings: disable auto targeting, otherwise it'd be impossible to use skills like Bull's Charge for disengaging. For more tips check out our settings guide.

• Playstyle: this build is all about weaving hard hitting skills into chains of block and evade frames while tethering yourself to the target with Magebane Tether as often as possible. The combos aren't set in stone, rather you'll need to adapt based on what CDs are available. Minimize melee contact whenever you can't outdamage your opponent, dodge/block/evade as many things as possible, and spike targets when an opening shows.

• Any burst skill can proc Magebane Tether, including Full Counter.

• Staff is your defensive set, the only truly dangerous ability with good damage here is Path to Victory.

• While Spear is the more offensive set, it's also fairly high on sustain thanks to multiple evade frames and CC skills.

• Fast Hands reduces the CD of weapon swapping to 5 seconds, which keeps gameplay rather fast paced with minimal downtime. As a result you won't be auto attacking much unless you're cleaving a downed enemy.

• Despite its range Bull's Charge is best used in melee to make it harder to react to.

• CCing a target removes a boon and deals damage/grants adrenaline via Loss Aversion.

• All movement skills remove the Immobilized condition - list of movement skills in the build:
  • Dagger/Shield: Breaching Strike, Aura Slicer and Shield Bash.
  • Spear: Spear Swipe.
  • Rampage: Kick (Rampage), Dash, and Seismic Leap.
  • Utility: Bull's Charge

Survival

• Almost every single Staff skill has some healing attached to it.

• Spear is great at evading attacks. Harrier's Toss ⇒ Full Counter ⇒ Harrier's Toss ⇒ Spear Swipe gives you 4 evade frames in a row while doing damage and CC.

• Brawler's Recovery, Sigil of Superior Sigil of Cleansing, Cleansing Ire and Warrior's Sprint will be used to manage condition levels before resorting to mass cleanses.

• Burst skills cleanse conditions whenever they strike thanks to Cleansing Ire.
  • Getting Blinded could make your Burst skill miss and thus the condition cleansing won't happen which is rather awkward. Dodge rolling however grants Resistance via Resilient Roll which renders Blind ineffective, increasing the chance of a successful Cleansing Ire proc.

• Balanced Stance isn't just an anti-CC skill, it also mitigates direct damage by giving you immunity to critical hits.

• If taken Mending cleanses 5 conditions and should be used pretty much on CD, assuming you're missing a large chunk of health or need to deal with conditions.

• If taken Defiant Stance can bail you out against any type of damage you're facing, but it's more of a last resort option.
  • Try not to overlap it with Balanced Stance, as the damage reduction from DS can result in less healing, and overlapping 2 damage mitigation tools in general is just a waste of CDs. Granted you can't actually use Defiant Stance while stunned, so if Balanced Stance is your only available stunbreak then using both is better than dying.

• Adrenal Health provides a steady stream of healing as long as you're landing those Burst skills (F1-F2).

• "Shake It Off!" (SIO) is both a stunbreak and a source of condition removal for you and your team.

• Kite, a LOT. You want to run out of harm's way using mobility skills as much as possible before resorting to major defensive CDs.

• Bull's Charge is great if you want to run away from pressure as it can build quite the gap while providing an evade frame.

Rampage

• Rampage is what you use when you quickly want to burst/CC a target, or desperately need mobility to either chase down someone or run away from a fight. Bonus points if you manage to attach Magebane Tether just before using your elite.

• CC skills barely do any damage anymore, most of the damage in this form comes from autoattacks and Dash.

• Throw Boulder is a popular opener, allowing you to CC targets from range and then either follow up with Dash for burst damage or Seismic Leap to keep the CC chain rolling.

Related Builds

• Spellbreaker - Defense Spearbreaker - sPvP version of the build.