Warrior Skill Check: Sever Artery + Gash + Final Thrust

Hi there, today let’s take a look at the Warrior's sword skill chain. It's a three skill combination that focuses heavy on bleeding your opponent, and ending with a high damage finisher.

Sever Artery Icon

The first skill, which is also the number one button on your bar, is Sever Artery. The simple description is you ‘Bleed your foe with a slash’. It’s a simple yet effective attack with a very useful effect on the enemy. Once you use and hit with Sever Artery the skill will automatically change to the next skill in the chain, which would be Gash.

 A quick side note, this is another tip of the hat to Arena Net for once again just simplifying game play with these skill chains for us the player, so that we can focus more on what is happening on the screen and less about HUD management. Ok, back to topic.

Gash Icon

The second skill in the chain, as I mentioned above is Gash. Gash will ‘Bleed your foe with a gash’. Like the first skill, this one also bleeds your enemy. You may be wondering ‘why would I need to bleed my target twice?’ Well the answer to that is simple: Bleeds stack. 

Bleeding is a stackable condition that cause damage per second and can be stacked up to nine times! That alone makes the first two skills in the chain really helpful for chipping away heavy health foes. Especially with how quickly you’ll go through the skill chain rotation, you’ll hit that nine stack in no time. That’s a heavy DoT that can be useful on normal enemies and bosses alike. 

Final Thrust Icon

Last but certainly not least is Final Thrust, the last skill in the chain that will ‘Strike your foe with a powerful thrust’. In a sense, this is what will knock em’ down after setting them up. What’s more, is there is even a trait that you can slot in order to make Final Thrust deal a critical hit. 

In a fight, on your fifth rotation (if it goes on that long), will give you your ninth stack of bleeding along with five critical attacks from Final Thrust. Not to mention the normal damage from five rotations of your other two skills and the DoT from the bleeds. That is a lot of damage coming from a three skill chain.

Overall, this is a great skill chain to take on really tough enemies with large amounts of health, or even bosses. Not to mention the trait to add the critical is just icing on the cake.

Stay tuned for other ‘Skill Checks’ as we look at more incredible skills Guild Wars 2 has to offer!