Weapon Master/guide

For the Weapon Master achievements any creature kill counts including ambient creatures. Several places have a high density of critters, like Godslost Swamp. A never-ending stream of rats will run past you at the beginning of Vigil personal story Forearmed Is Forewarned.

Work on these achievements in combination with the Slayer achievements.

Weapon master (finishing blows)

To acquire weapon-related achievements, the last hit must be dealt with that particular weapon. Only the weapon related to the weapon skill that strikes the killing blow will earn a point. If the target dies from any other source of damage such as Pets, trait effects, condition damage or most utility skills no credit is given, although several utility skills count as kills from a certain weapon.

• The piercing trait is highly effective against stacked ambient creatures like in the story instance Stealing Light.
• Kills from reflected projectiles count as the weapon that produced them.
• The names of the achievements "Speargun Master" and "Harpoon Master" are misleading. The "Speargun" achievement is actually referring to Harpoon guns and the "Harpoon" achievement to Spears.
• Some bundles and utility skills count as a specific weapon type.

Professions combinations

See full list of weapon usability by profession

To obtain the Weapon Master achievements with the least possible number of different core professions, the following combinations can be used:

• Ranger, Guardian, Engineer
• Warrior, Ranger, Thief, Necromancer
• Warrior, Ranger, Thief, Elementalist
• Warrior, Ranger, Thief, Guardian
• Warrior, Ranger, Mesmer, Necromancer
• Warrior, Ranger, Mesmer, Elementalist
• Warrior, Ranger, Mesmer, Guardian
• Warrior, Ranger, Necromancer, Engineer
• Warrior, Ranger, Elementalist, Engineer
• Warrior, Thief, Mesmer, Necromancer
• Warrior, Thief, Mesmer, Elementalist
• Warrior, Thief, Necromancer, Guardian

Places with large number of ambient creatures or underleveled enemies

• Godslost Swamp
• A Vision of Darkness (lvl 20, Sylvari): Rescue Tegwen. Lead her back until she says "I saw great eyes in the darkness." It is recommended to back track and down the NPCs at this point. Spiders respawn infinitely until the player crosses a certain threshold and snap the NPCs to say "There's the portal!". (You can skip that threshold by intentionally dying, causing you to respawn near the arch where the spiders come from.)
• Forearmed Is Forewarned (lvl 60, Vigil): an endless stream of rats spawn (at a rate of ~1 rat every 2 seconds, or 1800 kills per hour) and can be killed for weapon master achievements. By diving at the spawn even underwater weapon kills can be farmed this way.
• Stealing Light (lvl 80): At the top of the hill risen spiders spawn and will instantly respawn when one is killed. By not triggering the fight against the Spider Lord, these spider can be used to very quickly (depending on attack speed, between 60 and 70 minutes, except for Shield which takes longer) finish any weapon master achievement. The rate of spawn is approximately 80 spiders per minute, but they respawn at the rate they are dispatched. The spiders are not ambient creatures but underleveled enemies and while not hitting hard, the sheer number of can eventually kill a player without any sustainability. NPC Allies may interfere so it's best to feed them to the giants. Beware that they resurrect each other.
• Urban Battleground Fractal (lvl 80): Not a Personal Story chapter. The Urban Battleground Fractal can be selected when entering the Fractals of the Mists. In the northeast corner of the first area is a sectioned-off area where all human enemies are actually ambient creatures on a fast respawn. While the humans are spread out over a fairly large area, it is still possible to obtain multiple kills using long-duration aoe-skills.

Off-Hand

The focus, shield, torch, and warhorn achievements are noticeably slower to acquire, as there's no autoattacks for them on any profession, and their skills usually have lengthy cooldowns or deal no damage. Piercing skills work well on groups as well as AoE. The following weapon skills offer the most potential kills per minute if used against infinitely respawning creatures (for example the risen spiders in the story step Stealing Light):

• Focus - Elementalist Flamewall - ~187.5 hits per minute: 10 pulses against 5 targets every 16 seconds (with Persisting Flames and Pyromancer's Training), and use Fire Shield > Transmute Fire, Freezing Gust, Comet, and Magnetic Wave while Flamewall is on cooldown.
• Shield - Engineer can use Magnetic Inversion for 5 hits every 20 seconds, and Throw Shield every 24 seconds for 10 hits, if positioned correctly, for a total of ~40 hits per minute.
  • Chronomancer Tides of Time - ~24 hits per minute: hits 10 targets every 25 seconds (reduced slightly by alacrity from the skill itself). The cooldown can be decreased further by using the trait Chaotic Interruption (Interrupting the attacks of risen spiders in A Vision of Darkness and Stealing Light can trigger a 5-second cooldown reduction).
• Torch - Ranger Bonfire - 135 hits per minute: 9 pulses against 5 targets every 20 seconds (with Ambidexterity)
• Warhorn - Tempest can use Wildfire, Tidal Surge, Cyclone, Lightning Orb, and Dust Storm.
  • Necromancer - Death Shroud -- wait until surrounded, enter Death Shroud, trigger Life Transfer (which counts as weapon damage for whatever the off-hand weapon is), exit to normal, repeat. Hits 30 targets every 25 seconds. Regain Life Force quickly with Locust Swarm. Does not work with Scourge or Reaper.
  • Previously, Locust Swarm (with Banshee's Wail) was the preferred method, but since that skill was changed from Damage to Life Siphon Damage, it no longer counts towards Warhorn.

Ground targeted abilities (like Flamewall and Tides of Time cannot be autocast. To farm these weapon master achievements with minimal interaction, the Ground Targeting option can be set to Instant and the associated key on the keyboard can be held down continuously to have the skill be cast as soon as it comes off cooldown. Note however, that AFK farming is prohibited, be at the computer at all times.

Aquatic

Not much attention is paid to the aquatic weapons, so there is little information to help with gaining related Weapon Mastery. The rivers that run through Timberline Falls, Brisban Wildlands and Metrica Province offer a decent number of ambient enemies.

Swimming up and down the river west of Artergon Waypoint killing ambients is a good way to go using:

• Trident - Necromancer
• Spear (Harpoon Master) - Necromancer or Revenant
• Harpoon Gun (Speargun Master) - Ranger or Thief

In the Sylvari personal story chapter Source of the Issue, the stream that runs through the instance contains 18 Coho Salmon on a slow respawn. Once the regular enemies have been cleared out of area, they can be farmed in peace. The story step Forearmed Is Forewarned of the Vigil story offers an endless stream of quickly respawning ambient rats that can be hit from underwater.

For players with Path of Fire, the area of water around the Lily of the Elon private lounge has five groups of five Trout, which can be quickly killed with a couple of area-of-effect attacks and should respawn in the time it takes to complete a circuit of the structure. There are around 10 other ambient crabs and salmon on the route which can be targeted on the way round. While access to the lounge itself is restricted to only players with the relevant pass, anyone is able to swim around it, and other hazards in the area are very limited.

Additionally, the Thousand Seas Pavilion offers underwater golems that frequently respawn which can be easily killed with a full Berserker gear loadout.

As with all Weapon Master achievements, the killing blow on any enemy must be power damage from a weapon skill. Condition damage or utility skills won't progress the achievement so care should be taken if farming enemies which don't die in a single hit.

With the introduction of land spears in Janthir Wilds, Harpoon Master progress can be earned on land like the non aquatic weapons.

Non weapon skill sources

List of other confirmed skills:

Profession skills

• Elementalist
  • Sword
    • Arcane Blast, Arcane Wave, Arcane Shield, Conjure Fiery Greatsword, Glyph of Storms (any attunement), Lightning Flash, Signet of Air, Signet of Earth, Signet of Fire, Signet of Water, Tornado
• Engineer
  • Sword
    • Rocket Boots
  • Staff
    • Photon Forge, Rifle Turret, Rocket Turret
• Mesmer
  • Scepter
    • Illusions
  • Shield
    • The final explosion of Phantasmal Defender
• Necromancer
  • Hammer
    • Flesh Golem, Flesh Wurm, Reaper's Shroud
  • Scepter
    • Blood Fiend, Bone Fiend, Bone Minions, Shadow Fiend

Ranger pets (standard/F1 attack)

• Hammer
  • Bristleback
• Staff
  • Bear, Bird, Canine, Drake, Feline, Moa, Spider
  • Armor Fish, Jellyfish, Shark

Disguises

• Greatsword
  • Avatar of Balthazar (in The Ghost Rite)
  • Blish's Arm (killing enemies using Triboelectrocution in Forearmed Is Forewarned)
• Hammer
  • Alpha Siege Golem and Omega Siege Golem
  • Dredge Suit
  • Enchanted Armor
  • Golem Battle Suit Prototype (in Air Drop)
  • Inferno Hound
  • Raven Illusion

Environmental weapons

• Rifle
  • Overminer's Boomstick (in Among the Kodan)
  • TT6-B Devourer in Forging Steel
• Staff
  • Aether Mine (in Piece Negotiations)
  • Arrow Cart
  • Asuran Turret (in Piece Negotiations)
  • Iron Legion Mortar
  • Iron Legion Turret (at Charr's Triumph)
  • Sniper Rifle

Racial skills

• Human
  • Scepter
    • Hounds of Balthazar
• Sylvari
  • Hammer
    • Summon Druid Spirit
    • Summon Sylvan Hound

Master of Overkill

• Not limited to profession skills, includes skills available via bundles or siege weapons. The best way to max this achievement is by hitting ambient creatures like Rabbits or Raccoons, because they have no defense.
  • In Crucible of Eternity (story), there's a part where players follow a golem that is producing a force field. With one of the bundles you can collect right in front of the poison area, hit an ambient creature.
  • Hit an ambient creature with a siege weapon in World versus World.
  • Risen at the end of Personal Story mission Air Drop, while wearing the golem suit.
• Reviving downed players also grants progress equal to the cumulative amount of healing done when the player ends the revival channeling.

Notes

• Players can use the Combat log to check whether a weapon skill was the last hit dealt on a target as long as nothing else was attacking it too.
• Originally foes killed by area of effect damage from Sigil of Fire counted towards the title for whichever weapon skill caused the hit.
• Due to people farming ambient creatures with Maize balm many open world locations with quickly respawning ambient creatures have been adjusted with slower spawn rates or complete removal. There are however still some personal story steps that offer endless respawns of critters or underleveled creatures that can be killed with one hit and are ideal for farming weapon master achievements.
• An easy way of progress in this achievement was to upgrade a weapon with a damaging sigil like Sigil of Fire and kill the ambient creatures or low-health enemies in story steps. However, this blast no longer counts more than one ambient creature.