Guild Wars 2

Hey all,

I have an 80 Warrior and, regardless of build, it just feels slow and clunky. I also just get destroyed everywhere I go in HoT, but I think I’m just not playing well. I have a Mesmer that I am working on and was just curious which of the two you all felt was more suited for solo and casual play. The Mesmer is not yet 80, so I’m not sure if the durability via illusions is still applicable in HoT content.

Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts!

Stigas.9378:

Hey all,

I have an 80 Warrior and, regardless of build, it just feels slow and clunky. I also just get destroyed everywhere I go in HoT, but I think I’m just not playing well. I have a Mesmer that I am working on and was just curious which of the two you all felt was more suited for solo and casual play. The Mesmer is not yet 80, so I’m not sure if the durability via illusions is still applicable in HoT content.

Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts!

Love my Mesmers (notice there is an S in there lol) this is my favorite class. Yes you can rock the world using illusions and Wells. Until you get Chronomancer skills (you can select addidional speed with the Chrono setup) I always use the Superior Rune of the Traveler for speed.

Also when selecting traits have illusions appear when you dodge. This gives tons of illusions. I tend to use the GreatSword in my main for distance but when it gets close and personal I use One handed Sword and Shield (chrono only select something else for off hand until you open chrono, just find what you like).

I also have 2 warriors and for me personally, they are just meh (again my opinion only no offense to warriors).

Good luck with what you decide.

I haven’t tried warrior to 80 yet, but I have tried rev, necro, thief, and ele. What I’ve noticed is that, no matter what class I play, when I get to the HoT maps it is more or less mandatory that you have a ranged weapon set to fall back on.

So far, I’ve found daredevil to be my strongest class in open world HoT. The thief moves quickly everywhere he goes, deals amazing burst to both single targets and groups, has superior damage avoidance, and can disengage with any number of enemies at will and simply speed away. It makes my other classes feel weak by comparison, although they all have their advantages, too.

AliamRationem.5172:

I haven’t tried warrior to 80 yet, but I have tried rev, necro, thief, and ele. What I’ve noticed is that, no matter what class I play, when I get to the HoT maps it is more or less mandatory that you have a ranged weapon set to fall back on.
—snip—

This is about what I have discovered as well, although I’ve only been playing HoT with Rev so far. It seems that a lot of the champion monsters and stronger have a lot of frequent close range attacks that tend to keep you knocked down for extended periods of time if you get hit. I try and get close when I can but a ranged weapon seems necessary in a lot of situations.

I do better with my warrior with a greatsword and rifle than with my chrono. Having range helps, and I think warrior rifle is underrated. Sadly, they just nerfed gunflame, since that was amazing.

As for chrono, I just can’t seem to do much damage with it. I do think I may be playing it badly — I shatter every third keypress or so (when I get 3 illusions up, which is not hard), but my shatter damage is still low. I’ve been playing with sceptre now that they’ve buffed it, but until recently I did the traditional sword+shield/greatsword.

Well i play warrior Berserker with zerker gear and strength runes, Elite spec, defence and disciplin. As weapons i play GS, axe\shield and a rifle in my backpack, so to speak. Mango pies as food. I rarely have problems with this setup and can only suggest you try it out. My guild buddy, that i run hot maps quite often whith, most often runs either a coni mes ( no idea what he skilled and geared) or a zerker druid. He has neither more nor less struggle than i do, how ever he said that for instance the bloody raptors are annoyingly good in making out who’s clone and who’s player. I think that should be considered when thinking about soloing, as you might have a nasty surprise otherwise.

I have both mesmer and warr, but I survive on mesmer way easier as zerk.
Wells and feedback will take care of pretty much everything except certain champions of course. I also like to play shatterer in open world and it works very well.

Before I got the Elite spec, I ran my warrior with Arms, Defence and Discipline using rabid stats and swords + longbow. You are right about range, and with sword’s leap, you can dive right back into your longbow AoE for a combo. I rarely had any problems playing like that, I had so much adrenaline I could clear conditions more or less whenever I wanted by swapping to bow and laying down the fire field.

i played mesmer most of my time, but since hot i had to try different class because my mesmer survivability in hot is very low.
the thing i don’t get with clones is that no mob will ever get fooled in to aggro them, they run straight to you. although there is a fractal level, the one with dredges and the suit or ice elemental at the end, that will always aggro my clones and instead i want it to run at us instead, and that is driving me mad because i do little to no damage without clones

Amadan.9451:

i played mesmer most of my time, but since hot i had to try different class because my mesmer survivability in hot is very low.
the thing i don’t get with clones is that no mob will ever get fooled in to aggro them, they run straight to you. although there is a fractal level, the one with dredges and the suit or ice elemental at the end, that will always aggro my clones and instead i want it to run at us instead, and that is driving me mad because i do little to no damage without clones

Don’t use clones for distraction, use them for damage and support. Use phantasms to do damage and reflect (warden) and use clones to do damage by shattering them. If you’re pure power build shattering is great burst damage and you can finish weak mobs very quickly which makes it easier to fight tougher mobs then. If you’re condition build, then shattering clones is also very effective with right traits ofc, because they will put a lot of conditions on mobs. You can keep generating new ones and shattering them while you can keep evading mobs yourself and keep pressure from distance with whatever ranged weapon you like, probably staff or scepter.

I always wanted a warrior at 80 because they looked so good when the game came out.
Mine now just sits at a flax farm and rarely gets played.
Mes / Chrono however.. wow what a blast.
As has been said, go zerker, go shatter clones, get the metabattle build, can’t remember if it has decoy in it or not but decoy is nice if you feel you are being singled out by mobs.

I’m sure my ps warrior is appreciated for its banners in group/team play but if I want solo destroy all in my path fun, Chrono would be my choice of the two.

I dunno, longbow berserker warrior is pretty destructive. I definitely don’t feel underpowered laying down the burn and watching the condition damage stack up. I reckon your warrior deserves another look!

nosleepdemon.1368:

I dunno, longbow berserker warrior is pretty destructive. I definitely don’t feel underpowered laying down the burn and watching the condition damage stack up. I reckon your warrior deserves another look!

Saw a burn warrior with longbow last night. Good god that guy was positivly nuking the jungle. More of that kind and we might have to worry about global warmong

Silberfederling.9302:

nosleepdemon.1368:

I dunno, longbow berserker warrior is pretty destructive. I definitely don’t feel underpowered laying down the burn and watching the condition damage stack up. I reckon your warrior deserves another look!

Saw a burn warrior with longbow last night. Good god that guy was positivly nuking the jungle. More of that kind and we might have to worry about global warmong

That’s interesting – by burn warrior I assume you just mean condi? I have all Berserker exotics (new 80), I wonder if it’s worthwhile to craft/buy a condi set.

Thanks everyone for the thoughtful responses! It’s interesting to see all the varied thoughts.

I’ve found Engie to be terrible in Hot and ele was quite lackluster, Ranger was barely passable, dies a lot.

I believe Daredevil and Mesmer will be great though, not tried Guard, Necro or Warrior yet as they are like watching grass grow for me.

These posts are all right on. My two mains currently are mes and war. I only use my war for feactals and the dps. It’s not that much fun to play. Though survivability shouldn’t be a problem. Just go get the wvw meta where sw/wh provides great mobility and condi clear. Then either warhammer or longbow. But for open world I use a variation of the chrono shatter meta. Sw/sh and then either gs or scepter/sw. Great survivability and fun to play but champions can take forever to kill. If scepter/sw as alt weapon you can perma block and generate clones and just shatter. Almost impossible to die.

Warrior can engage head on, while mesmer relies on trickery.

Pretty much all I can say.

Choose GS Warrior and Press 2. Problem Solve.

Mesmer’s if you play them right are VERY survivable. I would recommend mesmer.