Guild Wars 2

My character is a lvl 80 charr Warrior. In both PvP and PvE, it seems like I’m easy to knock down so that I’m fighting for my life. Worse, if I manage to rejuvenate, when I come to I often have a bunch of sparkles floating around my upper body (these are conditions?) and drop down dead after a few steps. This is despite using elite CDs that are supposed to cure conditions. I end up frantically trying to collect dropped loot from my kills in order to defray the cost of teleportation and repairs.

I don’t know how to make this better, and would appreciate any advice.
My elite skills are

• “Healing Surge”, which I think everyone starts out with,
• “Shake it Off”, which cures a condition and breaks a stun,
• “Signet of Might”, which increases might,
• “Signet of Stamina”, which is supposed to cure ALL conditions, and
• “Charzooka”, which is pure fun. :-)

My traits are:

• 1920 power
• 1260 precision
• 1238 toughness
• 1311 vitality

And my un-nerfed HP is 23,172.

Have I misdiagnosed the problem? What can I do so that I’m not a fragile glass cannon?

Thanks.

Are you using Vengeance (the #3 downed skill) to get back up? Because that kills you after 15 seconds – unless you take the master trait in Discipline which makes you rally after getting a kill in Vengeance.

Which weapon are you using? Shields, offhand swords and maces and hammers are best if you feel you’re taking too much damage.

Using Signet of Restoration, which provides constant regeneration and has a weak heal on a short cooldown combined with the trait which removes many of the weaker conditions in combination with Shake it Off makes you quite resilient against conditions – if you can get reduced CD for both Signets and Shouts they will be up every 20 seconds. If you still have problems, try the Quick Breathing trait (I think it’s in Tactics) combined with a Warhorn. If conditions end up not being the problem, there are traits which make Shouts heal you, make Banners cause regeneration or give you innate regeneration based on you adrenaline. These are in Tactics and Defense iirc.

Resetting traits is indeed very cheap – 3.5 silver is less that going to town and back out. You can also go to the Heart of the Mists and experiment for free – there are NPCs you can spar against, but I don’t think there are any regular mobs there.

What armor are you using in terms of level requirement, rarity and the modifications it has? If you want to be less squishy, try getting gear with +Vitality, +Toughness, or maybe +Healing. Condition Damage is helpful for tankier builds if you’ve got a sword, rifle or bow, but I think there are many better classes than Warrior if you want to go that route, so accept it as a welcome bonus but don’t focus on it.

First of all, only what you have in the 10th slot is an elite skill. The skills from 7 to 9 are utility skills and the 6 is the healing skill.

You can recognize conditions applied to you by looking over the UI area on top of your healing / utility skills. Everything in red there is a condition. Look them up here.

Now, I’m not some kind of expert in warriors, I just have a puny not yet 80 one myself. But I definitely think you should change your healing skill with either Mending (this is what I use) or Healing Signet. Shake it Off is nice, I use it all the time. With Mending and SiO you should be able to clear your conditions most of the time. I see you’re using Signet of Stamina also, so between those 3 you should be covered. When you feel you are in situations you don’t get hit too often by conditions, drop one of these skills and pick something else more offensive.

I have a feeling you’re fighting mostly if not all the time as melee? Use a rifle in the second set and alternate between sets. You could engage with the rifle to pull a single mob, hit it until in gets close to you , and then switch to melee and finikitten off. In tough situations the game is very punishing for melee combat, so it’s nice if you can get into the habit of using ranged also. It keeps you more alive.

As for the traits and gear, just pick what you like best. You can either be the glass cannon and try to kill the mobs before they kill you, or go full defensive and slowly eat away at their health while they slowly eat you, or go balanced. It’s you call. A few weeks ago I was playing with 30 points in Tactics for Vigorous Shouts. Now I’m messing around with 30 points in Strength and 30 in Arms. So try it all out (resetting traits doesn’t feel expensive at all) and see what works best for you. I can’t comment on armor and runes and sigils as I’m still leveling, and I just use whatever higher level armor dropped for me. Sometimes I don’t even have runes on most of my armor pieces.

Edit: really Anet, really? I can’t write finish off it (turn the position of the last two words), without getting hit by the kitty army?

Thanks, Reashu.2734. I had completely misunderstood conditions and vengeance.

Even without the the high-level Discipline skill, there is a chance of rallying if you kill an opponent in the 15 seconds following your revival. I’ve been less lucky lately; maybe the odds change as you level up and fight higher rated opponents.