Guild Wars 2

I have a full level Thief and Elementalist, and I figured I would try something different and do a Warrior. Full on melee. But it doesn’t seem to work.

I am constantly getting knocked down or disabled by standard minions because of how close I am and the tendency of skills to lock dodging (greatsword 2, etc.), but it is still manageable, just harder. However, I am having increasing trouble as I get into high level situations. For example, I just did claw island retribution, and against blightghast I did basically no damage. I died several times (100% broken armor by the end) and did almost nothing to him; the NPC damage slowly building up was basically the only reason that fight ended. With him moving around so much, I could barely hit hit at all, and I was taking so much damage just from being near him that it was not remotely practical.

I never had this issue with my thief due to all the inherent extra dodges (sword 2 return, etc.) and dashes (dagger 2, etc.) in all the melee weapons. I could always get out of the way to attacks in close and once I was locked if I lost the target I could just jump to the damage point. And I had good ranged weapon; the rifle and longbow and the warrior aren’t nearly as good as pistol/pistol or shortbow on the thief (and anyway defeat the point; if I wanted to do more range I wouldn’t have gone with a melee class). With the warrior, it seems like all I can is stand there and take it and hope I do enough to kill them first, with just 2 chances in a fight to mitigate incoming damage assuming I’m not locked out of dodging by the skill I am using.

If this is how melee works, then what is the point? It seems like playing in melee range is just asking to die while being useless. How are you supposed to play this so it is actually practical? I know there must be a way or no one would play primarily melee classes, but I cannot figure out how to do it.

With your example of Blightghast: Sometimes you just have to use ranged attacks, even if you’re a 99% melee-only player. Blightghast is one of those situations because it’s just a pain to try to stay on top of the leg hitbox; it’s faster to just equip a longbow or rifle, and attack ranged. That being said, as you noted, warrior ranged weapons just don’t do as good damage as melee; and that’s why you only want to use ranged when you absolutely have to.

As for your issues staying up, you need to make full use of your dodges AND your various helpful utilities. You have Shake It Off as a short-cooldown stun break and condi cleanse. I often will use Balanced Stance when I’m just doing story stuff because it’s a second stun break, AND it gives me stability (and some swiftness). You also have Endure Pain as yet another stun break, and it also keeps you from taking damage from attacks for a few seconds. If you feel you need more endurance regen, there’s Signet of Stamina, and warhorn 5 gives you Vigor; there’s also food that gives you faster endurance regen.

Basically, it just takes practice and learning your class.

You need to set up a Hundred Blades. If the enemy has a lot of interupts I pop stability, then follow up with a Knock or stun before hitting Hundred Blades.