I ask this because my main is a Warrior. In Guild Wars 1, I didn’t have a “main” exactly, but I usually RA’d, TA’d and HA’d as one. Obviously being good in one (and I indeed was a good Warrior in GW1) won’t translate to the other, but so far my experience with the class in 8v8s has not been a favorable one. I’m not interested ranking professions, but more in your overall impression of playing Wars and fighting them. Do you ever find them threatening? What do you think of their utility? Build variety? Traits?
I’ll give you my general impression:
Warriors are a melee class, foremost. The Warrior has two ranged options: rifle and bow. Rifles have low base damage and some rather poor utility. The #1 slot is a basic attack that does nothing but damage+bleed, #2 is a cripple, #3 is another basic attack with no utility, although it’s the rifle’s primary source of damage but easy to dodge when it starts, #4 is low damage and adds some vulnerability (5), which may get you 10-15 more damage a hit on average, and #5 is a short range knockback. So, its main utility is a cripple and a knockback. It’s mainly a distance weapon, but not a particularly good one. Its F1 attack is 95% worthless, as it has an obvious animation anyone will avoid. Use it only when your target cannot see you. The bow has its own problems. Its main attack again has no utility, although it does hit twice, meaning it can act as a carrier for runes. #2 is very low damage and inflicts burning for about 1s, #3 is Arcing Arrow, a very slow, obvious attack that is very easy to avoid at long ranges. #4 blinds, buying you one hit, and #5 is a cripple. Again, low damage for the most part, slow, obvious attacks. You have to use the longbow as a melee weapon almost. Its F1 is the Warrior’s only option to create a combo field in the game, so you may find yourself walking into enemies, laying it at your feet and firing an arcing shot directly into the ground. Good in PvE and in WvW at times, not so much in PvP. Your worst weapon choice in sPvP.
So, most Warriors you will ever see will be running melee builds. Melee is easy to avoid. Evasions, cripples, freezing, stuns, dazes, immobilizes, blinds, knockbacks, knockdowns, turning people into moas and so on. Stability will allow you to avoid some of this, although the Warrior’s only stability options are Balance Stance and Dolyak Signet. Both do the same thing: grant 10 1/2s of stability. You basically have to have one of these on your bar in every single build, or you will never begin dealing damage to anyone, regardless of whether your target is crippled, etc, themselves. I feel like this starts off being the primary problem with Warriors, as they lack a lot of innate utility that other professions are built around, meaning they have a very low amount of build variety that ends up revolving completely around countering CC. GW1 was the same way, although mending touch made it tolerable.
People usually mention the HB+Frenzy build, which was nerfed prior to release and is easy to counter. Hundred Blades locks you in place, necessitating a lengthy stun prior to using the move, in addition to needing to isolate targets to begin with, unless you want his buddy to melt you while you Frenzy. It’s not a very good build, but on a class with few options, it’s one of the few unique things it can do.
The main “advantage” a Warrior has is its high health pool – a few thousand more than other professions, on average. Of course, many classes can deal well over that amount in a single hit, meaning this is mostly worthless. Survival in sPvP is all about utility, not health or armor. This is why a mediocre Guardian can outtank a perfectly specced Warrior with ease. Similarly, the Warrior’s strength is not DPS, which many other classes can exceed with ease (and more importantly, at range. )The main advantage Warriors have, or used to, is burst damage. This has gone down a lot since betas, and most weapons don’t do it particularly well to begin with. Axe and GS are your only real options here, and both rely heavily on a single attack that, again, has no innate utility and require a lot of awkward weapon switching or skill chaining to work, with a lot of drawbacks and not much payoff. So far I’ve found hammer to be the most useful in 8v8s just because it offers the most disruption, and hence, is the only real utility option in the game for a Warrior.
Again, I’m not asking if other professions are overpowered, or if another is worse off. I’m just asking your opinion on the Warrior. I’m not heavily experience in sPvP like I was in GW1, so I’m open to ideas, but my impression is that the Warrior does not do anything better than another profession and is hampered by its weapons’ terrible innate utility, meaning you have to waste secondary skill slots on mitigating that – not to accessorize your build, but to make it viable.
