Guild Wars 2

Hi there, recently, I had a battle with my GS+axe/axe build warrior against a ranger, and kept losing because my damage kept getting soaked up, as I noticed she also had protection, and later a necromancer had protection as well as I fought him, so I looked up to see who can get the protection boon, and I noticed that only the thief and warrior can…

Thing is, a thief got access to stealth, allowing him to get in and out of combat easily, getting himself into a favorable position as his opponent usually can’t hit him without having to use AoE attacks in hopes of damaging him.

So, my question is… what can make a warrior soak up damage?

when a warrior goes to a temple, swears an oath on the holy book and starts casting meditation, con-

oh crap, that’s a guardian!

Nothing. Build for damage. Warrior is the only class that can’t be a Bunker, because he lacks essential survivability mechanics.

Warrior don’t need no nuthin to soak up damage yo! True warrior dies in battle yo! Besides, we have the largest health pool and a ton of toughness, which obviously solves all our problems. Especially in a condition heavy game where everyone is spamming AoE and feeling awesome.

Yo!

Well, as far as damage, not sure. But if you’re having trouble with condition damage, I’d recommend Berserker’s Stance.

Nothing, warrior is a class that does not belong to this game, in this game armor is nerfed so its not important if you have a lot of armor/toughness, so be a heavy armor user compared to a thief that has medium armor or a elementalist that has light armor does not matter.

And guess, light armor classes and medium armor classes have acces to be bunkering(tanks), while warrior that is a class known in every game for its tank capabilities in this game its not because the only thing that has is heavy armor to do that, but like i explained, armor in this game dosent matter.

This game right now is a mess, its centered a lot on having boons and who keeps them most of the time, and direct damage its bad in this game because a bunker will mitigate it, so people are now doing condition builds because its the only damage source that has no way to be mitigated, ill explain: if you have 2 sources of damage but one of those sources can be reduced by armor/toughness,boons,evades,rolls,blocks,invulnerability, and the other form of damage only reduced by the ability of remove it with condition removes, guess what damage its going to be prefered to people?.

So on topic, dont use a warrior right now specially in pvp you are better using any other class, any other class is viable, warrior is not, dosent belong to this game.

Warrior doesn’t soak. Avoid or take. Shield block, endure pain, whirlwind, berserker stance etc.

Contrary to what the other posts above say, you can indeed soak up damage as a warrior. You can soak up a significant amount of damage if you go into tactics for shout healing (2k per shout, 6k for 3 shouts on a 20s cooldown). If you are getting killed by condis, soldier’s runes with shout healing can help a lot too (1 condi removed per shout).

If you go a little bit into the defense tree for the shield trait and run shield on top of shouts, you can also negate quite a bit of damage with well-timed blocks.

That being said, you have to sacrifice the big damage and get creative with how you take down your opponent. On the plus side, since shouts and condi removal with soldier’s runes are aoe, you will help your team win the big fights moreso than if you charge in, 100b someone and drop dead.

Kharr.5746:

Contrary to what the other posts above say, you can indeed soak up damage as a warrior. You can soak up a significant amount of damage if you go into tactics for shout healing (2k per shout, 6k for 3 shouts on a 20s cooldown). If you are getting killed by condis, soldier’s runes with shout healing can help a lot too (1 condi removed per shout).

If you go a little bit into the defense tree for the shield trait and run shield on top of shouts, you can also negate quite a bit of damage with well-timed blocks.

That being said, you have to sacrifice the big damage and get creative with how you take down your opponent. On the plus side, since shouts and condi removal with soldier’s runes are aoe, you will help your team win the big fights moreso than if you charge in, 100b someone and drop dead.

Dont believe us, just try what this guy says and then come back to say us how you were kitten d anyway.

Right now the Shouts Heal build can work even better if you run it with Beserker stance and Cleansing Ire. The only thing you’ll have a problem with is direct damage after that.

Kharr.5746:

If you are getting killed by condis, soldier’s runes with shout healing can help a lot too (1 condi removed per shout).

I use to repeat this mantra. Until I really thought about it. Rarely will you actually slot 3 shouts. You might now that fear me has a lower cooldown, but seriously, with 3 shouts you will have no stability and only 1 stunbreak.

Even if you do, you can remove 3 conditions. Ya. 3. On long cooldowns. 4 with shake it off. The way condis are applied in this game, thats not alot. Not to mention you’re sacrificing offensive stats with those runes.

Me personally, I’ve moved away from soldier runes. Using lyssa, cleansing ire, berserker stance etc for my condition removal needs.

I agree with SmoothHussler here. Going for Lyssa runes and berserker stance seems to be the way for me right now. I use Cleansing Ire in some builds, but not that many. I think that lyssa and berserker is enough condihate anyway.

Dirame.8521:

Right now the Shouts Heal build can work even better if you run it with Beserker stance and Cleansing Ire. The only thing you’ll have a problem with is direct damage after that.

And your damage. You won’t be able to kill anything, but anything will be able to kill you. It will just take more time.

The issue with warriors is that soaking damage only comes in the form of the enemy taking a longer time to chew through your healthbar. What you have to do next is to kill the enemy before that time.

Some try to combine Soldier’s Amulet and M/s + gs build. IMHO you might get annoyed with bunkers: if you don’t burst them at first, you’ll have problems bursting them again

I deal with conditions by pressuring the conditioner, with a full cc build. Necromancers and engineers cannot deal with stun spam. Some bunker rangers have problems too, even if their kitten pets help a lot (you can’t kite them with hammer). And their pets still deal 5k damage spikes (while the ranger uses Shaman’s Amulet).

In group fights you are great for focusing, though.

All of this to say: as a warrior, you want high armor, high hp (I find myself comfortable when HP*armor exceeds 60k) and high burst/damage. That’s how I see it.

Fenrir.5493:

Kharr.5746:

Contrary to what the other posts above say, you can indeed soak up damage as a warrior. You can soak up a significant amount of damage if you go into tactics for shout healing (2k per shout, 6k for 3 shouts on a 20s cooldown). If you are getting killed by condis, soldier’s runes with shout healing can help a lot too (1 condi removed per shout).

If you go a little bit into the defense tree for the shield trait and run shield on top of shouts, you can also negate quite a bit of damage with well-timed blocks.

That being said, you have to sacrifice the big damage and get creative with how you take down your opponent. On the plus side, since shouts and condi removal with soldier’s runes are aoe, you will help your team win the big fights moreso than if you charge in, 100b someone and drop dead.

Dont believe us, just try what this guy says and then come back to say us how you were kitten d anyway.

You do realize that he is correct, right? Shouts are infact quite good at mitigating damage.

you can play a thief and play it like it was warrior

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Fenrir.5493:

Kharr.5746:

Contrary to what the other posts above say, you can indeed soak up damage as a warrior. You can soak up a significant amount of damage if you go into tactics for shout healing (2k per shout, 6k for 3 shouts on a 20s cooldown). If you are getting killed by condis, soldier’s runes with shout healing can help a lot too (1 condi removed per shout).

If you go a little bit into the defense tree for the shield trait and run shield on top of shouts, you can also negate quite a bit of damage with well-timed blocks.

That being said, you have to sacrifice the big damage and get creative with how you take down your opponent. On the plus side, since shouts and condi removal with soldier’s runes are aoe, you will help your team win the big fights moreso than if you charge in, 100b someone and drop dead.

Dont believe us, just try what this guy says and then come back to say us how you were kitten d anyway.

You do realize that he is correct, right? Shouts are infact quite good at mitigating damage.

No its not, any shout warrior in pvp is garbage, that is why i told him to try it out, so he can saw it for himself.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Fenrir.5493:

Kharr.5746:

Contrary to what the other posts above say, you can indeed soak up damage as a warrior. You can soak up a significant amount of damage if you go into tactics for shout healing (2k per shout, 6k for 3 shouts on a 20s cooldown). If you are getting killed by condis, soldier’s runes with shout healing can help a lot too (1 condi removed per shout).

If you go a little bit into the defense tree for the shield trait and run shield on top of shouts, you can also negate quite a bit of damage with well-timed blocks.

That being said, you have to sacrifice the big damage and get creative with how you take down your opponent. On the plus side, since shouts and condi removal with soldier’s runes are aoe, you will help your team win the big fights moreso than if you charge in, 100b someone and drop dead.

Dont believe us, just try what this guy says and then come back to say us how you were kitten d anyway.

You do realize that he is correct, right? Shouts are infact quite good at mitigating damage.

Especially YOUR damage.XD

redslion.9675:

Dirame.8521:

Right now the Shouts Heal build can work even better if you run it with Beserker stance and Cleansing Ire. The only thing you’ll have a problem with is direct damage after that.

And your damage. You won’t be able to kill anything, but anything will be able to kill you. It will just take more time.

The issue with warriors is that soaking damage only comes in the form of the enemy taking a longer time to chew through your healthbar. What you have to do next is to kill the enemy before that time.

Some try to combine Soldier’s Amulet and M/s + gs build. IMHO you might get annoyed with bunkers: if you don’t burst them at first, you’ll have problems bursting them again

I deal with conditions by pressuring the conditioner, with a full cc build. Necromancers and engineers cannot deal with stun spam. Some bunker rangers have problems too, even if their kitten pets help a lot (you can’t kite them with hammer). And their pets still deal 5k damage spikes (while the ranger uses Shaman’s Amulet).

In group fights you are great for focusing, though.

All of this to say: as a warrior, you want high armor, high hp (I find myself comfortable when HP*armor exceeds 60k) and high burst/damage. That’s how I see it.

Bunker builds don’t particularly need to kill anything. Just stay alive long enough for people to come and support you.

Right now, almost every Warrior is running the 0/10/30/0/30 build with some slight variations on weapons and trait selection but point allocation still remains the same. This is because the stun is less predictable than the spin dash animation of a Bull’s charge and it lasts longer.

I noticed the stun lock builds work extremely well against Necros and the like and I believe if we are not careful, it will become the new War meta instead of 100B.

Fenrir.5493:

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Fenrir.5493:

Kharr.5746:

Contrary to what the other posts above say, you can indeed soak up damage as a warrior. You can soak up a significant amount of damage if you go into tactics for shout healing (2k per shout, 6k for 3 shouts on a 20s cooldown). If you are getting killed by condis, soldier’s runes with shout healing can help a lot too (1 condi removed per shout).

If you go a little bit into the defense tree for the shield trait and run shield on top of shouts, you can also negate quite a bit of damage with well-timed blocks.

That being said, you have to sacrifice the big damage and get creative with how you take down your opponent. On the plus side, since shouts and condi removal with soldier’s runes are aoe, you will help your team win the big fights moreso than if you charge in, 100b someone and drop dead.

Dont believe us, just try what this guy says and then come back to say us how you were kitten d anyway.

You do realize that he is correct, right? Shouts are infact quite good at mitigating damage.

No its not, any shout warrior in pvp is garbage, that is why i told him to try it out, so he can saw it for himself.

I’ve used it, and I’ve seen Warriors that use it. Granted it’s not as effective as a bunker Guardian/Engineer/Necro/Ele but it gets the job done. It can also be a very strong support build if you make a hybrid of it with Banners.

Warrior: I can take spike damage more than any class, but I die easily in long term fight.
Other class: I cannot take high spike damage, but I don’t die that easily in long term fight.

deviller.9135:

Warrior: I can take spike damage more than any class, but I die easily in long term fight.
Other class: I cannot take high spike damage, but I don’t die that easily in long term fight.

That’s not true. Like a S/D Thief who evades in the process of attacking can negate a spike just by happening to hit 3, even if he was immobilized it still gives him evade frames for the duration. Or a Guardian’s ability to negate spike damage, even while healing he blocks all attacks for the duration, including a lot of CC-causing attacks are blocked. It’s just misinformation. Warrior can’t take spike damage better than other classes can, by sheer virtue of having the least ways to negate that damage entirely.

samo.1054:

Warrior don’t need no nuthin to soak up damage yo! True warrior dies in battle yo! Besides, we have the largest health pool and a ton of toughness, which obviously solves all our problems. Especially in a condition heavy game where everyone is spamming AoE and feeling awesome.

Yo!

Except toughness is a horribly implemented stat. You can’t spec for high toughness and expect to deal decent enough damage before something kills you. Anet can’t balance toughness to be in the warriors favor either because every class has access to it.

Anet has said multiple times if the Warrior gets anymore survival they will break the game. What Warriors need is more reworking of traits and a few changes to weapon skills.

Dromar.1027:

samo.1054:

Warrior don’t need no nuthin to soak up damage yo! True warrior dies in battle yo! Besides, we have the largest health pool and a ton of toughness, which obviously solves all our problems. Especially in a condition heavy game where everyone is spamming AoE and feeling awesome.

Yo!

Except toughness is a horribly implemented stat. You can’t spec for high toughness and expect to deal decent enough damage before something kills you. Anet can’t balance toughness to be in the warriors favor either because every class has access to it.

Anet has said multiple times if the Warrior gets anymore survival they will break the game. What Warriors need is more reworking of traits and a few changes to weapon skills.

Rework toughness, nerf protection. I fail to see how warrior could break the game tho..lemme guess..1+ sec cast animations? Behind skill 6 war has no baseline sustain.

Perma blind, Perma Stealth and Perma Fear doesn’t break the game , in the eyes of ANET.
This is why I fed up with this stupid game.
It’s almost PERMA EVERYTHING right now.
And the weakest profession is dying since release. month by month.

Warrior has no mechanics. Other classes do.
We don’t soak dmg, because we are the stepchild of the system.

Dirame.8521:

Right now, almost every Warrior is running the 0/10/30/0/30 build with some slight variations on weapons and trait selection but point allocation still remains the same.

I’m not running that.

Dirame.8521:

Bunker builds don’t particularly need to kill anything. Just stay alive long enough for people to come and support you.

Right now, almost every Warrior is running the 0/10/30/0/30 build with some slight variations on weapons and trait selection but point allocation still remains the same. This is because the stun is less predictable than the spin dash animation of a Bull’s charge and it lasts longer.

I noticed the stun lock builds work extremely well against Necros and the like and I believe if we are not careful, it will become the new War meta instead of 100B.

You talk about it as if it was a threat.

However, shout healing is not enough to keep you alive against direct damage, AFAIK.
Maybe in 1v1, but bunkers should be able to survive against more than 1 enemy for some time.

There are many variations on the build you mentioned, some try to add some sustained damage to pressure with GS, others do it with mace.