Guild Wars 2

I tried using banner warrior in PvP, but it was too difficult to keep all the banners where my team mates were, so I asked a friend to work with me and we syergized our builds. We stuck together as much as possible during all the matches we played and I carried one banner while he carried the other.

I ran the banner warrior build while my friend ran critical flamethrower boon engineer. I used the healing banner for the +10% boon duration and extra healing and the precision banner for the slightly higher critical chance and +15% critical damage. The double stack swiftness from both the banner 3 skills and the 4 charge skill made us ridiculously mobile. When in combat, he was maintaining 25 stacks of might and had fury up most of the time making him put out serious sustained damage while still being very bulky. The regeneration from having two banners together gave us virtually perma regen that was pretty much unstrippable and lasted 20+ seconds after exiting the range of the banners. Team fights almost always went our way since I could easily rally downed team mates with war banner and they often ended in several enemy players getting slaughtered.

We won almost every PvP and tPvP match we played. Banners seem very strong to me, even overpowered when paired with the right build. The problem is that nobody carries them. Ever. Literally. Even when I ask people to in tPvP matches. You’d think people would be competing with each other to grab them since they’re free mobility and buffs.

So I’m curious, what’s your opinion on banners? I’m wondering how viable they’d be in true organized PvP. Two banner warriors each paired with DPS and then a bunker and roamer looks like it might be a fun team set up to me.

Banners are still useless and will be completely useless to me until we can summon them and attach it to our backs so that we can move and swing our weapons and gain benefits from the banners.

Ninja. Now I want to find a banner warrior to be my friend.

Swinsk: Sounds like they’re just not for you.

I have no experience with warriors and banners, but I do want to offer you kudos for trying. I think it’s great you had a friend willing to try this with you. It’s overlooked, but this is a team game, so any real coordination makes your team a lot tougher.

I just wish they’d let you tweak what you could put on the banner. Actually, having tag flashbacks to some FPS games, giving people the ability to customize banners wouldn’t be such a great idea. But we can dream…

Grackleflint.4956:

Ninja. Now I want to find a banner warrior to be my friend.

Swinsk: Sounds like they’re just not for you.

I don’t really see them useful for people who don’t have friends to play with. There should be an “attach to back” option after picking one up.

currently there is no room for banners on the pvp bar,
warriors are renowned for our lack of condition cleansing so 2 of your slots will be filled there with shake it off and signet and your last slot will likely be balanced stance/bull’s charge, endure pain or something else.
kudos for trying banners and i’m glad you’re having fun

Great for pve, in pvp there’s too many skills that are more crucial for either delivering or avoiding damage.

ninja.4139:

I tried using banner warrior in PvP, but it was too difficult to keep all the banners where my team mates were, so I asked a friend to work with me and we syergized our builds. We stuck together as much as possible during all the matches we played and I carried one banner while he carried the other.

I ran the banner warrior build while my friend ran critical flamethrower boon engineer. I used the healing banner for the 10% boon duration and extra healing and the precision banner for the slightly higher critical chance and +15% critical damage. The double stack swiftness from both the banner 3 skills and the 4 charge skill made us ridiculously mobile. When in combat, he was maintaining 25 stacks of might and had fury up most of the time making him put out serious sustained damage while still being very bulky. The regeneration from having two banners together gave us virtually perma regen that was pretty much unstrippable and lasted 20 seconds after exiting the range of the banners. Team fights almost always went our way since I could easily rally downed team mates with war banner and they often ended in several enemy players getting slaughtered.

We won almost every PvP and tPvP match we played. Banners seem very strong to me, even overpowered when paired with the right build. The problem is that nobody carries them. Ever. Literally. Even when I ask people to in tPvP matches. You’d think people would be competing with each other to grab them since they’re free mobility and buffs.

So I’m curious, what’s your opinion on banners? I’m wondering how viable they’d be in true organized PvP. Two banner warriors each paired with DPS and then a bunker and roamer looks like it might be a fun team set up to me.

I have been playing with banners a while also lately.. its actully nice but i wouldnt go that far saying it is op even if ive won alot of matches with it

Can be great in WvW and PvE. Not so much in sPvP.

Banners will continue to be overlooked until some high-ranked team or player actually uses them in serious matches, then they’ll be everywhere. That’s the nature of competitive communities for you.

I never used the non-elite banners really, but just started trying a new build with them.

They might be useful in point defense though where mobility isn’t an issue. Been trying out a build with banner regen and a ton of other survivability/crowd control.

Pop the defense banners on a point, and knock everyone off, stay alive, keep the cap control.

As long as you don’t get three-teamed, they can be helpful in staying alive while you stalemate-fight, but keep the point control.

Banners just have a boring skill mechanic. You can buff it all you want to try to make it viable, but it will still be boring.

Only the elite banner is interesting and worthy of my skill slot because of its res effect.

Hello , first I would say it’s nice you tried it and found people who wanted to test it with you.

My two cents are that I dont like banners not because they’re not powerful but because I dont find them really fun to play. When I carry a banner I feel like it turns myself into a boongiving machine wich can be strong but lacks the damage the agressive playstyle that is the core design of the warrior gameplay.

As a warrior I want to get a feeling near the one I had playing warrior in GW1. That means using my damage and mobility to keep pressure on the enemy while using adrenaline skills to initiate a spike. Banners do not fit my playstyle they feel passive for me.

So I think banners are overlooked mostly because warrior-players dont see the warrior like a support , or they think other class do the support-job better.

well banners are nice in PvE.

in PvE,
i used to be a healing shouts warior, then i became a regen banner warrior.
the recent banner buff made it better.

The elite banner is seriously bad (way too long CD to be usefull), the regular banners are only decent in PvE. In WvW, they just dont have the range required. At triple range, perhaps they can be usefull in skirmishes and warrant being used as a “drop and forget” skill. Right now you need to carry them with you, which simply isnt going to happen because people either steal them from you or you need to use your attacks.

Being able to “attach” a flag to your back would be great, in an instant they would be useable in WvW and turn the Warrior into a true AoE presence rivaling the Guardian.

caporal moktahr.3408:

Hello , first I would say it’s nice you tried it and found people who wanted to test it with you.

My two cents are that I dont like banners not because they’re not powerful but because I dont find them really fun to play. When I carry a banner I feel like it turns myself into a boongiving machine wich can be strong but lacks the damage the agressive playstyle that is the core design of the warrior gameplay.

As a warrior I want to get a feeling near the one I had playing warrior in GW1. That means using my damage and mobility to keep pressure on the enemy while using adrenaline skills to initiate a spike. Banners do not fit my playstyle they feel passive for me.

So I think banners are overlooked mostly because warrior-players dont see the warrior like a support , or they think other class do the support-job better.

Well, I feel like I still had an agressive play style. I had an axe and shield with 15 in precision which gave me a nearly 85% critical chance with shield bash eviscerate combos and that would be boosted to 100% when I was under the effects of fury. The 15% extra crit damage from the precision banner made it do burst that was good enough to bring down targets my friend had already weakened.

You also don’t hold the banners often. We would run to the next point, pop the fury from the precision banner, then drop and begin fighting. The only time I’d pick them up again after a fight began was to use the fury skill on the precision banner so I could gurantee an eviscerate critical.

Interesting , in fact you did’nt had the playstyle I had thought about. Much more like dropping the banner on the place you want to fight on like I do with longbow F1 sometimes.

I should give it a shot once again. Also I like the fact you used axe/shield because of that combo (remember shock axe back in some ways).

Thinking about the fact that warriors often rely on their utilities to help them maintain close contact with their target or relieve condition pressure , how did you managed to bypass those drawbacks ( you were using at least three banners am I right) ?

i tried all banners in hotjoin with full tank build and warhorn/shield and had a decent time. had pretty much constant group swiftness, loads of endurance with energy sigils and vigor from call to arms plus condition removal from warhorn spec, decent survivabilility, revive, regen, great support for big battles on nodes, Just gotta rely on everyone else to do the damage

Banners definitely seem to be kind of map centric – a banner build works pretty decently if you want to set up shop in the clocktower, for example, but they’re pretty much garbage on a map like spirit watch where mobility is key, and camping a spot isn’t going to do you much use, since the orb can neutralize your point just by touching it.

caporal moktahr.3408:

Thinking about the fact that warriors often rely on their utilities to help them maintain close contact with their target or relieve condition pressure , how did you managed to bypass those drawbacks ( you were using at least three banners am I right) ?

I used the war banner for my elite, the precision banner, the healing banner, and for my third utility, balanced stance. To deal with conditions I had the shrug it off trait that automatically made me use shake it off when I had two or more conditions and then mending for my heal. But really, when you have 300 vitality from the tactics line (addtional +200 because of soldier’s amulet), conditions aren’t any more of a threat than straight up damage is as long as you use mending at the right time, especially since your regeneration helps offset a good amount of pressure damage.

As for maintaining close contact, I have a longbow for my second set so that helps solve a lot of those problems. Eviscerate and Shield bash can also be used as gap closers. But even then, you don’t really need to maintain close contact. When my friend and I were near the banners it was very dangerous to approach us, but if either of us moved out of range of them we became much weaker. As long as you’re on a point, you won’t have to worry about catching up with other people because they come to you.

Thank you for those answers ninja , hope you will have fun with banners for a long moment !

Same reason nobody uses Ele conjured weapons — using them is super clunky.

Conjures and banners should be instant-cast, swappable weapons that you can freely swap back and forth.