Guild Wars 2

I guess this is the correct place to post this topic? I was recommended to move here from players helping players forum.

Hey guys i am new to GW2. I actually bought GW2 4-5 months ago but the gameplay was not to my liking so i gave up then. But seeing as i dislike the gameplay of all the other MMORPGs even more i want to retry GW2.

Theres where the problem is. I mostly want to be a good PvPer or WvWer but start with PvE combat and get accustomed to it. Unfortunately, my skill at making a character build is very bad. I have already gone through several build-related posts to find a good one and even saw gameplay videos but i still couldnt decide how to create a proper build.

So i would request some advice or help for a build that would suit my playstyle.
Offline i usually play Dark Souls 2 and other games with emphasis on timing and good reaction speed. In DS2 i went for a high-stamina, high-stamina-regen, high-poise build for a dodge type character.
GW2 combat being faster paced i guess that wouldnt work. But still i would like a build which would allow me to evade continously and depend on auto attack for damage instead of skill rotation.
This is because during combat in any game i become tense and cant think straight enough to use skill-combos.
So is there any build with infinite evade and condition removal with a few basic moves for damage output? Any class will do since i am going for a new character.
I am also asking for playstyle advice a bit because obviously being different games the DS2 playstyle will not work perfectly for GW2.
I dont think a pure evade build would work for GW2 but i wouldnt know. But still would want infinite evade as a back up plan at least. Being unable to dodge because of cooldown is the worst feeling ever. Is there a good build that would suit my evasive twitch based playstyle?

I actually want a build that will work for all 3 i.e. PvP, WvW and PvE . If that is not possible i might get a WvW build and use the same for PvE. If it has infinite evade and thus a chance for survival even in the most desperate situation, the build will still have some sort of offense to use against mobs.

I also have no idea on traits. My first and only character on GW2 was a warrior who only auto-attacked and used only 1 or 2 moves.
A specific build would be helpful because as i said i am pathetic at build-creation and i usually end up putting skill points in a randomly selected skill in pretty much any RPG I play.
Plus, to be honest, the trait system and its intricacies only confuse me.
I would be grateful for any help.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/
A place to try setting up your build.
There are a bunch of websites that have builds for PvE, PvP and WvW:
http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki
this is a pretty decent one.

The best advice I can give you is to suggest you take the time to learn the game mechanics. That way you can understand how damage mitigation in this game works differently from having infinite evades in DS2.

Thank you for your advice but as i said, i am complete amatuer at builds and i dont even know which skills go together. I find it nigh impossible to put together skills and traits and equipment and have no idea if they will scale well into late game.
That dodge-type build for Dark Souls i talked about, i copied that from the internet.
I am good at actual gameplay and positioning, timing etc. But not at builds, armor configurations, buffs selection etc.

In my search for a build i have already come across both of those websites. I even came across some thief and ranger evasion builds, but i couldnt tell exactly what sort of playstyle they supported. Believe me, i researched this over 2 hours and hit dead ends and only then did i post here.

Gaurav.8397:

i am complete amatuer at builds and i dont even know which skills go together

Everybody started that way.

Gaurav.8397:

Thank you for your advice but as i said, i am complete amatuer at builds and i dont even know which skills go together. I find it nigh impossible to put together skills and traits and equipment and have no idea if they will scale well into late game.
That dodge-type build for Dark Souls i talked about, i copied that from the internet.
I am good at actual gameplay and positioning, timing etc. But not at builds, armor configurations, buffs selection etc.

In my search for a build i have already come across both of those websites. I even came across some thief and ranger evasion builds, but i couldnt tell exactly what sort of playstyle they supported. Believe me, i researched this over 2 hours and hit dead ends and only then did i post here.

Wanting to get better is the best method for learning this game, so you’re doing well allready by having the right mindset. Many a players have suffered from having the wrong mindset coming from WoW or other games and go into it with one mindset and not realizing you have to completely rethink the idea of how a game is supposed to be played.

I’ve played warrior since the beta almost exclusively apart from making 5 other characters just to learn how they work. I’d say that if you’re good at positioning and timing you’ve chosen wisely when making a warrior.

Literally the only good way to learn the game is to play it. You can’t copy a build from someone and be as good as them. There’s no “one way” to play the game at top tier PvP or WvW as there might be in another game as WoW where you are aming at one thing and when you reach it you’re beast. It’s all about learning how you play. If you know what you’re good at it shouldn’t be hard to pick traits. You want abit of vigor to regain endurance, you want crit dmg and crit change and you want toughness.

Just to be clear aswell there’s no build that will work by just auto attacking. You will have to learn rotations, but those rotations entirely depends on your playstyle.

You can whisper me in game if you have any direct questions any time.

While not optimal for WvW the 4 signet warrior build is pretty straight forward and forgiving at least in this context.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQJARSjMdU3ZhHOewJaAmgCdnvBfw5EIAGAVPBA-TlyEgAGXAAclfqq/McEAkeAAa6CAM/RoEk5QA4u/AZAW2CA-w

With a few modifications and practice, this build can be changed into something far more effective but as it sits requires little health pool management (it is self healing) and has some passive condition moderation.

I kid you not, Straegen, when I pointed this thread out to a friend, 2 hours ago he replied “signet warrior inc”.

If your looking at actually being good at WvW, don’t bother with website guides. Join a guild and start learning from them. Most of the public guides you can pick up are pretty bad and don’t go to the extent that some guilds go to in developing builds.

Also, one thing that helped me in playing GW2 is investing on a gaming mouse. I got a Razer Naga mainly because all the attack buttons are on the side of the mouse. It took a bit to get used to but after a short while, muscle memory took over. Also, don’t quit if you die a lot. I had a friend that rage quit and haven’t touched the game for almost a year. You won’t be good if you don’t practice. Everyone in game was a n00b at some point and some have became the best commanders.

Thank you for all the helpful advice. Just kind of have a small query though. Most infinite evasion builds i saw online were based on ranger or thief. So theres no restriction that warriors cannot have infinite evade?
Also, since my clients currently updating and so cant currently check out what signets are, i guess they give passive benefits right?
So this Signet Warrior build Strategen suggested definitely has lots of self-dependent buffs like health-regeneration etc, does it also have infinite evasion?
And those “boons”, “control”, “conditions” listed under current effects, those are from signets or somewhere else? And are they permanent or do i have to keep applying them from somewhere to keep them active?

To be honest, one of the reasons you don’t see a lot of “Evade Build” Warriors is because it takes away from many of the Warrior’s strengths, and Warriors will never be as good at it as other classes. WvW Warriors DO Dodge Roll often in large, zerg fights, but in small group/1v1 type of fights, the Warrior is FAR better off simply popping Stances that prevent any incoming damage, or give several seconds of Stability, or just healing themselves with Shouts (while cleansing conditions) & Signet auto-heals. In short, a Warrior simply muscles thru attacks, rather than dodging them.

Thief, Mesmer, and Ranger, however, get all kinds of bonuses for Dodging. The Mesmer can trait to drop clones on every dodge! That can be very frustrating in small group fights or 1v1’s! Thief can gain Swiftness, Might, drop Caltrops, remove Conditions, AND they get some of their Endurance BACK on each Dodge! The best thing a Warrior gets is an (admittedly decent) AoE damage on Dodge that they can trait for. That’s it. And it only triggers when you’re already in combat, you can’t open with it (you wouldn’t anyway.)

Thats why i wanted to verify if this signet warrior build has infinite evade or not.
I become tense during combat, so if i have to use any combos i would have to practice them and commit them to muscle memory before using them in even basic PvE combat.

Using multiple defensive moves like stances, shouts etc simply isnt intuitive to me.
So if i had infinite evade, i could simply develop my timing for evade, and thus develop most of my defense around it since it would be the most intuitive for me.
So i wanted to conform before my client updated. I would hate to build Signet Warrior then realize that it doesnt have infinite evade only to go build hunting for another 2 hours.

Oh, yeah, there’s no such thing as an “Infinite Evade” Warrior. In fact, if you simply want to Evade using 1, single skill (such as “Dodge”), you won’t be able to do it all the time on ANY Class. Classes such as Thief, Ranger, & Mesmer all have multiple Evade skills: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Evade

You can increase the frequency of your Dodges on Warrior by constantly refilling Endurance, but there is only 1 Warrior Signet related to that: the “Signet of Stamina”. This refills your Endurance 50% faster AS LONG AS YOU DON’T USE THE SIGNET; it’s basically like having the Vigor boon all the time, but you give up a Utility slot for it. Also, it doesn’t stack with anything.

The Warrior Trait “Building Momentum” will also help you by refilling your Endurance everytime you use a Burst Skill (F1 on your Weapon Skills). This will give you an extra Dodge every minute or so, but only gives you 15 Endurance (a Dodge uses 50), and if you are Dodging a LOT, then you won’t refill your Adrenaline as fast, which is needed to use your Burst Skills.

The “Sigil of Energy” is very popular with WvW Warriors, however, as it refills 50% of your Endurance on Weapon Swap, giving you up to 3 Dodges in a row before running out. It has a 9 second Cooldown, however, and traited Warriors can Weapon Swap every 5 seconds, so you will see Warriors sometimes using this Sigil on BOTH weapons for the extra Dodge.

Then there’s food… the “Bowl of Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew” gives you 40% Endurance regeneration (+ Might on Dodge), but I don’t know if it stacks with “Signet of Stamina”. I’ve heard that it does, I’ve heard that it doesn, I’ve heard that it used to but not anymore, but I personally haven’t tested it lately (I run Bowl of Lemongrass Poultry Soup on my Warrior these days). If it stacks then you would have INSANE Endurance regeneration, and combined with the gear listed above, you would be able to Dodge A LOT, though still not quite infinitely…

I can confirm that this food works fine with the Thief trait “Feline Grace”, but that technically returns some of the Endurance on each Dodge, and is not considered “Endurance Regeneration”. Thief and Ranger do, get very, very close to infinite Evade if traited and geared correctly, but to reach the “nearly infinite” level they have to use Evade Skills other than just Dodge.

So all in all, if i were to use Signet Warrior how many continous evades should i be able to chain? Not just the dodge, all the other flash moves used as dodges as well. My playstyle avoids risk as much as possible, so thats why i asked?
I actually saw a build on youtube, where the guy was in a 1v1 match and was dodging and using evasion moves continously and quite literally just kept dodging 5 minutes straight, causing his opponent to rage. He was deliberately trolling, but if i had a similar build, at least i could evade whenever i wanted. I am only skeptical about Signet Warrior because i cant tell how the build will translate during actual gameplay.
Whether it is highly evasive or not and all that.

Well, out side of Dodge, the only other Evade that’s really available to Warriors is the greatsword’s Whirlwind Attack, and you will see some Warriors who use that skill every 10 seconds like clockwork.

The “Full Signet Warrior” is something you see in solo WvW sometimes, but it’s not common in WvW afaik. And only 1 of those signets actually affects how often you can Dodge.

I don’t know exactly how many Dodges/minute you will get, but all the information needed for making a “Maximum Dodge Warrior” is in this thread. The video you saw (I’ve seen a few like that) was probably a Warrior who was very good at Dodge/Evades, but there isn’t an actual Infinite-Evasion Warrior. There are a couple of videos showing a Guardian with permanent Evade from mid-2013, but that was actually a glitch related to the WXP Upgrades, and was fixed the next day.

Anyway, built and geared correctly, you will get a lot of Dodge/Evades out of your Warrior. You won’t get a lot of kills, but you will get lots of Dodge. (^_^)

You know, actually i think that provided you’re only into roaming, a ranger might be good for you because the weapon skills on shortbow are more of counter-play when a situation comes up (stun 5 or poison when they heal) and the rest of the fight is about kiting and positioning while autoattack continues to pewpew. They also have evades on weapons like the sword if i remember correctly (used to play condi/trap back in the day myself – shortbow+axe/torch) and can get high vigor(increases dodge uptime) uptime.

However, lol please realise that if you intend to get into a zerg-busting guild later, ranger will be completely useless for you and learning skill-rotation is a must but its even more important to be able to fight skillfully under pressure.

Gaurav.8397:

So all in all, if i were to use Signet Warrior how many continous evades should i be able to chain? Not just the dodge, all the other flash moves used as dodges as well. My playstyle avoids risk as much as possible, so thats why i asked?
I actually saw a build on youtube, where the guy was in a 1v1 match and was dodging and using evasion moves continously and quite literally just kept dodging 5 minutes straight, causing his opponent to rage. He was deliberately trolling, but if i had a similar build, at least i could evade whenever i wanted. I am only skeptical about Signet Warrior because i cant tell how the build will translate during actual gameplay.
Whether it is highly evasive or not and all that.

I can say you probably want to take 3 stances, Berserker Stance, Endure Pain and Balanced stance for your utility slots. They are defensive skills that last for a period of time(8, 4 and 8 seconds). And with that you want to take the trait Vigorous Focus that grants vigor(100% endurance refill rate) on stance use and you will want Furious Reaction trait that gives 10 seconds of vigor and fury when hit above 10% of your health pool.

That’s a start and it will give you good regen on your endurance. It iwll still run out but will take much shorter time to build up again.

Ha ha, i thank you for all the advice but now i am only more confused (_)
I guess i might go for the basic Signet Warrior build Strategen suggested and then mod it a bit for evade. I wish to play group WvW.
And i still dont know how Signet Warrior works in gameplay terms. On that note, if warrior is not good for evasion-heavy play, shouldnt i go for another class? As i said in my original post, i am going for a new character, so any class is okay, except maybe elementalist and mesmer since they require complicated combos.

If i could know how Signet Warrior plays i could make a more informed decision. Is it evade-centric, or does it focus on absorbing damage and dishing out damage only evading to let auto regenerate kick-in? If i could tell the playstyle, i also could know how to edit.
But most importantly, say if i complete said build at Lvl 80, but dont like it, will i be able to easily change it or would i need to make new warrior? Switching equipment for build change if fine, but to go from lvl 1-80 again just to fine tune build would be too much. Is it possible to redistribute attributes?

Otokomae> That video was of a ranger or assassin, not a warrior.

The reason the Signet Warrior came up is because it is the least managed build there is (that I know of). The healing is automatic, the condition removal is automatic, an automatic invuln kicks in when really hurt and the damage is straight forward. You really only have to push the 1 button to make it work. Get in trouble press the 3 and 5 on the Great Sword to sprint away. Signets have passive effects so you don’t actually have to do anything to get a bonus from them.

Once you master that, you can expand the warrior past just signets into more situation based skills. Also the hammer is fun.

The downside is that against any decent player you will get crushed. The upside is that in a group, you will be pretty tanky and still dish out some damage. As for heavy evasion builds, they require more micro management in skills particularly in healing and condition removal.

Gaurav.8397:

Ha ha, i thank you for all the advice but now i am only more confused (_)
I guess i might go for the basic Signet Warrior build Strategen suggested and then mod it a bit for evade. I wish to play group WvW.
And i still dont know how Signet Warrior works in gameplay terms. On that note, if warrior is not good for evasion-heavy play, shouldnt i go for another class? As i said in my original post, i am going for a new character, so any class is okay, except maybe elementalist and mesmer since they require complicated combos.

If i could know how Signet Warrior plays i could make a more informed decision. Is it evade-centric, or does it focus on absorbing damage and dishing out damage only evading to let auto regenerate kick-in? If i could tell the playstyle, i also could know how to edit.
But most importantly, say if i complete said build at Lvl 80, but dont like it, will i be able to easily change it or would i need to make new warrior? Switching equipment for build change if fine, but to go from lvl 1-80 again just to fine tune build would be too much. Is it possible to redistribute attributes?

Otokomae> That video was of a ranger or assassin, not a warrior.

If by group play, you mean a guild raid/gvg then im sorry but youre going to have to learn to fight under a lot of pressure. Builds can be changed at any time once youre 80 its just a matter of gold. The build will be provided by your guild’s theory crafter and it will have automatic condi clearing from melandru runes + lemongrass food. If you need extra evades that badly, the guild will get you to slap on a couple of sigil of energys, although remember you need to stick with the melee train rather than darting around or you die. However, healing will come from blasting waterfields and while you dont have to pull off the combos ele’s do, you need to follow a basic skill rotation.

Basically get to 80 on a warrior as soon as you can, join a zerg-busting wvw guild, get their build, join on ts and everything will come with experience of listening to them. Also ask question after question to the higher ups of the guild and maybe check out training videos on youtube, if its a good guild they might have some handy for you to watch.

Op go do spvp to fast track your progress. Getting tense in combat is due to in experience thats all.

Actually, if you like evade game style, then Guardian might be your best choice.

A hybrid Healway + tank type with staff as main weapon, Greatsword offhand, it is exactly what you describe, fairly low on damage which comes mainly from auto attacks on staff and fairly decent on survivability and it heals on evades.

It isnt anywhere near as good as it used to be, but still does OK and its very versatile, you can go higher damage or survivability by simply swapping out a couple (not all) pieces of your gear and utilities.

If you try it, make your staff PVT stats, the GS zerk stats, the difference between the 2 will be immediately noticable and you will see when / where to use them.

Find a trait in your character’s trait tree that gives you vigor somehow. If there’s a minor trait or major trait on the adept tier take it. You’ll find that in common with most metagame builds for both pvp and wvw. Vigor gives you more dodge rolls and builds that maximize its up time survive pvp much better than builds that don’t.

I’ve found most metagame builds running some kind of vigor trait.