Guild Wars 2

Ok, I have an 80 Warrior that I put a crap ton of time into building only to come and find out that I pretty much hate the class. Other than the Rifle sniper build, I’ve not found anything that really felt “fun.” Yeah, I know the Condi LB build works well (boring) and we all know about the issues with the hammer but I wanted a melee class that could deal out damage, have mobility, and somewhat decent survival skills. The GS sucks for Warrior! /cry

Anyways, after that rant, I am thinking of deleting the character and rerolling her into a GS + Sword/x Guarding using mostly zerker + toughness gear. Can you all give me some suggestions?

Does this sound completely stupid?

FinalPatriot.8034:

Ok, I have an 80 Warrior that I put a crap ton of time into building only to come and find out that I pretty much hate the class. Other than the Rifle sniper build, I’ve not found anything that really felt “fun.” Yeah, I know the Condi LB build works well (boring) and we all know about the issues with the hammer but I wanted a melee class that could deal out damage, have mobility, and somewhat decent survival skills. The GS sucks for Warrior! /cry

Anyways, after that rant, I am thinking of deleting the character and rerolling her into a GS + Sword/x Guarding using mostly zerker + toughness gear. Can you all give me some suggestions?

Does this sound completely stupid?

Is this real? Warrior lacks mobility in melee, and the guardian appeals to you?

Given the criteria of why you do not enjoy your warrior, the guardian is definitely not for you.

Oh, all I do is WvW.

It doesn’t sound stupid, but it’s pretty surprising to see someone say they hate Warrior in it’s current state. Is the problem that your simply tired of easymode? If so, then yes, try a Guardian. It won’t be hard for you to feel the difference quickly.

If you want to play Guardian over Warrior you need to understand a few things. We have 10.8k base health, almost no soft or hard cc. Loooooooooong cooldowns, bad traits(well two trait lines are fine). And only one viable build to play competitive so far.

Oh did i forget we have less sustain that warrior and damage. Well atleast i remembered. So to sum it all up.

- If you the above is not a troll post and i assume about 99% of all Guardian will assume it is, here is my tip for you. Stay Warrior as it is, you have everything except group stability and reflect bether or equal to that of Guardians, and a higher base health as topping on the cake.

Obtena.7952:

It doesn’t sound stupid, but it’s pretty surprising to see someone say they hate Warrior in it’s current state. Is the problem that your simply tired of easymode? If so, then yes, try a Guardian. It won’t be hard for you to feel the difference quickly.

It has a lot to do with not being able to really apply the GS skills. Nobody is stupid enough to stand there and get hit with HB and most of the other skills don’t appear much more effective other than running away. I could just really suck too as my main has always been my Mesmer.

Have you tried a Skullcracker build? Because Skullcrack into 100b still works just fine 1v1. You’ve got more Skullcracks than they’ve got stunbreaks, bar none. I’m also a fan of Mace/Shield + Axe/Warhorn as well, again for Skullcracks.

Warrior and Guardian survivability is on-par right now. They do it a little differently but they’re both roughly equal. Warriors however have slightly better mobility, but vastly improved soft and hard CC – when you catch up to someone, you can hold them as a Warrior. You can’t expect to hold anyone as a Guardian. It’s like trying to hold on to water.

Damage is also roughly equal with Guardians pulling slightly ahead in pure PvE, however Warriors can deal much more damage while traited/geared for survivability than Guards can on account of tanky condition builds, shoutheal builds, etc etc.

Source: I have two 80 Guardians and two 80 Warriors.

A berserk build might serve you in 1v1 but I wouldn’t push it past that and I imagine warrior is in every way better at that.

To me it doesn’t sound like you want what the guardian is (less mobile, less DPS, less solo’able). Our best WvW builds are tanky, low DPS, big support.

I have no choice to presume that this is a troll or a joke. First off never delete an 80 warrior it is literally the safest class to invest in these days even with the nerfs incoming.

Guardians do not have the mobility and “sticking power” to even compare what you could with a warrior on a kittenty build in WvW. I am not complaining. This is simply the truth. Higher mobility and better CC with better base stats. The difference is noticeable and brutal as a well played warrior much like a thief can disengage from just about any fight.

I am not sure what you want to hear. The grass is not greener on this side of the fence.

If you’re playing competitively, stick with the warrior. If you want to have fun, play the guardian. I had a warrior with full exotics and some ascended trinkets, but made my guardian my main after finding out how much more fun it is. I do play mostly PvE content though.

Speaking strictly PvE (several posters above have adequately covered the PvP mobility/sticking issues), Warrior is superior to Guardian right now. Arguments can be made (and have been made in another thread a few days ago) that Guardians are capable of outclassing Warriors in terms of DPS and Reflects with optimal group makeups—but if you had such a group I doubt you’d be here asking for profession advice.

Perfect Min/Max pro groups aside, Warriors currently bring better sustain, DPS, and support to most groups.

I also have 80 warrior and 80 guardian, and interestingly enough, I’m on a similar boat as you; wanting to leave my warrior. Though, I don’t think you should delete it :P Are you talking about WvW/PvP? If not, ignore my post, since I hardly ever PvE.

On your warrior, if you’re running GS + other weapon that doesn’t have CC (like longbow), you’ll be very frustrated because you can’t dish out that much damage with just your GS alone. You need to couple it with other CC utilities, or other weapon with CC, like the hammer, to make GS’s 100B even viable in a PvP fight. Since I like running melee + ranged weapon combo, GS on my warrior was very dissatisfying, because I was limited to just auto-attack (which is weaker than guardian’s auto-attack) and occasional whirlwind attack.

Luckily enough, I already have a lvl 80 guardian; actually my guardian was my very first character. Both my warrior and guardian have similar stats (2800 – 3000 armor, rest into zerker) and traits (defensive traits). It’s amazing how much more damage I can do on my guardian’s GS compared to warrior GS. All 5 of Guardian’s GS skills are incredibly useful, especially in a 1v1 fight. In my opinion, guardian’s GS wins hands down over warrior’s GS in terms of damage and fun. You won’t get the incredible mobility warriors get with their GS, though, so that’s a tradeoff. But in most cases, I found leap of faith (GS #3) and pull (GS #5) sufficient in having my face up against my target.
Guardian’s ranged weapon sucks though.

I’d say roll a guardian, go to sPvP, and play some games using GS. You can try the same thing on your warrior. Since you automatically become lvl 80 in sPvP, you get to see the pros and cons of each class yourself without fully committing to it.

Guardian GS to add what it is and not against Warrior.

Guardian
- Autoattack
Strike 296 (0.800) – Vengeful strike 296 (0.800) – Wrathful strike 443 (1.200)

Notes. Although it says 1/2 cast time the actually attack speed is 0.83
Final strike will add one – three stacks of might depending on how many targets you hit and the might stacks will last for 5 seconds.

- Whirling wrath
Spin around for 3/4 time striking one to five foes seven times, and sending out seven projectiles. Will allow movement at 50% reduced speed
Strike 139 (0.400) damage
Projectile 139 (0.150) damage
Combo finisher Whirl

Notes. One of the signature attacks of the GS and you can not wait for it to go off cooldown especially if you have five people around you, The numbers are however rather lack lusting as people actual have the ability to dodge. And the combat display bug has yet to be fixed. Oh and Whirl finisher is terrible. For instance
Whirl + Light field = condition cleansing nice right? NO. You send out 5 cleansing projectiles with very small hit box, at random direction with zero homing capability and assuming they do hit, they remove one condition.
Base value on projectile and strike may be different.

- Leap of Faith
406 (1.100) damage
1/2 cast time.
three second blind.

Notes. 15 second for a low damage ok scaling attack that will hit up to five people and blinding them for 3 seconds or the next attack, whatever comes first. Blind is good in SPvP(i assume, barely play it), and for WvWvW. But terrible for PvE since it will do wonders on trash but only reduce damage on a boss by 10% for the next attack. The leap is really sluggish and for a short distance, considering the cooldown.

- Symbol of Wrath
185 (0.550) damage
One second of retaliation.
1/4 cast time.
180 Radius
Can damage five foes and buff up to five allies.
Combo field Light

Notes. Will pulse each second for up to five seconds. So the damage and retaliation is for each second a enemies stand in it, really lack lusting considering 20 second cooldown and that retaliation is not really that good, and a kick in the nuts is the Combo field being light, the worst of all the combo field, yet i will admit. It is better than no combo field at all.

- Binding blade
369 (1.000) damage
Will affect up to five foes.
600 radius
Will apply a damage dealing condition on foes lasting for 10 seconds, but the condition will be removed if you pull foes. The condition can not be removed.

Notes. One of the really good Guardian GS skill, and one of our few control skills. Will sadly only affect five people so no Siegrazer here, generally a really good skill even though it got a 30 sec cooldown. Only sad part is the Radius is rather low, and sometimes when you pull a foe. They for some reason don’t go all the way but stops halfway.

VS

Warrior

- Autoattack
Swing 259 (0.7) – Slice 259 (0.7) – Brutal strike 333 (0.9)
Swing and Slice will also applies one stack of vurnability for 8 seconds.

Notes. Guardian autoattack actual deals slightly more damage but the overall chain of the attack (Guardian 2.5 seconds) vs (Warrior 2.4 seconds) is slightly slower.
Warriors do however have 2 stacks of vulnerability on mobs for 8 seconds and that is a lot better than one – three stacks of might since 1 vulnerability = 1% damage increase for the whole party. While Might = +35 power and condition = a 1% damage increase for yourself if you have 3500 attack.

- Hundred Blades
203 (0.550) x 8
406 (1.1) x 1
3,1/2 second channel
8 second recharge time

Notes. Hundred blade will deal massive amount of damage to anyone being caught in it, and for a fairly low coldown.
it does however have drawbacks, it is only a cleave (up to 3 targets) and it is a cone frontal attack so hitting targets is less viable than
with whirling wrath for instance, however the damage is a lot higher.

- Whirlwind Attack
259 (0.7)
Combo Finisher Whirl
Evade: ¾ s
Range: 450
recharge time 10 seconds

Notes. A decent attack that can be used to escape gap closer or even to evade, but it is not suited for damage against a one vs one.
During the spin it will deliver four attacks to anyone within range but each strike is only cleave so not really good for aoe as well.

- Bladetrail
277 (0.75) damage
cripple 4 seconds
Combo Finisher Physical Projectile
Range: 900
recharge time 15 seconds

Notes. A good weapon skill set to a melee one, will make it easier to catch foes or run away, the skill can even double tap foes if they get hit by the blade returning.

- Rush
628 (1.7) Damage
1200 range

Notes. A strong and easy to hit attack for fast movement either to the target or away, with a fast recharge it really shine as a gap closer.
The downside is that the damage although rather nice, is only towards one target.

Conclusion:

As one easily notice the Warrior vs Guardian show up as very different ways to use there GS, one favors mobility, soft cc and single / cleave target burst.
The other one focus heavily on Area damage, while directly comparing the Autoattack it is obvious that the Guardian AA will deal more damage, but in return will provide less of group or even self buff as a bonus.
The Whirling vs Hundred where one will deal a lot more damage, but will target less foes and also be easily avoided in return.
So if you think Warrior lack mobility, then think again.

To be honest, I think this video listed below is what really got me thinking. I do very well on my Mesmer but wanted do do something more with direct damage.

FinalPatriot.8034:

To be honest, I think this video listed below is what really got me thinking. I do very well on my Mesmer but wanted do do something more with direct damage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgYhGde9Qmc

Many other classes can do amazing things in a 1v1 if you’re specifically traited and geared for it. Here’s a warrior one:

Needless to say, both of those builds would not fair well in a zerg vs zerg fight in WvW, hence that is why I don’t run them.