Guild Wars 2

I’m a level 55 Warrior and this is my first “main” character. I know the consensus is that Warriors are one of the worst professions for PvP but I would like to try and get into it regardless.

A little history/information thus far: I have played a few games over the past 3 days and I’m currently rank 5 but naturally I still consider myself very inexperienced. Recently I have been using a Greatsword/Rifle combination with 10/30/0/0/30 stats and in my opinion I haven’t been doing too bad with above average score/placing at the end of the game. My main thought process during a fight is to stay at range with the Rifle, using the cripple and vulnerability skills followed by the spam shot. If they get close I either swap to the Greatsword or use the 5 skill on the Rifle to knock them backwards. When adrenaline is full I use the F1 kill shot (which has varying degrees of success in terms of damage, I don’t know enough about it to determine why it does that) and then proceed to use the Greatsword while the cooldowns are present. The ranged weaponry feels far more accessible to me, possibly due to being able to land more hits and it’s easier to chase people with.

I cannot say how much I win or lose in a 1v1 situation against what professions or ranks because I honestly have no idea but I would say on average I lose more fights than I win, though to give myself some credit the opponent is usually down to their last 25% of health.

There are times when I am facing two or more players and no matter what I do there is no escaping the inevitable crowd-control chaining. I am not sure if this is due to my inexperience or whether it’s something that “just happens” in PvP (or for Warriors), either way it’s a very frustrating thing and is the main cause of me being killed.

That’s about it. What I’m asking for is some general advice about Warriors or decent builds or anything which can improve my performance. As I’ve said before, I know Warriors don’t have a good reputation for PvP but I am determined to see it through, at least until I hit level 80 and choose a better profession for this part of GW2.

Thanks.

I find that build really fun myself, mainly because of the 9-18k killshots
On top of that I can’t really say anything except just find what you enjoy. People have called me stupid etc. before for using rifle on warrior, but they’ll usually shut up once they see me 1-3 hit a thief or so. So yeah, just find what you like and stick with it, sorry I can’t really be of that much help x.x

This isn’t a case of “my class is bad”, but as you say, more like “I’m a bit inexperienced at the game”. There are a lot of things you’ll need to learn no matter what class you’re playing, beyond just learning the synergy between your own skills.

Something like how you mention you get CC-locked into death. You do know there is a boon called Stability, which makes you immune to all CC? It comes on the utility skill Balanced Stance for warrior, as well as his trait 20 in the defense traitline, “Last Stand”. This should fix a lot of your cc problems. And also, there are skills in the game called “stunbreakers” which break all CC effects on you and allow you to regain control of your character. If you opt not to take any of these in your build, you’re making a conscious choice to be vulnerable to CC.

Overall though I would just keep playing the game. You’re way too new to make any blanket statements about a class or how viable it is yet. Just keep playing, keep getting trashed by better places, and think, “How could that encounter have gone better for me? What could I have done to make that fight go more in my favor?” That’s how most of us get better. If you don’t have an answer to that question, even win you win a fight, you probably are doing something wrong.

Finally, just as a side note, you should know that fighting in a 1v2+ situation, the odds are immensely against you, even if you are amazing at the game. The reason being that if the enemy is smart, they will just rez anyone you manage to down before you can get the finishing blow on them and they will just wear you down slowly.

The patch that is coming in a few days has considerable buffs for Warriors, so my suggestion is to try other classes, just for an hour or two, to get a better understanding of what they do. This will help your Warrior play out by allowing you to better avoid the other classes’ strengths and help you capitalize on their weaknesses. Then, when the patch hits, you can go back to the Warrior and try out the new stuff.

Get to level 80 first and get exotic gear. That makes a big difference in damage and defense. Heck, that might be the 25% more damage you been needing to make a difference. A rule of thumb is to use power, toughness, and vitality karma gear at first. Slowly replace a piece at a time with more damaging gear as you feel comfortable with your survivability.

Also take a look at what you want to do pvp wise. A warrior has to specialize more than other classes. It seems some classes that are good solo aren’t really that great in group fights. If you like 1v1 fights, you will need a build with lots of mobility and survivability. What good is your build if you keep getting run down by groups and dying or you can’t even catch that solo guy?

If you want group fights, you might want to think about forgoing some damage for some CC. Or if your group you run with has the CC, you could be a glass cannon GS warrior. All depends.

Zerg battles, you want more AOE stuff. Whirl, longbow, and reflect projectiles does that. Can also do some other support stuff.

Keep playing around with it. Then, go play other classes. You learn so much from doing so. I always come back to my warrior now and then, each time I do, I do better and better.

9-18k Killshot? This is PvP we’re talking about, not WvW, be serious.

First step is dropping the Greatsword, it’s a brilliant PvE machine but that’s where it belongs, PvE. The rifle actually deals brilliant ranged damage, rifle #3 can wipe off half a berserkers health if they’re not careful. I use Axe/Shield to maximise damage, but I do see a few people running around with sword/shield, but I could never give up Eviscerate and the immobilise on #3 with the Leg Specialist trait – Adds a one second immobilise to all cripple attacks, also affecting the Rifle #2 skill.

As mentioned above getting CC’d is a pain. We have subpar healing and defensive abilities, so if we’re not keeping up a relentless assault 100% of the time we are losing. For utilities I use Endure Pain/Balanced Stance/and….. Bolas…. Don’t laugh just yet, use them well and they will serve you well.
If you use them later on in battle people will hopefully have already burned their cleanse and you can sit them still for 5 seconds, works very well against thieves. Run behind them to attack so they can’t retaliate (can’t spin around when immobed.) Also if the thief vanishes early into the immobilise, they are more then likely still there, keep attacking.

Dolan.3071:

9-18k Killshot? This is PvP we’re talking about, not WvW, be serious.

First step is dropping the Greatsword, it’s a brilliant PvE machine but that’s where it belongs, PvE. The rifle actually deals brilliant ranged damage, rifle #3 can wipe off half a berserkers health if they’re not careful. I use Axe/Shield to maximise damage, but I do see a few people running around with sword/shield, but I could never give up Eviscerate and the immobilise on #3 with the Leg Specialist trait – Adds a one second immobilise to all cripple attacks, also affecting the Rifle #2 skill.

As mentioned above getting CC’d is a pain. We have subpar healing and defensive abilities, so if we’re not keeping up a relentless assault 100% of the time we are losing. For utilities I use Endure Pain/Balanced Stance/and….. Bolas…. Don’t laugh just yet, use them well and they will serve you well.
If you use them later on in battle people will hopefully have already burned their cleanse and you can sit them still for 5 seconds, works very well against thieves. Run behind them to attack so they can’t retaliate (can’t spin around when immobed.) Also if the thief vanishes early into the immobilise, they are more then likely still there, keep attacking.

My bad, I only use rifle warrior in WvW as the damage is so much higher than what you can get in spvp. I would personally just never use rifle in spvp to be honest, maybe I’m just used to the WvW damage probably just me.

i use the same build for sPvP , work like a charm as a damage support for your engaging friends.

just keep distance , stay alive and never solo.

Thank you for the responses, I was worried about this topic dying without a reply. I will give this a thorough read and reply accordingly.

That glass cannon rifle build is something I used to play at low levels too. Looking back I realize that rifle is awful in Spvp. It does half the damage of a melee weapon and has no mobility or gap closer and a bad burst. Plus you want to be fighting on the point not standing far away.

As far as the greatsword goes while it is looked down upon as a noob weapon the reality is that it hits extremely hard even when running a balanced build and has good mobility. Coupled with Axe/Shield for burst and bulls charge to start a mini combo you will be fine. Most high end Warriors tend to run either Hammer or Greatsword so don’t count it out.

Good utilities to run would be Bulls Charge, Balanced Stance, and I personally am partial to the signet that gives you adrenaline and the signet that cures all conditions. I heard these are getting buffed too so fun times.

Oh and remember condition removal is very important. Half the people in PvP will try to kill you through them so prepare for that before entering.

Godofallu is right on all points. Warrior used to have enough burst to win a race vs. condition damage classes, but these days I recommend sig of stamina for the condition cure. Use it wisely.

Frankly though, you’re going to get a mass of bad pvp advice here on the forum. Most good warriors have quit or rerolled. My advice for starting out, try this:

1) Find videos/streams of good warriors. Adopt their builds, emulate their playstyle. Once you understand how they play, and what makes their builds effective, then you can do your own experimentation. Point is the first thing you need to do is find out what a good build is capable of. Look up Defektive or Schwarenheit (blacktruth009) on twitch or youtube.
2) Do tournament pvp, just do it. Hotjoin is biased towards teamfights, and the quality of players/builds you’ll fight is so random that it’s almost impossible to judge your own effectiveness.
3) Learn how to play classes/builds that beat you, either by videos or by doing it yourself in the same way you learn warrior. You won’t reach a high level of play unless you understand their strengths and weaknesses

If you want any help getting started in game I can help, /w briggz.

For wvw I play my hybrid condition/zerker rifle with mace/warhorn. This build won after trying quite a few other things for sustained damage and burst. For guild zerging I would go with hammer/gs. Don’t forget to try shout/heal builds and see if you like them.

For spvp I use zerker rifle now and gs which I get out rarely. You have to know how to keep range, play off other people and time kill shot. Not going to give away the tricks but I have a lot of thieves lol me after I down them with a 10k kill shot and my highest was almost 15k last week. I will say however that the very best spvp/tpvp warrs I’ve seen play gs/sword and know how to key gs off other player’s knockdown and such and generally abuse the mobility. Too much work for me after a long day though.

Also for some reason not many warrs say this, but I almost always use Mending and Restorative Strength.