Guild Wars 2

Here’s a guide I wrote for my guild website a while back.

This is the one I personally run. It’s really versatile in just about every aspect of the game. It doesn’t have much burst, but it has good sustained DPS, survivability, and provides some absolutely insane support.

Traits:

• 0 Strength -
• 25 Arms – (Deep Cuts) (Blademaster)
• 15 Defense – (Embrace the Pain)
• 30 Tactics – (Inspiring Banners) (Quick Breathing) (Inspiring Battle Standard)
• 0 Discipline -

Skills:
Healing:

*Healing Surge - Since this build relies more on storing adrenaline than spending it, this skill provides absolutely spectacular burst healing. At full Adrenaline this can heal you for almost half your health bar. If you’re running Runes of Altruism, you should be using it on cooldown for free ‘For Great Justice’ buffs.
*Healing Signet - The passive regen on this is 208 + 0.033 * Healing Power. This means at high healing power it’s about the effect of a low healing power regen. This signet can be valuable, but if you’re running a rune set that has an on-heal effect, take something else instead. You never want to be activating this signet.

Utility:

• “Shake It Off!” - Though you already have plenty of condition removal, a stun breaker is absolutely invaluable. Also you don’t have enough condition removal.
• Balanced Stance - This one comes in especially handy if you’re on the offense. Getting knocked down when trying to burst is pretty much the worst thing ever.
• Banner of Defense/Banner of Strength - Depending on how much survivability is needed.
• Banner of Tactics/Banner of Discipline - Depending on how much survivability is needed.

Elite:

• Battle Standard - If you know for a fact you are going to be soloing, you can substitute for the only other Warrior elite skill worth a kitten.

Gearing Up:
Armor:
Your general guideline is:
Healing Power >>> Vitality > Precision > Toughness > Others
You can get Precision/Vitality/Healing Power gear with Ascalon Catacombs dungeon tokens. There are some available for Karma in Orr, as well.
You want Healing Power obviously to boost your regeneration. You’ll want Vitality to improve your survivability against the Warrior’s greatest weakness: condition damage. Precision will boost your damage, not just from crits but from bleed stacks. If you’re running health steal consumables, it’ll boost survivability too.

Runes:
You have a few good options here:

• Runes of Dwayna: – Runes of Dwayna grant extra healing power, 20% longer regeneration duration, a 5% chance to gain 10 seconds of regen when hit, and your healing ability will grant regen to all your allies. While your banners should be more than enough to keep regen on everyone, having this extra coverage can’t hurt.
• Rune of the Grove - Another healing power rune that grants you protection for 4 seconds on a 30 second ICD. It’s not bad with our extended boon duration.
• Runes of the Dolyak - Dolyak Runes make you even tankier, but keep in mind the regen you get from all six runes does not scale with your Healing Power, leaving it at only about 30 per second. It doesn’t help as much as it could but it certainly does help.
• Runes of Altruism - A new rune added in the Wintersday update. This rune grants extra healing power, 15% extra boon duration across the board, and grants allies fury and might when you heal. Basically you cast “For Great Justice” every time you heal. This Rune is pretty kitten sweet.
• Rune of Water/Flock - The healing gained from the six-set is 690 plus half of your healing power.

Weapons:
Primary Set:

• Sword + Warhorn – Your main set. You can stack a ton of bleeds to gain some respectable DPS despite your lack of Power stacking. The Warhorn is absolutely invaluable for mobility and survivability. Call to Arms will grant you Vigor and cause Weakness to your foes. Also speccing into Quick Breathing will cause your Warhorn 4 and 5 to convert conditions into boons.

Offset:

• Longbow – Generally, you’ll be carrying this for your offset. The longbow’s AoE capabilities are unmatched by any other weapon in our arsenal. The adrenal skill is also excellent for zoning in WvW, because those faceless opponents really don’t like entering red circles, and this one lasts a long time at full adrenaline.
• Rifle – If you’re in a situation where you’re going to be in more-single target encounters, replace the Longbow with this guy.
• Mace + Shield – If you don’t plan on doing any ranged activity, or plan on running face-first into zergs, I recommend taking this set instead of a ranged offset.
• Hammer – Hammer can be very useful for anti-infantry tactics. Especially close-quarters fights where you can stun and knockback huge groups of people. Maybe even knock some jabronis off of cliffs! When running a hammer I highly recommend bringing balanced stance. You’ll find yourself getting interrupted during a slam-jam way more often than you would like.

Sigils:

• Sigil of Earth - If you plan on ever hitting anything, you’ll want this on your Sword. Having this will allow you to stack bleeding up even higher, which means more DPS overall.
• Sigil of Life - This will grant you an extra 250 Healing Power when it’s stacked to full. You’ll really want one of these on one of your weapons, alongside a duplicate weapon without this sigil. Once it’s stacked to full there’s no need to keep the sigil equipped unless you get downed.
• Sigil of Blood - This heals 453 plus 1/10th of your healing power. It’s actually kind of kittenty even with our tons of Healing Power.
• Sigil of Fire - A good option for your Longbow or Hammer.

Consumables:

• Food: Omnomberry Cookies! +100 Healing Power and +70 Vitality! Yum yum yum!
• Nourishment: Not really needed, but Master Maintenance Oils will grant you extra precision.

General Usage:

• As a tanky, supportive Warrior, you’re going to be linebacking for your team. If you’re not up on the front line you’re not doing your job right.
• With your spec, you can keep your non-Elite banners up 97% of the time: they despawn about 6 seconds before their cooldown is up again. Be sure to carry them forward if you’re able to. If you’re running with friends, ask them to carry them forward if they can. But more often than not, some curious zergling will end up dragging it around (or running off with it.)
• When engaging you want to drop your banners ahead of you, closer to your opponents than yourself. The range is not huge so you want to make absolutely sure you’ll be under their effects when you’re actually fighting.
• Your Battle Standard is extremely powerful. Use your best judgement when using it. If you think you’re going to need to AoE res in the engagement hold on to it. Otherwise, drop it right before you know you’re actually going to be hitting someone. Remember, you can pick up the standard and use its second ability to refresh Stability on yourself and your allies.
• If you’re taking a beating, don’t use your adrenal burst skill. High adrenaline means more regen, and a bigger heal if you’re running Healing Surge.
• You can use your Sword burst skill every time you reach one bar of adrenaline. The damage is always the same regardless of what stage of adrenaline you’re at. The immobilization is the only thing that changes based on adrenaline level.
• Your Sword 2 is an invaluable escape skill. It will launch you far forward. It’s great for escaping death. Combined with your Warhorn 4 removing cripple, chill, immobilize, and granting you swiftness, you should have no problem getting out of a sticky situation.

inspiring battle standart : Banners also grant regeneration to allies.
Grants 3 seconds of regeneration, reapplying every 3 seconds.
regeneration : Gain health every second; stacks duration.

do each puls of regen stack in duration if put 4 banners closely enough with lets say.. 100% boon duration?

Here is my review:

DPS-wise you need a ton of min/maxing before you hit the “respectable DPS” mark.
Your build sits at 3,500 E.Power which is very low, a min/max banner-healing Warrior has 5000.
Even my poor support Guardian has way more DPS.
Plus the fact you use sword (which has much lower DPS than GS/Axe) means you really really need to get the most power possible to get your DPS to be respectable.
Dolyak runes are also very bad in general, there are much better alternatives for defensive purposes like Forge, Earth etc.

If I was to use your same setup I would go like this, you get 1500 more Epower, 20% damage reduction, Furious to get twice as much Flurries in your enemies, and Ruby Orbs (but anything else works, from Boon Duration runes to Forge to Earth etc).

Grounder.7381:

inspiring battle standart : Banners also grant regeneration to allies.
Grants 3 seconds of regeneration, reapplying every 3 seconds.
regeneration : Gain health every second; stacks duration.

do each puls of regen stack in duration if put 4 banners closely enough with lets say.. 100% boon duration?

Yes the regen pulse depends on your boon duration stat.
That’s why banners are great, you stack a ton of regeneration duration in a few seconds so even if your team moves away they keep the regen.