Guild Wars 2

So I have a warrior level 34 and am currently playing sword/shield I like the block mechanic by the shield allowing me to soak a little damage. I’m playing a precision warrior and am wanting my stats to look somewhat like 20-30-10-10 at level 80. My question is for dungeons and the such is a banner warrior really even that useful or is a shout warrior better? I use banner of defense and banner of discipline along so I get +toughness +vitality +precision and +critical damage %. Is this any good or even useful in dungeons or is shout warriors the way to go with FoJ, OMM and such.

oh and also is healing signet or mending a better heal for warriors? I use healing signet because with signet of rage and one other I get +120 precision from the trait. Is this worth it or no.

Personally Banners create a lot of faffing about when a battle is moving because you gotta pick em up and put them down again, during which you can’t attack properly.

Regen Banners vs. Healing Shouts
Healing shouts are instant and provide an OK heal on demand
Banners provide regen for a long time however it is much more HoT and doesn’t quickly save your life like a shout can.

However I reckon if you spec for banners and use them properly you can do well, it’s always nice to see variation in warriors perosnally, and I’d say go right ahead and use them.

With banners, go for Mending for condition removal as you won’t have Shake it off,
banners already give you regen making healing signet less useful.

I am a banner warrior, who uses a 1h Sword + Warhorn / Longbow.

My build:

0
25 :: Deep Cuts, Blademaster
15 :: Cull the Weak
30 :: Inspiring Banners, Quick Breathing, Inspiring Battle Standard
0

My preferred stats are Healing, Precision, Vita/Tough.

With this build, one banner, set to the side of an encounter, will heal my party (previously an entire raid in CS before they reduced the efficacy to only 5 people …) for 312 per tick (second) with 1320 healing. By placing your banners efficiently around the combat zone, you can blanket a very large area with a substantial regeneration field, and only 5 seconds of downtime. If you overlap banner fields, you can have a permanent regeneration field for your group.

Note: Banner heals do no stack, just the area of effect, so it is important to keep them spread out. Now, despite the nerf to 5 people per banner, 3 banners is still up to 15 people if a raid aware group can stay within a particular banner field.

Warhorn is indispensable with Quick Breathing. converting Conditions to Boons is priceless.

I use Defensive Banner, Shake It Off, Tactical Banner, and the elite Warbanner.

My healing skill is Healing Surge.

In solo play, I often switch that to Healing Signet because the regeneration from Adrenal Health, Healing Signet, and a banner do stack, so in solo play I have approximately 650 health regeneration per second. I will throw down two banners about 50 feet apart, and start kiting mobs in a circle around them, stacking bleeds with my sword, taking very little damage. Warhorn skills make me even harder to kill because I have 3 immobilization removal tools (two warhorn skills with QB, and shake it off).

This is obviously a character design geared for group play moreso than solo play, but it is very fun to play with, essentially, I am a very hard to kill combat medic. Oh ya, in combat, my revive ticks for 759, so downed players get up fast.

And I am a highly valued commodity in WvW.

I am sure I can say more, but this should give you an idea of how to use banners effectively.

I like banners. But shouts can remove condis on group. If you go banners get the regwn tactic at 30 tactics for sure. It does help out to have basically perma grouop regen for 30 sec.

nakoda.4213:

I am a banner warrior, who uses a 1h Sword + Warhorn / Longbow.

My build:

0
25 :: Deep Cuts, Blademaster
15 :: Cull the Weak
30 :: Inspiring Banners, Quick Breathing, Inspiring Battle Standard
0

My preferred stats are Healing, Precision, Vita/Tough.

With this build, one banner, set to the side of an encounter, will heal my party (previously an entire raid in CS before they reduced the efficacy to only 5 people …) for 312 per tick (second) with 1320 healing. By placing your banners efficiently around the combat zone, you can blanket a very large area with a substantial regeneration field, and only 5 seconds of downtime. If you overlap banner fields, you can have a permanent regeneration field for your group.

Note: Banner heals do no stack, just the area of effect, so it is important to keep them spread out. Now, despite the nerf to 5 people per banner, 3 banners is still up to 15 people if a raid aware group can stay within a particular banner field.

Warhorn is indispensable with Quick Breathing. converting Conditions to Boons is priceless.

I use Defensive Banner, Shake It Off, Tactical Banner, and the elite Warbanner.

My healing skill is Healing Surge.

In solo play, I often switch that to Healing Signet because the regeneration from Adrenal Health, Healing Signet, and a banner do stack, so in solo play I have approximately 650 health regeneration per second. I will throw down two banners about 50 feet apart, and start kiting mobs in a circle around them, stacking bleeds with my sword, taking very little damage. Warhorn skills make me even harder to kill because I have 3 immobilization removal tools (two warhorn skills with QB, and shake it off).

This is obviously a character design geared for group play moreso than solo play, but it is very fun to play with, essentially, I am a very hard to kill combat medic. Oh ya, in combat, my revive ticks for 759, so downed players get up fast.

And I am a highly valued commodity in WvW.

I am sure I can say more, but this should give you an idea of how to use banners effectively.

Hello,

I am a new player, a warrior who just hit lvl 80 (yeah noob:)).

My question is : do you think specing rifle instead of longbow for dungeon play is more effective since the rifle has a knockback,snare and the OP F1 ability wich name Ive forgotten

Thanks for the answer!

P.S.: Ill be trying out your banner build as soon as I can (but ill have to spend a lot of points :o)

Alot of good information from nakoda.4213 in here.

As for regen banners vs healing shouts, I think there are pros and cons to both. The beauty of these builds is that you can swap between the two depending on what is needed. If you know an area/boss is going to do lots of conditions and you really want to be using shake it off and FGJ with heals, use that. if it’s more of a tank and spank and you think banners will be better (including battle standard, 60 sec duration pulsing FGJ) then use that. Just swap your skills and major traits.

Last night I ran fractals with another warrior with a simmilar build and he was using healing shouts while I was using regen banners. That’s pretty solid support, at the expense of DPS sure but lets face it, dungeons in this game are not a DPS race. Hard to kill something when you are dead.

Nonfat.8742:

My question is : do you think specing rifle instead of longbow for dungeon play is more effective since the rifle has a knockback,snare and the OP F1 ability wich name Ive forgotten

Yes and no. Utility is key in group situations, so the utilities are definitely handy, and the rifle snare is one of the best. Kill Shot, OP as it is, however, is pretty hard to justify in dungeons because of how long it takes to set up and fire, it keeps you too stationary when you are typically mobile.

In my experience, I only use ranged in groups when melee is not an option, but the tradeoff is the warhorn, which is so useful that the ranged becomes a very situational tool. That said, many boss fights are those situations. Like Path 1 in HotW, there is no reason for me to be melee during that encounter, so I focus on the totems while buffing with the warhorn until I have full adrenaline, then drop a flame field from my longbow F1 skill so that everyone gets some extra burn damage in, then switch back to my warhorn after CD is down.

Ultimately, how you play is how you feel most comfortable, and I am always most comfortable when I feel useful and needed in a group. In previous MMO, that meant being a tank (I have been a main raid tank since EQ and in every MMO that followed the same general flavour of playstyle). In GW2, without the “tanking” role, in the more traditional sense, that meant learning how to mitigate damage without soaking it up, so I heal and buff now.

THERE IS NO WRONG SPEC (not even 5 signets, all you nay-sayers can sit on your thumbs), so experiment and find a groove that makes the ladies wanna dance next to you.

In the immortal words of James Brown: If It’s good to ya, it’s good for ya.

UHH! Yeah!

YojimboJones.6243:

As for regen banners vs healing shouts, I think there are pros and cons to both. The beauty of these builds is that you can swap between the two depending on what is needed. If you know an area/boss is going to do lots of conditions and you really want to be using shake it off and FGJ with heals, use that. if it’s more of a tank and spank and you think banners will be better (including battle standard, 60 sec duration pulsing FGJ) then use that. Just swap your skills and major traits.

Indeed. I have experimented a lot with this capability, and if I switch to a Shout spec, I will dual wield swords and end up being more DPS with emergency heals than a HoT Bot. They both work exceptionally well, and farming solo is definitely easier with the shouts and Dual Wield than with the warhorn, though I can fight considerably more mobs for longer with banners when on my own.

At the end of the day, situational awareness is what is key. Be aware, and be flexible.

Like your mom.

nakoda.4213:

Nonfat.8742:

My question is : do you think specing rifle instead of longbow for dungeon play is more effective since the rifle has a knockback,snare and the OP F1 ability wich name Ive forgotten

Yes and no. Utility is key in group situations, so the utilities are definitely handy, and the rifle snare is one of the best. Kill Shot, OP as it is, however, is pretty hard to justify in dungeons because of how long it takes to set up and fire, it keeps you too stationary when you are typically mobile.

In my experience, I only use ranged in groups when melee is not an option, but the tradeoff is the warhorn, which is so useful that the ranged becomes a very situational tool. That said, many boss fights are those situations. Like Path 1 in HotW, there is no reason for me to be melee during that encounter, so I focus on the totems while buffing with the warhorn until I have full adrenaline, then drop a flame field from my longbow F1 skill so that everyone gets some extra burn damage in, then switch back to my warhorn after CD is down.

Ultimately, how you play is how you feel most comfortable, and I am always most comfortable when I feel useful and needed in a group. In previous MMO, that meant being a tank (I have been a main raid tank since EQ and in every MMO that followed the same general flavour of playstyle). In GW2, without the “tanking” role, in the more traditional sense, that meant learning how to mitigate damage without soaking it up, so I heal and buff now.

THERE IS NO WRONG SPEC (not even 5 signets, all you nay-sayers can sit on your thumbs), so experiment and find a groove that makes the ladies wanna dance next to you.

In the immortal words of James Brown: If It’s good to ya, it’s good for ya.

UHH! Yeah!

Hello,

first of all I have to tell you that I love the spec! And thank you for the detailed answer ofc.

Yesterday was the “respec day” and tried my 2nd dungeon (did only AC story before) and I ended up doing the new fractals dungeon. Perhaps I should first try out the build on some mobs but I didnt and had quite some problems with the placing of the banners and using the sword (I see now that melee can be quite painful) at the beginning.
But after a while I got used to it and my team didnt die once! I was proud and I think that for a moment my group had tears in their eyes…tears of happyness

But tbh I still have same problems with how to use this build effectivly in solo PvE.

Kind regards

restoration.2806:

So I have a warrior level 34 and am currently playing sword/shield I like the block mechanic by the shield allowing me to soak a little damage. I’m playing a precision warrior and am wanting my stats to look somewhat like 20-30-10-10 at level 80. My question is for dungeons and the such is a banner warrior really even that useful or is a shout warrior better? I use banner of defense and banner of discipline along so I get +toughness +vitality +precision and +critical damage %. Is this any good or even useful in dungeons or is shout warriors the way to go with FoJ, OMM and such.

oh and also is healing signet or mending a better heal for warriors? I use healing signet because with signet of rage and one other I get +120 precision from the trait. Is this worth it or no.

Rarely use banners at all,unless its absolutely necessary then ill grab the elite one.Other then that its a hassle,its slow,you need to stay close,you need to bring it with you,the cd is Waaaay to long.Like i said,unless its absolutely necessary,i wouldn’t bother.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcRzVm9cMThRmMThRma0fxfVoVsqV

use this build lately with full berserker gear… gives highest possible non-support armor healing, great group buffs, and personal dps.

I run with ~70% crit, 95% bonus crit damage, and 3K+ power

Adrenalin regen is ~300 every few seconds, banner is ~150/sec
Healing surge is 8k every 30, or a full adrenalin bar if you don’t need the larger heal

Horn cleanses yourself, and your group… wins all around

I think in my full damage build, I had about 20-25% more damage potential, but spent a lot more time kissing dirt.

I honestly believe Banners are better in terms of support because it legitimately makes trading hits more of a breeze for the team. Not to mention you only need one Banner vs. having three shouts.

Schwahrheit.4203:

I honestly believe Banners are better in terms of support because it legitimately makes trading hits more of a breeze for the team. Not to mention you only need one Banner vs. having three shouts.

Absolutely. And considering how often players build glass cannons, a Defense Banner dispensing 100 health per second will increase their survivability greatly.

with 25 stacks of life sigil, my banners (at 1120 heals pre-sigil) tick for approximately 325.

Banners are weaker than shouts support imo mainly due to range and the fact that alot of fights you want to spread out and be mobile. Shout is a little better at this since you don’t have to move the banner around, nor have people sit in 1 relatively small area to get the benefit. Its still a decent spec to go into though, so if you like banners go ahead and roll a banner spec.

well, as a brief counter to that before I jet to work:

yes, shouts heal more in one go, and move with you as an intrinsic feature of it being you shouting; however, banners also provide boons to your party which persist for a much greater time than your shouts. additionally, banners can be placed spread around the field of an encounter to provide those boons to a large area, and each banner field of effect allows 5 more people to be healed in larger encounters (I do not believe that overlapping areas count however, apparently crossing the beams is a bad things). The point is, banners are an easily manageable way to provide heals and buffs to your party in a persistent manner, so that long term encounters are easier over all.

That is to say, for boss fights, or even champion fights, banners outweigh the “oh shoot” button of a shout heal. At 1120 heals plus 25 stacks of life signet, a shout heal lands for approximately 2500 heals, and can be dropped every 25 to 40 seconds. Te buff from a shout lasts approximately 15 seconds or less. If you have 3 shouts slotted, you can reliably give your group 7500 heals every 30 seconds on average.

With the same healing stat, Banners last just shy of 90 seconds (the tooltip duration is incorrect), and tick for approximately 325 heals every 3 seconds (or 110 a second to make the math easy) as a persistent regen that does NOT APPLY ITSELF to people with full health. Unlike a shout heal, none of your outgoing healing is being wasted. So, in 30 seconds, one banner heals for roughly 3250 and provides a persistent boon that lasts for as long as the heal, and you do not have to keep watching your skill bar to pop the heal when it may or may not be useful.

also, strategic banner planting can be helpful.

example, place your tactics banner nearer the boss and your defense banner farther away, or vice versa depending on the fight. If melee needs to back out, they can run back into a field of defensive boons to regen a bit and perhaps ward off adds while the rest benefit from the tactics boons (including longer lasting boons).

off to work with me.

That is beauty of it though. There is pros and cons to both shouts vs banners. Everything is situational. I find its more about finding the perfect build for your play style then the ultimate build for everything. For the later, there just no such thing.

nakoda.4213:

That is to say, for boss fights, or even champion fights, banners outweigh the “oh shoot” button of a shout heal. At 1120 heals plus 25 stacks of life signet, a shout heal lands for approximately 2500 heals, and can be dropped every 25 to 40 seconds. Te buff from a shout lasts approximately 15 seconds or less. If you have 3 shouts slotted, you can reliably give your group 7500 heals every 30 seconds on average.

With the same healing stat, Banners last just shy of 90 seconds (the tooltip duration is incorrect), and tick for approximately 325 heals every 3 seconds (or 110 a second to make the math easy) as a persistent regen that does NOT APPLY ITSELF to people with full health. Unlike a shout heal, none of your outgoing healing is being wasted. So, in 30 seconds, one banner heals for roughly 3250 and provides a persistent boon that lasts for as long as the heal, and you do not have to keep watching your skill bar to pop the heal when it may or may not be useful.

A couple of things:

First, a dedicated Shout build will probably be running the 20% reduction in shout cooldown to maximize the amount of healing that can be done. Yeah, you miss out on the Warhorn reduction (which is probably the great benefit of a Banner build), but with a reduced CD on Shake It Off, you use it more often, and get some good benefit out of it. I actually run a Hammer/Rifle build because I find that the CC from the two weapons makes for excellent damage prevention, while giving me a ranged option for enemies that aren’t melee-friendly.

Secondly, I typically run Runes of the Water, which, combined with a low-cooldown healing skill (like Mending or a traited Signet of Healing) can provide almost 35-50% regen uptime for people near you, which is pretty solid compared to the banner regen, which is a full 100%. The great thing about shouts, however, is that they actually do have a pretty decent uptime on buffs. I typically use Shouts on cooldown (For Great Justice and On My Mark) to provide constant stacks of Might and throw down a little vulnerability to speed up encounters, saving Shake It Off for condition removal or healing emergencies. The healing aspect is typically secondary to the buffs themselves.

Now, I’m not saying that the Shouts are superior to banners at all. I actually usually run the Banner of Tactics in a raid-ish group for the AoE heal and Regen and Swiftness. I just don’t think you can compare shout builds and banner builds, because they both rely on fundamentally different philosophies (i.e., HoT vs. Spot Healing). Neither is better, they simply excel at different types of heals.

I am still a lower level warrior, but I run banner in dungeons as well, similar to Nadoka.
I would definitely recommend the the longbow over the rifle for a ranged weapon because you can drop the fire field. I usually drop the fire field, use longbow 3, and drop 2-3 banners (whatever is up) and then use for great justice. I can get a large number of stacks of might on my team with this combo, and then the banners also give them some nice effects. I also use sword / warhorn in my offhand, to cleanse and debuff.

In random pugs, this is so helpful since most groups have glass cannon solo builds with no defense / healing / condition removal. So even if I dont do spectacular damage, keeping the other 4 people alive makes the runs go way smoother.

For WvW and running around it’s not as useful (altough picking up the banner for aoe swiftness is also nice). In solo play it’s not that great. I just go 5 signet for PVE solo because then I can watch tv while I kill stuff.

I found banners to be more effective at healing unless you got some healing power. It also took up only a single utility slot to get the regen buff, leaving two more slots open for other powers. Healing shouts needs all three slots to be most effective.

STR10 V
ARMS 20 V, X or XII
TAC 30 V, VI, XI
DIS 10 V or VI

GS/rifle
Banner of disipline, frenzy, FGJ, sig rage, mending with lyssa runes and full pwr/prec/crit dmg

or banner of choice, shake it off, FGJ, healing surge, sig rage with runes of the soldier and pwr/prec/crit dmg or defensive equip as needed power/vit/tough

i found the heals from shouts to be inferior to banner regen, and using a banner does not take you out of the fight you get used to it. also perma group swiftness is pure win.

Manijin.3428:

Now, I’m not saying that the Shouts are superior to banners at all. I actually usually run the Banner of Tactics in a raid-ish group for the AoE heal and Regen and Swiftness. I just don’t think you can compare shout builds and banner builds, because they both rely on fundamentally different philosophies (i.e., HoT vs. Spot Healing). Neither is better, they simply excel at different types of heals.

I completely agree, I was more trying to continue showing the diversity of banners in general, which are greatly overlooked.

in fact…

azmodeus.3409:

STR10 V
ARMS 20 V, X or XII
TAC 30 V, VI, XI
DIS 10 V or VI

GS/rifle
Banner of disipline, frenzy, FGJ, sig rage, mending with lyssa runes and full pwr/prec/crit dmg

or banner of choice, shake it off, FGJ, healing surge, sig rage with runes of the soldier and pwr/prec/crit dmg or defensive equip as needed power/vit/tough

i found the heals from shouts to be inferior to banner regen, and using a banner does not take you out of the fight you get used to it. also perma group swiftness is pure win.

is an awesome example that is a heavy hitting dps build rather than a utility/heal build that still capitalizes on banner regen.

imma try this later …

Vilhelm.9647:

I found banners to be more effective at healing unless you got some healing power. It also took up only a single utility slot to get the regen buff, leaving two more slots open for other powers. Healing shouts needs all three slots to be most effective.

well, you really only need two with the 20% CD reduction from traits. FGJ and SIO can be cycled reliably. The third slot can be anything that adds to your flavour, be it a banner, or a signet, or a physical. even radiation field is fun sometimes.

Love this discussion. Some great posts in here.

Can I ask, some of you have chosen the bonus things for full Adrenalin. In regard to how you play it. Do you only use your f1 for “emergencies” or when you do not need the bonus. Can you explain how you typically play this mechanic for me please

keep adrenaline full, the only time you’d use it is when your not taking alot of dmg so won’t need the extra heal from surge and you can blast off your rifle attack. the GS f1 isn’t worth it.

nakoda.4213:

I am a banner warrior, who uses a 1h Sword + Warhorn / Longbow.

I am sure I can say more, but this should give you an idea of how to use banners effectively.

+10 for AOE healing/support warriors! my build is exactly the same, but i use a mace for the interrupts, handy in dungeons, using all P/T/HP gear, then using the longbow fire field to place down up to 12 stacks of might from the banner blast finishers

Banners for me. As warriors we stay in melee range most of the time (at least we should be.) I find that shouts often miss the ranged people sitting up to 1200 away, noticing a lack of might addition to half the party when using For Great Justice. A strategically placed banner can cover the area much better, even if people fall out of range the regen should have built up enough to last until they enter it again.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Bunker-Warrior-tPvP-prototype/first#post953515

Most effective way to play banner ATM. No other way to play it but as a support/initiator much like Taric in LoL.

With the heal on [banner of tactics] bugged to not produce the tooltip instant heal, doesn’t [inspiring battle standard] render the [banner of tactics] heal (no.2) obsolete? At lv 49, my [compassionate banner] is supposed to heal for 1170 (instant) + 587 (regen). I’m getting 232 + (101 × 6.25).