Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone,

I just rolled a warrior, with the aspirations of getting up and close with my enemies. My main is a ranger and it does get boring just to kill everything with just pressing a single button. That being said, I read good things about the warrior class. After doing some research on the forums regarding builds and weapons and whatnot, I decided to roll a dual axe DPS monster. I am close to level 20 now and while I enjoy the insanely high damage dual axe provides, I do not enjoy dying all to often. Without getting into a dystopic imagery of the warrior class, could someone enlighten me if I am doing something wrong, or is it just like this?

Cheers.

Put a mace or a shield in your off hand for some fight control, or just get used to moving around more. Start using knight armor once you hit 60 or 65, whenever that prefix starts to show up, for some toughness.

Axe/axe is only higher damage than axe/anything else if you are fighting more than 3 enemies. Axe 5 is not that great of a damage dealer in general, and axe 4 is made redundant by FGJ and SoR.

You made a mistake if you want to melee go guardian. Warrior can do high damage but lacks the sturdiness to remain with in melee range. Warriors are forced to play hit and run.

What spec and gear, besides the double axe where have you placed our points so far and what traits did you pick? Is your gear in par with your level.

@Anon: Completely wrong right there, I leveled 2 warriors to level 80, all melee all with different weapons. I have done every story mode dungeon and almost every exploration mode dungeon, all the time in melee unless the fight requires otherwise. Hell I out survive 70% of the guardians I encounter lol.

You’re level 20 right? I suggest changing your trinkets: get one power amulet, 2 toughness rings and 2 toughness accessories. Then to make up for the damage you lose, get a minor sigil of bloodlust on your main hand weapon, that gives 5 power per enemy you defeat, stacking up to 25×5 = 125 power.

I also find that with a greatsword, even without deep strike trait (40 precision per signet), things simply die faster. I don’t use signets because I find them boring. With hundred blades I kill things faster than with axes, even though axe auto attack is higher dps. Hundred blades has a very short cooldown, only 6 seconds when traited, and it just destroys monsters by the dozens before they get my health down.

Greatsword also has a much higher hit arc, making it easier destroying multiple monsters at once if they’re not lined up in front of you.

I find axe skills very weak, boring and simply lacking in every way.. axe auto attack is nice against few targets, but the animation is ugly and the other 4 axe skills are very lackluster in my experience.

If not greatsword, then I find the hammer very efficient for solo leveling.. it does a ton of auto attack damage with a very wide arc, becomes very efficient when traited, works very well with high toughness and gives a lot of ways to interrupt monsters from landing heavy hits on you. It also works well with dual maces, for permanent weakness debuff, another interrupt, a very short cooldown (shorter than any other) block + counterattack, and another 2 second knockdown on relatively short cooldown.

I find that in the end, either greatsword with longbow (kiting), or hammer with dual maces, or mace/sword for the extra short cooldown block, is vastly superior to axes for pve solo leveling.

Axes just plain suck imo.. eviscerate doesn’t even hit multiple targets.. I think axes are more something to use as backup for a ranged rifle build, not for use as main weapon set, they’re just too bad.. other than its high sustained dps auto attack, dual axes has nothing to offer. I find axes bad in pve because it offers no survivability, and I find them bad in pvp because it offers no mobility either.

I just enjoy mashing things with hammer and maces, both weapon sets keeping the enemy weakened, which is pretty much the same as a permanent protection boon, and giving lots of interrupts and knockdowns. And I enjoy melting face with the greatsword, gathering 5 monsters and just pulverizing them with hundred blades + whirlwind, or playing around with blade trail and longbow moves, moving in and out of melee range. If warrior longbow had a decent auto attack, it’d be one of the best backup weapons in the game.

Gather 5 mobs, put them into hundred blades, finish with whirlwind, use the distance you created and switch to longbow, lay down combustive aoe and finish with the longbow #3 explosion.. that’ll kill pretty much anything while only being in melee range for 3.5 seconds.

I don’t find it opportune putting everything in dps, it’s much more fun to use stats, tactics, traits and skills that offer survivability as well as dps. You’ll kill single targets slower yes, but you’ll be able to take on 5 monsters at once at a much faster pace than having to kill them one by one with the axes.

Or you can just keep it simple, get mace/mace and auto attack things till they die, it’s a bit slower but you’ll never get downed because of the aoe knockdown, stun, daze, block and permanent aoe weakness.

Warriors really have no reason to complain about solo pve, experiment some and you’re bound to find a kitten build. Warriors are really bad for pvp roaming, they’re very bad for one vs one and duels, they suck at tpvp and spvp, but they rock at sieges, at support and at solo pve.

Try greatsword, longbow, hammer or dual maces, but don’t bother with the shield, it’s entirely useless for solo pve. In solo pve, a 10 or 15 cooldown parry, is far more useful than a 30 second cooldown block that lasts 3 seconds, since mobs attack only once every 3-4 seconds. So mace and sword parry are far better defensively than shield, except maybe if a lot of mobs are hitting you all at once within the 3 seconds, which rarely happens.

The only weapons I found bad for solo pve, are the rifle, the swords and the axes, and they’re not really “bad”, they’re just the least efficient weapons. Many suggest using rifle and axes, but I find both those weapons really bad for any kind of pve, and also very boring.

Try not to stay in front of Veteran mobs.

Hey Xorbah

I found the Warrior to be extremely squishy on the way to lvl 80. Even though i had my 30 points in defensive, still did bad damage and died to 3 regular monsters all the time. But it got a lot better since i hit 80 and started to get exotics with +tough, +pow, +vit. I think to be competitive in WvW you need to wait till you hit 80 and get gear with the warrior, sorry. Also your weakest point in the game will be exactly when you hit 80 and still wear some blues, greens from lvl 75 or what not. Just hold out, as soon as you have some exotics and the rest rares, you will get really tough and do great damage, dont feel weak anymore on the battlefield at all.

Greetings

Thanks for all the advice people! I’ll try some greatsword, hammer, increase toughness and see where things go.

Cheers!

Played most classes to above lv40, warrior is by far the easiest until lv30…

Warrior by no mean to fight toe to toe, GW2 is about positioning, so gain an advantage position is always the best tactics.

For example, using 100B on multiple foes, it is fun but what if foes are widely located? what if the foes are moving? what if the foe is hard hitter? you are sitting duck if you just charge in straight on and 100B.

The answer is movement, use your movement to control your foe!

For wide spread foes, save your 100B, move to one foe and strafe around so that the other foes is behind your target, they wish to hit you they will move to your current target, bingo, you can now 100B all of them.

For moving foes, use bladetrail, or whatever skill to cripple or immobilize, OR don’t 100B…. you have a lot of skills to use.

For hard hitter, strafe until target used his big hitter, dodge if needed, use rush to get back to position and 100B, watch foe action and don’t be greedy, break your 100B channel if another dodge is needed.

Thats my greatsword tactics, same tactics is good for other melee weapons, mobility is a warrior’s bread and butter.