Guild Wars 2

Hi! I recently started using a warrior in WvW, and I am trying to figure out a build.

My main weapon will be hammer, since I think it is pretty fun, but when running in a zerg I was thinking on using a longbow for that added range attack and tagging. I would use sword and shield in place of the longbow if the guys I WvW with usually had less people, but the zerg is rather large at times

Current plan is knights gear, with runes of melandru:

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/warrior/?8.2|2.1g.hd|3.1g.h1b|1n.7r.1n.7r.1n.7r.1n.7r.1n.7r.1n.7r|1n.64.1n.64.1n.64.1n.64.1n.64.1c.64|a3.0.p5a.k14.f3|15.1|5z.6g.6d.69.6m|e

Any feedback on this build?

I’m not the foremost authority on warrior builds, but I think it will do all right. I have three suggestions you can consider though.

1. You might look at swapping signet of stamina in for signet of fury. You would lose out on some crit chance and te option to fill your adrenaline bar, but the extra stamina regen and especially the full condition curing could be really helpful. It might not be as necessary since you have some condition duration mitigation, but I’ve found that it can be a bad idea to solely rely on that alone. If you do a lot of group play, then you’re probably fine with signet of fury, but signet of stamina would likely be better for solo roaming.

2. You might consider using dogged march as one of your defense line traits instead of missile deflection, especially if you have the longbow equipped (that website seems out of date and still has the turtle’s defence trait). Coupled with the soup and runes, this makes you nearly immune to cripples, chills, and immobilizes, which can be very handy in WvW. Not to mention you have no way of blocking if you use the hammer and longbow. You can maybe interchange this depending on whether you are using the shield or longbow.

3. I would not take the warrior’s sprint trait in the discipline line. The 10% really does not amount to that much. Instead, you should take signet mastery in that slot. This will reduce the cooldown on your utility signet (signet of fury or whichever other one you decide to use) as well as signet of rage. Since you will be able to pop signet of rage more often, this gives you fairly easy access to swiftness, and warrior’s sprint will not stack with a swiftness boon.

As a side tip, you can swap to and from warhorn to give yourself extra swiftness. If you take the signet mastery trait, this will allow you to essentially have perma-swiftness outside of combat by popping your signet of rage and using the warhorn.

Wow, good call on the dogged march, that definitely seems to be the superior one to use. Force of habit using that other site I recon.

Nice tips on the signets as well, with signet mastery it is even more useful to have that condition cure.

Thanks!

The great thing about Guild Wars is that you can play however you want to play. That being said, I personally don’t think hammer + longbow harmonizes very well with any build. Longbow sees significant damage bonuses with condition builds. If you aren’t stacking condition damage then your burns aren’t doing any notable damage at all. If you want a ranged weapon for WvW to accompany your Hammer I would suggest a Rifle.

Longbow works well for power/crit builds, 7-9k arcing shot aoe crits get peoples attention.

Warriors do a couple of things well and thats burst, mobility and cc. longbow works better for burst than rifle in mobile wvw open field scenarios. F1 on longbow is used for area denial, backing people out of choke points doors/etc.

In any event if you are not swapping your secondary weapons out of bag constantly, you are doing something wrong. I am switching from GS/hammer to gs/axehorn, rifle/longbow, gs longbow, GS/swdaxe constantly.

Its all about fighting conditions, many of our weapons are OP in certain situations and garbage in others.

Not bad, but can use some tweaking. Some of it is personal preference, but some of it just outright needs to go.

First let’s cover traits.

Strength major trait – Greater Fortitude. Why? Waste of trait points. You’re sacrificing 10 trait points for 1k health. Not worth it. If you’re gonna go 10 points into this, you’re going for Berserker’s Power. Don’t worry, it’s applied before your burst skill lands so you will get those juicy 13% on your burst. If you rather go more defensive, then Restorative Strength is also an option, but honestly as an hammer build you want the damage.

Defense Adept Major Trait – Missile Deflection? Why? You’re not using anything that can block, so this is a completely wasted trait. Since you’re running Runes of Melandru Dogged March is a good option, as it provides good synergy. If you take this, though, don’t bother with restorative strenght above and just go straight out Berserker’s Power. You’re sacrificing enough to get rid of movement impairing conditions and it’s quite enough.

Personally I’d also give up the 5 last points in that tree, put them in either Strenght for endurance when you use burst skills, or Discipline, or something. Personally, I think it’s a waste of 5 trait poitns for minimal damage gain, but to each his own.

Tactics Adept Major Trait – Leg Specialist. Again, why? Leg Specialist is an amazing trait for most builds, if you’re willing to sacrifice the points into the atrocious tactics tree, but you happen to be running the 2 weapons that least gain from it. Longbow has no cripples and comes with his own immobilize, and hammer has 1 cripples, and the rest of it is all stuns. Is it really worth it burning 10 trait points here for it? Not really, IMO.

Remove 10 points, add up the 5 points you saved up above, and dump them all in the Arms tree. You get 10% increased critical chance on bursts AND one of the best traits in the game for hammers or shield – Unsuspecting Foe. Seeing as Hammer is such a stun-based weapon, virtually guaranteeing critical hits whenever you stun someone is downright mandatory.

Discipline Adept Major Trait – Warrior’s Sprint. I know, it looks good, but it isn’t. Mobility in this game comes from Swiftness and skills with mobility included. Those 10% don’t stack with swiftness and, honestly, are utterly meaningless for the most part. You want the 15 point minor trait, so I’d just switch it for either Heightened Focus or Signet Mastery.

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Gear wise I’d only make one change: change all the jewels in your knights trinkets to ruby orbs. Incredibly cheap/efficient way to get critical damage, and what you sacrifice in return is next to nothing. Remember, due to the way toughness/armor works, anything over 3000 armor starts getting seriously hit with diminishing returns. Overall, you’re sacrificing a whole 2% damage reduction for 18% crit damage. That’s a big damage boost for almost nothing sacrificed.

Skill wise I’d change 2 things. First of all, get rid of Signet of Fury. You don’t need the extra crit chance that bad. Personally my warrior never leaves home without Signet of Stamina. That’s extra endurance regeneration as passive with a full condition cleanse every 45 seconds, 36 (IIRC) if you took signet mastery. Conditions are a Warrior’s worst enemy, and we don’t have the same access to vigor as some other classes. Overall, this signet is a must for me.

Second, For Great Justice is possibly THE best PvE skill in the game. In PvP, having a whole skill slot used up for fury and might (especially when you already have other sources of both) is counter productive. Especially as you’re running a Hammer build with no sword/Greatsword on switch (so your mobility is very reduced), I’d personally switch this out for the evergreen Bull’s Charge. It’s a 600 distance quick dash with a hefty 2 second stun at the end. It’s a great opener, distance closer, and, in a pinch, get away. I’ve ran a similar build for a while and, trust me, you need all the gap closers you can get.

Lastly, my 2 cents on “Hammer/Longbow”: I’ve ran this for a while and it’s quite fun when it works, and frustrating when it doesn’t. Hammer is a weapon that suffers from lack of mobility, defense, and raw burst. Longbow helps this a bit due to the immobilize and decent power-scaling burst (I’ve found myself switching back and forth between this and rifle when I used hammer). It relies on hitting that one critical stun, then stun locking the enemy to death. When it works it’s brutal and you’ll laugh out loud when you lock someone down and pummel them into mince. The problem is that several classes utterly disregard casual stuns due to abundance of stun breakers or stability, and even when you land your stuns, if you don’t instagib your opponent they might still get away. Hammer relies, in my view, a bit too much on chaining stuns. It’s not your best DPS weapon, but when it hits it hits hard, and that catches some players off guard. It’s best used in groups, particularly small to medium groups, where your team mates can capitalize of that one landed stun and guarantee a kill. If you’re caught “one on one”, you’ll have issues, and you’ll need to play carefully and downright surgically – Make sure they burn their defenses and then land that ONE stun that starts the chain.

Hope that helped.

Yes, thanks a lot!

I use hammer and longbow on my build fairly often, although I might be switch to hammer rifle. The longbow can be nice since you can give yourself extra might stacks when using a blast finisher in the fire field from the burst skill, and the immobilize can really help you out against kiters when using the hammer. Arcing arrow can also hit fairly hard.

I’d be a bit wary with unsuspecting foe. It’s 50% crit chance on stunned foes, but only earthshaker is a stun skill. The other skills on hammer are knockbacks and knockdowns, which I don’t think count for the purposes of that skills (haven’t tested this myself though).

This differs from the merciless hammer trait, which gives it’s bonus when an enemy is “disabled”, meaning knockback, knockdown, stun, launch, &c. Since unsuspecting foe explicitly refers to stun instead of disabled, I believe it will only work with earthshaker on hammer.

Mace has much more options for actual stuns, so that trait is probably better with mace.