Guild Wars 2

Hi everyone!

I’ve been thinking recently of a Warrior build that can be effective in PvE/WvW area, the objective of the build is to grant enough power and damage capability while keeping enough defence.

I’d like to know other people’s opinion and points of view, ways to improve it, etc.

Using the recent Dogged March trait with Runes of Melandru and Lemongrass for the 98% Movement Conditions Duration that’s been discussed with the announcement of the Dogged March trait I wanted to design a build I could use those.

This is the build: http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/warrior/?8.5|7.1g.h1.e.1c.h1l|1.1c.h1|1g.7r.1g.7r.1n.7r.1g.7r.1g.7r.1g.7r|4s.d1f.2s.d14.2t.d14.2s.d14.2t.d14.2s.d14|0.k6a.u18b.0.k5a|15.7|5y.6b.6i.64.6m|e

The condition removal comes from the march+melandru+lemongrass combo with shake it off for stun breaking or removing those big stacks of bleed/confusion/vulnerability, also I’ve gone with Mobile Strikes, even I think probably Adrenaline on Axe crit could do better.

I’ve also been thinking about the defence grandmaster trait of choice, Retaliation just got nerfed if I’m right. So I decided to go for the double Endure Pain, given the 2900 armor for 37% damage reduction, I think It can give enough durability to the Warrior.

In terms of Utility skills, I’m not quite sure what to go with. Bull’s Charge is only used in WvW and I replace it with FGJ in PvE, Endure Pain seems to always be good being the ‘oh sh** button’, Shake It Off and Signet of Stamina are a tough decision, 50% extra endurance regen is quite interesting, but the long cooldown and lack of stun breaker makes me realize I’d need Balanced Stance instead of Endure Pain to have enough Stability. So at the moment I keep thinking of Balanced Stance, Endure Pain, Shake it Off, Signet of Stamina and For Great Justice and switch between those as needed.

The idea of the build is to be strong for PvE usage even Warrior already does great in there by himself, while keeping a good build for WvW usage, one that can do well at both Zerg vs Zerg and group roaming.

So before I invest more money into my (already) 4th armor set / build, I’d like to know other people thoughts.

Thanks for reading all this massive text, and I look forward to your opinions since I’m not quite sure about traits and utilities and I might have left something important behind.

*Note: Buildcraft still shows Defence II as Turtle’s Defence which gives +200 toughness in the stats making the toughness shown by the calculator false, the Adept Defence trait for the build is Dogged March, but since Buildcraft is not updated I use Adrenaline when hit which is my 2nd option.

I’ve been looking into a similar build. I run 20 strength instead of arms as I think berserker power + slashing power will increase your damage much more then 20 into arms. I’m also only going 20 into defense for last stand (which is an amazing trait imho) and I put the rest into disc to get boon hate. You won’t see boon hate much in PvE, but in WvW I believe the extra damage is worth it. In order to compensate for my defense I run full knights gear.

Not Viable.

Poor Healing, No Sustain, No Condition Removal.

Having extra armor after 2700 almost makes no difference, you need protection.

Daecollo.9578:

Not Viable.

Poor Healing, No Sustain, No Condition Removal.

Having extra armor after 2700 almost makes no difference, you need protection.

It works for roaming. You can deal with most other classes roaming, even some guardians and eles. The extra toughness does help and this is not a gimmicky bullsrush – frenzy build.

peter.9024:

Daecollo.9578:

Not Viable.

Poor Healing, No Sustain, No Condition Removal.

Having extra armor after 2700 almost makes no difference, you need protection.

It works for roaming. You can deal with most other classes roaming, even some guardians and eles. The extra toughness does help and this is not a gimmicky bullsrush – frenzy build.

This is how other classes survive.
2700 Armor+Protection = (35% + 33%.)
You have 3600 Armor in that build, which is pretty much just 38% Damage Reduction, since after 2700 you hit a soft cap which makes it worse.
What is better, 68% DR or 38%?

You also no condition removal.

In the case of Guardians, if I played one I could get 35% + 33% + 15% Damage Reduction with there signet. Damage Reduction > Armor.

Poor Healing, No protection against incoming CC to slow you down, No Condition Removal (Defy Pain/Endure Pain are worthless without condition removal.), ok Mobility. (Not Sword/Warhorn.)

Its an ‘ok’ build, but honestly a ranger’s pet has more of a chance of living then you do.

You are pretty much immune to slows, however Warrior’s bane has always been damaging conditions like poison.

Daecollo.9578:

peter.9024:

Daecollo.9578:

Not Viable.

Poor Healing, No Sustain, No Condition Removal.

Having extra armor after 2700 almost makes no difference, you need protection.

It works for roaming. You can deal with most other classes roaming, even some guardians and eles. The extra toughness does help and this is not a gimmicky bullsrush – frenzy build.

This is how other classes survive.
2700 Armor+Protection = (35% + 33%.)
You have 3600 Armor in that build, which is pretty much just 38% Damage Reduction, since after 2700 you hit a soft cap which makes it worse.
What is better, 68% DR or 38%?

You also no condition removal.

In the case of Guardians, if I played one I could get 35% + 33% + 15% Damage Reduction with there signet. Damage Reduction > Armor.

Poor Healing, No protection against incoming CC to slow you down, No Condition Removal, 0 Mobility.

Its an ‘ok’ build, but honestly a ranger’s pet has more of a chance of living then you do.

You are pretty much immune to slows, however Warrior’s bane has always been damaging conditions like poison.

Yes, I’m well aware.

Part of the game is a balance between damage done and damage taken.

While a warrior’s damage taken is higher then the respective opponent, your damage done component is also significantly higher. You have just listed the enemies’ damage reduction items, at the same time you need to realize that the damage done component is much higher on your warrior then your enemy. Couple this with your higher health pool and inherent toughness you have some room in which you can kill other classes.

Secondly, in this build the main condition removal is just trying to just let it tick away. With melandru and poultry soup majority of non-traited conditions will fall off before doing any damage. After the recent patch, all movement conditions (which are a major prevention of increasing our damage done part) are literally removed. I have signet of stamina in case anything long lingers.

Lastly, very few builds can keep up protection 100% of the time. Part of the game skill is capitalizing on when protection is not up. Roaming is not going to be top tier Tpvp skill level and a skilled warrior will put up a good fight against 90% of the builds that I know.

Are the odds against you in a fight with a mesmer? Yes, they are. At the same time this doesn’t mean you’ll loose every fight, but you might loose 6 out of 10.

peter.9024:

Daecollo.9578:

peter.9024:

Daecollo.9578:

Not Viable.

Poor Healing, No Sustain, No Condition Removal.

Having extra armor after 2700 almost makes no difference, you need protection.

It works for roaming. You can deal with most other classes roaming, even some guardians and eles. The extra toughness does help and this is not a gimmicky bullsrush – frenzy build.

This is how other classes survive.
2700 Armor+Protection = (35% + 33%.)
You have 3600 Armor in that build, which is pretty much just 38% Damage Reduction, since after 2700 you hit a soft cap which makes it worse.
What is better, 68% DR or 38%?

You also no condition removal.

In the case of Guardians, if I played one I could get 35% + 33% + 15% Damage Reduction with there signet. Damage Reduction > Armor.

Poor Healing, No protection against incoming CC to slow you down, No Condition Removal, 0 Mobility.

Its an ‘ok’ build, but honestly a ranger’s pet has more of a chance of living then you do.

You are pretty much immune to slows, however Warrior’s bane has always been damaging conditions like poison.

Yes, I’m well aware.

Part of the game is a balance between damage done and damage taken.

While a warrior’s damage taken is higher then the respective opponent, your damage done component is also significantly higher. You have just listed the enemies’ damage reduction items, at the same time you need to realize that the damage done component is much higher on your warrior then your enemy. Couple this with your higher health pool and inherent toughness you have some room in which you can kill other classes.

Secondly, in this build the main condition removal is just trying to just let it tick away. With melandru and poultry soup majority of non-traited conditions will fall off before doing any damage. After the recent patch, all movement conditions (which are a major prevention of increasing our damage done part) are literally removed. I have signet of stamina in case anything long lingers.

Lastly, very few builds can keep up protection 100% of the time. Part of the game skill is capitalizing on when protection is not up. Roaming is not going to be top tier Tpvp skill level and a skilled warrior will put up a good fight against 90% of the builds that I know.

Are the odds against you in a fight with a mesmer? Yes, they are. At the same time this doesn’t mean you’ll loose every fight, but you might loose 6 out of 10.

@Your damage done component is also significantly higher.

Our damage is also much easier to dodge and avoid though, making the higher damage meaningless in PvP.

@health pool and inherent toughness

We have 200 extra toughness then someone in medium armor, that is about 1% difference if you have 2700 armor already, it just means we are better when we go full zerker. Higher health does not matter if we can’t keep our health up. If we cannot keep up with the damage you might as well say we are just making the fight last longer by seconds.

Anyone who raises this argument usually has no idea how game mechanics work, the extra armor is a “small boost” at most, while the extra health, as significant as it is, does not make up for the loss of condition removal/healing.

I will name the following classes who can have 100% Protection uptime.
- Guardian
- Elementalist
- Ranger
- Engineer
- Necromancer

That is 5 of the 8 classes, and warrior hardly has the invulnerabilities mesmer has.

You also have to take into account the extra traits and how much better they are then other classes, the Guardian’s Toughness tree alone makes up for the loss in health they get, here is a funny thing. Warriors atleast have to put 20 points in discipline to be good, but since BRAWN (3% burst damage.) is so terrible, your losing out on 300 points worth of stats (3000 health.)

When you look at balance, you really have to look at /the big picture./ and realize that that extra health means absolutely nothing.

@Your damage done component is also significantly higher.
Our damage is also much easier to dodge and avoid though, making the higher damage meaningless in PvP.

You damage is consistently higher. Some are easy to dodge, but there are only so many dodges right?

@We have 200 extra toughness then someone in medium armor, that is about 1% difference if you have 2700 armor already, it just means we are better when we go full zerker. Higher health does not matter if we can’t keep our health up. If we cannot keep up with the damage you might as well say we are just making the fight last longer by seconds.

Anyone who raises this argument usually has no idea how game mechanics work, the extra armor is a “small boost” at most, while the extra health, as significant as it is, does not make up for the loss of condition removal/healing.

While the toughness is less noticeable, there is a difference in health pool baseline between guards, ele and warriors. That HP pool is noticeable.

@
I will name the following classes who can have 100% Protection uptime.
- Guardian
- Elementalist
- Ranger
- Engineer
- Necromancer

Effectively, only guardians and elementalists can have 100% protection uptime. The other three you mentioned will only have it up partially at best.

You also have to take into account the extra traits and how much better they are then other classes, the Guardian’s Toughness tree alone makes up for the loss in health they get, here is a funny thing. Warriors atleast have to put 20 points in discipline to be good, but since BRAWN (3% burst damage.) is so terrible, your losing out on 300 points worth of stats (3000 health.)

While Brawn is kitten, the discipline line is not. The majors and minors are some of the best trait options warriors can get. Would it be nice if Brawn is better? Hell yes, but at the same time you can work with what we are given currently.

@When you look at balance, you really have to look at /the big picture./ and realize that that extra health means absolutely nothing.

In the big picture, health does have some component. Is it balanced perfectly? No, it’s not. Toughness for example should give more reduction and protection should give less. This also means that playing warrior needs a higher skill level because you can’t mess up as hard as other classes and still get away with it.

You asked for comments on your build. I gave my comments. In PvE its an ok build, in WvWvW/SPvP it is not that viable for competitive play (Your not going to be that effective, pretty much just an extra body in a zerg.)

You would be much better off with a rifle/longbow build and staying at range in a Zerg.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/warrior/ Here, now you can stand back and be a sniper and be much more effective.

Hi OP, the below is my build.
Warrior Build

I prefer 25 Arms because of extra 10% damage to bleeding foes. Your foe is always as long as you hit them. As long as they have 1 stack on them, it’s good enough. So far I find Dogged March better than Embrace Pain. Utilities wise, I am using Shake It off, Endure Pain and Bullcharge.

Though all my equipments are Berserkers, traits wise is more to balanced and I don’t find any problem roaming solo or in 2 man group in WvW. I only wvw by the way so no PVP advice please.