Is there a survivable melee build without w/h or shouts?
Mace+Shield will allow you do that this against a single target at a time. mace 2 blocks, mace 3 dazes, mace 1 provides weakness, shield 4 stuns, shield 5 blocks. You can add in some utility skills to provide more CC like Stomp or Kick.
Something along the lines of – http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQJApejcO1upOCPMRA – I only did this in like 30secs, so it may or may not be super usable, but I figured I would share. Essentially your goal is to chain CC your target and never get hit.
Leader of Eastern Wind [EW]
Yak’s Bend Server
Banner build (One banner, Dolyak Signet, Signet of Healing, Signet of stamina) with stability and condition cleansing looked promising. Key words are “looked promising.”
Sadly it was a PvE build to begin with. And you’re going to be better as a “support” with shouts.
Not really. Unless you mean PvE, where you can do just about whatever you want anyway. The constant healing plus the removal of conditions regardless of whether you’re stunned is just too good. Especially considering one of the primary problems of the profession is condition removal, allowing you to move around freely. Most of whether we live or die is determined by how well we can move, after all, as we can’t stealth out, make clones, hide in turret farms, or so on. It’s just us.
There are other builds that are intended to be similar, but are just too weak. Warhorn builds can give some somewhat consistent condition removal and speed buffs, but nowhere on the level of shouts + SoR. You can focus on mace and shield but the shield’s cooldowns are very high, even with traits, and they won’t help you get rid of conditions. As well, mace primary isn’t going to stop anyone, much less a group.
None of your secondary skills are going to make up for that loss either. Signets? No. Stances? Endure Pain buys you 5 seconds, and only 3 seconds with a grandmaster trait that auto-activates it (both conflicting with one another). Banners? No. The regen they can provide while traited does not stack and regen itself barely heals at all. The actual defensive bonuses are nearly worthless because banners are intended to be used in large groups (although they aren’t since WvW doesn’t work that way). So you won’t be supplementing the loss with other weapons or skills.
It’s not that healing shouts is too good. It’s just that the other possibilities are absolutely terrible. There’s a reason why it’s such a common build, and why people were prepping for it during betas.
Until they fix our traits + warhorn, shield, mace and banners/signets/stances to be less mediocre and “safe” in terms of design, it’ll stay that way.
You could try something like this Lord Knight
I ran it for a bit during beta and after release. It can mix and match to your liking (this is just what I used). It has the ability to output the damage but also take a little. It isn’t the best in defense but it will keep you going and keep decent condition removal.
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Hm… looking at that, I think my main concern would be the long c/d on all the utilities. Though I suppose if it outputs enough damage to shorten an encounter it might not matter.
I like mixing utilities, rather than getting three of the same kind.
Shake it off + a signet + a stance or physical. That way you get to avoid triple shout, as you asked for.
I do like shouts though, and somewhere I hope they will remove rampage and replace it with an elite shout.
But in general, I don’t think you should expect to be viable as a warrior in one vs one or spvp or tpvp, with any build.
The only offense warriors have is rifle, which will only ever hit people that aren’t paying attention, axes, which aren’t viable due to no mobility, and greatsword, which isn’t viable because you only get to use hundred blades once every minute, and totally waste your opportunity when someone dodges or uses a stun breaker. On top of that you have to sacrifice all survivability to make any of that low-quality offense work.
Warriors are only good for dungeons, solo pve and wvw sieges. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you like those things more than real pvp.
(edited by Zsymon.8457)
Zsymon <Ignore this guy.
Survivalbility is viable in many ways:
1) Healing shouts is the most common build. This one allows you to debuff and take off conditions from yourself as well as providing some degree of CC.
2) Regeneration Banners: One banner is enough but it comes with a heavy cool down and spec’ing fully into banners isn’t exactly all that exiting but in WvW/dungeons is great.
3) Stances such as endure pain gives stronger survivability.
Over all as long as you spec through high toughness and mid vit you can do great. Condition damage builds with sword/shield do incredibly good. So do Axe/mace or hammer build or a switch combo of both.
Oh and a random screen shot of my warrior final score on a match I had a while ago. Player healing shouts bunker sort of build.
I’m in Agreement with Lyonell. The build I run with shouts can 1vX relatively well. If either of the players are good almost any class cannot 1vX but even against good players I can lure them into other teammates or survive long enough for backup to arrive.
As for the Lord Knight build, the CDs were never a problem because the enemy was commonly killed fast enough or was running away.
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