Guild Wars 2

Howdy,

Thought I would share a bit of insight to the warrior class that I have picked up over time.

I personally have tried just about every build I have found, each with my own variations to optimize them. After alot of testing and research I have found a build that has the correct balance of personal dps and group support.

This build is designed for end game PVE content with a specific focus on high level fractals. Not only does it offer more damage then common PVE builds but it also brings many support elements pushing you to become the most useful member in most groups.

A link to my build can be found here:

gw2skills.net/editor/?fIMQNBHhNak0JFO5R7BHSgYKUEnCAoSRbgHpHhBbsGA;TUAg0CnsyYkxkAA

This build is primarily designed for higher level fractals, as from my point of view, is the only content in the game you cannot beat by repetitively smashing your face into the keyboard until the boss is dead. As a result of this, the examples I will raise will be taken from my experiences in fractals

Before I go into depth about how the build works, I need to specify a few points that the website restricts me on.

1: For my 1st Utility slot I change it depending on the fractal. The most commonly used utility for that slot is Berserker Stance. Due to the Vigorous Focus trait I have high uptime on vigor with the long duration and shoot cool down of Berserker Stance. The Burst skill of choice is the Longbow for AoE or Rifle for single target. Keep in mind while this is the most common, I constantly change it so it could also be considered “situational”

This decision for this shot is simply made with the following questions:
Do I need a stun break/Stability? Yes > Balanced Stance
Will I attempt to melee large packs of monsters (Charr/dredge/krait)? > Yes > Endure Pain
Is it likely that I will be required to res a defeated player in combat? > Yes > Frenzy
Is the boss dredge final boss? > Yes > Throw Bolas
Do I not need any of the above? > Yes > Berserker Stance

Weapons:

You will be running two weapon sets
1. Axe+Warhorn/Longbow
2. Rifle/Longbow

With the following sigils:
1. (Fire or Strength+Accuracy/Fire or Strength)
2. Accuracy / Battle

Warhorn: First I need to touch on what condition CONVERSION is. This is a trait in the warrior tree that not only removes a condition from all effected players but other converts it into a boon. This can turn a bleed into regen, a invulnerability until protection ect ect. The war horn trait results in TWO AOE CONDITION REMOVAL abilities on a 15sec CD, I had to caps all that to communicate how strong that is to a party. This is very very strong, like I cant get over how strong aoe condition conversion is… let alone the other cool kitten the warhorn brings.

1. AoE Swiftness and immo/cripple/chilled removal. AoE swiftness is very strong as you cannot begin to clear until your entire party is present, so time saved in travel is as good as time saved in killing a monster due to higher dps. It also can prevent a party member from dieing while can cut several min off a run (something that you would struggle to achieve with higher dps). Examples of this include any jumping required as puzzles are easier with swiftness and particuarly swamp where you can dis-spell their snares and speed them up. Very strong skill, it also allows party members to better dodge attacks, examples include the wells from cliffside boss, bloomhunger? in swamp, final grawl boss, ect ect

2. AoE Weakness and Vigor. This is soooooooooooooo strong. Ok, ok weakness. Lets start with that. I don’t know the crit chance of monsters, but I’m going to assume its 20% just for this argument. This means that you reduce the incoming damage to your party by 40% for 6 seconds. This is a similar damage reduction as 2.5 sec party immunity to damage. THIS IS INSANE?!?. Perfect examples include the char level where the entire party takes huge damage from the crazy vets. Sooooo strong, and with a 15sec cooldown you can maintain an approximate 40% uptime, thats 16% damage reduction for the entire party on average. Just massive.

AoE Vigor…. so strong. The extra endurance for dodge rolls converts directly into reduced damage and can easily avoid party members going down. Common examples include char level with the vets or mass dredge monsters where each dodge roll represents a huge reduction in damage taken. Really strong examples include the dredge final boss where you must roll constantly to avoid his many mechanics where a small boost in endurance can easily mean the difference between 0 damage taken and entering a downed state.

All together you can see how strong the war horn is in reducing the damage the party takes and is well worth the slot in any warrior build.

Ontop of this Axe 1 offers the highest dps of any weapon 1 ability in the game. Ontop of this it contains three combo finishers and leaves the off-hand slot available for the warhorn. Most warrior use great sword and it is clearly the incorrect choice.

The first set is your primary set. When In melee keep warhorn 5 on cooldown for aoe vigor and weakness. Use your combo finishers inside of combo fields and take advantage of your insane dps from axe 1. Longbow is used as a strong source of aoe damage and single target dps from range when melee is too dangerous(Longbow 1 is more dps then Rifle 1). In some situations it is best to swap out the warhorn trait for the longbow range trait if its safer being an additional 300 range from a fight. That is your call.

For the second set (Rifle/longbow) you will utilize your 5 sec weapon swap cooldown trait to keep both rifle 3 and longbow 3 on cooldown to maximize dps. The rifle burst skill is also used is berserker stance is in use.

Utilities:

Healing Signet: I will struggle to explain why this is strong to most people. So I will make it short. I feel too vulnerable casting Healing surge, the cool down to too long and often you will not benefit from it before you die these disadvantages only provide an additional 80hp/sec assuming your full adrenalin when you cast it which you often are not as you need heals when you take damage, usually in high level fracs when you take damage you down, there are out of adrenalin.

Slot 1: Covered this earlier
Slot 2: For Great Justice, easily strongest utility for warriors, Might and Fury for the entire party, hands down winner.
Slot 3: With traits Banner of disc grants permanent regen for the party in a large radius that stacks very quickly so members can leave the radius and continue to benefit from the regen. Also offers 90 precision and 10% critical damage. The benefits do not stop there. During a fight you (or any party member) can pick up the banner to grant AOE Fury and/or AOE Swiftness to the party, great for between fights or during. The “5” ability also is a blast finisher (The strongest type) and should be used where possible. Remember the use of the banner is not limited to yourself, smart party members will make use of its effects.
Elite Skill: Warbanner. I’m sorry there is no argument here, signet of rage is trash, warbanner is very very strong. Not even close. Don’t bother attempting to argue. All you 5 signet GS/Rifle warriors please stop.

Equipment:

Full exotic/ascended berserker. Power/prec/crit dmg
Runes: Ruby Orbs – best dps

Conclusion:
This build will bring your party: A high source of dps, aoe condition CONVERSION, aoe might, aoe fury, aoe swiftness, aoe vigor, aoe precision and critical damage, regen, instant res and much more. This build is very strong in for PVE endgame content. If you have any questions or suggestions about the build please feel free to leave them below

Reserved

Feel free to post after this

any recommend gear for this?
x3 berserker’s + x3 knight’s
x6 berserker’s
x6 knight’s?
also for the runes, should i get x6 ruby orbs? theres no better rune set for this build?

thanks in advance.

Its in the link, full berserker. All ruby orbs. I will edit the guide to be a little more clear. Thanks for the help

what’s your fractal level? 20?
that build is way too squishy with berserker armor, not to mention the fact that certain berserker pieces like the chest, legs and amulet are extremely stat inefficient

I’m up to frac 53. I’m alot less squishy then you suggest. I have high vigor uptime. Agony 1 hits you, no amount of toughness or vit will save you from that. You avoid it with dodge rolls, so vigor is a strong form of survivability.

More dps = faster rallies and boss fights dont take as long so they use less agony attacks, so I increase the survivability of my party with additional dps. Its a matter of correct positioning and strong use of dodge rolls. Through the use of omnomberry ghosts higher crit = more hp/s

They heal 340
With bow I hit 1.6 times per sec with a 70% crit chance.

0.7×0.66×340x1.6 = 240 hp/sec regen from food
Healing signet = 200 hp/sec regen
Banner = 170 hp/sec regen

Health regen is stronger then direct healing as you down often enough from agony. I die just as often as the guardians in my team. What make you think toughness is useful in high level fractals? Also whats your fractal level? You may not have experience with 1 hit kill agony mechanics.

Lots of failures that I want to point out:

1.) Understand that mobility is survivability too. Why are you using an Axe instead of Sword when most of your reliable DPS is probably going to come from Long Bow anyways?

2.) Berserker Stance? Really? Embrace the pain and Healing Surge bro, learn to use the trait and the heal. Berserker Stance is replace-able.

3.) The moment you spec 30 points in tactics, you have to have 30 points in defense to compliment it. If you don’t then you crippled yourself and your team by having low banner regeneration per second.

4.) For Great Justice when.. might doesn’t really scale that well in terms of DPS? If you picked something else like Signet of Stamina or Balanced Stance, it would help the team even more due to more survivability AND the ability to res easily.

5.) If you spec for the Warhorn trait, then you don’t need mobile strikes. Why do you have it? Is the 16 second Warhorn cleanse on top of a possible Signet of Stamina not enough?

6.) If you’re going to use a Berserker Amulet anyways, you might as well have used a standard DPS build such as 20/30/0/0/20. Any build with 30 points in tactics should always use Cleric Amulet + Jewel to maximize “team stats”

7.) Just a half-baked build in general. If I wanted to DPS, I would go 20/30/0/0/20. If I wanted to be a “good” Tanky DPS that can actually support the team then I would go 10/0/30/30/0 or 0/0/30/30/10.

Giving this build a 4/10. You tried but it wasn’t enough. Lack of synchronization and a lot of noob traps within the build.

1.) When melee is available axe does significantly more damage then sword. In a range only situation I would swap to rifle/longbow for maximum damage. Now in the very fight specific situation of using longbow only and swapping to sword ONLY for the sword 2 ability for mobility, I can see that being useful. But in any situation where your hitting your target axe does significantly more damage so the sword does not come close

2.) The 10s of vigor is very strong. I do use endure pain, its situational. Endure pain doesnt save you from an agony attack but additional dodge rolls will. I do not expect to convince you why healing signet is better but I guess its more of a personal preference.

Zerker stance is 25sec CD 10sec of vigor compared to Endure pain 6 sec of vigor 90 sec cooldown. The on use of effect of it is only useful in some situation (and I swap to it in those situations)

3.) I don’t understand this at all. Your basically saying because I put regen on the entire party for 170hp/sec that I MUST put 30 points into defence for the +300healing? So what my banners will heal for 200hp/sec instead of 170? Thats not really worth 30 trait points.

4.) Signet of stamina does not stack with vigor, due to my high vigor uptime it would not do anything. Balanced stance is strong when stability is required and I do use it. For great justice is amazing. Might scales extremely well with dps, your also forgetting the fury. 105power + 20% crit for 5 people is really strong.

5.) I don’t take mobile strikes, double check the link. I take vigorous shouts

6.) By using clerics amulet I could push my banner to heal 130hp/sec more for a total of 300 hp/sec instead of 170. My dps is very high, it is not worth losing most of it for 170hp/sec for the party. Some classes can make strong use of clerics gear, banner warriors are not one of them.

7.) You need to explain, what traits are you taking with the 20/30 str/arms? You gain 100 power and 200 prec, which is really strong, dont get me wrong. The traits you pick up just are not strong enough to justify it. You mentioned earlier its worth spending 30 points into defend for 30hp/sec for the party but when I spend 30 points into tactics for 170hp/sec for the party you feel that is not worth it? let alone the other traits in the tactics tree being far superior to anything in the defence tree

The traits in the defence tree are weak. This build would perform at least 85-90% of the damage of a 20/30/0/0/20 build but would also bring 170hp/sec to the party, condition conversion, bigger radius of banners with higher uptime due to shorter cool down and additional boon duration. Boon duration = longer might stacks = more power and more uptime on fury.

Why would you take a 10/0/30/30/0 warrior over say a full clerics support healing mantra mesmer? They heal significantly more, they can keep up regen (though its alot harder) they bring reflects, timewarp and better survivability. Instead I do almost as much dps as a 20/30/0/0/20 build while brining a strong amount of support to the group.

Weakness actually causes of 50% of normal hits to deal 50% damage. With 0% critchance this means on average 25% less damage.
In your example of 20% critchance (and 1.5x crits?)
1) normally enemy deals on average 0.2*1.5*X + 0.8*X = 1.1X
2) with weakness 0.2*1.5*X + 0.4*X + 0.4*0.5*X = 0.9X
3) so that is 1-0.9X/1.1X = 18% damage reduction
With 50% critchance (and let’s say 2x crits)
1) normally enemy deals on average 0.5*2*X + 0.5*X = 1.5X
2) with weakness 0.5*2*X + 0.25*X + 0.25*0.5*X = 1.375X
3) so that is 1-1.375X/1.5X = 8.33% damage reduction

Also I don’t understand your Healing Signet point. If one hit means you are down then what difference little healing makes? With Surge you can at least get adre back.

I agree that GS is somewhat overrated weapon and I use axe/mace for the interrupts on mace 5, but i find that it is not good enough in dungeons/fractals. I will try the warhorn.
I am also a big fan of the longbow.

but i don’t like the discipline line, I use the 20/20/0/30/0 build with serves me so far OK.

The 20% crit dmg and 9% crit chance is very strong.

thanks Kaz, ill use this build with some tweaks.

thank you once again.

If this is only about PvE, I would really recommend Sweet Revenge (Discipline VII) in open-world PvE. This will make you virtually invincible against normal mobs! Even if they down you, you’ll have 15 seconds to save your own butt!

Against bosses, the vigor on stance would probably be better though…

Hey bean, I find I am rarly downed for 7sec to ever pop veng. Either I am revive, rallied or defeated. Even if I can pop my veng and kill a target there is a chance I would res anyway. I think its a little weak for fractals

Kazin.2073:

Hey bean, I find I am rarly downed for 7sec to ever pop veng. Either I am revive, rallied or defeated. Even if I can pop my veng and kill a target there is a chance I would res anyway. I think its a little weak for fractals

You are correct in fractals Sweet is nearly useless. Trash isn’t what kills you, its the bosses. However, your build is low dps. Warhorn is nice when there is crippling amounts of conditions, but it is situational. Using a warhorn you don’t need the zerk stance+vigor. You simply don’t need to dodge that much, and learn to adren manage.

With your stats you are just a glass cannon that heals and buffs instead of going any damage. Party support is nice, but a good guard is going to do it better. Also, anyone who brings WB is just missing the point. It doesn’t last for a full fight on a boss, and if people are downed, one WB won’t help.

To say those that use WB are missing the point is so wrong its not even funny. In so many situations a WB will prevent a member of the party from being defeated which makes a HUGE difference to a boss fight.

What else would you use? Signet of rage? It has 50% uptime (more with boon duration) of swiftness fury and 5might. I already have 100% uptime on fury so thats useless. Warbanner is 5 might and fury and swiftness for the entire party with 30% uptime instead of the same for only yourself with 50% uptime.

So ignoring the res, which is a very strong feature of it, warbanner is significantly more dps then signet of rage 30×5 = 150 > 50. Let alone the AoE res that you can perform from a distance. So often someone will go down inside of an aoe or in a bad situation where its dangerous to attempt to res them, warbanner can save multiple people taking additional damage as well

I’m sorry but your completely missing the point.

How is my build low dps? I give up 100 power and 200 precision – the traits in those trees add very little dps except the +10% dmg one for 30% boon duration and better survivability for the entire team. So i would do 85% of the damage of a full glass cannon warrior and all of a sudden im “low dps”? Your so far off the mark its not even funny. Guardian support is strong, but a guardian’s dps wouldn’t come remotely close to 85% of the DPS of a full glass cannon warrior. Just wrong on all accounts

no arguin’ with FGJ/banner of discipline, and the fact that you change 3rd utility is also just right. Of course you also have to co-op if you meet a fellow warrior and change the banner(on any other banner! lol all of them are awesome but I think strength is significantly weaker than others) , but I think you know it.
Now, time to criticise.
I am using Healing Surge, as you said yourself it has higher healing/second overall(by a decent chunk by the way..) but what matters for me is burst damage. As you said in fractals and other high dungeons you are not often dealing with DPSing enemies… Usually you stay around 100% HP and then get hit by something hard that you need to heal back. Thus my reasoning for healing surge, not to mention burst>quick adrenaline which means it can be used for helping with damage(sacrificing healing for damage).
Running banner as elite is contradictory. It has very decent range(like 1k traited I think), but your allies are still running out of zone on multiple occasions. Might is 3 1/3
because it pulses every 3 sec for 1 stack for 10 seconds, well usually that should be 4 stacks if you stay in the area with boon duration buff from tactics.
Disadvantages are also here. Now, the range is significantly lower untraited and so is uptime… And you could use the trait slot for +70 might for entire group. Which is kinda serious, too.
Well, I’m using SoR because of the fact it synergises with my runes(lyssa runes last bonus – all boons/full conditional removal on elite use). I’m changing on a banner when res factor is crucial(good example is ascalonian battle fractal…)
Overall, you forget that you pay a significant trait price for getting those banner traits… and people just run out of their zone solid chunk of time.
And yea well signet’s are junk except signet of rage and signet of stamina. Stamina is pretty much unique in a way(can’t be replaced if you need dodges but dont have vigor), and you don’t always need the cursed banner with lower than 25% uptime when untraited.(65/240 seconds and people run out of range just as well)

For high level fractals warbanner is beyond a must have. Mentioning lyssa runes isnt really a good example are orbs are a far better choice for dps. The ability to res a person who’s downed body could be in a really dangerous area from a distance in an AoE is beyond powerful. Im going to start listing examples:

Someone downs near a tenticle at jade maw
Someone downs trying to return to the fire after the blizzard boss 1 torch level
Someone downs trying to run past the monsters from the 1st boss to the 2nd boss – same for running through jade maw trash
Someone dies in grawl final boss- aoe around them or not still important to get them up before they are hit by another agony
Charr – Resing vets is super OP and if removed I would consider balanced
Azure – Resing someone downed by harpies before they knock them off the edge
Old Tom in azure – Resing someone so your able to put the gem in or active the fan because they died ontop of it or resing them quick so they can do their role in the poison removal
Dredge – Resing someone who is downed by the final boss before another attack will defeat them (and also so you take less time keeping the boss in 1 place as opposed to lureing to next lava spot aka less chance of superheat going down and healing)
Cliffside – You wipe on the seal stages by being overwelmed, say 2-3 people go down at the same time, your group doesnt have the dps to rally them. Someone runs out to hit seal and dies either in the lava or amungst the monsters on the arm seals

In every single fight people can be defeated, simply using a warbanner to res them quickly is a viable option but the above examples show the “extreme” need for the aoe, ranged “quick” res that warbanner provides. The res from the warbanner alone destroys the small boost of personal dps the signet of rage provides. With this build you already have 100% uptime on fury and swiftness. I would give up 50% uptime on 5 might (2.5 might of average) for an aoe res every 3min. This is ignoring the huge dps boost the warbanner provides to the party. Additional features that are forgotten include swiftness and stability. All around it is an unbelievably strong spell, one of the best in the game, signet of rage does not come close in a high level fractal setting. Remeber, it only takes 1 person being defeated to result in a wipe. The banner trait is a no brainer. The power trait is decent, but doesnt come close. Warbanner trait: Using warbanner more often = amazing, banner of disc having 100% uptime = amazing. Remember its not there just for regen and prec/crit dmg .People pick it up and use the aoe swiftness, fury and combo finisher. I often coordinate droping a fire feild with longbow F1, having two people use the banner combo finisher and using longbow 3 in it as well for 9 might on the entire party.

The aoe radius of banners is 900, there are very few fights where groups members often leave its radius. Best way to describe that to you. If you were on one edge of the circle your killshot would not make it to the other end. With stacking regen resulting from either boon duration or additional sources (Eg other classes) The regen boon will stay up on all people at all times expect a very few specific fights.

Ok, I’m going to attempt to explain healing surge vs signet.

Signet = ~200hp/sec
Healing surge = 260hp/sec (full bar) 166 hp/sec (non full bar)

This is where it gets tricky. In high level fractals, I will often die before I get a chance to pop my healing surge. Examples include:
Most common form of death: Agony
Direct damage sources that 1 hit you: Charr level humans 1 hitting you with charge or multi mages using their fire attack on you.
Direct damage sources that dont 1 hit you: IF you can get away after the first blow without taking additional blows, then you have a chance to pop healing surge. It is stronger then signet. Often you will down before getting the chance. That is also assuming that you dont take additional damage while your vulnerable casting your heal.

Direct damage sources that do less then a full healing surge: You have a choice to make, get your heal on cooldown for 30s OR not benefit from the hp/sec until later. Signet is always working away 100% useage, healing surge will never get 100% useage, so the value of 280hp/sec is not really accurate as it needs to come off cooldown, you need to have taken enough damage to justify using it and you need to put yourself in a position where it is safe to do so. These factors vary from fight to fight but I found the higher my fractal level got, the small this number was.

I used to run healing surge. Its good. I wouldn’t judge a warrior for running it. BUT in high level fractals, when you make a build, you don’t make it for the easier content, you think of what will work best for the most difficult content and is still viable for the easier stuff. On boss fights, you get 1 hit. Its pretty clean cut. Now you shouldn’t be screwing up and getting 1 hit, but it happens. When you get resed, you have no adrenaline and you in a situation where you need the heal. You only will recive a 5k heal and you will gain no further healing for 30sec. So you will gain 166hp/sec and not have 100% uptime for reasons previously mentioned. So when this happend to me, it got me thinking, and I can conclude signet provides more healing then surge for the difficult content of fractals.

All of this ignores two other points.
1: That the signet can be activated for an additional heal which provides 166hp/sec if kept on cd (The same as if you had an empty bar). Using the signet has its time and place and if performed correctly can be extremely useful.
2: Not casting heals = more time casting attacks = more dps

TLDR: Too often I die while trying to cast the heal and too often ive been forced to use the heal while at 0 adrenaline.

When you are at full health Signet heals nothing so that ~200hp/sec is not accurate either.
When you get downed and ressed Surge allows you to get back to fight instead of needing to wait slow Signet heal.