Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone!

I just had a few questions for some of the other warriors on this forum.

Last night I finally hit 80 on my warrior, which also happens to be my first and only level 80 character. I assume that after that point, aside from completing my story, I’m supposed to get better gear by doing dungeon raids and through crafting. This brings me to my questions:

1. What weapons do you guys recommend? As much as I like the Greatsword and Axes, I’ve learned from doing dungeons that they’re not terribly useful… especially one attack takes you down to half health. Instead I was thinking about going some variation of Sword and Shield/Horn or Rife. I also have no problem with going one sword, two offhanded items. Would you guys do that? Run one of the following instead of having a rifle on swap:
a. Sword/Sword
b. Sword/Shield
c. Sword/Horn

2. What Trait build would help me get through PvE and Dungeons? I was thinking about the following:
a. 30 Arms: Rending Strikes, Blademaster, Deep Cuts
b. 30 Defense: Turtle’s Defense, Shield Master, Defy Pain
c. 10 Discipline: Heightened Focus
d. Alternatively, I really like the build that Yojack posted on this forum, mainly because he can remove conditions many times over as well as convert them into boons. The main thing that I noticed though, is that because he puts points into the Tactician line, he ends up having more raw health, but less toughness than the build that I proposed above. Is his build a good Dungeon running build? What is better at keeping one alive? More health or more toughness (effective health)?

3. What Utility Skills would you guys use for PvE and Dungeon runs? I was thinking the following:
a. For Great Justice
b. Shake it Off
c. Signet of Fury
d. Signet of Rage

4. What gear set should I use? I was thinking that I would start off with the basic Knight’s set (Gladiator – Rare Quality), maybe grab an Exotic weapon from the market. The Knight’s armors seem to have a good balance of offense and defense, boosting my Power, Critical Chance (which adds more stacks of Vulnerability and Bleeding) and adding Toughness.
a. Do you guys think it’s worth buying all this stuff from the market or should I just start doing Dungeons with the gear I have now and save myself some gold?
b. On that note, can someone explain to me how the “damage” in an offhand item reacts? I’m assuming that an offhand sword’s damage is only applied when you use those offhand skills. Is this correct or is a certain amount added to your main attacks?
c. Same question but for non-offensive items – what does the damage score mean on a shield or a horn?

5. For crafting, I want to specialize in Armorsmithing. My plan was to buy some of the cheaper materials (such as copper) off the market and start leveling the Profession.
a. I think that it would be more productive if I say, grabbed my level 15 Guardian and level it on him, since getting to 400 would give him a very generous amount of experience, whereas my warrior wouldn’t benefit from that. Any disadvantage in doing so?

That’s all I have so far! Thanks in advance for your replies. I look forward to reading them!

For weapons, I would stick with a melee set and a ranged set. I prefer rifle, but longbow has a great burst skill for combos if you’re running a dungeon.

Then it gets a little tricky, I think. Do you want to run more support with shouts and warhorn? Or do you want to do some damage?

As far as armor goes, power/toughness/vitality is always a solid choice. I personally run pow/tough/vit armor and berserker jewels and that works nice for me because I prefer doing more damage, but for a more support-y character probably will never take berserker gear.

So.. What exactly do you want to do? Shout support? That seems like what you’re leaning towards right now.

So.. What exactly do you want to do? Shout support? That seems like what you’re leaning towards right now.Also, about 4b/c, my understanding of it is that if you check your greatsword, the stat bonus is about double what the same kind of bonus your sword gives. So if you equip dual swords, the stat bonus will end up being the same. The “weapon power” stat itself I think only applies to offhand skills, but the stat bonuses apply always. That being said, the shield doesn’t give any weapon power by itself, but gives you bonus defense, which is passive.
Don’t quote me on this, because this is mainly my speculation, but I think that’s how it works.

1. Keep the rifle. As for your melee weapon, anything works. There is a reason greatsword is so popular though. The might on crit leads to some very high damage, and whirling attack provides an extra dodge. Using other weapon setups won’t significantly increase your survivability.

2. For survivability, the most important traits are adrenal health and healing shouts.
Start with something like (least survivability)20/25/15/0/10, 20/20/0/30/0, or 0/25/15/30/0(most survivability).
As you progress in dungeons, health regen becomes less effective and dodging becomes more important. Once you start doing CoE and Arah, switch to something like 20/30/0/0/20(most damage with weapon swap), 30/30/0/0/10(more damage, no weapon swap), or 20/30/0/10/10(traited elite banner)

3. Depends on the fight.
FGJ should be on your bar for most or all fights.
Signet of Stamina provide significant endurance regen.
Shake it Off is useful if conditions are an issue.
Endure Pain is good for taking extra hits, or for allowing you to make an extra mistake.
On My Mark is good for when you dont need anything else.

For the elites, both Signet of Rage and the elite banner are great.

4. Start with masterwork knights, with an exotic berserker weapon.. Replace with exotic as you can. Skip rare. Just don’t do Arah until you are in full or almost full exotics. Replace knights with berserker’s as you feel more comfortable with your survivability.
a. Masterwork is pretty cheap. Buy masterwork first.
b. Probably. Not sure.
c. Probably nothing.

5. No disadvantages that i can think of.

Thanks a lot for your help guys!

I ended up grabbing two exotic weapons (one of them a rifle) and masterwork equipment. Currently I’m running a shout support build with the following stats:

Power: 1.7k (2.8k attack)
Precision: 1.8k (46% critical chance without the Singet or FGJ.
Toughness: 1.6k (2.6k armor)
Vitality: 1.2k (21.5k health)

So, it seems like a good start. I seem to be surviving dungeons more than other players (though I still need to dodge – can’t just face tank everything).

I run the Vigorous Shouts trait, which makes all of my shouts heal – do these heals count toward the rune effects from say Runes of the Water, Flock and Dwayna?

Also, I’m a little confused on how the Healing Power stat affects us – I know that certain abilities do not proc it (such as the Guardian’s ability to heal on a Greatsword strike). Can someone please clarify? Does it affect regeneration as well? Do we know for sure that this affects Vigorous Shouts?

1) Pseudo-heals do not trigger Rune set effects. Only the #6 Heal button will trigger those benefits. Adding bonus heals or +Regeneration onto other effects won’t count.

2) For a Warrior, the only thing that +Healing skips is the Adrenal Health (Defense – 15 pt) trait. That trait heals a set amount that is determined by your Character Level and your current Adrenaline Tier.

3) For your Vigorous Shouts trait, you apply either 70% or 80% of your +Healing score. (I think that it’s 80%.) All things considered, a Shout build does get a nice return for investing in +Healing through items like the Cleric’s gear pieces (though using all Cleric’s will mean that you have a very low dps output).

4) Yes, your +Healing score affects things like the +Regeneration boon. However the pay out for that boon depends on where you’re getting it from. If you’re getting them from the Banner trait (Tactics – 30 pt), then it applies 100% of your +Healing score. However that situation is more of the exception and not the general rule for +Regeneration. Normally classes get around a 20% benefit from +Healing (which we could access through power like Banner of Tactics).

Wouldnt mace mainhand be good for its maintainable weakness and its block skill?

If you want maintainable weakness go hammer, the mace is very slow and doesn’t deal much damage.

i mostly WvW, but i would say use karma for your power tough vit gear. spend money on zerker gear or Rampagers. i like rampagers personally mostly because it has higher precision and power/condition balance with sword is great damage on bleeds and crit all the time to proc sigils and traits.

IMO vit > toughness , mostly because the more health you have the more toughness helps, but the more toughness you have doesn’t necessarily means you survive longer due to conditional damage ignoring toughness, and the way toughness is calculated in damage reduction.

i run full exotic rampagers gear with Soldier runes for my vit/toughness + condition removal. if you go full Knights you get maybe 1-2k more health and toughness but you lose out on the condition damage which is important for both sword and rifle + traits for bleed damage. You will crit less, deal less condition damage , and survive slightly better nothing you couldn’t also do by learning to dodge better or positioning will do more than the extra toughness/health.

again this is just from my experience with WvW , i am able to out survive guardians and necro’s without specing to hard into toughness and vit and useing more of the points in precision for crits and heals off blood sigils, and more damage with conditions (they can get removed but they are easily re-applied with auto-attacks or sword burst) which are very important with the traits giving more damage and longer bleeds really do give a nice increase in damage that a lot of players overlook.

Justine.6351:

Wouldnt mace mainhand be good for its maintainable weakness and its block skill?

With no Traits and no +Condition Duration, only the Mace will be able to have Weakness up 100% of the time. Now once you’re figuring on having Defense 20 pts, it starts to get closer (though you’d still need some +Condition Duration for the Hammer).

If you’re normally going to just use the #1 auto attack on the Mace, then it’s a nice source of Weakness. It also has a Block and a Daze, which makes it a good technical weapon. Also another reason to use the Mace is because you want a specific weapon in your Off-Hand slot (such as the Warhorn or Shield).

The Hammer can use Weakness, but I wouldn’t consider that to be its main function. Also the Hammer #2 move (for the Weakness) has a bit of an animation time delay. You character winds up, then sweeps the Hammer in a frontal arc. While you can cast Hammer #2 while moving to make it so that the animation ends when you’re next to your target, the time delay can cause you to miss on occassion. I’d say the main reason to use the Hammer for Weakness is when you’re probably not going to auto attack with your melee weapon for most of the time.

I have a Hammer AoE control character and a Mace / Warhorn AoE buffing Shout character. Both have at least 20 pts in Defense, but they have very different goals and go about reaching them in their own ways.