Guild Wars 2

Playing an almost fresh level 80 Warrior, this is also my first character, so bear that in mind here.

I’ve recently gotten to 80 and am working on the Living World, PUGing dungeons and sometimes joining the militia in WvW. I’ve been using the “standard” camp Greatsword build for the most part, with a ranged weapon on switch when I need to back off and heal for a moment. I have Knight’s Gear and Berserker’s Trinkets, working towards getting Exotics.

I’ve been doing some digging around and came across some other builds and I was curious about Phalanx Strength. The guide I was looking at Advocated am Axe/Mace approach, and there was also a Greatsword variant, both with ranged on switch, or a sword/warhorn possibly.

It seemed like something I might want to try. A supportish warrior that makes the party better, while still doing warrior things. I want to know mire about how all this works to see if it might be viable for me to make the switch. My main two questions are:

1. Is it beginner friendly? Especially in a PUG environment?

2, Is it WvW Viable? Phalanx Strength sounds like something cool I might try carrying over to the militia zerg. Is this a good idea?
I have a hard time as a shout frontliner in these chaotic fights and want to try and bring more support so I’m not totally useless. I know I’ll never be that ranged warrior I wanted, but this could be a possible change of pace.

Could be wrong here but a PvE Phalanx Strength build would have both Axe/Mace AND Greatsword. Also such a build wouldn’t transfer well to WvW. You’d probably get destroyed by conditions.

If you wanna read up on the PS build…
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Warrior_-_Phalanx_Strength

As for WvW, what kind of action do you usually find yourself partaking in? Solo Roaming, Small Group Roaming/Havoc, Zerg…

@Sagramor, a couple months ago, Phalanx with GS only was view as superior in term of dps and might stacking. But Nike took into account the vulnerability from Axe/Mace and in the end GS – Axe/Mace came a little bit ahead. They both work almost as good, with only a slight advantage for the GS-Axe/Mace build.

@Breidr, Phalanx build in PvE is super friendly for beginner and pugs. That’s boost the dmg of you group a lot since, most pugs don’t blast might. It’s also pretty good in high level fractal where blasting might can be a bit harder. You often need to dodge in the middle of your rotation as a elementalist, while PS warrior can just dodge and get back into giving might right away. The problem is that the Rune of Strength is a big part of the build, but the price of the rune is stupidly high right now. It will cost 85 gold to get the 6 you need. So even if, its a great build for pugs, it may not be worth the cost. Ppl started to use rune of Holbreak to replace the costly rune of strength, but now the price of Holbreak is also high (about 60 gold for a complete set). You can still use the PS build, without these rune, but you will give less might. It wouldn’t competitive, but it will do the job in pugs.

I hardly ever PvE, but I can see where pure GS would’ve been better before Anet bumped up the Vuln stacks on Mace #4 to 10.