Guild Wars 2

Utilities
These will vary majorly depending on what you are doing.

The primary utilities for DPS in a solo setting:
-Signet of Might
-Signet of Fury
-Banner of Discipline

“For Great Justice” is no longer a mandatory utility as of 6/23/2015, as we will be able to maintain our fury from readily using Arcing Slice off cooldown when maintaining our Berserker’s Power modifier. It is still a useful shout that provides power and fury, but due to the recent changes Signet of Might is the overall better option as it provides more power.

Banner of Discipline is almost always a must for optimizing DPS. It gives extra ferocity and nearly the same precision as signet of fury but to allies as well, which makes it crucial for both solos and groups. The other banners are irrelevant in a solo setting, but do remember that Banner of Strength is important to bring to groups as well as both combined increase the team’s DPS by 20-25%.

If banners are already settled, then you are free to use the extra utility to whatever you want; it’s probably better to use On My Mark or “For Great Justice” at this point depending on whether or not vulnerability is covered. Note that “On My Mark” is most of the time obsolete due to mace offhand receiving a buff towards the end of 2014 to give an equivalent amount of vulnerability with a cleave instead of single-target.

Sometimes, you will find yourselves in positions where utility is needed over straight up DPS. In these circumstances you have an array of tools to make use of depending on what you’re faced against.

Shake it Off is a stunbreaker that has an instant cast time and a short cooldown along with removing a condition from allies as well. Definitely the first-choice condition removal/stun-breaker if it’s needed.

If you are in dire need of stability, always use Balanced Stance over Dolyak Signet because it has a slightly reduced cooldown so you’ll be able to make more use of it. A good example of when it’s best to take it is for example when low-manning Simin, the second last boss in Arah P4.

Signet of stamina is sometimes very helpful during situations in which you are soloing and occasionally need to remove more than a few conditions. If you are in an encounter that you’re certain an energy sigil isn’t enough for, this might be of some use.

Endure Pain is definitely useful and you’ll find yourself needing to swap for it on occasions for things. It is however not an invulnerability skill and you will still engage in combat when struck. It does not prevent damage from conditions and only temporarily converts all incoming physical damage to 0 damage.

Berserker’s Stance can be useful as it provides temporary immunity to conditions, but rarely will you ever find yourself in the position where it will be practical to use due to its long cooldown. This utility in combination with both endure pain and defiant stance chaining results in invincibility.

Bull’s Charge is a situationally useful skill that I frequently swap to for the purpose of mobility when I know that I’m not going to engage in combat for a while.

Bolas has its rare uses like for keeping tar boss in Arah P1 immobilized, but it’s rarely ever needed for anything. However it’s worth memorizing that you have it at your disposal provided you ever need to stack immobilize.

Fear Me is an unblockable interrupt that’s very helpful for situations in which you need to interrupt a boss, for example the Subject 6 ooze boss in the Thaumanova Fractal during its block stance. I also tend to use it in pug groups for Arah P1 at the Legendary Shoggroth boss (tar).

Some videos of me making use of some of our many utilities in solos!

CM Path 1 Golem Remains Solo
Arah Path 3 Light Orbs Puzzle Guide
Arah Path 3 Wraithlord’s Ritual Solo

Foods/Nourishments

Assuming you’re using the traits suggested on the first post, you’ll want more power and precision more so than ferocity. The following foods will provide you the best DPS potential (the difference is super small, all are great!) :

-Plate of Truffle Steak
-Bowl of Sweet and Spicy Butternut Squash Soup
-Bowl of Curry Butternut Squash Soup

Alternatively, it is very cost-efficient and beneficial to make use of these as well for situations that you struggle to survive in:
-Slice of Candied Dragon Roll (lifesteal on crit food)

If you aren’t looking to spend quite as much but would still like to have a nice DPS boost, try buying food of the same type but lower tiered (i.e. Minotaur Steaks, Plate of Steak and Asparagus).

Nourishments
-Potions of slaying (i.e. Powerful potion of undead slaying for Arah)

Alternatively, you can use any of these if slaying potions don’t work in a certain situation:
-Skale Venom
-Hardened/Superior/Toxic sharpening stones
-Quality/Master maintenance oils

Sigils

For all mainhand weapons, use either:
-Superior sigil of Force
-Superior sigil of the Night
-Superior sigil of x slaying (i.e. Superior sigil of undead slaying)

For all offhand weapons, use either:
-Superior sigil of Force
-Superior sigil of the Night
-Superior sigil of Energy

Trinkets
-Use all berserker. Warriors have very strong self-buffing capabilities due to the Signet Mastery trait, permanent fury uptime, Banner of Discipline and Signet of Fury’s passive boost. Because of this, it is almost always better to opt for berserker over assassins unless it is a downscaled map, though I do not recommend changing gear for lower level maps.

What weapons to use and when to use them

-Almost always use Greatsword as your primary weapon, in conjunction with axe mainhand on swap. Offhand will vary depending on what you are doing:

Offhands:

Mace
-Mace is generally the best offhand for maximizing DPS in your rotations (off-wall, that is) and in groups it’s ideal to take against bosses when you don’t need an extra block, as it’s great for applying vulnerability. Make sure that if your team is making use of cc that you aren’t mindlessly spamming tremor, as bosses will gain defiance stacks when stunned!

Warhorn
-Warhorn is one of the most useful overall offhands that a warrior has! It is capable of providing close to permanent swiftness combined with the signet of rage elite, can cure movement impairing conditions (chill, cripple, immobilize), has a blast finisher, gives you and your allies vigour for more endurance and applies weakness to nearby enemies, which reduces their damage efficacy.

Sword
-Sword is used for blocks. It has half the cooldown as shield’s block and will also block all projectiles provided you aren’t within melee distance of the attacker(s). You should be using this in combination with shield (see below) to skip trash, and in fights that you need more than simply dodge rolls to effectively stay alive. For example, Giganticus Lupicus.

Shield
-Used in combination with sword OH’s riposte block, shield’s block will help you stay out of combat while skipping trash with ease! Since swapping weapons while out of combat doesn’t disrupt a channel, you can begin with riposte, swap to shield while it’s channeling and begin channeling shield stance before riposte ends. Then while shield stance is channeling, you can swap to warhorn or whatever other offhand of your choice without disrupting the block. If done correctly, you end up with 5-6 seconds of blocks and don’t engage in combat. Because of this, shield is a super useful item to carry for experienced warriors and I strongly recommend one. Aside from skipping trash, they are overall a weak offhand to use in PvE.

Mainhand:

Axe
-Axe mainhand is the absolute best autoattack weapon for a warrior. Always.

Mace
-Mace mainhand is helpful for situations when you need an extra block, but overall a generally poor option and very infrequently useful.

Sword
-Use sword mainhand for mobility and skipping mobs to avoid combat. As a power weapon in PvE, it’s very bad.

Ranged weapons?

Longbow
-Longbow is always the superior choice. Generally speaking, you’ll always do better damage with hand-to-hand combat than you will with ranged. If you must range, it’s in 99% of all circumstances a better choice to use longbow as it deals superior damage to that of a rifle and provides excellent utility.

Rifle
-Generally speaking rifle is crap in PvE. Not only is it single target, but it is awful DPS by comparison with GS and axe mainhand autoattack. If you are forced to range in the first place, longbow is in almost all circumstances better.

Useful consumables

Skale Venom
- A utility nourishment that gives a 10 minute duration of a chance to apply vulnerability and weakness on a target when struck. They are situationally useful in FotM against trash mobs, especially when there are no slayer specific potions to use.

Order of whispers spykits
- 3 seconds of stealth, 60 second cooldown.

Ash Legion spy kits
- 10 seconds of stealth provided you aren’t moving, 60 second cooldown.

Harpy feathers
- 3 seconds of stealth, 6 second cooldown.

Fire elemental powder
- summon an ember for aoe damage, distracting mobs to lose aggro, take the grub on Lupicus’s phase transition, etc. (30 min cooldown)

Ogre pet whistle
- summon an ogre pet for essentially the same purpose as an ember, but it’s slightly less useful. (30 minute cooldown)
-they also can be used as a stun-breaker when cc’d, though because of the 30 minute cooldown it’s not practical to use them for this purpose.

Mortar turret
- place a mortar turret that attacks mobs. It has its uses and has at least superior AI to that of a dungeon NPC, lol. (30 minute cooldown)

Golem in a box
- very long attack range. Send out a floating golem on a suicide mission to explode on a target specified. Great for pulling mobs so that you can LOS them behind objects.

Pot of hylek poison
- I personally use these for swiftness very often when soloing Lupicus on phase 3. They’re very handy for when signet of rage is off cooldown, but for this particular circumstance you could easily remove the need for these by using Arms II. However, it is often times nice to be able to save your signet and still gain swiftness. It also can deal negligible AoE poison in the surrounding area. Oooooh.

Medical Packs
-Use them for swiftness/a few seconds of fury, or to heal for a small amount. Very useful!

Underwater nets
-Use them to apply immobilize on legendary shoggroth (tar boss) on Arah P1. They are quite useful when dealing with inept pugs that fail to make use of skills to keep him from burrowing in the hole.

Portal Matrix
-A few seconds of AoE daze; useful for trash mobs, however impractical to use at times due to the long cast time. I suggest buying some and testing them, as you’ll need to get used to timing them properly.

Rock
-Each toss will deal a small amount of damage along with a 1 second knockdown— super useful for removing stacks of defiance!

Plank
-These are actually overpowered. You can spam knockbacks, launches, and knockdowns with them, which makes it great for removing defiance and gaining distance on trash mobs!

For more information about these consumables, please visit this page:
http://dulfy.net/2013/01/16/gw2-useful-and-fun-consumables-guide/

If you wish to read a guide co-authored by me with very specific detail and dungeon path breakdowns and loads of useful information about warriors, check out Element and Purple Miku’s Warrior Guide on dulfy here!

If you feel that I left out any important details, have any questions, or want to discuss anything in my posts please do so. I’m open to discuss my tactics and choices/usage of items and abilities.

Anywho, hope this helps at least some of you that aspire to start soloing dungeons on a warrior or just seek some general guidance.

P.S.
If you want to, take a look at my ‘highlights’ page for a variety of solos, boss fights, funny and/or ridiculous clips and more. I love to stream so it’s pretty frequent that I’ll highlight some of the most interesting things that go on. http://www.twitch.tv/purpleishawt/profile

If that wasn’t enough, you may follow me on youtube as well.

I’ll have to try some of these ideas on my warrior when I get him geared enough to actually do things on his own. At the moment he is a “baby” 80 (just hit it in game time).

Wonderful guide!
I’ll definitively try this build out in the next few days

PS: Keep on streaming! I enjoy it!

~Collinax

It’s nice of you to type that up and flesh out the guide for people who may not know the current meta build.

Here is the original meta guide by Nike:

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/83915-axemace-dps-build-for-dungeons-and-fractals-101513/

Thanks for the posts guys!

Yeah I remember when I first got 80 on my warrior. I didn’t have any idea what traits to use. I remember that out of pure guessing, I chose 30/10/10/10/10 because I didn’t even know what most of the attributes even did. The only ones that were straightforward enough for me to know that I obviously wanted them was “Strength” lol

I strongly advise to check out Nike’s guide there, and to read through everything I’ve posted here for specific advise with utils and more

I have a question. I run candied dragon rolls/omnomberry pies/ghosts since I’m poor and struggle to maintain the scholar buff. I am considering dropping 5 out of Arms (Increased damage to bleeding foes) and picking up 5 in Discipline (sharpened axes probs) for the extra crit damage. Is this a good idea? I lose roughly 3% crit chance and gain roughly 5% crit damage.

Sad Tas.2509:

I have a question. I run candied dragon rolls/omnomberry pies/ghosts since I’m poor and struggle to maintain the scholar buff. I am considering dropping 5 out of Arms (Increased damage to bleeding foes) and picking up 5 in Discipline (sharpened axes probs) for the extra crit damage. Is this a good idea? I lose roughly 3% crit chance and gain roughly 5% crit damage.

No, the 10% damage modifier you get from the 25 in Arms is far better than the 5% crit damage you get from an extra 5 points in discipline. There’s a reason this build is the meta build for PVE warriors.

Generally, damage modifiers trump crit damage.

Sad Tas.2509:

I have a question. I run candied dragon rolls/omnomberry pies/ghosts since I’m poor and struggle to maintain the scholar buff. I am considering dropping 5 out of Arms (Increased damage to bleeding foes) and picking up 5 in Discipline (sharpened axes probs) for the extra crit damage. Is this a good idea? I lose roughly 3% crit chance and gain roughly 5% crit damage.

Hey! What Ephemeral said above is correct, but let me try to elaborate to make sure you and anybody else that reads will understand.

Ok, so important things to note here:
Arms minor trait at 5, and Arms minor trait at 25.
Arms (5) minor: chance to cause bleed to foes for 4 seconds (33% chance on crit)
Arms (25) minor: 10% damage increase to all bleeding foes

Think about this for a second.

With each trait point you pump into Arms, you’re gaining precision, which increases your chance to hit a crit. Not only are you applying bleeds nearly 1/3 of the time assuming you’re maintaining fury with a banner of discipline and signet of fury with proper nourishment, (your crit chance should be ~90% or around that area), your overall damage is increased by 10%. This includes non-crits, because as long as the foe is bleeding then any hit will be 10% greater.

Something important to take into account is whether or not you use GS often or want to just stick with axe. If you do not want to use GS, you will struggle majorly with solos. Because of what you suggested, it seems to me like you’re interested in focusing on axe autoattacks. Having Arms X will no longer be as useful for you if you swap 5 points in Arms for 5 in Discipline because your DPS will be reduced from a slightly reduced chance to crit and the loss of the 10% damage buff to bleeding foes.

So assuming you also take out Arms X, you will not maintain an appropriate amount of might stacks and you will also be hitting much less than you’d like to with axe.

Basically for soloing, you definitely want to stick with Nike’s GS build. It’s unquestionably better, but non-soloing aside… provided you were able to outsource might from other people with you then yeah your idea might work well but still less efficient. :P

I’m not sure if I understood you correctly, Miku, but I got the feeling you say attack of opportunity is triggered only by attacks that cause bleeding. In reality it amplifies all damage as long as target is bleeding meaning even in solo situations it has almost 100% uptime unless fighting something like Alphard. No matter if solo or in a group, attack of opportunity is the best trait modifier available for a warrior and there is no reason to run 20 in arms.

Either run even less than 20 or go all the way to 25, the damage increase for 5 points is way more than you will get from discipline for example. Assuming 100% crit chance and 2,5 crit damage modifier 5% more crit damage is a total damage increase of 2%. In reality, warrior often has higher than 2,5 crit dmg modifier and always has lower than 100% crit chance leading to even lower total damage increase. Bleeding uptime required to surpass that is non existant and you also gain precision on top of it.

Konu.1826:

I’m not sure if I understood you correctly, Miku, but I got the feeling you say attack of opportunity is triggered only by attacks that cause bleeding.

Yeah, you misunderstood me. I’ll re-read my post to see if I wasn’t clear enough or typed something misleading. You basically just supported me either way so thanks.

E: AH! I had an extra “for nearly 1/3 of the time” after I said “your overall damage is increased by 10%” in one of my paragraphs, which conflicted with what I also said in the post… “This includes non-crits, because as long as the foe is bleeding then any hit will be 10% greater.” and “Arms (25) minor: 10% damage increase to all bleeding foes.” Thanks, that was a typo. Good catch.

By the way thanks for posting and for confirming what I said! You posted in a much more concise way and I appreciate that. As someone with ADD, that’s usually not something that I’m able to do.

To be honest, if you are running a pure axe build the best trait allocation is 30/25/0/10/5 since you will hit even more damage modifiers and the benefits of Fast Hands in a pure axe build is minimal. Obviously, I only advise a pure axe build in a group that properly utilizes fire fields for Might stacking, or Fractals. However, in fractals an Empowered Allies setup is pretty great.

Good call, I agree. The only thing I don’t like about the idea of doing that is it makes you less versatile and for me personally that takes a huge hit on gameplay. I do love fractals, but considering how much fun I have when soloing Arah as well and other things of that nature… it’s not viable.

Like you just said (and what I said in one of the above posts), the might stacks must come from somewhere. In a solo, the might from forceful greatsword is essential and thus makes the GS build an absolute must. In a group where you have a competent party capable of maintaining 20+ stacks of might, a pure axe build would certainly be the better option.

Thanks for the post

1. Stacking set should be axe mace, not horn since you will be stacking in places like AC, CoE, grawl, aetherblade fractal and so on where mace 5 is useful while horn 5 is useless.
2. Offhand mace sigils should be force and battle. Battle for bad group setups and duoing. Force for when you got an ele in group or any other form of might stacking. Force can also get you better evisc at Brie
3. Ogre pet whistle is also a stun break.
4. III in arms is also a viable choice for soloing in places where you know that you won’t be able to keep bleeds up long enough for Attack of Opportunity to be permanently triggered.

Hey Moa!

1. You know what you’re probably right but I want to clarify that it’s probably only better if you’re somebody that does group dungeons most often. You know me and you know that isn’t the case, which is why warhorn is more practical for a stacking weapon. Sometimes, however, I feel like I should have a third stacking weapon and perhaps even a fourth. :P
2. Good call. I rarely have good groups that maintain might stacks though. Hey, no problem! I have an exotic mace with force that I rarely use… uh, are you certain about that for Brie btw? If so, how much of a difference are we talkin? Kind of tough to visualize how much of a difference it’d make. I guess it depends how fast the might stacks drop from forceful greatsword afterwards.
3. NO WAY. Seriously?! WAIT… do you mean just the action of opening the consumable? Mother of god. I might finally have a use for the 3 spare stacks of ogre pet whistles that I bought on the day before the nerf, rofl.
4. Very true. Good suggestion! Best I can think of as an example would be Alphard and I’m actually going to try that next time instead of Arms I.

Nice stuff to add, thanks for posting

2. You can do the math yourself for Brie, 3 might from battle sigil is 105 power. Without any buffs/stacks u should have 2468 power, 5% of that is 123. the more power/might stacks u have the better it gets but if you’re solo then battles better for the part after u eviscerate to maintain better might alone. So force is useful only to show off in groups there xD Another thing to notice is if you have a main hand with force sigil then force and force don’t stack. I did few tests a while ago and they stack ONLY if some weird conditions involving equip and unequip order of weapons are met and if not then they don’t. So reproducing those conditions just for 5% isnt really worth it so its only useful with night and undead in main hand.
Here’s a video where force DOES stack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYp-Ytdsjcg
Now if you equip those weapons 1 by one, lets say you get 1 axe with force, attack, ooc, get another axe with force equiped then they won’t stack cause idk…fail logic. If theyre already equiped like in that video then they DO stack.
3. After the 30 min CD patch its only 1 stunbreak per 30 min but still useful in few places

Weird. Definitely seems like a bug that’s never gonna get fixed. Best add that to the list with the other thousands of things.

nice guide

what about elite skill? do you only take signet of rage? since it seems like the only one remotely useful, and everything else is either supportive or too gimmicky

Yes, sorry I’ll include that in the first post. The only time you should really bother with warbanner is I suppose FotM or Tequatl. It’s especially useful for Ascalonian fractal (for reviving NPC’s mostly) and Mai Trin boss fractal.

Aside from that I generally always have Signet of Rage. The other elites are pretty much useless.

Hai Miku, nice guide. o/

Starburst.1826:

Hai Miku, nice guide. o/

<3

Hi Miku, thank you for the guide. In your post you said you would talk about runes. But I couldn’t find any mention of runes. Were they left out because of the April 15th update?

reapex.8546:

Hi Miku, thank you for the guide. In your post you said you would talk about runes. But I couldn’t find any mention of runes. Were they left out because of the April 15th update?

Sorry about that, I guess I forgot to edit that in. Doing it now!

Purple Miku.7032:

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Because of the fact that warriors have no reflects.

Not true, you can easily trait 10 in defense (edit: 2) to pick up reflect during block.

Eulolia.2467:

Purple Miku.7032:

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Because of the fact that warriors have no reflects.

Not true, you can easily trait 10 in defense (edit: 2) to pick up reflect during block.

It’s not practical to use in almost any circumstance for soloing in PvE though; you lose out on a crap ton of damage to deal a negligible amount of damage in reflects.

I can’t think of any circumstance in which it’d be worth traiting 2 in defense for a boss solo fight tbh.

When posting that back then, I was well aware of that trait but this is a guide for DPS and efficiently going about things as a warrior in solo PvE, so with that in mind we don’t have reflects at our disposal to use.

Purple Miku.7032:

Eulolia.2467:

Purple Miku.7032:

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Because of the fact that warriors have no reflects.

Not true, you can easily trait 10 in defense (edit: 2) to pick up reflect during block.

It’s not practical to use in almost any circumstance for soloing in PvE though; you lose out on a crap ton of damage to deal a negligible amount of damage in reflects.

I can’t think of any circumstance in which it’d be worth traiting 2 in defense for a boss solo fight tbh.

You wouldn’t lose much DPS speccing 6/6/2/0/0 to solo something, you can spec 6/5/3/0/0 too and get the health regen for a bit more margin for error/meatshieldability. It would have been silly to spec like that before the patch but since you can now change traits anywhere it’s an option for certain solo dungeon encounters that you can’t just cheese with Sigil of Energy.

Just pointing out it’s incorrect to say “you have no reflects” when you do if you need them.

Eulolia.2467:

Purple Miku.7032:

Eulolia.2467:

Purple Miku.7032:

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Because of the fact that warriors have no reflects.

Not true, you can easily trait 10 in defense (edit: 2) to pick up reflect during block.

It’s not practical to use in almost any circumstance for soloing in PvE though; you lose out on a crap ton of damage to deal a negligible amount of damage in reflects.

I can’t think of any circumstance in which it’d be worth traiting 2 in defense for a boss solo fight tbh.

You wouldn’t lose much DPS speccing 6/6/2/0/0 to solo something, you can spec 6/5/3/0/0 too and get the health regen for a bit more margin for error/meatshieldability. It would have been silly to spec like that before the patch but since you can now change traits anywhere it’s an option for certain solo dungeon encounters that you can’t just cheese with Sigil of Energy.

Just pointing out it’s incorrect to say “you have no reflects” when you do if you need them.

You’re wrong, sorry. When you are soloing you CANNOT sacrifice VI in discipline. Not only do you lose out on a lot of ferocity, but you lose out on an absolute necessity for DPS – fury. You can’t upkeep fury without signet mastery no matter if you use both FGJ and axe offhand— worse enough, you can’t block even if you do use axe offhand and even if you try to, you sacrifice your primary weapon for utility and DPS, which is GS.

Once again, never practical to PvE with that trait.

Therefore, you do not have reflects at your disposal to use unless you intend to be vastly inefficient.

I should also mention that the only reason the new meta for optimal DPS from a warrior posted by Nike is 6/6/0/2/0 is because it is under the assumption that the warrior is able to outsource the fury elsewhere, namely from an ele with Persisting Flames. He went on to clarify in his video that for soloing, you drop the 2 in tactics for 2 in discipline, as Signet Mastery is NOT optional in that case.

Purple Miku.7032:

Eulolia.2467:

Purple Miku.7032:

Eulolia.2467:

Purple Miku.7032:

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Because of the fact that warriors have no reflects.

Not true, you can easily trait 10 in defense (edit: 2) to pick up reflect during block.

It’s not practical to use in almost any circumstance for soloing in PvE though; you lose out on a crap ton of damage to deal a negligible amount of damage in reflects.

I can’t think of any circumstance in which it’d be worth traiting 2 in defense for a boss solo fight tbh.

You wouldn’t lose much DPS speccing 6/6/2/0/0 to solo something, you can spec 6/5/3/0/0 too and get the health regen for a bit more margin for error/meatshieldability. It would have been silly to spec like that before the patch but since you can now change traits anywhere it’s an option for certain solo dungeon encounters that you can’t just cheese with Sigil of Energy.

Just pointing out it’s incorrect to say “you have no reflects” when you do if you need them.

You’re wrong, sorry. When you are soloing you CANNOT sacrifice VI in discipline. Not only do you lose out on a lot of ferocity, but you lose out on an absolute necessity for DPS – fury. You can’t upkeep fury without signet mastery no matter if you use both FGJ and axe offhand— worse enough, you can’t block even if you do use axe offhand and even if you try to, you sacrifice your primary weapon for utility and DPS, which is GS.

Once again, never practical to PvE with that trait.

Therefore, you do not have reflects at your disposal to use unless you intend to be vastly inefficient.

You’re wrong, sorry. I like how you have attempted to switch the debate to a theoretical DPS loss. Your original statement was:

Because of the fact that warriors have no reflects.

And it’s still completely wrong.

Additionally, there are two main reasons why your extra straw man reply is wrong too. First of all, Secondly , FGJ and signet provides ~80% fury uptime untraited anyway, so saying “you CANNOT sacrifice VI in discipline” is incredibly narrow-minded too . Yes, you might lose around 10% DPS overall from lower fury uptime and ferocity, but the whole point is being able to use the right build for the situation – in this case, a situation in which losing 10% DPS is less important that gaining other things that will keep you alive like reflects and double the healing signet tick.

There is no “optimal, undroppable” soloing build, it varies depending on the content you are soloing. Sometimes you may need more endurance, sometimes you may need reflects, sometimes you may need more health regeneration to counter unavoidable damage. It’s called adaptability – bear it in mind and you’ll be able to come up with better builds rather than just posting the old PvE meta group build.

cm p3 for example there is nothing more enjoyable than doing the first mobgroup with 30/30/10/0/0 they kill themselfs in a few seconds with mace/shield /axe/sword just reflect theire fast attacks =ggwp

Eulolia.2467:

Purple Miku.7032:

Eulolia.2467:

Purple Miku.7032:

Eulolia.2467:

Purple Miku.7032:

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Because of the fact that warriors have no reflects.

Not true, you can easily trait 10 in defense (edit: 2) to pick up reflect during block.

It’s not practical to use in almost any circumstance for soloing in PvE though; you lose out on a crap ton of damage to deal a negligible amount of damage in reflects.

I can’t think of any circumstance in which it’d be worth traiting 2 in defense for a boss solo fight tbh.

You wouldn’t lose much DPS speccing 6/6/2/0/0 to solo something, you can spec 6/5/3/0/0 too and get the health regen for a bit more margin for error/meatshieldability. It would have been silly to spec like that before the patch but since you can now change traits anywhere it’s an option for certain solo dungeon encounters that you can’t just cheese with Sigil of Energy.

Just pointing out it’s incorrect to say “you have no reflects” when you do if you need them.

You’re wrong, sorry. When you are soloing you CANNOT sacrifice VI in discipline. Not only do you lose out on a lot of ferocity, but you lose out on an absolute necessity for DPS – fury. You can’t upkeep fury without signet mastery no matter if you use both FGJ and axe offhand— worse enough, you can’t block even if you do use axe offhand and even if you try to, you sacrifice your primary weapon for utility and DPS, which is GS.

Once again, never practical to PvE with that trait.

Therefore, you do not have reflects at your disposal to use unless you intend to be vastly inefficient.

You’re wrong, sorry. I like how you have attempted to switch the debate to a theoretical DPS loss. Your original statement was:

Because of the fact that warriors have no reflects.

And it’s still completely wrong.

Additionally, there are two main reasons why your extra straw man reply is wrong too. First of all, Secondly , FGJ and signet provides ~80% fury uptime untraited anyway, so saying “you CANNOT sacrifice VI in discipline” is incredibly narrow-minded too . Yes, you might lose around 10% DPS overall from lower fury uptime and ferocity, but the whole point is being able to use the right build for the situation – in this case, a situation in which losing 10% DPS is less important that gaining other things that will keep you alive like reflects and double the healing signet tick.

There is no “optimal, undroppable” soloing build, it varies depending on the content you are soloing. Sometimes you may need more endurance, sometimes you may need reflects, sometimes you may need more health regeneration to counter unavoidable damage. It’s called adaptability – bear it in mind and you’ll be able to come up with better builds rather than just posting the old PvE meta group build.

You still have yet to come up with any specific situation to support your claim…?

The entire point of this guide, which is even so graciously listed in the title of this thread is a guide to optimal DPS in a solo setting for warrior.

It’s unbelievable how pendantic you are with that statement on reflects. I’ve clarified multiple times with you my reasoning for the claim that “warriors do not have reflects.” It’s because there is no circumstance in which traiting in defense will yield superior DPS. It is always better to learn how time your dodges properly, time your blocks, your whirlwind evasion, kite, time your invulnerability, and more. If you disagree with me, then what’s the point in continuing to nitpick with this detail when you’re clearly not getting anywhere— especially since you aren’t interested in the main topic of the thread?

I also find it pretty amusing how you’re talking to me as if I have no idea of what the word adaptability means, considering how many things I’ve posted solo videos of and how much time I spent learning how to do things differently than what I had known. To me, that’s a blatant sign of disrespect. If you have this much of a problem with the fact that I consider fury an absolute essential for DPS in solos, I highly advise you to refrain from posting again because bad news, good sir.

I won’t be backing down from my statement.

dominik.9721:

cm p3 for example there is nothing more enjoyable than doing the first mobgroup with 30/30/10/0/0 they kill themselfs in a few seconds with mace/shield /axe/sword just reflect theire fast attacks =ggwp

Since the last update, it’d be better to use stability + frenzy + endure pain and either intentionally wipe to go OOC and change to FGJ + Signet of Fury + Banner of Discipline for Sure-shot Seamus, or use harpy feathers / spykits.

Either way works, but your personal attacks with a full 100b channel + WWA deal _much _ more damage than that.

Purple Miku.7032:

You still have yet to come up with any specific situation to support your claim…?

The entire point of this guide, which is even so graciously listed in the title of this thread is a guide to optimal DPS in a solo setting for warrior.

It’s unbelievable how pendantic you are with that statement on reflects. I’ve clarified multiple times with you my reasoning for the claim that “warriors do not have reflects.” It’s because there is no circumstance in which traiting in defense will yield superior DPS. It is always better to learn how time your dodges properly, time your blocks, your whirlwind evasion, kite, time your invulnerability, and more. If you disagree with me, then what’s the point in continuing to nitpick with this detail when you’re clearly not getting anywhere— especially since you aren’t interested in the main topic of the thread?

I also find it pretty amusing how you’re talking to me as if I have no idea of what the word adaptability means, considering how many things I’ve posted solo videos of and how much time I spent learning how to do things differently than what I had known. To me, that’s a blatant sign of disrespect. If you have this much of a problem with the fact that I consider fury an absolute essential for DPS in solos, I highly advise you to refrain from posting again because bad news, good sir.

I won’t be backing down from my statement.

Sigh, you’re the one nitpicking here. See how you mention Throw Bolas, Stomp and Fear Me in your guide? None of those are optimal DPS choices either. Have you invented some arbitrary point of DPS loss at which selecting something goes from “worth mentioning” to so unmentionable that you explicitly claim it does not exist when it does, or are you still stuck in the pre-patch mentality and haven’t yet adapted to traits now being as easy to switch as utilities?

I’m not disrespecting your soloing accomplishments, I’m just amazed at how stubbornly you are willing to defend a single complete factual inaccuracy. Your original guide is otherwise very good.

Eulolia.2467:

Purple Miku.7032:

You still have yet to come up with any specific situation to support your claim…?

The entire point of this guide, which is even so graciously listed in the title of this thread is a guide to optimal DPS in a solo setting for warrior.

It’s unbelievable how pendantic you are with that statement on reflects. I’ve clarified multiple times with you my reasoning for the claim that “warriors do not have reflects.” It’s because there is no circumstance in which traiting in defense will yield superior DPS. It is always better to learn how time your dodges properly, time your blocks, your whirlwind evasion, kite, time your invulnerability, and more. If you disagree with me, then what’s the point in continuing to nitpick with this detail when you’re clearly not getting anywhere— especially since you aren’t interested in the main topic of the thread?

I also find it pretty amusing how you’re talking to me as if I have no idea of what the word adaptability means, considering how many things I’ve posted solo videos of and how much time I spent learning how to do things differently than what I had known. To me, that’s a blatant sign of disrespect. If you have this much of a problem with the fact that I consider fury an absolute essential for DPS in solos, I highly advise you to refrain from posting again because bad news, good sir.

I won’t be backing down from my statement.

Sigh, you’re the one nitpicking here. See how you mention Throw Bolas, Stomp and Fear Me in your guide? None of those are optimal DPS choices either. Have you invented some arbitrary point of DPS loss at which selecting something goes from “worth mentioning” to so unmentionable that you explicitly claim it does not exist when it does, or are you still stuck in the pre-patch mentality and haven’t yet adapted to traits now being as easy to switch as utilities?

I’m not disrespecting your soloing accomplishments, I’m just amazed at how stubbornly you are willing to defend a single complete factual inaccuracy. Your original guide is otherwise very good.

Did you read what I said they have rare uses for? You aren’t supposed to DPS the wraiths in the ritual at the end of Arah P3, and you can’t DPS the shoggroth tar boss in Arah P1 if it’s underground. As for stomp/kick, reality is that the champion krait was as close to impossible for a warrior to take down solo as it could get and it’s specifically because of the confusion pulsing from one attack. It’s very niche, and once again…

I still can’t think of a single reason where it’d be better to trait defense for that reflect trait, period. I’ve brought it up in each of my replies with you and it doesn’t seem like you can think of any either…

I seem stubborn to you because I already explained several times why I don’t include that trait as a viable option, but you’re still pedantic and trying to give me a hard time for no reason other than to get under my skin. The post before your last I admit did irritate me, because it was kind of tough to perceive most of it in a way that wasn’t a personal attack.

If it helps, fine you’re right; there’s a reflect trait in the defense line that’s seemingly never appropriate to use outside of PvP/WvW, at least in my opinion. Hopefully we can forget about this minute little detail now and move on.

reflect on block trait is pretty bad. the radius of reflect is too small to be effective at increasing DPS in most cases (see – lupi) and maxing reflect means you’re taking 2 useless sets, MH mace and shield.

I do like it for kittening around and destroying orrian eye turrets without having to sidestep the projectiles and use a longbow, but otherwise it’s really not that great.

Speaking of those orrian turrets, my friend Goku showed me a tactic for them that works very well in our Arah P4 duos; he takes shield OH and uses defiant stance, tanking it so that I can quickly take it down with hundred blades/axe autoattacks. Works quite well!

If an elite risen is aggroed we just pop a harpy feather + both spykits. If the NPC stays alive and keeps them aggroed, we either have no choice but to kill it or wipe… worth the risk imo because it’s much faster than both sidestrafe ranging.

Have you considered Berserker’s Stance?

In a duo? Nah because then you have to wait for it’s cooldown before fighting Lupicus. In a solo, sure because by the time the two aboms are dead the cooldown shouldn’t be too far from over and will roughly equate to the time you would have spent using longbow on em anyways.

So you have considered it.

Have you tried just ignoring turrets and sidestepping while killing aboms?

Yeah but not in a solo. I did it in pugs before and it’s fine, but I’d imagine it’d suck to be alone doing it with axe AA. It’s only the turret near the aboms that needs to go anyways.

Great guide for post patch! Just recently got back to see new changes, I can see similar info to old stuff. I also watched one of the DnT videos, so if I’m wearing 100% berserker with greatsword, rune of strength is better for forceful greatsword? And it was mentioned greatsword was nerfed? In what way (besides crit damage)?

Actually if anything the mentality has shifted to be even more so in favor of GS than before. The absolute highest damage capability our class has to offer is camping GS. Perhaps you’re watching the video of Nike’s prior to the discovery of GS being the best? He later on tested and found different results along with posting an updated build guide.

Full berserker with strength runes is indeed the best though yes. ^^

Great guide Miku Gs all the way!

Great guide. Definitely a very good, comprehensive guide to solo play. Helped me a ton. Thanks!

Thank you Sophie and I’m glad to know it helps

Hey everyone I updated the guide in a few places:
-added links to the youtube channels of the mentioned individuals at the start of first post
-tweaked some of the things that I mentioned/re-worded a few things on all posts
-added an example of when I use ‘Fear Me’ in Arah P1
-clarified some of the changes made to stacking sigils and what is now needed if one wishes to maintain stacks in general gameplay
-added ‘Medical Pack’ to the list of useful consumables that I occasionally use
-added a video of me demonstrating use of sword offhand in solo combat

Post here if you have any questions!

Which trait skills do you use?