Guild Wars 2

Returning player, intending to main a warrior. I work nights on weekends (now) and so I generally play online games at night on weekdays when population is at it’s lowest for any given game.

What’s the best overall build for leveling mostly by myself?

I started off greatsword / rifle simply because I intend to use that combo later in the game. Worked great for trash mobs, especially with the lowbie equipment giving power, but veterans and things were surviving my burst then tearing me down before I could do it again.

I’m shifting towards downright tanky gear. Runes on the trading post are nice and cheap, so it’s easy to get lots of +toughness. Using the Sigil of Bloodlust for stacks of power to keep my damage relevant, and using an axe so I can put a shield in the off hand for more defense and interrupts. Is that as good as it gets?

What about specs? What low end traits are most noticable? Lots of interesting traits and passives in the first ten spec points, but no numbers! How much armor when HP is over 90%? How much damage at the end of a dodge roll? Any real gems in there that have a strong effect?

Any tips for solo leveling a warrior, completionist style 100%’ing zones, would be appreciated.
Thanks.

I’ve been leveling up a new warrior recently and I’ve found:

Axe in the main hand is a powerhouse, it’s #1 does more damage than GS and it’s burst is very damaging (Crits will take off about 50-100% of a normal mobs health)

A rifle is useful to carry around, for those champs that are dangerous to enter melee range of (Also using it’s burst can again one-shot enemies, provided it crits and you have full adrenaline)

Healing Signet is overpowered at lower levels at least (The passive healing easily allows me to take on 3-4 enemies 3-5 levels higher than me, provided none of them have nasty effects such as poison/daze)

I’ve been leveling with full Power and eventually Power/Precision gear (Haven’t quite got to the 3 stat gear, but will use Power/Precision/Crit damage gear when I get there)

As far as traits go, it depends really on what weapons you want to use and such:

The power from the Strength line can be helpful at really low levels – At 10 points the trait for 3/7/12% extra damage based off adrenaline is very nice.

The 2/5/9% crit chance trait at 10 points in Discipline is very nice, as is the Fast Hands 15 point trait allowing weapon swaps every 5 seconds in combat rather than 10 – Useful if you want to leverage skills from 2 weapon sets which helps with both damage and control (Most weapons have a cripple on which allows for soloing of melee Champions)

Weapon dependant traits:

Strength 20 – 10% damage for Greatsword/10% critical damage for Main Hand Axe.

Arms 20 – 20% shorter cooldown on Greatsword abilities + Might on criticals/20% shorter cooldown on Rifle abilities + Rifle shots pierce/10% critical chance with Sword

Defence 20 – 20% shorter cooldown on Hammer abilities + Hammer does 25% more damage to disabled targets/20% shorter cooldown on Mace abilities + Mace does 10% more damage to weakened targets

Tactics 10 – Longbow skills have 1200 range

Tactics 20 – Longbow does 10% more damage to burning targets

Bearing in mind that unlocked major trait slots can have their traits swapped out at will when out of combat, this allows you to swap between different weapon sets based off what you need to do at the time.

Just my thoughts based off my experience as a leveling warrior (Who originally started out as GS + S/WH and is now A/A + Rifle)