Guild Wars 2

How do you guys do it? My mains are a level 80 Guardian and Necro and doomsday, the gods, and the Elder Dragons cannot kill me. But once I touch the warrior, its as if my armor is made of tissue paper. I cannot for the life of me figure it out. How do you stay alive as a warrior? Also, how do you get the most out of using vengeance? I’m level 43 doing the story mode for now

“How do you guys do it?”
Short answer: we rock.
Long answer: We don’t have an extra, nearly on demand life bar, we don’t have a ton of regen/protection/aegis boons. We do have CC.

“How do you stay alive as a warrior?”
Generally? Primarily through controlling our enemies with hammer or some sort of lockdown, as well as lots of toughness/vitality + really really good dodge timing. If all else fails, burst like mad and hope it dies. Endure pain is nice, but condition damage still gets through, so draw your own conclusion on this.

“Also, how do you get the most out of using vengeance?”
By NOT USING it at all. Seriously. The only good time to use it is when you can get up and kill another player that’s downed as well. Otherwise, just throw rocks at it.

Warriors are rough to play, we have to be on par 100% of the time. We get less freebies so we have to play like this to get by. Most warriors use 100b roflstomping to win. Crazy burst + control. That’s their one trick every minute. That’s no secret.

Hope this helped answer some of what you’re wondering.

Unless your traited for sweet vengeance, you probably dont want to use it in pve.

Not sure what your PvE problems are, warriors pretty easy to level. Not sure what your build is but you might want to get away from healing signet, which i find alot of newer players relying on.

Gregorius.1024:

How do you guys do it? My mains are a level 80 Guardian and Necro and doomsday, the gods, and the Elder Dragons cannot kill me. But once I touch the warrior, its as if my armor is made of tissue paper. I cannot for the life of me figure it out. How do you stay alive as a warrior? Also, how do you get the most out of using vengeance? I’m level 43 doing the story mode for now

Despite the “sturdy body” thing ANET said in the recently revised warrior design philosophy, we do die very easily due to the complete absence of any survival boons.

Anticipation and dodging are the primary things that keep us alive…and both of those require some measure of skill….especially since you have to do them at point blank range as a melee character. Everything I say is to be taken from a pve perspective.

We do have Shield Stance (3 second duration, 30 second cd) and Endure Pain (5 second duration, 90 second cd). Both of those are highly unreliable in my opinion due to low duration and high cool down…as well as the fact that they are not complete damage mitigation. We do also have war horn skill “call to arms”, which is extremely nice if you don’t mind giving up off hand weapon attack skills. Call to Arms gives area of effect weakness to enemies for 6 seconds on a 20 second cool down. It also gives 10 seconds of 100% endurance regeneration…which is huge considering how important dodging is to a warrior.

What I said so far is completely ignoring traits. If you plan on doing any decent amount of damage, then the only other things you can do are to pick up utilities/traits that remove conditions. I personally use mending for my self heal + it removes 2 conditions. I pair that with shake it off to break a stun/get up from a knock down/remove a snare or any other single condition. I prefer the utility “shake it off” over the trait “shrug it off” or “last stand” because I get to choose when I use it. Not sure if having both the utility and similar trait still put each other on cool down or not.

I’m assuming if you are having trouble staying alive, that you are not traited as a paper weight (defense/tactics). You aren’t really going to kill anything tough in a meaningful time frame that way, but you’ll have as much survivability as you can possibly get as a warrior. If you find your self in dungeon groups unable to out damage a boss’ regeneration rate..then you may want to re-trait. I tried going 15 points into defense to pick up adrenal health, but the survival gains from half of that trait line were so minimal that I’ll take my chances with a full glass build…I’m better off just dodging.

I’d say a warrior is more gear dependent than any other class, so you might have to update your gear more frequently than on your other classes. Its like one of the previous posters said…it often comes down to killing the enemy before it kills you…which makes glass builds hugely better for leveling than defense/tactics.

As far as your vengeance question….I’m probably crazy…but I do use it occasionally. If i’m downed, i’m not going to be able to recover due to something continuing to attack me, I don’t have a chance at rallying from throwing rocks…then yeah…I’ll pop vengeance. I do it with the premise that I’m going to die anyway…may as well try to take something with me. I have been pleasantly surprised on occasion to kill my target and not actually die to the vengeance timer.

I’m much preferring active defences to passive.
signet of endurance, shield stance, endure pain…
And don’t forget that dead things can’t damage you.

I hardly die, even as a crit damage warrior. I run GS/Bow with 97% crit dmg. I utilize Signet of Stamina which cures all conditions when used and passivley allows me to dodge 2 times more than average.

I do have my armor setup with Valkyrie runes though, it allows me to have more hp and take a slightly larger hit than most crit dmg warriors. If things get hot in CC, i flip to my bow(which causes blindness when switching) and dodge out, attack from ranged and focus as much on pinning the enemy as possible so they can’t get close.

Though these are playing tactics it really boils down to this one thing:

I survive by killing the enemy first.

Three type of Build

Knight
DPS
Tank

Knight – is a pretty easy build for a warrior for me i think all warrior should go knight build for FIRST timers to get the feel of the warrior on end games, the stat they go on gear is Power/Precison/Toughness

They do at least 10k highest damage and above they have at least 3.2k armor they can live through almost any fight without much to worry about diying too much from 1 or 3 hit to death.

The gear can be farm from Arah dungeon only… but you can also buy it off from thr trading post but they are pretty expensive.

DPS – Most warrior thinks that warrior is all about damage and yes they are all about damage cause they are good at it… but you need skill hand and mind to do it with out diying badly making yourself look like a trash player

they go by the Stat Power/Prec/Critdamage%

The gear can be farm from COF and others but COF is much easy

Tank – The tank build is by far the best build to be tanker in GW2 yes guardian can tank too but not as well as Warrior does

They go by the stat of Power/Toughness/VIT
you need at least 28k heath to be a good tanker and a armor of 3.52k -3.6k

They just go in and whack monster and they will ALL aim on you they will not go for other players cause you got all the aggo – if i am right the monsters will always chase the highest armor and hp so the tanker build is seriously hard to play some time cause… you dont want your butt get busted if you dont know how to “dodge and use your skill at the CRIT time”

It may be my build but in PvE I have just a bit more staying power on my Warrior than my Guardian. While my guard still needs a few more exotics to be fully geared (just boots, legs, and gloves), I can’t see that making her much more durable. My guards is a perma protection build with a hammer by the way.

After playing both a lot yesterday I think the main reason is mobility and control. I have a ton of abilities that move me around fast on top of perma swiftness. I also have a lot of control and damage negation on the warrior. I have my shield and endure pain that protects me a lot. The hammer shuts up dangerous mobs for a good duration also.

My guard feels like I am walking around with concrete shoes and while I may be able to take more unguarded hits, the warrior is better in the long run because I can evade more of it.

Condas.7056:

It may be my build but in PvE I have just a bit more staying power on my Warrior than my Guardian. While my guard still needs a few more exotics to be fully geared (just boots, legs, and gloves), I can’t see that making her much more durable. My guards is a perma protection build with a hammer by the way.

After playing both a lot yesterday I think the main reason is mobility and control. I have a ton of abilities that move me around fast on top of perma swiftness. I also have a lot of control and damage negation on the warrior. I have my shield and endure pain that protects me a lot. The hammer shuts up dangerous mobs for a good duration also.

My guard feels like I am walking around with concrete shoes and while I may be able to take more unguarded hits, the warrior is better in the long run because I can evade more of it.

If that’s the case, take GS on guardian he moves around the battlefield alot.

Karaad.7930:

i flip to my bow(which causes blindness when switching)

What?

I don’t see a rune, sigil or trait that does this.

Easy, you use Whirlwind Attack every time you think you’re going to get hit. If PvE was complex then you have to figure out which hits are you supposed to take and which hits you’re supposed to avoid no matter what.

Kinda like Vindictus.

i noticed this as well. i have an 80 necro and 80 guardian. i remmeber charging into 4 enemies on guardian with a GS and having no problems, and even necro was not too bad.

i rolled a warrior hoping for better defence than necro because of the heavy armor but so far i’m not nearly as tanky without DS and the blinding well.

i think warrior has much better DPS though (berserker vs berserker).

Gregorius.1024:

Condas.7056:

It may be my build but in PvE I have just a bit more staying power on my Warrior than my Guardian. While my guard still needs a few more exotics to be fully geared (just boots, legs, and gloves), I can’t see that making her much more durable. My guards is a perma protection build with a hammer by the way.

After playing both a lot yesterday I think the main reason is mobility and control. I have a ton of abilities that move me around fast on top of perma swiftness. I also have a lot of control and damage negation on the warrior. I have my shield and endure pain that protects me a lot. The hammer shuts up dangerous mobs for a good duration also.

My guard feels like I am walking around with concrete shoes and while I may be able to take more unguarded hits, the warrior is better in the long run because I can evade more of it.

If that’s the case, take GS on guardian he moves around the battlefield alot.

I have a GS, that is one mobility skill to the Warriors large array of abilities. This compiled with perma swift on me and cripple on the enemy, the guard cannot match that.

mango pie & adrenal health.

Steelo.4597:

mango pie & adrenal health.

+ regen form banner
+ healing signet regen
= PvE immortality

you can even add runes of Doylak, for additional 30HP/sec regen

healing signet regen is way bad at lvl 80 without healing stats (with a lot of healing its not bad) but really good at low level. the dolyak runes, as mentioned, have very bad regen. the banners need traiting into regen and are generally crap if not for the regen, wouldnt waste a slot on them. so for me its still just mango pie and adrenal health and the eventual rejuven booster i pick up. as i play mostly WvW i count on getting the normal regeneration from somewhere else. i use healing surge or mending depending if i need condition removal or just big heals.

Ive done at least 3 80’s now…and warrior was by far one of the easiest classes to level o.O you’re doing something wrong if you’re having trouble in pve with them.

Healing Signet + Axe/Shield, Run Shake it off/Endure Pain/ Last is optional and up to ur preference, I wouldnt recommend berserk for pve though (honestly though I do wish shake it off removed ALL conditions…that really needs a buff)

I use Adrenal Health (Defense 15, Keep Adrenaline bar at full with my axe/horn combo unless there is a combo field, usually water/dark to heal from)

Healing Signet (Healing skill)

Superior Sigil of Blood (Axe upgrade)

Mixed Berry pies (Food)

Full exotic Berserker Armor set.

I find with all these it really helps me stay in the fight and just plow everything away with my axe on trash mobs.

Now for bosses, its still important to know when to dodge. When I do screw up and health is low, I fall back with the rifle till health is up around 3/4ths full then jump back in.

LOTS OF HEALTH REGEN!!! XD

This keeps me up easy in the AC 1-3, CoF 1-2 spam runs I do, and solo mobs when not in a dungeon. Not sure about the other dungeons though.

Toughness instead of vit, and trait the horn to remove conditions. It works very well.

adrenal heal, seems to make a difference in the regen rate overall, and the short times you are being hit with condition damage it helps stabilize you until the horn cools off.

all signets for me because I use them for the additional 10% crit, plus trait for 10% sword crit, and a sigil of blood becomes extremely effective. If swords aren’t your thing consider the same strategy but with +heal instead of +cond/bleed. Plus I find the other skills too situational for my tastes, I’d rather focus on movement and finesse. Not that signets are super great, just that they are versatile. Plus you can maintain quickness almost 100% of the time, which is realy nice in casual exploration mode.

you will get in over your head from time to time, but quite often you’ll find that jumping into a group of adds restores your health faster than they can hit.

In PvE I do well like this, in PvP I am good 1 on 1 but like any build 2 on 1 puts the odds far against you unless your opponents are really not batting a thousand. That is true with all classes IMO.

Also in PvP I don’t have problems with mesmers or theives as much as guards. Definitely a trade-off which is what makes this game so great.

Edit: If you find this a little too bland, you may want to try dropping a couple signets for shouts and traiting shout healing.

Condas.7056:

Gregorius.1024:

Condas.7056:

It may be my build but in PvE I have just a bit more staying power on my Warrior than my Guardian. While my guard still needs a few more exotics to be fully geared (just boots, legs, and gloves), I can’t see that making her much more durable. My guards is a perma protection build with a hammer by the way.

After playing both a lot yesterday I think the main reason is mobility and control. I have a ton of abilities that move me around fast on top of perma swiftness. I also have a lot of control and damage negation on the warrior. I have my shield and endure pain that protects me a lot. The hammer shuts up dangerous mobs for a good duration also.

My guard feels like I am walking around with concrete shoes and while I may be able to take more unguarded hits, the warrior is better in the long run because I can evade more of it.

If that’s the case, take GS on guardian he moves around the battlefield alot.

I have a GS, that is one mobility skill to the Warriors large array of abilities. This compiled with perma swift on me and cripple on the enemy, the guard cannot match that.

I like guardian for kiting groups, using greatsword’s whirling wrath, leap of faith, and binding blade, and using “Retreat” and Sanctuary. Idk why but I stay alive while dealing great damage and last longer than my dungeon groups. Guardian has alot more mobility then most think, but such mobility relies on keeping the enemy off their feet via binding blade, and using hit and runs with the other skills.

Schwahrheit.4203:

If PvE was complex then you have to figure out which hits are you supposed to take and which hits you’re supposed to avoid no matter what.

Kinda like Vindictus.

The flame shaman (charr) or the giant fire elemental (asura) strictly remind me of the first time i accepted the white tyrant challenge…
“why does this bear look like he is going to jum…k im dead”
“what’ s that red thing this guy is spraying on the grou… k im dead”

And fractals luckily kept this tradition up