Guild Wars 2

Any of you warriors out there Sword & Board Dungeons? maybe S/Shield A/Sh M/Sh alt weapon maybe some sorta two hand or Mainhand/Horn? I just curious if its viable as a warrior to be some sort of support meat “Tank” rather than the same ol two handed GS warriors I am seeing. Currently myself play a mesmer.

I have seen some very good warrior who play a “tank” build and it works great. They are the first ones into the fight making them take most of the hits and if they are good they just wont die.

I used to play sword and board, and was indeed first into the group. Pop shield block and just absorb the first wave until the rest of the group could start CCing. Worked wonders with a shout build.

Right now im running a toughness build with a hammer. I’m not as durable during the first few seconds, but the CC is extraordinary.

GS is stupidly over rated if you ask me even in PvE. I got far more output in PvE with Sword/Mace. Bleeding makes me happy.
For WvW sword/shield is doing the job on melee
In SvP mace/mace for control – haha, the amount of times I’m hated on for mace/mace – bite me

i leveled from 1-80 with sword/shield mostly, when i reached 80 i stacked precision toughness and condition gear from the temple vendors. My conditions were ticking 100dmg in COF. i can’t remember the traits i had, think it was 0/30/30/0/10, i didn’t need power for conditions so i had really low damage against buildings and stuff. Crazy thing is when you have sigil of earth on sword + the bleed on crit trait + the high precision, when you use burst ability you can do 20+ stacks of bleed on 3 targets, its insane. This one time i took out 2 guys in wvwvw solo with this build lol. Anyway i recently found out what weakness does and so im rocking the mace for a bit killing off champion mobs solo.

Long story short, stack toughness and superior rune of earth to stay alive twice as long as the average joe gs warrior and maybe even output more damage than them in the time your alive.

If I’m using a shield at all, its with an axe. Usually run with dual axes though coupled with stacked toughness, like Sef describes above. Rarely even need to heal except from Boss frontals and the like.

For my groups current setup I run Mace and Shield and Axe and Mace for my second set. I’m specced 30 Defense, 30 Tactics, and 10 into Strength just for the vitality trait. Running a shout build with our guardian who is also running a shout build. With our two specs put together we’re able to not only keep mobs off of our 2 berserker specced thieves, but heal and boon them through the damage even if a mob decides to hit them. I run Shake it off, For Great Justice, and On My Mark(mostly just to let thieves enjoy destroying a target). It’s been a very fun build for me over all, and with our group comp we’ve been able to complete any explorable dungeon we’ve walked into with only one party wipe in COF path 2 during Magg’s bomb thing. As far as my gear goes, I’m running full cleric for armor and accessories with zerker weapons, and a toughness shield.

I’m not saying this is the best build ever, but after trying Knight and Zerker, this is the build I enjoy the most. And sorry for bad grammar and spelling, I’m writing this on my phone.

If you want to go tanky, go Guardian. I tried sword/shield and was shamed when I partied with a Mace/shield Guardian. He did everything effortlessly compared to me.

Warriors should be played for dps. Never go full tanky or support. Feel free to deviate and break the mold(GS is overrated), but remember that the warrior class is a strong dps class and should not stray from it.

Shields aren’t support tools, they’re defensive. You want a warhorn if you want a support offhand.

(See this thread for more on warhorns.)