Guild Wars 2

I don’t WvWvW or sPvP. I repeat. I don’t WvWvW or sPvP. This is strictly a PvE build. I don’t know how it performs outside of that.

Hello! When I’m running instances I actually get a lot of tells from people about my build. So, I thought I’d post it on the forums for ease of access and for others opinions! I’ve ran this build for quite some time and I think it’s quite flexible for the needs in groups. It’s a tanking/support build that can actually bring a good amount of dps.

http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/warrior#11|2|60|220|65|919|246|20|2366|1496|0|0|0|0|0|20|1895|1081|0|30|1513|1510|2371|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|28038|28016|53498|53498|53498|53498|53498|21031|48788|48788|48788|48788|48788|

Armor + Weapons

For armor, I’m 2/6 Knights and 4/6 Soldiers with Solider Runes and weapons – excluding my rifle, which is POW/CON/PREC (Which has Rune of Earth on it) with either Rune of Blood or Rune of Strength. If you can pack a lot of Onomberry Pie, I find Rune of Strength to be more useful. With this setup, I can usually keep a high stack of might to help bring the DPS a tanking build usually can’t bring. If not, Rune of Blood can help give you the extra edge in survivalbility.

Why Axe + Sword?

Honestly? I grew tired of greatsword and wanted something new. I was messing around with things and I found Axe and Sword very fun and capable. Axes give you good AA damage, Whirling Axe (Whirl Combo Finisher) and Throw Axe (100% Physical Projectile Finisher) while sword offhand gives you Impale (Another 100% Physical Projectile Finisher), which can bring good damage when combo’d up with Rip + Eviscerate , and Riposte, which is a block for recovery time and can also be used to gain adrenaline. And, we can’t forget Eviscerate, bringing good damage and a Leap finisher.

Finishers and Combos

This is where I think my spec kind of shines. When tanking, you have 2 Physical Projectile, 2 Blast (From banner drop and #5) and 1 Charge finisher. I think a lot of people in PvE forget about setting up for combos, or just let them go by naturally. When, really, and this may seem silly, I save my Eviscerate when I see someone tossing down Chaos or Water fields. And you can’t forget that Adrenal Health gives you a pretty good heal when at 3 stacks of adrenaline.

So, if I have an Elementalist and/or Mesmer in my group – I can bunker with 3/3 Adrenaline and when I see Chaos Storm or some Water fields out, I can give myself Chaos Armor for promised boons while tanking or give myself some heals from Physical Projectile and Leap finishers giving Healing.

Making Things Dead

Pre-combat, I usually setup my traits for the boss fight. It usually takes me 2 seconds to swap out a few traits / weapons. Boss is condition heavy or requires lots of evading? Run Quick Breathing and use Axe + Warhorn. Boss is a softgut and hits like baby tantrums? Swap to Lung Capacity or Empowered and “Bring da pain!” Chris Redfield with Axe and Sword. Got someone bringing 100% upkeep on Regen? Swap to shout heals and bring the extra healing boost.

For my offweapon, I found it pretty well to keep a range weapon. Sometimes I swap to Axe + Shield / Axe + Sword for two blocks and a stun, if I’m going to be taking a lot of damage and don’t mind being melee exclusive. But, generally, I run rifle as my secondary weapon.

There you are! I find this build very suitable for a lot of the PuGs and groups I run. I find this build extremely helpful in PuGs, seeing that it brings to the table a lot of support that common PuGs don’t want to. Hope this helps someone and if you think something may be better in this build, don’t be shy. I’d like to hear others opinions on the build! I’ve actually never written a forum post about my builds in all of MMO history, so know that as well xD.

Awesome, this helped me out with my warrior!Q

I’ve leveled 1-70 with this spec and I can’t imagine using anything else. It works great!