Guild Wars 2

Hi everyone,

though I have plenty of fun with my guardian and always feel “needed” in dungeon-groups with my defensive buffs, I sometimes just wish to have a “raw damage machine” and want to feel “needed” with aggressive buffs and … well, damage. Also, I am a huge fan of the rifle, don’t like my engineer too much anymore and have the crazy idea in mind about a human warrior, t3 armor and (perhaps some time in the future) the legendary rifle “predator”… :-))

I read a lot in these forums and hesitate now. Nearly all topics are about the warrior being in need of a buff, being bad at WvW or too squishy. So far I always thought, warriors are a fun class and important for group-play, but now I think, if something has happened, so that this class is no good idea to roll nowadays?

To let you know: I mainly do PVE (dungeons) and WvW, nearly no sPVP. Would you think, to roll a warrior would be a good idea for me or is it really this bad, like a lot of topics seem to state?

PS: Please excuse my bad English.

If you plan on not doing sPvP then the warrior is an excellent class. We’re the best profession in pve. And we’re definitely near the top in WvW.

Roll a warrior if you want to play underdog in WvW (not near the top) or tPvP. Roll a warrior if you want a PvE farming machine (basically, it is your first character).

I have both an 80 Warrior and an 80 Guardian (among others). There is absolutely no way that I would compare the two equal in PvE dungeons…Hint, Guardians can be more offensively focused too (build for boons) and still do all those group support/defensive as all can be things too. Warriors are not offensive powerhouses in comparison to Protection boon/Aegis boon mitigation.

Psilo.3764:

If you plan on not doing sPvP then the warrior is an excellent class. We’re the best profession in pve. And we’re definitely near the top in WvW.

near the top huh is that a joke?

Artaz.3819:

I have both an 80 Warrior and an 80 Guardian (among others). There is absolutely no way that I would compare the two equal in PvE dungeons…Hint, Guardians can be more offensively focused too (build for boons) and still do all those group support/defensive as all can be things too. Warriors are not offensive powerhouses in comparison to Protection boon/Aegis boon mitigation.

If you’re not destroying dungeons faster with your warrior, you’re doing it wrong.

Actually in high end pve/fractals warrior is horrible due to the fact = standing still or in melee = DEATH.

In high end PvE, enemies do not stand still and they have melee death AOEs that instantly kill anyone in them.

Warrior is the best for EASYpeezyPVEcontent.

Nah, its just most classes will sit auto attack at 1200 range. if a warrior did this with rifle he wouldnt die either. most warriors actually get off their butt though and do damage, and take risk. other people , dont because there is barley a reward if they do that. we can be lazy too, just dont chooose too.

Can’t say I’ve had a problem in “high end PvE”.

Sil.4560:

Can’t say I’ve had a problem in “high end PvE”.

Fractal 30+?
Twilight Arbor?
Cadecauses Manor?
COE?

Warrior is fine in “high end PvE”, it’s just getting harder, because you have to learn how to dodge. No more CoF facetank kitten. It’s all about movement/dodging later on (talking about fractals 40+).
In tPvP however, warriors (or at least I) suck hard. Too many conditions, too few gapclosing options. If I can’t hold on to the enemies, they will kite me to death (talking about going melee ofc)
In WvW however, you have a lot of “babysitters” around you (e.g. an ele or guardian cleaning your conditions, healing you). This makes it way much easier than fighting 1 on 1; being able to concentrate on damage and cc (which are the strong features of a warrior) you could say he’s viable in WvW.
It’s actually sad, but when it comes down to PvP, you really rely on others, because a warrior has no good access to protection or other defensive boons, gapclosers are mitigated by crippling and to clean conditions you have to spec for it.

Despite all this stuff, playing a warrior is one hell of a fun.

Warriors in WvW are good at being pretty much exactly what they sound like. They’re a soldier-ey class that works well with groups, where you’re typically granting fury, might, and swiftness as far as actual boons go, or the bonus of whatever banner(s) you’re using. Some minor heals, and a decent amount of area condition removal/conversion if you take soldier’s runes (for shout builds) and/or a traited warhorn. The thing is, when you’re doing this your influence is spread out across a lot of people – five at a time, to be exact. It’s not like ‘yeah, I’m awesome, look what I can do!’ and so it really depends whether you want to be useful, or be seen being useful. I don’t mean that in a judgemental sense, only that if you want/expect to be awe-inspiring, group buffs would probably put you to sleep.

Alternatively, you can also provide quite a lot of crowd-control abilities if you build that way. This is another thing which works best if you place damage secondary to survivability, and don’t mind being with a group. You basically exist to see the enemy doing things, and convince them that this is bad and they should stop. Maybe you want to ‘death from above’ them off a door, or slap them silly when they’re trying to res or finish someone, or just generally disrupt their ability to exercise free-will so your allies have an easier time of dealing with them. Arguably the most visible thing you can do short of being a commander… unless you do that at the same time… but you won’t be seeing huge numbers flash across your screen a lot.

I you do want to see large damage numbers on your screen and be the one directly killing people instead of getting them killed, you can actually prove to be decent long(ish) range fire support. You won’t hit out as far as some other things, but your attacks are faster-moving than things like grenades, and deal nice single-target damage (rifle) or AOE (longbow). You can couple this with group buffing as well to varying extents, and alternate to melee when it looks appropriate. Blast finishers everywhere.

Where they seem to fall short is basically… anything resembling e-sports. Okay, to be fair, that’s what I see everyone else saying, and I tend to defer to it since I don’t use my warrior for that style of play often. I basically expected what I got, and am happy to use it like a generic infantry class.

As far as my actual experience goes, in the short times I tried solo WvW play as a warrior, what I found was that it basically works like a predatory animal might. You spend more time moving around and selecting targets, and running from herds of enraged grazing animals hydralisks, than actually fighting. I’d go as far as to call it hunting instead, because you need to catch and kill a thing quickly or realize it’s not working (or wouldn’t work) and flee while you can.

For me that was… alternately a refreshing change of pace, or boring. It really depends on luck a lot of the time (again with the hunting analogy) that you happen to find suitable prey or not. And this is either lost randoms, players crossing ground to get somewhere after spawning, or others doing what you are. It’s not completely impossible as it’s sometimes made out to be, but it’s very black and white. Either you win quickly, lose quickly, or run quickly – with a few amusing stand-offs here and there as you do randomly come across a player who is both hard to kill and having a hard time killing you.

I can certainly see why a lot of people dislike it, because while you can get extremely mobile in a cross-country sense, to the point it would make anything else envious, your mobility is more oriented to starting a fight that didn’t want to happen, or fleeing before someone can do the same to you. It’s much less like a thief (or various other things), which is mobile and evasive within combat, but not as fast to cover ground in general. That tends to contribute to combat itself being of a limited(er) duration, which may bore you. Another thing I should mention is that, for the sake of this mobility, you do end up somewhat limited in build choices. Naturally not everything sends you hurtling forward at an alarming pace.

There are those who do it successfully though, so clearly it appeals to some. I don’t hate it, but would get bored of it eventually. On the other hand, I can pick a commander I think isn’t a moron, and follow them around for ages just buffing the people around me, dragging them back to the world of the living when nobody else can sit in the AOE long enough, en-speedening the swiftness deprived classes, and so on. I do of course fight things in the process, but I’m okay with my priority being to allies.

…and yes, in PvE there’s not really a downside. Some things do trouble it more than my other characters, but not really to the point of impossibility, and it’s more likely to be the other way around most of the time.

Sil.4560:

Artaz.3819:

I have both an 80 Warrior and an 80 Guardian (among others). There is absolutely no way that I would compare the two equal in PvE dungeons…Hint, Guardians can be more offensively focused too (build for boons) and still do all those group support/defensive as all can be things too. Warriors are not offensive powerhouses in comparison to Protection boon/Aegis boon mitigation.

If you’re not destroying dungeons faster with your warrior, you’re doing it wrong.

No issues running dungeons with a Warrior but it is far easier for my Warrior when a Guardian is along…that tells you something. I honestly don’t think any PvE content is all that hard in this game; it’s the deadweight or inexperience with the boss mechanics in your group that makes it hard.

Put it another way, Guardian allows you to make mistakes (large ones) and face-tank with a few button pushes here and there for whoops moments. Warrior-style actually requires you to just pay more attention for a tradeoff of better burst DPS output and as a result shorten the time of some fights.

Psilo.3764:

If you plan on not doing sPvP then the warrior is an excellent class. We’re the best profession in pve. And we’re definitely near the top in WvW.

Completely /disagree and could not do so any more /disagree because I got silenced temporarily for flooding the server. sPvP is correct. PvE is pretty good. WvW? What are you a 1-10KDR ratio GS warrior? I mean sure you can do well if you’re… heh, in a zerg. Try soloing stuff that knows how to kite you and you’ll get wrecked.

In general, you should stick away from broken classes unless you wish to be an “underdog” as stated above. Other than GS, which by the way is so redundant and overused that I heard it helped create a portion of Earth’s vast oceans, there is not very many valid build options left unless you run lysa or condi’s. Condi’s are on the very bad side of things, however.

Daecollo.9578:

Fractal 30+?
Twilight Arbor?
Cadecauses Manor?
COE?

Those aren’t really hard, once you know how to do them. <_>

Artaz.3819:

Put it another way, Guardian allows you to make mistakes (large ones) and face-tank with a few button pushes here and there for whoops moments. Warrior-style actually requires you to just pay more attention for a tradeoff of better burst DPS output and as a result shorten the time of some fights.

I like to know how to survive without the aid of a “try 2 die” class with me. Like you said, timing and attention. I suppose they’re handy if you plan for them with you, but I don’t need them by any means. =)