Guild Wars 2

I’m trying to choose a new class to level up specifically for roaming in WvW. I will be mostly solo, and I am looking for a class that does not rely solely on hit-and-run (ie. thief /mes) or continual kiting.

Based on the above, warrior has piqued my interest. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the warrior class in WvW roaming?

For reference, I have been eyeing Axe/Shield and GS (or hammer) builds, but I am not set on anything in particular.

Biggest strengths of a warrior is that they have quite high natural sustain through healing signet. This paired with excelent mobility to kite and high base armor/hp is probably what makes a warrior one of the more stronger classes for solo roaming. They also have quite some condi clearing through cleansing ireand a great deal of CCs

Warriors biggest weakness is most likely soft cc (i.e cripple, chill, immobilizes). There are ways however to reduce this with dogged march/condi reduction runes and food. Though if you meet a condi class focused on stacking condi duration, you will still get moderately long soft ccs. Most adrenaline skills require you to physically hit someone to activate cleansing ire sobeing kited makes this hard. Not to forget that poison is a direct counter to healing signet and it is applied abundantly.

Also blinds can very problematic when you’re using hammer.

Well that completely depends on your weapons and utilities.
Traits: strong condi remove (cleansing ire), maybe +25% movement speed for extra mobility & the ability to clear immob with movement skills – which some builds have a lot of
With healing signet you have a very strong passive heal that is however very vulnerable to poison.
With axe you have a nice AA and awesome dmg on 1 click with your f1 but #2 and #3 are rubbish.
With sword power builds (sword/shield, gs – includes a combo) you have awesome mobility and good survivability combined with high dmg unless your enemy cleanses his immobs very fastly.
Sword/Sword LB has decent mobility with good overtime dmg and very good defense.
Mace MH is good for skull crack builds (maybe even without “unsuspecting foe” depending on what you like)

Overall warrior CAN have mobility, healing, invulnerability, condi cleanse and dmg in one build, they can have a very strong revive (only down state) with battle standard
HOWEVER there are some weaknesses of warriors:
- poison is a killer for healing signet
- very good enemies with enough dodges will dodge every single of your important skills (e.g. Sword f1 & #3 #5, hammer f1 & #4 & #5, axe f1, mace f1 & #5, LB #3 & #5, shield #4, bulls charge, anything else as well)
that is because warrior is probably the class with the most obvious animations – if u are not able to dodge them then they are really strong but if u have enough dodges and can dodge them then warriors will be no problem at all

other than that warriors can look pretty cool, so another +

(If you want the sword/shield gs build I mentioned above just ask )

one thing I forgot:
Good P/D thieves with a lot of dodges, poison and ranged attack are probably the hardest opponents for me.
However if u are not really low you should be able to run away or at least survive until you reach your respawn location
The problem with them being that the poison reduces your healing, their ranged attacks and dodges makes it easy for them to dodge your important skills and also your burst skills – so no condi removal.

Note: I had one fight against a good p/d thief today and I was able to survive, but not kill him – because of the condis I turned around and walked away after a minute. The condis may only have been a problem because atm I am too lazy to get myself Melandru runes and my buff food :P

It really depends on the type and build you are going on your warrior. However most warriors tend to share the inherent weakness of being weak to classes with high evasiveness and incombat mobility. That is because many warrior skills have long-winded animations that can potentially go very bad for them if they miss.

Warriors can struggle against classes like S/D and S/P thieves because of their shadowstepping, stealth and evasiveness. Mesmers because of their stealth, clones, teleports. Engineers because of their ability to kite and their sustainability/durability.

Depending on how you spec as well, Warriors can be susceptible to conditions. Cleansing Ire isn’t usually enough and on certain weapon sets it isn’t very reliable. Well-timed blinds are also very devastating for this class.

@ Logi – I watched some of your vids, and kitten, that is some good sustain while running zerker gear.

Which opens a broader question, are most roaming warriors running zerker? Are there other popular stat combos for roaming, or do you get all of the necessary defense & sustain out of traits?

Also, I notice that warriors don’t have a lot of swiftness, so do you tend to rely on Warrior’s Sprint to get around the maps?

Haven’t you heard? We have no weaknesses. All we have to do is equip Healing Signet and we faceroll every single class with any build.

BondageBill.4021:

Also, I notice that warriors don’t have a lot of swiftness, so do you tend to rely on Warrior’s Sprint to get around the maps?

What?! I have almost perma-swiftness with not much sacrifice. I’ve got +10% from traits, so just from Signet of Rage, that’s 33 sec of swiftness on a 48 sec timer (w/ Signet Mastery). I fill the blank w/ Lyssa Runes (‘nother 5.5 sec) and Balance Stance (8.8 sec). But I could also do it w/ either more + boon duration or hot swap a warhorn in and out.
Swiftness isn’t a problem; so with some care, not much need for Warrior Sprint.

I will very much agree that our greatest weakness is blind/evade classes. Thieves are the main culprit, but mesmers are also quite slippery as well. (Well a good one) nothing more annoying than getting blinded in the middle of earthshaker or Backbreaker animation. However once you get them locked down they go down pretty fast.

IMO mesmers are a warriors greatest weakness, even more so then thieves. At least thieves have to stand next to you to do damage. A good S/D thief can take on a good warrior though. The thief just has less room for error. As the poster above me said, once you lock ’m down, they die quickly.

A good necro with boon corruption and lots of chill/fear on +condi duration can also completely destroy you. In WvW, that is. Good necro’s are hard to find, however.

Warrior has no weaknesses at all if you gear it properly. Not even sheer numbers. You can run away from pretty much everything. Take a look at this.

BondageBill.4021:

I’m trying to choose a new class to level up specifically for roaming in WvW. I will be mostly solo, and I am looking for a class that does not rely solely on hit-and-run (ie. thief /mes) or continual kiting.

Based on the above, warrior has piqued my interest. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the warrior class in WvW roaming?

For reference, I have been eyeing Axe/Shield and GS (or hammer) builds, but I am not set on anything in particular.

the strength of the warrior lies in its native durability (heavy armor + high HP pool) and its ability to negate CC, while dishing out strong CC.

the weakness is that it’s strengths are all possible to counter with just a few conditions (poison, cripple, chill, immob) and even with dogged march and cleansing ire you are far from being “as safe” as you may think. a proper condition thief or ranger will give you a run for your money as you lack evades and mobile blocks (yes shield stance is great, until you realize the ranger you fought spent that time placing traps on you, or prepping the pet for bursts. Or a thief positioning for a backstab+HS combo).

As for weapons, drop the hammer and NEVER use it. Your best friend in roaming will most likely be Axe + mace and sword + shield. Sword you use exclusively for immobilize spam. Using berzerker stance, you can charge up enough adrenaline to do a flurry (lvl 3) + eviscerate (lvl 2) combo. This should give you some decent CC-burst combo.

As for armor/weapons.
Knights + zealot and givers weapons. Use sigils of ice and hydromancy on sword/shield. Sigil of Bloodlust and generousity/nullification on axe/mace.

Prysin.8542:

BondageBill.4021:

I’m trying to choose a new class to level up specifically for roaming in WvW. I will be mostly solo, and I am looking for a class that does not rely solely on hit-and-run (ie. thief /mes) or continual kiting.

Based on the above, warrior has piqued my interest. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the warrior class in WvW roaming?

For reference, I have been eyeing Axe/Shield and GS (or hammer) builds, but I am not set on anything in particular.

the strength of the warrior lies in its native durability (heavy armor + high HP pool) and its ability to negate CC, while dishing out strong CC.

the weakness is that it’s strengths are all possible to counter with just a few conditions (poison, cripple, chill, immob) and even with dogged march and cleansing ire you are far from being “as safe” as you may think. a proper condition thief or ranger will give you a run for your money as you lack evades and mobile blocks (yes shield stance is great, until you realize the ranger you fought spent that time placing traps on you, or prepping the pet for bursts. Or a thief positioning for a backstab+HS combo).

As for weapons, drop the hammer and NEVER use it. Your best friend in roaming will most likely be Axe + mace and sword + shield. Sword you use exclusively for immobilize spam. Using berzerker stance, you can charge up enough adrenaline to do a flurry (lvl 3) + eviscerate (lvl 2) combo. This should give you some decent CC-burst combo.

As for armor/weapons.
Knights + zealot and givers weapons. Use sigils of ice and hydromancy on sword/shield. Sigil of Bloodlust and generousity/nullification on axe/mace.

I hope you know that your decent cc-burst-combo relies on a utility skill that is on a 60 second cd? Other than that you will AA on axe am I right? because you will always hit with it, yeah
Rather go for GS and then either Axe or Sword in MH and Shield or Warhorn in your OH.
Then you have some nice dmg combined with mobility and survivability

From what I am gathering so far (and thanks for all the input btw), it seems like the main warrior strength is having high durability through innate stats, traits, passive healing and mobility.

This allows the warrior to gear for a happy medium between offense and defense. On one side of the spectrum, you have zerker thieves and Mesmers, who are true glass cannons. On the other you, have the standard (condition) bunker roaming builds. It seems the warrior can effectively split the two instead of going to one extreme or the other.

The weakness comes in when your opponent can counter the strengths listed in the first paragraph then. High poison uptime negates HS sustain. High evasion / blinding negates CC and traits that require a hit (Cleansing Ire). High soft-CC counters mobility.

Does that sound about right? If so, it actually sounds like a well balanced class from a design perspective.

seems all right but warr is not balanced
It isn’t as op any more but warrior is still one of the best classes out there for ANYTHING – PvE (high dmg while having decent survivability and nice help via banners), WvW (dmg, mobility,…) & sPvP (great AoE stuns and dmg)

warriors atm just have a lot of everything (maybe apart from condis, did never run that – and no stealth of course :P ) and they are probably even faster than thieves with the right builds…
the AoE and dmg from warriors is insane, e.g. they can simply Stun you for 3 seconds every 8 point something seconds. Of course you can evade that but you
a) have to be good enough to evade all that good stuff because if you are hit by one of the important skills you are most likely at 50% health if you are lucky (apart from extemely bunkery specs)
b) need a build that allows you to dodge that often. The only builds where I know for sure that they have these amounts of evades are thieves – p/d and s/d

Warrior solo roaming is more near the middle of the pack in terms of efficiency. Outside of superior mobility, warrior cannot reliably engage 1vX and cannot flip camps safely (ie, minimize the use of utilities due to scout blind spam and lack of compression).

Warrior small group roaming (or even 2 man roaming) is near the top. Warrior’s ability to train down a single target (or a group of targets) really shines when there are other players flanking and providing some support, allowing warrior to effectively scatter the enemy group.

ryokoalways.3450:

Warrior solo roaming is more near the middle of the pack in terms of efficiency. Outside of superior mobility, warrior cannot reliably engage 1vX and cannot flip camps safely (ie, minimize the use of utilities due to scout blind spam and lack of compression).

Warrior small group roaming (or even 2 man roaming) is near the top. Warrior’s ability to train down a single target (or a group of targets) really shines when there are other players flanking and providing some support, allowing warrior to effectively scatter the enemy group.

Interesting perspective. Since I do tend to roam solo more than in a group, I’ll definitely take that into consideration.

BondageBill.4021:

ryokoalways.3450:

Warrior solo roaming is more near the middle of the pack in terms of efficiency. Outside of superior mobility, warrior cannot reliably engage 1vX and cannot flip camps safely (ie, minimize the use of utilities due to scout blind spam and lack of compression).

Warrior small group roaming (or even 2 man roaming) is near the top. Warrior’s ability to train down a single target (or a group of targets) really shines when there are other players flanking and providing some support, allowing warrior to effectively scatter the enemy group.

Interesting perspective. Since I do tend to roam solo more than in a group, I’ll definitely take that into consideration.

Warriors can solo camps pretty easy. Depends on your build. Full zerkers take a lot of damage from guards though. Warriors with balanced builds do not.

Warriors strength are basically their mobility. The down side of that is a mobility spec is not the best for 1vx, but its good at running away. You are sort of forced into ultra mobility builds as a warrior because you dont have steath or blinks or teleports. Which are much better all around than just mobility.

You might wanna have a look at this :

http://i.imgur.com/gPc5cN3.jpg

Those stats are achieved all by myself. With bloodlust and 10ish might stacks.
I don’t see any weakness. Healing signet. Endure Pain, stability and zerker stance. Ridiculous damage mitigation through 1.9k toughness and 22k hp. You have the best cleansing in the game (I’m running lyssa), greatsword for mobility and damage, longbow for immobilize, blind, might and damage (arcing arrow crits for 9/10k with this spec) and more RELIABLE cleansing from cleansing ire, as well as infinite dodges (from build momentum). Also running mobile strikes just in cases I’m running from a zerg. The only weakness to this would be if you’re deliberately trying to fight a 1v10, you might not win it.

Those stats are insane.

Dat power and crit damage.

If I were to attempt that on my thief or ele i’d have 11k hps and 900 toughness and no condition cleansing skills.

Just where is the downside to this build?

KarsaiB.9475:

You might wanna have a look at this :

http://i.imgur.com/gPc5cN3.jpg

Those stats are achieved all by myself. With bloodlust and 10ish might stacks.
I don’t see any weakness. Healing signet. Endure Pain, stability and zerker stance. Ridiculous damage mitigation through 1.9k toughness and 22k hp. You have the best cleansing in the game (I’m running lyssa), greatsword for mobility and damage, longbow for immobilize, blind, might and damage (arcing arrow crits for 9/10k with this spec) and more RELIABLE cleansing from cleansing ire, as well as infinite dodges (from build momentum). Also running mobile strikes just in cases I’m running from a zerg. The only weakness to this would be if you’re deliberately trying to fight a 1v10, you might not win it.

looks ok my only concern is for solo roaming GS alone without bulls charge isn’t enough mobility to run away. So yeah if you get yourself into an egagment you can’t win chances are you can’t disengage.

phaeris.7604:

Those stats are insane.

Dat power and crit damage.

If I were to attempt that on my thief or ele i’d have 11k hps and 900 toughness and no condition cleansing skills.

Just where is the downside to this build?

This is kinda a troll pic he has bloodlust from wvw and also never stated how many stacks of might he has. Those stats are not his own.

And now to dissecting the warrior profession when roaming

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMUQNAT8XjIVB2JWGWs2Bi1DCFoBxeYI+zIXBUdyI2lK-j0CBYLCyEEw0yAEGQZPFRjtsqIas6aY6SLqW5Cw6LY+ELqWKgIGGB-w

Right, this is a ranger build i tried recently. Stat wise, it can get close to that warrior build posted above, except for defense and cleansing.
You bring GS + LB for warrior roaming, well, i posted a power build for rangers, it is by far not the most efficient way to kill things 1v1, but it sure does the trick. The warrior LB is horrible for roaming, and i will now tell you why; it is slow!!!!!. The projectiles are taking ages to reach the targets. They are slower then the ranger longbow, and even though the ranger LB projectile speed was buffed, it still has issues hitting moving targets at max range.
The second problem of the LB is that it’s effective range isn’t 1200, but rather 600. Forcing the warrior to stay close, yet too far from the enemy to capitalize on it’s heavy melee damage. A warrior is most scary close up. Once you get into a ranged contest, they are ridiculously weak. Apart from killshot there is nothing at all that ever puts pressure on the enemy, simply because how the weapons work.
This leads us to the point where we have to look at the other warrior roaming setups that iv’e seen so far. The warrior are built around bursts, but because of it’s innate mechanics. While it has very strong and potent bursts, they need to be set up.
Take the 100b. unless you immob/stun the enemy, they can just walk away from it before you even get to deal proper damage with it, instead you waste the skill. Eviscerate, while being a bit more hard to spot, can be expected to be used once you get within 45-60% of your HP. And once you know that, you also know not to let the warrior get too close to you before you heal up.
Combustive Shot are almost exclusively used to get the bonus from cleansing ire. However if you just step outside the field and/or move around a bit, that trait+weapon combo gets very ineffective, as you simply waste alot of adren to cleanse maybe 2-3 condies.
The skullcrack + hammer builds, are annoying, but just like the LB and GS, they are predictable. You know the warrior will chain it as best as possible, and you can therefore plan how/when to use stunbreakers. Stability also screws over that build.

Finally, what makes warriors so weak 1v1, is because their skill rotations are incredibly transparent, not just the animations, but the skills and how they are normally chained.
The warrior will in 99% of cases use their weapons in a fashion that ends up like this:
Close gap-CC-burst-CC-burst-CC-burst and this CC-burst combo will go on until the enemy breaks free or dies. Knowing this makes the warrior easy to predict.

To show you what makes other professions better at 1v1, you got to look at their skill rotations.
Rangers are easy to predict, or so you’d think, they will always use the AA extensively, however that only applies offensively. Their bursts however comes out of nowhere with little telegraphing as their innate DPS is very high so their bursts doesn’t seem to do that much damage. Defensively, rangers are another problem entirely. Take the LB.
If you fight an LB user, you will always get hit by the Point Blank Shot and Hunters Shot sooner or later. These are offensive-defensive skills. Allowing the ranger to deal damage while gaining some form of defense. The sword and offhand attacks has evades and pulls, usually this is mixed in with some soft CC and/or poison. And poison is the warriors worst enemy and the ranger has loads of it. The GS has massive bursts, much much higher then any other ranger weapon, yet, the weapon itself is almost completely geared towards defense.
The ability to mix in a random and semi reliable AI to the mix also adds in a element X.
What makes rangers a pain to deal with in duels is their constant damage. The warrior can do 2-3 bursts dealing 20-30k damage total. But those burst have a CD, usually between 10-20 seconds. The ranger just does constant 2-3k hits once a second. So while the rangers burst may only hit 8-12k, it doesn’t really need the burst, as the DPS is a constant burst. Constant damage is harder to avoid and puts more pressure. If you dodge one shot worth 3k, well, it sucks, but once your dodge roll is over you’ll get hit for another 3k so i wont have to worry. I do not need to set up the strike unlike a warrior. My rangers bursts can be wasted however i like it to be, it is there just to supplement my DPS, not sustain my DPS and that is a crucial factor.

This concept of high, constant DPS also applies to the other top roaming professions. Mesmers, thieves, eles, engineers. They all do constant high damage, or repetitive bursts. This applies pressure, on a whole other level.

Downside of the build I’m running ? Absolutely none. People that don’t admit warrior is a monstrosity are either blind/bad or lying. You’re a monster 1v1 (count dodges before using your skills like a braindead tard) as well as in group fights, and can run away from a zerg, turn around and kill the fast squishies that chase you or just peace the kitten out and reset. Hf.

The 2 posts above are really funny btw.

Those stats are all by myself. 10 stacks of might, ish, don’t remember how much specifically. Just get in combat, proc battle sigil, pop signet of rage and swap twice for another battle sigil proc, there you have it.
This is what happens if a guardian uses empower to buff me on top (note that when I realised how much power I had and screenshotted this, I had already dropped a few stacks so 25 might is even higher) :

http://i.imgur.com/WHuwzEy.jpg

Yes, that’s right. 4.4k power.

Take bullscharge over zerker stance ? Ye lol, you lost all credibility.

About the bloodlust from wvw, I’m on deso vs 2 french servers and we’re getting beaten badly. The link in this post is without this wvw bloodlust.

Next.

Get into an engagement you can’t win ? Well, if you’re the kind of guy that uses rush and whirlwind from close range without thinking about your follow up ya, and you deserve to die coz you suck. If you’re out of combat, you can swap to sword and warhorn at will, so mobility is no problem at all. And in combat, longbow is far superior to anything else coz of the might buffing, the dodges you get back on the f1 skill and the RELIABLE cleanse, as well as ridiculous aoe burst damage from arcing arrow. Also, the burning and the bleeds from pindown are painful coz of the might.

About the projectiles speed from longbow… Have you ever gotten pin-downed ? It’s close to instant. And longbow damage is ridiculous. Arcing arrow crits for 8k/9k.

Also, longbow 2 from close range with the 3 shots hitting is about 1k each so 3k with 2sec of burning each so 6 seconds burning, on a 6 seconds cooldown. Terrible damage, right ? Not even mentionning reckless dodge that crits for 3k, coupled with very high access to dodges via building momentum + longbow f1 skill.
You also just wrote “take 100b, unless you immob your target […]”. Do you even know the skills of longbow ? Pindown, ranged immoblise that lasts 3 seconds.

Won’t bother reading the rest of the post, just glimpsed “what makes warrior so weak 1v1” and I think it’s enough.
Watch this video, might be helpful :

Cheers.

KarsaiB.9475:

Downside of the build I’m running ? Absolutely none. People that don’t admit warrior is a monstrosity are either blind/bad or lying. You’re a monster 1v1 (count dodges before using your skills like a braindead tard) as well as in group fights, and can run away from a zerg, turn around and kill the fast squishies that chase you or just peace the kitten out and reset. Hf.

The 2 posts above are really funny btw.

Those stats are all by myself. 10 stacks of might, ish, don’t remember how much specifically. Just get in combat, proc battle sigil, pop signet of rage and swap twice for another battle sigil proc, there you have it.
This is what happens if a guardian uses empower to buff me on top (note that when I realised how much power I had and screenshotted this, I had already dropped a few stacks so 25 might is even higher) :

http://i.imgur.com/WHuwzEy.jpg

Yes, that’s right. 4.4k power.

Take bullscharge over zerker stance ? Ye lol, you lost all credibility.

About the bloodlust from wvw, I’m on deso vs 2 french servers and we’re getting beaten badly. The link in this post is without this wvw bloodlust.

Next.

Get into an engagement you can’t win ? Well, if you’re the kind of guy that uses rush and whirlwind from close range without thinking about your follow up ya, and you deserve to die coz you suck. If you’re out of combat, you can swap to sword and warhorn at will, so mobility is no problem at all. And in combat, longbow is far superior to anything else coz of the might buffing, the dodges you get back on the f1 skill and the RELIABLE cleanse, as well as ridiculous aoe burst damage from arcing arrow. Also, the burning and the bleeds from pindown are painful coz of the might.

About the projectiles speed from longbow… Have you ever gotten pin-downed ? It’s close to instant. And longbow damage is ridiculous. Arcing arrow crits for 8k/9k.

Also, longbow 2 from close range with the 3 shots hitting is about 1k each so 3k with 2sec of burning each so 6 seconds burning, on a 6 seconds cooldown. Terrible damage, right ? Not even mentionning reckless dodge that crits for 3k, coupled with very high access to dodges via building momentum + longbow f1 skill.
You also just wrote “take 100b, unless you immob your target […]”. Do you even know the skills of longbow ? Pindown, ranged immoblise that lasts 3 seconds.

Won’t bother reading the rest of the post, just glimpsed “what makes warrior so weak 1v1” and I think it’s enough.
Watch this video, might be helpful :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdGhZv-mSH4

Cheers.

seems you are on the same server as me, ufortunately, that means you can actually get to see what it mean. If you won’t bother reading, i won’t bother to elaborate further upon the issue. Warriors are ezmode, both playing and killing em.

BondageBill.4021:

From what I am gathering so far (and thanks for all the input btw), it seems like the main warrior strength is having high durability through innate stats, traits, passive healing and mobility.

This allows the warrior to gear for a happy medium between offense and defense. On one side of the spectrum, you have zerker thieves and Mesmers, who are true glass cannons. On the other you, have the standard (condition) bunker roaming builds. It seems the warrior can effectively split the two instead of going to one extreme or the other.

The weakness comes in when your opponent can counter the strengths listed in the first paragraph then. High poison uptime negates HS sustain. High evasion / blinding negates CC and traits that require a hit (Cleansing Ire). High soft-CC counters mobility.

Does that sound about right? If so, it actually sounds like a well balanced class from a design perspective.

I think you nailed it here. I mostly play warrior in WvW solo/duo roaming. My warrior is all about the look ^^ I pick a weapon set simply because its the look I want and can easily make an effective and fun build for it. Being able to radically change your build from month to month keeps the play fresh. Sadly I have not found this flexibility with other classes as there seems to be only a few strong builds with very specific setups.

I don’t get why people hate on warriors and describe the play style as ezmode. It’s THE hack-n-slash class of the game. That’s why the attacks are telegraphed the way they are. Of course our skill rotations are pretty easy to see as stated already. We’re supposed to beat others into a pulp. We cc, burst, rinse and repeat. So what? All other classes have a niche play style that makes them just as easy to typecast as well.

Things may not be perfect at present, but it’s not as out-of-balance as people preach it to be. Pro warriors can still get face rolled by good players any day. Don’t listen to the haters OP.

@splendid
Yes any warrior can get facerolled by any profession any day (irony being that looking over this thread, everyone just silently accepts that rangers are the worst enemy a warrior can face as it brings Soft + hard CC, poison spam, evades and decent sustain all in one build).

Thing is, usually one get two or maybe three shiny toys with each profession.
Thieves got high mobility and perma stealth
Mesmers got sustain through distractions, and incredible utilities
Engineers got a “do it all” package, allowing it to do lots of things at once, but at about 80% capacity of any other spec.
Necros got amazing condition spammage and a huuuuge healthpool.
Guardians got very strong burst healing, loads of group support and ok AOE cleave damage
Elementalists got superior AOE coverage and strong group support
Rangers got the single longest range in game (1800 due to LB bug), second best combo field variety in game (multiple fire, multiple poison, ice, water, etheral), and good balance between sustain and offense (being able to take either to extreme levels)

And then there is warrriors
Incredible sustain, second best passive healing in game (only beaten by rangers if they spec heavily for it), a truckload of group utilities, massive healthpool, loads of immunities, superior condition cleansing, superior mobility, loads of hard and soft CC (albeit mostly single target with the exception of a few skills) and last but not least, no matter what the build, the warrior will always be upper-tier DPS, even when bunkering down.

There is only ONE thing that warriors are bad at, and that is combo fields. And while combo fields do give some practical buffs, they are by no means a “make or break” function as long as you can give yourself the same buffs as the field blasting does, which in the case of the warrior, it can.

The warrior has only one natural enemy. And that is a BM Condition Bunker Ranger with evasion build and CC pets. Mesmers may do well, but if the player behind the warrior is familiar with mesmer mechanics, the mesmer will most likely run or die.
Thieves are at the mercy of player skill and target awareness.

There is no real downside to warriors other then that 2 professions, of which both is hated (for various reasons), can kill it because they can spam enough poison to destroy HS.
Most other professions, be it rangers, thieves, eles or guards. Which have much much lower DPS and lower effective HP (armor+healing+HP pool) then the warrior can get by with 1/3rd the passive heal and the same active heal.
Earlier it was proposed to nerf healing signet passive by 30%. That is too much, 20% nerf to healing power scaling is more then enough. Naturally the active must get bufffed.

The issue pertaining to the healing signet, AS IS, is that you do not need to use it except for some very rare occasions. Thus the warrior can, with the HS alone get 400-650 HPS healing AND 2% crit chance because of traits, and the fact that you dont ever pop HS.

Now 2% crit chance is not much, however the fact that you get so many benefits from equipping a passive signet heal and spend 20 points into a traitline is ridiculus.

Compare with rangers, they gotta spend 30 points to make the signets WORK. Granted Ranger signets do have some very strong effects when traited.

The warrior has pretty much the best from every profession, all it really need is a smoke field and portals. Then we don’t need any other profession ingame except if you want to troll someone with a bearbow ranger

it had very close to no weaknesses at all before the 3ish nerfs (longbow nerfed twice, hammer nerfed iirc) it received recently. it’s on track to get another nerf to healing signet…and probably some other nerfs (because of how strong it is despite getting 3 nerfs in 3 patches). we’ll see if it has any weaknesses then…the popular opinion is it will still be OP.

Looks like everybody runs longbow and greatsword….

Gamgee.8612:

Looks like everybody runs longbow and greatsword….

I run GS/hammer, axe/Sh+GS, Sw/Sh+GS, and Sw/Sh + GS. I’ve been meaning to buy a zerker LB so i can play around with GS/LB tho

LB/GS is the shiz. I use this build lately with great success.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQJARTjcOxwFPuQMxBE0DNsK2CjijAIUKmD7A-jEyAYrARhAIRQJvioxWFLiGriBTfSEV7NKiWtUA6JMC-w

Strengths:
easy might stacking
pin down+HB combo
easy condi removal w/ Combustive shot and lyssa
arcing arrow crits like a beast
3 stun breakers, 2 endure pains
good armor

Weaknesses:
blinds and evades from good players
enemies with strong condi reduction/removal will break your pin down + x combos
base health

LB/GS is a nice little build, it isn’t without weaknesses however ... and is probably going to be less effective come the next patch.

@killahmayne

Can’t watch your video cuz of copyright bs. Would like to watch it if you re-upload without music or something.

SplendidDust of AncientSuns.8453:

@killahmayne

Can’t watch your video cuz of copyright bs. Would like to watch it if you re-upload without music or something.

You might be able to if you change your proxy to a different server in a different country. You can do it through your internet options.

So I can’t watch it on my phone (was at work) but it plays fine on my pc. Nice work there. LB is beast.