Guild Wars 2

All right, I know the subject is somewhat controversial at the moment, and I recognize that in some respects, warriors are less suited to tanking than guardians.

With that being said; I love warrior, and I’m trying my darndest to make a tanking build work. I’m going with a classic shout build: 30 in defense, 30 in tactics, and 10 in strength (in order to get the great fortitude trait.) I go with dogged march, shield master, and endure pain; and then empowered, lung capacity, and vigorous shouts.

I’ve got my warrior slotted up with the karma items from orr (all power/toughness/vitality), with a full set of soldier runes. Then, I’ve got all my jewel slots filled with exotic sentinel jewelry, in addition to the soldier’s spineguard and Thackeray crest.

My mace and shield are currently slotted with azurite orbs (which likely needs to change, but eh). I like to use the mango pie for dungeons, as it gives +70 vitality and regeneration comparable to what the guardian gets from their virtue. I like to use healing surge for my healing skill, since I don’t need mending for condition removal (due to the soldier runes) and experience has taught me that the healing signet isn’t especially useful for dungeons.

Now, with all -that- being said, I seem to have something of a hard time keeping aggro/hate off of my party members, or even other players in PVE. I’m not entirely certain what it is I’m doing wrong. My main strategy is to try and hit as many people with the shouts as possible (to generate hate via healing) while mixing in stuns/dazes/the small aoe afforded by the mace-thwack-attack. What kind of strategies do you all use to keep hate off of your party members? Is there something I should change? At some point I’m going to swap out to full sentinel gear, which should help with survivability, but I’m mostly worried about keeping hate off of my party members. This was a major issue in the Molten Core dungeon (all of those knockbacks/knockdowns/stuns really made it hard to do much effectively. Maybe include balanced stance instead of “On My Mark?”)

Warriors can’t tank. Mace is the lowest damage weapon we have. Thats why you can’t hold aggro. You went full defensive and your damage is pathetic. Your not helping your party by at all when you don’t do damage. If Guild Wars had a DD class like in other games where you have Tanks, DDs, Mages, Healers. Warrior is the DD class. Your not designed to tank. If you want to tank roll a guardian.

You’re going to need to use the longbow if you want to keep aggro on you for aoe. As for the weapon you may want to use a sword than mace since sword can hit multiple targets and immobilize them. They’ll start focusing on you more when you keep doing that and use Signet of Fury. So when you use your aoe attack for long bow or sword. You can switch to either weapon and activate Signet of Fury to have full adrenaline again.

Things I have noticed in dungeons: (just remember they could be wrong.)
Sometimes it seems whoever the boss “sees” first they will mainly stick to them.
Sometimes it seems whoever stays “in their face” the most they will attack
Sometimes it seems that high toughness or vitality, will prompt the boss to attack that person over others. Though it depends on vicinity.
I’ve just made these observations over many dungeon and fractal runs.

I’ve thought about using longbow as a weapon of choice, yeah. The problem is (and this is again from experience, but I may just be doing it wrong) I notice a rather stark decrease in my survivability when I switch to my longbow. That does make me wonder, though, if switching the 10 trait points I have in power so I can get the trait that gives you adrenaline on shout use…That could help keep the longbow fire field up.

I had thought about using sword before (and I’ve been experimenting with axe some, too). But wouldn’t you need to stack condition damage for the bleeding from the sword to be effective? The main reason I use mace, honestly, is because it can apply weakness to multiple foes. Those glancing blows can really soften the damage you take, though I suppose it’s a moot point if the enemies aren’t attacking you. XD

I’ll think about adding in signet of fury…Might be worth cycling out a shout for, we’ll see. Thanks for the tips so far! Hopefully the increase in vitality I’ll get from switching to sentinel gear will help keep threat. Any more tips?

Also, I don’t agree with the notion that warriors aren’t designed to, or can’t tank. Now, I may be a bit crazy (I loved deathknight tanking before there was actually an established tanking talent line, etc) but I love tanking, and I love warrior. I don’t think tanking is impossible, I think you just need a bit more out-of-the-box-thinking to warrior tank.

Sword does seem like it would have its tanking merits, though (being able to immobilize a small group of enemies could be incredibly helpful) but I wonder if axe might be a bit more effective without stacking condition damage. Thoughts?

As far as I’m aware healing doesn’t work that way in this game. Healing does not have threat modifiers. The threat modifiers in this game are not based of of hate. They are internal to the mobs coding. Some mobs go after ranged classes. Becasue they are coded that way for whatever the reason they will attack the farthest away players. Other Factors include proximity to the mob. Generally the closest player to the mob it will attack that player. Has nothing to do with hate on healing. Other threat modifiers are simple what player has the highest armor. The mob will go after what has the highest overall toughness and armor regardless if that player can tank or not. The other threat modifiers are damage based. From my experience the most comon threat modifiers are proximity and armor. But If somone in the party is doing a lot of damage the mob can turn on them and since there are no threat modifiers to warriors skills you wont be able to grab aggro back untill that players runs away or stops attacking.

So this whole notion you have about what a warrior is designed to do and what it can or cannot do needs some explaining. Warrior mainly doesn’t have the healing to take sustained damage thats one thing. You can just face tank Bosses. like that If you make a mistake and run out of heals to negate damage you end up having to disengage thus you lose the aggro. That is what makes guardians superior becasue of all the heals they have and protection.

Edit: In most cases throughout this game there is no need for tanking or what people consider tanking. A lot of mobs in this game are intended to be ranged and kited, while dodging to negate damage. These are not things you want to melee or face tank you will get destroyed.

no aggro because of mace/shield.. Either you use Sword/shield for the AoE immobilize of Flurry, or use hammer for melee. Keeping mobs ‘down’ with a hammer is good damage mitigation, and crippling/immobilizing mobs makes them angry at you. If you have a guardian in the group, though, the mobs will more often pick the guardian over you.

Aah, I didn’t realize healing had no effect on mob hatred. That’s useful information! I didn’t realize that mace/shield was such a poor combination, either.

Funnily enough, according to the wiki, which players are using shields actually factors into the threat table…But the use of shields/how much toughness a character has is apparently considered -after- the ones who are closest, which ones are dealing damage, and the people dealing the greatest damage.

So, it seems like I need to try out both hammer and sword/shield…The only sad thing is, with the defense/tactics primary traitlines, there’s nothing that you can get to actually benefit the sword. Also, what stats/sigils am I going to be looking for on the sword hammer? Sentinel, Berserker, Carrion? Some builds suggest using the superior sigil of water/life…

Oh, additionally, what are your guys’ thoughts on the use of the Dolyak Signet? I know it’s been buffed considerably (even if 180 toughness pales in comparison to the -10% damage the guardian signet has) but it offers some utility by providing stability for annoying situations like the Molten Core facility, while providing a passive benefit when you don’t need the stability (unlike balanced stance.) Somebody earlier mentioned the use of the signet of fury…Any thoughts on that? I would say that, of all three shouts, you could more or less safely swap out on my mark for a signet…But I’m not sure which signet to swap it out for, if any.

Also, am I right to think healing signet isn’t especially useful? I just feel like healing surge has more benefit…Although, that was when I was using the mace build (where I rarely, if ever used my burst skill), so the more frequent spending of adrenaline on bursts might warrant a different heal…Although I suppose healing surge -also- refills all adrenaline.

You could go for a hammer/longbow. Just round up the mobs and use Hammer Shock (3) and use Fierce Blow (2) on as many as you can everytime it’s up. Use Backbreaker for tough mobs or mobs using channeling abilities or devastating spells (5) then use Earthshaker (F1) every time it’s up. When you’re hp goes low you can use Staggering Blow (4), then roll back, weapon swap and quick longbow Pindown (5), then take advantage of longbow aoe skills. Once your hp is back up, just switch back to hammer and jump back in with the burst smash then the aoe weakness.

Just controlling and knocking around mobs like that provide good damage mitigation for you and your teammates. Unfortunately, bosses are immune to most CC so you’re not going to provide much help there other than average DPS and a bit of shout healing/buffing.

As for dolyak, I haven’t used it in a very long time, but I don’t recall it being a stun breaker. When you get hit by a knockdown in PvE, you usually need to get up as soon as possible and be immune to controls afterwards to really avoid certain death so I find Balanced Stance more useful in most situations. You can swap out Balanced stance with Banner of Discipline instead, for extra damage + fury and swiftness for your group, if you think Balanced Stance will be useless in a fight.

Well, Shake it Off has the benefit of being a stunbreaker, which could let you get up from a knockdown so you can pop Dolyak Signet…Although I do see the benefit of using balanced stance instead, as it accomplishes both at the same time.

I’ll fool around with Hammer/Longbow and Sword-Shield/Longbow….Hopefully that will help with what ails me. If anyone else has any helpful tips though, that’d be great!

Idly, I hope Mace gets -some- kind of buff in the future. It’s a shame, it seems like a classic “tanky” weapon, but the windup time on that last blow really, -really- hurts it, seems like.

The forums hate the idea of Warrior tanks, but since my groups could never get a Guardian while we went for Dungeon Master I tanked everything.

Mace is situationally good. Those situations being Missile Deflection traited and there’s a lot of high damage missiles coming your way a la Arah Risen hunters. Everything else I did with an Axe/Shield and Longbow.

My spec for tanking the lot of it was Soldiers gear, soldiers runes.

30 defensive
10 Missile deflection (usually) 20 shield master (usually) 30 defy pain
30 tactics
10 empowered, 20 shouts, 30 shouts
10 discipline
10 inspiring shouts

I think, more than any other part of the build, that soldier 6 piece has a huge impact on the spec. Constant condition removal is an incredible boon to the team. I can give pointers for plenty of specific fights since I face-tanked everything if you have any questions.

So, I read almost every response and these kids are idiots.

Warrior is the best solo tank in the game. Solo as in, they don’t need anything else to help them, they can survive just about anything. I played tank on my warrior for close to 1000 hours. My traits were, 10/0/30/30/0 with pvt armor (2 pieces were vit/prec/heal) and valk jewelry.

Sure, in pvp a guardian will own you, but thats because he needs every boon in the book. In pve, you can solo most dungeon bosses melee’ing.

In the harpy fractal, those electric sliders (looks like guitar hero) that damage you a ton and most classes die in one hit, you can tank close to 3 of those lol.

A warrior tank will ALWAYS be the last one standing if he’s worth a dam. I mean, no other class has a standard 9 seconds where you take 0 damage. You trait 30 into defense, take Defy Pain, slot Endure pain, and have a shield= 9 seconds no damage. Now if you’re sylvari you can take it further with your elite, to 12 seconds.

If someone says guard is a better tank than a warrior, theyre just stupid. In wvw, you throw a warrior in the middle of a zerg, he will last ATLEAST 9 seconds, not to mention his heals and 30-33k healthpool.

Now a guard brings TONS of condition removal, heals, and boons. Which is worth 10x more than any other class (i find that stupid). But as a tank goes. Warrior wins it hands down. Now if you pair up with a guard on your warrior, goodnight sir. Nothing will kill you lol.

And btw, what the first responder said. Mace, at full tank, hits 3k auto attacks. If i’m not mistake, thats as good as an axe. So i wouldn’t listen to these nubcakes who rerolled a guardian because warrior wasn’t easy enough for them.

@Remix
There’s truth to that, for PvE. You are the toughest and hardest to kill, yes, but part of tanking means you are also preventing bad things from happening to your teammates, and the guardian does a better job at that.

Anyway, running the Molten dungeon for the first time was a breeze on my tank warrior, while the rest of my party died over and over from the traps, so I guess new dungeons will always be best run by tanky builds.

I think the issue he brought up, Remix, is that while the mace may have comparable DAMAGE to an axe, its attack interval is nowhere near equal. That last hit on the mace takes a LONG freaking time.

Funnily enough, I’ve never actually slotted endure pain as an active…Although maybe I should make better use of it, that’s another candidate to replace “On My Mark!”

So Axe is another viable candidate as well? That was my initial impression, the only trouble I can see with axe, from a control/tanking standpoint, is the fact that you only get the one AoE (the circle attack, and the auto-attack has some as well). Sword -might- have better aoe potential, but I’m not sure. Have you ever experimented with sword/hammer, Shinki?

Also, I’m curious…Why Valkyrie jewelry?

If you trait mace and play clever, use the block skill. If he blocks and smack you can see numbers up to 8k on a single skill.

Most of the mace skills are instant, the 2s stun is just getting close and you got him. The daze is great to interrupt enemies, again you have to use it on the right times.

No, mace offhand is actually really strong in 1on1 fights, but you need a really good understanding of the game and it has a high skillcap. In other words it is a really hard weapon to use effectively. And it sucks in 2vs1, only reason why I don’t run it more.

Kiyo.2673:

I’ve thought about using longbow as a weapon of choice, yeah. The problem is (and this is again from experience, but I may just be doing it wrong) I notice a rather stark decrease in my survivability when I switch to my longbow. That does make me wonder, though, if switching the 10 trait points I have in power so I can get the trait that gives you adrenaline on shout use…That could help keep the longbow fire field up.

I had thought about using sword before (and I’ve been experimenting with axe some, too). But wouldn’t you need to stack condition damage for the bleeding from the sword to be effective? The main reason I use mace, honestly, is because it can apply weakness to multiple foes. Those glancing blows can really soften the damage you take, though I suppose it’s a moot point if the enemies aren’t attacking you. XD

I’ll think about adding in signet of fury…Might be worth cycling out a shout for, we’ll see. Thanks for the tips so far! Hopefully the increase in vitality I’ll get from switching to sentinel gear will help keep threat. Any more tips?

Also, I don’t agree with the notion that warriors aren’t designed to, or can’t tank. Now, I may be a bit crazy (I loved deathknight tanking before there was actually an established tanking talent line, etc) but I love tanking, and I love warrior. I don’t think tanking is impossible, I think you just need a bit more out-of-the-box-thinking to warrior tank.

Sword does seem like it would have its tanking merits, though (being able to immobilize a small group of enemies could be incredibly helpful) but I wonder if axe might be a bit more effective without stacking condition damage. Thoughts?

Well I play a healing bunker warrior and when I do dungeons I tend to get aggro a lot. I don’t use shout healing though, but I do use banner regen combine with healing signet. My gear’s toughness, conditions and healing so my regen might not be the greatest cause when I have 25 stacks of life it only ticks for 300hps. The weapon I use is main sword for the condition damage/ immobilize and off hand is axe for aoe. My secondary weapon is Longbow for more aoe so when I use combustive arrow I switch to my sword and use savage leap to gain fire shield to combine it with axe aoe skill. I usually tend to keep aggro there and when my teammates go down I get more aggro there taking less damage because I have superior runes of mercy. You can say I am a offensive tank with the help of Dolyak SIgnet and Signet of Fury to keep applying more aggro.

A warrior is pretty good in buffing up the party in offence.
*Empowered allies (trait): constant 70 power to nearby allies when in combat
*Banner of strenght: 170power and 170 condition damage
*Banner of Discipline: 170precision and 15% critical damage
*Shout “For great justice”: A constant 105power and max 210power + 10s fury (20% critical chance
*Vulnerability
-Axe mainweapon (4 vulnerabilty for 8sec / 6sec cooldown)
-Greatsword (2/3 of the auto-attack aplies 1x vulnerability for 8 sec)
-Offhand mace (4 vulnerability for 11sec / 15sec cooldown)
, -Shout “On my mark” (10 vulnerability for 11sec / 30sec cooldown if untraited)
-… could be more but, can’t think of it atm.

The defends/utility a warrior can bring to the party:
*Healing banners or healing shouts
– With 1500 Healing power a banner heals +-333 health/sec
(A constant regen to the party)
– With 1500 Healing power a shout heals +-2.300 (Don’t shoot me if i’m wrong here)
Traited you can use 2 shouts every 20sec and 1 every 24sec
*Banner of Defends: 170 toughness and 170 vitality
*Banner of Tactics: 170 healing and 10% boon duration
*Shout “Shake it off”: (Cure a condition of yourself and nearby allies 25sec cooldown)

The warrior is superior in bringing offence related boons to the party then the guardian. But then again the guardian is specialised in bringing defends related boons and not offence.

Total that a tanky/offencive support banner warrior can bring to the party:
(Not counting the eliteskill “Battle Standard”)
Power: 345 – 450
Conditiondamage: 170
Precision: 170
15% critical damage
10sec Fury every 25sec
vulnerabilty: with the right weapons 4-12 stacks (I think up to 3 targets)
Banner healing: +-333 health/sec

And when your team starts having a difficult time in a dungeon, switch to the more defends related banners.

Greetings,
Mordran.

Remix.2086:

A warrior tank will ALWAYS be the last one standing if he’s worth a dam. I mean, no other class has a standard 9 seconds where you take 0 damage. You trait 30 into defense, take Defy Pain, slot Endure pain, and have a shield= 9 seconds no damage. Now if you’re sylvari you can take it further with your elite, to 12 seconds.

If someone says guard is a better tank than a warrior, theyre just stupid. In wvw, you throw a warrior in the middle of a zerg, he will last ATLEAST 9 seconds, not to mention his heals and 30-33k healthpool.

Even not taking into account my disagreements with the rest of your post…

The Engineer says “Hi”
Elixir S: 3 seconds of Invulnerability
Self Regulating Defenses: Elixir S at 25% HP
Toolkit Gear Shield: Block for 3 seconds
Static Shield: Blocks next melee attack, or all ranged attacks for 2 seconds

Granted, there are differences between Elixir S And Endure Pain, but I find that Elixir S has the advantage: Elixir S locks skills but Endure pain means you still take hits from people, and means new conditions can be applied even while it is up.

The next closest contender is Elementalist at 8 seconds (Obsidian Flesh + Mist Form) and then Guardian at 5 seconds (Renewed Focus + Shelter) but it should also be noted that all 3 of those classes have easy access to near 100% vigor uptime for extra dodges, something warrior does not have.

Edit: It just occurred to me that Mesmer situationally has the longest Invulnerability uptime:
Distortion (3 clones, Illu Persona) 4 seconds
Mimic (after taking one hit) 4 seconds
Blurred Frenzy 2 seconds
Signet of Illusions —> Distortion 1-4 seconds
Illusionary Invigoration (Recharge shatters at 50% health) —> Distortion 1-4 seconds.

Only counting Distortions and blurred frenzy you have a 5-14 second invulnerability total, taking into account that blurred frenzy has a traited 8 second cooldown and you get a potential total of 16 seconds of invuln, 20 if you perfectly execute a mimic.

Kiyo.2673:

So Axe is another viable candidate as well? That was my initial impression, the only trouble I can see with axe, from a control/tanking standpoint, is the fact that you only get the one AoE (the circle attack, and the auto-attack has some as well). Sword -might- have better aoe potential, but I’m not sure. Have you ever experimented with sword/hammer, Shinki?

Also, I’m curious…Why Valkyrie jewelry?

Axe has more AoE than Mace due to Cyclone Axe. Mace 1 cleaves 3 targets total and that’s all it has, 2 and 3 are single target. Axe 1 hits 3, axe 2 hits 5 axe 3 is a single target snare. Sword only has AoE on the auto attack, similar to Mace and the snare doesn’t catch runners unless they’re in melee range.

I’ve experimented with every combo, I enjoyed Hammer quite a bit, all that control can really help the team, but it’s situational. Works great with the waves of Dredge in SE, allows overpulling in AC, can control the massive pulls in CM and locks down the knights in TA.

As far as jewelry I vacillated between knights and berzerkers depending on the encounter.