Guild Wars 2

Warrior weapons guide

I have been a warrior a long time, I played it nearly exclusively during beta, and logged hundreds of hours on the game. But experience is not the only thing that makes a good warrior, the best warriors are the ones who know what the enemy classes do, their weakness, and is able to read a build that your enemy has very quickly to discern target viability. In this guide I will try to provide general information for those to make their own decision about a build, and what the weapon’s projected build will have. It is however important not only to know your own class, but those of your enemy so even after reaching understanding of warrior your journey is not over, on to the basics.

Anyone in this game can be control, damage or support; even the squishiest of classes can be a terrible target if they spec right and/or play correctly. Conversely even normally harder targets like guardians can deal extremely dangerous damage and have therefore weak defenses. I generally assume my target is a rational actor, if he has a damage weapon than I assume his he specced for damage and if he has a defensive weapon he is specced for control/support. If a control weapon is specialized into damage his ratio for power will be low despite his gear/trait stacking and wont be very dangerous regardless so in general assume your enemy knows what he is doing and pick your targets accordingly. By looking at the power ratios of a weapon you can see what the makers have intended for you to do with the weapon. For a warrior I will outline the expected roll that each weapon will bring and the options therein. Some weapons lend themselves to damage, while others lend themselves to control, and some to support and many in between.

On to weapons:
The weapons each have a power scaling, which helps us to define what weapons are generally for damage, control, or support. This chart posted below gives us this information
taken from:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/10o4mi/the_damage_formula_and_the_efficiency_of_sigils/">

Skill 1/1/1* 2* 3* 4* 5*
Hammer 0.9/0,9/1.2* 1.4* 0.7* 1.3* 1.5*
Longbow 0.6/NA/NA* 1.2* 1.45* 0.2* 0.4*
Rifle 0.4/NA/NA* 0.35* 3* 0.5* 1*
Sword 0.6/0.6/1.3* 0.75* 0.75* ?/?* 0.5*
Axe 0.75/1.6/2.55* 0.7* 0.67* 1.2* 3*
GS 0.7/0.7/0.9* 5.5* 0.7* 0.75* 1.7*
Mace 0.8/0.8/1.6* 1 * 0.4* 1* 0.8*

It must be noted what this chart does not tell us. This chart does not tell us the swing times for each weapon, but according to the cast times on the weapons you can calculate from there. It must also be noted that this does not count the effects that the weapon gives, vulnerability for greatswords, weakness for mace, and bleeding for sword and rifle and for those interested to know the formula for bleeding it is the following.

Taken from: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/x58cx/condition_damage_attribute_effect_on_damage/

“Effect of 100 condition damage on Bleed damage: +12.5% damage increase by tick “

I will not speak specifically about the best weapon with what stats because with so many ways to play (spvp , wvw, pve) I don’t think anything said could hold true in all situations. So make your own decision, generally speaking the more you are stacking power the more the damage difference between sword and axe grows, and the more deadly hundred blades becomes and so on. I will try to underline specific traits that I feel make the backbone of a weapon, and any traits I feel go so well with a weapon that they will be useful to know nomatter your chosen playstyle.

Hammer: The role of the hammer is control/burst damage/area effect. I think this weapon is very unique as its chain attack damage is higher than great sword, and still has a deadly burst. This weapon can really go either way, either a support weapon or a damage weapon but it is far easier to accomplish the control/support than damage. 20 in defense gives you hammer mastery which is absolutely essential to any build offensive or defensive that is going to use the hammer most of the time. This trait gives you a 25% damage boost when a character is incapacitated (stun, knockdown, daze, fear) and also improves the recharge rate of the skills allowing for more control. The damage variant of the hammer is very similar to a hundred blades warrior except for the fact that his damage is lower but he also controls the target. Frenzied bulls rush to fierce blow to backbreaker to chain attack or staggering blow to earth shaker to chain attacks will result in an absurd amount of control and damage with all the pros and cons of a burst build who is frenzying. Also to be noted is earth shaker as a closer as it not only stuns but it jumps you to the target which is a great skill and has some synergy with signet of fury if you need a closer but lack adrenaline you can signet of fury than jump to close some distance. Bulls charge is both a closer and a knockdown and has great synergy with the hammer whether it be offensive or defensive. The trait leg specialist which is 10 in tactics synergizes well with hammer shock as hammer shock is a 600 range cone attack that can hit multiple enemies allowing the cripple to also be a 1 second immobilize on multiple targets. The arms tree provides the trait unsuspecting foe which is 10 in arms gives you a 50% chance to crit against stunned enemies which you can create yourself with earth shaker. Because the very skeleton of any hammer build is 20 in defense which is a tree that provides compassion (+heal) and toughness it lends itself well to defensive type playing. Defensive spec players who get max compassion and go for tier 3 tactics in shouts heal/banners regenerate will find much use out of the hammer as while they are not the most damaging characters because of their high compassion and thus low damage controlling the enemy and allowing others to kill while they are supported by the healing/buffs is of great worth in a fight.

Longbow: The role of the longbow is control/support and it is a beast of a weapon. Devastating in a defensive siege situation, it has one of the best uses of adrenaline a warrior can use especially in wvw. Fire combo field is a very attractive combo field and helps to control the battlefield with a long lasting and nasty AOE that will keep smart enemy players from that area. Particularly powerful in wvw and event bosses this weapons only downside is its 900 range on all of its attacks except for its adrenaline burst which can be rectified with a simple 10 in tactics for improved bowstrings to increase its range to 1200. Any warrior who feels useless in a defensive siege should keep one of these in his backpack or his secondary slot. Many of the bow attacks are combo finishers so this weapon is best used in conjuction with the burst skill and will be an adrenaline hog, so skills that add adrenaline will be of great output here.

Rifle: The role of the rifle is ranged burst damage and is best used in a team setting. As you can see from the chart this rifle is all about setting up volley. Volley and its adrenaline burst are really the only source of substantial damage, its chain attack is the weakest attack a warrior has, and provides a nominal bleed. Its burst attack has 1500 range and is a physical projectile and is another good source of burst damage. It has a 450 instant knockback that can be used as an interrupt if you are quick on the switch. 20 in arms provides both a 20% boost to recharge rate and piercing bullets which will be very valuable to a dedicated rifle warrior as it will stop you from hitting those pets/frontline fighters and hit the squishier targets usually more risk adverse as well as giving you the ability to hit multiple targets. The rifle is best used in conjunction with other burst ranged on a called target to give it that extra lethality. As a weapon swap it is also useful for its quick knockback/interrupt and its ranged cripple to catch targets trying to flee and is great in open field combat.

Sword: The role of the sword is mobility/control/condition damage. In the offhand the sword provides a ranged bleed of massive proportions and a block that also applies bleed, this is a theme that will come up again and again, your build is more defined by your offhand more so than your mainhand and is no different from sword. A condition based build will want an offhand sword and massive adrenaline gaining as to get those high condition damage ratios you will need to use the 4 and 5 in conjunction with flurry to get the most out of high condition damage as flurry is dominantly a condition damage attack. Those using shields or axes in their offhand will want to merely dabble in condition damage and mostly build their warriors without it as the 3rd attack on a warriors chain is a very respectable 1.3 power conversion with a high base damage and no bleed. Physical attacking swords will value the sword for its quick closer and its movement control with cripple and adrenaline now being used mostly for its immobilize. Without a recharge rate increase trait the sword also makes a good weapon swap as it will perform nominally no matter what build you use.

Axe: The role of the axe is damage/area of effect and has the highest sustained damage available to the warrior. Of note is that the 2nd chain attack will attack twice and apply the power conversion over 2 attacks so do not be too enamored with its power conversion, this of course also applies to its 3rd chain attack which is 3 attacks. Regardless the axe is quick and powerful and builds featuring a high power score will find this weapon to be give them large output. The axe has two area attacks in cyclone axe and whirling axe and in the offhand can provide mainhand swords or maces with better power scaleing than their mainhands provide. The axe traits Axe Mastery which is 20 in strength provides 10% more critical damage is much weaker than most weapon specialization traits but still provides more output than some non specialized traits. The second specialization sharpend axes can be found in 20 in discipline and provides with double adrenaline per critical which can be useful depending on your adrenaline needs. This provides the theme for the axe, which is damage damage and more damage, it has great power scaling and its traits go well with high precision. The axe suffers in PVP/WvW from lacking mobility and should be complimented by controlling utility skills like bulls charge and bolas.

Greatsword: The role of the greatsword is mobility/burst damage and creating threads about OP warriors. To the uninitiated getting frenzied hundred blades is a cold welcome to guild wars 2, but to those that know the strengths and weakness of the weapon it does not seem as threatening. The real strength of the great sword is the insane mobility that Whirling attack and Rush provides. With 20 in discipline the trait mobile strikes will let rush/whirling attack/bulls charge break immobilize as if it did not happen as they are all movement skills. 20 in arms will get you forceful great sword which gains might on critical hit as well as 20% recharge rate to the great set of skills that the greatsword provides. This also helps with your spear work when you are stuck underwater and faster tsunami slash will make you the king of underwater combat. 20 in strength will provide you with a 10% increase In damage to both your spear and your greatsword and is a great trait in comparison to most specialization traits as 10% damage is stronger than 10% critical or 10% critical damage and also provides better spear work. Greatsword has surprisingly low sustained damage with its chain attack but makes up for it with might stacks and vulnerabilities to set up the real reason for this weapon the deadly hundred blades. With a massive power conversion of up to 5.5 this is probably the hardest hitting attack in the game and can instantly kill someone under the right conditions. New players without knowledge that stun break also applies to knockdowns/fears will be frenzied bulls charged hundo bladed to death and cry foul is it seems unfair how deadly the combination is. Frenzy and endure pain while both stances do not override each other so players worried about the vulnerability of frenzy can use endure pain to protect themselves during this attack. Hundred blades is most deadly at the end of its attack and as it is a channeled skill it is easy enough to move away. Arcing slice has a 150 range (most melee is 130) but does not provide more damage with over 1 bar in adrenaline and only provides longer fury so having a switch with another useful adrenaline attack is suggested. Moldran of Team Paradigm with his hundred blades to eviscerate build is a great starting point if players want to see the power of a well played greatsword warrior.

Mace: The role of the mace is control/support and the mace is a very popular PVE weapon, providing a strong and long lasting weakness on chain attack this makes up for the innate lack of the protection buff on frontline PVE warriors. As an offhand it provides a huge vulnerability attack and a ranged line effect knockdown that can be used to set up combos. It has a daze to interrupt abilities and a block for tanking attacks, the adrenaline burst is a stun that can make this weapon very nasty for interruption. Because of the low base damage on the attacks even with decent power scaleing it is hard to make this a damage weapon. The specialization trait is best used if a mace is in your off hand as the real workhorse of the mace is its ranged line knockdown. Because it has a block on its main hand weapon skill, it has great synergy with shield as reflection will work with both the shield block and the mace block which can be found in 10 in defense with missile deflection.

Warhorn: The role of the warhorn is support/mobility and is exclusively an off-hand weapon. 20 in tactics buys you its specialization trait which is quick breathing which converts conditions into random boons. This goes well with a 10 point trait in tactics, empowered which gives you what I can surmise is a 3% bonus to damage for every boon on you. Because most warrior builds will feature signet of rage, and the warhorn comes with vigor and the warhorn may or may not grant you some random buffs this can come out to quite a decent percent of damage increase. The warhorn itself removes cripple, chill, and immobilize to make it not only great team support but an excellent way to break movement impairing effects. The skill call to arms adds vigor to allies and weakness to enemies at 1200 range which is substantial, this can have good synergy with a mace damage build for those utilizing the 5% bonus to weakened targets skipping the wait to the chain attack that produces weakness.

Shield: The role of the shield is mitigation/control and it is an off hand weapon. It has a 300 range stun that can be used as an interrupt if the skill in question is slow enough for the animation. It also features a 3 second block skill that is useful for people tanking in PVE, or people stuck in frenzy or a bad situation in wvw/spvp. 20 in defense provides for shield master which gives you 90 toughness while using a shield as well as lowers the cooldown by 20%. This is a very useful trait as the shield has great skills that will appreciate the cooldown reduction. Also of note is reflection which will reflect projectiles on block and the shield proves 3 seconds of unlimited block, very useful in wvw or pve.

Because as a warrior can you two weapon sets, and in some situations can even switch with the weapons in his inventory there should be a section on off sets that compliment your primary weapon, but just like making a trait/rune/equipment selection much of the fun of this game is experimenting with such elements, I hope this basic outline of each weapon type helps warriors make informed decisions about the weapons they want by complimenting the elements with the right gear and traits to make their builds successful.

Great guide thanks! Can the Hammer really be used by a DPS ‘role’ Warrior? Not sure how that would look like?

this is an awesome guide to have for new players but i got a question too. From your experience, how far off “mainstream” can a player use a weapon and still be viable? right now i’m making a warrior only lvl 15 and i love dual axe. however my goal is to make a shout heal tank( 30 tactics 30 defense 10 strength i guess) but i still wanna use dual axe, i guess the image i have is barbarian from diablo :P so yeah, am i limited to which weapon to use by the role i wanna play? (mainly for pve and WvW)

Fantastic guide for warrior weapons!! Thanks!!
Clear analysis for each weapon. Help a lot!!

Q:1 Because the hammer has a 25% damage increase during incapacitation , if your skills are used during incapacitation this can result in high damage. Greatsword warriors use frenzy to get the final strike, the most powerful part of hundred blades in the knockdown time of a bulls charge. The hammer warrior uses frenzy to chain incapacitation to burst a character down. For example: Bullscharge is a two second knockdown so you must perform your next incapaciation as well as a damage skill to maximize this effect. Because Fierce blow is 3/4 a second and provides a larger power bonus than chain attacks (it also weakens) this is a good inbetween attack to do before your next attack. The largest damage attack for a hammer is is backbreaker, but it is a slow attack with a 1 second time. If you do bullscharge to fierce blow to backbreaker you will have performed these attacks with the 25% bonus. Frenzy allows you to half the action time of these normally slow skills and get them in between eachother. It is difficult to hit skills intelligently fast, but it is certainly possible to get 6 seconds of incapacitation out of a hammer warrior and for that 6 seconds be at the full 25% damage bonus.

Q2: Most shout warriors I would imagine to use hammers, maces, longbows and warhorns as that is where they are most likely to find their traits. However axes have great power scaling and while clerics set does not provide particularly high power it does have power so you will get more damage than you normally would in exchange for awkardness of traits.

sayl.6307:

Q2: Most shout warriors I would imagine to use hammers, maces, longbows and warhorns as that is where they are most likely to find their traits. However axes have great power scaling and while clerics set does not provide particularly high power it does have power so you will get more damage than you normally would in exchange for awkardness of traits.

well thats nice to know since i’m already completely not traiting or planning to equip anything that mains precision and i dun really care much about the axe traits, thanks for the quick reply

Good guide.

I rarely use frenzy on my hammer warrior though. It’s not really needed against most PvE mobs and a death sentence in PvP. Also, you can bull’s charge > staggering blow into a cluster of enemies. The damage isn’t much less (on the knocked down mob) and it can really help your event score. It’s really nice if you can set up combustive shot first and then bull’s charge > staggering blow into it. If it’s a melee crowd sometimes they will come running back and then you can hit them with earthshaker or stomp. On even level non-veteran mobs they’ll all be dead very fast, especially if you are in a group. Hammer warriors have so many great ways to control a fight.

On the Warhorn, each condition Quick Breathing converts has a specific counterpart boon from my experience, so it isn’t actually random. It depends on which condition was last applied to you, as these are prioritized for condition removal effects.

Poison = Regen
Vulnerability = Protection
Burning = Aegis
Cripple = Swiftness
Bleeding = Vigor

These are the ones I’m 95% sure about. You may not see the ones from the mobility impairing conditions as often because Warhorn 4 already removes those conditions. Also, not sure which one grants Retaliation.

The damage coefficient information is crucial and very telling.

Rifle auto attack is way too weak for a power scaling weapon, which I guess is what it’s supposed to be, and it shows when you use the weapon DPS is terrible.

Rifle 0.4/NA/NA* 0.35* 3* 0.5* 1*

Very nice guide! Thank you for putting this up!

I think bleed attacks never scale much with power.. question is just why rifle auto attack bleeds despite the weapon clearly being designed for direct damage and not condition damage. Then again if warrior rifle would do as much damage as engineer rifle, it might be overpowered.. since engineer rifle auto attack does as much damage as a melee swing from another profession.

How is this not stickied?

cool stuff there

Zsymon.8457:

Then again if warrior rifle would do as much damage as engineer rifle, it might be overpowered.. since engineer rifle auto attack does as much damage as a melee swing from another profession.

yes, but Engineers can’t have melee weapons. They are thus compensated.

Very, lot of useful imformation here

Mace is great in small skirmishes in PvP too. Guess you didn’t bother to seek its potential out. Don’t blame ya.

I’m confused, I don’t play a Warrior yet so that’s probably why, but why all the talk of Warrior’s killshot needing to be nerfed and videos circulating showing Warriors doing like 16K-20K crits with killshot using rifle? There must be some other factor not spoken of in this thread or something I’m just missing?

The power scaling for burst skills are not in those charts?
(kill shot is a burst skill a.k.a profession mechanic skill for those who are not familiar with these crazy beasts)

Maybe someone could get the power scaling of burst skills so we could compleate the list? (mainly kill shot and evicerate as they are the biggest bursts, kill shot being the most powerful one according to my experience)

I recently joined this game and was looking for a good guide for my warrior as I always love warriors in RPGs. This one’s really contains hell of information, thanks.

What would go better with a sheeld a sword or an axe?

Hi everyone.

I was thinking about doing a power might stacking build (because conditions are not good with warrior, and it’s easier to mix with survivability if we go for direct damage).

Which weapon do you think would benefit most from that?

Hammer seems good, but what about burst skills from rifle and axe?

Hey all,

If you have questions about builds or traits I would suggest creating your own threads asking the community. We’ll keep this guide informative instead of striking up questions in it.

Thanks Sayl for doing the research on this!

The way the increase in bleeding damage is represented here can be misleading, and the author is using different numbers than the wiki. However, because I’m away from my gaming PC, I cannot test who is right. The wiki says base bleed should be 42.5 dps, his post assumes 40 dps. So let me use his numbers to give an example.

Level 80 toon, base 0 condition damage, adding 100

Bleed: 0.5 * Level + 0.05 * Condition Damage per stack per second
0.5*80 + 0.05*CD
40 + .05*100 = 45
45/40 = 1.125 which is where he gets a 12.5% damage increase. However, it is in relation to the base damage.

Bleeds scale at 5% of condition damage. It is a linear increase. So with an investment of 1000 condition damage, your bleeds will do an additional 50 damage (90dps/stack).

The guy knows what he’s talking about but for someone who just glances at the math, it’s easy to assume 100 condition damage will increase current bleed damage by 12.5% which isn’t the case.

To reiterate, 100 condition damage will always increase bleed damage by a flat 5 dps per stack… or 12.5% of 40(base bleed damage assumed in the post).