Guild Wars 2

I am only level 37 now but every post that I read says that signet warriors become less and less powerful the higher level one becomes.

My question is, at what level did you switch out of being a signet warrior? Also, what build did you switch to?

I’m sure the game gets much harder later on but it is hard to imagine that being the case at the moment!

I don’t remember specifically. If you solo, you can probably use it until 50-60 or so and not have too much trouble. Keep an eye on your crit chance and traits, though. Early on you can do lots of Arms and Power without worrying about it, but later on the amount of precision you need to increase crit% is just too much.

For sake of trait efficiency, consider swapping out after you get your next trait book (60, I believe). It’s a free trait reset and you can drop arms and see what else you like.

Lastly, if you plan on doing dungeons or wvwvw or pvp, use different utility skills. Shouts are great, physical skills can really screw people over, banners can support a lot of people in a crowd, the right stance can save your life, etc. At the very least, carry your Elite Banner in dungeons. Being able to instantly revive 2-3 people from down state turns a run around.

I’d like to find out the same — I’m lvl 38 and have all signets + 1 shout lol

My friends said they moved to pretty much full shout build

I tried playing with KICK and it was fun until I got steamrolled trying to kick a champion

Shurimpu.. thanks for the response.

Shurimpu.. thanks for the response.it seems that most people kinda switch to a tanking/banner build at higher level.

Shurimpu.. thanks for the response.it seems that most people kinda switch to a tanking/banner build at higher level.It is kinda unfortunate the play style has to shift so much so quickly…

Shurimpu.. thanks for the response.it seems that most people kinda switch to a tanking/banner build at higher level.It is kinda unfortunate the play style has to shift so much so quickly…

I never played the signet build since I didn’t consider it desireable. I’ve had my own versions of a build mostly putting points in Arms, Discipline and Strength throughout leveling and ever since. I’ve played it in pve and pvp, main focus being WvW. I change my weapons and stats more than trait configuration although I did take into account the potential to switch couple of the slotted major traits sometimes.

I’ve only used deep Defense or Tactics in structured. I must admit I’ve had some trouble in trying to make builds without either work there.

Honestly I used 5 signet build to lvl 80 with a sword and mace. Get to level 70ish and join the Zerg in ORR. You’ll be lvl 80 in just few hours and can then make a respectable build.

I just moved to signet greatsword build after being full defense control at level 56, now im 68, in a day.

This build is immense, most will tell you to go support, but i say go for what you find most fun. I like control but im having a hard time questing without the power greatsword gives, and since my gear was full tank, and i went 15 into defense for health regen, i was really durable, and could do 4x the damage of my hammer build on a single hit.

Don’t force yourself to change if you don’t want to, someone has to be decent at dealing damage. Wouldnt want to do AC explorable path 3 without someone who could hit hard =P

Signets all the way to 80.

If you do story dungeons along the way, you might like to try shout or banner healing builds at lv60+.

I’d like to know when you decided to switch INTO signet warrior spec…

I always found there to be little synergy between signets, since most only raise individual stats and the activates are mediocre at best.

I don’t go signet at all, it is just way too boring.. I want to use some bull’s rushes or kicks or shake it offs or frenzy’s now and then. Signets just sit there and do nothing. Warrior doesn’t need signets, a greatsword with 30-40% crit just from arms and some gear or dual maces will destroy any pve content at a rapid pace. We are entirely useless at pvp but we kill pve content like a beast. Get knight gear (toughess/precision/power) and go to town on does, drakes and moas.

Around level 60 is when i switched out. I started doing alot more dungeons around then, and signet builds are trash in parties.

If you don’t plan on doing dungeons and are just strait grinding to 80, you can use it all the way up, but i’d switch at somepoint just so that you get used to watching cds/pressing more buttons.

Signet Greatsword is not trash in dungeons, they are just not support focused. Sometimes you need someone who can rip stuff apart, sometimes full defense will get you killed.

Signet greatsword is probably the best damage build Warrior has, its popular for a reason.

I personally run hammer/mace control and occasionally shout healing when im feeling productive yet lazy, so no calling me a GS fanboi either =P

I still use a signet build for pve at 80, but it is a fairly defensive one, relying on the faster endurance regen /cleanse and toughness / stability signets for added survivability.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNAR8ejkOJvBPGPMRCA0DsuaLThiOFgSpoN7A

Use a mix of berserker and knights gear, should be able to get around ~40% crit, 220% crit damage and 1800 toughness. Have both solid offensive and defense and can stay in melee for almost every boss, with a few exceptions.

I switch out my signet build at level 60 to try out sword and shield / condition build.

I rode it all the way to 80, before switching to the shout build.

However 60 is probably a better level to look at changing out. At that point the precision you are getting from gear starts to heavily outweigh what you are getting from the signet bonus.

Plus you will want to use your elite signet often as a massive damage booster and a speed boost.

No need to switch out of the crit based role though til you hit the mid to high 70’s. Once you reach the mid 70’s I found myself needing more toughness and healing. Good luck, and enjoy the ride.

I never switched because I never used a signet build. I prefer to use skills like kick, stomp and fear me. They’re just so much more fun.

Only signets I’ve bought were Healing & Rage. The signets overall are not worth it for their passive which is lost anyway when you use them and other active abilities have a lot more utility. I’d rather be a CC machine constant stunning, knocking back and interrupting than having some extra stats.

Never.

Before I found signets, I found For Great Justice and Stomp. Those have been a crucial part of how I play since the beginning.

I do use Signets, of course. I generally run Healing Signet for sologrinding as together with Adrenal Health that keeps me healed up and it’s nice not to have to pay attention to my health that often. I also have Signet of Rage, since I find it to be the most useful Elite skill. Other than that, I tend to run Signet of Fury, Might or Dolyak depending on what I’m doing.

Of course, that’s largely because I have the Arms trait for +40 Precision per unused Signet. If not for that, I might be using Bull’s Charge, Shake it Off, Endure Pain, On My Mark or something like that.

you are doing 2 things wrong. First and formost you are not reading what the skills do. They scale as you lvl.

Second most playes on these forums aim for support and or think they need more toughness to survive.

I say meh to all that nonsense and run my sigs with banner. Im pretty happy doing 12xx-17k damage with 21k hp atm. Ill have more stats as i get better gear.

You have to get out of the mindset of traditional mmo thinking where toons have roles. Theres sorta a roll..just dps/support or pure dps and nothing more.

Either one kites while they have the agro to help group then switch when agro changes to other players.

First and formost you need to figure out the play style you enjoy playing the most,…..not what others recomend. Thanks to dodge skills you can do much more being just dps.

Second hit up the mists and play around with traits and weapon types..

When i was lvling my first warrior i was all about sword/axe great aoe skills and decent damage but i knew the great sword gives more damage. Sword deals bleed damage were greatsword is instant damage and alot of it.

You may have read about how stat like precision scales as you lvl..its awsome at low lvls. At lvl 80 111 precision gives my warrior 5% crit chance lol.

Just figure out if you wana be a supporter

deal decent damage

or plow through

Either way toughness is a joke when it comes to pve crit damage recived by monsters. Ive been knocked down at 3/4 health with 2k armor roughly 1800 toughness.

My motto is kill them before they kill you.

lvl 80… now Im a ptv shout warrior with a hammer

lvl 80, still signet. Why change what works?

I read a post early on about signet warriors and it had me wary of running a 5 signet build. That post pretty much dared anyone to run 5 signets …because that OP said you would spend most of your time in a downed status in pve dungeons. I tried to heed his warning and I stayed away from 5 signets for a while. I got bold enough to try 5 signets anyway and sure enough..he was right.

The passive benefit from some signets is overly weak compared to the active benefit you get from the non signet slot skills. I try to strike a balance now between useful signets and useful shouts/banners. I stay away from abilities with overly short durations or overly long cool downs. If I’m going to put something on my bars…I want to get some bang for my buck. I want it to be useful, effective, and available when I want to use it.

I have replaced healing signet with mending due to the poor performance of healing signet. Healing signet is great for solo pve grinding, but horrible in any spike damage situation. The heals per second are just too low and it provides zero secondary benefit. Mending is just flat out superior as it heals for more than the signet, has a low cooldown, and removes two conditions when you use it every time.

I replaced signet of fury as it only provides 23 precision…which is nothing at max level…as its passive. The active ability of signet of fury was pretty nice, but in my build where I accumulate adrenaline rapidly anyway..it was a wasted slot. I replaced SoF with “shake it off” for a while, and that was very effective in solo play and decent in group play. I fell out of love with “shake it off” due to the fact that it only removes one condition and you don’t get to choose which one that is. I love that it breaks stuns, but I hate that when I need to get a damage dealing condition off (like poison or bleed) and it removes immobilize instead. When you’ve got a whole row of conditions on you and it only pops one off..that’s a problem for me. Signet of Stamina was way better for that, but it has a longer cooldown. Ultimately I decided to just rely on mending to pop two conditions off of me at a time and go with a banner in that slot..banner of discipline specifically since I enjoy dps and my crit rate isn’t up to par yet.

The signets I do run and will keep are signet of might, dolyak signet, signet of rage. I’m on the fence a little about dolyak as I have not personally evaluated how good toughness is going to be in the long term…and whether or not I will eventually get enough from gear to drop this too.

To answer your question, I started dropping signets around level 50-60. It coincided with multiple deaths in dungeon runs, where I was dying rapidly to condition damage. Being able to support your party is pretty nice too. Currently I refuse to spec tactics at all because I hate all those situational filler traits (blah blah blah…while reviving) to get healing shouts, but I do use at least one banner in most groups.

I don’t run a GS either…I’m always guilty of trying to be different from the unwashed masses lol. I currently run dual axe/long bow.

http://www.gw2db.com/skill-builds/1925-dual-axe-deeps

Personally never even started on signets since I prefer a more active playstyle. Using Mending over healing signet due to better spike damage control as mentioned above and the double condition removal. Combined with the Restorative Strength trait in the Strength trait line 90% of the time it’s a full condition wipe.

Utility wise I run with balanced stance because I honestly can’t imagine playing a warrior without it, and the “For Great Justice” and “Shake it Off” shouts for the extra stun break on shake and the extra condition removal with 6 Soldier Runes bonus.

Generally run Sword/Axe hybrid direct and condition damage double assault with rifle backup to maintain bleed pressure and excellent anti kiting tools. Direct damage is only slightly behind a GS build with the added benefit of hideously large stacks of bleed and a 4 second immobilise on a 10 second timer. Without any boon duration at all it’s capable of 100% uptime on the fury buff for a maintained 98% crit chance … which is generally the point of a full signet build anyway.

Edit: Forgot to add a link to the actual build
http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/warrior#2|11|10|317|65|919|246|20|2368|836|0|30|1525|1523|2413|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|20|1109|1553|0|0|0|3|28037|28016|53498|53498|53498|53498|53498|0|0|0|0|0|0|

Full “Knight’s” gear for WvW or PvE give it some serious staying power without losing much damage at all.

Depends more on what you start with, if you grow up believing you can take hits, signet spec will be a shock when you realize you have to avoid them, if you are used to massive damage, other specs will be a shock when you realize you just divided your damage by 4.

Go be whatever you want and make it work, i get angry as a signet warrior in dungeons because i have been the tank for so long, i keep trying to resist the damage while reviving people, or flat out using myself as a meat shield for others when im just as squishy as them in my new spec. But that doesn’t mean damage is bad, my playstyle just does not accommodate a lack of tankyness, due to all the amateur heroics i pull myself through.

Singed in and decided to post because I was a little shocked by the claim that you can run full signets in dungeons and expect to do well at all (you’ll end up on the floor or ranging for the whole run).

You have to think about working with your team in explorable. How can you expect to survive the ridiculous damage, and to a lesser extent control, mobs throw around in dungeons without stances. How would you support your team with signets (oh but bane I can help them by doing leet damage and kill mobs really fast! whoops I’m on the floor again because I couldn’t survive white – trash mobs).

One of the largest draws of signets were and still are I guess the passive 40 precision you gain per unused signet. Not only is it that you have to keep them unused if you want to gain from this, that 40 precision starts to lose effectiveness as you level up it won’t always be increasing your crit chance by huge amounts.

As others have stated already mend is just superior to healing signet (if you want the regen ticks so bad trait into it, or you can also consume lifesteal food, grab blood sigils) burst heal plus condition removal is arguably too good to pass up.

In most cases you’ll also want a (for lack of a better word) “panic button” for when kitten hits the fan. A skill that allows you to turn bad fights around and grant you more tactical options. Who wouldn’t want almost 6 (traited) seconds of invulnerability with endure pain. Who doesn’t want stability (in this case, a case could be made for balanced stance vs the active of dolyak, since if you’re decent you shouldn’t need to pop stability for every encounter – and thus can make full use of the passive of dolyak, activating it only when you really need stability).

FGJ is just amazing as a bare minimum for supporting your team, other shouts have their own specific uses and you don’t need to run full shouts if it’s not your play style, but there is a reason FGJ is spammed a lot. Banners are great if you’re in dungeons where you don’t have to move a lot otherwise they become somewhat of a liability (you don’t wanna slow down to pick them up in the middle of a fight, allies might move out of it’s radius, etc). Control utilities are also great for supporting your team and keeping the damage you all receive down.

Elite skills:
Banner is great for rezzes and the constant buffs it gives, useful primarily because of the rez though not always necessary if in a competent team. Juggernaut is a bit underwhelming for an elite, but if you’re a control type player, great for when you’ve used all of your control utilities and just want to do some stomping. Signet of Rage the buffs it gives are all solid.

@ShadowBane
Agree on almost all points.The ones I would argue is that warbanner is useful.Maybe, in case 2-3 players get downed at the same time(if group is capable that just won’t happen). Too long cooldown with too little uptime.Signet of rage is just too good even for a self buff.For normal banners, I’d say bring just 1 in dungeons, which is totally manageable.When you switch to another mob pack, you can pick it and buff teammates with swiftness(iirc all banner’s 3 was aoe swift).

I used a signet high crit build (Greatsword, Rifle) untill 60, then I started to get really bored and have now switched to a more tanky high power build (Greatsword, Mace/Axe) skills (FGJ, Frenzy, Stomp)

You can survive with a Greatsword, i have done it numerous times. I usually get angry playing as one because i miss my CC and bullkitten defense, but im not a pathetic wet noodle as a GS 4 sig FGJ warrior. Provides group wide might, fury, puts vuln on enemies, ranged cripple, whirlwind evades attacks, etc.

You can’t go all out nothing but GS like how you can get pretty shafted being nothing but melee, but using your GS for massive burst hits and then backing off when it gets a bit more dangerous does not mean ‘olol GS crap olol’, its how you play as a melee fighter.

GS is not the worst weapon in existence, dual sword condition warriors, dual axe warriors, they both suffer from the damage of close combat and their weapons do not encourage defense speccing. Hammer and mace would be in the same area but their traits are in defense, same with shield off hands.

When i do use my GS spec i have 15 points in defense for health regen, that is a GS signet spec, high damage, high crit, a little less damage for damage reduction. This falls under the umbrella of signet spec yet seems universally vilified by the population.

Can’t imagine what a group of 5 shout warriors could do in some dungeon encounters, ones which require high damage output while you defend objectives..

I guess I wasn’t too clear on the last part about elite skills. I was actually arguing that signet of rage is indeed the “best” out of all of them. Warbanner as you’ve said and I’ve mentioned – the biggest draw is the rez, which in a competent team you won’t really need.

On topic again, I personally do use the GS (I also use the signet of rage and dolyak in lieu of balanced stance) and stay in melee in range. I was just saying that when you’re there you might want to have more than just signets in your bar and that you are traited accordingly to survive and do well in melee range. The traits signets subtly push you towards, are just not amazing.

@Graywolf

5 shout warriors will rock, because they will all heal themselves constantly, and provide a party wide perma fury and 15+ might stacks.In dungeon, you do what you can to not only boost your damage, but your other 4 party members’.
I’ve said it in another topic: all the damage you think you do as a 5 signet is less than the damage boost from just my 2 utility skills : FGJ and precision banner.If you pick the banner for the aoe fury, you can provide perma fury buff for your party, might stacks, and a party total bonus of 450 precision and 50% crit damage.

Edit: I just want to add.By no means do I say GS is not a viable weapon for dungeons.It is.It’s the traits that make it a completely useless spec(5 signet you know). You just try to sacrifice boosting party damage for your own damage.Thing is, party boosts always, always result in more damage.

I switch out of Signet whenever I’m in a Event, Dungeon, PVP, WvWvW, GVG.

Only time I use Signet build when I’m alone.