If you haven’t already, give the physical warrior skills a shot!
I thought they would all be kind-of meh, but they are very useful!
For instance, kick seems like a very poor ability to most people I’ve talked to. Your a warrior — if your playing melee, why would you want to kick someone away?
The real value of the physical skills (besides bolas) is their ability to interrupt.
You can kick a foe to stop a skill from activating. Your can stomp and send them into the air, both skills leaving your enemy on the ground for a few seconds while you continue to pound on them, and Bull’s Charge is a great addition to your bar for the same reason.
Kick, Stomp and Bull’s Charge are all extremely similar skills – so lets go over some good uses for them one-by-one.
Kick – kick pushes enemies away, is quick animating, and obviously interrupts skills.
Using this ability, you can knock enemies off of cliffs, into other players AoEs or fields, and stop dangerous abilities when you have no more endurance left.
Once you’ve Kicked a foe, you have to options. You can stay where you are — maybe switch to rifle and get off a kill shot? Or use healing surge? Alternatively, you can chase them. This works best with a charge skill, like Bull’s Charge or Rush, or a leap skill.
This usually allows you to get in an important heal or skill, switch weapons, run away, or do a second or two of damage.
Stomp – an AoE ability which has a blowout effect, which sends enemies flying into the air, much like a “knock-up” effect rather than knock back.
This is more useful than Kick in some ways, and the recharge rate is much longer to reflect that.
What I love about this ability is its kind of like an ‘Endure Pain’ for your whole party.
Any enemy which is sent into the air by Stomp is interrupted, and can’t attack for a second or two during the animation.
This means your entire team has a second or two when they aren’t receiving damage.
This gives everyone a chance to calm down a bit, heal, etc.
Most importantly, this allows for some longer skills to be activated and ensure they hit maximum targets. For instance, rangers traps, ’Dragon’s Tooth’ and other elementalists skills, other AoE fields, and skills which have a long animation (usually elites).
On the other hand, it gives the team a few seconds where they dont have to use any skills. This can really help when you have many skills with longer cooldowns, it can mean the difference between a heal being available and already used.
Bull’s Charge – A rush attack which has you running to your enemy, and promptly knocking them down.
This attack is excellent for runners, no only does it allow you to catch up, but it also gives you a second or two to apply a cripple for instance. And it doesn’t need a target, which means if you have a skill like ‘Throw Axe’ which cripples, but are out of range – you can Bull’s Charge towards them so that your in range for the cripple.
I find knockdown like this to be really good versus an enemy that would normally interrupt you (like mesmers, or mace warriors).
All in all this is a solid control ability, and especially good for those with limited mobility (like Mace/Shield, or even Axe/Axe).
Throw Bolas – a quick animating immobilize skill, with pretty long range.
Throw Bolas is a different skill compared to the rest – but can be used in a similar way.
If your facing a melee opponent, Bolas can give you a chance to clear some ground and get out of their range. For instance a greatsword warrior might use bolas, and then use Whirlwind Attack to quickly move away.
It doesn’t fit as well with the other attacks, but it certainly isn’t a bad immobilize if that is what you are looking for. I haven’t had too much time experimenting with the skill, but I’m sure some other forum-goers know of good combinations to use with this skill.
All in all, I think these are some highly overlooked skills that are quite effective, and should really be given a try!
