Guild Wars 2

So after running around trying various classes i’m back in warrior and i want to make a support shout heal warrior and i got to thinking what weapons are best for such a role.

At first i thought of going with hammer cuz of the sheer amount of cc it can do and it seemed to fit in with the idea of support but i dont feel like being in the frontline would be conducive for a support role as you gotta look out for yourself more and hence lowering your time spent supporting and increasing your time spent surviving.

With more thinking i stumbled across threads suggesting longbow and rifles but not for support and i thought that it might be a good idea, longbows got blind, immobilize and fire field while rifle is able to cripple, vul and bleed and it clicked for me, why not make a rifle/LB shout heal warrior? LB will be out simply to fire off those disables + field while the rifle is the main weapon for applying bleeds and vul with cripple and knockback as safety measures

I dont have a definitive build yet since i’m writing this on my phone but i’m sure i want 30 in tactics for the healing shouts and 20% shout cd reduction hence for my question to the warrior community, is this viable and where should the remaining traits go to? thanks in advance

You probably want to find the trait that increases the longbow range to match the rifle if you are intending to use both.

If you use the vitality and precision trait lines you can make the longbow do more damage to both bleeding and burning targets, but that would get in the way of the shout stuff.

I find I get a lot more support out of a rifle/longbow + axe/warhorn build. The warhorn offers a ton of support with quick breathing, a lot more than either rifle or longbow can do on its own, and the axe gives vulnerability + ranged cripple on top.

I suggest trying the rifle or longbow, together with the warhorn with quick breathing.

Quick breathing puts you 20 points in tactics, so only 10 more are needed for improving your shouts. I don’t think a support build works without the warhorn, as it is one of the best support weapons in the game when traited.

You get a ton of condition removal, five conditions gone of which two are turned into aoe boons, and then you get aoe weakness, aoe vigor and aoe swiftness all in one single offhand weapon, all at 16 seconds cooldown, which is insanely short, it’s really amazing.

@Jam i looked for it in the wiki and the longbow thing is an adept trait in the tactics line so i’m getting it for that
@lamefox yeah i doubt i will get that trait since i want to maximise support as damage is already gotta be pretty bad for this build
@Zsymon i know that warhorn is awesome but the issue i got is its trait location, it clashes with the shout cd reduction, thats y i decided to just go with shouts and go full soldier runes hence they all can remove conditions but maybe i’ll keep sword/warhorn in my inventory for those periods of running around either in open world or in W3

thanks for all the replies, keep em coming

update : so now i’m home and have access to the full power of the internet :P and more importantly the wiki and a build editor on a screen where i can actually see the whole thing and i have started a build that makes sense and does what i think i want to do.

So heres what i came up with
Traits 0/30/0/30/10

Arms major trait :+ 50% bleeding duration, Rifle 20% recharge + pierce and crit gains adrenaline
Tactics : longbow increased range, shout cd -20%, shouts heal
Discipline: signet cd-20%

Rationale: Tactics : longbow upgrade to keep it in line with rifle, shout cd and shout heal…. should be self explantory

Arms : mainly to support the rifle

Discipline : signet of rage is the best elite in my opinion even though some may say support should get the standard but after reviewing them standard is too situational for use and the long cooldown basically killed it for me. Rampage was never considered cuz…. i dunno it just dosent fit.

Heal :This also leads me to use healing signet
Elite : SOR
Utility : For Great justice, on my mark, shake it off ( the fear one is situational too so i might switch it in if the situation could use it ( eg. in W3 to replace on my mark for zerk encounters)

Weapons would be main rifle and longbow for throwing out field and disables, sigils i have no idea

Armor in the end would most likely be full cleric with full soldier runes to max healing and condition removal for group situation

so yeah, this is what i came up with, comments/critics are welcome

Honestly, I’d keep it the way you have it except for a couple things. Switch the rifle out for sword/warhorn. Change the 20% reduced shout cooldown to Quick Breathing for Warhorn. IMO the benefits you get from the quick breathing is greater than the slight cooldown reduction on your shouts. Change the traits that support the rifle into traits that support the sword. Use your longbow to set up combo fields and then swap to sword, leap through them (to combo on yourself) and whack away until your weapon swap is available again, back out ( blowing the warhorn), swap to longbow, rinse and repeat. All while using you shouts at the appropriate moments. Also, Warrior isn’t quite good enough at healing to spec FULLY into it, so why not do a little damage? Cleric’s gear is probably fine for the most part but I suggest slotting a couple pieces of jewelry that boost condition damage or getting weapons that have condition damage stats. Your going to be doing a lot of burning and bleeding. Might as well make it tick for something. Or boost your crit damage a little bit. With 300 in precision and permanent fury, you’re going to be critting quite often. Might wanna make those crits hit a little harder.

well…. i’m back from actually playing and…. i expect pure range warrior to pretty much sux without going for power/crit build…. and after trying out various weapons i have come to the same conclusions as what both Zsymon and Argis have pointed out, the warhorn is indeed a powerful enough off-hand to warrant traiting for it instead of shout cd reduction so thanks for this suggestion

As for the suggestion to use longbow as the secondary of choice, i agree with you argis, between the rifle and longbow, with the main weapon being sword/warhorn, it does provide a lot more than the rifle in way of support and combo so i will stick with it, so i guess my final question about this build will simply be sigils, what are some good options for a support warrior? i saw sigil of water but i heard that the healing it provides is… useless, is it?

I used to use Sigils of Water. The only good thing about those sigils is how cheap they are on the trading post. They are that cheap for a reason. Don’t get them. lol. I would get sigil of fire on the longbow for increased AoE, for the sword I would probably get a sigil of earth for more bleeding, and for the warhorn a sigil of battle. Sigil of earth might not be a bad choice for the longbow either as you would be able to simultaneously get some bleeding and burning with one weapon.

Firstly i have changed to topic title to simply support warrior since the ranged part has proven to be not so viable for someone trying to go the support route so yeah :P

@Argis thanks for the heads up about the water sigil :P as for the other suggestions, maybe i will go with that sigil load out cuz it seems like it makes the most sense so thanks for that too

But now i noticed something after reading more into the skill details, warhorn #4 cures chill/cripple AND immobilized? wtf that is freaking op lol and if you have the wh trait u cure another condition???? the reason i brought this up is cuz with the 2 wh skills + shake it off i see no reason to use soldier runes anymore lol and was looking around for runes to replace em and i saw the heal runes and i think i found just the thing

so now i just wanna ask about the rune of water, with 6 of em it says you get an aoe heal when u use heal? but it writes small amount and dosent say how much so i wanna ask if anyone knows how small is the heal? cuz if its good that makes a 4th aoe heal for us and i’ll totally go for 6 water runes if not i’ll go 2 water, 2 monk and 2….i guess either major monk/water to get 10 % boon duration for a total of 70% increased boon duration with the 30 tactics

kitai.7638:

Firstly i have changed to topic title to simply support warrior since the ranged part has proven to be not so viable for someone trying to go the support route so yeah :P

@Argis thanks for the heads up about the water sigil :P as for the other suggestions, maybe i will go with that sigil load out cuz it seems like it makes the most sense so thanks for that too

But now i noticed something after reading more into the skill details, warhorn #4 cures chill/cripple AND immobilized? wtf that is freaking op lol and if you have the wh trait u cure another condition???? the reason i brought this up is cuz with the 2 wh skills + shake it off i see no reason to use soldier runes anymore lol and was looking around for runes to replace em and i saw the heal runes and i think i found just the thing

so now i just wanna ask about the rune of water, with 6 of em it says you get an aoe heal when u use heal? but it writes small amount and dosent say how much so i wanna ask if anyone knows how small is the heal? cuz if its good that makes a 4th aoe heal for us and i’ll totally go for 6 water runes if not i’ll go 2 water, 2 monk and 2….i guess either major monk/water to get 10 % boon duration for a total of 70% increased boon duration with the 30 tactics

According to the wiki discussion page on “of the Water” the heal is 690+(healing power/2)

2 Monk, 2 Water (with 30 in Tactics and Quick Breathing) gives you potentially 100% uptime on Warhorn boons. The last 10% from a pair of majors basically only gives you 3/4 of a second of Fury and 2.5 more seconds of 6-stack Might overlap on FGJ. In real world situations you may or may not get a swing off in time for that last attack to get a 20% increase crit chance (1/2 of those last attacks, accounting for something like 1 of every 10 attacks getting a 20% chance to do 50% more damage is like .5% overall damage increase in ideal circumstances) I might suggest “of the Fire” (20% Might duration) which will extend that 6-stack overlap to 20 seconds out of 25.

Might boosts both regular and condition damage and the weapons you’ve chosen utilize both. Might helps critical, power and condition builds while Fury helps mostly +crit damage% builds, which tend to already have amazingly high crit chance (and again, 3/4 second is as likely to go unused as used).

I’m a Sword/Horn+Rifle (LB for siege if there’s time to swap and set traits) and do the 2 Monk, 2 Water myself. My 3rd pair is Krait, but with condition clearing I don’t think I’m really benefiting from it much so pondering some “of the Fire” for maximizing the group damage side of the support role.

well first off, thanks for the info about the water rune i guess that makes it not so worth it for healing, as for your suggestion about the last 2 runes, i thought of using the major ones for 1 simple reason, signet of rage 10% extends it by 3 secs which with 70% i get 51 seconds of it with 48 seconds of cool down due to signet mastery this also works with warhorn where that 70% makes the swiftness last for 17 seconds on a 16 second cooldown hence it gives it a bit of leeway to pump it back up so while it may not do so well with FGJ it helps out the others much more, maybe you should consider it for yourself too

well that basically clears up all my questions about support warrior, thanks to all of you guys who replied, i think i already have a detailed plan about the way my warrior will look in the end.

but i do have a final mechanics question, how many people does the shout/ warhorn buff? i remember on guardian some shouts buffed only 5 ppl does that apply to warriors too? if so i might pack a banner for W3

I’ve been playing support warrior for over a month now, have 2 armour sets of: 6 runes of mercy for heavy duty rezzing in my healing banner support build and on power/touch/healing power 6 of the soldier for the healing shouts/mass condition removals/boons.

I favour using shout build for personal survivability.

I use sword/horn and mace/shield on both, S/H gives great mobility, cripples and 2 great aoe buffs (traited to reverse debuffs) and M/S which give me good survivability and 2 interrupts on visible enemies trying to finish downed allies.

My healing skill is Heal sig, which is combined with adrenal health and hp regen food (mango pie) on either build.

Honestly not sure how many people are affected by shouts, but I see the heals on more than 5 people for sure.

I typically use War Banner elite for both.

Sometimes, near cliffs, I use stomp in place of a 3rd banner/“Fear me” (also good near cliffs) and then replace war banner with Juggernaught elite for 3x stomps when I fling myself off a wall using savage leap to trigger DfA. Leave transform, weapon swap and trigger hydromancer, throw up traited shield stance and hobble back to portal spamming condition removals/heals then horn.

Sigils are 1x water (quite meh) and 1x hydro on mace/shield and life and hydromancer on S/H. doubled up hydro is very effective, and life stacks up fast for 250 more healing on shouts, yet more on banner support.

Traits 10 str (death from above is amazing…) 30 def and 30 tactics, traits to suit build.

I don’t use any kind of ranged weapon as support warrior, just doesn’t synergise well with how I play.

well firstly i can see the way you play is quite different from how i think i wanna play, you seem to rely on a whole bunch on jumping in, dishing out a whole can of kitten kicking then going back out using your skills to survive, seems fun but i guess not my style:P

and since you said shouts heal more than 5 ppl i think that would mean it affects everyone in the radius since 5 seems to be the magic number for anet :P 5 ppl buffed, 5 enemies hit by aoe and what not.

as for the elite…. well i dunno, banner feels like it offers too little?? i mean the rez is only for downed players and it only does it at the instant it lands and the buffs…. stability i think only applies on the first pulse while might and fury i can already pump out using FGJ so i dun really like it, as for jugger…. dosent feel supporty to me :P kinda wish we had an elite shout but thats already said in some other threads

What interests me most is your build, i just reached 20 and the mace looks like it would fit in better than the sword in the end. i mean first is that its a power reliant defensive weapon, if in the end i use full clerics thats + pow,tough,heal which would suggest mace would benefit most. 2nd is the trait line affecting mace, defence as you have said and i looked at it and it seems to best work with cleric set too, the major traits add dmg to weakened enemies with the minors adding survivability and toughness to power so this is really starting me wondering

Hence a new question, what about a mace/Warhorn build? i guess the alt weapon is still gonna be LB since having that ranged option has really saved me kitten in DEs when champs get too hot for me to melee. Think the build would be 0/0/30/30/10 or 0/0/25/30/15 cuz i dunno if i want a grandmaster trait in def though defy pain and balanced stance seem really tempting, as for the other major traits it would be the increased dmg to weak + the mace one

edit kitten kicking? wow, censor is turning me into an evil person :P