Guild Wars 2

Edge.4180:

Reaver.9256:

They’ve already lost a lot from not having enough to do. How many posts have been on these forums of people complaining about lack of players? I know a lot of my friends/guildies quit because they already accomplished everything to do. Most people don’t care if there weapon has a pretty unicorn on it or not. Most people I know want better/cooler items to work for.

You’re downplaying aesthetics while at the same time suggesting escalating stat changes is somehow “cooler”. Unfortunately, this is a game where:

1) stats scale down depending on your location making an increase in stats fairly meaningless for most of the world (and the entire world map is largely considered to be all end-game content under this design).

2) as players are given equipment with increased stats they are ultimately countered by NPC opponents with increased stats, making the entire thing a pointless wash.

Take a level 10 character, for example, and pit him against a level 10 monster. Now take that same character, give him equipment that has three times the stats, but raise the stats of the monster by a factor of three to maintain the balance. There is going to be no difference in the feel of that fight beyond seeing bigger numbers everywhere. What actually makes higher level content more exciting is the introduction of new abilities, mechanics and tactics on both the player, the environment, and the NPC opponents. You don’t have to throw in stat changes on top of that to accomplish the goal.

The only thing character stats are really good for in GW2 is to slowly unfold the world around the player. A level 10 player can not survive a level 80 zone until his stats have improved. That gives them a location and a goal to strive for over time. It becomes the point of leveling up – to be able to survive in more areas of the world. But once you reach max level, increasing stats just for the sake of increasing stats does little beyond making your current gear obsolete (which I doubt anyone is fond of). It’s also mechanic that can also be used to gate content by forcing a player to get tier 1 equipment in order to raid a tier 2 dungeon, to then obtain tier 2 equipment to raid a tier 3 dungeon, and so on.. but that’s the treadmill this game was supposed to be avoiding like the plague, and even now the developers are insisting they’re opposed to this design.

You know, it’s like players want to believe that there’s always a dungeon out there that is unconquerable until they have invested both time and effort into coming up with a way to survive in it and ultimately conquer it. WoW has taught us that the solution to this dilemma must always come in the form of gear with better stats. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We shouldn’t have to make our current gear obsolete every time we do that. There are plenty of other ways to gate content and make players feel like they are progressing through challenge after challenge. WoW rarely bothers trying this because they already have a mechanic: the illusion of gear “progression”. GW2 could continue its brave trend of being different and use a different way if they really believed in their original philosophy.

This guy is somebody who gets it. I’ve tried to explain this to my friends who I used to play wow with.

Its all an illusion, you aren’t getting more powerful, except relative to old content you’ve already done anyways. When developers introduce new content into games that utilize a gear treadmill, they do it with the understanding and expectation that you have a certain level of gear.

Every time they introduce new content, you are in fact weaker, and working your way back up to simply being on par (read: being able to actually complete content).

All it really succeeds in doing is two things:
1) Trivializes old content. In a game that doesn’t utilize a gear treadmill, if you want to go back and run older dungeons, they can still be mostly as challenging as they were they day you did it. The big thing that changes here is player skill, not you curb stomping it because you have another +200 stats.
2) Forces people who like to play multiple characters to grind endlessly. I’m a complete altaholic. I now have two level 80s, and am working on 1 of every other class. When you play a game with a gear treadmill, when a new expansion comes out you have to gear up EVERY CHARACTER YOU HAVE. This gets tiring very quick. I love the idea of being able to go back to a character I leveled up and actually roll into new content if I so desire, instead of grinding for x many dozen hours before I’m allowed to do the things I actually want to do.

At the end of the day its been said to death here and people don’t seem to get it. Almost every other MMO on the market has gear treadmills. There is no reason that GW2 needs them.

I too found this particularly frustrating. When speccing out my engineer I came to the conclusion that I wanted a very particular stat lineup, initially I landed on one that is only available in PvP but has different stats in PvE.

The Shaman Amulet in PvP gives +Toughness (Primary), +Healing and +Condition Damage (Secondaries).
In PvE it gives +Vitality (Primary), +Healing and +Condition Damage (Secondaries).

This made no sense to me. Why give the same prefix different stats in one game mode over another? Why only allow us to craft some, but make others only accessible via dungeons (or not at all, some combos don’t even exist).

Seems to be no purpose for it.

callidus.7085:

What he’s asking for isn’t to use the WH to apply buffs, but to remove buffs from other players.. to use the WH itself offensively.. to have skills in slots 1, 2 and 3 for the WH.. but OP, that’d be a little weird, don’t you think? duel wielding WHs? You can’t really do a “hit” with a WH.. what would the attack animation be? lol.. it IS a cool idea, to be able to have offensive WH abilities.. but I don’t think the WH will ever be a main hand weapon.

I see.

If that’s the goal, I think that would be easier achieved by an alternative major trait. The current trait allows for condition conversion into boons for the warhorn. Maybe add a counterpart trait that converts enemy boons into conditions when they are in range. That would be pretty cool.

I guess I’m not sure I understand your intended goal here. You mention offensive support, but as things stand I feel like you can actually accomplish this by going sword/warhorn, or my preferred combo, axe/warhorn.

As someone who has used warhorn as their main weapon slot since around level 15, I feel like it adds massive support. I wrote a post on why I think it’s pretty fantastic.

With the proper traits, it adds massive group utility, and since its in the same tree as both banners and shout healing, chances are you are taking one of those to supplement it as a support warrior.

Sword main hand gives you good single target lockdown, meanwhile the axe has great AoE potential for WvW/PVE.

Maybe I’m missing something about your request, but I feel like what you are asking for is already possible.

I love that someone wants to roll in here talking trash on BP from AR.

Bottom line is, we’re both bottom of the barrel and got stomped by NSP. Talking trash on the other underdog doesn’t mean anything, we both still lost by an insanely huge margin.

Makes it all seem a little dumb don’t you think?

Yeah, though this also means the 15 point defensive trait to heal based on your adrenaline level is also unaffected by +healing similar to the dolyak rune buff.

Though, it does not seem to be a hard and fast rule. Adrenal Health and the dolyak rune buff neither grant the actual boon regeneration itself, nor gain +healing bonuses, but then the healing signet also grants a regeneration effect that does not actually give you the regeneration boon, yet it IS affected by +healing.

Healing from shouts is a flat heal value rather then a healing over time and is effected by +healing.

Banners with traited for regeneration actually pulse the regeneration boon itself, and are therefore by default effected by +healing. So far as I’m aware anything that grants the actual boon is effected by +healing, but other effects that grant nebulous regenerative effects may or may not and just require testing to know.

As far as signets are concerned, you have to realize they just don’t make sense in the context of how the Engineer class mechanic works. It’s not just about it being different, it’s about it being literally tied to the skills we choose.

Signets, by design, are meant to be a cost analysis. You have to make the decision if you want a passive playstyle and effectively eschew skills for signets. Sure you might use some of them, but for the most part you just want the passive and let them sit there.

The engineer class mechanic requires every skill to give you an active toolbelt skill. This means the engineer would be the only class that has signets and keep the passive bonus, while just using their toolbelt skills instead. It just doesn’t make sense with the class.

Personally, I think signets should be either made more rare or removed entirely, but thats purely my own personal taste. They promote a passive playstyle (lol 5 signet gs warriors). Utility skills shouldn’t be passive bonuses imo.

Proeliator.8740:

I agree with Konrad about mending being the best but if you still want the regen you could get the Dolyak rune which gives regeneration and lots of extra toughness/vitality. I’m giving it a hard look along with a few other runes. The only thing you’re really losing is a little dps but that’s probably worth it for the added survivability.

Dolyak Rune 6 piece bonus only gives 30 health regen/tic. It also isn’t affected by +healing gear. The bonus is pretty worthless imo.

This is coming from someone who builds toughness/healing and utilizes banner regeneration and loves it. It just doesn’t have a place in any build sadly.

Davez.4861:

Grundir have you done the research is the healing power also scales up you are healed using the shouts (Vigorous Shouts) ?

I don’t know the exact ratio, but I do know that Vigorous Shouts does get a bonus from +Healing.

I did more extensive testing with the banner regeneration as well, and I can give more useful information for that specifically. My banners would heal about 120/tic with no healing. Throwing on a PvP Clerics Amulet increased it to around 260/tic.

I’ve become a very big fan of banners. I keep meaning to put up the current build I’m running but still haven’t gotten around to it. I will probably make a new post for that as it’s a bit out of scope of warhorns specifically, but the warhorn is still a key part of my build.

incisorr.9502:

I use warhorn since the game is released for pvp and pve, its not overlooked and youre not awesome for pointing it out

warhorn is good only if youre going for a glass cannon or a buffer, anything else is a waste

That’s a pretty arrogant statement. So since you know about them surely everyone else knows their potential.

Furthermore, you obviously didn’t read my post, because if you think that using a warhorn makes you a glass cannon you don’t know jack about the potential of the condition removal/conversion and vigor options that increase your durability overall.

Drunken Mad King.8193:

The problem with the warhorn is that it is situational. That situation being dungeons. Out in pve warhorn is transport only. Dynamic events do not evaluate things on support which is a significant overlook. Play your way but get penalized for being support. They only look at dps and mobs hit. If they evaluated it also on support, meaning people rezzed, healed or booned, cleansed, and so forth then support people would be better suited in PVE.

I don’t get penalized though, because with an Axe mainhand I’m still tagging mobs and doing enough damage to get golds on every event I do.

Furthermore, later in levels some events really do require actual effort to complete unlike most of the earlier events. The bigger zone events like the one at Malchor’s Leap can take a significant investment to beat, and if people are dropping like flies around you that won’t happen. Warhorn keeps people alive.

Gopher.4562:

Vitality does not give much return, in terms of actual HP. With 30 points in the Vit tree you’re getting maybe 2k HP.

When mobs are hitting you for 5-6k, the extra 2k is definitely nice, but since the Tactics tree is a bit lackluster in terms of skills, and it seems that the majority of the skills that are useful in that tree are broken.

Empower Allies is great, however it does not actually increase the power of anyone.
Shrug it off is also another great ability, however it has yet to ever activate for me (tested this in a dungeon and outside of a dungeon)

For me, who uses a Greatsword/Rifle and Dual Axes everything else in the tree is very lackluster.

I prefer Toughness as that allows me to take more damage than Vitality ever will, and the Toughness tree actually has some decent (non broken) skills.

I run 30 points in tactics and can say that Shake it Off works for me to great effect. I wonder if perhaps you weren’t using it while inside some fields that reapply effects (poison zones, etc).

Combined with the Shout Healing Trait in the Tactics tree, I find it to be a very useful, low cooldown utility skill. Keep in mind it also removes one condition from surrounding allies.

If you are a fan of either 1) Banners, 2) Shouts, or 3) the Warhorn, Tactics is actually a really great tree in my opinion.

Plague.5329:

I’ve used nothing but the warhorn, but not because I wanted to. I actually detest it as a weapon. I just use it because Charge is on there. It’s just a getting away from something weapon. Applying weakness is cute but really doesn’t mitigate as much damage as out-DPSing someone will. (They can’t hit you if they’re dead.) The 5 skill is really only useful to help you dodge around a little more, after a quick weapon swap.

The Warhorn doesn’t really have much effectiveness against one or two enemies. It’s more effective in groups, yet in WvW, if you’re close enough for it to affect that many enemies, you’re in way too deep. You could use it in 8v8s, I guess, but… why would you?

Personally, I think in terms of combat performance, it’s the worst weapon the Warrior has. It’s just a weapon that’s doing the job a secondary skill would be doing in GW1. I really hate using it, but it’s the fastest way to get around, and I do a lot of walking.

Most of my response to Dreadspectre applies to your post as well. When thinking of things purely from a solo-play perspective, you’re probably right that the Warhorn isn’t very compelling (though I still use it just because I really like the play style it encourages).

Leading the charge into a big group of enemies to push them back is a perfect situation to have a Warhorn on. You aren’t really there to do the damage, you’re there to intimidate, stay alive, and hinder the enemy. I do this all the time in WvWvW, to varying success (depending more on whether people actually follow through on it or not).

I think at the end of the day it really boils down to how effective you want to be in a group setting, and whether you care more about overall success or pure personal damage output. In world events this won’t matter that much because it’s pretty hard to fail most of them, but in a dungeon setting or PvP I feel like it can make a significant difference.

Vain.1029:

In a prolonged fight, especially where your build is defensive and also focused regenning a lot of health (e.g. 15 defense trait, shout heals, etc.), or you are coordinating with others to create heals (e.g. blast finishers on water fields), then toughness can work really well. In general, if you are not focusing on these sorts of things, I’d go for vitality.

This is a good point to take note of. Your build matters a lot in this equation. I build for the 15 point defense trait mentioned here, as well as down Tactics for the Shout Heal Trait. As far as I’m aware, healing effects all of these, not just your heal skill (someone please correct me if I’m wrong, I’m still trying to figure out exactly what effect heal has on some of these abilities, and how significant the effect is, but I’m pretty sure it does effect them).

Someone I think mentioned condition removal up above and I feel like it was dismissed out of hand. The Warhorn when Traited grants significant condition removal (and conversion) potential. Combine that with Mending and Shake it Off and you have pretty reliable condition removal on demand. This, in my opinion, makes Toughness the ideal stat for me on my Warrior build.

Dreadspectre.3456:

I think the warhorn turns people off because it offers no offense at all and both skills have what, 20/25 second CD’s? Just feels like a situational swap weapon more than a keep it on weapon.

I think this is the core of the problem for this type of item. Most players are very damage focused, and even then in a much more narrow scope of their OWN damage and ignoring everyone elses. They pass over an item like this because it does nothing to boost their damage output and never give it a second thought.

I won’t try and make the claim that your personal damage output is somehow better with a Warhorn, because it isn’t, but I will state the possibility that it will generate more overall damage output for a group as a whole. Having condition removal, buffs like swiftness and vigor, and the boons granted from the condition conversion, can all go a long way to helping you and your allies stay alive in a long fight.

A dead ally is putting out no damage, just like you are if you’re dead.

Generally speaking, in most solo situations a greatsword will be better because you’ll kill them long before you get to the point where you need to really mitigate the damage, but in a group event or dungeon scenario, I really think the Warhorn could win out in that regard.

By the way, default cooldowns are 20 s on both abilities, down to 16 with the Master Major Trait. This makes it eligible for an excellent offhand slot to swap to when you need to use the abilities (or maybe start out a fight that way) then swap back to another weapon set.

above mars.4586:

Very informative, thanks for the post. I’ve wanted to try a warhorn at 80 for a while and haven’t gotten around to it. Only 2 concerns — hows the DPS? Can you still get gold in DEs vs dragons? I feel like it wouldnt be too hot. Also, does this build make the second set of weapons pointless, ie. hammer or rifle? I often switch to rifle during DEs when the boss has a strong AoE, and I think this build would hurt my dps a decent amount.

I’ve only been 80 for a few days, and I don’t think I’ve done any of the DEs involving the dragons yet. Mostly I’ve done the events in Malchor’s Leap relating to the corrupted priest or whatever, and I have never felt that I have trouble getting gold.

In my main set, I do Axe/Warhorn because the Axe offers significant AoE options. The auto attack will hit I think up to four targets, and then you also have the 2 for a little extra AoE punch, plus Vulnerability stacks.

Generally speaking I use a Rifle in my second set purely because I typically feel like having a ranged option is pretty necessary. Sometimes in PVE I will run with Axe/Mace as my second set, as the Mace offhand adds more vulnerability, plus the shockwave style knockdown in a line.

I’m sure my build doesn’t output damage as much as other builds out there, but I would wager it probably has more survivability, as well as the best group support you can get for a Warrior. Sadly, I don’t think the events currently factor any kind of support role into event contribution.

To help with Damage though I do currently run 20/0/20/30/0 Traits to give me some power, as well as Power/Toughness/Healing gear. I’ll post my full build sometime later.

So apparently the image tags don’t work or I’m using them wrong… Guess I’ll edit those out.

Edited. I’ll replace this post with my build sometime later.

Understanding how Conditions and Boons work, as well as how they convert, is key to maximizing your Warhorn potential. In addition, knowing how these stack (in either Duration or Intensity) is also very important.

Let me give an example which I found particularly useful. You all probably have encountered the Earth Elementals which lay a cripple line effect on the ground (Elementalists have this ability as well). When you stand in it, you get the Cripple Condition. If you use Charge, you will grant yourself 13 seconds of swiftness, then furthermore convert the Cripple Condition into yet another 13 seconds of swiftness, in fact granting you 26 seconds of Swiftness. This can get crazy over the course of the fight, as you can get these effects multiple times, and convert them with both Charge and Call to Arms. I’ve had Swiftness stacked up over 2 minutes because I was fighting Earth Elementals for a prolonged time.

Grandmaster Major Traits – Both of the Grandmaster Major Traits can be good depending on your Utility skill choices.

• Inspiring Battle Standard – Banners also grant regeneration to allies. As I stated earlier, I plan to play with a more Banner focused build soon, but I can’t report yet on the effectiveness of this Trait.
• Vigorous Shouts – Shouts heal. This is another nebulous Trait, but I have been using it and find it to be rather effective. At level 80, I find my shouts heal somewhere between 1400-1600. My gear has been fluctuating so I’m unsure exactly what effect +healing gear has on it. I find it to be very useful though.

As you can see, the Warhorn is very versatile. Traited properly, you can remove, depending on which conditions are on you, up to six conditions with one round of abilities, and while doing so converting two of those to boons, while granting their own boons as well.

This increases your utility to the entire team, and increases survivability significantly. Fighting mobs that constantly throw poison on you? Turn that into regeneration and heal back the damage they deal. Heavy hitter mobs? Throw on Vigor and dodge roll the majority of the abilities they lay down. And any enemies attempt to slow/immobilize you just makes you move with swiftness that much longer.

Hope this was helpful to someone, I’ll post my build later in another post, as this one is long enough as is.

Adept Major Traits – There are a few really good options here depending on your play style.

• Empower Allies – If you are running with a group this is another decent option to support your buddies. You grant them another 70 points of Power. Not the biggest upgrade, but it scales with the number of people around you and can add up over time. Of course, keep in mind the usefulness of Power to your allies may vary depending on if they use condition damage heavy builds.
• Inspiring Banners – If you enjoy rolling with Banners in your Utility skill slots then this is a must have Trait. Increased range on the buff +20% Recharge.
• Empowered – If you are rolling solo this is probably the only other real option you have available. Empower grants you (according to the GW2 Wiki) +1.5% Damage per Boon. With the Warhorn, you can have at any given time two buffs available, and if you are combining that with Shouts like “For Great Justice” then you can easily get this bonus up to over 5%. Nothing to write home about, but it’s an option.

I’ve been rolling with Empowered in my current build (which I will detail later on). When I play WvWvW I swap to Empower Allies to give my group a little extra damage. I’m planning on giving Banners another good try though so I will probably be swapping to Inspiring Banners soon.

Master Major Traits – There is obviously only one option here for this build, and it is what makes the Warhorn my favorite item in the game.

• Quick Breathing – Warhorn skills recharge 20% faster. Warhorn skills convert 1 condition into a boon.

This seems like a simple Trait but it is actually very complex. If you go down 30 points into tactics, that’s +30% Boon Duration (13 seconds on Swiftness (Charge) and Vigor (Call to Arms) for you AND your allies). Taking this Trait reduces the cast time of both of those abilities to 16 seconds from 20, meaning you only have to wait 3 seconds before you can reapply them. Keep in mind, there are other sources of gaining more Boon Duration that I intend to experiment with (Banner of Tactics, as well as some Runes), I’d wager you might be able to get this up to near 100% uptime.

The real bread and butter here is the condition conversion. Please note, this is different from condition removal! I was pretty confused at what the conversion was, as the tooltips don’t really give any useful information on it. You remove a condition and convert that into a corresponding boon. I can’t find anywhere on the GW2 Wiki that lists the exact conversions, but I’ll try to list which ones I can from memory here. Feel free to correct me if I get any of these wrong.

• Bleeding, and Poison become Regeneration
• Chilled, Crippled, and Immobilized become Swiftness
• Weakness becomes Vigor
• Blind becomes Fury
• Burning and Vulnerability become Protection
• Confusion becomes Retaliation

I feel like the Warhorn is overlooked and probably undervalued as an option for the Warrior class. It’s pretty rare that I see other players using it, what with the deluge of 5 signet greatsword Warriors, and the other seemingly more popular options.

As a Warrior who hit 80 a few days ago and have used the Warhorn since around the mid teens, I figured I would try to offer up my opinion on why I enjoy it so much, and hopefully give some players a better understanding of the potential and usefulness of this item.

What makes the Warhorn worthwhile?

The Warhorn, if traited properly, is all about mobility, buffs and condition control, not just for you, but your entire team. It adds great support and utility to your build, making you and your allies very hard to lock down.

Charge (4) – Grant swiftness to yourself and allies, while curing chilled, crippled, and immobilized. 20 Second Recharge.

• Swiftness: 10 s
• Cures Crippled
• Cures Immobilized
• Cures Chilled
• Range: 1,200

Call to Arms (5) – Grant vigor to yourself and allies, while weakening nearby foes. 20 Second Recharge.

• Vigor: 10 s
• Weakness: 6 s
• Range: 1,200

Charge is great for keeping up swiftness both in and out of combat. I’d go out of my mind running between areas if I didn’t have swiftness at higher levels. It’s also great for running past mobs you don’t want to deal with, with proper dodge rolling they can’t keep up with you. The effect removal makes it difficult for people to keep you locked down, further enhancing your mobility. Keep in mind, all of your allies in a range of 1200 units get Swiftness as well.

Call to Arms is excellent for dealing with heavy hitting mobs where you really need that extra dodge rolling endurance. For those who may not be familiar, Vigor grants you double endurance regeneration, making you a dodge rolling fool. Furthermore, you weaken your enemies, causing their hits to glance 50% of the time while also making it more difficult for them to dodge. As with Charge, your allies also get Vigor for using this ability.

That in of itself is quite useful, but let’s look at the Trait options and how they change the way the Warhorn is used.

The Tactics Trait Line

Tactics is the fourth Trait Line for the Warrior. For every point you add, it grants you +10 Vitality (Maximum Health Pool) and +1% Boon Duration. Already with the Boon Duration you can see that this will synergize well with the Warhorn. With a full 30 points in the Tactics Trait line, you’ve buffed up your Swiftness and Vigor buffs from 10 second duration to 13 seconds.

The only beef I have with the Tactics Trait line is that every minor Trait revolves around reviving. It has its benefits, because chances are if you choose to use the Warhorn it’s because you want a more utility oriented playstyle, and reviving allies jives with that quite well. I do wish though that maybe one or two of these were usable outside of reviving. It means that the majority of the time your minor traits are not in effect, but when you do need them it’s usually one of the more important situations in the game, as reviving allies in any scenario is pretty key to victory.

kschmidt is correct. Reference the Miscellaneous section of the following wiki article: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Movement_speed. Only the highest movement speed buff actually applies, which means at best you’d have 25% at any given time.

Furthermore, keep in mind that the IV on Air stacks at a rate of 5% every 10 seconds. Calling it a flat out 25% movement speed buff is pretty disingenuous, as you’d have to be in that form for 50 seconds for it to ever reach that point. Personally, I find this really weak for elementalist because I think if you aren’t attunement swapping you are losing a lot of potential.

Also keep in mind the 5 pointers for each attunement only apply while you are actually in that attunement, thus making the IV on Air that much weaker to rely on.

Sounds like a pretty solid idea to me. It makes sense that it would be easier to resetup the turret after picking it up then after you blew the dang thing to smithereens