Guild Wars 2

honestly, you don’t need ascended armour for raids so far

also stuck at this stage

^ we used a zerk herald with jalis and a few toughness trinkets, had enough toughness to take aggro and enough mitigation to deal with the hits in the first boss fight anyway

personally dont rate cavalier as a stat choice, would always take valk if you want that high damage on crits with crit chance aquired by some other means

vit>tough in general and keeping power main stat and not a secondary

im sure there is a place for cav in small amounts in some builds but i would avoid investing too much into it

also iirc bloodlust>cruelty always

Power is always better than ferocity in equal amounts as far as I am aware, so would go spicy butternut or truffle steak etc. with power as main stat. Defo spicy butternut if you’re going for the high numbers.

Buuuut those sharpening stones are nice for making the most of stat gain especially on a build with less defensive stats, because of giving all dat toughness too, so would personally stick with those.

For pug environments it’s a bit difficult as people usually want every warrior running regular shout builds. But if you have tons already and barely enough guardians to go around in terms of party comp, it cant hurt to throw in a few dps builds imo (as long as shout warrior comes as priority as its more important to the core of the melee).

You do contribute but just in a different way, more jumping onto single or small groups of squishy targets and then getting back into the safety of the melee. Playing more of a focus rather than melee damage but it depends how you set up your utilities and whether you are in a melee party with guardians or seperate.

Normal dps warrior is 6/0/2/0/6 (safe with dogged march), 6/0/0/2/6 (leg spec, easier eviscerate setup etc.) and 6/2/0/0/6 for rifle instead of axe shield. Using endure pain, balanced stance or dolly sig and your choice of other utility and elite (rampage as a defensive cooldown running solo is strong).

In terms of running something in between shout and dps (as tanky stat wise as a shout warrior but running stances), I don’t think this is worth it really, unless you need more core melee but don’t have enough guardians for reliable stab.

Depends what kinda route you want to go. If you are going with a raid format you might want to take a few shout warriors for cc cleanse and heals etc.

Say for example you run a melee core party or two depending on what your composition is like, that party might be made up of two guardians, one or two shout warriors and a necro.

basic eg of the shout build : http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNBiYD7kKRq8wyQwzDoDxAVBFyFPAUeDNe6N4FSBA-TlCEABQ8AAKRzwwHBgtUCykyPFV/pNdAAcBAe4gAEz+DBAQAu5NDADdoDdoDdodzbezhezbWKAmEWB-w

Add more power tough vit if you want more survivability, add more berserker if you want more damage. Don’t be tempted to put in pieces without power as main stat (eg dat knights) in order to hit nice looking stat numbers because you always get the best overall survivability and damage running power main stat gear on this kind of warrior build

Giver’s stat sword warhorn, Malice sigil and toxic sharpening stone are all there to give flurry as much duration as possible. Also the new food sweet bean bun or something is pretty much a straight upgrade from lemongrass with 25% condi duration and -40% condi duration on you, but its not in the build editor and i think its a little pricey :P

Sigils are subject to change, use whatever is best for your engagements because there isnt really a standard setup (just always bloodlust over other stacks). Obviously if its better for you to run healing signet then go for it, but defiant is great against groups who have the potential to put out big damage at once, you just have to play a bit more smart, vs those groups its better than heal sig. You can use lung capacity instead of leg specialist but if you can manage your shouts right you don’t need the cooldown reduction, and leg spec is stronk

Also trooper runes vs hoelbrak, trooper is great but in the same way as heal sig, when you go up against big groups who can spike lots of damage and throw out lots of condi cc, its better for you to play safer with hoelbrak than it is to have a couple of extra condi removes on skills that you need to save for other uses anyway (fury on bombs with fgj and stunbreak with shake it off).

This is a larger scale raid build but its one of the best things to fight zergs with when outnumbered and organised. Throw an intel sigil onto the hammer and suddenly its effective at small scale fighting too :P

I guess other warrior builds would be more stance based, probably running defense tree and discipline tree for less of a melee core group idea and more of everyone surviving by themselves. I personally love hammer/greatsword for that and I think it has potential for the zergbusting role too.

AAaaaalllsoo… killshot warrior is rather good these days for focusing enemy commanders :P kill the commander and most of the time you bust the zerg, its surprisingly easy. But its more of an afterthought thing less of a main staple of a group.

eg of killshot : http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAU8enUJSfHW3BehApIG4HoMHBBQDcqwVnG5eZA-TVCEABEcBASU9ntUCykyPDeAAtpbAgjAwDHEgY2fIAACwNvZ2sNDG6RP6RP6R7m38o38m3sUAMpMC-w

Utilities personal preference, rampage is there for when you are being focused and need to make distance as signet only really gives you fury, and banner isn’t so suitable for a dps build.

Another dps option is axe/x greatsword with the two points in arms from the killshot builds moved into defense for dogged march or into tactics for leg specialist and appropriate traits for axe or gs in strength (and a stability utility skill taken). I feel like the dps builds are very focused on single target spike which is great for gvg and killing the pug commander but not so much for zergbusting in terms of aoe pressure. You can even it out a bit though by changing sigil setup and traits to have less emphasis on the eviscerate and more emphasis on constant aoe damage. eg heightened focus instead of burst mastery, slashing power instead of axe mastery and dps sigils like fire or force on gs. This makes it a bit better for just dishing out as much damage as possible to an area of pugs :P (and dont be afraid to try new utilities on dps warrior other than endure pain and a stability skill. The last is really whatever works best in your situation.)

TLDR shout war great, mabye add a dps war too

Give 0/0/4/6/4 a try too, the fast hands and destruction of the empowered are great. Sword leap whenever you need and much more damage vs most targets, because pretty much everyone in the big fights is laden with boons.

eg. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNBiYDbkpjKPLDxzD6QDkFUIH8AQ5LU4p/gTIEA-TlCBABCt/gWKxOTJIWKPA4BAYp6P5pbghjAwGHEgAuAAkCgJlRA-w

(edit: Think Ogro has a vid on this build on his channel too)

I had to sign in to voice my cringe. the /laugh too, really? :S

I had to log in to agree with you on this :P
I’ve been having the same issues for a while, especially when you want to specifically target one person in a group, it seems AoE is king because it doesn’t suffer from this.

I am currently running a build with a mix of single target and AoE but it seems most of the time my single target abilities are wasted because I lose the lock on people.