Guild Wars 2

You should try it when defending against a WvW siege, it’s quite good in that situation for jumping off the wall onto the guys either sieging the door, or in the vicinity of the walls. It can cause a lot of chaos, and is great if you can coordinate taking advantage of the AOE knockback with someone else. You don’t have to keep the trait all the time, and I don’t; I swap another trait in there when I am no longer in that situation.

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.

You can just go axe/warhorn (which is what I do) and have great damage, and great utility. Warhorn is only taking up skills 4 and 5 on your bar of what a damage-based offhand would otherwise have been (and skills 4-5 tend to be utility or on long cooldowns anyway), so you are not giving up much at all. Mainhand axe does a ton of damage, and like all mainhands, skill 1 is a frontal AOE. You can still keep a ranged as your second weapon set.

Plague.5329:

Make Empowered work with any passive state, boon or not, including signet passives, but reduce the gain. Warriors don’t have a very wide range of boons to begin with, and Empowered is already outclassed by a large margin by Empower Allies, which does the same thing for you and allies while granting a better resulting buff. You know what would be even better, though? If instead of just raising invisible numbers, the trait actually did something, like dropped little AoE fields that granted Might, whenever you use a Burst skill – anything that actually changes the battlefield around you instead of just crapping numbers.

Avoid traits that increase recharges. All this does is cause you to balance the skills so that you HAVE to bring the traits to normalize them, which means if you don’t have the traits, you won’t be using the skills. This is a no-no. I will spray you with a Windex bottle full of water if you do this again. Traits like Physical Training should not exist. They do more to hurt normal use of the skills than to benefit you for bringing it, because I know good and well you are increasing their native recharges because the trait exists at all. Traits like Physical Training should do something like increase the knockback of all physical skills, or apply a short immobilize after their use, or cause cripple for a second or two. Lots of choices that don’t involve punishing people trying to use the skills normally on other trait lines.

Empowered is not bad in a group due to other people’s boons, or even alone if you have the warhorn with quick breathing (which I use). I usually have at least 6 boons on me when engaged in combat in WvW. I wouldn’t say it’s totally outclassed by Empower Allies, although that one is also pretty good, with 70 power worth about a 2% increase in power damage, multiplied by up to 5 players around you (5 being more likely in WvW than tPvP). The latter doesn’t stack though, and I find a fair number of people seem to have it in WvW.

I don’t think all the traits are balanced around the assumption you got the recharge reduction. Healing signet is good without the signet trait, the stances work great without the stance duration trait (although given what these stances do, increased stance duration is inferior to the equivalent recharge reduction in my opinion), and it is totally viable to do a 3 shout healing shouts build without the shout CD reduction (I think warhorn quick breathing is much better choice than the shout CD reduction). Warhorn is viable without speccing into tactics at all. The physical training trait, though, is totally lackluster for a 30 pointer, and the damage part of the physical abilities are a joke.

I definitely agree that the warrior traits are a bit too straightforward, and there should be ways to cater to more interesting high risk/high reward playstyles if you choose to take it in that direction. Banners are also pretty clunky to use still.

From other games you may be used to the idea of stacking health as a bad strategy, instead stacking mitigation as much as possible, with only as much health as you need to avoid spike damage. However, in GW2 things are a little different, and vitality is better than it first appears. Healing in general is harder to come by, and there is no healer spamming 10 full health bars of healing into you, so you aren’t benefiting from your mitigation rate for 10x the value of your health bar.

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.

Emperor — here is what I am currently running in WvW: http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fIAQRBHhx21IpTMcKkLETkAAfoKThi0HaL9oM2ED

It’s really about the axe/warhorn more than the sword/shield though. Sword/shield is there mainly for its amazing utility, while axe does the damage. I am using a power build, not a condition build.

You can change berserker stance to something else if needed, but I often want to flurry to immobilize and then eviscerate soon after, and berserker stance will get you a 3 bar adrenaline activation for both skills. Leg specialist is surprisingly good in WvW even though it’s only a first tier trait.

Banner used to grant stability (up until practically days before the GW2 release date actually), but it was nerfed at the last minute. This is because its groupwide stability was too good in sPvP. I do expect it will be reworked at some point, they just haven’t got to it yet. As it stands it’s not that great. I use it in tough dungeon boss fights sometimes, when multiple people can get downed at once. It’s also useful for mass-rezzing large groups of NPCs in the Orr camps.

Signet of Rage, while a selfish elite, really is very good, especially if you spec into 30 tactics for +30% boon duration. If you don’t have it, you’ll probably want to another way to get access to Fury, such as FGJ.

As a “which gear does what” strategy, I would put your mainstay stats (things that you change the least, even when you change builds) on your armor pieces, and the stats that you change up the most on your jewelry.

The reason I suggest this is that you will probably find an armor set you like, and you probably don’t want to change it every time you switch builds. Jewelry is easy to switch out one piece at a time without visually affecting the look of your character — if you care about that, that is.

I put my survivability stats (power/toughness/vitality) on my armor pieces, as I’m nearly always going to be keeping that, and my damage (currently berserker’s) on my jewelry. The jewelry pieces I change around a bit depending on what I am trying to do.

I would avoid building an armor set around healing power, as it is only worthwhile with the healing shouts build (healing power isn’t worth it just for your self heal), and you probably don’t want to pigeonhole yourself too much into that.

You can definitely melee, even against a zerg, opportunistically killing targets on the outside or those who are maybe a little more protected but who are low. However, you really need a fine tuned sense of when you just got, or about to get, unwanted attention (e.g. when my norn is 15 feet in the air doing a stability stomp), and it’s time to get out. You’ll need several “outs” if you want to play this kind of style.

I use axe/warhorn as my primary weapon set. Axe does almost all the damage you need (not to mention the ranged snare), leaving your other weapon and swap available for support/utility. Warhorn by itself is amazing, but with Quick Breathing it is completely nuts. Use Charge! to save immobilized/snared allies (immobilize=death), and of course to provide run buffs (very necessary in WvW). Call to Arms for weakness and vigor; it’s less visible, but quite underrated. Keep in mind that Quick Breathing converts vulnerability into protection.

For your second weapon set you can pick anything, but if you’re just getting started, I’d suggest longbow. Make sure you get the range upgrade; several of your skills will be able to lob fire well over castle walls, killing defenders up there.

Currently I am running a double melee set, which is definitely not something to most people’s taste, as I think most people prefer to equip a ranged second weapon set. I am using axe/warhorn + sword/shield. There’s a lot of get in-get out going on, and savage leap and shield block are amazing for jumping in/out when you are picking off people in a zerg. Shield stun can set up a flurry (used for the immobilize rather than the damage), which can keep several people rooted while allies strike. If you just took an objective and are being chased by 10+ guys, having savage leap will enable you to stay far enough in front of your pursuers that you will be able to get out of combat and escape.

I highly recommend you staple Balanced Stance to your bar. You are unlikely to get a stomp or revive off unless you do, and other classes (e.g. engineer) will have their way with you if you do not. Nothing like 4 people stomping a downed guardian and being the only person not thrown 15 feet away. If you are planning on high risk strikes into the enemy zerg, grab Endure Pain as well.

Mister Kitty.6718:

Offensive warriors are effective. They’re more effective when you have allies doing the resilience and unstoppability for you. You can either spec tank and try and do everything yourself… or you can spec DPS and let your guardian friend root the enemy with his scepter so you can bash his face in while getting protection and heals.

There is a lot to be said for playing to your strengths, and I think people get a bit caught up in the support options, without realizing how they compare to the capabilities of some of the other classes in filling those options. Dedicated roles are gone, and everyone can do a bit of everything to fill in the holes, but some classes definitely lean more one way than the other.

You can certainly do a control build to a point, where you simply mace/shield + hammer CC mobs so that they don’t harm the party.

The problem you will run into doing this is that dungeon bosses are almost perma-immune to CC. Every time they are subject to a control effect, it removes one stack of CC immunity, so you will land about 1 out of every 4 or 5. You’ll also need to coordinate with party members so that the CC immunity stack is clear for when you want to interrupt a specific move.

If someone is playing well with the party in a pug situation, I am not going to be a kitten and complain about how they should respec to the “proper” build instead. I find people with the “lol u’re playing X build” attitude in a pug situation in MMOs to be incredibly obnoxious. If you want to go heavily into damage, and are managing to do a great job of it, go for it, I’m happy to compensate and cover some of the party support or control if needed. If you’re dying all the time and are a liability, we’ll have to talk though.

Shouts heal for only 1100 with no investment in healing, which is underwhelming. For support I much prefer to use the warhorn with quick breathing, which between the snare removal and condition→boon conversion I find causes people to avoid taking far less damage than the shouts would have healed. I love seeing vulnerability on allies, as the warhorn turns it into free protection.

Agreed with the above, warriors are in really great shape overall, I am pretty happy with the huge number of different builds and utilities I can play with. The numbers on the skills the devs can tweak as needed, I don’t get too concerned about those — I am just happy to have a huge variety of playstyles to pick from.

My elementalist friend is not as happy, and I can see why, as the traits and build variety there are just not as interesting IMO.

I love my warrior in WvW. I mostly roam with a small group of 2-3 others and take objectives. My standby is axe/warhorn, 30 tactics and quick breathing, which is absolutely amazing. Near perma group speedbuff and great group condition removal. My alternate weapon set is either longbow (for sieges) or sword/shield (roaming).

Longbow with the range upgrade is fantastic. You can lob projectiles well over castle walls and murder large groups of people up there.

I always have balanced stance; you’ll pretty much never get a stomp or rez off on someone otherwise, and it’s also great for escaping a bad situation without getting locked down.

You can definitely fight in melee, even if fighting a zerg on the open field, or if you are inside a castle defending against a siege. Jump off the wall, snare/root/stun someone, get your kill, then get out. Often a few of us will run around into the back of the zerg, kill stragglers or take out a piece of siege, and then get out. Endure pain is pretty much a must have for this. Between charge removing snares, balanced stance, endure pain, and shield block, you can get out of danger pretty easily.

Most professions have one or more 25 point traits that are around +10% damage if some easily met condition is met. Thief actually has three. The 5 point bleed trait is also fine. If the problem is greatsword damage, then it is the greatsword that needs looking at, not those traits.

Forceful greatsword is probably the strongest 20% CD reduction + X trait in the game though. I suspect that will get changed to only a 33% chance to grant might on a crit.

Chronos Khan.4539:

Well there’s the problem right there…you’re wearing cloth.
Cloth = dead.

Dunno if you were expecting cloth to be the best armor or not.

The difference in mitigation between cloth and heavy armor in GW2 is only about 14% btw. The main difference in survivability comes from the the default health pool size, and often I see squishier classes not put points into vitality.

The old battle standard was amazing in team fights, and the fairly long lasting group stability was a bit too strong in 5v5 (particularly on foefire), so they nerfed it. Guardians also took a nerf to one of their stability utilities a few days ago. I have no doubt warbanner will get buffed in the future, as it is pretty lackluster right now. Having an immobile object cast a short duration swiftness on nearby allies is a little silly really.

It used to be +30% for 30 points a long time ago, but it was nerfed to +3% because eviscerate was getting pretty out of control when people were also stacking the +30% damage on weapon swap (now removed) and 100% crit change on weapon swap sigils. The +crit damage part of the passive is still very good, although very specific to burst builds.

I think they’ll eventually rework the discipline passive to reduce the cooldown of the burst ability, so that it works like most professions’ similiar such lines, and rework the discipline trait that does the same thing to do something else instead.

Vayra.3290:

So you’d have to wait for another same size group to queue for the same server out of 235 servers? And hope that there would still be room for both groups?

No, you make it so that if you want to buddy-queue with another person and stay on the same team, it will ONLY work if you use hot join, and you can’t pick a specific server. The system can be made to congregate all such player+buddy pairs on a relatively constrained set of servers, rather than all 235. They could even make it so that solo hot joiners never get put in these.

I understand where ArenaNet is coming from, in that they want as many people to enjoy WvW as possible without being intimidated or feeling singled out, and that the compromise is that the people who are really into the player rivalry are the sacrifice.

That said, if it were possible I would choose the option to enable my own name to be visible to enemies (with this option is disabled by default). Some number of other people would do the same, and we’d have fun knowing we killed a nemesis (there aren’t that many worlds, and now that worlds have found their ranking, we’re getting matched with the same 3-4 all the time now). Maybe people would single me out and kill me more often because I have a name, but I’m fine with that. Everyone else can remain anonymous if they choose.

A compromise on the friends vs pugstomp problem is to make it so that you can Hot Join (only) with one buddy to ensure a place on the same team, but the system will ensure you are put into games which have an equivalent number of buddy-gamers on the other team to balance you out. This is a half step between the current 8v8 random join and signing up for a free 5v5 tournament with just one buddy and hoping you don’t fight a full-5 (non pug) team.