Guild Wars 2

Best way to survive in the jungle is to kill fast, break bars, and use dodges, evades, and blocks intelligently. Know when you are outmanned, and don’t try to solo encounters that are meant for groups unless you really know what you are doing.

In addition to a coherent build, make sure you are dodging using the key bind (not double-tapping), using mouse look to move, and have all of your abilities bound to keyboard/mouse keys. Turning auto-targeting off will allow you to use rushes, leaps, and other movement skills to bypass foes. If you suffer from a low framerate, turning down your graphics will make the game run more smoothly and it make it easier for you to see hostile tells and wind-ups for big attacks (hint: shadows low, player models low). These help most players far more than a build change.

The build I use in the jungle is a standard Berserker (stat) Berserker (specialization) power-based Greatsword build.

• Traits: Strength/Discipline/Berserker, or Strength/Discipline/Arms if Berserker is not yet unlocked. Discipline is mainly for Warrior’s Sprint and Fast Hands, but Brawler’s Recovery, Heightened Focus, and Burst Mastery are all good too.
• Gear: Berserker stats, offensive runes with % damage set bonus (ie. Strength, Scholar, Rage, etc.). Greatsword with Force/X as main weapon, Mace/Shield with Paralyzation/X for control and blocks. Feel free to use a ranged weapon if absolutely necessary.
• Skills: Signet of Fury, Sundering Leap, To the Limit, and Headbutt are strong for adrenaline generation. Wild Blow, Headbutt, Stomp, Kick, and Bull Rush are good control options. Sundering Leap and Bull Rush for added mobility if needed. Signet of Rage, Signet of Fury, Signet of Might, and For Great justice for passive stat boosts if nothing else is needed. Healing Signet is the strongest sustaining heal skill, To the Limit is the best emergency heal, and Blood Reckoning is the best offensive heal.

Hope some of this helps. Good luck out there.

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How about a Knight’s PS/EA/Banner DPS tank? Seriously, all that’s technically needed is Toughness, right?

Luvok.5697:

darthgreg.2340:

Not enough info to recommend a build. What is your friend struggling with particularly?

Mainly just dying a lot and not being able to deal with the normal mobs out there.

I know on my guardian I’ve switched to a condi/burn build because it’s easier to kite mobs around while the burn stacks take them down. I don’t know anything about warrior so I don’t know if there’s a comparable build that might make things a bit easier for them while eliminating some of the frustration.

You can setup a similar build on Warrior, but really any build should be able take on normal mobs if you are dodging and using your weapon skills effectively.

Here’s an idea for a build

This is a version of the pre-HoT meta Warrior condition build that focuses on shouts that heal. To use:

• Sword/Sword for melee. 1 stacks up conditions and immobilizes on 3rd hit, 2 is great for mobility/escaping, 3 is a very strong finishing move. 4 is a ranged condition attack, and 5 is a block. F1 is an AoE immobilize. All very useful stuff.
• Longbow for ranged spam. 4 is a blind and 5 is another immobilize, while 1 and 2 stack up burns, 3 is a strong power attack, and F1 is a large fire field.
• Use your shouts to get out of sticky situations. “To the Limit!” is a huge heal that also fills up Adrenaline Bar. “Shake it Off!” is a stun break that removes a condition (and heals), “For Great Justice!” stacks up Might and Fury (and heals), and “Fear Me!” will make normal/Veteran enemies break like they’ve been hit by a pool cue (and heal).
• Use Signet of Rage on cooldown for Speed, Might, and Fury, and to stack up the Precision bonus from Signet Mastery.
• Gear Condition Damage as primary stat, with Precision and something else as secondaries. Rabid is a good tanky option, Sinister is more aggressive. Viper’s will be good once they fix the bugged Expertise stat.

Just an idea.

You can run a ghetto Phalanx Strength build with Strength Sigils, Strength Runes, and Fried Golden Dumplings but you still won’t be anywhere near a Forceful Greatsword build in terms of Might generation.

Get someone else to account for the Might generation, and run whatever you want.

Not enough info to recommend a build. What is your friend struggling with particularly?

NikeEU.7690:

Strength, Tactics, Bers is well ahead of Arms for group play. Not particularly close.

For open world, Strength, Arms, Berserker is insane.

Need details!

I just took an Ascended Berserker Warrior build through all the HoT maps and beat the story. Main changes I made from pre-HoT:

• Slotting Hammer in place of Axe/Mace for controlling dangerous monsters (Shadowleapers/Bladedancers) and taking down break bars. If you’re doing a lot of this, trait Merciless Hammer over Heightened Focus.
• Slotting physical skills like Bull’s Charge and Rampage for additional control/breaking, trait Peak Performance over Restorative Strength.
• Using Omnomberry Ghosts for the 15% experience boost and health steal on crit.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Arms, discipline and berzerker.

I’ve been running a S/S warrior for 3 years now and I finally can do nice dmgs.
Stack release was a HUGE improvement but to have decent access to burning on melee and offhand while ONLY losing a block and torment is a nice tradeoff..

I have sinister and rabid ascneded armor on this warrior, and sinister trinkets, I use sinister weapons and use Pizza and toxic crystals on the full sinister
.
I use aristoracy runes and strength sigils, the other sigils are optional, I tend to choose and switch between malice or corruption and smoldering as I use it in all situations, Untill now I mst say I prefer the stacking sigil. But it’s personal I guess, it adds a lot of dmg when fully stacked…. allowing for a glass build 3000 pwer/3000 cnd dmg or 2700 power/3000 cond dmg with the rabid set whe fully buffed. I rely on banners with regen for added sustain 1 strength whcih I take everywhere and 1 tactics whcih is for selfsupport (adding heal and to buff might duration during long fights

Reason for these traitlines is:
Easy changing between ranged and melee options
Retaining some adrenaline after f1 bursts and
fast hands, warriors sprint

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQNAsfTjMdQLI29BWeAnIWgCsjmQAIlpcEuBDh3Xbtd3C-TxxCABO8EAaUJIAnCAmV/xZlf6t/Ay6DIFwiKrA-e

-edit: build link added-

I like this build too, and the Berserker variant using Sword/Torch is fun. I just wish it did comparable damage to a power build.

My biggest problem with PvE Warrior is Phalanx Strength’s dependency on a Greatsword trait to be effective. There will always be a “best” weapon and I’m fine with Greatsword being it, but I want to bring other builds and other weapons into dungeons without compromising my group utility so harshly. Spread the group love to other weapons. Take Might-on-crit out of the Forceful Greatsword trait, stick it somewhere else and make it work for any weapon. Forceful Greatsword remains a great trait without it.

Played Berserker in BWE2 and BWE3 in PvE. Brought it to Vale Guardian.

For power builds, the gains over Arms feel dubious. Clunky contortions are necessary to maintain any sort of respectable damage. Not a fan of managing the on/off state in general, does not feel very kitten to have my elite spec turned “off” for 40% of each fight. Might be better if there was a more visible cue in the UI. Switching back to Arms was such a relief – suddenly I could maintain Berserker’s Power easily, could deliver more crits to power Phalanx Strength, and could focus on the fight rather than micromanaging my adrenaline bar.

For condition builds, Berserking feels in place. Sword+Torch/Longbow is extremely active and fun. Without Berserker’s Power up-time as a consideration, I don’t feel so weak when in the “off” state compared to power builds. As good as this feels, however, the number remain in question. How does it stack up compared to other specs brought for their damage alone?

A few additional specific critiques:

• Berserk/Primal Burst chain feels good now.
• Rupturing Smash is awful compared to Earthshaker. Needs to be tuned up/changed.
• Gun Flame is hilarious, hope it’s still good after it’s fixed.
• The healing on Blood Reckoning feels weak. Need to plan a large damage burst to use it effectively, but then it’s not available when a heal is needed. For a “Berserk” ability, seems a bit too premeditated in its best use case.
• Still found no use for any of the Rage skills in PvE, outside of Headbutt for open world.
• Arc Divider feels good.
• Scorched Earth feels like it ought to be ground-targeted, like Inspiring Reinforcement on the Revenant Dwarf stance.
• Last I checked, the attack speed increase from Berserking did not stack with Dual Wielding. If this isn’t yet fixed, it should be. Would help spice up the PvE applicability of Axes.

And one last, if I may.

• I still really, really, really want in my heart of hearts a way of maintaining 100% Berserking up-time in PvE.

NikeEU.7690:

Your berserk mode is ending soon. Right before it ends you use a primal burst. That gives 10 seconds of BP. Right after BP ends, your Berserk comes off cool down and you can reactivate and use the burst. There will be a one or two second down time between when BP ends and when Berserk comes off cooldown.

Let’s say you refill your adrenaline quickly during the berserk down time thanks to cleaving multiple mobs or whatever. You can use Arcing Slice to avoid any BP downtime. But then when Berserk mode is ready again you won’t have adrenaline. Thats when you can headbutt to fill up your adrenaline and activate Berserk.

Essentially you can use Headbutt to fill in the gaps in either BP or Berserk since its 30 free adrenaline strikes. Since the Berserk downtime is only 10 seconds now, it should be fairly easy to manage all this. The real key will be making sure you save your last Primal Burst to hit right before the end of Berserk so the BP lasts as long into the downtime as possible.

Ah! You were talking about ensuring Berserker’s Power 20% damage stays up between Berserks by Headbutting when Berserk fades. Do you think this could be accomplished as effectively with Signet of Fury, to free up the elite slot for Banner?

NikeEU.7690:

Now, using Head Butt as our elite and with Smash Brawler changes, there is a pretty good chance if you use your Primal Burst right before Berserk ends you will be able to keep only 1 or two seconds of downtime before your next Berserk.

I’m trying to wrap my head around this.

Smash Brawler

Killing a foe reduces the recharge of all primal burst skills. (Changed functionality of this trait.) This trait now reduces the recharge of berserk mode and primal burst skills by 33%.

To me, this means that this trait reduces Berserk recharge from 15s to 10s, and Primal Bursts from 5s to 3.33s. Where’s the 1 second down-time? What am I missing?

Vennyhedgie.5369:

I am by no means a warrior expert but asking for 100% uptime of something like that seems extreme. You dont see necros asking for 100% death shroud uptime.

Extreme in what way? If you look at the mechanics of Berserk, it’s not really extreme at all. 15% improved attack speed, substitution of Primal Bursts instead of normal Bursts, some low-damage Burns, and 7% of Precision buff to Ferocity. With my suggestion, you get it 100% of the time instead of 60% of the time.

Balance this against the perks of Arms: 33% chance on critical to inflict vulnerability (8s), 5% damage increase against bleeding enemies, 12% sustainable critical chance increase from Signet Mastery, unblockable (6s) on striking enemy below 50%, 33% chance to inflict bleed (3s) on critical, bonus 1 adrenaline on critical, and a huge amount of bonus condition damage because… what the hell, if you’re going to be inflicting bleeds with your power build, they might as well hurt.

I’m not attached to 100% Berserk up-time being the solution that makes makes it viable for power builds, but it might work and it doesn’t seem extreme to me, at all.

Disappointed that Berserker doesn’t offer enough to a dungeon/raid power build to displace Arms as a trait-line. Gotta run Strength for Forceful Greatsword, gotta run Tactics for Phalanx Strength, just leaves one trait line to play with. Even though Arms is tuned more for condition builds, it still beats out Berserk for power builds – this is really sad.

In terms of PvE feel, the on/off mechanic of Berserking is pretty clunky. The GCD/after-cast changes above definitely help this, but I don’t think is quite solved.

Nike himself said that Berserk’s biggest problem for PvE power-builds is up-time. The current change to Smash Brawler brings its maximum up-time from 50% up to 60%. I don’t think this is enough.

What if Smash Brawler were changed to allow Warriors to maintain 100% Berserk up-time in constant-contact PvE scenarios? “Critical hits extend Berserk duration by 1 second.” “Primal bursts extend Berserk duration by 5 seconds.” Something like this that means when a Warrior is Berserk and fighting, he can actively keep it going until combat ends, he disengages, or there is a lull in the fight.

This type of mechanic would feel really, really good. It’s too strong for an Adept probably… what about making it baseline?