Guild Wars 2

I dislike 4 and 5, as they will just add to the annoyance that p/d condi is.

I’d say #8 is closest to what the developers intended.

Zero Day.2594:

Weird, the thread Let’s pick a class and whine about it. was closed for some odd reason.

Polls are prohibited.

I vote PU mesmer.

They might just give us staff.

Asura’s are ugly to begin with lol. They are just better when it comes to pvp as their animations are less obvious. #pancy

Charr looks great, go with that.

And remake your engie.

From my experience as a roamer;

• What is the first thing that comes to mind when you’re about to face a Mesmer?*

Looking for signs of what the mesmer is running. If it is power, I know the mesmer has to be quite good to beat me. If it is condi, not so much.

• How do you feel about your odds of winning?*

If it is power, and the mesmer is decent and/or uses staff, I will lose more then I will win. Staff just absolutely wrecks a power warrior in roaming, mostly because of the insanely low cooldown on the teleport.
If it is condi, the mesmer really does not have to play half decent in order to stand a chance. The upside is most mesmers that play this cancerous spec are incredibads, so I do win more then I lose. A well played PU mes is invincible against a warrior in straight up 1v1 if he does not spec longbow, and even then it is a bad match-up.

• Strategies and tactics?*

Make sure to dodge the obvious shatter combo’s, like sword#3. Kill phantasms ASAP, and use whirlwind offensively if the opportunity arrises. Usually, a power mes is squishy as hell if you manage to reach him, whirlwind is what nets me the win most of the time. Leg specialist also helps a lot to land crucial hits.
Against PU I will always keep Rush off of cooldown in case I need to kite or reset, as I will never submit to a loss against this spec. It feels more of a loss against Anet or GW2 in general then the outcome of a difference in skill.

• Which type of Warrior build do you feel best fights Mesmer?*

GS is the preferred weapon to me here. Longbow excels against PU condi, so there is that. I do not like facing a power mesmer on GS/longbow tho, as longbow has pretty much no active defense.
Hammer is actually quite bad IMO if you don’t spec leg specialist, and if the mesmer has a staff, hammer is borderline useless.

• What Warrior skills (weapon or utility) are most important to have in this fight?*

Like I said before, Whirlwind works incredibly well against any mesmer. Other then that, rush is good for kiting and does good damage if you manage a hit. Most mesmers have insane in combat mobility, so you need gap closers. Endure Pain as a utility as a clutch to mitigate a shatter combo you failed to dodge. Other then that, everything seems optional to me.

• How do you feel about Mesmer in general?*

I have a lot of respect for guys that make a shatter glass spec work, I tried it myself and find it to be quite difficult. PU condi should be removed from the game, however. Without a doubt, most braindead spec ingame IMO.
I actually started gw2 playing mesmer, but melee is more my style

Nice topic.

witcher.3197:

Warlord.9074:

Other professions get buffs we get fixes 2 years late.

Necromancer “mobility buff” was about reducing cast time of a warhorn skill by 0.5 seconds.

Ranger greatsword leap is still broken and locks you in place 80% of times if not used on flat terrain, which is a lot worse than Rush was.

Don’t act like other classes got better changes.

Ranger GS leap was not worse then Rush.

Rush was the worst skill in the game before this patch.

Now shoo.

I agree, Giving Forceful GS a 5% dmg increase is uninspired and will make Slashing power the clearly worse choice.

Hell, even now I think FG is better.

Might generated from 5 to 7 seconds seems fine.

The title of this topic is the best title ever.

Kinda exactly what many of us must have thought when they showed Rytlock with the blindfold.

Oh, my bad. I thought one could have 8 character slots per account.

As long as we can get a ninth.

Just remove it.

My money is on torch too.

Tom Gore.4035:

The two biggest problems I seem to have against them is the stupidly high damage from a shatter burst, taking as much as 12k out of my health within a second or two, and the problem figuring out where the Mesmer is after it ports/stealths.

Right, I think you give the answer to one of your questions yourself. You take a stupid amount of damage from a shatter burst, thus you need to mitigate that. This should always be your main focus when fighting a shatter mesmer.

Some advice from my experience.

The absolute best skill you have to dodge a mesmer burst, is GS#3. This attack will not only give you an evade frame that’s just enough to dodge the burst, it will also destroy all clones while being safe (because of the evade) in case you don’t time it perfectly.

Shield #5 and Endure Pain are your other options.

Also note that if you manage to outrun the clones, they will break after a period of time. GS#5 comes into play here. GS#4 can also be a utility skill to destroy a clone/phantasm without getting hurt.

That being said, I would change the sigil of battle on GS to Sigil of Air. With such high crit chance, you can often get a double proc to destroy any high HP phantasm with 1 attack. Also, Sigil of battle is getting nerfed into non-existence, being even inferior to Sigil of Strength.

Another advice regarding sigils is to swap out Strength on your shield to energy. This gives you an extra dodge should you need it when your other mitigation options have been used.

Always dodge through the clones/phantasms running towards you, as they will break but you evade the damage. Dodging backwards, or simply away from the clones only means you postpone the inevitable.

Like others have said, there are certain moments at which most mesmers will perform their shatter burst. A good one will get up three clones before shattering for maximum damage. Sword#3 is an immobilize, so Shield 5, GS 3 in time to mitigate. Save Endure Pain if you should get stunned (pistol 5 for example).
Their GS#2 skill is also often used for a big burst, in conjunction with Blink. They GS2, blink in, and along with previously spawned clones they perform their burst.

Other skills to watch out for are Phantasms. Destroy them as soon as you can and try to avoid the initial attack. This will greatly reduce any pressure the mesmer can put on you.

As for figuring out where the mesmer is, this can be tricky, even for a veteran.

Try using Tab targetting. When the mesmer is in your vision range and comes out of stealth, Tab targetting will immediately target the real mesmer.
Other stuff like a plethora of buffs, non-clonish behaviour and general prediction of what good positioning would be should help you identify the mesmer quickly.

Mesmer is a notoriously hard fight for a power warrior, but we can manage a win and I feel GS is one of the best weapons to get it. GS#3 is just so good against them both defensively and offensively, and you have it on the lowest possible cooldown. They will normally try to kite you, but if you manage to get close and whirlwind in their direction, it means WW will deal maximum hits and can take out half their HP in one hit.

Don’t forget that you can always kite out to restore health and allow for more mistakes on your part.

As for your build, try this;

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJMQNAR3ejMdU2ZZIehwJaAmgCZnPBHT7AQ9T85DBA-TVCEABE8AA2SJITK/M4CA0muhGV/BgjAwDHEgY2fgUALpMC-w

I switched the sigils and gave it bloodlust instead of perception. You get over 400 extra power, while still retaining 94% crit chance on your evis (which is more then enough). Burst Mastery is definitely not needed on this build due to regular swapping, Cleansing Ire, fast hitting auto attacks and a generally inferior burst skill on GS (that doesn’t need max adrenaline for maximum damage anyway).

Hope I helped.

Sigil of Strength might be a viable alternative for battle after the patch hits?

Everybody loves to hotjoin sometimes.

You can try this build of mine, ‘The acrobat’;

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNBMhNakpjyQ7CxKEORDkEUoH9MoEOGAFgyvo0B-TlSDwAvV/hyhAoyJAoryvFKBBpPAgJoBPAAJHBAa7PEA4AghHe4hHOZAW2CA-w

It is basically dodge spam might stacking warrior. You stack might via Sigil of Battle, Runes, SoR, Warhorn 5 and longbow 3 and sword 2 (combo with fire field) to get high amounts of power and condi damage. You already start off with 2400 power/700 condi damage with wvw and bloodlust stacks. Combined with 40% base crit chance and high fury uptime, 200% crit damage, you will reach high direct damage with a few might stacks. And you can start any fight with 3-8 stacks, to go up to 15+ which can easily be maintained.
You also get a sweet +50% duration on your bleeds, making sword auto quite painful.

On the survivability end, you get incredible amounts vigor. It is absolutely crazy. 4 stances (1 with the trait) gets you 24 seconds of vigor, along with 10 seconds every 20 seconds from warhorn. Off course, you won’t be spamming skills if you play correctly, but this is still an insane uptime on vigor for warrior. Sigil of energy for even more dodging.
Stances are better then shouts for roaming in my opinion, as the amount of burst on roamers is very hgih, and you need to mitigate that instead of heal it back up. That being said, double Endure Pain will avoid any gank, Zerk stance to get your adrenaline up and for that condi immunity, and balanced stance to save for a guarantueed stomp.

All the while retaining 700 healing power, ~2900 armor, ~26khp and extreme condition resistance through food, runes and Dogged March.

The build has everything you would need, although it lacks the raw mobility of GS. So don’t get caught out by a zerg and you should be fine with this.
Another weakness is the complete lack of hard CC. You can not interrupt, so you need to either cleave, have somebody else stomp, or pick another build. Although I generally like the cleave on this build, the playstyle may or may not suit you.

More range would be fun.

A viable rifle would be more fun.

I am not saying drop healing shouts. I am saying either drop healing shouts or Distracting strikes. I would drop DS.

The build would look like this;

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAseTjMd06ZnHWewJagqgC5iHAKvhgI9J01pAA-TVyCABVcEAA4BAwj6PEqEkLlftoPY59Hk4QAQxJAgUAQMNC-w

Honestly, I think it is inferior to a build without perplexity runes, as OP they may be. They just require a different set-up with more interrupts.
Without perplexity, you could try this;

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAseTjMdU4ZnHWewJigkgC1ofKAU+EbR6fouDCA-TVyCABVcEA8+EAAwDAQ69H4R9HCVCylyvW0HIxhAgUAMJNC-w

This allows you to not get Cleansing Ire, while retaining good adrenaline build up through shouts and swapping weapons, and condi removal through Sigil of cleansing, Signet of Stamina on a low cooldown, double shake it off and a base 55% reduction on all condi’s with 88% on movement condi’s. You still get +50% duration on your bleeds (which is the biggest deal here), and a nice 1 second Fear on a 36 second cooldown. Higher poison uptime too.

Overall, damage on a full apothecary is rather weak. Try mixing in some Rabid (also gets you crit chance for them bleed on crits) or Dire (more base survivability and more condi damage).

Why I am trying to help with this eludes me.

Nice video! Funny ending.

You need to either drop Distracting Strikes or the shout healing. You have no adrenaline build up nor condition cleansing like this. Perplexity would already give you decent confusion uptime. And just taking Fear Me and shield 4 does not justify going 4 points into strength for DS. Everytime your Fear Me or shield bash gets blocked or blinded or evaded or w/e, you get nothing out of the trait. Whereas 4 in Defense allows for health regen to stay in the fight longer for the conditions to work, Condi cleanses, adrenaline build up. I don’t see how you can viably pass up on it.

On the other hand, I pity perplexity users so good luck ;P

Terrorsquad.2349:

I see no need talking about specific details (like launching Arcing Arrow and switch weps to let it crit with sigil) since new players won’t even understand this.
(since this is actually a higher level play with mechanics of the game)

This is really not that hard to explain, even to a newbie. You should try it.

In PvE, banners allows us to exist. Warrior is easy to play in PvE, even easier then other classes, but they have mediocre damage by themselves (and PvE=DPS).

Solo PvE, warrior is probably in the top three (though not the best according to some experienced solo players on this forum).

PvP, hambow? That’s it. You can not take warrior and do just fine, and you can take a hambow and do just fine. Shoutbow is also good. Again, easy to pick up specs.

Roaming? Thief off course, but also mesmer, elementalist and engineer easily outclass warrior in 1vX.

Dueling? Power warrior is probably the worst dueler out there right now, not even kidding. The thing is, warrior can trait to counter a lot of specs quite good by moving ~4 points around. Still, some classes on their meta roaming spec should just always beat you, and will always beat you when at the same skill level and they don’t kitten up badly.

Still, warrior is a lot of fun to me. Think of the first year of gw2, when warriors were considered l00tbags. It was fun then too, because of the challenge.

Vukorep.3081:

why not make Rush have the effects of Rush from gw1?

It was a adrenal skill that costed 4 adrenaline points and it gaved the user a loooong 25%speed boost.

In gw2 it could give swiftness for 5-10-15 seconds based on how high your adrenaline bar is .

This way it can still be somehow used for running away, or to chase down the foe that is running away.

It can only be used in combat cause of the adrenaline requirement (just like in gw1) ,unless you use the healing skill that pumps up your adrenaline.

You do know that everything you would be chasing also has that buff, or better, and will use skills that create more distance, right?

Fists.

MrKrataus.6420:

“skull crack is suddenly kittenous skill when that’s the only high skill cap thing that Warrior had going for it.”

I lost faith in humanity, an other casual player who’s calling other build brainless and op.

Omg I lose to [put a random build/class here] it is definitly op! Try to play other builds/classes it would be a first step to see how skull crack isn’t that skilled as u think

Just because the combo is simple does not mean the playstyle is.

Juba makes a good point IMO. I too have been running strength runes more often, especially on HamGS. The cleanses are pretty decent on that set.

Melandru offers other things then ‘just a little defense’, though. A -25% on stun duration can allow you to pack less stunbreaks or stability, for instance. Also, just using Melandru and Lemongrass nets you a 65% decrease on all condi’s, which might allow you to choose another trait instead of Dogged March. Granted, the traits in that line don’t really suit HamGS, but you get my point.

All in all, I sold my Melandru set ages ago. Hoelbrak not only offers better damage but it is also decent in PvE if you don’t play a lot of that, like me. Besides, in WvW, you need to take out one target quickly in a 1vX, or you die anyway.

Also, going hoelbrak+full zerk nets you 2600 armor, and that is with ascended gear and the +100 toughness useless trait in Defense. So in order to get above mentioned 2800 armor, you would need at least three toughness trinkets. This would reduce the damage difference between Hoelbrak and Melandru.

Forceful GS as a reason why to use Hoelbrak is just silly. A 5 second might stack turns into a 6,5 second might stack. Who gives a silver. Don’t get me wrong, Forceful GS is awesome, but it will be with or without Hoelbrak.

Rampage baby…

Pwent.2639:

Fox and Raiden imo

This. Afro used to have great vids too, but he plays thief now.

Don’t listen to the elitist comments about twitch here, totally different thing.

Just reading through this topic it seems that from tier 5-6 and lower people are experiencing frustration and problem without the white swords. Higher tiers don’t because they have more scouts.

So for the higher tiers, there is no difference, whereas mid-lower tiers have taken a step back.

Awesome change.

Caedmon.6798:

The stun duration is enough really,you use shield bash as an opener for other skills like evis.
I’d rather see shield block getting some love,like 3 sec of added stabi while block is up,so you don’t get pulled out of it by an engi or screw yourself over with running through a line of warding or getting randomly feared out of block etc.

The necessity of stabi when you pop shield block is big atm, 3 sec added stabi would improve it bigtime and no need to waste a 60 sec cd dolyak or a 40 sec cd balanced stance just to be sure your shield block stays effective.Just make it so the stabi doesn’t get shown as a boon ,but rather added to the effect of shield block itself.
Like;

Shieldblock;

Block attacks,unable to be feared,stunned,dazed,pulled,knocked while in effect.
Duration: 3 s

Yeah I don’t really like this. Shield Block can only be countered by unblockable attacks. IMO, a skill having a counter is a good idea.

ulchanar.4309:

The idea behind RR was to have it as a bonus with three other useful utilities. Frenzy has always been nice with 100b, but you have to use it together with EP or you will likely be dead. And if you use it without stability you might get CCed. So in the end you need to use 2 or 3 utilities to make use of it. Now with RR you compensate for the 25% incoming damage increase (as you said, mitigation would be ~45%: (100%25%)*0,55=68,75%, that’s even less than 100%0,75=75%). And if you use it after being stunned your oponent won’t use this stun again soon, so less need to pop stability for Frenzy.

Off course RR mitigates damage, and it helps with using Frenzy, but this combo will, imo, prove to be completely unreliable. You can only use Balanced Stance to ensure the 1k toughness. If you already used it, or if the situation is not calling for Frenzy, you are completely reliant on actually breaking from a stun to get your toughness. So, in fact, in order to use Frenzy reliably with RR, you need two utilities (Frenzy/Balanced Stance) and a GM trait in a line with much better traits to begin with.

ulchanar.4309:

SIO is rather weak without Trooper runes and for yourself only (talking about solo roaming), but it has a low cooldown and (in theory) allows for ~30% RR uptime. Under perfect circumstances you could have 39,2 seconds of RR per minute with the three utilities (or even more if you take Lung Capacity over Leg Specialist). But of course Dolyak signet could be used instead, to have an offensive Stability (BS) and one defensive/reactional, or you could use a non-stunbreaking utility, e.g. Berserker Stance or Bull’s Charge.

As I said, nothing tested so far. I now saw that Elegie runs a very similar build, but with both CI and BR and with only BS as stun breaker. I’m curious what he/she can report.

This best case scenario will never happen. It can not even be called the dream, as you will always need to use your utilities in reaction to your opponent as well, not just when it suits you (to get RR going).

IMO, best thing you could hope for is getting 16-24 seconds of RR per minute. That’s when you used Balanced Stance offensively. I can promise you are gonna need stability for stomping rather then setting up a burst. At least, in an outnumbered situation.

tl:dr, I think your testing will show it is not as viable as it looks.

ulchanar.4309:

More theory build discussion welcome!

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJQQNAseRjMd05ZZIuhwJaAsgCdhHAnu6e4wX9UVAA-TlTEABYfCAcSJVTKDA4ABgo6OapEcJlKRcEASUlA20HwhGGGOEAO8AAgZ/hAAIAZz28mBeuzduzduz5m38m38m3sUAMJMC-w

Ideas behind the build:
- condition removal via Brawler’s Recovery/Sigil of Cleansing/SIO (over CI cause both Sword and GS burst skills are used more situational)
- up to 24 seconds of Rousing Resilience
- use Frenzy when stunned, Rousing Resilience will make up for the 25% incoming damage
- Leg specialist to prevent being kited and just be annoying
- Missile Deflection for priceless moments

Just an idea so far, but since this has been a very constructive thread I thought I could throw it in, too.

As with almost any build that does not put in Cleansing Ire, I have one of two questions;

How do you gain adrenaline?

The other one would be how you cleanse conditions, but you sacrificed enough (sigil, trait, utility) to get that going.

Also, popping Frenzy will mean death if you don’t slot Endure Pain. Rousing Resilience is not enough to counter Frenzy’s negative effect.

Rousing Resilience is just a very mediocre trait for roaming tbh. It usually amounts to an increase in damage mitigation from ~25% to ~45%. Honestly, this is not all that much. Endure Pain is way more useful to counter burst or to be aggressive in melee. Think of it this way; EP increases damage mitigation from 25% to 100% for 4 seconds, whereas RR only increases it from 25% to 45% for 8 seconds. To get the same net amount of damage mitigation, one would have to proc it twice in the same time you use EP once. This may seem good, hell you might proc it more often with SiO, but then, during those 8 seconds, you still take 55% of all damage… And SiO might have to be used for something else then stunbreaking (especially if you actually rely on it for condition cleansing).

This is all without considering the fact that RR requires both Balanced stance and an additional stunbreaker along with the heavy trait investment, for which you could have gotten an extra Endure Pain.

I roam as a power/hybrid warrior, power/hybrid engineer and power thief. Never full condi, though I have tried some of the cheese specs (thief and engineer).

The problem with condition specs is not so much the power of it, but the ease that comes with using the spec.

Honestly, I feel the risk/reward that comes with playing condi’s is where the unbalance is at. I am not very skilled at fighting with my thief, so I play the most forgiving power spec (d/p). I still die regularly, as I have 300 toughness and 150 vitality from gear/traits, so pretty glass. Yet, when I ventured into condi p/d, I was suddenly invincible. I had infinite get out of jail free cards, could put out incredible burst damage with bleeds/torment/confusion, and had the survivability of a tank with heal in stealth and dire gear. Whenever I met a good roamer, I could reset at will until they made one mistake too many.

You can afford to go dire on most condition specs, just because of the incredible sustained damage that comes with conditions combined with the incredible sustain to let the conditions do their job. Even if you go Rabid, which increases damage at the cost of vitality, you are still quite tanky. This is part of the reason it is so easy to play, you only really need to invest 1 offensive stat in order to be efficient.

One might argue that you need condition duration to be effective, which is true, but easily adjusted for by using+40% duration food.

I know this reply will invite people to come and tell me PVT does better damage then CVT. This is bullkitten. In any real combat situation in WvW, PVT will do little damage, whereas Dire can delete somebody in seconds.

Another funny bit of irony, a lot of these condi specs are countered by…… conditions! I guess I am doomed.

Tier 2 EU.

I don’t like it. For roaming, it is nice to know where small groups of players might be without having to just run around the map hoping your target is not running in the same direction. White swords on objectives like towers and camps usually were a pretty good indicator of something else then a zerg. Now, either you play during slow hours and end up searching 80% of your time, or during peak hours and end up running from the next zerg you found.

That being said, I don’t like Tier 2 to begin with.

Kagamiku.9731:

Yes, warrior took constant nerfs and now they’re terrible at any kind of dueling. Still ok-ish in team play for their utilities, but most classes deal with them now without a problem.

Can’t remember the last time I lost to one in wvw…

I agree with this more or less. Warrior was never very good at dueling in my opinion, best we got was somewhere in the middle. We are bottom tier as far as dueling goes now though. Unless you go condi, off course.

Good thing you are having fun, that’s what it is all about. I was running swordGS again yesterday too. Good stuff.

I can’t wrap my head around people claiming warriors were ‘ridiculously OP’ before the adrenaline nerf. Massive L2P issue here.

Just because warriors are easier to pick up, does not make them strong. In fact, it’s what makes them weak.

Aeolus.3615:

Warrior is one of the classes on game, u just need to tune it and learn its rotations, you should lose against any meditation guardian.

Fixed.

Perma chill necro’s don’t exist, but they can get a lot of it (and fear). Unless you pack a longbow, expect to lose. Some builds just counter others, whereas meditation guard just counters any power warrior really.

Do you play pvp or wvw?

Animosity.5968:

Nice suggestions guys ^.^ I should note that this build was meant for WvW Solo roaming (my bad to forget to mention that), I play a guardian for GvG or zerging. So, after careful review I came up with this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJIQNAseRjMdUFajHehwJigkgC5onBXDgCQXVkaGA-TFTDAB9oEj7DBAFHBgHeAARpk4JlDvo+DI6DAwEnEnAAIUCSz+DkBwfCA-w

I had to sacrifice the might on GS crit trait to be more sword oriented. idk what this will play like and im kinda disappointed in the power/crit dmg loss. I will note that im very curious how Elegie’s mentioned build will play out and think im going to try to play it for myself. Quick question, does Dolyak signet proc Rousing Resilience even if not breaking from stun or is it only balanced stance?

This is decent, like the last one.

some tips.

Lose the intelligence sigil. It is really only useful for final Thust, which you often won’t use straight after swapping weapons. Besides, with such high crit chance and basically permafury, you are sacrificing a sigil for ~27% crit chance on three attacks. If you’d take perception, you’d get a permanent 12% crit chance added. But Bloodlust, doom, hydromancy, even battle are decent replacements.

Imho, forceful GS is way better then Opportunist. This is not so much because of the might stacking, which is not as good in wvw roaming, but more because of the -20% reduction. You will always have HB off of cooldown, more mobility, more Whirlwind (which is one of your biggest sources of damage AND it is an evade). I would never pick it over opportunist, not when I can get better sources of fury.

Deep Cuts is also mediocre here. You only apply bleeds with sword auto and burst. Burst is a short duration to begin with, whereas sword auto might be good, but you have low condi damage anyway and you don’t stack might. Furious Reaction would give you great Fury uptime, Vigor to boot, and would open up a slot for other options as you wouldn’t need Opportunist anymore.

The food you chose might look good, but the condition damage is somewhat of a waste for reasons stated above.

Leg Specialist is a great trait, and it gives you synergy with Opportunist off course. It actually works really well on this build too, as you have cripples on both sets. You do sacrifice a lot of damage though, as you could grab both Armored attack and DotE if you took out LS.

Again, try to find the version of the build that works for you personally. I used many different variants, some of which have been mentioned in this topic already, but decided to stick with the one I mentioned earlier. That one just works best for me.

Your build is fine as is, although I do think there is a better variant.

This is what I came yup with, keep in mind that personal playstyle matters a lot when finding the right build for you.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJIQNAseRjMdUGaVImdwJagfgC9t3C5g1AYA0lGA-TVSEwAAeAADOCAaVCW4QAsU53K1fwt/AH9BOOBABAOAY4hHe4hHuUAMJMC-w

IMO this is what perfectly combines extremely high damage with survivability on GS/sword builds.

You get -73% on movement impairing conditions. You absolutely need this bare minimum, as you are full melee and your gap closers will fail if you are chilled/crippled/immobilised. All this while retaining the possibility to cleanse with CI.

The trait spread is designed specifically with a couple things in mind. First of all, you take 5 in strength to get 25% increase on conditions. This rounds off your level 3 sword burst to a nice 5 second immobilise. Anything more then this on condition duration is complete overkill in my opinion. Your opponents might cleanse, and if they don’t 5 seconds is still a lot of time to do what you need done. You can drop the 5th point in favor of DotE in Discipline, your choice. 50 power/5% duration increase and 3% damage increase versus 3% crit damage/5% burst recharge and 3% damage per boon on target.

Second, you take 6 in Defense to get Defy Pain for extra survivability and so that you are not obliged to slot EP, CI for an emergency condi cleanse and off course Dogged March. Sometimes, when you know you are facing a lot of ranged classes, you can swap out zerk stance for EP, and slot Missile Deflection instead of Defy Pain. Reflect OP, yo (vid to prove it).

3 in Discipline for the mandatory Fast Hands and guarantueed movement speed.

Air/Fire on GS gives maximum sudden burst. I agree with Elegie’s friend on sigil of Perception, as you will get a nice base 65% crit chance with high Fury uptime (going up to 85%). You still maintain extremely high power because you invest so heavily into Strength. I take energy on the shield, as that’s the defensive set.

It is a good roaming build, though it may feel a kitteneesy to use. You can outrun anything except for a thief or a FGS ele, and because you rely almost solely on mobility for survival, you will ‘run’ often. That’s why a lot of people call it the ‘running spec’. I actually find fighting these warriors frustrating myself, but hey, if other classes can kite, why can’t we, right?

The only way I found rifle to work in wvw other then dueling or zerging, is with 04604. Take IV and X in arms, II, IX and XI in defense and III and VIII in discipline. You will want to be as zerky as possible. On your rifle, take sigils of air and fire, gs is debatable. I think I used bloodlust and battle, but energy and hydromancy are great too. Runes of hoelbrak and -condi duration food. Balanced stance, endure pain and bulls/zerk stance. Can also use FGJ for on demand fury and more might. In my vid I actually used Fear Me, but that is unreliable and trollish.

This build is actually pretty decent in 1v1. In 1v2 it is weak though, as you have little active defense. Try to take out one guy quickly, then kite with GS to regain health. On this spec, NEVER use gs#5 to close a gap unless your target is running, you have 1200 range on rifle for that.

When i first made my warrior i also loved the rifle and still do, sadly it is a very niche weapon. Can have a lot of fun though.

I would go as far as to say the hambow user will die more often then the gsaxe user when they face off in 1v1. The gs user can disengage at will, baiting ou cooldowns and mistakes from the hambow. And as long as you stay outside of the longbow field, hambows damage is weak, whereas axe maintains extreme sustained DPS.

Really, there are only a couple things that can happen from here on out. Pick your poison;

-keep it the way it is. Sane warriors will continue picking Fast Hands for every build they play (not talking PvE here). It really is that class-defining (more so then adrenaline is). Which means any warrior build starts with Versatile Rage, which is pretty decent, a pick of Sprint, Signet Mastery or Vigorous Focus, which are all great minor traits, and Fast Hands. But you only have 11 points to make your build with.

-Make Fast Hands a part of warrior. Simply make this a feature of the class. I suggested this a long time ago, as it is the only viable way to overcome this problem, imo. Off course, this means warrior would need to be toned down to some degree in other areas, but all-in-all, no major nerfs would be needed as warriors currently always have this trait already if they are to be any decent in pvp/wvw. The problem is, that you would have to nerf some things, and the question is what. It would probably amount to some master traits getting moved to GM and such (looking at CI here).

-Remove Fast Hands from the game. Another option, a scary one at that. Warrior is not in a very good place right now imo, this nerf would be detrimental to it. Thus, major buffs would have to be implemented elsewhere.

As for CI, it is quite mandatory in WvW. Not because of the cleansing, which off course it does quite well depending on the weapon set. Not because of the building adrenaline, you can do this in other ways too. It is because of prementioned Fast Hands trait really. As warriors feel they must get FH, they are left with 11 trait points. Now, what does CI do? It combines two of the most nessecary attributes of a warrior in one; adrenaline build-up and controllable condition cleansing. You simply can not afford to forgo it, as it is the most trait point cost efficient way of getting what you need.

It actually spells disaster for lesser used weapons, like Mace and Rifle, as they have burst skills that are very unreliable to hit, and thus to cleanse with. To be able to make viable builds with these weapons just requires more trait points then we have got.

You are asking this for larger group fights only? Don’t know of any youtubers that focus on that tbh. But there should be somebody on the forum here that can help, yes.

Bought the Strength runes, cause I figured they would be fun on some builds in WvW too. You were right, off course, they rock.

Last time you advised me to run these;

Purple Miku.7032:

You’ll have more than likely the easiest time soloing CM p1, p3, and I suggest TA up and fwd as well. SE p1 is easy as well except I suspect you’ll struggle with Tazza (last boss) and SE p3’s last boss is no walk in the park either.

Watched some vids on those paths, some did look easy, some didn’t.

I’ve still been running AC p3. Find everything to be quite easy, except for the boss. Just need a lil more practice to get him right every time. The NPC is what makes it hard.

Where would you rank ACp3 to be, difficulty-wise?

I think TA up might be a good next try.

I like the weapon to be ascended. Longbow would be better off celestial if you want that, because of the condi’s it applies.

My 80k build;
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQJATRjMdUGanHWewJagqgC5iHAK7hGP9J01pAA-T1SDwAvV/hyDAoyhAoryP4aCWoEEkOgBHBAAmgot/gkLAApA6aZE-w

Zerk weapon rounds of the stats quite nicely.

Wo thanks for the quick response!

I do have the cash for Strength right now, so I’ll think about wether or not to buy them straight away.

Thanks for the advice!

This topic should get stickied so it always stays on the front page. Just like the guides on other class subforums.

I have a question. Recently started doing dungeons with a friend of mine (he plays guard, warrior and ele if nessecary). So far, we’ve only done AC p1 a couple times, which was easy. Which dungeon paths do you recommend besides that?

I also have gear with Hoelbrak, and find Strength to be kind of expensive. Tbh, I can only stomache PvE until I got enough gold to buy what I want, and solo/duo dungeons is at least challenging. But If I can skip buying the ever so expensive Strength runes, that’d be nice. So how mandatory are they?

There are a lot of things about your build that make it inferior to the meta.

No Cleansing Ire. You have very weak condi removal (SiO only??).

Two shouts, yet nothing you get from them but adrenaline.

Spiked Armor is very lackluster, GS/Axe functions way better with Defy Pain so you can keep up the pressure.

All traits you have chosen in Discipline are mediocre.

So are Traveler runes (on a warrior). Warrior’s Sprint is an excellent trait, you can get more from your runes.

And yes, double bloodlust sigil is poor, just get used to switching. You get 5 stacks for a kill, which should get you up fast enough.

coglin.1867:

Cygnus.6903:

Perplexity is definitely not weak, but the truth is in the eye of the beholder. Many runesets work in certain situations, and don’t in others. That’s no reason at all to call the runeset weak. Yet, if the runeset works too well in it’s intended use, it should get nerfed.

Look, I can state my opinion as if it were fact as easy as you.

The rune set is not particularly strong. It has a reasonable ICD, and there is no reason to nerf it.

By the way what are you claiming is its intended use?

And I can follow up every one of my sentences with the phrase ‘in my opinion’, but I can also assume that others on this forum know that it is solely my opinion I am stating here. No need to go nitpicking to make a point. I’ll adjust my sig to make sure this awful misunderstanding does not happen again.

We can simply agree to disagree, I base my opinion solely on what I experienced while playing with these runes myself, as well as fighting others who use it, and the experiences of others.

The intended use of these runes is obviously not PvE, as confusion is a bad condi for PvE. It is obviously not PvP, as the runes are not available there. Thus, they are probably suited for WvW. And as I have said before, they are not very useful in large scale battle. The logical conclusion here is that they are best used, or ‘intended’ if you will (nitpick incoming) for small scale WvW.

In my opinion.