Guild Wars 2

It’s good, though if you want a challenge you’ll find very little in GW2.
The entire open world is completely void of challenge, mobs are pushovers.
The opposite of GW1 zones basically.
You can only find a challenge in instanced places.

You don’t get it…
Giving adrenaline-filled Warrior offense and adrenaline-starved defense is good design because we’d actually use burst skills when we need to get defensive.
But 25% is too much on a heavy class with 18k base health, especially when stacked with other reductions.

A Warrior could go 30 defense with knight’s armor etc and get 50% DR,. waste adren immediately to get 25% DR and you’d have a Warrior with 75% DR while still dealing a lot more damage than other classes.
It’s undeniably OP in PvP, especially when you consider you also have Endure pain and Defy pain.

natanfk.1649:

Lol, I’ve never been kicked, and yeah, it’s quite a selfish build, but I didn’t do it to play PvE.

You mean that you use that trash build in PvP?

natanfk.1649:

If I get a few seconds dodging, it’s enough for me to get back in the fight.

That’s the problem.
Full regen with no burst healing at all means that every time your health is low you need to spend some time dodging away and dealing no DPS.
Realistically with your low regen it would take at least 5-10s to recover from a bad injury, while a good Warrior would recover in a second and continue to fight.
Let alone no Endure Pain. That nullifies all damage which means if you deny say 10k dmg it’s 10k healing you would need otherwise.

This build has no staying power in high end content.
If you wish to prove me wrong post a video of Frac 46 with it.

You don’t realize how terribly, awfully OP is 25% DR?
A 3/6/9 would make a lot more sense.

Vorch.2985:

Griefing is a violation of rules.

Apparently not.
I sent a support ticket for being victim of such, this is roughly how it went:

Me: “We got kicked at chest from 2 people etc etc will you do something?”
Support: “As a player myself, I perfectly understand how you feel yadda yadda, we’re planning to improve our dungeon system yadda yadda”
Me: “I understand but will you punish those giefiers?”
Support: “As a player myself, I perfectly understand how you feel yadda yadda, we’re planning to improve our dungeon system yadda yadda”
Me: “Thanks but I understood that the first time. I’m asking you directly if that griefing will be punished or not”
Support: “As a player myself, I perfectly understand how you feel yadda yadda, we’re planning to improve our dungeon system yadda yadda”
Me: “Ok, I’ll take that as a no. Please no more copy and paste you can delete this.”

Robert Hrouda.1327:

We can’t have rangers that change based on PvP, open world, and dungeons

Someone needs to tell you this Robert: Anet will never, ever achieve balance unless you do a proper PvP/PvE split.
This is undeniable; some skills simply cannot be equally good in both.

So, you could continue applying bandages over bandages and never end up with a final result thus being haunted with profession issues for the years to come… or you could sit down and split all skills properly.
I know it’s a good effort, but to be blunt we paid for a balanced vanilla game, and we expect it at some point.
It can take even 6 months, but it must happen sooner or later.

Ranger is just the tip of the iceberg of that issue, look at Warriors forced to not use many adren skills as it would be a DPS loss, look at D/D Eles being terribly OP in WvW because nerfs only apply to sPvP, look at Engineers.

All classes have issues that are due to the inexistance of PvP/PvE splitting, and until said split happens (which should include WvW unless you want it to keep being an unbalanced zergfest) we will not resolve dungeon issues or PvP issues.

Where I work when there is a problem we find a definitive solution even if it takes effort because then the issue is eliminated.
Some companies ignore or give temporary solutions to issues, and those problems continue to haunt them for their entire existence.
Do what needs to be done

Banner build is more efficient in healing as shouts overheal a lot while regen is constant, banners have 900 radius and regen stays with you when you go out of range, plus the buffs, plus the fact it doesn’t force you to equip the same 3 shouts and therefore you’re a lot more useful.
I would go like this.

Signet build is terrible, lacks team support (FGJ/SIO) lacks Endure Pain which alone avoids damage worth hours of regen.
Your Regen is 320/s but you lose 280hp/s that surge would provide in a bursty way so you’re not exactly gaining a lot, you just trade a burst heal for a regen heal.
You’ll get kicked by any decent team out there like every signet Warrior post-80 because you’re not doing nothing not only for your team but not even to keep yourself alive.

Oglaf.1074:

That is exactly what happens in the game.

If you’re going to speculate something provide proofs for it; you make the claim, you prove it or it isn’t true.
I have a whole 400 man guild who witnessed the opposite along with exhaustive personal evidence so unless you provide any fact I’ll have to stick with in-game reality.

Oglaf.1074:

There is no “magical number” of Toughness makes you aggro; all that matter is that you have the highest Toughness around. Just like how there is no “magical number” of damage per second that makes you aggro; as long as you have the highest damage per second around you will move up on the mob’s aggro list.

That’s not what the wiki states nor what happens in the game.

Feel free to join my frac team tonight, I’ll run a 2700 armor build while other guildies will be squishies and you’ll see I barely get any more aggro than any other member.
In game tests squash any theory, 2700 armor does not get aggro period.

Of course Guardian is tons better for defensive support; even support Elementalists, Rangers, Necros, Engis and some Thief builds are much better.
For offensive support nothing beats a Warrior, we can provide up to 265 power to the team and permanent Fury.

Our tactics grandmasters’ benefits are not worth the big DPS loss, and are barely noticiable in a team setting – if you want to provide support, provide damage buffs and DPS.

Prahl.1057:

Sword actually has almost as much dps as Axe or Greatsword, but the way condition stacking works makes it very difficult to realize your damage potential.

No.
25 Bleeds deal up to 3-4k DPS on a Sword Warrior, GS/Axe Warriors sit on 7-8k DPS.
From a DPS perspective direct damage beats by far condition damage on Warriors.

Oglaf.1074:

Sigh.

It is not rocket science, people.

1) Axe can achieve the highest mobility-to-DPS ratio due to auto-attack being the biggest source of damage, and you are free to move as you please. Greatsword loses all mobility when attaining its highest DPS due to Hundred Blades having a self-root.
2) Greatsword has the most mobility due to Whirlwind Attack and Rush. Axe is sadly very lacking in the mobility department with only Eviscerate being a very, very short Leap.

Us Warriors should love one another, not bicker like school children.

Oglaf is completely correct here.
GS offers mobility with the best stationary DPS, Axe/X offers the best mobile DPS with less options for mobility.

Pure DPS
Invul DPS (A/S with defy pain)
Hulk Smash full control DPS
Axe/Warhorn conditions-to-boons
Banner full DPS / Banner Invul DPS

Atherakhia.4086:

And in PvP, is Knights also good? Toughness over vitality for a warrior because their healthpool is so much larger than the other classes?

I’ve seen in other threads people suggesting things like healing power on weapons and such to get a minimum of +1000 healing power and such? Is this solely for shout builds?

Check Nyspar’s videos, he’s running mostly Knight+Zerk and he does pretty good in PvP.

Oglaf.1074:

Actually the Wiki is pretty clear on it. Either you’re lying, or the clothies were bunker and didn’t tell you.

Wiki “pretty clear”? Not remotely on that subject.
It only says toughness is one of the many factors that dictate aggro, but it does not state how much toughness is will get you aggro, how important it is against other factors or anything.
It also says damage dealt is a factor so we should be an aggro magnet, but that also doesn’t happen.

In-game tests evidence and they’ve never pointed that some armor automatically makes you into an aggro magnet.

Sahfur.5612:

I want people to realize that stacking zerker or vit isn’t the only way to go.
I also want them to realize that no build is optimum for all situations.

Do you realize how many people I see who refuse to change anything about their build for a specific part of a dungeon to make things run smoother?

Edit: I’ve had groups with zerkers who refuse to switch out their signet for the banner during lupicus. Why? They’d sacrifice dps. I want people to be more like water, shift and change for the situation.

Thats what I want to accomplish.

I already explained it above.

Thats how I’m successful, and I wanted to share that success.

The warrior community is running rampant with more or less the exact same builds and it is contradictory to progress or diversity.

Edit: I want people to understand they can unlock their maximum potential in more than one way. Zerker isn’t theoretical optimum for all situations. It works for speed runs in COF or if other people are able to draw aggro. In actually difficult content, a long cd skill, a few dodge rolls and a prayer do not cut it.

Run with good people.
I suggest trying to find a large, high-end PvE guild, they will be coordinated on TS and swap to the best stuff according to encounters.
PuGs are difficult to manage.

Btw I agree that full zerker isn’t the way to go outside CoF, I’m trying to push Warriors to get Cavalier trinkets or Knight’s armor.
In the hardest content even the most skilled player cannot permanently avoid all damage (let alone that constantly dodging deals little DPS, I actually use dodge offensively).

Oglaf.1074:

It is all relative to what the other people are wearing. If you wear Toughness and the other people in your party aren’t (which is a likely scenario, especially with Light Professions in the group) you are going to take most of the heat.

Again in-game tests say differently to me.
I have teamed up with clothies while on 2700+ armor and never actually ended up being an aggro magnet.

We don’t know for sure how the formula works, we can only test and see the results.

Oglaf.1074:

Again, I have to stress the fact that Toughness = Aggro.

If DPS is your goal, you don’t want anything but your DPS adding to your aggro.

From my tests toughness doesn’t give much aggro until 2800ish armor.
Even on my Guardian I rarely get the aggro even though he’s sitting on 2764 armor.

I say go Knight armor+Zerk trinkets like Cook said, it’s a good setup to start with.
I would suggest something like this.

Full zerker gear/ruby orbs.
Sigil of perception for 100% crit on secondary set.
Sigil of rage on main set.
20 arms for deep cuts (pin down ftw) and rending strikes.
20 tactics for LB traits.
10 strength for zerk power.
20 disc for signet trait/height focus.
FGJ/SoFury/Frenzy/SoR.

Make sure adren is always filled and targets are burning before you toss your 10k bomb.

It was nerfed in BWEs in order to nerf Eviscerate.
Failed to, as they still needed to nerf Evis, but they never reverted the Brawn nerf.

It’s curious how we had some really OP builds over these 5 months, like Thief/Mesmer who got toned down without screwing them up, the current D/D Eles being out of control… but the only one who got knee-jerk nerfed in a really bad way was the Warrior.
It was a quick nerf without thinking, they even made sigil of doom into a joke no one uses (another nerf that made something completely useless).

Those weren’t just changes or nerfs, they actually made sure those things wouldn’t be any good.

3% dmg on a single burst skill a non-factor, if they wanted to nerf it they should have made a proper PvE/PvP split or make Brawn give boons to us/debuffs to enemies.

I too had problems with the imbued, initially, even staying at full range with a Rifle.
Now I melee him and never die.
Yet the imbued didn’t change from back then to now (actually it’s higher difficulty so he’s harder).

All classes are good, it just takes a lot more effort and time compared to traditional MMOs to get really really good with them.
There is no rotation that you just do and win, it’s all about knowing yourself, your class, your gear and the encounter.

Warrior is great in PvE, but you need to know exactly when to do what, when you can do this and when you need that, etc.
Everyone is born a 5 signet Warrior, what we become later only depends on how hard we try and how good we want to become.

Having a Thief myself I know it has more failsafes, but the above applies to it too; if you aren’t good with it you will still not succeed.

If you want 100% failsafe that requires zero skill roll an AH support guardian, you can stand still and spam a few buttons never going remotely close to death – but any DPS class comes with risks.

I’m not sure why Anet did away with the new district system they had created and went back to the obsolete “server” system.
It’s causing all sorts of problems like this one, guild issues when playing with people on different servers, over/underpopulation issues, WvW unbalances, etc.

They don’t seem interested to go back to the better system though.
At best they will create some time gating on boss chests, but I doubt we’ll ever see a proper population handling system like GW1.

I’m not sure how can people die to Thieves unless it was totally unexpected while fighting someone else.
All their burst is sitting on the initial attack, you block that and 3shot the Thief, simple as that.

Getting a legendary doesn’t make you legendary, regardless how you obtained it.
“Legendary” is just the name of a tier that indicates its rarity, not that obtaining it requires a legendary action.

So far I think the dredge first boss in fractals (the one with russian name) is the only one able to hit through endure pain.
His big hit skill will ignore endure pain and hit for its full damage.
This doesn’t happen with any other big hits from bosses I believe.

Lighter.5631:

none the less i’m always top or top 3 in tournaments. maybe you just need to l2p?

And I’m Bill Clinton.

If Warrior was good you’d see many in tPvP, but there are very few and for a good reason; we can’t bunker and we are worse than other classes at roaming.

Plus all the bugs to Rush, Bull and Bolas greatly impair our PvP ability.
Just fixing those bugs would make us a lot more viable.

I ain’t even asking buffs, just fixes to bugged skills.

Akhellan.4180:

I just feel that the “difficult” content should to some degree be segregated and not painted over the entire landscape with a broad brush

So you want us to be segregated into a zone and the rest of the game be made into a cakewalk because you like it this way? Wow.
I’m not sure you realize this but the majority of gamers who play combat-based game love a challenge, if you want a birdwatching MMO buy Skyrim and disable the AI.

ArtemisEntreri.4138:

This is what I am trying to discover and build. Sure I can go full GC hammer/GS or some other mixture but I wanted to serve a higher purpose than HULK SMASH!

How would you build a offensive support warrior?

A good offensive support set would be a 20/25/0/10/15 including FGJ+Banner of Discipline, Empower allies and switch SoR to Battle Standard for tough fights.
It gives your team 530 precision 175 power 10% crit dmg permanently, along with an AoE rez and Stability when it’s really needed.

Warrior with shield is great if played properly.
As I said above I have a guildie who uses shield+axe and he’s a walking fortress that deals great DPS and never dies.
It’s too bad some people here can’t see the potential of some things and will just try to morph every Warrior into a GS clone.

OP sorry but you’re basically asking that the entirety of GW2 zones are made into a joke, which is not acceptable.
Not everything should be “relaxing” in a combat-based game, we also need hard zones on top of the easy ones.

TMCG.7108:

I feel like I do contribute in groups but if people think “what a noob! He uses healing shouts!” I’d like to know haha. Just want to contribute to my group the best I can!

My guild is running the hardest content constantly, so I can give you a pointer to what an high-end team will think of you depending on your build.
Here is how we rank Warriors, from worst to best:

Newbie Warrior
Full zerk gear, Signet build, never changes setup or skills according to encounters, zero chance to be in our teams.

Shout healer
Warrior locked into the same 3 utilities forever (and thus not using the best Warrior feats such as DPS, Invul, Control) so very inefficient.
I only take this in WvW, or in PvE if the current team has enough dmg and support so we just need a “filler” before going in.

The Incredible Hulk
A Warrior with all weapons/utilities/traits completely focused on control. I like these.
His damage is respectable but its biggest contribute is avoiding wipes through control.
Definitely worth a slot unless we’re doing very specific content where CC is not good.

Skilled Berserker
Full zerker Warrior that overcomes lack of defense with player skill and well-timed EP.
Will swap utilities and even weapons to what’s best in the situation at hand, goes down sometimes but will rarely die unless focused a lot.
Always worth the team slot.

Invincible Berserker
Same as Skilled Berserker except he went 30 defense and uses shield to be invulnerable 21.6% of the time. Will very rarely go down, let alone die. Swaps utilties/weapons according to enemies. It’s usually the guy who jumps in first to negate the big initial bursts and has incredible staying power.
I die to have these in my team, they make things much easier.

Endless-Spike Warrior
Warrior with big DPS and 20%+ DR, spikes mobs for extreme damage and rolls into another spike, makes sure EP negates tens of thousands of damage, will switch weapons and utilities according to situations, great staying power. Rarely downed unless on purpose when a dying mob is tagged, owns all weapons and carries them with him and even some gear pieces, usually the second last person to die when a support Guardian is present.
Although rare, when I see these Warriors they are guaranteed a slot immediately.

So, if you are Hulk or above you’re fine for endgame stuff.

ArtemisEntreri.4138:

True. Though I haven’t been able to make a layout of guardian that included 3k armor, 3k attk, 50% crit, 100% crit dmg, and 15k+ health. If I could reach those numbers I wouldn’t want to roll a warrior unless I wanted crazy burst.

There you go.

ArtemisEntreri.4138:

Sadly, I can’t think of any ideas how to make warriors more interesting and have their own niche.

Warrior’s niche is highest DPS/damage and best offensive support, and it’s pretty interesting if played out right (assuming you like that role of course).

I got to 95% crit chance and it’s just too good.
I even put Perception Sigil on my secondary weps so I can get up to 100%.
It’s a big DPS increase as all your HBs are hitting 25k rather than some 22k and some 15k due to non-crits, all your Killshots/Volleys are 15k blows etc.
I sacrificed about 4% of my damage reduction (sitting on 20% now) but I’m happier this way.
Non-crits just irritate me, I just wanted to get rid of them forever.

Had no issue with my thief in frac30+.
Signet of Malice+Omnom pie+sigil of blood still equals at least 650hp/s.
Blindspam/evade prevents damage altogether.

Changes just made full glass cannon much harder to play, now you’ll have to rely on some defense to keep up.
I have 2400 armor 15k health while still hitting like a truck, and healing/blind keeps me in the fight.

You wanted more loot, and the result is it created a ton of deflation and lowered our income.
Be careful what you wish for next time.

IvanHoe.3468:

I’d also like to take this opportunity to show yall a better build editor. It pains me when I see you use that gw2BuildCtaft site….

Here it is better build editor

That editor not only has very outdated skills and traits, but has no PvE gear, no damage reduction shown, no effective power/health.
“Better”? It stopped being useful months ago.

Plus I’m not sure why would you want to show active skills.
Skills need be swapped according to what content you’re facing, it’s gear/traits that make your build.

The problem of full-out healing power builds on Warriors is they make you hit like a full support Guardian with just 1% of what he gives.
You cannot replace a Guardian where it’s really needed on that build, and if you have a Guardian then your healing is not really needed (but your DPS really really is).

Anet needs to find a way to make support Warriors useful.
For instance vigorous shouts could give 3s of protection and regen (4s due to boon duration from tactics tree).
That would give a lot of survivability to your team compared to meaningless heals shout give now.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

All new stuff in dungeons is going to be hard for the first few days. We see it all the time with new content – people fail and get knocked down when they aren’t used to that sort of thing, and they claim it is too difficult.
Give it a week or so for everyone to develop strategies, learn encounters, and build fundamentals, and they will claim it is too easy. Trust me when I say this, the numbers are punishing (but less than they were before), but knowing the mechanics will greatly mitigate the danger.

What strategy are we supposed to develop for p3 where the entire zone is filled with oneshotting falling rocks with no safe zone, blocks doesn’t work etc?
Sorry but inevitable mass AoE oneshot isn’t good design.

Before: Spam damage on boss, avoid oneshots.
Now: 4 of your team spam boss to death in seconds, 1 kites the gimmicky knockdown spammers with stability.

It’s easier and way less fun.
Why not just make the boss spawn some breeders or something?

Spifnar.4712:

You can also get cavalier exotic weapons as account bound drops in FotM. I swap between zerk and cavalier axe depending on need. Also had a rifle with those stats, but decided toughness wasn’t worth the loss of precision in a ranged weapon.

Sadly, they’re pretty rare drops

True, I’ve seen cavalier exotic weps drop in fractals, but they all come account bound.
You could spend a life there and never get one sadly.

Btw Cook Knight armor+Zerk trinkets and Zerk armor+Cav trinkets give roughly the same results.
With the first setup you have 12% less crit dmg, but more precision, with the second you get the opposite – but the final results are pretty similar.

I also suggest you run a ton of fractal dailies so you get swarmed with ascended rings and you can try different combos.

One bug I forgot to mention, against some large bosses (i.e. the tree in swamp fract) if you use Rush your character continues “running in place” for the full duration even if you are in melee range with the boss, and fails to deliver the hit.

I think this might be due to boss’ target circle being larger than his hitbox, which results in your character never being able to reach the hitbox and thus continuing to run.

It’s quite a DPS loss because rush hits for 6-8k.

Another two come to mind:
1) Bolas often says “out of range” even if the target is a lot closer to you than 900 range.
2) Sure Footed doesn’t increase duration of defy pain.

I got Gwen and I’m happy with it.

It’s the masochism of gamers: if rare loot is rare they complain they rarely get it, if rare loot is made more common it isn’t worth a lot so they complain.

I loved the grittiness of GW1 too.
GW2 stories are very goofy indeed, game doesn’t take itself seriously and thus fails to involve you into it… the humor isn’t really funny either, the only times GW2 made me laugh was through funny bugs or things I did myself.
Even Orr isn’t really scary, DoA was, Tombs was, FoW/UW were… Orr is just the bottom of a sea with some annoying mobs; the less scary of them are difficult, the scariest (abomination etc) can’t stand a full 100B channel… huh?

Races too…
Charrs were scary back in GW1, now they talk like cavemen.
Asuras used to be know-it-alls, they still are but they look very childish now and less dignified.
Humans were done greatly in GW1, in GW2 they all seem 18 year old kids from their dialogues.
Trahearne… Just… Trahearne.

But I can live with it.
I’ve done the stories and early zones so I won’t see most of that cheese again.

Haziq.3907:

My current unbuffed stats are
3438 power

What? Your autoattack must hit for 20k lol.

The problem, craw, is that Trinkets are the biggest source of crit dmg.
Trinkets give 44% crit damage, if you go with Knight trinkets you will be left with 50% crit dmg only, making your DPS as low as a shout healer.

Oh dear… Your Warrior has less damage than my Guardian geared with rares and traited for support.

The trait build is good (I used that build a few times, solid one) but the gear choice is terrible.
If you trait into defense forever, just go full zerker with gear.
50% damage reduction is useless if you deal less DPS than a Plush Griffon.

CookMETEnder.7582:

That’s what I’m thinking.
90% (Not all, mind you people that will flame saying “not me!”) of the people that say go for Cavaliers have been all talk and no screen shots or videos. They say that Cavalier is better overall and say the extra defense is worth it…. then in another thread they say to go berserker ascended and that glass cannon is best if you know how to play.

I’m sitting here thinking, “wtf?”

Thanks for the reply!

Both are true.
If you know how to play full zerk is acceptable but in case of inevitable damage you die.
Cavalier gives more failsafe when such inevitable damage happens, also gives you more staying power.

Also unbuffed stats:

EU player here, having lag issues too and confirmed it’s not my connection.
EU servers just seem to be bad lately.