Guild Wars 2

Nuorus.8415:

Gaah don’t be so ignorant. GS is mobility burst weapon. Axe (mainhand) is dps weapon (not mobile). Yes Hundred blades does out burst axe auto attack but while it’s on cd autoattack on axe will make more damage. Also when the target moves out of your HB your dps will fall dramaticaly. Axe has no problem with moving targets. Axe’s weakness is on PvP while it’s best weapon for PvE. GS and Axe are kinda bouth good in PvP but not best. If you don’t want to have ranged weapon gs and axe will provide the max dps together.

Now who’s being ignorant? We’re talking PvE. In PvE GS is unmatched. The DPS you get out of Hundred Blades (which the mobs don’t know better to avoid) is unparalleled. On top of that you get a third, 8 second cooldown, high AoE damage dodge because of whirlwind. Everything else, like Might stacking, is just gravy.

In PvP, where you won’t land HB roughly ever, Axes get higher DPS (whether they’re better weapons or not is a whole different deal).

Axes are quite good in PvE. WAY more than enough for all PvE content. In fact, they’d be the best PvE weapon… except for the Greatsword. GS simply eclipses everything else in PvE. If you can’t see it then you don’t know how to use it.

PaulBarty.1630:

Well whats a good PvE gs/rifle build for a warrior?

Actually, if you’re pure PvE I’d recommend Greatsword/Longbow, due to AoE.

10/25/20/0/15 is mine. Works for PvE and PvP, and you can easily sub in any other weapon-set by just changing the traits.

For PvE of any kind: Greatsword. Warrior’s Greatsword is the single greatest PvE weapon in the game. if “it doesn’t seem that great” to you, you’re doing something horribly wrong.

BlackBeard.2873:

I think he wants +100% movement speed, and will probably ask for +200% base damage next. How dare someone run from you when you jump them at the most inopportune times! Everyone should be a free kill, right?

It’s Daecollo. If you’re still taking him seriously you haven’t been around long enough.

PS: It’s “supposed”. You’ve spelled that word wrong every single time I’ve seen you use it.

Quakeman.9378:

Just curious to see the highest crits you all have hit on other players.

ITT: Illiterates.

Around 12-15k killshot in WvW. Didn’t see who, but most likely an upscaled glass cannon.

Normally I hit around 8k killshots.

FinalPatriot.8034:

With all the zerg actions these days in WvW, how do you Guardians deal with the massive amount of ranged combat? I play a Mesmer as my main and so most of the time, I just sit back in the group and toss out damage with the GS but as a Guardian, are you not forced to either provide defensive support or charge into the enemy group?

I only ask because I was playing around with my level 32 Guardian yesterday during a zerg and didn’t have a clue as to what my role should be.

Wall of reflection is a godsend. You’d be surprised how many people simply kill themselves outright. Other than that, Staff or Scepter + Shield and Tome of Wrath.

Or, if I feel like it, go in with melee. We’re built for it.

Warlord.9074:

Guess wha the definition of invulnerable is?

you guessed it

in·vul·ner·a·ble
/in?v?ln?r?b?l/
Adjective
Impossible to harm or damage.

which is synonymous with take no damage,

Yep. I’m out… It’s like trying to teach quantum mechanics to a donkey…

Sil.4560:

Well that is assuming they’ve looked at all of those other skills. For someone to ask about Endure Pain, I’m going to assume they’ve got probably limited experience in order to not know how exactly it functions so maybe they haven’t played all of the other classes long enough to make note of those skills.

Honestly, I’m not here to argue. If you’re wanting to be one of those people online who comes across as rude and as if they don’t want to miss a chance to pass themselves off as smarter than someone else, I guess that’s your call. I’m just trying to give someone the benefit of the doubt and say that I’d be totally okay with in-depth descriptions on skills.

And I quote: “I can see why people would think it functions like other forms of invulnerability.”

You’re the one who mentioned other forms of invulnerability. Otherwise, you have no reason to think so. It doesn’t say it makes you invulnerable. It says you don’t take damage from attacks. See above for the difference.

Warlord.9074:

Really your just a troll, you probably don’t even know what attack means in the English dictionary. The problem isn’t my English the problem is Attack is a vague English word.

Attack —-to set upon in a forceful, violent, hostile, or aggressive way, with or without a weapon; begin fighting with: He attacked him with his bare hands.

Attack – to begin hostilities against; start an offensive against: to attack the enemy.

If a players casts a skill on another player with the intention to harm them and that skill is capable of damage regardless if it is a condition it is none the less an Attack especially in the English language.

The problem with trying to sound smart, is that people who are smart don’t need to try to sound smart. They do so naturally.

Your attempt to argue uncontextualized semantics aside, you’re still missing the point.

Conditions are not attacks. They’re by-products of attacks. A bruise isn’t a punch. It’s the result of a punch. A wound isn’t a knife stab. It’s a potential result of one. Conditions are not attacks. They’re the results of certain attacks.

Endure Pain mentions you take no damage from attacks. You do not. It says nothing about conditions. You don’t take damage from the attacks applying conditions. You do receive the conditions. You do receive the damage from the conditions.

“We good”? Need a drawing?

Sil.4560:

ProxyDamage.9826:

Does not prevent rain. Does not prevent hypothermia. Does not make you fly. Does not contain nuts…etc.

Point being, there’s no need to mention everything the skill doesn’t do. It’s just clutter. The skill mentions exactly what it does. If you assume it does other things that’s your fault.

XD

That’s funny, but reasonably I can see why people would think it functions like other forms of invulnerability.

I can’t.

Mistform: “Morph into an invulnerable, vaporous mist for a brief time.”

Obsidian flesh: “Envelop yourself in stony armor, making yourself invulnerable.”

Fortify: “Use magnetism to envelop yourself in a shield, becoming invulnerable.”

Renewed Focus: “Focus, making yourself invulnerable and recharging your virtues.”

Endure Pain: “Take no damage from attacks.”

“One of these things is not like the other…”

Sil.4560:

Some of you need to learn some social skills. Wow.

Endure Pain, “Stance. Take no damage from attacks.”

Would there really be anything wrong with adding additional descriptive text? We can insult one another all day over how it’s to be interpreted, but to me, the more information given on any skill, the better. I like helpful descriptions.

Endure Pain, “Stance. Take no direct damage from attacks. Does not negate conditions. Does not negate control effects (Stun, Knockback, Launch, Sink, Float, Fear, Daze)”

Maybe it’s just because I grew up playing games like Magic: The Gathering. I’ve got patience to read things, haha.

Does not prevent rain. Does not prevent hypothermia. Does not make you fly. Does not contain nuts…etc.

Point being, there’s no need to mention everything the skill doesn’t do. It’s just clutter. The skill mentions exactly what it does. If you assume it does other things that’s your fault.

BurrTheKing.8571:

You can easily dodge most of volley’s damage, same with Killshot.

This isn’t an excuse. Any attack in the game can be dodged. Volley is very spammable. Killshot is an attack of opportunity thing. If you prefer a damaging auto-attack over burst skills pick longbow.

KICKER.3874:

I will transmute a full Magic Find set with the exact looks of my Berserker set.

I will wear the MF and ping you the Zerk from inventory.

Did u even consider how useless gear pinging is ? Just annoying really.

edit: obviously, 90% of you missed the point; the idea was that I can ping gear from inventory and they have no way of knowing if that`s what I`m actually wearing, so why even ask for pings?

And you are the reason why inspecting should exist. Sorry, I don’t want dead weight in my party (which you are), and gear checking is the best way I have to prevent that. It’s not effective, but ANet won’t give us the tools for it, so the least I can do is inconvenience you as much as possible.

PS: You’ll be kicked from my party anyways if you underperform.

I’ve mentioned many times. Ascended gear is a bad idea… It’s a gear treadmill that the game was thousands of times better without.

When it was just a ring or two, ok… Now it’s full accessories, with full gear sets set to come.

As someone with a lot of ascended crap already ( because I have to, because it’s the BiS), I’d be incredibly happy if they announced the ascended gear stats being nerfed down to exotics… or exotics being pushed up to ascended.

GW set out to be a different MMO. One where horizontal progression substitutes its vertical counterpart. It’d be a shame to lose that.

Warlord.9074:

Its bugged. The description is "Take no damage from attacks. " But this isnt true. because it doesn’t make you invulnerable. Elemental mist form makes them invulnerable they actually take no damage from attacks but endure pain on take no damage from physical attacks. But I have also found this not to be always true as well.

You can still be pulled stunned, knocked back knocked down crippled bleed poised ete etc.

Actually it’s your English knowledge that’s at fault here.

“Take no damage from attacks”. You don’t. You take damage from conditions. Also the skill does not mention any kind of immunity to CC, so, yes, obviously you still suffer from cripples/stuns/knockdowns/etc. That’s what stability is for.

The condition is there for few reasons:

First, they clearly don’t wanna give rifle more DPS. Which is understandable given that Volley and Killshot already give quite a stupid high burst. Being able to also maintain a post-burst high DPS through a high damage auto attack, would potentially send it over the top.

However, it figures that they also felt that maybe the damage by itself was not good enough. Thus they added a small “overtime” component, that adds just a tiny extra “oomph” to your auto-attack, over a slower period of time – thus not adding to the already high rifle burst, but giving it just a little more sustained DPS.

In turn, this bleed serves a secondary purpose: it allows for the rifle to have any use in a condition build – sustained bleed stacking versus the longbow’s burst burning, and it stops it from being potentially overpowered in a raw damage build.

If you look at the longbow it’s the exact opposite situation. The auto-attack has no condition, but actually scales pretty well with power (as do many of the other skills, despite scaling better with condition damage). This means that it’s still useful in a power build, despite its damage truly shinning in a condition build.

Chopps.5047:

ProxyDamage.9826:

Chopps.5047:

I am sad about retaliation though because it’s something you have to be aware of. I feel great when I notice retaliation and say “NOPE NOT ATTACKING”. Don’t you? That’s a skill thing, I think. I wonder exactly why it is being nerfed, Xsorsus?

Don’t be ignorant. It’s a “cost/benefit” issue. Both needed a nerf (although whether it was too much or not is another issue entirely).

Confusion is way too easy to apply on top of everything else a condition damage build will have and is extremely punishing. It gives you the choice of receiving very high damage, or being unable to do anything – i.e.: dazed.

Retaliation, on the other hand, was hard to notice (no immediate visual indicator) and, in some builds – like guardian, possible to easily maintain a very high rate of upkeep. In turn it made any physical strike extremely painful, creating the same situation as above – You can stop the skill hurting you, but that leaves you unable to attack the enemy.

In both cases as soon as you used the skill it was win-win, because of how disproportional the damage received was.

Ok ok I was just asking a question. I roll around with guardians and necros and typically avoid zerg combat. I apologize for my ignorance oh great one.

Apologies for being a bit “harsh”, I thought you were being sarcastic like a few others here. It doesn’t translate well over the internet, etc.

scanz.4536:

Disappointed with this to be honest. A lot of us with ascended quivers have had to put a lot of time, effort and gold into getting one and now anyone can just go buy one with gems. Sigh, nice one ANet.

…so? They’re not taking that away from you are they?

I can’t understand this mentality. It sounds like an 8 year old kid throwing a hissy fit in a playground…

When you made your quiver that was the only thing available. Nobody said they wouldn’t add anything in the future. You had two options: wait and see, or go ahead and make it. You made it. You got what you wanted. Nobody’s taking it away from you. ANet isn’t turning your ascended into a normal skin are they? Are you suggesting that ANet should never add any content ever again, lest people might think “oh that’s nicer looking than what I have! ANet has wronged me!”. It’s not even the same skin.

Get over yourself.

Chopps.5047:

I am sad about retaliation though because it’s something you have to be aware of. I feel great when I notice retaliation and say “NOPE NOT ATTACKING”. Don’t you? That’s a skill thing, I think. I wonder exactly why it is being nerfed, Xsorsus?

Don’t be ignorant. It’s a “cost/benefit” issue. Both needed a nerf (although whether it was too much or not is another issue entirely).

Confusion is way too easy to apply on top of everything else a condition damage build will have and is extremely punishing. It gives you the choice of receiving very high damage, or being unable to do anything – i.e.: dazed.

Retaliation, on the other hand, was hard to notice (no immediate visual indicator) and, in some builds – like guardian, possible to easily maintain a very high rate of upkeep. In turn it made any physical strike extremely painful, creating the same situation as above – You can stop the skill hurting you, but that leaves you unable to attack the enemy.

In both cases as soon as you used the skill it was win-win, because of how disproportional the damage received was.

Dardamaniac.1295:

Again i will say that WvW isnt a place where you want balance.Large battles take place..numbers matter,massive fights matters,duels doesnt matter..sPvP is the place where you need balance,where 5 fight 5 and every member has a unique role…And in there,Shortbow is the master..

Your view of what constitutes “balance” is ignorant at best.

Young padawan, “balance” isn’t sPvP only. Balance isn’t 5v5 only. There are more ways to play this game than 5v5 sPvP, and they should all be, within human limitations, balanced. The problem isn’t when something isn’t good in 5v5 sPvP. The problem is when something isn’t good enough at anything (or too good at something).

There are way too many ignorant scrubs running around thinking that the build they use for duels is (or should be) the same they use for large scale battles, or vice versa. Don’t be one of those. Nobody likes those.

Daecollo you really should think these things through before you post them…

The active gives you 15% extra damage… That’s a lot. That’s what you trade for the (supposed, after the patch) 180 power. The 5 stacks of might are a passive bonus from your trait II in the Critical Strikes line, which is a bonus to any signet.

Get your kitten together man…

If you’re anything short of a full ranged thief (and even then…) and don’t use Steal (and Mug) you’re doing something horribly wrong. No "but"s or "if"s. You’re a bad player. Period. Even if completely untraited it’s such a stupid good free gap closer that you have no reason not to use it.

Once the new patch hits, however, that won’t necessarily stay true, but for now, that’s a fact.

You’re right, elementalists don’t have enough stunbreakers. Every elementalist build should have at least 3 stunbreakers without making any compromises whatsoever, like the standard D/D build. Nothing wrong with that.

Fortus.6175:

ThiBash.5634:

a) We have a greatsword.

a) we dont, we have an elite

Which summons a….?

Hint: Not a mace.

It takes a very “special” kind of person to claim guardian elites are useless…

A very, very “special” kind…

I wanna point out just how baffling that statement is, but I honestly don’t know where to start. Let’s just go with “The doctor prescribes a liberal dose of L2P, at least twice a day – but really consume liberally” and let’s all reunite and re-discuss this topic, if need be, once everyone has had their much needed meds.

If anyone has any specific questions I’ll be glad to answer them. “Guardian elites are useless” is simply too stupid a claim to debate. If you want useless elites try Warrior: You have 1 elite – Signet of Rage. Everything else is a joke gone a bit too far.

D/D elementalists and properly built Thieves are pretty much unkillable unless they make a mistake.

Doesn’t mean that they’ll beat you, in fact if they stand toe to toe they’ll likely lose, simply that they can get away from any other class whenever they so choose. When the fight starts to go pear shaped for them they have more than enough tools to simply say “kitten it” and leave.

That’s sweet… I’m thinking of hording a few super weapons to make a Tron-style asura.

JJBigs.8456:

Dont use hammer in PvE unless your with all squishers

Disregard this, poster is high on something. Something strong.

Hammer is arguably the best PvE weapon, outside of mass killing trash minions, but those are never an issue anyways.

For PvP/WvW it comes down to damage (Greatsword) vs. control (Hammer). That said, depending on your build/traits, the differences are more subtle than major.

As Gaffles said, that happens because the axe (and scepter) attacks are not projectiles but, instead, targeted instant attacks.

The downside is, as you mentioned, the inability to deal with untargetable enemies (such as windows and Stealth Thieves). The advantage is that they can’t be “juked” (have to be rolled) nor can they be reflected.

Or… you can just buy the armor you want…

Crafting is even cheaper, but even if you just buy it… It’s not that expensive. You don’t need to build around gear you don’t want. Decide your build first, and then get the gear you need to fit it.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Hate to be a Negative Nancy, but there’s nothing new here. It’s a pretty common build.

Allow me:

Chazcon.1867:

Weapons:
DPS weapon set: Berserker’s 1h Sword, Berserker’s Shield, Sigils: Earth, Agony
Tank set: Knight’s Mace, Cleric’s Shield, Sigils: Blood, Water

I just skimmed through most of the post, and “so far so standard”, but this actually made me wince… 2 things terribly wrong here.

First, Sigil of Blood and Sigil of Water both have internal cooldowns… Because of the way sigils work, this means that they’re constantly competing to be active… When one triggers, they both go on cooldown… And main hand has a slight advantage over off hand (it’s checked first). What, in turn, this means, is that it’s quite inefficiency to have 2 sigils with internal cooldown on the same weapon set. Keep one, switch the other.

Second, why in the world are you using sigils of earth at all…? Unless I missed something you have 0 condition damage… That right there is a waste of two perfectly good sigil slots… If you want more damage use a sigil of air/flame and a sigil of accuracy.

The rest looks like a pretty standard build. Not necessarily the best tank you can get out of a Guardian, not by a significant margin, but perfectly viable nonetheless. But for the love of god… those sigils…

Dragonite.3841:

PvE

Hammer. Regardless of other issues.

Only thing GS is better than hammer for is multi-mob tagging…. But the staff is better at that than either.

Stand your ground → Thief kills himself.

Condition Thief → laugh and ignore. If he makes a mistake root him with something and pummel his kitten in.

laharl.8435:

What are some good sigil combos for and Altruistic Healing / Empowered Might crit build?

Anything that gives you/your allies a boon – Sigil of Strength / Sigil of Battle.

Anything that facilitates crits – Sigil of Accuracy / Sigil of Perception / Sigil of Intelligence.

It’s not rocket science mate… You know what your build is, you know what it does. Now look at what sigils there are . Tada. Pick the appropriate.

CMF.5461:

If it is no, then I feel that is a huge oversight. Retal should be the direct counter to conditions and smaller damage based hits, while larger hits should be counter by blocks and dodges.

You know, it’s usually a good idea to think about things before you say them…

No, retaliation doesn’t work against conditions, if it did a single use of relation would destroy any serious condition build with 10 to 20-ish stacks of bleed (and other conditions) continuously ticking. Any condition build would be completely suicidal.

Retaliation is a counter to “white” damage. More effective when used by high toughness characters (since the damage “reflected” is flat and not a percentage of what you receive) and when used against low damage attacks with many quick hits.

Really… Think kitten through before you post it…

@Topic: Retaliation is fine. Stop trying to “fix” what isn’t broken.

Grimwolf.7163:

I’m hoping this isn’t a serious post. I’d say it was satire, but mocking yourself seems strange.

See the name of the poster. If you’re still taking him/her/it serious than you haven’t been around long enough.

Durzlla.6295:

Yes but contrary to popular belief, it -doesn’t- have low survivability, CC, or damage,

Oh man. This is too good. If you don’t wanna learn, then that’s your problem.

I’m out.

Durzlla.6295:

I don’t think either your nor proxy realize how much Defense this build actually has… It has an amazing amount of dodges, each one giving 33% less damage, it has a large amount of CC through the Hyenas and the Bow, and it can pump out a large amount of condition AND raw damage.

Honestly, I can’t tell if you’re trolling people or just genuinely dense… Cause you keep saying things like this. But this is not supported by any facts…

Durzlla.6295:

It has an amazing amount of dodges

Fact: No, you don’t. You don’t even have vigor. You have permanent half-vigor (50% endurance regen vs. Vigor’s 100%). And don’t get me wrong, Natural Vigor is pretty good… Which is why every ranger build worth a kitten has it. It’s not unique to your build.

Durzlla.6295:

each one giving 33% less damage

This is true, this is a fact. Also a fact: For 2 seconds. TWO SECONDS. Not to mention that while Protection is pretty good, as is Bark Skin, you have almost no armour… You only get protection for 2 seconds after a roll, and Bark Skin doesn’t kick in till you’re at 25% health… And you have no armour. Even against white damage you’re not a tank.

You’re just tankier, in white damage terms, than a generic glass cannon. Which is hardly note worthy since you lack the damage of a generic glass cannon. Glass cannons die fast, because they also kill fast… You die only slightly slower, but you kill a lot slower. We’ll cover that in a second.

That’s just white damage. When it comes to conditions you’re well and truly kittened. You have exactly 0 condition removal, 0 stun breakers, and 0 stability. Any serious condition build targets you and you’re living on borrowed time.

Durzlla.6295:

it has a large amount of CC through the Hyenas and the Bow,

Pray tell, what is a “large amount of CC” in your world? Cause a random, uncontrollable, single target knockdown on a fragile pet, an easily dodgeable AoE cripple on a 30 sec cooldown, and one single target knockback is not “a large amount of CC” in my world. Oh wait, you have your elite… Once. Every 120 seconds.

My necro has a large amount of CC: AoE chill, AoE cripple, AoE fear, AoE blind, single target chill, single target cripple, Plague for AoE cripples and blinds, AoE weakness through combo fields…

My Warrior, when using an hammer, has a large amount of CC: 1 very large AoE stun, 1 melee-AoE knockdown, 1 AoE knockback, 1 AoE cripple, 1 single target weakness, 1 long range single target knockdown… Generally on switch I also have either a low cooldown single target cripple (rifle) or a long duration immobilize (longbow).

Either builds are also a lot harder to kill and hit a lot harder… You don’t have “a lot of CC”. You have “some” CC. Which you desperately need just to have some semblance of survivabiliy…

Durzlla.6295:

and it can pump out a large amount of condition AND raw damage.

Fact: You don’t. Especially not on the longbow. You have 4% critical chance. 4%! and 0% critical damage. Your white damage is trash.

Your condition damage is dependent on sun spirit and Sharpening Stone, both of which are pathetic damage wise.

Sun spirit has a 10 second internal cooldown and a 35% chance to work at all, a long cooldown, and only works as long as it’s alive – a tough nut seeing as it is held together with wet paper and wishful thinking.

Sharpening Stone only grants 5 stacks of bleeding for 6 seconds, every 36 seconds. To one target, unless you also use barrage which also freezes you in place for almost 3 seconds.

You only have 2 sources of real condition damage: Your torch and your elite. Most of your elite’s damage will be mitigated since people will simple cleanse/break free of it, and it has a really long cooldown, so Torch is your only damage. That’s it. That’s all you have.

Good damage on a condition build implies you’re almost constantly around 10-20 stacks of bleed. WITH their condition removal taken into account. If you’re doing it around burn then it has to be almost permanent burn… Usually you want both if you have them. And poison. And any other conditions you can stack to make removal more problematic. You barely have 5 stacks of one bleeding and a very long cooldown to reapply them once cleansed…

Considering 2 people of equal skill and gear/level: you don’t. That would be the definition of overpowered.

2 lowbies/crap players, on the other hand: Any solid build really. It’s more about knowing how to use your build and exploit their flaws. As long as your build isn’t a gimmicky crap one-trick-poney (HB cheese builds, for example, though those mostly died with the quickness nerf), it’s not an issue…

Do keep in mind that even 2 lowbies can give a full lvl 80 grief, depending on their level, classes and provided they’re good players. It’s one of the cruxes of the miserable “downed” system, in that it places a significantly more weight in numbers over individual skill.

innocent ouarior.1954:

ProxyDamage.9826:

That’s your call.

Well I read a lot that +healing is worthless on a guardian.

I’m not entirely sure why someone would think so…

Virtue of Resolve scales quite decently with it… 0.06 seems quite low, except that’s the passive healing per second. This means that for each 100 healing power you heal 6 more hp a second. Considering the base, at lvl 80, is 84 hp/s, that’s quite nice.

The active scales at 0.75, which is a pretty nice scaling for healing. Especially considering that’s not even your main heal.

Signet of Resolve Scales at 1.25 (!).

Shelter scales at 0.7 (and don’t forget Shelter is the weaker heal to make up for the block).

Altruistic Healing Scales at 0.01 per boon… which is actually pretty good given that the base value of 69 hp per boon.

… Etc… And that’s not even accounting for Regeneration, which scales equally for all classes. I don’t know, Guardian seems to be the best healing power scaling class, to be honest…

Personally, I’m going with Knight’s simply because I prefer a more offensive Guardian. But I don’t see why Magi wouldn’t be legit for a more bunker build… Just make sure that you also have some toughness in your build somewhere.

Knight = Power/Precision/Toughness

Magi = Precision/Vitality/Healing Power

They’re both equally good at granting critical chance, the choice becomes whether you want more offense (Knight’s) or defense (Magi’s) in your build. That’s your call.

No, you’re being ridiculous.

Spirit weapons needed their nerf – They were invincible, and extremely strong, pets you couldn’t do anything about. Admittedly the first nerf was ridiculously and unnecessarily heavy handed, but they seem more or less ok now.

Wall of Reflection, while extremely strong, has very evident counterplay – don’t shoot through it. Non-projectiles (ground targetted AoE, Guardian Staff, Beams, etc) don’t get reflected, and it forces the enemy to stand behind it if they wish for its protection. At worse, it causes a temporary stalemate.

Comparatively the old spirit weapons, once summoned, were pretty much unstoppable, giving the guardian free reign to do as they pleased meanwhile.

Huge difference.

If you want to play full support then the choice seems obvious: Both improve your survivability a lot through different means, but only one of them improves your direct support.

Vitality improves your health. Healing power improves all of your healing. Guess which one your team mates will prefer.

Either ways you’ll be very hard to kill, but roughly as dangerous as a kitten’s fart in the desert.

Sword is more of a condition weapon for warrior. If you’re running a shout build, consider a condition build? Full rabids (precision/cond. damage/toughness) with dual swords and longbow. It’s quite powerful in PvP if done right.

As a powerbuild Axe is, hands down, the better weapon.

… On the other hand, Frostfang looks like complete garbage and Bolt is one of the better looking legendaries, one of the few that’s actually good… So… Personally I’d make Bolt regardless. Simply because I’d never make Frostfang…

Best “all around” PvE warrior set up is GS + longbow. You get the massive melee AoE damage and the 8 second cooldown high damage and mobility extra dodge (WW) and of GS, and you get the ranged AoE and combofield of longbow.

You can get higher melee DPS builds, and honestly there’s very little reason to not keep an axe and a shield around in your inventory, and there might be slightly more efficient set ups in specific fights, but all in all that’s your best “all around” PvE set.

For PvE Greatsword is the undisputed king. As much as I like running around with the hammer sometimes, and it’s not a terrible weapon by itself, it is the weakest choice. Enemies in PvE rarely dodge, making Hundred Blades the highest DPS skill in the game, and WW is a high damage, high mobility, back up dodge on a 6 second cooldown or something if traited. It’s not that other weapons are bad, but that Greatsword is simply the hands down boss of PvE.

In PvP on the other hand, Greatsword is only really useful for its mobility. Hammer provides better burst and way better CC, and so, is my weapon of choice out of the two. But do remember that if you bring it you’ll need either a ranged option, or a mobility option on backup.

Irena.1062:

Well then why does mace kill things faster than sword ALL the time for me?

Because you’re doing something horribly wrong with the sword.

Are you perchance using an exotic mace and a green sword and just auto-attacking with the sword?

- Quite tanky for how much damage I can do.
- Undisputed kings of PvE (except for soloing champions, that’s Mesmer/Guardian territory).
- Ridiculous burst damage.
- Hammer is one of the most enjoyable weapons in the game. AoE CC tied to high damage.

Any questions?

broknsol.5386:

Any major changes I should know about?

You’re welcome

Same use as every other class – compliment to Toughness to improve durability (see wikia or something regarding how they work), direct counter to condition damage (like toughness is to direct damage). Obviously if you’re going for a bunker more Vit on top of high toughness is always good, but depends on what you’re sacrificing. You gotta do some maths (or use a good build calculator) to see whether it’s worth sacrificing something else for more or not. Depends on your build as well…