Guild Wars 2

I think you shouldn’t see it as just setting up 1 attack. I rather see it as continuous stun pressure these days. Based on the rotation, you can literally try every 10s again. And you can force a lot of dodges / stun breaks using shield bash, mace daze And bulls charge. I basically never expect to down the enemy on the first mace bash. Rather I expect them to blow some of their defences so that the second mace stun is much more devastating. With 70 % crit chance (if you use signet of fury) you’ll actually do quite decent damage on GS already. The mace stun is kinda like the eviscerate that axe provided before.

I would say the GS has more utility in builds then the hammer. But in the end I would suggest to play with both until you figure out which one you like most.

So I’ve tried running it with Signet of Rage as well now and it feels really good. The pressure is kinda similar to the old Axe / shield + GS builds, except instead of eviscerate, you have constant Stun pressure on them.

Penguin.7906:

I really like the concept of this build and made my own variant of it with a bit more armor and slightly less power;

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=Vt;4RK-Q0_4cL-w2;9;5JJ-T;139-18;227ACwW9;26TsW6TsWm-kZNL35;2Vn-w0x1237_E53o-GV1i;9;9;9;9;9;9;14k3H

I think both Reaper of Grenth and Mistfire Wolf are interesting choices
18s of chill should guarantee you a kill in most situations, the only counter i see to it is running away which still would be hard seeing you are a warrior x)

Really need to level a human warrior to test this out

edit: tweaked build to end up on 50% critical chance flat
second edit: just to clarify Reaper of Grenth is not a transform so you still regain all of your weapon skills.

Hmm I never tried grenth, but 18s of chill sounds pretty good!

Tyrion.4259:

By the way, newb question – this elite is a free unlockable elite? Never noticed it before but I wasn’t actively looking for it. I know I haven’t unlocked all utilities and elite skills.

It comes with the deluxe edition.. Might be a bit pricey

Warrior doesn’t soak. Avoid or take. Shield block, endure pain, whirlwind, berserker stance etc.

Signet of rage is not bad, it’s a very good elite overall. It’s just most of the time you’ll find that warriors overly rely on it. For example a majority of people take signet mastery just so that signet of rage goes down to 48s cd (myself included). Also most recent mace builds keep crit chance at 30% instead of 50%. Swiftness is of course better then warriors sprint, but usually it’s the downtime where you get started to get kited really hard.

So in this build specifically, it wasn’t very beneficial to take signet of rage, as the fury is not overly useful (majority of the damage comes from mace/100b combo). Swiftness is replaced partly by 100% uptime warrior sprint and you’re left with only 5 might. In my opinion, some other elites are worth trying out for 5 might and I personally love the new Mistfire wolf. Also if you wanted to you could still run signet of rage with this build, there are just some redundancies.

Penguin.7906:

afaik unsuspecting foe only sets your critical chance to 50%, so you would get only 1% crit chance from that trait, would be awsome if someone could prove me wrong

I’m pretty sure my all critting 100b would like to disagree.. You can check for yourself in spvp. Just use a berserker amulet to get close or so.

Skullclamp’s Mistfire Wolf – WvW Roaming Build

This build is highly experimental roaming build. I’ve been running it over the last couple of days and it’s quite effective.
Its base is the standard GS + Mace/Shield builds that have been floating around with the twist that it doesn’t need to use Signet of rage to achieve almost the same effectiveness.

Link to build:
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-s;4RKVP0S4NLV83;9;5TJ-J;139A18;227-n-F7C;1qObSqObSm-FW0-HXO0;1kVq0u1zY4_A52i-HV1k;9;9;9;9;9;9;14k3O

This build aims to keep your crit chance at 50% without fury and uses warrior sprint instead of your reliance on swiftness from signet of rage. The toughness can go 180 higher (using dolyak) and it’s currently not reflected in the build editor.

Why not Signet of Rage?
Signet of rage is good, but I wanted to see if there is any viability not running it. There are a couple of good reasons why not having to rely on signet of rage can be good:
- Corrupt boon
- Giving your neighbor S/D thief fury, might and swiftness for 30s instead
- Minimum of 18s downtime, during which you are oh so slow… and less crits
- Sometimes you engage with Signet of Rage almost over since you used it as movement skill before
- Boon stripping in general greatly reduces your killing power

Elite slot options
- Mist fire wolf is used right now (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Summon_Mistfire_Wolf). It makes you a ranger for 30s :p. The pet has quite a high amount of chill, along side some pretty decent DPS. The chill especially synergizes with the mace, as it helps with catching up to hit your stuns. The wolf also baits more dodges from enemies, which means they have less dodges for your cc!
- Warbanner
- Rampage (good for running away)
- Norn elite (good for running away)
- Warband support (decent DPS + a knockdown)
- Hounds of Balthazar (Good DPS)
- Others (don’t really know much about Sylvary / Asura)

Sadly I don’t have a PC good enough of taking vids.. Maybe someone else could add some?

I would take berserker. I feel longbow scales better with power then condi. Also, who doesn’t like 8k aoe crits?

Player Character.9467:

Olba.5376:

Wyre.7458:

peter.9024:

I think more warriors are running sword now that axe got hit with that Damage nerf..

Wait, axe didn’t get hit with a damage nerf….?

People are talking about how they balanced the damage on the auto-attack chain so that it’s roughly 25% on Chop, 25% on Double Chop and 50% on Triple Chop.

but gl actually landing triple chop on somebody…

In addition they moved berserker power and heightened focus which affected sustained damage the most, I.e. the axe auto attack chain.

Would 0/25/25/0/20 or 0/25/30/0/15 be a slightly more optimzed option? you can get the 10% damage trait and last stand if needed

Assassin.7890:

MiLkZz.4789:

Easy question, the playstyle is so different. I have a warrior and a guardian and I love my warrior a lot more. I know other players rolling warriors aswel and saying it is real fun to play. Some of them don’t ofcourse, it still is personal opinion.

A bunker warrior with tons of CC ponies everything up that does not have stability. A warrior has great escape abilities. Mine is specced for group support condition cleaning. And he removes tons of conditions from myself and teammates. Think I can remove up to 12 conditions in 1 rotation on myself alone. While my guardian, also specced for support feels totally different to play with. I feel their abilities are easier to land but are lower damage. Meaning you keep up a continuous DPS cycle burning your opponent slowly down. While a warrior has abilities harder to land, but they hit real hard. Meaning he is more like a burst character.

Survivability, a warrior with protection from a guardian (or himself) is the tankiest thing ingame. That health pool just takes so long to burn down. He surpasses the guardian in tankyness in large scale fights. But the guardian beats him in smaller and solo fights.

tldr.:
warrior: CC/burst dmg/mainly aoe condition cleaning, second aoe healing/best survivability in large zerg fights
guardian: Pull and lock/continuous dmg/mainly aoe healing, second aoe condition clean/best survivability in small scale fights

could you explain your condition cleanse combo in more detail please? wanna learn!

He probably just runs 3 shouts + soldier runes (4 condi)
Shrug it off (2 condi)
Warhorn mastery (2 condi)

That’s assuming he’s not running healing shouts.

I’ve tried this build in WvW. I kinda just sit on my adrenaline for it, since both bursts are kinda kittenty to use (esp. for a power build). I run 30/0/25/0/15. You can stack quite a bit of toughness while still dealing good damage thanks to berserker power. Mobility is quite high since both GS and sword have good movement skills.

I feel like in order to make this truly worth it, it should have a 40s CD. Also stance mastery should really reduce the CD of our stance skills by 20% instead of adding laughable 1-2s to a stance.

With those two changes you get 8s immunity per 32s. Necros will cry OP, but I think it’s needed to make warrior somewhat viable, being a hard counter to some condition spam classes.

Callahan.3180:

galandor.1059:

Iavra.8510:

At least warriors don’t have to fear every patch knowing that their class will be nerfed even further.

/signed,
Mesmer

You can’t nerf something that is already scraping along the bottom of the abyss.

/signed,
Warrior Community

You never played ranger then
/signed,
Abyss.

No but for real, we have it bad, rangers have it far far worse. Just get imobilized and find a reliable way to remove it. kitten sucks.

I’ve played ranger.. Idk what you are talking about. Between the large amounts of evades, protection on dodge, passive 2-4 condi removed every 10s.. Let’s not even talk about the insane heals of troll urgent and the sheer utility of healing spring.

TheGuy.3568:

Wanze.8410:

What about if i start with a 4 second fear or pop it once you caught up to me?

Infitratos signet and steal itself will counter that. As will Shadowstep.

Wanze.8410:

What about smart terrain usage and perma swiftness?

Perma swiftness wont factor 33% vs 25% where the 25% has vastly superior mobility. I do not mean slightly better mobility vastly superior mobility and more catch up skills then you could imagine plus access to immobilize and cripple on the run at range. Not even considering the fact that thief could possibly steal your boons so there is that also. So…..there’s that.

Terrain in terms of WvW there are only a few spots that you could use. Since none of them give you any move advantage then no being in melee range the thief could pull out SB and range you to death or just wait for you to move and continue the chase.

Wanze.8410:

You also forgot our tsunami slash, how is your mobility under water?

Not at all as I said I omitted some things (not to be nit picky), but since you would like to go there. Steal still works under water furthermore Ink Shot will allow the thief to catch up. The projectile speed is not that slow. the main disadvantage for thief underwater isn’t chasing a warrior but killing the warrior as warrior dps and cc underwater over shadows the thieves’.

Wanze.8410:

tAre you traited for fall damage reduction?

Irrelevant as both have traits for it and it wont factor unless they head to cliff. Too much of a hypothetical and pointless to ask as it has nothing to do with mobility.

Wanze.8410:

How good is your cc removal and stability uptime?

Stability on thief is hard to come by but CC removal is vastly superior to warriors. I am not going to do a detailed guide. However, sword main hand, SA trait 4 and some of the skills mentioned above. Also this is another pointless um point. Any warrior with enough CC to challenge your removal is running hammer or mace and its not all that mobile to begin with. So…..once again there is that.

Wanze.8410:

In the end, it all boils down to how good you can play your class and your build.
A good thief will catch 90% of all warriors while a good warrior will also be able to get away most of the times.

True and yet any good thief will caoth a warrior with a basic build end of story. D/P alone is troll worthy in this regard. (see Shadow Shot)

I know warrior like to debate but this one isn’t up for it. Any thief who knows what they are doing will catch you. You could be the best warrior when it comes to running away a good thief will catch you. If the thief didn’t catch you they sucked. End of story.

Edit:

Before some else tries to argue let me save you the trouble. On this particular issue there is no argument. Thief mobility and chase skills are better. Not up for debate. This is strictly the facts of the matter. It may cause some hurt to your pride or you may run circles around thief all day. I do not care. If a thief wants to catch you they will catch you. If you are both built for mobility he will outrun and outmaneuver you too.

I guess the only thing is that the thief will “catch” the warrior by matching the movement speed, but he won’t be able to kill a competent warrior by the time he caught up.

I guess warriors are good for something now?

I’ve been running a mainly power build: 30/0/25/0/15 GS+Sword/shield. High toughness and if you sit on your adrenaline your damage is quite good.

Berserker stance increased from 4 to 8s… Where are my heal cool down reductions ?!!

Adrenal for sure. It’s the only heal that feels reasonable.

I think more warriors are running sword now that axe got hit with that Damage nerf..

I don’t see the sustain part in this build..

Just go for it. Worst case it misses, best case he’s down.

Warriors survivability depends on movement skills and utilities rather then damage soaking and health regeneation. So if you plan on playing a tank you’d be very disappointed, but if you play as a mobile striker it can be very rewarding.

Tactics 25 pt kinda sticks out. I’d say make it a master trait and slot in empowered instead. I’d also keep the GS damage and keep 100b on the GS, because it has it’s uses.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Because they can.

They may be their preferred profession overall, and they use it everywhere because they know the skills and are used to them, or maybe because they are stubborn and want to get the warrior achievements before they switch to another profession, or maybe for a silly reason like they like how the gear looks.
Or maybe just to prove they are not sissy cowards that will use dirty cheap cowardly tricks like ranged weapons, or dps conditions, or stealth, or illusions, or hiding behind minions, pets and other summoned creatures, or running away as soon as their HP gets under 75%.
They get close to the enemy, and they smash them with a hammer. Bluntly. No tricks. No cowardice, no retreats. Just sheer brave power.

But it doesn’t matter why they choose warrior.
What matters is that they can choose warrior. It’s not a PvE-only profession. So it should work in PvP as well as any other profession with any other build.

QFT

I think you’re missing a lot of damage by not going 30 into the power line. You could try 30/20/10/0/10

Some ideas:
-remove 1 condi on movement skill or weapon swap
-remove 1 condi on dodge
-omnom berry as a trait

I’m not that big of a fan that it gets moved to grandmaster. This means that every burst build now also has to run 30 in defense. I would rather see some nice sustain options in strength, tactics or arms adept.

Honestly, I don’t get all the craze about longbow..

Longbow 1 is slow and tracking is kinda unreliable
2 is only decent in melee range.
3 is good in power builds, but landing it agains any competent opponent really relies on hoping to land 5 and then hoping that the person has no blinks. I.e best against other warriors
4 is pretty decent long blind. Mostly good against slow attacking melee types: warriors
5 nice immob and bleeds. Since it’s not a stun most classes can clean it fast. Also cd on that is way too long.

Apart from the blind and the snare, the longbow has no defensive capabilities. And also no movement skills. I can see fire field being decent in point clearing in spvp, but for roaming good people are not going to stand inside. For zerging it has always worked great, but anything works there.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

I really wanted to provide constructive tweaks to try and bring us up. But frankly in the AoE condi meta, the only way we have a chance is if each of our attacks hit for like 5000 damage.
We are just gone from competitive play at this point. I tried to bring it within earshot but unless the team is made for it, it does not fit.

I wouldn’t mind that…

I guess I could give up my DPS for 17k heal

Oni Link.4621:

People have to understand that is not the Warrior who needs a buff, simply other classes need a nerf (less AOEs, less conditions and [most important] more telegraphed skills).

Yes, but I think that train left a long time ago.. Simply put its easier to bring 1 class up to par then to nerf the 7 other classes.

ANET you have unleashed the beast of the warrior forum onto spvp!!!

This is not the only issue:
The real issue is for the higher health pool a lot of defensive options are just not there. For example as a warrior you need 1600 toughness to achieve 33% damage reduction. Most other classes have access to the protection boon which does the same. In all our weapon skills we have 1 evade, 2 single blocks, 1 3s block. Conpare that to any thief/ranger weapon set or guardian/ele access to blocks. The last thing is that despite being a melee focused class, we always have to physicallly move to the enemy. That means that there is always a travel time before the warrior engages that allows the enemy to set up their defenses. We don’t have blinks, invis, pulls. During the travel the enemy is also free to snare you, stun/daze etc. because beside your two dodges and whirlwind you’ll most likely take it.

On the warrior side, there aren’t many fixes that you can do to bring him on par with other classes. Maybe something extreme like increasing the movement speed cap on warriors only could bring more viability to the class.

Scoobaniec.9561:

TheGuy.3568:

Scoobaniec.9561:

Its still can be cool.. as (noob censure?) 5 minor trait

After looking at the minor traits for the Defense line I threw that suggestion out. Unlike Tactics they are all good and appreciated. Not a one of them needs to be replaced for a trait like this. I honestly believe it needs to go and be replaced.

Minor trait 5 in defense is probably the worse of all. 100 extra toughness above 90% hp.

Yeah the 5pt trait is like 3% mitigation for 1 hit?

On the defense side maybe adrenal health could move to 5pt and last stand to 15. That would leave more room for taking the weapon traits.

in PvE and wvw anything is viable. There is no requirement to be fully min-maxed for anything.

These are really good recommendations. I’d add to maybe combine shield mastery and missle reflection and maybe make dualwielding work with all offhands?

Aiden.6483:

30\x\x\x\20

+critdmg with axe, +15%dmg on full adren, and axe trait in discipline.

rest are optional.

I’d say going another 10 into disc for heightened focus will improve your DPS greatly.

kaiserneon.8427:

THEmeltor is right. For sword and conditions, I fully recommend a balanced build. Check this one out:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIEQNBjYDbk0JGuFy3hJOggeohfxWcUAFLRShYwGA-jEzAIMAMGMeDi4ATfAICQZxioxWdjW5NI9iwqqJiq12YCBoYOA-w

You achieve intense pressure from conditions but with the added effect of maintaining a fairly heavy load of direct damage. You’re critting almost all the time with a minimum floor of 47% (67% with fury, more on that later) on the longbow and you have a good amount of crit damage at 34%. plus with 1k healing power you can make the most out of your passive healing along with whatever regeneration you get from dogged march or converting poison with the warhorn. You get two forms of endure pain for a total of 10 seconds every minute to help you catch a breather while regenerating, and you can maintain steady damage and safety using the longbow while controlling an opponent with the sword. The added fury from immobilization means that between both weapon sets and leg specialist you’ll always have close to 70% crit chance. This with the boon and condition duration gives you a surprisingly large amount of possibilities to extend your survivability while delivering good damage and control across all aspects of gameplay. 8s AoE Weakness, 6s AoE blind, potential protection from warhorn, cripples and immobilization everywhere, etc.

As an option you can slot out the precision signet for a banner of tactics to bring along a dedicated burst heal with regeneration on its 2 and to improve your utility even further for survival and group support. However, keep in mind the precision signet functions to increase your overall damage (along with deep strike) and to provide a failsafe source of adrenaline for your passive healing when you choose to use burst skills.

For an elite, SoR is probably the go-to standard but if you’re human you should look into Reaper of Grenth. Combine that with the sword and you get an extra source of condition damage while your opponent is going nowhere.

Overall I think this is the best possible build for a hybrid warrior.

And before anyone criticizes me for using celestial, you have to understand that if you need anything more than three stats, going celestial is almost always the better choice due to the overall balance it gives you while pushing crit damage % almost as high as dedicated gear. You simply get way more out of its spread and I think the stats on this build shows you how powerful this can be for a warrior who wants to do hybrid damage while having a form of sustain with very high armor.

Anyways, I like full condition specs a lot (and I have an apothecary ranger) but the problem with them is that they often push you into overrelying on condition-loaded shots for sustaining any real damage. This isn’t a problem for the ranger naturally due to the quick cooldowns and large variety of rapidfire conditions but for a warrior you don’t get much freedom outside of the autoattack on the sword. The longbow is at best situational and feels too limited when only given condition damage considering what it can actually do when pushed to realize its full potential.

I like the way you’re thinking. I’m looking at your build and I think you can probably slot out deep strikes for 50% longer bleeds, especially since you’re only really using it to get 40 precision from signet of fury (2% crit chance). I also think that since you’re hybrid damage, you could try moving 5pts from defense to arms to get the 10% dmg boost.

My general question for those builds are usually how do you defend yourself. I find that both sword and longbow have very few active defenses (block or evade). Also I’m worried that by going hybrid you’ll be a jack of all trades but master of none. I.e both condi and physical damage is too low to apply any sort of pressure.

Highest dps is probably 30/20/0/0/20 or 30/25/0/0/15

It really doesn’t solve anything.. In a group they are fine already, with allies buff protection and condi removal flying around. It’s on an individual level where the warrior is lacking the most.

Settler sounds interesting. Potentially you could go 0/10/30/30/0.

I think it has to do with that a couple months ago they increased the projectile velocity of arrows. This lead to all arrow weapons having slightly longer range. I don’t think it ever got fixed.

This is the weekly please change the minors in tactics trait line. I don’t think there is any other profession where you think that the minors in that trait line are so utterly useless. I realize that maybe some warriors like to revive allies, but please make those traits selectable for them in adept, master. At this point going into that tree basically gimps every warrior of 50% if the tree potential.

I’d also like to see warhorn mastery moved down to adept. I think that going into master for that trait really isn’t worth it.

I’d love to see evade. Some of our weapons already have skills that could be an evade: sword 2, axe 2.

Viking Jorun.5413:

This is exactly what separates the excellent and the inexperienced. Those of us who have stuck it out as warriors and learned counters to the most powerful builds out there. Running berserker’s is the worst possible decision you can make, in my honest opinion. You hear about the lack of warrior sustain everywhere you look in these foul and putrid forums for warriors, yet all of them run berserker gear. Tell me, which class can run full berserker gear and last more than 1 minute in any fight without running away to reset the fight? Figure out what works for YOU. I personally run apothecary gear for the condition damage and heavy healing, as well as the high toughness to avoid burst. Shout heals allow for a MUCH higher EHP.

Find what works, use it to your advantage, master it. That’s what I can tell you. Warriors DO NOT suck in tPvP, and you’ll find that if you put enough time into mastering the class rather than learning to play it, you’ll seldom lose.

Not sure if…

Anyhow, I tried to play a bleed warrior for a long time and it always only worked against other warriors and the occational Mesmer. The amount of condtion removal on most other classes completely negate your damage in a 1v1. Not to mention that sword sword has very few defensive capabilities (1 block) and longbow only has 1 blind and pin down. What is your general experience in a 1v1 or 1v2. I hope you’re actually roaming and not just zerging..

Try playing a warrior..