Guild Wars 2

I’d like to suggest adding a 1 sec CD between dodges so people can’t just spam dodge constantly without putting any thinking into it making it very difficult for everyone else to deal with that in addition to all the blinds going around right now. This way, professions that can dodge a lot will still be able to dodge the same amounts of time however they’ll have to wait 1 second before doing it again. I believe this will increase the skill cap of players because now they have to plan their dodges properly and their opponents can look out for that dodge and use that particular important ability RIGHT after the dodge ends within that short period of time.

Btw, just so there’s no misunderstanding, dodging would still work exactly the way it does right now, there would just be a 1 second CD before you can do it again, despite you having enough endurance for it.

Thanks!

Blinds
Aegis
Evasion

These counter just about anything and really it counters GS mace/shield more because once you miss that mace stun, you’re pretty useless for a while. But really those 3 can be considered counters if you’re bad, I would say they’re more like temporary inconveniences. It’s really easy to look for them and use your abilities properly and not waste stuns. Aegis in team fights disappears in seconds and for blind you just need to swing your weapon once. There are plenty of pets, illusions and so forth around to lose blind.

To say your entire team changes their build because of 1 out of 5 players in the enemy team, while sure I suppose it’s understandable, it means a lot. You bringing more stability and stun breakers means you’re bringing less of something else, usually being damage and offensive pressure so your job as a warrior is done just from that perspective.

It would be awesome if they made it like the Elite one and I think in that case it would be used much, much more frequently since it would also bring mobility in addition to everything else.

With hammer mace/shield you can lock people down and help your team both offensively and defensively that way and then there’s the sword/longbow build that brings really strong AoE condition damage. There are a few other builds that work well but those are more selfish allowing you to do more damage but bring less to your team.

I found Hammer Mace/Shield if played well to be much, much better than GS Mace/Shield in both 1v1s and as far as what you bring to team fights. GS Mace/Shield is an improved version of Bull’s Rush > 100B that was ran in beta and a couple of months after launch but still, the same 1 trick pony that solid players will be able to counter just fine. If you miss a mace stun or if your opponents have stun breakers you’re pretty useless for 8+ seconds each time your rotation fails.

With Hammer Mace/Shield you’re much more consistent, applying pressure all the time, not just during repetitive and predictable stun>100b rotations. You’re also able to help your team with the huge amount of interrupts and “gib” players since you can pin them down and together with your teammates kill them in seconds. You also bring a great benefit during rezzing being able to interrupt opposite ones and help with your own. My favorite part is that if you play this build right, you can literally lock opponents down that otherwise would hurt your team really bad such as engineers, necros and so forth.

I found that Hammer Mace/Shield has a higher skill cap than the GS version however once you get the hang of it you really feel strong and comfortable in any sort of situation and vs any opponent.

S/D thieves are really tough to fight because it’s so difficult to land the mace stuns.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Matale-s-Hammer-sPvP-Duels-and-Strats-1

I posted this a while ago and it works great in both duels and tPvP. If you check the link you have 50 minutes of duels vs some pretty good opponents of all professions and strategies on how you should approach fights vs all professions. I played it for quite a bit of time and still do so it’s very well tested and I have to say I feel really comfortable and strong with it in just about any situation.

Good luck!

in any case, we’re kind of going off topic now :p… i guess it’s a matter of personal preference

redslion.9675:

Well, the nemy can’t hide much from my autoattack, for example.

And I feel a dirty pleasure by finishing someone with an autoattack chain.XD

And the enemy can’t go too far with teleports.

Well at the same time, you can get attacked there from the windows or roof and it takes a lot longer for you to get to your ranged opponents since you have to jump on the boxes to get to the window and so forth, you have to constantly be aware of the catapult attacks and if you fall off the “point stage” because you’re knocked back or whatever, you have to go all the way around to get back to the enemy that’s constantly shooting at you from the top, slowing you down and so forth.. also when you get knocked down, you can’t just leap back to your enemy, you have to actually run around due to the LOS before you can leap back

redslion.9675:

O_o I always felt the opposite…

What was I thinking the whole time?XD

(I mean… I am sure you are right, something in what I do must be wrong).

What do you mean? Do you like Clocktower as a melee warrior? :p

redslion.9675:

I tried the “King of the Hill” server. There you fight around the spawn point in forest of Niflhel. I have a much wors time at using weapons like Greatsword for stable damage there, while in most points there is much less room for manuevers.

Well I could also say that clocktower is about as anti-melee as it gets so in comparison, the “King of the Hill” server is using a much better setting than what you could be facing in tPvP/sPvP. You’re also not always going to be fighting on points, some fights often occur in between them. I think the Forest of Niflhel’s spawn point is a really good spot for 1v1s imo, the terrain is pretty balanced helping both ranged and melee. With a GS you can take advantage of the wide space by kiting when you need just a few more seconds until your heal gets off CD and you can also kite around those 2 pillars vs ranged attacks.

Bottom line is that the point of the server is to make yourself more accustomed to what other professions can do and learn how to react accordingly. Having a medium that favors you isn’t going to help you improve. If you can do well in that setting you will have a much easier time when the terrain is in your advantage.

On that server I was able to do very well using the GS Mace/Shield build, managing to constantly beat all professions with the exception of Mesmers and really good S/D thieves.

redslion.9675:

Yeah, but in 1v1 servers you fight in different grounds than tpvp. For instance, you play in a really open place, where trying to melee is a pain. And you’ll face 1v1 taylor-made builds.

While yes, there are some that come with specific 1v1 builds, the large majority come to test their tPvP builds and get better at fighting vs certain professions and increase their reaction time. As far as terrain goes, it’s pretty much the same as in tPvP/sPvP, the maps people fight on do have certain LoS elements.

In sPvP (hot joins) and tPvP you can get away with a lot of things due to either having some help from teammates or your opponents not having all their CDs or when you lose you blame it on you not having all your CDs and so forth.

I think the best way to test a build and see how well it really does is to go and spam a 1v1 server for a few days (maybe up to a week so you meet all sort of opponents) and see where its true weaknesses are. By doing this you know what professions hurt you more, vs which you are more effective and so forth and you get a really good idea of how strong the variation of your build really is.

Making a list with an order of the way you use your skills or simply suggesting a variation of a build based on a theory while it may sound good initially, it will often have a different result once you start trying it out vs competent players. While sPvP and tPvP may have solid players to fight against on some occasions, it’s rare that you actually get a fair fight vs them and the chance to analyze it and then re-match to see if your conclusions and new strat does better.

These are my personal thoughts at least and from my personal experience, testing and improving a build over and over again on a solid 1v1 server will help you immensely.

gwawer.9805:

there is inherent design flaw in melee vs range in this game

ranged has no disadvantage even when trying to widen the gap because they can CAST while moving. this means melee will always dps only a certain percentage of the time, while ranged will have 100 percent dps uptime.

in WoW, warrior vs mage, if u close the gap on the mage, he has to try to kite you and his dps is lessened greatly while he is moving.

so gw2 desginers need to make up for this descrepency. yet i have the feeling this critical subtle detail will continue to go unoticed and melee-junkies will have a frustrating time enjoying pure melee builds in this game.

and guys i’ve been playing since release as a warrior. just can’t have fun as a melee warrior in this game. never have, and still can’t. i’m putting this game down and checking back hoping they can improve the melee warrior pvp experience.

are you reading this designers? cough

Did you just completely skip over the videos I posted? You’re just doing something wrong if you’re having that tough of a time. If I’m able to beat a lot of great players in 1v1s of all professions and do 1v2s and 1v3s vs lesser opponents with various builds and weapons then you really can’t say melee warrior doesn’t work, you just really need to know what you’re doing.

Anyways, in regards to your points:
- ranged DPS is usually way lower than melee DPS for just about every profession
- ranged DPS also can’t tank you, they need to kite you when you get close; ex: a thief will lower his DPS if he’s using a shortbow by using the evade skill trying to get away from you when you get close;
- as a warrior, some of the top builds right now are both bursty and you get to stun your opponent for a while which in many cases seems overwhelming for newer players and it’s just a walk in a park for you to stomp all over them

Melee warrior sucks if you just don’t know the profession of the opponents you’re facing and when you go in, you just have no idea what’s happening to you and hence die pretty fast. If anything, melee is FAR more balanced in this game than it is in WoW due to the dodging mechanism which offers you a winning chance vs just about anything. I’m not sure how things are in WoW right now, but for the longest time and I mean years and expansions in a row, even the worst frost mage ever could CC and beat a warrior on any given day in a 1v1.

Aeri.5738:

I’d still like to see you fight against a good LB/GS (or LB/SW+WH) Ranger.
As much as I rocked with my warrior using your build, I totally wreck warriors using this build with my ranger.
I am not a very good sPvP player, so imho a ranger could be a pretty tough matchup for you.

I’m not 100% familiar with rangers, I really just need to make one and play it for a while however I also haven’t really been loosing to them and I did fight several different ones, mostly spirit rangers who have been beating other players left and right. What I learned is that I need to pace myself vs them, go in, be aggressive when I have CDs to back me up and spread my CDs out so that I can keep going and usually, by the time Berserker’s Stance is back some of their spirits are dead and on CD and I just go in and win. I wish I could explain it a bit better and have a better understanding of what’s going on, but this is just how generally things happen. I feel like visually, when you fight a ranger, even if you have no idea what their skills are, you can just tell from the animations what’s going on, when things are bad and when they’re good. From this perspective it’s really similar to how the warrior is. Rangers in general aren’t very popular though on 1v1 servers even though they’re very strong. You see them about as often as you see guardians so they’re not a big concern, especially how I don’t really tend to lose nor do they have a bunch of experience vs playing my build/strat.

The only rangers that have been giving me problems and these are the rangers that I need to pace myself vs and not try to rush them down, are rangers that are using some 2 × 1handed weapons and are kiting all over the place.

But like I said, they don’t feel like a huge threat atm and I’m sure that if I invested a bit more time and learned how to play one it would only get easier.

vove.2768:

Did you try this build in WvWvW? I thought about going something like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNAS5ejcOpwxOGPMxBE0DNsK4iTBlQ9YOsj4A-jEyAYLioZqwQmJEQZvioxWFLiGreBTZSEV7OKiWtQAyGDA-w

People tend to swap lyssa for melandru or hoelbrak but after trying different sets lyssa seems to be the best choice for me. Only disadvantage is you have to activate signet of rage during fight, otherwise its condition clearing is wasted.

After being very successful in pvp I’m planning to use this build in wvwvw in small havoc group/duo roaming/ocasionally zerging. I’m still at the gear farming phase but in theory it gives a little bit less toughness than the pvp build, but at the exchange of 74% crit damage and flat 23% crit which sums up to 73% against stunned targets.

I didn’t touch the traits (I still plan to run 0/10/30/0/30) it’s now matter of gear. So, any thoughts?

The way I see it gear wise, it’s the same as I went for the GS mace/shield build. You stack max power and crit damage with a defensive stat, I believe it’s Vitality for PvE gear and Toughness for sPvP. You can just ignore precision for the most part as you’ll still have some crit chance as low as that might be, lets say 5%, then you’ll have fury so you’re now up to 25% and then unsuspecting foe since you’re stunning almost all the time boosting you up to 75%. You can still increase your crit chance to the point where you have 100% crit chance during stuns, but I’m not sure how worth it it is vs the defensive stats you’ll get. If you’re running solo and you don’t really have fury up all the time, I would suggest increasing your crit chance to 20-25%. I believe you can get your crit damage to almost 100% depending on what kind of gear you’re using.

Runes of Lyssa are far superior in my opinion because of the stability, protection, aegis and small regen you get in addition to the full wipe. All those stats, for 5 seconds make you really tough and there are a ton of situations where you can use it: downing someone in a 1v2, you’re out of immunities and about to get bursted by a thief, mesmer or w/e, full condition wipe vs the tropical rain of conditions going around, use it when you know you’re about to get stunned for example vs an Engineer dropping his big ol bomb hoping for some breathing room, a thief that just popped his basilisk’s venom and so forth. There are so many situations where those Runes of Lyssa are a huge advantage that I don’t see myself playing with anything else. It’s not just a condition removal, it’s a big benefit in many situations vs just about any profession you’re playing against.

My only drawback from using this build in WvW is that you have crap mobility so unless you’re with a team (which you are and that’s great) you’ll die a lot due small roaming groups or zergs that will just hunt you down. What would I use instead? There’s a sword/shield hammer variation that works pretty well and also the hammer / gs.

sorry if this question is dumb, but do you get anything out of beating all of them? other than achievement points and some gold?

I could be wrong, but from my personal experience Warrior’s aren’t tanky by being pure meat shields. You become tanky in combination to also playing well with your blocks, dodges and immunities and also through constantly stunning your opponents, allowing your health to regen.

gwawer.9805:

wow playing a melee char in this game sucks

can barely keep on a target. everyone has swiftness/teleport/CC/invis

warrior cripples suck. makes me want to just quit this game, which i think will happen soon. back to pve.

Here are a few videos of playing pure melee where I do pretty well. Make sure to check the video’s description for additional info and links to discussion threads.
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMgma5zSGMc
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM-DvB4y1yw
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq1JmiOaPiQ

Bottom line is however, that as a warrior, you need to know most of the professions you’re fighting in order to do well. As a profession the warrior is very unforgiving, not using your shield block or other immunities at the right time can result into a loss.

The main weakness of this build is that you have really poor mobility when you’re using Mace/Shield. Once you switch to Mace/Shield, you need to wait 5 seconds before you use your Mace Stun so that you can immediately swap to GS for 100B. Just keep all of your interrupts, blinds, chills, cripples and so forth for when you see the warrior swap to Mace/Shield and try your best to kite the warrior. Outside the “Mace Stun > 100B combo” this build does sub average damage so as long as you keep all you have in order to avoid the Mace Stun you should be fine.

Players that bring Bull’s Rush as one of their utility weaken themselves by not having either Ignore Pain / Balanced Stance / Berserker’s Stance so you can also exploit that too.

When I played this build in sPvP for the first time on a 1v1 server and had pretty much no experience vs great Engineers, I lost to one with no stun breakers because he used this exact strat. Obviously after a few more attempts I learned how to do better and win, but it was never a guaranteed win, with this build I had about a 50% win ratio.

Added an “updates” section on my 3rd post where I can just add things as I learn them. This is the first update:

Vs Mesmers – Try using Berserker’s Stance early on. Many bursty mesms that I’ve been fighting like to start with Pistol Phantasm and a Blurred Frenzy. Once I see the Pistol Phantasm I start blocking its shots with my Mace and use Berserker’s Stance which makes me immune to the cripple/immobilize so I can just dodge out of Blurred Frenzy. In the process I also gain a lot of Adrenaline which allows me to go super offensive and make the mesm use all of his stun breakers very early on since I can chain burst skills in addition to my other stuns.

Zenyoga.6910:

Nice video! But to add to the healing signet/surge debate are two factors not brought up that make signet a poor choice.

1. Poison, if you are poisoned a decent portion of the time, your healing will be greatly effected.

2. Surge allows for 100% adrenaline from the start, and that is pretty big in a tpvp environment and even duels sometimes.

In regards to your #1 it really depends on what you’re fighting and your luck; Poison could also affect your Healing Surge if you really need to heal and have no way of removing Poison. You could use a burst skill to remove conditions but then you also have a lower HS heal. What you’re saying is a factor to consider, but it can really affect both.

In my general setup I use Berserker’s Stance as one of my utilities and I use that early on which gives me Adrenaline. I don’t just pop it from the start, I explained in my tips (vs necros or engineers) how I do it, but it helps just the same. I also usually like to start my fights a bit defensive and pay attention to the enemy burst so I can avoid it properly before going in with my own.

vove.2768:

Ashanor.5319:

Don’t worry, you are only the 50th person to try to claim this build.

I’m not trying to claim anything, goober. When I was looking for the build I only found the Defektive’s one. The one that was posted by Metale back then was:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNAS5ejcOtuxOqQMRCEkCNkLOFUC1D74OijUBxA-TsAA1CnIMSZkzIjRSjsGNQYhw2CA

Sorry I was hoping that I share something someone might find useful.

Besides as you can see his post was made 5 days ago and I’m using this build over a week now. That only confirms how good it is if so many people started using it.

< Matale

I think you’re probably confusing it with one of my post-beta WvW builds/videos. I started focusing more on sPvP about a month ago when I noticed how much better competition was and after initially playing one of my WvW GS Mace/Shield builds I switched to Hammer Mace/Shield. I’m also playing 0/10/30/0/30 and if you take a look at my post (linked at the bottom) I posted a “how to / tips” vs all professions and a 50 minutes long dueling montage.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Matale-s-Hammer-sPvP-Duels-and-Strats-1/first#post2574366

But anyways, yeah, it’s a really great build; I started playing it because I couldn’t beat mesmers as GS Mace/Shield in sPvP and the main complaint I always heard from them was the lack of stability so I tried Hammer and was really happy with the result. It’s a build that can beat any profession as long as you play it right and you bring quite a bit of utility through your stuns for your team.

I’m going to bump this thread as I’ve seen people talk about Hammer – Mace/Shield and how strong it is in several threads but more as if it’s something they’ve heard about but don’t really know that much, top secret, a myth and so forth. So for those that missed it, here it is again, video and explanation on how to play it on the first page of the warrior forums.

No Walking.6349:

Anyone able to link the build?

I posted this a while ago:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Matale-s-Hammer-sPvP-Duels-and-Strats-1/first#post2547448

HatSimulator.9362:

Now that (almost) every warrior is using this build, and the fact that warriors are the most played class, I and many other people on the forums in different professions have had to make builds just to find how to counter all these stuns.

I’m not saying stunlock, unlimited healing warriors are OP but when every single class has to change traits and runes just to counter one class, it becomes OP.

(not replying to anything replying to this post, warriors are impossible to argue with)

Pretty much how warriors have to run Berserker’s Stance and Runes of Lyssa JUST to be able to have a fighting chance vs Necros, Engineers and Spirit Rangers?

Let me explain a little bit how this mace/shield GS build works in sPvP to try and end this uninformed OP trend. I’ve played this build and practiced it a lot so I have a pretty solid understanding of it. I no longer play it as I prefer mace/shield hammer better, it’s much more effective and reliable and if you want to see how I’m doing with it, I posted a video of about 50 minutes worth of dueling footage vs all professions on the warrior forums.

Outside 100B you do bellow average damage. If you stood in front of any opponent and he didn’t move, he just lets you do damage using any other GS skill while he also hits you, you wouldn’t stand a chance. With that being said, the conclusion is that if you don’t land 100B you won’t win. Now how many 100B do you need to land to kill someone? Not that many, just 2 or 3 should do the trick as 1 100B does about 6-8k dmg, maybe a bit more if the target is really really squishy.

Any real opponent should bring a couple of ways to get out of stuns. It’s not just warriors that have CC, all professions have it, necros have a ton of fears and knock downs, eles have some, thieves do too and so forth.

Now how many mace stuns can you actually land? Well I may not be the best warrior but I’m not the worst either and I practiced trying to land my mace stuns a lot. Vs a decent opponent that has dueled you a few times, you’re looking at landing constantly around 2/3. That 3rd mace stun will go to waste because it will either be dodged, you’ll get a surprise blind or stability or aegis and so forth.

With that being said, lets do a little math. You can hit your mace stun every 8 seconds with the standard builds. Lets assume it also takes you 8 seconds to get full adrenaline although it does actually end up being more time. This is a time frame that you’re looking at:
- at second 8 you have full adrenaline and you land your first mace stun which is broken
- at second 16 you land your second mace stun and it is broken again
- at second 24 you miss your 3rd mace stun

By the time a little over 30 seconds have passed, vs any decent opponent that brings some stun breakers and not just straight DPS utilities and expects to do well, you will have done bellow average damage and mostly, you will have just tried to stay alive by using all your utility skills (Ignore Pain, Berserker’s Stance, Balanced Stance) your shield block and at the same time build adrenaline so that you can in a perfect scenario attempt to hit your opponent every 8 seconds with your mace stun.

Now at second 32, in this perfect fight scenario you’ll get your first 100B and then at second 40 you’ll get your second one and hopefully win. If this is how things went, trust me when I say, you’ve worked so hard that you deserve to win.

Now what happens if you miss either your second 32 or second 40 100B? Well by the time you get another one at second 48, chances are one of the stun breakers is off CD so it will be broken. Unfortunately your defensive CDs aren’t back and you’re already struggling to survive. What happens when a mesmer can daze you or become invulnerable to one of your 100B in addition to all the stun breakers he has or even worse, what if he’s using a staff? What if the pet of the necro you’re fighting stuns you during one of those 100B?(and the list goes on) Lets just say things don’t end up looking too good for you.

So before you start complaining about how OP this build is and how you’re getting killed, how about you make sure first of all that you’re not super squishy, that you bring a few stun breakers and that you learn to kite a warrior when he switches to mace/shield or at least save all of your interrupts, blinds, stability and CC for that moment. A warrior that misses 2 mace stuns in a row is pretty much a dead warrior. Ignore Pain and Berserker’s Stance are 2 utilities that just about any melee warrior needs to bring to a fight and use every time just to survive. Balanced Stance or the signet equivalent is also often, especially in team fights pretty mandatory. We have to bring 3 defensive utilities just to survive and you expect to win with pure DPS or passive utilities? I say learn to adapt, the tools are there, I’m sorry you can’t run around as a DPS machine and be a PvP hero but neither can warriors.

Signets obviously provide passive bonuses which are great and if you get the signet reduction CD, the new CD is pretty equivalent to the stances one. Some warriors, including myself prefer picking up the 25% run speed trait instead of the signet CD reduction. The reason for that is because many professions are able to remove boons of you and I’m also using Runes of Lyssa so I don’t have a solid source for swiftness. I use my elite as a condition wipe, later during a fight.

Phaeton.9582:

Hey man.. Glad you’ve seen the light with the cc warrior. I ran a very similar build when they first implemented cleansing ire, but after a couple of months of high level tpvp with it I’ve found this version to be stronger – definitely worth a try!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Phaeton-s-Anchor-Warrior-Build-CC-cleave

Note: combination of condi immunity, soldiers ammy, and the ability to completely lock a condi player out if played correctly makes cleansing ire not mandatory with this set up

I’ll give it a try, thanks for the tip! I also play mostly solo even in tPvP with solo ques, so if you’re playing with a team, that might be a factor to consider.

Glad you guys are enjoying it! Now that I’m feeling really comfortable in duels vs just about anything, I’m probably going to start recording more tPvP. I don’t have a whole lot of time to play but as soon as I get a good chunk of content I’ll make sure to post a similar montage!

Gabage.1235:

With there being no Valk or Beryl Ascended gear would you recommend staying exotic or do you have a plain for ascended gear in mind?

In sPvP I’ve played this build with both Berserker’s Amulet and Valkyrie’s Amulet and they both did fine. With Berserker’s Amulet you just have to be much more careful in regards to incoming damage but at the same time you start critting more often and hence do more damage.

The only main stats you need to have is power and crit damage. Other than that, anything should be fine. Stamina or Toughness are probably your best choices for 1vX or group fights because you can’t pay attention to everything and these 2 stats help you stay alive. Precision though can also work because you can end fights quicker that way, you just need to really know the professions you’re facing so you can avoid their damage properly.

In sPvP I found 0/20/30/0/20 to be my personal favorite with the Balanced Stance trait in Defense. Many opponents try to CC you when you get in range as part of their defense strategy and you just counter it automatically allowing you to apply way more pressure.

Good luck!

I just realized something about comparing Healing Signet and Healing Surge and I’m not trying to make a point if one is OP or not but it’s something that in my personal comparison I’ve overlooked.

So again, with my stats:
Healing Signet = 422 HPS = 12660 healing over 30 seconds
Healing Surge = 10700 healing every 30 seconds

Now in a normal 1v1, a good warrior using my build shouldn’t need to use Healing Surge until lets say second 20. You were able to not go bellow 10k HP by that point because you used your defensive skills properly. Now if the fight keeps going until second 49, the healing gained by that point is:
Healing Signet = 20678
Healing Surge = 10700

Now at second 50, things are about the same since a second Healing Surge comes in and you have HSurge with 21400 and HSignet with 21100. However, here you are assuming that things timed so well that exactly when HSurge came off CD, you had full adrenaline and were able to heal. Now for the next 29 seconds and this is where it starts counting HSignet gains a big advantage of providing 33338 healing vs the same 21100. Also, keep in mind that when HSurge comes off CD, you might really need a heal but you don’t have 3 bars of adrenaline so here you lose the race again even if you decide to wait for full adrenaline or if you decide to just go ahead and use it.

Now you might say that the advantage of HSurge is that it gives you adrenaline. Well to keep up with the healing you get from HSignet you need to use it at full adrenaline so you’re not really getting an advantage, if anything, it’s additional work that you have to do to keep up.

Now you might say that Healing Surge is burst healing and it allows you to recover quickly. Well, that also means that Healing Signet rewards smart play and that it rewards players that know when burst is coming their way and know how to use their shield block or Ignore Pain and so forth properly.

My personal opinion is that at this point in the game, in the hands of a good Warrior, Healing Signet offers the most amount of healing and is probably the best healing option you have. To me, this doesn’t sound fair vs the other healing options we have because with Healing Signet you can just forget about it where with the other Healing options you have to time things properly.

Ashanor.5319:

stefanplc.5234:

Cygnus.6903:

All the fuzz about healing signet.. it’s fine, because it has a weakness. The good thing is you get the highest sustained healing. That is also the weakness: burst. It’s like fighting a good ele. You exchange some blows, get m a bit low, he uses water form to heal back up completely (burst healing for WAY more then any warrior ever could), wait for the swap to the next attunement, and THEN burst him down.

Also, out of all healing skills a warrior has, signet is the weakest to long duration poison.

bunker eles can’t 100B for up to 7-8k in sPvP… I think that’s where the issue is… the warrior still does a ton of dmg while surviving as if he was using a bunker build

Err Ele was known for being able to bunker and still have decent DPS. Warrior also doesn’t have the ability to bunker on that level.

I thought you didn’t like arguing?

lol I’m done on that topic, promise

Cygnus.6903:

All the fuzz about healing signet.. it’s fine, because it has a weakness. The good thing is you get the highest sustained healing. That is also the weakness: burst. It’s like fighting a good ele. You exchange some blows, get m a bit low, he uses water form to heal back up completely (burst healing for WAY more then any warrior ever could), wait for the swap to the next attunement, and THEN burst him down.

Also, out of all healing skills a warrior has, signet is the weakest to long duration poison.

bunker eles can’t 100B for up to 7-8k in sPvP… I think that’s where the issue is… the warrior still does a ton of dmg while surviving as if he was using a bunker build

Ashanor.5319:

In any case, that’s not really the point of this thread, I really dislike getting into arguments over what’s OP and what’s not.

Advice: If you say something is overpowered or too strong, people are going to argue back their points. Especially with the way the warrior forums have been the last couple days with bad players coming in here saying warriors need a nerf etc.

Yep, pretty much, that’s why I try to avoid these type of conversations. I just take things as they are and try to make the most of it.

Healing Surge is my favorite too, I sometimes swap Mending if I’m playing vs condition heavy opponents or teams. The signet just maws through people that try and play a balanced build or aren’t really experienced because it offers so much survivability for free and its really strong in 1v1s mostly. Once you play in teams or vs good players who do a lot of bursts, Healing Surge becomes much better.

With my stats:
422 HPS = 12660 healing over 30 seconds
Healing Surge = 10700 healing every 30 seconds

Even though the signet heals for more, many of those ticks are wasted because you’re at full HP. Also when you have a lot of burst coming your way, it’s harder to recover with Healing Signet than Healing Surge.

The only thing I dislike about the Healing Signet is that it allows bad players to suddenly feel like they’re great. But that’s not the first case seen in GW2 and it was much worse on other professions before.

In any case, that’s not really the point of this thread, I really dislike getting into arguments over what’s OP and what’s not.

Aedh.2631:

I’ve been playing this build for the past few days as well, with healing signet and soldier ammy.
Lots of fun to play, but I only tried it in hot-join for now. Do you think you will record touney games with this build ? It would be quite interesting to watch, I think.

Anyway, great vid, and thanks a lot for the guide.

P.S : Healing signet + Adrenal health actually provides around 500-550 HPS (adrenal health ticks every 3 seconds, and not 1 as the signet). 900 would be OP.

I’ve just seen several warriors that you could tell were bad, with random dodges, constantly using stuns into blinds and so forth and they did really well vs much better players simply because of that signet. On the 1v1 server we had a warrior that constantly won playing with the signet and when I dueled him it just didn’t end, it went on forever because he couldn’t land his skills but I couldn’t kill him either, I didn’t do enough damage. I convinced him to try a different healing skill like I was doing and it was over pretty fast afterwards. In my eyes it just feels like that signet carries a lot of players based on what I’ve been seeing. In the hands of a really good player I’m sure it’s devastating.

Ashanor.5319:

stefanplc.5234:

Ashanor.5319:

I played a build nearly identical to this the day after the patch was released (The late June patch). Experimented a lot with it and other weapon variations and posted about it on the forums. It is definitely not a bad build and is capable of some hilarious juggling at times, but I feel there are better options generally. Your video cut off after 3 minutes for me by the way.

I think its your connection, I just scrolled through the entire video and it was fine. I played a bunch of different builds too. My favorite was GS mace/shield because of the mobility you get, but it wasn’t as strong vs Mesmers, Thieves and Necros.

Yep, what I ended up settling on was M/Sh GS, but I also play S/Sh LB at times, and still occasionally pull out my hammer and mess around. I understand where you are coming from with not being as strong vs Necromancers, but I felt the M/Sh GS combo gave me enough cc to be effective vs them. When I did this build mine was a bit different though, rune choices, some traits etc. Basic 0 10 30 0 30 or 0 0 30 10 30 were the trait layouts. I also tried it with desperate power and more DPS centered stats but I preferred unsuspecting foe and tankier stats in my final build.

I will try to watch again later when I have some time.

It also depends if you’re talking WvW or sPvP. WvW is much easier for warriors since you can do so much more damage and when things get rough you can reset the fight by running away. My main issue with GS wasn’t Necros in sPvP but Mesmers and some S/D thieves. Even slightly above average Mesmers seemed impossible in sPvP as GS. I played 0/20/30/0/20. My problem was that you only do real damage with that build during mace stun > 100b. Outside it, you hit for 800-1500 every now and then. With mesmers and generally other good players, landing that mace stun was just harder and harder as they knew to get away when they saw me pull the mace/shield out and save their blinds/stability etc.. for then. So in other words, it’s a very predictable build and vs really good duelers it really didn’t feel fair. I switched to this build though with the Hammer and even though I was skeptical initially because the Hammer is such a clunky weapon I was surprised how well it performs. The problem with the “currently top” sPvP professions is that they don’t have a lot of access to stun breakers and stability so that gives you an advantage.

Ashanor.5319:

I played a build nearly identical to this the day after the patch was released (The late June patch). Experimented a lot with it and other weapon variations and posted about it on the forums. It is definitely not a bad build and is capable of some hilarious juggling at times, but I feel there are better options generally. Your video cut off after 3 minutes for me by the way.

I think its your connection, I just scrolled through the entire video and it was fine. I played a bunch of different builds too. My favorite was GS mace/shield because of the mobility you get, but it wasn’t as strong vs Mesmers, Thieves and Necros.

Vs. Rangers
- Most of them are Spirit Rangers and they do both condition and direct damage (or so it feels) so Ignore Pain is useful together with Berserker Stance.
- Reflects are also great, especially early on when they’re trying to gain an advantage through range
- Spirit Rangers are very strong and often it’s just a race of who does more damage. I try to stun them as often as possible even if my stuns aren’t full duration.

Vs. Thieves
- S/D are very difficult so don’t feel bad if you don’t beat them all too often.
- Landing your mace stun will turn out to be difficult vs S/D because of their dodges. I like to wait till the sword #3 evade animation is almost over and then quickly use my stun. There’s a short window there where if you time it right you’ll be able to stun them. Overall the more stuns you land the better your chances at winning are so while they have a big advantage with so many dodges, you can overcome that aspect by practicing.
- When you see a thief use his Basilisks Venom, act accordingly! Some of your options are either using Ignore Pain when he hits you, popping your own Elite for stability and protection or use Balanced Stance. Shield Stance is also an option but often they’ll just wait it out since it’s only 3 seconds long.

Vs. Warriors
- Well you play this profession so you should be able to figure out how to counter them. The general idea is that warriors have a lot of stability and stun breakers so kite them when they have stability and try baiting their stun breakers.

Updates
- Vs Mesmers – Try using Berserker’s Stance early on. Many bursty mesms that I’ve been fighting like to start with Pistol Phantasm and a Blurred Frenzy. Once I see the Pistol Phantasm I start blocking its shots with my Mace and use Berserker’s Stance which makes me immune to the cripple/immobilize so I can just dodge out of Blurred Frenzy. In the process I also gain a lot of Adrenaline which allows me to go super offensive and make the mesm use all of his stun breakers very early on since I can chain burst skills in addition to my other stuns.

This is all I can remember for now, if you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask. Good luck to those interested in playing this build, it’s a lot of fun!

Vs Engineers
- I love the reflection trait in this case because very often, during a fight you’ll be able to reflect up to 2-3 times their #2 and #3 pistol skills. It’s going to take some practice but if you’ve played an engineer before or fought them enough times, you’ll be able to “feel” when it’s going to happen. The first time is when you get close to them, in a distance of 500-600, as you’re moving towards them.
- I suggest keeping your Berserker’s Stance for when they switch to bomb kit. Many of those skills have pretty long CDs and you’ll counter them 100%
- Use your elite early for a condition wipe as it will also give you a boost in damage.
- Many engineers use Flame Thrower and the toolkit skill for that applies a very long burn over their next 3 attacks. You can spot when they’re about to use it because they get an icon/buff that looks like a green bullet. Avoid that or cleanse it ASAP!

Vs Mesmers
- Pay close attention to their Phantasms; the more Phantasm attacks you dodge the better. I like to reflect the Pistol’s Phantasm shots back to it and if I get most of them, the Phantasm is 1 shot away from being dead which is great since it’s on a 20 sec CD un-traited.
- I like to keep Berserker’s Stance for when the Mesmer uses Staff #4 and #5 to avoid getting a ton of conditions on me.
- Use your dodges wisely. Vs Mesmers you’ll be tempted to constantly dodge because you see so many attacks coming your way but many of them don’t really do damage. Keep your dodges for the blurred frenzy attack which you can avoid by dodging when you see a clone coming really fast at you and for all the other Phantasm attacks.
- Mesmers can daze you by shattering their clones. This gets really annoying because they don’t all shatter at the same time, they do it as they get in range, often being able to stop you from doing much for even up to 3-4 seconds. Use stability the first time you’re dazed (not from pistol though) chances are that’s what’s about to happen.

Vs Elementalists
- Most of them like to open with a big burst. As soon as they knock you down with their air skill, they’ll switch to fire, apply burning on you and try dagger #5 and Scepter #3. If you can block that or use Ignore Pain to avoid its damage (you can’t block Scepter #3), you’ve dodged a huge bullet as both are on pretty long CDs.
- You can use Stability vs Shocking Aura (Dagger #3) and often they won’t expect it as they’re hoping that you’ll get stunned and that they’re about to have a window where they can pour a lot of dmg into you.
- Elementalists have stability too through Armor of Earth. It’s easy to spot as it looks like a bunch of boulders around them; it’s better just to kite them during its duration.

Vs Necromancers
- Many necromancers start with their staff and put marks down as you’re going their way. What I like to do is when I get in decent range around 500-600 is to start blocking with my mace. The moment I block one of their marks I know they’ve started their damage rotation and I dodge once and use Berserker’s Stance to avoid the conditions coming my way.
- Use your Elite (with Runes of Lyssa) as late as possible as Necros often have Corrupt Boon and convert all of your boons into conditions. The longer you wait, the larger the chance that they’ve already used it on you to transform your stability into fear.
- When a necro uses Spectral Walk to break your stun (you’ll notice that he leaves a transparent green line behind him as he runs) try and stun him ASAP with whatever you have even if it’s short duration. Chances are he won’t know it’s a short duration stun and he’ll use Spectral Recall to go back to his original position; the sooner, the better. You should also be prepared if possible to leap back to his starting point with the Hammer Burst Skill.
- If he’s using a Worm, keep his location in mind because when things get rough, that’s where he’ll teleport.

Vs. Guardians
- Kite during stability and blocks. Remember that many of their skills provide them with invulnerability such as their Shelter Heal and Renowned Focus Elite so keep an eye for those.
- Reflect back Scepter #1 as it does pretty decent damage and Sword #3 which does even more damage.
- Guardians are pretty easy to kite
- Vs Spirit Weapon Guardians play defensively and survive the weapons. Once those are gone, you’ll have an easy time winning.

Here’s the link to my video containing Warrior sPvP Duels with Hammer – Mace/Shield. If you care for more info such as tips and strategies keep reading.

Build: http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-ss-Bx;9;9;89T-T;13;0489;127AC-F2X;1KJG4KJG44Bq

Hey what’s up? My warrior’s name is Matale and I’ve been playing for a few weeks now Hammer Mace/Shield. In order to improve my play style I decided to invest a lot of time on 1v1 servers and record my fights so I can see where I can do better. I gathered a lot of footage and I’m running out of space on my HD so I decided to compress it and upload it on youtube to help others trying the same build.

I usually play on a EU server called 1v1 King of the Hill for those that are interested; as far as I can tell this is where some of the best duelers meet to face off. Before you ask, yes, I’ve also lost to some of the opponents in the video and no, I don’t win every duel. I’ve had plenty of streaks where I played from server restart to server restart without loosing and days where I’ve lost constantly. Overall, with this build I feel like I can win vs anything. The only 2 professions that feel difficult are really good mesmers and especially stealth spam ones and S/D thieves but really, defeating really good players is never easy.

Here are a few tips that I’ve gathered in my learning experience. In the video I don’t always do them, but again, these clips were used to spot my mistakes so you should expect some.

General
- After you use your mace stun with full adrenaline (and the paralyzation sigil) you can hit your opponent 3 times with your Hammer before needing to que another CC. So for example a rotation would be like this: 3 seconds mace stun > hammer #1 > hammer #1 > hammer > 1 > hammer #5 or #4. Your opponent will be stunned the entire time. For all the rest of the stuns that have a 2 seconds base duration, you can hit twice with your hammer or mace before needing to que up another CC skill. This is very important because it adds up both to your DPS and survivability.
- In order to win, you need your opponent to run out of stability / stun breakers. Try and bait your opponent into using them by stunning them with 1-2 bars of adrenaline burst skills instead of the full 3 bars. In many situations, they won’t know that your mace stun is only 1-2 seconds long and not 3 and they’ll use a stun breaker anyways. This speeds up a fight increasing your chances of winning.
- Pay close attention and kite when your opponent has stability. Pay attention to invulnerabilities, blinds and aegis. The more important abilities you land, the better your chances of winning are!
- In fights that you know are difficult and that will last a long time, remember to use Healing Surge (if that’s the case) when you have full Adrenaline, it will count for a lot! (Ex: vs Mesmers, Thieves etc…)
- Adapt your Healing and Utility skills as needed in both duels and tournaments. If your opponent(s) are heavy condition pick up Mending and Signet of Stamina over Ignore Pain. When I do tPvP I often check out their roster and run around the map towards their spawn to see what they’re playing. Some necros might play condition and some might play power or MM builds. I also like to swap my Amulet. I usually use Valkyrie with Berserker’s Jewl however that toughness does nothing vs condition builds so I swap to full Berserker’s Amulet.
- I’m not going to get into arguments over Healing Signet. I currently view it as too good and even though I played around with it, I don’t want to touch it. I think it’s going to get nerfed soon and I don’t want to get used to playing with it. I think Healing Surge and Mending are in pretty good spots and that’s what I use. I’ve seen plenty of bad and confused warriors get carried by it because their opponents simply could not DPS through the 800-900 HPS it provides together with Adrenal Health.

Jzaku.9765:

I’m pretty interested.

Alright, just for you then! It’s currently rendering, pretty much just raw footage but that’s the point anyways. I’ll post a new thread with some explanations, tips, strategies in a few hours when it’s done uploading and rendering.

I’ve been playing Hammer & Mace/Shield in sPvP on 1v1 servers for a while now and I got a bunch of footage playing solid opponents of all professions and various builds. I recorded the footage for me to look and and see where I’ve made mistakes and where I could improve and now I’m kind of running out of HD space. Is anyone interested in seeing it? I don’t want to spend the time and make a montage of it and upload it on youtube for no reason. The build is 0/10/30/0/30.

Hunter.4783:

Skull crack with sigil of paralysis gives 3.75 sec stun which can be followed by a 100b which has a total channel time of 3.30 sec. This usually results in death unless you use a stunbreaker. Thats nice and all except for the fact this combo can be repeated EVERY 7.5 SECONDS due to burst mastery. IN addition, due to fast hands weapon swap = 5 sec cooldown as well as gives adren.

It’s 3.45 seconds but that doesn’t really matter. Try landing mace stuns vs good players and especially mesmers and thieves and let me know how succesful you are. Every time you miss, you add +8 seconds during which you don’t really do much damage, you just try to survive and build adrenaline.

Hunter.4783:

Last but not least, HEALING SIGNET IS EXTREMELY OP. 400 Hp/sec in addition to regen based on adrenaline (2nd minor trait in defense line) makes for quite a ridiculous regen which is unconditional and can be further enhanced by regeneration.

I agree with this. I didn’t want to be the one to say it, but I’ve seen several warriors that are pretty bad, that wasted mace stuns into obvious blinds, blocks, stability and invulnerabilities and still ended up winning vs decent opponents just because of the signet. I dueled one of them and I couldn’t kill him. Eventually we both got bored since he couldn’t really land his bursts and he switched from his signet to something else and the fight was over shortly.

Hunter.4783:

The build i am talking about is this: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Skull-Cracker-V-3-0-The-Counter-Meta

Might as well make it popular so they “adjust” it sooner than later

The build isn’t overly strong at all. Vs decent mesmers and s/d thieves you stand close to no chance. You can beat anyone else if you play it right and it really is, IF you play it right. Missing 2 mace stuns in a row is pretty much GG. If you have the SIGNET though, things are much easier. I do agree it’s a bit over the top right now.

As a warrior, I really hated those unblockable marks Necros had.

Scoobaniec.9561:

Seismic Leap: This skill has replaced Stomp. It is now a ground-targeted, 2-second AoE knockdown with a 600-unit range.

I actually wonder if that also replacing “normal” stomp

I was thinking about this myself and then I kind of wondered what would be the difference between this and bull’s charge other than some small details.

when will these updates be live?

TBH, I’ve always thought that once you learn the other professions and how to counter them, warriors aren’t THAT BAD. Sure, they’re not up to the level of other professions but you can still do well and have fun. I’ve been very active recently on 1v1 servers and I’ve constantly felt, when I played well but still ended up loosing that the -5 seconds CD would have been EXCELENT and it would have allowed me to win.

Healing Surge and Mending both look like they got some pretty nice buffs so I’m really looking forward to testing them out. If Rush actually works well I’ll be one happy warrior for sure.

Healing Surge with condition removal utilities and runes of Lyssa was pretty good and almost there for sustainability (for my play style). The only issue was that I constantly felt that when I played well, I couldn’t keep up with the damage that I was taking but not by a lot, just barely not making it through. I think this small buff might be just what I was missing. Really looking forward to testing things out!