Fezz

Few reasons that I have read why everyone includes strength in their Warrior builds.

1) Armor Piercing.
2) Though they don't require attribute points to be effective, Frenzy/Flurry.
3) And some of the other skills are fairly useful.

This is just what I have gathered by reading these forums, so those who are big Warrior buffs, may have differing opinions.

HotSnack

In no specific order, why I imagine most Warriors take Strength:

1) Damage Enhancements - armour penetration on regular attack skills, Warrior's Cunning, Power Attack, etc. all help Warriors to deal the ouch more.

2) Shields - you'll need points into either Strength or Tactics to wield a good shield properly, and when you compare strength and tactics well... it's hard not to see why people choose Strength.

3) Speed buffs - Strength has the speed buffs. Warriors need speed buffs so they don't die a horrible death before they even reached their target.

Brett Kuntz

12 str + 12 hammer = pain on regular hits, pump 4 stats into something like Elem for Earth based skills and you'll rock low armour class's like no one else.

Scaphism

There are a few reasons why strength is still popular.

1) It still has a good reputation from when it did 2% armor penetration and had Healing Signet tied to it.
2) It's still a primary attribute and gains a passive bonus. (Smiting never will).
3) You get a shield that's as good as (if a bit more rare than) you get from Tactics.
4) Strength has some very powerful skills, and unlike Smiting they fit in very well with the warrior's primary role.

Said skills:
Sprint
Power Attack
Warrior's Cunning
Warrior's Endurance {E}

Battle Rage {E}, Bull's Charge {E}, and Bull's Strike are good as well.

If you made Tactics the warrior primary and gave it a minor boost to AL per level, (I'm not advocating that this be done) then people would start flocking to Tactics, especially if you took shields out of Strength. However, secondary class warriors would rejoice, as they would have access to an Improved Sprint, Power Attack, which devours a warrior's energy pool but is excellent on non-warriors, and Armor Penetration from Cunning and a terrific energy engine in Warrior's Endurance.

My point: People put points into their primary attribute if they don't have anything better to do, because they understand that a passive bonus will always help them. And strength helps you kill people faster, which is what every warrior wants to do.

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torry

Your replies confirm just what I said. Nobody plays a Strength warrior.

whats so special about a Strength based shield, compared to a tactics based? Most are tactics based?

Power attack? Sure if you want to spend mana on generally low dam/mana abilities.

Frenzy/Flurry got nothing to do with Strength.

Warriors Endurance would be the only proper reason to play Str. I tried it last weekend. I think my Str skill was like 6-7, I cant remember. Was lvl 14ish.

Took a while before I saw that Flurry cancelled it..hahaha. Darn stances.

it is a neat skill together with hundred blades and ..eh..thats about it.
Any extra hit adding skills in other words.

Probably better of with Expertise though as a mana saviour, or Victory is Mine. VIM must be incredible if you have some Epidemic fun or if you generally are in a crowded melee ?

HotSnack

Quote:

Originally Posted by torry Your replies confirm just what I said. Nobody plays a Strength warrior.

Wait, what? We did?

As to what's so special about a Strength based shield over a Tactics, you're right in that it is not much. However that is based on shields alone, and when you are looking at which skill line to dump points into, you are looking for which line is giving you the most bang for your buck. Most primary Warriors will have Strength over Tactics, because Strength skills leans towards the offensive (what primary Warriors want) while Tactics skills leans towards the defensive (if the enemy team is attacking you, then that's probably because they have killed all your other team mates, barring the Warriors and the Rangers).

Scaphism

Don't be so quick to take my words as confirmation of anything.

I said that strength is still popular because it used to be the the best line in the game. Reuptation takes a while to wear off.

Quote:

Originally Posted by torry Nobody plays a Strength warrior.

Find me 10 primary warriors and I'll show you 10 who have points in strength.
People will continue to play strength as long as it has Armor Penetration linked to it, plain and simple.

Warrior's Endurance is a terrific skill with a poorly written description. It gives you 3 energy per hit and only stops giving you energy when your energy reaches 15. Then, as soon as you spend the energy, it starts giving it to you again. It opens up a world of choices for a warrior who wants to use energy based skills. My personal favorites for use with Warrior's Endurance are Life Siphon and Immolate, unfortunately you need a 12 in both attributes to use them well, which makes it difficult to work out the attribute point spread.

Using Hundred Blades with Warrior's Endurance means you get to use HB for free and you net at least 1 energy from swinging, more (+6 per additional person) if there is anyone else standing next to your target.

I think you have an agenda to prove that strength is a bad line, and I'm not sure why. Sure it has some skills I wouldn't consider using, but most lines do. The point is that strength helps a warrior do his job better. The formula for a warrior remains Weapon 12, strength X, secondary profession line Y until a better option is out there. You could consider a 4 attribute warrior I suppose, but you're probably giving up your high armor shield to do so.

You mention expertise being better than strength. Expertise is the most powerful primary attribute in the game, and here's to hoping it's toned down slightly in the near future. You don't consider how it looks on a warrior though- BAD. The best warrior skills that use energy are in Strength. If you could combine a high-level power attack with a high level of expertise, you'd have everyone crying for a nerf. There's a reason why Primary Attributes are exclusive to their particular classes, and that's just one example.

Power Attack is a terrific skill for powering through defenses like Shielding Hands and Healing Hands. It turns your 20 damage attack into a 44 damage attack, and that's not considering how many buffs you have stacked on top of it, like Warrior's Cunning and Conjure Element.

Don't sleep on Warrior's Cunning either. As far as I know it's still a skill, not a Stance or Enchantment, which means once you have it up and running there is no way for anyone to remove it from you. If you want to see how it affects your damage, check out Ensign's chart here.

I don't see the reason to dismiss strength. Warriors want damage, damage, and more damage, together with a movement buff. Weapon + Strength gives you all of that. Your secondary class is just to find 1 or 2 nice skills to compliment it.

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Ensign

Quote:

Originally Posted by torry Your replies confirm just what I said. Nobody plays a Strength warrior.

No one plays a Fast Cast Mesmer, or an Energy Storage Elementalist, or a Divine Favor Monk, or a Soul Reaping Necro, or an Expertise Ranger, either. Primary-only attributes are supporting lines, not something that's able to stand alone.

A Warrior needs either Strength or Tactics to use a shield, and the presence of Strength-based Tower Shields means that Strength just has to beat out Tactics to justify spending points in it.

On top of that Strength is one of the deeper support attributes, with a bunch of solid skills that have a good amount of synergy with what a Warrior normally does. Power Attack is a Warrior staple, and Griffon's Sweep is an underrated skill that does wonderful things to Distortion and Shield of Deflection. Bull's Strike does wonderful things to any opponent who can't win a stand up fight with you - which is pretty much everyone.

Sprint is a staple speed boost that's used on a ton of Warrior builds. Warrior's Cunning is a little pricey, but it's a 'skill' with no casting time and a useful duration - it'll kick out a lot of damage over its duration. Plus you have Warrior's Endurance and Battle Rage, two of the best resource engines in the game.

Strength has around eight skills that any Warrior should give a good looking at - skills that work well with any melee strategy. With that kind of depth and synergy, why would you not pump some points into Strength? It isn't as straightforward as Energy Storage, but the attribute does a lot of little things that add up to a good investment.

Peace,
-CxE

__________________
Don't argue with idiots. They bring you to their level and beat you with experience.

nicosharp

On top of all that, most smiting spells cost 10+ energy which is kind of pricey being a warrior with a base energy of 20

Brett Kuntz

Strength hammer warriors beat down any other form of warrior 1:1, including shield warriors. They output really high damage and have nice skills to back it up. With skills based in adrenalin, they don't have anything holding them back. In PvP, wack a target untill it runs from you, then target the next closest player (dont chase). Just wack random people untill you have full adrenalin, at this point, press T or just pick someone near by, and wreck them up real good. If a monk/caster (low armour) class is near by, you'll be able to mowify them before anyone even notices. With no solid way of healing yourself you'll need to rely on atleast one monk, but it's a lot better to have hammer warriors mowing players dead and 1 monk keeping them alive, then a bunch of low damage sword warriors who can barely deal over 20 damage to a monk..

I used to take Earth Armour with me (4 stats) for standoffs, adds a lot more AL and lowers the already low damage of a sword warrior even lower. On top of that, with full adren, you should be able to knock down a target 3 times in a row for 8 consecutive hits, 10 if they try and run from you after getting up from the 3rd time.

Nash

I use Battle Rage and Sprint from Strength. It's also required for my shield, and gives armor penetration for my attack skill spam. It's a really good attribute.

torry

Obviously the line "Nobody plays a Str warrior" was not meant 100% literally. . What is a poor chap to do, waiting for the next weekend?

"I think you have an agenda to prove that strength is a bad line, and I'm not sure why."

Referring to my original post: "Would be fun if anybody could post their up and running Str based builds, to lift my perspective a bit on this one."
Enough said.

Kuntor and Nash responded the way I was hoping. The rest, including me, probably dont play a warrior, or use the Str atribute much, if they do play the W. 10 out of 10 ppl using Str attribute as primary warrior? Not as far as I have seen, but I am, and play with, weekend players only.

As I said I did try STR with WE (E) last weekend, and it worked well, but my Str was a bit low so I hit the mana roof restrainment easily, and took a while before I saw that Flurry broke WE ( :P)

Warriors Endurance: Assuming 3 x 11 hits (?) = 33 mana. Costs you 5 mana => 28 net, 2 times a minute = 56 mana/minute.

Victory is Mine: assuming 3 conditions, it nets you 10 mana, 4 times per minute = 40 mana/minute.

Kuntor, thanks for a good insight into the Str Hammer wielder. It sounds like a reason to go W/Hammer obviously, but do you really need that passive armour penetration bonus as long as the hammer skills mostly do knock downs? I haven't really considered hammer much. It looks so CUMBERSOME to get those skills going? and the effect of the hammer skills is not so obvious as the other ones? Counter blow looks like a goodie.

I never used a hammer, so I dont know their usual max damage range. (Swords are like 15-25, arent they?). I can imagine a heavy hammer penetrating Healing Hands much better also, or other damage mitigation skills.

Still waiting for the first build from someone who actually plans to play a W/x with a bit of points into STRENGTH the next weekend though

Nash

The Nash has, and will, play a high Strength W/Mo. The Nash's build can be found here.

BlackArrow

I guess I'm one of the rare warriors then. I've used strength for as long as I've played a warrior (3 or 4 BWEs). I don't use any skills from Strength(yet) but the armor penetratoin and ability to use a shield with Strength beats Tactics anyday. Berserker Stance, Battle Rage, Sprint, Warrior's Cunning are all skills I'm looking at including in my build. Strength isn't my highest attribute (Swords at 12 is, Strength is at 9) but those attributes will change to something similar to Nash's setup when I find a minor rune of Swordsmanship.

I'm gonna have to disagree with you and say that most primary warriors will use Strength over tactics. Tactics is better for a secondary warrior, but only since they cannot access strength. 10 out of 10 is high, but 8 out of 10 is more likely.

Here's my W/Mo build:

Strength 9
Swordsmanship 12
Healing Prayers 9

Sever Artery
Gash
Galrath Slash
Final Thrust
Hamstring
Healing Breeze
Healing Hands
Mending

Brett Kuntz

12/12 hammer wars are true wrecking balls, no other class can plow like they do. Sword warriors are like annoying flies, they're really good at annoying multiple targets at once, but you'll never really kill anyone good on them due to lower damage and no energy to use any real skill combo's. The hammer warrior is entirely about massive-hit combo's (like the 8-10 hit combo I described), and there's a huge amount of combo's you can dream up of. A 12/12 hammer warriors default damage (no skills) can hit triple digits on monk's and elem's, and other class's with low armour. Class's with high armour and even behind shields will still get slapped hard. With knock downs and conditions at your disposal, it's not only raw damage you deal, but an all around pain train. I don't know why everyone jumped on the sword war bandwagon, but it happened around the time hSignet was moved into Tactics, I guess people don't like relying on Monk's for defense quite yet, probably change in retail.

FluidFox

The main reason that Hammer warriors aren't as popular is that since they have a lower hit rate due to slower attack, they tend to regenerate Adrenaline slower. On top of that, a lot of their skills cost more adrenaline than sword and axe skills.. But if you can work around that, it can be a beautiful thing. As stated above, they hit like a ton of bricks.

Dovi the Monk

idk, strength was kick arse when it was 2%X armor penetraion, now with no healing signet and only 12% armor pen. with 12 strength is it realy that good, i know such skills as bulls strike are awsome and also power attack cause they add super damage, suchas around 25 extra damage. but then if u go 12/12 warrior how will u ever make another pro god, ud hve to go pure warrior to benafit that, unless u use runes. i guess im just a weird hammer warrior who is trying tactics next beta for healign signet. i mean i hve lots of damage coming from my hammer mastery such crushing blow, heavy blow, devastating hammer. i mean with my 12 hammer i deal +16 damage with crushing blow, plus with a knockdown they get a deep wound which basically deals another big damage.

Brett Kuntz

Don't bother going tactics just for one skill, it's useless especially when you can just get a monk on your team to heal you. 4 stats in earth and Earth Armour gives you 34 more armour for 30 seconds (15 second recharge) so when the going gets tough you get some much added defense. According to Ensign's little guide wars at 80 AL will take about 70% of the calc'd damamge, add EA in there for an extra 34 AL, you're only looking at 39% dmg taken on average. It really helps out for when you need to dig in and fight.

Nash

Hah, Hammer Warriors.

Well, considering Hammer skills suck while Swords have many good bonus damage skills, and can use a focus for more energy, no wonder people pick Swords.

Triple digits on default attack? Hardly. 59.4 max, and 37.8 average.