Curse

Winterclaw · Jul 30, 2009, 04:18 AM // 04:18

5 Elites For Every New Warrior

Welcome to the wild, wonderful world of Warriors. If you are reading this, I hope that you are of an open mind to learn about your chosen craft. One of the most important aspects about Guild Wars is your elite skill choice.

The elite skills are the ones with a gold border around them and you can only equip one of them. Because you can only equip one at a time, that is what makes them special. They are the skills that you build your skill bar and party composition around. Because of this, the right elite can make or break your build and either help or your party.

One thing that should be noted is that these skills are listed for their general PvE value. If you plan on PvP or farming, you should probably look into a different set of skills. So below I’ve listed what I consider to be generally the 5 best ones you can start off with as a Warrior. This doesn’t mean they are the only ones or that you can’t use other skills at the right times, but they all have use and value. I kept the number to 5 mostly to start off small and allow you the player a good core of skills to focus on in the beginning to learn the craft. From there you can start exploring the other elites.

To put it simply, at the time of this writing these 5 are the most fundamental tools in your tool box.

Another thing I’d like to express is that I’m not going to give you an entire build or delve into all the things you need to know about being a Warrior. Marty has a nice primer for you to peruse if you haven’t already and I really suggest you read it. I will however, where appropriate, include a few other skills to show how and why these elite are good.

The Big Duo
These are probably the two best elites you can pick up, mostly because they both are powerful and help your party out a ton. If you have two warriors in your party, have one take each and life will be a lot easier. However they both have a small drawback: neither are core. That means each one is limited to players who have the campaign that has them. Another problem is because they are the best, people probably will expect you to use only these two, which can get boring.

Dragon Slash – Factions
Dragon Slash (DS) is good in PvE for one reason: Save Yourselves (SY). SY is a nifty pve skill that gives all your other party members +100 AL. This is good because mob AI usually targets the lowest AL person first. That would be you. That also means because all the mobs are focusing on one person in the party, you, your monks only have to focus their energies on keeping one person alive, which is a lot easier for them. With proper agro control, you’ve just made your party’s life a whole lot easier.

Rumor has it that For Greater Justice helps this skill out by letting you spam damage (spamy damy) and adding Brawling Headbutt and Steelfang Slash to your bar means you can get a lot of knockdowns as well as letting you reuse DS again real quick.

Earth Shaker – Prophecies
Okay, all the little mobs are around you. Better yet they are around the DS guy. One easy way to stop them from running away or attacking is to knock ‘em all down. With Earth Shaker (ES) you can. Knockdown (KD) is useful because for a two second (3 seconds with stonefist gauntlets, your Warrior is wearing them right) you’ve stopped the surrounding mobs from attacking, casting, or kiting… You’ve introduced a two second pause button for all the enemies you hit with this. Add in another KD or two and you can keep one foe on his back until you’ve finished him off.

Useful, no?

The Trio of Victorio
The next three skills are all useful skills that you can bring along to help you kill stuff faster and are nice when you get sick of playing the same two builds all the time. Two of them also have the advantage of being core skills which any warrior can get.

Hundred Blades – Core
There was a time when this was a bad skill but not anymore. Now it gives you extra damge to every mob around you and if you are lucky enough to have Sun and Moon Slash and/or Whirlwind Attack, you can crank out a lot of AoE damage. Any Warrior can get it, but you’d need factions and nightfall to get the most out of it.

Warrior’s Endurance – Prophecies
This skill lets you use Power Attack on recharge to pump out ton of damage. It also works with any melee weapon type so you can use it with your favorite weapon. It's also good for dagger and scythe builds to give you the energy you need to run them

Cleave – Core
While not as great as the other 4, damage is the king of PvE and this little skill lets you spamy damy. Plus any Warrior can get it.

Final Thoughts
Well, those are the 5 elite skills. Some people might claim other skills are better and some other elites do find plenty of use on a Warrior’s bar in PvE, or ones you pick up until you can get something better, but the 5 I mentioned are good enough to get you started in your PvE career. There are other skills you need to get if you plan to PvP or to farm, but those are left for another discussion.

There’s also another important thing for you to learn from these 5 elites. 4 of them share something important in common. If you don’t see it at once, reread all the skills and what I’ve said about them.

With all the skills I listed except for Earth Shaker, they let you pump out damage (DS needs other skills to help it do this but still). This is important for a Warrior because in Guild Wars a Warrior is someone who takes the fight to the enemy and kills stuff. Even ES is helps out because for 2 seconds, the mobs around you aren’t running away, or fighting back, or casting which makes it easier to kill them all.

You are a Warrior, it’s your job to be the first person in there to kill stuff.

Some people like to think of Warriors as tanks, but what is a tank in the real world? Yes it is a vehicle with a lot of armor, but that armor is only there to help the tank’s real purpose on the battlefield: to get into the enemy’s face and use its big gun to kill stuff with. It’s the same in GW, you do have armor, but it’s there only to help you get to the bad guy and stabbity his face with your sword… or whatever weapon you are using. So your mantra as a Warrior needs to be damage first.

-Winterclaw

PS. Wark.

deluxe · Jul 30, 2009, 05:15 AM // 05:15

After 4 years of playing I think you should know a knockdown is 2 seconds standard, increased to 3 with stonefist.

snaek · Jul 30, 2009, 05:30 AM // 05:30

i'd run wars endurance or triple chop over cleave if axe

fenix · Jul 30, 2009, 05:34 AM // 05:34

Excellent choice of elites, except Cleave. It sucks pretty bad. I'd do Primal Rage over Cleave, better damage output.

KD on Earth Shaker is 2s without stonefist, 3s with.

Kerwyn Nasilan · Jul 30, 2009, 05:38 AM // 05:38

Dragon Slash- SY Spam. with KD from headbutt, and massive damage from DS itself, AMAZING GO CAP THIS SHIT NAO!
EarthShaker- Never was a fan of it but its effectiveness with proper aggro is amazing
100 Blades- A really fun skill when combined with Whirlwind, Sun and Moon, and PvE skills like "By Ural's Hammer"
Warriors Endurance- Easily my favorite elite atm. Works very well with Axe imo put Power Attack, Cyclone, and Dismember combined with Asuran Scan and you have the perfect War counterpart to Discordway and nice damage.
Cleave- Don't use it, pretty boring elite IMO.

YunSooJin · Jul 30, 2009, 05:44 AM // 05:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by fenix

Excellent choice of elites, except Cleave. It sucks pretty bad. I'd do Primal Rage over Cleave, better damage output.

KD on Earth Shaker is 2s without stonefist, 3s with.

when I want IAS underburdened by move redux I just go with defy pain and frenzy... I don't really see what the point of primal rage is, since I dont really notice monsters kiting from me all that much.

snaek · Jul 30, 2009, 05:45 AM // 05:45

primal rage is really only good in pvp...the ims is fairly irrelevant in pve

fenix · Jul 30, 2009, 05:51 AM // 05:51

No, I'm not saying that Primal is amazing, but that I'd prefer it over Cleave. I should have used a terrible skill to compare, but in essence I'm simply saying that Cleave isn't worth the elite spot.

Warrior elites aren't that spectacular outside of the main 4 in PvE anyway, but there are certainly better choices than Cleave. It's simply not worth it.

laksa and curry · Jul 30, 2009, 05:59 AM // 05:59

I agree with TS over skills but I would have added triple chop inside. Thank you for the information it was good.

I would not have rated the skills and classified them as " big 2" and such. This may create misconception that warriors who only be running those 2 builds. esp for DS+SY combi.

So many people request for warriors to run "godmode" but so few are decent enough to stick within shout range. Whats the use if one can spam +100 ar when ppl choose to scatter?

**Marty Silverblade** · Jul 30, 2009, 06:12 AM // 06:12

I agree with the whole Cleave thing. It's a decent enough skill, it just doesn't stand up to the other elites. Seriously, have you ever loaded ES, DS, or HB (possibly other things) and thought 'hey, this would be a good time to take Cleave!'? I don't think so. It doesn't deserve to be as highly regarded as the other elites. It's simply unremarkable.

Shrimz · Jul 30, 2009, 06:17 AM // 06:17

I really need to try Earth Shaker lol. I used to run cleave for axe but that was before I got WE. Dslash is alright but i like HB better but then again, i need SY lol.

Never really used triple chop because Hundred blades is better AOE

Gennadios · Jul 30, 2009, 06:58 AM // 06:58

Dragon Slash: You omitted to mention Sun+Moon slash when discussing DS, especially with regards to a SY! build. It may be a decent skill on it's own, but S+M can ensure near unbroken coverage of SY! for the entire duration of FGJ. I'd also almost always recommend using the Paragon skill Enduring Harmony with FGJ, as it'll increase adrenal feueled spammabe by a whopping 10 seconds.

Warrior's Endurance Should stress that its main use is primarily with Daggers/Scythes, which do not have adrenal skills. Sure it can be used with warr weapons, but there is enough variety of adrenal skills that the elite slot can be put to way better use.

Defy Pain <- Left this out, sure, there's no rage system and you'll likely be the last target in any encounter, but it's a great help in situations where abusing terrain features or enemy travel range can leave you completely surrounded by mobs for the nukes to tear appart while you're sitting in place spamming Defy/Endure Pain, Dolyak Sig, and lion's comfort. This is usually a mainstay on warriors when my guild does any of the Slaver's Exile bosses in HM.

Bristlebane · Jul 30, 2009, 07:16 AM // 07:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Winterclaw

Warrior’s Endurance – Prophecies
This skill lets you use Power Attack on recharge to pump out ton of damage. It also works with any weapon type so you can use it with your favorite weapon.

Sorry, Warrior's Endurance will only work with melee weapons. So you can't use a bow or a spear. Otherwise nice guide, just needs a bit tweaking but you're off to a good start :-)

Bobby2 · Jul 30, 2009, 11:42 AM // 11:42

Charge!

Running from mob to mob can be soooo tedious

Winterclaw · Jul 30, 2009, 05:36 PM // 17:36

About ES- shows you how often I use hammers.

About Cleave, I accept is isn't great so yeah that was a tough one for me. I was thinking about evicerate, triple chop, or whirling axe but I wanted a second core skill. Part of my reasoning for this guide was to try and keep it accessible to as many players as possible so with two core skills, everyone should at least have an either/or choice if they don't want to play 100 blades. Plus it is pretty easy to use because you can spam it on recharge in pve.

PR is good but not quite as good as the pre-nerf version because you can't stance dance with it like before.

I didn't choose charge because it is tactics and I didn't want to encourage people to go into tactics if they are just starting out.

I didn't choose Defy Pain because tanking is bad. I don't want newer people to the game to think of warriors as meat-shields.

Fenix mentioned there are only 4 main pve elites, so if you guys want I could remove cleave from the list altogether and leave it as four skills.

Arkantos · Jul 30, 2009, 06:22 PM // 18:22

Quote:

Defy Pain <- Left this out, sure, there's no rage system and you'll likely be the last target in any encounter, but it's a great help in situations where abusing terrain features or enemy travel range can leave you completely surrounded by mobs for the nukes to tear appart while you're sitting in place spamming Defy/Endure Pain, Dolyak Sig, and lion's comfort. This is usually a mainstay on warriors when my guild does any of the Slaver's Exile bosses in HM.

Defy Pain is for warriors that overextend and have terrible monks, or for warriors who want to screw around. It's definitely not regarded as one of the best warrior elites.

Lishy · Jul 30, 2009, 07:18 PM // 19:18

Cleave is simply an adrenaline based, but watered down version of Power Attack. It's terrible and Eviscrate is better all-around.
You should write about Triple Chop > Whirlwind Attack > Cyclone Axe

Gennadios · Jul 30, 2009, 08:10 PM // 20:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arkantos

Defy Pain is for warriors that overextend and have terrible monks, or for warriors who want to screw around. It's definitely not regarded as one of the best warrior elites.

Define "best." There are a total of 36 warrior elites and only 5 have been mentioned. Even if it's the 10th best skill, there are still 26 worse skills to be had.

Even if it's not used all that often in a party setting, it's still a great utility skill to have and every warrior should have it available along with the other 5.

It's not a damage dealing skill, but there is very little incentive to bring warrs along for anything nowadays, any utility skill beyond damage dealing they may have should be welcome.

Bobby2 · Jul 30, 2009, 09:01 PM // 21:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kain Fz

Cleave is simply an adrenaline based, but watered down version of Power Attack. It's terrible and Eviscrate is better all-around.
You should write about Triple Chop > Whirlwind Attack > Cyclone Axe

Triple Chop is quite terrible.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gennadios

Define "best." There are a total of 36 warrior elites and only 5 have been mentioned. Even if it's the 10th best skill, there are still 26 worse skills to be had.

Even if it's not used all that often in a party setting, it's still a great utility skill to have and every warrior should have it available along with the other 5.

It's not a damage dealing skill, but there is very little incentive to bring warrs along for anything nowadays, any utility skill beyond damage dealing they may have should be welcome.

As suggested before, make a QQthread about why everyone scorns you for using Defy Pain.

/scorn

Lishy · Jul 30, 2009, 09:11 PM // 21:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bobby2

Triple Chop is quite terrible.

Enlighten me. AoE axe builds looks good on paper, especially when paired with SY.