Curse

Cha0ticGoblin · May 08, 2007, 10:01 AM // 10:01

Greetings to all Warrior...

I have recently purchased GW and a copy of Factions (Nightfall will follow in a few days) so forgive me for any noobish questions I might have.

First of all, let me say that I have always played the Warrior class in all the mmo's I've played, and I love it. My main question is how much the class differs in GW from many other games. From the posts I've read in the forums ppl seem to love their Warrior class but it seems that there are alot of bashing on the class from diffrent directions since it seems there are alot of Warriors out there that dont know how to play the class.

Any advice for a new player? What should I think about when it comes to PvE, which I'll play for a while to become accustomed to the game. I've read that you can choose 2 professions and one that seems popular is War/Mo. Is it still viable or should I try something else for a first char?

Well..any advice is much appreciated and I hope I'll have a blast in the game.
Hope to see some of you in-game. //Cheers

Stormlord Alex · May 08, 2007, 10:16 AM // 10:16

Righty-O.

First and foremost, in GW, unlike other MMOs, (good) Warriors generally don't tank. The aggro system is too iffy, and we lack a 'taunt' type skill to get foes to aggro on us. Besides, there's only a few (really high-end) places were you need to have a warrior take the hits, everywhere else is faster if the warrior kills stuff.
To this end, warriors should focus on maximising their damage - take some attack skills (try to include a skill that causes Deep Wound, the 20% health loss is a killer), throw into this a stance such as Flurry [skill]Flurry[/skill] to increase your attack speed (often referred to as an 'IAS) and you're well on your way to becoming a powerful damage dealer.

On secondary proffession, I generally stick to skills that require no attribute-point investment that help me cover areas of weakness, such as skills to remove conditions or remove enemy enchantments.
In factions, I'd personally recommend either /Monk - to remove conditions, hexes, and give you a reuseable ressurection spell, or /Assassin - for the speed buff Dash [skill]Dash[/skill] and condition removal, Signet of Malice [skill]Signet of Malice[/skill]. As you become better at the game, and maybe try your hand at PvP, /A also gives you access to a variety of teleportation skills. Remember also that, later on, you can freely change your secondary depending on what specific skills you need for a mission.
And, I feel it is my duty to say...
DO NOT USE HEALING PRAYERS! They suck hard as a warrior, [skill]Healing Signet[/skill] is better. Remember this and you're already better than ~90% of PvE W/Mo

Alex the Great · May 08, 2007, 10:29 AM // 10:29

use mending touch from nf is u go w/mo

and no other monk skills pls

Div · May 08, 2007, 10:37 AM // 10:37

If you want to go W/Mo, only use mending touch, rebirth, and maybe smite hex or bane signet as your monk skills. Don't bother taking other stuff in healing prayers/protection prayers.

Focus on one weapon attribute, and try to balance your skillbar so you have ~4 damage skills (maybe including 1 increase attack speed skill like tiger stance) 1 run-type skill (enraging charge, sprint, dash), 2 utility (heal sig, mending touch, sig of malice, defensive stances), and 1 resurrection skill (rez sig or rebirth).

Remember not to run too far from your monks if you're in a PUG. Also, that balance of skills allows you to do decent damage while having good survivability when being in the front and soaking up monster damage. For starters, I'd go with an axe or sword, since that way you get a shield to provide more defense.

A good bar would look like this:
(weapon skill)
(weapon skill)
(weapon skill)
Tiger stance
Enraging charge
Mending touch
Shield bash
Rebirth

For axe, run something like cleave, dismember, penetrating chop. For sword, run something like crippling slash, gash, sun and moon slash.

You can run something like 12 (+runes) weapon mastery (axe or sword), 11 (+minor rune) strength, 6 protection prayers.

Cha0ticGoblin · May 08, 2007, 10:47 AM // 10:47

Thank you all for the quick response. Any advice is always thankfully recived. Another questions then. If I choose to play PvE at first then later move on more and more to PvP, should I stil learn War/Mo or go in an diffrent direction from the start...or stick to it until I know the game, then later on as you said change it on a later occasion?

Lurid · May 08, 2007, 12:38 PM // 12:38

In PvE your secondary profession doesn't matter as much, generally. As unless you are farming a specific area, and want a specific build most PvE monsters aren't strong enough to really matter. For the most part even horrendous builds can work decently in PvE, however it is a good idea to start from a good base perspective.

For the most part Warriors run high attributes in their primary weapon (no secondary weapon attributes, stick with one per build) usually 13 - 16 in ranks in that attribute, then a good deal (myself included) prefer Tactics for the self heal and various other buffs. Thus I generally run high weapon mastery, moderate to high tactics, and then on occasion i'll dump some points into the other attribute line..say something from my secondary profession.

Notable examples:

/R - Speed Buffs, Antidote Signet, Apply Poison, Running Skills, Etc...
/A - Speed Buffs, Attack Buffs, Malice Sig, Higher Criticals, Self Heal, Etc...
/Ele - Shock, Speed Buffs, Conjure Element, Defense Buffs, Etc....
/Mo - Mending Touch, Hard Res, Etc...

There are more, but as Alex put it, usually skills that cover a Warriors weakness without having to put too many points into a secondary attribute line, or offer a noticeable advantage in Damage Per Second (DPS) or defense. Warriors lack efficient removal of hexes and / or conditions (with the exception of like one NF skill iirc), therefore things like condition removal are often targeted by Warriors as a weak point.

clawofcrimson · May 08, 2007, 03:45 PM // 15:45

{NOTE}

Most of the comments and suggestions that you see on these forums are helping players who 'already' have a level 20 character. Keep that in mind if you are a noob with a level 6 war.

[card]Healing signet[/card] on a warrior with starter armour is typically a bad idea (because it is still -40al) if the enemies are a higher level than you... thats why skills like [card]mending[/card] are popular. While they are quite pitiful on a level 20... lower level/armour characters may find them usefull.

warriors have a starting armour of 25 +20 vs physical... so ....

Lets say an enemy hits you with 30 fire damage... here would be the results:

55 damage without healing signet activating.

110 damage with healing signet activating.

So unless you are level 20, the downside to healing signet can be a killer if you have starter armour and low level/health.

iridescentfyre · May 08, 2007, 06:05 PM // 18:05

Im unconvinced that tanking is dead in Guild Wars—at least in PvE. If you can learn to get a good feel for body-blocking, mobs WILL attack you and cluster up to be nuked. The aggro can be a little shaky at times and it should not be relied upon, but its a matter of using terrain and body-blocking to your advantage.

For the OP who may not know what I'm talking about, body blocking involves getting between your team's backline casters and the enemies and making it difficult for them to get back there. Obviously this doesnt differ much from other games, but it works in GW because the AI will attack you if it can't find easy pathing to the soft targets. You can use terrain to your advantage by having the casters get around a corner (they can cast most spells through walls, but not attack), and positioning yourself slightly in front. The pathing the mobs follow will try to go directly to the casters, which means they will approach as close to the wall as the game engine will allow them to, and if you're in the way it will stop them most of the time. Since you're an easier target, they'll usually go for you.

This is also slightly relevant in PvP, as long as you can make enough of an obstacle of yourself. True that if the opponent has any PvP experience, they'll avoid Warriors like the plague, but a smart warrior can limit their options such that they have to kill you to to get to your casters. Crippling skills and other snares also help make you a more inviting target—its better than just hobbling along taking Critical hits in the back. Mobility is a key aspect of PvP though, so tanking skills like Dolyak Signet and Armor of Earth that are great in PvE slow you down too much in PvP and will probably just hinder your ability to tank.

Halmyr · May 09, 2007, 12:07 AM // 00:07

Here are some none skill related tips

-Always keep your party windows open, its easy to forget your team mate in th middle of battle, just keeping your party window helps you keep aware of your surrounding.

-Use the terrain to your advantage, there are many spots were you and a fellow warrior can easily body blocks the enemy and let your elementist nuke the hell out of everything.

-Control your leeroing, be ahead of your party, but not far enough to be out of reach of your healer, just enough so you can let those rare few enemy cast meteor shower on you (one of the more powerfull elementist spell).

Also when you do that you can try to put your self in the way of melee enemies, sometimes enemy will stop, and start attacking you, lets say the group compose of 1 or 2 melee, go ahead and tank them, but if there 3-4 melee and you only get one, just go ahead and kill the squishies.

-In PvE, this is my general order for killing enemys

1) monk/mesmer
2) elemental/necro
3)ranger/paragon
4)warrior/dervish/assasin

you'l have to learn enemy's, because smetimes you'l have a some enemy with more priority.

-Finaly, I personaly enjoy a warrior/mesmer because of elemental and physical resistance, both mesmer stance, +40 armor( elemental/physical) -20 armor(physical/elemental). So elemental resistance increase elemantal defence but reduce physical and vice versa. to counter that I also use "Watch your self" which increase my armor by 20 at 11 tactic.

With that I can get a god mixture of defence and offence.

but over all it comes to you and what still of play you like

hope this helps a bit

Cha0ticGoblin · May 09, 2007, 07:37 AM // 07:37

Again...thank you all for the response, I must say I already like the community here =)

Utaku · May 09, 2007, 10:17 AM // 10:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Erkki

As a side notice, for the love of God, don't use Frenzy

You'll attack faster, aye, but also take double damage, making the life of your monks a living hell.

Frenzy owns.

Use Frenzy but bring a cancel stance if you happen to take damage, or if you need to heal with healing signet.
A cancel stance is a stance you use to cancel frenzy as you can only use one stance at a time.

The shorter the recharge, the better.
[skill]dash[/skill] is nice, but [skill]pious haste[/skill] is better in that role.

Stormlord Alex · May 09, 2007, 03:41 PM // 15:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Erkki

As a side notice, for the love of God, learn to use Frenzy effectively when you get some more experience with a warrior.

Fix'd
Frenzy is among the most effective and versatile warrior skills out there (and that IS saying something).
However... Frenzy is *not* a skill I'd recommend to a newbie though, stick with Flail or Flurry until you feel confident.
Learning to Frenzy is one of the most important warrior skills, IMO (more notably for PvP)

Yes, I frenzy regularly in PvE. All it takes is some skill, and knowledge of the AI. Plus Flail's for pussies ^^

Halmyr · May 09, 2007, 04:55 PM // 16:55

Aye, frenzy is a very risky skill, personaly I dont use it, but in the hands of some one who knows how to use it propely, it can be very effective.

Experiment with different stance, attacks, and weapons and find what suits you.

All the three weapons have different con's and pro's try them all out, see what you like more, done restric your self to one weapon, I carry multiple weapon of each kind with different stats. Personaly I enjoy the axe, but in second the hammer.

qvtkc · May 09, 2007, 07:47 PM // 19:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stormlord Alex

Yes, I frenzy regularly in PvE. All it takes is some skill, and knowledge of the AI. Plus Flail's for pussies ^^

Don't fool yourself. Frenzying safely in PvE takes very little skill. It's a piece of cake for a warrior to shake off aggro since you have tons of armor compared to others.

I consider it more skilful to get agro, keep it and still do damage.

iridescentfyre · May 10, 2007, 12:31 AM // 00:31

As you can see cha0tic, Frenzy is a rather controversial skill

I'm pretty sure Frenzy is one of the first skills you receive as a warrior in any of the three campaigns, so its pretty relevant for you to understand it.

As with anything, knowing when and when not to use it are all-important. For a skill that causes you to take double damage (but causes your target to take 33% more, in effect), this is even more important. Frenzy is much more commonly used in PvP, sometimes to great effect and sometimes it just means a spectacularly fast death for the warrior. For a new player, my advice would be to avoid Frenzy until you feel you have a good handle on the game. All of the increased attack speed skills have a downside to keep them balanced (i.e. a movement speed debuff, high recharge time, disabling your other skills, taking up your Elite slot, etc.). Frenzy has the best recharge time to allow it to be spammed constantly, but to counter that, its also got the worst downside. If you can mitigate that, its awesome. But if you can't, you're a rez waiting to happen.

Effigy · May 10, 2007, 01:15 AM // 01:15

Frenzy+Protective Spirit is key.

Before you get any ideas, though, PS comes from a monk in your party. Don't bring PS on your warrior's skillbar, just bring a decent monk.

Risa · May 11, 2007, 10:56 PM // 22:56

Tips for a fellow Warrior...
1-In more difficult missions in the game, you'll want to bring a ranged weapon (Preferably, a longbow) to pull groups of enemies to your party, instead of charging into them. Most groups wont expect you to have the common sense to do this, however. And if you choose not to bring one, that's perfectly acceptable.
2-Although, I really, really hate this cliche...There is no "I" in team. It can be tempting to charge at your foes without any reguard for your fellow party members. Their energy will often take longer than yours to regenerate, and although you don't want to waste adrenaline, it's best to make sure your party is going to be aware if you decide to go and attack a group of foes. Work with your group to get the job done. Unlike in other MMOs, teamwork is a huge factor in how you play Guild Wars.
3-Feel free to choose Monk as your secondary. It has convenient skills, such as Mending Touch (Although this is a Nightfall skill, which you don't have) and a "hard" res. (resurrection that can be re-used in a mission) The downside to the monk secondary is the common "Wammo" (W/Mo) stereotype. You will receive little credibility to the groups your in with the monk secondary. I'd have to recomend the Assassin class for skills such as [skill]Dash[/skill] and [skill]Signet Of Malice[/skill] along with a shadow-stepping skill such as [skill]Death's Charge[/skill]

Also: There has been a lot of discussion about the skill Frenzy. I would strongly recomend against you using this skill as a beginner. And even if you're experienced, monks will be annoyed when they click on you to heal you and they see you've used Frenzy.

I hope I gave some useful advice.