Curse

Syndren · Jul 21, 2006, 06:12 AM // 06:12

Hi, this is my prot warrior build. I think its somewhat unique and not what people usually use, but I may be wrong :P.
Original Article:
Original
Its old so there are some revisions:
Original Article:

Quote:

Opening words:

This is the beginning of a weekly gwtavern.net thing where someone from the gwtavern types up an article on character builds. This week I am covering the topic of the common W/Mo but taking a little unconventional route about it. This will be a Protection Warrior... its not meant to be a team helper... but more like the team pillar. This is great for solo, teams, and PvP (well there is one change for a PvP build... but I'll get to that later). You may not agree with what I say here but I am just giving my view about how a W/Mo build should be approached. For my first article let me cover some details about what type of player I am, decisions on a build, and some things I believe to be a misconception with W/Mo.

What type of player am I?

For the warrior I am usually a tactics user, I also prefer the sword out of the three avaliable warrior weapon types.

Before you start...

This is the place where usually anyone in thier right mind would say to come up with a plan first, and then figure out how you are going to achieve that plan, then implement it. However, since this is a game, I have the liberity to say this: Just jump right in, experiment with what you have. You'll end up liking something or just starting over a new character. Due to Guild Wars' incredible character flexibility usually this won't happen. Play around with your character and find your niche.

Misconceptions about W/Mo

Just this section I would like to clear up some misconceptions about HOW a W/Mo should be built.

Mending- You don't need this at all! This is for players who have a clear view about how to make thier builds... I would not recommend this to a player who uses more than 2 energy skills (including mending) I cannot stress enough that warriors do not have enough energy and energy regen... if you take away one energy regen tick you are slowing down your energy, and your W/Mo, as a whole.

Healing Breeze- This is a good skill but remeber that it is also not a requirement. It is nice to have a 5+ energy regen but remeber that it only lasts 10 seconds and that it takes 10 energy. There are ways to get around the cost, or to lessen the blow of that cost..but I'll mention that in another article... the focus of this article is for the protection warrior.

Final Thrust- This is not a need. Final Thrust is a good thing to have but remeber that it takes alot of adrenl. put into your skill slot with caution.

The Build

I'll just jump right in to giving you the good stuff then explain it.
Sever Artery/ Gash / Final Thrust / Bonnetti's Defense / Watch Yourself (You can switch this for rez however) / Shielding Hands / Shield of Regeneration / Healing Signet

You want to split this up nice and evenly in a 11,10,10 attribute distribution.

Severy Artery and Gash - This is a common little combo that works so well for DoT and finishing off a running away player

Final Thrust - Just to give you that little edge when you know you can finish them off soon and have nothing to lose.

Bonnetti's Defense - You'll notice that there are alot of energy using skills. This is when you can use Bonnetti's Defense to get that energy back. Most effective when you are:

a) Low on health and use this to block attacks and use heal sig (when you use heal sig the bonnetti's defense doesn't wear off)

b) Low on energy and just used shield of regen. Build up your adrenl., health and energy.

c) Low on energy. Use this to build up the adrenl. and energy.

Watch yourself - gives a nice bonus to your teammates and yourself. If you use this skill with shielding hands you usually get damage reduced to zero.

Shielding hands - Low energy cost, great defense, at 10 skill points into protection prayers it reduces damage by 13! Usually reduces damage to zero when you use it with Watch Yourself or Shield of Regen.

Shield of Regeneration - +40 armour, +5hp regen, for 9 seconds (at 10 skill points) enough said ;p

Healing signet - heal me up scotty!

Ending

So here is the skill list:
Sever, Gash, Final Thrust (these first three can be changed with any sword skill), Riposte/Watch Yourself/Res, Shielding Hands, Shield of Regen/Mark of Protection, Heal Sig.
Anyways this build is tried and true

Lasted from the early stages of GW all the way till now

. Works well in pvp, but works wonders in PvE. I'll let you figure out attribute arrangement

. Warning if you use this for pvp - Some angry people who couldn't beat me 4v1 have been called a griever build... I do not think its a griever build since in a sense it acts like a regular paladin build... but better.

jummeth · Jul 22, 2006, 11:40 PM // 23:40

The 4 people that couldn't beat you were noobs.

It may work in PvE, although the enchants you use may be a problem. However, using ripostes in PvP is just asking to be ignored. With your 11,10,10 distribution, you are missing the most important part of the warrior... the ability to do *damage*.

Never... just never take riposte for any PvP. Reasons being, it only works for melee (once), and with the investment in Tactics (to make it worthwhile) your weapon mastery suffers.

Its not a griever build, cos I certainly don't think its possible to grieve with this build. Since you can't do much damage, people will just ignore you until you are by yourself. Noting that you lack res-signet also (cardinal sin), after that, all they have to do is attack you when MoP or just put degen on you.

There are too many ways to bring down a warrior like this, its not even worth mentioning.

PvE, I wonder how much shatters you get, anywhere in cantha. There is so many anti enchant.. although AI is stupid, so you might get away with it.

Nice try, sorry to be harsh but its a pretty poor build.

Syndren · Jul 23, 2006, 12:06 AM // 00:06

Its fine if you say its a pretty poor build. It works wonders for me anyways >.>
Everyone is entitled to thier opinions

EDIT: After awhile I decided I should probably defend my build. Comments below are not meant to be mean nor aggresive.

Quote:

The 4 people that couldn't beat you were noobs.

It may work in PvE, although the enchants you use may be a problem. However, using ripostes in PvP is just asking to be ignored. With your 11,10,10 distribution, you are missing the most important part of the warrior... the ability to do *damage*.

Never... just never take riposte for any PvP. Reasons being, it only works for melee (once), and with the investment in Tactics (to make it worthwhile) your weapon mastery suffers.

Its not a griever build, cos I certainly don't think its possible to grieve with this build. Since you can't do much damage, people will just ignore you until you are by yourself. Noting that you lack res-signet also (cardinal sin), after that, all they have to do is attack you when MoP or just put degen on you.

There are too many ways to bring down a warrior like this, its not even worth mentioning.

PvE, I wonder how much shatters you get, anywhere in cantha. There is so many anti enchant.. although AI is stupid, so you might get away with it.

Nice try, sorry to be harsh but its a pretty poor build.

First off, I welcome critique in the form of healthly constructive criticism. Your reply was just plain negative. If you want to say something negative then please follow up with room for improvement.

When you mention shatter being a weakness to my build to tell the truth its the weakness of any standard w/mo build. Usually warrior cannot afford to use one time non enchanting healing spells like other professions - The energy restriction is far too great. If you look at most of the w/mo builds that actually use the monk side, they are usually: mending + healing breeze + (sometimes healing hands)... basically the prebuilt paladin. So your basically saying that most w/mo are bad (Infact most are since they think that a w/mo can _only_ be run with these skills).
There are anti builds for all builds. I can mention that a mesmer has shatter, interrupt, and images of remorse (this mesmer build is warrior shut down) which can defeat my warrior - therefore my warrior build is 'a pretty poor build'. With this logic I can also say that touch rangers suck because I can use rigor mortis on them; IWay sucks because I can just use shield stance; Spikers suck because I can use protective spirit; Necros suck because I can interrupt them; Anti-spell casters suck because there is a warrior, etc, etc. There is always an anti build for any build so using the logic that they can shatter my enchantments or anti my enchantments is only circumstantial. There is always a chance someone just so happens to have the anti of my build. Yes its a game of skill, but there is also luck involved.

The ability to do damage is also not sacrificed in this build. Strength adds to armour penetration - it does not say that my sword doesn't do 15-22 anymore, does it? If you compare to a R/W sworder, my damage output is about the same. If you really want to compare exactly though my attribute distribution atm is (with runes) 10 prot, 2str, 12sword, 12tactics. Every warrior isn't always a strength warrior. I do not see where you are going with this 'missing the important part of the warrior' if you look at the skill lineup - sever, gash, final thrust - you can see, degen + max hp takeaway + huge bonus damage. My build still does a great deal amount of damage to spell casters, and warriors alike.

When is the warrior ever the first person to target? Against a team of W, E, N, Mo who would you start attacking first? You are now arguing human nature and thier tendency. If you look at it this way then for every warrior build your opponents will not attack you first.

If you looked at the skill list and actually read it and considered it then you would have noticed this:
--Riposte/Watch Yourself/Res
This means that if you are unhappy with riposte you can then change it with res if you feel like it. I did not set in stone that you had to use riposte.
--Shielding Hands
MoP (which I assume means mark of pain) damage output is greatly reduced with shielding hands.

If you want to talk in anti then let me talk about my build in anti:
Sever, Gash, Final Thrust - Anti anything that lives
Riposte - Anti- melee
Bonetti Defense - Anti-Ranged, melee, and recharges energy
Shielding Hands - Anti-spike, damage, and even works against shatter
Shield of Regen - Anti-degen, Anti-armour drain (gives +40 armour)
Healing Signet - Anti-dying, also combos with shield of regen (since it gives -40 armour)

This build is an attempt to stray away from the usual w/mo build which is only healing and such. This build has been tried for many many months now, it is not something that I just came up with after a day of sitting around. The build is credible

Please read the article carefully then I implore you to actually try out the build (not a lame attempt once then complain) before making a negative post such as that. If you have an issue with a skill then suggest something else for the build. If you just say "its just bad" then it shows the inflexibility in your line of thinking. An opened mind is needed when considering builds. Something that does not suit your personal preference is by no means bad. By blaming the players and the AI when my build actually does work against both is a relatively weaker arguement. Please do reply with a little more substance, I look forward with chatting to you

Again, this reply is by no means meant to be offensive to anyone (in particular the person whom replied)

Don Zardeone · Jul 23, 2006, 10:32 AM // 10:32

I think, when he said "important part" about a warrior... was the lack of a superiour swordsmanship rune.

You don't really do damage with 11, or 12 in swords.
And like you said yourself, an R/W has the same damagepotential.

If you want to do openminded dunno weird stuff, you can reverse the profession to Mo/W with the exact same skills. Damage will be exactly the same except you have more energy for less defense and your riposte may actually have a point... dunno.

Afaik, warriors usually think like this: kill something before it kills me.
If your offense is strong enough then you'll decrease the need for defense.
This build seems to be bigtime defense?

Also, your "energy management" seems to bonettis defense, which requires you to be hit. Riposte requires you to be hit too.
Warriors are the last to get hit... and once you're the last to die, you'll eventually die.

Afaik, this build can annoy, like a buzzing fly, but it can't really kill....

I mean, your only real offense is sever, gash and final.
Sever and gash on their own is deepwound+6hp per sec degen....
It usually takes more than a full minute for that to kill someone who is running away... if he doesn't remove the conditions or heals himself that is...

With low swordsmanship, your eh autoattack..damage is eh, meh.

Needs more powah

Syndren · Jul 23, 2006, 10:45 AM // 10:45

In the build I mentioned above I mentioned nothing of runes, so if there is a need for a superior rune then the player can add it.

If you wish you can change it to Mo/W but you lose the ability to use runes if you want (from minor to sup.) you also lose the absorption rune.

Indeed this build is more defense then offense, it has the chance to switch from defensive warrior, to a support role if needed to be.

Eg) You cast some prot spells on the people with aggro/opponents. Personally I don't mind switching quickly to a yakslapper to lay some healing/prot on a party member if I don't have any attention.

If you are being under attack Bonnetti works great for energy regen (when your attacked you need it). However if your not geting hit then I don't see what is wrong if you just use a heal sig. :P Using a staff with your prot spells when your not attacked also increases your energy greatly.

PvP the damage varies - if its a spellcaster (low AL) then you are still able to apply a good amount of damage to them to give them pressure. If its against another warrior then the damage is decreased - yes but then you depend on the degen to do its work. If the warrior starts using a heal sig then final thrust can come in play. Really though, you can change those three skills for anything you think is more suitable. Even though I suggest adr. based ones for those three. Assuming you have 11 sword + sup sword rune.. that brings up to 14 sword if you really want.

Thanks for the reply

EDIT: btw yes I realise its the reverse approach to what most warriors think in builds. My line of reasoning is that not to depend on other people to achieve your goal (always need monk healing). In most battles if you are being attacked (as a warrior) then that means more than one person is fighting you. If you just kill one person then you have to think about the other 1-2 people out there to get you. To me at least, the mindset of high offense and low defense is very short term thinking. Also to rely on other people to make you survive to me is a very risky and major flaw in a build, esp. if you are talking about RA where every team is random. As a side note: Most people don't notice a warrior in the back switching to support for the monk :P. Even if they start attacking you, you'll be well equipped.

jummeth · Jul 23, 2006, 10:47 AM // 10:47

I tell it exactly how it will happen.

With your low sword mastery, you simply cannot output even a fraction of what a normal warrior can do. That is a big problem. Higher sword mastery give higher base damage, higher crit damage and higher crit chance... go figure.

In PvP environment, there isn't a "hold agro while squishies kill" since people are not stupid. Samely I call any defensive stance when in any arenas. Why? because it means that we can ignore that warrior and concentrate all the warrior hate to somebody that can really hurt us.

The problem in your build is that its too passive. You cannot rely on your enemy to do something that will directly hinder them, therefore, you cannot expect your ripostes to work more than once or twice.

If anybody claims that they can survive against 4 players as long as its not 4 heal monks or something silly like that, is biting off more than they can chew. Nothing can live against 4 balanced team players. If the 4 people are incompetant then its not about the build, its about playing against incompetant players.

There are so many good builds that can be found everywhere, I didn't bother to tap one out. The post was on the negative side, however, your build is just not effective. Sure you can get lucky in RA picking up 4 inept players on the opposite team, however your build's useful ness in anything other than RA is very low.

Syndren · Jul 23, 2006, 11:01 AM // 11:01

Probably you posted this just after I posted mine, so the rune thing, aggro, passive-ness, and the swordmanship I mentioned in the above post.
In the first post I did not mean to boast about surviving 4 players or anything. I wanted to bring up the point of griever build and point out that the mechanic of the build is similar to the paladin. Probably they were sub-standard offensively or tactically but that isn't my point at all.

Skuld · Jul 23, 2006, 02:17 PM // 14:17

If it works for you, fine. Don't try to get anyone else to use this though.

Syndren · Jul 23, 2006, 05:38 PM // 17:38

In this thread I willingly share a build with the community (even if people say its bad its a contribution [good or bad] ), people comment on it, and I answer those comments with what I think is a reasonable answer.
No where in this thread I do not come off as forcing people to use my build at all. I personally think that your comment is a personal attack and uncalled for, please elaborate if you must make a comment like that please.