Curse

Ser Jaremy Ryker · Mar 17, 2007, 07:11 PM // 19:11

Keys to Designing a Successful Warrior Build (PvP)

Introduction:

A while back LightningHell posted one of the best threads in the forums Entitled “The Seven Principles to Making a Build” -your article should be stickied! An excellent example of an Elementalist/Monk was provided along with it. As a newer (than some) player, I found this very effective in improving my builds (I had some bad ones) and my play.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10080986

Personally, I enjoy playing melee characters. LightningHell’s article inspired me to write my own comprehensive guide (for newer players) geared towards the warrior class based on the input and experience from a lot of the good people that frequent these threads.

This article will focus on the tried & true strategies for building an effective PvP warrior. It will highlight the general scope of a warrior, secondary professions, and weapon choice, attribute allocation, skill choice, energy management and casting, testing, play strategy, some example builds, and a build evolution. Hopefully, this will help out players that are new to the game or the profession.

Scope of the Warrior:

Warrior melee characters have the highest armour value in the game while packing an incredible offensive punch. An effective warrior can eclipse the damage potential of any other profession, while a less-than-effective warrior is useless.

The first and most obvious role of a PvP Warrior is to deal damage. Unhindered, they present, without a doubt, the single highest battlefield threat. They are big, strong, and enjoy hitting things until they are little more than a puddle on the ground. A well constructed warrior can mow down opponents, but first the must know how to do so.

1) Know your Role:

The first thing a warrior must decide is his/her role. Is this character designed to deal huge spikes of damage, provide consistently high DPS, disrupt the enemy, spread conditions, etc? Note that a well designed warrior can fulfill many roles. Once this has been decided, everything else you do with your build should keep this in mind, and at every step you must ask yourself “How does this help me fulfill my role?” Some good questions to ask are.

-How do I deal good damage without that initial charge of adrenaline?
-How do I dish out damage fast enough before I die?
-How do I keep my self alive long enough to be useful?
-How do I keep up constant DPS after killing 1 target?

Secondary Professions:
When choosing your secondary profession keep in mind the role that you have determined. There are many interesting choices one can make (although there is nothing wrong with a pure warrior) but you must keep in mind how to reasonably achieve your objectives. It is a good idea to ask yourself "Will my team benefit more if another character takes this skill instead of me?" The following choices are:

/Ranger:
Beast Mastery can be used to bring an animal companion to supplement your damage (although they can be ineffective at times). Alternatively, Wilderness Survival offers some interesting choices such as Apply Poison (a somewhat costly cover condition), Nature Rituals such as Nature’s Renewal (punishes enchantment reliance) which alter the battlefield conditions for both you and your opponent, possibly traps, and Antidote Signet which removes some conditions.

/Monk:
Extremely popular as the Healing and Protection prayers can increase your life expectancy. Some skills of note include Mending Touch (removes conditions while providing a modest heal), or Holy Veil (allows for hex removal) which help maintain your effectiveness when facing melee shutdown.

/Mesmer:
Adds the element of unpredictability as the enemy might not know what to expect. Domination will punish/interrupt your opponents, Illusion can supplement your offense/defense, and Inspiration can provide energy denial and management. Some noteworthy skills include Hex-Breaker (which can also serve as a cancel stance to Frenzy) or skills that remove enchantments which are useful for setting up your spike. Some of the skills, however, are demanding in terms of cast time and energy consumption and work best in tandem with other Mesmer skills.

/Necromancer:
Also becoming popular due to the skill Plague Touch (requires no attribute investment) which transfers a condition from yourself to your enemy. The Curse and Blood lines offer some interesting possibilities, but can be resource heavy for a warrior and sometimes tend to synchronize better with a chain of necromancer skills. Like the Mesmer, there are also some good options for enchantment removal.

/Elementalist:
Offers some interesting offensive utility. Skills like Shock/Gale are very flexible as snare/interrupts but cause exhaustion (which will be detrimental on an energy reliant build). Some of the spells are very resource demanding in terms of energy cost and cast/afercast time so you must look for economical options.

/Ritualist:
Many of the weapon spells synchronize very nicely with the warrior as they can supplement your damage, steal life, interrupt, etc. They can be somewhat energy intensive as they do typically have relatively short durations.

/Assassin:
This combination is becoming very popular due to some excellent snares and mobility buffs available which aid the warrior's objectives.

/Paragon:
Offers some useful shouts that can lead to party-wide tactical advantages.

/Dervish:
This combination has access to many cheap enchantments to increase your offensive or defensive capability. Rending Touch is a cheap and quick way to remove enchantments (from both you and your opponent) without requiring attribute investment.

2) Equipment Choices:

The next thing a warrior must decide is the weapon. The following is a general description highlighting the different weapon choices.

Swords:-Swords attack once every 1.33 seconds, and deal a maximum of 15-22 base damage per hit, giving them a reasonably predictable damage value per second.
-Critical hits with swords are far less powerful than critical hits with hammers or axes.

Axes:
-Axes attack at the same rate as swords, but deal a maximum of 6-28 base damage per hit.
-Critical hits with axes are much more powerful than with swords and as such can be more suitable for spike oriented builds.
-Few energy-based axe attacks are available.

Hammers:
-Hammers have the potential to deal more damage than other weapons, a maximum of 19-35 base damage per hit.
-Several Hammer Mastery skills cause knockdown.
-Hammers attack slower than other weapons, once every 1.75 seconds.
-Hammers are two-handed, and prevent the use of a shield or focus item.

After selecting your weapon, you will want to decide on what mods to use. Remember to ask yourself “How can I better fulfill my role?” Generally, as a warrior, you will spend a fair bit of time in stances. In this case, it is pretty obvious you want the mod that provides a damage bonus while in a stance. There may be other choices based on what sort of state you expect to be in (such as damage bonus while enchanted). Additionally, if you are skilled enough at weapon swapping, you could alternate between plus damage while >50% health and plus damage while <50% health (but this is not recommended for an inexperienced player). Regarding the prefixes, this is very much determined by your role. Do you want to deal fire damage? Then use a fiery mod. Do you want spike damage? Then perhaps use a sundering or vampiric mod (if using vampiric you will want to be adept at weapon switching). Do you want to lengthen the time targets are crippled? Use a crippling mod. Do you expect to be fairly energy dependant? Use a zealous mod. As for the suffix, you typically want something fairly general, either the unconditional armour bonus, or the unconditional health bonus.

If you haven’t chosen the hammer, your next decision is regarding the shield or focus item. You will want to have enough invested (9 pts) in the corresponding attribute to ensure it is effective. Generally, as a warrior, shields are recommended as they will reduce the damage you receive by just over 20% (but not from hexes, conditions, armour ignoring damage). You can use the focus item if you expect your build to be energy dependent, but generally it won’t do much as your energy management is more dependent on the regeneration than on the initial value.

Ideally, you will have more than one weapon set. Your first should consist of your primary weapon/shield combination and a second set consisting of a wand/focus set. This secondary set can be swapped in to: deal with fleeing enemies, build up adrenalin from a range, or provide a quick energy boost to fire off a skill. You will also want to consider a third that is pretty much identical to the first but with an elemental mod (ebon is typically the least gaurded against) so that you may bypass the physical armour bonuses (20%) of other warriors.

Finally, you must decide on your armour. Typically, for you helm, you want the plus weapon mastery mod and at least a minor weapon mod. If hex removal is an issue, you may consider the Lieutenant’s mod to reduce hex duration on your boots or gloves (these are put here since they have an armour penalty and boots/gloves are the least likely to be hit, note there is also a 5% damage output penalty). If you are including knockdowns in your build, you will also want the Stonefist mod to increase the knockdown duration. You will also want minor mods to increase your tactics (and/or possibly strength) if you’ve invested enough in these attributes.
For the other armour, it is generally preference, but again, it is recommended to go with unconditional armour, health, or energy boosts.

2) Attribute Balancing:

Skills are useless without points invested in their corresponding attributes. Unfortunately, as a warrior, your attribute allocation is pretty much pre-determined.

Weapon Mastery:
You want this as high as possible. This determines your base damage, chance to land a critical hit, and the effectiveness of your attack skills. You absolutely require at least a 12 invested in this. Recommended is at least 14 (12+1+1). To be most effective in your role though, you will want to go 16 (12+3+1) in your weapon mastery. Although, you will loose a bit of maximum health with the superior mod, you can gain this back with a superior vigor mod and take a self-heal, and, you will hardly notice the difference in health, but will definitely notice the difference in damage output.

Tactics:
Generally you will want 9 (8+1) invested in the tactics line. This gets you the minimum requirement for your shield and is not overly expensive in attribute points. You may go higher than this if you expect to use more skills in the Tactics line.

Strength:
If you are running just a pure warrior, the rest of your points can be invested in here if you want. Strength does offer a passive 1% armour penetration per level (on your attack skills only) which will slightly increase your damage output. If you are running a secondary, however, and are not relying on any Strength skills, you should only invest your leftover attribute points into here. Note that if you're not using any Tactics skills, you might as well invest for the Strength shield.

Secondary Class Skill:
This generally is going to be governed by how much you have after fulfilling your weapon-mastery and tactics attribute levels, the effectiveness required from your secondary, and considering ‘break points’ (Some skills will have no effect whether they are increased one or two attributes).

In the articles and guides section of the website there is an attribute allocation table that will help you out with this.

3) Skill Choice:

The first rule of this is simply to just use good skills and skills that synergize with each other. You want your skillbar setup to provide you with a competitive advantage over your opponents. The article mentioned above highlights this very well (with the following example).

Some skills are more useful than others. This is measured sometimes by skill flexibility. For example, Mending is less useful than Healing Breeze. Mending takes very long to heal a certain amount compared to Healing Breeze. Mending is inflexible, because for it to heal a significant amount you have to expend a large amount of resource (in this case time) to gain any noticeable effect. An opponent using Mending is much more easily pressured out compared to one using Healing Breeze.

As a warrior dishing out melee damage, a good portion of your skillbar is already predetermined.

Skill 1: Increased attack speed (IAS) skill.

A warrior can more effectively swing their weapon better by simply swinging faster. What happens is a dramatic increase to their damage per second (DPS). For a warrior, pumping out damage doesn’t come down to just using one or two big ‘nukes’ the way it does for an elementalist, it also comes down to adding together many smaller attacks in the same time it takes for that nuker to get their spell off. The cumulative damage gathered from damage buffs and weapon swings apply immense pressure to an opponent. Just by swinging with an IAS skill a warrior can dish out almost 1800 damage per minute. Although a good portion of this damage will be mitigated by the enemy they must devote resources such as time and energy to so. Additionally, by swinging faster, you have increased your adrenal intake meaning you can execute your adrenal attack chains quicker and more often.

Generally, the best IAS skill is Frenzy. It is unlinked, meaning it requires no attribute investment, provides a 33% IAS (highest in the game), and has reasonable energy devotion (5 energy per 8 seconds). The drawback to this skill is that you will take double damage while it is in effect, however: you can use another stance to cancel out of Frenzy when you start taking damage, and you can often go for the full 8 seconds without being attacked (warriors are typically considered a lower priority target). The other IAS skills may be safer but they include drawbacks such as higher energy demand, reduced damage, and/or reduced movement speed.

Skill 2: Speed Buff (Movement)

To destroy enemies a melee warrior must be able to stay close to his opponents. The two main ways of doing so are to either make sure the opponent can’t get away (snare) or to make sure the warrior can catch up if they do so. Speed buffs let warriors run faster for a brief time. Using such a skill allows a warrior to close into melee range faster than they could otherwise and prevents someone from outdistancing them. Reserving a skill slot for this is just common sense. Additionally, a speed buff stance is an effective way to cancel out of Frenzy.

Skill 3: Attack Skill (Deep-wound)

A warrior is nothing without some decent attack skills to dish out huge spikes of damage. When using attacks, remember to charge all of them up before using them. This is known as a spike and is very potent if you can catch someone off-guard and unleash it before a monk catches it. A deep-wound is one of the most devastating attacks a warrior can unleash. The damage will be 20% of the opponents maximum health (does not stack with itself), so on a 500 hitpoint target you will do 100 pts of damage with this attack regardless of what their current health is (but a deep-wound alone will not drop a target below 1 hp). Additionally, the healing benefit received by that target is reduced by 20% for the duration of the deep-wound. A great example of a deep-wound attack is Eviscerate and this should be considered a staple for any axe-warrior.

Skill 4: Attack Skill (with possible Cover Condition)

As discussed above, deep-wound is one of the most devastating conditions in the game. Conditions, however, can be removed prematurely by the enemies. As such, it is good practice to apply another condition to cover the deep-wound to ensure it stays on. Other very effective conditions to consider are: Cripple (keeps your target close by reducing their movement), Weakness (reduces the effectiveness of enemy skills), and possibly Dazed (targets take longer to cast and are interrupted if hit with damage). A knockdown (although not technically a condition) is a good state to put your oppenent in as well.

Skill 5: Attack Skill / Possible Damage Buff:

This is where you want to make sure you apply the hurt to your opponent. You will want another strong attack skill to maximize the damage inflicted during your spike. Alternatively, you may consider a damage buff of some sort to increase your effectiveness. One good example of this is the conjure element skills available to an elementalist secondary (you will require the proper weapon mod). They are very economical at 10 energy per 60 seconds of duration and can considerably boost your damage. At 10 points invested into the elemental line you are provided with an extra 14 pts of damage per attack. This will add an extra 56 damage over a 4 swing attack spike and still provide you with an increase to your sustainable DPS. It is, however, an enchantment which can be removed but warriors are typically a low priority for enchantment removal and it can be recast within 30 seconds.

Skill 6: Attack Skill / Offensive Utility Skill:

You can take another attack skill if you wish to play aggressively and maximize damage, or you may chose to take another utility skill to help you achieve your goal. Some examples of useful utility skills include:
- Shock/Gale. Knocks down your target which is useful before a spike or for interrupts. This is energy heavy as it causes exhaustion.
- For Great Justice. Increases your adrenalin intake so you may spike more often.
- Disrupting Chop. Interrupt your opponent.
- And many more.

Skill 7: Self-Heal / Defensive Skill:

These skills are generally used to increase your life expectancy and provide your healer with some relief. Through the use of defensive stances, like Shield Stance, Warriors can decrease their chances of suffering damage. Through skills that add armor, like Watch Yourself, they can reduce the amount of damage the party members will take. Through the use of skills that heal them, like Healing Signet, Warriors can recover damage taken. Through the use of skills like Mending Touch a warrior can eliminate conditions that would reduce their effectiveness. Usually only one (possibly 2 if you wish to take condition/hex removal) of these skills should be taken in any build. A warrior loaded up with ripostes and self-heals has dramatically reduced their combat effectiveness.

Skill 8: Resurrect Skill:

This is to resurrect fallen allies. By sacrificing one skill slot for this, you have effectively recuperated 8 skills for your team should an ally be taken down. Res-signet is typically the skill of choice for this due to no energy demand and the quick cast.

One more thing to consider is to factor in the environment. If you are facing a lot of melee-hate in terms of hexes or conditions you will probably want to bring some sort of removal. If you are picking your team-mates, it is worth it to consider having an elementalist carry Mark of Rodgort for you instead of taking it yourself. Not only do your skills have to synergize with each other, they should also synergize with the meta-game and your team-mates (if you are choosing them).

One more small consideration is to line up your skills in an easy order to use so that you don’t waste time hunting for the right key/icon.

4) Energy Management and Casting:

A problem with many builds is that they use too much energy without being able to effectively recover it. As a warrior you will start with a low energy pool (20 base) with only 2 pips of regeneration (0.67 energy gained back per second). As such, you will want to choose skills that are very economical with their energy. The advantage that warriors do have is that they are able to relieve their energy demand through using adrenal skills. Adrenal skills can be quickly charged up and unleashed. When considering energy based skills there are a few things to consider:

Energy Demand:

Not only to you want to shy away from skills that require a huge upfront energy investment but you also want skills that are economical in terms of demand. If you start off with only 22 energy casting a 20 energy skill is going to severely deplete your energy reserves. Regarding demand, you want skills that will provide a more sustainable effect. Using a skill that requires 10 energy every 45 seconds uses less of your regeneration than using a skill that requires 5 energy every 5 seconds. Generally, you will want to run in slight deficit to ensure maximum efficiency. A good way to tell is if you just bottom out on your energy occasionally during matches. If your energy never drops below a certain point (for example you never have less than 15 energy) you are not efficiently using it and could probably allocate some of your energy management to other resources. There are skills available to regain energy, but you want to make sure they help you achieve your goal reasonably. Using a glyph to lower the energy cost of a spell is a bad idea on a warrior as you have essentially wasted a skill slot to enable you to use another (and have added an extra second devoted to casting). Using a skill such as Drain Enchantment could be more worthwhile as you not only recuperate some energy, but you have disrupted the enemy at the same time.

Casting and Casting Time:

Casting with a warrior is generally inferior to having those same spells on your caster team-mates. If you are looking to carry a spell on some-sort you will want to carefully consider alternatives. There may be a warrior skill that can net you the same or similar effect more reasonably. You will want to ensure that if you choose to carry a spell that it synchronizes well with your goals. For example caster skills such as Shock or Rend Enchantments (risky due to potential health loss) will compliment a spike build very well since you can use these skills to set up your spike (and snare/knockdown you target in the first instance, or remove their defenses in the second case). Beware though that some skills will cause exhaustion and temporarily lower your energy pool which recovers slowly (within 30 seconds). This means that first you should only use them at opportune times (such as interrupting a res-sig), and secondly that it does not complement builds that are energy intensive (for example you may only be able to use an energy based skill at the start of the match and never be able to again unless you waste time recovering).

If you have a magic type skill you will want to ensure the casting time is negligible. Every second you’re not attacking is a second of lost damage opportunity. Generally, you will want nothing that takes longer than one second to cast (2 seconds possibly in some circumstances but there may be another way to reasonably achieve your goal). Another thing to consider is that spells have what is termed aftercast. With normal spells this means that after it is cast there is almost 1 second of dead-time before you can do anything. With Point-blank-area-of-effect spells the aftercast is almost 2 seconds. This will significantly reduce your efficiency as you have lost time that could be better spent elsewhere.

5) Testing:

Designing an effective build requires verification and can be an iterative process. A good spot to initially test out your build is on the Isle of the Nameless. The first spot you will want to go practice is on the Test Dummies. With an effective build you should be able to take out all 4 of the Test Dummies within about 50 seconds or less. You will then want to test your build out on some of the hostile Masters, particularly the Master’s of Healing and Enchantment. An effective build will be able to take them out within a couple of minutes. Finally you will want to field test your build in actual combat in the arenas. Random Arenas is a common place to test builds and is a good start. However, don’t tale the results from this too seriously as it can take many attempts to finally get on a cohesive team, and you may run into many sub-par builds or players that can be taken out with minimal effort.

6) Play Strategy:

Ultimately this will depend on the goals you have set for you build and the battlefield conditions. Generally as a warrior you are responsible for identifying the most dangerous threat to your team and taking it out. People will often chant the mantra of “Kill the monk first” however this is a poor tactic to blindly adopt every time. You want to be flexible in your strategy and be able to read your opponents and adapt appropriately. Your team will probably want to harass the monk to divert their attention, and often with a bit of coordination you can off a nice soft mesmer or assassin before the monk can react fast enough. You have to ask, which target is going to prevent us from winning. An assassin, mesmer, thumper, or necromancer left unhindered can easily negate the effectiveness of your own support. A ritualist, left alone, can spam an entire army of spirits. A monk is a high priority target, but typically have minimal offensive threat. Remember, just by attacking targets you force the other team to devote their resources to mitigating the damage. Also remember that unleashing all of your attacks within a short period of time is more effective that using them at different intervals. Don’t forget to switch targets often to catch them off-guard. Pay attention to what skills the enemies are using. Mindlessly swinging at a monk that just threw up Protective Spirit is not going to accomplish much. Also, considers the calls your team-mates make. A good team will call targets: that are low on health, right before they spike, or are seriously hindering their efforts.

In addition to knowing which targets to focus on you will need to learn how to effectively mitigate the damage you are taking. Kiting away from enemies will relieve some of the damage you take, but it will also drain their time and other resources and possibly you may be able to lead them to a battlefield location that is advatageous to your team (such as getting them to overextend from their monk). The terrain can also be used to your advantage. Bow/wand/spear attacks and projectile spells depend on a line-of-sight. If you are able to stay close to a ledge or other physical obstacle you will have temporarily removed the offensive threat from them if the line-of-sight is blocked. Kiting and blocking lines-of-sight will protect you when you use a self-heal. Finally, you will want to know when to push and when to run. You will have to ask questions such as:
-Will my team benefit more if I push offensively (to eliminate/weaken a foe) and possibly die?
-What is my party condition? Have their resources been drained and are they unable to support me?
-How does my opponents damage and healing (self and from other members) intake compare to mine?
-Is there a more opportune target available, or can I assist my party in another way?

Other things to be aware of are how to compensate for your weaknesses. For example, blind can be a very debilitating and frustrating condition for melee class characters. However, there are still things that can be done while blind:
-Let your team-mates know your enemy is blinding you. Doing this will effectively request condition removal if available and for another team-mate to focus on taking out that enemy.
-Fire off a condition removal (if available) or a self-heal (if it will help) to relieve some of the burden from you monk.
-Cycle through your team and enemies and evaluate their condition/location. Will one of your team-mates be needing help soon? Is there another opportune target available? Is any enemy using a skill worth mentioning to my team. Decide a plan and move to that location.
-Do you have any skills that can still be used? You can still use gale to interrupt an opponent if required.
-Finally, sometimes you can fake out an opponent. They may not know that you are blind and by running at them and taking a swing you might get them to needlessly spend some of their resources.

Remember, being flexible and the ability to adapt and play well as a team will largely determine your success. Always ask your self, what can I do to get an advantage.

7) Example Builds:

The following are some of the more successful builds:

Shock Warrior:
W/E
Axe: 12+4
Strength: 9+1
Tactics: 9+1
Air: Spare points
Skills: Frenzy, Sprint, Shock, Eviscerate, Executioner’s Strike, Bull’s Strike, Heal-sig, Res-sig

This is one of the more popular builds as it is well balanced and fulfills are variety of roles. It is capable of disrupting the enemy through knockdowns which are also a great way to start off the spike chain.

Dragon Warrior:
W/Mo
Sword: 12+2
Strength: 8+1
Protection: 10
Skills: Frenzy, Rush, Sever Artery, Gash, Sun&Moon Slash, Dragon Slash, Mending Touch, Res-sig.

A high pressure DPS warrior that has a high adrenal intake once it gets going. This variant has opted for Mending touch to provide just a moderate self-heal but more importantly to keep itself clean from conditions.

Devastating Hammer Warrior:
W/D
Hammer: 12+4
Strength: 10+1
Tactics: 8+1
Skills: Frenzy, Sprint, Rending Touch, Devastating Hammer, Crushing Blow, Heavy Blow, Heal-sig, Res-sig.

A high spike damage warrior that removes enchantments (useful before the spike) and throws out 2 knockdowns in the attack chain while inflicting weakness.

8) Build Evolution:

Now, we will follow the principles outlined above and develop a custom build for Player X. He has decided that he wants to build a W/E. He insists on not using a ‘cookie cutter’ build even if it may be slightly less effective than them. The goals he has set for his build are to provide high DPS, snare opponents, and disrupt them area-of-effect style. He has come up with the initial build below:

W/E
Axe: 10+2
Strength: 10+1
Tactics: 8+1
Water Magic: 8
Skills: Warrior’s Endurance (elite), Frozen Burst, Conjure Frost, Power Attack, Dismember, Penetrating Blow, Heal-sig, Res-sig.

Now with this build it is fairly evident what the player wants to achieve. Unfortunately, this build needs serious help.

Healing Signet and Res-sig are pretty much staples, so we’ll keep them there. Conjure Frost is also an economical choice to boost DPS so we’ll also keep this.

The build is very energy heavy (Frozen Burst and Power Attack) and is relying on Warrior’s Endurance for supply. Not only is this wasting an elite skill, but it doesn’t offer anything towards the set goals. At first glance the DPS may appear to be high (with the ability to repeatedly use Power Attack), however when we consider a typical cycle (worth 10 weapon swings = 13.3 seconds in this case) it is found to be nothing special (not much higher than 50 DPS) as 1) there is no IAS and 2) there is almost 2 seconds after Frozen Burst that the warrior can do nothing due to aftercast.

The first thing to examine is Frozen Burst. The goal here is to do a bit of damage, snare opponents (essentially disrupt all of them within an area). Remember, we want to achieve this goal reasonably. Examining the Axe-Mastery skill set, we can find the skill Axe Rake which will result in a cripple and still provide damage from the actual attack without an aftercast. We fulfill the deep-wound prerequisite and it will provide a cover for it as well. So now we have:

W/E
Axe: 10+2
Strength: 10+1
Tactics: 8+1
Water Magic: 8
Skills: Warrior’s Endurance (elite), Conjure Frost, Power Attack, Dismember, Axe-rake, Penetrating Blow, Heal-sig, Res-sig.

The next thing that pops out is Power Attack. Spending 5 energy every 3 seconds is hardly efficient. If we take that skill out we can also eliminate Warrior’s Endurance as our energy efficiency will improve dramatically and free up an elite. We now have:

W/E
Axe: 10+2
Strength: 10+1
Tactics: 8+1
Water Magic: 8
Skills: Unassigned Elite, Conjure Frost, Unassigned, Dismember, Axe-rake, Penetrating Blow, Heal-sig, Res-sig.

Since we’ve freed up an elite, we can use the skill Eviscerate for the deep-wound which is far superior to Dismember as it provides much higher spike damage. Also, we are not relying on Strength for any skills at this moment so we can reduce it. We’ll pump those extra points into Water Magic to increase the DPS even more. We now have:

W/E
Axe: 12+2
Tactics: 8+1
Water Magic: 10
Strength: Spare points
Skills: Conjure Frost, Unassigned, Unassigned, Eviscerate (elite), Axe-rake, Penetrating Blow, Heal-sig, Res-sig.

The next thing we notice is that we don’t have an IAS skill or Speed Buff which are vital to an effective melee warrior. For an IAS skill we’ll use Frenzy and for a Speed Buff we’ll use Sprint or Rush (even with minimal strength they have a decent duration). We now have:

W/E
Axe: 12+2
Tactics: 8+1
Water Magic: 10
Strength: Spare points
Skills: Conjure Frost, Frenzy, Sprint, Eviscerate (elite), Axe-rake, Penetrating Blow, Heal-sig, Res-sig.

Additionally, since we’ve improved our damage we can consider changing out Penetrating Blow. Remember he wanted to do a bit of AOE disruption so we can now add in the skill Fear Me. At first glance this skill doesn’t appear to be anything special, but considering how spammable it is, and the fact that it does energy denial to all enemies with the area it actually can be a very useful skill. Since we have a self heal, we can sacrifice a bit of initial health and use a superior axe-mastery rune to increase the damage output further. We now have:

W/E
Axe: 12+4
Tactics: 8+1
Water Magic: 10
Strength: Spare points
Skills: Conjure Frost, Frenzy, Sprint, Eviscerate (elite), Axe-rake, Fear Me, Heal-sig, Res-sig.

Going back to the player’s goals we can see that we have achieved them reasonably. It is not a standard ‘cookie cutter’ build. It has much higher DPS than the initial version (~63 dps over a 10 second attack cycle). A 4 weapon-swing spike also provides almost 340 damage. It can snare opponents and it provides AOE disruption. The attributes are well balanced and the energy usage is quite manageable.

9) Concluding Remarks

Hopefully this article has provided you with some input on how to make you warrior more effective. A good portion of this is compiled from tried and true principles and the valuable experience of some of the veterans that frequently post here that are generous enough to offer us their expertise. Regards,

10) Useful Links

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10115806

Moriz’s Tips for Tards: Warrior
- A short and to the point conversation about pvp warriors.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...d.php?t=113319

Why Nuking Sucks
-nicely details the threat that warriors pose in the battlefield

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/f...play.php?f=210

The Warrior Forum-Contains a sticky of important posts which explain some of the underlying game mechanics.

Issac · Mar 17, 2007, 11:25 PM // 23:25

Very nice guide, I learned some stuff that I didn't know before. Good job

Racthoh · Mar 18, 2007, 12:15 AM // 00:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ser Jaremy Ryker

Strength:
If you are running just a pure warrior, the rest of your points can be invested in here if you want. Strength does offer a passive 1% armour penetration per level which will slightly increase your damage output. If you are running a secondary, however, and are not relying on any Strength skills, you should only invest your leftover attribute points into here.

Strength is 1% armour penetration on attack skills only.

Mesmer in Need · Mar 18, 2007, 05:31 AM // 05:31

hmm... seems like a thread i made a while back....(that i got flamed for)
w/e nice guide.

Ser Jaremy Ryker · Mar 18, 2007, 01:02 PM // 13:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Racthoh

Strength is 1% armour penetration on attack skills only.

Edit made. Thanks.

qvtkc · Mar 18, 2007, 01:05 PM // 13:05

Good guide, I especially like the "build evolution" chapter at the end, it helped me create a build of my own for the double gladiator point weekend.
Thanks

Yanman.be · Mar 18, 2007, 01:18 PM // 13:18

Where's the part about tanking?

TheOneMephisto · Mar 18, 2007, 01:33 PM // 13:33

Eh, okay guide for beginners. Doesn't offer anything for more experienced players (read: anyone who isn't retarded at GW). I'd also say that the person who wrote it isn't exactly top-notch material, as it has some dubious information (who uses conjure x?).

Franco Power · Mar 18, 2007, 01:38 PM // 13:38

Mephisto, in my opinion this guide looks like something taken from guildwiki and includes some obvious information, this guide and the "How to win Heroes Ascent" sticky in the HA forums win the "bleeding obvious" award imo, but still, which is why I didn't comment in the HA one and won't in here, there is information that new players can learn by reading this, even if something looks old news to you, might be useful for someone else.

Zonzai · Mar 18, 2007, 08:01 PM // 20:01

I don't think that there are any devestatingly large errors in it. It is a good guide for those looking at playing a warrior in PvP for the first time.

This guide is better than many of it's kind I've seen.

Shmanka · Mar 18, 2007, 08:16 PM // 20:16

Personally I would have dived into the weapons with more detail and examples, yet good job overall. It is better then many of its kind.

Stormlord Alex · Mar 19, 2007, 12:24 AM // 00:24

Now, if only the average wammo had the cranial capacity to actually read...

Good guide.

Moun10Dew · Mar 19, 2007, 01:17 AM // 01:17

Quote:

Some skills are more useful than others. This is measured sometimes by skill flexibility. For example, Mending is less useful than Healing Breeze. Mending takes very long to heal a certain amount compared to Healing Breeze. Mending is inflexible, because for it to heal a significant amount you have to expend a large amount of resource (in this case time) to gain any noticeable effect. An opponent using Mending is much more easily pressured out compared to one using Healing Breeze.

you might as well copy+paste this part from the other thread you mentioned.

Quote:

If you have a magic type skill you will want to ensure the casting time is negligible. Every second you’re not attacking is a second of lost damage opportunity. Generally, you will want nothing that takes longer than one second to cast (2 seconds possibly in some circumstances but there may be another way to reasonably achieve your goal). Another thing to consider is that spells have what is termed aftercast. With normal spells this means that after it is cast there is almost 1 second of dead-time before you can do anything. With Point-blank-area-of-effect spells the aftercast is almost 2 seconds.

since this is a post about making a better warrior build, you may want to change this section to show why warrs with casting skills are bad. otherwise the other information is useful (not including the conjure x and power attack part).
edit:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yanman.be

Where's the part about tanking?

please tell me you are being sarcastic xD

Byron · Mar 19, 2007, 03:16 PM // 15:16

I agree with previous replies, that it is a good guide for beginners.

Though, I think it should be stressed, that experience is much more important than the tactical significance of this skill or that. A good warrior becomes a good warrior through practice, not skillbar. This in spite of the fact that it is a thread on pvp builds rather than play.

Ser Jaremy Ryker · Mar 19, 2007, 07:23 PM // 19:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Byron

I agree with previous replies, that it is a good guide for beginners.

Though, I think it should be stressed, that experience is much more important than the tactical significance of this skill or that. A good warrior becomes a good warrior through practice, not skillbar. This in spite of the fact that it is a thread on pvp builds rather than play.

You are a very wise man Byron. Your build will not ultimately determine you success, it is determined more by competency. A skilled, experienced player using a sub-par build will be able to compete more effectively than someone using the latest & greated that does not understand combat tactics (for example, a Shock Warrior that shocks indiscriminately). Having a good build is just one of many additive factors that contribute to success.

crucifix · Mar 20, 2007, 06:25 PM // 18:25

I dont want to be a complete dick and just shoot this down, but the guide is long, and mostly full of things that in the end, don't matter. kudo's for putting the time toward it, but one must understand that as far as single pvp character builds are concerned, originality is NOT encouraged. Back when the meta was still evolving, build creation was great. It spurred innovation and some really unorthodox shit that usually didn't work. Warriors focus around 3 main weapons (scythes if you like that zergway, ss/ fear me scythe shit), hammers, axes, and swords. If you play with any 3 of those weapons, you are almost ALWAYS going to use bars that have been used many a time before. a good exmaple of this is in your secondaries. w/mo = mending touch, w/r= igay, w/p= sig of remedy, w/n=crap now, sig of remedy and mt are 10000x better, w/me= don't do it, w/rt=your a pure warrior, w/e=shock, w/d= rending touch... you get my point. Creative builds 9/10 time just don't work because better, more obvious bars do 1) more damage, 2) more utility (i.e. run buffs to catch kiters, heal sig, extra kd's). last but not least, that massive 340 dps conjure frost warrior is a REALLY BAD EXAMPLE.

edit: unless your playing a linebacker, dev hammy wars without feirce blow are just bad.

Aejorii · Mar 20, 2007, 11:38 PM // 23:38

Nice article for people starting into the warrior profession.

Is there a source for the little section about lieutenant insignia? I just want to read a bit about it.

Patccmoi · Mar 21, 2007, 12:54 AM // 00:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ser Jaremy Ryker

On your boots or gloves you should take the Lieutenant’s mod to reduce hex duration (these are put here since they have an armour penalty and boots/gloves are the least likely to be hit

Just read that randomly and i was like 'hrm, what?'

Maybe more experienced warriors can correct me if i'm wrong (i do not play warrior in general), but for competitive play (read out of RA) isn't that just bad now?

Lieutenant's Insigna =
Reduces Hex durations on you by 20% and damage dealt by you by 5%Armor -20

You honestly want to lose 5% damage to reduce hex duration that are very likely to never reach their full duration in organized play anyway? I know i wouldn't do that.

LightningHell · Mar 21, 2007, 03:28 AM // 03:28

Someone noticed me~! I'm happy.

Lieutenant's Helm used to be a staple on Warriors, back when it halved hex durations, and armor-swaps were available (back in the first GWWC, I think).

Oh, and if you're not using any Tactics skills, you might as well use a Strength shield.

Avarre · Mar 22, 2007, 10:40 AM // 10:40

Quote:

A problem with many builds is that they use too much energy without being able to effectively recover it. As a warrior you will start with a low energy pool (20 base) with only 2 pips of regeneration (0.67 energy gained back per minute).

By this logic, it will take 8 minutes to charge energy for Frenzy?