Built to aggravate: The defensive War/Me

Hello all! First post, and I've only just gotten back into Guild Wars since roundabout the first month into Prophecies. I've found a build that I'm really enjoying in PvP, particularly AB. Forgive me if someone else has posted this before, or a better variant.

Gladiator's Defense
Disciplined Stance
Shield Stance
Healing Signet
Empathy
Energy Burn
Diversion
Wastrel's Worry

Obviously, it stands out in one way: No attack skills. It's all tactics defense and domination spells - so much defense that I've actually begun swapping out a shield in exchange for a domination idol, to have a large store of energy to play with while in combat.

My guildmates have commented on this negatively (Why not just be a mesmer?), but so far it's worked out like this for me:

* Assassins who single me out die quickly. Between gladiator's defense, empathy and the attack speed of daggers, some die without me needing to cast anything else - it all goes on too fast. But in the event it gets drawn out or they run, there are spells within the domination line that dish out some nice damage. Better yet, spells don't cancel any warrior stance that I know of, so I get a lot of freedom in that regard.

* Other melee are about as easy, though it takes longer - but I also get to use energy burn, diversion, and wastrel's worry (if I have it) to speed things up. I have 3-4 stances at any given time, so if they bust through gladiator's somehow, there's still more to get through - and by the time they're done with, gladiator's is back.

* Obviously, taking out casters is more problematic with the build. Wastrel's worry and energy burn helps out here, but honestly I usually throw these around in group-fight situations while I'm waiting for a melee to come over and deal with me.

* With Healing Signet I'm in particularly good shape. Gladiator's defense and empathy carry the bulk of the load in a fight, which means I can pound on the signet without sacrificing all that much of my dps.

As for the reason for choosing this over a Me/War - it seems to me that warriors just plain get more armor, which is oddly crucial when it comes to assassins. They can rip me up so quickly as a Mes, I sometimes fall to 50% health before I can get gladiator's defense up (that shadow-step thing is a pain.) The key is to attract melee-centric builds to engage what they expect will be a melee-oriented fight. Instead they get a hedgehog.

Any thoughts or comments would be appreciated!

kick all of your mes skills, kick all of your stances, go deal actual damage please.

1) OHMIGOSH I R WARRIOR AND R 2 PIPS OF ENERGY REGEN OMFG

....

2) OMFG I STACK STANCES ON MYSELF AND PEOPLE JUST EVADE ME AND KILL OTHERS WHILE IM COMPLETELY USELESS RAWR

....

ok, a bit more serious now. you should indeed go with a mesmer primary. a stance or two and healsig is actually completely fine and gives you a nice self defense. fast casting will actually help you a lot to get out your spells and youll have a lot more energy to actually cast something.

conclusion; warriors are for dealing damage, not tanking with stupid caster classes using spells that take 5 seconds to cast.

glads defense sucks btw.

also, you should know that mesmers arent really that good damage compared to others. its rather a shut down.

i guess Energy Surge, Burn, Backfire and Empathy is fine enough for capping shrines, tho.

That's probably the worst PvP build I've ever seen in Guild Wars, and your guildies are right to mock you. It just goes to show how sad ab's are, if you actually get kills with that.

If you're looking for constructive criticism though, the whole point of a warrior is to deal damage. Since you have no attack skills, you've kind of veered from the goal on this one. Any intelligent melee won't sit there and attack you through 4 stances and get themselves killed. In fact they don't really need to kill you at all, since they can simply stand next to you in a capping battle, unimpeded. The greatest humiliation for a warrior is to be ignored, because he doesn't pose a threat.

You've got 3 10 energy Mesmer skills, and a 5 energy skill intended to be spammed. With 2 pips of regen, I honestly don't even know how you have enough to cycle stances, let alone use any mesmer skills. Do you have a BiP necro following you around?

Regardless, don't forget the point of a warrior is to kill things. PvE tanking tactics don't apply to PvP.

Who is this meant to aggravate - yourself, for playing with such a crappy build, or your team, for having to play with you?

.... some one shoot me please....





Imho the alliance battles need to be remade altogether... but since that will never happen... i guess we will still see ...um...newbies like this running around...with dumb builds that work only on even 'dumber' people

Don't tank plx.

Seriously, it may kill idiots, but that's of no real use.

16 Axe Mastery and Frenzy kills idiots too, but can also be a threat to people with half a brain too.

your guildies are right, go mesmer, bring distortion if you want a blocking stance.
bring physical/elemental resistance if you want armor.
You should not rely the effectiveness of your build on some people who failed at being smart when facing you. If I was fighting against you, I would just ignore you, let you run out of energy.
And come on, you have 2 pips of regen, 33 energy max, you burn it all in seconds with this build...

In all fairness, a single stoneflesh ele cost us an AB because 5 or 6 on our side were stupid enough to keep attacking it. That one character had a lot more impact on the game than any decent axe warrior could've. When you are facing 12 opponents on 3 seperate teams which often are completely uncoordinated, banking on a fair portion of them being stupid isn't a bad bet.

Advice:

Don't compensate for the fact that a warrior has pretty much nothing useful to do in alliance battles (except abuse AI as a vengeful tanker) by playing it as an entirely different class.

EDIT:

Ah yea, alliance battles...home of the utterly clueless...

Hey, I -am- a newbie. I even said, I only just got into Guild Wars again after not playing since what was probably the first month of prophecies. When my guild invited me, I stipulated "You realize I'm utterly new at this, right?" I have a lot - a ton - to learn. So please, flame away - I've had a lot of fun with it, and until I learn better, that's good enough for me.

One thing though.

Everyone's talking about how the whole point of a warrior is to deal damage, but.. if I *really* want to deal damage, shouldn't I be playing an elementalist? Or an assassin? Even a necro? It's about how you do your damage - a warrior isn't going to put the dps on the same way as other classes, even if my idea sucks. I just figured that the one true strength of the warrior is innate defense, and decided to try and build around that concept for PVP.

Anyway, let me explain my stupidity further.

* The meager energy regen of a warrior has been pointed out. Absolutely this is an issue. But that's why I mentioned dropping my shield in favor of domination idol in the offhand - it's a big boost to energy, and between that and the appropriate runes, it's less a worry. It regens back slowly, but that's not as much of a worry as you'd think in ABs and faction battlefields. I don't spam the spells unless the situation is desperate (mobbing) or stacked in my side's favor (Opposition is very outnumbered.) In the former, I'll be dying soon, so hey, I'll have my energy topped off anyway. In the latter, we'll have a moment's peace to cap and/or a run to the next objective, and I'll get energy back on the way.

* Recycle time on the spells isn't a big issue, with one exception: diversion. That's a mistake on my part because it really isn't a spell I ever use when I'm being attacked, only when an ally is. There's far better skills/spells to put in there with this build. As for the rest, wastrel's worry is 1/4 cast with a 1 recharge. Empathy is a 2-cast and not a spamming spell. Energy burn is a 2-cast, but a decent chunk of damage combined with burning off someone's energy seems worth it to me.

* "I'd just ignore you" actually works with this build. Let's say a melee build engages me - they notice I'm turtling up with stances and using empathy. They say "Screw this" and engage another target. Hey, that's fine - they can engage whoever they please. But they're still going to get hit with empathy while they switch targets. I'm probably going to keep hitting them while they're hitting someone else too - along with energy burn and wastrel's worry. If they get annoyed and start hitting me again, up comes another stance.

That's why I said this build is made to aggravate - it's built around survivability (and really, what's more annoying than an enemy who's really hard to kill?), and it does its most damage if a melee actually focuses on me. That said, I'm sure there's far better builds out there - I just wanted to share this one because my experience has been surprisingly positive with it.

this is along the same lines as that guy that wanted to impress everyone how he 'hid' his primary proff.. (assasin) and used only anti melee necro skills... stating that it worked well in alliance battles....


its not effective against anyone except morons. So please dont lower yourself to that level.... if you find joy in outsmarting an idiot... you may be one yourself.

~ you dont have the skills/attributes to actually kill something proactively...and even a moron who falls for this will not likely do it again.

~ you dont have the energy to keep up these skills-even with a focus in hand

~ If you really want to do well in AB get a good guild with vent and coordinate a well balanced capping team...(you might even take some shutdown skills for builds like the aforementioned ele tank like:

[card]expunge enchantments[/card] and [card]wild blow[/card]


and mow over the rediculous builds that you see in AB.... or better yet..skip AB and go straight to GVG where the real fun and competition is.

No semi-intelligent melee will keep attacking you once they see you throw up your stances. They'll just leave you for some casters to kill. They'll find some softer target. Any melee that keeps attacking you is an idiot.

Empathy, Eburn, and Wasteral's Worry just aren't that big of a threat to a warrior. A warrior can attack through empathy; he'll just have to use heal sig a bit more.

As for you attacking the warrior, I assume that you have little if any points in a weapon attribute. That means you'll hardly be doing any damage with your weapon.

Your build just doesn't really do any damage.

Quote: Originally Posted by RiskyTheChopper

I actually have a decent chunk in axe with this build (+3 rune, +1 via helm, and you need to get to 9 to use the PVP axe anyway), but yeah, the dps on this is not all that great. The best performance I've seen with it is against assassins - if they actually decide to attack me, they typically drop so fast that I think some may not know what's going on. With others (Paragons, warriors, etc) there's more time to figure out, so they shift focus. Maybe there's a way to tweak the build to retain gladiator's and empathy while swapping out the rest. I still really like the idea of a warrior with a very heavy defense.

I'm still learning the whole game, though. Thanks for the last few posts - sorta highlights the flaws of this build better. I'll be back asking for more help I'm sure.

Sorry but...almost as bad as the MoP and ZB Wammos i saw in AB today.

Too many stances tbh, try wiki, personally i love...this build - http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Build:W...dy_Axe_Warrior

And why those sins werent using Expose Defences...i dont know.. lol

by the way... getting your axe mastery to 9 does not make it max damage...I made that mistake as well when i started.... to get the 6-28 damage you need 12 axe mastery...and to get even higher than that... you should always run 16 axe mastery ...

at 16 axe mastery
Result: Weapon does 6.89-32.16 damage

at 9 axe mastery
Result: Weapon does 4.63-21.59 damage

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/calcula...uru_weapon.php

since you only have access to 12 in domination, your domination spells will do next to no damage. 39 damage per attack on an assassin is a mere annoyance. especially considering that assassins are made to kill in 4 seconds. in a typical assassin attack chain, you'll do.... just over 230 damage. out of probably 570 hp. hardly a threat to any decent assassin.

your build simply do not pose a threat to anything. in an AB battle, you are no better than a leecher.

Quote: Originally Posted by moriz

i think what they are trying to say here is that your build "does not pose a threat" against any player that is not stupid and/or any player with half a brain. i.e. anyone with common sense.

but then again, most players in AB, unfortunately, dont use common sense

Quote: Originally Posted by RiskyTheChopper Maybe they were all people just as newbish as me - but then, that makes this a build that's incredibly effective if you're going up against newbies.
grandstanding. That's what they've been tellin you - this build is only good against idiots. Any skill that punishes the target for doing somethin (Empathy, Backfire, Insidious Parasite) is good against an idiot.

If you think that build is "incredibly effective" against melee, you've obviously never touched a primary mes, nec, or ele

Quote:

Originally Posted by RiskyTheChopper I still really like the idea of a warrior with a very heavy defense. Just about every bad warrior likes having massive defense. Half their skillbar is filled with healing/defense, and they can't kill anything at all.