Survive as a warrior?

[OldGamer.2986]

I played POF maps with my thief and it was a piece of cake. I have constant healing with Signet of Malice, heals on critical hits and vampire rune-things on my armor. My lvl 80 warrior however dies withuout end. I can't complete any hero challenge solo, mobs on the map are always challenging. All my armor and weapons are orange, Berserker armor, trinkets are focused on vitality and healing. My armor has this vampire upgrades too and i use greatsword. I mean from a logical standpoint, the warrior should be more resilient than a thief but it's not somehow?

build: (Only berserker fully unlocked but was too squishy)https://imgur.com/d8w3VLE

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Swap Berserker's Power for Might Makes Right. use axe/axe plus greatsword. Take For Great Justice. Might will heal you for 133 hp per stack and 2 endurance no icd. Building Momentum will keep your endurance full, so dodge more. Swap Defense for Tactics. Mending Might will heal you for 69 hp per might you grant to anyone including yourself.

Maximize might generation, dodge frequently, and land your bursts attacks.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PKwAEdflJwuYJMRWJOSTlLPA-zRIURUzXIcxBmBRUC+NLhNDA-e

Here is a sample. Landing Eviscerate will give you 25 endurance btw. In PvE Brave Stride should keep you from getting CC'd.

[OldGamer.2986]

Okay Axe/Axe then, bought my griffon recently and I'm completely broke but still 3 gold left to buy 2 axes. Thanks will try that. The most difficult thing is to use 9 buttons. I'm left handed and the numpad is a bit difficult to reach and using my mouse buttons feels very off to me. My thief was very easy in comparison. Spam 3 (p/p) and sometimes 7 to escape and mouse 4 to steal.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Bulls charge, axe 4, axe 5, axe 2, F1, AA chain. Can all be done with the left hand. Just know when to dodge and not cancel axe 5 or the AA chain.

[Telgum.6071]

If you have trouble surviving I can only recommend to go Strength, Discipline and Defense

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

@Telgum.6071 said:If you have trouble surviving I can only recommend to go Strength, Discipline and Defense

That is what he was doing when he made this thread.

[Teratus.2859]

Yep, I second everything Lan said, Might healing Warriors are superb.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Yeah, just take MMR and MM while maxing your might generation. Axe/Axe is the best PvE dps set, and 50% of the crits will give you might, and it has a high hit rate, so you'll generate lots of might with it.

[synk.6907]

Quick shout out to Lan -- motivated by your posts in this thread and some others in this section, I tweaked my warrior's build. While being happy with my damage output, I was finding myself plopped on the ground a lot, clearly not playing the class well at all. I kept my berserker's gear and adjusted my trait and rune selection. Since I don't raid with warrior, I think I was focusing her incorrectly. This advice helped, and I am already enjoying it much more (and standing my ground to boot).

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

@synk.6907 said:Quick shout out to Lan -- motivated by your posts in this thread and some others in this section, I tweaked my warrior's build. While being happy with my damage output, I was finding myself plopped on the ground a lot, clearly not playing the class well at all. I kept my berserker's gear and adjusted my trait and rune selection. Since I don't raid with warrior, I think I was focusing her incorrectly. This advice helped, and I am already enjoying it much more (and standing my ground to boot).

Awesome! What did you end up doing if I may ask?

[synk.6907]

For power-based play, I swapped out scholar for strength runes, swapped to MMR as my grandmaster Strength trait, and slotted in Tactics instead of Spellbreaker or Berserker to run with core-only. I have been keeping a physical skill (e.g. bull's charge) and a shout (typically FGJ) for peak performance and vigorous shouts. No gear stat changes, but that alone has greatly increased my ability to stay in melee (GS and Axe/Axe) doing bounties and champions where otherwise I'd probably have ate it or swapped to my condi spec.

Edit: I feel like if I was a better warrior I could make spellbreaker work with more correct use of Full Counter, but I've only recently taken an interest in warrior after not focusing on it hardly for quite a while and need to get into the rhythm better.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

@synk.6907 said:For power-based play, I swapped out scholar for strength runes, swapped to MMR as my grandmaster Strength trait, and slotted in Tactics instead of Spellbreaker or Berserker to run with core-only. I have been keeping a physical skill (e.g. bull's charge) and a shout (typically FGJ) for peak performance and vigorous shouts. No gear stat changes, but that alone has greatly increased my ability to stay in melee (GS and Axe/Axe) doing bounties and champions where otherwise I'd probably have ate it or swapped to my condi spec.

Edit: I feel like if I was a better warrior I could make spellbreaker work with more correct use of Full Counter, but I've only recently taken an interest in warrior after not focusing on it hardly for quite a while and need to get into the rhythm better.

Ah. Scholar is meta, but meta only works if are able to do it properly, but if you can't do it properly then it isn't meta for you.

Some other pointers. Try the following runes as funds allow: Vampirism, Dolyak, Durability. If you are surviving fine then try: Thief or Eagle.

Berserker: You might just want to roll Eternal Champion with it until you learn it better. But in general you want to Headbutt -> Outrage -> F1 -> Blood Reckoning -> F1. In Berserk Mode everything should be devoted to Adrenaline gain and spamming F1.

Spellbreaker: You just have to learn when/where to use FC. Mobs generally attack slow and have windups. Move INTO the red circles and use FC. With Magebane Tether, MMR and MM you'll stay alive very easily.

On Peak Performance, the trait is fine for the base damage modifier and physical skill CD reduction, but the conditional damage modifier is a complete trap.

I do not recall if the buff appears when you initially cast a physical skill, or after it completes, but either way you are dealing with at least 1 second (cast time + aftercast + the following skills windup) where you are dealing almost no DPS (kick and throw bolas are the main physical skills to fuel it and they do something like 1.2k on a crit). So if you have 30k DPS without the buff, then waste 1s doing ~1k DPS to get a 15% DPS buff for 6s you actually end up lowering your DPS. If you are going for a sustained increase then taking Signet of Might and never using it will increase your DPS more than trying to maintain Peak Performance.

Where PP shines is spiking a target, if you are meming it out in WvW/PvP with Arc Divider, Gunflame, or Rampage, or if a breakbar on a champion is about to break. But as I said, over a longer period just camping SoM and not wasting an action on maintaining PP is still higher DPS and a better option outside of very specific scenarios where your party needs to pass a DPS check within a small window of time.

[synk.6907]

@Lan Deathrider.5910 said:Where PP shines is spiking a target, if you are meming it out in WvW/PvP with Arc Divider, Gunflame, or Rampage, or if a breakbar on a champion is about to break. But as I said, over a longer period just camping SoM and not wasting an action on maintaining PP is still higher DPS and a better option outside of very specific scenarios where your party needs to pass a DPS check within a small window of time.

good point about PP; notedI do like warrior's signets already.

Thanks for the advice.

[Telgum.6071]

@"Lan Deathrider.5910" said:http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PKwAEdflJwuYJMRWJOSTlLPA-zRIURUzXIcxBmBRUC+NLhNDA-e

Here is a sample. Landing Eviscerate will give you 25 endurance btw. In PvE Brave Stride should keep you from getting CC'd.

What is the reason of going this over Defense? I've been trying it and I feel like Defense gives you more survival and healing by far, yet most warriors I see on PVE are going Tactics over Defense

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

@"Telgum.6071"

Adrenal Health from Defense is fine though it was nerfed in competitive play. Mending Might in Tactics will heal you for every stack of might that you grant you or an ally. With 5 allies nearby FGJ in PvE heals you for 7265=2,160 just from Mending Might. With MMR and Vigorous Shouts thrown in that becomes 4378 hp. With Phalanx Strength instead of Vigorous Shouts its actually even more healing, but less team healing. Every crit with a greatsword will heal you for over 200 hp per foe hit. This is more healing that Adrenal Health provides even in PvE. The only way Defense would help you more is with Defy Pain, but that only kicks in every 60s in PvE and is at best a get out of downed state free card when you botch a dodge, better to just learn how to dodge better.

That and there is more personal DPS out of Tactics, and more group support out of Tactics. Defense is entirely a selfish traitline. If you are soloing around or are on a very empty map, Tactics won't help as much, but again Tactics has more personal DPS for you, and more healing.

Edit: I am a very big proponent of "do what works for you" so if you do find that Defense works best for you, then go for it by all means! I find Defense does really well with Soldiers or Sentinel gear because it keeps the damage reduction up for longer.

[alazar.1907]

On 10/31/2020 at 8:22 AM, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

@"Telgum.6071"

Adrenal Health from Defense is fine though it was nerfed in competitive play. Mending Might in Tactics will heal you for every stack of might that you grant you or an ally. With 5 allies nearby FGJ in PvE heals you for 7265=2,160 just from Mending Might. With MMR and Vigorous Shouts thrown in that becomes 4378 hp. With Phalanx Strength instead of Vigorous Shouts its actually even more healing, but less team healing. Every crit with a greatsword will heal you for over 200 hp per foe hit. This is more healing that Adrenal Health provides even in PvE. The only way Defense would help you more is with Defy Pain, but that only kicks in every 60s in PvE and is at best a get out of downed state free card when you botch a dodge, better to just learn how to dodge better.

That and there is more personal DPS out of Tactics, and more group support out of Tactics. Defense is entirely a selfish traitline. If you are soloing around or are on a very empty map, Tactics won't help as much, but again Tactics has more personal DPS for you, and more healing.

Edit: I am a very big proponent of "do what works for you" so if you do find that Defense works best for you, then go for it by all means! I find Defense does really well with Soldiers or Sentinel gear because it keeps the damage reduction up for longer.

 

I just came here to say Thank you! I was struggling to complete some of the main story missions, and I followed the link you provided above with the example of the build (the one with vamp runes) and it completely changed my gameplay experience as warrior. 

 

Curious to know what you think about the recent patch, and if you would recommend any changes to the above survivability build? 

 

Thanks!