Monday 30 July 2012

Warrior CC Build

Hi guys,

This is a new build creator I just came across. Thought I would use it to churn out a Warrior CC build. This is particularly useful in Foefire when you are fighting the first battle in Sanctum.

This has a number of stuns, cripples, immobilizes etc, which can give your team mates some breathing space or help them burst down a target.

Build

Sunday 29 July 2012

Bleed and Poison Build for Melee

This is for lovers of Melee who have an eye for keeping weapons circulated whenever possible, keeping up a 33% heal debuff up on your target. It also has decent toughness and should be able to outlast most classes.

Armour

2 x Rune of Afflicted
2 x Rune of Centaur
2 x Rune of Krait

Overall:

56 Condition Damage
25 Power
+45% Bleed Duration

Build

That means you get almost 100% bleeding duration increase (every Riposte and Impale stacks 4 bleeds for 23 seconds instead of 12) and like you said you should have poison up at least 50% of the time, the rest of the time you could have them stunned with shield bash or mace attack.

Thursday 26 July 2012

Three things I learned in BWE3

Three things I learned from the BETA that people should take on board.

1. Condition damage avoids toughness and armour. Do not underestimate this! It murders Guardians.

2. (Credit to Calypratus from "The Unnamed") You can place an Armour Rune on your Breathing Mask. This means you can have seven runes not just six. They might fix this but who knows.

3. When out of combat you can swap out a Focus or Horn, give youself the speed buff, then swap back to your shield/torch/axe/sword or whatever your offhand is normally. This means in SPvP you can get around from place to place quicker.

Two Condition Builds from the BWE3

POINT PROTECTOR BUILD

Build

After watching a few BWE3 videos from some seriously good PvP players I decided to combine a few things and create a point protector build.

Unlike a Guardian point protector this build deals a pretty decent amount of damage, to multiple enemies, whilst still having almost 2200 in toughness and 21k HP.

 When this is coupled with adrenal health (125-360 health every 3 seconds) the shout healing focus giving 3x 2k heals and your normal heal giving you 6,300 it gives you effective healing of around 500 - 600 healing per second. When you couple this with the toughness you are pretty tough to kill.

This build also focuses on stacking bleeds (92 dps per stack) on a single target and burning (580 dps) on multiple targets, and you still do decent damage with the other weapon skills and have a shield for knockdown and more mitigation.

Fear Me can also be used to clear a point for a few second and allow you to buy yourself time if it is 1v2 or 1v3 until other people can arrive.

The AoE from Longbow could also be nice in places like Clocktower, Sanctum and Keep where there are mass battles. Being able to deal 580 dps to a few opponents, WHILST focusing the target called by the team puts a little bit more pressure on the other team and makes them think a bit more, the might even pop a cooldown they wouldn't usually.

Runes wise this has 7 in Undead.

Check out the videos below for some examples. The guy in the second video is my hero, he doesn't die once....

Longbow Example

Survivability Example


 AGGRESSIVE BUILD

 Build

That build is a bit more full on. Comes with 65% crit overall, 75% crit on sword and 85% crit on sword burst skill.

As well as this attacks have a 30% chance to steal life (on crit) so about 21% chance overall if you average it out. That means every fifth attack grants you 350 health (does not stack with Healing). The sword attacks also have a 45% chance overall to give a nice stack of bleeds.

Bleeds tick for 87 dps and Burning for 350 dps, which means you should have almost 450 dps ticking over as standard on targets, whilst you're pounding on them with crits.

The three shouts also heal for about 1.1k (nice to have your CC heal you!), which does take 80% from healing, but we don't have any on this build so that's irrelevant.

Adrenaline management is good too:

Crits give extra
Shouts give extra
Half a bar on weapon swap

Runes for this are:

2 in Balthazar
2 in Flame
3 in Forge (1 extra on the facemask)

This gives +45% burning duration which is huge when the main downside of Burning is the length it ticks. (credit to AyraSwag for this gem of an idea)

This is essentially the other side of the coin to the original build. Worth carrying a Horn in your inventroy for getting around with this in SPvP or WvW.

Wednesday 25 July 2012

Some good Youtube channels to bookmark for Warriors

Like the title says these are a couple of good channels to bookmark for Warrior Gameplay, Theorycraft and general fun.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Moldran

http://www.youtube.com/user/AyraSwag

http://www.youtube.com/user/Fredzwx


Tuesday 24 July 2012

Three BWE3 Videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=AifQDxwFZ3M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3Gwhy7mbXg&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWQ7fpyJ1P8&feature=player_embedded

Monday 23 July 2012

BWE3 Burst Build

This is a build created from the final BWE testing. I'm not sure how much they will change traits and abilities, so it might not be any good for launch.

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.2.4.12.15.0.33.28.28.0.29.31.39.38.50.10.1.6.78.84.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.121.128.132.139.138.0.20.0.0.30.20

This takes advantage of the crazy damage from Hundred Blades and Eviscerate, but from the gear and buffs you see that it focuses only on the extra crit damage (pairing with Sigil of Intelligence) and has a very low crit rate % and a higher power, for consistent damage.

It also has a decent amount in toughness, healing and vitality, so you have better survivability and the build is still built around having healing shouts.

Worth a try if they don't change much before release!

Final BWE Thoughts

So here are my thoughts (in no particular order) on the BWE.

The below rifle build

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.2.8.3.0.19.1.32.0.33.29.31.38.39.50.9.9.37.0.0.0.93.97.0.0.0.0.121.128.132.139.0.0.0.25.0.30.15

was very decent. Great survivability and could outlast most other classes, but still survive strong burst damage if the CC was used correctly. There was also decent scope for chasing down people with savage leap etc, and the shield is very nice for when 2 or more people come at you and you need to survive to wait for friends.

The other build below was pretty weak. I wouldn't recommend it!

Also found out that the weapon swap might sigil on weapons does stack with warrior weapon swap might abilities, but that sigil of leeching doesn't stack in intensity, so it's only worth having one of them on a dual weapon set!


WvW for a Warrior is decent fun. I ran with just a rifle for most of it and it gives good flexibility with ranged and also open battles. It showed me how even a single group of players can make a big difference by going around and taking supply camps.

For SPvP I thought the rifle build at the top was decent. I even tweaked it a bit to try out what it would be like stacking crit instead of condition damage and it seemed okay, but not as powerful. It still seems that burst warriors rule the roost though. My group came up against a tournament with a crit thief and a burst warrior roaming the map together and a 10k hundred blades and a 5k backstab is very difficult to mitigate, especially when a 5k whirlwind and a 6k eviscerate from a warrior is waiting in the wings. No amount of dodging and CC can stop that!

Anyway, for people who like the Rifle build, but find it not crit heavy (big numbers) enough, I'd really suggest trying out the ranger. It's good fun and the longbow puts some nice long range numbers on the board.

I'll put some pictures of the tweaked rifle build below, but like I say I still prefer the bleed heavy build.

Knights Amulet with Cleric Gem

30% Chance to Lifesteal on Crit (Rifle)

Leeching on Shield (Very Important)

  
Armour of the Eagle (crit heavy)
 
I also found something very interesting out last night. Or actually this morning. At about 5am one of the lads from the guild told me that you could put an armour rune on your breathing mask (bottom right corner in the screenshots).

This means that you can stack a 5/2 armour bonus if you want to. This means that players can take things like Rune of the Ranger, when they are a Warrior, not worrying about the companion buff for number six, because they can then take two of another rune. Blew my mind. If you take nothing else from this post remember that!


Another (more balanced) burst build to follow.

Friday 13 July 2012

Viable Warrior Builds to Test in BWE3

Shout healing and lifesteal build:

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.2.4.3.19.15.30.32.33.33.28.31.38.39.50.1.1.41.80.0.0.0.0.0.108.0.0.121.128.132.140.0.0.10.0.15.30.15

Rifle bleed and healing build:

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.2.8.3.0.19.1.32.0.33.29.31.38.39.50.9.9.37.0.0.0.93.97.0.0.0.0.121.128.132.139.0.0.0.25.0.30.15

Both builds have shouts that heal and focus on doing lots of damage over time. It is important to keep bleeds up on both builds and swap weapons when you can to steal life in the first one, and if you get into trouble in the second one.


Warrior Healing Numbers

These are the L80 numbers - Compassion contribution % shows how much healing is increased for every 100 Compassion you have (e.g. 13% = +13 healing every 100 points).

Numbers

Mending [Skill]
Healing: 5,560
Compassion contribution: 100%
Notes: 20s cooldown

Healing Surge [Skill]
Healing: 6,520
Compassion contribution: 100%
Notes: 30s cooldown

Healing Signet - Active [Skill]
Active healing: 7,480
Active Compassion contribution: 100%
Passive healing: 183 every 3 seconds (unique effect)
Passive Compassion contribution: 2%
Notes: 40s cooldown (30s with Signet Mastery)

Adrenal Health [Trait]
Stage 1 healing: 125 every 3 seconds (unique effect)
Stage 2 healing: 240 every 3 seconds (unique effect)
Stage 3 healing: 360 every 3 seconds (unique effect)
Compassion contribution: none

Inspiring Battle Standard [Trait]
Healing: 125 every second (Regeneration boon)
Compassion contribution: 13%
Notes: Utility banners offer 45s duration on 120s cooldown, over a radius of 1,200

Vigorous Shouts [Trait]
Healing: 1,192
Compassion contribution: 80%
Notes: Cooldown times vary, radius normally 1,200

Thursday 12 July 2012

WoW PvP vs GW2 PvP

An interesting post from Sylvari Specialist



1.) No adaptation: In WoW, every single spec is well known with miniscule diversity. 3 specs per class, and only a handful of them actually work for PvP. You don't have to adapt to what players are doing, play long enough and you'll understand everything with no unpredictability except for player skill - which, for me, is still entirely predictable. With GW2, there are a million different builds and specs, making it impossible to know exactly how someone is going to play. Sure, there will be popular builds, but from what I've seen It looks like alot of builds will be viable. Plus there's the factor of swapping out different weapons, which makes for a whole new dimension of unpredictability. You'll have to adapt quickly to each persons build and figure out a way to take them down.

2.) No Healers: Everyone has their own opinion of healers - I personally despise them. Worst thing to happen to gaming. In GW2, every bit of damage done is important, and every single way you can avoid damage is crucial! You don't have a healer behind you with infinite resource keeping you full on health so you don't have to be defensive. Players tend to get lazy with healers at their backs. The danger of death is right around the corner, what will you do to avoid it? You have to be smart, and you have to play your conditions and abilities correctly.

3.) Lack of Stunlocks: In WoW, it wasn't about adapting to situation to situation with different debuffs and buffs, you just wait for all your cooldowns to be down at a certain point, and then LOCK someone down until they die. If they trinket out of your bursty combo, you would simply wait for all your CC's to be available again. This is especially true for matches with healers. No huge stunlocks in GW2 means you can't use your failsafe stunlock to destroy somebody. There's imobilizes, there's stuns, but none of them (in my experience) that last incredible amounts of time that make you a sitting duck to be destroyed.

4.) The Focus on Conditions/Boons: In GW2, everything about is about reacting to certain conditions and boons - especially necromancer! It's not about just smashing 1, 2, and 3 over and over until someone dies, it's about using your cooldowns effectively when your target is at their weakest state - or their strongest! You need to hit them hard when they have vunerability, or poison them when they're low on health, or immobilize them if they've got swiftness! The possibilities and combinations are infinite.

5.) Dodging: This is self-explanatory. It adds a whole new level of depth to the combat, and since it's shared between every single class it makes the PvP more balanced.

6.) Ability Aiming: This is where a ton of skill comes in. What with WoW, you just spam - oh saaay - Mortal Strike over and over and over while you're running toward your enemy, and it won't go off until you're close enough to them. There's no risk of accidentally waisting a precious ability. I can't tell you how much it turned the battle when I messed up a big ability by aiming it incorrectly, or using it when out of range. That just doesn't happen in WoW, the only thing you have to aim is ground targetted spells.

7.) Lack of Global Cooldowns: For me this is huge. I have a natural ability to think very quickly and react accordingly, but global cooldowns slow me down to no end. I've died far too often in WoW from global cooldowns restricting me. Now for a game like WoW, it's obviously needed or else a Warrior could smack down all of his abilities in 1 go around, but for GW2 just about everything has a cast time, negating the global cooldown. As long as my brain can think it, I can hit whatever button I want when I want. Having a gobal cooldown is just much worse than having a cast time on most abilities - that's how I see it.

Wednesday 11 July 2012

A number of 2v2 battles

Great 2v2 video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL69AEEF06799051EB&annotation_id=annotation_724185&src_vid=zinUWFKvWd4&feature=iv&v=QmMoPVEuzBc

Thursday 5 July 2012

Interesting article from ArenaNet explaining their "Golden Rules" for creating GW2.

http://www.arena.net/blog/the-golden-rules-of-guild-wars-2