Thursday 8 August 2013

Warrior Trait Synergy

Hi everyone,

Been a while since I last properly posted, been taking a break from the game, mainly due to the fact I do not enjoy the current super cheesy condi meta in PvP, but that's just my feelings on it. I was using this time to brush up on other classes and get some casual theorycrafting on Warrior going when I decided to do this post.

Do you have an in depth knowledge of the Warrior class?
Are you confident in creating your own builds?
Do you know exactly which traits and utilities compliment each other?

If the answer to any of the above is yes, then I would suggest you stop reading, this post isn't for you and it will come across as condescending, probably make you rage and then most likely make you want to troll.

The aim is to help out new players, or players who are new to theorycrafting, with the Warrior class and give them some very basic "building blocks" that they can then play around with and build on. Lots of people just use the builds that get posted up as the 'best' build for that class and what the community think is the role it can fulfill within a high end team. However, this doesn't always suit the individual person's playstyle or skill level, as well as pigeonholing everyone into a role and giving the general community tunnel vision when it comes to innovating new builds. The more people have a go at theorycrafting and improving their general class knowledge the greater chance we have as a community of finding and developing some of the lesser played builds.

To this end I have tried to pull together groups of traits that compliment other traits, utilities or weapons, in an attempt for people to be able to go, "Hey, I like playing with Shouts, where should I start?" and hopefully showing players that are newer to theorycrafting. Hope you enjoy and get involved in theorycrafting more!

Block/Shield

This build has a shield, three traits and an armour set. Personally I am not a fan of the runeset, but I wanted the first one of these to go all out to show you how you can max one particular part of your class and work a build around it as your focal point, regardless of trait level etc. It is worth noting that when "reflecting" ranged damage this does not count as block and you do not get the bonuses or procs.

Shouts

AoE healing shouts that remove conditions, provide good support and keep your adrenaline up

Banners

Regenerating banners. Not a fan of Powerful Banners (as the damage is negligible), but the AoE rez on Battle Standard can change a fight, and the Furious Rally on Banner of Disc is very nice.

Stances

Very popular at the moment and very strong. Can have close to perma vigor if you go that way, as well as amazingly long stances (especially berserkers stance)

Signets

Seems a little bit counter intuitive, but makes the passive on signets stronger, and if you use them means they are on passive again faster.

Burst
or
Cleansing Ire

Cleansing Ire version of this is very popular at the moment! Both reward you for using your adrenaline and as a result you need to spec further into strong adrenaline generation,

Adrenaline

Opposite of the above, rewarded for not using adrenaline. Good for Greatsword, as it has a very weak Burst ability.

Healing

Maximizes ticks you can have of healing/second. Can Chain it with Banners or Shouts for even more.

Immobilize

Used to be very strong, the ICD on leg specialist has killed it a bit, but still good in some situations (Hammer with Valk jewel in PvP for example)

Longbow

Two generally quite weak traits, but if speccing heavily into a Longbow build can be useful.

Greatsword

Great to boost your GS damage. Nice to pair with one of the Adrenaline traits.

Axe

Big fan of this (but I just quite like axes). Gives you nice damage and nice Adrenaline generation.

Boons

Interesting one this. Warhorn is very underused in PvP, but I have always been a fan of the AoE condi peel and boon generation. Especially in the current meta.


Physical Utility Build

With Warrior increasingly being used as a CC stun monster, and the fact that as it stands Hammer skills are so incredibly telegraphed, thought I would rehash a slightly older build for stacking hard CC on targets and locking them down, whilst still having decent damage from Axe. You lose mobility by swapping sword out for axe (from the standard build lots of people use at the moment) and the condi clear is almost non existent which may prove to be a problem if you do not use zerkers stance effectively and if you are really having problems you could consider swapping in Mending instead.

Link

Would appreciate any comments or changes people can suggest as this is pure theory and am yet to test it.