PvP Lives Here

The Warrior style rewards the brave and the honorable.

Team Quitter’s sixth profession overview takes a look at one of the most familiar and oft-used professions not only in the Guild Wars universe, but in the entire role-playing genre. Returning to Guild Wars 2 is the Warrior, and like it's predecessor, this melee fighter prioritizes damage dealing first and damage mitigation second. He's a straightforward, high-threat, high-control, and I dare say simple-minded killing machine that will gladly teach you the importance of kiting the hard way.


The Warrior Signature: Adrenaline
Warriors are granted one powerful attack skill based on their main-hand weapon choice that requires Adrenaline to activate. Adrenaline is gained through attacking enemies, certain Traits, and select skills. The warriors Adrenaline Bar is separated into three segments which represent the power or functionality of the Adrenaline attack skill. In general, having a full adrenaline bar will unleash the most powerful version of the skill and you must have at least the first segment filled before you can even activate the attack. Based on the situation you may find it better to use the lower tiers if it means the difference between life and death for you or your enemy.

The Tank
The Warriors greatest virtue is his natural survivability. Tied for the highest health with the Necromancer and having access to heavy armor, the Warrior is one of the few classes that can wade into a team fight without fear and shrug off incidental area damage. Most classes like the Thief, Elementalist, and Guardian have to be extremely careful due to either low health or low armor. Being a warrior means you're usually the first to engage and the last to die.


The Weapons Master
The Warrior has access to more weapons and combinations than any other class in the game, giving him the most customization in terms of build and play style. With 12 different weapons and a total of 19 possible combinations the Warrior has the ability to really specialize towards very specific goals, making for some very interesting character and team builds.


Sword - This Weapon focuses on damage over time through the bleeding condition instead of large damage numbers. Having one of the best closers in the game, Savage Leap gives you an extremely fast recharge leap that can be used to greatly increase your mobility to cross the map, get into melee range, or escape a battle gone wrong.

Adrenaline Skill: Flurry - Being able to immobilize your enemy and hit him 25+ times in under 4 seconds makes this a great skill to use at full adrenaline. When combined with Weapon mods that have a chance to cause bleeding on hit you can stack a massive amount of conditions on your target and anyone else close enough.

Axe - Axe has but one focus, do as much damage as possible. With emphasis on the vulnerability condition axe can weaken the enemy's defenses and pound in the damage. This set becomes particularly deadly when combined with the Utility skill Frenzy as it greatly speeds up the Triple Chop chain.

Adrenaline Skill: Eviscerate - A giant leap of death towards your target that deals massive damage. Combined with Signet of Might and vulnerability you can deal 10K+ damage to a single target with full adrenaline.

Mace - This weapon is all about control. Providing stuns, knocks, and daze . Counter Blow makes this set particularly annoying to fight against with melee as it has a very low cooldown.

Adrenaline skill: Skull Crack - At full adrenaline this thing puts out a 4 second stun which is huge in terms of both killing and defensive power. The Other amazing thing is that at first tier Adrenaline it puts out a 2 second stun, giving you a nice choice between frequency and duration.

Greatsword - A focus on area damage and movement but makes for a disappointing PvP weapon at the moment. This feels more like a PvE weapon in terms of what it has to offer. Hundred Blades could not be used while moving and Whirlwind Attack, while looking spectacular, does little damage and does not provide enough control in movement.

Adrenaline Skill: Face Me - The movement and control you want out of the set, but cannot make up for the shortcomings of the other 5 skills.

Hammer - An amazing PvP set with great area damage and control. Can put out area weakness and cripple with Fierce Blow and Hammer Shock, Can knock back groups of enemies with Staggering Blow, and can put a single enemy on his ass with Backbreaker. This set really shines as all the skills can be used either offensively or defensively depending on the situation.

Adrenaline Skill: Earthshaker - Again amazing, large area damage and stun that can be cast at range making your character do a giant leap to the area. Can be used in a lot of different ways for interesting strategic plays and positioning.

Rifle - The rifle is used with single target damage in mind and has a great ability to keep the fight ranged if you so choose. Between Aimed Shot and Rifle Butt, you can keep enemies away and play the "kite and fight" game, slowly whittling down the enemies HP with Bleeding Shot and Volley.

Adrenaline Skill: Kill Shot - A large spike of ranged damage but it's hard to justify over other adrenaline skills due to slow cast time.

Longbow - This weapon puts out a huge amount of AoE and Burning but much slower projectiles than the rifle leads to poor hit rate at longer ranges. It's odd that this weapon almost feels better at point blank ranges. Arcing Arrow and Incendiary Shot are both great damage and give area burning allowing you to stack a lot of area fire damage.

Adrenaline Skill: Combustive Shot - This skill has a huge area and allows you to ignite your own arrows when standing in it. This can put out huge amounts of burning and is especially amazing in big team fights when other allies can take advantage.

Warhorn - The best movement weapon in the game bar none. Charge is probably overpowered at this point being able to remove all movement debuffs in the game every 10 seconds as well as grant swiftness to all nearby allies. Call to Arms provides a huge area weakness and adds vigor to all allies, can easily turn large team fights in your favor. Recommended for PvP big time.

Shield - Another almost indispensable PvP weapon. Both skills are incredibly versatile in use, Shield Bash provides a great stun that allows you to get a lot of damage on target before he can escape. Shield Stance allows you to close distance without taking damage or as a measure to save yourself during battles.

Axe - Whirling Axe can provide some pretty decent damage but it's true use is the adrenaline gain because it hits so many times. This can easily fill half your adrenaline pool if used well.

Mace -Tremor is a nice way to get a ranged cripple and damage in your build but overall the other weapons feel a lot stronger in terms of use for PvP.

Sword - A nice mix of damage and defense. Impale is a very big damage skill but can be dodged if the enemy is at too long a range. Riposte acts much like Shield Stance but with a lower recharge and the ability to bleed melee. It's an interesting choice but the Shield's ability to stun feels like a bigger advantage.

The Warrior Experience
The Warrior has made one of the best transitions from the original Guild Wars in terms of overall feeling. The class is able to maintain its role as a disruptive frontline killing machine while gaining more satisfaction from the high action oriented combat. Like the original Guild Wars, if the warrior is left unchecked he will generate the most damage per second in close quarters. Melee damage in general will be much higher due to the difficulty of staying close to a target and the ample selection of knockbacks, Snares, blinks, and the Dodge ability all enemies have access to. As casters now have the ability to move and cast at the same time this also makes the Warriors job even harder to get his damage in. To prevent endless kiting, combat speed changes based on the direction of travel; forward movement being much faster than backward or strafing movement, allowing the warrior to keep pace with his target. The focus on knockdowns and stuns is still a heavy theme in the warriors play style and there are still skill based abilities like Bulls Charge, which acts like a Bulls Strike from the original with the bonus of quickly sliding a moderate distance. Frenzy also makes its return trading the double damage clause for a long cool down making its use very important at the right times. An Axe warrior under frenzy will kill a target in under 5 seconds so using it well and after the enemy has wasted his blocks/escapes is key.

Banners are the new warrior mechanic that add an interesting team aspect in the utility skill line up. They act a lot like Wards from the original Guild Wars, creating a large area that gives specific buffs to all allies within. The bonus is that you can pick up your banner and carry it with you to the next fight, planting it where needed. These are very nice for planting on capture points and to carry into a team fight, but be aware you cannot use any weapon skills while holding the Banner.

Warrior PvP Action: Pax 2011
This video provides some interesting footage of Warrior Gameplay but unfortunately it's rather limited to the Rifle in terms of skill use. Please Blame Team Quitters very own Crimson (blue Warrior) for not swapping weapons once in the match. However, this is a great display of the warriors survivability as Crimson is able to stay in multiple battles and shrug off damage. Also Watch Myself (Blue Female Elementalist) and Daemon (Blue Male Elementalist) handle the enemies warrior.



@ 3:08
Red warrior using sword/shield + longbow struggles from range and misuses his Stomp skill, a large portion of his health is taken before he's even able to engage and is forced to use his heal skill, putting it into cool down.

@ 4:11
Crimson slides towards target with Bulls Charge and immediately combos into Stomp, normally this would blow all enemies back but the damage from Stomp killed the target.

@ 4:33
Crimson feints an escape to heal up and comes right back out activating the Adrenaline skill, Kill Shot, doing almost 6k damage to his target. That's almost half the targets full health pool.

@ 6:35
Crimson fears death and activates his elite Rampage, making him more resilient to damage and gaining 5 new powerful skills.



What do you think of the skill barrier required to play Warrior?

Why are there ranged options for a warrior?

Is there Deep Wound or something similar?


Please feel free to ask any questions or leave any comments. The best questions and answers will be added to the FAQ above with credits to the authors. If there's a topic you'd like to see as a QQ Feature, let us know with a reply below. As always, thanks for reading.

Also in this series:
Elementalist
Guardian
Necromancer
Engineer
Thief

Nicely done sir!

I really hope the subtle gameplay of the GW1 Warrior is either preserved or improved on in GW2. Stuff like target switching, dodging prots, calling spikes, landing Bull's Strike, Frenzy timing, maintaining the pressure, pushing backlines, etc. was all such a large part of not just Warrior gameplay but PvP in general. I know the frontline feel is there, and the GW2 Warrior does make you want to run away from him (I played Elementalist the most in the demos and if I gave a Warrior a few seconds of me standing still...I'd explode) so I hope the micro is there. It's needed to make him truly honorable =)

Been waiting for this one.

Glad to see my favorite weapon is still a favorite among the PvP in this game. Also I read Bulls Charge it says fleeing foes just like the original bulls charge and strike. Still works the same way I assume from reading.

Thank you good sir.

The warrior looks quite interesting to me.

Second, right after Thief for me!

Good to see hammers being viable in GW2, and Rifle sounds like fun too.

I'm honestly thinking Mace/Warhorn and Dual Swords is going to be the most powerful kiting set.

Quick attack rate with the swords, and having Riposte for a Thief, Guardian, or Warrior. CtA also helps prolong the battle for an extra chain or two if you need it, depending on how they time their heal, but unless a Guardian is heavy specd in Toughness or spamming Resolve, they're easier to dispose of because of low health. The mace can be switched to for a Skull Crack, which is spammable at any Adrenaline level due to the dual swords and Charge.

I'm sure it'll be useful in cc points too, with Flurry's extremely low recharge and AoE ability.

Does switching weapons reset adrenaline, or can you build up with one weapon and switch to use the burst skill of another weapon?

Is there a way to stick to a target or do you have to manually keep in mellee range of someone? I assume its the latter, based on your comment about mellee damage being so difficult to pull off. But I just wanted to be sure~

I'm totally going to play Warrior. Fucking manly!

Switching weapons does not reset Adrenaline as it is used in a global pool. That also means that by using your Adrenaline on one set you will not have Adrenaline for the other.



There is a move to target option in the settings, however due to terrain and other obstacles it may not be the best choice to activate. I feel better warriors will turn this off and manually control movement akin to quarter stepping, giving better control over positioning and not moving towards targets unexpectedly. It may come down to a preference thing, but it is there. The difficulty in staying close to a target is more about good use of closers/snares and keeping track of their rolls. They may even provide more movement options by release as well.

Excellent writeup, Jaden

Re: Movement: The movement system is really what makes the game so promising. From playing the game for 45 minutes I was pretty blown away by how fluid the movement in their game actually was. Even if they make only a mediocre skill and trait system, this game is still going to be incredible because of its freedom of movement.

How do you see quarter stepping possible without a click to move ability? How will you activate skills while moving if you use your left hand for movement keys, for example? Do you see viable a skill clicking option attached to a left hand movement option?

I've played warrior and I found it hard to stay in melee range of my target because of the fast paced action. In the light of the questions above, how do you see the option of auto approach target now that you also have ranged skills that you could use while auto moving towards a target?

Moving with WASD and using skills at the same time really isn't that hard. If you think you might have trouble just play a melee on AoC now that it has a F2P option.

How does being able to move while casting effect the warrior gameplay? It seems to me movement controls like sprint, bulls strike, hamstring, and axe rake are even more important.

If I'm an elementalist, can't I just keep walking backwards throwing fireballs in the warriors' face?