Warriors

Hi, ok, so in this post i'll basically be detailing the Warrior profession in Guild Wars including stuff like their attributes, weapons, skills and generally what they do within the PvP scene.

So, what is a Warrior and what do they do? Well Warriors are essentially powerful killing machines, if played well a good Warrior will cause A LOT of pressure to the enemy team and will be your own teams main offense. In PvP the Warrior has only 1 job and that's to kill stuff! Everything else on your team will be co-ordinated to this one goal, helping the warrior to kill things as fast as possible.

Ok so if we delve a bit further into the Warrior class we can see what makes them such powerful sources of damage. While Warriors are strong damage dealers they are also notoriously good at midgitating damage done to themselves, this is primarily because of their high armour rating of 80 + an additional 20 against any physical damage (dealt by hammers, swords, axes, spears, daggers, scythes and bows), compared to the low armour rating of the Caster professions which stands at only 60.

However the Warrior has only got a very small energy pool compared to say the energy pool of an Elementalist. The Warriors energy pool stands at a base value of 20 and regenerates at a rate of 2 energy every 3 seconds (indicated by 2 arrows to the right on the energy bar aka 2 pips of regeneration), which is quite slow. For comparison the Elementalist has a base energy pool of 30 which regenerates at a rate of 4 points of energy every 3 seconds (indicated by 4 arrows to the right on the energy bar aka 4 pips of regeneration).

This small energy pool is counteracted though by skills that rarely exceed a cost of 5 energy and attack skills that are powered by adrenaline instead of energy. You gain one strike of adrenaline everytime you successfully hit with an attack and most attack skills will cost from 4-10 adrenaline.

The Warrior has 5 different attribute lines there are(along with their definitions):

Strength [Primary Attribute]: Strength increases the armour penetration of your attack skills by 1% per attribute level. Strength also improves the effectiveness of skills that keep you alive, and those that inflict damage on your opponents.

Axe Mastery: Improve Axe Mastery to increase basic axe damage and damage dealt by axe skills.

Swordsmanship: Swordsmanship increases basic sword damage as well as damage dealt by sword skills.

Hammer Mastery: Hammer Mastery increases basic hammer damage and damage dealt by hammer skills.

Tactics: Tactics improves Shouts and Stances that give you and your party an advantage in battle.

Strength is the primary attribute of the Warrior and therefore cannot be used by any professions that choose to take the Warrior as their secondary profession. Most builds in PvP will run quite a high level in the strength attribute as it has some very very nice skills and the additional armour penetration allows the Warrior to do even more damage.

As i'm sure you can tell, the weapons the Warrior uses are the Axe, Hammer and Sword. Each of these will have it's own advantages and are balanced equally with pros and cons. Firstly I will explain what you must do to wield the weapon.

Each weapon will have a certain requirement e.g Axe "X" will have requires 9 axe mastery, this means that in order to get the full damage from axe "X" you will be required to have at least 9 points in your axe mastery attribute, if you do not meet this then the axe will do an insignificant amount of damage but can still be equipped, most frontline characters will run more than 9 in their desired weapon though in order to maximise the damage output from their weapon skills. If you exceed this requirement or equal it, the axe will do full damage. This principle carries true throughout all professions and weapons, but the required attribute will vary and the value of attribute will vary but will not fall below 9.

The Axe - The axe is a very fast swinging melee weapon, this means it hits every 1.33 seconds and has a maximum damage range from 6-28, this means that on any given swing the axe may hit for anything between these figures and while that may not sound a lot, when you consider that damage is being done every 1.33 seconds, it really does add up and that's not including using any axe skills which generally have +dmg advantages. Most axe skills use adrenaline and so not a lot of energy is used and the adrenaline cost for the skill can be built up quite quickly. Axes also only require 1 hand to use and so allows for a shield to be used on the offhand.

The Sword - The sword is also a fast swinging 1 handed weapon, which hits every 1.33 seconds as well. A sword will have a maximum damage range from 15-22, this means that while the maximum damage the sword can inflict is lower than that of the axe, the variation between attack damage will be smaller. Also unlike the axe, the sword is more of a mix between adrenaline based attacks and energy based attacks and are not focused so much on damage, instead the sword is more geared towards conditions, such as bleeding ( a condition which causes 3 pips of health degeneration) and deep wound ( a condition which decreases your maximum health by 20% with a maximum value of 100).

The Hammer - Unlike both the sword and the axe, the hammer is a slow swinging, dual handed weapon. This means that you cannot equip a shield while wielding a hammer. The hammer has an attack speed of 1.75 seconds and so is a lot slower than the axe and sword, however, the damage it deals is also far greater at 19-35 per hit. Like the sword the hammer is also a mix between adrenaline and energy based attack skills, with more adrenaline skills than energy based and the hammer is geared towards knocking down (KD'ing) opponents. This is a very very useful thing to do, as once the opponent has been knocked to the floor he can neither run away or cast any spells, the KD duration is 2 seconds but this can be prolonged to 3 seconds with the use of an insignia placed in the warriors armour, the absolute maximum time a KD can last for is 4 seconds but this 4 seconds can only be applied by 1 skill in the game.

Tactics - Tactics is not used very often by warriors in PvP as most of the skills under this line are based on defense rather than offense and when playing in an organized team the warrior will not need to take any defense, he can leave this to his monks.

Shields - If a warrior is wielding a 1 handed weapon, he or she can then also equip a shield, which will have a armour rating of 16, shields require either 9 attribute points in strength, which most warriors will have already or 9 attribute points in tactics. Shields are not just used by Warriors though, they are also used as a defensive set by backline and midline characters as well. This is because even if they do not meet the requirement of the shield, the shield will still grant them half of armour rating, so they will recieve +8 armour rating from wielding a shield.

I think that pretty much sums up the basics of the Warrior profession and I will not go into actually playing the Warrior as it is by far one of the hardest professions in Guild Wars to play, you could nearly write a book on it =P

Here is a listing of all the different skills available to the warrior class along with their descriptions:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/List_of_warrior_skills
The golden skills are elite skills, you can only have 1 of these in your bar of 8 skills.

And here is a list of current effective Warrior builds used in PvP under the W section:
http://www.pvxwiki.com/w/index.php?title=Category:All_working_PvP_builds&from=Team+-+TA+Balanced
However, if a build here is rated anything other than a 5 (Great), it won't see much competitive play.