Thursday, February 3, 2011

In-depth look: Warrior

The warrior is a soldier profession with mastery of a wide range of weapons, using adrenaline to become as deadly as it is versatile.

Warrior concept art.

Abilities
The warrior's role is largely defined by the weapon they wield in their main hand. Each weapon type has a particular flavor and type of damage that it inflicts.
Adrenaline is the warrior profession's unique mechanic. As the warrior attacks adrenaline is built up which increases the damage of the warrior's attacks. It can also be spent on a single powerful burst attack. Each weapon set has a single burst skill which has a variety of different conditions that improve with more adrenaline.

 Special skill types
  • Banners — The warrior summons banners to buff his allies. A banner can be picked up and carried around to move the buff, or it can be planted in an area to convey the buff, allowing the warrior to continue fighting. One example is Banner of Courage, which increases the melee damage of allies within its range.
  • Chains — A set of three skills that share a single skill slot, chains go off in sequence if you are hitting your target. For example, the sword chain skills Sever Artery, Gash, and Final Thrust are all on the same key, so rather than making a sword warrior spend three slots, they stack to fill only one slot. Chains effectively give a warrior two extra weapon skills on a weapon set allowing for a larger selection of skills and abilities.
  • Charge Skills — Skills can be held down to power them up for more impressive attacks. A warrior with a mace can wind up the powerful skillObliterate and release it at four different power levels to do increasing amounts of damage.
  • Shouts — Shouts are skills that affect a large area and give bonuses to allies or debuff enemies. A warrior could use the shout On My Mark to lower an enemy's armor and call a target out to allied party members.
  • Stances — These are toggle skills that let you turn on an enhancement at the cost of energy regeneration. For example, a warrior could hitBerserker's Stance which drains his energy, but gives him adrenaline regeneration. It can then be toggled off so the warrior is able to regenerate his energy pool again.


Traits
A warrior gains traits through training physically, by defeating enemies, and by eating and drinking.
A warrior has two general trait lines to choose from: Power and Tactics. They also have trait lines for each of the weapons they can wield.
See list of warrior traits.

Attributes
Warriors can put attribute points into Strength, Agility, Vitality, and Perception, the other attributes being considered minor for this profession.

Armor

The warrior is a soldier profession and thus wears heavy armor.

 


Weapons


 Two-handed

  • Hammer - Pounds the ground with area-of-effect attacks that can stagger groups of enemies.
  • Greatsword - Sweeping area-of-effect attacks while being able to move quickly between groups of enemies.
  • Longbow - Massive fire AoE damage used to keep hordes of enemies at bay.
  • Rifle - After taking aim, a warrior can quickly volley bullets against a single target or pierce groups of enemies with one shot.
Main-hand
  • Axe - Can quickly build up adrenaline and can deliver powerful high damage attacks.
  • Sword - Quick and mobile, with many opportunities to cause bleeding.
  • Mace - Has powerful stunning attacks, leaving enemies susceptible to further blows.
Off-hand
  • Shield - Provides defensive abilities.
  • Warhorn - Buffs damage output.
  • Axe
  • Sword
  • Mace
There are nineteen different combinations of weapons that a warrior can wield. A warrior has two active weapon sets and can easily switch between them, but doing so in combat induces a cooldown to prevent continuous switching between weapons. This cooldown can be decreased by equipping the Weapon Mastery trait once gained.


62 comments:

  1. Excellent guide! I have a few friends who played Guild Wars for a while, heard it was an amazing game.

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  2. Nice article I'm gonna follow this site for sure.

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  3. Man, I love your blog, I'll follow you!!! Keep posting!

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  4. Getting me back into the Guild Wars mood.. :)

    A necromancer guild would be sweet

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  5. Haha laughed at the comments of the players in the video.. "Hold that pose"..

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  6. hmm i might have to check this game out

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  7. Warriors always seem to be the dominant characters. Great review!

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  8. not a big gamer but very useful post and good description. great job

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  9. A few of my friends are GW2 players. They've been trying to convert me, but I'm just too much of a loner in MMO's. I'd probably end up getting them killed. :/

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  10. You seem to be well versed in this game, and you make me want to play too.

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  11. Really detailed look, thanks mate!

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  12. The weapon system. Main hadn off hand all that. Looks so awesome. And I love GW2 concept art.

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  13. wow, the warrior looks awesome, wonder how are the other classes if this is so cool

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  14. The artstyle seems amazing...

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  15. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  16. Quite a few MMORPGs being released this year (Star Wars, RIFT, Tera, Guild Wars 2). Add that to the preexisting ones makes me wonder what subscription numbers will be like for each. I'm more interested towards RIFT and GW2 though.

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  17. Im going to make a warrior class now.

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  18. still interesting, i like to read your article dat after day.

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  19. Thats the coolest warrior Ive ever seen!

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  20. I might have to try that game soon, nice info

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  21. Excellent guide. I wanted to play this game for a long time just didn't have enough time.

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  22. wow! warriors look sweet im gonna have to give it a try

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  23. Warriors are the best! I never understood the people that got into such a game and choose another "line of duty", I thought the battles were the main reasons for most to join.

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  24. interesting pic..i like it..i think im goin out to buy this game soon..u have finally convinced me lol

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  25. thanks for description about this game.

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  26. This is real nice. Very informative.

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  27. A GW2 review that isn't shoving the author's opinion down my throat? I am impressed. It's a shame that the game's graphics don't resemble the concept art.

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  28. @Old Liam

    Oh but it does actually. Search youtube for a HD game play video and you'll how the UI and stuff is sort of made like an "artsy" style. Not to mention the way they integrate the 3D rendering with real painting style artworks in the cut scenes and stuff.

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  29. Cool blog man. I've never actually tried guild wars (always been a wow player), but I might actually test this out =)

    http://musicnewslife.blogspot.com/ my blog

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  30. Very in-depth review, I can tell you spent a lot of time with it. Followed!

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  31. Nolan North, AGAIN? Oh yeah this is pretty much only MMORPG I find interesting anymore, everything else looks like a variation of WoW. Its looking quite promising, but I don't think ill be playign a warrior.

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  32. it looks damn awesome but then again so does everything in gw2

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  33. Cool blog and post
    now following

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  34. You really have a detailed blog here! keep it up!

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  35. Nice, such in depth reviews on these! Gotta love it!

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  36. love these gamer blogs, keep it up!

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  37. ive heard nothing but great things about this game and i am always looking for some great teambased PvP, guess GW2 is on my list!

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  38. Nice post.
    I love melee classes in every mmo.
    I've played one in WoW too

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  39. good post and nice blog, keep it up :)

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  40. I've been looking into this game for quite some time, I appreciate the info.

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  41. Nice post I've always wanted to get into this game

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  42. I would totally rock a warrior! I like your blog, I'll be following.

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  43. Ive been looking for a decent blog that covers this in much detaile. Following :)

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  44. That's some really cool concept art, seriously!

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  45. tuhe warrior's picture is really nice.

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