alphabet's builds for a warrior

Um....Warriors have many many different possible builds...here're a few that I use.

For PvE:

1: Bleed /crit build (my first build, mainly used during map exploration)
The philosophy behind this build is that you rally if your opponent is defeated. Thus by leaving many stacks of bleed on your opponent, even if you do go downed, you can still rally back up relatively easily. Also, bleeding stacks intensity so I like bleeding more over poison or burning, as it can get really painful.

Armor: Full Rampager's armor (power, precision, condition damage) with superior rune of the eagle(precision/crit damage)
(Or you can also use any superior rune which focuses on precision or condition damage or bleed duration, for example a cheap one is superior rune of the krait, or another possible one superior rune of the thief, or even superior rune of the undead for more survivability, superior rune of adventurer, etc.)

Accessories: focuses on power precision condition damage, just get the best possible (ascended > exotic > rare, and so on)

Weapon choices: Double sword + rifle for multiple bleed conditions. But I like double swords for its #4, which puts on 4 stacks of bleed over time, and its #5, which blocks an attack and hits to cause 5 stacks of bleed; it's #1 is a bleeding attack, and its "F1" also bleeds quite a lot, with its #2 to leap at foes / run away. With just about any superior sigil that triggers on crit (Eg: superior sigil of Air, or superior sigil of ice), or the superior sigil of agony which increases bleed duration.

You may as well use any set which gives conditions.

For traits I go for 0/30/10/0/30
For the Arms trait, I get #I or III , III or VIII, XI
For the Defense trait, I get #IV
For the Discipline trait, I get #III or VI, VII, X or XI

Traits that I really really recommend: Discipline XI, Defense #IV
For your information:
Arms # I is "Deep Strike" which gives +40 precision for any unused signet.
Arms # III is "Deep Cuts" which increases bleeding duration for 50%.
Arms # VIII is "Blademaster" which increases critical chance by 10% while holding a sword.
Arms # XI is "Furious" which grants extra adrenaline on crit.
Defense # IV is "vigorous Return" which increases health on rally.
Discipline #III is "Warrior's Sprint" which increases movement speed while wielding a melee weapon.
Discipline #VI is "Signet Mastery" which reduces signet cooldown by 20%.
Discipline #VII is "Sweet Revenge" which grants 100% chance to rally if you kill something that gives exp during vengence.
Discipline #X is "Moblie Strikes" which helps break immobolize if you use a movement skill.
Discipline #XI is "Quick Bursts" which reduces burst skill cooldown by 20%.

Slot Skill:
Either go for 5 signets (I use signet of fury, signet of might, signet of rage, healing signet, signet of stamia, but you can also replace signet of might by dolyak signet)
Or, go for other skills of your choice; in that case, replace the "Deep Strike" trait with "Deep Cuts" or something else.
I like going 5 signet as it gives decent stats increase / increase in endurance gain, with an increases crit chance due to "Deep Strike".


The idea of this build is to inflict many stacks of bleed on your target so that they die even if you go on downed. The best thing about double swords is that you get 4 bleeding skills: sword #1 F1, offhand sword #4 #5 bleeds a lot and you can keep using them. The Defense #IV trait really helps to keep you alive upon rally as it grants you a lot more health. The Discipline XI trait keeps your adrenaline up when you use sword F1 on multiple targets, resulting on many crit hits which grants adrenaline. If the situation gets bad you can always use your sword #2 to leap out of the fight, then switch to rifle. The Discipline VI trait lets you use your signet of rage more frequently, and with the fury boon you would get to about 90% crit chance (or in some more extreme cases more than 100%), which also lets you hit more and gain more adrenaline.

The damage of this build might not be as crazy immediately when compared to a berserker's gear warrior, but it sure can keep you alive better.

2: Banner tank (I mainly use it for PvE, during harder dungeons like CoE, Arah, FotM)

Armor: AC armor (power/toughness/vitality) with superior rune of the dolyak (which grants toughness/vitality and grants regeneration if all 6 pieces of armor have it)
Weapon set: mace/shield + hammer (for sigil you can use superior sigil of Debility which increases weakness duration on both weapons, or just about anything you can think of.)
Accessories: There is no easily obtainable exotic power/toughness/vitality accessories right now. What you may use is the ascended rings and backpack from FotM, and rares for other parts, or you can buy exotic power/toughness/vitality accessories from WvW vendors for badges of honor.) Also, there is currently no jewels that give power/toughness/vitality; you can probably get something similar that includes either toughness or vitality along with healing power, for example sapphire type jewels)

Slot Skills: Healing signet (or any other healing skill actually), endure pain, banner of defense, banner of tatics, battle standard. (actually you can use one less banner, and get another skill that you like)

Traits: 0/0/30/30/10
For Defense: # IV, IX, XI (or you can use #II also)
For Tatics: # II, V, XI
For Discipline: # III (you can replace this by Arms # VI, or even Strength II or III or VI)

For your information:
Defense # IV is "Vigorous Return" which increases health on rally.
Defense # IX is "Shield Master" which grants 90 more toughness while weilding a shield and reduces shield skill cooldown by 20%.
Defense # XI is "Defy Pain" which activates endure pain at 25% health.
Defense # II is "Turtle's Defense" which grants 200 toughness when crippled, chilled, stunned or immobilized.
Tatics # II is "Empower Allies" which grants an additional 70 power to yourself and allies near you.
Tatics # V is "Inspiring Banners" which increases the area in which banner buffs are applied and also reduces banner skills cooldown by 20%.
Tatics # XI is "Inspiring Battle Standards" which causes banners to grant regeneration.
Discipline # III is "Warrior's Sprint" which increases movement speed while wielding a melee weapon.
Arms # VI is "Furious Reaction" which grants 10 seconds of fury and vigor when you take damage more than 10% of your max HP in a single hit.
Strength # II is "Restorative Strength" which removes removes crippled, chilled, immobilize and weakness on heal skill use.
Strength # III is "Great Fortitude" which gives 5% power as a bonus to vitality.
Strength # VI is "Powerful Banners" which makes banners deal damage when summoned.

This build focuses on tanking while granting some power and regeneration to allies, while having the ability to use a lot of control skills and apply weakness on things so that you tank better. Mace #3, F1, Shield #4, Hammer #4, #5, F1 are all control skills, while mace #1 chain and hammer #2 applies weakness. You tank well because mace #2 and shield #5 are blocks, and you have endure pain in slot skills, which also activates when your health reaches 25%. If you use superior rune of the dolyak and healing signet, you will have 3 heals (1 from rune, 1 from signet, 1 from defense minor trait) which keeps you alive. It will get even better if you use food that grants health regen, or even probably a regen booster.

The main thing that you need to be aware of is the timing to use your mace #2. If timed well enough, you can tank most of the mobs even in CoE or FotM. Also good timing of using crowd control skills to help is needed, as well as to know how the boss buff (defiant) works. You can pretty much break a boss's defiant buff if you spam all your crowd control skills onto him.

One nice thing to do is to bring along with you a warhorn and a rifle / longbow, so you can still fight at range when needed, and also run faster if you're just covering the distance.

3: Tank shout build (I mainly use this build for PvE, on probably a little easier dungeons, like CM, TA or FotM lower levels)
This build is kinda a little more offensive than the banner tank build.

Armor: Power/toughness/vitality, with superior rune of the soldier (grants vitality, toughness; also causes shouts to remove a condition if you have it on all 6 pieces of your armor.)

Weapons: mace/shield + hammer (or any set which you think you can tank well in) with superior rune of debility which increases inflicted weakness duration. (or any other rune that you can think of.)

Accessories: Power/toughness/vitality. Again you may not find exotics for some components of this set of accessories; just go for ascended or rare.

Slot Skills: Healing Signet (or any healings skill actually), "For Great Justice", "Shake It Off", "On My Mark". (you can use "Fear Me" if you like it more, but I like the shorter cooldown time on "On My Mark".) and Battle Standard.

Traits: 0/0/30/30/0
For Defense: # IV, IX, XI (or you can use #II also)
For Tatics: # II, VIII, XII
For Discipline: # III or # IV (or you can use Arms # VI, Strength # II, Strength # III also.)

For your information:
Defense # IV is "Vigorous Return" which increases health on rally.
Defense # IX is "Shield Master" which grants 90 more toughness while weilding a shield and reduces shield skill cooldown by 20%.
Defense # XI is "Defy Pain" which activates endure pain at 25% health.
Defense # II is "Turtle's Defense" which grants 200 toughness when crippled, chilled, stunned or immobilized.
Tatics # II is "Empower Allies" which grants an additional 70 power to yourself and allies near you.
Tatics # VIII is "Lung Capacity" which reduces the cooldown on shout skills by 20%.
Tatics # XII is "Vigorous Shouts" which lets your shouts heal allies.
Discipline # III is "Warrior's Sprint" which increases movement speed while wielding a melee weapon.
Discipline # IV is "Inspiring Shouts" which grants adrenaline upon using a shout.
Arms # VI is "Furious Reaction" which grants 10 seconds of fury and vigor when you take damage more than 10% of your max HP in a single hit.
Strength # II is "Restorative Strength" which removes removes crippled, chilled, immobilize and weakness on heal skill use.
Strength # III is "Great Fortitude" which gives 5% power as a bonus to vitality.

The playstyle of this build is not too different from the previous one, but the focus on your slot skills are a little more offensive than the banner tank as you can inflict 10 stacks of vulnerability on your target for a short time, and grant 3 stacks of might and fury to you and your allies for quite a long time.
Again the timing of mace #2 is really important, and also you have to use your crowd controls when needed and learn the mechanics of the boss buff "defiant".

4: Berserker's Build (I use this one in PvE mainly, when I do easy dungeons like AC, CoF path 1, or even low levels in FotM, this build focuses on all out raw damage, and ignores anything else)

Armor: Power/precision/critical damage (CoF armor) with superior rune of the scholar (or any rune that increases critical damage, and would be good for it to increase your crit chance too, like superior rune of rage, superior rune of divinity which is toooooo expensive, superior rune of the eagle, superior rune of the ranger)

Weapons: Greatsword + Rifle (with superior sigil of strength on greatsword, and superior sigil of accuracy on rifle, or anything that triggers on crit, eg superior sigil of air, superior sigil of fire, etc.)

Accessories: Power/precision/critical damage. Get the best you can (ascended > exotic > rare > masterwork....)

Slot Skills: 5 signets (I usually leave out the dolyak signet, but you can use it if you want to)

Traits: 20/30/0/0/10
For Strength: # V, IX
For Arms: # I, VII, X
For Discipline: # VI or # V

For your information:
Strength # V is "Berserker's Power" which increases your damage by a percentage based on the amount of adrenaline you have.
Strength # IX is "Slashing Power" which increases the damage done by greatsword and spear by 10%.
Arms # I is "Deep Strike" which gives +40 precision for any unused signet.
Arms # VII is "Crack Shot" which reduces rifle and harpoon gun skills cooldown by 20% and also lets the shots pierce targets, which means you can hit in a line.
Arms # X is "Forceful Greatsword" which reduces the cooldown of greatsword skills by 20% and also grants might on crit with a greatsword.
Discipline #VI is "Signet Mastery" which reduces signet cooldown by 20%.
Discipline #V is "Heightened Focus" which increases your critical chance by a percentage based on your adrenaline level.

The purpose of having this build is just pure damage. You should never use your adrenaline skill (F1), and you will most probably be switching between the 2 weapons quite oftenly to just heal up at range if you get low. One critical hit with a greatsword grants 1 or even 2 stacks of might (1 by trait for sure, 1 by sigil which has a 30% chance), so you can easily get 25 stacks of might if you use your hundred blades on a few mobs. You can also activate hundred blades every 8 seconds, dealing a ton of damage to mobs.

A slight note is that I like to use superior sigil of accuracy as I use the same rifle in WvW, but of course you can use another sigil if you like.

5: Berserker's build (This is mainly for WvW. It's only slightly different from that used in PvE, but works somehow better.)

Armor: Power/precision/critical damage (CoF armor) with superior rune of the scholar (or any rune that increases critical damage, and would be good for it to increase your crit chance too, like superior rune of rage, superior rune of divinity which is toooooo expensive, superior rune of the eagle, superior rune of the ranger)

Weapons: Rifle + Sword/Shield with superior rune of accuracy on rifle, superior sigil of energy + any sigil on sword/shield.

Accessories: Power/precision/critical damage. Get the best you can (ascended > exotic > rare > masterwork....)

Slot Skills: 5 signets (I usually leave out the dolyak signet, but you can use it if you want to)

Traits: 10/30/0/0/30
For Strength: # V
For Arms: # I, VII, XII
For Discipline # V, VI, XII

For your information:
Strength # V is "Berserker's Power" which increases your damage by a percentage based on the amount of adrenaline you have.
Arms # I is "Deep Strike" which gives +40 precision for any unused signet.
Arms # VII is "Crack Shot" which reduces rifle and harpoon gun skills cooldown by 20% and also lets the shots pierce targets, which means you can hit in a line.
Arms # XII is "Last Chance" which grants quickness if you hit something with less than 25% of their maximum health. (has a 90 second cooldown time.)
Discipline # V is is "Heightened Focus" which increases your critical chance by a percentage based on your adrenaline level.
Discipline #VI is "Signet Mastery" which reduces signet cooldown by 20%.
Discipline # XII is "Adrenal Reserves" which causes burst skills to use less adrenaline.


The biggest difference in this build and the previous one is that you get 10 more points in discipline which gives 10% more critical damage. Also, in this build you can actually use the burst skill. However you should only use the burst skill when you have full adrenaline for maximum damage, and it is best to use it when your target is not looking at you, so you basically surprise them with the burst damage. Also use your rifle #2 to cripple your target, making it harder for them to run. I basically use all the skills of the rifle, perhaps less on #4 as its long casting time hinders the rate of damage.

The main focus of this build is to kill invaders before they can react. Hiding in a crowd will help you a lot since you have basically no survival mechanics except the shield skill #5 and dodge rolls; staying in a crowd also distracts invaders so they look at your allies instead of you. An important thing to note is that you should always stay in the crowd (if you have one) and not go in front; you may get pulled into the enemy zerg if you're standing right in front, and that is not the point! You have to live to kill more, not get killed in a few secs.

When using this build remember to always target the invaders with lower defense (For example elementalists, necros, mesmers, thieves, etc). The tanks you can just leave them to rot, and just deal with them after their dps are dead. Also remember DO NOT chase low HP enemies if they are too deep within enemy zerg; the enemy zerg can always just rez the person if they go downed.

Also, a good practise in a group fight is to drop one of the invaders, and quickly change target to people trying to rez him as they tend to just sit still there taking the damge. Again target the weaker ones.

A nice method I found is to sort of "tap" an enemy to check out his/her defense. If you hit for about 2k, aiming a killshot (Rifle F1) should drop them instantly. If you hit for about 1.5k, a volley should drive them back (if they don't run, aim a killshot to finish them off). If you hit for less than 1k, then don't bother, that one's a tank, move onto another target.

Also you have to notice boons that the enemy have, for example don't shoot someone with endure pain on, or look out for the guardian heal skill.

If you get chased down when using this build, you'll most probably die in a few hits. Do try to switch to your sword/shield and try shield #5. Also look for a target away from the fight and use your sword #2 to leap at it. Also in WvW if you fall off a cliff you won't get a repair bill, but if you get killed by an invader there goes 1.86s from your pocket. (So fall off a cliff and die if there's just too many chasing you.)

A good practise in WvW is always to bring along with you a warhorn and a longbow. The warhorn is used for general running (just keep switching back and forth, use your warhorn #4, then switch back to your shield.) and the longbow is used in certain situations when you can't finish off your opponent (for example, defending a tower). The longbow #3 skill hits a lot and is great in situations like that as it is an AoE. If your damage is high enough you can even keep invaders off their ram even though they have a lot of people.

Also, do use the signet of rage a lot as it grants the much needed fury which will push your crit chance up to about 85-90%, and grants 5 stacks of might and swiftness for a long duration. Don't worry about losing the 40 precision, you get fury which is worth more.

Maximum damage recorded using this build is 25k on a poor little necro. I think she's pretty low in level, but well.....on an average light armor invader you should be able to killshot 15k+, similar damage can be done to medium armor invaders.

6: Boon on self build (This build is fun, you get to stack up fury and swiftness for as long as you want to. It also focuses on using shouts to heal allies and yourself, as well as granting aegis every 48 seconds.)

Armor: Power/healing power/toughness with superior rune of the monk. (AC runes, grants healing power as well as chance to gain healing on hit, also grants aegis to nearby allies when you use an elite skill if you have this rune on all 6 pieces of your armor.)

Weapons: mace/shield + hammer or mace/shield + rifle with superior sigil of debility on hammer and mace, any sigil on rifle or shield.

Accessories: Power/healing power/toughness

Slot Skills: Healing Signet (or any healings skill actually), "For Great Justice", "Shake It Off", "On My Mark". (you can use "Fear Me" if you like it more, but I like the shorter cooldown time on "On My Mark".) and Signet of Rage.

Traits: 0/0/30/30/10
For Defense: # IV, IX, XI (or you can use #II also)
For Tatics: # II, VIII, XII
For Discipline: # VI

For your information:
Defense # IV is "Vigorous Return" which increases health on rally.
Defense # IX is "Shield Master" which grants 90 more toughness while weilding a shield and reduces shield skill cooldown by 20%.
Defense # XI is "Defy Pain" which activates endure pain at 25% health.
Defense # II is "Turtle's Defense" which grants 200 toughness when crippled, chilled, stunned or immobilized.
Tatics # II is "Empower Allies" which grants an additional 70 power to yourself and allies near you.
Tatics # VIII is "Lung Capacity" which reduces the cooldown on shout skills by 20%.
Tatics # XII is "Vigorous Shouts" which lets your shouts heal allies.
Discipline #VI is "Signet Mastery" which reduces signet cooldown by 20%.

The idea behind this build is that, with "For Great Justice" and signet of rage, you can basically have fury on you forever. Also the cooldown time of signet of rage is 48 seconds, and the boons it apply on you lasts for 43.5 seconds. If you would pull out your warhorn when you're not in combat, and cast #4, you can have swiftness forever too. You can also get 11 stacks of might on yourself by "For Great Justice" and signet of rage. Another good thing about this build is that you can heal your allies a lot every time you cast a shout, and you have 3 shouts having 20 seconds of cooldown (slightly more for "On My Mark"). One shout heals nearby allies and yourself by about 2.2k.

Also, because of the runes on your armor, you can apply aegis on nearby allies and yourself every 48 seconds when you cast your signet of rage, which just makes it better.

Be reminded though, this build is not as good in situations when mobs can steal/ rip off your boons, for example in AC, graveling scavengers can remove (...or steal!?) boons from you. In such situation your boon might get removed / stolen and thus the build's less effective.

A note on using a warrior:
Do bring multiple weapons, and switch weps a lot !
For example, while running, try to switch to your warhorn and cast #4 and switch back.

For me I basically carry a greatsword, a mace, a hammer, a shield, a warhorn, two rifles (one with crit damage, one with condition damage), and a longbow.....with me all the time....You'll never know when you'll need that specific weapon, so why not bring them with you !

nice job there lol.quite a few builds too. was thinking you only wrote one not 10 lol.

Sniper!!