Weapon Swapping...got some tips for a new Warrior?

Hey everyone!
It's been a while since I"ve been here after first seeing this game a few years ago, never really getting into it and now completely addicted.
So first a big thank you to the entire online community that's given me and my new Guild Wars Clan an awesome welcome and great time.
A few questions regarding Weapon Swapping and negative energy and tips?
First off, i'm coming from a Sacred online gaming background where, when switching weapons, it was actually possible to free up a ton of extra energy just before casting a spell, casting it then switching weapons without an energy deficit.
Whilst playing this game and reading some great posts here about how negative energy deficits come to bear while swapping weapons and casting spells, I was wondering if any of you guys had any tips on what kind of left hand items to have equipped to better a pve warrior (mine, heh :P) that's using a good bit of energy plus addrenaline.
I"m quite a fan of using a whole bunch of differnet types of resources pools like adrenaline plus energy and have just gotten around to getting a good "feel" of how to balance energy and adrenaline while having my warrior run his attacks.
I currently have a level 20 warrior with my attributes split up amongst axe , strength and healing.
I love the way that Endure and Defy Pain stacks up giving those few extra seconds to finish off battles and I'm getting pretty good ( I think :P) at making those strength based ways of giving me health points last till the timer wears off and my health points snap back to normal.
I'm currently switching my left hand items from an icon that gives me +15 to energy with a - 1 to regen to a another protective icon that just gives me plus twelve with no negative regen.
The way i'm playing it, when i do medium difficulty battles, I use the icon with no penalties to energy regen and when I do a tougher battle, I first go into battle wth the bigger energy tank that incurs the negative to my energy regen and then when i finish using up all the extra energy, I then switch to my lower energy icon with the faster regen until the battle finishes.
First off...
lol, am I doing this right?
And/or, do any of you have any suggestions on how, if at all possible, this can be made to work better?
Again, a big thanks to the great community.

tks


gogo

Don't waste time with healing prayers plz.
Now is a good time to learn that a warriors job is to kill things.

Since you are using axe - you should look forward to capping eviscerate.

Weapon swapping should be like this with an axe.

Vampiric axe of defence(Fortitude when you have money) use this to kill things.
Zealous axe of "same" for when you are using lots of energy based skills like bulls strike, sprint, frenzy, and maybe even shock.
Elemental axe of "same" use this when hitting warriors as they have extra armour vs physical damage.

Spread attributes between strength and axe(maximum ie16 with sup rune) and tactics. Defy Pain is not that good - get eviscerate. Many other eleites are better. Endure pain is decent - save it till you are down on health like around 100 health as this will give you more time to heal.

Use mostly a shield. However when you need to use extra energy from those +15-1 regen items is when you need to repeatedly shock ghostly heroes in PVP. Otherwise dont waste your time carrying them in PVE.

Use frenzy in PVE but when you get targeted cancel the stance with sprint and run away. This is when you are in a guild group where you know the people know how to kite and monks use a thing called energy management.

In PUG(where people are stupid sometimes)you might want to bring a watch yourself but dont waste time healing with healing prayers spells.

When you need to heal use healing signet.

Secondary skills of use are plague touch(nec) and shock (ele).

All of this applys to PVE and PVP except when farming when you do stupid stuff like stack live vicariously and vigorous spirit etc.

Sam

Get a shield, and stop casting spells. If you're using energy to the point that you actually have to worry about energy swapping, you're doing something extremely wrong.

Don't worry too much about your secondary profession skills. Warriors are one of the best classes that work by themselves. Take healing signet to heal, and lots of damage skills. If you want to get a good idea on how to get a good build that works, take a look at this thread

Thanks for the responses.
Pah301, the tips you posted are excellent and i'm taking them to heart regarding what I first want my warrior to do and the best way to do it with what's offerred.
Eviscerate?
heh, don't got it yet but will work on having it as soon as possible.
Marty Silverblade, that link you posted to that build was a real eye-opener for me and I've already begun my revamp and rethinking.
Again, thanks guys for the critique.
Cheers!


gogo

try not to get into the closed minded views as the people who post telling you what you can and cant do with a warrior. your warrior can really be anything you want it to be. if you need energy shaft the sheild use a high evergy off hand and a totem axe for a total of +17 energy. ontop of that if you need more energy use gladiators armor. your total will be enough to try anything.
remember you need to be creative... everyone probably thought the first 55 monk was a dumbass right? or solo UW ranger. for that matter.

personally i like going w/e or w/me, really you can do anything. theres nothing worse than playing a game where every warrior has the exact skillset as you right?

-so if you want energy... totem axe or any other weapon that gives +5 energy
-gladiators armor
-for extra energy use a zealous weapon with some sort of ias. 1 energy degen isnt alot really. but remember to only use it when ur hitting things.
vampiric weapons blow... horribly... zealous is much better, but if you can make vampire weapons work for you do it.
as for your offhand. yea a sheild will be extra defence but like the guy above you said your there to kill stuff. so it isnt really 100% needed. >

pm me if you want help on the more "exotic" warrior builds. i dont have a closed minded view of warriors like most of the people on this forum.

There's a difference between being close-minded and being reasonable. A warrior with focus and a totem axe casting Meteor Shower is not reasonable (just an example).

Also, vampiric weapons do not "blow." Tests have consistently proven vampiric to be the most effective damage mod. Zealous and vampiric are used for completely different reasons, so saying one is better than the other makes no sense. Anyway, you can (and should) use both.

If the OP is interested in micromanaging, I'd suggest trying a monk out. That's where you really get into main/offhand (and even armor) swapping.

@Jetrel: I doubt anyone thought the first 55 monks or solo UW rangers were stupid. One look at those builds and anyone who knows the mechanics of the game will realize exactly what's going on.

Your example is misleading, because they're solo builds. Such builds have always required substantially different thinking, because you need to be able to fit, in 8 skills, everything you need to take on an area designed for *8 people*. A build made to work with groups is going to be more conventional, because it's become obvious at this point what generally works and what doesn't. Here, I'll use your example. if a 55 monk or UW solo ranger wanted to join your mission group, what would you think? How effective would they be? Chew on that for a while.

The fact is that cookie-cutter builds tend to represent the most effective builds known by the community. Everyone runs them because they know they're built for maximum effectiveness, and thus the build becomes 'cookie-cutter'. Remember our good friend the Shock Warrior, and before him, the Gale Warrior? These pretty much defined the cookie-cutter PvP warrior, because *everyone* ran these on their teams. Why weren't more teams playing original and exotic builds? Perhaps because the Shock Warrior is a brutally effective build? Take a look at the skill usage charts of the top teams in the Factions World Championship. All of the builds look remarkably similar, don't they? Think that's just a coincidence? These are the top players in the world, and they're all running builds where 6~8 skills out of 8 are identical. Think they know something you don't?

Trying to be 'exotic', just for the sake of being exotic and 'open-minded', is doing yourself and anyone who listens to you a disservice. If you absolutely must build around the idea that anything that's been done before must be bad, that's fine. But talking to beginners as if being exotic were somehow better, and that they can "do anything", is irresponsible.

We have a lot of beginners trying their own thing in PvE. What do you think all the wammos are doing? You think the guy with mending, defy pain, and deadly riposte looking for mission group is following someone's advice (I sure as hell hope not)? If he'd actually taken the time to learn anything about the game I guarantee he wouldn't be caught dead with that build.

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Deadly riposte is not that bad...

If you're having trouble leading off with attacks at the beginning of battle, 'To The Limit!' is a good offensive skill. Most of the energy-based attacks are bad because your energy regens so slowly that you can't use them quickly. Adrenal skills are usually much better.

For comparison, if you use Legionnaire's amour and a monk focus, you get +10 armour and +12 energy, while you if you use Gladiator's amour and a shield, you get +16 armour and +8 energy. (Armour doesn't disappear when you die, and armour is better than energy for you, so use a shield. )

Also, skills that boost armour, like 'Watch Yourself' and Dolyak signet are usually better than skills that boost health.

As for 'useful', your inherent advantages are adrenaline and high armour, so try to work around that. You can use adrenaline with a bow, and high armour with elementalist skills like phoenix. It might not kill as quickly, but it's different...

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I don't recommend Frenzy for PvE either because, unlike PvP, you should be getting attacked most of the time.

Well, heh I lucked out last night...or at least I think I did. I picked up a haft of Vampiricism.
+3/re -1
Woot!(maybe :P)
I'm just a newbie level twentier that will probably ascend only about next week, and so I'm wondering if I can make any use of this haft at all?
I had a sundering haft attatched to my axe, and was wanting to put this one on , but when I tried this haft with another axe that negative one regen was kinda a turn off.
Is there some way to balance this?
I'm thinking to perhaps buy another good axe then have one axe with sundering and one with Vampirism...
switch between the two...
Would this work?
Any ideas?
Thanks


gogo

p.s. frenzy...heh, well, it's fun sometimes but I lose hp so fast which I guess gets weighed against all that extra speed. Guess it's got it's proper time huh.
p.s.s Martialis, I like the way you talk about "inherent" advantages. I'm starting to understand now what the basis of a good warrior's strengths are and from there I guess I'll have more of a baseline to add to regarding more fun and intersting stuff.
So much to learn!

Yes, you definitely want to use the vamp mod. Just make sure you have a second weapon, or even just an empty slot with a shield, to switch to while your not fighting. During combat, the health you steal will compensate for the health degeneration from vamp.

heya effigy
Is that extra three points of damage per hit really that worth it?
...only three extra points?


gogo

those extra 3 points are armor ignoring dmg and also replinish your health a lot,specially if you use speed boosting stance

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Tiger Stance I find I like less and less. The one class that seems to be able to use it effectively (KD hammer warrior) gets either total loss of adrenaline or out of synch KD chains. On a sword or axe warrior I think the most effective use of Tiger Stance is just waiting for the recharge and reusing it.. but why? Take a zealous weapon and use Flurry, I'm almost willing to bet this will give you more damage and adrenaline.

As far as secondary skills.. usually I don't take very many, but lately I've fallen in love with Consume Corpse and Necrotic Traversal. So fun on a warrior. ^.^
As a w/mo.. meh.. take Strength of Honor? I don't know. I guess Purge Signet could work nice too. In PvE the recharge isn't such a bad thing.. all your fights have resting time between them.

Gogo, I think you'd really have a lot of fun playing as a monk, since typically you will be doing more micro, as someone else said. That's why I was initially so drawn to the class, because it was actually a challenge for me.

:Edit: On the Zealous and Vampiric issue, you definitely get more out of the weapon in battle than using a regular weapon. 1 degen is only 2 hp per second, or .33 energy per second. With a 3/1 upgrade and skills like Flurry, Hundred Blades, Cyclone Axe, Triple Chop, heck even Sun and Moon, you will really see these weapons start to shine.

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Woot!
Got two axes now, one with Vampire and one with Sundering.
I bought a handsome new ornate cleaver (Hey gogo...yer axe is so tiny ...anyway :P) from Kaineng Center...two actually, and stuck the mods on each one. Now like you guys proposed, I switch between both. Very useful this. After someone here mentionned Triple Chop I did an elite by location search on Wikki (Bless the Wikki ) and found out that Triple chop is super easily available in Canth and super close by the starting point!
With triple Chop and a few other Adrenal skills...Mister Warrior seems to be off to a great start.
I see where my challenge was when I made this first post with my toon. I was having a huge energy deficit because I was really relying a ton on Energy to get the damge in...when I had overlooked the other even better source of Attacks for a warrior...Adrenaline.
Coming full circle...I realized that Energy attacks can instead start off the Adrenaline Engine...and by that I mean that only using energy to give momentum to my warrior so that he gets hits in to build up adrenaline which then in turn kicks the damage output into full bore seems to be the way to go.
So far
At this point...after having two great weapons (for a lowby starter like :P) I was researching the best way to get the Adrenaline Engine to start off nicely.
Looked at some cool skills.

1-Rrenzy
2-Tiger Stance
3-Flurry

I love Flurry. I get a whole bunch of attacks in, my vamp axe does three damage everytime I hit, irregardless of how much damage is reduced when using Flurry, and I get hp back everytime it lands.
And...it feels better landing more blows faster too :P
When I went back to earlier levels to get bonuses, I took a chance and switched out Flurry for Frenzy...and this time I didn't get creamed, lol.
And...Good bye healing...Hello Tactics.
Got a shield...kinda a crappy one...but Healing Signet works nicely with the Dolyaks...very nicely in fact.
The New Warrior is now ascended with pride and far less nicks and scratches than originally thought.
Thank you everyone.
It's been a great ride and I'm looking forward to much more.
I"ve started using my NOstromo N52 http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProdu...duct_Id=157024
Can switch weapons now in a blink, and am working now on turning my HUD into kind of a Sniper Scope with the main toon always centered in the middle :P
With this huge turnaround in build, the weapon swapping is doin awesome, and I've just two questions...
Anyone got any ideas fer a decent shield?
And...am I finally on the Warrior Path?


gogo

p.s. lol, Tim...dunno what yer talkin about...

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lol, snipious...thank you for the words of encouragement

And...we can get a shield in Kaineng?
I went to Weapons and I didn't see a shield there...
hmmm, can someone please help me out with what i've missed at Kaineng?
Is there some Sub Rosa store of hiddenness that I've missed? :P
That shield sounds awesome


gogo

You get it from the Weaponsmith, just scroll down to the bottom past all the caster weapons.

Got it!
And yeah...heh, it shows on the battle field what a good shield can do!
I'm curious now...what would you suggest is a better one if any.
Is there perhaps a good shield to look out and/or farm for?
A collector that has an especially good shield?


gogo

To be honest.... I would say that those are the best all around stats at the moment. Definately watch for a -2 Stance/ +30 hp shield, as that one would be slightly better than the -5 20% one. As you go through the game you might watch for a -2 damage while in stance/ -2 damage while enchanted, as they have their uses. I wouldn't worry about collecting any of the +armor vs shields as they're really to situational, and don't really give much benefit to a warrior. Nightfall is coming out this week, and with it might be a few new stats for shields and weapons... so watch for those at least.