I'm new switching from wow.

As stated in the title i have currently switched from WoW (which i played for over 4 yrs). and just have a few question i cant seem to find anywhere else.
currently i am a w/mo teaming up with my little bro as a n/mo and i just cant seem to figure out the tanking aspect of GW.

I know i am supposed to run in first while my team stays back and wait for all mobs to attack me the part im confused about is everyelse ive read is ur not suppossed to move after i have agro so first question is

1. how do i keep agro when there are casters in the grp and i have to run to them say there are 2 casters left over and i run to the first one and the second one will start attacking my mo or n/mo how do i stop that

2. also if there is a mob attacking one of my teammates how do i peal him off if im not allowed to move from my current mob

The AI prioritizes low health, low armor targets, so you're going to find the aspect of "tanking" to be a lot harder in GW than it is in WoW. As a warrior, you're first objective is really to be a consistent damage machine. Your basic armor and runes will give you great survivability, so it'll be ok to indulge a little bit in some quality damage. There are some great guides to playing Warrior, one of which is on this site, under the PvE section ^_^

As madriel said, doing huge damage as a warrior, is much better then tanking.

Oh, and welcome to gw.

Tanking in GW is a bit tricky since there is no threat inducing skills.....unless they count healing as one XD.

Yeah if there are casters, sometimes its going to mean you HAVE to just keep the Melee busy while your party deals with the rest. A BIG part of tanking in GW evolves from using your environment (basically natural or built walls) to screw with enemy AI.

See their pathing wants them to go the shortest route to their target, but if a little ol warrior stands in their way properly, then they eventually change target to him.....or just stand there. Sometimes casters will also try to get closer to your back party, and also get stuck next to the warrior. Once you learn the AI's path it's extremely easy to tank if you wish.

Here is a quick tip about tanking though. You DO NOT need defensive skills. Your armor as a warrior is a good enough excuse to tank, and also Protection monks are your friends. Once you get in the area of the game where you can grab a prot AND heal monk, your pretty much set, let THEM do the healing while you dish out the damage. Warriors have GREAT damage potential and don't forget to bring a skill that increases your attack speed (If you are tanking try to avoid frenzy unless your monk casts protective spirit on you)

Tanking sucks and no one does it.

Go for a combination of DPS and condition inflicting warrior, its loads more fun and useful.

Basically the AI is programmed to avoid tanks and kill low health casters, as such tanking is useless in GW and you should forget about it.

The only really effective form of GW tank is the minion master necro, which uses an unlimited supply of low health undead minions to soak up damage.

Another thing to remember is that your secondary is barely necessary and easily changeable -- you'll probably want to change to W/A or W/E or something useful,
W/Mo is in fact a fairly reliable noob indicator.

Use this:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:W/an..._Slash_Warrior

My main character is a warrior. I see my job as running about half an aggro circle ahead, but not to capture the aggro of the whole mob. I run ahead to take out the healers in the mob. Your casters can take care of themselves for a short while against the melee and any casters that think they are tanks. I target the healer, then the ele or necro, then the melee, in that order. Other than the plus of wiping out their healer, this serves the purpose of helping to keep your casters out of range of their casters.

As ajc2123 said, there will be times when the environment allows you to block the mob and prevent them getting past you, but that seldom happens.

Tanking in GW is only done in very specific areas (and is usually done by assassins with shadow form)
As a warrior, you should focus on damage dealing.
also, focus on 2 attributes (strength + weapon attribute)

There are few situations where there is true tanking, these are usually (as WoW would say) raid bosses. A warriors best bet is to stick to the heat of the battle and deal damage. You can use your runes to increase health and armor, don't really worry about energy. Also, if you do tank, use skills that increase your health.

A good example of one of the places where tanking takes place is destruction depths.

1. don't tank in gw. there are only a few elite areas where people want someone to tank.
2. w/mo isn't a good combination despite what you may think or have heard. leave healing to the actual monks you don't have the time nor energy to do it yourself. you should be focusing on killing things instead

On the other hand, having your own Condition removal and a reusable resurrection skill is good regardless of your profession combination. But, yeah, *HEALING* is something Warrior primaries really shouldn't do.

I wouldn't run condition removal on a War. It's not worth dropping a KD/attack/whatever. Besides, the only thing that screws you up is blind, and it's the Monks job to clean that off.

There's a common tactic used in Gw called pulling.
When your party is 3/4 of a radar screen away from a mob you want to attack, a front line character or a ranger will switch to a longbow or flatbow for just a sec and shoot once at the mob then run back to the group.
This "pulls" the mob in to a line shape if done well, allowing you and your team to hit the first few enemies with your entire team while part of their team is still catching up.

If I didn't explain that well someone please elaborate for him. I'm tired, lol
and Welcome to Gw.

reusable res possibly, but i still wouldn't. normal res sig would do just fine plus you're not stuck with a secondary. for condition removal let the monk take care of that.

adding to what riot was saying on the compass you have a bubble around you commonly called the aggro bubble because when (most)monsters are inside of that bubble they become aggressive and attack your party. the other way to make them aggressive is to pull by hitting them with a bow from a longer range to make them come to you. this is useful because then you don't fight more groups than you can handle.

Except, of course, that they have no way to know that you're Blinded and that they need to take time out from their healing & protection duties to tend to you - unless you take several seconds to type to a human Monk or to fiddle around and have a Hero Monk do the deed (HenchMonks, obviously, are useless for this). Me, I'll stick with removing it myself (though I prefer W/R and Antidote Signet to W/Mo). Much more reliable and far quicker.

I tank very successfully. Tanking still works but it is more effective in some situations other then others. Here are my tips.


1. As a tanking Warrior, Health above all else is crucial. Your there to take a beating and the more health you have, the longer you can survive in a situation where most damage is diverted to you.

2. Runes and Insignias: These power up the armor you wear. Each piece of armor can have 1 Rune and 1 Insignia on it. As a warrior, health is vital. The general optimal recommendation is:

a. Healmet: Survivor insignia and a Minor rune of the same weapon type your headpiece has (Sword and Axe are prefered, Hammer) for a total of +2 to that attribute.
b: Chestpiece: Survivor Insignia and Vigor Rune (The Highest Vigor you can afford the better, Rune of Major Vigor usually the best Cost/Health ratio).
c: Gloves: Survivor or Stonefist Insignia (Stonefirst increases duration of knocking an ennemy down with a skill by 1 if you use knockdowns in the future).
d: Leggings: Survivor Insignia and Rune of Vitae.
e: Boots: Survivor Insignia and Rune of Vitae.

2. Strength: is your friend. Avoid the tactics attribute line at all costs. Sure some skills may seem appealing at first but each profession having a main attribute that empowers the profession somehow, Strength is yours and tactics will do nothing for you other then increase the usefulness of a limited selection of skills. Strength increases the Armor Penetration of your attack skills by 1% for each rank put into it, aswell as power up a larger selection of usefull skills.

3. Weapon/Shield:

a. Sword, Axe: with either +30 Health or +5AR, though health is usually the prefered choice.
b. Hammer (two handed, no shield): with either +30 Health or +5AR, though health is usually the prefered choice.
c: Shield: (with Sword or Axe): With +30 Health and either a -5dmg (20% of the time) or -2dmg (While in a Stance, Since Warrior use stances often.)
d: Longbow or Recurve bow: Mods on your bow doesnt matter, it will be used to get ennemies from point A, to point B (You).

4. Pulling and Blocking:

a. See the Mob, see what the Prime target is (Usually Healers, large damage dealers (Elementalists), Problematic targets (Necromacer Minion Masters) or Ritualist Spirit Spammers and call that target.
b. Then find a secrure place to pull to, Narrow passage-ways, large rocks, edge of a cliff, walls, etc that you will be standing on the corner/side of. You will be holding ennemies here.
c. Find a safe place or distance for your team to be waiting at while you set the situation up.
d. If present, call your monk to cast a protection spell on you (Usually Protective Spirit)
e. Make sure your bow is selected and find the target that is closest to you. Then proceed to run up to it, shoot your bow and the INSTANT the arrow leaves your bow, proceed to running back to your determined blocking position and remember to switch back to your Weapon and Shield. In Normal mode (by default Guildwars is in Normal mode, until you complete the game at which point you can switch) enemies will not pull as far, so after shooting your bow, walking backwards to your blocking location may be required.
f. After reaching your blocking point and the mobs are about to decent on you, brace for impact. Use any skills that increase your Armor or lower your received damage and use your stance if you have one and have a -2dmg (while in stance on your shield)
g. Right before mobs arrive to you, sidestep slightly ONE step off the wall or object you are blocking. This will increase your blocking potention if done right, just dont sidestep too much and practice.
h. Attack targets you are blocking and at all costs, DO NOT MOVE. Moving, if only slightly once you have aggro of mobs will cause them to go around you and attack your lower armored party (also known as Squishy)
i. Have your party kill all the foes and any foes that have gone around you (bleeders)

Congratulations, you have successfully tanked

In a nut shell. Warrior has the highest armor before spells or enchantments. You see the mob, find the prime target, call it, find the best pull location, get enchantments cast on you if available, run to shoot called target, switch back to weapon, run to pull target, apply all defenses, sidestep, wait for incomming mobs, attack masses on you, party kills foes as you do also, do not move at all costs.

You Win!

Basically, as you can see from the above responses, GW is a whole different game from WoW. The tactics, classes, and play style are very different than WoW.
In GW, although there are players who tank, it is not something that very many warriors do any more, and, imho, is not any more successful a tactic, than many others.

I agree! I just recently started playing my warrior again I'm fairly new and its a W/mo and I dont use a single monk skill, definitly going to change it soon to W/E or the likes just to do more damage.

1. Tanking sucks, as stated in GW the AI will prioritize weaker classes first. So the whole -idiotic- tank-n-spank routine you see in every other MMO, WoW included, doesn't work well in GW. As a warrior, you're a damage dealer so simply forget about tanking and do your job - killing stuff. You'll find that in GW combat and gameplay in general will be, to put it bluntly, smarter than in the average MMO.

Prioritize your targets, monks go first, then the other casters, mesmers/eles probably might be your 2nd priority. Whoever is harassing the most (mesmers for example have shutdown abilities rendering someone useless with the right skills).

Also, W/Mo is bad as it won't sinergyze with warrior much. Healing sounds good yes, but leave the healing to the monk. Focus on damage and deep wound and other conditions. Warrior has the best DPS in the game, tanking will be the exact opposite of what it should be doing. Healing in your bar is bad because it'll take space off other useful skills when you already have a dedicated character for that (monk henchmen/hero).

2. Since you're not supposed to tank, this question is void. Just protect your casters, monks in particular since they're vital for your own survival, when you have the window for doing that, that is. It's useless beating on some warrior enemy that's beating on your monk, when there's the enemy monk healing that said enemy warrior. So kill the monk first. Your own party should be able to hold on for a while as long as you're not over-aggroing.

Oh, and welcome to Guild Wars.

Tanking is not an efficient way to play in GW, since you have to get and hold aggro of all enemies, never move in the battle, and the party has to be very careful to be out of aggro range of the warrior when he makes contact with the enemy. This often fails, since 90% of all players don't know how to play with a tank. And if often fails, because there is no skill that can draw and glue the enemies to the tank. The enemy AI is smart enough to let a tank alone and switch to weaker targets in aggro range.

Instead, simply be the first one who makes contact with the enemy and everyone else joins the fight 2 seconds later. The blocking of incoming melee fighters is usually done by the undead minions of a necromancer. Or by a wall of spirits since the renaissance of the ritualist spirit spammer. The result of this play style is a steady fast run through the area. Not a ragged stop-waitfortank-fight-go-stop-waitfortank-fight-go rhythm with tanking, which takes much more time.

And I cannot understand why everyone suggest that the warrior should always go after the enemy monk. By doing this, he often pulls the own monk into the middle of the battle, because he has to follow him at some point and heal him. The enemy monk is usually in the enemy backline far away. I tell this from my own experience as monk. Warriors going this far either kill themselves (because I cannot reach him) or kill me (because I get under enemy fire).

It is much better if the warrior tries to block and catch incoming melee attackers instead. The warrior should not go behind the enemy midline. The enemy monk is taken out by the own midline. A midline with necromancers, rangers and mesmers is much more powerful than a warrior. They can immediately take out the enemy backline by using their ranged spells/skills, while the warrior first has to run to each enemy target. And if it still lives when he reaches it, he is blinded/crippled/weakened half the time and misses his target anyway dealing approximately zero damage. Especially in hard mode.

I don't, but most of the time it's the optimal thing to do. If the Warrior is dealing 100 DPS, and the Monk is healing 60 health per second, the Warrior is doing a net 40 DPS, which is pathetic. Everytime the Monk gets a heal/prot off, he/she is wasting your damage.

Not really an issue with decent pulling. Also, SY goes a long way into protecting the backline. 82.32% damage reduction is massive.

One of two things is happening here.

1) The Warrior is overextending without justification. Thats his fault.
2) He/She is dealing horrible damage and isn't shutting down the Monk. Also his fault.

Good Wars will have a ton of damage and KD's lined up to take out pretty much anything that they need to, especially with team backup. Any high priority targets that would require a bit of overextending from the War should be killed asap so they can draw back if necessary.

Note: Overextending isn't always a bad thing. If it can secure a kill (PvP) or just make life a lot easier and get stuff done faster (basically how PvE goes now anyway) then there really isn't that much of a problem with it. The problems arise when idiots rush a full two aggro bubbles away.

A properly buffed War (with Necro support, as you mention) will blow stuff up MUCH MUCH faster than a Mes and Ranger will. A War should really only prioritise holding melee aggro when there are a lot of them (blow them up with Splinter Weapon or HB) or when there are no major priority targets.

This is a massive overstatement. Other than some places such as Shards of Orr, it's never like this. Besides, a random blind/cripple/hex should be wiped by the Monk (ctrl-clicking takes a second if you're fast/have your UI set up to make life easier).

EDIT: I'm actually halfway finished on a target selecting article that I was going to put into my War guide, but I haven't had time/motivation to work on it for weeks. I'm lazy .

Tanking as Warrior becomes more effective later in the game and more so in Normal mode but in most places in normal mode it should be needed as much. Generally speaking you should should worry about:

1. Increasing your attack speed
2. Finding powerful attack skills that you can re-use at a steady rate without much down time, this is mainly where adrenaline kicks in as a sword warrior at least.

[Flail]["I am Unstopable"][Optional][Optional]["Save Yourselves!"][Dragon Slash][Lions Comfort][For Great Justice][Enraging Charge]

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[Flail][Hundred Blades][Whirlwind Attack]["I am Unstopable"]["Save Yourselves!"][Enduring Harmony][For Great Justice][Enraging Charge]

3. Increasing your armor if possible with nomore than 1 skill.
4. Carrying a self heal with no penalties, for those times where you need a heal between your monk healing other people other than you.
5. Protect your squishy targets, go for targets beating on them.

I don't agree with the idea of the warrior going after the enemy monk (PvE). It's much better to have the warrior engage some of the agro and have one of the friendly spellcasters take out the monk(s), imho.