How is a Warrior primary better then a R/W in PVP?

I'm about to start a non-caster alt and from my experience as an elementalist it seems like Warriors are incredibly weak. Too much of their skills and armor seem to be built around the idea that you're gonna be fighting other warriors. Strength gives armor penetration and their armor is better vs. melee. However, in PvP how often are you really engaging other warriors? It seems the bulk of the time you're attacking soft targets that don't have much armor and probably won't be attacking with melee. If you're building a straight melee fighter, (not a combo like illusionary warrior or something) it would seem better to go R/W. From my experience casting against rangers they actually do seem to take quite a bit less elemental damage. Even if you ignore the potential benefits of expertise, that seems to be worth it right there. Anything that can help you to survive against air spikers would be invaluable. Rangers also have a number of skills that help you survive in melee. Thoughts?

Well, what do you plan to do with your R/W or W/R? If you plan to use mainly ranger skills, it'd be better to go R/W for the expertise due to the fact that warrior primaries have very little energy to begin with.

I'm looking at a melee fighter. Most points in warrior skills and points in ranger skills that benefit melee or damage avoidance.

I personally would go Warrior anyway due to the fact that Warrior skills benefit from Strength, not Expertise from what I'm aware of.

Armor penetration vs. hard or soft targets is still extra damage regardless so that shouldn't be used as a benchmark.

Expertise allows skills to be spammed and with a Ranger, true, but a ranger seems to lack an effective speed skill. Sprint, Rush, Battle Rage are all strength based skills and have a very good duration for just running down a foe only if you have any strength though.

R/W can't run for nearly as long as a W/R so your damage output becomes nullified.

Rangers have Storm Chaser, which is about 100x better than Sprint, IMO :P

Also Rangers can spam Hamstring like nobody's business since it only costs them 4-5 mana with high expertise. They're not *running* anywhere...

I'll toss in a few things that, judging by your post, you may be unaware of...

1) [I do not claim to know this for fact, this is what I've read elsewhere on these forums] The way damage versus armor is calculated creates a "breaking point" at 60 armor. Weapons, at 12 in the mastery attribute, do 100% of their damage to a target that has 60 armor. The damage scales accordingly as armor increases or decreases. This all makes sense... now for the part that I saw on these forums: Armor penetration actually has a "greater" effect on LOWER armor values as opposed to higher. Why? I'm not sure exactly, but in a very long thread containing a lot of math this seemed to be the general concensus.

2) Anything that has "armor" and then a value works, by default, against physical melee, piercing, and elemental damage. This is why some warrior sets have X armor then +Y against physical. The general "armor" applies to most everything except most forms of holy and illusionary damage. That being said, it seems many ranger sets have large vs. elemental damage on them, and so, as you said, rangers will end up with more elemental resists (about 20) and warriors will end up with more physical (10-20 depending on set)

As for which is better... you have to look at the skills you will use. If you plan to use a bunch of energy based skills, then R/W may be the way to go. Don't forget that if you are neglecting to use many adrenal skills you are wasting a fair amount of potential and "free damage" that you generate through combat.

If you are priming Ranger and dumping points into expertise for a cheap hamstring and little else, then it's kind of missing the point of having it in the first place, in my opinion. 10E isn't a heavy price, even for a warrior spamming frenzy and keeping his target poisoned with poison arrow (I play a R/W) if you simply use a zealous weapon.

Lastly, in PVP, a ranger will be a higher priority target than a warrior, and that is something out of your control but something to consider when thinking of your own survivability.

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Expertise affects ALL attack skills, stances, traps, and preparations. This includes warrior attack skills.

Also, why anyone would use mostly adrenal skills when they are a R/W is beyond me. When there are better disruption skills like Hamstring, Savage Slash, Distracting Blow... You can make a caster's life pretty much hell with those 3 skills alone. I'd throw in Sever Artery as my only adrenal to put another condition on them if they happen to have mend ailment or something.

I've used a lot of W/* and R/W builds in pvp and tried a bunch of different combinations. I really think the W/* builds are far superior.

Here's some reasons:

1. If you're going melee, then you're going to be maxing points out in a weapon. 12's the best you can do with a ranger primary. 16 for a warrior.. which will give you 20% overall better damage, and then more damage on each weapon skill you're using. You wouldn't want to go under 12 either as the damage drops off considerably more for every point under that.

2. Strength. This is really an underrated line of skills, and a much better passive than expertise is going to give you. If again.. you're primarily going to be melee, you're not going to need the energy that expertise gives you. Getting expertise for something like.. hamstring? 15 sec recharge at 10 energy? If you have some very specific build.. where you're using all energy attacks, you can always use skills like warrior's endurance, flourish, and ViM, which are generally superior and don't require a separate ability line to pump points into.

3. Shield. You wouldn't have access to stength shields, and thus be forced into putting points into tactics to make use of a shield. Wouldn't have a rune to use to bump this up either, so this would be a hefty cost. You could use a focus.. but then you're gimping your armor.. which I thought was the whole point of using a ranger?

I do think a ranger secondary is good on a warrior however. Things like apply poison, troll unguent (superior to healing sig at least), antidote sig, winnowing, and even storm chaser (I still prefer sprint because it has a better recharge) make some of the ranger skills appealing to a warrior.. but those are support skills. The extra elemental armor isn't worth doing a whole lot less damage, having more ability lines to pump.. while not having the benefit of runes for the warrior line.. and perhaps worst of all, having to make do without the stength line of skills.. that includes a lot of elites that are very appealing.

I've tried to like the R/W, but when it comes down to it, the W/R is just a far better choice. There are situations where I would consider it, but it wouldn't be for a primary melee damage dealer. It would only be with builds that had winter/greater and in a supporting role.. like using a hammer disabling build perhaps. If you want to do damage in melee (except IW), I believe a warrior primary is still far better.

The reason why R/Ws are not as good as W/**s in PvP is simple.

No one targets wars or rangers first, its always soft stuff like monks and mesmers. This is because rangers and warriors both have incredible tanking ability. Wars have armor, rangers have dodgy skills. But all that is irrelevent.

The whole point of any war build is to do as much damage as possible, and not to worry about Defense at all. No one will atck you till your team is dead, so defense doesnt help you. You need to do a lot of damage, fast.

Now there is only one difference between melee R/W and W/**. Expertise vs Strength. Essentially more mana vs more damage. As I said just 1 paragraph ago, what is the single most important thing a warrior must think about? Damage.

The only way a R/W could match up is if he finds a way to turn that extra mana into damage. But lets look at all the important Warrior attacks:

Cleave, Eviscerate, Executioners, Dismember, Axe Rake, Axe Twist, Backbreaker, Heavy Blow, Final Thrust, Galrath, Sever, Gash, and Skulll Crack all require 0 energy. Those are some if not all of a warrior's most important PvP attacks.

As can be seen, warriors (especially axe warriors, my personal favorite) do not need much energy at all. Therefore for a melee damage fighter, strength > expertise and war primary > ranger primary.

Not to mention a W/** still gets to choose a second class.

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Having recently started playing a r/w that I like more than any other melee combo I've tried yet, I'm finding this thread very interesting. All I have to say on the matter so far, is that if you go r/w, definitely use a hammer.

I with those that say a W/R > R/W. The R/W will/might do well in Arena/Random PVP, but in organized groupings, your players all need to play a specific role. I would think that a W/R and R/W would have similar roles, and that's to deal damage by attacking soft targets. So then, the question goes to who has the higher DPS on these targets? And it's evident that any W/* will be able to have a higher DPS then any R/W due to Strength and Weapon Runes.

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Oh well, just noticed this thread... if all you're gonna do is max two attributes... then yeah W/Ra is gonna do much better than a melee Ra/W.

W/R is going to do better burst damage is best way I can explain it. Ra/W can do better in terms of sustained DPS. With a W/R you're going to have to charge adrenaline... (which is why battle rage is such a highly prized elite). If you're battle raging you're not attacking faster than normal though. The catch is you do about 10-30% more damage a swing... and if you're running on adrenaline... only about half to 3/4 of your attacks fall under the skill attack category. (EG: you spend time building up adrenaline then release it all at once). Also while a lot of people like apply poison in this build.. I'm of mixed mind on it. 15 energy is a LOT for a warrior. Although the condition is common and reapplied often and goes well with 100blades or cyclone axe (both of which require 5 energy themselves.. that more or less tops off your energy budget, even with a zealous mod). Someone brought up warriors endurance... which is a very good elite as it gives you ranger-like energy spam ability. However since it's a stance if you use it... you can't get 50% more attacks in using an attack speed buff. (swings and roundabouts). You can use tigers fury for a mere investment of 10 attribute points sure as a w/r... but that 10 energy every 10s hurts to come up with.

A Ra/W is a different mindset... with the ranger warrior... you're going to be spread a bit more between attributes. You'll want 9, 11, 12, or 13 ranks of expertise. Because you're taking ranger for two reasons. Because you plan on using energy and a lot of it. (leveraging the rangers better energy regeneration, reserves, and cost reduction). As others have pointed out... you'll want 12 ranks in your chosen weapon (10-11 can work... but only if you have a really really good reason for doing so; not something I'd recommend outside some very specific niche roles). After the chosen expertise, weapon... the build starts to get complicated though. And it's a very 'busy' setup. (EG: you better be used to pressing attack buttons nonstop and in sequence as your hands dance over the keyboard).

After this.. you'll want to pick some good adrenaline attacks to intersperse in place of energy. Cleave works well... because of it's high availability at 4 adrenaline (remember the point is to make up for your lack of good single +damage attacks with MANY weaker ones). Why weaker attacks... because big damage has protections against it... see Protective spirit... okay so you can whack a guy for 100+ hammer damage... great... but I can slip a lot of 50 point attacks which will barely notice the protective spirit in the same timeframe it took you to charge the adrenaline for that hammer attack. If you do this right... a full 90% of your attacks will be skill attacks with +16 damage at least... or PB AoE attacks like cyclone axe which have the extra benefit of fast charging your adrenaline skills and energy (with zealous hilt... that's +1 adren and energy per target in the AoE).

The final reason why I think ra/w's are still a very solid pick for PvP... (I'd take either in fact if I was picking players for a team). Ranger armor... it's better than it looks... in a game currently dominated by elementalists thinking they're gods... rangers who take half damage from em... are a huge pain in the ass to spike damage builds. Who are rangers weak against?! Non-conjure warriors and rangers... who are busy beating up the weak soft targets. Who are warriors weak against?! I'll give you a hint... it starts with an 'E'... that's right elementalists... no armor bonus for you. And I've seen good spike builds drop the warrior (especially one tricked out with 2 superior runes) who NOBODY is going to attack in PvP with the surprise target switch synch gank. (really they're surprisingly squishy!).

Just as an aside... remember all those rangers suck posts when warriors were predominate in PvP?... Now that elementalists have come into play to own the warriors and their support... we're seeing posts that rangers are too strong (especially with their rituals). And posts that rangers will soon predominate (which kinda makes sense since rangers are the premier undisputed elementalist killers). When rangers are too much in vogue we'll see the warriors come back out of their hovels again. (basic circle I've noticed in game... rangers trend weak against warriors, who trend weak against elementalists, who trend weak against rangers... and that covers your big 3 damage dealer classes in game).

I like my R/W because I can spam attack skills non stop adnausium. Between a couple of adrenal skills, and a couple of energy skills, almost every swing can be some sort of special attack. So you have a little more strength and a little more weapon skill. Big deal, because I have bonus damage from using skills on pretty much every attack, while you are waiting for something to recharge.

W/x for spike damage, R/W for a faster consistant DPS. Tiger's fury is awesome.

For the short version of the explanation:
Warriors can pump up their strength and weapon attribute using runes.
Warriors have access to strength attribute skills, a lot of which are energy/adrenaline management skills.
Warriors rely on mostly adrenaline skills for damage, so the energy bonus of expertise is not utilized as much as you'd like.
W/? allows for a secondary class to further enhance your dps.