Warrior Skill Question

Hello 2 questions:

1) I was looking at the skill pages and noticed some skills have {Elite} by them. What exactly does this mean? I know you can only have 1 {Elite} skill on your hotbar, but that's about it. Can I use my secondary profession's elite skills?

2) Eviscerate is an {Elite} warrior skill:

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/content...elite-id95.php

Dismember is a non-elite warrior skill:

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/content/dismember-id94.php

Why would any warrior bring Eviscerate into battle over Dismember? Is the 1-24 extra damage (which is the only difference that I can tell) really worth it, when you could probably find a better elite skill to bring?

Another question, what does AL stand for when referring to armor class? (Warrior has 80AL + 20AL or something... ) I'm not sure I understand it.

Sorry for all the noobie questions, I was thinking of picking this game up when it comes out, and I was trying to figure out my character type. Strongly leaning towards warrior at this point but these things aren't clear to me.

One final thing, If someone can explain exactly how adrenaline works: how much is max, how much you start with, how much you gain per hit, would beserker stance (+20% adrenaline generation) really make a huge difference, I would appreciate answers to this question.

Thanks,

-wolfpaq777

Yes, you can use any skill from either of your profession including elites. And, yes, you can use but one of them at any given time.

Good question. And one I think the devs don't really know the answer to, if you ask me. The only reason you'd take Eviscerate over Dismember is if you had Dismember on your bar and didn't have another elite yet. Eviscerate's better than Dismember because you'd do damage with it but is +1~24 so much better that you'd forget about every other elite you could take? I don't think so. And most people making up Warrior builds wouldn't think so, either, I'd hope. Yet, if Eviscerate was non-elite you'd take it in a heartbeat over Dismember.

It's just a skill that unusable because it's elite. There are plenty of them. There are only so many skills out of the total that are going to be useful in a given scenario, that are going ot give you enough to get by - that are "playable" - there's a lower number of elite skills overall so there's fewer of them that are playable even if skills were perfectly balanced. Which they're not and never are going to be.

AL stands for "Armor Level". The AL is just a number. 60 is the base, if you have 60AL you'll take the listed damage from skills and ttacks that interract with armor. A higher number and you'll take less. A lower number and you'll take more damage. AL is just used in place of "armor" or anything else because it's a lot shorter when you have to type it out so much.

So, a Warrior has 80AL, they have more defense than the baseline. It's complicated but 20AL is worth about 25% less damage from attacks that don't ignore armor. The +20 part means that when facing certain types of damage they have yet more damage. For Warriors, that's physical damage. So, against physical damage - the swing of a sword, an arrow, and so on, they'll have a rating of 100 and will take about 50% less damage than the average character.

Adrenaline is counted by skill. It's used in place of a recharge timer. When you have enough adrenaline you'll be able to use that skill, you'll lose that adrenaline, and you'll need to build it back up again. You build up adrenaline by attacking someone, where you'll get one "strike's" worth of adrenaline and, to a lesser extent, by taking damage (It's something like .1xDmg=adren or 100 damage to equal the adrenaline you get from one attack. That's not entirely right but I don't know the exact figures. Point being you'll earn a lot more by attacking than you will from taking damage). If a skill says it takes 7A or 7 adrenaline then you need to hit something 7 times to recharge it. You can't have more than 7 adrenaline built up in that skill and once you use it you'll need to make another 7 hits to use it again. There's no adrenaline pool or bar as there is for energy. Your adrenal skills are all separate (Well, almost, using an adrenal skill drains you other adrenal skills of one strike of adrenaline. So if you have a 4 adren skill and a 7 adren skills it takes 4 hits for the first but 8 for the next - and, of course, you can use the 4 adren skill as the second charges, too. A 4A, 7A, and 10A skill and it takes 4, 8, and 12 hits respectively. Carrying a lot of adrenal skills you'll raise the recharge time on all of them, basicaly.)

As for Berserker Stance, yes, it's good. The problem is that it "ends on skill" so you can't actually use it *while* you're using your adrenal skills just when you're charging them but as you'll want to be cycling skills over and over it's far from optimal. But it can get you a lot of adrenaline while it's around. It's not just the 20% more adrenaline, though, it's the faster attack rate. Let's say you use a sword. Swords swing once every 1.33 seconds so to charge up a 6 adren skill it will take you 6 swings or 8 seconds. Now, using Berserker Stance you'll swing faster, making your sword swing about once every 0.8 seconds and each hit will be 1.2 adrenaline so you'll only need 5. That means you can gain 6 adrenaline in 4 seconds or so, half of what it takes normally. It's that IAS or increased attack speed that's the real cause of that gain, though. You could use Frenzy, which increases your attack rate and doesn't end on skill, and gain 6 adrenaline in about 5 seconds. In any event, increasing the speed at which you swing a weapon will let you gain a lot more adrenaline.

Wow thanks for the detailed response.

I have one more question though...

The skill Flourish (elite warrior strength skill) is supposed to:

"All of your attack skills become recharged. You gain 1-6 Energy for each skill recharged by Flourish."

Does that mean it gives you adrenaline or is that just for attacks skills requiring energy. Thanks again for the awesome response.

Eh, I'm just practicing for when we add that Karma system...

But, no Flourish doesn't do anything for adrenal skills. Only skills with recharge timers. Those are all energy-based skills. Adrenal skills have no recharge timer, they have adrenaline instead. Of course, they don't cost any energy to use. But using Flourish won't cause adrenal skills to be useable at all.