Thoughts on new Warrior Elites?

Hey everyone,

Just curious on everyone's thoughts on the new Factions Elites. If there is already a thread about this I appologize. I did see some posts talking about a few elites but I wanted to go into a bit more details.

IMO, here are the REALLY good Elites that Warriors were given. Ill post what they do as well so no one has to look up anything.


Auspicious Parry
For 5...10 seconds, the next attack against you is Blocked and you gain 1..4 strikes of Adrenaline.
Attribute: Tactics

IMO this is the shizzel.... a very good way to get high amounts of Adrenaline... and its very spammable AND blocks attacks... hard to complain with this

Quivering Blade
If Quivering Blade hits, you strike for +10...34 damage. If it is "blocked", Quivering Blade is disabled for 4 seconds, and you are Dazed for 5 seconds.
Attribute: Swordsmanship

This is a really great skill. So cheap and the daze really shouldn't effect you at all. Some Warriors would choose not to run this due to being an Ele as a secondary for example... but for most its a fast, cheap way to dish out lots of dmg

Dragon Slash
If Dragon Slash hits, you strike for +10...34 damage and gain 1...4 strikes of adrenaline.
Attribute: Swordsmanship

Personally this is incredible. I absolutely love this skill. Combined with "For Great Justice" its just a powerhouse of endless beatings. I really enjoy this skill, even with the 10A it still is very promising

Triple Chop
Attack target foe and adjacent foes. Each attack that hits deals +10...34 damage.
Attribute: Axe Mastery

I really like this as well. No adrenaline is required, just a very small amount of Energy. Also has a pretty quick recharge time (10 seconds). Thumbs up!!

These are the ones I REALLY like. The best may even be Auspicious Parry because its kinda sickening how much adrenaline you can make with this if you know how to spam it at the right times. Personally my favorite that I've tried is Dragon Slash... but I think they are all good and have their uses.

Of course I left out some, these are just IMO ones that I think are quite good. Feel free to add more to the list and talk about others that you enjoy. It may help people create new build ideas if they know a good elite to base it on.

I'm thinking of using auspicious parry on my mesmer
its like a self sustaining block skill, and you probably don't need to invest to greatly into tactics for it to work. You could really piss warriors off by continually blocking their attacks.

Dragon Slash is great. I know its not an elite but so is sun and moon slash. Thats basically 2 hits of adrenaline you gain on using it, then dragon slash and your almost able to use sun and moon again and repeat this combo. Swords have always been lacking a good elite, I mean what the flip is hundred blades ??? Now we have one

Dragon Slash is amazing....You can really get some insane adren chains off with it...

Quivering Blade is definitely my favorite. By far.

For Great Justice -> Dragon Slash -> Sun and Moon Slash -> Dragon Slash -> Sun and Moon Slash... 20 seconds of fun.

I was in love with Hundred Blades a week before factions (and maybe still am a little bit) because the animation makes it seem like its a fast attack skill and because it's quite powerful, but Dragon Slash is awesome, finally a skill combo that can match Eviscerate - Executioners

Auspicious Parry is an awesome skill for solo'ing NPC's in GvGs, good if you're getting spiked (in PvP or by damn factions monsters), awesome adrenaline gain, and I think Anet did the right thing by adding a recharge for it, it would have been way too good without one.

I like to run Cyclone Axe + Triple Chop for missions with Afflicted, it takes them down real fast but sometimes get spiked by Afflicted Explosions It's not the best skill for PvP, but is good for multiple foes in PvE, don't like it's recharge though but strong skill all-round.

I don't like Quivering Blade that much, I prefer using Hundred Blades because my attacks get blocked or evaded by Aegis chains or constant Guardians so often I don't think I would get that much use out of this skill though I have tried it in PvE and found it to be a good hard hitting skill.

Bad skills...
Forceful Blow? what were they thinking? this skill sucks really bad...

Coward? It's usually best to run a elite attack skill on a warrior, I have found this to be useful on an Assasin though but I changed it for Aura of
Displacement fairly quickly.

Shove? Seems like an elite Shock to me, with a lot more drawbacks. A little exhaustion and having your secondary Elementalist or having to use up an elite spot, losing all adrenaline, much bigger recharge and not able to use non-attack skills. Shock ftw.

Shove rocks. "To the Limit" > Riposte + Deadly Riposte then Shove. At 16 Tactics that's 400+ Damage (with bleeding factored in) puls a KD. And that's before you actually hit them with a weapon.

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Primal Rage is a really mediocre skill. More criticals and 20% armor penetration (in perspective, 25% AP ~ 32% more damage on 60 AL targets.). Not sure how much damage it pumps out, but it's at the cost of your entire skill bar for 10 seconds, and doesn't include an attack speed buff. Whatever good it does is almost certainly overshadowed by those.

Triple Chop is an elite Cyclone Axe. If you're running it and Live Vicariously for farming, you can pump out some amazing spike heals, decent damage, and net a lot of adrenaline. If you're using it in PvP, I'd love to see where you found a good place for it o_O

Whirling Axe is another Cleave variant I don't like for the same reason I don't think much of the Repeating Strikes Assassin build.

Enraged Smash is another skill I haven't unlocked. Even so, from what I've gathered, it doesn't count towards the 'fully charged' conditional, meaning you'd need 4 other attacks/shouts/whatever in addition to it that you don't even use to make full use of it. I don't really see it as being popular in hammer builds.

Forceful Blow as well. Another Executioner's/Galrath/Silverwing variant with a slightly reduced adrenal cost. My guess is that it's there to compress your adrenal chains into Forceful Blow -> Heavy Blow.

Dragon Slash I like. I don't run sword builds because I prefer the disruption of Hammer and the Eviscerate->Executioner's spike of Axe in PvP, while I'd rather use Hundred Blades in PvP, so despite liking it, I don't run it. (I'd run Sever and Gash for the deep wound, but then I wouldn't have the space for Sun and Moon, Galrath, and Silverwing, Frenzy, Rush/Sprint, Rez Signet, and Healing Signet). On its own merits, I don't think it's a bad skill by any stretch, though.

Quivering Blade is a half adrenal cost Galrath. I don't have it unlocked though, so I haven't played with it. In the end, I think I wouldn't like it much for the same reason I don't run Dragon.

Auspicious Parry is amazing in certain areas of the game. Pretty much, the Arena and PvE. You can get Bonetti's up in no time at all, and take advantage of it frequently in PvE. In the arena, it's iffy, but you can get away with most builds there.

I've run Shove, and I don't really think much of it. It's an unconditional knockdown, and it deals a decent amount of damage, but I can't really say that I like it. It does expand the tactics line some, and it gives more flexibility to a non-hammer build, but when all is said and done, I don't think it'll see much use.

As for "Coward!", the final new elite, I'd have to say that I haven't unlocked it, but I don't think too much of it either. In the time it takes to catch up to a fleeing foe that you knocked down, they're usually going to have gotten up before you've recharged it. In short, if it's to stop them from fleeing, instead of walking backwards, I doubt it works. But this is purely speculation.

So, um, in short, I don't think many of the new elites will find places in any but my gimmick arena builds, and a few select farming builds. Some I dislike, and some I like but find that my builds run more smoothly with another, but overall, most I just don't find desirable.

Of course, these are only my opinions, and you're free to your own.

Edit: Doh, redundance

Poor Etterwyn got totally owned by an Auspicious + Riposte spammer in alliance battle yesterday. He caught me off guard and I was dead before I realized what was going on. That's the first time another warrior has ever killed me 1 on 1. It was a good build for that particular purpose (anti-warrior), but in situations where the warrior isn't targeted much, it's not a good elite.
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Considering all the new tactics/strength/swords elite how could my typical swords warrior be improved. I like swords for the high damage without an elite so I can use an elite of another profession. The swords skills I use at the moment are
Sever, Gash, Galrath, Final Thrust - usally in that order. I would consider replacing galrath with sun and moon but then maybe adding dragon slash in there too for PvP but almost definitely add Auspicious Parry for PvE, making you an adrenaline power house.

Sun and Moon better than Galrath ?? or... replace galrath for dragon slash although the adrenaline gain from it would be lost if using final thrust afterwards. The solution would be to remove final thrust... expect at 16 swords it does +86 damage if foe is below 50% health. THATS LOADS !!!
Any ideas to improve a sword build ?? (usually have one skill slot from other profession + res so you've got 6 slots to work with)

I love Auspicious Parry when farming, you can spam ripostle to kill any mele boss really dang fast which is nice.
For great Justice - Dragon Slash - Sun and Moon - Blah Blah is also very very nice against non mele bosses =). The sword lives!
Only problem is I have to take out Grenths Balance now..=(

Woah I never realized how good Triple Chop is in PVE... fantastic for farming. It'll never take the place of Eviscerate in PVP because of the deep wound but in PVE this is ninja material Very cool...

Thanks for the replies so far and comments... anyone have any more to add?!

One thing to add about Quivering blade. The daze effect. If it is blocked by monks and eles and you are a /N with plague touch you can send the daze effect right back at them and combined with an IAS stance, you will pretty much disrupt their spell casting for the duration of the daze effect.

And if the monk likes to spam guardian or if the ele has that nice silver armor, you can pretty much keep spamming them with dazes.

Be careful when wording how good they are, we don't want them nerfed now.

We never know who may be looking...

Parnoid much? *lol*