Effective warrior guide

''note: this article is intended to provide guidance for experienced characters playing new warriors or experience warriors looking for additional options. if this is your first time playing guild wars, please see Getting started in Guild Wars Prophecies.''

A Warrior's Place
As a warrior, your place is in battle. Knee deep in foes and first in the fight. Warriors have the highest natural Armor rating of any class (Sentinel's Armor, for instance, has 100 against all attacks), as well as defensive and enduring skills such as Endure Pain, "I Will Survive!", and Defensive Stance.

Specialty Skills
Warriors can make use of adrenaline skills that take no energy. These skills have to be charged by gaining adrenaline.

Warriors can also use shouts, which have no activation time, and often aid the entire party.

Being a Warrior
As a warrior, you should be the first into battle and the last out. In PvE, your primary responsibility is to mitigate damage to the rest of the group by soaking it yourself. Attempt to block or hinder foes attacking casters. Engage other warriors attempting to attack your party. Once the greater threats to your casters have been dealt with, move on to the opposing casters. In PvP, your job is to deal damage, force people to run away from you, and apply general pressure to the enemy. Engaging casters is typically more important and more useful than fighting other warriors.

Always carry a resurrect skill of some kind, as your higher armor rating and survival skills mean you will be most likely to survive a near wipe situation. Monk and Ritualist secondaries should carry reusable resurrection spells like Rebirth or Flesh of My Flesh.

It is also advisable for warriors to carry self-healing skills. Self-healing skills can keep the warrior effective longer, and allow primary monks to concentrate healing on more vulnerable allies.

Weapon of Choice
It is important to choose a single weapon to use with your warrior. Attribute points are in short supply, and focusing on a single weapon is the only way to use them effectively. See Runes and Armor for options on creating a weapon-flexible warrior. Be sure to read the associated page for details on your chosen weapon.

Strength
Strength grants 1% armor penetration per attribute level when using attack skills, and controls the effectiveness of strength skills. Strength based armor penetration stacks with sundering weapon upgrades, but it replaced by skill based armor penetration.
 * Interesting Strength Skills:
 * Power Attack, Griffon's Sweep, and Leviathan's Sweep are direct damage attack skills may be used with any weapon.
 * Protector's Strike and Bull's Strike are skills that may be used with any weapon to deal extra damage to moving foes.
 * Endure Pain and Defy Pain grant extra health to survive when health is low near the end of battle.
 * Sprint and Rush allow you to move faster into or out of battle.
 * Signet of Strength, Warrior's Cunning and Berserker Stance can make your attacks more effective or faster.
 * Warrior's Endurance is an excellent way to gain energy in combat.

Tactics
Tactics controls the effect of Party wide or personal countering skills. Most Tactics skills are defensive in nature.
 * Interesting Tactics Skills:
 * Protector's Defense, "Shields Up!", and "Watch Yourself!" grant additional armor or additional chance to block attacks to other party members
 * Gladiator's Defense, Riposte and Deadly Riposte block incoming attacks and cause damage to the attacking foe.
 * Defensive Stance, Wary Stance, Bonetti's Defense, Deflect Arrows, Shield Stance, and Disciplined Stance grant blocking, evading or armor bonuses against incoming attacks.
 * "Charge!" and "Retreat!" grant speed bonuses to allies or party members

Runes and Armor
Here is an example armor set for a flexible warrior that allows the warrior to change weapons, skills and attribute bonuses at will.
 * Two matched sets of cuirass and leggings, Infused with Major or Superior Vigor and Minor Tactics Runes.
 * Gladiator's Armor for 5 extra energy with High energy builds such as Warrior's Endurance or Flourish
 * Sentinel's Armor, Dragon Armor or Legionnaire's Armor for extra armor with adrenal or tactical builds
 * Two helms, infused with minor strength runes.
 * Strength helm for Strength based builds
 * Tactical Helm for Tactics based builds
 * Three sets of Gauntlets, each infused with a Weapon skill rune, preferably of differing visual styles for easy distinction.
 * High armor gauntlets, such as Sentinel's Gauntlets, for axe.
 * High armor gauntlets, such as Sentinel's Gauntlets, for sword.
 * Stoneskin Gauntlets for hammer.
 * One set of Knight's Boots, infused with a Major or Superior Absorption rune.

Suggested Skills

 * Warriors Endurance, Berserker Stance, and "while in a stance" equipment: at 12 strength, Warriors Endurance lasts 20 seconds, Berserker Stance lasts 10, and both recycle in 30 seconds, allowing you to remain "stanced" and gain constant benefit from stance equipment. Additionally, the energy gain from Warriors Endurance allows the use of energy-expensive attack skills and/or maintained enchantments.


 * Dolyak Signet and "Watch Yourself!": Both these skills have no energy cost, and provide unconditional armor bonuses. "Watch Yourself!" can be maintained continuously even with 0 Tactics (provided sufficient adrenaline) and provides 20 armor. At 16 Strength, the duration, recharge and casting time of Dolyak Signet allow a continual +42 to AL. Combined at those levels, these skills reduce incoming damage by roughly 62%.


 * Skull Crack and Berserker Stance: at 12 Strength, both Dazed and Berserker Stance last 10 seconds, allowing you to interrupt your target caster once a second for 10 seconds. Ranger secondaries may wish to use Bestial Fury or Tiger's Fury, as they can be renewed. Assassin secondaries may wish to use Silencing daggers for the slightly higher attack rate and lengthened Dazed duration.


 * Frenzy and Sprint: Frenzy allows you to increase your damage at the expense of your defense, while Sprint can be used to cancel Frenzy if the enemy begins to attack you. This combination is very popular in high-end PvP.