How to shut down warriors?

[ares416]

Hello. My guild is just starting to get organized and be successful at PvP battles. One problem we are having is warriors (especially hammer warriors!) getting through and making short work of our healers. I know that's the basic strategy - aim for the healers and we have a hard time even getting 2 in our group - no one wants to play them! I built a character based on trying to protect the healers (Ra/Me) and having some but limited success. Basically I am able to help the healer keep the warriors off of him for a minute or two before they're down and then I"m next.

I'm really getting tired of near-invincible warriors! Anyone have any ways to shut them down? I have tried empathy, pin down, poison arrow and throw dirt and it does make their job a little more difficult but it is far from shuting them down or killing them outright. Is this possible? Has anyone found a good way to counter warriors? Or is there a good healer build that can at least stand up to this sort of abuse?

Thanks

[DoC-Makaveli]

try imagined burden?

[Canshero]

I agree, Rangers have a tough time with Warriors. I have an identical type of character as you (R/Me) and specialize in mostly Ranger skills with very few Mesmer skills although I can easily see them helping against a Warrior. I've found that Whirling Defense can really stall a Warrior for a short while. Empathy doesn't seem to do enough damage anymore, and the only way I can really see shutting them down (especially W/Mo) is by sapping of them their Energy. Heck, even Distracting Shot to stop them from healing, or any Mesmer Energy stealing skills (from which I know there's a bunch) could probably help alot with W/Mo. For other Warriors, I don't really know what you can do. Try a defensive stance, throw some dirt afterwards, and pray your allies can rain hell on the warrior.

[EVilAkurei]

I agree, Rangers have a tough time with Warriors. I have an identical type of character as you (R/Me) and specialize in mostly Ranger skills with very few Mesmer skills although I can easily see them helping against a Warrior. I've found that Whirling Defense can really stall a Warrior for a short while. Empathy doesn't seem to do enough damage anymore, and the only way I can really see shutting them down (especially W/Mo) is by sapping of them their Energy. Heck, even Distracting Shot to stop them from healing, or any Mesmer Energy stealing skills (from which I know there's a bunch) could probably help alot with W/Mo. For other Warriors, I don't really know what you can do. Try a defensive stance, throw some dirt afterwards, and pray your allies can rain hell on the warrior.
My R/me can rape a warrior... 1v1.. its the 3 v 1 that hurts...
poison arrow, conjure phantasm, pin down, either feast, cancel sig,ignite arrow, and troll urgant..... i use barb trap(59damage plus cripple and bleed for 19 seconds....bad ***) .. ^^
you have to protect the healers.duh..pin down charging tanks..lol......also if you DOT the healer while ganging up on thier tanks.. they lose focus on healing and there is your chance..... lastly...since 1 v 1 is so rare...and healers suck..(because they rez and run.. hehe) use the cancel sig to stop the rezing.. works like a charm.. plus gives you 9 energy :P gl

PS. i use to swap distortion hehe

[Agonotheta]

With support, the premade N/Me build rapes Warriors. IMO the best way to kill a warrior is to get him with another warrior, and this build has several skills to severely hamper the Warrrior's fighting ability, and escape/chase ability too.

[Torm Shadowbane]

Earth Elementalist. Nothing is more annoying than one of those.

Ward Against Melee gives all the allies within the ward a 50% chance to evade. With 12 in Earth Magic you can keep it up nearly 100% of the time. Time that with Eruption (causes blind) so that when your ward wears off they'll be blind and still can't hit a damn thing while you recast the ward. Repeat. Use a ranger to set traps within the Ward such as barbed traps. Uggh.

Trust me, nothing is more annoying. If you have more than one Monk keeping everyone healed it's cake as long as they stay within the Ward. You'd want to take out the Elementalists first, though, because of their ability to AoE your group. Cast Ward Against Elements to help with that. Have a ranger summon a Frozen Soil spirit -- and tuck it away somewhere out of the way at the beginning of the fight. That will prevent resurrection while it is up.

Then just have your group focus on the same target while forcing them to split up or run into your ward to step on the trap, get AoEd, or whatever type of offensive plans you have. Take out their key players (Elementalists, then Monks to avoid mass AoE).

Have your ranger use poison arrows and choking gas then have your Mesmer (or Mesmer secondary) cast Epidemic after he casts Conjure Phantasm to drive the enemy monks insane. (Suddenly, now everyone is losing massive amounts of health fast! While they have trouble casting spells!)

By that time if they have an elementalist he would be dead, possibly a monk as well, take out remaining monks, then other casters, then rangers and finally warriors. Adjust according to the group you are facing and their stratigy. Rinse, repeat.

[showme]

For W/Mo seems like Spirit Shackles + Empathy + Shatter Enchantment would do a number on them. Lose mending, then lose 5 energy and take 25 damage if you attack is gonna make a W/Mo either stop and rethink attacking or go ahead and commit suicide.

[DataPhreak]

w/mo are easy to kill. whirling defense, press 'C', cast empathy first, then phantasm, start choking gas, begin shooting. when they bash their health down to about 15% watch them freak out when they can't cast heal spells. when choking gas runs out, switch to incendiary arrows. Wash rinse, repeat.

[FragJunky]

Why not make a hidden Monk. Do a W/M with all your points on Protection, Smithing and Healing. Load him up with Monk Skills. They see a Warrior, and leave him alone and go after the frontline Warriors.

[showme]

Why not make a hidden Monk. Do a W/M with all your points on Protection, Smithing and Healing. Load him up with Monk Skills. They see a Warrior, and leave him alone and go after the frontline Warriors.

One problem is that W/X has bad energy regen and not much energy.

[ares416]

These are some great responses, thanks for all the input. I thought about the "hidden monk" trick but worried that without Divine Favor, their healing abilities wouldn't be effective enough. But maybe with healing maxed it would be good enough to keep a primary monk alive while the rest of the team focuses on the enemies soft spots. They wouldn't have to worry about physical attacks as much with warrior armor either.

A lot of these skills mentioned are not easily unlocked so I will have to work on that and until I do I will be at a disadvantage. My level 15 Ra/E is my highest character so far and haven't been too much farther than Lion's Arch. That doesn't do me much good for the mesmer skills either. Looks like I need to do some more work in PvE!

[Torm Shadowbane]

For W/Mo seems like Spirit Shackles + Empathy + Shatter Enchantment would do a number on them. Lose mending, then lose 5 energy and take 25 damage if you attack is gonna make a W/Mo either stop and rethink attacking or go ahead and commit suicide.

That wouldn't work on me. It's the most used strategy, so I don't even bother with mending, I currently only carry breeze and only use it SELDOM, empathy would hurt for a few moments until I tell the group to remove hex. It wouldn't matter if you sucked up all my energy I do my best to focus mostly on using adrenaline based skills. Worst thing that could happen to me is to have my attacks slowed (making me pretty much useless) and burden me then run away. I'm effectively disabled from the fight until your ready to kill me. Maybe even throw a poison arrow or two my way along with another nasty hex. Nothing I can do but either chase you slowly, run away slowly, or stand still. :p

Normally I just stand still let the group know that I am hexed like woah, wait for a few to wear off while watching the battle and keeping an eye out for enemy strategy. So I guess I can still be a passive threat.

But, yeah, I almost never heal in combat. I breeze myself to counter act degen or if I have spare energy and need a quick boost back to full while not in the thick of combat but that's about it. That's why I bring Monks and secondary caster monks along. :p

[Hunt3r_kill4]

The one condition that completely shuts down any melee character is Blindness. Throw Dirt would probably be the best example I can think of, or some air skills such as Blinding Flash. Once blinded, the warrior gets 1 out of 10 hits, meaning no adrenaline for him!

[Torm Shadowbane]

Ward Against Melee + Eruption = Me hating you. :p

[Gorki]

I'm a warrior/Monk and the things a-i've read are some kind affective.
But the best would be Blind and those ( if he's a smithing monk ,
he'll do smithing skillz then) but as i recently changed to healing prayers .
i can't do that anymore.
Taking away my energy with eh Spirit of Chackeles is very effective
( i hate to fight against mergoyle for that reason) but i don't need that energy to gain adreneline and still have powerfull blows.
Although Warrior vs Warrior is the best ;)

GorkiTjai^

[Im Bogus]

Tell ur healers to try this:

10 blessing
12 heal
10 tactics

and to use bonetti's defense (75% miss + 5 energy per miss)
or gladiators defense (elite)
or defensive stance (not the best)

[Hunt3r_kill4]

Bonetti's defense is 75% block instead of miss, but yes, thats good for replenishing energy

[Dragon Flame]

you should have no problem turning a warrior into a pile of dust with a mesmer or an air elementalist (i should know, im a warrior)
Mesmer
1 spell, empathy...im not sure why you're having problems taking out warriors with it...they take damage extremely fast, faster than they can deal it, with empathy on them (if their dumb enough to keep attacking)
2. for a W/Mo, yes, spell shackles it takes out their energy...but...if you just happen to be fighting a very adren based warrior, then its really a waste of spell.

empathy should be enough, if not, imagined burden can slow them down, and there are many disruption spells mesmers have that i just dont know about.

Air Ele?

easy, blind! glimmering mark, and thats it for mr warrior for a fairly long period of time if u keep attacking him with lightning.

[CLaN]

Tell ur healers to try this:

10 blessing
12 heal
10 tactics

and to use bonetti's defense (75% miss + 5 energy per miss)
or gladiators defense (elite)
or defensive stance (not the best)

How do you plan to get the adrenelin for bonetti's defense fast enough

[DutchSmurf]

There are skills that remove adrenaline too, mesmer has them, too lazy to find the names. Empathy is nice, but doesn't do that much damage. Combined with some necro skills you can higher the damage to 71 per hit and then it does hurt. Add some more hexes, so the important ones can't be removed. The smart warrior will stop attacking, most will just kill themselves. In both cases you probably just saved your monk.

[zapka]

Tell ur healers to try this:

10 blessing
12 heal
10 tactics

and to use bonetti's defense (75% miss + 5 energy per miss)
or gladiators defense (elite)
or defensive stance (not the best)


It's not the adrenaline that's the problem with this, it's the fact that Bonetti's Defense ENDS when you use a skill.

[Messenger]

Im a lvl 20 W/Mo using a hammer, and the attacks that cause me the most hassles are (please excuse me if I just describe rather than use the names)


blindness
drain adrenaline
drain energy

Use one of those and I have a big problem, 2 of those and im useless, 3 of those and i sit down :confused:

I havent really gotten into pvp, but in pve, those have been my biggest problems. You want to find a quick way to halt a hammer warrior, there u go

[The Catfish]

Mesmer Adrenaline depleting spells I know of:

Soothing Images - target foe and adjacent foes can't gain adrenaline for 8-18 seconds

Sympathetic Visage - For 8-18 seconds, whenever target ally is hit by a melee attack, all nearby foes lose all adrenaline and 3 energy

Both are very nasty :)

[Nero The Nimble]

was gonna say sympathetic, works really well against an organized group, just throw it on monks and watch the warriors eat their energy and adrenaline themsleves.

[pryzmatik2]

Earth Elementalist. Nothing is more annoying than one of those.

Ward Against Melee gives all the allies within the ward a 50% chance to evade. With 12 in Earth Magic you can keep it up nearly 100% of the time. Time that with Eruption (causes blind) so that when your ward wears off they'll be blind and still can't hit a damn thing while you recast the ward. Repeat. Use a ranger to set traps within the Ward such as barbed traps. Uggh.

Trust me, nothing is more annoying. If you have more than one Monk keeping everyone healed it's cake as long as they stay within the Ward. You'd want to take out the Elementalists first, though, because of their ability to AoE your group. Cast Ward Against Elements to help with that. Have a ranger summon a Frozen Soil spirit -- and tuck it away somewhere out of the way at the beginning of the fight. That will prevent resurrection while it is up.

Then just have your group focus on the same target while forcing them to split up or run into your ward to step on the trap, get AoEd, or whatever type of offensive plans you have. Take out their key players (Elementalists, then Monks to avoid mass AoE).

Have your ranger use poison arrows and choking gas then have your Mesmer (or Mesmer secondary) cast Epidemic after he casts Conjure Phantasm to drive the enemy monks insane. (Suddenly, now everyone is losing massive amounts of health fast! While they have trouble casting spells!)

By that time if they have an elementalist he would be dead, possibly a monk as well, take out remaining monks, then other casters, then rangers and finally warriors. Adjust according to the group you are facing and their stratigy. Rinse, repeat.

Epidemic spreads hexes aswell? Hmm... thought it was just negative conditions. Have you tried this?

And also thats expecting that they all stick together, which from when i've PvP'ed doesn't happen that often. Depends on the map your PvP'ing on I say.

[Ancalagon The Black]

One of the best ways I have found is to light them on fire. Then most of them get mad at you for doing it and attack you, then all you have to do is phoinx,inferno,and lava font and there down for tha count. :happy34:

[Hart]

Epidemic spreads hexes aswell? Hmm... thought it was just negative conditions. Have you tried this?

And also thats expecting that they all stick together, which from when i've PvP'ed doesn't happen that often. Depends on the map your PvP'ing on I say.

For the record, Epidemic spreads Conditions only, so tossing around a bunch of Conjure Phantasm doesn't work. Use Poison/Disease instead. Or Mark of Rodgort, smack em with a Fire wand and immediately Epidemic. That's always good for a laugh.

[Katiapain]

Monk protection spell pacify is my favorite. I'm a divine int/Protection healer and thats a must to stop warriors especially w/mo's because pacify only prevents attacks but w/mo's spells usually are only heals but if no one is attacking them pacify makes them pretty useless. I find the best defense for a warrior attacking your monk is to have more monks.

[Thervold]

Mesmer Adrenaline depleting spells I know of:

Soothing Images - target foe and adjacent foes can't gain adrenaline for 8-18 seconds

Sympathetic Visage - For 8-18 seconds, whenever target ally is hit by a melee attack, all nearby foes lose all adrenaline and 3 energy

Both are very nasty :)

Fighting storm runners in the desert, you really learn how these can mess up a warrior. My pure anti-warrior would probably be Me/N or N/Me. Load up one of these adrenaline nullifiers, tack on curses such as price of failure, faintheartedness, and spirit of failure to reduce their attack speed and chance to hit, and tack on malaise or spirit shackles to drain them of their low energy pool. Throw in an elite like panic or ineptitude, and you'll be able to reduce the effectiveness of at least a couple warriors.

I've seen a Mo/Me that was quite effective at defening vs warriors by using spirit shackles and an adrenaline nullifier. Since all that leaves a poor warrior to do is swing with basic attacks, any decent monk can heal up the damage quite effectively.

[Nanila]

Sympathetic Visage is nice if you know who the warrior is going to attack and if they stick on that person. It'll drain their energy (and all other enemies near by) to stop them from healing or using skills and since it drains their adren they can't use their attack skills.

Glimmering Mark is another fun ability against warriors, even more so if they bunch up. It's like a super blind spell. For (at max) 14 seconds whenever target foe is hit by lightning damage target foe and all foes near your target suffer from blindness for 3 seconds. If like two or more warriors all bunch up on me or my monk I can just toss glimmering mark on them and they basicly can't touch me. Since the spell recharges in 15 seconds I can keep it on them forever unless someone gets smart and knocks the hex off them. Doesn't happen to often though because the monks are so busy keeping themselfs alive they can't stop to smite a hex on a warrior (and like no warriors bring smite hex). Even if they cure the blindness it's self, it'll just refresh when the target is hit by lightning again.

I've taken down a group of 4 war/monks (pretty common since war/monks breed like rabbits) in the random team map with just that spell since we all bunched up and they were blind for the entire match.

There's a lot of ways to shut down warriors but a lot of people don't bring them with them.

[roselan]

with my ranger, I tried an anti-monk build that made wonders against... wamo.

As Distracting shoot was non effective (disables one skill), i thougt It may be better to agress energy than skills. Debilitating arrow removes 10 energy, (10/0/5), and costs me only 6 thanxs to expertise, but it is the 5 sec reload time which is nice!

After a while playing with it, I noticed that wamo did suffer the most of it. As ranger I use a combination of throw dirt, swirling defense, poison, pin down, troll perfume... adding debilitating arrows allows me to stay alive quite longer )but no way I can bring him down :lol: )

[Torm Shadowbane]

Epidemic spreads hexes aswell? Hmm... thought it was just negative conditions. Have you tried this?

And also thats expecting that they all stick together, which from when i've PvP'ed doesn't happen that often. Depends on the map your PvP'ing on I say.

No, unfortunately it doesn't. It only spreads conditions. That is why you cast it after the Ranger has made his attacks (poison arrow). Both Blindness and Poison are nice conditions to spread around. I sometimes play a Healing Monk in PvP, and lemme tell you... when you see all your team's bars go green you groan. A ranger can keep an entire team poisoned no matter how fast or how much I cure it. But yeah, it depends on the map. Still, most teams have a "stick together" mentality.

From experience as a Healing Monk I can tell you nothing is more annoying than your entire team's health dropping all at once.

[minetryk]

I was just thinking of creating a Warrior and trying to think of the best secondary profession. People mention W/M and W/N but what about W/Me? especially against other warriors. Though I found 6 Necromancer spells I really liked for using with warrior, Mesmer has Ineptitude. And no one's mentioned that spell yet

10,1,20 Ineptitude- (Illusion) For 4-9 sec., if target foe attacks, foe takes 10-68 damage and becomes blinded, and ineptitude ends. Elite skill.

I just don't know how long the blindness lasts. Regardless, no adrenaline for the other warrior, plenty for me.

Might as well bring epidemic, just in case. Or just run right by a few warriors, not attacking but casting ineptitude and soothing images.

Ineptitude does have a slow recharge compared to Soothing or say clumsiness for countering attacks.

BTW, Im just a noob, its all theory to me.

[Garumn]

Use Hunters Shot, Imagined burde, and Distortion when he gets near.