I like
Guild Wars a lot. For over four years now, I have been routinely returning to the game for one to two month binges of dedicated playing, before I get burned out on the game or a new craze sweeps me away. But I feel one of the strongest aspects of my love for the game lies in my constant return to it. Guild Wars was the first
Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) game I had ventured into, and of the handful I've tried since (the monster
World of Warcraft and the not-quite-living-up-to-its-name
Lord of the Rings Online) I've always considered Guild Wars to be my favorite. The linear storyline, combined with a vast world to explore and plenty of
clear goals to achieve, make the game easy to approach I feel. The combat is both very deep and complex, but also relies on simple principles. There are several tremendously addictive facets to the game, from collecting resources to construct new, cool looking armor, to scouring the continents trying to capture and unlock the almost 300 Elite Skills. And above all, the game is absolutely free after you purchase it; you don't have to mess with the archaic and greedy system of monthly fees. Guild Wars was the first major title to start that, and it is keeping it alive with the upcoming sequel,
Guild Wars 2, which I absolutely cannot wait for. In the meantime, let me tell you some about my experience in Guild Wars.
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| The very first screenshot of Falhock Ospri |
Falhock Ospri is the name of the very first character I made in Guild Wars, and he remains as my main character to this day. Fitting with my typical attraction to the stout and easy-to-use melee classes, Falhock is a
Warrior, and for most of his life his secondary profession was a
Monk. At first I was attempting to emulate some kind of paladin-esque class, hoping to utilize the
Smiting and
Protection Prayers attributes of the Monk. However, I learned the hard way that primary Warriors do not do well with more than a few, at most, caster skills. For the longest time I tried using
Mending, a maintained enchantment that gave me a tiny amount of health regeneration at the cost of poorer energy sustainability. Between running out of energy, and the several monsters that would actually strip me of this enchantment, it did not help me very much in conquering
Tyria. Eventually I captured the
Elite Skill Warrior's Endurance, which when combined with my eschewing of Mending and other healing skills, allowed me to actually maintain my energy well and output a lot more damage. Still, my build was far from great, and the grind was slow.
It is really a miracle I beat the
Prophecies campaign at all in the first place. My build sucked, my understanding of the game was honestly quite poor, and I did not have the best equipment by a long shot. Today, Falhock Ospri stands as my solely successful cross-campaign character, the only one to have beaten the
Eye of the North expansion pack, and currently my champion in overcoming the
Guild Wars Beyond content. Shortly after beating Eye of the North, something prompted me to look into alternative--and better--builds for my Warrior. I soon discovered the Elite Skill
Battle Rage, and around that I constructed a build that I use today, and although I know it is not the best, I am still very happy with it.
Full Adrenaline Sword Warrior
This build is very easy to use, relying on adrenaline and the Elite Skill Battle Rage to keep up a very steady barrage of melee Skills. It is, in most scenarios, extremely easy to sustain and very easy to use. The stance Battle Rage gives double adrenaline, which allows the five melee Skills in the build to be used twice as often as they normally would be usable. The easiest aspect of this build, however, is the fact that Battle Rage itself only requires four strikes of adrenaline to be used, which means that it can very easily be maintained as long as you are in combat and landing hits.
Attributes
Strength: 11(+1)
Swordsmanship: 12(+3)
Smiting Prayers: 6
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Generally, right before you're to meet the enemy, use
"For Great Justice!" so that you can jump start the double adrenaline gained from Battle Rage. "For Great Justice!" lasts for twenty seconds, which is more than plenty of time to accrue the adrenaline to activate Battle Rage. After Battle Rage is active, you can generally use any of the five melee skills depending on the situation.
Whirlwind Attack can be used at any time since it still adds bonus damage, however it is by far most useful when used within striking range of multiple enemies, the more the better of course. But, from time to time, if an enemy is blocking a lot or you keep missing hits, you can use Whirlwind Attack if you're hoping to land a heavier-than-normal hit.
Standing Slash by default adds +20 damage with 15 Swordsmanship. However, if the user is in a stance (which you are due to Battle Rage!) the attack deals an additional +20 damage with 15 Swordsmanship. Requiring less adrenaline than the other three melee Skills, Standing Slash is a great, efficient skill. It should be noted that if Battle Rage is removed, or you don't maintain it, this Skill will deal less damage than it could.
Sun and Moon Slash is, in a way, the weakest Skill in the build, but it makes up for it with its unique nature. The primary reason for this skill is that it is unblockable, a great trait to have with the multitude of ways for enemies to constantly block melee attacks. It also has an interesting quality of striking twice, simultaneously, which helps in building adrenaline. The downside to this skill is that it has no bonus damage, so while it can sometimes deal high damage when used on foes with low armor, more often than not you'll deal two blows of low damage. Still it is better than nothing.
Galrath Slash is a sort of powerhouse move in the build, dealing an additional +40 damage with 15 Swordsmanship. Unlike Standing Slash, which requires you to be in a stance to be fully effective, Galrath Slash can be used in any condition to its full potential. The downside is that it requires two more strikes of adrenaline than Standing Slash. Fortunately, Battle Rage doesn't make that a big deal, but it is something to consider.
Final Thrust stands the end-all move in the build, but is one that should be used carefully. The most important thing to know about Final Thrust is that when used all of your adrenaline goes away. Although Battle Rage will allow you to quickly rebuild it, it will add a few seconds of downtime where you can't deal as much damage as you normally could. The reason this Skill is in the build though is that it is one of the best spiking skills for the Warrior. By default, the move grants +40 damage with 15 Swordsmanship. However, if the target foe's health is below 50%, an additonal +40 is dealt. This totals to a whopping +80 damage! If used correctly, it can deal a nasty blow to the enemy and it is very common for this move to finish off a foe. However, it should be remembered that because it drains all of your adrenaline and it is its strongest when the enemy is below half health, it should be used sparingly.
The final slot in the build,
Strength of Honor, is honestly the free spot more than anything. When capturing Elite Skills, this is the slot I put the
Signet of Capture in. If I'm delving into the
Depths of Tyria, I tend to bring the
Light of Deldrimor to uncover hidden treasures. If going up against the
Margonites of
Abaddon, I bring
Lightbringer's Gaze. All in all, it is a versatile slot and should be used freely to adapt to your situation. When there is no dire need for a specific Skill, I tend to default to Strength of Honor, a maintained enchantment that adds a simple bonus of +13 damage to melee with 6 Smiting Prayers. My general rule of thumb is that at the beginning of a Mission or area, I will activate the enchantment, and if it is stripped I tend to not reactivate it. I will sometimes try to keep it up if I know an area doesn't have a lot of enchantment strip hazards.
As I said, the build is really rather easy to use and works well in most situations. It tends to not work nearly as well when several foes use a means of constantly blocking, or when enemies cause a heavy dosage of
Blindness. Stance removal can also be a major problem, but it does not occur very often in PvE.
In addition to this Swordsmanship-centric build, I have similar builds for
Axe Mastery and
Hammer Mastery, but I will go into more detail with those later.
The final thing I will go over is Falhock's armor, one of my slightly more impressive achievements. As I clawed my way through the Prophecies campaign, I of course used whatever the best armor was that I could craft. As I settled into the top tier of armor I went ahead and crafted a dedicated set of armor, the simple
Templar Armor. I was always drawn to this armor for its stylish helm and sturdy platemail design. At the time, though, I was so poor in the game that I thought I would never be able to afford any of the Prestige Armor sets. I was, eventually, wrong.
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| Templar Armor, with a Lesser Highlander Blade and a Shield of the Lion |
The first set of Prestige Armor I crafted for Falhock was the
Elite Templar Armor. This armor was, to me, even cooler than the cheaper Templar Armor and a definite status symbol to some degree. Saving my gold and platinum took a long time, but I eventually assembled the whole set. I absolutely loved it.
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| Elite Templar Armor with the Deldrimor Maul |
After some time though, I began thinking about making another set. I had, afterall, managed to make one set and it didn't kill me. I soon began saving for my second set, the extremely intricate
Elite Canthan Armor. When this armor was finally complete, I realized I had a conundrum: I couldn't wear both sets of armor, yet I wanted both to be useful. My solution was assigning the different armors to different roles. The Elite Templar Armor would be my standard armor, loaded with
runes and
insignia to help ward off melee damage. The new Elite Canthan Armor would then serve as my anti-elemental armor, using the
Sentinel Insignia to give a hefty armor bonus against the nasty and deadly damage type.
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| Elite Canthan Armor with Droknar's Sword and the Exalted Aegis |
A lot of time would pass before I became antsy to craft a new Prestige Armor set. The next one I set my eyes on was the illustrious
Elite Kurzick Armor. This armor set truly took some time to craft, and I feel does have at least a hair of true prestige to it. The large amount of time-consuming-to-acquire
Amber Chunks make this armor harder to get than a simple saving of
Iron and
Steel Ingots. With three different sets of armor, I had to stretch my mind again on how to use all of them. I came to the hard decision of making the new Elite Kurzick Armor my main Swordsmanship armor. This meant re-dedicating the Elite Templar Armor to focus on Hammer Mastery, as I had recently been playing around with the hammer and found it fun in low-risk situations. I was sad to see my favored armor leave the spotlight, but the Elite Kurzick Armor really is awesome looking, and is my main armor to this day.
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| Elite Kurzick Armor with Droknar's Sword and the Exalted Aegis |
It would be a few years before I decided to craft my fourth, and at the time of this post, latest armor set. Ever since the Eye of the North expansion pack was released, I had a fondness for the
Norn Armor. I put off pursing the armor for its requirements of
Monstrous Fangs and
Claws, which I deemed too rare and expensive to make. But during my latest binge of playing, gold and platinum were piling up from daily
Zaishen Challenge Quests with nothing to spend it on and I actually crafted this armor with a slight goal in mind: I wanted to look into an Axe Mastery build. If I were to investigate this last bastion of the Warrior's prowess I would need appropriate armor, and I saw no other fit for the job. So I ended up buying most of the Monstrous Fangs and Claws from the
Rare Material Traders, and now I am the proud owner of four sets of Prestige Armor.
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| Norn Armor with a Norn Axe and the Exalted Aegis |
Expect several later posts concerning Guild Wars, truly one of the finest online cooperative RPGs to date.
