Warrior Build Compendium - Updated 06/29

Blank spots can be filled by yourself depending what you need.
These aren’t Team compositions, those are separate builds, soon I will sort them better.

Every Build is handcrafted and inspired by PvXwiki or individual builds i’ve found and adjusted to my liking or what would make the most sense given effHP, effDPS etc.

Enjoy!

BASIC PRINCIPLES IM FOLOWING:

Weapon

• Prefix: Vampiric. It nets the most reliable damage boost and surpasses sundering (except maybe when critting a lot with 16 hammer mastery). A zealous mod is required for some builds, but else there are no better options.
• Inscription: +15% damage while health is above 50% is the standard mod and gives its bonus pretty reliably. Depending on your team setup +15% against hexed foes works aswell and depending on your build +15% damage while using a stance is reliable, too.
• Suffix: Armor is better than health. In general a weapon mod of defense (+5 armor) will therefore be the best choice. There is an issue, however, with this weapon mod: Other than the armor bonus from your insignias, shield and shield inscription the +5 armor count towards the effect stacking cap for armor bonuses which is at +25. Single armor bonuses can go beyond the +25 (i.e. dwarven battle stance), but if multiple bonuses are affecting you they can't combine beyond +25. If, for example, you're under the effect of "stand your ground!" (+24 armor) the weapon won't effectively add more than 1 armor. If your team features such armor bonuses, go for a suffix of fortitude instead. Note "I Am Unstoppable!" is bugged and will always apply after stacking armor bonuses.

Insignias

• If you have a knockdown in your build, use a stonefist insignia. Note that you should not use it on chest or leg armor, as that doesn't provide an additional bonus. Whenever you get hit by armor respecting damage the game will randomly chose which of your armor pieces gets hit. That's important because +armor insignias only count for the piece of armor they're applied to, so you want to minimize the chance that you get hit on the stonefist armor piece without armor boost. The hit chances are:

1. Chest: 37,5% (3/8)
2. Legs: 25% (2/8)
3. Head: 12,5% (1/8)
4. Hands: 12,5% (1/8)
5. Feet: 12,5% (1/8)

• The remaining 4 insignias should provide a reliable armor boost. Sentinel's insignias provide a phantastic +20 armor against elemental damage, but not against other types like any physical damage and armor respecting damage of other types like chaos (wanding mesmers). Also you'll most likely lose the bonus entirely while weakened. If you play a build which has a nearly permanent stance upkeep, sentry's insignias are a good choice. Stance removal isn't very common. If you play an enchantment-heavy team setup blessed insignias are worth a try, but enchantment removal is very common so you might lose the bonus quite often.

Runes

• Superior attribute rune and additionally another +1 from the headpiece for your damage attribute – in case of scythe and dagger builds that's strength.
• You'll want +1 for either tactics or strength, depending on what your build calls for. Most builds make use of strength, so you'll probably need that one. If you play a scythe or dagger build you already have a strength rune and can take a rune of vitae instead.
• A rune of clarity can be picked if you don't trust your heroes' ability to remove blind quickly. If you play with asuran scan you can skip the rune of clarity of course and take another rune of vitae.
• A rune of superior vigor for extra health.
• A rune of superior absorption. It isn't very effective, but it will be more helpful than another +10 health.

1. Weapon Prefix:
   1. If your build requires zealous to function, then zealous. Obviously. Some builds that are borderline on energy sufficiency can swap between zealous and vampiric.
   2. For general damage, the answer here is becoming less clear than it used to be. Veeeeery far back in the day, you'd carry a pulling bow, plus two elemental weapons selected to match the weaknesses of the monsters you'd be facing, plus a vampiric weapon. Then you'd swap weapons as you swapped targets, hitting every monster in its softest armor category. Later, that calculus changed because of two things: (1) the addition of heroes (and especially 7 heroes) meant that you could count on your party having Orders/Barbs/MoP/etc. that required physical damage and added way more damage than the differential from swapping to the weak element. (2) Monster armor creeping up across the board created more situations where the differential from swapping to the weak element was not greater than the 3 armor-ignoring damage from vampiric. So vampiric all the time became the clear optimal choice. However, there have been changes since then that undercut those rationales, and I don't think we've appreciated that. (1) In the current mesmer-heavy 7-hero meta, Orders is relegated to the BiP's sidebar, mostly unused, and no one is running Barbs/MoP/etc. at all. (2) The elementalist update took monster armor back down a few notches. Recently I've been wondering if a return to the very old vamp-ele-ele swap model might be in order.
2. Weapon Inscription: +15% damage while health is above 50%
3. Weapon Customization: Do it.
4. Weapon Suffix: I'm going to briefly recap, then add one point. Generally, 5 armor helps your survivability more than 30 hp. An exception is when you'll be hitting the armor cap. However, I feel compelled to add that if you're in a situation where you're at risk of dying, then there's a strong possibility that something has already gone wrong with your other source of bonus armor, so you're no longer at the cap. To exaggerate only a little bit: "No one in the history of GW ever died while under SY!; they died when SY! went down."
5. Shield Inscription: Received physical damage -2 while in a stance. The case here is pretty straightforward: You should generally be in an IAS stance all the time. Minus 2 off every physical hit is double the average of -5 20% of the time. Stance removal is a lot rarer than enchantment removal. Most mobs/zones are mixed enough that -2 off every physical hit adds up to more than 10 armor against any one element or physical subtype. (Aside: For heroes, go -5/20)
6. Shield Handle: 30 hp. This might seem a little counterintuitive, since I just recommended the -2/stance inscription. Here's the reasoning: Your IAS stance is usually going to be Frenzy. If you're in trouble, often a sensible thing to do is to not recast Frenzy. If you had a 45^stance shield handle, not recasting Frenzy would mean losing 45hp, in a situation where you're already in trouble. (Remember that changes to max hp also change current hp.) Not a great idea. Going with the static 30hp shield handle avoids that sort of hp yo-yoing.
7. Armor Generally: The answers here change somewhat depending on how much pocketbook and storage space you have to make and store multiple armor sets, or swappable pieces for them. If you can only afford one set, you might do some less-than-optimal things (e.g., both minor strength and minor tactics runes) for the sake of more flexibility.
8. Armor Insignias:
   1. (One) Stonefist. Stick one on gloves or boots, for any build with a knockdown -- which isn't limited to hammer builds because of Brawling Headbutt. If you can afford two sets of gloves/boots, swap depending on your build. Otherwise, just leave it on all the time.
   2. (Everything Else) Damage Reduction: Reasonable people can differ. Against the "average" mob, Knight's insignia stops the most total damage overall. However, the run-of-the-mill physical hits that Knights reduces usually aren't the things that pose a credible threat of killing you. What usually does you in is a big spike of elemental or armor ignoring damage when PS/Shelter is down. The best defense against elemental spikes is Sentinel's. The only defense against armor-ignoring spikes is more hp, so Survivor's. Ultimately, the choice comes down to your threat model: Do you care more about defending against pressure or spike? If spike, are you more scared of eles or mesmers? (I don't care for Sentry's for the same reason I don't love 45^stance shield handles -- if you're dropping out of Frenzy because you can't stand the heat, it's the worst possible time to lose 10 armor.)
9. Runes:
   1. Mastery Rune: The old-fashioned, conservative view is that a minor rune is best, because the health buffer is more valuable than the slim benefits of a superior rune. There's two reasons I say the benefits of a superior rune are "slim": (1) Weapon mastery ranks above 12 only increase your base damage 40% as much as ranks 12 and below. So 16 weapon mastery does not do ~14% more base damage than 14 mastery, but rather only ~6% more. (2) Virtually none of the weapon-mastery-based skills have significant breakpoints at 15 or 16. It's not like you get an extra second of knockdown, or Sun & Moon Slash hits three times; Rather, all you get is slightly more bonus damage along a linear scale. On the other hand, the more adventurous view is "I've got Shelter; I'm invincible; I want to do as much damage as possible." (You probably already knew this, but put the mastery rune on your headgear for easier switching between builds.)
   2. Vigor Rune: Biggest one you can afford. Duh.
   3. Absorption Rune: Superior. This soaks a ton of damage. Absolutely worth it.
   4. Rune of Clarity?: I've never found them worthwhile. If your backline is leaving blind in place for 80% of its duration, then you have bigger problems than the rune can fix. Either add more condition removal or bypass blind with Asuran Scan. (If your backline isn't leaving blind in place for 80% of its duration, then this rune does nothing.)
   5. Strength/Tactics: Usually just strength. Tactics is a weak line and it's pretty common to use zero skills from it. If you can afford extra armor pieces, you might put tactics on gloves/boots (whichever doesn't have your stonefist) so you can swap it on as needed.
   6. Everything Else: Vitae. (Don't use attunement. Max energy is not energy management.)