User:Malokai92/Guide Index/player

The Profession Guide A general overview of professions in PvE

Introduction
General PvE refers to instances where you are playing with other players. Organized groups refer to speed clears or specialized teams such as DwGway. They generally have a couple people knowledgeable with the area that leads the group. For example, a pug for UW will have a A/Me and E/Mo with variations lead the party around. A pug for FoW would have the main tank pull and ball while the rest of the group follows. In the context of this article, general play refers to any pug organized for clearing an area. Both organized teams and pugs will give bias to the meta of SF sins, Emos, Panic Mesmers, UA Monks, and SoS Rits. The quality of the profession generally relies on how much you do individually since your team often isn't coordinated effectively.

Heroway refers to playing with 7 heroes or with 1-2 other players where you control all the heroes. There is an exception with Deep and Urgoz, but you can clear those with a blanced 7 hero team anyways. The difference is that when you have control over the heroes, you essentially have control over the team and your playing by yourself with a couple people tagging along. You'll find that after spiritway and mesway, any additional players has much less impact on the overall effectiveness and stability of your team. You can base your hero setup on what your profession is, casters and melee will use different setups.

Warrior
The amazing things about Warrior builds is that each mastery serves a purpose and have effective builds available. This is unlike other professions where generally one attribute is superior to the rest. The profession deals less single target damage than an Assassin. It also deal less AoE damage than a Dervish because Dervish have innate AoE attacks and many AoE damage skills. Warriors have essentially a couple AoE attacks and Hundred Blades for AoE damage. However, they do have a distinct advantage of having access to both spiking and AoE damage depending on your play style. They also have a unique advantage with spamming KDs thanks to Stonefist Insignia. Warrior are melee characters in the frontline, so they suffer all the melee hate. They get hate from Blind, stances, Blurred Vision, snares, Crippled, Weakness, Soothing Images, and energy denial since they only get 2 pips.

General
Warriors do not receive much love in pugs. First of all, most players think Warriors are tanks and use Defy Pain. They don't sport massive single target damage for killing foes and most of their damage comes from Splinter Weapon and Strength of Honor. You shouldn't expect an vigilant Ritualist spamming Splinter Weapon on you or any monk using Smiting Prayers. Pulling is often regulated to a dedicated tank in organized instances and attempting to tank in an unorganized group is doomed to failure. The fact is Warriors just suck when it comes to normal pug groups. You won't have anyone to keep you clean so you can actually kill stuff. Warrior ends up outclassed the more independent frontliners of Assassins and Dervish. You will still be the last one to die however, so bring Scrolls of Resurrection and an IMS to kite when your group starts wiping.

If you happen to use a Warrior in a pug, do not fret. You can still contribute to the party. First of all, bring "Save Yourselves!" Assume people are stupid and that the only way any of the other guys standing next to you or behind you will live is with "Save Yourselves!" up. Second, bring Brawling Headbutt or "You Move Like a Dwarf!", you can't rely on your party to interrupt a nuke, Meteor Shower, or Invoke Lightning. Put that Stonefist Insignia to go use and lineback the one melee about to rape your monk. Another suggestion is to bring Asuran Scan. This will let you attack through blinding Surge, Whirling Defense, and all that other crap and make sure you keep spamming "Save Yourselves!" as well as burn off your DP.


 * Suggested builds
 * Build:W/any Dragon Slash - Spam "Save Yourselves!" constantly and act like an Imbagon. This won't prevent your party from wiping if they end up spread out, but it does offer a chance for your party to kill something before they die.
 * Build:W/any Hundred Blades - This is the only way to contribute to an organized spike and what you will use in FoWsc. Ebon Battle Standard of Honor will boost your damage as well as allies if the perma sin doesn't bring it.

Heroway
Warriors are very flexible when it comes to heroway. They are much more durable than other frontliners and have a slurry of awesome builds to choose from. You can afford to leeroy in by yourself and expect not to die as long as your heroes have powerheals. Warriors are best suited for those who love to charge in with confidence, knowing that their heroes are more likely to die before they do.

The Warrior's main advantage is their high armor and health, which makes pulling dangerous mobs trivial compared other professions. This advantage stems in part from a shield set. Casters generally run 40/40 sets with runes for attributes, even with a defensive set they are glass vases in comparison. Warriors are the only profession that can do "naked" pulls without it being suicidal. This means pulling HM Margonite groups where Invoke Lightning hits ~170 instead of ~320 without Shelter or prots up and HM Thorn Wolves hit ~60 with autoattacks instead of ~90.

They also lend themselves to tanking for similar reasons. Do not use Shield of Absorption or Protective Spirit as an excuse for pulling and tanking generally being the same on any profession. Things can go wrong, enchantments can get stripped, and Shield of Absorption isn't permanent. Warriors can survive on pure powerhealing. Also keep in mind that the high health and armor makes Warriors low priority target for aggro, which is great for balling and bodyblocking mobs for your heroes to nuke.

They also have easy access to primary PvE skills "Save Yourselves!" and Whirlwind Attack. "Save Yourselves!" is not for defense. Do not use it to compensate for your terrible microing skills, glass cannon heroway that collapses in 10 seconds, or small penis. That's why you're bringing Shelter, party heals, "Stand Your Ground!", and other defensive skills on your team. Since you're at the frontline, heroes may often not be within shout range while they kite or run off like they love to do. "Save Yourselves!" is the panic button. This is the skill you use when your entire party is about to get hit by Searing Flames, Rodgort's Invocation, or getting trained to death by melee. This is the skill you hit when an enemy casts Savannah Heat or Meteor Shower and your heroes decide to scatter in 20 directions in the same area instead of running to flag you put up half a second ago. It acts as a safeguard for when your heroes are being stupid or your Assassin friend sits on Unsteady Ground with you. You don't need "Save Yourselves!" up to avoid your heroes collapsing. Whirlwind Attack is your general purpose AoE attack. This is the skill you'll be using to trigger Splinter Weapon and dishing out AoE damage. While Axe Mastery has Cyclone Axe and Hammer Mastery has Crude Swing available, Sword Mastery is reliant on Whirlwind Attack for an AoE attack. Whirlwind Attack is essentially free to spam and AoE attacks will charge it quickly, allowing you to pump quite a bit of AoE damage.


 * Suggested builds
 * Build:W/any Warrior's Endurance Axe - Your jack-of-all-trades build for any area. This is the build to use in areas with Soothing Images to avoid cutting your damage output. It's generally used for any new area since it reacts well to new situations and essentially have the bar is free for whatever skills you need. You can't go wrong with this.
 * Build:W/any Hundred Blades - The spiking build you will use for high-end areas. Nothing is more effective than 100b when balling up foes in FoW, Urgoz, or Deep. Mark of Pain makes balls explode, but you don't have to use MoP for the build to work effectively.
 * Build:W/any Dwarven Battle Stance - This build is fun to use simply because spamming Whirlwind Attack and Crude Swing is satisfying. The best way to enjoy using it is bringing Brawling Headbutt and Renewing Smash to wail on enemies. Spamming Renewing Smash delivers DPS comparable to dagger spam. You can't use Brawling Headbutt with Yeti Mash or Hammer Bash however.

Assassin
Assassins are the most accessible profession in the game. They abuse Shadow Form for speed clears, running dungeons, and tanking. For pugs, they are commonly used for tanking while balling up foes or use the Physway setup to clear areas through sheer force. Shadow Form is used in nearly every speed clear and organized team. All that's required of the player is to maintain Shadow Form and Shroud of Distress while they run around. This makes an introduction into high-end PvE rather uncomplicated for players. As an individual character, Assassins dish out more damage than any other profession and are pretty durable. The Build:A/any Dagger Spammer build does not rely on an elite and you can take the 5 main skills roll through PvE. The usage is trivial and there's nothing hard about using three skills over and over. It's so easy and effective to use, that even someone new to the game will find it trivial.

General
Assassins have access to Shadow Form, a skill that makes you invulnerable to spells and reduces damage from attacks. Formerly Shadow Form caused all attacks to fail and required two skills (Glyph of Swiftness and Deadly Paradox) to maintain. Shroud of Distress serves as replacement, providing blocking, health regeneration, and an enchantment for Shadow Form. Shadow Form is used in FoWsc, UWsc, dungeon teams, and other elite areas because of this. Their popular use is as a tank in tank n' spank builds, balling up foes for the rest of the team to spike down. Typically the other use is for running a dungeon or completing a task solo. This is usually done with Sliver Armor, degeneration, or small packets of damage. FoWsc relies both on a perma tank (A Shadow Form Assassin using Earth Magic for damage reduction) and individual Shadow Form Assassins to complete other tasks. A sinway is a team consisting solely for Shadow Form Assassins that complete the minimum objectives required to finish a area. Examples of perma solo and speed clear builds can be found on PvXwiki:Dungeon Overview.

The profession doesn't revolve around Shadow Form however. You have your general dagger spam build that works just about anywhere and kills everything. You dish out more single target damage than any profession by and large. A common setup is to abuse the damage an Assassin puts out with dagger spam called Physway. It consists of 5-6 Assassins using dagger spam builds and "Save Yourselves!" while support buffs and heals them. Typically there is an Orders necro and Emo to keep them alive.

Paragon
Paragons suck in PvE. They are terrible. The only people who will say otherwise are Paragon fanboys who think Racway somehow makes up for the fact that they suck. Paragons have no AoE damage skills bar conditional damage from Holy Spear. They don't have access to Strength of Honor to abuse melee damage and no spammable source of Deep Wound. Their only IAS skills are tedious to use and give armor penalties. Aggressive Refrain costs 25 energy and requires constant usagee of shouts to keep it up. Soldier's Fury requires a shout to be active at all times to receive benefit. Paragons do not have any easily maintainable shouts. There are no shouts that have a longer duration than recharge except "Can't Touch This!", which is a crappy skill itself. Your best options are "There's Nothing to Fear!", "Stand Your Ground!", and "I Am Unstopppable!" and they all have certain disadvantages just to get a fucking IAS. You do get the same high armor and health like a Warrior, but since you're at midline without AoE attacks, you really can't do anything. You just sit there chucking your spear thinking you dealing a competent amount of damage. Don't bring up Orders either, if I'm required to bring an Orders hero just so I can deal more than 8 damage with a spear, I'd rather grab some daggers and Strength of Honor.

General
The only build Paragons are used for in pugs is Imbagon. No other build, nothing else, just that build. And it's the only build viable for pugs. Do not use anything else, do not try to use anything else. This is the best option available for contributing to a pug team. You can run Soldier's Fury with friends or an organized team where you're an extra. Otherwise, you will run some variation of Imbagon for your entire PvE career.