I am currently a P7 warrior. My valor level is 1242, which is extremely high.
Although there is a firestorm about Warrior PvP balance on these forums, once I breached the 1100 Valor mark, I found PvP not to be as horribly imbalanced as people make it out to be.
I currently run a 51/15 RB/Pal combination. This is a very basic build that has been around since the dawn of time. I took block talents, and took points out of hardened will for the mez protection, martial shield, and pally stun for 1.6.
Riftblade is undeniably the PvP soul for warriors. While warrior PvP in inflexible (as in run RB or ****), which properly specced into RB combinations and with high Valor, warriors are still very formidable.
I regularly kill P8s with glowing weapons of all classes, they kill me. Against undergeared teams I can usually survive 4-5v1 with just paladin heal and consumables.
I found that most people who comment on "PvP being broken" suffer from the following misconceptions:
-They mistake gear domination for class imbalance. Warrior is the MOST GEAR DEPENDENT calling out of any other calling in the game. Everything about a warrior scales with weapon and gear. The higher valor that you have as a frontline class, the better off you are. Warriors should be stacking as much valor as possible, which means having a fully upgraded PvP source engine with as much valor as you can cram in it as early as possible. This means having all the proper runes, crafting valor items (like the stalwart shield with a valorstone) and using battlemaster brews. THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE THAT COMPLAIN ABOUT BEING DEVSTATED IN PVP DO NOT EVEN HAVE 1k VALOR, WHICH IS THE BARE MINIMUM REQUIRED TO PLAY AN EFFECTIVE WARRIOR.
-Many warriors play improper specs, as in not RB and not S+B. Champion 2h and paragon DW builds were unnerfed but offer very little survival power. Sword and board is the absolute king of warrior PvP right now. While some 2h builds can be effective, many warrior weapon pieces are armor are itemized for STRENGTH, which is a defensive stat the boosts block. With so much passive STR, there is no reason why a warrior shouldn't take a shield and optimize survival power through blocking, especially when the primary PvP soul (Riftblade) gains very little benefit when using DW or a 2H weapon.
-People don't bring consumables in PvP. Consumables win pvp, hands down. You should always have battlemaster brews on hand, PvP whetstones, armor platings, shield spikes, and most important POTIONS AND RIFT CONSUMABLES. Rift consumables are extremely powerful in PvP. Crucia Mirrors can be chained to overrun and pally hammer for a ultra long stun, Tablets prevent you from E-starving, Wrathful Flames DEVASTATE rogues and other warriors when combined with avatar of the rift, Revitalization Seeds prevent you from dying to rogue bleeds, Soul Remnants ALWAYS DEAL 1000 dmg through valor and can lead to insane burst spikes + finish off healers that are not paying attention, and Earth consumables protect you from fearbombs. A true warrior uses every asset and tool available to him to win, the same applies to PvP in rift. If I fight you, you bet I'm going to pot, seed your bleed attacks, stun the hell out of you with crucias, and finish you off with a soul remnant the second you hit 1k health.
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Other classes, such as mages ARE NOT AS IMBALANCED as other people make them out to be.
VS. ROGUES
Rogues got a huge nerf to their shields, RS/NB is still extremely killable. With the new AoE tanking sweeps on a 5 sec CD there is no reason why a warrior shouldn't be able to hit a suspected rogue out of stealth. When I pop wrathful flames and open with Rift Surge on RS/NBs, I usually win every time. Assassins are much more devastating and a warrior should ALWAYS have seeds on hand to mitigate bleed damage. People that complain about rogues are usually bads that don't know how to fight them. Stop using class imbalance as an excuse to suck. Learn how to play good and even the best rogue should be an equal challenge to you.
Vamp munitions and fell blades still sucks, it will wreck your pally heal, but you should still do formidable damage and block enough attacks to have an advantage over the rogue. Use break free at the proper time and always riftwalk BEHIND rogues after their opener to prevent them from getting backstabs on you. Most of the time, Wrathful Flame + Avatar of the Rift with Surge on is enough for the rogue to kill themselves after 5 seconds of beating on you while you simultaneously smash their face in. Marksman can be Riftwalked to and crumple like a house of cards once you get in range.
After 1.6 and breaching 1200 Valor, I still lose to good rogues, but usually its because I got jumped in a position of disadvantage or the guy was just good. I never felt after 1.6, that I lost to a rogue "because of my class." Rogues are in a nice place of balance right now.
VS. CLERICS
Clerics are much more tricky and P8 clerics will take MORE THAN JUST YOU to kill. P8 wardens are near unkillable solo and if you are caught alone with a warden and a dps, you will most definitely die. Does this make clerics imbalanced? No.
Dedicated healing clerics NEED to have survival power to be viable and SHOULD require multiple team members beating on them in order to kill because they contribute no DPS to their team. Clerics are designed to be IMPORTANT TARGETS THAT REQUIRE TEAM COORDINATION to kill. They act as a lynchpin for their team and the second an important cleric (like Zipi, Sonia, Alibi, and a few others on my server's guardian team) dies, their team will fold.
The entire point of a healing or support cleric is to act as a team leader and keep the team alive. Because of this it is perfectly balanced for their defenses to be fortified since they are the glue that holds their team together and keeps it alive. A team that isn't focusing a healing cleric and is losing because they can't score teams is a baddie team that should be using team coordination to shut down the cleric or focus him down.
LW and vamp munitions is more than enough to balance PvP healing. Most people that complain about P8 wardens don't understand the concept of priority targets. Rogues are extremely good at killing clerics with fell blades and most of the time teams lose against strong healing teams because their MMs suck and do nothing but spam fan out when they should be eradicating the cleric and spreading vamp to make the guy killable.
Justicar based builds have not given me problems, since it takes EXTREME effort for them to kill me through 1242 valor. A combination of crucias, windspears, and light's hammer is more than enough disruption for me to lock down and kill a justicar based cleric. Clerics that are problematic should always be focus and teammembers should always mark and ask for assistance when trying to kill a game changing healer.
There is nothing wrong with clerics not being killable in 1v1, they have to be that strong. If a cleric was killable in 1v1 as a healer, what would be the point of having a healer when he can't even take care of himself, let alone his entire team.
Also if a cleric is pushed to the point where he is doing nothing but spam healing himself, guess who he is not healing? That's right, his entire team, who are probably getting mashed into meaty cubes without any heals. It only takes ONE good warrior to pressure a healer to this point and force him to lose focus on team healing. When a healer isn't healing his team, he's absolutely useless to them.
Clerics are far from OP, in fact, they can probably use better DPS so that they aren't forced into MASH builds or P8 warden healing. There are a few good clerics out there that use hybrid cabs. Cab is very underrated in PvP and Sign of Asias can totally trash an enemy cluster.
Also any team that is dying to soul drain is filled with bads, because you have until the end of time to interrupt it.
VS. MAGES
Most mage players are damn good, and players mistake imbalance as mage player simply being absolute gods at pvp. Mages have a high learning curve to play well, most of their devastation abilities require alot of setup time and "entrapping" enemies in certain situations. Examples of this is stormshackle + split personality. Most of the time the warrior dies because he isn't paying attention and runs through the storm shackle to escape the adds.
Fighting a mage is about awareness and knowing what kind of mage you are up against. Doms can be hard. You should always watch your debuffs for stormshackle against a mage and know to RIFTWALK to him and not run when you see it up. Mages are the kind of class that punishes you for making mistakes or having bad awareness.
Mages are also easy to lock down, and nothing ruins a mage's day more than:
-Windspear
-Riftwalking in his face and face-slamming/bashing a key skill like mortality or lightning burst
-Pally Stun (light's hammer)
-Crucia Mirrors
The absolute counter to a mage is hard aggression and not allowing him to setup. Granted there are still chloro mages that "tank." These mages can still also be disrupted but are far less threatening due to the inability to doubletap with devouring shadows since 1.6, which was their primary source of damage. Key skills to hit on those mages are nature's fury and void life on 51 chloros. Most of the time you can ignore chlorolocks and focus on higher threat targets on the enemy team.
If you pressure a mage hard enough, he will make mistakes, or not be able to get in his big finisher. There are pyro-chloros out now that can be challenging, but are still killable with high valor and good interrupts. Riftwalk usually counters flicker and always be in their face to spam interrupt and disrupt fireball spam. Without the neddra's buffs, a Pyro gives up much more survival power than the chlorolock for damage. When pressured hard, you can break him much easier.
Windspear > light's hammer > crucia is more than enough to lock down a pyrolock and force him to either flicker away and run or die. Because pyros are a spammer class that relies on fast fireballs, Rift Surge kills them just as fast as it kills rogues.
One spec to watch out for are STORMCALLERS. They are glass cannon builds that can instant kill a target if allowed to setup. In order get their instant gib off they require stack building and alot of preparation. SC is a high risk build that is easy to kill, and SC spec mage can be killed seconds within closing the gap on them.
Yes a SC can do 4000+ dmg and a 2k icicle to instant kill a 1k valor target, but this is far from imbalanced, because they die just as fast as they kill you when pressured. Interrupting LIGHTNING BURST is a surefire kill on a SC. Without getting of burst, he loses his only way of killing you outright.
SCs should always be watched and focused. They require immense setup to score kills and getting in a SC's face each time he initiates combat is more than enough to stop him from ever getting his shorts off. SC's are the equivalents to FPS snipers who wait at the end of combat to "take their shot." They really have no survival power and are easily kill.
THE META:
Honestly, this meta is huge improvement over last patch's. Warriors are not really in a bad place if proper specs are run and they are still very formidable against almost every calling and soul combination. PvP balance is not based on 1v1, which is why p8 clerics should be able to demand team focus to be killed.
Many warriors that complain on here, really just aren't good or use all the tools they have been given to be the best that they can.
The only problem with RIFT pvp is that yea, it is inflexible. You need to run certain specs, like heavy RB, to be good. But there will always be a FoTM and an effective way to play a class. But when you dedicate yourself to running specs that actually work on a war, you will find that it's actually pretty damn good and not nearly as bad as people make it out to be.
When you run proper specs and follow my guidelines on how to be pvp prepared, you also find that once you get proper valor ratings, class imbalance is not nearly as bad as the forum crying makes it out to be.
BEING GOOD AT PVP:
So if you want to stop being a forum baby and actually be a decent warrior in PvP do the following:
-Run my spec, or any other spec PROVEN to be good on the forums. There are many RB combinations out there and even an SLI reaver dot spammer that is effective. Know how good specs work before you try to experiment on your own. For a solid basic build, use this:
http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0c...tdsrGdsR.xgozo
Macros:
Primary Builder:
#show Rift Strike
cast Aggressive Block
cast Rift Strike
cast Sweeping Strike
cast Frost Strike
cast Thunder Strike (or Searing for single target)
cast Shield Throw (Free attack point, wewt)
cast Retaliation
Finisher:
#show Earth Burst
cast Earth Burst
cast Storm Burst
cast Fiery Burst
cast Retaliation
Snare (fork this for multisnare):
#show Stonespear
cast Stonespear
cast Freeze Armor
-Have rift surge, touch of life, stoneshield, windspear, rift walk, fork, face slam, break free, and riftstorm (for uncovering stealthers) on keybinds.
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GET VALOR!
-Grind unseen rep and get the following essences to put in a PVP SOURCE MACHINE immediately:
Both conqueror essences
Brigandier's Outrage
Both Nihilist essences
Vigilante's Outrage
************YOU CAN USE THE FILTER BOX AT THE BOTTOM OF THE UNSEEN VENDOR MENU TO SHOW THE ROGUE PvP ESSENCES SO YOU CAN BUY THEM! MOST PEOPLE DO NOT KNOW THIS!!!!************
When you are complete your essence machine should give you
248 valor. This is stupid huge considering that 25 valor = 1% pvp damage reduction.
-Find a crafter and forge the following:
VALOROUS HEAVY SHIELD OF THE STALWART:
-This shield is near T3 quality and the Valorstone augment (craftable by apoths) gives you 43 valor on your shield. Because armor does very little for you in PvP due to most damge being elemental, this is a near 2% reduction (even putting it possibly above the P8 shield in terms of player damage prevention).
The mats are as follows:
3 tempered orichalcum bars
3 infinite essences
2 eternal planar dusts
2 ethereal flux
1 pure valorstone (easy to make)
BEFORE YOU GET SERIOUS ABOUT PVP YOU SHOULD HAVE THE FOLLOWING:
-P4 gear or better
+50 valor rune to chest
-Library and port scion valor/vengeance runes if you can get them
-King of the Fight pvp trinket
-The 43 crafted valor shield I posted above
-Revered with the unseen and the Nihilists/Conqueror's essence machine I posted above for 248 valor.
-Battlemaster's brew, pots, and rift consumables.
-T2+ 1h weapon
The above combination should put you well over 1100 valor. At 1242 valor I'm at 49.7 PvP damage reduction.
Take all this in mind when going into pvp, prepare well, and you will realize you can be pretty damn devastating as a warrior.
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Originally Posted by Lunacresia 
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