Tips for WAR PVP, Stat weights and Medals

[Syrus_Draco]

Hey All,

So I tried some PVP in season 2 to get myself a handle of the arena, now I want to try and climb up as best as I can, so I have two major questions.

1) Is the stat weight the same for PVP as it is with PVE?
I'll go doing PVP as a warrior, and working on my gear I want to ensure that I am still following the same stat weights all others use. In this case: Crit > Det > Skill Speed

2) The Medal UI showing both team's medals is very big, and in the past I closed it off and picked up medals when they dropped, while not exceeding 4 stacks. There have been some cases where I pick up a big drop of medals, and I go from 1 or 2 stacks to 7+ stacks. It isn't intentional, but is there an easy way to determine how many medals dropped after a kill -without- having to use the large UI? OR is that the only option? (I'll have to adjust if that's the case)

Lastly, so I play on controller, there any tips you can give for controller players?

Thank you!

[Koltik]

Hey All,

So I tried some PVP in season 2 to get myself a handle of the arena, now I want to try and climb up as best as I can, so I have two major questions.

1) Is the stat weight the same for PVP as it is with PVE?
I'll go doing PVP as a warrior, and working on my gear I want to ensure that I am still following the same stat weights all others use. In this case: Crit > Det > Skill Speed

2) The Medal UI showing both team's medals is very big, and in the past I closed it off and picked up medals when they dropped, while not exceeding 4 stacks. There have been some cases where I pick up a big drop of medals, and I go from 1 or 2 stacks to 7+ stacks. It isn't intentional, but is there an easy way to determine how many medals dropped after a kill -without- having to use the large UI? OR is that the only option? (I'll have to adjust if that's the case)
Lastly, so I play on controller, there any tips you can give for controller players?

Thank you!

Hi Syrus. It says how many medals are dropped in the chat log immediately after the kill. This is the best way.

Regarding the size of your window, you should be able to resize it like you do all other UI elements. You'll need to do it from within Feast, though!

[TiramisuMacaron]

Crit / det on everything as warrior, 2-3 crit/acc accessories.

The best advice I can give about medals is to avoid two stacking as tank. Your teammates can pick up 25 medal drops (coins) without getting any stacks. Just pick up the first two bags that drop early on into the game. Later in the game, it is better to look at the scoreboard/chat log because bags can be anywhere between 50-74 medal.

[Februs]

1) Is the stat weight the same for PVP as it is with PVE?

Crit>Det>>Skill Speed>>>Accuracy>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Parry.

Just keep in mind that PvP syncs down to 150 stat caps. Most PvE set combinations WILL NOT get you to your caps unless you mix and match pieces. PvP gear is a good substitute for any useless Parry or accuracy pieces. Unfortunately, you'll have no way of knowing if you meet the caps until you actually sync within an instance, so it may take some tweaking before you have an ideal set.

2) The Medal UI showing both team's medals is very big, and in the past I closed it off and picked up medals when they dropped, while not exceeding 4 stacks. There have been some cases where I pick up a big drop of medals, and I go from 1 or 2 stacks to 7+ stacks. It isn't intentional, but is there an easy way to determine how many medals dropped after a kill -without- having to use the large UI? OR is that the only option? (I'll have to adjust if that's the case)

As Kotlik said, the UI is the easiest way to get an exact value. If you're using a controller, you can change it's size using the virtual mouse (Hold L1 + click R3). Alternatively, you can also use the chat box function to tell how many medals are dropped, if you go through the time and effort to create a custom box. However, neither option is ideal for screen space.

Another, more risky, option is to just pay attention to how many medals are dropped based on who has died and who has picked up. You can kind of ballpark how many medals are up for grabs based on the symbol. You just have to keep in mind where the limits are and how high your heavy medal stack is.

The general rule of thumb is that from a neutral start to the match, you can pick up 2 medium drops to get instantly to +4. If you have +1 stacks, you can pick up 1 medium stack. At +2 stacks, you can pick up small stacks only. Large stacks are always risky unless you know EXACTLY how many medals the person dropped, because the symbol does not change after 75 medals. They could have had 75, or they could have had 250. These are obviously ballpark figures, but they usually work out. The only exception is if you died and had your total medal value reset to 0.

If you want to know the approximate medal range for each symbol, you can find that here. It's kind of a pain to memorize, and the utmost limits of each stack set can give you a some unpleasant surprises (such as getting +5 when you intended to get +4), but you'll get a feel for it the more you play.

Lastly, so I play on controller, there any tips you can give for controller players?

You can figure out a few tips and tricks for controller gameplay using this page. Otherwise, you'd have to be more specific. Targeting will probably be your biggest issue, as it is always clunkier on console over keyboard and mouse, but that's more of a problem for healing than tanking. Otherwise, it's all about hotbar management and muscle memory. Try to get very familiar with swapping to your PvP hotbar so that you don't get lost in your own controls during a match, and if you have any more specific questions about it feel free to ask.

[Syrus_Draco]

Otherwise, you'd have to be more specific. Otherwise, it's all about hotbar management and muscle memory. Try to get very familiar with swapping to your PvP hotbar so that you don't get lost in your own controls during a match.

Mostly crossbar set up. Since my PVE cross bar has been so ingrained into my muscle memory, I'm trying to reorganize my cross bars. The reason for this is, the biggest difference with PVP and PVE is the excessive amount of movement that PVP has. Because of this, I do have a lot of my main actions on my D-Pad, and if I need to hit the D-Pad briefly to hit one of those actions (example: Fell Cleave is on a D-Pad, again from that PVE set up makes the most sense to me) then that'll make me briefly pause in place. I am actively trying to figure out what works best, but if others have a crossbar for warrior that they have found great success on, I could look at that as a reference/jumping off point

[Februs]

I am actively trying to figure out what works best, but if others have a crossbar for warrior that they have found great success on, I could look at that as a reference/jumping off point

All of my hotbars on all of my jobs were optimized for movement while maintaining actions. On melee Dps jobs it makes a lot of sense because they have positional requirements for their combos, but I even do this on my tanks because I don't like having to pause my actions while dodging AoE's (such as boss cleaves). It's also useful for raids and extreme trials, as it allows you to maintain 100% dps up-time on bosses while still retaining the ability to move and dodge at a moment's notice. For that reason, the vast majority of my combo actions are kept on my right triggered face buttons, which will likely seem backwards to you. I can give you an idea of how that works, though sadly I can't post any pictures ... sorry.

In any case, I'm pretty particular about my hotbars. For all 3 tanks, I have 3 primary hotbars and one PvP hotbar. Each of the primary 3 hotbars are dedicated to a single combo; however, I also keep duplicate actions across all 3 to make it easy to swap between combos on the fly without having to swap hotbars. For example: on my War, hotbars 1 through 3 all have this layout:

• Right Trigger+Circle = Heavy Swing
• RT+X = Skull Sunder
• RT+Square = Maim

However. each RT + Triangle on all 3 hotbars is a different combo finisher. On Hotbar 1: RT+Triangle = Butchers Block. On Hotbar 2, it's Storm's Path, and on Hotbar 3, it's Storm's Eye.

By setting it up like this, I can easily execute the first and second combo action of any combo on any hotbar. I only have to swap hotbars for the final hit. Likewise, I also keep oGCD actions that I regularly use on duplicate positions across my hotbars so that I have access to them immediately, no matter what the circumstances. As long as those actions have the exact same button mapping on all 3 hotbars, then I will always hit the right button no matter what hotbar I happen to be using at the time.

I take the same approach to my oGCD infurate/abandon actions, only the introduction of a second stance had me modify the layout a bit after HW came out. Currently, my first two Hotbars are exact duplicates of one another.

• Left Trigger+Circle = Inner Beast.
• LT+X = Steel Cyclone
• LT+Square = Unchained
• LT + Triangle = Infuriate

My 3rd Hotbar is my dedicated "dps" hotbar, so Inner Beast is swapped with Fell Cleave, and Steel Cyclone is swapped with Decimate. I swap it in that fashion because it's a single target attack for a single target attack, and an AoE for an AoE. It just helps my brain keep things consistent. Infuriate remains in the same position on all 3 hotbars, so that it is always at the ready no matter what stance I'm using. Unchained, however, is swapped out on my Deliverance Hotbar with Holmgang. I chose that one because it is not used frequently enough (in most content) to warrant duplication, and it sometimes needs to be used in a hurry, meaning I don't want to have to take my thumb off the movement stick while using it (especially in PvP).

After all of that, it's just a matter of filling in the blanks with your CD's. Which CD's get put where depends on how you like it, and which ones you like to couple together (for example, I like to keep Bloodbath and Berserk on the same hotbar, so that I can use them together for the best results). War's CD's are pretty fluid though, so it's up to you how you'll like it. You should have room for an additional duplication on at least one other hotbar, as well. I typically go with Brutal Swing (duplicated across HB 1 and 2), so that I always have a stun at the ready, but that's up to you. I typically make those kinds of judgments based on frequency of use, but everyone is different.

As for PvP actions. I keep those completely separate on a different hotbar. I don't like to mix PvP and PvE, and we have limited hotbar space to work with, so it's better just to keep them aside and learn to swap to them when they are needed. One thing you might consider is setting up a horizontal or vertical hotbar somewhere on your screen (off to the side somewhere). You will not be able to use it using controller (unless you activate the virtual mouse ... which is way too slow to be viable); however, any actions you keep on that hotbar will still show their CD timers. So, you'll know when Full Swing is at the ready without having to swap to your PvP hotbar, for example. I have an entirely different HUD layout saved for PvP, in which all of my PvP actions are on display so I can keep an eye on them without having to constantly flip flop around. It's a pain to set up the first time, but once it's done it's done.

Another fun side note is that you can spy on your teammates PvP actions if you set them to that HB as well. For example, if you set Attunement to your horizontal or vertical hotbar as a War, you will still see it activate when your healer uses it. I'm not sure if SE intended for this to be a thing, but it is ... or was, last time I checked. Dunno if it was patched out recently or not.

Anyway, I hope that helps. It works pretty well for me, but I'm accustomed to it because I had my HB's set up like this pretty early on in ARR. I came from games with a lot more movement in them, so it just made more sense to me to keep my thumb on the stick at all times. In your case, it might be harder to learn since you're accustomed to doing it the other way. This is just one alternative though. Maybe someone else will give you something more familiar to work with.

[Bartleby]

1) Is the stat weight the same for PVP as it is with PVE?
I'll go doing PVP as a warrior, and working on my gear I want to ensure that I am still following the same stat weights all others use. In this case: Crit > Det > Skill Speed

As others have said, Crit/Det with 2-3 acc/crit accessories to hit acc cap. Avoid parry like the plague.

2) The Medal UI showing both team's medals is very big, and in the past I closed it off and picked up medals when they dropped, while not exceeding 4 stacks. There have been some cases where I pick up a big drop of medals, and I go from 1 or 2 stacks to 7+ stacks. It isn't intentional, but is there an easy way to determine how many medals dropped after a kill -without- having to use the large UI? OR is that the only option? (I'll have to adjust if that's the case)

The magic number you should be shooting for as a tank is 200 medals (i.e. 4 stacks). As you may or may not know everyone starts with 100 medals, and when someone dies they drop half their medals, thus the easiest way to get to 200 is to pick up two 50 medals stacks (so 2 enemy kills but not the same person twice). If the enemy drops 25 medals, or basically a non 50-denomination you should probably let one of your teammates pick it up (125 medals is still 0 stacks and if an enemy is dropping more than 25-50 you probably have a teammate that has died earlier and needs to pick up medals).

It will actually announce in the chat how many medals are dropped when someone dies so you don't necessarily need your medal screen open but... the medal screen is realllly helpful for a lot of reasons. Knowing everybody's medal count lets you know who you should be focusing on the enemy team (generally) and who on your team will need to pick up the next medal drop. It also serves as a constant reminder as to which team you're on and which team is in the lead. I've seen it several times where people mistakenly think they're on the team with the lead and then as a result of that mistakenly retreat during the last minute or two of the match, giving the other team a free win.

[SuperZay]

One of mistakes I did was bursting when not all buffs were ready so it rarelly killed anyone, try to line up Maim/Storm's Eye, double Fell Cleaves, Berserk, Internal Release, Full Swing into a single burst for a much better chance.
The best warriors I've seen pushing with mythril tempest or holmganging enemies into your team's medals so they gain extra stacks, which makes them easier to kill later. It's clunky and hard to master but actually very useful technique.
Good tanks also watching the timer when boxes will spawn (like at 4:00 exactly) and get into their position in advance, both attack buffs and melee LB gives a big advantage to your team.