Running as a W/Mo : GW Submissions

In this "guide" I'll be giving and explaining basic guidelines to proper running as W/Mo, this is mainly intended for people relatively new to running that want to get into it more.

First of all, there's 2 skills you should ALWAYS take with you: Sprint and Charge (Elite).
Combine these two skills and you can keep running forever.
Charge (E) can be captured from a boss named Balthazar's Cursed on Perdition Rock (Fire Island Chain, outside Ember Light Camp), he can be found in any of the following locations:


That said, let's have a look at the different aspects of running:
1) Equipment
2) Skills and how to use them
3) General guidelines

1) Equipment

A sword or axe (no hammer because that's two-handed) with Fortitude bonus, preferably health +30 ofcourse.
Don't go for the Defense mod giving extra armor because the +5 armor won't make that big a difference, besides this applies only to instant damage you receive while extra health can save your !@#$%^&* when you get hit by degens (Conjure Phantasm, Life Siphon, Crippling Anguish (E), Bleeding, Poison, etc...) aswell.

A max armor shield (16 armor) preferably with health and/or damage reduction bonusses.
Malinon's Shield is generally a very good choice for running, it's stats are as follows:

Armor: 16 (req. 9 Tactics)



Health +45 (while enchanted)



Damage reduction -2 (while enchanted)

Shield armor does not only apply to frontal attacks btw, the armor value of your shield is added to the armor level of each piece of your armor individually resulting in a better overall protection.

As for armor, you will need Gladiator's armor with one piece (either the boots, gauntlets or helm) of Knights or Ascalon armor.
Gladiator's is because the majority of damage you will be taking is physical damage and Gladiator's armor is the armor with the highest armor level vs Physical (80 +20 (vs physical) = 100 vs physical), besides that each piece will also give energy.
It's still best however to have one piece of Knights or Ascalon armor because it adds a damage reduction of 2 to all damage you receive globally.

On a sidenote: some people may tell you the damage reduction from Knights and Ascalon armor is local and applies only to damage received on that very piece of armor.
This however is wrong, I have done extensive in-game testing on this matter resulting in solid proof (found here ) that I presented to the community, however some people would still refuse to believe it holding onto Anet's own official online manual in which it said the damage reduction was local until recently Nihil Zarathustra informed about this at Anet and got confirmation by Gaile Gray (found here) (Community Relations Manager at ArenaNet) that their online manual was indeed faulty regarding this.

So, let's summarise:
Why Glads? Because it gives 80 +20 (vs physical) = 100 armor vs physical attacks and gives energy bonus.
So why still one piece of Knights or Ascalon? Because it adds a damage reduction of 2 to all received damage.
Then why all Glads with one piece of Knights or Ascalon and not the other way around? For two reasons: because the armor level (which applies locally) on Glads is higher than on Knights and Ascalon (except for the Knights Helm, but then again that part doesn't have the inheritant damage reduction bonus either) and because it gives extra energy for each piece whilst the damage reduction bonus from Knights and Ascalon applies to the entire armor even with only one piece.
Why should this Knights or Ascalon piece be boots, gauntlets or helm but not the cuirass or leggins? Because the armor level on Knights and Ascalon is lower you don't want to be hit on that piece of armor and the chance you get hit on boots, gauntlets or helm is only 12,5% while the chance your cuirass gets hit is 37,5% and leggins 25%.

On some runs with a lot of hexes you may want to use the Lieutenant's Helm from the armor crafter in henge of Denravi, this helm only has an armor level of 60 +10 (vs physical) so at a rate of 12,5% your may be taking increased damage but it does shorten the duration of all hexes cast on you by no less than 50%.

2) Skills and how to use them

In this section we'll be looking at the different options for skills in the following categories:
- Healing
- Condition removal
- Hex removal
- Other

Sprint and Charge speak for themselves, anything special you need to know about their usage will be covered later on as it's in combination with other skills/tactics.

Healing
Most often you will be using a Healing Sig for this purpose, it allows you to heal a good amount of health by just using your Tactics attribute which you need anyway for Charge (E), however this skill has two drawbacks.
First off it has a 2 second "cast" time, I say "cast" because it's not a spell and thus you do't really cast it, more like activation time.
Anyway, this 2 second "cast" time makes it a pain to to use for healing while enemies are crawling all over you, unless you're running through really low level enemies you best ditch any followers before using this signet.
Also it lowers your armor by 40 while you're using it, so for 2 seconds you'll not only be standing still but also have only 80 -40 +20 (vs physical) = 60 AL vs physical attacks, meaning you take double damage.
Double damage? Yes, see the following listing for reference:

The AL on your armor determines how much damage you take in this fashion:

0 AL = 283% damage.
5 AL = 260% damage.
20 AL = 200% damage.
30 AL = 168% damage.
40 AL = 141% damage.
50 AL = 119% damage.
60 AL = 100% damage.
70 AL = 84% damage.
75 AL = 77% damage.
80 AL = 71% damage.
85 AL = 64% damage.

100 AL = 50% damage.
110 AL = 42% damage.
120 AL = 35% damage.

As you see you'll be taking 100% damage instead of 50%.

Another decent option (if you have any points in healing prayers) is Healing Breeze, not only can you use quickly cast this while being followed and then continue running or use it to heal up after you cleared out of a hostile territory, you can also cast it before you run into a group so that your health will stay at a decent amount a bit longer initially or use it to cover another enchantment you're running.
More on the latter when we get to hex removal...

Condition removal
There are two most useful options here:
Purge Conditions and Mend Ailment, purge gets rid of all conditions, however has a 20 seconds recharge time.
Mend on the other hand, removes only one condition (the last inflicted one) but recharges in only 2 seconds.

So, when to bring which one? It all depends on what you're running, if you're running in a place where you encounter some silly Crippling Shot/Pin Down ranger every 30 ft bu no other conditions are inflicted you'll want to bring mend ofcourse, since you'll never have more than one condition on you however will want to remove that condition very regularly.
In places where few conditions are inflicted but when they are they come in pairs you'll want purge, I take for example the Stone Summit Rangers in the Northern Shiverpeaks and the Pinesouls in the Southern Shiverpeaks.
In the Northern Shiverpeaks you'll keep getting hit by Pin Downs but rarely get any other condition, best choice: mend.
In the Southern Shiverpeaks Pinesouls place Barbed Traps, you won't often step on one but when you do you got bleeding and cripple on you, hit purge and speed away...

So much for the focus on cripple which is for a runner ofcourse the worsed condition, what to do however when you get degens on you?
Desease, poison, bleeding... generally you just keep running, it's not worth removing; get clear and lose any tail, then remove them with a purge.
Another reason besides the fact it's usually no problem to carry them around for a bit on your run not to remove them immediately is when you're facing ranger type enemies.
Rangers often inflict degen conditions using preperations such as Apply Poison (poison) or Melandru's Arrows (E) (bleeding), if you purge or mend them before having lost these enemies' aggro you'll find the condition back on you in less than one second usually, immediately as the next arrow hits you.
In this case if you used purge that's a shame especially because you'll have to sit out a 20 second recharge time and that while you won't even have lost the condition.

Hex removal
There are three useful skills in this category: Holy Veil (veil), Smite Hex (smite) and Contemplation of Purity (cop).

Generally veil is the best choice, it's description reads as follows:

Enchantment Spell. While you maintain this Enchantment, any Hex cast on target ally takes twice as long to cast. When Holy Veil ends, one Hex is removed from target ally.

So let's see what happens if we use veil, I cast it on myself and run past an Ice Imp, I run run run... 20 ft, Ice Imp is half way casting Deep Freeze (normally he would've finished by now but veil doubles the cast time of any hex cast on you), I continue to run run run... 40 ft, Deep Freeze!
All I do now is double click the veil icon to stop maintening it, veil ends and one hex is removed from me, goodbye Deep Freeze and goobye Ice Imp.
So basically using veil you can twice as far as without it before a hex even hits you and when it does you can remove it without standing still to cast anything.

Slight drawback though, since it's an enchantment it can be shattered/removed and this is where the choice of healing skills comes in.
As I said earlier Healing Breeze can be used as a covering enchantment, this way it serves multiple purposes.
For example, there's a Stone Summit Heretic up ahead, chances are he'll use Shatter Enchantment or Crippling Anguish (E) which slows you down and caused health degen, or even worse... both.
Put up your veil, then cast breeze, regen for a couple of second and run in, now the Heretic will shatter your veil using Shatter Enchantment and then as he casts Crippling Anguish (E) on you you'll still have veil up and will still be able to remove it instantly.

Rule of thumb with veil is to wait after having cast it until it has (almost) recharged before running in to a group of enemies so that should it be neccessary you can put it right back up after you used it to remove a hex.

Smite is generally used in addition to veil if veil alone is not enough, rule of thumb of to keep veil up as longas possible since it slows down the casting of hexes on you, so if you get hit by a hex it's often a good decision to use smite to remove it even if you have veil up, then continue running and if another hex hits you remove veil.
This way you'll minimize the amount of hexes you take.

Cop isn't used as much as veil and smite but can be handy in hot areas with lots of hexes/conditions.
It's description reads as follows:

Skill. Lose all Enchantments. For each one lost you gain 6 Health, lose one Hex, and lose one Condition.

It's often used (if used at all) in combination with veil, put up veil and run in somewhere you get hit by a lot of hexes/conditions instantly, hit cop and you'll lose veil, aswell as two hexes and one condition.

Other
There's two major skills left to explain here:

Endure Pain



Skill. For XX seconds you have an additional XXX Health.


Balanced Stance



Stance. For XX seconds, you cannot be knocked down and you do not suffer extra damage from a critical attack.


Endure Pain is very useful on the harder runs, it can give you a great amount of extra health for some time, so basically if you're about to die but not yet through a group of enemies just hit endure and keep running, lose them as soon as possible though.
When endure ends you lose the amount of health you had gained from it, however if you have exactly that or less at the time it ends it will always leave you with 1 health, so it will never kill you as such.
Make sure you get any degen conditions/hexes off you before it ends because any degen will kill you instantly when your health falls back to 1, also keep in mind that if it drops your health to 1 it will have to stay that way for a few seconds before you can recover.
During these few seconds that you cannot recover hp regen will have no effect and instant healing will kill you, so always wait before using Healing Sig until natural regen starts to increase your health, if you finish activation of the signet before this you will die.

Balanced Stance is used to prevent yourself from being knocked down, so if you encounter any sort of creatures that will knock you down using any action hit balanced and you will be able to keep running undisturbed, keep in mind balanced is a stance just like Sprint and multiple stances do not stack so never hit balanced and then Sprint to get a speedboost cause you'll lose balanced straight away and still be knocked down.
For this purpose use Charge (E), since it's a shout this can be used in combination with balanced.
Also it's not always a good idea to use balanced straight away because it might be wearing off further up ahead where you need it more; example: in Lornar's Pass, the start of the Droks run there's a tunnel with Avicaras in it and Wurms (which knock you down) attack you before it.
It's a good decision to just let the Wurms knock you down over and over while you slowly advance towards the Avicaras and use balanced and Charge (E) to get through them because the damage from a Wurm isn't as bad as the damage from a load of Avicaras between which you'll be pinned down due to knockdowns of a Wurm.

3) General guidelines

Most important is to know the place you're running through, practice your runs until you know where it's safe to stop and rest, you know what skills your enemies use and where to prepare using what skills.

Also keep in mind in places with a lot of enemies stretched out over a long part of your run it's not always possible to avoid damage however still attempting to do so as many runners do will cause you to die swiftly.
In such cases you may have to choose damage instead, quickly look around at your environment, what enemies are around and if I cannot escape from any damage at all from which enemies shall I be taking damage until I am ready to escape (because a certain skill or so recharged).

Another important aspect of running, often forgotten, is to respect your "customers".
If you treat them well and give them a quiet fast runs you will sometimes receive tips but also acknowledgement.
People will come back for other runs or recommend you to their friends if they find you a good and respectful runner.

Good guide but c +p

http://guildwars.gameamp.com/guide/viewGuides/936.php

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