Guild Wars 2

And about the “ranged vs warrior” problem: I said it to illustrate why “Berserker Stance” has been buffed. It was like, I don’t remember (as I didn’t care because they were never doing updates for PvP but only for PvE), a 7, 8 months or a year ago. I resumed GW2 for a week-end and all I saw was : “Condi’s everywhere!”. I was easily kited by everyone (so PvP players who play correctly) and when I was at melee, they weren’t taking big damages (because you know condi builds are tanky = normal, GW2 amulets) and their healing skills had short CD compared to mine and my ability to cure (Mending had really long CD before it’s reduction), their conditions were coming back too fast. You surely must know about the period, I am talking about. It not anymore a problem for us, thanks Berserker Stance. I’m not saying that we should let it the way it is now, it looks like being a real problem for condi build players, so do Diamond Skin. I’m saying that we must carefully change it’s duration and CD. It should still be effective for the Warrior. And my request for CD reduction if duration is reduced : because you cannot completely compare it to Endure Pain since Endure Pain absorb direct damages and prevents them to be fatal to you. Let’s say, you are getting burst by a thief and an elem while you are unable to dodge and during Endure Pain, you surely have absorbed like, let’s say more than 15k damage. You will never get +15k damage from conditions in a period of 4s! So it isn’t a real variant of Endure Pain for conditions and cannot justify a long CD for a very short duration.
The thing is : it prevents from blind, chill, cripple, weakness and immobilization ; conditions that can *heavily affect the Warrior’s mobility and he’s effectiveness. Berserker=crazy and cannot be controlled and the fact that it gives adrenaline clearly shows it’s should be used offensively ; and it should be our guarantee to be so and being fully effective. Remember that a counter exists already and is the main mechanism to counter Warriors : kiting, running away. Putting distance from the Warrior, waiting until he’s Berserker Stance is finished, so saving conditions like chill, immo, cripple to use right after the stance. The Warrior can be KB, KD, Stun while Berserker Stance; and if he uses balanced stance to not be KB, KD, Stunned, so that means he will be highly/completely vulnerable to conditions and controls after theses 2 stances (which last for 8-10s)!

Asato.5479:

Stuff

Making Combustive Shot a skillshot does way more than reduce damage output – just like every other burst skill the combination of Burst Skill + Cleansing Ire becomes harder to proc; This means that if a Warrior fails to land it he’s stuck with his conditions for another ~8s on average, and if you’re in a situation where you need that cleanse 8s is a long time to continue having conditions on you.

If you nerf Hambow’s ability to stack might like I suggested that also nerfs it’s damage. If you run berserker’s amulet with any build, however much people love to complain that we have “the highest armour and highest HP” we’re still going to melt under focus.
I also hit sustain with a Healing Signet change, yeah?

Oh and Rank 2 Adrenaline for Earthshaker blast finisher won’t work – You get one from Burst Mastery already, you swap weapons and get 5 strikes, then you just need a little bit more time to build 2 from Cleansing Ire’s adrenaline gaining effect or simply attacking. You can still achieve it within the fire field’s duration.

Harper.4173:

Yeah – remember those times – the very successful niche “freekill” and “so easy” builds were very popular. So popular you saw almost no warriors in sPVP.

Why do you think all the changes happened?

I also like how you’re almost admitting that you liked the situation in which the warrior was the underdog. Really proves why Anet staff should listen to your suggestions.

First of all it’s not like I am reverting all those changes, so that’s a bit of a sensationalist statement to make. We still have much, much better condition cleanse than before. We still have significantly stronger healing skills than before. Berserker’s Stance will still be strong even with a 25% shorter duration. We have Dogged March to help with our crip/chill/immob issues.

Also, sustain can come from something that’s not passive. I, and I’m sure a lot of other people, feel that passive play is bad for the game. Surely you’ve felt animosity for things like Spirit Ranger, Minionmancer, Phantasm Mesmer. The concept is the same even if the build is different – the game does the heavy lifting for you. But you are right, it’s not simply a matter of HS being too strong, our other heals are a tad weak as well. I think an increase to the base amount Mending gives you will go a long way towards making it viable – perhaps it’s time to consider reducing Healing Surge’s cooldown.

Also as I have repeated many times, Warrior is not the only class that deserves a nerf. I just only feel qualified enough to post meaningful Warrior changes. I strongly feel that everything needs to be toned down significantly to make this game enjoyable. The power creep has never been more apparent than with this patch, it’s high time to reverse a little of it.

Cygnus.6903:

What? So you want us to go back into being a free kill to lose the current negative stigma? Why not see through the fog and realize warriors SUCK apart from hambow in point control teamfights only?

I will never vote in favour of the evergrowing mass of ignorant glass lootbags filling this ‘balance’ forum.

Buff warriors before nerfing them back to gw2 launch.

Please don’t misunderstand, I am just being real here. Nerfs have to come before buffs, that’s just the cycle of MMO life. Also it’s really sensationalist to claim that we’ll go back to launch-state Warrior, a lot of changes have happened since then.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

Every other build that runs hammer?..please feel free to display all other meta, or niche builds that run hammer + any other weapon..they simply don’t exist, there is only hambow after the massive cast time to mace.

Um no, I was saying “if you even attempt to make a build that runs Hammer you would have to do XYZ”. I’m saying that any future build including Hammer would have a really hard time.

And finally, to everyone saying “none of our other builds are viable”, I think improving our sources of condition cleansing that’s not Cleansing Ire will go a long way towards that. There’s a reason longbow is a requirement at this point if you want to be “viable”, it’s because it’s the only way to make CI reliable. More, and better, reliable sources of condition removal from warhorn, Mending not being bad, Shake It Off not being terrible – these changes free up traits, free up weapon choices.

And what makes you think that nerfing warrior will fix the balance?

With the current state of engineer I feel your desire to “fix” warrior is misplaced.

I feel your changes don’t “free up traits or weapon choices” but make the class underpowered for no good reason.

And finally, to everyone saying “none of our other builds are viable”, I think improving our sources of condition cleansing that’s not Cleansing Ire will go a long way towards that. There’s a reason longbow is a requirement at this point if you want to be “viable”, it’s because it’s the only way to make CI reliable. More, and better, reliable sources of condition removal from warhorn, Mending not being bad, Shake It Off not being terrible – these changes free up traits, free up weapon choices.

Let’s say “every ~7-10s”, you have from 1 to 3 conditions cleanses. And to beat that, other cleanses have to be much more interesting. You are completely right.

Making Combustive Shot a skillshot does way more than reduce damage output – just like every other burst skill the combination of Burst Skill + Cleansing Ire becomes harder to proc; This means that if a Warrior fails to land it he’s stuck with his conditions for another ~8s on average, and if you’re in a situation where you need that cleanse 8s is a long time to continue having conditions on you.

Yes? Since, it’s about balance in sPvP. I don’t see why you are failing your skillshots specially with bow-F1, which is an AoE skill. Yeah maybe you are right! I must be the only one seeing high damages on bow-3 and bow-F1, bow-3 having specially short CD. I’d say, as a Warrior : let’s let theses skills the way they are already, it’s all good for us. But since it’s about balance, I’m trying to bring some logic. And having bow-3’s cooldown specially short helps a lot to this “might stack” problem that you want to nerf! So if bow-3’s CD is longer => less might stack, no?

If you nerf Hambow’s ability to stack might like I suggested that also nerfs it’s damage. If you run berserker’s amulet with any build, however much people love to complain that we have “the highest armour and highest HP” we’re still going to melt under focus.
I also hit sustain with a Healing Signet change, yeah?

We all agree that berserker=vulnerable. But => high crit chance, ferocity and power. And actually, I don’t see really an effective point to run another DPS weapon(if it isn’t for the fun, for the weapon’s gameplay). Hammer do really high damages and it has controls! Might stacks contributes a lot for sure, but the base damage should be slightly reduced, not significantly!
As it’s a topic for sPvP, I don’t care how it affects PvE (hmm, they actually separates some skills from sPvP and PvE/WvW non? ; they can do it for the hammer). And for other builds running hammer, well it will be more balanced and we’ll see more interest to bring a DPS as a weapon swap while having hammer for the controls.

Oh and Rank 2 Adrenaline for Earthshaker blast finisher won’t work – You get one from Burst Mastery already, you swap weapons and get 5 strikes, then you just need a little bit more time to build 2 from Cleansing Ire’s adrenaline gaining effect or simply attacking. You can still achieve it within the fire field’s duration.

I do think it will for sure affect the might stacking, for exemple : when I know that my target cannot be down/untouchable for the moment or just after a fight in order to stack might for the next fight, I use bow-F1 with lv1 adrenaline with ham-F1, lv1 adrenaline. Don’t forget that if the target is running or/and you aren’t being hit enough/if you don’t have enough adrenaline: you won’t be able to ham-F1 within the duration of bow-F1.
As you said yourself : those are skillshot skills. So I don’t think that you will easily skillshot your bow-F1, bow-3 and your ham-F1 (which will request lv2 adrenaline in order to might stack), without bow-F1’s duration expires.
As I said above : increasing bow-3’s CD will help to reduce the might stacking too!

All i see here is warrior nerfs.
You want a less passive warrior. Where are your changes to improve active defenses for warrior using hammer/longbow?
How would you improve active defense for warrior using GS/LB?

You want less passive but none of your changes put warrior with more active play. You are only nerfing the warrior.

a less passive warrior by un-fixing building momentum and making other heals viable without hambow.

Because nerfing disguised as “improving” the class is the best way to do it.

The amount of “we only want hambow on warriors” here is kitten very high!
Warrior weapons’ damages are really correct, actually ; no one will be telling that a berserker warrior isn’t dealing damages… We just need some changes/improvements and fixes on some skills.
Yes, we did propose “active defenses” for Warrior : inscrease/change other heals; you just have to carefully read.
You just read nerf on hambow and that’s all you read and is interesting you. You don’t want a nerf on hambow, so whatever we say, you will argue against the idea of little nerfing hambow (which includes HS).

All i see here is warrior nerfs.
You want a less passive warrior. Where are your changes to improve active defenses for warrior using hammer/longbow?
How would you improve active defense for warrior using GS/LB?
You want less passive but none of your changes put warrior with more active play. You are only nerfing the warrior.

We don’t want to change/improve only hambows active heals, but all warriors’ . You should know that other builds/weapons exist for warrior. Your active defense is about active heal, I guess? Because, Warrior have already great defensive skills (so you click in order to active) : Berserker Stance, Endure Pain, Dolyak/Balanced stance ; blocks etc. Improvements on the other healing skills would really change and will be a buff not a nerf for warriors.
And since hambow has already great defenses, great damage and great controls (=disabling an enemy = he’s not dealing damage).
You really run GS/LB in PvP at the moment? Ok, let’s imagine, it’s good for roamers and some may like it, (bow-5 in order to place 100b; GS giving great mobility between points) your job will be to surprise the enemy, burst him down, kill him => next point/target. From this POV, you will be fragile and can be easily down too, HS won’t be really useful or the best choice of heal, you want to be able to absorb the incoming damage and for this a good active heal be great (Defiance Stance for exemple if his cast time was instant).
Btw, HS is forcing Warriors to go more defensive (Endure Pain, Berserker Stance, Dolyak, Soldier/valkyrie amulet) and it limits also the variety of builds.

I don’t like guys who are only criticizing the others propositions and blame them for not bringing the good solutions while they are not at all bringing ideas. They sound like crying children who don’t want their candy taken away.
What are your solutions? Stay Hambow for another 6months? If not, bring your solutions too, please. This topic is not about crying but finding solutions.

You should realize that these “other builds” that apparently exist are mostly a mirage of unviable builds that don’t really get a lot of use because they’re not really useful.

You’re saying that we’re criticizing and not bringing solutions – we’re just saying that if there is something to be fixed your solutions aren’kitten

We all want more build variety but nerfing warrior isn’t going to bring it. We need other builds made viable – and that would happen if the condi meta would be toned down and we wouldn’t be forced to 20 in defense all the time.

Harper.4173:

You should realize that these “other builds” that apparently exist are mostly a mirage of unviable builds that don’t really get a lot of use because they’re not really useful.

You’re saying that we’re criticizing and not bringing solutions – we’re just saying that if there is something to be fixed your solutions aren’kitten

We all want more build variety but nerfing warrior isn’t going to bring it. We need other builds made viable – and that would happen if the condi meta would be toned down and we wouldn’t be forced to 20 in defense all the time.

OK! Understood! From the beginning of your first post I knew you were a closed-minded player. Now, I have the confirmation.

“other builds” that apparently exist are mostly a mirage of unviable builds that don’t really get a lot of use because they’re not really useful."
-please define useful.
Just because you cannot play “a build” doesn’t mean this build is necessarily useless. Notice that : it takes little time before, you get the mechanism, the possibilities of a build. I remember (it was before april patch) I gave the hambow build to a friend who wanted to test Warrior, I even showed him all the tricks, and the day after he said me that this hambow build was useless; because he hadn’t played enough to master it a little .
You surely didn’t even take the time to look closely at these builds. You should test before commenting that you realized what you haven’t realized at all. Guess what? The team who won the Tournament of Legends, TCG had a war and he wasn’t “hambow”. I see more warriors who are running axe centered builds because they saw and realized while watching the tournament that Ròm was winning against other warrior who were running hambow and thought maybe hambow wasn’t the only viable build. You said you have tested builds, what are those? What needs to be changed in your opinion? You just keep complaining, claiming, and stating “nothing must be touched about hambow”. We kittening explained you why it was taken over other sets and if it doesn’t get little nerfed (at least the abusive might stacking) you won’t see much varieties of builds, because hambow will be the prefered. If you find you are dying too fast with a build that deals insane damages, it’s normal, the concept is : high risk = high reward (and it’s also a kind of gameplay that some players love)
With hambow : low risk= high reward. Which will define “unbalanced/OP” in MMORPG games and in a lot of multiplayer games.

Your look like loving have always reason , and your statements are true because you say so. You don’t read, you don’t understand.
No one said, he wanted to kittening nerf to a point he would be useless… My god, don’t make us tell things we didn’t tell.
To be not forced to go 20def, we proposed/asked more viable cleanses.
To be honest, I don’t care about nerfing/changing/letting Healing Signet, if we can have other heals buffed/improved/changed. 12k hp heal for 30s is kinda correct for a bruiser.

At the end, we all want the same : heals being buffed and solutions for decent cleanses without going 4 in Def for Cleanse Ire (which will free trait points for more various builds)
.

Asato.5479:

I was running GS/LB before the patch. Now i dont even care about that build because you have almost no defenses with it. Two of our ACTIVE defenses were nerfed in the last patch.
1-Building Momentum
2-Pin down.

Those two skills could give you some surviability without the need of defensive stances and Cleansing Ire (i played that build with bolas, bulls charge and balanced stance, 0 points in defense), but i played with Healing Signet. That was the Heal Skill to go for me.

Those two skills could give you some damage when used at the right time (Reckless dodge could be used more often with the old building Momentum) and pin down to Immo target for hundred blades.

Right now if you predict a huge attack you cannot immo the target or you cannot immo the target outside the circle you are defending because when the arrow hit the target he is already inside (if it hits at all because he can just pass by you and the skill enters on CD).
Bolas is buggy as usual and miss +/- 50% of times when they are at range.
Bulls leaves me away from my target. (you can also use this utility as ACTIVE defense)
Rush is bugged too. (is more usefful to run away than to deal damage).

The only way to be sucessefull with that build was by playing smarter than your oponent, avoiding key bursts and trying to prepare yours.

ANet already nerferd that build and none of the changes in this post will make it stronger or more ACTIVE to play, only weaker.

About HamBow: The recent nerfs to HamBow (they were a few) made them a lot weaker even with the might runes.

Are HamBows passive?
The only thing passive on them its the healing, All other “defenses” dont triger by them self. That healing dont give them a Burst heal and right now all HamBows control skills have huge animations and are very slow to play. (not talking about movement speed).
A single stance is not a full “imunnity”
You only achieve that full “imunitiy” when you use them all together and only gives him 5 sec max of that with a 60 CD and the cost of all Utilities Slots. (So you really need your weapons to deal damage).

The Tournement of Legends showed that Hambows are not that strong anymore. There was one team i belive that played with two warriors and didn´t make it.

I would like warrior to have more ACTIVE play. But i dont see the solutions here.

Pin down was reasonable and well done nerf, Building momentum fix is not OK.

Sorry for the late reply, I’m very frequently unable to use my Desktop and I’d rather kill myself than try to write up an extremely lengthy reply post with quotes and everything on my Mobile.

silentnight warrior.2714:

All i see here is warrior nerfs.
You want a less passive warrior. Where are your changes to improve active defenses for warrior using hammer/longbow?
How would you improve active defense for warrior using GS/LB?

You want less passive but none of your changes put warrior with more active play. You are only nerfing the warrior.

Thank you for posing this question! I tend to ramble and that makes me unable to get my point sufficiently across. I’ll edit the OP (eventually) to clarify this subject. As a response to you though; A very important thing about “passive play” is the level of thought required to put into your play to be effective. The things I aim to change about the passiveness of Warrior are:

Healing Signet – with the change of functionality but not effectiveness HS maintains it’s extremely high HPS – but now requires you to stop and think if switching weapons is a good idea when you require that ~1.8k+ heal. This is the most impactful change I’m suggesting – it also adds a wider window of opportunity for the opponent to burst down the warrior.
Combustive Shot – As it is right now it cleanses conditions with impunity when combined with Cleansing Ire. Being affected by Blinds and Blocks again, requires the Warrior to consider the situation before being able to cleanse. I know this is a good idea no matter what you’re doing – but this adds a level of thought when you want to utilize CI effectively.

That aside, I fully agree with you that we need more active defenses on Warrior. There was an excellent thread on Building Momentum, that I think was made by BurrTheKing.8571, that suggested it be restored somewhat but scale with Adrenaline used, which has been deleted for some reason. That change would really help Warrior with this angle and I’m going to add it to the OP (with credits of course) should that thread not get created again.

Also, about the Pin Down nerf, I also definitely mourn the loss of being able to use it as a just-in-time immobilize when you see a threat coming, in fact that’s the first thing I mentioned to my guildmate when I read that change. Honestly I feel like the bleeds tacked onto it are really out of place and belong elsewhere – but I’ve been considering something like reducing the immob to 2s and making it a channeled skill that shoots 2 arrows – one at the start of the channel that immobs, and the second arrow at the end that bleeds. It might be a little clunky to use that way though… but the advantage of being able to cast-cancel it and utilize it as an instant cast immobilize would be great, I think.

We’re also in full agreement about a lot of other things! You’ll notice that I don’t even touch stances outside of Zerk stance because I don’t believe in the invulnerability nonsense and I ’ve intentionally mess with Hammer in a way that only affects Hambow.

Harper.4173:

You should realize that these “other builds” that apparently exist are mostly a mirage of unviable builds that don’t really get a lot of use because they’re not really useful.

You’re saying that we’re criticizing and not bringing solutions – we’re just saying that if there is something to be fixed your solutions aren’kitten

We all want more build variety but nerfing warrior isn’t going to bring it. We need other builds made viable – and that would happen if the condi meta would be toned down and we wouldn’t be forced to 20 in defense all the time.

I’m not entirely sure if you’ve missed how I want our other condition cleanse options to be improved so we’re not forced into 20 Defense so we have more build diversity, but it’s there should you ever want to go through it again. Also I maintain faith that the condition application will be looked at eventually but since that has nothing to do with warrior specifically, it’s not in the OP. If you have any suggestions please feel free to post them! If anyone has followed this thread since it’s creation they will have seen that the OP is anything but final. I’ve changed it a ton of times to incorporate elements people have suggested or revert a too-harsh nerf because of sound, logical arguments that others have put forth.

Finally, I want to add a section dedicated to the improvement of our other heals, but I’ll need to find space in the OP for it first since regrettably I didn’t reserve post spots and I’ve hit the character cap on single posts.

Edited the OP with the newfound space available – thank you based mods!

• Reworded a bunch of things for clarity of purpose
• Softened the “nerf” to Berserker’s Stance
• Added a healing skills section dedicated to the improvement of our other heals
• Added the building momentum change someone else suggested

• Added some changes to the Physical utility skill subset.

OP really needs to L2P.

Also funny that people keep saying" Warrior are so easy to play" and yet I keep spam-killing all these warriors on Spvp- Eotm (probably uplevel) and WvW.

xbutcherx.3861:

OP really needs to L2P.

I started thinking he’s a “hambow” player. Or not even a warrior.

xbutcherx.3861:

OP really needs to L2P.

Considering my changes include both nerfs (Combustive Shot, Earthshaker, Cleansing Ire, Zerker Stance, Healing Signet) and buffs (Shake It Off, Quick Breathing, Building Momentum, Mending, Healing Surge, Bull’s Charge, Kick), I have no idea what you mean. Should I l2p as a warrior? Against warriors????

Asato.5479:

I started thinking he’s a “hambow” player. Or not even a warrior.

Considering my post history has been literally nothing but Warrior since 2 years ago, I am kind of offended by this. I just want to encourage build diversity by nerfing compulsory things and buffing weak things.