Guild Wars 2

Hello lovely people!

Before you proceed to say something along the lines of “Another warrior thread huh?” Please note this is not a complaining thread, my intent is to bring some information to light with concern to the state of the game with concern to warriors, where they excel, where they lack, whatever. Last time I talked about warriors, I spoke about their traits specifically some time ago.

My previous effort gave me some more context than before on how Warriors are, Cleansing Ire is seemingly an entirely DIFFERENT issue with warriors that needs more talking about. No, the way Warriors handle conditions needs to be addressed at some future point-

BUT, this isn’t that thread. This thread is about what Warriors like to use, WEAPONS!

We got pretty decent weapon skills! The roles of the weapons for better or worse actually with some thought to how a brutish warrior would handle them, match well! Toss a greatsword on a warrior, he’s gonna cleave things down, give him a hammer, he’s gonna rock the world!

…But, there are problems. Not all weapons are created equal, some are mechanically disadvantaged in some regard, some are doing too much/too little numbers-wise, and some share both problems and just flat out have no real niche.

That’s why I’m here, to help present the problems for better or worse. I welcome criticism and debate with my points, it is healthy to have such things occur for the better of all. With that said, time to talk!

The Axe: A vicious, fast damaging weapon with the sole purpose of inflicting the most damage as possible. Eviscerate is its obvious trademark, the dread of many a ‘squishy’ unprepared foe. It’s auto-attack, vulnerability application and fixation on AoE with concern to Whirling Axe has this particular weapon fill many roles as both a main-hand and off-hand weapon.

But is it broken? Short answer is a no.

Long answer is that of the warrior weapons, the axe is for movement’s sake, the slowest melee 1-handed weapon without a strong crowd control (Throw Axe for a ranged cripple helps, but if that misses you better have a way to close.). The thing I admire so much about the Axe is that it has reliable good roles in both PvE and PvP, much like the Greatsword which I will get to soon. It is the go-to weapon if you want to apply damage and burst to your build.

In SPvP as the warrior you must be ready to either open or close with the Eviscerate, because once the enemy figures out your main-hand axe you know the opponent will be having something to negate that when it comes. And considering the range of many of the Axe moves, there are just enough ways to deal with it that it becomes a game of who makes the wrong move first. In WvW the axe off-hand’s love Whirling Axe is a terrific tool for open-field combat as sustained pressure and damage. Dual Strike’s function seems to encourage it as it can hit twice, cleaving and add up terrific fury duration, a good stat to employ for a power-based warrior. And in PvE, the Axe main-hand is a popular meta-build designed to own dungeons, have at it.

Overall, I could go into detail about why those who seek to see Axe nerfed just to respect to Eviscerate, but there is so much that goes into setting up that one burst skill that it seems kind of moot to talk about Eviscerate as much as what capabilities the warrior has might be leading to the Eviscerate landing. It might be something to debate but my personal opinion is that if you know the warrior has an axe, anticipate it, it’s probably the biggest way to tell the difference in skill and knowledge between one person and another in a 1v1.

(To be continued shortly, feel free to post as I go through weapons. I’ll take these at a decent pace)

The Mace: Hitting things with a blunt object your thing? Smashing them skulls huh? Good stuff, the Mace definitely feels like you leave an impact when you do so. It can weaken with an auto-attack chain, do an impressive stun with the burst, daze with another main-hand skill, and off-hand mace does a linear quake of knockdown evil! What could possibly be wrong with the Mace?

…Yea….the Mace is not up to snuff. It’s a problem.

I have a few issues with the mace, and frankly overall, it is underwhelming even with all its potent CC. In fact, the Mace’s problem is not its control ability, it does that job extremely well! The problem I have with the mace is that it does not assist in much utility in any other regard. I don’t want the mace to do more damage, it is not supposed to, it is supposed to suppress and control the opponent then it does its damage when the opponent is suppressed enough. You start the beating, and the permanent damage will come soon!

…Straight to the point, the Auto-attack chain and Crushing Blow, maybe even Counterblow if other options are too potent, need changes. Rework numbers and mechanics.

The auto-attack chain of the mace is potent, it won’t swing as fast as the axe but each hit is felt by an opponent. For reference, the 3rd strike in the chain does a bit more than a Final Strike or Sword 3 skill on an opponent over 50% life. And it applies Weakness. …But the mace also suffers from the being the slowest of auto-attacks for the three 1-handed weapons, and the big effect of the chain comes in with the last hit, the animation is a full 1 second to swing! You are not getting any sort of good weakness up-time from the mace on any competent opponent in SPvP, in WvW the state of the game unfortunately doesn’t call for slow cleaving by a 1-handed mace, duels suffer the same fate as in SPvP. And in PvE, I reckon Bjarl might really hate getting chained stunned by Skull cracks but Warriors tend to go either GS or Axe.

Solution to Auto-attack chain? Add 2 seconds of weakness on 2nd attack, reduce 3rd attack weakness to 4 seconds.

More reliable up-time on weakness actually addresses many problems with the mace, and adds the prospect of Sundering Mace being taken more. Logically getting hit blow for blow by a blunt object you aren’t going to suddenly feel weakened on occasion, it’s going to pound into you constantly. Heck, my suggestion for the weakness durations might be a touch strong, they can be reduced as long as they exist somewhere so a Warrior might not feel compelled to use Main-hand Mace just for Skull-Crack.

CRUSHING BLOW! Decent damage skill that inflicts 4 stacks of vulnerability for 10 seconds! Has a 15 second cooldown! It also takes 0.75 seconds to swing! …Woohoo?

Honestly, I could not for the longest time figure out why this skill seemed so…lackluster. In PvE you want that vulnerability to build up, the 10 seconds seems like a decent amount of time to pop it just before a hard nuke with an FGS. But the off-hand mace is obviously carried by Tremor, much like how off-hand Axe has the relationship between Dual Strike and Whirling Axe. The only difference is that Dual Strike has a huge effect in a nice brawl, Crushing blow…takes more time to do less with.

What’s the fix to Crushing Blow then? That vulnerability has got to LAST, you keep crushing someone they will feel it always. Stacks remain the same, but the vulnerability duration increases to match the cooldown.

I would not give it anymore simply because the weapon already has the perfect amount of control. Tremor, despite its steep 25 second cooldown, is a brilliant CC move that I personally think is underrated. And if my suggestions ever prompted a series of buffs to make Mace more viable in ZvZ, we will be seeing Tremors EVERYWHERE!

Counter-blow is actually fine as it is, but my only gripe is for whatever reason it becomes too potent to apply the weakness to the Auto-attack chain as I said, maybe make the counter apply it instead. Just a thought, I put a ‘maybe’ there to begin with.

Overall, CC good, other stuff bad. Make other stuff more reliable, Mace get viable, build diversity increase, tremor warriors everywhere!

actually, warrior’s mace skills are rather okay at the moment.

mace 1 chain
whole chain takes 3.1 seconds and the 3rd attack gives 5 seconds of weakness provided if it hits, can be easily avoided by running around, dodge, blocks, blinds etc. i think this skill is fine and balanced.

mace 2
well, my only complaint is that the duration of 1.5 seconds is too short, but the recharge time is only 10 seconds so it balances out the short duration of 1.5 seconds. i think. other than that, this skill is fine. no point putting weakness here.

mace 3
fine and balanced. 1 second daze, 15 seconds recharge. fast activation. good interrupt. the fast activation makes it easier to connect.

mace 4
slow activation. 15 seconds recharge, 10 seconds vulnerability. for myself, i find it hard to connect since the activation time is a bit longer.

mace 5
nice skill, working as intended.

mace f1
even though the activation time is 0.5 seconds, still can connect provided that i am close to them. was it 0.25 seconds activation before they nerfed it?

Mace is probably my favorite Warrior weapon, but it only shines when paired with a GS atm. There’s potential for a Mace/Axe + Axe/Shield or maybe Mace/Axe + Sword/Shield but right now offhand Axe needs more utility like what the Thief steal has. Mace is basically a weapon that enables combos and is really good at denying stomps when they don’t have stability/invulnerability.

It’s main weakness is that it doesn’t go all that amazingly with a LB which means condi clear can be a real issue. You can go Skull Crack + Fan of Fire + Arching Arrow but honestly the DPS would be way lower than Axebow I’d imagine. This is of course why many Warrior mains are trying to make the GS burst an alternative to Combustive Shot.

EDIT: After I wrote this I came up with a concept similar to Axebow but I can’t test it for a while. I don’t really like offhand Axe but this might be something worth trying out. Here it is. You’ll have to use Pin Down and Bull’s to set up Skull Crack but after that you should be able to land all of Axe 4 and 5. It’ll deal less than a full 100b but it doesn’t root you, you can evade, and you can still bring a LB for cleanse. Probably not viable but it’s kind of a cool concept if someone wants to try it out.