So yeah, Warriors were really very low on sustain about a year ago.
This was a year ago.
By now I’m pretty sure they’re in a great place - and they’ve been in an incredible place for 6 months, at least.
Actually they last for far too long, for a class that as far as we’ve been told is balanced around low sustain - particularly against conditions - and high up-front power damage.
The War’s crazy sustain comes from a number of sources:
- Cleansing Ire - strong condition cleanse, very reliable when combined with Fast Hands and/or Longbow
- Berserker Stance - complete immunity to incoming conditions, plus high adrenaline gain
- Endure Pain - complete immunity to incoming power damage
- Healing Signet - high health regeneration
- naturally high health and armour
As someone who plays anything that isn’t a Warrior, I’m really rather sick of them dominating the meta* - so here are some ideas for toning down the insane sustain of this class without running it into the ground.
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*as en Ele, Thieves are also horrible, Mesmers hurt, and Engineers just ruin everything with that much CC... but they can’t stand there pummeling you for nearly so long as the Warrior. All of these have pretty reliable counters, too, while hambow really doesn’t (at least at low-mid skill tiers - I know that at higher levels of tpvp it’s less effective, but at higher levels of tpvp it’s not ruining everyone else’s fun, and isn’t incredibly easy to play*).
*(_cough cough MM necro cough cough there are enough topics about these daft specs cough cough_)
Anyway.
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I’ma not cover them all, but here are the two biggest problems I have as a power user, along with some solutions that I hope are useful - or that can at least spawn productive discussion.
- Cleansing Ire
This trait is apparently 100% necessary for any Warrior to take in order to survive.
While I’d like the horrible ’spam conditions until things are dead’ mindset to go away, I’d prefer that Warriors had to think about which conditions were on them sometimes (like everybody else does, if they want to deal any damage) rather than spam burst skills - or maybe for them to occasionally need to retreat. The trait grants incredible adrenaline gain on top of its cleansing effects, which makes it synergise very well with Fast Hands.
Solution:
I guess to remove the adrenaline gain on hit, so that Warriors needed to choose between two traits for its effects - possibly a seperate trait in the same pool as CI, but probably by merging it with one in a different line - Strength and Arms are offensive lines, and Critical Burst is kinda terrible right now, so chucking it in as part of Arms 3 might work?
Another option would be to reduce the cleanse, but to do that would also require serious nerfs to Berserker Stance, and drastic changes to two major parts of many War builds wouldn’t be very great for the balance team.
- Endure Pain
Warriors can proc this twice (GM trait and skillbar slot), allowing for 8 seconds of immunity to power-based builds.
This is madness.
This is sparta.
This is silly.
Warriors are barely punished for running unthinkingly into a capture point and attacking whoever’s trying to defend it - if conditions are a problem, pop Zerker Stance or use Cleansing Ire well and everything’s fine. Alternatively, just hit things until they’re dead, because your HP will easily soak up the condi damage.
Warrior needs to defend a point? That’s fine, just use stances and you’ll take no damage. Boom, you’ve survived for long enough for your team to arrive, even with most random soloq matchups and/or with the Warrior being 2v1’d.
Solution:
Treat Endure Pain like any other invulnerability - while it’s active, the player can’t contest capture points.
This would make the skill require at least *some* thought before use, and force Warriors to occasionally rotate out of points when in team fights. The proc from the GM trait might need upped in duration by a couple of seconds for balance... but no longer could a Warrior just run willy-nilly into a midpoint fight, pop their stance, and expect to come out standing while their team was cheering from 900-1200 range.