Guild Wars 2

JonPeters.5630:

The biggest problem is IMO is actually the active heal. If we reduce the passive without doing something to make the active useful, we are just creating a different problem. Truly the active on this skill right now is in the following place. When I see someone press it I think “No No No don’t do that!” We are discussion some options here so if you want this to be constructive give suggestions towards improving the active. Reducing the passive is easy to do but we will not do it without solving the other problem. Also we will not greatly reduce it because it is giving Warriors a sense of sturdiness that we want their profession to have. Without strong heals, Warriors feel too much like everyone else. Setting them apart with strong heals has been good for changing their playstyle feel, but we agree it needs some tweaks.
Jon

“Without strong heals, warriors feel too much like everyone else.”

This is the justification given for Warriors having a powerful passive heal.

I totally disagree with this. If we want warriors to feel different, why not give them fighting-game style on-demand blocking? Or some other form of active defense?

Let’s make block reduce damage by 80% (instead of 100%) and make all warrior blocking skills have very short cooldowns and fairly short durations.

Also let’s give them some sort of block skill as a utility so all warriors can have at least 1 block move. (lets say the utility version reduces damage by 50% only…)

Now warriors feel different to other classes. So maybe you could remove the warrior’s passive healing. (replace with some other effect, like damage boost whilst full health or something.)

Would roll a warrior istantly if given something like that type of blocking :o

Would solve the low skillcap and ceiling.

I wonder if they could take a page out of Dark Souls book and have blocking linked to stamina (endurance) where the amount of damage blocked is proportional to the amount of stamina lost. Stamina would recharge at a slower rate when blocking just like in Dark Souls too.
In fact perhaps you could link it to adrenaline instead of endurance.

I think this would be a great idea, we could even tie it to adrenaline. It would also promote defensive gear to reduce that last bit of damage. Only downside we practily have to redesign every weapon.

Rieselle.5079:

JonPeters.5630:

The biggest problem is IMO is actually the active heal. If we reduce the passive without doing something to make the active useful, we are just creating a different problem. Truly the active on this skill right now is in the following place. When I see someone press it I think “No No No don’t do that!” We are discussion some options here so if you want this to be constructive give suggestions towards improving the active. Reducing the passive is easy to do but we will not do it without solving the other problem. Also we will not greatly reduce it because it is giving Warriors a sense of sturdiness that we want their profession to have. Without strong heals, Warriors feel too much like everyone else. Setting them apart with strong heals has been good for changing their playstyle feel, but we agree it needs some tweaks.
Jon

“Without strong heals, warriors feel too much like everyone else.”

This is the justification given for Warriors having a powerful passive heal.

I totally disagree with this. If we want warriors to feel different, why not give them fighting-game style on-demand blocking? Or some other form of active defense?

Let’s make block reduce damage by 80% (instead of 100%) and make all warrior blocking skills have very short cooldowns and fairly short durations.

Also let’s give them some sort of block skill as a utility so all warriors can have at least 1 block move. (lets say the utility version reduces damage by 50% only…)

Now warriors feel different to other classes. So maybe you could remove the warrior’s passive healing. (replace with some other effect, like damage boost whilst full health or something.)

Holy kitten this idea is amazing.

You are amazing.

It’s “active defense”, addresses passive regen, and allows the Warrior to be the “tanky beast” Arenanet wants it to be.

I long for the days that Shield Bash in its GW1 form can also be implemented. It’s design like this that needs to return to GW2.

btw thinking of it it would play almost like a mesmer SW/SW with added vit and armor…

Apparently active defence is bad, it’s not fair you actually have to think and move, everyone wants passive facetanking now.

Tim.6450:

I think this would be a great idea, we could even tie it to adrenaline. It would also promote defensive gear to reduce that last bit of damage. Only downside we practily have to redesign every weapon.

Unfortunately this is absolutely true. Introducing a completely new mechanic like this may prove to be “too much work” for something so fantastic to see the light of day.

One can dream though. Get hype about this!

F2- attempt to block the next attack, consumes adrenaline. 0 adrenaline, 0% blocked. 1 bar, 33% damage blocked. 2 bars, 66% damage blocked. 3 bars 100% blocked. 10 second cool down.

Now its part of class mechanic. Sacrifice burst for blocking.

Mightymealworm.8409:

F2- attempt to block the next attack, consumes adrenaline. 0 adrenaline, 0% blocked. 1 bar, 33% damage blocked. 2 bars, 66% damage blocked. 3 bars 100% blocked. 10 second cool down.

Such implementation will be even more worthless than current F1 on greatsword.

If healing signet doesn’t change much it really can’t be made too strong. If it gets reverted back to 200 a second then it could be toned up to 1 block per adrenaline bar. As it is I’m basically introducing the equivalent of an aegis every 10 seconds. But perhaps you would prefer permanent immortality?

Mightymealworm.8409:

F2- attempt to block the next attack, consumes adrenaline. 0 adrenaline, 0% blocked. 1 bar, 33% damage blocked. 2 bars, 66% damage blocked. 3 bars 100% blocked. 10 second cool down.

Now its part of class mechanic. Sacrifice burst for blocking.

I dunno, tying percentage damage blocked to Adrenaline would further entrench Cleansing Ire as “mandatory” for all Warrior builds.

Maybe 1 second of Block out of every 5 seconds? or 2 out of every 10? The cooldown should be short enough that you can block for a short duration very frequently.

Maybe make it so that if you Block you stand still or have a ~50% movement speed penalty, so you sacrifice mobility for defense.

Also Blocking should generate Adrenaline such that Cleansing Ire should not be the “only trait to take for frequent Burst skill users” – though the condi removal is extremely valuable.

Finally, more skills like Riposte and Counterblow should be implemented. There are far too many DPS skills and far too few “Punisher” skills – and what Punisher skills there are are essentially only used for their secondary effect.

Mightymealworm.8409:

F2- attempt to block the next attack, consumes adrenaline. 0 adrenaline, 0% blocked. 1 bar, 33% damage blocked. 2 bars, 66% damage blocked. 3 bars 100% blocked. 10 second cool down.

Now its part of class mechanic. Sacrifice burst for blocking.

I like this. the trait shouldn’t be too OP.

MonMalthias.4763:

I dunno, tying percentage damage blocked to Adrenaline would further entrench Cleansing Ire as “mandatory” for all Warrior builds.

Maybe 1 second of Block out of every 5 seconds? or 2 out of every 10? The cooldown should be short enough that you can block for a short duration very frequently.

So you want a renewed focus tier block every 10 seconds on an already very tanky class? Warrior would need some severe nerfs in other aspects then (such as impale) to prevent a power creep from happening.

I worry that if blocking gains adrenaline you would see a lot of simplistic defend, burst, defend rotations. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad though, but I would rather some traits effect blocking more. Like, gain vigor on block or remove a condition on block.

I must say I’m impressed! At first I took this for yet another useless thread when in fact it is entirely the opposite and could not only adress the current issue regarding that ridiculous passive healing but also allow for actual active play.

Linking it to the Adrenaline bar would be perfect as the basic mechanics are already in place.

Shields across all professions have been a disappointment as a defensive tool.

Their recharges are so long that you are always better of just dodging (you can likely dodge 3-4 times in the space of one shield skill recharge).

Engineers for instance seems to treat it as a offensive weapon, stunning, dazing and providing yet another blast finisher.

I would love to trade dodge for a on demand block with a stamina cost based on incoming damage.

A block that is not a timed channel, but stays up as long as i keep the button pressed.

Thus if i block early i am not penalized by having the skill be useless for 30+ seconds.

digiowl.9620:

Shields across all professions have been a disappointment as a defensive tool.

Their recharges are so long that you are always better of just dodging (you can likely dodge 3-4 times in the space of one shield skill recharge).

Engineers for instance seems to treat it as a offensive weapon, stunning, dazing and providing yet another blast finisher.

I would love to trade dodge for a on demand block with a stamina cost based on incoming damage.

A block that is not a timed channel, but stays up as long as i keep the button pressed.

Thus if i block early i am not penalized by having the skill be useless for 30+ seconds.

While I’m all for more active defense, (I find a lot of defense in this game is utterly passive, which is odd considering how much of a crusade ANET went on to remove it in GW1), having a button that says “hold this down: prevent all damage indefinitely” is not the way to do it.

In addition, the thing about pre-casting a block skill and having it go wasted and then on CD is a GOOD THING. It encourages smart play. That said, the CDs on most of those skills is absurd. Short block durations on a short recharge would be MUCH better in my opinion. Something like a 1-2 second block on an 8-12 second CD. Short enough blocks that it encourage blocking important would-be hits, and a short enough CD that its not a useless skill slot after its active is finished. In addition, the window would hopefully be long enough that if you wasted it on small stuff, you would still get punished for it.

I think duration blocks are pretty well covered by stances. I would love to see stance durations halved, along with half the cool down.

That’s a good idea, actually. Half the brouhaha around stances revolved around them being simply “too weak” for their long cooldown. Half duration for half cooldown would be a pretty smart change as it bypasses that.

1 Thing I would like to add is that if you reduce the healing signets heal, the warrior will have no means of getting his health bar back up. No means at all. All the other classes have healing from multiple sources while the warrior only has 1 (2 with adrenal health). You can spec into shout heal, but this is such a significant damage cut that it ain’t worth it for roaming.

Healing signet takes 20s…yes 20s! to heal 8k dmg back up. That is a pretty long time. Considering the warrior is in the open 100% of the time. He soaks up all the damage thrown at him. Only thing he can do is make him invulnerable for a short duration but those skills are on long CD.

Throw in the highly telegraphed skills that are so easy to dodge that you could finish your tea before having to press dodge. Then you come to the conclusion warriors are fine as they are.

Don’t reduce our ONLY source of healing and give us a periodic block that blocks 1 attack. 1 attack…. not even close to worth it. Definitely not in group fights were the block will most likely be used on a fast hitting low damage channeled ability.

Warriors had to give up a lot of damage to get this healing buff. Our condi cleaning got nerfed and buffed again so that stayed pretty much the same.

There are so many biased opinions about the warrior right now, thrown in the world by people who don’t know how the class works. Or simply don’t know how their own class works. For everything people complain about the warrior, the warrior has to give up a lot to achieve those things. His mobility for example.

If you know how a warriors skills work, you wont get hit by them.

8k over 20 seconds is a lot of healing. Add in dogged march and adrenal health and you can get over 12k health every 20 seconds. Then there are banners or healing shouts, but at leat those require significant investment. The proposal here is to provide active mitigation while reducing passive recovery. This of course requires more skilful play to pull off to its full potential and raises the skill cap but we are not talking about gutting the passive anyway. 1 block per adrenaline bar on a very short cooldown that works regardless of equipment and works with cleansing ire should be plenty. Ad half duration stances on half duration cool downs and I think you have a very fun and active class. More room for risk/reward.

Mightymealworm.8409:

8k over 20 seconds is a lot of healing. Add in dogged march and adrenal health and you can get over 12k health every 20 seconds. Then there are banners or healing shouts, but at leat those require significant investment. The proposal here is to provide active mitigation while reducing passive recovery. This of course requires more skilful play to pull off to its full potential and raises the skill cap but we are not talking about gutting the passive anyway. 1 block per adrenaline bar on a very short cooldown that works regardless of equipment and works with cleansing ire should be plenty. Ad half duration stances on half duration cool downs and I think you have a very fun and active class. More room for risk/reward.

You know other classes can burst heal up to 20-25k right? Engis healing is by far superior to warriors healing.

And by the way, a block has a duration. If not it is called aegis. And that is the guardians mechanic. So you could give the warrior a 1s block (meaning all attacks blocked for 1s) for each adrenal bar. And I could agree to that. You could even swap out adrenal health for this.

MiLkZz.4789:

1 Thing I would like to add is that if you reduce the healing signets heal, the warrior will have no means of getting his health bar back up. No means at all. All the other classes have healing from multiple sources while the warrior only has 1 (2 with adrenal health). You can spec into shout heal, but this is such a significant damage cut that it ain’t worth it for roaming.

Healing signet takes 20s…yes 20s! to heal 8k dmg back up. That is a pretty long time. Considering the warrior is in the open 100% of the time. He soaks up all the damage thrown at him. Only thing he can do is make him invulnerable for a short duration but those skills are on long CD.

Throw in the highly telegraphed skills that are so easy to dodge that you could finish your tea before having to press dodge. Then you come to the conclusion warriors are fine as they are.

Don’t reduce our ONLY source of healing and give us a periodic block that blocks 1 attack. 1 attack…. not even close to worth it. Definitely not in group fights were the block will most likely be used on a fast hitting low damage channeled ability.

Warriors had to give up a lot of damage to get this healing buff. Our condi cleaning got nerfed and buffed again so that stayed pretty much the same.

There are so many biased opinions about the warrior right now, thrown in the world by people who don’t know how the class works. Or simply don’t know how their own class works. For everything people complain about the warrior, the warrior has to give up a lot to achieve those things. His mobility for example.

If you know how a warriors skills work, you wont get hit by them.

“There are so many biased opinions about the warrior right now, thrown in the world by people who don’t know how the class works. Or simply don’t know how their own class works. For everything people complain about the warrior, the warrior has to give up a lot to achieve those things. His mobility for example. "

Let me tell you a story. Four of my guildies and myself (3 of whom have never played Warrior before) decided to make 5 Warriors and to take it into Team Queue. Now we were all pretty high on the leader boards so our MMR matched us against challenging opponents and experienced teams. We played 10 games and won 8 of them; 2 of the wins being 500 to something less than 100. On all of the teams, the other teams were mostly above rank 30 averaging above rank 45. That’s how facerolly warriors are right now.

You know other classes can burst heal up to 20-25k right? Engis healing is by far superior to warriors healing.

MiLkZz.4789:

And by the way, a block has a duration. If not it is called aegis. And that is the guardians mechanic. So you could give the warrior a 1s block (meaning all attacks blocked for 1s) for each adrenal bar. And I could agree to that. You could even swap out adrenal health for this.

Burst healing 20-25k? Really now?
Thats the equivalent to using SIXTEEN blast finishers in a water field. I would like to see anyone heal that much. The only class able to burst heal 20-25k would be the warrior using that new stance which turns damage into healing.
Just because engineer’s healing is better then a warrior’s healing, Warrior healing is in a fine place?

Balancing around an engi burst heal is probably as bad an idea as balancing around current HS. There is also a time/effort involved there. And no, not all blocks have a duration, there are plenty more than aegis that don’t. If you think 3 seconds of possible blocking duration every 10 seconds is balanced, along with the current duration blocks, I think you might want to think about that.