Guild Wars 2

Burst Precision: To me, this is a bit of an odd trait. It currently competes with Berserker’s Power which grants 15% additional damage on full burst. At a first glance, it seems like a full glass cannon warrior has absolutely no need for this trait. It definitely won’t be a trait used in PvE. In WvW, a full glass cannon warrior with fury already has kitten near 100% critical chance, if you use critical burst, it probably is 100% (correct me if I am wrong there). So it seems like even a full glass cannon warrior will find this trait completely useless and redundant. Why would they give up 15% damage?

The next thing one would think of intuitively is, what about wearing all Valk’s gear? If one can crit 100% on burst, why would you need precision?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vIAQFAUj8cU3ZjH+dwJaAx84HACA4UIAVPsjNsNA-zkBB4fAUBA5mFRjt4qIasKkYaXER1BAQAc0je0je0j2Rv5Rv5RPapAiYZE-w

This is an example of a classic zerker build except that it would utilize valk gear. Unfortunately you cannot take full advantage of valk gear because the trinkets only offer a hybrid. So with the Signet of Fury you would have around 30% crit chance with fury that makes it 50%. The choices in terms of gear would already make this build half redundant and suboptimal. However if you have Signet of Fury down the crit chance is only 21%.

However, you would have around 25.5K HP. With WvW bonuses that might push 28K. With Guard stacks you might be pushing 30K HP. Which truly is a lot of HP for a supposed glass cannon build. However, you are losing 15% damage from Berserker’s Power which is quite a lot. And the 100% critical chance bonus is only for burst skills. Which means with fury, you are only critting for half of your hits on average (which really isn’t a whole lot of DPS compared to the classic glass cannon which crits on at least 80% of their hits). So essentially it is a simple tradeoff of more survivability vs more overall sustained burst DPS and more damaging hits. However, with no toughness, mitigation or condition removal, having 30K HP doesn’t mean much if you get hit by 12K backstabs or laced with conditions. You just have a better window of absorbing 2 more big hits and maybe being able to sustain smaller hits for a few more seconds before you need to back off. Instead of Berserker gear, you could get cavalier gear, but you would be reducing your damage even further.

Another possible set up would be going 30/0/20/0/20 as a roamer build. The main weapon set up that would take advantage of this trait set up would be axe/shield + greatsword, since it is extremely important that eviscerate from the axe crits. Not so much for weapons like hammer, longbow, greatsword, sword, mace, etc. Now this theoretically wouldn’t be a terrible set up at all. You can still be quite tanky and do nice damage, except however it is suboptimal.

You lose 15% damage from berserker’s power. You should already have around 60-70% crit chance including fury if you have built for it. Which is plenty. for eviscerate to inherently crit most of the time you want it. If you intend to go full valks, and have around 40% crit chance with fury, relying on a burst to do all your damage for you and then having terrible DPS until your burst is up again is a dangerous ideology to follow. This is because you are not always going to land eviscerates when you want to, and even if you do, it may not be enough because you have low sustained DPS.

It would be a build something like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vIAQJAnejMd04ZVIehwJaABpQDrCzjfAIAAlC7YDB-z0BB4fBkABgIAM3sIaslRFRjVhET7iIqOAACghO0hO0hO0G6NH6NH6QLFATKjA-w

However, what makes this trait even more redundant is the new sigil of intelligence, which causes your next 3 attacks to critically hit. As a rifle build, you can easily switch to it and then immediately fire a killshot. Then stay on rifle for a bit, switch to your offset, wait till your rifle burst is back, switch, then fire killshot again, etc. Same thing for axe. You can land Bull’s Charge, switch from greatsword to axe, then eviscerate. Or if you are close enough, you can switch from greatsword to axe, shield bash then eviscerate.

So overall, a 100% chance to crit on burst isn’t as amazing as one may see it. Because most glass cannon builds already have close to 100% chance to crit in general. Not building precision to take advantage of this may seem like a good idea in theory but relying on burst for most of your damage is a dangerous path to take. You lose 15% damage from Berserker’s Power, and any attack that isn’t a Burst ability is only going to crit half the time on average at best as a glass cannon. As a roaming build, even less so. The sigil of intelligence basically addresses the need to crit on burst although it requires good timing on swap.

Rousing Resiliance: Hmmmm, finally a worthwhile grandmaster trait, or so it seems at first glance. To put this in perspective, a 3000 armor warrior goes from 38.8% damage mitigation to 54.1% damage mitigation. This is equivalent to a protection buff, plus approximately 6%. Based on how toughness works, this number becomes much higher the lower toughness you have. For example, a 2,500 armor warrior goes from 25.97% damage mitigation to 48.51%, which represents approximately an 87% damage mitigation change.

Again let’s put this trait into perspective. Basically the trait says that you gain 1000 toughness when you break out of a stun for 4 seconds. Based on this description, I make two assumptions. It means that I must physically get stunned first and then I must then break out of it to gain the bonus. Which means if somebody uses a stun while I have stability, this effect will not work. Secondly, this trait only works on stuns. It means that knockbacks, knockdowns, sinks, floats, etc will not trigger this trait at all.

Okay, now this trait suddenly sounds less OP. It requires you to get stunned first of all, and then it requires you to break out of the stun.

Most warriors tend to equip two stunbreakers on their utility bar. One is Endure Pain, the other is either Dolyak Signet or Balanced Stance. Like nick mentioned, stunbreaking using Endure Pain is useless because you mitigate all damage anyway, both the trait and endure pain lasting 4 seconds. That leaves Balanced Stance/Dolyak Signet, on a 40-60 second cooldown.

So theoretically that is a 7-10% uptime on this buff. In practicality this is much less because, well, consider this.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stun

Discounting Water skills and the stun from rampage which nobody uses, there are 14 skills in the game that stun. Three of which come from the warrior themselves. This means that the likelihood of being stunned from a class that isn’t a warrior or an ele is slim to none (unless maybe you encounter a Lockdown mesmer which then again are pretty rare themselves, and not all of them run CS).

Given this low likelihood of being stunned, in the heat of the battle, if you get hard CC’ed, you are most likely not going to care, or not even paying attention to whether you were stunned or knocked down. Regardless, you are going to want to stun break whatever hard CC is put on you to avoid further damage. Which means you may not even proc this trait at all. You’re likely not going to save your stunbreak when you get knocked down, in order to proc the trait when you get stun.

While roaming in WvW, I don’t see this to be a beneficial trait unless you are fighting a hammer or a mace warrior. And I don’t think people are going to get stunned on purpose just to use a stunbreak to gain 1000 toughness. They are going to want to dodge it.

In zergs it might be different. Many warriors in zergs use hammer with shout builds. I understand that there are a variety of warrior shout builds. Some go 10/0/30/30/0, some go 0/0/30/30/10, 0/0/25/30/15, etc. A standard shout warrior will have Shake it off and probably Balanced Stance or Dolyak Signet, unless they rely on guardians for stability. However, in a zerg most will pre-emptively pop stability then charge, rather than charge into the zerg. This may change with this trait, unless guardians are already popping stability. It may be interesting how this trait may play out in a hammer train vs hammer train. It could potentially be really good. Give protection to a warrior and it may be like an endure pain basically, but still it is only 4 seconds.

In sPvP it would also be interesting to see the effectiveness of this trait. Just based on the fact that there are a lot of hambow builds out there, the trait may proc enough to be useful in that setting, which is kind of ironic in a way. Many choose to run balanced stance and Dolyak Signet to there is the potential for decent uptime with this trait, (perhaps around 15% of the time). However condi builds can still do decent amounts of damage. The other problem is that giving up Merciless Hammer would be cutting your DPS down a lot.

However despite the situations where it can be really good, I can hardly call this trait overpowered. Hammer builds used in sPvP give up Merciless Hammer. Non-hammer builds in sPvP aren’t as good anyway, even if using the new trait. WvW roaming and 1v1 it is situational at best. In WvW zergs it can potentially be good, but then again you are giving up Merciless Hammer as a shout/hammer build. Also, I don’t see how this trait would be that much better than Defy Pain. Defy Pain negates all burst damage for 4 seconds when you reach 25% health on a 60 second CD, while Rousing Resilience is likely to proc about every 60 seconds due to cooldowns on stunbreakers and gives about 1000 toughness. In closing, it doesn’t seem as powerful as people make it out to be.

I think it really is all relative.

For example, if you compare this to Guardian GM traits, you can tell which one had more though process put into it and which one get done with a state of mind that said ‘Friday afternoon, want weekend, must finish work ASAP’.

Xae Isareth.1364:

I think it really is all relative.

For example, if you compare this to Guardian GM traits, you can tell which one had more though process put into it and which one get done with a state of mind that said ’Friday afternoon, want weekend, must finish work ASAP’.

If you compare it to Guardian traits it is still equally as sh***y if not more.

We have a Strength Grandmaster that can easily be replaced with the Sigil of Intelligence

We have an Arms Grandmaster that has little to no application outside of PvE and literally would only be viable with one build, and even then it probably isn’t even the best option

We have a Defense Grandmaster that is situational at best, however wouldn’t replace Defy Pain, Merciless Hammer and hell, even I like Spiked Armor better then this

We have a Tactics Grandmaster that basically does what Guardians and Eles do, except 10x worse. Plus the only reason to go into Tactics is Vigorous Shouts, otherwise, the whole trait line pretty much sucks.

We have a Discipline Grandmaster that is fit for an Adept Trait, enough said.

Not that I am complaining, because other classes got really bad ones. But to say Warriors got anything worthwhile is such a huge misconception and a huge lie.

killahmayne.9518:

If you compare it to Guardian traits it is still equally as sh***y if not more.

We have a Strength Grandmaster that can easily be replaced with the Sigil of Intelligence

We have an Arms Grandmaster that has little to no application outside of PvE and literally would only be viable with one build, and even then it probably isn’t even the best option

We have a Defense Grandmaster that is situational at best, however wouldn’t replace Defy Pain, Merciless Hammer and hell, even I like Spiked Armor better then this

We have a Tactics Grandmaster that basically does what Guardians and Eles do, except 10x worse. Plus the only reason to go into Tactics is Vigorous Shouts, otherwise, the whole trait line pretty much sucks.

We have a Discipline Grandmaster that is fit for an Adept Trait, enough said.

Not that I am complaining, because other classes got really bad ones. But to say Warriors got anything worthwhile is such a huge misconception and a huge lie.

+1 For summarizing it perfectly. The traits don’t seem to have any use, in any game mode, because in all cases there are better options already available.

Your basic point is that the warrior is so incredibly OP right now that what should be insanely good GM traits won’t get used because there is something more insane.

I agree. The need is a warrior nerf.

Bombsaway.7198:

Your basic point is that the warrior is so incredibly OP right now that what should be insanely good GM traits won’t get used because there is something more insane.

I agree. The need is a warrior nerf.

lol, hilarity ensued.

big wall of text for the traits.. esp for Burst Precision. want a hint? sigill of intelligence

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/my-thoughts-to-new-patch/first#post3806209

Bombsaway.7198:

Your basic point is that the warrior is so incredibly OP right now that what should be insanely good GM traits won’t get used because there is something more insane.

I agree. The need is a warrior nerf.

Vote this guy for president.

Bombsaway.7198:

Your basic point is that the warrior is so incredibly OP right now that what should be insanely good GM traits won’t get used because there is something more insane.

I agree. The need is a warrior nerf.

Insanely good GM Traits hmmmmm, give me Stone Heart, or 300 extra vit or the Mesmer interrupt cooldown in Domination. Hell give me 33% extra burn damage.

Blind curing weapon swap FTW! Too OP Nerf plz ANet too hard to press #1