Guild Wars 2

Since last balance patch there are a number of warrior builds, that are insanely strong in wvwvw roaming. Warrior always had quite a good trade off between damage and survivability, however for the builds I’m talking about at the moment it feels out of bounds.

what is the build I’m talking about?
mainly warriors with great sword + x/shield (most of them use a mace at the x). However it might also count for certain other builds, I did however not face not enough warriors playing this to give a proper opinion about it.

Why does it feel out of bounds?
Okay basely I don’t consider myself a bad player and against most professions while roaming I notice if I do low damage to them, they do low damage to me, if they do high damage to me, I do high damage to them. This making the odds to win while facing an player that is around the same skill level about 50/50. However when facing a warrior with the build pointed out above, I notice I can hardly do any damage to them, while they can pomp out allot of damage on me. Than if you actually manage to get them to low health, the movement speed on great sword makes them actually able to outrun me as a d/d elementalist, specced in such a way I have a very high movement speed.

What are the problems
one of the problems with warrior is, when they proc the -40% condi duration food (combined with runes of melandru), they basely are about nullifying one of their big weaknesses, which is cripples, frozen and immobilize.
And other problem is the amount of blocks and invulnerability a warrior can use. They can get 2 from utilies, in the spec I’m discibing they have a shield block and if they use a mace they have a block form that also. In most cases they also have a damage invulnerability also form traits.

Possible sulution?
I have been talking to a few warriors and one of the things the mentions is turning both condition duration foods form +/-40% to +/-20%. Why, because this would make warriors more vulnerable to cripples, frozen and immobilize.

I do not really play warrior myself, but I could see it working to actually lower the amount of invulnerability and blocks that are available in one spec, since they are scaling to good with the healing signet.

Last thing is actually to lower the gs movement speed, if a d/d ele specced on moment speed already does have great trouble to hold up with that while chasing (that does mean only 20 sec cd on ride the lighting instead of 40 sec cd), how can most other profession actually keep up with it.

Conclusion
The problem with warriors is not necessarily their damage is out of bound or their survivability. The pain is they can get all without any real sacrifice. This does not go for every build, if I’m facing for example a hambow they are still strong, they however are way more in balance even though their damage to survivability trait off is still good, they do not have the ridiculous movement speed, allowing them to reset combat en hit back in on you and even though most still have some invulnerability form utilities, it’s way more into balance, because of the CD on those.

You do know that when facing a mace/shield GS warrior the only thing you have to dodge is the mace stun right? You can literally soak everything else. He has no sustained damage.

Cygnus.6903:

You do know that when facing a mace/shield GS warrior the only thing you have to dodge is the mace stun right? You can literally soak everything else. He has no sustained damage.

You did really not get the point right?

Full melee warriors are terrible for dualing. They only appear good because they move so fast and shrug off CC that they rare actually die, but thats not to be confused with actually being dangerous or good.

The trade-off warriors make is that to get this high DPS with high survivabilty they have to go full melee, which makes them very vulnerable to being outplayed. When I am on my mesmer or ranger, even a full zerker warrior does nearly no damage to me because they spend 90% of the fight just trying to hit me. They can chose to take a rifle which means they cant be kited like this, but then they do see that DPS drop.

They do have a trade off, IMO, and dont see warriors as unbalanced at all in terms of roaming / dualing (though other game modes are a different story).

morrigana sedai.2091:

Cygnus.6903:

You do know that when facing a mace/shield GS warrior the only thing you have to dodge is the mace stun right? You can literally soak everything else. He has no sustained damage.

You did really not get the point right?

You say warriors with GS+xshield are out of bounds. Then you start talking about how nerfing food might be the solution to this. Am I missing something here? A tl;dr next time would suit your wall of text.

I disagree with you about everything you said.

Saying a full melee warrior has no drawbacks is not really getting the point. But the poster above me has already adequatly pointed out the drawbacks, which is more then I feel this topic deserved.

I just stated the obvious drawback to the mace shield GS build. If you can not comprehend this, nay, feel obliged to make a topic about it, then, good sir, I wish you a good day.

Edit: please don’t say warriors have invulnerability. They don’t.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Endure_Pain → invulnerability to direct damage
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Berserker_Stance → invulnerability toward condition damage against 90% of the builds there are around
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Berserker_Stance → combined with stability invulnerability to all incoming attacks for 3 sec and stability is easy accessible on warrior
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Counterblow same for shield stance since you need to be in melee range to break this block, which will make you very vulnerable for the f1 of mace
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shield_Bash You need to dodge that also, since if they land it on you they can land f1 also

so they do have invulnerability.
This also nullifies your claim the only thing you have to dodge is the f1.

and they are chasing they opponent for 90% of the time?
Don’t make me laugh, their have 3 gap closers in that build.

And it seems you did actually miss something there, since I did also state why, but you clearly did not read that in the first place.

So with your response you are giving me the idea you are just afraid to lose your toy. And that does cause you to come up with poor arguments.

@Cufufalating.8479: so what you are saying comes down to the claim that someone should be ranged to kill a warrior with a gs+ x/shield build. Does not sound like proper balance to me. And like I stated above warriors have 3 gap closers, especially if they hardly get bother by conditions due the massive amount of reduce the food and runes of melandru gives, this means every warrior that does need to to chase like that does not use his gap closers properly.

I don’t get it, not just warriors other classes have strong no skill brainless roaming builds too.

are you complaining only about warriors?

sure i do, i wish all of them are gone, including every classes else’s, then i’ll probably enjoy WvW roaming and dueling.

the mace shield gs warrior, all he needs to do is skill rotation and spam some random dodges, and he will avoid most of the damage, while killing most of the builds(ofc not everyone of them, only most). which is boring brainless and gaiiiii. i don’t even know why people feel good about themselves for using builds like this. just like PU mes, Shadow rejuv thief, MM necros, etc, also TVC builds.

that’s why dueling and wvw roaming in this game is so boring and not fun, because all these builds. carried so hard by builds, and in WvW, that’s just a whole new level of no balance in stats, builds, food, etc for dueling/roaming : runes of perplexity, TVC, crazy condition duration, insane stats stacking. you know how easy a condi build can kill some one who is not running -condi duration? like seriously.

Ok, I’ll bite.

morrigana sedai.2091:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Endure_Pain -> invulnerability to direct damage
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Berserker_Stance -> invulnerability toward condition damage against 90% of the builds there are around
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Berserker_Stance -> combined with stability invulnerability to all incoming attacks for 3 sec and stability is easy accessible on warrior

What?

Just to clarify, invulnerability in this game means being immune to all sources of damage. Neither Endure Pain nor Berserker’s Stance achieve this. Sure, if you combine both of your 60 sec cooldown utilities you get invulnerability for 4 seconds, 5 traited.

However, Berserker’s Stance gives total immunity to conditions, not just against 90% of all builds.

And I asume you were linking to Defiant Stance. Why are you even referring to this when it comes to roaming? It is completely useless in this aspect… I guess you are just trying to make a point, but it also appears that’s the only thing you are trying to do.

morrigana sedai.2091:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Counterblow same for shield stance since you need to be in melee range to break this block, which will make you very vulnerable for the f1 of mace

So why break the block? Wait for an astounding 2 seconds and continue hammering.

Also, again, please stop spreading false information. Counterblow is also nullified by ranged attacks, making it useless apart from blocking 1 attack (which can well be a stray clone bolt or something). You can trait for it to reflect, but it does not do this on it’s own.

morrigana sedai.2091:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shield_Bash You need to dodge that also, since if they land it on you they can land f1 also

So, what, you don’t slot a single stun breaker? Soak the bash, soak the F1, stun break and /laugh.

morrigana sedai.2091:

so they do have invulnerability.
This also nullifies your claim the only thing you have to dodge is the f1.

It doesn’t. You just need to realise that you need to be ranging or blinding, or whatever the warrior while he is on mace.

morrigana sedai.2091:

and they are chasing they opponent for 90% of the time?
Don’t make me laugh, their have 3 gap closers in that build.

This sentence more then anything else shows your complete lack of understanding towards this build. Your talking about 3 gap closers. I asume you mean GS3 and GS5, along with shield bash? This would be a phail on your behalf, because regarding shield bash as a gap closer is completely missing the point of that skill. Or maybe you mean Bull’s Rush (which is not solely available to mace/shield, off course). But then, you only have 2 utilities left… Oh no, there goes our ‘invulnerability’!
Let me wake you up, 2 out of the 3 ‘gap closers’ you refer to won’t help you land your F1, because they are on GS.

morrigana sedai.2091:

And it seems you did actually miss something there, since I did also state why, but you clearly did not read that in the first place.

So with your response you are giving me the idea you are just afraid to lose your toy. And that does cause you to come up with poor arguments.

I missed any reasonable argument.

And I play Hammer GS almost exclusively now, Mace Shield is just for giggles. It does work very well against some of the condition heavy specs in WvW, but there are a lot of specs that completely destroy it.

morrigana sedai.2091:

@Cufufalating.8479: so what you are saying comes down to the claim that someone should be ranged to kill a warrior with a gs+ x/shield build. Does not sound like proper balance to me. And like I stated above warriors have 3 gap closers, especially if they hardly get bother by conditions due the massive amount of reduce the food and runes of melandru gives, this means every warrior that does need to to chase like that does not use his gap closers properly.

So what you are saying comes down to that the heaviest melee class in the game should, when using the most melee oriented build ever, be countered by…melee? That does not sound like proper balance to me.

Good day.

People are still getting caught out by skullcrack builds?

Cygnus.6903:

morrigana sedai.2091:

@Cufufalating.8479: so what you are saying comes down to the claim that someone should be ranged to kill a warrior with a gs+ x/shield build. Does not sound like proper balance to me. And like I stated above warriors have 3 gap closers, especially if they hardly get bother by conditions due the massive amount of reduce the food and runes of melandru gives, this means every warrior that does need to to chase like that does not use his gap closers properly.

So what you are saying comes down to that the heaviest melee class in the game should, when using the most melee oriented build ever, be countered by…melee? That does not sound like proper balance to me.

Looks like Cygnus replied for me, but to reitterate, that does sound balanced to me. Warriors are a heavy melee class and frankly it comes as no surprise to me that in a straight up “smacking eachother with oversized swords until one drops” fight that warriors come out of top. I don’t see a problem there.

That’s not to say warriors can only be beaten with range, but if you’re going to melee them they are going to have the obvious upper hand and you’re going to win with other tactics, such as a sword thief jumping in and out of the fight to do / avoid damage, or a sword mesmer going in to use blurred frenzy before backing out. You should not be able to take on the heaviest class in the game by standing there facetanking.

Also 3 gap closers is not a lot. On my trap ranger build I have 2 dodges and 1 evade backwards on my SB, and there I have instantly dodged all 3 of their leaps. And then if they do get to me I still have 2 evades on my S/D other weapon set, plus another evade which I can use to re-create distance between us, plus my stunbreaking LR which also will evade backwards and create distance. And all this is ignoring the 5 different sources of immobilize I have.

So actually, if you’re playing a ranger and a full melee warrior is runnign you down then you are going it wrong. Very very wrong.

I don’t know… I play a trapper ranger with Ice+Spike trap and Axe+Dagger and Greatsword…. And it is not uncommon that a ROFLCopter warrior escapes me before I can pin him/her down for my party to do the kill… I think the GS (with some other toy, like runes of melandru, rush, etc…) has a bit too much mobility but it’s just me….

The last few month I have seem a whopping 1 warrior using skullcrack build. It was annoying…. that’s it. He can’t do kitten to me, once I break out of the mace F1 stun. Shield bash and bull charge is very unreliable if you just move around a bit, they bug out and miss too often.