Guild Wars 2

I have really enjoyed this game, but I’ve come to the conclusion of what this games largest problem is. Warriors strictly bring too much to a group.

When you’re looking for upping a groups dps, your primary focus should be on getting maximum amount of Fury uptime, Might stacks, and Vulnerability on enemies. For all of these things, warriors bring the best of all three – and coupled with a Mesmer, it’s entirely possible to keep a 3 warrior group on 100% uptime on Fury, 25 might, and 25 vulnerability at the same time.

When you look at baseline damage, Warrior really isn’t THAT good. Without any buffs or debuffs Warrior is looking at between 2500 and 2600 dps on Medium armored targets(in full berserk gear). To put this in perspective, commonly thought to be one of the weakest classes, a Condition based Necromancer runs roughly 2300-2400 DPS. You can see here they aren’t very far apart…but then the modifiers happen. Warriors get 12% damage, flat, from just not using one of their abilities. Ontop of this, they snag an additional +9% crit chance. Coupled with this, they have a 33% chance to stack vulnerability on every single crit, which at 70% crit chance before fury…is often.

So here we’re looking at a class that is all around better at everything damage-oriented than any other class. They stack vulnerability most efficiently, they keep fury and might stacked – with a mesmer – indefinitely, and they deal the highest amount of Cleave damage across all classes. When the most popular party is Guardian warriorx3 and a Mesmer, you can see where the problem arises.

Of the melee, Warriors bring all the advantages, and none of the disadvantages. They aren’t squishy, with their 16k+ health. There is simply no reason to not bring a warrior over another class in these groups, 1 guard 1 mes 3 wars.

All classes should NOT be the same, that is what keeps the game interesting. Take a necro for instance, they dont stack DPS conditions, they stack defensive conditions. It all depends what you want and skill level. The fury/vuln is worthless if the team cant survive. This 25 vuln/might is usually when things are stationary and just because COF is so popular, and what everyone talks about, doesnt mean that all encounters are like this. If you have to move and dodge, its harder to get that since banners are stationary, you wont constantly crit etc..

Nikaido.3457:

Ain.5386:

I have really enjoyed this game, but I’ve come to the conclusion of what this games largest problem is. Warriors strictly bring too much to a group.

When you’re looking for upping a groups dps, your primary focus should be on getting maximum amount of Fury uptime, Might stacks, and Vulnerability on enemies. For all of these things, warriors bring the best of all three – and coupled with a Mesmer, it’s entirely possible to keep a 3 warrior group on 100% uptime on Fury, 25 might, and 25 vulnerability at the same time.

When you look at baseline damage, Warrior really isn’t THAT good. Without any buffs or debuffs Warrior is looking at between 2500 and 2600 dps on Medium armored targets(in full berserk gear). To put this in perspective, commonly thought to be one of the weakest classes, a Condition based Necromancer runs roughly 2300-2400 DPS. You can see here they aren’t very far apart…but then the modifiers happen. Warriors get 12% damage, flat, from just not using one of their abilities. Ontop of this, they snag an additional +9% crit chance. Coupled with this, they have a 33% chance to stack vulnerability on every single crit, which at 70% crit chance before fury…is often.

So here we’re looking at a class that is all around better at everything damage-oriented than any other class. They stack vulnerability most efficiently, they keep fury and might stacked – with a mesmer – indefinitely, and they deal the highest amount of Cleave damage across all classes. When the most popular party is Guardian warriorx3 and a Mesmer, you can see where the problem arises.

Of the melee, Warriors bring all the advantages, and none of the disadvantages. They aren’t squishy, with their 16k+ health. There is simply no reason to not bring a warrior over another class in these groups, 1 guard 1 mes 3 wars.

I don’t see why you’re focusing on the warrior, when the guardian is obviously the group enabler, the element you just couldn’t do without at high lvl FOTM if you intended to speed clear it.

If any class is truly overpowered, it’s guardian. It doesn’t have the strong dps of a war, but you only truly “require” that in an optimized group doing speed runs. If you want a class that’s capable of facerolling content with your eyes shut, guardian is pretty much it. It doesn’t have the best dps, but it’s still decent, in comparison, it brings a level of support that is basically met by none of the other classes of the game.

Replacing the warriors in a 3war/1guar/1mes group would slow down the run, but replacing the guardian would make it feel more painful. See the difference? And in FOTM I’d rather take 2 guard.

I think the trinity is a problem all around. Mesmer is miles ahead of everyone else at support. Ele and Necro can’t even compete.

Guardian is the best enabler, no question.

Warriors are the best damage, and best for keeping fury, might, and vulnerability stacked.

These three classes have no downsides, and the other classes have no upsides in bringing them, outside of maybe thief for stealth rezzing, but once you’re not dying on content…why do you need that?

Ain.5386:

These three classes have no downsides

Not sure if you’d call this an actual downside, but the big three tend to also have the biggest idiots playing them.

I understand the mentality and theory. It’s the natural evolution of no trinity. Before you wanted the best tank to control the crowd so the healer could be as efficient as possible with the tank and DPS who destroyed things quickly. Take the healer and tank out?

It makes sense you’d want everyone to bring full damage to burn everything down. And Warriors and their Mesmer are really self-sufficient and effective about it. They cause steady, solid damage, and buff each other to do more of it. If Mesmers didn’t bring Time Warp and Reflect, you wouldn’t even need them in this school of thought.

Guardian utility? Ranger or Thief support? Ele utilities? Why? Don’t get it. Don’t die. Simple. That’s why the best groups run full Zerker – you don’t get hit. And if you don’t get hit, you don’t need survival stats, let alone Healing Spring or Aegis. It’s just wasted potential.

I believe the problem goes beyond just players, though. Outside of the forums, I rarely run across these players, and I don’t mind that they play like that on their end. I’m content to not be as “efficient” because I’m here to play with friends and I like my Thief and Ranger best.

That said, the problem stems into the dungeon design philosophy. I understand Robert wants them to be difficult and cooperative, but from his comments about how he plays his own content (he’s a ranger, he posts on the ranger forums) show he’s also not one of these min/max speed runners. So even things he feels are fine for rangers or any other class or fight mechanic still doesn’t jive with the people who run as efficiently as possible, because he’s also the kind of player they’d kick or look down on.

Does the 4W1M template break the dungeon design? I have to think it does, because theyr’e still not playing by his rules.

I agree, Warriors need a DPS nerf and a major survivability buff. They have poor sustain and poor healing and almost no condition removal.

Dungeon mobs should be more about buffs/debuffs, not large HP pools.

Daecollo.9578:

Dungeon mobs should be more about buffs/debuffs, not large HP pools.

Yes.

PsionicDingo.2065:

Daecollo.9578:

Dungeon mobs should be more about buffs/debuffs, not large HP pools.

Yes.

Here is my 2 c.

Nerf mob HP by 50%, Add boons to them like Protection/Regeneration/Fury/Aegis, let the players deal with them.

NOW SUDDENLY OTHER CLASSES ARE WANTED! :>

Now, make the mobs deal things like weakness/vulnerability instead of just raw damage.

NOW SUDDENLY WE WANT ELES TO CURE! :>

Warrior don’t need a damage nerf different professions = different pros/cons warrior is designed for high dps.

I think boons/condis are the way to make things interesting. It would open up various classes for blinds/cleanses/control without making any specific class mandatory.

These things can be done in explore, but it often feels chaotic and random, not like a planned part of the strategy.

You guus are funny thinking buffs and debuffs and nefing HP by 50% is going to bring in more classes. Mesmer is already the best boon remover and all 3 classes have condi removals for the grp.

Daecollo.9578:

Now, make the mobs deal things like weakness/vulnerability instead of just raw damage.

NOW SUDDENLY WE WANT ELES TO CURE! :>

Warriors and guardians have plenty of AoE condition removal with shouts. Guardians can trait all shouts to remove conditions, warriors have a shout which removes conditions and both can run runes of the soldier to remove conditions with all of their shouts (which means guardians can do two at a time). Guardians would probably bring one or two shouts and one or two reflect utilities, warriors would still bring shouts and maybe have one that runs banners for the others. Conditions won’t help anything.

There are a few things which could change the dungeon meta around dramatically and enhance to viability of multiple classes and builds as well as the need for some kind of strategy instead of OMGDPSFASTER.

• We need less content which values projectile reflection. So much of the current content is countered by reflection skills, which mesmers and guardians excel at. Reflection is currently the most powerful mechanic in the game in almost every area (even open world karka favour it). Design less mechanics which are negated by it.
• We need more mobs that have very high toughness but lower vitality. Direct damage (even crit damage) becomes far less valuable compared to condition damage (which ignores toughness). A mixture of mobs vulnerable to direct damage and condition damage would be great. Don’t require either (that would suck) but noticeably reward parties for bringing a heavy condition damage character or two.
• Give mobs more boons which will be helpful to be stripped. This one is a bit iffy because so few classes have the ability to strip boons (I can only think of mesmers and necros). Things like perma protection (which also rewards condition damage) and the like. Don’t make it required, but make it more rewarding (it’s insane to me that the buffs on the last boss in CoF p1 have special boons which can’t be removed).
• Reduce the value of crit damage. Maybe change a boon to make a mob resistant (or immune) to crit damage or give all bosses a buff which makes all bosses resistant to it. Maybe make a mechanic which makes them immune to crits until a condition is fulfilled (like enraged). Crit damage scales far too well in this game and there should have been some kind of cap on it, it’s ignored in PvE because PvP isn’t broken by the increasing ease of stacking zerker’s gear (with ascended items) and party buffs. Add a cap to how high it can scale to bring it in line with condition damage.
• Add more mechanics like the Molten Protector’s Flame Shield. Give lesser valued mechanics (like interrupts, knockbacks and boon stripping) the ability to counter these kinds of skills. Something like a channelled Flame Shield which they cast for 15 seconds or until they are interrupted and then it disappears. Different variations can be used (such as a high DPS AoE or boons and healing until interrupted). Make the tells really obvious like the flame shield so they don’t get lost in the battle. Make the effects matter (not like the Ascalonian Monks in the charr fractal which you can just ignore and DPS down).
• Rework defiant. It’s a bad mechanic which solves a real problem. I don’t want bosses to be ping pong but defiant makes strategic play pointless most of the time, CC skills become worthless in most groups because one bad player can ruin it for everyone and you rarely feel like you can interrupt strategically. Not all CC is equal (a stun is weaker than a daze which is weaker than fear, knockback and knock down) yet all of them account for the same value when used against defiant (or once defiant wears off). There should be a period of time where defiant won’t come back even if people spam. Maybe make all CC act as interrupts to prevent boss ping pong but still allow strategic interruption. More visual cues on defiant type mechanics would also be important (instead of having us all watch the defiant number on the UI – play the game not the UI).
• Stop making DPS race/check events. Things which reward you for doing as much damage in a short window (like the Ghost Eater when it hits a trap). Make them vulnerable until a certain % of their health is gone then make them invulnerable again. High DPS groups will have to do the specific mechanic (in this case the traps) the same amount of times as lower DPS groups. Lower DPS groups will still take longer, but not exponentially longer because the game is rewarding high DPS groups with the ability to kill faster and bypass boss mechanics by winning a DPS race.

I think the problem with warrior is his damage is too high on some attacks but are useless in anything but pve due to the warrior being rooted; such as killshot and 100b.

Puandro.3245:

You guus are funny thinking buffs and debuffs and nefing HP by 50% is going to bring in more classes. Mesmer is already the best boon remover and all 3 classes have condi removals for the grp.

Quite true. Warriors themselves are self-sustaining.

It’s like I’ve always heard in game design: given the choice between optimal and fun, players will tunnel optimal.

Daecollo.9578:

PsionicDingo.2065:

Daecollo.9578:

Dungeon mobs should be more about buffs/debuffs, not large HP pools.

Yes.

Here is my 2 c.

Nerf mob HP by 50%, Add boons to them like Protection/Regeneration/Fury/Aegis, let the players deal with them.

NOW SUDDENLY OTHER CLASSES ARE WANTED! :>

Now, make the mobs deal things like weakness/vulnerability instead of just raw damage.

NOW SUDDENLY WE WANT ELES TO CURE! :>

Great, so power build rangers with no boon removal become even more garbage.

Warriors need a nerf in pve, plain and simple. Their damage is outrageous. And to say base damage is low is just silly. Condition necro don’t benefit from vulnerability because vulnerability doesn’t affect conditions. Necro dagger auto doesn’t cleave, while several of the warriors’ hardhitting attacks cleave.

Instead, they buffed their ridiculous banners while all rangers got was a crappy 60% hp buff to spirits (did nothing, 60% of base nothing is still nothing) and an increase chance to proc after 20 trait points are spent in a crappy traitline without touching the 10 second effect recharge rate which was the issue to begin with.

And to say mesmers are great at support, wth?

Mesmers are brought for Feedback and Time Warp. Period. If they had neither, nobody would bring them, because their sustained DPS is actually pretty bad.

This game rewards damage and and damage avoidance. It doesn’t value healing specs, or individually high toughness specs because mobs in high level content hit ridiculously hard and taking a couple of hits whether you have 916 or 2.5k toughness will end with you dead anyways.

AoE damage is also too kitten good in this game. Melee cleaving is so much better than a ranged weapon’s single target attacks. Single target and mobility weapons in general are very niche.

Warrior has both high aoe and single target in one weapon. At least the thief has to choose between high single target dagger or lesser sword cleave damage (though thief damage is universally high in any weapon).

A FGJ nerf would be enough, just drop the Might stacks from 3 to 1, and possible re-nerf the banners as they were already too good to pass up, then they near double the effect (lol AN logic).

Job done.

Warrior is my second, so not exactly biased/mad either.

Zenith.7301:

Mesmers are brought for Feedback and Time Warp. Period. If they had neither, nobody would bring them, because their sustained DPS is actually pretty bad.

For boss fights? Yeah, my DPS is unimpressive and my main contribution is to use Time Warp and Feedback correctly.

Against groups of enemy infantry, a Mesmer can be a great force-multiplier. [Into the Void] can pull five mobs together against a convenient wall or pillar. [Illusionary Leap] > [Swap] will immobilize them for two seconds. Close in and use [Blurred Frenzy] and maybe a Shatter skill or two. Between proximity and damage output, you should be able to get some aggro and hold most of the enemies in-place (using interrupts, dodges, and Distortion to stay alive). Your teammates now have a convenient cluster of enemies towards which they can aim piercing/bouncing projectiles, AoE attacks, and cleaving melee strikes.

Note: Guardians can perform similar combos, but their Pull ability has a slightly longer activation time and cooldown, and their AoE immobilize requires greater skill/effort in order to be effective.

Warrior to be more in line with the other classes would be a very VERY simple change.

1) Drop vulnerability on Axe 2 and Mace 4 to 1 stack, or lower the base damage of axe/mace as a whole. Currently this is some of the highest damage in the game, coupled with amazing amounts of vulnerability stacks – 8 stacks INSTANTLY with no rng involved at all. Throw in some rng, and you could be looking at up to 12 stacks of vulnerability in 2 shots from the highest damaging class right now. That’s it, 2 4 and you have the potential to get half of vulnerability stacks instantly.

2) Reduce the amount of might warrior can spread. I ran a dungeon last night with 3 warriors, they all spread 9 stacks of might, I doubled it to 18 stacks on everyone but me. Few auto attacks later – everyones sitting at 25 stacks of might 3 or 4 seconds into the fight. No combo fields, no special mechanics, notta. All of us hit 1 utility spell, and they autoswung a few times. gg?

3) Higher toughness on bosses. This would let players whom are based on purely offensive conditions(burning, bleeds) stay on par with the significantly higher damage of warriors. Alternatively up the scaling on burning/bleeds.

The problem is not warriors, it is the combination of

• Class philosophies that are designed to promote class diversification
• Skill availability across classes that makes that diversification largely unnecessary
• Direct damage stats scaling much better and thus making more of a difference than other stats
• Combat mechanics that favor damage over everything else

I think they just need to discourage glass cannons. Give every mob some kind of aura of pain, or retaliation or something that just forces people to use more defensive builds.

Maximillian Greil.1965:

I think they just need to discourage glass cannons. Give every mob some kind of aura of pain, or retaliation or something that just forces people to use more defensive builds.

if you complain glass is to common or whatever reason you say its discouraged, why should everyone be forced to run defense isntead? it just create the same problem, with different gear

Maximillian Greil.1965:

I think they just need to discourage glass cannons. Give every mob some kind of aura of pain, or retaliation or something that just forces people to use more defensive builds.

That doesn’t actually encourage anything. Can’t remember the last time the group I was in killed the squire instead of kiting him in Ascalonian fractal, or focused the retaliation totem in HotW. Heck, one sword Mesmer can instantly neutralize the golem turrets in CoE better than actually killing them, so we don’t bother doing that, either. All retaliation means is that I actually need to pause and heal on occasion, and maybe eat life leech food.

Zenith.7301:

Mesmers are brought for Feedback and Time Warp. Period. If they had neither, nobody would bring them, because their sustained DPS is actually pretty bad.

I believe this depends on the spec. A properly played shatter mesmer can have decent DPS, and amazing burst every 10 seconds, not to mention if its a 20/20 build, 25 vulnerability stacks on the boss. I can see a phantasm mesmer struggling with certain fights and DPS, but I’ve never had problems doing damage on my shatter mesmer in high level fractals or tough dungeons. Hell, sometimes I pull aggro from guardians and warriors.

I do agree on what you said otherwise though. Reflection/Time Warp and portal/nullfield are our mainstays. I don’t even feel this is a mesmer issue, I think its the way the content is designed: it caters to professions that can reflect or mitigate a lot of damage rather then removing conditions or doing other strategic mechanics. As long as reflection is required or nearly required to get past nasty bosses like the Grawl Fractal at higher levels, or Archdiviner’s spin attack, or any other nasty attack that can be reflected, people will want mesmers and guardians to negate that.

Either give every class some kind of party wide reflection or tone it down on the content that caters to it. Add more medium HP bosses with nasty conditions please. Condition removal/reversing would bring more classes into a good place in my opinion.

Shiren.9532:

• We need less content which values projectile reflection. . .

Even as a reflect-centric build, I kinda have to agree that reflect is out of line with other utility in this game. That being said, before Anet takes this and runs with it, I want to make it clear that the fix to this is not unreflectable projectiles, but rather melee or non-projectile AoE.

• We need more mobs that have very high toughness but lower vitality. . .noticeably reward parties for bringing a heavy condition damage character or two.

Until they fix con damage stacks, I don’t see this happening. A 4 Warrior/1 Mesmer group can nearly hit bleed cap on dry land, and that’s with all of them being zerker. I was talking to another Mesmer in my guild last time we did underwater fractal. They’re condi spec, and I’m zerker. I was stealing a lot of their dps on jellyfish because I was relegated to using trident, which is going to steal bleed stacks. And since each of my bleeds was ticking for about 2/3 of theirs. . .yeah. . .

• Give mobs more boons which will be helpful to be stripped. . .

Like I said to the other poster, a single sword mesmer can already keep up with the CoE golem turrets. The sheer speed you’d have to refresh the boons would also remove the draw in stripping them.

• Reduce the value of crit damage. Maybe change a boon to make a mob resistant (or immune) to crit damage or give all bosses a buff which makes all bosses resistant to it. . .

Even against enemies where you can’t crit, power builds are usually preferred over condition builds. Conditions are just that weak, and I’d rather see conditions brought up than see zerker brought down.

• Add more mechanics like the Molten Protector’s Flame Shield. Give lesser valued mechanics (like interrupts, knockbacks and boon stripping) the ability to counter these kinds of skills. . .

My mesmer can already launch, knockback, and stun, and that’s not counting the four to five additional stuns I could get from utility skills if I felt like it. I get that you’re trying to encourage focusing on non-direct damage abilities, but I’m not sure how effective this one would be at all.

• Rework defiant. . . Maybe make all CC act as interrupts to prevent boss ping pong but still allow strategic interruption. More visual cues on defiant type mechanics would also be important (instead of having us all watch the defiant number on the UI – play the game not the UI).

Hmm. . bosses are already easy enough without our being able to easily interrupt them. Easy interrupts would actually exacerbate the issue of zerker groups, because then there’s even less incoming damage.

• Stop making DPS race/check events. Things which reward you for doing as much damage in a short window (like the Ghost Eater when it hits a trap). Make them vulnerable until a certain % of their health is gone then make them invulnerable again. . .

I’m not against this at all, on the condition that the mechanic be one where familiarity and communication can actually make you speed it up. As I commented on in one of the MWF threads, the “25%” mechanic isn’t bad when it’s something like grawl shaman where co-ordination helps you, but gating damage every 25% like they did in the weapon test encounter is just annoying, because there’s no way to meaningfully speed up the encounter.

Sorry for the heavy editing, apparently there’s a 5000 character upper limit. >_<