Guild Wars 2

After playing various classes for a couple of weeks now, all I can say is that I Don’t Get It. Seems like all of the classes have strengths and weaknesses — except for warriors.

High DPS? Check.
Tons of weapon options? Check.
Good CC options? Check.
High armor? Check.
High HP? Check.
High mobility? Check.
Great healing and regen? Check.
Very useful downed abilities? Check.

Surely Arenanet must be aware of this by now. Why don’t they fix it? Serious question, I’m really confused because most other aspects of the game seem fairly well balanced.

Maybe there are downsides to warriors I just haven’t found yet. But the only one I can see is feeling cheesy even playing one because they’re so insanely overpowered compared to most other classes.

Warriors are currently overpowered across all formats of the game. Anet acknowledges this, and have said that they don’t want warriors to dps, cc and have high survival all in a single build. Dec 10 patch will see changes to tone that down.

Outside of that, Warriors have always been overpowered in PvE. This is because some of their main weaknesses, like slower and more telegraphed animations, or required party support to burst someone or cleanse conditions, are not very important to PvE, due to the enemy design and AI. This makes more straight forward classes, like the warrior, naturally favored by PvE’s design. It’s unfair, yes.

I don’t know what Anet is planning to fix this one, but if we take a look at an upcoming game with similar battle design philosophies, EverQuest Next, its developers have been insisting that the enemy’s AI will be good enough to prevent situations like that. In comparison, we know GW2’s AI is almost non-existent.

EDIT
If the AI could do some of the core actions that this battle system is balanced around, like dodging and strafing, applying conditions and boons more often, and auto-attacking, then PvE would be so much better. Movement effects and cc would be desired to hit anyone, predictable bursts could be evaded by the AI sometimes, condition cleansing and boon stripping would be more valuable, and so would defensive stats.

Warriors are actually in one of the best spots in the game. They should NOT be able to do everything they currently can do, all at once. They are going to address this.

But warriors can do a lot, and do it well. You have a lot of build potential there. It just needs to be tweaked so that a warrior can not do it all at once.

That said, this is where every other class needs to end up. The warrior doesn’t need to be nerfed into the ground, but every other class needs to be brought up to this level.

Other classes should have the ability to do a wide variety of things, have many different builds, just not all at once. There should always be sacrifices.

Lots of classes need serious help to bring them up to this level. They need to put more focus on this, rather than nerfing the warrior.

I have no idea why people are still qq’ing about this. Nerf is incoming.

You should understand is that most of balancing is geared toward the PvP environment. So if a class isn’t overpowered in PvP it’s probably not on the chopping block. For a long time, Warrior’s we not considered viable in PvP, therefore, no nerfs.

Now warriors are viable / OP in PvP, ergo, nerfs incomming.

Diogo, that’s a great, sane explanation to my post-that-was-basically-a-rant and I appreciate it.

I’ve read about the “nerf” that’s incoming and it seems rather minor to me. I don’t even see as much complaining in the warrior forum as I do about nerfs being made to other classes that really need nerfing a lot less from what I can tell.

And yes, most of my experience is in PvE, but I routinely see warriors dominating WvW play as well, and my guess is they are no slouch in PvP either.

Qaelyn.7612:

High DPS? Check.
Tons of weapon options? Check.
Good CC options? Check.
High armor? Check.
High HP? Check.
High mobility? Check.
Great healing and regen? Check.
Very useful downed abilities? Check.

1. Not true, there’s tons of discussion out there pointing out that Warrior isn’t that awesome for DPS. What Warrior does have is providing Might and Fury for the party better than pretty much all other professions.
2. Yeah well that’s the warrior gimmick.
3. I’ll give you that one.
4. Armor isn’t as useful as you think. Plus, Guardian also has access to the same amount of armor. Warrior has literally zero access to Protection, which can have a much higher effect than having armor.
5. Necromancers also got high HP. And as Eles would prove, you don’t need high armor or high HP to bunker.
6. The mobility comes at a cost though. Most notably, the highest mobility sets have no CC.
7. Yeah and warriors have very little access to other defensive boons. Regeneration takes a Grandmaster trait, vigor needs Warhorn. No protection, no aegis, situational retaliation takes a Grandmaster trait.
8. Not really. Vengeance can easily be kited and the hammer neutralized by dodge/evade/blind/aegis/stability. In comparison, the knockback on Guardian is an AoE and vapor form is pure win.

Currently, the potential damage achieved with Hammer or Unsuspecting Foe does result in both good CC and damage, but they’re putting a pretty heavy nail on that coffin in December.

full party boon duration increase? nope
full party condition duration reduction? nope
instant long-range travel skills to save someone? nope
area or long term stealth skills? nope
create multiple targets of myself? nope
summon pets to do my damage for me? nope
hide my health pool? nope
see what I’m getting at here?

there are tons of things warriors cannot do that other classes can. while it’s true wars have a bit more build diversity and can access more of their class options at one time easier than others, this doesn’t mean they are simply overpowered. yes, my warrior can out damage any of my other characters. it also gets pick up off the ground more than any other too.

roachsrealm.9284:

see what I’m getting at here?

INdeed I do. it is what is refered to as a weak hyperbole.

All I see that your getting at is cherry picking very specific skills from completely different professions to do a very poor hyperbole. No profession can do more then any 2 of the things on your list, yet warriors can do all 8 in one build on the other list. While every other professions has to trait and gear out just to get 2 or 3 of them at best.

coglin.1867:

roachsrealm.9284:

see what I’m getting at here?

INdeed I do. it is what is refered to as a weak hyperbole.

All I see that your getting at is cherry picking very specific skills from completely different professions to do a very poor hyperbole. No profession can do more then any 2 of the things on your list, yet warriors can do all 8 in one build on the other list. While every other professions has to trait and gear out just to get 2 or 3 of them at best.

Really? How is warrior getting high mobility in a hammer build? Which is what I think you’re referring to.

And warrior downed abilities are completely worthless. They may as well not exist. And even if they were worth using no one is going into a fight thinking “this guy might get me standing up but once I’m downed he’s mine”.

The point isn’t that warriors are superior to all other classes in all respects. It is that, compared to other classes, they have far more positives and far fewer negatives, at least in my experience.

The “nerfs” I’ve seen proposed appear to be minimal. I think Arenanet is worried about upsetting the huge % of people playing warriors right now, and perhaps with good cause. But the longer they delay dealing with this, the harder it will be to deal with it.

Qaelyn.7612:

The point isn’t that warriors are superior to all other classes in all respects. It is that, compared to other classes, they have far more positives and far fewer negatives, at least in my experience.

The “nerfs” I’ve seen proposed appear to be minimal. I think Arenanet is worried about upsetting the huge % of people playing warriors right now, and perhaps with good cause. But the longer they delay dealing with this, the harder it will be to deal with it.

Totally agree with you.

Qaelyn.7612:

The point isn’t that warriors are superior to all other classes in all respects. It is that, compared to other classes, they have far more positives and far fewer negatives, at least in my experience.

The “nerfs” I’ve seen proposed appear to be minimal. I think Arenanet is worried about upsetting the huge % of people playing warriors right now, and perhaps with good cause. But the longer they delay dealing with this, the harder it will be to deal with it.

Or maybe they’re just worried about over nerfing. For the better part of a year most people considered warrior a free kill and rightfully so.

They probably don’t want to put warrior back down to where they were and are seeking a middle ground. Take away the cc and the healing it took us so long to get improved and we’re pretty much back to day 1 warrior.

But conspiracies are fun. So whatever.

Mad Rasputin.7809:

The warrior doesn’t need to be nerfed into the ground, but every other class needs to be brought up to this level.

This. Could have locked the thread after this post because nothing else said will be as true as this statement is.

Another warriors thread… this one more biased than another.-

Warrior exceed at combat. Period. It is the easiest class to see its advantages. Just equip it and auto attack. Other classes has other goodies that are harder to see but it doesn’t mean they are not on par with Warrior.

Warriors are not best dps, are not best bunker, are not best at range (?), are not the best at evading, are not the best at escaping, are not the best at jumping puzzles (why not), they don’t exceed at everything as you think. They are good overall, that’s what they do, they fight and fight well; its obvious.

PS: I would trade my warrior downed skills for any other class any other day of the week. I HATE vengeance. It’s horrible.

PS2: Don’t ask ANet for balance or even coherence. One patch, warriors are fine so we will just tweak their support traits. Second patch, warriors are OP! we have to nerf hammer… yeah right… they are a) listening to too much whining or b) clueless about their own game… can’t tell which one is worst.

Warriors ARE balanced.

In order to have them so good, rangers have to be so bad to restore the game balance.

The “don’t nerf this class, buff that class” thing is one of the oldest canards in gaming.

There is no difference at all. It makes no matter in PvP, and if they buff weak classes to match stronger classes, that just means they also have to buff PvE.

-High stability and low cd stun breaker options along with cc spams? Check.

-2x endure pain invulnerability (trait+slot skill) + one 8sec condition and condi-based cc invulnerability? Check.

Classes may be balanced in spvp and 1v1 fights but definitely aren’t balanced in wvw(massive scale fights) and pve. In pve lfgs, you can see that many parties only want warriors and guardians in their parties, other classes aren’t wanted. In wvw, raid guilds want warrior groups to spam hammer ccs, need guards for stability, other classes aren’t that important and specially required, they are just optional. This sums the class balance.

Mesket.5728:

Warriors are not best dps, are not best bunker, are not best at range (?), are not the best at evading, are not the best at escaping, are not the best at jumping puzzles (why not), they don’t exceed at everything as you think. They are good overall, that’s what they do, they fight and fight well; its obvious.

I beg to differ. Try catching a warrior with a GS traited to remove roots and dolyak signet, healing signet and rage signet. And dont tell me thats a weird build, because minus the root removing part, all warriors run that in WvW, and dont tell me they dont do damage, a nice root from a cripple followed by a nice 100b isnt exactly my definition of comfortable, specially when they made me burn dodges and conditions cleanses with their low CD gap closers and intense damage/healing capabilities. Add a hammer on top of that to sweeten the deal and you have the WvW warrior, which escapes anything and engages anything and kills most things, and if it fails to do that….run away in a blink.

Sounds a lot of like D/D ele right? Well, even old D/D ele cant compare to current power-creeped warrior, which has been getting steadily at least a buff in every patch, several ones at a time sometimes, al while all other classes have been seen nothing but net nerfs for the most part

So no, try other classes in WvW seriously and fight lots of these “balanced” warriors and come talk to us again.

Fortus.6175:

Mesket.5728:

Warriors are not best dps, are not best bunker, are not best at range (?), are not the best at evading, are not the best at escaping, are not the best at jumping puzzles (why not), they don’t exceed at everything as you think. They are good overall, that’s what they do, they fight and fight well; its obvious.

I beg to differ. Try catching a warrior with a GS traited to remove roots and dolyak signet, healing signet and rage signet. And dont tell me thats a weird build, because minus the root removing part, all warriors run that in WvW, and dont tell me they dont do damage, a nice root from a cripple followed by a nice 100b isnt exactly my definition of comfortable, specially when they made me burn dodges and conditions cleanses with their low CD gap closers and intense damage/healing capabilities. Add a hammer on top of that to sweeten the deal and you have the WvW warrior, which escapes anything and engages anything and kills most things, and if it fails to do that….run away in a blink.

Sounds a lot of like D/D ele right? Well, even old D/D ele cant compare to current power-creeped warrior, which has been getting steadily at least a buff in every patch, several ones at a time sometimes, al while all other classes have been seen nothing but net nerfs for the most part

So no, try other classes in WvW seriously and fight lots of these “balanced” warriors and come talk to us again.

My main is a warrior. I leveled 3 other 80s because I hate warrior in WvW (besides I believe WvW is horrible in this game but that’s another topic).

A GS Warrior have some weapon skills that when combed with some traits gives lot of mobility… so what? Will his mobility kill you? or your zerg? Is he the only one around with mobility? Doesn’t the ranger have another long range (1200) charge? frikin ranger has like 30 seconds stability!!! Does the guardian have something similar in his GS 3? what about all the classes that has teleports? stealths? Necrotic Transversal? Illusions? Every pony can do some tricks… don’t take it on the warrior because it is the easiest to recognize its strong points.

and for god sake stop crying about the hammer… ANet already realized players don’t have enough combat awareness to use stability so they nerfed the hammer 30%… I’m waiting to see people keep dying to hammer and realize they have the problem…

Can I start crying because my warrior can’t land 3-5 AOEs at the same time at around 1K range? Many classes can, I have to stick my nose in the middle of the fight if I want to hit something; and no, bow F1 is not something you can spam as effective as: mesmer/necro/ele staff, ranger traps/barrage, engies grenades, thief SB, even guardian with scepter and concecrations has more range aoe than a warrior.

Warriors are so rediculous right now I literally quit playing mine due to sheer boredom of it. I used mine mainly in PvE dungeon farming, outdoors champ farming and WvW. All of these on various builds.