Guild Wars 2

I’m sure no one has written an angry screed about the Berserker yet….right?! Oh well I’ll re-kick us off anyway.

I think it’s ironic that after all the “Dragon Puncher” jokes that’s essentially what we got. The Berserker is a played out archtype that GW was supposed to be beyond on a conceptual level. But it’s even a poor example of the archetype. There’s zero component of sacrificing defense for improved attack in the game play, taking an interesting mechanics out and replacing them with a straight (and mandatory) buff for burst skills.

The torch is stupid…The abilities feel like duplications of the Guardians and I don’t think adding a torch to the warrior makes him feel like much of a berserkers, because I would assume that someone “going berserker” would prefer to hold an actual weapon! A torch is more befitting for an Explorer or a Dungeoneer—and as luck would have it both exploring and dungeoneering are integral aspects of HoT!

The new utilities are stupid…They completely replace physical skills, meaning functionally Warriors have fewer utilities than other classes. The distinguishing feature between physicals and “rage skills” (which is a stupid name) could have easily just been a grandmaster trait. I think that’s a recipe for feeling super, super lame.

Anet is a company without ideas!

And there were better ideas available. If they had even bothered to read the wikipedia article on legendary berserkers of norse myth, they would have had a pretty quick recipe for a berserker concept that far outstrips what they came up with. Berserkers were recognizable by their wolf skin armor and spears, warrior who fought in a rage like trance.

If you read that thought…melee staves and mantras…then congratulations you have more common sense and better associative powers that anyone at Anet!

But literally there were much better ideas available outside of the whole berserker archetype. Remember in FF1 how after you get that rat tail the dragon king will transform your fighter into a knight letting him learn protective white magic?! There is just 1 far better idea that would have been a much better fit for GW2 lore. And i say that because presumably the Pact, having just come together in a large coordinated effort of magic and strategy, has little obvious use for individual warrior who freak the kitten out and light themselves on fire!

I picture the Pact meeting going like this:
Trehearne: “Ok, moving onto continuing business. Let’s get updates on adapting our tactics to better confront the dragons. Guardians what have you got?”
Guardian: “Well Marshall, based on that last fight where we spent most of our time on that airship no where near the actual dragon, we’ve been training our members to use long bows and have developed some interesting backline support skills that will really come in handy!”
Trehearne: “Excellent! Warriors, how about you guys?”
Warriors: ….{crickets}