Guild Wars 2

I have been playing warrior since the game launched in PvP I love the class. It makes me sad panda that even trying really hard, they just don’t seem quite worth it to bring in a serious tourney. Too much of a liability and requires too much babysitting by the team to do much. There have been a couple of threads with suggested changes but given how much I’ve played warrior I thought I’d take the time to think up my own ideas keeping with the flavor of the class Anet has.

Healing:
Warriors rely on their large health pool to survive. Health as defense is very inefficient because it devalues healing as a percentage of health, and basically kills your sustain. Warrior healing needs a boost to compensate for that. Mending base healing should be increased by about 1k, it’s CD shortened by 1 sec per condition removed would be a cool, balanced bonus. Healing Surge can stay as is but the CD should be reduced to 25 seconds. Healing Signet active heal should be boosted by about 25% and the passive by 50%.

Traits:
Brawn: The useless trait line. I like the idea of it gaining the functionality of the Adrenal Health trait to help bridge that health gap a bit, for every point invested you get 14 health regen every 3 seconds (420 every 3 sec total at 30 points), does not scale with healing power, rename trait line “Tenacity”.
Short Temper: Change it so the bonus also applies to attacks that get evaded or hit invulnerable targets, making it much more interesting.
Distracting Strikes: I think this trait should be scrapped, it’s terrible and does not fit, and swapped around with “Destruction of the Empowered” which is underpowered for a grandmaster trait and would fit better in this line.
Restorative Strength: Should also remove vulnerability.
Stick and Move: Damage bonus should be 5% rather than 3%.
Furious Reaction: Should trigger when the warrior is hit by a critical strike, not on taking over 10% health dmg, due to warrior larger health pool it currently barely procs in pvp and never does against condi classes with no big hits.
Rending Strikes: Chance should be upped to 50%.
Furious Speed: Chance should be upped to 33% with duration lowered to 2 sec.
Last Chance: This slot would take a new trait called “Infected Wounds” attacks against bleeding targets have a 33% chance to poison for 5 seconds (15 sec internal CD) Worthy of a grandmaster trait investment wise along which along with LB changes further down would make condi actually viable. “Last Chance” would move down to Grandmaster discipline line to take the place left by Destruction of the Empowered, duration can stay 4 seconds but ICD should be 60.
Adrenal Health: Gains a different functionality, every time the warrior uses a burst skill it gains 180+0.125 healing power of health for each adrenaline bar spent (so up to 3x that amount). This would create a dynamic balance between healing from “Tenacity” for holding on to adrenaline and spending it. Plus this line needs something that scales with healing power considering it’s a healing power trait line.
Empower Allies: Should also affect the warrior, in fact, that should be the case with all ally stat increasing traits, I don’t understand why it isn’t, it’s not as if the amount is that high.
Stronger Bows Strings and Burning Arrows: Should be combined into a single master level trait, then “Shrug It Off” should be moved in it’s place as an adept trait. This would open up a slot for a new master trait called “Mighty General” which would grant the warrior 1 stack of might for 8 seconds each time he used a shout to all allies in range.
Reviver’s Might: Get scrapped because it’s awful, “Fast Healer” should take its place, reflecting a better positioning for a more defensive warrior investing 30 in the line. The master minor trait needs to be more all around useful and work well with the buff themed tree, my idea is a trait called “Tactician’s Eye” that grants one strike of adrenaline every time the warrior grants someone a boon.
Vigorous Focus: Change vigor duration gained to 10 sec across all stances, most of them have a pretty long CD so this needs to be a decent duration to be worth picking up.

Abilities:
Berserker Stance: Needs to do more, Signet of Fury is actually a better adrenaline generator and has a great passive. I think this is a great candidate for another condi removal as has been suggested. It should remove 1 condition at cast then another every 5 second for the duration for a total of 2, or 3 with the Sure Footed trait.
Endure Pain: Cooldown needs to be brought down to 70 seconds, it’s strong however not making you immune to condis or CC’s makes the 90 sec CD excessive.
Dolyak Signet: Make it instant cast and a stun breaker, however, increase CD to 70 seconds and make the stability only last 4 seconds. This would make it a viable alternative for balanced stance while still having disadvantages over it.

On My Mark: Reduce CD to 25 sec and make it grant 10 seconds of AOE swiftness to warrior and players nearby. The vuln is just not enough for a utility slot and given warrior reliance on melee another option source of swiftness would be great.
Shake It Off: Should remove two conditions, increase CD to 30 sec to compensate.
Signet of Stamina: Reduce CD to 40 seconds.

Weapons:
Hammer: Fierce Blow range should get a slight increase to 200 for a small gap closer. Staggering Blow should be castable while moving as it’s not strong enough to justify not being able to move while casting it. Earthshaker cast time should be reduced from ¾ to ½ and just be more responsive.
Sword: Hamstring should add 2 stacks of 6 sec bleed (as an alternative over messing with the auto attack which I like as is), as the melee weapon for condi builds, sword needs a little boost to how fast it bleed stacks. Riposte needs work, the bleeds almost never lands, any melee attacker that gets blocked should receive the bleed stacks regardless of angle/where they are standing. It should also continue to block if only hit by ranged attacks by default, since it does not apply bleed at range this would give it some use against ranged attacks. Flurry is awful to land with the cast time AND short range. Cast time should be decreased to ¼ from ½ and the “normal” damage portion should be doubled.
Mace: Mace main hand should be the weapon of choice for a defensive warrior. Counter Blow should block full duration against ranged attacks by default and if it blocks a melee attack the attacker would take damage (about 20% higher than currently) and the warrior would gain 2 sec of protection. Pommel Bash is too much like Skull Crack being an instant close range interrupt, it should be changed to a small closer of 250 range, gaining a ¼ cast time to compensate. Crushing blow needs to hit about 25% harder to compensate for the close range and long cast time. Reduce 3rd auto attack combo cast time from 1 to ¾ sec.
Axe: I would make one change, but a key one, make Dual Strike (off hand) a gap closer with a 500 range. The need to pick up either sword MH or GS to have some gap closing/mobility makes axe, hammer and mace all really difficult to pick up unless you want to have no ranged capability. Some of my previous suggestions added small gap closers, but none that would help close larger ranges or with mobility. Adding a not as good but decent off hand longer gap closer/mobility skill to off hand axe would open up a lot more weapon combinations while making the off hand axe worth looking at in comparison to other off hand options, which it currently isn’t.
Longbow: Longbow autoattack needs some bleeding to make condi viable, longbow condi abilities are all in a fairly long cd while Fan of Fire is rather ineffective at range due to the spread. Auto-attacks should add 1 stack of 1 sec bleeds with each arrow, this would be a marginal barely noticeable damage increase for direct dmg builds but make it far more viable for condi.
Rifle: Is a confused weapon. It has a long bleed on auto attack while everything else about the weapon encourages direct damage setups. Vulnerability would be a far better suited role for it, so increase autoattack dmg by about 30% and make it add 5 sec of invuln per hit losing the bleed (name change to “Piercing Shot”). Also, double the damage of Brutal Shot to make that 1 sec cast time worthwhile, it’s not worth using atm.
Greatsword: Arcing slice damage needs to go up by about 25% so it’s actually worth using. Rush pathing to enemies really needs some help, in any place that isn’t flat all around using it is more likely to get you stuck somewhere or hit air.
Warhorn: It’s fine but for one thing, cast time is too long. For support buffs that do no damage to your opponent or heal you and need to be cast often to be effective, it just feels too slow and cumbersome to use while you’re getting wailed on. Lower the cast time on both abilities from ½ sec to ¼ seconds.

Warrior needs some work yes. But the problem is that they are already uber in PvE and are currently the most played profession. How do you increase their viability in PvP without making them better than they already are in PvEasy? That’s the real problem the development team faces.

My suggested quick fix. In sPvP Only move Endure Pain and Frenzy into the F2 and F3 utility slots. Should be a rather simple change and will help the Warrior class out dramatically.

Theplayboy.6417:

Warrior needs some work yes. But the problem is that they are already uber in PvE and are currently the most played profession. How do you increase their viability in PvP without making them better than they already are in PvEasy? That’s the real problem the development team faces.

My suggested quick fix. In sPvP Only move Endure Pain and Frenzy into the F2 and F3 utility slots. Should be a rather simple change and will help the Warrior class out dramatically.

That’s a good point. But I think that’s doable. The changes I suggest don’t really increase warrior sustained damage (which is what make them OP in PVE) the damage boosts are minor and only to currently weak, underused weapons, but rather just gives them small boosts to healing, a bit more condi removal, makes a condi build viable and a few more ways to stay on top of fast moving/dodging targets (which is a PVP problem not a PVE one). I don’t think any of those things would have a significant impact on PVE, except for maybe the direct increases to the main healing abilities, but that could always be applied to PVP only. If sustained damage is what’s making them OP in PVE all Anet has to do is nerf their direct a damage in PVE a bit while leaving it as is in PVP.

I can see many familiar ideas from me and other users that you may have read in Warrior changes for SPVP viability topic and in a discussion about condition Warrior in another section. It would be better to keep going a single topic, splitting discussions won’t help to attract developer’s eye.

Back to your topic. The idea of adding gap closers is nice, some weapons are lacking them and it will greatly counter the problem of being kited (like Engineers like too do >.<).

Theyplayboy your idea is basically the return of “classic” stances and I guess that every Warrior would like to see the addition of F2, F3 and F4 as stances, that would be awesome.

I think Brawn should be a percent based heal.

Heals for 0.05% every point spent, every second.

Daecollo.9578:

I think Brawn should be a percent based heal.

Heals for 0.05% every point spent, every second.

Wammo aspect would be cool.

Oni Link.4621:

I can see many familiar ideas from me and other users that you may have read in Warrior changes for SPVP viability topic and in a discussion about condition Warrior in another section. It would be better to keep going a single topic, splitting discussions won’t help to attract developer’s eye.

Back to your topic. The idea of adding gap closers is nice, some weapons are lacking them and it will greatly counter the problem of being kited (like Engineers like too do >.<).

Theyplayboy your idea is basically the return of “classic” stances and I guess that every Warrior would like to see the addition of F2, F3 and F4 as stances, that would be awesome.

I don’t know about “many”, some, but I disagreed with the tuning and had a lot of new suggestions to make and thought better to create a separate discussion of them so it wouldn’t get too confusing. I am allowed, as it turns out to start a thread as well.

Good ideas posted here. I played warrior in gw1 and they weren’t as fun as the warriors in this game but they were better. Survivability is the biggest problem IMO. Most of the time it just feels like I’m running into my death.

Yeah the warrior NEEDS some changes to make it viable Anet has already said they can balance PvP separately from PvP so affecting PvE isnt even a worry? I think one of the next patches they really need to focus on getting the warrior and necro to a lesser extent back to a place where they are viable in TPvP

hello friends
best change for short term: buff warriors
best change for long term: nerf rest of classes so they’re not so independent
regards,
player-who-is-looking-for-better-pvp-game

Just deleting warrior makes it viable lol

milo.6942:

hello friends
best change for short term: buff warriors
best change for long term: nerf rest of classes so they’re not so independent
regards,
player-who-is-looking-for-better-pvp-game

I don’t really agree, with no dedicated healers without sustain and some degree of independence the pvp will become too much about quickly bursting people in 2 seconds. Sustain makes for longer more dynamic fights and Anet has stated that’s the direction they want to move in. The biggest problem for warrior is that it really has the worse sustain in a game mode that’s all about sustain.

hello my friend julius
pls kindly consider situation where:

1. burst dmg is lower & pace of combat is marginally slower
2. support is slightly improved
3. there is a game type that encourages teamfights (not conquest)

and you can easily see how this game could be good
regards,
milo

milo.6942:

hello my friend julius
pls kindly consider situation where:

1. burst dmg is lower & pace of combat is marginally slower
2. support is slightly improved
3. there is a game type that encourages teamfights (not conquest)

and you can easily see how this game could be good
regards,
milo

Anet has slowed down the pace of combat though. The 1 second instant kills are pretty much gone, you can still burst a target down really fast with 3 or 2 on 1 but, it makes sense and I think it’s fine. I think damage is in a good place, and rather than nerfing that, improving sustainability for classes that die too easy atm will slow down that pace in a better way. Very weak or nearly absent defensive CDs and condi removals (or ones that require too major a tradeoff off in damage/utility) aren’t an acceptable class “weakness” for any class in a game with high burst and really heavy hitting and ccing condis. I think if all classes have access to their own flavor of, (which is mostly true for pretty anything other than warrior and necro) but reasonably strong sustain, through self healing, self condi removal and defensive CD options, that slows down the pace of the game without nerfing damage and makes it more dynamic.

I do agree that team support abilities and traits could use a bump to encourage more teamfighting, and that it would be cool to have game types other than just conquest. But conquest is really fun too and I happen to like where the game is going, it just needs tweaking.

As already stated warriors are main in PvE, untill ANet finally wakes the Bleep up, and splits ALL skills from PvE vs PvP (So yes, 2 different co-dings for each skill, one PvE one PvP) balancing out Damage output in PvP vs PvE and Defense etc etc etc., the warrior will not become viable till this happens, because of the fear for making it into a monster in PvE aspects of the game..

piercing shot currently belongs to the thief harpoon auto attack 1. It bleeds as well.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Real fast, it’s Sunday, so I’ll keep this quick:

Yes, Warrior needs more help in PvP, but is already strong in PvE. Due to that you may see some new splits happening between the gametypes as far as balance goes, and you may also see new traits to help Warriors find a way into team comps.

Hey Jon, as you are posting about this issue, and mentioned pve, I would like to take this opportunity to make a very interesting question. Has the balancing team ever thought about the possibility of actually toning down hundred blades for pve, or do you think it is all other professions that should instead be (pve) buffed to that level?

JonathanSharp.7094:

Real fast, it’s Sunday, so I’ll keep this quick:

Yes, Warrior needs more help in PvP, but is already strong in PvE. Due to that you may see some new splits happening between the gametypes as far as balance goes, and you may also see new traits to help Warriors find a way into team comps.

Better be someway to counter evades and blinds.

DiogoSilva.7089:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Real fast, it’s Sunday, so I’ll keep this quick:

Yes, Warrior needs more help in PvP, but is already strong in PvE. Due to that you may see some new splits happening between the gametypes as far as balance goes, and you may also see new traits to help Warriors find a way into team comps.

Hey Jon, as you are posting about this issue, and mentioned pve, I would like to take this opportunity to make a very interesting question. Has the balancing team ever thought about the possibility of actually toning down hundred blades for pve, or do you think it is all other professions that should instead be (pve) buffed to that level?

if ever they decided to tone down hundred blades damage in pve, they better decrease its attack speed. because apparently in some build’s auto attack somehow does more damage then hundred blades. and you should try to stand in front of mobs and try to pull off that hundred blades and see how long you can survive..

also warrior’s damage doesn’t just come from hundred blades but the whole skill set. 3 4 5 do better burst damage then hundred blade in a set period of time.

Hundred Blades is good just for number of attacks, not for damage. Damage speaking, autoattacks are better, but since 100B hits more, you get more Might stacks from “Forceful Greatsword” trait.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Real fast, it’s Sunday, so I’ll keep this quick:

Yes, Warrior needs more help in PvP, but is already strong in PvE. Due to that you may see some new splits happening between the gametypes as far as balance goes, and you may also see new traits to help Warriors find a way into team comps.

How about WvW, which still puts us at a disadvantage even with the aid of having PvE stats?

Sil.4560:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Real fast, it’s Sunday, so I’ll keep this quick:

Yes, Warrior needs more help in PvP, but is already strong in PvE. Due to that you may see some new splits happening between the gametypes as far as balance goes, and you may also see new traits to help Warriors find a way into team comps.

How about WvW, which still puts us at a disadvantage even with the aid of having PvE stats?

No nothing is too wrong with warriors in WvW because we are always surrounded by allies for support. If the warrior’s doing a Rambo then that’s on them.

Really? The same shortcoming warrior’s suffer in spvp don’t transfer over into wvw at all? Just a lil bit? Just a lil? Just a tiny bit? Just a tiny lil bit? Eencey weencey bit?

Destruction of the Empowered
Deal 5% bonus damage per unique boon on your target.
Each time you hit the target, heal yourself for each boon he has.
(At level 80, the amount healed per boon is 69 + 0.01 * Healing Power.)

Example:
If your target has 3 unique boons, each hit will heal you for 207. This would allow warriors to have an Anti-Bunker Role in SPVP/PVP, but not overpower them in PvE, because most mobs do not have boons except bosses/champions/golds.

FIX BRAWN, NERF HUNDRED BLADES (It does way too much damage, Warrior damage needs TONED DOWN and needs to be more survivable and the damage less avoided, this means it needs to be FASTER :<)

AlBundy.7851:

Really? The same shortcoming warrior’s suffer in spvp don’t transfer over into wvw at all? Just a lil bit? Just a lil? Just a tiny bit? Just a tiny lil bit? Eencey weencey bit?

No unless you’re doing a Rambo. WvW is nothing but zerg vs zerg which is different from Spvp.

AlBundy.7851:

Really? The same shortcoming warrior’s suffer in spvp don’t transfer over into wvw at all? Just a lil bit? Just a lil? Just a tiny bit? Just a tiny lil bit? Eencey weencey bit?

I would say that it’s already pretty ridiculous that they gave Warriors access to practical immunity to chill/immob/cripple in WvW. And they already have decent mobility. I dont know what they were thinking when they could have given that to a class that actually needs it, like Necro.

roamzero.9486:

AlBundy.7851:

Really? The same shortcoming warrior’s suffer in spvp don’t transfer over into wvw at all? Just a lil bit? Just a lil? Just a tiny bit? Just a tiny lil bit? Eencey weencey bit?

I would say that it’s already pretty ridiculous that they gave Warriors access to practical immunity to chill/immob/cripple in WvW. And they already have decent mobility. I dont know what they were thinking when they could have given that to a class that actually needs it, like Necro.

Necros are boss in wvw zergs.

a lot of people play wvw in small groups a lot like spvp. Kind of subjective to say wvw is nothing more than zerg v zerg. Even with short durations on movement impairment the warrior hasn’t been able to lift itselves out of the mud.

I guess it’s easy to say hey they get this when it hasn’t had a very beneficial impact on warrior’s ability to compete with other classes.

Brutalistik.6473:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Real fast, it’s Sunday, so I’ll keep this quick:

Yes, Warrior needs more help in PvP, but is already strong in PvE. Due to that you may see some new splits happening between the gametypes as far as balance goes, and you may also see new traits to help Warriors find a way into team comps.

Better be someway to counter evades and blinds.

Like what? Being able to hit people while they evade? Seriously dude, don’t be like that. Ask for more plausible things.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Real fast, it’s Sunday, so I’ll keep this quick:

Yes, Warrior needs more help in PvP, but is already strong in PvE. Due to that you may see some new splits happening between the gametypes as far as balance goes, and you may also see new traits to help Warriors find a way into team comps.

Jonathan,

Have you considered that Warriors were actually fine as they were during beta? that perhaps their seemingly high damage was due to other classes building squishy + not knowing how to play.

You keep saying that you don’t want to do whack-a-mole balance, and yet taking away the warrior’s burst seemed like a very knee jerk reaction.

The biggest problem with the warriors in pvp is that they can’t hit. Their damage is extremely high. And the biggest problem with warriors in pve, is that their damage is extremely high.

If warrior’s damage was ever to revert back to beta days, I think the pve community for the remaining 7 professions would take the forums by storm, while the pvp warrior community be left kinda cold.

It wouldn’t acchieve anything positive. :P

Besides, I never liked the idea of a “dumb”, anti-newbie profession. Punishing new pvp players with an instant-kill beast gives a bad perception to this game’s pvp. A newbie warrior should be on equal ground – or closely tied, to any other newbie profession. Of course, that’s not exactly what happens with warriors now (and mesmers).

Dirame.8521:

Brutalistik.6473:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Real fast, it’s Sunday, so I’ll keep this quick:

Yes, Warrior needs more help in PvP, but is already strong in PvE. Due to that you may see some new splits happening between the gametypes as far as balance goes, and you may also see new traits to help Warriors find a way into team comps.

Better be someway to counter evades and blinds.

Like what? Being able to hit people while they evade? Seriously dude, don’t be like that. Ask for more plausible things.

Beats a blank, but i just grew tired of Jon and their insights on warriors. We tell them one thing and they do the complete opposite. I’m not sure it’s fear or something else they don’t want to become too strong.

Why not go towards the approach taken by GW1 for warriors but without overdoing it? Re-introduce “breaker” skills/traits. We don’t have stances anymore but now we have aegis and sprint effectively taking the place of the old stances that would cripple warrior damage. Right now, warriors can deal damage but they have no utility with which to actually make said damage real. There’s no shock, no gale, no control abilities to pin down their opponents for the spike. They can’t even lineback anymore because of how hard it is for them to hit anything as they can just get kited perpetually because of their linear approaches.

Why not the good old Irresistible Blow: unblockable, hits and removes aegis, and knocks down. Make it a trait on hammers/maces that affects only one of the skills, perhaps have the trait change #2 to do the above. Swift Chop, Griffon’s Sweep as options for swords and axe.

Its funny ppl where calling warrior the most op spvp class about a month ago lol.

Jski.6180:

Its funny ppl where calling warrior the most op spvp class about a month ago lol.

funny you must live on mars

Time to nerf warrior signets by 75%, that’s 50% over the pre-buff era. Seriously, I didn’t understand how a.net could buff the most OP build by 100%. That’s just silly.

Some people care about PVE balance you know …

Jski.6180:

Its funny ppl where calling warrior the most op spvp class about a month ago lol.

I think you have “warrior” confused with “bunker DD ele” there.

marnick.4305:

Time to nerf warrior signets by 75%, that’s 50% over the pre-buff era. Seriously, I didn’t understand how a.net could buff the most OP build by 100%. That’s just silly.

Some people care about PVE balance you know …

This is a thread about spvp balance on the spvp forums, more specifically a thread about how to make warriors more viable at the tourney level.

I’m not exactly convinced that just nerfing signets so CoF1 speedruns have less warriors in them is going to suddenly make spvp tourney teams full of warriors.

Jski.6180:

Its funny ppl where calling warrior the most op spvp class about a month ago lol.

“Funny” in the sense of “completely made up?”

Basically since the release of the Game, Warriors were probably the least played class and this has been true until now.

*Edit: I really don’t understand why so many PvE-Players post in this Subforum… Do I come into your Forums and post stuff that has completely no connection to what your preferred game-mode is?

If you have a Problem with Builds, address it in your Forums and push ANet towards seperated balancing, there’s no need to post it into the PvP-subforum, it just makes you look uninformed and whiney…

marnick.4305:

Time to nerf warrior signets by 75%, that’s 50% over the pre-buff era. Seriously, I didn’t understand how a.net could buff the most OP build by 100%. That’s just silly.

Some people care about PVE balance you know …

We know that there is people who care about PVE (me too) bu this is SPVP sub-forum and the topic of this thread is written in the title: “how to make Warrior viable”.
SPVP-wise, yes, the title is missing that part though XD

Actually Warrior, at least in EU, was in the first months after the release one of those classes, which were in the setups pretty often. Ranger on the other hand, was rarely been played.

zone.1073:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Real fast, it’s Sunday, so I’ll keep this quick:

Yes, Warrior needs more help in PvP, but is already strong in PvE. Due to that you may see some new splits happening between the gametypes as far as balance goes, and you may also see new traits to help Warriors find a way into team comps.

Jonathan,

Have you considered that Warriors were actually fine as they were during beta? that perhaps their seemingly high damage was due to other classes building squishy + not knowing how to play.

You keep saying that you don’t want to do whack-a-mole balance, and yet taking away the warrior’s burst seemed like a very knee jerk reaction.

THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS 100X THIS. Maybe eviscerate was supposed to be lethal because melee range is kitten. Then people l2p eles and now its over