Guild Wars 2

The Hambow “nerf” is almost here, correct me if I’m wrong, but it essentially is an 8% reduction in HPS on HS and a cast time and animation change to Pin Down.

But what about the changes to two handed weapons (now have 2 sigil slots), the removal of shared cool downs on sigils and the change to sigil of intelligence?

Hambows can now run valkyre amulet + berzerkers or soldiers jewels and with fury uptime and 3 guaranteed crits on weapon swap still have a lot of critical hits (and dodges because energy sigils/sigil of intel on each wpn), but get the added benefit of more power (more toughness & armored attack), more toughness via the valkyre (3276 v 2707) and additional healing power.

The additional healing power should put the HPS of a valk Hambow at about 387 vs. 407 they have now… 20 less hps.

The only big loss I see is in health which will go from 21.6k to 18.8k, but the increase in toughness really helps mitigate direct damage and hambows typically do well v. condi w/ cleansing ire, dogged march, etc.

Just curious if we can get some dev feedback on what it’s like running something like This Version of Ham with the new changes?

sigil of intelligence is awful on hambow

Waste all 3 charges cause your first aoe attack (or that fire field that hasn’t gone away) hit mesmer clones? nothx

ens.9854:

sigil of intelligence is awful on hambow

Waste all 3 charges cause your first aoe attack (or that fire field that hasn’t gone away) hit mesmer clones? nothx

The point is that the 8% isn’t a shave. It’s more a trim and not the kind of trim that is needed when you are going to sit down, dim the lights, chill the ham and enjoy a hot toddy with friends around the fire in the dining hall.

ens.9854:

sigil of intelligence is awful on hambow

Waste all 3 charges cause your first aoe attack (or that fire field that hasn’t gone away) hit mesmer clones? nothx

That is 1 possibility the other possibility can be 3 hammer combo hits critting => killing the target. Why would you not want that?

I guess the hambow will be still the king in town.

i think people are overreacting.

do remember that they balance the game for casual players, not competitive.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

i think people are overreacting.

do remember that they balance the game for casual players, not competitive.

They balance the game to balance the game.
Did you play GW1? If something was wrong in GvG, they fixed it. Otherwise, it wasn’t a priority. With the e-sport community of GW2 increasing, I can’t imagine they just sit back and watch the rank 60+ teams decimate with broken builds and not concern themselves with it. I promise you… they don’t balance PvP for sPvP. They balance for tPvP.

Mythoryk.7984:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

i think people are overreacting.

do remember that they balance the game for casual players, not competitive.

They balance the game to balance the game.
Did you play GW1? If something was wrong in GvG, they fixed it. Otherwise, it wasn’t a priority. With the e-sport community of GW2 increasing, I can’t imagine they just sit back and watch the rank 60+ teams decimate with broken builds and not concern themselves with it. I promise you… they don’t balance PvP for sPvP. They balance for tPvP.

E-sport community increasing? I hope you’re being sarcastic. GW2 had nothing to do with esports nor it ever will. What it has is 4 teams per continent tryharding against new and PvE players to get 650 – 0 on Legacy.

the healing sig change will be unnoticeable, the sigil change will be a massive buff.
so thats what we get after half a year of hambow lameness, and thousands of threads
a hambow buff.

The healing sig actually gets more powerful thanks to the ferocity nerf. The sigil change is a big buff.

The change to pin down doesn’t matter, as long as the shot doesn’t root you during the cast. It’s the same.

nekretaal.6485:

The healing sig actually gets more powerful thanks to the ferocity nerf. The sigil change is a big buff.

The change to pin down doesn’t matter, as long as the shot doesn’t root you during the cast. It’s the same.

There’s no ferocity nerf in spvp (stat combos get an artificial boost) and I don’t exactly think hambows are running amok in WvW.

I will say you should prepare to have your pin downs dodged… a lot

Mythoryk.7984:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

i think people are overreacting.

do remember that they balance the game for casual players, not competitive.

They balance the game to balance the game.
Did you play GW1? If something was wrong in GvG, they fixed it. Otherwise, it wasn’t a priority. With the e-sport community of GW2 increasing, I can’t imagine they just sit back and watch the rank 60+ teams decimate with broken builds and not concern themselves with it. I promise you… they don’t balance PvP for sPvP. They balance for tPvP.

You dont play GW2 spvp do you? That is exactly what happens right now….

Pin Down alone was never the major problem, neither was the HS specifically; they’re all just compounding parts that form together into a bigger issue. From what we know so far (which won’t be definite until release), the Hambow build will still be in the same spot that it is in right now. It’s a build that does too many things too well for a game mode focused around small-area capture points.

It has on-demand as well as auto-procced Stability, on-demand Condition Immunity, on-demand Damage Immunity, high HP, high Toughness, high passive HPS, an AoE stun that supplies the most effective instant CC possible in a teamfight, the largest and longest lasting AoE Fire Field in the game, passive Condition Cleansing, active Condition Cleansing via Lyssa and a decent amount of damage output.

There won’t be a reason to switch from the Hambow meta because it’s not situation- or composition-specific. There’s no scenario in our current sPvP mode where a Hambow Warrior is limited or could be traded for another Profession that fills the role to exactly the same capacity.

Until there’s new sPvP game modes that require dramatically different approaches in terms of composition and strategy, “stand on point, support teammates, deny enemies, don’t die and AoE a lot” will be the core mechanics that builds seek to fill, and Hambow does just that.

They just made hambow build the absolutely most telegraphed and obvious in the game. You can now literally dodge everything big the warrior is going to throw at you because its the slowest thing in the game. The bad players will just spam dodge dodge dodge and run out for absolutely not reason and get hit with everything while the good players will run circles around them.

Forestgreen.7981:

They just made hambow build the absolutely most telegraphed and obvious in the game. You can now literally dodge everything big the warrior is going to throw at you because its the slowest thing in the game. The bad players will just spam dodge dodge dodge and run out for absolutely not reason and get hit with everything while the good players will run circles around them.

Hambow means Hammer and bow. Pin down, weapon switch to Hammer and fun. You can’t Dodge that
every time. And you have not always a Dodge free. The skills are AE for example with a radius of 240. Good warrior come with the stun when you cannot avoid it. Plus even without the stun hambow is strong. 15-18 stacks of might. Tanky as hell because of stances. Hambow is more than stun people

Forestgreen.7981:

They just made hambow build the absolutely most telegraphed and obvious in the game. You can now literally dodge everything big the warrior is going to throw at you because its the slowest thing in the game. The bad players will just spam dodge dodge dodge and run out for absolutely not reason and get hit with everything while the good players will run circles around them.

Implying you get more dodges per second than the warrior has atacks, you dodge the first kitten he tanks you for a while and gets you on another one soon enough, you talk like you can dodge everything, and just own the warr right away…

Dont know why people even bother to tpvp anymore. All I do is mess around in spvp, maybe do a premade, and smash heads in wvw. I swear there is more balance in wvw small man roaming then in tpvp.

Sigil of Intelligence + Valkyrie on several Warrior builds (not JUST Hambow) could be a very powerful choice after the new patch. 5 sec weapon swap + 3 guaranteed crits per swap + lots of power and Ferocity, all while being very tanky.

It’s gonna be fun to try out

Ultimately, none of us can know what it is like because we haven’t played it. We can look at the stat changes and make conjecture based on what we do know, but there is too much we don’t know to say for certain that it will or won’t continue to be OP.

It certainly doesn’t appear like warrior is going anywhere, but what I would like is for someone like Hugh who is a decent PvP player to say he’s tried out something like the build I posted in test and give his feedback, thoughts. Or just give his general feedback and thoughts on the incoming warrior changes.

Does he feel better on his warrior, is it because of the warrior changes or the changes to everything else? Or does the new warrior feel a bit weaker, etc.?

There is so much changing just with runes and traits and so much we don’t know that it really would be interesting to get some feedback on warrior just like Tyler talked about how much more effective he felt the Elementalist was on test w/ the new changes.

Anyway, thanks for reading.