Guild Wars 2

Glass Canon this, Glass Canon that.

I hit this hard with Kill Shot on my Warrior too, and think it is nonsense hah.

The funny thing is, you can get Glass Canon numbers, and still get high defense on a Warrior. I have over 3000 in Attack, and Armor, on top of having 26k hit points, and 70% crit when I’m attacking you.

I won’t even mention how well my shouts heal, on top of other abilities that heal me when I crit, while I’m reflecting missiles each time I block.

Katsumoto.9452:

Thief
OMG 20k damage using all utilities, so once every 45 seconds, with steal-cnd-backstab from melee range and has to hit in the back to pull off that damage. Forum rages calls for nerfs.

Warrior
20k damage, not melee but 1500 range no less, once every 45 seconds i’d guess to charge up the adrenaline, no specific angle required. Forum mentions it but who cares right. Warriors should only get buffs.

kitten?

I didn’t ever mind backstab, still don’t. I don’t particularly mind this either. However get some consistency, if backstab rotations are broken this is too, perhaps even more so.

It’s always in gigantic bursts with these classes. Thief jumps you. 6k backstab then hasted HS face roll spam 3.5k, 4k, and 5k and vanish. 100% to 0% before you even know WTF hit you. This is with HIGH armor FYI.

It really comes down to toughness not scaling 1:1 against crit damage, damage bonus multipliers, vulnerabilities, and might bonuses.

I honestly don’t get hit more than 4k from siege and no other class but thiefs and warriors hit me for over 5k. I’ve never been bursted down by engineers, necros, mesmers, rangers, guardians, and elemantalist, but I’ve bursted down by thiefs and warriors numerous times.

All it takes is a Warrior catching you with your pants down and they can offload a 12-15k hundred blades + blade trail + whirlwind combo in 2s.

ComeAndSee.1356:

Katsumoto.9452:

Thief
OMG 20k damage using all utilities, so once every 45 seconds, with steal-cnd-backstab from melee range and has to hit in the back to pull off that damage. Forum rages calls for nerfs.

Warrior
20k damage, not melee but 1500 range no less, once every 45 seconds i’d guess to charge up the adrenaline, no specific angle required. Forum mentions it but who cares right. Warriors should only get buffs.

kitten?

I didn’t ever mind backstab, still don’t. I don’t particularly mind this either. However get some consistency, if backstab rotations are broken this is too, perhaps even more so.

It’s always in gigantic bursts with these classes. Thief jumps you. 6k backstab then hasted HS face roll spam 3.5k, 4k, and 5k and vanish. 100% to 0% before you even know WTF hit you. This is with HIGH armor FYI.

It really comes down to toughness not scaling 1:1 against crit damage, damage bonus multipliers, vulnerabilities, and might bonuses.

I honestly don’t get hit more than 4k from siege and no other class but thiefs and warriors hit me for over 5k. I’ve never been bursted down by engineers, necros, mesmers, rangers, guardians, and elemantalist, but I’ve bursted down by thiefs and warriors numerous times.

Keep in mind the best defense though, is from having a high crit. The heal on crit items are far better for defense, on top of switching weapons gaining lifesteal on the next hit, that gives the glass canon builds a much better defense, than a defensive build can get. What is worst, defensive builds have to give up a lot of damage to gear out the way they do..

After testing it on my Warrior, and seeing that I do nearly ten times the damage I do on my bunker Guardian, classes I absolutely destroy on my Warrior, I’m in the process of respeccing my Guardian in the same fashion.

It still cracks me up that if a Guardian dodge rolls for a 1600 heal, the masses cry about it, literally. But if a Warrior, or a Thief bursts for 20k damage in seconds, only a select few speak up, with the masses saying the damage is ok.

So they nerf the Guardians dodge roll heal, cutting it literally in half, making a past gear choice worthless, all because the majority, who play Glass Canons had to take three extra seconds to kill the Guardian. Cracks me up every time.

I have four 80s, so I see balance issues diferently. /shrugs

That dodge roll heal could be abused if you had high healing. If you put in your main + off-hand 50% endurance return you could heal yourself for 5k (while evading) every 10s. I use to do it in WvW with like 5 people chasing me around and they couldn’t kill me unless they cc spammed me to death.

They nerfed the boon duration runes as well and nerfed Guardian shield protection to last half as long because with monk + water + protection runes you could have 100% uptime on protection. It was Save Yourself + Hold The Line + Shield + Rolling Around in your Symbols = lol.

I have a glass cannon engineer with 60%+ crit, 80+ crit dmg and I cant hit more than 2000 with any attack I can think of, that’s with elixirs and other buffs too.

any one skill that can kill anyone that fast seems somewhat overpowered unless every class can do it, and if every class can do it then it seems to easy to kill others.

Was this taken at Redlake sometime early NA time last night? Near IoJ border?

Yeah that engi video is old. I have a very similar build and only get crits of about 5k with grenade barrage, not the mythical 11-12k he was getting. I also play my engineer very well as I’m sure several JQ and SoS players can attest to. We don’t have a magic 2s kill button.

That being said, I don’t find the warrior’s instakill ability that big of a deal. They have to set you up for it and the build they do basically ruins everything else the class is actually good at. If they want to neuter themselves for cheap kills, won’t hurt my feelings.

Phoenix grenade barrage will hit 5k, and that’s with “kitten” gear (I have all rares with the exception of 2 exotics). Now if you’re dropping the bomb on someone with a ridiculous amount of toughness the number may decline. Honestly I don’t use barrage as my opener, I find rifle shots with incendiary work just as well in terms of per second (barrage is just a spike) then I use barrage to nail them if they start to flee.

dekyos.1548:

Yeah that engi video is old. I have a very similar build and only get crits of about 5k with grenade barrage, not the mythical 11-12k he was getting. I also play my engineer very well as I’m sure several JQ and SoS players can attest to. We don’t have a magic 2s kill button.

That being said, I don’t find the warrior’s instakill ability that big of a deal. They have to set you up for it and the build they do basically ruins everything else the class is actually good at. If they want to neuter themselves for cheap kills, won’t hurt my feelings.

Yes that engi video is old but grenade barrage has been buffed in WvW since then….

What does Inc mean? I’ve seen it on the map chat in WvWvW a lot.

incoming

/15 char

Ah okay. Thank you =)

Berengar.6951:

dekyos.1548:

Yeah that engi video is old. I have a very similar build and only get crits of about 5k with grenade barrage, not the mythical 11-12k he was getting. I also play my engineer very well as I’m sure several JQ and SoS players can attest to. We don’t have a magic 2s kill button.

That being said, I don’t find the warrior’s instakill ability that big of a deal. They have to set you up for it and the build they do basically ruins everything else the class is actually good at. If they want to neuter themselves for cheap kills, won’t hurt my feelings.

Yes that engi video is old but grenade barrage has been buffed in WvW since then….

Yes but my build has the exact same crit bonuses as his, and I doubt he’s running full berserker armor considering he has 20k HP, and I don’t get 10-11k crits. So obviously at some point barrage has been adjusted.

No it hasn’t, only difference is orbs have been removed, but 12-13k is still possible. I hit that high on PvE bosses which have more defense than most players in WvW.

You guys have to remember with those old videos you had Orbs as well.

Not to mention the fact that so many other players were upleveled. Not as many full-exo level 80s in Sept.

dekyos.1548:

Berengar.6951:

dekyos.1548:

Yeah that engi video is old. I have a very similar build and only get crits of about 5k with grenade barrage, not the mythical 11-12k he was getting. I also play my engineer very well as I’m sure several JQ and SoS players can attest to. We don’t have a magic 2s kill button.

That being said, I don’t find the warrior’s instakill ability that big of a deal. They have to set you up for it and the build they do basically ruins everything else the class is actually good at. If they want to neuter themselves for cheap kills, won’t hurt my feelings.

Yes that engi video is old but grenade barrage has been buffed in WvW since then….

Yes but my build has the exact same crit bonuses as his, and I doubt he’s running full berserker armor considering he has 20k HP, and I don’t get 10-11k crits. So obviously at some point barrage has been adjusted.

No it hasn’t.

Only change to barrage was the extra range from grenadier was fixed. this would not effect its damage.

20k hp, and 11 k crits with barrage…

A few things.
1. food, orbs, guild buffs. These can have a MASSIVE effect. 3 orbs when they were in, were 150 power. Food, you can get 100 power, oil 6% of tough+4% of vit. +40 guild buff. you can get like 350 power from buffs alone.
Hp. Same deal. vit food. wvw realm buff, guild buff, orbs. these each stack btw.
10% realm, 15% orbs. was not +25%, it was 10%, THEN 15%, for +26.5%
zerkers is like 18082 iirc for an engi. getting 24k with various hp buffs was cake.

2. Vulnerability. Every grenade stacks vul with 25 points in explosives.
An engineer can stack 24 stacks of vul in 6seconds, without haste. Faster with. and if you consider barrage is 8 stacks itself more as well. But even disregarding a ful24-25 stacks, you can and probably will have a good 10 stacks of vul on target for a barrage. and then stack 8more, 1 per grenade that lands. Very important for each one counting separate.
If you barrage, and lets say every grenade does 500 damage. Well its 5001 stack of vul, for the first one. Then 505+1 stack of vul for the second. 2 stacks, 510+1 stack of vul for the third. By the 8th grenade, 7 stacks of vul, and it hits for 535

3. Might can obviously also have a large effect.

Barrage scales at .375p.
And grenades have a 920 average weapon kit damage.

Stats in full zerker is
2342power. (no ascended, mad king bg, centaur runes) Note, higher power can be gained with other runes.
Also this is WITH rifle equiped. swapping to grenades will reduce power to 2170.
barrage uses weapon kit damage, however, will use main weapon stats if it is equiped.
Crits deal 117% damage.
56% chance of crit with fury up.

Barrage can miss, only landing 5-6 if you don’t aim well.

10k+ vs soft targets is easy. Even 2600 targets take 5-6k, from a barrage.
(not to mention the rifle shots that probably set it up. Or the constant 3k from grenade 1.)

I’m actually surprised that I’ve never been hit by any of these, seeing as how I’m a squishy glass cannon ele with 11k health…

ComeAndSee.1356:

That dodge roll heal could be abused if you had high healing. If you put in your main + off-hand 50% endurance return you could heal yourself for 5k (while evading) every 10s. I use to do it in WvW with like 5 people chasing me around and they couldn’t kill me unless they cc spammed me to death.

They nerfed the boon duration runes as well and nerfed Guardian shield protection to last half as long because with monk + water + protection runes you could have 100% uptime on protection. It was Save Yourself + Hold The Line + Shield + Rolling Around in your Symbols = lol.

There is still zero reason for them to nerf that heal, and remove yet ANOTHER thing Healing Power effected. They’re pretty much making Healing Power useless.

That 5k in heal over the span of minimum 5 seconds to a maximum of 10 seconds means nothing, when you can be backstabbed for 5k-8k depending on toughness, in a second after you rolled around on the ground for five seconds, with no hope of getting away from the Thief, with your minimal speed. <laughs>

In a game that gives you access to ten times more damage than you can mitigate, and no diminishing returns on crowd control, there is absolutely no excuse to complain about any form of healing, even on dodge rolls by the Guardian, the second slowest class in the game, second only to the Mesmer.

Like I said earlier, I have four 80s. For the fun of it, I just regeared both my Thief, and my Warrior into a bunker build, all exotics to see the difference compared to my Guardian. Hands down the Guardian got screwed because both my Thief, and Warrior have better survivability, and they both retain almost all of the damage they had with their glass canon builds because Vitality, and Toughness scale horribly in comparison to Power, and Precision.

With the ability to have very high crit in a bunker build by the Thief, and Warrior, pushing 70% crit easily, while slotting a sigil that gives life steal on 30% crit chance, and food that gives lifesteal on 66% chance after crits (the food doesn’t seem to have a cooldown), you can gain a lot more survivability without having to sacrifice damage.

This also doesn’t take into consideration condition damage, and how it ignores toughness.

Everything is fine.

A little diversity between builds and classes is good. Sure, once in awhile a thief or warrior will hit me REALLY hard, but once in awhile my elementalist pumps out an insane amount of AoE damage against a zerg. We all have strengths and weaknesses. It is silly to come in here and complain about other classes strengths while ignoring their weakness and your OWN strengths.

There is no such thing as a perfect balance when you are dealing with different classes with different skills. Even if such an imaginary perfection existed, there would still be folks on forums complaining about imbalance because there are other factors at play like skill and chance.

We don’t all have to be same. Diversity, and even overpowered classes, keeps things interesting. If you think those builds are so great (which they are not), go make one, and then meet me in WvW/PvP.

I think the class balance falls within a reasonable range. Moving on.

jkctmc.8754:

Glass Canon this, Glass Canon that.

I hit this hard with Kill Shot on my Warrior too, and think it is nonsense hah.

The funny thing is, you can get Glass Canon numbers, and still get high defense on a Warrior. I have over 3000 in Attack, and Armor, on top of having 26k hit points, and 70% crit when I’m attacking you.

I won’t even mention how well my shouts heal, on top of other abilities that heal me when I crit, while I’m reflecting missiles each time I block.

Lol this is exactly right, but there are so many dopey kitten on this forum who are, as you said “glass cannon this, glass cannon that” and don’t know kitten.

Last thing I will say is stop crying for warrior nerfs. Warriors dont have pets, clones, stealth abilities, insane healing, 3 or more dodges, stealth finishers, perma quickness, portals, warping, or any of the cool stuff that other professions have. We dont have skills that allow us to run around like sissys and attack at the same time depending on weapon and in this case kill shot. We don’t have versatile trait lines that apply to multiple weapons and builds. When a warrior has a specific build they are speced for that one thing and are mediocre at everything else.

All warriors do is damage that’s it if your going to cry for nerfs on warriors everything I mentioned that warriors don’t have needs a huge nerf as well. LTP

If all this high dmg incidents are just a recent phenomenon, then I think there might be some exploits out there which people used to increase their dmg.

The reason I said so is because I encountered a group of warriors and guardians in WvW eternal battleground yesterday. These enemies basically 2-shot you to downed state. I tried fighting them at the same area for like 4-5 times but each time I entered the fight, I was downed in 2 shots. I go wow … no way to win them … I switched to other borderlands map.

Lo and behold, I met the same op-ness of other enemies in the borderland. Guess what? They are also warriors and guardians. Ok, I say to myself, co-incidence. Let switch to OTHER borderlands.

After I got 2-shot again in the other borderland, I said that is enough for the day. I logout amidst the huge number of corpses of my fallen comrades on the battlefield. Guess what profession of the enemies that 2-shotted us?

By the way, I am wearing exotic gears in all slots except one.

I’m all for a warrior nerf. Most OP class second only to thief. We sissy mesmers and our OP portal, our dodge-able, blind-able, block-able phatasams, and our whopping 5K crits welcome a warrior nerf.

Let’s not even mention the warrior’s “Screw being downed” downed skill….

i thought they patched burst damage from thieves and warriors (killshot)

Heh, dunno why the ele deleted his video. Might be because it took away any ground an ele would ever have to stand on in terms of complaining about damage pumped out by any other class… ever.

The engi toolbelt burst build still works just fine btw. Try it for a few days, seriously. I run it on my engi and wouldn’t respec from it at all at this point. It gibs people so hard in wuvwuv.

Honestly at this point I could care less about warriors getting a nerf. They’re already crap in competitive PvP. The latest state of the game interview basically spelled this out, both by the pro players and Mr. Sharp himself when they talk about warriors being unused and undesired in competitive pvp because they are in a poor state. They’re good at killing noobs. That’s it. That’s pretty much the sentiment expressed by Mr. Sharp as the pros giggle about it claiming “L2P” seeming harsh but being the reality for people complaining about warriors.

Yup, nerf wars. Screw it. Hell, going from unwanted in competitive pvp because the class is pretty kitten to being unwanted in competitive pvp because the class is kitten wouldn’t change much.

Problem isn’t really with Warriors or any other class, or any certain over powered ability… the problem is that people go down too fast in this game period.

Braxxus.2904:

Rifle Engineer 100-0’ing everyone in less than 2 seconds upon initial contact. Most within 1 second
http://youtu.be/PJkTMqJOWvU

That video is of a level 80 glass cannon in full exotics, back in September when the game was new, killing people sidekicked up to 80 wearing their leveling gear 5-10 levels below their own level.

So how much Might did the glass cannon Warrior have, and how much Vulnerability did the glass cannon Ranger have?

Either way, sounds completely fine. That’s what happens when two class cannons meet each other. If you don’t like it, then don’t be a glass cannon, simple as that.

Raincrow.1840:

Problem isn’t really with Warriors or any other class, or any certain over powered ability… the problem is that people go down too fast in this game period.

I disagree, the ends of the bunker/glasscannon spectrum are just a lot further apart than in most games. Critdamage stack is absurd and so is stacking pure defense on something like ele/guardian.

Kill Shot hits like a truck though for sure, the only one I’ve gotten hit by on a fully geared character was 10.8k damage out of the blue; no vuln and warrior had only 3 stacks of might. Medium exotics + 300 toughness.

e: and really, at least half of the classes can push extreme burst with a dedicated build. Thief/Warrior/Ele/Mesmer, Engineer probably as well but nobody plays them.

I don’t say this often but honestly learn to play.

1st. He has to build up all the way to use that KS
2nd Even hasted the war has to take a knee and cast that for 3 good seconds (dodgeroll)
3rd Once casted he must build up to this again or if you’re smart enough to roll – wait a few seconds so he can try to do it again

Warrior bursts do a lot sure but can easily be dodged (HB eviscerate KS) and warriors have sort of a lack of escape spells.

Edit: why is a thief complaining about burst damage?

They can be dodged….. assuming the enemy renders in the first place.

Killshot cannot be compared to other professions skills, because it has much much more drawbacks:

1. adrenaline
2. casttime, therefore hard to land
3. easily dodgable
4. NOT REPEATABLE

Nerf the damage and Killshot becomes entirely useless.

SniffyCube.6107:

I don’t say this often but honestly learn to play.

1st. He has to build up all the way to use that KS
2nd Even hasted the war has to take a knee and cast that for 3 good seconds (dodgeroll)
3rd Once casted he must build up to this again or if you’re smart enough to roll – wait a few seconds so he can try to do it again

Warrior bursts do a lot sure but can easily be dodged (HB eviscerate KS) and warriors have sort of a lack of escape spells.

Edit: why is a thief complaining about burst damage?

1 – Warriors have a signet to instantly gain 3 bars of adrenaline, not to mention the various adrenaline regenerating traits.
2 – it’s 1.75s cast time… And I’d have to assume it is affected by Quickness.
3 – Successfully dodging it does very little since the warrior doesn’t lose adrenaline after failing his ability.

I disagree that perma swiftness, extremely powerful dashes on sword/greatsword, easy condition removal, and highest base defensive stats in the game aren’t good for surviving

Please put some effort into at least coming up with accurate numbers next time

yertle.5837:

1 – Warriors have a signet to instantly gain 3 bars of adrenaline, not to mention the various adrenaline regenerating traits.
2 – it’s 1.75s cast time… And I’d have to assume it is affected by Quickness.
3 – Successfully dodging it does very little since the warrior doesn’t lose adrenaline after failing his ability.

I disagree that perma swiftness, extremely powerful dashes on sword/greatsword, easy condition removal, and highest base defensive stats in the game aren’t good for surviving

Please put some effort into at least coming up with accurate numbers next time

you’re referring to the superb 30/30/30/30/30 build, right?

teg.1340:

Killshot cannot be compared to other professions skills, because it has much much more drawbacks:

1. adrenaline
2. casttime, therefore hard to land
3. easily dodgable
4. NOT REPEATABLE

Nerf the damage and Killshot becomes entirely useless.

Eles say hello, and ask you to compare to churning earth.

teg.1340:

you’re referring to the superb 30/30/30/30/30 build, right?

Obviously you couldn’t have 3 weapon sets, and I guess Warriors are so absurdly tanky they can just go 10/30/0/0/30 and skip useful traits like condition removal on warhorn.

Still, Shake it Off gives you easy condition removal as well as the requisite stunbreak (or do warriors not need one to survive? Haven’t played them a lot, personally found the class quite boring)

Katsumoto.9452:

Thief
OMG 20k damage using all utilities, so once every 45 seconds, with steal-cnd-backstab from melee range and has to hit in the back to pull off that damage. Forum rages calls for nerfs.

Warrior
20k damage, not melee but 1500 range no less, once every 45 seconds i’d guess to charge up the adrenaline, no specific angle required. Forum mentions it but who cares right. Warriors should only get buffs.

kitten?

I didn’t ever mind backstab, still don’t. I don’t particularly mind this either. However get some consistency, if backstab rotations are broken this is too, perhaps even more so.

Yea I noticed that right away. if it was a thief backstab everyone would be going “Yeah they still haven’t nerfed dat kitten”, but it’s a whole different story when it’s about a profession that’s recieved nothing but buffs lmao.

Heavy armor + higher HP pool does not automatically make a tanky class. You have to spec for it (defence, tactics) like any other profession. And Shake it off removes 1 condition every 25s. Not that impressive. Whats your point?

SteepledHat.1345:

I’m all for a warrior nerf. Most OP class second only to thief. We sissy mesmers and our OP portal, our dodge-able, blind-able, block-able phatasams, and our whopping 5K crits welcome a warrior nerf.

Let’s not even mention the warrior’s “Screw being downed” downed skill….

5k crits after the most recent patch?!?! Where!?!?!
I go GS/Staff and with the new patch delaying the phantasm attacks, they either miss the enemy or are killed before they can even swing, meanwhile I’m left with my GS auto attack and mirror blade which hit under 2k.

Playing Warrior in WvW.

The way the traits are setup, I can either go for:
tank + heal & buff + low damage
tank + cc & utility + low damage
medium armor/life + medium damage (balanced build dps/survivability)
glass + cannon
(These being the extremes you can go for)

Going for KS glass-cannon is by no means easy:
– you need complete Berserker’s equip (takes a while, is not for free
– your utility will all focus on that one skill
– you’re only going to be useful in WvW zerg-situations (1v1, 5v5, siege/def much less so)
– Coupled with this you’ve got low survivability, no buffs for your group, no utility to get out of cc/sticky situations.
– people who are downed often get raised. Shooting them dead at range takes forever, meanwhile you’re not doing damage against the opponent team.

I’m not fully Berserk yet and I hit 10-13k. Once I have the remaining armor I’ll hopefully be able to get 15k and very situationaly more (fully buffed with 25 stacks of Might & enemy needs to be bleeding).

It’s not overpowered in my eyes. You’re sacrificing everything else the class has to offer in order to increase the damage-spike on one slow-casting burst-skill. It’s a one-trick pony, other classes also have these.

Does it need nerfed? Absolutely, along with the thief burst and all other super burst builds. With the lowest base health being 10k you should see 5k hits at most.

This game cannot even begin balancing classes until they balance the stats. Power/precision/crit damage scales so much better than all the other stats. Condition damage is left miles behind due to it’s scaling and the large amount of removal abilities/traits. Healing power is an absolute joke for most classes. Toughness can only mitigate power at a 1:1 but since crit/crit damage multiplies it out it’s left in the dust.

They have a few options. Add a new stat that reduces the chance of being crit, reduce the amount of precision on current gear(or nerf how much precision=1% crit), or make sure precision and crit damage don’t occur on the same gear. Then make it so healing power and heals in general are EQUAL to damage. If a thief wants to stack healing power and use on-hit heals to stay alive then let him! Condition damage needs to either be increased or make it able to crit. Lastly, remove the huge base HP gaps that classes get for no logical reason. Armor types should be useable by all classes but each having their own pros/cons.

Once all that’s finally ironed out we can begin balancing classes. Suddenly that thief has to worry about stacking crit vs crit damage. Does he crit more but for less damage or crit less for high damage? Perhaps middle of the road. Condition builds will become much more viable. Healing/vampire builds will actually be possible and poison suddenly becomes more important/tactical. You will actually have to have some skills to win a fight instead of insta-gib combos and <10s fights.

Katsumoto.9452:

Thief
OMG 20k damage using all utilities, so once every 45 seconds, with steal-cnd-backstab from melee range and has to hit in the back to pull off that damage. Forum rages calls for nerfs.

Warrior
20k damage, not melee but 1500 range no less, once every 45 seconds i’d guess to charge up the adrenaline, no specific angle required. Forum mentions it but who cares right. Warriors should only get buffs.

kitten?

I didn’t ever mind backstab, still don’t. I don’t particularly mind this either. However get some consistency, if backstab rotations are broken this is too, perhaps even more so.

Backstab is only broken right now because of culling.

Thief players kitten and moan and bad as the QQers

Pvp.2758:

Engineer video was in September.

Ele video is deleted.

Rangers could 100-0 people during beta but we are talking about now, not then.

Good to know you are not up on the times.

Josh P.1296:

Lol this is exactly right, but there are so many dopey kitten on this forum who are, as you said “glass cannon this, glass cannon that” and don’t know kitten.

I know they guy you are quoting is pretty much glass cannon….he just switches crit damage for vit.

Mif.3471:

Braxxus.2904:

Rifle Engineer 100-0’ing everyone in less than 2 seconds upon initial contact. Most within 1 second
http://youtu.be/PJkTMqJOWvU

That video is of a level 80 glass cannon in full exotics, back in September when the game was new, killing people sidekicked up to 80 wearing their leveling gear 5-10 levels below their own level.

This is why context is important.

OP: You’re a full glasscannon spec with base health. So uhm, why didnt you just dodge that Kill shot or just daze him with SB5?

Kill shot is no different than what other classes can do at range if specced for it. My engi does the same amount of damage just as quickly. Heck jump shot on its own will do roughly 10k damage vs a glasscannon, then followed by blunderbuss for 6-7k. And neither of those are hard to get off after a lovely net.

And if you dont wanna risk getting that close you have your toolbelt skills that will (with the right spec) instagib any glasscannon in seconds.

Goggles+Diagnostics → Unload your arsenal of goodies.

Kill shot is possibly THE most situational ability in GW2. As you mentioned, crits over 10k only happen when one glass cannon hits another glass cannon. Random screen shots of omglookatthatdamage are of little value since there’s no contextual information regarding other factors such as vulnerability and might stacks.

A thief can kill a class cannon warrior in 3-4 seconds coming out of stealth. In fact, anyone that gets in melee range of a GC warrior is going to completely shut the class down. Any ranged damage forces the GC warrior to have to reposition, and AoE and ground effect attacks prohibit the use of Rifle Shot given the 2+ second cast time.

As anyone who spends time in WvW knows, battles tend to be very mobile affairs. In medium to large battles, Kill Shot tends to be ineffective. A warrior must run up to within 1500 meters of the enemy, then kneel down for 2+ seconds before firing a shot. Even if the shot happens to hit (a big if), it’s not going to one shot anyone, and the person who is hit will simply move to the back of his group and heal up, since all the other Rifle abilities are 1200 range and the warrior has no ability to follow up on that one shot. Most of the decent rifle warriors just switch to long bow for mid to large scale battles.

In small groups battles of 3-8, GC rifle warriors can sometimes be effective, but only against inexperienced or poorly skilled opponents. Most enemies know enough that the dude kneeling every 10 seconds trying to take someone’s head off shouldn’t be left alone. In any sort of even match up, a single player can completely negate the effectiveness of a GC rifle warrior by getting into melee range with him. In this situation, the warrior has to run or he will die. And running usually only works if the enemy gives up and decides to focus on someone else. Against players of even mediocre skill, a Rifle warrior is much more effective with toughness and vitality gear instead of glass cannon gear.

Where GC Rifle Warriors really excel, and what gets all the headlines with the “Nerf Kill Shot” posts, is in situations where the enemy is vastly outnumbered. A GC rifle warrior involved in a 3 on 1, 5 on 2, or 12 on 3 battle is going to do extremely well because not only are they likely to be left alone, but the enemy is also going to be so worried about everyone else that they’re far less likely to notice the Kill Shot animation in time to dodge. With stacks of vulnerability and might, a GC rifle warrior can sometimes crit a lone enemy for 11-12k damage. Of course, the fact that the enemy was going to die due to being outnumbered whether the warrior was there or not does little to stop people from posting a screen shot and complaining about it.

The bottom line is that a Glass Cannon Rifle Warrior is only effective when fighting completely new players or when they already greatly outnumber the enemy to the point that the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Anet sees this as well, as they often use the warrior class to point out the difficulty in balancing classes for both the casual player and the hardcore. There’s a reason you rarely see warriors in tPvP, and that’s because skilled players can easily mitigate warrior effectiveness.

yertle.5837:

1 – Warriors have a signet to instantly gain 3 bars of adrenaline, not to mention the various adrenaline regenerating traits.

Signet of Fury is on a 30 second cool down and gives warrior’s full adrenalin. Adrenal regeneration traits are pretty useless since a Rifle warrior rarely has time to wait around to for adrenalin to tick up to full.

2 – it’s 1.75s cast time… And I’d have to assume it is affected by Quickness.

The actual cast time is 2.2 seconds, which is an eternity in a game where most abilities are insta-cast. It is affected by quickness, although it only seems to shave about .75 seconds of the cast time.

3 – Successfully dodging it does very little since the warrior doesn’t lose adrenaline after failing his ability.

Successfully dodging Kill Shot starts the 10 second refresh timer before the warrior can fire again. Are you really going to stand around for 10 seconds and let him get off his next shot? Giving a glass cannon of any class 10 seconds to tee off on you, especially when you’re a glass cannon yourself is going to get you killed.

I disagree that perma swiftness, extremely powerful dashes on sword/greatsword, easy condition removal, and highest base defensive stats in the game aren’t good for surviving

You’re assuming that a warrior can spec all his trait lines and load all his skills and abilities at the same time. Please point out the specific build, weapon, ability, and gear load out that you consider overpowered and I will give you a detailed analysis of the pluses and minuses of it. It’ll be a far more effective way to evaluate class balance than just throwing a bunch of empty superlatives. Imagine if we listed every possible thing any thief of any build, weapon, gear, rune, and sigel set was ever able to do. Anyone who didn’t actually understand the class would certainly say, “Yeah, that sounds overpowered.”

WvW + Zerg + Culling + Higher Range = Dodge is not an option -.-
Warrior: Range + 19k hp (in that picture)
Thief: No range + No hp + No toughness

ErlendR.6107:

WvW + Zerg + Culling + Higher Range = Dodge is not an option -.-

Once again, a warrior cannot have every trait at the same time, and any build that includes Improved Culling comes at a significant trade off in other areas.

Some bad Warriors in here. You do not have to give up damage, for defense.

My Warrior has over 3k attack, 3k armor, 27k hit points, and 70% critical once I enter combat. Slot the Superior Sigil that grants 30% chance to lifesteal on crit, and use the food that grans 66% to lifesteal on crit, while utilizing shout heals on top of one of your weapon sets being two weapons, so the second weapon gives lifesteal on weapon swap, and you’re doing both insane damage, and have insane defense capabilities.

In WvW my Warrior hands down is tankier than my Guardian, and my Warrior can do easily 5 times the damage my Guardian does. I’ve shown other Warriors complaining about their class that I can solo Supply Camps, with the Claimant having the immunity buff, and keep him busy until the buff wears off, and kill him. Not once getting below half health.

Warriors do not need to do that much damage with Kill Shot, or Eviscerate in order to be viable, and in a game where you’re paying attention to more than just the Warriors, you’re going to get hit with these abilities, and Kill Shot also works with Piercing. When I was running with a Rifle, I’d get multiple high hits, as the shot traveled its full distance.

Skilled players don’t fear balance, they welcome it.