[PvP][Warrior] A Less Passive Warrior

[PvP][Warrior] A Less Passive Warrior

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Posted by: Jzaku.9765

Jzaku.9765

Important things to note before reading this thread!

  • I maintain faith that condition application will be looked at by Anet eventually and these changes take that into account
  • I feel all classes need to be toned down due to the power creep but am only experienced enough with Warrior to post changes related to it

A big problem with Warrior is how forgiving it is to play. The goal of these changes aim to:
1) Promote build diversity by putting pressure off “compulsory” traits and skills.
2) Make a little bit more effort required to achieve what used to be things we used to achieve nigh-passively.


  • Longbow burst skill, Combustive Shot, now fails to proc and expend Adrenaline when used under the Blind condition. Also, the radius in which it fails to proc when casted on top of a blocking or invulnerable target has been increased.

- This standardizes all of the Warrior burst skills to be have the same weakness: being hard to utilize Cleansing Ire when fighting a class with blinds and blocks/aegis. This change will reduce Longbow’s ability to cleanse conditions with impunity when combined with CI, requiring more thought from the user in times of need. Longbow is still a great option for it’s utility skillset (rare for a Warrior!).

Surely one day Brawler’s Recovery will be actually good so we aren’t pigeonholed into specific Weapons to deal with Blind spam. Or blind is reverted back to being cleansed on attacks that don’t hit the target. #BelieveinKarl


  • Hammer burst skill, Earthshaker, now is only a blast finisher at maximum Adrenaline.

- This change aims to reduce the might stacking ability of hambow; the Trait Burst Mastery they usually run allows the build to retain 1 bar of adrenaline after using Combustive Shot, just enough to blast right into the fire field for 3 stacks of might. On the other hand, this nerf does not significantly affect other builds that run Hammer for the control/damage aspect of it and don’t happen to always have a field up for them to want to blast finisher it.


  • Berserker’s Stance shaved down to 6s of Condition Immunity. Cooldown reduced to 55s. This skill cleanses Blind on use.

- This change aims to reduce the window of opportunity BS provides, but increase it’s overall reliability in a match with a shorter cooldown. If you do the math, this change is only a 2.42% uptime nerf but the Warrior best have a plan when activating BS or he’ll have just entirely wasted it. This skill should rightfully be the Endure Pain variant of conditions, however it was lasting too long to properly draw parallel to it’s more-balanced counterpart. In keeping with it not being a stunbreak to prevent another 3x stunbreak build, it’s more effective at what it does.


  • Cleansing Ire reduced down to cleansing 2 Conditions at max adrenaline, also 2 condition at 2 bars, and 1 condition at 1 bar.

- This trait is just way too good and completely pigeonholes warrior into 20 points in Defense. On top of the all-but-obligatory 15 points into Discipline that is a lot of pigeonholing. Additionally, it’s interaction with Longbow Burst in it’s current iteration further pigeonholes Warrior specs into always running Longbow in nigh every viable build.


A bunch of other Condition cleanse options for Warrior have been improved -

  • Mending prioritizes cleansing damaging conditions and heals slightly more (still less than Surge)
  • Shake it Off now cleanses 2 conditions
  • Quick Breathing now causes Call to Arms to convert 2 conditions (Charge! still converts only 1).

- This change aims to provide alternative means of condition cleansing to the warrior – Now you can choose to stack different means to achieve the same effectiveness, but CI isn’t the one stop shop for cleansing any more. Imagine running an actually good Mending + Shake it Off and being free to allocate that 20 trait points into Defense elsewhere!


  • Building Momentum now reads “Burst skills restore endurance, scaling with Adrenaline spent.”
    Stage 1 : 15%
    Stage 2 : 30%
    Stage 3 : 40%

- Credits go to BurrTheKing.8571(i think) for his original thread that doesn’t exist any more for this idea. The purpose of this change is to move Warriors away from passive defenses towards active defenses – instead of face-tanking and being effective this kind of trait encourages skillful play.

Continued in the next post..

(edited by Jzaku.9765)

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Posted by: Jzaku.9765

Jzaku.9765

  • Healing skill changes!

  • Mending now prioritizes cleansing damaging conditions, and heals 5740(1.2).

- If you actually calculate it out, Mending already had a decent HPS. This change aims to improve it’s reliability as a condition cleanse without traiting 10 into Strength and effectiveness as an actual heal – Improving it’s base heal to slightly above a rank 2 Healing Surge and improving it’s scaling with healing power.


  • Healing Surge now reads:
    Cooldown: 25s
    Adrenaline: 30
    [Adrenaline level]: [Base Healing] (Scaling with Healing Power)
    Stage 0 : 6,094 (1.40)
    Stage 1 : 6,540 (1.40)
    Stage 2 : 7,361 (1.45)
    Stage 3 : 8,837 (1.50)

- This is quite a comprehensive change. The goal of reducing it’s cooldown is to increase the frequency where you can take advantage of it’s secondary effect of restoring Adrenaline. The healing values have, of course, been reduced by an appropriate amount to take into account this new cooldown (At max adrenaline, it’s exactly the same HPS as it’s old 30s CD version). Additionally, the healing provided by this skill at lower rungs of adrenaline have been significantly increased. It’s clearly still a significant advantage to heal at maximum adrenaline, but now it’s not entirely terrible should you be forced to use it otherwise. The biggest impact should be to getting back into a fight after being rallied – As in that situation you would have 0 adrenaline.


  • Healing Signet (passive) now reads “Receive a small heal when you Weapon Swap.” It retains its approximate healing strength assuming you swap weapons every time it’s available.

- This change aims to add an active component to utilise healing signet properly. Of course, it inevitably has to be balanced around the warrior already having Fast Hands. Swapping weapons every cooldown to retain the high healing the signet could give you has the potential to put the warrior in very compromising positions – being on the wrong weapon set at the wrong time and finding it hard to execute cross weapon combos such as the infamous skull crack – 100b combo of old.

  • Healing Signet (active) now reads “0.75s cast time. 20s CD. Heal, and reset your weapon swap cooldown.” The approximate healing strength if you use it every CD is 70% the strength of if you took full advantage of the passive instead with Fast Hands and everything.

- The goal of this change is to create redundancy if you had traited for Fast Hands, thus the only reason you’d use the active would be as an emergency heal, as it is now. Simultaneously, it also aims to provide great utility to warriors if you didn’t trait for Fast Hands – putting some pressure off the trait due to it’s importance to the class. That way the signet retains it’s usefulness to all builds – the passive is good if you traited for Fast Hands, and the active is good if you didn’t.


  • Bull’s Charge’s cooldown has been reduced to 35s.
    - The physical skilltype needs help, and I feel a big problem lies in their cooldowns for sub-par effects. This change aims to increase the frequency Bull’s Charge is available in combat – allowing you to feel less terrible about missing it or using it as a gap-maker/escape.

  • Kick now breaks stun. It’s now instant-cast with the exact same animation delay and aftercast.
    - Traited, this will be the shortest CD stunbreak available in the game short of pseudo-stunbreaks like Phase Retreat and iLeap>Swap. I feel this will make up for the plethora of other problems Kick presents for it’s effect – being affected by blind, rooting you for the duration, and being kind of hard to land. This also adds another skill that actually works well with our new trait, Rousing Resilience, bringing the total number of skills that could be described that way from 1 all the way up to 2. That’s a 100% increase!

(edited by Jzaku.9765)

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Posted by: Jzaku.9765

Jzaku.9765

Reserved for great justice.

(edited by Jzaku.9765)

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Posted by: Spicyhash.7605

Spicyhash.7605

I don’t think healing signet should be reduced by 33%. Seems too much. 8% might be fine, but they should also make it so that healing signet stops working when you’re blocking, invulnerable, or dodging.

Also, how about making it so you can only use one stance at a time? Warriors are already so over the top and then added with 8s (utility + trait) of full damage invulnerability and 8s of fully condition immunity is just so ridiculous. Then you also get 8s of stability with balanced stance and then another 8s if traited for it. It’s just too much. All stances should overwrite each other so you have to strategically use them and not just spam them with GS5 (which should also require a target) and have a 100% chance of escaping.

Warriors cannot have the best everything, it’s just lame. The best CC, damage, armor, health, and mobility/survivability/sustain/whatever in the game.

CD

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Posted by: bobomb.5209

bobomb.5209

1.) longbow change = good. While it has the same physics as somehow blinding the explosion of an engineers bomb, from a purely mechanic standpoint this is a reasonable change and would promote more reactionary gameplay.

2.) This change is simply unreasonable. If a warrior would like to waste his 3 second stun that you get from max adrenaline and put the burst skill on a cooldown be my guest. Since warrior lack any significant finishers getting rid of one of the only good ones warriors have is simply asinine.

3.) This is simply a horrible idea. You say this would be a heal for more aggressive playstyles but how can you be aggressive when you will be dead? 33% reduction on healing signet at 0 healing power is approximately 263 (rounded up). This is simply not good enough. perhaps a 12% nerf? And the only use that I can think of for a 15% damage increase for 3 hits would be for an eviscerate build. Which would completely be overpowered because you can already stack ungodly amounts of increased damage for the axe.

4.) This would be a good change. No other class I know has a 3 condition cleanse on a (at best) 7 second cooldown and would promote saving adrenaline so that you can align the stars and simultaneously cleanse your conditions while delivering the enemy a crippling blow.

5.) The healing increase to Mending is direly needed. And if the condition cleansing options for warrior are nerfed you might see this healing skill actually USED. I am skeptical about “Shake it Off” cleansing two conditions because, while cleansing two conditions every 25 seconds AND being a stun breaker is pretty nice, pairing it with superior runes of the Soldier makes it cleanse 3, and traiting shouts makes the cooldown 20 seconds. A 20 second stunbreak that cleanses 3 conditions. The Warhorn change seems decent, as “Call to Arms” has a fairly long cooldown.

6.) seems like a tooltip fix rather than a balancing issue, but ok.

These are just my thoughts. Hope the correspondence helps.

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Posted by: Jzaku.9765

Jzaku.9765

Stuff

Thank you for your detailed feedback!

For the hammer change, if you think about it, using earthshaker purely for the blast finisher and not a stun is a terrible idea. You put it on cooldown and probably expend your adrenaline hitting some random minion. The goal was to weaken hambow without significantly impacting other builds, and this seemed to fit the bill. Warrior still has other blast finisher options on longbow and warhorn (and stomp whenever they feel like making it less awful), and still allows coordinating with your allies for a Max adrenaline blast finisher if you want to.

Perhaps I was too hasty with the healing signet change. I feel like it is one of the main reasons warriors can’t get any more respect nowadays and really feel a functionality change is in order. How about weakening it by 10% total from how it is now, and the active changes to “instant cast. 10s CD. Your weapon swap comes off cooldown. This skill does not heal you when activated.” That puts some pressure off fast hands, promotes activating healing signet, and now burst damage is definitely a counter since it’s now entirely a HoT.

As for shake it off, I think you are entitled that great condition cleanse if you get a runeset specifically for it. Runes of the soldier really don’t offer that much aside from the 6th bonus unlike lyssa. Also, you’d use it as EITHER a stun break OR a condition cleanse most of the time, the only time it’s conveniently both I can think of off the top of my head is when a condition necro nukes you. I think the change would promote actually using shake it off considering how unused it is now.

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Posted by: perko.8309

perko.8309

I like the Bow/Hammer suggestions.
Your HS nerf is way too harsh. Also, I would keep the activate part defensive – perhaps a 2 sec Aegis(?) that would have to be timed well to reward better players.
I also agree with only 1 stance at a time and cutting Rush down to range 900.
For “Shake It Off” 1 condi clear isn’t enough and 2 may be too much. Perhaps something flavorful that would lend itself to be shaken off like, for example, clears fear and confusion + 1 condi. That would most often be only 1 clear, but with some added benefits in keeping with the theme of a brave warrior.

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Posted by: Blackjack.2083

Blackjack.2083

These changes would make warrior worse than they were before to be honest…..and back then they were at the bottom of the food chain. Why? Because we have had a series of nerfs to our damage output, at least in power builds, over the last few patches to compensate for the sustain we got. Now if if you nerf the sustain and have nerfed the damage than that’s a bad combo. This next patch is going to see some more direct nerfing of damage to hammer and LB…..both of which have already been nerfed.

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Posted by: Phaeton.9582

Phaeton.9582

Think the OP just needs to learn how to duel warriors rofl…


Phaatonn, London UK

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Posted by: Jzaku.9765

Jzaku.9765

These changes would make warrior worse than they were before to be honest…..and back then they were at the bottom of the food chain. Why? Because we have had a series of nerfs to our damage output, at least in power builds, over the last few patches to compensate for the sustain we got. Now if if you nerf the sustain and have nerfed the damage than that’s a bad combo. This next patch is going to see some more direct nerfing of damage to hammer and LB…..both of which have already been nerfed.

We were the absolute worst in PvP back when cleansing ire didn’t exist! Berserker stance also didn’t give condition immunity and our healing skills had received a huge balance pass between now and then. We have sustain options now, except that 1) they are our ONLY options and 2) they are a tad too strong. I’m aiming to provide diversity with these changes while toning down what is almost unanimously the best warrior build and the compulsory traits. Do not fear change!

Also, I too feel like nerfing the damage on longbow and hammer is completely barking up the wrong tree, but I can’t do anything about what’s already happened. That doesn’t mean that nothing is wrong with the way things are now though.

Think the OP just needs to learn how to duel warriors rofl…

Right, considering I’ve been playing warrior since beta I’m definitely posting this out of a personal vendetta against warriors. If it gives a better perspective though I don’t think ONLY warrior should be toned down, I think every class does across the board for enjoyable play but I only feel qualified enough to suggest warrior changes.

Meanwhile, I have changed the healing signet portion of the op after reading feedback. I strongly suggest rereading it and posting your opinions!

(edited by Jzaku.9765)

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Posted by: Phaeton.9582

Phaeton.9582

Ok dude, this my feedback

- blinding combustive shot would make warriors get facerolled by condi classes. It can however be blocked currently although this could be made easier. A big problem here though is the lack of viable builds with aoe missile deflection that works on it. Eg if there was a viable build around ele focus we’d see much more counter play. It should be left to none condi classes for the role of blocking combustive shot however.


Phaatonn, London UK

(edited by Phaeton.9582)

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Posted by: Jzaku.9765

Jzaku.9765

Ok dude, this my feedback

- blinding combustive shot would make warriors get facerolled by condi classes. It can however be blocked currently although this could be made easier. A big problem here though is the lack of viable builds with aoe missile deflection that works on it. Eg if there was a viable build around ele focus we’d see much more counter play. It should be left to none condi classes for the role of blocking combustive shot however.

- cleansing ire should cleanse two conditions at max adrenaline when traited with burst mastery. It’s this combination that makes it spammy, without it cleansing ire is an excellent mechanic.

Thank you for joining in the discussion!

About longbow burst, I feel like blind spam countering HAS to come from something outside exclusively longbow, preferably one that all builds can utilise for diversity’s sake. Outside of brand new traits or reverting blind back to being cleansed on any attack I don’t see this happening though. The new cleanse blind on swap trait is a start but as it is now it’s really bad, especially for a grandmaster. Also, I did actually suggest for blocking ranged aoe to be easier in the combustive shot change so we are in agreement there. I’d wager that’s it’s much easier to change it to interact better with an existing mechanic than to add new skills across all classes to implement a counter to it.

As for cleansing ire, that is a really interesting idea! I remember warriors being really concerned when the trait was announced that this exact interaction of these 2 traits was the case. However, I still think that cleansing ire is too over budget for its master slot relative to all other cleanse options in the game, especially taking into account the Embrace the Pain baked into it. My suggestion is also linked to increasing the viability of other cleansing options for warrior to make up for the nerf to CI, imagine actually running Mending for once because it was actually GOOD. (Also I am secretly optimistic that maybe Anet will get their act together and nerf condition application across the board for PvP)

(edited by Jzaku.9765)

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Posted by: Paavotar.3971

Paavotar.3971

Interesting ideas indeed. Heres a few words from me as well.

Put an ICD in CI. A lot of people have suggested this to balance out CI. Most people have said to put something like 7s CD, but I would go as far as putting 15s CD to it. This way it wouldn’t be that spammy and it could still clean 3 conditions.

What comes to Stances, I would really agree that only one can be up at a time, canceling each other out (exception being the trait that gives EP @ 25%). With this in mind, balanced stance should actually be made into real stance and not granting stability. Make it so it’s actual stance and can’t be taken away from warrior for the duration of the stability. This would also deny stability stacking you can do with guardian so that warriors can’t have insanely high amounts of stability uptime with this skill.

Berzerker stance. Either make it 60% condition reduction or decrease the duration to 4 seconds. As it is now, it is too powerful against some builds.

I did have a suggestion thread about warrior stances, but it kinda got drowned in all the tears, but meh.

A Pink scumbag of [FACE] and deep inside a [GuM]ster
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Posted by: Phaeton.9582

Phaeton.9582

Ok guys if you want more feedback (bearing in mind I’ve said this all a 100 times before and know this forum gets ignored).

I made a thread about countering blind spam and it’s reliance on longbow in the winter. The idea was to make the burst skill on greatsword not require a target to generate fury, and use the guardian pull animation. This would make it’s f1 more useful and make GS Axe a tad more viable, which was the only ever vaugly skill based build on the warrior.

As for replacing cleansing ire with an alternative to condi removal, I’m not sure it’s a great idea. Cleansing ire has excellent visual counter play, even if it is too strong combined with burst mastery. Skills such as mending and shake it off are just hard cooldowns, and are boring to play against ppl (you can control/predict the enemy warriors gameplay far less with those).

What would largely solve these problems would be to slow down the projectile speed of combustive shot, giving players time to block it..


Phaatonn, London UK

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Posted by: Phaeton.9582

Phaeton.9582

Any by slowing the projectile speed I mean increasing the distance traveled along the z axis; as most of the time the aoe is close to the warriors feet.


Phaatonn, London UK

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Posted by: silentnight warrior.2714

silentnight warrior.2714

Lets wait to see what the incoming nerfs to hammer/longbow/HS and lyssa will do to the warrior and then we could see what needs adjustments.

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Posted by: Cush.4063

Cush.4063

Make warrior have base health of Ele. Warrior fixed.

Hehe :p

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Posted by: Stand The Wall.6987

Stand The Wall.6987

Maybe change healing signet to work based off of how much crit damage and/or precision one has? So GC warriors dont have the same regen as a full tank warrior.
EDIT or based off of how much adrenaline the warrior has, since GC warriors are encouraged to spend adren to deal damage.

Team Deathmatch for PvP – Raise the AoE cap for WvW – More unique events for PvE

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Posted by: nicknamenick.2437

nicknamenick.2437

first thing i read is: is too strong right now in PvP….

You want to nerf

(again.. number 4 nerf on longbow) combustive shot.
Doesnt matter if you get blinded or not or the hit radius.. you drop an aoe on the ground. even blinded you can drop it..

Again nerfs for hammer..

Nerf on cleansing ire, only removes 2 conditions on full adrenaline and zero on 1 adrenaline bar?
But you give more condition remove options on warhorn trait etc.. this will only hurt more builds because now cleansing ire issnt enough so you need another trait for more cleansing..

Anet already nerfed so many damage on longbow and hammer.. (even other weapons) after we get sustain, if you nerf our sustain now also we are worse than before.

just no

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Posted by: Jzaku.9765

Jzaku.9765

Thank you for all your feedback so far! There are some interesting ideas and it’s really unfortunate that I cannot reply properly on my mobile phone. One big thing I did take away though is that perhaps cleansing ire does not deserve as much of a nerf as I thought. I think the visual counterplay options brought up by phateon is an excellent point, there aren’t many skills more flagrantly telegraphed than warrior burst skills. Adding an icd to it though I feel adds a terrible unreliability element to the trait. I can’t count the numbers of times leg specialist has failed me when I needed it most because it was activated by some other random cripple.
What do you guys think about 2-2-1 conditions cleansed relative to adrenaline level? Warriors are still painfully pigeonholed into getting the trait because it’s just so good.

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Posted by: Bunschii.2918

Bunschii.2918

No

/15 char

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Posted by: Citanul.5163

Citanul.5163

We have a nerf incoming to Healing Signet, which will probably be enough, howevere make it heal more when Active & you´ll see it used more like a healing skill.

Bow is getting a nerf already. Add in a cd on cleansing ire, say 15-20 secs & voila, no more OP warrior Hambow builds, it will open up for more different builds

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Posted by: Jzaku.9765

Jzaku.9765

We have a nerf incoming to Healing Signet, which will probably be enough, howevere make it heal more when Active & you´ll see it used more like a healing skill.

Bow is getting a nerf already. Add in a cd on cleansing ire, say 15-20 secs & voila, no more OP warrior Hambow builds, it will open up for more different builds

The problem is that the wrong thing is constantly being nerfed. I really don’t think damage is the problem with hambow anyway, it’s how forgiving the spec is to play.
Besides, damage nerfs won’t open up diversity. Cleansing ire is still a requirement for warriors because it’s too good and or other cleansing options too bad. This in turns strongly promotes running hammer because you’re already 20 into its trait tree. Longbow is still the only weapon that guarantees the cleanse from CI so it’ll still be compulsory. Build diversity will still be pretty awful.

Also,

Adding an icd to it though I feel adds a terrible unreliability element to the trait. I can’t count the numbers of times leg specialist has failed me when I needed it most because it was activated by some other random cripple.

(edited by Jzaku.9765)

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Posted by: Sube Dai.8496

Sube Dai.8496

Warriors are fine in PvP, the problem is how to balance them for WvW…

John Snowman [GLTY]
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Posted by: bobomb.5209

bobomb.5209

howevere make it heal more when Active & you´ll see it used more like a healing skill.

God forbid a healing skill should be used like a healing skill

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Posted by: Jzaku.9765

Jzaku.9765

Regarding Stances – A big part of the complaints and clamouring over making them unable to stack is that a Warrior is able to achieve pseudo-invulnerability with none of the drawbacks by stacking them. What makes me extremely skeptical about this complaint is that by doing so, a Warrior has used up at least 2 utility slots with long cooldowns [Endure Pain] and [Berserker’s Stance], 3 if he went the full mile for [Balanced Stance] to be immune to CC. He’s just used up all his utility skills (1-2 of them being stunbreaks) for that short window of true invulnerability! I really think that he completely deserves that moment of opportunity as it means he’s without stunbreaks or get-out-of-jail-free cards for the next (minimally) 40s.

That’s not to say I’m opposed to the change. If we couldn’t stack stances any more I’d definitely advocate Balanced Stance being turned into an actual unstrippable boon like the other stances.

(edited by Jzaku.9765)

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Posted by: bobomb.5209

bobomb.5209

Agreed and I am elaborating on it.

I completely agree and I’ve said it to others in-game. A warrior has to use up 3 utilities or 2 utilities while going 30 into defense just to achieve what other classes have in one utility. Therefore it is completely unreasonable to complain about these skills. The only problem is that other classes don’t heal with healing signet while they are invulnerable. Therefore Healing Signet should be changed. But that is beside the point here.

The following opinions are based off of PvP and general activities related to warriors performing in PvP:

If there ever was a change to stances I don’t see how they could be justified. Stances are in a good place right now. The only problem i see (and a problem with warriors in general) is that they have no “active” skills. Look at their skills.

Banners – AoE passive buff to player and allies within radius of banner, can be traited for shorter cooldown and larger area of buff.

Shouts – More buffs to allies but warriors tend to spam them for the immediate buff/debuff, rather than actually planning the use of the skills. After all why wait to buff yourself when you can do it now? And on a (traited) shout build they cleanse conditions (Superior Rune of the Soldier) Heal the player (depends on Healing power but base 1,800 or so) And have a low cooldown, making it more viable to spam them for their properties rather than saving them for strategic play.

Stances – more passive play going on here. While these are a bit more forgivable because of their great benefit, and the fact they have long CD making spamming them/using them without reason fatal.

Signets – Like stances but a bit weaker. These skills have a passive and active component that are equally useful (aside from the infamous Healing Signet) These skills are also fairly balanced and provide strong self buffs to the warrior without sacrificing utility. The only problem is with group play. But what am I talking about? We all know people compare balance with 1v1’s (which isn’t how you should go about it at all).

Physical – The only “Active” skills that a warrior possess and can be used effectively by intelligent warriors. These skills can be highly effective but rarely are.

Just a simple overview of functionality and overall descriptions of the utilities a warrior possesses

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Posted by: CntrlAltDefeat.1465

CntrlAltDefeat.1465

It seems painfully obvious to me that ALL of the warrior balance changes have been based around 2 builds only. Hambow and Duel sword condi. It sincerely believe that applying changes to an entire profession and all of it applicable builds off of 2 builds that rose to the surface as being uber strong is not good for the profession in the long run. Hard changes needed to be made to these 2 builds, over hard changes to the entire profession. The simplest and easiest change that could have been made would have been move Merciless hammer from master trait to any of other trait line. This way it didn’t pair with also getting grand master status in the healing/toughness line in order to have it. Currently the typical is dogged march>cleansing>merciless hammer+30 in healing/toughness.

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Posted by: Jzaku.9765

Jzaku.9765

It seems painfully obvious to me that ALL of the warrior balance changes have been based around 2 builds only. Hambow and Duel sword condi. It sincerely believe that applying changes to an entire profession and all of it applicable builds off of 2 builds that rose to the surface as being uber strong is not good for the profession in the long run. Hard changes needed to be made to these 2 builds, over hard changes to the entire profession. The simplest and easiest change that could have been made would have been move Merciless hammer from master trait to any of other trait line. This way it didn’t pair with also getting grand master status in the healing/toughness line in order to have it. Currently the typical is dogged march>cleansing>merciless hammer+30 in healing/toughness.

The problem with all condition builds in general, I think, is that Condition Damage alone is good enough to provide you enough damage source to kill people. This in turn lets you stack 2 other defensive stats allowing for ludicrous tank builds that can still do huge damage. That’s really a problem for all condition builds and will only be resolved by taking a hard look at condi in general. There’s also the ease of condi application to factor in, but I’d say that doesn’t relate to Warrior S/S that much outside of Impale (which really has a pretty good telegraph already).

I’m not so sure about moving Merciless Hammer into another tree, as that not only affects Hambow but every warr build that tries to run Hammer in general. What are you trying to accomplish with that change? Let’s say you take the most obvious route and move it to the Strength traitline. Without a change to CI, that’s minimum 20 into defense because it’s too good to pass up, minimum 15 into Fast Hands because Hammer in itself isn’t enough to kill anyone, minimum 20 into Strength for Merciless Hammer as it’s terrible without the cooldown reductions… and you have 15 points actually available as a choice for you. That’s just really awful for diversity.

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Posted by: Jzaku.9765

Jzaku.9765

I’ve finally decided on an interesting change to the way healing signet functions, and have edited the OP accordingly. I would love to hear your opinions on this suggested change!

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Posted by: bobomb.5209

bobomb.5209

I’ve finally decided on an interesting change to the way healing signet functions, and have edited the OP accordingly. I would love to hear your opinions on this suggested change!

It’s interesting but I assure you not everyone would like it. However as to the extra benefit of someone using the healing skill who doesn’t use fast hands. Perhaps a buff such as protection or aegis? Or a smaller heal but is AoE?

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Posted by: Phaeton.9582

Phaeton.9582

I’ve finally decided on an interesting change to the way healing signet functions, and have edited the OP accordingly. I would love to hear your opinions on this suggested change!

It’s interesting but I assure you not everyone would like it. However as to the extra benefit of someone using the healing skill who doesn’t use fast hands. Perhaps a buff such as protection or aegis? Or a smaller heal but is AoE?

Everyone uses fast hands. It’s the most mandatory trait in the game.

I like the idea. A heal every 5 seconds has much more counter play and you get control over it!


Phaatonn, London UK

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Posted by: bobomb.5209

bobomb.5209

I’ve finally decided on an interesting change to the way healing signet functions, and have edited the OP accordingly. I would love to hear your opinions on this suggested change!

It’s interesting but I assure you not everyone would like it. However as to the extra benefit of someone using the healing skill who doesn’t use fast hands. Perhaps a buff such as protection or aegis? Or a smaller heal but is AoE?

Everyone uses fast hands. It’s the most mandatory trait in the game.

I like the idea. A heal every 5 seconds has much more counter play and you get control over it!

Not everyone is a warrior, therefore not everyone uses fast hands. Not every warrior uses fast hands, therefore why make a change to healing signet that not everyone can use? In it’s current form it is useful to most all builds but the change would make it less useful to everyone. And I assure you that it is not mandatory. After all how do you think those other classes get by? You know, those classes that aren’t warriors?

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Posted by: Phaeton.9582

Phaeton.9582

Sorry what I meant was that warriors find fast hands more mandatory than any other class finds X trait mandatory.

If if a warrior doesn’t feel the need to use fast hands he isn’t in a competitive or challenging game mode.

Edit: and of course the sigil patch makes this line of thought even more irrelevant :p


Phaatonn, London UK

(edited by Phaeton.9582)

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Posted by: Jzaku.9765

Jzaku.9765

I’m going to have to agree with phaeton here. Fast hands is the thing that defines warrior as “the guy that uses weapons better than anyone else”. Even our weapons are designed in a very one-dimensional way that encourages extremely frequent swapping for cross-weaponset combos. Literally the only reason a warrior wouldn’t take fast hands is if he flat out couldn’t spare the points for it.

As for an active, I was thinking to just run along with the weapon theme. How to encourage people without fast hands to constantly use the signet so they aren’t able to use the passive? I think something along my original idea " 0.75s cast time. 10s CD. Heal, and reset your weapon swap cooldown. The approximate healing strength if you use it every CD is 70% the strength of if you took full advantage of the passive instead."

It’s 70% because you can get one use of the passive off before you activate the signet to reset your weapon swap. This way you put less pressure on fast hands as a trait, and if you took fast hands, you’re disincentived to use the active as anything other than an emergency heal.

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Posted by: Jzaku.9765

Jzaku.9765

Now that the dust has settled on the patch and we’ve all found out that Sigil of Battle + Runes of Strength + Hambow is extremely silly, this thread seems more relevant than ever to me. Updated the OP to reflect the new changes and improve readability.

Also, the OP is too long for me to put this in it but…

  • Adrenal Health now actually states that the regeneration provided by it ticks every 3 seconds.

- You’d be surprised how many people actually believe this is 360HPS when it’s 120HPS at best assuming max adrenaline all day when all the viable builds require you to use your burst skill really often.

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Posted by: Asato.5479

Asato.5479

Hi !

As a player who stopped playing gw2 fully time with a friend after few months from the launchment, after seeing that the game got only one mode and was too complicated to be really competitive in Paid Tournaments and having fun (as we needed 3 other players who have the same play hours, but we built a team and it didn’t work, so we stopped).
So what I will state may not correspond exactly with the current meta (as I don’t know it perfectly). I don’t have the time neither interest to fully update/remaster about the other classes now. But as I decided Warrior would be my main (I had to choose one class&role and being effective with for my old team) and these are what I felt after playing few times after my stop.
I remember when I once tried to resume gw2, the game was full of condi builds, it was really hard to reach ranged classes (chill, cripple etc) and when finally I come at melee => blind! No problem, I cure it with Mending! Oh apparently it didn’t please the guy because I’m again under chill/cripple/immo. The second time I reach him, I was blind again or dead. That was nonsense! With every build, I was a free meat to them. And after seeing everybody crying about how Warrior was useless, I stopped the game again for more than 6 months.
The buff about Berserker Stance is really the thing that allowed again Warriors to survive or to be effective. The total immunity against conditions give them the time to be effective (assurance that they will reach&touch their opponents). It’s the only class that can be easily “kited” by the others (since you are used to hambow+old lyssa+berserker stance, you won’t see it that way; and maybe GS guards have/had same problem?) and his movements/skills/actions are pretty predictable (slow animations; so can be dodged/countered easily).
If my memories are good, it was 4s duration at the beginning and wasn’t clearly enough to be effective (from watching your screen, take a look at your ceiling, at your screen, at your ground and at your screen again, and it’s already gone!) and that’s the reason why it got buffed to 8s. And I’m not sure about 6s being effective… maybe it could be and more balanced from the view of a condition builder, but in this case the CD must be reduced! To something like 40s or kitten in order to have it ready for every fights. It will give to Warriors the guarantee about his movements and offensive skills for a short duration and maybe will make him think more carefully about the right moment to use it. Remember 4s is too short, 6s maybe too; it doesn’t remove applied conditions and most chills last for 2 or 3s at least, and cripples last often 5s at least ; so if we won’t remove them quickly with a cleanse, Berserker Stance won’t be effective at all (almost). All this to say that CD reduction must follow duration reduction.

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Posted by: Asato.5479

Asato.5479

Another thing, you have to consider that most classes in GW2 are ranged and/or have the ability to easily reach their targets (thief,ranger,guard). So as melee warriors, we are “vulnerable” to ranged classes’ attacks and aren’t danger at all for them until we can touch them!. And we will get rewarded if we reach them, by dealing them high damage or high controls. They must be feared from us getting at melee. They have the tools to get away from or prevent us getting close to them. So from the moment it’s too difficult for Warriors to get at melee of their targets, it’s unbalanced for the Warriors. And from the moment it’s too easy for Warriors to reach their targets, it will be too difficult and unfair for they targets because they are not in their secure zone/range and will be out-damaged or/and controlled at melee.
(maybe replace all my “will” by “should be”… , it’s logical thinking and is actually what happens in a lot of MMORPG or MOBA games). You can see that secure distance like an invulnerability, like a Berserker Stance that ranged (and condi?) classes have against Warriors. While the Warrior is trying to reach the ranged class, he’s taking damages from him.

But now, this hambow build (with might stacks runes, and bow’s high base damages) is completely unbalanced!. Too way much high controls with high damages and easiness to reach the target.
Lower the damage of F1 bow (so includes burn procs).
Lower the damage and CD of 3 bow. (~4-5k5 AoE damage on crit every 10s is not right… and as we only have contest mode, it’s really hard to miss even with slow arrow’s speed)
Increase the CD or lower the duration of the immobilization on 5 bow. (every 25s, for 3s of immobilization with a lot of bleeds) Get touched by this arrow, unless cured at time and dodged, you will be already getting knock-backed, knockdown, and stunned by the hammer skills and you are dead or almost (because might stack, little high base damages of the hammer).
I really love hammer (I was playing it since you had to remain stationary to cast the 4) but some nerfs seem really needed.
-maybe lower F1 stuns duration, since it’s an AoE stun and got really short CD, actual duration is senseless.
-lower general hammer skills’ damage. It is designed to control, not to burst/kill someone this quickly.

Bow has the only one combo field on the warrior, and 3 bow and F1 ham are the only weapon blasters… So with these rune& sigils that garants might stacks, it’s difficult to choose other weapon sets than hambow! Don’t forget these mights affect your allies as well!
So combo blast on for lv3 of adrenaline seems too much.. maybe lv2 could exist and will be enough to reduce might stack spams.
The nerf on F1 bow that you are asking for.. seems really unfair. It’s a fire arrow that ignites the targeted area. If it happens, as an unlikely IRL situation, that you got blinded before your the shot "you would know approximately there to shoot, because image memory, or muscles memory (your arms were already directed into the right direction, for exemple). You want just to be able to cover your conditions just putting a blind over them which will give you more damage. But the animation of the F1 is already slow and let’s you know that he’s cleansing and let’s you anticipate your next moves already.
The Cleansing Ire nerf seems to me fair. But I’m not truly sure about it’s effectiveness. Since most of condi designed classes can put more than 2 or 3 conditions easily in a really short time, and while having too long duration and effectiveness on them, they are all tanky… allows them much more forgiveness than you could actually think Warriors have. While their dots are triggering, they are free to do something different or move away.

(edited by Asato.5479)

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Posted by: Asato.5479

Asato.5479

I’ll copy from my post on another topic concerning my thoughts about Healing Signet.

I think too that Healing Signet is little OP but the other heals aren’t really enough profitable .

-Healing Surge : casting time and CD are long. And I remember, so as a Warrior, a melee bruiser, to feel it’s heal, I tended to wait till I had 3 bars of adrenaline and knowing that it fills my 3 bars of adrenaline makes me feel like I wasted some potential bursts. When I was using it just after a burst skill, it wasn’t enough (6k is 1/4 of most warriors’ max HP) and felt like a waste of heal (10k fills almost half of your HP bar).
If it has to be used more in a aggressive way, (so sacrificing your potential heal), the casting time must be reduced, 1s is way too long for a little amount of heal and too risky to get interrupted as a bruiser war, you are one of the first focus’. And to be really effective, we would more likely choose 2 burst skills that can severely damage the enemy (like F1 mace/hammer + F1 axe) in the shortest time possible. In this way of logic, including the weapon swap need and casting animations of the burst skills, 1s to cast Healing Surge is not enough quick to be used like a offensive tool. If we look at Restorative Strength in Strength, it removes all movement affecting conditions allowing to the Warrior to directly continue his assault, pressure in the combat.

-Mending : The small amount of heal and the fact that we got Cleansing Ire combined with Healing Signet and Berserker Stance lets it with no interest. So increasing the heal and adding more condition removes or add a fact that reduces the duration of incoming conditions (or some specifics) for a short period of time. Why not even an invulnerability to one or two specific incoming conditions for a short period of time, that could be interesting (like blind+weakness or movement conditions, even fear+vulnerability as the icon looks like a fearless man!)

-Defiant Stance : I find this one really interesting and worthy for a high damage/burst build but suicidal (so something like 6/6/x/x/x with Frenzy). And as it is a “stance”, it would be more interesting to remove the casting time, just like the other stances. The interest of this heal is to absorb the incoming burst and to heal yourself fully; so you want to use it when you are really low and it is your last chance; 0.25s for the cast is really fast but often we are under controls when we are low (enemy will do so to secure the kill) and it happens to not be able to cast it and feeling like “kitten I took this heal over Healing signet, what a idiot!”. So instant casting would be interesting for surprise enemies in teamfights and propose more various gameplays
It will be just like Endure Pain but it will heal you completely if you use it at the right moment when you get focused. If the enemies pay attention, they will change their focus / stop hitting you while you are under Defiant Stance.

-Healing Signet : As like proposed above, better scaling of the passive with healing power would be more nice while reducing slightly the basic health regen par second and adding interesting active heal; more interesting for bunkers and less for damage dealers. But to do this changement, you have to first buff/up the other healing skills of the warrior.

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Posted by: Asato.5479

Asato.5479

Your propose look really interesting (heal on weapon swap), but the active effect looks like little broken. Too short CD and reset weapon set swap is OP or senseless (we can already have weapon swap every 4s with the Warrior’s Rune) and it negates what you said :
" Swapping weapons every cooldown to retain the high healing the signet could give you has the potential to put the warrior in very compromising positions – being on the wrong weapon set at the wrong time and finding it hard to execute cross weapon combos such as the infamous skull crack – 100b combo of old."

I read somewhere about the idea of “life steal” on when direct damages are dealt. So the stronger you hit, the greater you get healed. It would a certain percentage of the dealt damage, like this new GW thief trait. While having a passive heal regen par second (HPS) which will intelligently scale with the healing power. Not giving the damage dealers who have (x/x/4 or 6/x/x) traits which gives them 200-300 healing power (~500-600 with valkyrie amulet) much HPS with this side of the passive. So almost no HPS with 0-200 Healing power; highly limited HPS with 200-600 Healing power; and for those who got ~800-1200 with Settled Amulet, Cleric Amulet, Magi Amulet a significant HPS. While having moderately interesting active heal which won’t scale at all, a last resort thing, healing for par exemple 5k heal. It includes CD’s increasing to 25s or 30s, while having a fast cast time; maybe 0.5s or 0.75s.

These are only suggestions… What do you think of them?
(I know, I wrote too much, sorry about that and my bad English too…)

(edited by Asato.5479)

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Posted by: Cygnus.6903

Cygnus.6903

First of all, let me say that your suggestions are well thought out, and though i do not agree fully are clearly worth reading.

however, i have to say that you are only adressing half the problem. It is not simply that hambow is too strong, which is debatable, in teamfights it excels. The other half of the problem is warriors do not have other options equally viable. Only nerfing hambow to the ground further then what has already been done will make them equal. Equally unviable.

Buff warrior before you nerf it, it is direly needed.

I only state my opinion unless stated otherwise.
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Posted by: Jzaku.9765

Jzaku.9765

Stuff

Wow, that’s a lot of stuff to read! I’ll try my best to respond to your points:

First of all please don’t get me wrong, I’ve been maining Warrior probably just as long, if not longer, than you, so I’m definitely not suggesting these changes out of spite.

- Berserker’s Stance: Yes, it has all the flaws and drawbacks of Endure Pain. I don’t think the CD should be reduced, it should be a Warrior’s “time to shine” so to speak, decent uptime with high cooldowns also allow a lot of room for counterplay from the opponent. I DID consider having it cleanse all movement impairment conditions + blind, but I thought that shaving it down a little first to test the waters would be better.

- Ranged VS Warrior: The warrior has tons of gap closing options. You just have to sacrifice something for that mobility. You can’t run like say, Hambow then complain that you don’t have a leap, that’s just silly. Dogged March also helps in this aspect, although it’s always wise to have a cleanse ready for cripple/immob/chill. And while I feel it’s cooldown is really high for what it does, there’s always Bull’s Charge.

- Hambow Changes: I really hate it when my weapon damage is nerfed across the board because of a specific build in PvP. What if I don’t run that build? What if I actually run it in PvE? Either way, I feel that both Longbow and Hammer are in good positions right now bar my suggested changes. I don’t see any reason to flat out nerf the damage when you can make it harder to land read: skillshot. Hammer also holds the title of the most telegraphed weapon in the game – I feel that if you land a blow with it, you deserve that high damage! Just from my experience alone, there are many, many people who are able to consistently avoid hammer stuns, and once you do, you’ve messed badly with the Warrior’s tempo – he can’t chain his stuns effectively any more and it all circles back to “needing a CC to land damage” just like old times.

- Cleansing Ire: Yes, classes like Necro and Engi have ludicrous condition application potential. I feel like to improve gameplay in general both condition application AND removal has to be nerfed across the board, but I don’t feel qualified to make changes for other classes.

- Healing skills: Yes, part of the problem is Healing Signet being too gud and the rest being too weak. I feel Surge is actually in a pretty decent spot for a Healing Skill actually. It has an interruptable cast time, it’s conditional, it’s strong when you do fulfill that condition, and it gives some great utility when you don’t. Mending is actually pretty great as a cleanse especially if you spec into Restorative Strength, it’s just not good as a heal, thus I suggested increasing it’s base healing.

- Healing Signet: Yeah, the active skill honestly is still a WIP. I tried to kill 2 birds with one stone here to put pressure off Fast Hands, I completely understand your perspective though. I’ll meditate a bit on it and maybe change the cooldown so it’s not an EXACT Fast Hands replacement like it is now. A life steal is an interesting idea, but it naturally benefits some weapons way more than others. see: Signet of Malice being almost exclusive to Pistol Whip builds. I don’t think that’s too good of a dynamic, heal skills should all be pretty equal no matter what you run.

First of all, let me say that your suggestions are well thought out, and though i do not agree fully are clearly worth reading.

however, i have to say that you are only adressing half the problem. It is not simply that hambow is too strong, which is debatable, in teamfights it excels. The other half of the problem is warriors do not have other options equally viable. Only nerfing hambow to the ground further then what has already been done will make them equal. Equally unviable.

Buff warrior before you nerf it, it is direly needed.

To be fair I’m not nerfing Hambow into the ground, in fact only the first 2 changes are exclusive to that build. And to be honest, just like Elementalist I feel like we need to enter a phase where we’re relatively weak to shake off some of the negative stigma before we receive buffs in the right direction. I have a whole slew of buff ideas, but the way things are now, it’d stir so much controversy that it’d be completely unfeasible that Anet would implement them. One step at a time.

Also, I strongly believe that with an improvement to diversity (releasing us from Cleansing Ire and Fast Hands) there will be other builds that find their own niche success in other team compositions. It happened before the massive change that shifted Warrior from underdog to high tier, it’ll happen again.

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Posted by: Jzaku.9765

Jzaku.9765

Edited the cooldown of the Active of the suggested Healing Signet change: At 20s base CD, you frontload a 30% weaker heal than what you would get with the passive, but lose the passive for a pretty significant duration. It also isn’t too long to be unable to take advantage of the weaponswap cooldown effect – It’s no Fast Hands, but hey, we can’t all be stars.

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Posted by: Harper.4173

Harper.4173

Sadly your HS suggestions are bad and are sadly aimed at killing off the class.
HS was buffed for a reason – it is designed to give warriors good passive sustain and it is doing its intended job.

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Posted by: Asato.5479

Asato.5479

I really think the other builds are viable, they are pretty balanced deal correct damages ; surely some bug fixes are welcome or improvements/change concerning few weapons skills. The hambow combo is so enviable and it feels like you are wasting great damage & controls potentials if you choose other weapon sets. If we nerf hambow, we’ll see more various type of builds being in played by a lot of Warriors.
-As you can easily stack Might, with this set. It doesn’t need this high base damages. (I play often Hambow with Berserker Amulet, and I constated I can burst someone more easily with Hambow than with other weapons which have far less controls and are designed to burst (as like Axe, GS; Sword with it’s skill 3 can be nice). So why would I choose theses others weapons over Hambow combo? Hammer has , I find quiet correct base damages, but because of the possibility of Might stack, hammer skills deal really high damages around 15-25 stacks, that you can easily maintain during the combat. Hammer has 4 of 6 skills which are direct controls, with F1 having short CD and which is a AoE stun! Leg Specialist makes the 3, an AoE immobilization.

So, I don’t see why want to have this high reward for skills which are skillshots but pretty easy to place and have short CD’s? So if you miss, no big deal! The 3 ham allows you to place your controls with some guaranteed accuracy.
3ham => F1 ham. 3ham => 4 => 5 => F1. These are really huge controls and are nightmares for some classes/builds with less break-stuns or stability.
3 bow is slow which would justify his high damage, but not his CD! 10s. And since we have only Conquest mode in GW2, I don’t see how you could often miss your 3bow and wasting it completely (touching no one). And as a “good” player you won’t launch it without being pretty sure it is going to touch the target (5bow+3 or launch it at close distance and in direction of the target’s movements => less time for him dodge) and same thing for F1 ham. Increase Arcing Arrow ’s CD (cooldown) so this skill will be balanced.
For F1 bow, this a burst skill with a really large area and huge burning conditions. So if you want to miss, it’s that you wanted to miss it. Maybe lower little bit it’s damage. But I think pretty everybody are ok with this skill. The bunkers wouldn’t care really but about dodging it, and the delicate ones will be force to move from the area.

With Berserker Amulet", Hambow has really high damages & controls while having a average/good sustain. 22k hp, ~2500 armor, 35% (55% with Fury) crit chance.
With Soldier Amulet, you have a really good sustain (you have stats of bunkers!), really good damages and a very high controls. 26k hp, ~3300 armor, 24% crit chance (with Fury, and with sigil of intelligence, you can have 3 crits on your ham skills, which will deal high damages with might stacks).
This combination of high damage, high and short CD-ed CC’s* with big sustain makes the hambow a OP build with large forgiveness.

I’m pretty sure, you lower the damages of hambow, there will be far less complaints about HS. The hambow will become a less important threat to the eyes of players. “He can stun-lock me? It’s annoying, but it’s ok, I’m not expecting a big damage burst from him, I will survive!” But it will be a big deal in teamfights! “Because while he’s neutralized, the target isn’t a threat for my team members, and he’s vulnerable and can to be focused, and it’s the glass canon’s job to burst him”. It won’t change this build’s effectiveness in teamfights. His role in team, is the target caller, the guy who decides who must die in first and quickly and he makes it possible, thanks his huge controls! And this, already makes him really dangerous for the enemy team and a big threat that should be taken seriously. To be this threat, the Warrior must have a good sustain. If he’s killed easily& quickly, he’ll be useless. Neither, if he has good sustain, high controls and high damages, it will be completely unbalanced (which is actually the case) and it makes no sense.

(edited by Asato.5479)

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Posted by: Harper.4173

Harper.4173

So let me get this straight – warriors have one build that’s strong in PVP right now and you want to nerf it. Why is that exactly?

Because of balance issues ? – Engineers are already running rampart in PVP doing more damage than hambow warriors.

The sad truth about nerfing hambow is that if you do it the class will be dead again until new buffs arrive.
You think people will reroll to other builds but the more practical player will figure out that rerolling to other classes is far better.

I really wish people would understand that Hambow has been nerfed constantly for a while now – first hammer and longbow and now longbow.
The build is good – but not as good as it used to be – you don’t really see that many warriors in sPVP anymore – and there’s a reason for that.

Also when you say that nerfing a build’s damage won’t change its effectiveness you fail to see that any damage you take away from one member of the team is damage you take away from the entire team – of course it changes the effectiveness.

Also I fear the only evidence of this " high damage" you’ve provided is writing it in bold a couple of times – which is honestly not that relevant.

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Posted by: Harper.4173

Harper.4173

Also, I strongly believe that with an improvement to diversity (releasing us from Cleansing Ire and Fast Hands) there will be other builds that find their own niche success in other team compositions. It happened before the massive change that shifted Warrior from underdog to high tier, it’ll happen again.

Yeah – remember those times – the very successful niche “freekill” and “so easy” builds were very popular. So popular you saw almost no warriors in sPVP.

Why do you think all the changes happened?

I also like how you’re almost admitting that you liked the situation in which the warrior was the underdog. Really proves why Anet staff should listen to your suggestions.

If here they fall they shall live on when ever you cry “For Ascalon!”

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Posted by: Cygnus.6903

Cygnus.6903

What? So you want us to go back into being a free kill to lose the current negative stigma? Why not see through the fog and realize warriors SUCK apart from hambow in point control teamfights only?

I will never vote in favour of the evergrowing mass of ignorant glass lootbags filling this ‘balance’ forum.

Buff warriors before nerfing them back to gw2 launch.

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Posted by: CntrlAltDefeat.1465

CntrlAltDefeat.1465

It seems painfully obvious to me that ALL of the warrior balance changes have been based around 2 builds only. Hambow and Duel sword condi. It sincerely believe that applying changes to an entire profession and all of it applicable builds off of 2 builds that rose to the surface as being uber strong is not good for the profession in the long run. Hard changes needed to be made to these 2 builds, over hard changes to the entire profession. The simplest and easiest change that could have been made would have been move Merciless hammer from master trait to any of other trait line. This way it didn’t pair with also getting grand master status in the healing/toughness line in order to have it. Currently the typical is dogged march>cleansing>merciless hammer+30 in healing/toughness.

The problem with all condition builds in general, I think, is that Condition Damage alone is good enough to provide you enough damage source to kill people. This in turn lets you stack 2 other defensive stats allowing for ludicrous tank builds that can still do huge damage. That’s really a problem for all condition builds and will only be resolved by taking a hard look at condi in general. There’s also the ease of condi application to factor in, but I’d say that doesn’t relate to Warrior S/S that much outside of Impale (which really has a pretty good telegraph already).

I’m not so sure about moving Merciless Hammer into another tree, as that not only affects Hambow but every warr build that tries to run Hammer in general. What are you trying to accomplish with that change? Let’s say you take the most obvious route and move it to the Strength traitline. Without a change to CI, that’s minimum 20 into defense because it’s too good to pass up, minimum 15 into Fast Hands because Hammer in itself isn’t enough to kill anyone, minimum 20 into Strength for Merciless Hammer as it’s terrible without the cooldown reductions… and you have 15 points actually available as a choice for you. That’s just really awful for diversity.

Every other build that runs hammer?..please feel free to display all other meta, or niche builds that run hammer + any other weapon..they simply don’t exist, there is only hambow after the massive cast time to mace.

[PvP][Warrior] A Less Passive Warrior

in Profession Balance

Posted by: Asato.5479

Asato.5479

F1 hammer / Earthshaker is an AoE burst skill that deals AoE damage and AoE stun. And it is a skillshot leap too, but which is pretty easy to place and doesn’t justify this high reward, thanks Leg Specialist and number 3 Hammer or 5 of the bow. Which practice, we even learn to place it without need of them. It has a short CD. I feel it’s a little OP.
We cannot do anything about his CD, since it’s a burst skill. But we may be can lower stuns duration or damage to balance it a little bit.

@Jzaku.9765 : Your idea about might stack’s problem on Hambow is great. However, I find lvl3 adrenaline requirement for a blast high and too much. I think a lvl2 adrenaline will may be enough to limit the might stack spamming. (Tests will be great).

(Btw, Hammer and bow are for me utility/support weapons. Hammer = controls. Bow = field for the team and AoE pressure; a blind, and a immo which allows you to reach your target.)

I joined a screen to illustrate, why I find this combo doing high damage while having high controls.

At today’s Tournament of Legends, almost every Warriors were Hambow. This should say something about it’s effectiveness.
Only one was axe/sword + longbow (2/0/6/0/6) with Valkyrie amulet. Longbow for AoE dmg, might stack, and blind&immo. Sigil of intelligence for crit 100% on F1 of the axe. 5 sword for block and adrenaline. A nicely realized build
I’d really like to more various builds to become profitable to players.
As like, I don’t know, for exemple : Dual Axes + Hammer; F1 ham + 5 axe, followed by a F1 axe. Or Axe/Mace + Mace/Sword. Even Hammer + Greatsword.. etc.
And to see some of them, we need some fixes/improvements for some of them. That would be great!

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