Guild Wars 2

The amount of Warrior bashing we see on these forums is actually staggering. The most amazing part though is the massive amount of incorrect information or just flat out lies about the class is greater than any other game I’ve played in recent memory. What follows is not directed at any one person but all of the reactions are statements I have seen written within the last few months.

1. “Warrior has no weaknesses”

This is the most recent bit of propaganda I’ve been seeing in great numbers. It often comes hand in hand with some statement about how they can do everything in one build or at least an implication of such. One would think that if this statement were true then we would only ever see Warriors. I mean, if they have no weaknesses then why wouldn’t you run a 5 Warrior PvP team. If this claim is true then they would probably dominate. In WvW, I would see no reason to run anything other than Warrior as well. A good Warrior player should also never lose to a good player of any other class, right?

And yet, none of these things happen. I’ve tried with my guild to make 5 Warriors work, and even with different builds it turns out that they can not do bunker as well as a Guardian, burst as reliably as a Thief (or a Meditation Guard), or Support as well as an Ele (or Guardian). Hammer Warriors are obviously prevalent in WvW, but those Warriors would be worthless without other classes keeping them alive (Guardians).

One thing that is unique to Warriors is that most weaknesses are weapon/build dependent. This should imo be the case for all classes and in the case of many it is. I play Engi and whenever I hear that Necro hard-counters the class due to poor condition removal I tend to scratch my head. While many triple kit or 2 kit + Elixir S may be weak to Necro a build based around Elixirs with Cleaning Formula 409 certainly isn’t. I have several power-based HGH builds that have tons of dmg and control and totally rock Necros. Anyways I’m getting off track. The point being that you have to learn the Weapon/Build to know its weakness.

Oh, I also love the classic “I beat Warriors all the time but X, Y, and Z are OP.” If you don’t have problems vs them then how are they OP…

2. “Insert Statement about a trait or skill here that is somewhat or totally wrong”

Seriously, if you’re going to make a statement about a class at least bother to look up the thing in question first. This happens with all classes but Warrior seems to get it the worst. There’s also plenty of cases where people exaggerate in order to make something sound more powerful than it is. My favorite example of this is Adrenal Health. I’ve seen it factored into HP/Sec calculations when people don’t seem to realize that it only procs every 3 seconds. What makes this important is not only is it not every second like so many seem to believe, but in order to deal damage/not be overrun by conditions Warriors almost constantly spend their adrenaline. This means that you’re lucky to get even 1 full proc and most of the time you’ll be getting the level 1-2 healing. If you are sitting on that adrenaline then chances are you’re either in PvE and probably shouldn’t have points into Defense or your running some build based around not spending it or you got blinded/blocked multiple times in a row (which some 300 hp every 3 seconds is not going to be helping you in the not-dying-department).

3. “Insert comparison of X Warrior thing to Y classes thing that is kinda-sorta-similar”

This one is easy, you can’t directly compare two similar things on two different classes and ignore all of the other class mechanics. One thing may be perfectly fine on one class, but the same thing on another would be stupidly broken. You can argue that something on one class is too weak, but you can’t fairly compare it to another similar thing to make your point because the classes are all designed differently.

4. “Warrior’s Mobility is too strong”

Before I say anything let me point out that no, ANet did not say that it was too good. What they actually said was that some of you feel that their mobility is too good. That’s a huuuuge difference seeing as they may or may not believe that themselves. PvP players know that this isn’t an issue and in WvW those GS/ Sword + WH builds hardly pack any real punch. You can preach till the end of time that these builds offer some sort of strategic benefit but I personally feel that Thieve’s ability to disengage while still remaining in the area is waaay more useful. When a Warrior runs away you see them. If they manage to reset the fight on you that means you foolishly followed when you had the option to turn the other way and reset it for yourself as well. If you were doing well enough where they felt the need to retreat, chances are you can do it again.

Once again, this is something Thieves do better, they can remove conditions and heal while stealthed while you may be unable to do the same. Thieves can also use Shadow Step and Withdraw in addition to a sword and SB and be able to get miles away in seconds and there’s very little to be done about it.

I’ve said this a million times, but the majority of “balance issues” are more “design issues.” Hambow would not be that strong – scratch that – no AoE build would be that strong in PvP if the points weren’t so small. It would also make tthe particle effects much less overwhelming. Some with tanky/bunker builds. Most capture point based games only give the cap/decap to the side with the most players on point but GW2 doesn’t do that. This encourages players to build for sustain and while it will always be useful for 1v1 for anything more things gets to the point the gameplay becomes less interesting because not only are you hardly able to see anything but fights can be very drawn out or be less about team fights and more about just rotating to where the enemy has the least numbers. I’m R72 and some days I ask myself why I put up with it.

In WvW all of the extra buffs from Guard Stacks and food make classes that have high base stats artificially strong. While everyone can benefit from them some classes simply get more out of them. All the +/- duration food are the worst offenders but guess what, Koi Cakes are cheap and Lemongrass isn’t. Not to mention you get a lot more out of +duration than you do with -duration.

I’m sure someone is probably going to write a longer respond than this refuting all of this or claiming all their nerf suggestions are reasonable (they generally aren’t) but whatever. If I wanted to get a bit straw man I could say that most of those who post anti-Warrior threads are Thief players who want to distract people from some of their builds or players that just want Warrior to go back to being a free kill so that they don’t actually have to adjust their build or learn how to counter them.

I’m also not saying Warrior as a class isn’t strong, but calling it OP is ridiculous. The more time I spend on my Guardian the less useful my Warrior feels.

Warrior is artificially weak. It only appears to be strong because you can make 2-3 mistakes in a row before taking a nosedive. Unfortunately, once you enter that nosedive, you got no way to correct it, and you crash.

Kibazuka.1390:

You seem to missunderstand having a weakness with being able to do things. Yes warrior cant burst out heavy single target long range damage like mesmer and engineer, yes they dont have a crapton of combo field like eles, yes they cant spam blindness and evade like a thief, but that arent weaknesses. They cant be used or exploitet against the warrior in any fighting situation at all. You can call them drawbacks but not weaknesses.
If i ask for a weakness i want to hear the weakness and not be basically told “hey look, they could be even more op”

If a Warrior is running:

Hambow: Be ready to blind/aegis/dodge several times in a row. If you see a Hammer, you know what’s coming. When the bow is out the only skill you have to worry about is Pin Down, which is easy to see now.

Skullcracker: When the mace is out they’ll probably reflect projectiles whenever they can and will try to use a set-up like Shield Bash or Bull’s Charge to land SC for the long stun. Don’t blow your Stun Break or w/e you have on the setup, wait until the SC has been used. If you have stability then feel free to break the setup however.

Celestial Axebow: Pretty much carried by how good Celestial is atm. It’s strength is a wide variety of attack methods. Where it sucks is in the mobility and it lacks any way to deny a stomp. Hard to beat 1v1 but like most Warrior builds if you time your conditions correctly you can overload them just like any other Warrior build. Bait out Berserker Stance, play defensive for the duration, then unload. If you have Fear or any other interrupt then save a quick one for when they try to burst with LB. It’s another easy-to-see burst considering they aim basically straight up. I think most people’s complaints with Warrior also stem from Asura, but they’re broken on any class and something does need to be done about it.

BurrTheKing.8571:

Kibazuka.1390:

You seem to missunderstand having a weakness with being able to do things. Yes warrior cant burst out heavy single target long range damage like mesmer and engineer, yes they dont have a crapton of combo field like eles, yes they cant spam blindness and evade like a thief, but that arent weaknesses. They cant be used or exploitet against the warrior in any fighting situation at all. You can call them drawbacks but not weaknesses.
If i ask for a weakness i want to hear the weakness and not be basically told “hey look, they could be even more op”

If a Warrior is running:

Hambow: Be ready to blind/aegis/dodge several times in a row. If you see a Hammer, you know what’s coming. When the bow is out the only skill you have to worry about is Pin Down, which is easy to see now.

Skullcracker: When the mace is out they’ll probably reflect projectiles whenever they can and will try to use a set-up like Shield Bash or Bull’s Charge to land SC for the long stun. Don’t blow your Stun Break or w/e you have on the setup, wait until the SC has been used. If you have stability then feel free to break the setup however.

Celestial Axebow: Pretty much carried by how good Celestial is atm. It’s strength is a wide variety of attack methods. Where it sucks is in the mobility and it lacks any way to deny a stomp. Hard to beat 1v1 but like most Warrior builds if you time your conditions correctly you can overload them just like any other Warrior build. Bait out Berserker Stance, play defensive for the duration, then unload. If you have Fear or any other interrupt then save a quick one for when they try to burst with LB. It’s another easy-to-see burst considering they aim basically straight up. I think most people’s complaints with Warrior also stem from Asura, but they’re broken on any class and something does need to be done about it.

But all of these things give you no real advantage over the warrior. If you dodge a mace stun on a warrior they can just do it again in 8 seconds. If you blind a shield bash they still have a butt load of stuns to hit you with. Warrior is much too forgiving. Warriors aren’t punished for missing an attack unlike most other classes.

The warrior shoot fireballs from his eyes, and bolts of lightning from his kitten .

[not to be confuzed with your run of the mill elementalist]

.

alchemyst.2165:

BurrTheKing.8571:

Kibazuka.1390:

You seem to missunderstand having a weakness with being able to do things. Yes warrior cant burst out heavy single target long range damage like mesmer and engineer, yes they dont have a crapton of combo field like eles, yes they cant spam blindness and evade like a thief, but that arent weaknesses. They cant be used or exploitet against the warrior in any fighting situation at all. You can call them drawbacks but not weaknesses.
If i ask for a weakness i want to hear the weakness and not be basically told “hey look, they could be even more op”

If a Warrior is running:

Hambow: Be ready to blind/aegis/dodge several times in a row. If you see a Hammer, you know what’s coming. When the bow is out the only skill you have to worry about is Pin Down, which is easy to see now.

Skullcracker: When the mace is out they’ll probably reflect projectiles whenever they can and will try to use a set-up like Shield Bash or Bull’s Charge to land SC for the long stun. Don’t blow your Stun Break or w/e you have on the setup, wait until the SC has been used. If you have stability then feel free to break the setup however.

Celestial Axebow: Pretty much carried by how good Celestial is atm. It’s strength is a wide variety of attack methods. Where it sucks is in the mobility and it lacks any way to deny a stomp. Hard to beat 1v1 but like most Warrior builds if you time your conditions correctly you can overload them just like any other Warrior build. Bait out Berserker Stance, play defensive for the duration, then unload. If you have Fear or any other interrupt then save a quick one for when they try to burst with LB. It’s another easy-to-see burst considering they aim basically straight up. I think most people’s complaints with Warrior also stem from Asura, but they’re broken on any class and something does need to be done about it.

But all of these things give you no real advantage over the warrior. If you dodge a mace stun on a warrior they can just do it again in 8 seconds. If you blind a shield bash they still have a butt load of stuns to hit you with. Warrior is much too forgiving. Warriors aren’t punished for missing an attack unlike most other classes.

I agree with this. The “burst” skills on other professions often have a higher cooldown and in many cases can be harder to land.

Anyway, while I don’t think that warriors are inherently OP, I am saddened that the other classes can’t be as good or as viable as they are in all game modes. And while the warrior’s weakness other than continual poison application varies based on its build, I personally feel like many of the other classes don’t have the opportunity to cover their weaknesses based on their build as well as a warrior. For example, no matter what you do, Necromancers will always be vulnerable to focus fire regardless of builds, whereas in warrior you can run a longbow with cleansing ire to cover a condition weakness or a GS to cover a mobility weakness etc. Mesmers can cover their condition weakness with mender’s purity (and harmonious mantras or the cleanse mantra) but in order to do so they must give up a significant function that defines the only reason why you bring mesmer, such as taking the cleanse trait prevents you from grapping ipersona, deceptive evasion, or shattered concentration, or taking the cleanse mantra or null field prevents you from bringing blink, portal/veil or decoy.

So correct me if I’m wrong, but I honestly don’t feel like warriors have to give up a primary niche, function, or survival technique in order to cover a perceived weakness.

The key here is opportunity cost. People feel that warriors don’t need to sacrifice as much to gain something. I can’t talk about warriors or confirm this due to lack of experience, but I’ll just take your engineer example. Engineers CAN indeed clear conditions very well and certainly they can beat necros with a 409 build, but Guild Wars 2 is almost never about just 1v1 situations and I would think a hgh/409 build is significantly weaker in other matchups because you lose out on so much kit utility that is one of the strength of the engineer— some would argue you could just play another class at that point. You’re at the very least putting 4-6 in alchemy and sacrificing traits like backpack regen, invigorating speed, or protection injection. I doubt the expert engineers have simply ignored this choice.

If we compare to other classes that are worse off, we can see rangers that need to spend about 6 points just to have longbow not be useless, 6 to have signets actually work, and about 8 to have shouts be usable. Well, that’s not completely accurate at times, but if we look at what doesn’t work, such as rangers, you can see classes give up a lot to accomplish anything. A DPS guardian is made of glass and a bunker guardian pretty much has to invest almost everything in the lower 3 trees.

So I think that’s what people are complaining about that certain other classes have to pigeonhole themselves into something or more like many of the other classes are just badly designed.

Then again, I sometimes wonder in general if people have even played the class they complain about that much.

Nice post OP.
Just to add that warrior dont have the ability to lose target so they are always available to be hit by players. The absense of ports and weak access to blinds demand that warrior take all the damage while persuing their targets.
In the beginning (snare) was a huge weakness by it self (along with the other damage conditions) and ANet needed to buff warrior to allow them to keep up with their targets. Now warriors have “windows of oportunity” to do their things and that keeps them in the meta. As soon those windows close they are just like in the past, but this time their oponents need to play better than before.

Edit:

Just to had that Warrior damage comes from their weapons skills, not AI. When you have classes working with AI and they have much more time to prepare their defense while the AI does the damage from them, you start to realise why warrior needs to be the way it is.

Well said OP. I think now we can direct all hyperbole to this thread. Also I have yet to run into this all in one warrior that can tank, heal through shouts, has high crit damage, high conditions, immunity to CC and conditions, high mobility, abundance of stuns, blocks, permanent swiftness, banners, fire fields and confusion.

When someone fights a 6/6/6/6/6 build record it so the rest of us can fight it

silentnight warrior.2714:

Nice post OP.
Just to add that warrior dont have the ability to lose target so they are always available to be hit by players. The absense of ports and weak access to blinds demand that warrior take all the damage while persuing their targets.
In the beginning (snare) was a huge weakness by it self (along with the other damage conditions) and ANet needed to buff warrior to allow them to keep up with their targets. Now warriors have “windows of oportunity” to do their things and that keeps them in the meta. As soon those windows close they are just like in the past, but this time their oponents need to play better than before.

Edit:

Just to had that Warrior damage comes from their weapons skills, not AI. When you have classes working with AI and they have much more time to prepare their defense while the AI does the damage from them, you start to realise why warrior needs to be the way it is.

Yeah, because AI pets in this game are so good(bad) at attacking moving targets, they are obviously superior(inferior) to your sweet, helpless, defenseless, perfectly balanced warriors who can attack moving targets.

alchemyst.2165:

BurrTheKing.8571:

Kibazuka.1390:

You seem to missunderstand having a weakness with being able to do things. Yes warrior cant burst out heavy single target long range damage like mesmer and engineer, yes they dont have a crapton of combo field like eles, yes they cant spam blindness and evade like a thief, but that arent weaknesses. They cant be used or exploitet against the warrior in any fighting situation at all. You can call them drawbacks but not weaknesses.
If i ask for a weakness i want to hear the weakness and not be basically told “hey look, they could be even more op”

If a Warrior is running:

Hambow: Be ready to blind/aegis/dodge several times in a row. If you see a Hammer, you know what’s coming. When the bow is out the only skill you have to worry about is Pin Down, which is easy to see now.

Skullcracker: When the mace is out they’ll probably reflect projectiles whenever they can and will try to use a set-up like Shield Bash or Bull’s Charge to land SC for the long stun. Don’t blow your Stun Break or w/e you have on the setup, wait until the SC has been used. If you have stability then feel free to break the setup however.

Celestial Axebow: Pretty much carried by how good Celestial is atm. It’s strength is a wide variety of attack methods. Where it sucks is in the mobility and it lacks any way to deny a stomp. Hard to beat 1v1 but like most Warrior builds if you time your conditions correctly you can overload them just like any other Warrior build. Bait out Berserker Stance, play defensive for the duration, then unload. If you have Fear or any other interrupt then save a quick one for when they try to burst with LB. It’s another easy-to-see burst considering they aim basically straight up. I think most people’s complaints with Warrior also stem from Asura, but they’re broken on any class and something does need to be done about it.

But all of these things give you no real advantage over the warrior. If you dodge a mace stun on a warrior they can just do it again in 8 seconds. If you blind a shield bash they still have a butt load of stuns to hit you with. Warrior is much too forgiving. Warriors aren’t punished for missing an attack unlike most other classes.

Missing a burst can indeed be VERY punishing, especially vs condition builds. Unlike other classes that remove/transfer condis every x number of seconds passively (interesting thing to note, Warriors are accused of being passive while they have some of the most active condi removal in the game) the Warrior is reliant on hitting that burst. When it comes to risk/reward Skullcracker is pretty high up there. If you miss SC that means you still have those condis on you. If it’s poison that means your healing is being reduced dramatically. Missing SC means that you got to go for the GS burst which is pretty much useless. This means you got to gain that adrenaline again and the build is dependent on landing that stun to deal damage.

Even with LB you can play around them having higher condi removal. A well played Corruptomancer just has to lay on the condis right after a burst and then laugh as the chilled and crippled warrior either tries to catch up or fires puny bow attacks. Warriors ARE weak to conditions, it’s just that you rarely find someone playing a condition build well enough to realize it. After Berserker Stance is gone you just gotta apply just enough conditions to keep up the pressure then nail them once they burst.

That I can definitely see. For example, on my engineer facing warriors, it’s often up to the warrior to successfully land his bursts and use this momentum to finish me off. If he blows his stances or doesn’t land enough damage on me, I often will just recover to full and he’s pretty much a sitting duck and will never clean all my conditions off. Warriors do seem to have to take advantage their window very well and if anything they seem to be the one that has to take initiative.

Perhaps it’s because there’s more warriors wandering around so there’s a lot more poor ones that I end up fighting, but I wouldn’t be worried about them as a thief that can just troll you forever or a mesmer than seems to be able to absorb a crap ton of damage. Sure, I’ve been destroyed by warriors, but every well played class has proven capable of that so…

I created a warrior, I had never played warrior before, I used the LB/axe build.

I destroyed almost everyone without looking at my screen.

ArchonWing.9480:

The key here is opportunity cost. People feel that warriors don’t need to sacrifice as much to gain something. I can’t talk about warriors or confirm this due to lack of experience, but I’ll just take your engineer example. Engineers CAN indeed clear conditions very well and certainly they can beat necros with a 409 build, but Guild Wars 2 is almost never about just 1v1 situations and I would think a hgh/409 build is significantly weaker in other matchups because you lose out on so much kit utility that is one of the strength of the engineer— some would argue you could just play another class at that point. You’re at the very least putting 4-6 in alchemy and sacrificing traits like backpack regen, invigorating speed, or protection injection. I doubt the expert engineers have simply ignored this choice.

If we compare to other classes that are worse off, we can see rangers that need to spend about 6 points just to have longbow not be useless, 6 to have signets actually work, and about 8 to have shouts be usable. Well, that’s not completely accurate at times, but if we look at what doesn’t work, such as rangers, you can see classes give up a lot to accomplish anything. A DPS guardian is made of glass and a bunker guardian pretty much has to invest almost everything in the lower 3 trees.

So I think that’s what people are complaining about that certain other classes have to pigeonhole themselves into something or more like many of the other classes are just badly designed.

Then again, I sometimes wonder in general if people have even played the class they complain about that much.

Actually, for warrior to make shouts worthwhile you need 6 points. They are quite lackluster, and even if you invest 8 points to get adren on shout, you still do not measure up to ranger shouts.

Its sad but look at it this way;
Max warrior shout heal (AOE) is ~9400 ish. To accomplish this the warrior needs to have AT LEAST 1200 healing power, and it needs the Lung Capacity Trait, Shake it Off trait and Invigorating Shouts trait. Thats 6 trait points. Now you are speccin into a fairly “passive” line, so you want to regain some DPS. Easiest way to do that is use Inspiring Shouts to allow rapid buildup of adrenaline for near instant bursts. While not a requirement, i will list “Inspiring shouts” as a “Very Valuable Trait” in relations to shouts.

The shouts themselves produce a very long lasting 3 stacks of might, which can reach 6 stacks cuz of duration vs skill CD. It also cleanses 1 (2 if trait trigger) AOE condition cleanses removing 1 condi pr shout activation and 10 stacks of vulnerability on the enemy.
The cost of this “utility/support” is 3x utility slots and 8 trait points.

Compare this with rangers that only need 6 points to gain a AOE regen of 310 hp/s @ ~1400 healing power. Stats that are easily avaliable to the ranger even with a clerics build.
Now, at the same time, the ranger can take Vigorous Spirits and Spirits Unbound. Allowing the ranger to also bring AOE Protection and AOE 10% damage.
This sounds all well, but we know that clerics is the “downfall of DPS”. Fear not. If the ranger bothers to, it can go 6 into beastmastery to get lower cooldowns on shouts (technically 4 points needed, but the shout heal is a GM so 8 points investment needed to unlock it), it can also get AOE vigor and AOE healing. The GM minor in BM line return 10% of healing power as raw power. Meaning 140 to the power stat.
In addition to this, a massive increase in pet DPS will further balance out the loss of DPS from using a supportive gear. Pulling the rangers DPS far beyond that of the warrior.

So in all regards, warrior shouts are underpowered… they require massive investments and even then, comparing them to rangers, they gain ~190 hp/s more healing (over a 20 second timeframe) But at the cost of 2 utility slots and a huge amount of damage.

In addition to this, nobody with their sanity intact will say ranger shouts are actually in a good spot. They got 2.5 decent shouts that has ZERO group value when not traited (sic’em is the 0.5 only cuz of revealed and DPS increase, but its a pain to use and CD is too long. Search and Rescue is a wasted utility slot after the overzealous nerf).

And yes, i do happen to run a shoutheal built warrior. It’s just sad to see the stark contrast between the two professions (ranger hitting for 6-800 + 1.3-2.6k pet AA vs warrior doing max 4k evis and 1200-1900 axe aa)

As I see it, the OP doesn’t seem to be responding to the thought out comments on threads out there. It appears to me, that he is addressing the very very few, minority players who are unreasonable in their complaints. I notice the warrior defenders here have ignored the more thought out and reasonable complaints.

None of the his post address some of the trait combinations that are over powered when used with certain weapons and so on. It seems to me, that it would benefit some of the warrior community to branch out and level the other professions, because most of their statements are made based on the warrior in a vacuum, and appear to display little, to no knowledge, of how they compare to the other professions , when it comes to being able to accomplish various goals with in the game itself.

The issues players are actually complaining about, are not so much profession specific, but are actual only problematic in the context of certain builds. It is the builds that become common and thus, used by so many, that have the uninformed poster, speaking as if those build represent the warrior as a whole.

As a corrupto-mancer main for a long time most of this is actually true.. warriors are still weak to conditions.

It is just not as easy as before. You tank until zerk stance runs out then fear chain them corrupt the stability and its over pretty soon.

Warr v Necro is one of the best matchups IMO. A true skill matchup. Can the necro survive 15+ sec for zerk stance and initial stuns to end. Can the warr take advantage of this time to destroy the necro? Bad necro does not dodge earth shaker gets stunned for 10 sec then gets zerk stance rekt and its GG. Good necro dodges earthshaker tanks in DS while getting hit during zerk stance. Transfers when hit with pin down or fire field. Brings corrupt boon for stability and starts the chain of fear to death.

In the end though noob warr > noob XXX

That is why most people cry

Narkodx.1472:

As a corrupto-mancer main for a long time most of this is actually true.. warriors are still weak to conditions.

It is just not as easy as before. You tank until zerk stance runs out then fear chain them corrupt the stability and its over pretty soon.

Warr v Necro is one of the best matchups IMO. A true skill matchup. Can the necro survive 15+ sec for zerk stance and initial stuns to end. Can the warr take advantage of this time to destroy the necro? Bad necro does not dodge earth shaker gets stunned for 10 sec then gets zerk stance rekt and its GG. Good necro dodges earthshaker tanks in DS while getting hit during zerk stance. Transfers when hit with pin down or fire field. Brings corrupt boon for stability and starts the chain of fear to death.

In the end though noob warr > noob XXX

That is why most people cry

I agree…. Finally some Necro is making sense.

It seems for noob XXX here weakness means being instagib by something.

Prysin.8542:

Actually, for warrior to make shouts worthwhile you need 6 points. They are quite lackluster, and even if you invest 8 points to get adren on shout, you still do not measure up to ranger shouts.

Its sad but look at it this way;
Max warrior shout heal (AOE) is ~9400 ish. To accomplish this the warrior needs to have AT LEAST 1200 healing power, and it needs the Lung Capacity Trait, Shake it Off trait and Invigorating Shouts trait. Thats 6 trait points. Now you are speccin into a fairly “passive” line, so you want to regain some DPS. Easiest way to do that is use Inspiring Shouts to allow rapid buildup of adrenaline for near instant bursts. While not a requirement, i will list “Inspiring shouts” as a “Very Valuable Trait” in relations to shouts.

The shouts themselves produce a very long lasting 3 stacks of might, which can reach 6 stacks cuz of duration vs skill CD. It also cleanses 1 (2 if trait trigger) AOE condition cleanses removing 1 condi pr shout activation and 10 stacks of vulnerability on the enemy.
The cost of this “utility/support” is 3x utility slots and 8 trait points.

Compare this with rangers that only need 6 points to gain a AOE regen of 310 hp/s @ ~1400 healing power. Stats that are easily avaliable to the ranger even with a clerics build.
Now, at the same time, the ranger can take Vigorous Spirits and Spirits Unbound. Allowing the ranger to also bring AOE Protection and AOE 10% damage.
This sounds all well, but we know that clerics is the “downfall of DPS”. Fear not. If the ranger bothers to, it can go 6 into beastmastery to get lower cooldowns on shouts (technically 4 points needed, but the shout heal is a GM so 8 points investment needed to unlock it), it can also get AOE vigor and AOE healing. The GM minor in BM line return 10% of healing power as raw power. Meaning 140 to the power stat.
In addition to this, a massive increase in pet DPS will further balance out the loss of DPS from using a supportive gear. Pulling the rangers DPS far beyond that of the warrior.

So in all regards, warrior shouts are underpowered… they require massive investments and even then, comparing them to rangers, they gain ~190 hp/s more healing (over a 20 second timeframe) But at the cost of 2 utility slots and a huge amount of damage.

In addition to this, nobody with their sanity intact will say ranger shouts are actually in a good spot. They got 2.5 decent shouts that has ZERO group value when not traited (sic’em is the 0.5 only cuz of revealed and DPS increase, but its a pain to use and CD is too long. Search and Rescue is a wasted utility slot after the overzealous nerf).

And yes, i do happen to run a shoutheal built warrior. It’s just sad to see the stark contrast between the two professions (ranger hitting for 6-800 + 1.3-2.6k pet AA vs warrior doing max 4k evis and 1200-1900 axe aa)

That’s some valuable insight there. Ranger shouts benefit from being in a decent tree with various ways to make up for lack of dps and it’s not necessary to clog up your utility slots since “guard” by itself is almost enough to ensure perma regen and swiftness for the group while maintaining good damage and it can still be useful without investing that much into healing power (though they could still go all out healing for obnoxiously high group regen.) and this doesn’t exclude apoth builds.

But yea, ranger shouts could be better as they have the same issue as some other ranger things— they’re awesome when traited but then untraited they’re really bad and selfish. Still, I suppose with those things at least you at least get your trait points worth, as opposed to warrior shoutheals as you described.

Guardian shouts for example such as hold the line or stand your ground are still very useful by themselves though they can be traited to provide additional utility so that avoids this unpleasant kind of pigeonholing.

Chrispy.5641:

silentnight warrior.2714:

Nice post OP.
Just to add that warrior dont have the ability to lose target so they are always available to be hit by players. The absense of ports and weak access to blinds demand that warrior take all the damage while persuing their targets.
In the beginning (snare) was a huge weakness by it self (along with the other damage conditions) and ANet needed to buff warrior to allow them to keep up with their targets. Now warriors have “windows of oportunity” to do their things and that keeps them in the meta. As soon those windows close they are just like in the past, but this time their oponents need to play better than before.

Edit:

Just to had that Warrior damage comes from their weapons skills, not AI. When you have classes working with AI and they have much more time to prepare their defense while the AI does the damage from them, you start to realise why warrior needs to be the way it is.

Yeah, because AI pets in this game are so good(bad) at attacking moving targets, they are obviously superior(inferior) to your sweet, helpless, defenseless, perfectly balanced warriors who can attack moving targets.

Yea, the AI is so bad that ANet needed to nerf pirate runes. Makes perfect sense.

coglin.1867:

As I see it, the OP doesn’t seem to be responding to the thought out comments on threads out there. It appears to me, that he is addressing the very very few, minority players who are unreasonable in their complaints. I notice the warrior defenders here have ignored the more thought out and reasonable complaints.

None of the his post address some of the trait combinations that are over powered when used with certain weapons and so on. It seems to me, that it would benefit some of the warrior community to branch out and level the other professions, because most of their statements are made based on the warrior in a vacuum, and appear to display little, to no knowledge, of how they compare to the other professions , when it comes to being able to accomplish various goals with in the game itself.

The issues players are actually complaining about, are not so much profession specific, but are actual only problematic in the context of certain builds. It is the builds that become common and thus, used by so many, that have the uninformed poster, speaking as if those build represent the warrior as a whole.

These are the posts that have gotten the most focus/posts these past few months. I responded to each and every one of those threads. You’re also being incredibly vague here so it makes it impossible to respond.

Put longbow burst on a conquest point

/sit

/dance

profit

BurrTheKing.8571:

These are the posts that have gotten the most focus/posts these past few months. I responded to each and every one of those threads. You’re also being incredibly vague here so it makes it impossible to respond.

I do not believe he is being vague at all. The fact that someone points out that specific builds are the problem, and not the profession as a whole, is pretty specific.

At this point in time, Warriors have become a ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’ profession. They are easy to pick up, but they don’t excel at any given discipline.

…Which in turn explains why everyone would want at least one in any given scenario. They have a viable build for every situation, and in a way that makes other professions feel unwanted. I have tasted the workings of every profession after getting a really good impression of the Warrior, and it DOES seem to feel like the Warrior is in a good spot.

Until you consider where all that power is.

No warrior who wants a hand in any PvP setting will go into it without going 20 into defense. The warrior traits are woefully unbalanced, and whereas the other professions can spread out and mix-it-up to making their builds work (and thus give themselves weaknesses as well), Warriors need to funnel points in the same kitten trees for the same kitten traits all the time, or fail at everything.

I have always said Warriors have false power, they are in an artificially good state thanks to a few unique capabilities. But when you get down to it, they are absolutely nothing, abysmal is what I think of when I consider how unbalanced the Warrior tree is.

As soon as the traits find a resolution, regardless of how much it impacts warriors now, can the Warrior profession get a REAL fix, and see some real progress towards balance.

Oh, and the underwhelming or clunky mechanics we have need to go away as well.

the problem is that warrior is the noob class,
it is ridiculously easy to pick up and own faces without the need of any knowledge.

they have no fancy mechanics to learn.
this means that they have the lowest skill requirement but also the lowest skill cap,

in a 1v1:
a bad warrior will most likely beat a fairly good [other class],
a master warrior will most likely lose to a master [other class].

in high end tournaments warriors are still taken because they are very effective at team fights, between the heavy sustained aoe damage and the constantly chained AoE CCs (throw in the damage/condi immunitys, a condi clear every 7 seconds and the large passive regen) warriors are a nightmare in team fights.

Miss a dodge against a warrior = you are dead

Warrior stands still without dodging = signet will heal it up without you having to do anything

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Miss a dodge against a warrior = you are dead

Warrior stands still without dodging = signet will heal it up without you having to do anything

Yeah this sums it up. When I fight warriors as a shatter mesmer they take a 3-4 clone mind wrack pretty kitten well, and I die in two hits lolz.

I’m not that great of a mesmer but still :/

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Miss a dodge against a warrior = you are dead

Warrior stands still without dodging = signet will heal it up without you having to do anything

That only works if your average damage is less than 390 dps.

a t s e.9614:

Liewec.2896:

the problem is that warrior is the noob class,
it is ridiculously easy to pick up and own faces without the need of any knowledge.

they have no fancy mechanics to learn.
this means that they have the lowest skill requirement but also the lowest skill cap,

in a 1v1:
a bad warrior will most likely beat a fairly good [other class],
a master warrior will most likely lose to a master [other class].

in high end tournaments warriors are still taken because they are very effective at team fights, between the heavy sustained aoe damage and the constantly chained AoE CCs (throw in the damage/condi immunitys, a condi clear every 7 seconds and the large passive regen) warriors are a nightmare in team fights.

That’s the thing, actually very few people are good at this game except for the top players who play in high end tournaments.

Game population is : at least 30% noobs 60% average players and only 10% that mastered their class. Therefore , any1 who doesn’t play warrior will get owned by warriors unless you are a top player.

Because its only 1 mistake and you are most likely going to die. Arcing arrow 5k crit, hammer skills 4-5k each and eviscerate 7-10k. Only a top player can dodge/avoid everything , an average player will make at least 1 mistake and will die from it.

Not quite so. Those builds have the same weakness Elementalist have – Boon removal. Remove / steal/ corrupt their boons and they dont hit that hard.

BurrTheKing.8571:

alchemyst.2165:

BurrTheKing.8571:

Kibazuka.1390:

You seem to missunderstand having a weakness with being able to do things. Yes warrior cant burst out heavy single target long range damage like mesmer and engineer, yes they dont have a crapton of combo field like eles, yes they cant spam blindness and evade like a thief, but that arent weaknesses. They cant be used or exploitet against the warrior in any fighting situation at all. You can call them drawbacks but not weaknesses.
If i ask for a weakness i want to hear the weakness and not be basically told “hey look, they could be even more op”

If a Warrior is running:

Hambow: Be ready to blind/aegis/dodge several times in a row. If you see a Hammer, you know what’s coming. When the bow is out the only skill you have to worry about is Pin Down, which is easy to see now.

Skullcracker: When the mace is out they’ll probably reflect projectiles whenever they can and will try to use a set-up like Shield Bash or Bull’s Charge to land SC for the long stun. Don’t blow your Stun Break or w/e you have on the setup, wait until the SC has been used. If you have stability then feel free to break the setup however.

Celestial Axebow: Pretty much carried by how good Celestial is atm. It’s strength is a wide variety of attack methods. Where it sucks is in the mobility and it lacks any way to deny a stomp. Hard to beat 1v1 but like most Warrior builds if you time your conditions correctly you can overload them just like any other Warrior build. Bait out Berserker Stance, play defensive for the duration, then unload. If you have Fear or any other interrupt then save a quick one for when they try to burst with LB. It’s another easy-to-see burst considering they aim basically straight up. I think most people’s complaints with Warrior also stem from Asura, but they’re broken on any class and something does need to be done about it.

But all of these things give you no real advantage over the warrior. If you dodge a mace stun on a warrior they can just do it again in 8 seconds. If you blind a shield bash they still have a butt load of stuns to hit you with. Warrior is much too forgiving. Warriors aren’t punished for missing an attack unlike most other classes.

Missing a burst can indeed be VERY punishing, especially vs condition builds. Unlike other classes that remove/transfer condis every x number of seconds passively (interesting thing to note, Warriors are accused of being passive while they have some of the most active condi removal in the game) the Warrior is reliant on hitting that burst. When it comes to risk/reward Skullcracker is pretty high up there. If you miss SC that means you still have those condis on you. If it’s poison that means your healing is being reduced dramatically. Missing SC means that you got to go for the GS burst which is pretty much useless. This means you got to gain that adrenaline again and the build is dependent on landing that stun to deal damage.

Even with LB you can play around them having higher condi removal. A well played Corruptomancer just has to lay on the condis right after a burst and then laugh as the chilled and crippled warrior either tries to catch up or fires puny bow attacks. Warriors ARE weak to conditions, it’s just that you rarely find someone playing a condition build well enough to realize it. After Berserker Stance is gone you just gotta apply just enough conditions to keep up the pressure then nail them once they burst.

So you’re basically saying that if the 1 in a thousand chance occurs that someone lays enough condis on you in an 8 second span if the warrior doesn’t avoid them and/or if the person misses them, or if you have berserker stance, or if you have -40% condition duration food (which TONS of warriors run) then they MIGHT get your health down low.

But then 8 seconds later (sooner if you weapon swap) you just use your burst again so its fine for the warrior

As I’ve said, warrior’s forgiveness is much too high. I think warrior’s should be very tactical on the field rather than faceroling and literally winning from that. A warrior should tactical thoughts, not button mashing.

I play a warrior a good amount in spvp. I rarely have more than a few conditions on me. I outrun thieves constantly. (I main a thief, I’ve tried catching up to them, you can’t.) I can escape from any situation. I can deal insane damage. I can support my allies. I can make myself immune to conditions. I have insane survivability.

I literally can’t think of any weaknesses for warrior other than their predictability with their attacks, but just because they are telegraphed doesn’t mean you can keep up with their attacks.

Sorry for my rant X_X

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Miss a dodge against a warrior = you are dead

Warrior stands still without dodging = signet will heal it up without you having to do anything

Please keep bias to a minimum. Kthx.

nearlight.3064:

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Miss a dodge against a warrior = you are dead

Warrior stands still without dodging = signet will heal it up without you having to do anything

Yeah this sums it up. When I fight warriors as a shatter mesmer they take a 3-4 clone mind wrack pretty kitten well, and I die in two hits lolz.

I’m not that great of a mesmer but still :/

If you know you suck as a mesmer, why even post this as part of an arguement?

a t s e.9614:

Liewec.2896:

the problem is that warrior is the noob class,
it is ridiculously easy to pick up and own faces without the need of any knowledge.

they have no fancy mechanics to learn.
this means that they have the lowest skill requirement but also the lowest skill cap,

in a 1v1:
a bad warrior will most likely beat a fairly good [other class],
a master warrior will most likely lose to a master [other class].

in high end tournaments warriors are still taken because they are very effective at team fights, between the heavy sustained aoe damage and the constantly chained AoE CCs (throw in the damage/condi immunitys, a condi clear every 7 seconds and the large passive regen) warriors are a nightmare in team fights.

That’s the thing, actually very few people are good at this game except for the top players who play and win in high end tournaments. ( ESL cups, ToL etc)

Game population is : at least 30% noobs 60% average players and only 10% that mastered their class. Therefore , any1 who doesn’t play warrior will get owned by warriors unless you are a top player.

Because its only 1 mistake and you are most likely going to die. Arcing arrow 5k crit, hammer skills 4-5k each and eviscerate 7-10k. Only a top player can dodge/avoid everything , an average player will make at least 1 mistake and will die from it.

Then either I must be part of the top 10 or the warriors I see in yoloQ and hotjoin are garbage.

But since Warrior’s are OP…Guess I am the new addition to the top 10.

So what the OP is saying is: Now the warrior has immunity to forum based arguments as well.

Another buff for Warriors!

Ross Biddle.2367:

So what the OP is saying is: Now the warrior has immunity to forum based arguments as well.

Another buff for Warriors!

+ infinite

Ross Biddle.2367:

So what the OP is saying is: Now the warrior has immunity to forum based arguments as well.

Another buff for Warriors!

Its a new stance called “Ignore biased qq”.

Works great

While I agree with everything Burr said in his initial posts, writing it you must have known that you were incredibly prone to the ‘coglin-dancingmonkey’ combo. Good thing they don’t invest in power. Cleanse that kitten bro.

Seriously though, anybody that wants to write anything about warriors would do well to read these first 4 posts beforehand.

Solori.6025:

nearlight.3064:

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Miss a dodge against a warrior = you are dead

Warrior stands still without dodging = signet will heal it up without you having to do anything

Yeah this sums it up. When I fight warriors as a shatter mesmer they take a 3-4 clone mind wrack pretty kitten well, and I die in two hits lolz.

I’m not that great of a mesmer but still :/

If you know you suck as a mesmer, why even post this as part of an arguement?

Because its a matter of principle, it doesn’t seem balanced when I have to kite for ages and land multiple shatters to down a warrior when one can kill me if I fail to dodge two hits.

PU condition makes them a lot easier though, but then again, lets not even pretend like that build can actually hold a capture point.

Ross Biddle.2367:

So what the OP is saying is: Now the warrior has immunity to forum based arguments as well.

Another buff for Warriors!

Its only a matter of time before Anet buffs other classes to the Warrior’s level, or nerf’s the Warrior to the other classes’ level. Warriors are just getting desperate, trying as hard as their barbarically simple greatsword swinging mind can to justify why Warriors should stay exactly the way they are.

Fact is, balance patches come and go, and in any MMO, classes are routinely bumped from bottom to top and back to bottom again. Its going to happen, even to warriors, even to Anet’s so called ‘golden child’. If there was ever a truth that is as inescapable as it is moronic, this is one of them.

Warriors are not exactly OP, it’s more like it takes zero skill to do what they do.

You can see that from my example of me creating a warrior (never played this class before) and winning 90% of my duels without looking at the screen.

Warrior is not OP, it’s automatic:
-Longbow burst= easy cheap and strong way to win in conquest
-stances= one-button perfect counters
-signet= we gave you the highest health and armor so we though it would only make sense to give you the best regen skill with zero drawback
-eviscerate= leap, homing, low cd, hurt like hell, no resource cost on miss, enormous synergy with traits … yeah why not a hamburger and fries with that as well ?

Warrior is not fair.

The thing is, at high level of gameplay warriors are not that strong because players will have trained so much to counter them. But one moment on inattention and you are dead.

Honestly, all the posts on both sides point to one solution:

Warriors need an overhaul. Period. Rework Banners and Physical Utilities, Rework Traits and take power from the strongest parts of a warrior unless you trait for it. Make it so there is a few alternatives to competitive viable PvP builds that don’t need 20 into defense.

I don’t think Burst needs to change too much, but if there had to be changes, it would be to create an offensive and defensive burst, and double the recharge. Adds utility and a bigger cost, make the Warrior have Depth.

I agree with the sentiment that Warriors are rather easy to play, I would like to see them be more competitive at higher play at a bigger cost.

5. “Blatant over-exaggeration of a skill such as Kill Shot or Eviscerate”

In the case of Kill Shot, don’t even bother responding.

In the case of Evis, ask the exact gear/trait setup they were using. Chances are it’ll be glass, at which point you point out that glass vs glass is going to be like this no matter what glass. Meditation Guard may not get those huge numbers in one attack, but when it comes to damage it dishes out way more than your average Warrior. The sustain can also be just as good. Power Necro can also put out several 3-5k hits in a row in DS or with Lich Form. Even a Power Ranger (hehe) can deal crazy amounts of damage from what can feel like miles away. Of course let’s not forget Backstab on any Dagger build and the consistently high DPS and high survivability from S/D.

What seems to annoy them is the one big number. If you compare how much DPS a Axe Warrior puts out to that of any of the above builds chances are it’s lower. Most of the damage that occurs in between Evis comes from the AA. Most of the AA damage comes from the last hit of Triple Chop.

I’ve been playing my Guardian a lot more recently and my only issue is mobility, which isn’t much of a weakness. In PvP and WvW you just use other player’s swiftness. In exchange I either get tons of sustain/support or deal much higher damage. I find it strange that we we so few complaints about Guardians when they feel like a much stronger class.

burr great thread and great points.

6. “Warrior is simply OP overall don’t even try to defend it”

They are right. It’s OP. Don’t even try to defend it.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

6. “Warrior is simply OP overall don’t even try to defend it”

They are right. It’s OP. Don’t even try to defend it.

Would you like to defend your post? Or would you like to stick to your post that proves nothing?

BurrTheKing.8571:

I’m sure someone is probably going to write a longer respond than this refuting all of this or claiming all their nerf suggestions are reasonable (they generally aren’t) but whatever. If I wanted to get a bit straw man I could say that most of those who post anti-Warrior threads are Thief players who want to distract people from some of their builds or players that just want Warrior to go back to being a free kill so that they don’t actually have to adjust their build or learn how to counter them.

BurrTheKing.8571:

The amount of thief bashing we see on these forums is actually staggering. The most amazing part though is the massive amount of incorrect information or just flat out lies about the class is greater than any other game I’ve played in recent memory.

Oh, I also love the classic “I beat thieves all the time but X, Y, and Z are OP.” If you don’t have problems vs them then how are they OP…

right back at you… :>

BurrTheKing.8571:

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

6. “Warrior is simply OP overall don’t even try to defend it”

They are right. It’s OP. Don’t even try to defend it.

Would you like to defend your post? Or would you like to stick to your post that proves nothing?

I told you already I have one piece of evidence that beats everything:

I’m rather experienced in PvP (top 200 or so), but I’not a great player. I play with friends in the top 100. The other day I told them I wanted to train with my ele main against warriors as point defender. So we fight and I lose a lot (or declare loss, in the sense that getting hit by any eviscerate or pin down puts my life so low that I can not reliably hold the point anymore). So my friend, who is skilled and experienced with all classes tells me I should play warrior to try. Therefore we swapped classes: me on warrior, him on ele. I did not look at him, I had my eyes fixed on my skills, I did not dodge even once, but I wrecked him. I had no idea what I was doing and I wrecked him. We proceeded to do this against other classes and I wrecked most of them too.

So if a noob like me who has never played warrior even once before can destroy an experienced player, how is this class not bloody OP?