Guild Wars 2

It seems a common sentiment that the warrior lacks a real role. While those of us who cannot play any other class have carved our own roles the best we could. It just seems apparent that there is no defined path that a warrior should take.

I was thinking about it a bit, and it just sort of occurred to me that a warriors place is in the middle of a battle or should be anyways. SO. Whats happening in the middle of battle? You are getting hit. Teammates are fighting around you. It seems logical that a class whose place which should be in the heart of battle, should be well adapted to it.

My idea is pretty simple. Gear skills and traits to benefit from being in combat.

I’ll try to keep my list simple. So it is by no means perfectly balanced or complete.

1. A warrior should thrive with teammates around. So things like “Vigorous Shouts” could heal the warrior for a small amount per affected ally. Something Similar could be done for “Quick Breathing” for warhorn.

2. The Warrior should become more powerful, the more enemies that are around. This could actually affect several areas in some cool ways:

-Defy pain(trait)- added effect – for every hit that would have caused damage during endure pain, the warrior is healed +(#)(max #). This would affect both endure pain the skill and the one activated by the trait.

-Shield Stance – added effect – for every successful block during shield stance, the warrior gains1 sec of protection

-New trait – Bloodlust – Every time the warrior successfully hits more than one foe with an attack, gain (something, maybe might)

3. I feel attacking a warrior should have some sort of consequences, not necessarily direct.

-New Trait – Aggressive Retaliation – Upon successful block with a skill(not aegis) warrior gains haste (2-3 seconds (with cooldown)). This gives the warrior a cool option for finishing people off as well as encouraging using different weapon sets.

4. Warrior’s should be a bigger benefit to their team, their team should rally around the warrior. I think that was the idea of banners, but I like the concept of the trait “Empower Allies” and I think more could be wrought of such traits.

-New Trait – Stunning Stability – For every enemy successfully disabled, your allies recieve 1 second of stability. So Earthshaker could potentially give 5 seconds of stability to your whole team.
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I really like the idea of a warrior charging into battle and being a force to be reckoned with there. Warrior, is not a solo player, can’t disappear, and doesn’t heal/protect others that well, but they can and should be the heart of battle.

I openly welcome comments/criticisms/additions

Interesting ideas. I think you’re right on with what the concept of the profession is: mobility and group synergy. The warrior certainly needs more of both of these. I think though, the best way to do this is to tweak the existing skills, especially the shouts and banners. Right now I almost never see anybody use a banner. And the shouts don’t really have any group synergy. Fixing those things will go a long ways toward putting the warrior where it needs to be – in the thick of it. One of the things you haven’t addressed is condition removal. Warriors really need a new way to do this.

I will say this in defense of what the warrior can already do. I run a hammer build with bull’s charge. It works well for both PvP and PvE. I have a decent amount of mobility and can add a lot to a group, compared to greatsword which has a bit more mobility and damage, but lacks CC. I feel like I bring something to the table that most other players don’t, CC. And it works very well in sPvP. I can very effectively engage and shut down a player. The difficult comes from not making myself the prime target. I have to wait until I can engage 1v1 or follow the thieves and mesmers’ targets to prevent getting taken out. If I do train a target, they are just dead.

They’re actually some pretty good ideas; but I don’t think we’ll be seeing new skills or traits before an expansion to be honest. But you’re on the right track, currently Warrior is mostly lacking in group support and synergy, many of your suggestions would go the right way towards fixing this issue.

I’m very interested in banners to be honest, they are what drew me to the Warrior as my first character for Guild Wars 2. Maybe one of the normal banners (probably defense) could have a condition-removing tick every x seconds, or something. Banners doing other things, such as ticks of damage, non-damage conditions or boons at close range could also be useful.

I’d also like to see banners be carried on the back – with banner skills 2-4 being linked to F2, F3 and F4 – or possibly even the option of banners being carried in the offhand. The other thing I can think of with banners, is traited banners being permanent – this wouldn’t be OP as currently they have a downtime of 5 seconds when traited.

@Zonzai
The point of most of my ideas were to make the warrior a bit less desirable of a target. So if people want to attack you less, you get CC’d less. I wouldn’t want to increase our condition removal too much as we would just be able to walk through condition heavy builds with a shout build and runes of the soldier. I understand your sentiments, but with traits like mobile strikes and access to a warhorn, warriors don’t really have it that bad(try being a ranger who don’t really have good options for condition removals). Though it would be nice to see a reduced cool down for warhorn skills or a little more flexible access to quick breathing without it conflicting with so many good traits.

@Varyag
I agree with you on banners, it would be nice to be able to transport banners without taking up a weapon slot. I made a big long post about my ideas for banners here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Banners/first#post569244
Not too far off from what you’re saying, but keeping banners as a carryable item.

Thanks for your input!

@Angriff
I hadn’t thought of it like that. That’s a good point. I doubt we will be seeing any new skills but I’d really like to see some of the existing skills changed to be more useful. It seems like shouts and banners specifically have a lot of potential to add to our group synergy (or lack of it).

Zonzai.2341:

One of the things you haven’t addressed is condition removal. Warriors really need a new way to do this.

Soldier Rune + Shouts + Warhorn + Heal = plenty of condition removal. There are other runes and a signet for condition removal. There are some times when there are just literally too many conditions to remove anymore. I played a few games last night and I was constantly being hit by 2 necros and a mesmer with conditions and you can really only remove so much until you are stuck on CDs. I do agree that it would be nice to have a “remove condition every 10 seconds” utility.

Well it’s time again. This time it’s…

Rifles. They’re boring. Some might say underpowered, some say very situational. I say they could use a heavy dose of fun.

Why are rifle’s boring? Well you sit there and you peck away from a distance, and every so often you get a big painful peck that often never connects.

My idea is to make the rifle much more aggressive.

Volley - The closer you are, the more damage it does. I think about 18th century battles and how inaccurate the muskets were, a volley was held off until opposing forces were relatively close to maximize damage. The skill could also track enemies moving around you instead of the skill ending early.

Crack Shot - Change piercing to ricochet(up to 3 targets). I think this mechanic is a bit more fun and makes hitting more than one target a bit easier to set up. Taking time to line your targets up doesn’t seem like a warrior type thing to do. Charging in firing wildly is more like it.

Now for the fun stuff

Rifle Butt - Changed to the adrenaline skill. Now stuns instead of knocking back(remember volley doing more damage up close?)

Prepared Shot (Replaces Rifle Butt on the #5 slot). – Prepare a powerful Rifle Shot. Prepared shot Does different things depending on how well prepared it is. Skill changes for every second it is charged.

-Less than 1 second – ill Prepared Shot – Fire an ill prepared shot that knocks back the enemy(so a double tap of the skill maintains the same function as Rifle Butt)
-After 1 second – Hastily Prepared Shot – Fire a Hastily Prepared shot that stuns your foe
-At 2 seconds(full cast) – Well Prepared Shot – Fire a powerful Shot that immobilizes your foe

Bayonette - Replaces Brutal Shot – Rush forward and impale your foe with with a bayonette making them vulnerable.

I think it would be a lot of fun charging in with a rifle like this. More utility(prepared shot/rifle butt), more damage(volley/crack shot), more aggressive, more fun. Yeah it gets rid of Kill Shot, but I never liked that skill anyways. I think it would be hard to make an accurate Kill Shot when pumped up on adrenaline anyways.

Edit: Some additional thoughts. Though the idea of these changes were to make rifle more aggressive, but they also allow for more defensive play as well. Bayonette could used to run away as well as charge in. Prepared shot can keep people away or hold them still and if they do get close, rifle butt is there to stop them.

This approach makes the rifle more involved, versatile, and usable.

Angriff.1935:

Well it’s time again. This time it’s…

Rifles. They’re boring. Some might say underpowered, some say very situational. I say they could use a heavy dose of fun.

Why are rifle’s boring? Well you sit there and you peck away from a distance, and every so often you get a big painful peck that often never connects.

My idea is to make the rifle much more aggressive.

Volley - The closer you are, the more damage it does. I think about 18th century battles and how inaccurate the muskets were, a volley was held off until opposing forces were relatively close to maximize damage. The skill could also track enemies moving around you instead of the skill ending early.

Crack Shot - Change piercing to ricochet(up to 3 targets). I think this mechanic is a bit more fun and makes hitting more than one target a bit easier to set up. Taking time to line your targets up doesn’t seem like a warrior type thing to do. Charging in firing wildly is more like it.

Now for the fun stuff

Rifle Butt - Changed to the adrenaline skill. Now stuns instead of knocking back(remember volley doing more damage up close?)

Prepared Shot (Replaces Rifle Butt on the #5 slot). – Prepare a powerful Rifle Shot. Prepared shot Does different things depending on how well prepared it is. Skill changes for every second it is charged.

-Less than 1 second – ill Prepared Shot – Fire an ill prepared shot that knocks back the enemy(so a double tap of the skill maintains the same function as Rifle Butt)
-After 1 second – Hastily Prepared Shot – Fire a Hastily Prepared shot that stuns your foe
-At 2 seconds(full cast) – Well Prepared Shot – Fire a powerful Shot that immobilizes your foe

Bayonette - Replaces Brutal Shot – Rush forward and impale your foe with with a bayonette making them vulnerable.

I think it would be a lot of fun charging in with a rifle like this. More utility(prepared shot/rifle butt), more damage(volley/crack shot), more aggressive, more fun. Yeah it gets rid of Kill Shot, but I never liked that skill anyways. I think it would be hard to make an accurate Kill Shot when pumped up on adrenaline anyways.

Edit: Some additional thoughts. Though the idea of these changes were to make rifle more aggressive, but they also allow for more defensive play as well. Bayonette could used to run away as well as charge in. Prepared shot can keep people away or hold them still and if they do get close, rifle butt is there to stop them.

This approach makes the rifle more involved, versatile, and usable.

I like your suggestions for a more ‘colorful’ skillset for the rifle,
though I don’t like the ‘Prepared skillshot’ with variable outcome
based on holding down the numerical key? ..for x amount of time.

Well actually, my line of thinking was to make it sort of like kill shot, only you can hit the button again during its cast time for different effect. So when you start the action, it would have an “ill prepared shot” icon, after 1 second it would change to “hastily prepared shot,” and at 2 seconds it would just fire.

So you could use it exactly like kill shot if you wanted that effect, or stop it short for a close range knock back or long range stun.

So you wouldn’t have to hold any buttons, just hit it again to stop it short. Very much like the main hand mace when it blocks something, except it’s you triggering the effect.