Guild Wars 2

I’m sure I’m not the only one that noticed this, but it seems to me that the warrior’s utility skills, healing skills and even elite skills are a bit bad, they’re very plain and uninteresting, the best ones are signets and shouts while the other abilties suffer because:

Stances: generally very situational and no specific trait tree for them, also most of them can be replaced by other utilities, namely signets.

Banners: Clunky, not very strong, (FGJ gives more damage than banner of strength for example) and not very fun to use, also has the problem of repositioning and flag thieves.

Physical: Massive overlap with weapon skills, kick overlaps with rifle butt, throw bolas overlaps with pin down, bull’s charge overlaps with tremor and savage leap, and stomp overlaps with another utility skill, the shout «Fear Me!» also, the traits for these skills are deep in the strength tree, which doesn’t seem to fit much because these are control utilities and the strength trait line doesn’t seem like a control-oriented specialization.

Elites: Rampage is plain useless, and Battle Standard is very situational.

Healing skills: Healing Signet should be changed to something like thieves’s signet of malice in my opinion.

banners are persistent buffs with virtually 100% uptime, most of which offer stats not available from boons (helaing power, boon duration, flat precision, crit damage, vitality, toughness). banner of tactics and and discipline also offer very strong active abilities, with an aoe heal (3,840) + 6s regen, and 10s of fury in aoe (respectively) on a 10s CD, which can be used by everyone in your group.

your argument against physical utilities doesn’t make any sense. just because you have a few control abilities on your weapons, you shouldn’t get them on utilities? why not just erase the guard’s shouts, since most of his weapons pump out boons. why not remove mesmer’s stealth utilities, since he gets it from prestige anyway? why give necro wells that blind, and stack vulnerability when his weapons already let him do that? because that’s what these classes specialize in. warrior has the option to specialize in disables, and control.

as for stances having no focused trait line, i suggest looking at the toughness trait line, where you can get a stance-focused trait on each major tier. they are also not outclassed by signets. balanced stance compared to dolyak signet, balanced stance wins by a longshot as it is also a breakstun and has a 20s shorter CD, making it much more reliable for its purpose. the precision signet gives 30 adrenaline, whereas a traited berserker stance gives 50 over an 8 second duration. it’s a matter of preference. endure pain giving invuln, has no comparable signet, and neither does frenzy’s quickness.

your comparison of fear me with stomp is baffling. one is a aoe blow + blast finisher, and another is an aoe fear. these have literally nothing in common other than the fact that they’re disruptive to the enemy.

rampage sucks, because transforms suck in general due to the way they work. warriors got it better than some other classes by having TWO good elites, instead of just one. war banner gives you a massive buff to your group’s damage output, while doubling as a revival. it’s good at turning around fights, and pushing them in your favor. it’s a more powerful version of signet of rage in an aoe, with a longer CD.

brienson pretty much has it. without giving away my build, ill say that i use 1 shout, 1 physical and 1 stance, none of which i have traited, and i cannot replace any of them because they are so central to my build. personally, i dont like any of the signets (the sole exception would probably be stamina).

fear me > stomp because you can still use it while stunned/knocked down.

and as for heal…ill just say, traited mending removes up to 6 conditions.

Stances are pretty kittening awesome, but I 1/2 way agree, I wish you could triat for reduced CDs

Brienson.7319:

with an aoe heal (3,840) + 6s regen,

On this note, upon seeing this a few weeks ago on the banner (never really used them before as I prefer to be mobile) I thought “Wow! Gotta try that”.

Tooltip listed the 3k+ amount, it healed for approx 600. Tried letting a guardian with clerics use it and it still healed nowhere near as much as stated.

don’t forget: all banners give you swiftness, in this extremely slow game (when running around I mean) that’s a necessity =) and the elite banner can give you 8 seconds of stability, which is useful in pve stuff (jumping puzzles, fotm cliffside etc)

Brienson.7319:

banners are persistent buffs with virtually 100% uptime, most of which offer stats not available from boons (helaing power, boon duration, flat precision, crit damage, vitality, toughness). banner of tactics and and discipline also offer very strong active abilities, with an aoe heal (3,840) + 6s regen, and 10s of fury in aoe (respectively) on a 10s CD, which can be used by everyone in your group.

Banners are the definition of situational. In pve they can be handy, especially in boss fights, but when it comes to other areas, especially wvw, they are only useful in the most extreme and unusual situations. I think the OP is mostly correct here.

as for stances having no focused trait line, i suggest looking at the toughness trait line, where you can get a stance-focused trait on each major tier.

There is only one stance focused trait in that line, which is Sure Footed, which increases stance duration. Last Stand and Defy band have no affect on your selected stances, except to offer very ineffective short term (1-2 second) version of them, that do not stack with the ones you have loaded.

Change one of those to reduce stance cooldown by 20%, and add another one that makes stances replace endurance, health, or adrenalin when used, and you would have more of a proper trait line for stances. The OP is correct on this.

your comparison of fear me with stomp is baffling. one is a aoe blow + blast finisher, and another is an aoe fear. these have literally nothing in common other than the fact that they’re disruptive to the enemy.

Yes and no. Functionally, they are both different. In reality, they are usually competing for the same spot on our hot bar and they often are used towards the same goal. I like them both and find them both useful in different situations.

rampage sucks, because transforms suck in general due to the way they work. warriors got it better than some other classes by having TWO good elites, instead of just one. war banner gives you a massive buff to your group’s damage output, while doubling as a revival. it’s good at turning around fights, and pushing them in your favor. it’s a more powerful version of signet of rage in an aoe, with a longer CD.

See my banner comment above. I really feel like my elite slot is a waste. I use the signet, but only because I find the other two options to be even less useful. Something that gave us stability plus a significant reduction in damage (75%) for 15 seconds would be a better fit in my opinion. It IS our elite slot, after all.