A warrior design philosophy
So you want the warrior to be a heavy armor profession with tons of hp, ridiculously hard hitter with a multitude of ways to block/evade/parry/counter attacks along with high vigor uptime and be very mobile with basically invincible mobility skills on every weapon…..holy kitten I’m glad you’re not working on gw2. Why don’t you just let them cut out all the middle work and make your autoattack grant you invincibility for 10s, 1500range, homing, unblockable and sends enemies into an instant-downed state? All you have to do is walk over and hit f-oh wait…..walking, yeah can’t have that. All warrior auto attacks are 1500 range, unblockable, homing attacks that grant 5s of evasion and instant kills target. Sounds good?
When free speech ends, tyranny begins.
The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.
The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.
While easier access to Vigor would solve a lot of warrior problems, I think it breaks with their design philosophy, because there are already two dodge-centric classes (ranger, thief). And I highly doubt we’ll ever see the current weapons get new movement abilities or animations or anything like that.
Regarding evades/blocks/parry, I think that style of gameplay is just not enjoyable on a fundamental level and wouldn’t want more of it. It’s just very annoying to have a clean, unobstructed ability connect with the target, then “oops! gotcha! I blocked it, nyah nyah” happen.
Another design to integrate into warrior I think could be worked into the class, would be to have quick weapon swapping (i.e. make Fast Hands part of the class, and have some other thing in its place). Fits the theme of weapons master, and is super useful, but currently only a few builds can dip into Discipline tree. Another “weapons master” themed idea could be… carry a third weapon set, but that’d probably be a can of worms for balancing ;-)
So you want the warrior to be a heavy armor profession with tons of hp, ridiculously hard hitter with a multitude of ways to block/evade/parry/counter attacks along with high vigor uptime and be very mobile with basically invincible mobility skills on every weapon.
Tell me how it’s fair that I trait my warrior in full defense/tactics with giver’s/shaman/cleric exotics and I’m not remotely as tanky as a guardian specialized in damage, nor do I have his level support, and of course my damage is crap due to no power on my gear. People say “OMG warrior damage too high make them squishy” but don’t realize there’s no other way to play a warrior. Look at the “warrior tank” posts, they almost all have someone saying “go zerk or roll a guardian.”
This is wrong. Since when are warriors not tanky? There’s a reason you keep seeing questions about how to make a tanky warrior here. People expect to be able to tank well with a warrior. I mean, come on it’s a heavy class that can carry a shield and has a ton of health, with a long tradition of being tanks in video games. I expected to be able to get good survivability when I picked a warrior, if I wanted to play a melee glass cannon with crazy DPS I would have picked a thief. Warriors should be able to bunker if they have the right stats, weapons and traits. Of course, zerker glass cannons should not, nobody ever said you should be able to have good survivability with the damage of a zerker. That would be dumb.
I agree with the OP that a warrior’s defenses should lie in block, evade and dodge rather than protection. As someone who liked playing tanks in other MMOs, I find that being good with skills like Counterblow is very rewarding because the timing is not always obvious. (If this game had traditional tanks in PvE it would be my favorite game to tank in because of that.) Personally I’d change Shield Bash so that it blocks or evades during the charge animation so that could be another skill that you can time. It’s a little difficult to use as a stun due to the animation lag anyway, so why not also give it a defensive purpose?
However, with more and more things being unblockable, I think tanky warriors need an straight up invulnerability move, but since chaining Shield Stance with an invul and Defy Pain would be a little crazy, I think it should be baked into one of these skills. I would just change Shield Mastery so that it also makes Shield Stance give invulnerability during its animation. It won’t change anything 95% of the time, but when you know that something unblockable is coming (happens often in dungeons) and you need a breather, you could pop Shield Stance and know that you won’t take damage in the next 3 seconds whether the attacks are blockable or not.
Tanky warriors should have good regens (a buff to Healing Signet was hinted), but not so good that they don’t need to block or dodge; because that wouldn’t fit with their suggested fighting style. I think Healing Signet’s passive heal should scale much better with healing power.
Then there’s this thread that has great ideas about how to improve the defense line without making it too overpowered for glass cannon zerkers:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Defense-Grandmaster-Trait-Indomitable
This is not WoW, where one class can only do damage while another one can do just as much damage and be able to tank and heal. I’m pretty sure that warriors (or any profession) are not intended to be good at only one thing. I could be wrong, but as far as I know, every profession is intended to be able to specialize in whatever the player wants: defense, melee damage, ranged damage, conditions, support, etc. And even more when it’s natural. (Warrior tanks.) The difference is in the playstyle. I don’t really care about the removal of the trinity, in my opinion that’s a big mistake in the absence of anything better; to me the genius of the class design of GW2 is rather in the fact that every class can specialize into everything. (No unidimentional classes like mages that can only deal damage, priests that can only heal, etc.) In the future, I’d personally like this aspect of the game to be pushed.
So you want the warrior to be a heavy armor profession with tons of hp, ridiculously hard hitter with a multitude of ways to block/evade/parry/counter attacks along with high vigor uptime and be very mobile with basically invincible mobility skills on every weapon…..holy kitten I’m glad you’re not working on gw2… bla, bla…
So much hate and contempt! Well, I should not be surprised: this is the Internet after all!
It seems that you need more explanations to understand my point. First this isn’t really a balancing post even if it looks like one. It is more a core mechanic one.
First let’s dismiss the “heavy armor argument”: it’s a widespread knowledge that this kind of armor doesn’t offer real melee staying power and is far less efficient than the protection boon. The warrior right now cannot stand the heat of battle for long and it’s a shame.
That is why in sPvP, after the last patch, players still categorize the warrior as the weakest class. Not me, them!
What is a warrior right now? It is a hard hitter which gets a special attack after a while.
And that’s it!
That special attack may be powerful (rifle/axe/hammer), may have some uses (mace/sword/bow) or may be just useless (greatsword). Anyway it doesn’t offer staying power in a fight.
Necro’s death shroud offers it. Mesmer’s clones offer some. Thief has stealth. The ranger is a dual entity and don’t get me started with guardian or ele core mechanics… (no clue about engies)
Our core mechanic offers nothing that could help us to stay longer in a fight while most of the others do. That’s why we are weak against them unless we killshot/eviscerate/zerk-gear them first. So we do our predictable pony trick and after we have to run or be dead meat. Hit and run gameplay should be the thief’s one, not the warrior’s. Something is wrong here.
So yes I’m asking for melee staying power. It is legitimate. And I ask it through dodge/block/evade/mobility because this is what we need and it is coherent with what a warrior should be.