Guild Wars 2

Honestly I ma still kitten over the fact that we still have no passive condition removal or a change to shake it off.

What makes me giggle is S/D thief immobilizing and the ripping the regen hey just proced because of Dogged March lol.

Sil.4560:

Presumably it’s a Grandmaster trait, since they’re combining the current ones to make room for it. Now I can get the full whopping 3% burst damage boost!

I am not going to complain, though I’ll probably run the new burst trait instead. Actually having to choose between traits will be a welcome change. I still would have preferred if the boon hate thing replaced our worthless burst damage boost…

TheGuy.3568:

Honestly I ma still kitten over the fact that we still have no passive condition removal or a change to shake it off.

What makes me giggle is S/D thief immobilizing and the ripping the regen hey just proced because of Dogged March lol.

Well, dogged march is actually a form of passive condition removal… well, pseudo-removal through duration decrease.

Regarding the signet of might change : considering that blocking is not widely spread among professions : (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Block) , and considering that there are many other ways for us to miss : blind, evade, dodge, invulnerability (+ stability if we consider that landing an ineffective CC is effectively having it nullyfied ).
I think the signet active won’t help us in landing our attacks properly in most combat situations wich was I think the purpose of the skill’s active.

Furthermore : it has been mentioned that some signet passives will be buffed like banners were → +180 power from the signet of might’s passive really does’nt make you want to get rid of it.

caporal moktahr.3408:

Regarding the signet of might change : considering that blocking is not widely spread among professions : (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Block) , and considering that there are many other ways for us to miss : blind, evade, dodge, invulnerability (+ stability if we consider that landing an ineffective CC is effectively having it nullyfied ).
I think the signet active won’t help us in landing our attacks properly in most combat situations wich was I think the purpose of the skill’s active.

Furthermore : it has been mentioned that some signet passives will be buffed like banners were -> +180 power from the signet of might’s passive really does’nt make you want to get rid of it.

Which is what they stated their overall goal with the signets was. The +180 (if they decide to double it) power from signet of might will be useful in all situations, whereas the unblockable attacks will only be useful in certain situations. It’s a fairly powerful thing to be able to do, but you have to use it for a specific situation.

The example given in SotG was using it to counter a guardian using shelter. However, you have to recognize that the guardian is going to heal, set up your positioning so you can properly land your interrupt, and then actually execute it. Right now, we’re all just speculating about possibilities on paper, but it will not be so easy in practice.

I predict there will be a lot of people who just keep the signet up the whole time, or people will pop it and use up all the charges without really capitalizing on what it’s supposed to be used for.

One side nerf of the signet of might deal is that it won’t sync well with the berserker’s might trait anymore. Not sure if people really used that trait though, but there was a nice bit of synergy between the two that will no longer be present.

haha these ‘buffs’ are hilarious.

TheGuy.3568:

Honestly I ma still kitten over the fact that we still have no passive condition removal or a change to shake it off.

What makes me giggle is S/D thief immobilizing and the ripping the regen hey just proced because of Dogged March lol.

we have always had a trait that gives a auto shake it off every 20 seconds or so when you have more than one condition. i know, the famous retort “not good enoguh” is to follow.

fony.5102:

we have always had a trait that gives a auto shake it off every 20 seconds or so when you have more than one condition. i know, the famous retort “not good enoguh” is to follow.

It’s ICD is 30s. And yes, a single condition cleanse that you can’t control and you can’t keep track (due to ICDs being invisible) and procs on any condition application is “not enough”

In fact that’s probably the worse case of condition removal you could bring up trying to defend warrior’s condition cleansing ability

Yamsandjams.3267:

The example given in SotG was using it to counter a guardian using shelter. However, you have to recognize that the guardian is going to heal, set up your positioning so you can properly land your interrupt, and then actually execute it. Right now, we’re all just speculating about possibilities on paper, but it will not be so easy in practice.

You also need to realize that if you interrupted a shelter, the guardian is 100% screwed because it goes on full cooldown, not the 4s CD interrupted heals normally go on. Since most guards are in the habit of popping their shelter while already in melee (why would you take shelter otherwise?), I don’t think it’s unreasonable for it to get interrupted often enough to be a problem, and warriors running it could very well be bringing multiple interrupts (say mace/shield) for just this purpose.

That said, it has taken me the better part of my first 40 ranks on thief to get really comfortable interrupting heals with steal… an instant shadow stepping daze. Although shelter has a pretty obvious animation when it goes off, I think MOST warriors will be hard pressed to react in time (trigger signet, find an available interrupt, use it) to do much about it, leading them to blow signet late and waste it. If it were me, I’d just use signet when I saw them low and start hitting interrupts in anticipation.

Sounds fun, I predict hordes of Warriors going on Guardian hunt in WvW xD

I already do, but this will make it faster and more satisfying. =)

ens.9854:

You also need to realize that if you interrupted a shelter, the guardian is 100% screwed because it goes on full cooldown, not the 4s CD interrupted heals normally go on.

…

That said, it has taken me the better part of my first 40 ranks on thief to get really comfortable interrupting heals with steal… an instant shadow stepping daze. Although shelter has a pretty obvious animation when it goes off, I think MOST warriors will be hard pressed to react in time (trigger signet, find an available interrupt, use it) to do much about it, leading them to blow signet late and waste it. If it were me, I’d just use signet when I saw them low and start hitting interrupts in anticipation.

Why would the heal suddenly go on a full cooldown? I expect it will function as interrupted skills normally do and receive the 3 or 4 second cooldown, whatever that number happens to be.

I also think the last point you mentioned is how a lot of other people will use it. If a guardian gets low, you can pop your signet and start whipping out hammer CCs. That way, they can’t pop up an on-demand aegis or a heal like shelter to protect themselves when they’re on the ropes.

oZii.2864:

Ok watching it again now so all signets passives will be doubled this goes for all warriors! So so dolyak should yied +180 tougheness. So I wonder what that means for healing signet?

Ok so the dotted march trait that replaces turtle defense will reduced cripple chill and immoblize by 33% and if hit by any of those condition you get regeneration on a cd.

That’s great until you run against a D/P thief with Infiltrator’s Signet + Quick Recovery trait which will give them four initiative every 10 seconds, making a D/P a true perma-stealth class.

If the thief has Signet of Shadows, that’s 50% movement speed right there. Good luck trying to hit him while they are kiting you to death with shortbow.

I don’t think Anet actually thought this through with making all signet’s passives doubled.

Zidane.5297:

oZii.2864:

Ok watching it again now so all signets passives will be doubled this goes for all warriors! So so dolyak should yied +180 tougheness. So I wonder what that means for healing signet?

Ok so the dotted march trait that replaces turtle defense will reduced cripple chill and immoblize by 33% and if hit by any of those condition you get regeneration on a cd.

That’s great until you run against a D/P thief with Infiltrator’s Signet + Quick Recovery trait which will give them four initiative every 10 seconds, making a D/P a true perma-stealth class.

If the thief has Signet of Shadows, that’s 50% movement speed right there. Good luck trying to hit him while they are kiting you to death with shortbow.

I don’t think Anet actually thought this through with making all signet’s passives doubled.

The signet passive buff only applies to single stat buff signets, which will apply 2x the stat buff.

Initiative, run speed and so on are not stats. Power, precision, perhaps even condition duration and such are stats as they appear in the hero panel.

Leo G.4501:

Zidane.5297:

oZii.2864:

Ok watching it again now so all signets passives will be doubled this goes for all warriors! So so dolyak should yied +180 tougheness. So I wonder what that means for healing signet?

Ok so the dotted march trait that replaces turtle defense will reduced cripple chill and immoblize by 33% and if hit by any of those condition you get regeneration on a cd.

That’s great until you run against a D/P thief with Infiltrator’s Signet + Quick Recovery trait which will give them four initiative every 10 seconds, making a D/P a true perma-stealth class.

If the thief has Signet of Shadows, that’s 50% movement speed right there. Good luck trying to hit him while they are kiting you to death with shortbow.

I don’t think Anet actually thought this through with making all signet’s passives doubled.

The signet passive buff only applies to single stat buff signets, which will apply 2x the stat buff.

Initiative, run speed and so on are not stats. Power, precision, perhaps even condition duration and such are stats as they appear in the hero panel.

Ok that makes sense or otherwise it would be OP. Still, a thief with Assassin’s signet is going to have 180 power and combine it with Bloodlust stacks, a thief is going to hit hard even in a semi-glass cannon build.

Zidane.5297:

Leo G.4501:

Zidane.5297:

oZii.2864:

Ok watching it again now so all signets passives will be doubled this goes for all warriors! So so dolyak should yied +180 tougheness. So I wonder what that means for healing signet?

Ok so the dotted march trait that replaces turtle defense will reduced cripple chill and immoblize by 33% and if hit by any of those condition you get regeneration on a cd.

That’s great until you run against a D/P thief with Infiltrator’s Signet + Quick Recovery trait which will give them four initiative every 10 seconds, making a D/P a true perma-stealth class.

If the thief has Signet of Shadows, that’s 50% movement speed right there. Good luck trying to hit him while they are kiting you to death with shortbow.

I don’t think Anet actually thought this through with making all signet’s passives doubled.

The signet passive buff only applies to single stat buff signets, which will apply 2x the stat buff.

Initiative, run speed and so on are not stats. Power, precision, perhaps even condition duration and such are stats as they appear in the hero panel.

Ok that makes sense or otherwise it would be OP. Still, a thief with Assassin’s signet is going to have 180 power and combine it with Bloodlust stacks, a thief is going to hit hard even in a semi-glass cannon build.

As was mentioned, they specifically said that the doubling only applies “a lot of” the signets that gave a straight 10+level bonus to a stat. And that won’t really be a problem, considering that the active effect of Assassin’s Signet is +15% for 5 attacks.

Because let’s face it, pretty much every other class with signets has at least 1 signet where the passive is excellent. Guardians get Signet of Resolve, Rangers got Signet of Renewal and Signet of of the Hunt, Thieves have Signet of Shadows and Infiltrator’s Signet, Elementalists got Signet of Air, Signet of Water and Signet of Restoration, Mesmers have Signet of Inspiration.

Jonwar.9205:

I think these buffs are going to be great for hammer builds… Considering I run defektive’s hammer build these buffs actually look really awesome, but who knows.

Where does this boon hate trait sit, gm discipline? At work and I’m curious…

Hmmm, what leads you to think this? I don’t really see anything that would positively effect a shout + hammer build.

If they’re going to increase counters to blocking, I would like to see our block recharge times cut down whenever the block is broken.

They also mentioned that they are looking into more ways for us to spend adrenaline. Some form of adrenaline-based block, or burning adrenaline as backup endurance for dodging, would be amazing.

Dodging for adrenaline would indeed be pretty kitten cool if they’re not going to give us real sustain.

Gulesave.5073:

If they’re going to increase counters to blocking, I would like to see our block recharge times cut down whenever the block is broken.

Why? That would completely defeat the purpose of the unblockable attack. And we don’t even know what kind of cooldown the Signet of Might active is going to be put on. If the cooldown is greater than that of our longest block, Shield Stance, then it won’t be a problem.

They also mentioned that they are looking into more ways for us to spend adrenaline. Some form of adrenaline-based block, or burning adrenaline as backup endurance for dodging, would be amazing.

Ever heard of Building Momentum?

I’ve been hoping Signet of Might’s CD will stay the same, lol

timidobserver.7925:

Jonwar.9205:

I think these buffs are going to be great for hammer builds… Considering I run defektive’s hammer build these buffs actually look really awesome, but who knows.

Where does this boon hate trait sit, gm discipline? At work and I’m curious…

Hmmm, what leads you to think this? I don’t really see anything that would positively effect a shout + hammer build.

Who said anything about shouts? I ran a shout build once, quite frankly I think they’re awful.

For the tanky dps warrior I think a lot of these buffs shine. Most of these builds already dedicate 15-30 points into discipline (rarely less than 20). Also they’re typically slow attackers so block and blind are huge weaknesses, the new signed of might may mitigate this depending on cooldown.

These buffs are awesome. That is all.
Can anyone tell me if they’ve confirmed to be removing leg spec on arrow carts? Trying to decide where to get the extra 10 points for boon hate.

Quick recap:

- New trait: Dogged March. Replaces Turtle’s Defense. Reduces cripple, immobilize, and chill durations by 33%, and gives a small amount of regeneration when hit by these conditions.
- New trait: Burst Mastery. Combines both grandmaster Discipline traits. Reduces burst skill recharge and adrenaline used.
- New trait: Discharge of the Empowered. Grandmaster Discipline. Increases damage to target by 3% for each unique boon on them.
- Signet of Might’s active now causes the next 3 attacks to be unblockable.
- Passive signet stat increase cap changed to 180 from 90.

Well, let’s look at these from a tPvP perspective, shall we:

a) Signets.

- passives get to what they should’ve been since beginning
- Signet of Might (active): doesn’t provide immunity to blind, doesn’t go through evade

Given how heavily compressed our utility bar is (balanced stance, endure pain, bull’s charge, frenzy - usually at least 2 of these land on your utility bar), replacing a critical utility skill for a ... signet, seems far off in most cases.

Prior to the update, Signet of Fury saw limited application in builds featuring longbow. Signet of Stamina has also seen limited use. Dolyak was always terrible, and will always be terrible without changes to it’s active.

Signet of Might, totally reliant on target not dodging, evading or blinding us, might see more play in cheesy WvW builds featuring zerker longbow/rifle, rather than proper tPvP builds, which to this day are melee-centric or melee-exclusive in their weapon selection.

Verdict: new toys for the PvE/WvW guys, for us fundamentally nothing changes.

b) Dogged March

- this would be good, but as a 5-point investment in Tactics or Discipline line (given how many builds go 10 Tactics for leg specialist or 15 Discipline for Fast Hands anyway)
- currently, it competes with other very useful traits, namely Embrace the Pain and Missile Deflection (both of which provide necessary damage and sustain for various builds to function - full-duration ranged blocks reflecting projectiles from MD, more reliant burst rotations on weapons with slower adrenaline gain or difficulties tracking the target from EtP)

Verdict: It may be an improvement over Turtle’s Defence, but taking it means removing another critical (and far more important) major trait from most viable builds, be it in the Defence or another traitline. Compared to Rangers getting 50% endurance regen for 5-point investment in Wilderness Survival, this trait adds more salt to injury.

c) Burst Mastery

- considering it’s a 30-point investment in a tree with very poor passive stat gains (brawn anyone?), and that prior to the update niche builds made use of either grandmaster trait for faster or more frequent burst rotation, this change is about right

Verdict: Good change. Not a game-changer, but (for now) our first and only worthwhile grandmaster trait (more on it below).

d) Discharge of the Empowered

This trait is bad, for various reasons:

- requires heavy investment in a tree everyone needs (Signet Mastery, Fast Hands, Mobile Strikes) and everyone hates (Brawn)
- provides a straight-up damage boost for the very short duration a target will have enough boons to make this trait worthwhile, instead of allowing us to strip boons (stability and protection are worst offenders)
- the damage boost throughout the fight will either be minimal (2-3 boons or less on target for most of the time), or reduced to zero in critical moments (given how boon spamming is usually paired up with stunbreaks, condition cleaners, blocks, blinds, evades and strategic dodging)
- these 10-15 Discipline points could be put to better use on many builds and used to grab Last Chance, Furious, Slashing Power, Leg Specialist and the like (combined with access to minor traits such as Attack of Opportunity - straight-up 10% damage boost in teamfights) ... indeed, in most instances, NOT grabbing this trait and taking something else will grant us better survivability and damage throughout a whole duration of a fight
- this trait would be acceptable ... as a minor 5 or 15 trait, elsewhere in the tree, or another tree altogether

Verdict: This trait doesn’t solve the "boon" problems for Warriors, but instead goes a round-about and insulting way of pretending to "fix" something that simply isn’t there (we don’t have problems with damage output, but boons that completely shut us down for their duration - and there are far better damage alternatives to wasting 30 points in Discipline for this trait, including the "damage vs boon spammers" scenario).

---------- Final Impressions -----------

If these changes are final and the only ones a Warrior will see in the upcoming patch, we’ll remain exactly where we are at the tPvP foodchain. Our core "boon" problem is still not addressed, instead round-about solutions are put forward, making the Warrior (supposedly) more competitive in the areas he is already good at, while doing very little to address the original problem.

Our viable traits (in relation to each other and their alternatives) became even more concentrated, reducing the potential for future build variety. Possible solution is to rework our minor traits and give them the functionality of most critical major traits and utility skills, to give more room for signets, limited weapon combinations and obscure utility skills.

List of STILL unaddressed problems:

- no long-term defence mechanisms against: protection, retaliation, stability and confusion
- very compressed utility bar
- far too many necessary traits you must have regardless of the build
- no worthwhile elites besides SoR
- poor self-sustain necessary to dance around a point
- bad/useless burst skills
- brawn

When you watch the state of the game video they didn’t even know that main hand sword’s burst skill didn’t return endurance on use with the strength lines 15 point minor trait because it’s bugged.

It’s pretty obvious no one at Arenanet really has a grasp on how the classes are actually playing out in the pvp aspect of the game or wvw. If they did we would of seen vast improvements to the warrior’s ability to stay in fights by this point in the game’s life.

Maybe with the spectator mode they can actually watch decent teams play their game and make changes according to players that have a decent understanding of game mechanics.

It makes me wonder from just browsing through the forums with all the bad advice people post that maybe Arenanet has been misled by these people. I think these forums are more of a hindrance than a help.

Also build diversity is terrible in this game I would like to see spvp die if we could get rid of the terrible tiered trait system. Most grandmaster traits are no better than the ones in the adept/master tier and the grandmaster ones need to be able to be placed in the adept slots for different builds to actually function.

Jonwar.9205:

Sil.4560:

Presumably it’s a Grandmaster trait, since they’re combining the current ones to make room for it. Now I can get the full whopping 3% burst damage boost!

I am not going to complain, though I’ll probably run the new burst trait instead. Actually having to choose between traits will be a welcome change. I still would have preferred if the boon hate thing replaced our worthless burst damage boost…

That’s my thought…If the ‘boon hate’ 3%/per is a grandmaster 30-pt Discipline, the effect or promise of Warrior boon hate will be minimal. It is good to hear that there is some change to the Grandmaster traits though.

The ideal would be a 1%/2%/3% per enemy boon in addition to the current F1 burst of 1-3% of Discipline trait line and wouldn’t be far out of balance. We can hope… Protection Boon (enemy bunker) is still far and away better than this change though so I am not seeing what would really happen in tPvP (give up one damage boost trait for another is not going to help Warrior balance).

What’s kind of funny is that Dogged March by itself is not really that great of a talent in concept. It is only viable with a Lemongrass/Melandru counterparts. I personally would have rather seen Mobile Strikes just actually work against all movement impairing (Immobilize, Cripple, Chill) instead since it seems like a no-brainer enhancement (could even add Endurance gain when it happens).

Overall, very small tweaks except for the potential large impact of Signet builds (helping the Warrior further in non tPvP areas).

The dotted march or whatever it is provides lemongrass/melandru for free. Its -33% for those conditions. Embrace the pain isn’t a necessary trait imo. Its good to have but getting adrenaline is just so easy. The most important time is when you need to pop healing surge I am pretty sure pretty much everyone gets a full bar in 30 secs.

Its pretty easy to test the impact it makes before hand just grab some melandru runes in the mist or run both or 1 in wvw and you can get a feel for how it will impact the movement conditions.

It makes a pretty big impact as you can basically stick to someone like glue thats just with melandru all on its own most Immobs dont even last long in game anyway and are rounded down like all conditions in duration so in reality the -33% will actually be -40% since everything is whole seconds in this game.

lemongrass/melandru is 70% condition reduction. It’s used in wvw not spvp. Dogged march is only movement condition’s so even if you were to run it in spvp with melandru which ppl won’t you will still be vulnerable to damage conditions unlike wvw.

oZii.2864:

Immobs dont even last long in game anyway and are rounded down like all conditions in duration so in reality the -33% will actually be -40% since everything is whole seconds in this game.

Conditions that do direct damage are rounded down (the damage component only is rounded down). Any effects (Immobilize, Cripple and Chill) as well as (Confuse, Fear, Blind, Vulnerability, Weakness, and Poison (the heal reduction)) is rounded down to the nearest 1/4 second…at least that is what I have seen from in game testing; fairly easy to test btw.

Related, that is why Confuse is the best damage condition because it is not prone to the 1-second cutoff rule in WvW meaning it will hit you for the full effect based on your attack speed (in other words, Confuse condition probably should have a 1-second internal cooldown to have the intended effect and then balanced (damage done) from there).

Here is a "Discharge of the Empowered" that would actually make a difference:

"Burst skills remove a boon (removes stability before protection, and protection before any other boon). Boon is first removed from the target, then damage & effects from burst skill are inflicted. In case of AoE/piercing attack, maximum of 5 individual targets lose a boon (normal game rules apply)."

lol imagine if they actually give warriors anything meaningful in the years to come lol.

This community is pretty up in arms at the slightest change imagine if something like that went through there would be a major kittenstorm on the forums lol. Ppl just don’t like warriors in this game. But don’t seem to have a problem with guardians thieves and mesmers for some reason.

Artaz.3819:

oZii.2864:

Immobs dont even last long in game anyway and are rounded down like all conditions in duration so in reality the -33% will actually be -40% since everything is whole seconds in this game.

Conditions that do direct damage are rounded down (the damage component only is rounded down). Any effects (Immobilize, Cripple and Chill) as well as (Confuse, Fear, Blind, Vulnerability, Weakness, and Poison (the heal reduction)) is rounded down to the nearest 1/4 second…at least that is what I have seen from in game testing; fairly easy to test btw.

Related, that is why Confuse is the best damage condition because it is not prone to the 1-second cutoff rule in WvW meaning it will hit you for the full effect based on your attack speed (in other words, Confuse condition probably should have a 1-second internal cooldown to have the intended effect and then balanced (damage done) from there).

I’ll have to go back and test again but me and some others tested it using warrior cripples when trying to decide if the leek soup was more cost efficient than going for the lemongrass.

Confusion is getting a 50% nerf (sPvP damage) in WvW so it wont be as significant but I feel like it will still be strong against people that love to spam buttons. I plan to stick with my rabid condition mesmer. I ran glamour and it is really powerful group setting but I prefer to solo roam alot. Confusion is all about intensity anyway though. Have to see how it goes.

@Al bundy – I know that lemongrass isn’t available in sPvP no foods are I was suggesting that if anyone wanted to see or get a general sense of how the new trait will be they could just go bet melandru runes and test it out in sPvP its not the exact 33% but you can get an idea of the difference it makes when struck by those condi’s with the -25% duration. We don’t know how the Regen proc will work for the trait that something we will all have to wait and see in the patch notes and patch day.

actually surprised, the changes sound decent at least.. it will give me a reason to fraps again.