Guild Wars 2

This post is to evaluate where the warrior is currently at. What skills are overpowered, underpowered as individual skills, or what combinations are problematic.

As a general rule, I will be talking about my experiences playing. I don’t theory craft or min/max to any major extent. Listing huge equations has little bearing in a game like this, kitten many variables cannot be accounted for.

I play WvW almost exclusively. I do PvE on occasion, however most of this post will lean towards the former. If anyone with extensive knowledge of SPvP can contribute, please do.

Character overview

Armour – PVT /w melandru runes
Accessories – Beserker, Knights and hybrid Power/Vitality/Precision/ Crit items.
Weapon – Axe/Shield ~ Hammer

Skills -:

• Healing signet
• Berserkers Stance
• Bulls Charge
• Balanced Stance
• Signet of Rage/Rampage.

Abilities/Traits of Interest

These are the abilities that have come under fire.

• Berserkers Stance
• Healing Signet
• Defy Pain
• Last Stand
• Unsuspecting Foe
• CC – Ability

Why are they highlighted?

Berserkers stance
8 seconds of condition immunity in a condition heavy meta cause a few waves of conflict. No way to fear, cripple or slow. It was a big deal. Is it too strong a skill? At 100% reduction, considering the reduction of the condition meta probably yes. However I feel it was needed to break the condition meta that had taken over.

Healing signet
Where to start? A much needed increase to sustain, which warriors struggled with. I’ve seen a lot of comments about an uninterruptible heal. No counter. Always active. I do, strongly, believe that this is a knowledge issue. Is it too strong as an individual skill? No.

Defy pain
Easy one. Only active at 25% health. I don’t feel this is too strong a skill on its own.

Last stand
Same as above, activates when a CC hits.

Unsuspecting Foe
A large chunk of crit chance when stunned. I’m torn between this skill. If you have no crit damage, the increase in damage is negligible. However if I stun with my setup with full adrenaline, I’m at 100% crit chance with 91% crit damage. That’s big. I do feel as an individual trait, this is too much of an increase.

CC – ability
Hammer stun, mace stun, shield stun. Etc etc. we have a lot of access to stuns. I feel that these are not a core issue. Warriors personify stuns and lockdowns from weapons. That’s what we are based around. Mace F ability was too much with a bugged rune. However that’s been resolved. I feel these are fine. There are many ways to escape and make us blow these cooldowns. I would probably change shield 4 to a knock back from a stun. Shield should be point defence. Would break some of the mace/stun synergy and add to defence on points or saving a team mate.

Combinations

Prime candidate is Unsuspecting Foe and the CC abilities we possess. Again it comes back to the build and gear debate. However being able to get these chains off, we need to be immune to the counter measures of the class we are fighting. Conditions are covered by berserkers stance, knock backs with passive stability, health loss is dealt with endure pain and healing signet is reducing the damage incoming by a % due to its static nature (a la protection). All of these are potent when together.

Now for a personal opinion. All builds are a hard counter to another build. There are no soft counters in this game and that’s where a fairly big issue arises. Regardless of your skill level, a build will dictate the match up to a high level of accuracy. This is bad design. Skill should always be the major factor in any fight. Therefore the hard counter approach needs to change.

Berserkers stance
Change to 75%. Dogged march will possibly need to change. Allow conditions to be a factor, if only a small one for the duration of the skill. This allows a skilled warrior, with a build set up for dealing with conditions to win, but also allows the opponent, a fighting chance to wear the warrior down and make him blow cooldowns.

Healing signet
I wouldn’t touch this skill. I feel this enables the sustain and the pocket sitting abilities of a warrior to shine. Again, a proper build setup to deal spike damage or has access to poison can easily counter the signets healing. Changing what’s around the signet is far more effective.

Defy Pain/Last Stand
There a few ideas here, so bare with me.

1. Move both of the above to the grandmaster tier. The only issue I have with this is that other classes have access to reflects and passive abilities that are in the master tier. I do feel both of these in the current setup are too strong together.

1. Reduce the last stand stability to 2 seconds. Reduce to cool down to 40 seconds. Shorter, sharper bursts are less effective. It opens up the possibility that we can be CC’ed if a player reacts and can blow the cooldown, then capitalise on the situation after.

Unsuspecting Foe
Reduce to 25%. I think the idea of this trait to a good one. However the number is just too much. Allowing a defensive build to reach 100% crit chance shouldn’t happen. But access to some damage is needed otherwise the opponent won’t fear the warrior or the CC, as the damage is nonexistent. Reduce it, let it ride for a month. See where we stand afterwards.

CC chains
Leave them as they are. Anet took a good sweep at stun breakers. If people don’t choose to take them, then they have to out skill the warrior to defeat him. Stun breakers are a learning curve. That what makes good players outshine the up and coming/learning players. Again possibly changing shield 4 to a knock back rather than a stun would alter the skull crack build enough to not make it too powerful.

Miscellaneous

One change I would like to see is to cleansing ire. I had always had the image of a warrior who holds adrenaline should be defensive and can trait to be defensive. However a warrior that expends adrenaline should be rewarded for doing so by damage.
I would like to see a simple change. Cleansing ire keeps the adrenaline on hit, however for every bar of adrenaline gained, it reduces the duration of conditions placed by 5%.

I would like to see something in the arms tree or even tactics that gives the current removal of conditions based on how many bars spent, but it’s not something I’ve given a huge amount of thought to.

Summary

Warrior is now a very complex array of offensive and defensive abilities that can’t be balanced by an individual spotlight. It needs to be looked at with everything else attached. Usually the most obvious choices aren’t the issue at all, it’s what supports that primary skill that’s making it work better than intended. Healing signet is getting a lot of stick for something that’s actually not that hard to counter. Our total immunity to conditions coupled with high CC allow us to simply lock out any caster from doing damage. Stop the immunity to conditions, create soft counters and allow skill to come to the forefront.

I’d love some good, constructive feedback on this. No too sting, nerf comments as I’ll just report it for deletion. Keep it civil and constructive about experiences in game and we can give some really good feedback.

Thanks for reading

Reserved for good feedback/points to discuss