Guild Wars 2

Hey,

I tried hard to get a WvW build using banners. But I gave up, its impossible. Banners for WvW are perse useless:

1. Banners range is way to small to be useful in WvW. Most of the time I dont fight at choke points. I have to move around the whole time. I cannot stand in that tiny banners radius.
2. Banners cooldown is way to high. Because of point (1) I had to recast banners every now and than. But with a (reduced) cooldown of 96 seconds, thats impossible.
3. Picking up Banners in WvW is inconvenient. Most often I dont have time to pick something up before moving. Furthermore there are so many objectives like loot bags, siege, broken walls and doors, which prevents you from picking exactly your banner. And finally every now and then another player accidently picks your banner up + throws it away. Awesome!
4. The banners bonuses are mediocre for the given cooldown. 180 stats in a tiny radius for 45s on a 120s cooldown? Come on. Even buff food got better stats with a 100% uptime.

It really bothers me that warriors dont have access to regeneration other than 30 tactics + banners. And I’m deeply disappointed that a whole professions mechanic is completely useless.

These are my suggestions to make banners viable.

1. Reduce banners cooldown to at least 60s.
2. Increase the banners range. Add a visual circle so you can see when you’re in the radius of a banner.
3. Remove the existing stat bonuses (its way to boring). Instead add the following effects:
- Banner of Defense: Grant Protection to all nearby allies for 5s (refreshes every 10s)
- Banner of Tactics: Heals nearby allies for 1000 (?) (every 10s)
- Banner of Strength: Cripples nearby enemies for 5s (refreshes every 10s)
- Banner of Discipline: Blinds nearby enemies (refreshes every 10s)
4. Banners bonuses are also granted when the banner has been picked up.
5. Add F2 shortcut for picking up / placing the currently active banner. You must be in 600 range to pick up.
6. Only one banner per warrior can be active simultaneously.

What do you think?

Banners should be worn on the back of warriors like sashimono. This would allow banner warriors to fulfil their role infinitely better and add mobility to a very static build that is lacking. The utility bars on the banners really quite meh in my opinion. Freeing the hands would not even remotely make the build overpowered and allow more a lot more variety.

Isn’t 4 already true?

Banners are close to being viable. Small tweaks would probably do it.

I think a lower CD would be nice.

Allow skill #1 to hit multiple targets the way every other warrior weapon does. (This is the main one- you have to put the banner down to fight.)

Change Banner 5 to F1 for some kind of adrenaline based AE blast finisher. Banner 5 is too slow right now so switching to a different weapon is just so much faster for planting the banner. Or at least allow the powerful banners trait to cause AE damage on banner 5.

Banner 4 should be less like greatsword 5 and more like greatsword 3.

Daokitten618:

Banners should be worn on the back of warriors like sashimono. This would allow banner warriors to fulfil their role infinitely better and add mobility to a very static build that is lacking. The utility bars on the banners really quite meh in my opinion. Freeing the hands would not even remotely make the build overpowered and allow more a lot more variety.

I agree with this.
Simply make the “adren” skill on banners something that lets you “equip” them on your back.

Also the limit on the number of people that can benefit from the area of effect (8 or so?). In a decent sized group, the warrior who planted his own banner is unlikely to receive any benefit from it – very annoying since I like the 10% crit damage one.