Guild Wars 2

What do we have now? We have a banners, that give some stat boost, but only very few people (ussually warriors themselves) put effort into picking them up and carrying them. They only good for swiftness buffing and occasional fury/regen/stability.
Also how often do you use the regen from Grandmaster Trait?
Read on.

Proposed change:
Whole idea is to change banner into temporary offhand weapon.
Summons a enviromental weapon that, when picked up replaces your offhand weapon slots (4,5). Each character can only carry a one banner at single time. (banner+sword!)
- Switching a weapon set would cause banner to be dropped on ground

- Banners would still give same bonuses, as they do now; so banner of discipline would still give precision and prowness.

4th skill – Inspire
- Banner of Defense – Inspire nearby allies, granting them protection for 5s
- Banner of Strenght – Inspire nearby allies granting them 3 stacks of might for 8s
- Banner of Disciplnie – Inspire nearby allies granting them fury for 8s
- Banner of Tactis – Inspire nearby allies granting them regeneration for 5s
- Battle Standart – Inspire nearby allies granting stability for 3s
15s CD on all

Range on all these skills would 600 by default, increasable by the trait Inspiring Banners.

5th skill – Inspiring Charge (shared with among all banners)
- inspire nearby allies giving them swiftness for 10s
15s CD

Note: mind that this compared to warhorn would not remove chilled, crippled or immobilized.

Traits –
Inspiring Banners – works great, nothing to change here.

Powerful Banners – in addition to dealing minor damage, the banners would also launch nearby foes in the area they are summoned into (the green circle). And this area could be further expanded with the Inspiring Banners trait –
Summoning banner in combat? Yes please.
Also enemies would have red circle, coresponding to the Area of Effect displayed. (so they can dodge and to prevent ninja chaining launch)

Inspiring Battle Standart – instead of pulsing regeneration, each specific banner would pulse their specific boon for 2s every 4s, WHILE CARRIED. So you would have to actually carry Banners, to benefit from it. No stacking 5 Banners on hill and lolololol 5 boon spam.

Discipline – Fury
Strenght – Might
Defense – Protection
Tactic – Regen
Warbanner – Stability

Note: this would only work with banners summoned by warrior who has
picked this trait.

So what do you think? I think that carrying a sword in one hand and
a banner in other hand is pretty kitten, also his would further encourage players to carry banners with them, and stick near them. (Rally to me! )

So please feel free to post constructive feedback and critique.

EDIT: Some formating things.
EDIT2: Changed the Inspiring Battle Standart to give pulsing boons only while the banner is carried.

I personally think the banners are fine how they are. I do, however, agree that the Banner of Defense 2 skill should give Protection. say 3 seconds with a 15-20 second cooldown. Or if that would be OP make it longer

While Banner is on cooldown give a skill to overcharge and destroy it (heal, knockback, buffs, whatever).

Well, i can’t image “overcharging” banner, as i can with turrets and such, but I assume that, the 6-9 button correspoding to the banner could work as a plant button (when you picked it up), ofc without that second long jump plant (which is blast finisher btw) as it is now, just 1/4 sec plant animation.

I do feel that banners are extremely underwhelming as they are now. There’s not much benefit to actually holding them, and the skills you can use while holding them are generally pretty weak.

I think the banners could be made a whole lot more exciting than they are. I had posted a thread on my new approach to how a warrior should play and with that thinking in mind, the possibilities are exciting.

I’ll post my ideas for the banner here though.

I actually like carrying around a banner, and feel that it should stay a two handed weapon. The regular skills need to be reworked. They can actually use most of the existing skills, so the bar might look like this.

1. Stab - Should actually be a stabbing motion, faster like the spear underwater. maybe give a combo with stab→jab→thrust. Maybe causes vulnerability like greatsword autoattack

2. Brutal banner - This skill can actually stay the same, just stuns instead of causing vulnerability, all

3. Inspire - Maybe give it a unique buff for each one(in addition to swiftness).
Example: The basic bar for each banner will be the same, so for banner of tactics, Inspire would also heal and grant regeneration as well as grant swiftness. Basically the #2 skill could just be merged with inspire, banner of strength would need a new effect for this.

4. Enraging Charge - Sprint forward with your banner to stab your foe. If successfully hits, grant fury to allies. Basically the same as it is now but with a stabbing motion, give it 900 range.

5. Vanquish - Forcefully plant your banner in the ground to damage nearby foes. Deals massive damage to downed players. Uses same planting animation but with an AoE effect.

Instead of just giving it F1, F2, F3…skills, banners should get a unique adrenaline skill to use with each one.
Strength F1 – Merciless Banner - Repeatedly Stab Foe. For each successful hit, allies gain might. (similar to mariner’s frenzy except slower and hits 1 target)

Tactics F1 – Staggering Banner - Push back nearby foes. For each foe pushed back, allies gain stability. (use hammer’s staggering blow animation)

Defense F1 – Protective banner - Stab the ground with the banner and deal damage to foes in the area. For every foe struck, give protection.

Discipline F1 – Disciple’s Banner - Stab your foe with great force. For every teammate in the area Disciple’s Banner hits for +damage
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Battle Standard is where things could get really cool. A unique bar separate, but similar to regular banners.

1. Banner Strike - Hits multiple foes compared to 1 foe with regular banners. Could chain Banner Strike→Banner Swipe→Sweeping Banner

2. Frenzied Banner - Basically a land version of Mariner’s Frenzy

3. Inspiring Swipe - Swing your banner, inspiring allies and nearby damaging foes. Buffs allies in a similar manner to Inspire as described before and grants the normal buffs applied by the original version of "whirlwind banner

4. Savage Banner - Lunge at your for and stab them with your banner. Grants fury upon successful strike. Basically same range and mechanics as savage leap with sword.

5. Victorious Beacon - Forcefully plant your Battle Standard in the ground damaging nearby enemies and healing nearby allies. Deals massive damage to downed players.

Battle Standard F1 – Whirlwind Banner - Swing your banner(once) and create a whirlwind around yourself. All allies in the area lose a condition and gain swiftness(pulsed effect)

I tried to keep it from stepping into other weapon’s territory by mostly only causing damage. Brutal banner for regular banners is mostly for defense and there are no cripples on any of the banners. A good amount of the skills are only as powerful as there are more or less allies or enemies so I feel that is a balancing point of its own.
Battle Standard is more damage and support based than the other banners, so I feel that it wouldn’t need a disable skill.

I may have gotten carried away thinking about this.

I love regen banners. In spvp i take several banners with and drop them off at nodes and hot areas so when an allies fight there they are getting 100% regen coverage and it goes ALONG way suprisingly for like a 200-300 heal tic. The other stats on the banner i could actually care less about which is maybe your point. Flat % stats might prove better like 10% dmg / 10% crit / 15% speed / 100hp per sec / -15% dmg and for the elite make it more maintainable with maybe 10% dmg/crit/15% speed. to prevent stacking they could make the effect the banners generate the same for both the non-elite banner and the elite and unstacking. Basically you can take a more specified banner to suit your specific needs or you can take the elite for a general buff but gain no benefit from both besides maybe coverage in different areas of the map like what i do in spvp with regen banners.

Inspiring Battle Standard is actually extremely good. Gives you 100% regen uptime if you’re actually traited into reduced cooldown and doesn’t require much stat investment past 30 points into Tactics.

Also, if you want to drop banners quickly, just hit your weapon swap key.

My only issue with banners is their overly long cooldowns, I just can’t seem to adopt them into my playstyle when they kill a utility slot for 2 minutes. Shorten the cooldowns would be my request. One of the things I like about warriors is short cooldowns, and the banners pretty much fly in the face of that across the board.