Guild Wars 2

This thread is to address what I consider to be a flawed concept and mechanic, and attempt to make it more “fun.” Obviously this is my opinion. Others may disagree.

What is this flawed concept and mechanic? The Reverse Synergy that exists between the following:
1. Adrenaline
2. Adrenal Traits (Regen, Power, Crit, Strikes)
3. Burst Skills
4. Burst Traits
5. Misc Skills (Rage, Heal Surge)

Under the current system, we are encouraged to SIT on our adrenaline, rather than spend it for most burst skills. This is largely due to the passive traits that buff us when Adrenaline is full. We can gain: +12% damage, +9% Crit, and +360 hp regen/3sec, just by NOT using our burst mechanic.

Some burst skills (killshot, hammer AOE stun) can be quite powerful, and worth using. Others (sword, greatsword) are only as good as, or weaker then regular attacks, and rarely see use since they’ll result in the loss of the passive trait bonuses.

This is reverse synergy, and a common and unfortunate practice is to simply forget about adrenaline entirely.

HERE is a proposed solution I think would make adrenaline more usable, fun, and yet not disrupt the current level of balance warriors have.

-Remove the passive trait bonuses that encourage sitting on a full adrenal bar. That means a removal of 12% damage, 9% crit, and 360 hp/3sec regen. Stay with me here.

-Roll in HALF of those bonuses to Warriors BASELINE, linked to adrenal in the same fashion. 6% damage, 4.5% crit, and 180 hp/3sec at level 3 for example.

-In those now empty trait positions, place new traits that encourage the use of adrenal skills, and grant small bonuses for doing so. In place of berserkers power, for example, a trait that adds several stacks of might upon using burst. In adrenal regen, a trait that adds regen. One for a short lived fury boon in place of heightened focus.

-Rework some of the less useful Burst skills. I doubt many warriors would complain that Killshot or Earthshaker is useless. But the Greatsword burst adds fury, and warriors can already get fury from a dozen other sources. Perhaps replace it with a blowout (it is described as an uppercut/slash?) or other cool effect?

-Change Disciplines Brawn to “Enhance.” Have each burst skill be affected by “enhance” in a different way. For example, increasing Earthshakers stun duration would be insane and OP. But adding 1 stack of confusion per 5 points of enhancement, however, could be cool. For Longbow, Enhance could increases Burst AOE duration, and so on.

Thoughts? Opinions? Enragedflametrollposts?

I disagree completely, as it is works fine, you can build up and hold the line or you can build/dump/repeat.

Quit whining because the class doesn’t favor your chosen strategy as much as you would like, and yes, claiming something is broken outright when it works just fine based on statistical popularity is whining pure and simple.

It is not just “not favor your chosen strategy” it is blatantly horribly designed.

Then play another class. Maybe butterflies are your thing. Judging from the popularity there is nothing horrible about it. I find it works very well as many others do.

Hammer warrior here—Ignoring the troll, OP I think you make a good point in your post. However, I’d say that the point of having these skills isn’t to intentionally create reverse synergy, but to create more of a sense of choice/decision making.

For example, lets say you have the +12% damage trait while fighting a boss and you are wailing on him, sitting at full adrenaline. But then some adds spawn! What do you do? You could continue hitting the boss with your damage buff, move to the adds and try to kill them one by one, OR use Earthshaker and stun them all, sacrificing some of your own DPS, but relieving pressure from your party allowing for some free hits, heal skills, and targeted AoE skills to be more effective. GW2 is a lot about the tradeoffs (at least for warriors).

As for the GS adrenaline skill, I don’t even understand why it’s there. Does pretty bad damage while fury is pretty useless from a weapon skill IMO.

The axe and rifle are pretty fair because they are just damage spikes. If you allowed warriors to have 3 more traits in place of the adrenaline ones, we might just be too OP :P

Earthshaker is sort of exempt from this discussion though; it is probably the only Adrenaline skill that is designed right in that it actually has a unique function that it performs very well, unlike the Greatsword/Axe (it isn’t that much more damage when you lose all your Adrenal traits on your following auto-attacks after you’ve used it).

Who in the right mind would say adrenaline is fine as is? This system is garbage at this moment. And I hate to repeat myself but adrenaline skills are amazing but just isn’t aggressive enough. Like I’m not going to lie, most F1 skills are a drug that you simply can’t get enough of.

TL;DR In regards to adrenaline, I’m in withdrawal. And so should you the moment you get too attached to burst skills.

Much simpler solution would be for the traits (crit, damage, regen) to apply for 5s after you use a burst skill. Bonus during that 5s would depend on the adrenaline level when the burst skill was used.

That way you’re encouraged to burst as often as possible if you want the passive buffs, adrenaline-building traits become more important, as do the two burst traits. You still have to play smart if you want the fantastic utility of some burst skills to be used properly (i.e. if you know adds are coming hold off the burst for an earthshaker as above).

Greatsword burst would probably need to be changed as combined you would get 9% crit from bursting along with 20% crit from fury (change the burst to might instead or something with some actual utility).

In AoE situations, good Warriors will utilise the cleave on #1 (and other weapon skills) to build up adrenaline far quicker by ensuring that they’re always hitting 3 targets rather than one.

RollingBob.8502:

Quit whining because the class doesn’t favor your chosen strategy as much as you would like, and yes, claiming something is broken outright when it works just fine based on statistical popularity is whining pure and simple.

Well I ironically rolled out the welcome mat for “Enragedflametrollposts” and sure enough, I got my wish!

In all seriousness Rollingbob, try to exercise a little restraint, and put some thought into things. Re-read my original post. Does it REALLY look like im “whining, pure and simple” or could it be that maybe, JUST MAYBE, I see the potential to improve upon both the mechanics and general enjoyment of a class?

I prefaced the entire thing with “this is my opinion” not to state that obvious fact, but rather to remind everyone that no opinion is right or wrong.
The class mechanic is not necessarily broken just because I feel it could be improved.
And I’m not a whiner just cause you feel the need to flame a legitimate thread.

Having addressed the troll, I thank the rest of you for disagreeing in a more civilized manner.

@Thor: I had actually considered the whole tradeoff between using or sitting adrenaline, but as it stands, I see way more people sitting it.
@Oglaf: I’d agree that earthshaker is our best designed burst skill.

The problem COULD just be as simple as “the other burst skills suck too much to make them worth losing the passive bonuses” with Greatsword being the best example, but I would rather see the entire mechanic reworked and made a little more compelling and fun.

No mention of the longbow burst skill? Combustive shot is one of my fav warrior abilities. It’s our only combo field, 4 sec duration pulsing dmg and stacks of burning. Plus if you immedeatly follow it up with arcing arrow you grant 3 stacks of area might.

Longbow is clearly ment to be good for medium range control/aoe and performs well in that regard, especially it’s burst skill. Not to mention it offsets the adrenaline drain with an impressive ammount of attacks that build adrenaline quickly. If fighting multiple foes, you nearly always have enough to fire another combustive arrow at 3 bars as soon as it’s off cooldown.

I think that using your burst skill is supposed to be a choice.

Furthermore, the synergy is actually decent, the 12% damage and 9% crit apply to your burst skill itself. You just sacrifice them temporarily to use a buffed burst skill.

You could also trait for pumping out as many burst skills as possible, to make the burst damage and utility available more often or to regen your endurance with the 15pt strength trait.

But at the end of the day, you have to make the choice. Do I use Eviscerate now so I can dodge? Do I use it now so I can burst? Do I hold on to my adrenaline for the buffs to axe 1? Do I hold my adrenaline so I can use the skills at a different time?

The only major flaw to this is that some burst skills are very poorly designed or simply underpowered, making their use a far more unattractive option.

Improving upon the burst skills that are lacking, reducing the damage increases through adrenaline from traits, and increasing the base damage. These are the things that would probably make the choice more meaningfull

Why not have both? Pop berserker stance in the middle of flurry and you are back up to 3 bars of adrenaline about one second after the cooldown starts. Healing surge and Signet of fury are full adrenaline heals too.

On two enemies I don’t even need berserker stance, flurry sustains itself.

I think thats the intent behind arcing slash too. Arcing slash, hundred blades, back at or close to 3 bars of adrenaline again long before the cooldown is finished.

Naturally, its a little trickier with rifle or hammer, but its still pretty doable.

Invest in traits that grant you adrenaline and you get the best of both worlds. Adrenal Reserves will allow you to always have at least one bar of Adrenaline. Inspiring Shouts gives you even further control over your Adrenaline. Save multi-hit abilities for after an Adrenaline bump. Even Healing Surge can be used to top off your Adrenaline after a burst. We have so little to juggle compared to other classes that a little bit of resource management really isn’t so bad.

I use both burst abilities on cooldown and I’m almost always at full Adrenaline using this build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQJATSnkOk8YzDSBxEZAwUoI1D4aTu0jyQLNA

Ok, we understand the argument that you can dump your adren, then use a multi-hit skill to refill that adren pretty fast.

That does not change the argument that your dps drops during that moment. If you hit 100b with full adren its gonna deal more damage than if you just dumped your adren, and then used 100b.

Some casual testing in heart of the mist gave me around ~1.5-2k damage difference on heavy golem using 100b at 0 adren vs max adren, and built about 1 + 1/3rd a bar of adren in the process. My arcing slice was hitting for about 2.6k crit on it. So unless i’m hitting 2 or more targets immediately after (to refil my adren bar in 1 cast of 100b) its gonna be worse or at best even, to not using adren at all. That hardly sounds like a “good” or “rewarding” mechanic.

The burst skill still benefits from the adrenaline traits though, doesn’t it? If you use Flurry with Heightened Focus, it gains the 9% crit and consumes it.

On a single target, If i do that and use berserker stance (Instant) while i’m using flurry, i’m straight back up to 3 bars before its even finished, so the only benefit lost is one tick of adrenal health.

Can do the same with 100b – Take embrace pain (5 defense) and hit berserker stance as soon as you hit arcing slice and you’ll be back up to 1 bar, 2 bars if you wait a second before the game will even let you use 100B. Or just use healing surge.

but I suspect the reason it isn’t good isn’t because of losing a bit of damage on your next one, but that fury is already easily attainable without using arcing slice.

the adrenal system is fine as it is, we get a choice of either buildup-and-sit, or buildup-dump-buildup-dump, depending on the situation. like using a rifle in wvw, in 1v1, u wanna keep adreno high and enjoy the buff instead of using kill shot which is just too easy to dodge, or even reflected back to you. but in group fights, you wanna buildup-killshot-buildup-killshot on those staff eles.

i do agree that some of the F1 skills are not worth using, even buggy. no one uses gs F1; hammer F1 always hit no one if fighting on a small hill; kill shot gets out of range even target is within 1200; and rifle skill cant hit roots, cant hit oil, gets obstructed by thin air, plain buggy.

my suggestion towards changing gs F1: ignite the gs, applying condition dmg on every gs hit, like some burning or bleeding, for a small period of time. lose the dmg and crit buff, but gain some condition dmg.

Dand.8231:

Others may disagree.

yup.

agreed that some burst skills should be improved.

I don’t really care about the trait changes though. I’m fine with having an option for passive adrenaline damage, it’s an interesting spec choice for customizing playstyle.

I would just focus on balancing burst abilities so that there’s always good situational reasons to use them.

Its amazing how one man comes up with instant improvment to mechanic that team of professionals developed over years. Even more amazing is that forums are full of saviours and every one of them is proposing all kind of solutions!
How come industry hasnt recruted you already? Oh wait ur not interested in working for game industry you solve design problems out of hobby…
As for GS f1, what if somebody is not running FGJ or SOR and still could use fury on his GS build? They have given us tools its up to us to think how to use them.

Nice thread Dand. Just ignore the trolls, cause definitely something must be changed on the burst skills. Im not talking about buffing, im talking about a change.

The OP suggestion from my point of view is a nerf, so stop blaming him about whining.

The thing with burst skill is that most of them could help you do some burst (quick) damage; like use hammer adrenaline skill then 100b-axe 5, or mace’s stun then 100b, or sword’s adrenaline root then 100b, or bow’s adrenaline and then 3 which is high on base damage, but since u are dumping all your adrenaline your adrenaline u lose about 20-30% damage which is not acceptable so u don’t do it at all. Actually i use my adrenaline skills only if im speced support, or its the last man standing and the fight is over already.

The changes you suggest Dand are too major, something less dramatic must change(the weapon adrenaline skill changes had a point though, it pointed that u can add additional effects on them to make them more appealing and not OP). How about those bonuses are granted when u are 0 adrenaline and lose the bonuses as u get adrenaline, it actually makes more sense to heal your self and be more precise on you attacks (crit bonus) when u are calm, than when you are enraged.

Problem became when discipline line was nerfed.
Now you dont gain as much by giving up adrenalin as you did with that fat 1% per point. So you either spec to benefit from adrenalin stock or you spec build that doesnt care for adrenalin and use your burst as small bonus.

I agree that sitting on full Adrenalin is bad design.

I would like to see a trait that heals after using your burst. Amount of healing or maybe Duration (if its a HoT) based on Adrenalinlevel.

Also the 5 seconds buff after Burstskill sounds promising.

Pair Axe with fury cause Axe is a critbeast
Pair GS with might to support forceful GS
Pair Mace with Retailiation to support its tanky role
Pair Hammer with stability to support is CC role
Pair Bow with inproved Coditiondamage(or duration) to support the burn
Pair Gun with quickness making it a machinegun for lets say 2 or 3 seconds.

each buff would be desirable and would encourage people to burst asap to maintain the buffs as much as possible.

okokokok, i was just gonna move on but the amount of ignorance to balance in this thread is a bit too high.

do you know why you cant use a high damaging burst skill then also stay buffed afterwards indefinitely? cause thats ridiculously OP! 12% increased damage? 9% increased crit chance? free health regen? do you have any idea how OP that would be if we got to keep that even after using our quite often very powerful burst skills?

heres a better solution, get trait into adrenaline regen! go a shout build and have shouts grant adrenaline, simply use berserkers stance, use healing surge after a burst skill since it gives a FULL adrenaline bar now and heals you!

there are work arounds and nice ways to stay buffed without just remaining buffed constantly at all times, or as the OP suggested ways to buff one self with burst skills. warriors would either go bunker and start stacking might/regen/crit/etc and then also be doing massive damage in no time (since its incredibly easy to use burst skills a lot with the quick bursts trait and the ways to regen it that i listed above) and we’d end up with another possible blood death knight from WoW (in like 4.3 or something the “geniuses” at blizz made vengeance, something akin to might, very powerful and these tank classes would stack it none stop until they were also one of the highest damaging classes in the game while tanking all the damage).

simply put? its fine as is, the adrenaline system isnt broken.