Guild Wars 2

There are a couple things that bug me about Battle Standard.

• It’s conditional and situational.
• It has a 240 second cooldown.
• It’s a Banner but not really.
• It’s an elite skill.

It’s so situational that you can’t be pressed to actually use it more than a couple times an hour even. You don’t really use the banner as a banner, it’s really used for it’s one-time resurrection function. The duration is much shorter than a regular banner so you can’t get the most out of it anyway even if you did spam it off cooldown.

What I would like to see is Battle Standard changed into an actual banner like the utilities with its own unique effect. By removing the resurrection away, banner traits can actually be good again and maybe we’ll get the cooldown buff back. I know it’s been said that Anet wants to force players to carry banners and that they don’t want 1 warrior to be able to have 100% uptime but they could probably be more creative with traits if Battle Standard had a different function. One idea is have the Battle Standard have all 4 Banner effects but last only 15-30 seconds with an appropriate cooldown, not 4 minutes. This gives warriors a “burst” banner and gives “100%” uptime on their key banners by investing in an Elite rather than investing in a trait (in a world where warrior traits are already a messy ordeal). You could also have a scenario where multiple warriors can alternate banners more actively rather than every 2 minutes-ish.

The resurrection function could find its way to an Elite Shout. We already have “I Will Avenge You!” voice lines so IWAY could find its way back into GW2 and have a res function or something. Maybe reuse the old GW1 shout “We Shall Return!” which has pretty much resurrection as part of the skill. Having the Shout have the res could buff Vigorous Shouts and shout warriors in WvW. The shout can have identical cast time and obvious animations to spot (maybe they’re taking a breath before shouting?) and the original Battle Standard didn’t root you during cast so it could work as a shout as well. Only change would be that it may not have the targetable AoE circle but it could be balanced accordingly (or just be a targetable shout).

I’m not sure how attached everyone is with Battle Standard and the design behind it and I know these boards focus a lot more on PvP. At this point it may be too late and be considered “iconic” to have Battle Standard be what it is but it isn’t the first time Anet has changed skills completely like Guardian tomes into Shout + Signet (although that involved removing tomes completely).

I just want an elite banner that’s actually a banner and not a giant rally button.

Reduce cd to like 75 sec

Skittledness.5106:

Reduce cd to like 75 sec

No. You would need to nerf its ability to resurrect if you did this. We already have enough kitten resurrection abilities in the game lets not be a part of the problem.

75 seconds…..you have no idea how much chaos this would create.

Yes. Very much so, yes. Warrior support (bar Phalanx Strength), is quite frankly, something that needs buffed. And I think that would be a good start.

My main concern would be, that it would make using all banners a lot less viable (than it already is). So, perhaps just a buff to the boons would be good. More might, possibly even stability or quickness. (These are likely all either/or possibilities)

I also like the idea of bringing in “We Shall Return” for a rez. Because, seriously… Warriors need an elite shout.

Its sad to see such a elite skill fail when the downed guy has a bit of poison on him. xD

Changing the CD on Battle Standard doesn’t really fix the problem I have with it. Also changing it would affect WvW the most and would shove warriors into a Banner bot role more than anything (referring to the 75sec cd). I prefer moving the functionality to a shout where it’s function makes sense in terms of skill types.

Battle Standard is arbitrarily a res on a Banner which isn’t really anything more than a dragon facet on the floor whereas warrior banners are more known for their unique buffs that they supply. With this logic, you can make any skill type like Physical, Rage, or typeless like Mending be the big res, it doesn’t have to be a banner.

I’m just lamenting that it’s the Banner that Anet chose to have a big game changing class defining ability at the sacrifice of another functional skill that would make more sense.

Even the pulsing stability from the early version of it wouldn’t be strong enough to justify that crazy cool down time and the cast time nowadays. I am also in favor of a skill rework to a shout or anything similar.

Skittledness.5106:

Reduce cd to like 75 sec

EDit: 75-90 would be fine.

Everything with banner is kind of broken, cool down too long, cast time too long, easily interrupted in the HOT era, to cap it all off it doesnt rez people most of the time because there health pool is so low or they have poison on them.

All in all Anet didnt balance any core spec lines with HOT and the power creep. When you have the down state before when it was 10-30-30 focusing more on a cele/defensive scene in WvW and PvP. Skill like banner were so vital to team play.

With HOT with the increased stats to 30-30-30, increased CC, increased healing and along with some really gimmicky builds in WvW and PvP there is literally no reason to use any of the old skills for many classes.

Currently there is no reason to use the Elite Banner anywhere in the game, as well as rampage, as well as cultural skills. Warriors use 2 banners in raids and then 2 stances in PvP and then PvE is a combination of those 4 utility skills based on the event you are doing.

Seriously whens the last time you used call Owls or jungle worm? I wanted GW2 really badly so i could turn into a bear, people have seen me use this elite skill and asked what that was, it goes to show Anet really isnt too worried about the class skills as long as raids/WvW/PvP can make sense in a small way.

All classes have some type of role in raids so i guess they must think banners are on the list of ok skills.

I would love to see warrior banners to be made like the centaur/turtle/dragon banners in wvw and actually have some theme/utility instead of the same generic skills with a different buff but of course not as strong as the wvw banners

kdaddy.5431:

Everything with banner is kind of broken, cool down too long, cast time too long, easily interrupted in the HOT era, to cap it all off it doesnt rez people most of the time because there health pool is so low or they have poison on them.

All in all Anet didnt balance any core spec lines with HOT and the power creep. When you have the down state before when it was 10-30-30 focusing more on a cele/defensive scene in WvW and PvP. Skill like banner were so vital to team play.

With HOT with the increased stats to 30-30-30, increased CC, increased healing and along with some really gimmicky builds in WvW and PvP there is literally no reason to use any of the old skills for many classes.

Currently there is no reason to use the Elite Banner anywhere in the game, as well as rampage, as well as cultural skills. Warriors use 2 banners in raids and then 2 stances in PvP and then PvE is a combination of those 4 utility skills based on the event you are doing.

Seriously whens the last time you used call Owls or jungle worm? I wanted GW2 really badly so i could turn into a bear, people have seen me use this elite skill and asked what that was, it goes to show Anet really isnt too worried about the class skills as long as raids/WvW/PvP can make sense in a small way.

All classes have some type of role in raids so i guess they must think banners are on the list of ok skills.

We seem to be in the need of a big rework of so many existing skills. The release of the expansion made the situation even worse as it added powerful new skills which made quite a few commonly used skills obsolete.

About racial skills: They have been designed and even changed in the past to make them ‘weaker’ versions oft any non-racial skills. This was done to avoid players feeling forced to use a certain race for any given class because of their special skills.
The fact that some of those skills are still useful as they have some unique effects without a non-racial counter part and others are exactly what they are suppooed to be, flavor skills for role-playing mostly, is a balancing issue. One of many.