Guild Wars 2

We need a consolidated thread of all discussions revolving around the upcoming Warrior changes like the other Profession boards.

From:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview

Warrior:
The overall goal here is to reduce the damage for the very high control warriors. This means reducing some dependency on going 30 points into discipline for Burst Mastery, making warriors spend 20 points in Arms to get the benefit of Unsuspecting Foe. We also reduced the damage on the hammer’s burst skill to separate the control from the damage. We don’t mind warriors doing massive damage, or doing great area of effect control, but we’re trying to prevent them from easily doing both. We also increased the readability of Skull Crack, which will allow opposing players to more easily react to it. Combustive Shot on longbow also saw some rework. It will scale better with adrenaline levels, and still provide strong burning per adrenaline level, but the raw damage was toned down slightly.

Strength 5 – Reckless Dodge. Increased Damage by 25%
Strength III – Great Fortitude. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 7%.
Arms IV – Unsuspecting Foe. Moved to Master Tier.
Arms VII – Crack Shot. Moved to Adept Tier.
Arms XII – Last Chance. Increased the threshold form 25% to 50%. Reduced the cooldown from 45 seconds to 40seconds.
Defense 25 – Armored Attack. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 10%.
Defense XII – Spiked Armor. Reduced the recharge from 15s to 10s.
Tactics 5 – Determined Revival. Now correctly displays the amount of toughness.
Tactics 25 – Reviver’s Might. Now applies 3 stacks of Might instead of 1.
Discipline II – Thrill of the Kill. Increased Adrenaline gain from 1 to 10.
Discipline XI – Burst Mastery. Reduced damage increase from 10% to 7%. Removed erroneous adrenaline gain fact.
Earthshaker. Reduced damage by 20%.
Staggering Blow. Reduced damage by 23%.
Skull Crack. Increased the cast time from 1/4s to 1/2s. Updated the animation and effects of this skill to be more clear.
Combustive Shot – Increased pulse duration to 3s. Increased burn duration per pulse to 3s. Normalized damage per pulse. Updated pulses per tier to 2, 3,and 4 respectively for tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3.

Discuss.

Dear GW2 team.

PLEASE DO NOT NERF THE WARRIOR HAMMER BUILD!

Earthshaker is THE ONLY cool skill the hamwarrior has so it’s bad enough to be forced into a burst build, but to kastrate the ONLY efficient build THERE IS for a hammer Warrior is just, stupid, silly, completely uncalled for, stifles gameplay and honestly bejond frustrating.
And to call this build overpowered is so far from reality that I cannot even think of a good way to explain.

This is a build that ONLY works in WVW Zerg fight, is highly specialized and thus LIMITED.
It sucks in PVE, it sucks in one on ones, it even sucks in small PVP groups.
Isn’t that balanced enough?
But even if you think that it’s still overpowered within the ridiciously small limits it can operate, lets take a look at other classes in zergfight.
Compared to what some other classes are throwing out there (eg. massive bleeds, confusion, torment on thiefs and necros; dmg on mesmers, thiefs, elementalists, GS warris etc.) the hammer build falls WAY behind in terms of overall damage.

With that in mind, the damage obviously can’t be the problem, right?
So lets talk about the CC’s on the hammer. again… to call this overpowered is mindblowing. Please compare it to the walls and bubbles on guards(!!), static fields, or necros who can put out fear like there’s no tomorrow.
These skills are about a million times more helpful in big group fights than hammer stuns or knockbacks.
In fact most of the time you wont even get ANY CCs out of your build because when two zergs clash, every single player has stability up which renders the hammer CCs utterly USELESS!
(keep in mind that guard walls and bubbles still work though.)
Overall the hammer warrior deliveres MEDIOCRE CC paired with MEDIOCRE dmg output with NO OTHER abilities, like heal, ressurect or good group support skills, which together still makes a really well rounded build.
So again, WHERE is the imbalance here?
In fact the hammer burst build is very well balanced in WvW gameplay, since what the hammer warri delivers in cc and damage on the one hand it lacks in aplying conditions, the ability to deal with the same, incorporating the second weapon set and vitality on the other hand.

And now the most important part:
A hammer build is FINALLY FUN.
Since you added movability to staggering blow and the possibility to reduce cooldown on earthshaker playing a hammer warrior build FINALLY really FEELS like throwing a kitten hammer around.
The way this works right now IS PERFECT!
PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT DESTROY THIS GREAT BUILD!

Everything in this game is so geared towars greatsword anyway, which is getting sooooo old…
Wanna play Guard? first weapon GS, second doesn’t matter because… you know GS.
Wanna play Mesmer? Sure… just make sure your first weapon is a GS, second doesn’t matter because… you know GS.
Oh Warrior? GS GS GS hundret blades hundret blades hundret blades… Other builds? Good luck finding someone to group up for PVE, PVP or roaming in WVW.
Greatsword, Greatsword, Greatsword… like in ANY OTHER MMORPG out there… THE ultimate weapon is always the twohanded sword. yawn
When I bought this game I was so excited that there was a warhammer. so coool!!
So I started a warri, got me a hammer and realized that if I ever wanted to reach lvl 80 I effing HAD to get a Greatsword.
I did not want to do that though so I started a guard. Got me a hammer aaaand… utter disappointment: The hammer skills on the guard were even lamer than on the warrior.
So what weapon do you get if you want to play the guardian efficiently? Oh… surprise surprise… a Greatsword.
Does not exactly feel like what you promised the game would be like (play whatever you want… sure)

The hammer FINALLY has its legitimate place and a build that goes with it. Why you want to destroy this I will never understand.
How about you give thieves, necros and elementalists greatswors too? Then you could get rid of all the other weapon classes all together.

Thank you very much for your attention.

Skull Crack. Increased the cast time from 1/4s to 1/2s. Updated the animation and effects of this skill to be more clear.

If the animation is updated to be more noticeable, why is the cast time also increased? If anything, short-range non-combo generating melee attacks need to have reduced cast time and/or reduced aftercast animations across the board.

Arms XII – Last Chance. Increased the threshold form 25% to 50%. Reduced the cooldown from 45 seconds to 40seconds.

Can the “increased the threshold form [sic] 25% to 50%” be changed to activated via F1 Adrenaline skill? Keep the internal cooldown to 40-45 seconds. Note, with this change, this means that Quickness will not apply to the F1 skill currently being used.

5 seconds shaved off of the internal cooldown and virtually uncontrolled usage in practical terms does not make this trait viable (since the current attack is not affected by the Quickness aspect).

nicknamenick.2437:

Combustive Shot – Increased pulse duration to 3s. Increased burn duration per pulse to 3s. Normalized damage per pulse. Updated pulses per tier to 2, 3,and 4 respectively for tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3.

Anet just keeps condition builds strong but nerfs the raw damage.. its a hybrid weapon so why nerf the raw damage on it? its the burning that does allot (too much) damage that also allot of people complain about. but nope Anet nerfed the raw damage and forcing us to go lame condition builds.

Also Anet pls consider buffing the raw damage from Flurry.. its soo terrible low.

The problem is reducing the AoE radius unless Adrenaline Tier 3 AND reducing the frequency of the ticking/reducing pulse damage is too much when combined together. Either revert to the prior patch change or increase the frequency of ticks to be every 1 second (both changes together is very bad design).

With this change, there is no reason to use the F1 Adrenaline unless you have full 30 Adrenaline strikes because the target(s) will be more often than not out of the radius of the effect if used with low Adrenaline levels. And it severely limits the viability of Longbow AoE being used to apply pressure to moving targets (even with Pin Down) considering arrow travel times to target. Pin Down is already frequently used already to land Arcing Arrow (similar to Savage Leap being used frequently to land Final Thrust) so it really isn’t viable alternative to use Pin Down.

TL;DR this change breaks Combustive Shot

You are so right! Hammer/mace isn’t OP.
And yes, greatswords all over, I hate them.

Artaz.3819:

Skull Crack. Increased the cast time from 1/4s to 1/2s. Updated the animation and effects of this skill to be more clear.

If the animation is updated to be more noticeable, why is the cast time also increased? If anything, short-range non-combo generating melee attacks need to have reduced cast time and/or reduced aftercast animations across the board.

Because they want Warrior to have thoes clunky obvious attack that people can easily dodge and have fun doing it. They proven it with change to Final Thrust. It could have been very swift and cool finisher, and dont get me wrong I like this skill but its hard to land it on player with half brain, and for players with whole brain you need to stun them or immobilize, because they dont event have to dodge, they can just move away and it goes on 15 s cd. They do the same thing with Skull Crack. I understand that its is 3 sec stun but for the love of god if warrior is near you and he is using mace you know what he want to do. Animation change is enought, and making asura Skull Crack more telegraphed is a good thing.

Strength 5 – Reckless Dodge. Increased Damage by 25%
Damage should triger faster. If not -no Damage increase wil be even noticed.

Strength III – Great Fortitude. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 7%.
2% …still to weak , make it 10%

Arms IV – Unsuspecting Foe. Moved to Master Tier.
Make it 25% or 30% and dont move it. Move it but make work with daze too. For a master trait is mediocre and too narrow.

Arms VII – Crack Shot. Moved to Adept Tier.
Maybe someone is going to use rifle after this. I know I wont.

Defense 25 – Armored Attack. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 10%.
Good.
Tactics 25 – Reviver’s Might. Now applies 3 stacks of Might instead of 1.
Make it also give protection.

Discipline II – Thrill of the Kill. Increased Adrenaline gain from 1 to 10.
Still there are far better traits for 10 points than this.

Discipline XI – Burst Mastery. Reduced damage increase from 10% to 7%. Removed erroneous adrenaline gain fact.
It one of those traits that change warrior playstyle. I would take it just for adrenaline gain. 3% damage nerf is small.

Earthshaker. Reduced damage by 20%.
Nope, there are to many counters to this and it bugs often, making it do less damage will turn people away from hammer but maybe its what devs want.

Staggering Blow. Reduced damage by 23%.
Too long cd for that damage, cc? stabilty= no cc

Opynn.2936:

Arms VII – Crack Shot. Moved to Adept Tier.
Maybe someone is going to use rifle after this. I know I wont.

Rifle will not be a valid option on par with Longbow until the autoattack Bleeding Shot has the same Adrenaline generation as Longbow (maybe slightly less due to projectile speed) or in other words, increase the frequency of Rifle autoattack cast time/aftercast (and balance it by reducing raw damage per shot so Bleeding Shot does the same DPS but generates Adrenaline on par with Longbow).

There may be those Warriors that will take this trait but those are the same Warrior builds that would have taken it in Master Tier as well. I’m not sure too many builds will take this Trait over Deep Cuts (if condition based) or Rending Strikes (if power based) except in those rare cases of underwater combat because of the piercing mainly…and even then.

Opynn.2936:

Tactics 25 – Reviver’s Might. Now applies 3 stacks of Might instead of 1.
Make it also give protection.

Or Stability boon so that it becomes a worthy Grandmaster for WvW/sPvP.

I actually see that they want synergy somehow rifle+gs, bc i don’t see other reason moving crack shot to adept instead of opportunist, blademaster. Time will show, i hope they have some plans for both weps.

Take a look on spear+harpoon gun…they synergize pretty good and they both use the same traits as gs+rifle.

Scoobaniec.9561:

I actually see that they want synergy somehow rifle+gs, bc i don’t see other reason moving crack shot to adept instead of opportunist, blademaster. Time will show, i hope they have some plans for both weps.

Take a look on spear+harpoon gun…they synergize pretty good and they both use the same traits as gs+rifle.

That’s fine but what’s the synergy between Rifle and Greatsword except for Cripple spam/kiting (I concede that may be good enough).

JonPeters.5630:

Mace
but will greatly make this skill more counterable in PvP and WvW.

Thats the problem actually. Warrior is the olny class that suffer from obvious and long animation. I think its would fine IF rest classes also get a cleaned and longer animations, just take a look on mes pistol #5 or engi rifle.

JonPeters.5630:

Hammer
We are taking damage away from the hammer skills that do CC, because we don’t think it is ok for skills to do both of these things. I see a lot of comparison with Greatsword damage, but the Greatsword has no interrupts and a single cripple on the Bladetrail. We left the skills that do not do hard control alone such as Fierce Blow and Hammer Shock, as we are ok with those skills hitting hard because they do not actually disable. We also left Backbreaker alone because it has a long cast time and a long cooldown. The standard hammer build is still going to be very strong after this change, but it will open up options for mace to make a comeback as the control weapon.

Thanks for the explanation, however, I find what you say at direct odds with the trait Merciless Hammer, which specifically boosts damage when an opponent is disabled. If you don’t want the hammer to do strong cc and damage, why have traits that directly link the two?

JonPeters.5630:

Hammer
We are taking damage away from the hammer skills that do CC, because we don’t think it is ok for skills to do both of these things. I see a lot of comparison with Greatsword damage, but the Greatsword has no interrupts and a single cripple on the Bladetrail. We left the skills that do not do hard control alone such as Fierce Blow and Hammer Shock, as we are ok with those skills hitting hard because they do not actually disable. We also left Backbreaker alone because it has a long cast time and a long cooldown. The standard hammer build is still going to be very strong after this change, but it will open up options for mace to make a comeback as the control weapon.

What about us pve hammer warriors. It is not like groups appriciate us while playing since our damage is lower than greatsword and most of the time knockdown is not needed or on bosses is useless. When lowering damage now, this will make groups even more wary of hammer warriors.

If the hammer is too strong in PVP (due to CC) why not optimize it there and leave it as is in PVE?

Overall I don’t think any of these changes are too rough. I’m sure everyone who wasn’t kidding themselves knew that Hammer would have some changes coming, particularly anyone who spent time in WvW. My only concern really is the same concern I typically have in MMO balance runs, it sounds like a good deal of material is changing at the same time. Have you all considered how these changes will interact with one another and the possibility that in concert these changes will impact some builds viability more than initially planned.

On another note, although it came off as somewhat dramatic I can understand where Scoobaniec is coming from. Warrior has always been one of those classes (going back to the days of ZOMG 100 blades is overpowered) with highly telegraphed moves that are really easy for a competent foe to avoid. Do these design decisions also play into your balance discussions? Indeed the skullcrack change is only a fraction of a second but combined with a more telegraphed animation that’s a hefty impact in PvP, no?

Combustive Shot – Increased pulse duration to 3s. Increased burn duration per pulse to 3s. Normalized damage per pulse. Updated pulses per tier to 2, 3,and 4 respectively for tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3.

Current combustive shot versus Future Combustive shoot
Tier 1 = 3 ticks Tier 1 = 2 ticks
Tier 2 = 4 ticks Tier 2 = 3 ticks
Tier 3 = 5 ticks Tier 3 = 4 ticks

JonPeters.5630:

Longbow
A lot of thought went into the change to combustive shot. This skill was simply too effective at renewing itself. One of the drawbacks of the burst skills needs to be losing your adrenaline, but this skill was easily able to restore all of the adrenaline it lost. Rather than reduce the burn duration we reduced the # of attacks this skill creates because we felt it made it more counterable in PvP and less reliable in PvE as an adrenaline builder.

Yes but what about it’s DAMAGE? Why do we need to suffer a decrease in damage too(power)?.Isn’t already a decrease in andrenaline gain enough?Are you planning to increase the damage too or we will loose 33% on tier 1 and respectively 20% on tier 3?“Normalized damage” on the notes you posted are really vague.You need to update it to match the current damage or this is unnaceptable for power builds please.

On another note damage and andrenaline gain was considerably brough down last patch with the decrease of aoe radius on tier 1 and repectively tier 2 of combustive shot why do you need to bring this down even more ?

So why does every warrior’s skills have to be telegraphed to an extreme degree while builds like glass engie rifle w/ celestial armor + runes of the noble can hit harder than hammer from range while applying more condi’s and relatively low-cd control/blowout skills and with untelegraphed or minimum telegraphed attacks, yet can also regen for 10k HP w/o supply drop, and 20k HP with supply drop, has near perma-vigor and enough immobs/control/interrupts to mitigate large amounts of damage?

Or the near-unkillable faceroll builds of condi bunker mesmer with perplex runes that still puts out large pressure at range and has existed since the dawn of time?

What about the fact that hammer warrior was one of the only viable counters to a necro sitting behind a wall of guards spamming condis all over the place, and that the warrior had about 8 seconds to put enough pressure on the necro to down him or force him to disengage? It’s bad enough that dire armor now allows necros to become huge tanks that also condi bomb for huge damage, but now that our hammer damage has been reduced it further decreases the chance of being able to lock down a class/build that can literally single-handedly turn a fight behind the safety of their front line. Have you considered how a nerf to warriors is now an indirect buff to a build that you already recently buffed through introduction of dire armor?

Here’s another question: Why is there only 1 stat modifier for condi damage (condi damage), and yet you need 3 for power builds (power, crit chance, crit dmg)? This is one of the main reasons that has lead us to this extremely boring meta of very tanky/high HP/regen bunker builds that focus near 100% of damage through conditions.

It’s pushing warrior to a point where there is becoming little reason to run anything but condi bunker because the dmg you can do through condis is comparable to power builds but allows you to become a ridiculous tank in the process.

JonPeters.5630:

Unsuspecting Foe
I’ve seen some concerns about moving this to master tier. This comes down to the core philosophy that drove the warrior changes for this build. Warriors by nature have a lot of survivability, and we need them to make a choice between heavy control and heavy damage. This trait is a way for them to circumvent that and is therefore build defining. In many ways it exemplifies what a grandmaster trait is all about, however we felt that moving it all the way to grandmaster was overkill, but that placing it at the master tier allowed warriors to still run this with other traits, but have to make some sacrifices to do so.

I have always found that this trait fits very well to bunker warriors with little damage. Which is what you are trying to do if i am not mistaken. But to be honest in my opinion “Unsuspecting Foe” does not fit the role of a Grandmaster Trait, since that trait is cornerstone for builds with less damage and more CC.

Hammer
We are taking damage away from the hammer skills that do CC, because we don’t think it is ok for skills to do both of these things. I see a lot of comparison with Greatsword damage, but the Greatsword has no interrupts and a single cripple on the Bladetrail. We left the skills that do not do hard control alone such as Fierce Blow and Hammer Shock, as we are ok with those skills hitting hard because they do not actually disable. We also left Backbreaker alone because it has a long cast time and a long cooldown. The standard hammer build is still going to be very strong after this change, but it will open up options for mace to make a comeback as the control weapon.

Wouldn´t be possible for example to move “Merciless Hammer” from defense line to strength line and achieve a 25% damage reduction in that way ? By doing that in my opinion would force the warrior to sacrifice a bit of his defense if he wants that extra damage.

Mace
I highly suggest being patient with this change. I understand this skill did not need an increased cast time in PvE, but this change just makes this skill feel a lot more impactful, and a change of 200 milliseconds of cast increase is not going to impact its use against creatures, but will greatly make this skill more counterable in PvP and WvW. Some discussion here revolved around defiant, which is causing a lot of control builds to be neutered in PvE. We agree and we will start making strides towards solving that in the future.

In my opinion, the increase on cast of “Skull-Crack” and with a new animation(as if when a warrior with mace comes to you isn´t obvious enough what is about to do) will place it on par with the other mace skills which are slow and have telegraphed animations. Since “Unsuspecting- Foe” is getting moved to a master, by reducing mace´s stun to 2 secs would have been enough. Also i do not think that mace will have a comeback as a control weapon of choice after that change. But it remains to be seen.

Sorry I got to you guys last, I truly did just go through these in alphabetical order.

Thanks,

Jon

No worries Jon, have a nice week at work and thanks for your thoughts.

PS:" What about the proposed change at “burst mastery” trait? Any thoughts on that ? Also is it possible to see a rebirth on axe as main-hand ?

Regards

Seed

JonPeters.5630:

Hammer
We are taking damage away from the hammer skills that do CC, because we don’t think it is ok for skills to do both of these things. I see a lot of comparison with Greatsword damage, but the Greatsword has no interrupts and a single cripple on the Bladetrail. We left the skills that do not do hard control alone such as Fierce Blow and Hammer Shock, as we are ok with those skills hitting hard because they do not actually disable. We also left Backbreaker alone because it has a long cast time and a long cooldown. The standard hammer build is still going to be very strong after this change, but it will open up options for mace to make a comeback as the control weapon.

I dont quite understand this. Greatsword #1 chain deals less damage than Hammer #1 chain. Control weapon deals more damage than damage weapon. And yes there is Hundred Blades that deals a lot more but you cant land it on people who think, also in pvp people always move so skill that roots you in place is pve skill. After Hammer burst nerf I dont see any good weapons that deals direct burst damage.
Axe chain nerfed, Sword chain good for conid, Final Thrus higly telegraphed, long cd. Greatsword- #1 chain deals less damage than #1 Hammer. Mace- yay “new” control weapon, after balance yet again telegraphed attack.

I hope more professions skills will be balanced to be more telegraphed. I play for more than a year and still can’t see most of “casters” skills and I played all of them. They move a finger and cause havock.

As Hammer user since lunch those changed saddens me. Time to put my Juggernaut in the bank.

JonPeters.5630:

Longbow
A lot of thought went into the change to combustive shot. This skill was simply too effective at renewing itself. One of the drawbacks of the burst skills needs to be losing your adrenaline, but this skill was easily able to restore all of the adrenaline it lost. Rather than reduce the burn duration we reduced the # of attacks this skill creates because we felt it made it more counterable in PvP and less reliable in PvE as an adrenaline builder.

I already hate the slow “pulse” speed of the CURRENT combustive shot. Once pulse every 2 seconds is painful. One pulse every 3 seconds is even worse.

Look at Rangers Barrage skill. It hits once every 0.6 seconds. It literally will hit 5 times more often than the new Combustive shot.

Now, I understand your reasoning: adrenaline gain. And yes, slowing the pulses certainly will slow the gain, but it’ll also have a lot of impact with actually hitting opponents who are moving around. or missing out on damage if they move into, and then out of, the field between the long pulses.

Think about a 1v1 duel. How long does any opponent stay in a Combustive Shot field? Currently, you may get 0-2 pulses: the initial hit if they dont dodge, and then maybe a 2nd pulse if it takes them too long to get out. Now with a 3 second delay between pulses, it’ll be even harder.

To say nothing of the impending damage nerf.

Instead of nerfing the pulse speed I say improve the pulse speed to 1 second. And if Adrenaline gain is really an issue, then change it so each pulse only grants 1 adrenaline, not 1 adrenaline PER foe struck.

Combustive shot was already reduced in size for the lower adrenaline levels, AND there’s a range bug I’ve been reporting for months that STILL hasn’t been fixed. Please either improve the pulse speed, or leave it as is!

JonPeters.5630:

Here are my comments on what we have seen discussed so far with the warrior changes.

Longbow
A lot of thought went into the change to combustive shot. This skill was simply too effective at renewing itself. One of the drawbacks of the burst skills needs to be losing your adrenaline, but this skill was easily able to restore all of the adrenaline it lost. Rather than reduce the burn duration we reduced the # of attacks this skill creates because we felt it made it more counterable in PvP and less reliable in PvE as an adrenaline builder.

Ah, so folks are using the AoE as an Adrenaline builder, but don’t they have to have adrenaline first to cast it? Which means something like Bezerker stance is still the go to in making the AoE work and would end up on a trait bar anyway.

Why not just push the cool down out a bit? That would also limit the amount of attacks over time, while still giving it good situational use? I hate to see it nerfed in this manner, I want it to be an effective skill which obviously I feel it is now. Anyway, you probably did consider this and have a reason why it won’t work, >shrugs< mainly talking out loud.

You can still work on overall damage per tick even keeping it at 2 per second. So, you want the AoE that ticks 3 times in 6 seconds for say 450 (just using a number), to instead click 2 times in 6 seconds for 400 (just using a number). ??? This way more guys can run through it without getting the tick, which AoE’s are already limited to … what 5? getting the damage in an area?

Why not keep the ticks at 3/6 but just drop the damage to 400 (same example as above) ? Then put in a longer cool down time even if adrenaline pumps back up? The argument about the adrenaline to quickly is mute because once cast, you can immediately start bowing or swording or making anything close to you to build up adrenaline anyway. It isn’t the like the Ranger Barrage as the only thing a warrior can do while AoE’n.

being someone who has invested 14000 hours into my warrior, you are very wrong. THe weapon set is extremebly op

TIL ArenaNet has no clue what they are doing.

deathTouch.9706:

So why does every warrior’s skills have to be telegraphed to an extreme degree while builds like glass engie rifle w/ celestial armor + runes of the noble can hit harder than hammer from range while applying more condi’s and relatively low-cd control/blowout skills and with untelegraphed or minimum telegraphed attacks, yet can also regen for 10k HP w/o supply drop, and 20k HP with supply drop, has near perma-vigor and enough immobs/control/interrupts to mitigate large amounts of damage?

Or the near-unkillable faceroll builds of condi bunker mesmer with perplex runes that still puts out large pressure at range and has existed since the dawn of time?

What about the fact that hammer warrior was one of the only viable counters to a necro sitting behind a wall of guards spamming condis all over the place, and that the warrior had about 8 seconds to put enough pressure on the necro to down him or force him to disengage? It’s bad enough that dire armor now allows necros to become huge tanks that also condi bomb for huge damage, but now that our hammer damage has been reduced it further decreases the chance of being able to lock down a class/build that can literally single-handedly turn a fight behind the safety of their front line. Have you considered how a nerf to warriors is now an indirect buff to a build that you already recently buffed through introduction of dire armor?

Here’s another question: Why is there only 1 stat modifier for condi damage (condi damage), and yet you need 3 for power builds (power, crit chance, crit dmg)? This is one of the main reasons that has lead us to this extremely boring meta of very tanky/high HP/regen bunker builds that focus near 100% of damage through conditions.

It’s pushing warrior to a point where there is becoming little reason to run anything but condi bunker because the dmg you can do through condis is comparable to power builds but allows you to become a ridiculous tank in the process.

+ 1

Back to the release warrior! Thumps up Anet, well done and good job. War is the <3 class from Anet? Yes, after Mesmer, Guard, Thief, Elementist, Engineer, Necromancer ..

You are missing the most important part of the conversation here. If you read through the balance notes or other threads, the main complaint is around the healing signet. It is ridiculously OP at the moment. What it needs is a cut to its base heal and an increase to its tie with healing power. If someone wants to run zerker or soldiers, it should heal for less than today. If someone wants to stack more heal power, it should heal for more than today.

style.6173:

You are missing the most important part of the conversation here. If you read through the balance notes or other threads, the main complaint is around the healing signet. It is ridiculously OP at the moment. What it needs is a cut to its base heal and an increase to its tie with healing power. If someone wants to run zerker or soldiers, it should heal for less than today. If someone wants to stack more heal power, it should heal for more than today.

Plz, run healing signet in gc build, i beg u, my freebag waiting. Its was buffed for a reason – to make it viable for soldier/hybrid builds.

JonPeters.5630:

Longbow
A lot of thought went into the change to combustive shot. This skill was simply too effective at renewing itself. One of the drawbacks of the burst skills needs to be losing your adrenaline, but this skill was easily able to restore all of the adrenaline it lost. Rather than reduce the burn duration we reduced the # of attacks this skill creates because we felt it made it more counterable in PvP and less reliable in PvE as an adrenaline builder.

Thanks Jon

But why not then disable the pulse of Combustive Shot from generating Adrenaline strikes (or limit it to just 1 target generating the Adrenaline Strike as oppose to multiple)? In lieu of this, increase the frequency of the ticking and/or increase the pulse damage.

The problem you created is the Stage 1-Tier and 2-Tier adrenaline uses of Combustive Shot are now worthless when you add the decreased area radius. There is no purpose to ever use this ability outside of full Adrenaline.

Scoobaniec.9561:

style.6173:

You are missing the most important part of the conversation here. If you read through the balance notes or other threads, the main complaint is around the healing signet. It is ridiculously OP at the moment. What it needs is a cut to its base heal and an increase to its tie with healing power. If someone wants to run zerker or soldiers, it should heal for less than today. If someone wants to stack more heal power, it should heal for more than today.

Plz, run healing signet in gc build, i beg u, my freebag waiting. Its was buffed for a reason – to make it viable for soldier/hybrid builds.

I am quite certain that Healing Signet is not off the list of potential Warrior changes but remains ‘lack of data’/not forum complaints compared to these Dec 10th changes that are being proposed.

For now, let’s keep it off the thread because it isn’t part of the December 10 changes unless Jon wants to discuss for other reasons.

Peow peow.2189:

being someone who has invested 14000 hours into my warrior, you are very wrong. THe weapon set is extremebly op

14000 hours? You have been logged on for longer than the game has been around???

Probably a type-o but …

Artaz.3819:

Peow peow.2189:

being someone who has invested 14000 hours into my warrior, you are very wrong. THe weapon set is extremebly op

14000 hours? You have been logged on for longer than the game has been around???

Probably a type-o but …

Nope, hes a troll.

Defense XII – Spiked Armor. Reduced the recharge from 15s to 10s.

Ask yourself, with the cooldown reduction, do you believe that anyone will take this Grandmaster trait over Defy Pain (or even some of the lower-tiered Defense traits)? If the answer is yes, then you are getting close. “When struck” (instead of when critically struck) with the 15-second internal cooldown would make much sense and even then …

JonPeters.5630:

Here are my comments on what we have seen discussed so far with the warrior changes.

Unsuspecting Foe
I’ve seen some concerns about moving this to master tier. This comes down to the core philosophy that drove the warrior changes for this build. Warriors by nature have a lot of survivability, and we need them to make a choice between heavy control and heavy damage. This trait is a way for them to circumvent that and is therefore build defining. In many ways it exemplifies what a grandmaster trait is all about, however we felt that moving it all the way to grandmaster was overkill, but that placing it at the master tier allowed warriors to still run this with other traits, but have to make some sacrifices to do so.
n

moving this up kills a lot of builds. not like this trait gives a lot of damage to heavy cc hammer build or anything except for mace gs, which is not that good but viable. nerfing damage purely on hammer is enough.

JonPeters.5630:

Thrill of the Kill
I’ve heard some concerns about this being permanent max adrenaline in WvW zerg fights. We understand that, but given the fact that this trait competes with Warrior’s Sprint, Vigorous Focus, Signet Mastery, and Inspiring Shouts, we feel like players that take Thirll of the Kill we be giving up a sufficient amount of effectiveness to counter this. There are so many other reliable ways to gain adrenaline as is that I can’t imagine this tipping the scales as much as one of the other adept traits in this line.

still useless imo, kill rate in pvp is too low for this trait to be equal to any other trait, not to mention the bunker meta.

JonPeters.5630:

Hammer
We are taking damage away from the hammer skills that do CC, because we don’t think it is ok for skills to do both of these things. I see a lot of comparison with Greatsword damage, but the Greatsword has no interrupts and a single cripple on the Bladetrail. We left the skills that do not do hard control alone such as Fierce Blow and Hammer Shock, as we are ok with those skills hitting hard because they do not actually disable. We also left Backbreaker alone because it has a long cast time and a long cooldown. The standard hammer build is still going to be very strong after this change, but it will open up options for mace to make a comeback as the control weapon.

i definitely felt that hammer build are doing more damage then greatsword, i can just aa and do better burst then “can not land full” HB. i felt like GS need damage boost after the damage nerf. since with gs, you can’t simply have that much defense like a hammer or anything else, you need cc to do damage which gs itself does not provide so you have to slot for it, giving up a lot of defense. also i suggest decrease the cd on bullcharge

JonPeters.5630:

Longbow
A lot of thought went into the change to combustive shot. This skill was simply too effective at renewing itself. One of the drawbacks of the burst skills needs to be losing your adrenaline, but this skill was easily able to restore all of the adrenaline it lost. Rather than reduce the burn duration we reduced the # of attacks this skill creates because we felt it made it more counterable in PvP and less reliable in PvE as an adrenaline builder.

i’ve always felt that longbow was one of the best weapons warrior. being the fact that i always used it during free kill tier and 1v3ed from time to time because of its f1.
but after you reduced the F1’s aoe range to that ridiculously small circle(which is smaller then engi bomb and LB’s 3), you already nerfed it hard enough, and now you nerf its tick and utility…please anet, don’t do this, not like anyone can step in that ridiculously small circle anytime soon…for us to build that adrenaline.

as of mace, increase cast time is not necessary, its not any close to the effectiveness of hammer build, so why, its just the bullcharge frenzy hb, which people need to learn to avoid. improve animation is fine.

also, why -3% damage on burst mastery, what is the point? why nerf every other burst skill.

Artaz.3819:

Defense XII – Spiked Armor. Reduced the recharge from 15s to 10s.

Ask yourself, with the cooldown reduction, do you believe that anyone will take this Grandmaster trait over Defy Pain (or even some of the lower-tiered Defense traits)? If the answer is yes, then you are getting close. “When struck” (instead of when critically struck) with the 15-second internal cooldown would make much sense and even then …

Not going to happen. But i can see some ppl exploiting it with boon duration.

Seed.5467:

Wouldn´t be possible for example to move “Merciless Hammer” from defense line to strength line and achieve a 25% damage reduction in that way ? By doing that in my opinion would force the warrior to sacrifice a bit of his defense if he wants that extra damage.

Exactly how do you think that changing the hammer meta from 0/10/30/0/30 to 20/0/20/0/30 is going to make them squishier?

Here is what a current hammer warrior is going to look like. Effective HP 33,848, effective Power 2,085.
Here is what it would change into. Effective HP 34,574, effective Power 2,116. What you’re suggesting would actually be a pretty decent buff.

Sue me, but I agree with his comments on the Warrior changes.

IMO These warrior changes were much needed, and this is coming from someone who has mained a warrior since headstart. I wonder what people running gs m/s will run now, hopefully more warriors will diversify their builds while still being efficient.

“Warriors by nature have a lot of survivability, and we need them to make a choice between heavy control and heavy damage.”

my sides are in outer space, i’m done with this game

You talk about not doing whack a mole with nerfs but this feels like one with the hammer… 20%? Seems a bit high. Why not start with 10% and see how it plays out first.

Also if you are going to nerf hammer, why don’t you fix the fact that earthshaker misses any time the target is on a slope of some sort.

My last comment is why aren’t the default traits in the tactics tree being changed or buffed? Determined Revival, Fast healer and Reviver’s might are too situational compared to other traits. In a given night, I make use of those traits maybe 1% of the time.

style.6173:

You are missing the most important part of the conversation here. If you read through the balance notes or other threads, the main complaint is around the healing signet. It is ridiculously OP at the moment. What it needs is a cut to its base heal and an increase to its tie with healing power. If someone wants to run zerker or soldiers, it should heal for less than today. If someone wants to stack more heal power, it should heal for more than today.

Just in case this hasn’t been pointed out enough (in the thousands of times it’s come up) if you think that healing signet is too effective on a guy running a glass cannon build, news flash … that’s not a glass cannon build. Healing Signet even if used in a defensive build will fold to heavy consistent pressure, if you can’t apply it that’s your problem, not the warrior’s.

@ JonPeters,

This is only my second post and I have been playing the game since beta. I feel I have to be vocal about the LB & CC changes. I did not speak up when the ranger received its nerf to short bow with no buffs or AI fixes which caused me to leave the game for 4 months.

Now it appears ANET is headed down the same road again only this time it is with the Warrior. Do not nerf the long bow. There are other threads that address this technically. Please read those and reconsider the changes.

In short, you are reducing its effectiveness for pure condition build, balanced condi/damage builds, and team play as a combo filed which is supposed to be one of the core mechanics of this game. If you say the LB helped make Hambow OP you have already addressed the hammer issues from several angles ruining it. Nerfing even more the LB to offset hammer damage is just not needed.

You and your team are very wrong about the LB.

Read “Not happy with new Combustive shot” thread as well as others.

The warrior in one v.s. one encounters before the patch: “Hey look over there, someone I can kill easily”.

The warrior after the patch: “Hey look over there, a dummy target !”.

The warrior has never been adjusted in a way he can compete in a decent way with other classes. And this patch won’t make it, either. It’s too easy to counter most of the warrior’s attacks as they are telegraphed as hell, and it’s too easy to kite a warrior while doing damage at the same time. When I’m playing my <put every class you want here> against a warrior, I’m just smiling.

It’s such a sad time for the warriors…

JonPeters.5630:

Here are my comments on what we have seen discussed so far with the warrior changes.

Longbow
A lot of thought went into the change to combustive shot. This skill was simply too effective at renewing itself. One of the drawbacks of the burst skills needs to be losing your adrenaline, but this skill was easily able to restore all of the adrenaline it lost. Rather than reduce the burn duration we reduced the # of attacks this skill creates because we felt it made it more counterable in PvP and less reliable in PvE as an adrenaline builder.

I really feel that simply lowering the number of attacks/pulses the longbow combustive shot makes is not the answer to it giving back too much adrenaline. Why not make it so that each pules can only at max generate a limited amount of adrenaline? Even just a limit of 1 adrenaline strike per pulse, provided the pulse hits a target, I think would be fine. Otherwise then the damage level of each pulse really needs to be increased to compensate for this.
Already the recent change to combustive shot being a smaller radius at adrenaline levels 1 and 2 has had a big impact. At level 1 its a 180 radius, which frankly is tiny. No player going to just willingly stand in that the for even half the duration of the skill. If you increase the time between the pulses to 3 seconds, that is just a huge time gap when I comes to player vs. player combat. At most I would be able to get 1 pulse of the skill off on an enemy, maybe 2 if I’m lucky.
Please look into ways to solve the adrenaline rebuilding thing without making this skill weaker.

CC is like sinking ennemy action IF he has no stability nor cleanse or breakfree. Hammer CC warrior needs to be tone down.

I don’t get the hammer nerfs. They nerfed the power-crit builds moving Berserker’s Power and Heightened Focus to grandmaster tiers, and they nerfed the axe damage displacing most of it to the end of the chain (which means impausible against foes with functional brains). So people leave those weapons for hammers not due hammers did anything new, but because axes and greatswords (which still has a utterly useless burst skill) lost their main appealing: the damage.

So, instead of enhancing GS and axe to appealing levels, they chose to nerf hammers and maces (despite almost no one use them in PvE). Meanwhile the absurdly overpowered runes of perplexity are still in play without a nerf in form of stacks, duration or cooldown.

More contradictory even, as was stated, if there was no intention to made the hammer a control + damage weapon, why -in first instance- Merciless Hammer enhances both sides? The answer is that the hammer damage was already fine: useless in PvE, where bosses have Defiant and not as great in sPvP/WvW where other weapons had a much bigger spike damage. The “problems” started when they nerfer those weapons to almost became non-relevant, in a environment in which hammer was already a lot more solid tool in the WvW raid metagame.

Is also a joke to see those nerfs in damage while the game keeps pushing towards power creep with the ascended stuff, increasing the gap betwen new players and long time dedicated ones, which collides against the rule of making the game based on skill and not on gear/money spent.

Anyway, the changes will not modify my current builds a single bit; they just will make the fights more slow and potentially boring for the foes.

My feedback on these changes, Jon:

Strength 5 – Reckless Dodge. Increased Damage by 25% – [b]Whenever I invest points into this I come to the same conclusion and that is that due to it’s small radius, I hardly get any use out of it.

Now I understand that you have pretty much standardized dodge effects in regards to range for all classes, which might make it very difficult for you to increase its range without it being an inconsistency in terms of design compared to other dodge roll traits (correct me if I am wrong), but Reckless Dodge has no personal effect, nor an effect with a duration like the thief’s caltrops roll, so that it either hits or misses and more often than not, if I am in melee range and I am dodging through my target (let alone away from it), the dodge roll will propel me beyond the required range for this trait and thus not hitting my target at all.

If I could change this trait, I’d increase the radius to 240 from 180 and reduce the max number of targets to compensate for it (from 5 to 3).[/b]

Strength III – Great Fortitude. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 7%. – Sounds good and in line with other classes’ trait changes

Arms IV – Unsuspecting Foe. Moved to Master Tier. – I am fine with this

Arms VII – Crack Shot. Moved to Adept Tier. – Might be a little too strong for an adept tier line, though rifle is underused currently, so that for now this may not create any issues. Should rifle skills ever be buffed, this will become problematic.

Arms XII – Last Chance. Increased the threshold from 25% to 50%. Reduced the cooldown from 45 seconds to 40seconds. – There is a pro and a con to this change, which will leave it basically at the same level.

Right now the biggest advantage of this trait to me seems to be the fact that if I manage to down my target quickly after it activates, I will then have enough quickness left to stomp it, which makes things a lot easier. With the change, I will have an easier time downing my target, but it will be almost impossible to have enough time to squeeze in a quickness stomp afterwards.

Defense 25 – Armored Attack. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 10%. – Fine and in line with other traits.

Defense XII – Spiked Armor. Reduced the recharge from 15s to 10s. – Substantial buff and probably what it should have been all along.

Discipline XI – Burst Mastery. Reduced damage increase from 10% to 7%. Removed erroneous adrenaline gain fact. – A change that affects all current builds, but it’s so miniscule, I don’t see a problem with it.

Earthshaker. Reduced damage by 20%. – Good change.

Staggering Blow. Reduced damage by 23%. – Good change.

Skull Crack. Increased the cast time from 1/4s to 1/2s. Updated the animation and effects of this skill to be more clear. – I can live with that, though I do believe that raising the damage coefficient to match the new animation time is in order.

Combustive Shot – Increased pulse duration to 3s. Increased burn duration per pulse to 3s. Normalized damage per pulse. Updated pulses per tier to 2, 3,and 4 respectively for tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3. – Good change.

I want to add that it would be great if you could look into Counterblow and Riposte. Right now both these reactive skills have low range and require your target to hit you in order to trigger. With the long animation time both have, I find myself interrupting the follow up skill more often than not, because by the time it is executed, my target might already be out of range again.

I’m actually happy about these changes. But then again, I don’t use cookie cutter FOTM builds, so i’m not affected by the nerfs at all. My builds will either be buffed or untouched by this patch. I may actually start using rifle again now that crack shot is moved.

Dear support staff,

I normally dont post in forum with regards to updates but just read them. I personally felt this nerf gone way too far. I am actually okay with the hammer nerf in terms of damage as I understand that it is OP when I use it myself. What I could not accept is why is mace getting nerf and with regards to all these nerf there isn’t any additional buffs to other areas to open more options for build. I fought several classes 1v1 and I don’t think I am a real bad player but is having a lot of trouble to kill them , like for example for mesmer that illusion, evade and stealth rotation is totally lame and its not getting nerf, you can barely land a burst on them and when u finally stun them they teleport away, meanwhile you are suffering from tons of conditions which means you are pretty much dead unless you run. I think the dev team is too focused on nerfing OP areas due to QQers but neglected the fun of the class itself whereby so many weapon is left unused like rifle, axe and GS(Seriously you expect us to hit stuff with it when 3 out of the 5 skill always fail due to lag). Please give us buff in other areas like u did with guardian when you nerf us.

Xurse.8267:

Dear support staff,

I normally dont post in forum with regards to updates but just read them. I personally felt this nerf gone way too far. I am actually okay with the hammer nerf in terms of damage as I understand that it is OP when I use it myself. What I could not accept is why is mace getting nerf and with regards to all these nerf there isn’t any additional buffs to other areas to open more options for build. I fought several classes 1v1 and I don’t think I am a real bad player but is having a lot of trouble to kill them , like for example for mesmer that illusion, evade and stealth rotation is totally lame and its not getting nerf, you can barely land a burst on them and when u finally stun them they teleport away, meanwhile you are suffering from tons of conditions which means you are pretty much dead unless you run. I think the dev team is too focused on nerfing OP areas due to QQers but neglected the fun of the class itself whereby so many weapon is left unused like rifle, axe and GS(Seriously you expect us to hit stuff with it when 3 out of the 5 skill always fail due to lag). Please give us buff in other areas like u did with guardian when you nerf us.

And the only weapon that was kind of viable againts mesmers is getting a huge nerf besides all that.Yes i am talking about bow.Bow/mace is the most nerfed build in this patch even more than hammer/x since mace lacks mobility and without the strong aoe you wouldnt even be able to kill the clones,besides no cripple/weakness and aoe stun/damage/mobility a hammer still has over mace.I am strongly considering to move on if the patch will prove too kitten fun builds.No go for booring fotm dire or pvt for me.