Guild Wars 2

Dand.8231:

silentnight warrior.2714:

I dont believe any of the changes proposed to warrior, with the exception of moving UF

Agreed!

Obviously they want the Hammer brought down. But isnt nerfing UF enough?! Isn’t that where all the OP damage is coming from primarily?!

And why LONGBOW of all things?! It’s our only half decent ranged weapon! Rifle is either so bad it’s a joke, or it’s part of a Full Zerker 20k sniper build.

ATM the Hambow warrior is really strong (PVP) and people have QQ’d about it quite a bit so now Anet is nerfing the kitten out of that build so nobody uses it anymore. Great way to stop the QQ.

Just tossing it out there,
“Defense XII – Spiked Armor. Reduced the recharge from 15s to 10s.”
30 tactics, boon runes = 100% retailation uptime.
About 500dmg every time you’re hit with average Warrior’s power.

A Thief doing two Pistol Whips on you receives 10,000 dmg.

Red Falcon.8257:

Just tossing it out there,
“Defense XII – Spiked Armor. Reduced the recharge from 15s to 10s.”
30 tactics, boon runes = 100% retailation uptime.
About 500dmg every time you’re hit with average Warrior’s power.

A Thief doing two Pistol Whips on you receives 10,000 dmg.

hmm, I can hearing the crying already. “Warrior are so OP I kill myself on them”

Red Falcon.8257:

Just tossing it out there,
“Defense XII – Spiked Armor. Reduced the recharge from 15s to 10s.”
30 tactics, boon runes = 100% retailation uptime.
About 500dmg every time you’re hit with average Warrior’s power.

A Thief doing two Pistol Whips on you receives 10,000 dmg.

To get retaliation to deal 500 damage per hit, you would need 4,020 Power.

Here’s a warrior with 25 might stacks, 25 bloodlust stacks and whatever sacrifices need to be made to get 100% boon duration. He’s got 4,041 Power.

And here’s a Pistol Whip Thief who heals 201 hp/hit on Pistol Whip. To achieve your proposed 500 dmg/hit, you would now need 6,701 Power.

But considering the popularity of Warriors in WvW and the constant complaints about retaliation in WvW, I could totally see people campaigning to have Spiked Armor nerfed if it proves popular. After all, hitting 5 targets who have retaliation and 3,000 power would result in like 19,000 damage to the attacker.

-Strength 5 – Reckless Dodge. Increased Damage by 25%

Fine.

-Strength III – Great Fortitude. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 7%.

Fine. A bit more hp even for damage oriented warriors.

-Arms IV – Unsuspecting Foe. Moved to Master Tier.

Sure it belongs at least to a master tier.

-Arms VII – Crack Shot. Moved to Adept Tier.

Really? I think it’s even too good for adept. I remember a discussion in Ele’s forum, about the fact that ALL weapon reduction cd were master tier. Now, warriors got shield at adept, but it’s a only off hand (it affects 20% of the skills considering swap).
Rifle is 2h weapon, so this feats would reduce cd of 50% of warrior skills plus givin a real useful effect. Ele’s elements reduction cd reduce 25% of the skills without giving extra effect.
I don’t get the logic, but my warrior will appreciate this change.

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

Still not worth a grandmaster tier.

-Defense 25 – Armored Attack. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 10%.

More power for defense oriented warrior. Good. The conversion rate will match those of other classes (and I see this will happen for other classes, too, like ele’s earth trait).

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

Really nice. Now in combo with tactics this will be a almost perma retaliation.

-Tactics 5 – Determined Revival. Now correctly displays the amount of toughness.

Ok.

-Tactics 25 – Reviver’s Might. Now applies 3 stacks of Might instead of 1.

Before was meh, now it could be something. Better than nothing.

-Discipline II – Thrill of the Kill. Increased Adrenaline gain from 1 to 10.

x10? It’s a lot of Adrenaline, but seems fair.

-Discipline XI – Burst Mastery. Reduced damage increase from 10% to 7%. Removed erroneous adrenaline gain fact.

A 3% damage reduction. This is meant to reduce all burst damage or only to fix the strongest burst skills? Could be a problem for F1 skills that were not strong before, and after will be even worse.

-Earthshaker. Reduced damage by 20%.
-Staggering Blow. Reduced damage by 23%.

I think it’s right to don’t give too much CC and Dmg in one weapon, but care. Weapons with zero CC will be useless in pvp, weapon with low damage useless in pve.
By the way, utilities can change this.

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

Single target F1. Let’s see how it will be changed. I think the big problem with high CC warriors is not that, but the big numbers of CC skills and relatively short CD.

-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.

With Burst Mastery nerf this is nerfed 2 times. I know that bow > rifle, but now rifle will get a good buff, and to get Crack Shot a dps oriented warrior should put at least 10 traits in Arms tree, that give damage oriented stats and Precise Strike.
To take Burning Arrows a bow warrior should put 20 feats in Tactic tree, obtaining Determined Revival and Fast Healer. Plus, Stronger Bowstring only to match rifle range.
Considering this, i think that Crack Shot should stay in the master tier (to balance with all other classes), Burning Arrows should be removed. Stronger Bowstring should go to master tier, upgrading Bow’s range and giving 20% CD reduction on skills.
Determined Revival and Fast Healer should be togheter, Adept Tier. Instead, at master tier there could be a trait like this “5-10% more damage on burning/burning and bleeding/with movement impaired”, something that adds damage on tactics tree at some condition (more frequent the condition = 5% dmg, less frequent = 10%).

Also, why don’t warriors have a CD reduction for swords? It’s the only weapon that lack of that
Axe, GS, Mace, Hammer, Bow, Rifle, Shield, Warhorn all have it.

Purifer.3946:

Also, why don’t warriors have a CD reduction for swords? It’s the only weapon that lack of that
Axe, GS, Mace, Hammer, Bow, Rifle, Shield, Warhorn all have it.

I asked for that and many other things..0 response. Guess where they have warrior community? Ill give ya a tip – its some black hole.

Red Falcon.8257:

Just tossing it out there,
“Defense XII – Spiked Armor. Reduced the recharge from 15s to 10s.”
30 tactics, boon runes = 100% retailation uptime.
About 500dmg every time you’re hit with average Warrior’s power.

A Thief doing two Pistol Whips on you receives 10,000 dmg.

So where is the problem in that? Guardians do this in soldier’s gear since launch and no one is complaining.

All I really wish is them to fix the elevation issue with hammer F1. The boost to AP would be nice and the retaliation buff also is nice. Getting 4K AP isn’t really that hard IMO.

Red Falcon.8257:

Just tossing it out there,
“Defense XII – Spiked Armor. Reduced the recharge from 15s to 10s.”
30 tactics, boon runes = 100% retailation uptime.
About 500dmg every time you’re hit with average Warrior’s power.

A Thief doing two Pistol Whips on you receives 10,000 dmg.

5 seconds base, so you’d need a 100% retaliation boon duration increase to get a 100% uptime (and even that would be only theoretical, since you’d have to be crit every single time the very second it comes off ICD. I am not aware of any runes that give 70% boon duration.

I am also not sure how you figure retaliation to be doing 500 damage per hit with 2k power. You’d need over 4k power (power, not attack) to get 500 damage out of retaliation.

I have heard of warriors with powerlevels of “over nine-thousand” even, but I am having my doubts that this is possible in GW2.

I think nerfing earth shaker by 20% then nerfing burst mastery damage by 3% is too much of a nerf just for the sake of hammer warriors because then earth shaker will deal less damage than the hammer auto attack. It’d be fine if earth shaker got a 10 or 15% nerf, but 20% with burst mastery nerf is a little much. i don’t know why burst mastery is getting a 3% nerf. It’s 30 in discipline and not too many people go 30 discipline anymore… And people are worrying about damage with hammer? Backbreaker still deals the most damage for a hammer warrior, so idk why people are crying. CC skills are annoying despite how much damage they do.

Unsuspecting Foe is a great trait and tons of people think warriors will be unviable or something because it’s moving to master tier. :P personally I think it should’ve stayed in adept but just be toned down to something like a 33% increase crit chance vs stunned foes

I removed unsuspecting foe 2 weeks ago and I don’t seem to see any difference except now earthshaker doesn’t crits all the time anymore… I really think the issue here was unsuspecting foe applying the stun BEFORE doing it damage roll.

This + burst damage boost + merciless hammer = Lots of stuff stacking together.

As of right now I don’t use UF, either burst mastery and hammer’s burst is doing a fine job. It’s not OP and hit for a little more than the average damage sword does which is a 1 handed weapon. (this make sense) But if they gonna nerf it’s damage I think it might become a bit weak for something that needs you to spend up to 3 bars of adrenaline.

Would still be a freaking AoE STUN on a 10sec CD, given that you can regen Adrenaline fast enough. With a 600 range leap. Carrying blast finisher for utility. And with all the related adrenaline traits interaction such as Cleansing Ire (given it lands).

I wouldn’t call it weak.
I think there are like, dunno, 3 other skills across the other 7 professions which are up to par with it – but much less frequently avaible.

It surely will change Earthshaker to “Control skill with a little dmg attached” instead of “Control skill + 7k burst AoE dmg”, thus making Hammer more of a CC oriented kit rather than good for all.
Which is exactely the point of the patch.

Hammer was fine…..it’s going to suck after the patch. You already could counter ES by dodge rolling, blind, stability, invul, block, or your own stun/knockback if the user didnt have his own stability up. After the patch you will still have access to all of these same counters but it’s going to hit like a wet noodle as well. UF worked on stunned targets so lets remember you only got that bonus to crit on a percentage of your attacks as well…..not all of them. You also have crap mobility with a hammer or with a mace/x.

Works great against terrible players and not so much against those with half a brain. We’ll see but I predict it will end up being overkill on the weapon and you won’t see many guys using it anymore. They really need to just completely separate sPvP mechanics from PVE and WvW. The reality of what is OP in sPvP or WvW or PVE is so far apart that all you end up doing is screwing up balance even more when you make a change like this.

One last time.

unsuspecting foe/burst mastery is enough to tone down hammer dmg. now I have to make a choice between.

a) dropping 10 points from discipline losing a lot of crit dmg and burst reduction cost. Without crit dmg crit chance doesn’t matter.

b) dropping 10 from defense and losing merciless hammer(because cleansing ire IS a requirement), loseing -100 toughness/healing and armor attacker(power lose). This would prob net you the most dmg.

c) or just shifting that 10 points that would have given me UF somewhere else(which wouldn’t give me any crits/crit dmg at all).

The crits and crit dmg is wats important here. I have done have power stacking hammer builds and even with might blasting and 4k+ attack(along with zerker power) I wont hit as hard as a crit build. Without uf giving bursts of crit chance your gonna have to go crit based runes and zerker and at that moment you will lose a lot of survivability.

nerfing hammer directly WILL hurt non meta builds(ham shouts says hello) and prob turn people away from the hammer entirely. 1/4 from 2 out of my 6 hammer moves is over kill especially when you consider hammer has no primary dmg dealing move like eviscerate. I have to COMBO my whole bar to get dmg and again 2 moves cut that much out of my combo is gonna trash the hammer.

For it to be fair you would need to

a) increase stun/knockback duration. DONT WANT, I get bad memories of other games with TRUE stun lock, im talking get hit then go for a walk.

b)Shift that dmg from es and sb and put that into the auto attack and fierce blow. With this it would be all about trying to take advantage of the merciless hammer bonus which would promote attacking after a cc instead of comboing cc together. This would be interesting.

OR

Just leave hammer alone and let the changes to uf and bm take. If your still scared of UF you can always improve it and shift it to gm(uf isn’t good enough for a gm). Hammer has always been a great weapon(yes, since the beginning), seeing it ruined after all this time is just sad.

The Hammer will still be a good weapon after the patch. If the Player cannot wield it with success, then it’s a commentary on the Player, not the Hammer.

The hammer damage nerf seems to be the 1 thing that ANet got wrong in this patch: everything else is more than reasonable including moving UF up to mastery forcing people to not be able to get a defensive GM and UF at the same time while also getting discp or tactics GM. Yes UF was available since release but burst mastery wasnt and the cooldown on burst skills wasnt.

Likewise mace was only really used for its heavy stunning in spvp, the cast time will have virtually no effect on pve or large wvw combat.

The staggering blow nerf should have been to take away its mobility which is what caused grief in the last patch, or perhaps to nerf its damage by a more modest 10% since it WAS buffed in the last patch if it was indeed felt to be too OP now though i question why people should be allowed to stand in hammer range for prolonged periods of time and not get punished.

The earthshaker nerf essentially makes burst skills in general an underpowered class mechanic, earthshaker has been available with its current damage since launch of the game a year ago including periods of time when warriors were the laughing stalk of spvp, while powerful, it is what gives the slower hammer its utility as a weapon, forces people to dodge, and made it useful instead of just running GS for everything, it is in no way, shape, or form OP and this nerf is uncalled for.

Why will it still be good? No offense but the response of saying it will be good and if it’s not then the player is to blame is lame. Have you tried it post patch? Obviously the answer to that is no. However, anyone can look at the proposed changes and determine that you are looking at a serious hit in the damage department post patch. This can’t be denied. I have no problem with you saying its going to be fine but if you are than give some reasoning behind your statement.

Good point Tammuz. Hammer has been around since launch but all of a sudden it has become this incredible OP weapon of mass destruction that UN inspectors need to be sent out to dismantle? Or, rather could it be that we are seeing a influx of nubs in WvW achievement grinding and hence an increase in whine? Hmmmm…….same weapon and mechanic for 18 mos with no whining….WvW Season 1 release and the cries are deafening.

Hmmmmmm……..

I have a feeling that the hammer will suck unless you are zerging. Then it will still be useful. Roamers will need to find a new weapon.

Butnaked.9287:

Just leave hammer alone and let the changes to uf and bm take. If your still scared of UF you can always improve it and shift it to gm(uf isn’t good enough for a gm). Hammer has always been a great weapon(yes, since the beginning), seeing it ruined after all this time is just sad.

Yea I think that the changes to Unsuspecting Foe and Burst Mastery traits should happen, but not at the SAME TIME as lowering warrior hammer skill damage. Do not go for nerfing all these things at the same time, otherwise you will overdo it. Because the core complaint seems to revolve around the usage of a single trait, Unsuspecting Foe, change that before thinking about the other changes to warrior hammer builds.

A 20% damage reduction of 2 of the hammer skills seems way too much, especially when combined with the other 2 trait changes. Stun breakers/stability is basically mandatory in pvp/wvw fights, in addition to condition removals (can anyone say fear spamming necromancer?) If you are getting hit by the hammer skill combos of warrior hammer, its your own fault, as you didn’t then counter it with stun breaks/stability, invulnerability, binds, etc.. And lets not forget that Earthshaker is highly telegraphed and easy to recognize, “Hey I see someone leaping towards me in mid-air with a hammer, I better dodge that or stun break it.”

And finally for the change to Longbow F1 Combustive Shot: Anet please read this.
You have said that you wanted to change Combustive Shot because of how much adrenaline it refills you quickly. However you are ok with making Thrill of the Kill trait grant 10 adrenaline from a kill. This contradicts your previous statement about Combustive Shoot granting too much adrenaline.
The solution to Combustive Shot should not be to make it even weaker, but change its adrenaline gain mechanic to be exactly the same as Sword’s F1 Burst skill Flurry works. Flurry does not grant any base adrenaline from the hits it makes, which is 8 to 12 hits, and up to 3 targets. Yet you get only 1 or 2 strikes of adrenaline back from using Flurry. So why not just apply the same mechanic to Combustive shot?

Tammuz.7361:

The hammer damage nerf seems to be the 1 thing that ANet got wrong in this patch: everything else is more than reasonable including moving UF up to mastery forcing people to not be able to get a defensive GM and UF at the same time while also getting discp or tactics GM. Yes UF was available since release but burst mastery wasnt and the cooldown on burst skills wasnt.

Likewise mace was only really used for its heavy stunning in spvp, the cast time will have virtually no effect on pve or large wvw combat.

The staggering blow nerf should have been to take away its mobility which is what caused grief in the last patch, or perhaps to nerf its damage by a more modest 10% since it WAS buffed in the last patch if it was indeed felt to be too OP now though i question why people should be allowed to stand in hammer range for prolonged periods of time and not get punished.

The earthshaker nerf essentially makes burst skills in general an underpowered class mechanic, earthshaker has been available with its current damage since launch of the game a year ago including periods of time when warriors were the laughing stalk of spvp, while powerful, it is what gives the slower hammer its utility as a weapon, forces people to dodge, and made it useful instead of just running GS for everything, it is in no way, shape, or form OP and this nerf is uncalled for.

Been saying the same thing since I read the notes.

At this point I think they should just drop UF out of the game and replace it with something that isn’t as situational. You can tell that this trait was put there to help dmg output with hammer, mace and shield but its useless for everything else. Turn it into a GM trait, keep the idea of increasing crits but you need some other condition to trigger it.

If you want to keep UF and Cleansing Ire, Earthshaker will take a 40% damage nerf.

40%

the developer stated his reason for the Nerf like 3 pages ago, he prolly will never comeback and look at this post again cause nis second response sounded like, if u dont like the nerf play another weapon

Zantmar.5406:

the developer stated his reason for the Nerf like 3 pages ago, he prolly will never comeback and look at this post again cause nis second response sounded like, if u dont like the nerf play another weapon

that’s why I have zero confidence in the dev team.

Consider this. They are changing the animation on skull crack to make it easier to read, which I agree 100% with. All animations should be unique and readable yet nothing has been done about asura. smh doesn’t cover it.

The problem I’ve seen with my stun warrior is that with the Fury boon, my armor stats, and the +50% crit chance from Unsuspecting Foe, I can get 117% crit chance with at least 60% extra damage per hit for two seconds. Unsuspecting Foe should just give fury for 10 seconds upon stun with an internal cooldown of 15 seconds. Right now, it isn’t the problem with the damage the hammer does, it’s the fact that when an enemy gets stunned by a warrior the warrior gets a 100% crit chance for the entirety of the stun chain. In short: The crit percent from the current meta build is too kitten high, specifically since warriors have almost permanent fury uptime with a ~47% base crit chance.

Which is stupid as I’ve stun-lock killed pretty much every class.

Don’t get me wrong, there are counters to this build. For one, any amount of stability will completely negate the CC and stealth can prevent the CC from hitting you. Last I time I played in WvW most zergs had Guardians giving out stability and Mesmers giving out veil with the guardians partied up with the classes that don’t have easy access to stability.

Stun warriors also give up a lot of on-demand mobility by using a hammer/mace+shield. The hammer burst isn’t up right away, the mace has no leaps to close distance, and shield has a short range charge that takes a couple seconds to connect, and about half a second at point blank.

Now when they activate “OP Mode” where they have Berserker Stance, Endure Pain, and Stability, there’s not much you can do other than kite. Endure pain only lasts 4 seconds, afterwords any attacks that deal raw damage will work. The problem comes from Berserker Stance lasting 8 seconds. The raw damage immunity from Endure Pain only lasts 4 seconds. Berserker Stance lasts too long compared to the other damage mitigation stance Endure Pain. I suggest making Berserker Stance 4 seconds and grant 1 extra tick of adrenaline per second to compensate.

In PvE the all the hammer warrior has going for it is the super effectiveness against any mob aside from champion mobs or better because they have defiant which renders CC completely useless after the initial CC hit. Defiant stacks on bosses and some bosses being completely immune to CC completely destroy any CC builds, especially in dungeons. My suggestion is to make it so CC gets less effective the more you use it in quick succession on a boss. Spamming CC would make it progressively get more and more resistant until it’s just immune to CC. This promotes thoughtful use of CC to interrupt the dangerous moves, but doesn’t leave the boss open to be permanently CCd.

In short: CC damage comes from the crit damage percent. Nerf the crit chance trait is a good idea.

Berserker Stance lasts twice as long another damage mitigation utility; Endure Pain rendering any condition builds helpless. Nerf Berserker Stance to 4 seconds and give it 1 extra tick of adrenaline per second.

Defiant and Unshakeable ruin CC builds in PvE. After the initial stun, the boss is completely immune to CC. I suggest a resistance that scales with how much CC has been used on it during the fight.

Blackjack.2083:

Good point Tammuz. Hammer has been around since launch but all of a sudden it has become this incredible OP weapon of mass destruction that UN inspectors need to be sent out to dismantle? Or, rather could it be that we are seeing a influx of nubs in WvW achievement grinding and hence an increase in whine? Hmmmm…….same weapon and mechanic for 18 mos with no whining….WvW Season 1 release and the cries are deafening.

Hmmmmmm……..

exactly. No one used hammer last year and now suddenly the noobs thought it was magicly buffed when it was really wasnt. And more crys came after 4 became usable while moving. Hammer is the same god kitten thing it was. Its just abused now when more then 1 guy in a group use it. The same can go for every weapon in this game but nope nerf hammer cus of the bad stun wars.

Sir Alymer.3406:

The problem I’ve seen with my stun warrior is that with the Fury boon, my armor stats, and the +50% crit chance from Unsuspecting Foe, I can get 117% crit chance with at least 60% extra damage per hit for two seconds. Unsuspecting Foe should just give fury for 10 seconds upon stun with an internal cooldown of 15 seconds. Right now, it isn’t the problem with the damage the hammer does, it’s the fact that when an enemy gets stunned by a warrior the warrior gets a 100% crit chance for the entirety of the stun chain. In short: The crit percent from the current meta build is too kitten high, specifically since warriors have almost permanent fury uptime with a ~47% base crit chance.

Which is stupid as I’ve stun-lock killed pretty much every class.

Don’t get me wrong, there are counters to this build. For one, any amount of stability will completely negate the CC and stealth can prevent the CC from hitting you. Last I time I played in WvW most zergs had Guardians giving out stability and Mesmers giving out veil with the guardians partied up with the classes that don’t have easy access to stability.

Stun warriors also give up a lot of on-demand mobility by using a hammer/mace+shield. The hammer burst isn’t up right away, the mace has no leaps to close distance, and shield has a short range charge that takes a couple seconds to connect, and about half a second at point blank.

Now when they activate “OP Mode” where they have Berserker Stance, Endure Pain, and Stability, there’s not much you can do other than kite. Endure pain only lasts 4 seconds, afterwords any attacks that deal raw damage will work. The problem comes from Berserker Stance lasting 8 seconds. The raw damage immunity from Endure Pain only lasts 4 seconds. Berserker Stance lasts too long compared to the other damage mitigation stance Endure Pain. I suggest making Berserker Stance 4 seconds and grant 1 extra tick of adrenaline per second to compensate.

In PvE the all the hammer warrior has going for it is the super effectiveness against any mob aside from champion mobs or better because they have defiant which renders CC completely useless after the initial CC hit. Defiant stacks on bosses and some bosses being completely immune to CC completely destroy any CC builds, especially in dungeons. My suggestion is to make it so CC gets less effective the more you use it in quick succession on a boss. Spamming CC would make it progressively get more and more resistant until it’s just immune to CC. This promotes thoughtful use of CC to interrupt the dangerous moves, but doesn’t leave the boss open to be permanently CCd.

In short: CC damage comes from the crit damage percent. Nerf the crit chance trait is a good idea.

Berserker Stance lasts twice as long another damage mitigation utility; Endure Pain rendering any condition builds helpless. Nerf Berserker Stance to 4 seconds and give it 1 extra tick of adrenaline per second.

Defiant and Unshakeable ruin CC builds in PvE. After the initial stun, the boss is completely immune to CC. I suggest a resistance that scales with how much CC has been used on it during the fight.

hammer/mace/shield, as you said if your target had a brain and used stability there goes your whole build. Stun wars to be nerfed but not the dmg of the weapon skills. If a weapon has more then one CC on it i think the other CC skills should go on a mini cooldown to avoid stunnoobing. For example, i have hammer out i use f1 my 4/5 go on a 2 second cooldown. If i have mace and use F1 my 3/4 go on 2 second cooldown.

As for your ‘’OP mode’’ deal… kite them for 8 seconds and then enjoy your free kill because they blew everything.

And the hammer only has 1 stun skill which is the f1 which lasts 1 second. Mace has 2 and a daze but you will either swap weapons to keep stun on for UF to keep going. You cannot keep perma UF. As for perma fury. You will either have to have FGJ and signet on or use arcing slice on GS and one of these 2 skills.

pve wise hammer sucks as its all about dmg in pve.

Taking into account the entirety of the patch (not just Warrior changes), ANet is actually creating an even greater stale meta come the patch. CC in its various forms will see far less use as lack of Warrior CC exacerbates the issue of other team members. This results in from what was a tradeoff of CC break utility and builds negating burst during hard CC to builds that are laser focused on one thing – conditions.

Now what will happen is that everyone will be building condition use (one stat focus) with anti-condition utility since they don’t need to worry too much on being anti-CC and it becomes a spam fest followed by whether you have your ‘iWin’ utility (for Warrior’s that’s Berserker Stance) available.

Welcome to the new age of meta with no offensive counter strategy to conditions…except Stealth burst (which is also seeing a major nerf to perma).

sPvP will be even less enjoyable and this bleeds into WvW where build diversity will be diminished as well.

TL;DR Everyone needs to be rolling their perma-vigor Mesmer and Guardians

I don’t understand why they have to take something simple and make it complicated. Would it be that hard to take that UF and make it 20-25% crits. It would be closer to what a adept trait is and people could still use it in their builds…

The idea behind that trait is really great. If it’s too powerful just reduce it to a proper level.

it’s funny, cuz every1 whining about hammer sucking has relied on its’ CC for damage, like, you can’t just rely on killing people purely from CC skills.

CMstorm.8679:

it’s funny, cuz every1 whining about hammer sucking has relied on its’ CC for damage, like, you can’t just rely on killing people purely from CC skills.

The hammer has slow well telegraphed attacks and really weak vs blinds and quick dodgy characters like some thieves. The only way to really kill anything with it is to lock it down and burst it to death. Now they are taking that burst potential away. We won’t know the effects of it all until the patch is released but I have a feeling that it might not be worth using unless running with a very specialized group and someone can burst for you. Probably won’t make a difference in a WvW zerg ball but for smaller groups and roamers it will probably be too weak to be worth using.

Once again, completely uncalled for nerf to Hammer which has been working the exact same way as it is know since launch pretty much. They ask for dialogue regarding it yet there is no interaction on their behalf. Anet is going to go ahead and push it through regardless. Just like they did with the WvW league system that everyone warned them was flawed before hand.

Amazing to me that ES with a FULL adrenaline bar is a 2 sec stun and that is causing this much whine from people?! Really? 2 seconds with 3 bars or simply 1 sec with 1 bar. C’mon man are you kidding? It is one of the slowest most telegraphed weapons we have and you want to nerf it? Again, whomever is pushing for this is a clown.

You want to worry about OP classes I’d go take a look at some of the Mesmer and Engineer builds out there. Warriors? They are so predictable with what they are trying to set you up for simply based off their weapon selection that dealing with them is much easier.

The main problem is this :

Warriors are very popular + Warriors became flavor of the month = lots of warriors running around in WvW and sPVP.
So that’s what the bad players and whiners whined about.
Mesmers and engies are very rare – people rarely complain about them because you don’t com across them so often.

And this nerf came because of a 20/80school of thought. 20% to try to balance things because they might have thought warriors are op.
80% to silence all the " warriors are so OP " threads that were cluttering the forum. Because if people all scream the same thing on the forums it will be nerfed.

Harper.4173:

The main problem is this :

Warriors are very popular + Warriors became flavor of the month = lots of warriors running around in WvW and sPVP.
So that’s what the bad players and whiners whined about.
Mesmers and engies are very rare – people rarely complain about them because you don’t com across them so often.

And this nerf came because of a 20/80school of thought. 20% to try to balance things because they might have thought warriors are op.
80% to silence all the " warriors are so OP " threads that were cluttering the forum. Because if people all scream the same thing on the forums it will be nerfed.

Nah.
If Anet nerfed stuff just to shut down terribads crying they would have nerfed healing signet.
They just nerf things that need to be nerfed, else we’d be calling them Blizzard.

They do have a point that doing high damage with skills that already do high control is not ok.
CC weapons should not be super-damage weapons as well.

I love how they said “we’re fine with warriors doing massive damage and having sustainability” btw.
Way to shut down all the complainers.

From a commanding point if view. Having more hp from a trait I already take and having defy pain go off and 50% instead of 25% is actually a buff for me.

Hammer damage reduction isn’t needed with the other nerfs. Axe 5 damage still sucks. Lots of other things they could of changed but didn’t.

Going to be a tough patch. Glad they didn’t touch healing signet

My warrior is a tank with hammer / LB-sword horn.
30 defense, 30 tactics, 10 arms (shouts give adrenaline).
Knight armor, soldier rune. Knight weapons, soldier trinkets.
Still crit almost at 50% with fury for 7k dmg on keep bosses in wvw. Reach 35k hp when buffed, and almost 5k power. Traits are all in defense or adrenaline gain.

Buffed def and tact 25, nerfed dmg of 2 hammer skills. So 2 skills will do less dps, but all of my attacks will do a bit more. I think this will not change at all my build, maybe it will be a bit more powerful.

So why this changes? sPvP. And for this hammer in pve will be trash.
I suggest to give bosses a special features. For skills that do CC they are immune add a slight bonus on damage. Bosses will be not stunlocked, hammer will not be useless.

P.S. care about build variety. Seems tank condi will be a must.
Give sword a cd reduction trait, change axe gameplay (not funny as other weapons, weak).
Nice buff to rifle

Purifer.3946:

My warrior is a tank with hammer / LB-sword horn.
30 defense, 30 tactics, 10 arms (shouts give adrenaline).
Knight armor, soldier rune. Knight weapons, soldier trinkets.
Still crit almost at 50% with fury for 7k dmg on keep bosses in wvw. Reach 35k hp when buffed, and almost 5k power. Traits are all in defense or adrenaline gain.

Buffed def and tact 25, nerfed dmg of 2 hammer skills. So 2 skills will do less dps, but all of my attacks will do a bit more. I think this will not change at all my build, maybe it will be a bit more powerful.

So why this changes? sPvP. And for this hammer in pve will be trash.
I suggest to give bosses a special features. For skills that do CC they are immune add a slight bonus on damage. Bosses will be not stunlocked, hammer will not be useless.

P.S. care about build variety. Seems tank condi will be a must.
Give sword a cd reduction trait, change axe gameplay (not funny as other weapons, weak).
Nice buff to rifle

I want to see screenshot of stats or it dindt happen
And rifle wasnt buffed so idk what u talking about again.

Prolly about Crack Shot moved down to Adept.

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 still don’t understand this justification. The damage ticks from Combustive Shot don’t gain adrenaline, and never have…I don’t know what you mean when you say it’s “too effective at renewing itself”, because it can’t.

Is there some trait combination that lets the damage ticks gain adrenaline? Does Arms XI “Furious” cause it to gain adrenaline? If that’s the case, seems like you should fix the trait interaction, not change the burst ability…

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.

I am a bit baffled, Jon.

In my opinion Combustive Shot simply did/does too much damage, so that actually reducing the “burst damage it deals in 10 seconds” is fine with me, but I really don’t know why you are saying this ability is/was able to easily restore all of the adrenaline lost, when in reality not only do the pulses not “easily restore all of your adrenaline” but they do in fact not restore ANY adrenaline at all.

I’d be grateful for a clarification on this matter. Are there instances where Combustive Shot pulses actually restore adrenaline? I am testing it right now and with Signet of Rage on cooldown (Signet gives 1 passive adrenaline strike every 3 seconds), there is zero adrenaline gain from the respective hits.

Edit: Oh my, just saw the post above, I should refresh the browser every now and then considering there are 8 hours inbetween. Either way, Bear and I are basically wondering the same thing.

Not sure if anyone on the dev team is even reading this but I’ll throw a suggestion out nonetheless. I would ask that at the very minimum if you are determined to make these nerfs to hammer damage if you could at least only make them in sPvP. The actual dynamic of sPvP and point control is completely different than what you find in WvW matches and obviously PVE. Perhaps you could do something similar to what you incorporated for axe offhand #5 skill?

I’m currently in Silver and have faced all of the servers at one time or another except for the top 3 in Gold league. I simply do not see these massed Hammer Warrior trains anywhere. Do I see warriors with hammers? Yes of course, but I see more of just about every other class tbh. I also see plenty of times when fights have stagnated into more or less standoffs with ranged classes exchanging fire. Hammer warrior actually serves a role in these fights to go in a deliver a quick burst and try to get out before they die. An utter nerf to that burst potential will make the weapon worthless if you ask me.

This weapon has been in the game as it is since launch. For the life of me I cant understand why all of a sudden is being targeted by the nerf bat so hard. The argument that you can go PTV/Cavaliers combined with Hammer do deliver hard hitting burst is weak. That hard hitting attack ONLY is felt with UF and if the opponent does nothing to counter an outrageously telegraphed attack. Outside of getting an ES off on them the rest of your attacks are not doing that much considering the low crit chance and slow weapon attack speed. Even with a full adrenaline bar and UF specced you can still have the effects of UF negated by stability…..not to mention a variety of means to completely mitigate all damage on a super telegraphed attack.

Stop trying to balance sPvP with WvW and PVE…..it is IMPOSSIBLE to do. Hell, I would say that even sPvP would be completely different if it were deathmatch instead of stupid control point centric. The game dynamics are so different in these three game modes that you are going to screw up if you keep attempting this approach to class balance.

Blackjack.2083:

Not sure if anyone on the dev team is even reading this but I’ll throw a suggestion out nonetheless…..

It’s my impression, given the response we got from the Devs in the other balance thread, that they are not listening or are listening but don’t care and are going ahead with the nerfs no matter how much we say it is a mistake. I`d be surprised if anyone of them is actually reading this. They spent a lot of time responding to thieves, eles, engis, guards, and rangers in the other thread and the only response to warrior was a copy paste from the OP saying that they want to separate control from power. The nerf bat is coming and there is nothing we can do about it. We just have to learn to accept it. Had I known, I would not have wasted time and mats making me a ascended hammer.

Scoobaniec.9561:

Purifer.3946:

My warrior is a tank with hammer / LB-sword horn.
30 defense, 30 tactics, 10 arms (shouts give adrenaline).
Knight armor, soldier rune. Knight weapons, soldier trinkets.
Still crit almost at 50% with fury for 7k dmg on keep bosses in wvw. Reach 35k hp when buffed, and almost 5k power. Traits are all in defense or adrenaline gain.

Buffed def and tact 25, nerfed dmg of 2 hammer skills. So 2 skills will do less dps, but all of my attacks will do a bit more. I think this will not change at all my build, maybe it will be a bit more powerful.

So why this changes? sPvP. And for this hammer in pve will be trash.
I suggest to give bosses a special features. For skills that do CC they are immune add a slight bonus on damage. Bosses will be not stunlocked, hammer will not be useless.

P.S. care about build variety. Seems tank condi will be a must.
Give sword a cd reduction trait, change axe gameplay (not funny as other weapons, weak).
Nice buff to rifle

I want to see screenshot of stats or it dindt happen
And rifle wasnt buffed so idk what u talking about again.

I don’t even bother about what you think My post was for the developers.
In Wvw you can have 10+ stacks of might quite easy (i can give myself 11 in one second) and from this comes the high power. The crit is not on autoattack, of course.
Check again rifle’s feat. Moved to adept tier, it gives the chance to have 20% cd reduction an pierce with only 10 traits in arms.

I decided to check out the game again a few hours ago. I’m 75% of the way through the download only to read, that my darling Charr warhammer is being turned into an inflatable squeakytoy. I understand the design goal, but its a really demoralizing way to be reintroduced to the game. I felt like the damage hammer was a pianist’s play. A sort of high reward for proper timing and reaction as well as a fun alternative to the Greatsword hundo snoozefest.

The way it was nerfed also bothers me in that it hits the PvE players especially hard. They already fought things that were flat immune to the disables and thus lost 25% of their damage. To lower the base ratios on top of that seems cruel. Come to think of it, the very nature of Unsuspecting Foe is against your stated design philosophy. Why not just leave the base damage ratios and replace Unsuspecting Foe with another interesting mechanic that doesn’t reward people with the thing that you don’t want warriors to do(simultaneous damage and cc) to do for doing what hammer does. Perhaps giving the warrior personal fortitude for properly executing cc or better yet team utility in the form of buffs to surrounding allies.

This all sounds pretty set in stone though, I suppose the best thing to do is move on. Perhaps my D/D Ele is still rewards/contains a high skillcap.

Replace UF to give a 50% increase on current crit chance. So 50% crit would turn into 75%. To get the benefit you need to invest into the gear. Which is the problem right? Pvt warriors having high crit chance?

Med.6150:

In my opinion Combustive Shot simply did/does too much damage, so that actually reducing the “burst damage it deals in 10 seconds” is fine with me, but I really don’t know why you are saying this ability is/was able to easily restore all of the adrenaline lost, when in reality not only do the pulses not “easily restore all of your adrenaline” but they do in fact not restore ANY adrenaline at all.

Maybe he is talking about the effectivness of Longbow burst with the Furious trait? That is the only possible explanation I have :-/ .

kubetz.3058:

Med.6150:

In my opinion Combustive Shot simply did/does too much damage, so that actually reducing the “burst damage it deals in 10 seconds” is fine with me, but I really don’t know why you are saying this ability is/was able to easily restore all of the adrenaline lost, when in reality not only do the pulses not “easily restore all of your adrenaline” but they do in fact not restore ANY adrenaline at all.

Maybe he is talking about the effectivness of Longbow burst with the Furious trait? That is the only possible explanation I have :-/ .

who uses that lol

I do. Works pretty well with a S/S+LB conditions build. Effectively you’re able to use F1 each time it is off cd, unless you prefer to leave the adrenaline there to heal up via Adrenal health.

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.

Comparing Hammer CC/damage to Greatsword CC/damage misses the primary reason for running Greatsword, at least in WvW . Greatsword is powerful because of the evades on WWA and tremendous mobility on WWA and Rush (GS5). Good greatsword warriors mitigate damage by being hard as heck to pin down… [Note: don’t nerf GS!]

Sure, Hammer 4 was overly buffed with the new animations, but Earthsharker has always been a pain to land (except in large group warfare… where lots of people are swinging hammers on both sides and it evens out).