Guild Wars 2

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.

Use hammer in a dungeon that has foes with defiant. If they have 1 stack of defiant and you use hammer 4 (Staggering blow) it does not remove the CC stack. If you use hammer 5 (backbreaker) It does not remove the CC stack. If you use hammer f1 (earth shaker) it does remove the CC stack. By your own under the hood mechanics all of hammers skills apart from f1 do not count as CC.

So walk me through this one..hammer has too much CC?..your own mechanics show it only has one CC.

The damage is coming from the fact they’re running lyssa runes which increases precision. The damage is coming from 3% extra damage per boon. Anyone who see’s a hammer now pops stability/aegis/vigor/protection or all 4..it is easy to escalate from 3% extra damage to 12% extra damage. This is compounded by having 30 points in crit dam/burst dmg.

Limit the maximum damage per boon to X number of boons. Reduce crit chance on unsuspecting foe to a adept level % and listen when players 7 months ago were asking for lyssa runes to be removed or changed.

Really glad I’ve got sunrise to work on and not juggernaut. I’d be spitting after creating a legendary hammer to discover it doesn’t work on most end game foes and does kitten damage.

Really?

Are some of you really in denial about how strong hammer has become?

In the last few weeks of WvW i see 80 percent hammer/longbow warriors, 20 percent everything else.

But why wouldn’t you as a warrior. The weapon does the best damage with the best cc out of all the weapons in the game. Aoe cc+ huge damage, on a 7 second timer. (when isn’t the adrenaline bar full?), not only that, if you miss the earthshaker, you get to try again and again until you land it every 7 seconds.

I switched from warrior to thief a month ago, yesterday another thief backstabbed me for 6k (about the normal), and I backstabbed him back for about the same. A hammer warrior earthshakker’d me for 4.5k, with a 3k follow up hit, yet my backstab did about 3-4k on him. Yet he also gets the bonus of it being a 2 second stun and aoe and using no resources if he misses and being repeatable in 7 seconds.

Even if I said ‘Could you make backstab aoe, 1 second stun, up every 10 seconds, use no initiative and not actually require being behind the opponent, but rather ground targetted’, There would be an uproar.

It wouldn;t be so bad if adrenaline took a little longer to build up, but we all know it pretty much up a few seconds after you enter a fight and then the F1 is back up every seven seconds. It’s like having a 6th ability on a 7 sec timer, an amazing 6th ability.

phaeris.7604:

Really?

Are some of you really in denial about how strong hammer has become?

In the last few weeks of WvW i see 80 percent hammer/longbow warriors, 20 percent everything else.

That’s really just the side effect that most of WvW is zerg v zerg (or blob). In zerg/blob, you want to tag as many opponents as possible to get wxp and generate combo fields/use combo fields. Guess which two weapons are best for a warrior to tag massive amount of other players? Add the synergy of Hammer and the benefit of having fire fields for might stacking, fire/forget AoE for tower attacks and defenses and you have what you have for Longbow (this would be a much different view if Warrior had a different combo field available but they don’t).

So you see Hammer/Longbow is used a lot because for zerg/blob, there is no real choice for Warrior. And that really doesn’t change a whole lot even with the next update unless the damage output from the AoE becomes minimum/null…but guess what is happening to Longbow Combustive Shot on Dec 10th. Warrior loses massive damage (~upwards of 40% over time on Hammer) for tagging and loses frequency of attacking for Longbow meaning targets won’t take any damage on Dec 10th. Conditions range from randomly very good and completely horrible in zerg v zerg mainly because of the Guardian (with a minor to Necro/Mesmer) clearing factor.

Of the other 20% (all perception in your 80/20) it is because there is a ton of Sword/Warhorn and Greatsword users in WvW even in zerg but those builds are more slanted to roaming.

Rifle might see a comeback but it is more because LB will have been severely nerfed in its AoE ‘tag’ twice now and there just is too much of the playing of this game that requires a ranged option.

IMO, I now wish Warriors had a MH Pistol option because the two ranged options for Warrior are going to be just pitiful for synergy in builds and just for the sake of faster action (don’t want to hit a button and wait for 3s before damage is done) game play. But adaptation will take place (for those that stick with Warrior).

phaeris.7604:

Really?

Are some of you really in denial about how strong hammer has become?

In the last few weeks of WvW i see 80 percent hammer/longbow warriors, 20 percent everything else.

But why wouldn’t you as a warrior. The weapon does the best damage with the best cc out of all the weapons in the game. Aoe cc+ huge damage, on a 7 second timer. (when isn’t the adrenaline bar full?), not only that, if you miss the earthshaker, you get to try again and again until you land it every 7 seconds.

I switched from warrior to thief a month ago, yesterday another thief backstabbed me for 6k (about the normal), and I backstabbed him back for about the same. A hammer warrior earthshakker’d me for 4.5k, with a 3k follow up hit, yet my backstab did about 3-4k on him. Yet he also gets the bonus of it being a 2 second stun and aoe and using no resources if he misses and being repeatable in 7 seconds.

Even if I said ‘Could you make backstab aoe, 1 second stun, up every 10 seconds, use no initiative and not actually require being behind the opponent, but rather ground targetted’, There would be an uproar.

It wouldn;t be so bad if adrenaline took a little longer to build up, but we all know it pretty much up a few seconds after you enter a fight and then the F1 is back up every seven seconds. It’s like having a 6th ability on a 7 sec timer, an amazing 6th ability.

Who the heck uses longbow on a war in wvw large scale fighting?

See, people come complain on threads, and then make statements like that which show they have no idea what they are talking about.

News flash: None of the major guilds use longbows on their war builds AFAIK.

Tammuz.7361:

phaeris.7604:

Really?

Are some of you really in denial about how strong hammer has become?

In the last few weeks of WvW i see 80 percent hammer/longbow warriors, 20 percent everything else.

But why wouldn’t you as a warrior. The weapon does the best damage with the best cc out of all the weapons in the game. Aoe cc+ huge damage, on a 7 second timer. (when isn’t the adrenaline bar full?), not only that, if you miss the earthshaker, you get to try again and again until you land it every 7 seconds.

I switched from warrior to thief a month ago, yesterday another thief backstabbed me for 6k (about the normal), and I backstabbed him back for about the same. A hammer warrior earthshakker’d me for 4.5k, with a 3k follow up hit, yet my backstab did about 3-4k on him. Yet he also gets the bonus of it being a 2 second stun and aoe and using no resources if he misses and being repeatable in 7 seconds.

Even if I said ‘Could you make backstab aoe, 1 second stun, up every 10 seconds, use no initiative and not actually require being behind the opponent, but rather ground targetted’, There would be an uproar.

It wouldn;t be so bad if adrenaline took a little longer to build up, but we all know it pretty much up a few seconds after you enter a fight and then the F1 is back up every seven seconds. It’s like having a 6th ability on a 7 sec timer, an amazing 6th ability.

Who the heck uses longbow on a war in wvw large scale fighting?

See, people come complain on threads, and then make statements like that which show they have no idea what they are talking about.

News flash: None of the major guilds use longbows on their war builds AFAIK.

Yeah, for zerging it’s Hammer/SwWh and sometimes Hammer/SwSh. Longbow is roaming/small scale fights. It’s good for tower defense or holding a choke point until back up arrives.

limonovich.4971:

“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

TBH, if you fought against warriors using a class other than warriors, be it 1 v 1, 1 v x, or warriors specced for team synergy in team battle settings, or against zerg-busting highly trained guild warrior heavy 10-15 man groups you wouldn’t be saying those things. (Outside a few builds that are extremely limited in function and group value.)

Right now, out of every class its warriors alone that are able to enjoy this “perfect combination” of durability, stun breaks, stun spam and absurd damage. Many other classes rolling 50-50 tank to damage ratios haven’t even been able to outdamage the passive healing signet regen of the warriors they encounter or are just barely able to(a moot point when they pop the heal itself when the damage amouns to anything), yet don’t have anywhere near enough stun breaks and rolls to counter the incredible amount of stuns you can throw out and have enough endurance leftover to avoid the incredibly high burst damage that comes in when we fail to dodge a single hammer stun because of its overly high damage which will immediately be followed with another high damage attack. In other words, most classes have to choose between “their cake” or “eating it”.. warriors are the only class as of late “having their cake and eating it too”.

Nevertheless I’m sure the changes won’t be perfect, some things may go overboard. Give ArenaNet time and they will begin to bring a semblance of balance. If warriors end up too hard strung to make a good build, they will come in with some power-ups. Unfortunately its a slow process for all classes.. and in terms of build diversity problems.. that’s a problem for every class out there right now and probably more so for thieves. (Ironic considering how hated they are by the untalented masses of players out there.)

At any rate, for those of you who thought those instances where you were comfortably soloing three-four man groups of full 80s and exotics and only taking upwards of half your life bar in damage was the norm and based purely skill alone and not more so the result of an overpowered character combined with skill(I’m not going to deny there are some very talented warriors) this patch should be a wake up call and put you more on the level of the other classes who outside running away tend to have extreme difficulty taking on 2-3 equally geared opponents even when they outskill them drastically and are forced to make tough choices like risking survival to go for a burst/down of even one of those opponents. (And by skill I’m referring to fighting instinct, reaction times, stun, stunbreak and burst timing and the whole sha-bang.)

Love when other classes pop up here to share their “wisdom”. Yea most warriors I see are running around shredding whole armies by themselves while dual wielding Hammers and the infamous 30/30/30/30/30 build. Passive Healing signet shrugging off poison and ticking for over 5,000 a second. Meanwhile perma stunning wave upon wave of foes with ES stun that cant be avoided or mitigated…….And when it gets really tough they pull out their LB and use it blow holes through SM walls with a single shot.

Nerf earthshaker but don’t fix the bug where it doesn’t work if you’re on a different level than opponent. Sigh.

Hammer is my favourite weapon because of the animations and I prefer blunt force as opposed to blades. This is disappointing.

I really don’t agree with most of nerfs I wish they would just not try to nerf anything right now other than healing sig and zerk stance it is such a simple fix I rather that than them finding out later healing sig is OP and nerf that. If they start nerfing bits and bits and than nerf the major imbalance (healing sig). I feel like warriors will be even worse than they were in the post frenzy days since we won’t have damage or sustain. It is a very simple nerf that will make warriors balanced. Although there is also still a lot of other kitten that needs nerfing.

The real culprit is still unsuspecting foe. With UF and fury(which you have at least half the time if not always) we have a 70% crit chance on our cc chain. This screams ignore precision and dump truckloads into crit-damage and power(Valkyries FYI).

At that point all we have to do is get somebody to within our “dunk window” which is entirely ruled by how much crit-damage we have(see:truckload). Now, we can’t 100-0 any decently geared/intelligent player and we don’t have the full bust chain up all the time(limited by Backbreaker CD) but we don’t have to. All we have to do is get them near half or more and then go nuts with the stun to crit Backbreaker and Fierce Blow. The eight help you if they frenzy and get another frenzy due to the low hp proc. What we have is nigh guaranteed crits making crit-damage obscenely abusable without costing any precision.

To top it off our primary hammer trait adds another mutliplier by increasing the damage when we successfully CC chain. This is exactly what they said they didn’t want hammers to do. The main hammer trait does exactly what they are nerfing warrior for doing to much of: Damage and CC at the same time. Also, chain cc is never fun for the receiver regardless of damage why design around this?

IMO the solution would be twofold. The first is simple: don’t give us free crits or damage for stunning. Free crits are damage. Damage and cc was what was not desired, damage for cc is the same thing. So right off the bat two culprits are easy rework targets: Merciless Hammer, and Unsuspecting Foe. The second being to promote spacing of cc and provide some sort of team buff or utility for spacing it well. A 3-4s retaliation reward for CCing promotes us letting them get in a few hits before we stun them again because we WANT them to do something. 3-4 seconds may seem a bit long but most of it would be wasted by the cc and promotes the taking of boon duration, which balances desirable stats away from ridiculous high crit-damage.

I don’t understand why everyone thinks Unsuspecting Foe is the reason warrior is dealing a lot of damage at the moment. Uf only affects stunned targets. The meta hambowbuild consists of one stun lasting 2 seconds, that is 2 hits with 50% extra crit chance when Earth shaker hits.

The reason you can get good damge from the hambow build, even with soldiers ammy, is because of the might stacking it is cabable of and the burning.

I think a lot of the misconseption about the warrior beeing so tanky and doing so much damage is because it is difficult to differentiate if they are using berserker’s or soldier’s ammy. People see how tanky they can be with soldier’s, how good damage they can pull out with zerker’s and then they simply combine the two into viewing warrior as super tanky and high dps.

Do not get me wrong, i think soldiers ammy hambow warrior is over the top, but i don’t think changing unsuspecting foe will change anything regarding zerker hambows.

yea UF is not a real problem its always been same its just there sustain with kittenloads of damage that makes the build OP. You can’t have both sustain and damage on a class its just too much ex. Necros. I never run valks btw cause you do not have them perma stunned on hambow maybe on mace shield gs. But honestly I have tried so many other builds without heal sig and it was much harder to survive.

apt.9184:

yea UF is not a real problem its always been same its just there sustain with kittenloads of damage that makes the build OP. You can’t have both sustain and damage on a class its just too much ex. Necros. I never run valks btw cause you do not have them perma stunned on hambow maybe on mace shield gs. But honestly I have tried so many other builds without heal sig and it was much harder to survive.

Hambow is only really good in close quarter (point holding) fights. that is why it shines in PvP. In WvW it is average at best due to the lack of gap closers and mobility. I think it’s funny how I have been playing a Hammer warrior in WvW for the past year and the ES burst has never been a problem, the hammer was even considered laughable by good players of other classes and all of a sudden it becomes OP?. Even now, with our increased sustain, efficient use of dodges, stun breaks, stability make the Hammer next to useless. I main a warrior but I have killed these so called OP warriors with both my ele and guardian and I don’t get why people think it is OP.

Penguin.7906:

I don’t understand why everyone thinks Unsuspecting Foe is the reason warrior is dealing a lot of damage at the moment. Uf only affects stunned targets. The meta hambowbuild consists of one stun lasting 2 seconds, that is 2 hits with 50% extra crit chance when Earth shaker hits.

The reason you can get good damge from the hambow build, even with soldiers ammy, is because of the might stacking it is cabable of and the burning.

I think a lot of the misconseption about the warrior beeing so tanky and doing so much damage is because it is difficult to differentiate if they are using berserker’s or soldier’s ammy. People see how tanky they can be with soldier’s, how good damage they can pull out with zerker’s and then they simply combine the two into viewing warrior as super tanky and high dps.

Do not get me wrong, i think soldiers ammy hambow warrior is over the top, but i don’t think changing unsuspecting foe will change anything regarding zerker hambows.

Zerker hambows can be killed because squishy .Just dodge their erathshatter or pop a stunbreaker or stability and burst them down with no problems.Soldier hambows are a different story though because you cant burst them down and as a result they will keep spamming rotation after rotation until all your skills are on cd and you are defeated.

If you think UF is not the problem you really don’t understand really well the new meta or game mechanics in a pvp situation.Tip: the problem of being OP is not have insane damage or insane survavibility but both.Zerker hammers WERE NEVER A PROBLEM because every zerker class can deal ridiculous damage while being squishy.

Main problem of UF is that earthshatter ALWAYS CRITS even at 4% critical hit chance. 4%20%(fury)50% = 74% more than full zerker amulet plus precision trait tree in spvp for any class 74% its a guaranteed crit on eartshatter.Even if the stun was 0.1 seconds that would still be e FREE crit while going full tank.All physical damge comes from crits rest it’s garbage.Are you starting to get the picture here ?

apt.9184:

yea UF is not a real problem its always been same its just there sustain with kittenloads of damage that makes the build OP. You can’t have both sustain and damage on a class its just too much ex. Necros. I never run valks btw cause you do not have them perma stunned on hambow maybe on mace shield gs. But honestly I have tried so many other builds without heal sig and it was much harder to survive.

This guy has rank 49 tpvp warrior in his signature and posts nonsense like this /rolleyes

Well buddy you can’t say UF is not a real problem but the insane damage with the sustain.Why? BECAUSE of UF you can have both sustain and damage.Without UF you dont have damage unless you go zerker and if you do you lose armor and sustain.Healsig is borderline worthless on zerk build because you have no armor to mitigate damage with. Please edit your signature seriously.

Well hate to bring logic in here but what the heck why not. Firstly, mini…..74% does not equal guaranteed, that would take a 100% to equal guaranteed….least in the math classes I’ve been in. Second, you also make no mention in your example that ES bonus to crit from UF can be completely nullified by dodge roll, stability, or blind to name a few. You also ignore the fact that in your example a warrior with 4% crit rate is hitting like a noodle for 90% of all of his other attacks outside of his highly telegraphed, easily mitigated ES attack. Just another example of people using hyperbole to justify a nerf on something that doesn’t need one and has never been complained about since launch.

I just want to say that the hammer build now is just about ok. Nerfing earthshaker is not a good move. The reason being after the stun, the time it takes for attack hammer swing is slow and thus loosing about 1 sec of the stun. Worse is, when the hammer swing after earthshaker doesnt register. No idea why and it happens alot. Thus all the stun time i have from earthshaker is gone to waste.

Blackjack.2083:

Well hate to bring logic in here but what the heck why not. Firstly, mini…..74% does not equal guaranteed, that would take a 100% to equal guaranteed….least in the math classes I’ve been in. Second, you also make no mention in your example that ES bonus to crit from UF can be completely nullified by dodge roll, stability, or blind to name a few. You also ignore the fact that in your example a warrior with 4% crit rate is hitting like a noodle for 90% of all of his other attacks outside of his highly telegraphed, easily mitigated ES attack. Just another example of people using hyperbole to justify a nerf on something that doesn’t need one and has never been complained about since launch.

You are terribly wrong the earthshateer alone is enough to count as main damage source on hammer in a team fight.The damage it does it’s absurd when it crits.I main warrior since launch and i will never back down on UF being broken.2 seconds it’s a lot of time in a fight too you can do more than just hammer attacks in that interval and if you hit it a 1 andrenaline bar you still have 1 free aoe big crit every 7.5 seconds wich is more than most classes get.

imagine a bunker guard doing 4,5k crits on you every 7-10 seconds.Uf should have been nerfed to 10-15% range or simply deleted from the game.

And 74% it’s guaranteed crit i don’t care what you think you can hardly have more crit chance in spvp with any amulet/runes or setup on any class/build.

TooBz.3065:

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?

Exactly. Sometimes I feel like they have no idea what they’re doing.

apt.9184:

nerf anything right now other than healing sig and zerk stance

My guess is that this is round 2 for Warriors come January…only evidence is the lack of response to this thread or the general forum one. It may have to wait until a few general gameplay fixes are implemented so February is also possible.

mini.6018:

And 74% it’s guaranteed crit i don’t care what you think

I can’t really comment on statements like this other than ?!? I don’t follow. I have a feeling I’m not the only one.

The big issue was that hammer burst always crited with UF then your next 1-2 attack would also crits because the target was stunned. They should have simply fix what made the burst skill get the bonus of UF before the damage or reduce the crits chance from 50% to 20% to be equal to a adept traits and it would have pretty much fixed everything.

mini.6018:

Main problem of UF is that earthshatter ALWAYS CRITS even at 4% critical hit chance. 4%20%(fury)50% = 74% more than full zerker amulet plus precision trait tree in spvp for any class 74% its a guaranteed crit on eartshatter.Even if the stun was 0.1 seconds that would still be e FREE crit while going full tank.All physical damge comes from crits rest it’s garbage.Are you starting to get the picture here ?

Earthshaker, you mean?

And 74% == 100%?

I can’t take you seriously when you repeatedly claim 74% crit is “guaranteed”. It’s high, yes. But you’re exaggerating for dramatic effect, and it really kills your argument.

I ,obviously, have argued that the changes to Hammer are unwarranted and do not support them. However, I will say the more I thought about things the one gripe I did have with Hammer Warriors was not really about the weapon or warrior but rather the combo on Asura warriors. You know….the ones who make their character the absolute smallest they can. The problem with them is that it makes that easily telegraphed attack much harder to see. I know some will say I’m the one with the problem and need to l2p but kitten those guys can be hard to see. You mix a few people in WvW and all the aoe effects then toss in a mite sized Asura with a hammer or mace and yea….most times I struggle with seeing the animation.

It just seems like a double standard from Anet. On one hand they want our cc attacks to be telegraphed but by the very nature of Asura size you make it 10 times more difficult to see. Meanwhile, on the other classes the animation is much more apparent and I can argue the cc tradeoff for slow attack speed and telegraphed attack exists. Making two foot tall opponents with no downside to using them is part of the problem imo. Go ahead…..I got my flame suit on now.

i hear u on that ive had to deal with it on other mmo’s it’s just an issue thats rlly hard to deal with since they will never change the height for them. There only option is to put symbols over there heads for certain skills and that just a pain lol

Red Falcon.8257:

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.

Because warriors have no gimmick class ability like stealth or reflects or clones or god knows what.

I can’t help but worry we are moving towards a pure condition meta like we saw at the end of GW1 regarding curses.
I also wonder at how both the Soldier classes are slowly siding towards becoming purely support classes. We’ll see if the trend continues.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Thanks,

Jon

jon. the problem with having unsuspecting foe in master tree is the condition damage and precision tree is terrible. instead of moving the thing and changing nothing but 7% damage loss on ES and another 10% crit damage, why not make it 50% increased crit chance on THAT ability only. it would nerf the skullcrack 100blade build as well as decrease the damage that chain CC would deal on hammer assuming you used the BB, fierce blow, staggering blow, ES, 100blade combo that has caused so much “grief”
from the way I see it right now I would rather have the old warrior because I dont want to take survivability over damage, but you give me no choice to make up for the reduced earthshaker damage and more wasted stats.
Its not just me, many other people dont see how you separated damage from control, seeing as we have no choice to sacrifice CC to regain every bit of damage lost. (which many of us would do happily.)

I think the hammer and longbow nerf are too much. The nerf seems to be targeting sPvP more than anything else. It doesn’t seems to have anything to do with PvE or WvW.

First with the stun duration fix in the sigil. Now, a damage nerf. The amount of CC hammer can provide isn’t significant in WvW, the damage and CC are what make it attractive. By taking that away, the logical concept of melee should deal higher damage than range became blurred.

Longbow is known to be effective in PvE due to its high AOE damage, it is truly amazing. A nerf in that due to sPvP is going to affect how warrior perform in PvE, especially in high level FOTM when come to killing a number of mobs.

Little overkill on the nerf department. Why not dial back one or two things instead of everything associated with hammer eliminating its usefulness in WvW and possibly Spvp (I don’t play this area). It will still be terrible for PvE.

So post nerf, mostly for wvw:

1) Axe(main): Mediocre damage, way too much dmg backloaded onto 6th autoattack to be pvp-viable and terrible utility
2) Axe(offhand): God-awful everything
3) GS: Mobility only, indirect 100b nerf with skullcrack nerf.
4) Rifle: High dmg mostly single target but only useful with pure glass builds w/ high crit chance + dmg + power. Survivability is based on pairing with GS + EP and never making a mistake.
5) LB: Nerfed, mediocre/low damage. Only truly viable with condi builds.
6) Sword: Mediocre/low dmg except for final thrust, which reliably requires a stun condition to actually burst.
7) Sword(offhand): Terrible power scaling/low dmg, condi-only weapon
8) Shield: High defense, zero damage
9) WH: Mobility + utility, zero damage
10) Mace: Huge nerf, will be extremely hard to land a skullcrack considering its range and now 1/2s cast time + big animation. Indirectly nerfs GS. Big nerf to damage from Mace stuns.
11) Mace(offhand): Terrible dmg, one block one knockdown
11) Hammer: Burst nerfed making it very difficult to build enough dmg in wvw to actually kill targets before their heal gets off CD, especially if they make proper use of blinds, dodges, evades, invulns, teleports, stun breaks, blocks, or stab. Mediocre damage post-nerf. You can kiss killing full-bunkers goodbye with hammer, even with pure damage builds.

So basically, warrior weapons are for support-only. Got it Anet.

The only viable builds I see if you actually want to have any sort of competitive dmg is:

1) Pure condi war LB + SS (wooo more skill-less, boring condi kitten!!!!)

2) Glass Rifle + GS

3) Nerfed hammer war that is dependent on someone else to actually finish off targets for them because they will lack sustained burst/dmg against any half-decent player.

This nerf is clearly, very clearly targeted only at the spvp Hambow war. So why not make spvp ONLY changes Anet???? This is going to trash our wvw builds/effectiveness.

We’re already extremely lacking on viable offensive builds (the main purpose of this class was to be a primary DPS class), and you just nerfed yet another one into the ground unnecessarily, mainly because terrible players can’t figure out how to use blinds, dodges, evades, invulns, teleports, stun breaks, blocks, or stab.

And for the love of god buff axe, especially offhand. No one in their right mind takes axe at this point because it is so godkitten awful.

Oh btw, go to mesmer forum and we are 3rd easiest to kill for them, right after bearbow ranger and bad eles.

“With warriors, you only need to avoid the stuns. Pick up blocks and stun breakers and they are not that beasts they seem.” <—- from decent players

Also, according to engie forums warrior is about 3rd easiest to kill, right after thief and bad eles.

So yeah, nerf that overpowered warrior hammer build that clearly has no counter…except of course phantasm/bunker PU mesmers, celestial engies, condi-tanky necros who know how to avoid being hit during zerker stance, dire-wars, or well-playe d/p thieves.

Clearly no counters at all. There’s nothing you can do against a hammer warrior except beat it with another hammer warrior. Sorta like how you can’t beat a PU condi bunker mesmer without rolling a PU condi bunker mesmer.

It’s well-known the best game balance comes when you try to compensate for the bottom 10% of players.

JonPeters.5630:

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.

Mace didn’t even need a increased cast time in PvP either.

The range is so short that 60% of the time skull crack will never hit anything. Skull crack already requires a high demand of skill to use on a moving enemy.

If you are going to make skull crack counterable by dodging, then skull crack shouldn’t be counterable by moving.

I play Hammer/Mace/Shield a great deal and have found many classes to easily counter the full melee warrior:
1. Prismatic Understanding mesmers equipped with 4 stealth skills plus staff and traited; they come out of stealth with 4 sec Aegis/Protection/Regeneration-they gain alot of time to recuperate plus cripple when you destroy their illusions;

2. Necromancers with focus off hand to chill (traited for focus recharge) plus plague signet for 14secs of chill/cripple, plus tons of opportunity for weakness;

3. Necromancer Minion Masters; minions can immobilize, cripple, knockdown

4. Spirit rangers; spirits maintain ranger defense long enough for conditions to wear down a full melee warrior plus burst on exploding spirits;

5. Slippery thieves with S/D evades, shortbow’s disabling shot, and shadow step; the warrior must time his CC at the right instances. And lastly, there’s blinding powder.

6. Grenade/Bomb Engineer; Will recover from CC by out-healing the warrior, then destroy a full melee warrior on a point with conditions, finishing him off with supply crate;

7. Guardians (scepter/focus, sword/shield +berserkers amulet); they will use their many sources of stability and blocks to nullify stuns then out dps the hammer/mace warrior.

In light of these challenges a Hammer/Mace warrior faces, I think the damage nerfs on hammer, the shift of Unsuspecting Foe, and the longer execution of mace are too many changes.

The CC warrior should be rewarded by skillfully closing the gap to do CC-it is his only viable defense against strong opposition. He has no choice but to fight melee to survive.

So please Anet, please consider your nerfs on hammer/mace carefully.

deathTouch.9706:

This nerf is clearly, very clearly targeted only at the spvp Hambow war. So why not make spvp ONLY changes Anet???? This is going to trash our wvw builds/effectiveness.

Because that would be ANet doing something smart and being reasonable for once, and god forbid they do that… its the warrior BUFFS that are “spvp only” (see offhand Axe), not the nerfs of course.

Their dev team is so outta touch they probably think we are playing with a 50% damage increase to whirling axe in pve / wvw from where we actually are or some such nonsense and wondering why everyone using hammer having forgotten that that particular buff only went into effect for spvp.

Regardless continued poor management decisions by Anet is kinda becoming old news and starting to bore a lot of people, especially as we move into the beta seasons for other up and coming MMOs.

As a PvE point of view. I don´t like Axe Gameplay without Eviscerate, and using the GS F1 sometimes would be funny too (possibel GS only gameplay with it).
But this skills is rly bad.
PvE Warrs lost something since the big that patch switchted hightend focus and berserkes power to grandmaster traits…
Weapon XI is way to weak too.

Warriors need their weakness uptime looked at as well, this is a very strong condition that they get to use VERY often, and is part of what makes them so strong paired with a necro (or other condi team)

all the warrior OPness began when they buffed HealSig by 100% , adrenal health and made and placed Cleansing ire into 20 defense ….. those 3 combined are what is making warrior OP , perhaps toning 1 or 2

Butnaked.9287:

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.

Just like all thief and necro etc attacks are readable? Riiiiight..

deathTouch.9706:

So post nerf, mostly for wvw:

1) Axe(main): Mediocre damage, way too much dmg backloaded onto 6th autoattack to be pvp-viable and terrible utility
2) Axe(offhand): God-awful everything
3) GS: Mobility only, indirect 100b nerf with skullcrack nerf.
4) Rifle: High dmg mostly single target but only useful with pure glass builds w/ high crit chance + dmg + power. Survivability is based on pairing with GS + EP and never making a mistake.
5) LB: Nerfed, mediocre/low damage. Only truly viable with condi builds.
6) Sword: Mediocre/low dmg except for final thrust, which reliably requires a stun condition to actually burst.
7) Sword(offhand): Terrible power scaling/low dmg, condi-only weapon
8) Shield: High defense, zero damage
9) WH: Mobility + utility, zero damage
10) Mace: Huge nerf, will be extremely hard to land a skullcrack considering its range and now 1/2s cast time + big animation. Indirectly nerfs GS. Big nerf to damage from Mace stuns.
11) Mace(offhand): Terrible dmg, one block one knockdown
11) Hammer: Burst nerfed making it very difficult to build enough dmg in wvw to actually kill targets before their heal gets off CD, especially if they make proper use of blinds, dodges, evades, invulns, teleports, stun breaks, blocks, or stab. Mediocre damage post-nerf. You can kiss killing full-bunkers goodbye with hammer, even with pure damage builds.

So basically, warrior weapons are for support-only. Got it Anet.

The only viable builds I see if you actually want to have any sort of competitive dmg is:

1) Pure condi war LB + SS (wooo more skill-less, boring condi kitten!!!!)

2) Glass Rifle + GS

3) Nerfed hammer war that is dependent on someone else to actually finish off targets for them because they will lack sustained burst/dmg against any half-decent player.

This nerf is clearly, very clearly targeted only at the spvp Hambow war. So why not make spvp ONLY changes Anet???? This is going to trash our wvw builds/effectiveness.

We’re already extremely lacking on viable offensive builds (the main purpose of this class was to be a primary DPS class), and you just nerfed yet another one into the ground unnecessarily, mainly because terrible players can’t figure out how to use blinds, dodges, evades, invulns, teleports, stun breaks, blocks, or stab.

And for the love of god buff axe, especially offhand. No one in their right mind takes axe at this point because it is so godkitten awful.

Your still going to be able to beat a staff ele in a few seconds bashing your keys randomly so there is no point crying.

Xillllix.3485:

deathTouch.9706:

So post nerf, mostly for wvw:

1) Axe(main): Mediocre damage, way too much dmg backloaded onto 6th autoattack to be pvp-viable and terrible utility
2) Axe(offhand): God-awful everything
3) GS: Mobility only, indirect 100b nerf with skullcrack nerf.
4) Rifle: High dmg mostly single target but only useful with pure glass builds w/ high crit chance + dmg + power. Survivability is based on pairing with GS + EP and never making a mistake.
5) LB: Nerfed, mediocre/low damage. Only truly viable with condi builds.
6) Sword: Mediocre/low dmg except for final thrust, which reliably requires a stun condition to actually burst.
7) Sword(offhand): Terrible power scaling/low dmg, condi-only weapon
8) Shield: High defense, zero damage
9) WH: Mobility + utility, zero damage
10) Mace: Huge nerf, will be extremely hard to land a skullcrack considering its range and now 1/2s cast time + big animation. Indirectly nerfs GS. Big nerf to damage from Mace stuns.
11) Mace(offhand): Terrible dmg, one block one knockdown
11) Hammer: Burst nerfed making it very difficult to build enough dmg in wvw to actually kill targets before their heal gets off CD, especially if they make proper use of blinds, dodges, evades, invulns, teleports, stun breaks, blocks, or stab. Mediocre damage post-nerf. You can kiss killing full-bunkers goodbye with hammer, even with pure damage builds.

So basically, warrior weapons are for support-only. Got it Anet.

The only viable builds I see if you actually want to have any sort of competitive dmg is:

1) Pure condi war LB + SS (wooo more skill-less, boring condi kitten!!!!)

2) Glass Rifle + GS

3) Nerfed hammer war that is dependent on someone else to actually finish off targets for them because they will lack sustained burst/dmg against any half-decent player.

This nerf is clearly, very clearly targeted only at the spvp Hambow war. So why not make spvp ONLY changes Anet???? This is going to trash our wvw builds/effectiveness.

We’re already extremely lacking on viable offensive builds (the main purpose of this class was to be a primary DPS class), and you just nerfed yet another one into the ground unnecessarily, mainly because terrible players can’t figure out how to use blinds, dodges, evades, invulns, teleports, stun breaks, blocks, or stab.

And for the love of god buff axe, especially offhand. No one in their right mind takes axe at this point because it is so godkitten awful.

Your still going to be able to beat a staff ele in a few seconds bashing your keys randomly so there is no point crying.

1) That’s an ele problem, not a warrior problem. I’m not opposed to buffing eles in general.

2) Even so, the staff ele in our guild can work wonders by herself with a little support. If you’re running solo staff ele…why? If you’re not running solo staff ele, why aren’t you asking for peels from teammates when you need it? Staff ele isn’t meant to be super mobile as much as its supposed to be support + mobile artillery and is vulnerable to aggressive melee classes that can keep constant pressure on it. If she’s getting locked down by stun wars then it’s our guard and war’s job to help peel off the wars long enough for her to do her job of AoE deeps on downed clumps + water fields. If the opposing war’s have long-time stab up then we corrupt with a necro and deal with it accordingly.

This game actually works fairly well if everyone on your team knows their job, communicates and reacts in different situations.

It is simple guys, if you guys dont want they to nerf it lets all quit warriors and move to next class, they will buff it in the next patch since they like to “BALANCE” the class.

Xurse.8267:

It is simple guys, if you guys dont want they to nerf it lets all quit warriors and move to next class, they will buff it in the next patch since they like to “BALANCE” the class.

Not only would they buff the warrior back up, they would also nerf whatever other class we decide to move to.

deathTouch.9706:

1) That’s an ele problem, not a warrior problem. I’m not opposed to buffing eles in general.

Outside of scepter burst and offensive arcane utilities (that stuff’s nonsense), the Elementalist could actually be used as a viable pace-car for managing/balancing the current meta-game. This game doesn’t necessarily need any more buffs at this point. It needs nerfs and function changes. Any more buffs and PvP combat is going to be so lightning fast and face-rolly that nobody is going to have any fun. It’s already fast enough when facing some of the more overpowered specs.

Overall, not a bad patch, I guess. I’m actually sad that ANet is just nerfing damage (again) instead of considering adjusting cast-times on skills. Time is this game’s Energy mechanic, and by drawing out cast-times on some abilities, one can make them cost a lot more in practice or make a user think about when to activate them.

Take a look at long-bow for instance. All but 1 of its weapon skills outside of the auto-attack are all 1/4-second long cast-times. That really just encourages spamming. If each weapon set had at least one long cast-time skill, the combat in this game would be a little more lively instead of so spammy.

Swagg.9236:

Take a look at long-bow for instance. All but 1 of its weapon skills outside of the auto-attack are all 1/4-second long cast-times. That really just encourages spamming. If each weapon set had at least one long cast-time skill, the combat in this game would be a little more lively instead of so spammy.

It would have to be applied to all classes though, from a balance perspective. One of the major downsides of war right now compared to other classes is its already telegraphed moves. There’s too many subtle animations/instant casts for other classes right now which is why war SHOULD hit harder and have more survivability than other classes. Not only do we not have great defensive boon access, access to stealth or other skill-based defensive mechanisms besides straight utility CDs like Stab and EP, but almost all our weapon abilities can be countered through a wide variety of options.

If we can manage to land a blow as a warrior, it SHOULD hit hard for punishing the opponent for not adequately countering it.

Passive regen of war was the only possible issue right now. It was NEVER hammer damage. Hammer damage was never an issue back when wars had 0 sustainability and couldn’t continuously stay in the fight and earthshaker repeatedly without outside support.

deathTouch.9706:

Swagg.9236:

Take a look at long-bow for instance. All but 1 of its weapon skills outside of the auto-attack are all 1/4-second long cast-times. That really just encourages spamming. If each weapon set had at least one long cast-time skill, the combat in this game would be a little more lively instead of so spammy.

It would have to be applied to all classes though, from a balance perspective.

I’m not saying that it shouldn’t.

deathTouch.9706:

One of the major downsides of war right now compared to other classes is its already telegraphed moves. There’s too many subtle animations/instant casts for other classes right now which is why war SHOULD hit harder and have more survivability than other classes. Not only do we not have great defensive boon access, access to stealth or other skill-based defensive mechanisms besides straight utility CDs like Stab and EP, but almost all our weapon abilities can be countered through a wide variety of options.

Warrior shouldn’t hit harder. It’s damage is honestly fine.

deathTouch.9706:

If we can manage to land a blow as a warrior, it SHOULD hit hard for punishing the opponent for not adequately countering it.

Not really anymore now that warriors can just walk through everything during an encounter’s opening moments without really worrying about anything. Like I said, though, if we just increase cast-times on some skills, it wouldn’t be so bad. Damage wouldn’t necessarily need a nerf; it would just come down to responsible skill usage. Longer cast-times on key skills would slow down combat and add keyhole moments during which keen players would either have to proc their dodges or defensive abilities (if its early on in an encounter) or just bite the bullet (if it’s later on in an encounter) in the case that an opponent saved his/her big hitters or they come off recharge.

deathTouch.9706:

Passive regen of war was the only possible issue right now. It was NEVER hammer damage. Hammer damage was never an issue back when wars had 0 sustainability and couldn’t continuously stay in the fight and earthshaker repeatedly without outside support.

Can’t say that I disagree.

deathTouch.9706:

Swagg.9236:

Take a look at long-bow for instance. All but 1 of its weapon skills outside of the auto-attack are all 1/4-second long cast-times. That really just encourages spamming. If each weapon set had at least one long cast-time skill, the combat in this game would be a little more lively instead of so spammy.

It would have to be applied to all classes though, from a balance perspective. One of the major downsides of war right now compared to other classes is its already telegraphed moves. There’s too many subtle animations/instant casts for other classes right now which is why war SHOULD hit harder and have more survivability than other classes. Not only do we not have great defensive boon access, access to stealth or other skill-based defensive mechanisms besides straight utility CDs like Stab and EP, but almost all our weapon abilities can be countered through a wide variety of options.

If we can manage to land a blow as a warrior, it SHOULD hit hard for punishing the opponent for not adequately countering it.

Passive regen of war was the only possible issue right now. It was NEVER hammer damage. Hammer damage was never an issue back when wars had 0 sustainability and couldn’t continuously stay in the fight and earthshaker repeatedly without outside support.

I play a charr warrior and I tried with a low lvl asuran a few weeks ago. My attack did hit the target a lot more because my move were harder to read. I think warrior might have been the first class they finished. They had more time to polish the animation which look neat but are too easy to read. You recognize a experienced player over a new one because they know how to read the warrior’s attacks.

I really wish the fix the slope issue with earthshakker. I conditioned myself about not using hammer F1 if I’m not on an even terrain.

The hammer dmg decrease is to be expected (I play a dps hammer build, as well as most other builds) and the stuff I can get away with is ridiculous. I can 1v3 and kill them all. I can sometimes 1v5 if there are a few bads mixed in, or glassy players. Too much CC in addition to dmg, something had to go. I’m glad it is going to be less dmg, and not less CC’s. Although I wish they had fixed the vertical miss issue with earth shaker before lowering damage….. It’s hard to say whether something is balanced or not when a GLARING bug prevents it from even landing much of the time.

Not sure where the justification for longbow dmg decrease is. Combustive shot and arcing arrow already require a good amount of skill and/or combos to pull them off to their full potential.

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

Not sure where the justification for longbow dmg decrease is. Combustive shot and arcing arrow already require a good amount of skill and/or combos to pull them off to their full potential.

Apparently it took too much skill to move out of the instant cast,instadeath oneshot invisible circle.