Guild Wars 2

Well… Just another warrior here, hoping for the next balance patch. This is my first forum post ever, since I tend to spend most of my time playing the game. At the moment I don’t agree that Warrior is totally unplayable in PvP- although it is far from competitive. I feel that the problem doesn’t stem from Berserker, but from core Warrior. And, the Defense, Tactics, and Discipline lines are where many problems lie. Defense is necessary for survival in PvP, and Discipline is also necessary because our weapons are balanced around a 5-second weapon swap, although that is common knowledge among warriors by now. Not to mention Tactics could use a rework, because it is seldom seen in PvP nowadays and is carried by Empower Allies and Phalanx Strength in PvE. I don’t want to take shots at the Devs, because I know that they have a very difficult job of incorporating PvP, PvE, and WvW into their balance patches. So, these are my ideas for a rework of these three specialization lines.

First, as many of you may imagine, the first thing we can do is make both Fast Hands and Embrace the Pain baseline. Having these traits baseline makes an open minor slot in discipline and devalues Cleansing Ire, but I’ll get to those.

Side note: Every time I mention skill recharges, it is 20%.

Now, the Defense line.

Thick Skin -> Defensive Stance: Take 10% reduced damage from enemies within the range threshold. Range threshold: 600

Adepts: Shield Master and Dogged March are both good. Cull the Weak could stay the same and be okay, but a new version with a little more flavour:

Deal 7% more damage to weakened foes. Inflict Weakness when you deliver a single strike greater than a percentage of your foe’s max health. Percent: 20%, Weakness: 6s
No ICD
-This trait definitely favours power builds, but it doesn’t have to change. Just a flavour option I came up with.

Adrenal health is fine as-is.

Masters are fine as-is. Maybe Sundering Mace could use some love as it has to compete with Defy Pain AND Armoured attack, but other than that they are fine. Maybe post suggestions for Sundering Mace?

Spiked armour: Retaliation 5s -> 8s.

Grandmasters:
Rousing Resilience and Last Stand are good, but Cleansing Ire lost is Embrace the Pain effect. Now:

Cleansing Ire: Remove a condition for each bar of adrenaline spent while using a burst skill. (No longer needs to hit with the burst skill) Gain adrenaline each time you are damaged by a condition. Adrenaline: 1

Next: Tactics. Minors are okay in Tactics, I think. Burning Arrows is no longer in the Tactics line.

New Adepts:
Inspiring Battle Standard (came from master tier Discipline) Banners have increased effect radius and now apply their benefits to 10 allies (excluding Battle Standard, 10 person revive is too OP) Banners have reduced recharge. Radius increase: 300 (900 total)

Empowered: Maybe think of something cool to put here? If not it can stay the same.

Leg Specialist: Increased immobilize duration to 2s. Maybe apply a 1/2 second daze as this one is to lock down for allies to kill.

Masters:

Shrug it off and Empower allies same as before. Alternatively Shrug it off and Vigorous shouts could merge into one trait, more similarly to Last stand, and we get something new for its old slot.

Quick Breathing: Warhorn Skills convert 2 conditions into boons. Reduced recharge on Warhorn Skills. This one needed a bit of a buff to compete as it’s coming up to Master.

Grandmasters:

Phalanx Strength: Same as before.

Powerful Synergy: You combo finishers have increased effects. Allies gain increased effects when they combo out of your combo fields. Effectiveness increased: 100% (+100% effectiveness to normal stacking effects eg. Might, +100% duration to duration stacking effects eg. Duration stacking boons and auras, Whirl finishers create 100% more bolts and condition cleansing effects remove 1 additional condition)

Vigorous Shouts: Add 1 condition cleanse and increase the heal values. I would keep these buffs even if Shrug it off Merged with Vigorous Shouts.

Discipline:

Brawler’s Recovery is now Minor master, in the place of Fast Hands. Versatile Rage is still adept minor and Versatile Power is still Grandmaster minor. There are now 2 open Slots in the Master Tier.

Adepts: These are good for the most part, but Warrior’s Sprint out-competes the other 2, I think. Perhaps add 250 Ferocity to Crack Shot.

Masters:

Burning Arrows now takes the place of Brawler’s Recovery: 66% chance for longbow arrows to inflict burning. Additionally, Longbow arrows have increased velocity. Reduces recharge on longbow skills. Velocity increase: 50%, Burning: 2 stacks for 4 seconds, 4 seconds ICD

Destruction of the Empowered: This trait was good before. It’s still good.

New Trait to fill gap in Master tier: Steadfast Power: Weakness has 50% reduced effects on you. Gain might when you are blinded and immunity to blinds for 8s. 15s ICD. Might- 5 stacks, 8s

Grandmasters:

Heightened Focus: Gain quickness and fury for 5s when you strike a foe below the health threshold. Health threshold: 25% (might change that to 50%)

Burst Mastery: (Put a lot of thought into this one, and it still isn’t complete) Burst Skills restore adrenaline on use and have bonus effects. (Primal Bursts always gain the maximum effect as they count as level 3 bursts)

-Flurry/Flaming Flurry: Gain Quickness (1/1.5/2s) on activation
-Eviscerate/Decapitate: +5/10/15% Damage
-Skull Crack/Skull Grinder: 10 Stacks of Vulnerability, 8s
-Arcing Slice/Arc Divider: Inflicts immobilize for 1.5/2.5/3.5s when it hits an enemy under 50% health
-Earthshaker/Rapturing Smash: Didn’t have many good ideas for this one. Thoughts? Discuss
-Kill Shot/Gun Flame: Unblockable and cannot be reflected. It will still be stopped by skills such as Wall of Reflection but not reflected back. Now has 100% Critical chance. (Hence the 250 Ferocity on Crack Shot)
-Combustive shot/Scorched Earth: Now pulses its damage and burning every second.
-Forceful Shot/Burning Shackles: Explodes on its target and damages nearby foes. The Explosion does 80% damage for Forceful Shot and 50% for Burning Shackles, but Burning Shackles applies its burning and immobilization effects to all targets. Targets: 5, Explosion radius: 240
-Whirling Strike/Wild Whirl: Gain 3 stacks of might for 5/10/15s and 3s of fury for each for you hit with this skill.

catching breath

Merciless Hammer: Gain a 20% damage buff for 4s when you interrupt a foe while wielding a hammer. Single attacks can proc this trait multiple times before going on cooldown, giving increased damage buff duration. ICD: 15s. Reduces recharge on hammer skills.

Before you rage, I don’t believe this will totally fix Warrior. This is a proposal to help make core warrior, where the problems are, more robust. To make warrior fully competitive again we will need a rework on Strength and Arms, which I am working on, and some serious skill tuning. If you think I am crazy and all this is OP, that’s fine, if you think I am crazy and I never want Warrior to be good, well…

PS. If you do think this is good, please say so. I might post a rework of Strength and Arms, if you guys do.

Edits: Mostly grammar and editing for clarity. I’m a bit of a writer so this kind of thing tends to bother me.

Or maybe leave CI as is but make it a Minor Trait.

And as always and i will keep saying it Fast Hands + Warrior Sprint (just the 25% speed) need to be baseline.

Juba.8406:

Or maybe leave CI as is but make it a Minor Trait.

And as always and i will keep saying it Fast Hands + Warrior Sprint (just the 25% speed) need to be baseline.

While Fast Hands could be justified as Warrior being a master of weapons and therefore having a low baseline weapon swap, is having something like warrior sprint as baseline really fair? All other classes out there have to sacrifice for increased move speed.

Weap swap can be justified in a way because other classes sometimes have extra systems that act as extra weapons; Ele attunements is an example of this. But Movement speed is something that is the same across the board. Although the ways that it can be increased may differ, all classes move at the same speed normally, whether they are a melee/ranged/squishy/tanky/etc. class.

@ the OP:

I don’t have any objections to it, I would like most of these changes (although I don’t know what the*embrace the pain* trait your talking about is. I do have a few suggestions though.

I feel that leg specialist should apply immobilize at the same duration as cripple would have been

To make Sundering more attractive you simply have to increase war’s survivability so that people don’t feel forced to have defy pain in order to survive.

I would ask for Last Stand to also reduce cooldowns of stances or at the very least swap the duration increase for a cooldown decrease.

Netreius.8951:

Juba.8406:

Or maybe leave CI as is but make it a Minor Trait.

And as always and i will keep saying it Fast Hands + Warrior Sprint (just the 25% speed) need to be baseline.

While Fast Hands could be justified as Warrior being a master of weapons and therefore having a low baseline weapon swap, is having something like warrior sprint as baseline really fair? All other classes out there have to sacrifice for increased move speed.

Weap swap can be justified in a way because other classes sometimes have extra systems that act as extra weapons; Ele attunements is an example of this. But Movement speed is something that is the same across the board. Although the ways that it can be increased may differ, all classes move at the same speed normally, whether they are a melee/ranged/squishy/tanky/etc. class.

@ the OP:

I don’t have any objections to it, I would like most of these changes (although I don’t know what the*embrace the pain* trait your talking about is. I do have a few suggestions though.

I feel that leg specialist should apply immobilize at the same duration as cripple would have been

To make Sundering more attractive you simply have to increase war’s survivability so that people don’t feel forced to have defy pain in order to survive.

I would ask for Last Stand to also reduce cooldowns of stances or at the very least swap the duration increase for a cooldown decrease.

Embrace the Pain is the effect where you gain 1 adrenaline each time you are hit by an attack. I like the flavour you suggested for Leg specialist; it also has some play around it as you can make sure to use your long duration cripples instead of random short ones. Your suggestion for Sundering Mace does make sense as well as does the one for Last Stand.

I agree with Netreius on the topic of Warrior’s sprint though Juba, but the CI change is possible. What would you suggest to replace it in the GM Tier though? Last Stand is a strong trait already(especially if it were to reduce Stance CD’s) and Rousing Resilience can be good with the right setup (Possibly with Berserker and Outrage) I assume it would be Spiked Amour that is removed by CI becoming minor. Personally though I’d rather keep it as a GM with the ideas I had for it.

Netreius.8951:

Juba.8406:

Or maybe leave CI as is but make it a Minor Trait.

And as always and i will keep saying it Fast Hands + Warrior Sprint (just the 25% speed) need to be baseline.

While Fast Hands could be justified as Warrior being a master of weapons and therefore having a low baseline weapon swap, is having something like warrior sprint as baseline really fair? All other classes out there have to sacrifice for increased move speed.

Good points about how “Justified” Fast Hands being baseline….

Now read this :

Warrior According to ANet

“Warriors are masters of weaponry who rely on speed……”

OneDarkEndeavour.2579:

but the CI change is possible. What would you suggest to replace it in the GM Tier though? Last Stand is a strong trait already(especially if it were to reduce Stance CD’s) and Rousing Resilience can be good with the right setup (Possibly with Berserker and Outrage) I assume it would be Spiked Amour that is removed by CI becoming minor. Personally though I’d rather keep it as a GM with the ideas I had for it.

I made a lengthy post about reworking the whole defense line (Before HoT release and before Shield + Last stand changes) might need some update

check it here
Making a better Defense Line