Guild Wars 2

Defense Tree
So I have thought about it for a long time, and after reading many things and trial and error, I think this is what a warrior needs to have great sustain and survive.

5: Adrenal Health: Gain health every second based on adrenaline.
[ Stage 1: gain 1 + (0.4625 * Level) + (0.055 * Healing Power) per second ]
[ Stage 2: gain 3 + (0.8625 * Level) + (0.085 * Healing Power) per second ]
[ Stage 3: gain 5 + (1.5625 * Level) + (0.125 * Healing Power) per second ]

15: Burst Healing: Burst skills heal you based on adrenaline.
[ Stage 1: .5 * Healing Power + 875 ]
[ Stage 2: .5 * Healing Power + 1975 ]
[ Stage 3: .5 * Healing Power + 2785 ]

25: Adrenal Sustain: Gain damage reduction based on your adrenaline.
[ Stage 1: Reduces all damage taken by 25% ]
[ Stage 2: Reduces all damage taken by 15% ]
[ Stage 3: Reduces all damage taken by 10% ]

This allows the defensive warrior to choose when to use his burst skills, and makes burst skills a heal, giving warriors the sustain he needs to survive heavy melee combat.

Questions+Awnsers
1. Adrenal Health, why so much?
It allows hybrid warriors to have more survivable options in melee, it also allows more passive warriors to have more sustain.

2. Burst Healing, Why heal on burst? L2P!
This allows warriors to have a reason to use there skills besides just damage, warriors need more sustain options.

3. Adrenal Sustain, isn’t it backwards? Why do I get more DR for having less?
This means the defensive warrior has to watch his adrenaline, the more hes enraged the more damage he is going to take. It also means the Warrior will want to use and “hit” his burst, if he misses his burst skill… he will still be at full adrenaline!

He must constantly be using his burst skill to dump all his adrenaline so he can stay alive. Also he must watch how much he hits as well, if he gains too much adrenaline he will die faster, so this favors Maces+Hammers more-so then not, since they hit slower!

This allows for more active and dynamic combat, it is actually very very hard for a warrior to stay at ‘Stage 1 Adrenaline’, especially since every time they damage a foe they gain it.

Comments+Opinions
I know it sounds very powerful on paper, but in actual practice, the idea is to put more skill in the adrenaline tree from a defensive warrior, there are many “DPS” options that come from having “Full Adrenaline”, so gaining a bunch of damage reduction from having little to no adrenaline makes a lot of sense, especially when your looking at a calmer, more defensive Warrior.

Make sure you read every bit of it in detail before judging, I think you will see that this could really help the warrior.

I like the idea of using adrenaline to gain survivability, but I’m not so sure it should be based entirely on the defense tree.

This change would make 15 in the defense tree a requirement for any build. The emphasis on the F1 burst skill would also make weapons like the greatsword or main hand sword nearly useless due to their weak bursts.

Hammer and Axe/X builds would probably dominate with these changes since both of them use their burst skill often and can spec easily into the defense tree.

I was thinking an alternative would be to add F2 or F3 defensive burst skills that heal/remove conditions based on adrenaline level. The defense tree could have traits that add extra ability to these and make the trait line more useful.

Mikemad.2495:

I like the idea of using adrenaline to gain survivability, but I’m not so sure it should be based entirely on the defense tree.

This change would make 15 in the defense tree a requirement for any build. The emphasis on the F1 burst skill would also make weapons like the greatsword or main hand sword nearly useless due to their weak bursts.

Hammer and Axe/X builds would probably dominate with these changes since both of them use their burst skill often and can spec easily into the defense tree.

I was thinking an alternative would be to add F2 or F3 defensive burst skills that heal/remove conditions based on adrenaline level. The defense tree could have traits that add extra ability to these and make the trait line more useful.

Your quote for the “15” is very sad, it kind of shows that there isn’t much warriors have to survive anything, I’m sure however without ‘15’ Greatsword users will be fine.

Don’t see how that would help much, You should have to invest in trees to get that type of power, and you already get Heals/Condition removal with shouts.

I think that your Burst Healing should go under the Tactics Tree. Seriously, if you want lackluster passives, they’re there. But also seeing that the Tactics tree has more healing based traits, though it doesn’t improve healing stat, I think that it makes sense there.
As for the Adrenal Sustain, looks too powerful. I think that 8/5/2 would be more suitable for both PvE and PvP.

gameshoes.1530:

I think that your Burst Healing should go under the Tactics Tree. Seriously, if you want lackluster passives, they’re there. But also seeing that the Tactics tree has more healing based traits, though it doesn’t improve healing stat, I think that it makes sense there.
As for the Adrenal Sustain, looks too powerful. I think that 8/5/2 would be more suitable for both PvE and PvP.

Tactics tree is about group support, and does not use healing power at all.

Except Warriors do not have protection or condition removal like other classes do, the “Stage 1” would be very limited unless you weren’t attacking or doing anything, that is why its so powerful.

Adrenaline is a resource unique to the warrior profession. Its primary use is to fuel burst skills, which become more powerful with each full stage of adrenaline.

There are three stages of adrenaline, and each attack made by the warrior in combat grants one “strike” of adrenaline, equal to 3.5% of the completely full adrenaline capacity. Thus it takes approximately 10 strikes of adrenaline to fill each of the 3 stages.

Which is why, each strike the warrior makes gives you adrenaline, so after 3 attacks, you would lose stage 1.

Thus, the “Adrenal Sustain” greatly benefits from low attacking weapons such as hammers and maces.

You’re just going to make a new thread every time you come up with a new ‘sustain’ idea, huh?

Adrenaline is already used by plenty of traits. The key to helping Warrior is modifying what they gain access to via adrenaline, i.e. their Burst skills. Give them a splash of defensiveness (no, you don’t need HP return to ‘sustain’. Blocks, evades and dodges are -far- more effective) and suddenly you fix their survivability in dungeons while giving them higher skill-cap to compete with the likes of Guardian, Mesmer and Thief.

Leo G.4501:

You’re just going to make a new thread every time you come up with a new ‘sustain’ idea, huh?

Adrenaline is already used by plenty of traits. The key to helping Warrior is modifying what they gain access to via adrenaline, i.e. their Burst skills. Give them a splash of defensiveness (no, you don’t need HP return to ‘sustain’. Blocks, evades and dodges are -far- more effective) and suddenly you fix their survivability in dungeons while giving them higher skill-cap to compete with the likes of Guardian, Mesmer and Thief.

Warriors don’t really have much in the way of dodges.
The Burst Heal trait only works if you hit your target, you won’t get a heal if you miss.

Daecollo.9578:

Defense Tree
So I have thought about it for a long time, and after reading many things and trial and error, I think this is what a warrior needs to have great sustain and survive.

5: Adrenal Health: Gain health every second based on adrenaline.
[ Stage 1: gain 1 + (0.4625 * Level) + (0.055 * Healing Power) per second ]
[ Stage 2: gain 3 + (0.8625 * Level) + (0.085 * Healing Power) per second ]
[ Stage 3: gain 5 + (1.5625 * Level) + (0.125 * Healing Power) per second ]

10: Burst Healing: Burst skills heal you based on adrenaline.
[ Stage 1: .5 * Healing Power + 875 ]
[ Stage 2: .5 * Healing Power + 1975 ]
[ Stage 3: .5 * Healing Power + 2785 ]

15: Adrenal Sustain: Gain damage reduction based on your adrenaline.
[ Stage 1: Reduces all damage taken by 25% ]
[ Stage 2: Reduces all damage taken by 15% ]
[ Stage 3: Reduces all damage taken by 10% ]

This allows the defensive warrior to choose when to use his burst skills, and makes burst skills a heal, giving warriors the sustain he needs to survive heavy melee combat.

Questions+Awnsers
1. Adrenal Health, why so much?
It allows hybrid warriors to have more survivable options in melee, it also allows more passive warriors to have more sustain.

2. Burst Healing, Why heal on burst? L2P!
This allows warriors to have a reason to use there skills besides just damage, warriors need more sustain options.

3. Adrenal Sustain, isn’t it backwards? Why do I get more DR for having less?
This means the defensive warrior has to watch his adrenaline, the more hes enraged the more damage he is going to take. It also means the Warrior will want to use and “hit” his burst, if he misses his burst skill… he will still be at full adrenaline!

He must constantly be using his burst skill to dump all his adrenaline so he can stay alive. Also he must watch how much he hits as well, if he gains too much adrenaline he will die faster, so this favors Maces+Hammers more-so then not, since they hit slower!

This allows for more active and dynamic combat, it is actually very very hard for a warrior to stay at ‘Stage 1 Adrenaline’, especially since every time they damage a foe they gain it.

Comments+Opinions
I know it sounds very powerful on paper, but in actual practice, the idea is to put more skill in the adrenaline tree from a defensive warrior, there are many “DPS” options that come from having “Full Adrenaline”, so gaining a bunch of damage reduction from having little to no adrenaline makes a lot of sense, especially when your looking at a calmer, more defensive Warrior.

Make sure you read every bit of it in detail before judging, I think you will see that this could really help the warrior.

Yes, i agree this is so ultimate improvements….

I actually like some of your suggestion, which really makes more fun, but in my opinion some amendments should make.

1) Current Adrenal health should not be changed, it is a 15 point minor trait and should work like one.

2) Both Burst Healing and Adrenal Sustain should be in grand master trait, and therefore a player can only choose one of each to avoid being overpowered.

3) Burst Healing effectiveness should be on pal with “shatter heal / shout heal etc”, therefore formula should be like 0.8* healing power + 800 and it should heal on hit therefore no heal when missed or blocked.

4) Adrenal Sustain should be 3/6/9% damage reduction, 9% at lv 3 adrenaline makes a player choose whether to use his burst skill or keep the 9% damage reduction.

Crossaber.8934:

Daecollo.9578:

Defense Tree
So I have thought about it for a long time, and after reading many things and trial and error, I think this is what a warrior needs to have great sustain and survive.

5: Adrenal Health: Gain health every second based on adrenaline.
[ Stage 1: gain 1 + (0.4625 * Level) + (0.055 * Healing Power) per second ]
[ Stage 2: gain 3 + (0.8625 * Level) + (0.085 * Healing Power) per second ]
[ Stage 3: gain 5 + (1.5625 * Level) + (0.125 * Healing Power) per second ]

10: Burst Healing: Burst skills heal you based on adrenaline.
[ Stage 1: .5 * Healing Power + 875 ]
[ Stage 2: .5 * Healing Power + 1975 ]
[ Stage 3: .5 * Healing Power + 2785 ]

15: Adrenal Sustain: Gain damage reduction based on your adrenaline.
[ Stage 1: Reduces all damage taken by 25% ]
[ Stage 2: Reduces all damage taken by 15% ]
[ Stage 3: Reduces all damage taken by 10% ]

This allows the defensive warrior to choose when to use his burst skills, and makes burst skills a heal, giving warriors the sustain he needs to survive heavy melee combat.

Questions+Awnsers
1. Adrenal Health, why so much?
It allows hybrid warriors to have more survivable options in melee, it also allows more passive warriors to have more sustain.

2. Burst Healing, Why heal on burst? L2P!
This allows warriors to have a reason to use there skills besides just damage, warriors need more sustain options.

3. Adrenal Sustain, isn’t it backwards? Why do I get more DR for having less?
This means the defensive warrior has to watch his adrenaline, the more hes enraged the more damage he is going to take. It also means the Warrior will want to use and “hit” his burst, if he misses his burst skill… he will still be at full adrenaline!

He must constantly be using his burst skill to dump all his adrenaline so he can stay alive. Also he must watch how much he hits as well, if he gains too much adrenaline he will die faster, so this favors Maces+Hammers more-so then not, since they hit slower!

This allows for more active and dynamic combat, it is actually very very hard for a warrior to stay at ‘Stage 1 Adrenaline’, especially since every time they damage a foe they gain it.

Comments+Opinions
I know it sounds very powerful on paper, but in actual practice, the idea is to put more skill in the adrenaline tree from a defensive warrior, there are many “DPS” options that come from having “Full Adrenaline”, so gaining a bunch of damage reduction from having little to no adrenaline makes a lot of sense, especially when your looking at a calmer, more defensive Warrior.

Make sure you read every bit of it in detail before judging, I think you will see that this could really help the warrior.

Yes, i agree this is so ultimate improvements….

I actually like some of your suggestion, which really makes more fun, but in my opinion some amendments should make.

1) Current Adrenal health should not be changed, it is a 15 point minor trait and should work like one.

2) Both Burst Healing and Adrenal Sustain should be in grand master trait, and therefore a player can only choose one of each to avoid being overpowered.

3) Burst Healing effectiveness should be on pal with “shatter heal / shout heal etc”, therefore formula should be like 0.8* healing power + 800 and it should heal on hit therefore no heal when missed or blocked.

4) Adrenal Sustain should be 3/6/9% damage reduction, 9% at lv 3 adrenaline makes a player choose whether to use his burst skill or keep the 9% damage reduction.

Well, that would just make me take the 9% DR trait and lazily just save up my adrenaline and not care about it like I do now.

It has to cost the opportunity cost, its a “self heal.” whilst shout heals are AOEs (and you can have three of them.), so it has to be much better.

Remember developers want “active” not passive play-styles, so managing your adrenaline would really go towards what they want.

You don’t realize how terribly, awfully OP is 25% DR?
A 3/6/9 would make a lot more sense.

HannaDeFreitas.4236:

You don’t realize how terribly, awfully OP is 25% DR?
A 3/6/9 would make a lot more sense.

25% is OP if it wasn’t a 2-3 second thing, but you play a warrior, tell me…

How many warriors remain in stage 1 adrenaline? Its actually very hard, because well, every time you hit something you gain adrenaline, if you hit multiple times you gain lots very quickly.

Its very hard to stay at stage 1, you literally have to do nothing, and if you arn’t doing anything you die. You say its overpowered, but your really not gaining 25% for that long, you gain adrenaline very quickly, 25% is completely temporary, less you are not doing anything but standing there…

3/6/9 would make sense, accept the fact that it would combine to well with offensive traits and actually punish you for using burst skills, which means nobody will use burst skills, they would just get this trait, the 9% critical chance trait, and 12% damage trait and press ‘1’ and ‘2’ all day like they do now. It goes against everything the developers have been changing lately, they want active playstyles, not sitting there afk with thumb in mouth not using adrenaline skills.

Defensive Traits should be the opposite of offensive traits, if you have 25% DR, you lose the critical chance and damage from the other traits. 9% Critical Chance, damage reduction and 12% extra damage from having full adren? woo!

If its 25%, and I have a burst heal and other adrenaline traits, I have to really think about what I want to do, and that is how it should be. Do I wanna waste my adrenaline, or keep it for my offenses? Do I wanna burn it all at once for a heal?

You don’t get it…
Giving adrenaline-filled Warrior offense and adrenaline-starved defense is good design because we’d actually use burst skills when we need to get defensive.
But 25% is too much on a heavy class with 18k base health, especially when stacked with other reductions.

A Warrior could go 30 defense with knight’s armor etc and get 50% DR,. waste adren immediately to get 25% DR and you’d have a Warrior with 75% DR while still dealing a lot more damage than other classes.
It’s undeniably OP in PvP, especially when you consider you also have Endure pain and Defy pain.

HannaDeFreitas.4236:

You don’t get it…
Giving adrenaline-filled Warrior offense and adrenaline-starved defense is good design because we’d actually use burst skills when we need to get defensive.
But 25% is too much on a heavy class with 18k base health, especially when stacked with other reductions.

A Warrior could go 30 defense with knight’s armor etc and get 50% DR,. waste adren immediately to get 25% DR and you’d have a Warrior with 75% DR while still dealing a lot more damage than other classes.
It’s undeniably OP in PvP, especially when you consider you also have Endure pain and Defy pain.

But your doing 2/6 the damage of a Berserker Warrior…

And thats not how damage reduction works.

All damage goes through toughness, and then is reduced by boons and other things after that, so it would be much less then 75% damage reduction.

Damage reduction and Endure pain does not reduce condition damage either.

This is how Adrenal Sustain would work.

I am a warrior in full knight’s gear, I have 42% damage reduction.
I take 20,000 damage, its reduced to 11600.
I have Adrenal Sustain at stage 1, so I then reduce that 11600 by 25%, its reduced to 8700, its actually less.

Daecollo.9578:

But your doing 2/6 the damage of a Berserker Warrior…

A full-out zerker has 6610 E.Power, a 30 Def build without Zerker Power has 3382.
That’s 50% of the DPS of a full zerker, while having 576% more damage reduction.

Let alone, what would happen when Warrior reaches 50% health and triggers 12s of protection from his runes?
75% damage reduction +33% damage reduction… yeah, dream up.

Daecollo.9578:

And thats not how damage reduction works.

All damage goes through toughness, and then is reduced by boons and other things after that, so it would be much less then 75% damage reduction.

Damage reduction and Endure pain does not reduce condition damage either.

This is how Adrenal Sustain would work.

I am a warrior in full knight’s gear, I have 42% damage reduction.
I take 20,000 damage, its reduced to 11600.
I have Adrenal Sustain at stage 1, so I then reduce that 11600 by 25%, its reduced to 8700, its actually less.

I’m not sure what to tell you about this theory beside asking if you have any evidence that it works that way else we’re talking about fried air.

Anyways, do you seriously believe Anet is going to give such a major buff to Warriors?
It’s never going to happen, don’t get excited because it’d be a delusion.

HannaDeFreitas.4236:

Daecollo.9578:

But your doing 2/6 the damage of a Berserker Warrior…

A full-out zerker has 6610 E.Power, a 30 Def build without Zerker Power has 3382.
That’s 50% of the DPS of a full zerker, while having 576% more damage reduction.

Let alone, what would happen when Warrior reaches 50% health and triggers 12s of protection from his runes?
75% damage reduction +33% damage reduction… yeah, dream up.

Daecollo.9578:

And thats not how damage reduction works.

All damage goes through toughness, and then is reduced by boons and other things after that, so it would be much less then 75% damage reduction.

Damage reduction and Endure pain does not reduce condition damage either.

This is how Adrenal Sustain would work.

I am a warrior in full knight’s gear, I have 42% damage reduction.
I take 20,000 damage, its reduced to 11600.
I have Adrenal Sustain at stage 1, so I then reduce that 11600 by 25%, its reduced to 8700, its actually less.

I’m not sure what to tell you about this theory beside asking if you have any evidence that it works that way else we’re talking about fried air.

Anyways, do you seriously believe Anet is going to give such a major buff to Warriors?
It’s never going to happen, don’t get excited because it’d be a delusion.

You didn’t take in mind critical and losing damage from having less adrenaline, and having less trait points that increase damage overall.

And yes, that is how boons/dr buffs work, it goes through one thing and then another, its not all at once.

Do we actually know if there isn’t a hard cap on the possible amount of damage reduction anyway?

HannaDeFreitas.4236:

I’m not sure what to tell you about this theory beside asking if you have any evidence that it works that way else we’re talking about fried air.

Anyways, do you seriously believe Anet is going to give such a major buff to Warriors?
It’s never going to happen, don’t get excited because it’d be a delusion.

I’d suggest hitting up the Guardian forums. They tend to go on about the ins and outs of Protection and other boons. But yes, damage reduction goes through armor first (reduced by toughness) then by boons and damage reduction. If the percentage damage reduction was additive, that would make the damage reduction multiplicative, which it isn’t.

For constructive discussion, what about make a change Adrenal Sustain to 1 of below:

option 1) gain protection boon for 5 sec upon Maxing adrenaline. (only activate once upon reaching full adrenaline, 30sec internal CD)

option 2) gain aegis boon for 10 sec upon Maxing adrenaline. (only activate once upon reaching full adrenaline, 45sec internal CD)

These will help def warrior a lot while also encourage the use of burst skill, as you only gain the boon by rebuild your adrenaline to max.

Please keep in mind the above suggestion is based on it is a grandmaster trait on def line.

Crossaber.8934:

For constructive discussion, what about make a change Adrenal Sustain to 1 of below:

option 1) gain protection boon for 5 sec upon Maxing adrenaline. (only activate once upon reaching full adrenaline, 30sec internal CD)

option 2) gain aegis boon for 10 sec upon Maxing adrenaline. (only activate once upon reaching full adrenaline, 45sec internal CD)

These will help def warrior a lot while also encourage the use of burst skill, as you only gain the boon by rebuild your adrenaline to max.

Please keep in mind the above suggestion is based on it is a grandmaster trait on def line.

It sounds like a good idea, but boon seems more guardian territory (25% for having no Adren, 10% for having full seems fine, it builds more then one builds and playstyle for the warrior.) and I just realized I screwed up…

I meant it to be 5/15/25, not 5/10/15…

When I made the trees, I wanted to make it where I had Hammer/Mace in Mind moreso then the other weapon sets, since they hit slower, they would stay in “Stage 1” longer then the other weaponsets would, giving them a slight advantage in there own tree, an Axe user would only be in stage one for very little bit, so would a great-sword wielder.

HannaDeFreitas.4236:

You don’t get it…
Giving adrenaline-filled Warrior offense and adrenaline-starved defense is good design because we’d actually use burst skills when we need to get defensive.

I know, it makes it where you have to choose between offensive or being defensive based around your adrenaline and rewards you for watching and using burst at the right time.

However, since it doesn’t stack there isn’t any way you can reduce it to nothing.

I wish we could have more stuff like this, Warriors could use more sustain options…