Guild Wars 2

Preface:
This post is in regards to a concept once in a while floated around, but never expanded on. Here’s a little background on me and why I feel that I am a good candidate to propose this design change:

My in-game name is Defektivex. I play a tournament Warrior, and only a Warrior.
I stream daily – so my skills and abilities are widely available for scrutiny (twitch.tv/defektive).
I have spent a lot of time creating well rounded and interesting builds (‘Avalanche’ Hammer-Axe/Mace).
I comment and create threads a lot, with a 90% goal of being constructive and opening a conversation.

Design Issues:
Warriors do not suffer in their damage dealing capabilities. We also have very high HP compared to other professions. Where Warriors fall short is their un-unique skills and utilities.
Professions such as Necros and Mesmers provide interesting group capabilities (AoE Blinds, teleports, boon removal, CC’s and longevity to name a few). However, Warriors provide simply damage and roaming capability within a solo-perspective. Teams thus prefer other Professions simply because they provide more team based utility.

The Proposal:
Elementalists strike me as a incredibly complex and interesting class. Mobile, tanky, with decent damage. They also have fundamentally one of the most interesting mechanics. They can’t change weapons, but they CAN change attunements. In return they also don’t have standard Burst skills.

I would like to take this concept and apply it to a Warrior.
!!!!!Here’s an image mock up!!!!!: http://i.imgur.com/FeS4y.jpg

Changes:
-Remove burst skills (just like Elementalists).
-Remove the change weapon button (just like Elementalists).
-Add a third weapon slot.
-Burst skills now allow the ability to change Weapons (just like Elementalists).

-In order to change weapons, you must have their allotted amount of Adrenaline to change.
-Weapon 1): Your primary weapon, this only requires 1 Bar of Adrenaline to change to.
-Weapon 2): Your secondary weapon, this requires 2 Bars of Adrenaline to change to.
-Weapon 3): Your third weapon, this requires 3 Bars of Adrenaline to change to.

-Each weapon gives an AOE Buff or an area/single target effect when swapped to.
Example: Swapping to a Shield gives protection for 5 seconds.
Example 2: Swapping to a Great Sword gives Fury for 5 Seconds.

How this changes the game:
Warriors, being the ‘Weapon Master’ class can now take full use of their broad range of weapons.
Teams will be inspired to use Warriors because they can be an on the fly tank that buffs their allies as they use their vast range of weapons.

How this creates an interesting class:
This change will provide Warriors with a vast amount of new and interesting builds to try. Suddenly, builds such as Greatsword/Mace-Shield/Longbow are viable. Another example: Shout healing Sword/Sword – Longbow – Mace/Shield becomes viable as a condition dmg Tank.

Conclusion:
I strongly believe this will add flare, flavor and increase the skill cap of Warriors.
Currently, almost all other professions have more skills to use in-combat than Warriors. By making this change Warriors will be on par with other Professions in not only usability, but also available attack choices.

Thank you.

Oh, I like!

ORRRRRRRRR ANet could just give us freaking stance dancing for our F2-F4 key slots. It’s a fun mechanic, it’s a high skill-cap mechanic and there have been many successful implementations of it.

WoW – Stance dancing
AoC – Guardian stance dancing, Bear Shaman aura molding
WAR – Chosen Aura Molding
GW2 – Ele attunement swapping
etc

But I do like your suggestion as well and would support it if ANet decided to go that way so +1!

I liked the combo idea better, how about we stick with that?

I think the combo idea may take to long to implement, and thus won’t be taken seriously by the developers because of turn around time.

However, this concept has already been implemented for Ele’s. Assuming they coded the profession style in modules/functions it should take considerably less time to implement since the core code is already functional and in-use.

Yeah I’d rather not Warrior be an Ele duplicate. Mechanic wise and even if it isn’t obvious at first sight.

Combo idea takes the cake

Idea isn’t bad but without burst skills traits and weapon skills themselves would need extra rework. Look at Axe’s Eviscerate, Rifle’s Kill Shot or Hammer’s Earthshaker. Removing burst skills would seriously weaken many weapons.

That’s where the weapon swap buffs / effects come into play.

I guess, but it’ld have to be something much more meaningful than a simple 5 second boon. Fully charged Eviscerate or Earthshaker can turn fights 180.

As a level 80 warrior I have always felt that warriors are ridiculously streamlined and straightforward when it comes to skills. Really, it seems like a core design issue (although I think that was the point of warriors) because the fact that warriors can’t ever throw curveballs makes it inherently inferior to other classes.

Being able to use an extra weaponset won’t really fix how straightforward our skills are, example: The sword deals exclusively bleeds + attached damage. That’s it. The skills on the sword set that don’t do bleeds are gap closers/maintainers. They should really combine Savage Leap and Hamstring then give us another type of condition + damage hybrid skill in slot 3. All of our “blocks” are extremely awful as well (MH mace, OH sword, spear). Not only are they extremely boring and tend to be the equivalent of “deal damage on block”, but releasing the block early has VERY little tactical advantage as all of them ONLY provide 1/6th a bar of adrenaline if you do. What, warriors aren’t allowed to strike a vital point on a well-timed hit to daze/confuse/weaken/(any other kind of condition that’s not 100% damage)?

TL;DR I think it’s an inherent design flaw that warriors are doing pretty badly right now outside of the Greatsword (which really is only good in PvE). Even healing shouts warrior is outclassed in heals by other professions.

A lot of underlining and bolding.

Okay… no. Giving us access to more weapons per encounter will not improve the utility of any of those weapons. I know people like the idea of just letting us use more weapons, but that will change nothing at all. The problems with the Warrior are intrinsic, after all. You even mention this, then ignore it. You could give us access to every single weapon in the entire game, all at once, and it’s not going to make the profession any better in terms of its role viability.

There are no major problems with the Warrior. There are, however, a lot of minor ones. Unfortunately, right now, since the profession is somewhat stable and the forums are populated with HB/rifle whiners, it’s difficult to gain traction on things you never even SEE Warriors use. Stances, signets (outside of that stupid precision build that morons use), physical skills certainly, and even banners. That composes a very large portion of our secondary skills. Actually, that’s all of them. Except shouts, which actually are the only secondary skills that are currently working as they should, maybe other than your typical Bull’s Rush or Balanced Stance. Or Frenzy, god help us. All have problems and this limits our viability for individual builds. Worse still, even if most of these skills were buffed in terms of either damage, recharge, or whatever, they still would not be any better because most of these skills have no utility external to the Warrior’s most basic mechanics.

I hesitate to do these write ups because I’m almost positive the devs never read them, but whatever. Let’s take a look at our secondary skills, and explain to people who don’t play the profession what’s wrong with them. Because I know most people just blither on about HB, Frenzy or whatever, and then frantically pout about Thieves for the rest of the thread.

cont..

Stances:
Endure Pain: 5 seconds of invulnerability to basic damage. This is okay, but it doesn’t have much real utility behind it. As most moves in the game are not massive damage spikes with big telegraphs, this skill is usually just a way to shrug off five seconds of normal DPS. It also doesn’t have much synergy with other skills. You can view it as just being a bunker skill for a bunker build that Warriors don’t actually have, as they don’t perform that role very well. Could use some work.
Balanced Stance: It’s fine. I have issues with Stability in general, only working on stuns and knockbacks and not on conditions, which is a bigger issue, and being so short term, but it’s fine. Stability is basically just used as a glorified spiking mechanic in PvP, rather than as a real counter while in combat, with some rare exceptions. I imagine if stability didn’t help spiking at all, people would complain about it a lot, as it would be nearly worthless unless it was happening more consistently. Most players don’t understand this because they’re all very range-heavy. Stability is a great trick for them. For Warriors, being able to stay in melee is life or death, so mitigating control effects is our life. Not an issue for almost any other class.
Frenzy: Idiotic, but okay. In GW1 you could use stance canceling to give this more depth. (Only one stance could be used at a time, so you could just use another to cancel the +50% damage and attack speed entirely.) But even if it worked this way now, since most of your slots are locked to weapons, heals or your elite, this is no longer a viable concept, especially for a Warrior whose utility is deeply tied to secondary skills, as the weapon skills do very little in many cases other than straight damage or damage accessorizing.
Berserker Stance: Warriors don’t have a problem gaining adrenaline. This is a worthless skill. Even if we did have problems gaining adrenaline, our burst skills don’t do anything of real merit in most cases, encouraging people to just sit on the adrenaline as fuel to increase their personal damage. Overall, adrenaline was a good idea in GW1 that has been poorly handled in GW2.

Banners:

I’ll lump all of these together, since they’re all the same exact skill. They’re obviously made with WvW in mind. You don’t want too many people getting a benefit from these things at once, when there’s fifty people around you. As a result, their benefits are pitiful. Worse, they’re just stat boosts. They don’t actively DO anything. Of course, there’s also the bundle stat problem. Banners should be the Warrior’s AoE solution for controlling areas, not just applying AoE stat bonuses. Imagine if instead of Banner of Strength just giving +90 condition damage and power, it instead poisoned nearby enemies around it in pulses and applied a 5-10% decrease in their run speed. In terms of stats, not much difference. But in terms of what you can DO with a banner like that, it’s far more interesting and makes the Warrior far more viable tactically. Bottom line: banners suck. They’re too “safe” in their design, and too lazy. Secondary skills should always do something active, not just apply stat bonuses. Even just applying a condition is cutting it close at times.

(cont)

Signets:

Signet of Might: Passive? Improve power by 90. Active? Gain five stacks of might. Wow. That sure is interesting, huh? So much utility! Now, we all know how useful stacking might or power bonuses can be. No one is denying that. But remember… secondary skills are there for their utility, not as steroid pills. Signet of Might doesn’t DO anything to the battlefield other than PUMP CLAP YOU UP. You may say “Well, there’s nothing wrong with that” but I will stop you right there. We’re discussing why Warriors have upper tier viability and this is one of the reasons why. Sure, this skill works. It’s balanced. But it’s also lazy and uninspired, and it fails to give the Warrior a chance to actively change the landscape of the battle around him. If you can’t understand this, I can’t help you.
Signet of Fury: Precision passive, adrenaline gain. Again, Warriors don’t have adrenaline issues, and adrenaline doesn’t do anything interesting. And again, this is not a worthless skill, but like SoM, it doesn’t do anything within the context of what the profession needs in PvP. If adrenaline was a pain in the kitten to create and it was used to fuel most of our skills (like in Guild Wars 1), then yes, people may use it. But this is GW2, and adrenaline does nothing other than fuel as single skill that either does about +300-500 more damage or gives you Fury that you already have, or sets up the longest most telegraphed attack animation in the game. The problems here are all minor but vast.
Signet of Stamina: Faster endurance regen, condition removal. Endurance? Sure, everyone needs that. Condition removal? Everyone REALLY needs that. Unfortunately, this removes ALL conditions all at once, with a forty-five second recharge. For a class that needs to stay close at all times to its target, in an environment where cripples, dodges, freezes, immobilizes, sinks, floats, knockbacks, knockdowns, stuns and so on all hinder that and are VERY common, this becomes a worthless skill, especially when you can just run healing shouts with a soldier rune and remove four conditions every twenty seconds. This is a skill that highlights how the developers still don’t understand how their game is even played. Or at least how Warriors are played.
Dolyak Signet: Reduce incoming damage, gain stability. Sixty second recharge. This skill directly competes with Balanced Stance but is worse in almost every way. Little more need be said. An activation time to boot, unlike a stance. This skill is awful, and has the same minor problems associated with stability I listed with BS. There’s no real reason to ever choose this.

Physical Skills:

Kick: There’s nothing particularly wrong here. But it’s a skill meant to be put on a Ranger, or something. The Warrior in most builds needs to stay close, and you want me to knock them backwards? Plus, I only have three secondary slots, and you want me to waste one on something as simple as this? Bull’s Charge or even Bolas do basically the same thing, except a little better, and they’re approach skills.
Throw Bolas: Buggy, yeah. This skill is okay, aside from that. It actually does something actively. It’s not support, but it’s not supposed to be. If it worked and wasn’t so easy to dodge people wouldn’t ridicule it so often.

Bull’s Charge: Again, this is buggy, but otherwise fine. People certainly abuse it on those ridiculous glass cannon HB builds all the sPvP people complain about. In GW1 this skill was just a melee attack that caused knockdown if your target was moving. That means you had to trick your enemy into moving (because blocks were very common in that game). That gave it more depth, whereas in this game you’re just pressing a button and being fired into your enemy like a missile. I think this would work better as just a status that gives you a three or so second speed buff and stuns the next enemy you hit, assuming you land an attack before it runs out.
Stomp: I love the idea of this skill. It works like Fear Me in a way, so you can use it to repel attackers off a downed ally, knock people off edges, control choke points and so on. Unfortunately it has a down time of a whole minute. Also, it knocks enemies back, which is bad for melee. But that’s okay. Unlike kick, since this is more about area control, you shouldn’t be using it offensively, exactly – more as a control utility. Unfortunately since there’s a trait that reduces physical skill recharges, this skill is punished by having its recharge increased to normalize the traited version. Some of the fault rests with the traits, in this case. As a result, this skill can’t do its job, especially when you have things like conditions and staying in melee range to worry about more often. Not worth it.

(fin…)

Briefly mentioning elites, we all know that story. Signet of Rage is the only real one, and it just applies swiftness and a little might. Oh, and fury. As though you needed it. Battle Standard is a defunct alpha skill back from when people didn’t rally on kills and you could res the dead. It desperately needs an update, due to its huge cast time and rather mediocre benefits (the stability it creates only lasts on the initial summon, by the way, for all you angrily reading the wiki). It’s also a little bugged and tends to fail to revive people anyway. Rampage? Haha. Yeah. Also, honorable mention: I Will Avenge You. Remember that? It’s not an elite, but it could be. It’s a shout, to go along with an elite signet and banner… and what should be an elite stance, but isn’t (Rampage). IWAY of course being a hilarious GW1 staple skill, but in GW2, now conflicting with modern revive mechanics and being overpowered anyway as a normal secondary skill. Its replacement, On My Mark, is another lazy skill that does nothing to the battlefield. Hence, why people always just use Fear Me as its replacement.

But there you have it. That’s what’s wrong with most of the Warrior secondary skills. Most are tied to old, defunct concepts that worked in alpha but no longer do. Or, even more commonly, are just too boring to warrant use, since all they do is raise an invisible number. This of course OBLITERATES any role they could possible serve on the battlefield. I think this more than anything is the main problem of the class. Not that we can’t use three weapons at once or that we need to use a combo, or whatever other asinine idea I keep seeing on the forums. Feel free to desperately nitpick at tiny details because you’re scared someone might buff the Warrior one day, and that it may affect you personally.

Warriors have no Adrenaline issues? Long Bow says hi, the would’ve been effective build that is.

Schwahrheit.4203:

Warriors have no Adrenaline issues? Long Bow says hi, the would’ve been effective build that is.

Warriors leak Adrenaline out their pores if you’re doing it right. If you intended to use the Longbow’s burst skill very often maybe you should have supplemented your Adrenaline gain with one of the many many many weapons/traits/utilities for it.

And that’s how Long Bow becomes effective, when you can actually spam its burst. And guess what? Berserker Stance is a liability when in combat.

Schwahrheit, try Adrenal Shouts. Assuming you’re using healing shouts like everyone else. Or “Furious” in Arms. Or Embrace the Pain. Or note the presence of Versatile Rage. Or Adrenal Reserves for outright reduction costs. Sharpened Axes. And even Thrill of the Kill.

No. We have no issues with adrenaline. I actually use Adrenal Shouts with a longbow in PvE. I literally have to switch to a second weapon and use ITS burst skill because I’m gaining adrenaline so insanely fast. If weapon swapping had no cooldowns I could literally switch back and forth spamming my burst skills, if I wanted to.

Talking about PvP. Sorry if I’m not being specific but in PvP using shouts with a Long Bow is just lol.

Well, using a longbow in PvP in general is a bad idea. In theory it would be a good idea. Area control and all. But it’s just too weak with too little going for it to be a really viable upper tier PvP weapon. PvE, of course, it’d godly. But the problems with primary weapon utility is another kind of write-up entirely…

theres a trait for 12% more damage if your adrenaline bar is full, everyone not using it is a bad warrior and should reroll

altho the trait is quite pathetic, it disencourages the use of adrenaline as 12% is a lot. 12% from this, 10% more damage with greatswords trait and 10% more damage on bleeding target gives you 1/3 more damage which is huge.

The problem with warriors right now is that they have only 1 viable build – glass cannon with greatsword. Hammer warriors are useless in pve and easily countered in pvp (in mid+ skill games, not even gonna talk about high level ones) and only 1 viable type of skills useful for spvp – stances. Nobody with their right mind will take signets or banners for pvp. Physical skills are “okay” until you realize they push targets away and you don’t need that since you are a melee class. (unless you use rifle, in which case you are bad since rifle is bad)

you have no choice with warrior, you either stick up with greatsword and offensive traits either just take 1 slot from your teammates and do 50% of the job any other class can do with same role

Great Idea. I felt the Ele concept fits way more for the warrior. For the reasons I’ve stated numerous times and as the OP states. I would also like the class to become more complex. Currently it’s just too “slashy-slashy”. There is little to no depth compared to EVERY other class. I think this design should make your bar full by default if we lose the current weapon swapping ways. Otherwise you would be stuck in one weapon type until you start hitting someone.

However, I will say this won’t be the end all to the Warriors problems. They need to get us out of this “Meatshield” state. Sure, a warrior shouldn’t be “casting” heal abilities. We need our own regen(like adrenal health) that allows us to heal effectively as we fight. Currently Adrenal Health isn’t effect enough though. We currently rely way too much on another to heal us.

Healing Signet: The passive can be nice to shrug off those smaller hits, but up against serious dps it just fails. The heal isn’t enough even if spec with healing. The 1 1/2 sec activation time doesn’t help either. Overall, this is pretty balanced. Just lower the activation timer. I personally feel it should be instant, considering the weak heal. It’s only used as a panic button anyway.

Mending: Again, healing isn’t enough and sucks we rely on abilities like this to remove conditions. While others can remove them easily every 10 seconds, plus other abilities. Doesn’t justify a 25 second cooldown. 20 seconds is about right.

Healing Surge: I think this heal is great. Warriors just lack proper healing. This should have been a 20 second cooldown being the case. You could even remove the adrenal boost, we shouldn’t miss it…

Being primarily a Melee class(frontlines) we should have no issues healing. Since there are no “dedicated healers” in this game. Either reduce the cooldown of our 2 healing abilities or make us MUCH better passive healers that don’t interfere with regen.

-Grandmaster Traits-

POWER:
1)Physical Training- Physical utility skills do 100% more damage and recharge 20% faster.

This is more of a Master trait then grandmaster. This doesn’t benefit you enough to justify 30 points. The physical skills are too high of a cd and damage isn’t good enough to make up for it.

2)Berserker’s Might- Berserker stance that needs 6+ stacks of might to activate and only every 45 seconds.

Why is this considered a grandmaster trait? We already have enough adrenal boosting power and this only occurs every 45 seconds. This is not a master trait even with a 20 second cd.

ARMS:

1)Furious- Critical hits grant an extra adrenal strike…

Again with the adrenal boosts. Even Sword #5 gives me the stuff…How about making this attribute condition builds. Although this might not be a problem if other things were changed.

2) Last Chance- Gain Quickness for 4 sseconds when you strike a foe with less than 25% hp(90 sec cd).

Not bad, but why do all of our abilities that seems useful have MAJOR cooldowns…So, I not only have to guess what is 25% hp of another player, but I must also hope I’m doing serious damage to him within that estimated trime frame. So I can make use of my 4 seconds… Hopefully the guy doesn’t run away from me with all his useful kite skills that I have little chance of countering(if he’s skilled). Otherwise this is on a 90 seconds cd…

DEFENSE:

1)DEFY PAIN: Activate endure pain @ 25% hp.

Ok, not bad but endure pain is a 90sec cooldown. It also only lasts for 5 seconds. Reduce it to 45-50 sec cd and this would be pretty nice. Even though our support is still currently garbage.

2)Spiked Armor: Gain retaliation(5 secs) when struck by a critical hit. 15 sec cd

Umm…Why does one of my GRANDMASTER abilities rely on someone hitting me with a critical… What sense does this make? I spec in defense in hopes that someone does critical damage to me? For a 5 sec buff that won’t make a HUGE impact. I should gain retaliation for 5 secs every time I’m hit, regardless of it being a critical, without a cd. It’s not like we have any other way to bolster our defense, unlike ele and guardian.

TACTICS:

1) Inspiring Battle Standard- Banners grant regeneration. Again, why is this in tier 3? Banners are terrible, this only makes them mediocre. This should be in tier 2. Tier 3 should increase the current buffs and allow them to become mobile in some way. Kind of like Rangers and their spirits tier 3, which also buff.

2)Vigorous Shouts: Shouts Heal.

Can any sane warrior say this trait is garbage? I will state I think the heal could be more. However, if we had better support I probably wouldn’t feel this way.

DISCIPLINE:

1) Quick Bursts- Burst skills recharge 20% faster.

So it goes from 10 sec cd to a 8 sec cd… What was Anet thinking in making this a tier 3…This is Tier 1 at best. Nothing else to say about this trash trait.

2) ADRENAL RESERVES- Burst skills cost less(half).

This just barely makes a tier 3 skill because it can be useful to some builds. Again, just barely…

SWORD/SWORD

This is by far my favorite weapon choice for ANY MMO that allows me to be viable as a warrior. We need to prevent a dps plummet by the condition cleansing builds.

A Condition Necro can effectively keep his dps consistant on all other builds. Soon as you remove them, he starts stacking them again. Since he has so many conditions to apply, it maintains a balance.

Warrior can only make someone bleed(sword/sword) and sounds great on paper. However, it requires WAY too much time to make it effective. Which by the time it actually starts doing good dps, someone can easily cleanse themselves. Thus your weak blade damage is your only effective dps which will get you killed.

MH Sword:

1. Final Thrust- Apply 2 stacks of bleeds, reduce damage if need be. Sword is about conditions anyway. The last damage boost doesn’t help much

1. Hamstring- Apply Cripple AND a bleed. This helps with consistent dps.

OH Sword:

1. a) Imapale- Bleeds should stack a bit faster, takes slightly too long. Keeping condition builds in mind. 20 sec cd

b)Rip- Again, we don’t need a damage “leap”. This does a nice crit if glass cannon. It just isn’t what the theme of sword/sword is about. Big numbers should be for the greatsword. Allow this to apply another 4 stacks of bleeds. So it’s most effective by timing impale as it applies stacks.

1. Riposte- Applies 4 bleeds if you block an attack with it. 15 sec cd

The problem is what if the player is ranged? You’re forced into hoping he’s dumb enough to shoot you as you stand in his face. You’re also forced into hoping he STILL doesn’t just dodge the attack after he activates it. Just allow me to choose based on the situation. Block an attack then poke for smaller bleed stacks, or press again to jab the enemy without blocking for an increase in bleeds. That adrenal boost is far from useful. This is a needed ability for sword/sword yet it relies on my enemy far too much. This isn’t going to work in a WvW battle either.

Condition build Warrior needs to be more potent. It takes way too long to get effective stacks on someone, just for them to cleanse them away.

BURST:

Flurry- The bleeds are great, but allow me to at least block/reflect projectiles. I’m just an open target for everyone ranged while I root myself.

This is of course unless the OP idea is implemented in a similar fashion. If burst skills were removed, then they should be re-adjusted to be normal abilities. In this case Flurry should replace OH sword #5. Maybe make them useful physical utility skills. This would make a good 30 seconds skill, in my opinion.

In my opinion the only thing warriors really need is better banner AoE with lower cool downs, lower cool down on some stances and maybe an added effect to shouts. Our weapon switching should be 5 seconds always not only spec into and not working. Burst skills could use some rework, at least some of them. In my opinion, long bow, rifle, Axe, hammer and sword are amazing. Great swords needs to either add more damage or simply give a close in move, axes could use a bit more crit chance, maces simply need to be able to land without so much effort on our part, specially when all classes out maneuver us.

Give warriors that, an incentive to our burst tree and some fixes in our bugs such as vengeance not killing us when we respawn and I’ll be happy. Well forget that since it seems the time before I can use vengeance got increased so now I can never use it unless under water lol!