Guild Wars 2

If you don’t like the current warrior mechanics so much, or think they are fine but need tuning up or down, this is your thread. No limits, redesign as far and as much as you want.

So, just for fun, how would you redesign the warrior?

Few personal ideas to start the thread:

Idea 1 – Expanded burst skills

I like how burst skills work, but I feel like they could be much more. Having only one option, which yeah, changes depending on how much adrenaline you have, but with no design changes, only numbers, is kinda limiting.

So, how could this be moved forward?

A first option could be to add two different burst skills, one for the main-hand, and another for the off-hand. This would give you two different options at the same time, and create new synergies with weapon combinations that aren’t very popular now. Two-handed weapons would get an additional skill.

So the F1 would stay as you know it, and we would get a new F2 linked to the off-hand weapon (or the two-handed weapon). Simple solution.

Another alternative?

Instead of adding a new F2 burst skill, we could split F1 in various skills, each one covering each adrenaline level. The skills could be the same one with different stats, or have unique mechanics altogether.

The key here is that you would be able to use F1 and F2, and consume only the portions od F1 and F2, instead of the entire bar, which opens a new layer of adrenaline resource management.

If the skills are different enough, maybe you’re interested on using F1, F1, and then F3. The split burst skills could be designed to create combos with one another, to reward you for managing the resource smartly.

As for the berserker and the primal burst, it would be adapted to these ideas, but specially, it would get its 30 maximum adrenaline back so it’s not the “F1 spam” it is now.

Idea 2 – Banners as turrets

Banners are pretty cool in concept, a warrior wielding a banner to rally his allies around him. Once ingame, they’re kinda boring and dull. And of course, useless in PvP.

The first problem is that they are not useful while wielded. Their skills are just bad, and they don’t really give any significant bonus over just placing them somewhere and forgetting them until the cooldown is over.

We could redesign their skills altogether, putting them at the same level of the WvW centaur, turtle, and dragon banners, but do we really want them to have their own skills? Carrying them doesn’t necessarily involve carrying them as bundles, and this would eventually lead to other problems anyway.

So, pretty simple idea, what if we just adapted them to something similar to engineer turrets?

You place them as normal, but instead of picking them up as a bundle, you only reduce cooldown by picking them up. Since they aren’t active minions like turrets, picking up a banner could reduce the cooldown much more.

If you want to go further, banners could become destructible like turrets, and in exchange become a bit more powerful than they are now.

Just some random ideas to begin the thread. Waiting for yours!

…

Full list of redesign threads:

Elementalist – Mesmer – Necromancer

Engineer – Ranger – Thief

Guardian – Revenant – Warrior

I like your approach.

Another alternative might be to make the banner off-hand, so the warrior can still wield a weapon. Right now, warrior loses literally all his DPS for a rather minuscule buff he has to place and pick-up all the time (or continue being a mascot). Especially for GS-warriors, being highly mobile and always on their targets, always having to go back and pick the darn thing up is somewhat… dumb.

The alternative to carry the banners on their back (Samurai-style) would surely be OP if that leaves the warrior untouched. Maybe nerf his movement speed while being a walking banner. But then again, skinny women carrying gargantuan greatswords walk unhindered… so having a stick with a flag on your back should not slow down a muscular bulk of manliness (in my case :P). Or anybody being able to wield a GS while wearing a ton of scrap metal/metal bikini.

Plautze.6290:

I like your approach.

Another alternative might be to make the banner off-hand, so the warrior can still wield a weapon. Right now, warrior loses literally all his DPS for a rather minuscule buff he has to place and pick-up all the time (or continue being a mascot). Especially for GS-warriors, being highly mobile and always on their targets, always having to go back and pick the darn thing up is somewhat… dumb.

The alternative to carry the banners on their back (Samurai-style) would surely be OP if that leaves the warrior untouched. Maybe nerf his movement speed while being a walking banner. But then again, skinny women carrying gargantuan greatswords walk unhindered… so having a stick with a flag on your back should not slow down a muscular bulk of manliness (in my case :P). Or anybody being able to wield a GS while wearing a ton of scrap metal/metal bikini.

I thought about other options, but they don’t convince me:

• First use of the skills spawns banners in your back, samurai style, or floating behind you. Second use throws the banner into the floor. Problem: Pointless to throw them if they have the same effect when just carrying them, and pointless to carry them if it’s for the worse.
• Banner bundles come with a conjured off-hand weapon (using existing weapon skills), so you can use them in combat. Problem: Banner skills still suck.

I think banners are cool when carried, but their current playstyle has nothing to do with that. I want a skill where the warrior raises a banner and roars, but I can’t make that fit with current banners. Maybe have the banner summon be preceded by a skill effect with some animation depicting that?

My redesign starts with an change of the burst skills. Their spamable character make the class mechanic much to easy. (Berserker kills it completely.)
Adrenaline gain should reduced drastically and burst skills and traits should have much higher impact.
It should be an hard decision to use the burst with one bar or wait for a second or third bar.
When the berserker should be an burst spammer, then with lesser impact (and reduce the adrenaline traits from three bars strength to two bars strength).

Overall will that changes kill the warrior in the current game, nerfs to each other class will be required!

And then we need so big trait changes:
- Make groups of weapon traits, e.g. twohanded weapons or ranged weapons
- Add sustain or support to all trait lines
- Fast hands baseline :-P
-… so much more.

The simplest banner fix will be: make banner works like heralds facets…

I like warrior overall, so my biggest complaint is the lack of build diversity. So if I had to change anything it would be to find support by other means than Phalanx Strength stacking. While it would likely get nerfed in respite, adrenal health could be an aoe heal for allies, banners could use a buff in their passive effects and there could be a trait added to give a party buff when using burst skills.

Rettan.9603:

My redesign starts with an change of the burst skills. Their spamable character make the class mechanic much to easy. (Berserker kills it completely.)

+1

Would change gs to be a cleave weapon. Keep all its abilities but increase the max targets to….8 or even 10 for everyhting except gs5 (keep that to 1 target prolly). Basically just give it that berserk guts treatment. Maybe increase the windups and lower the overall damage and add more ‘effect’ or ‘cc’ of some kind to the weapon.

Then I’d add in the great axe……a gs that is just a giant axe…..would replace axe/axe with a whole new toolset like the greatsword’s but it would be more single target related and armour debuffing.

Then I’d remove our downed state. Instead I’d make vengeance happen immediately on a 25% chance. So 75% of the time we die instantly upon hitting 0 hp. And 25% of the time we are instant upp’d in vengeance state. Then downing an enemy will grant you 2seconds extra uptime of vengeance, and kill them in their downed state will give you 100% chance to rally.

I’d also Give all warriors a third melee weapon set of skills, for single target useage. These would be kind of based l ike adrenaline is. Doing enough hits will grant you these melee abilities for single targets. Then when you use them they go on cd again….until you dish out enough hits. SO like hitting 25 things will fill all 6 of the abilities.
6
1 2 3 4 5

6 can be like headbutt sorta, a very powerful ability. The abilities fillup 1 by 1 from 1-6. and using any of them at any time automatically sets them all back on cd and you have to refill them all. So genrally you use the highest one you saved for at the tiem if u need it….but many will be situational abiltiies that you might ‘have’ to use earlier to survive.

1 – punch
2- kick
3 – bull rush type thing
4. guard (guard body with arms) and retalitate somehow on hit
5 headbutt mbe
6 rampage…mbe 6 should grant rampage with the damage reduction and larger size.

I’d also make sword MH and OH totally badarse. Game of thrones badarse.

Balance wouldn’t really be the issue between weapons. It would be more of a case of sword does speedy and critical type of hits but has limited cleave against more than 1 foe. Greatsword does cleave and weighted attacks but is slow and hard to defense urself with…offense is its defense. Great axe/hammer does weighted attacks good but is slow but is better for creating defense and debuff style attacks for opening up enemies to other sources of damage (support potential zerg weapons).

Axe would be skirmish play. you can throw them you can impale them in ur eneemy. Id make axe very much like throwing swords…..you can treat them like arrows almost, you can have alot of axes on you and use them for ranged attacks and honestly condi attacks would make sense with axe. or maybe id make condi attacks a whole separate thing under poison blades. Where you have to choose if you poison ur blade or not….if you do then it changes all the damage and stats to condi related, none of this both condi and power abilitity jargon we have atm.

Then I’d make warhorn more of a trumpet type of thing. Where you signal allies with the sounds it makes, and give some buffs here and there. Meant for coordinating with other allies basically or a warcry and coordination tool.

Cerby.1069:

Then I’d remove our downed state. Instead I’d make vengeance happen immediately on a 25% chance. So 75% of the time we die instantly upon hitting 0 hp. And 25% of the time we are instant upp’d in vengeance state. Then downing an enemy will grant you 2seconds extra uptime of vengeance, and kill them in their downed state will give you 100% chance to rally.

You’ve put some thought in your post, but this made me giggle a bit. Warrior would instantly become unplayable in PvP should this happen. Everyone would focus warrior because when you deplete their HP bar, you have a 75% chance of instantly removing somebody from the fight. The other 25% you can just /ignore him for a few seconds and achieve the same goal.

The true unbalance in downed states comes from a couple classes being able to delay their stomp without fail. All other abilities are irrelevant until those are either nerfed or given to all classes.

I personally really like the idea behind Vengeance, but it is poorly executed. The knockdown is also pathetic, easiest downed state cc to avoid ingame.

I’ll just copypaste this from my old post – see how u like my idea, it hasn’t changed much, or at all

Warhorn – weapon that remained in 2014 considering quality, too weak and useless, should get more boons-per-skill, more debuffs/conditions, and more condi cleansing

Maces – solid weapons, but difficult to build them up to be able to use them in their best form, traits that maces benefit from are spanned over 4 trait lines (in my opinion it should be more simple than that), and mace skills are too weak in dmg, that should be doubled up

Hammer – nothing to say except base dmg i think should be bigger by 25-33% because i hate seeing such a weapon hit barely 2k-3k with skills in spvp with zerk build

Offhand Sword – this weapon doesn’t exist anymore, should be reworked into tactical zerk weapon

Shouts – also trapped in 2014 – should get more boons/conditions, maybe dmg, but all in all, more properties definitely, even through traits (stronger heal – 1000 heal at 20k hp class is LOL), decrease cooldown on “Fear Me!”, maybe add or rework some shouts to more defensive abilities

Stances – too simple with huge cooldown time, there should be more to a warrior (now we do have Adrenal Health, but for how long?) than doubling Endure Pain just to stay alive, also maybe add or rework stances to more defensive abilities, for the sake of bigger sustain and/or tank/bunker build

Signets – should have slightly better Active properties, maybe even passive 25% moving speed

Physical – return the old trait with 100% dmg boost OR increase base dmg, remove dependence on adrenaline, make them able for counterbuild similar to thief’s, decrease cooldown times, and make them up-to-date by giving additional physical skill that unlocks after initial successful hit – for example; after Bull’s Charge successful hit gain access to Elbow Punch – falling on an enemy once he is on the floor, or after Throw Bolas – pull your enemy toward you

Berserker (expansion aspect) – make it less dependent on EQUIPPING a trait line just to be able to use new stuff (I’m saying this for all classes, not just warrior), we should be able to use Rage skills and Torch irrelevant to using the trait line, maybe even Berserk Mode WITHOUT modified F1 bursts

Offhand Burst skills (new F2) – just to make Offhand weapons more useful/needed, while two-handed would have both F1-F2, but all weapons and weapon combinations would only be able to use 1 skill per adrenaline, and wait till adrenaline is pumped up again to use a second burst skill if the first one is still on cooldown

Adrenaline-over-time – a suggestion from personal opinion to give skills and abilities that use adrenaline like Revenant his Energy or Thief his Initiative

Traits – some need re-work, some need re-ordering to different lines or columns, some I think should be removed, and some new added

Banners – would give increased stat bonuses, and for elite banner, make it Pulse Life every 10 secs, meaning when a player is downed, it will make him rise again, and when the player is finished and waiting to port-spawn, banner gets him back to Downed state, and after 10 secs to Life again – BUT i would make those banners destructible and remove pve aggro so they last longer once summoned.

I still stand behind this.

Here’s a quick redesign idea:

F2 based on the equipped Elite skill. Berzerker F2 would just move to F3. Each is always a level 1 burst, and spends 1 bar of adrenaline. Also long cooldowns (20-30s).

Headbutt would make F2 into an AoE whirl with low damage, and a weak knockback, but a very fast cast.

Warbanner would make F2 into an AoE buff, spreading a few seconds of Regen, Protection, and Stability1 to allies.

Rage Signet would make F2 into a block, ending with a weak AoE shockwave, with bonus damage based on the number of hits blocked.

Rampage F2 would grant alacrity for 5s, and quickness for 2s.

Banners
Casting the banner skill puts the banner on your back, granting is usual effect. Casting it again throws it on the ground at the targeted spot, and grants all nearby allies a one time boon (str=might, defense=protection, tactics=regen, disc=fury, battle standard=rez and stability), and then pulses its typical effect thereafter.

How would I? I think I’d just make some tweeks on the core burst skill so that there is less like pure damage skills but a balanced number of both damaging skills and offensive skills.

For this purpose we may freely imagine burst skills that result of a combination of the 2 weapon wielded while dual wielding and such. Afterward, it would have been up to the game designer to accentuate the offensive part or defensive part depending on the purpose of each new Elite Specialization.