Guild Wars 2

I’m at work so I’m going to keep this initial post short.

It has come to my attention that people categorize the warrior as either 1 of 3 things.

1) DPS Roamer – although not quite as good as say Ranger or Thief.

2) Bunker DPS Defender – although not quite as good as Guardian / Engy and sometimes even Necro.

3) Support / Burst – although not quite as good as Mesmer / Engy / Thief.

Yet in my opinion there’s a fundamental area in which Warriors excel at that not a lot of people seem to either grasp nor want to admit.

The way I perceive and play my Warrior are along these lines:

I do above average damage, with above average survivability. I don’t bring many buffs to the team (or heals) as people would like. But what I can bring are abilities that support a teams objective of taking a point, and setting up enemies for failure.

The sheer amount of stuns and other abilities such as knockbacks, immobilizers, and Fear add a level of elegance to the class that can only be taken advantage of by those who can identify when to apply pressure.

Warriors place the enemy team in a high pressure situation. When half your team is stunned or feared that means your half as effective. When it’s difficult to blatantly burn down the Warrior that’s causing these problems is where the true strengths of a the profession shine.

People are going to chop this up to “does this mean you’re saying the Hammer is a required Warrior weapon?” No, it’s not. The Shield have a consistent stun as do Maces. Bulls charge also has the ability to easy switch targets and apply pressure to that individual. Stomp is effective, yet rarely used due to it’s CD and cast time. Bolas is extremely effective against Thieves who are out of position.

Because of these reasons I truly believe that Warriors add an element of necessity when it comes to applying pressure in a stalemate battle. To consider them a set Roamer or Bunker is against the fundamental goals of the class. They are in my opinion in the Category: Support/Pressure.

Example of Support/Pressure:

http://www.twitch.tv/defektive/b/334138943

I agree that CC Warrior is pretty effective, but I disagree that it’s worse than others in Roamer/Burst roles.
When you spec for damage and mobility you can efficiently roam and blow up people still.

Maybe it’s just not your thing.

I did the roamer thing for my tPvP teams for a long while before I settled on Hammer. While yes I could roam, a thief does it better. What a Thief or Ranger really can’t do, is CC and play pressure.

While we have the ability to do other things, we don’t do them nearly as effective as some classes. What I’m merely trying to surmise is we may as well play to our strengths rather than try to be something other professions are more suited for.

Defektive.7283:

I did the roamer thing for my tPvP teams for a long while before I settled on Hammer. While yes I could roam, a thief does it better. What a Thief or Ranger really can’t do, is CC and play pressure.

While we have the ability to do other things, we don’t do them nearly as effective as some classes. What I’m merely trying to surmise is we may as well play to our strengths rather than try to be something other professions are more suited for.

Well that depends on how you played and what build you played.
I rest my case that Warrior roamer has nothing to envy to Thief or Ranger, if well played.

Red Falcon.8257:

Well that depends on how you played and what build you played.
I rest my case that Warrior roamer has nothing to envy to Thief or Ranger, if well played.

How do you rest your case? All you said is that we have roaming capabilities, which I’m not denying. I’m simply stating that Ranger/Thief has BETTER Roaming and on demand burst than a Warrior. So don’t try to put us into the same pot as them.

I roll around as a support/cc hammer myself. Can bunker in pretty easily with this if needed, and put on alot of pressure if your attacking with your team.

Damage is complete kitten though, i can’t solo kill most classes, but i can basically stall out indefinitely 1on1 and survive even 3on1 for a really long time. I really wish hammer didn’t self root you so much though…

warrior is good as it is atm

Sieghart.5870:

warrior is good as it is atm

I agree with this.

I see a lot of players keep trying to play a Warrior as some bursty profession and they aren’t doing so well in tPvP. Generally when I’m playing any of the number of builds that I’ve posted on this forum, burst Warriors become one of my easiest targets.

If I see a GS Warrior whose built slightly tanky, lets say 1500 Toughness 22-24k HP. I still call it to burn him down real quick. and I mean in a matter of 2-3 seconds. It’s an easy free kill for points.

I honestly think that if more Warriors played to our strengths then we wouldn’t be ranked so often as the worst or near to the worst class for sPvP.

Being that the only thing that really needs help is probably Longbow.

Recently.1043:

I roll around as a support/cc hammer myself. Can bunker in pretty easily with this if needed, and put on alot of pressure if your attacking with your team.

Damage is complete kitten though, i can’t solo kill most classes, but i can basically stall out indefinitely 1on1 and survive even 3on1 for a really long time. I really wish hammer didn’t self root you so much though…

A common mistake in my opinion is going to heavy in one stat. Going WAY to defensive results in your issue. But going way to heavy in damage results in a kill, maybe two, and then you’re useless until you respawn and run back to the fight.

I try hitting a nice middle ground and can almost always win a 1v1 against every class and often I can win 1v2’s.

Example of 1v1: http://www.twitch.tv/defektive/b/333898008

But… but… hammer abilities are so obvious and easy to dodge, and slow, and the Thief was just bad, and my team won’t take me if I’m not Frenzy/GS, and.. and…

Kudos on the analysis. To me, it seems like just the kind of inspection of the class that will evolve the meta and have an impact on the game.

Personally I think the Capt. Hammer build shows an incredibly strong role for the warrior: wildly annoying to multiple foes at the same time, without ever needing to be a damage powerhouse.

I think the ‘Capt. Hammer’ build is a step in the right direction. However I don’t agree with a number of the trait choices because they pigeon hole the player in one area.

I especially don’t agree with that builds belief to take more stats in +Healing when in reality the stats gained from that are minimal.

Overall though, its a step forward from Rifle builds and the like.

Using your word choice, I consider the Warrior ‘wildly annoying’ but at the same time, a power house to the point that if you grab a Warriors attention now you’re going to be CC’d and taking considerable damage. Just being annoying doesn’t seal the deal, it just means your annoying.

My Support/Pressure build stats borderline Tank+DPS. Think Feral druid.
29,600 HP
2010 Toughness
3300-3900 Power at any given time.
5 CC’s

Hey Defektive
I run a “balanced” GS/rifle build in WvW and it works just fine for WvW, but in sPvP I run the Captain Hammer build and would be interested in trying other CC/hammer builds as well. Could you post your build here if you haven’t already?? That would be awesome!

We are really strong in tourneys if played right with GS/Axe/shield.
We are not the best solo roamer as we are weak against some classes, however in my oppinion we are A+ when paired with someone else or in a zerg to take a vital point.

Any warrior will land a couple of full frenzied 100blades in any given game which will practically guarante an instant kill. Outside of 100b we have eviscerate burt from axes and stun from shield. Our survivability is pretty decent also with liberal use of whirlwind, shieldblock and dodges. Most warrior run 30 in defense so we are fairly durable and great at delivering killing blows and ressing.

It’s a myth we lack damage outside of 100b. Our GS autoattacks, whirlwind and Axe autoattacks does a LOT of damage. And with rune of intelligence on the axe we can deliver 100% crit eviscerates that hit for up to 8k.

Warriors also serve the purpose of “zerg dispersion” since nobody wants to be inside of 100blades range. Also, never open with bullrush until you know that your opponent has burned a stunbreak or teleport.

GS warrior is a good class in tournament games.

cortoss.8093:

We are really strong in tourneys if played right with GS/Axe/shield.
We are not the best solo roamer as we are weak against some classes, however in my oppinion we are A+ when paired with someone else or in a zerg to take a vital point.

Any warrior will land a couple of full frenzied 100blades in any given game which will practically guarante an instant kill. Outside of 100b we have eviscerate burt from axes and stun from shield. Our survivability is pretty decent also with liberal use of whirlwind, shieldblock and dodges. Most warrior run 30 in defense so we are fairly durable and great at delivering killing blows and ressing.

It’s a myth we lack damage outside of 100b. Our GS autoattacks, whirlwind and Axe autoattacks does a LOT of damage. And with rune of intelligence on the axe we can deliver 100% crit eviscerates that hit for up to 8k.

Warriors also serve the purpose of “zerg dispersion” since nobody wants to be inside of 100blades range. Also, never open with bullrush until you know that your opponent has burned a stunbreak or teleport.

GS warrior is a good class in tournament games.

GS Warriors have their place in the game… somewhere… Personally I rarely see them anymore on the decent tPvP teams. I don’t know if that’s because Warriors are going out of fashion (I don’t see many of them anymore in general in tPvP) or if people don’t see the value of GS burst.

In regards to my CC build, I’ll do a little write up and post it, considering how often I get that same question I may as well bite the bullet.

Strength of the warrior isn’t being tanky. It’s being able to instantly kill most targets at 50% HP and being able to lock down players with mace/shield.

Take a DPS ele/thief/mesmer/ranger with only 16k~18k health. If they are around the 2k armor mark, eviscerate will crit them for 9-10k. Meaning while they feel confident at 50~60% HP, they’re in the kill zone.

Most players will use their stun break on your shield bash, leaving them open to a 2.5 second skull crack. You can drop any target during this stun with frenzy + axe auto attacks except 3k+ armor tank classes. But they end up coming out in the kill range for a 4k eviscerate.

Warrior is the ultimate assist class. A team with a thief & warrior combo will instantly drop the other team’s DPS.

Daays.4317:

Strength of the warrior isn’t being tanky. It’s being able to instantly kill most targets at 50% HP and being able to lock down players with mace/shield.

I think this applies more to a range of professions that have on-demand burst and not just a Warrior hence why I don’t include it in my thoughts as to what the Warrior Profession really should be focused around.

Any class with Knockbacks / Stuns and Quickness can easily pull off the same Scenerio Examples of other classes with these abilities:
Rangers
Thiefs
Engineers

Thing about belt burst engineers is that it comes on a longer CD and they lack the ability to endure pain and keep trucking. Not to mention you really need your target knocked down during your burst and one stability will ruin your fun.

Rangers don’t actually have instant burst, they just increase their stream of damage from fast to super fast.

Thieves are probably the closest, but need setup. Have to be in melee range for the C&D and have to get behind for the BS. All in all takes about 3 seconds.

Warrior just needs a full adren bar. Because it hits at once and because it’s also a gap closer, you can surprise people very quickly. Basically it requires the least amount of setup and is the hardest hitting ability in the game.

I’ve found that none of the other classes really have that pocket burst damage you need to be fearful of 24/7.

But it’s also one of the easiest to dodge and mitigate. You don’t want to be a one trick pony! The plethora of burst players out there has already educated the populace enough to easily mitigate heavy burst builds.

Evis isn’t that easy to dodge. It’s not like 100b. You know when 100b is coming. Even in group fights you know when 100b is coming.

At any time you can decide to swap targets and lead off with an 8k crit.

Most of the dodges vs evis though are just general dodges in order to get some distance. They’re at ~30% health and have the endurance so they dodge away. Just happens to be the best time to evisc. So you just change up your evis timings so that they’re dodging away with 5% hp and you finish with auto attacks.

100b is a one trick pony. You are required to have frenzy + bull rush + stability in order to land it. That’s 3 utility skills needed to land one ability.

You don’t need any of those to land an evis. And even if you fail, you get to try again in 10 seconds.

If Evis burst is what you’re referring to as on-demand burst. Many builds including bunkerish builds still provide that level of burst. You don’t need to push yourself into a squishy area in order to achieve the same results.

But they don’t.

Have you seen Oppa stream? He uses axe/mace and traits for more survivability.

I literally do 100% more damage than him. He auto attack crits DPS classes for 1.3k while I crit for 2.6k.

Thing is we have the same survivability because he’s sacrificed too much damage. Being tanky and controlling players is only effective when killing players quickly is not an option. When you can drop people from 50% health, there’s no reason to play as a tank.

Daays.4317:

But they don’t.

Have you seen Oppa stream? He uses axe/mace and traits for more survivability.

I literally do 100% more damage than him. He auto attack crits DPS classes for 1.3k while I crit for 2.6k.

Thing is we have the same survivability because he’s sacrificed too much damage. Being tanky and controlling players is only effective when killing players quickly is not an option. When you can drop people from 50% health, there’s no reason to play as a tank.

Being tank-y as a Warrior is not as effective as having higher DPS. But it’s not because toughness/healing isn’t worth it. Its because in order to make the most use out of it, you need more than just ‘press 6 for heal’.

Guardians make it work because they build for a mace heal as part of their chain, a shield heal, a normal heal, a passive regen, a ‘meditations heal’ trait (and condition removal meditations), a ‘symbols heal’ trait, and a ‘dodge rolls heal’ trait. And if you want to go crazy, Support Tome.

If you’re not building for shouts heal, adrenaline heal, healing signet, etc, you’re not going to last very much longer. You’re only 1/2 a tank build.

Haven’t any of you played a ‘cleric’ type class in duels? You know, the class that always wins because they’re the ‘healer’ of the game? Healing is a big deal and you need to figure out ways to get more of it while maintaining high toughness.

Guardians are the only class that can get away by playing pure tank/healer because of the easy access to retal and other healing effects.

Against a bunker guardian, retal will be at least 50% of their damage. Remove retal (as it shouldn’t be in the game in the first place) and they would only delay their death.

Warriors don’t have the retal uptime. Warriors don’t have the multiple healing abilities. You’re no where near as effective by sacrificing amazing offense for mediocre defense.

Lol@ret being 1/2 the damage. So stop attacking? They can’t perma-ret you know.

Also, ret isn’t going to be removed. It’s part of the game and it’s balanced as-is for every class individually. As you can see from 10/1 patch, Guardian’s ret isn’t being removed.

And for god’s sake if you think it’s so good, get the spiked armor trait and keep ret up ~1/3 of the fight. Activating “Endure Pain” at 25% HP on a tank build for 3 seconds is a terrible trait for terrible players.

Another “lol stop attacking” player I see.

The point of a bunker class is to hold a point until reinforcements arrive. So please, do tell how “not attacking” is playing to your advantage and not to his?

And Guardians still have 100% retal uptime. Just not passively anymore.

Point is why bring a Warrior bunker with less survivability, less DPS output, and less healing. Defektive was right on this one.

Daays.4317:

Another “lol stop attacking” player I see.

Another? So you’ve been given this advice before and you’re still not listening?

Sorry, sounds like you just want to complain at this point.

Do you want to beat the Guardian or do you want to defend against him? Being a point defender isn’t about beating the other player…its about getting them to leave.

If you’re assaulting a point defender as another point defender, you’ve gotta re-think your strat.

Daays.4317:

It’s called mocking the stupidity of your statement.

Point of a bunker class is to delay. Your advice for fighting a bunker class with damage reflect is….don’t attack. Brilliant. Thanks for the suggestion.

I realize you were being ‘trollish’ in your statement. I was being serious….

Don’t attack when ret is up…

If you don’t want to listen, you don’t have to be nasty.

Daays.4317:

But you seem lost. So let me bring you back. Your team needs a bunker class. They have the choice of Warrior or Guardian.

Guardian has more survivability due to more healing and more damage output thanks to a higher retal uptime. There is no reason to bring a Warrior as the bunker class. Either Guardian or Necro fill those roles as they can delay much longer.

• Ret requires you to attack, no attack when ret is up means less DPS.
• Guardian has more healing but less CC….deal with it? I don’t know what to say…
• Necromancer has wells and DS. Stay out of the wells until they’re down, and beat him

And look, I’m not saying one class is better than the other at performing the bunker role, you are. So what do you want? You want a better point defender warrior build?

What if they make the warrior better but he’s still not as good as the guardian? Will he still be rejected?

What if they make the warrior better than the guardian? Will the guardian be rejected?

Here’s the problem, one class has to be better than another at SOMETHING. Thats how these things work. The guardian doesn’t have a choice. He’s gotta play point defense. The warrior can be pretty good at point defense, but he’s got the ability to play the DPS role very well.

If you ask me, the warrior is a mostly DPS melee class with an option to go ‘bunker’ build. If he’s got a better bunker build than the classes that are ‘bunker first, fluff second’ then there is no reason for the other classes to exist.

Also, sounds to me that you want to roll a guard…do you?

Necros and Guardians are both good bunker classes mid.

One brings group stability, retal, and heals. The other brings condition damage, spread damage, aoe chilling, and blind spam.

One favors more offensive play styles. One favors more defensive play styles.

They are not better than each other at the role they are trying to fill; bunker mid. Just better at different play styles.

A bunker warrior is not better at being offensive than a necro. A bunker warrior is not better at being defensive than a Guardian. There is no trade off. Not until bunker guardians get toned down or bunker warriors receive more in the terms of healing or damage output.

Your whole point was “you need to fully build for a tank role”. My point is that even built for a tank, Guardians will outshine you.

Should stick to the strength of the class, which is the highest damage output in the game.

Had a long post ready for this thread but I think Daays covered everything I was going to say, 100% agree. We need to play to our strengths, and apply pressure through cc and high burst damage.

I either run a gs/axe shield build with 1500 toughness with leg specialist, which lets me setup a bull charge frenzy 100b with my gs cripple, or immobilize eviscerate, or shield stun eviscerate. If they pop stability for one, I have the other ready on weapon swap.

I also run a axe/mace mace/shield combo and If I am roaming with a thief or ele we can lockdown the other teams dps and blow them up in seconds. Both builds also have the high sustained damage of axe auto attacks.

Why build for tanky node control when guardians and necros do it better? Just my personal opinion and playstyle but it has worked well for me in tournaments so far. I do appreciate all the work you have done for warrior builds though, and am in no way discrediting you, just giving another viewpoint on warrior playstyle.

Defektive.7283:

Example of Support/Pressure:

http://www.twitch.tv/defektive/b/334138943

Really great build. You want to help your team? Play this build.

Thundar.3910:

Defektive.7283:

Example of Support/Pressure:

http://www.twitch.tv/defektive/b/334138943

Really great build. You want to help your team? Play this build.

Or stop being selfish and reroll to a class that does the job better. OMG HAMMAR WAR? Hell just roll a hammer guard, 200% more beneficial to your team. HURR DPS WAR?! Go thief, engi, ranger, mesmer, or even a dps guard. Doesn’t take much to simply look at what the abilities the other classes offer in relation to similar warrior abilities to realize you get more out of another class.

Braxxus.2904:

Thundar.3910:

Defektive.7283:

Example of Support/Pressure:

http://www.twitch.tv/defektive/b/334138943

Really great build. You want to help your team? Play this build.

Or stop being selfish and reroll to a class that does the job better. OMG HAMMAR WAR? Hell just roll a hammer guard, 200% more beneficial to your team. HURR DPS WAR?! Go thief, engi, ranger, mesmer, or even a dps guard. Doesn’t take much to simply look at what the abilities the other classes offer in relation to similar warrior abilities to realize you get more out of another class.

This poor man has resigned himself to a lifetime of mediocrity. Almost brings a tear to my eye.

Random comment. Braxxus, did you used to play on Draenor in WoW?

I agree with the thread though, we can have much more of an impact on a fight than other classes and change the outcome if we want to.

Cogbyrn.7283:

This poor man has resigned himself to a lifetime of mediocrity. Almost brings a tear to my eye.

Sure man. It couldn’t be a simple case of reading and math. There’s a reason EVERY major team has dropped wars from their team roster and has either in forum posts, blogs or streams commented to the fact that anything a warrior can be spec’d to do another class can do just as well, if not better, while bringing more to the team as a whole.

Warriors would be fine, if other classes didn’t do the same thing but better. It’s just facts, has nothing to do with the quality of players and trying to pawn it off as such is simply a case of ignoring the actual mechanics. Can you have a great player on a warrior and a bad player on another class? Of course, but it’s irrelevent. That same great player would get more bang for the buck by rolling a different class to perform the same role on the team.

*@Fadeaway: I don’t recall which server I ended up on in WoW, I did a few transfers. I did however have a druid named braxxus though my main was a prot warrior named Gorath, and my other one was a DK named Daegoni. Yes, I have a thing for melee tanks with warriors being my favorite class in every game (typically).

I think what sets Warriors apart is that you can’t really CC them out of a fight. We have so many stun breaks / stability boons on extremely low CD’s that it’s impossible to properly mitigate our presence. Couple that with our own Stuns / CC’s and now you have this behemoth walking around who can’t be CC’d but whose stopping you from your objective.

That has to be worth some weight.

Ah nevermind then, I used to know a warrior called Braxxus is all ty

Having played warrior extensively, my feeling is that its a good class to kill new players and unexperienced. For higher level pvp, it is just too easy to kite around and spamm dodge with vigor.

I believe one of the main issues with the warrior besides being easily kited is the fact that his skills are too simplistic, which do not allow for a higher skill cap. Most of our skills are do dmg and thats about it. There is a lack of strategy and thinking when using your skills, we don’t have access to boons like protection and retaliation reliably, also we don’t have access to conditions like poison, chill, confusion,blind,burning, not to mention we aren’t able to remove boons. Whenever we approach someone, they know it will either be pure direct damage or knockdowns with cripple, and thats it.

Retaliation : Spiked Armor
Blind and Burning : Longbow
But I agree with you on the form, we are straight forward in our aim (although there’s many way and builds to do it, with different efficiency).

Guldur, not to be a thorn in your side but I’m going to pick apart your statement.

1) “easily kited” – With proper shout management, you can cleanse a large amount of cripple / immobilize / Chill, essentially rendering yourself mobility free. Not to mention a number of skills that provide mobility such as Leap, Earthshaker and Bulls Rush

2)“his skills are too simplistic” – This may be true if you’re running GS or Rifle builds. Even Weapon/Shield builds are relatively simplistic. But the number of skills that combo into each other as a Warrior are vast as soon as you mix in Hammer / Maxe(MH or OH) and Axe.

3)“Most of our skills are do dmg and thats about it.” A lot of our skills do important things as well: Vulnerability on demand. Stuns. Knockbacks. Weakness debuff (which would eliminate the spammy vigor players), bleeds. We can also buff allies with Warhorn. I think a lot of about being a good warrior comes down to knowing whats going on around you and reacting to it accordingly.

4) “we don’t have access to boons like protection and retaliation reliably, also we don’t have access to conditions like poison, chill, confusion,blind,burning”
Retaliation uptime of 33% of a whole fight is pretty nice, I consider that reliable wouldn’t you? We also have access to Weakness, Burning (longbow bleh), Bleeds, Confusion (traited), and Vulnerability so I’m unsure of where you get that intrepretation. Also, a NUMBER of our attacks work in combo fields that will also apply things like Poisen and Burning.

5)“we aren’t able to remove boons.” – Just grab a 60% chance to remove Boon on crit sigil and stick it on a weapon if it’s that important to you.

Guldur.6502:

I believe one of the main issues with the warrior besides being easily kited is the fact that his skills are too simplistic, which do not allow for a higher skill cap.

One of the main issues is more that the players see an ability that just does damage and think it’s simplistic. They sell the skill cap short and don’t realize the ceiling isn’t about comboing conditions (which is fairly shallow skill), and more about timing and positioning (which condition users will still need, it’s just behind the initial layer that people see).

For example, Whirlwind Attack. It’s really tempting to just use it after 100 Blades, or to lead into someone, or whenever it’s up and you’re next to somebody, right? I mean, it does damage, it closes distance, it’s wonderful. However, pick up Mobile Strikes, and suddenly you have a dodge (since WA gives evasion frames) that breaks immobilize. Just get Bolas’d? WA into the Warrior who is potentially 100Bing you. You’ll evade, do damage, and break the immo in one ability. Get rooted by a Thief? Use WA. You can save WA for a more tactical use than just damage.

Same goes for many abilities. I truly feel that how you use your abilities will define how good of a Warrior you become. If you think of a common hammer, what is its function? To slam nails into other material? Sure. However, unless you’re a handiman, you probably don’t think of the claw on the back that’s used to pry nails up. The Warrior class has its obvious side, and its less obvious but still useful side. The uses are there in front of you, you just have to recognize them.

I respect your opinion Defektive and your builds are great. But the problem isn’t the warrior per se. The abilities are nice (albeit alot of the traits are just redundant and seem pointless to choose, and 80 percent of the utilities serve no purpose in spvp), some weapon skills are ok, but they are mostly single target, on long timers and incredibly tiny duration.

The other issue the warrior suffers from is range. To land hit you have to be pretty much on top of people for melee. I can’t count the number of times i’ve sword 2’d to someone, hit sword 3 and it would miss because they would be out of range.

Stability negates the whole hammer and mace line. I’m finding stability up on so many targets now that people have realised it’s a must have for pvp. Last night I was getting perma knocked down by elementals in lightning specs , I had to sub in stability buffs just to actually stay on targets. best part was..the elementalist seemed to have stability uptime greater than me, better escapes than me yet could output damage constantly from range.

Historically the trade off for being melee was you were tankier and if you could reach your target you could put out some hurt. If you were ranged you were squishier but you had the advantage of not having to be near your target. I find myself having to wade through swathes of aoe damage to stay on a target as they roll around and drop aoes/fire and forget abilities.

That balance doesn’t exist in this game, consequently range has all the advantage. It has escapes, damage, cc and defence.

At the moment all the warrior is good for is for stomping noobs in hot joins. If the person your playing against has any ability the warrior will fall over because currently every profession out classes the warrior.

Warriors need their utilities buffing, their 1H damage buffing (looking at you greatsword,sword,mace,bow,rifle damage key 1), traits overhauled to be more group friendly, utility cooldowns lowered (and made more group/aoe friendly). Shield needs to have some sort of natural block chance. It does no damage, has long cooldowns for such short timered abilities.

I feel sorry for warriors I see in spvp, because i’ll target them with my warrior as I know chances are they won’t have stability, or camoflage, or stealth on first hit or instant ranged escape abilities up and they’ll drop faster than a cloth wearing class to any attack.

In regards to targeting Warriors in sPvP:

That’s true in tPvP I usually call to just burn down the warrior. But thats only because 95% of Warriors still play single minded. It reminds me of when WoW Arena (yes I went there) started and people tunnel visioned on one enemy. Thats the common Warrior at the moment. When in reality its the target swaps and the pressure that gives which set a player apart.

I think the class has a lot of offer, maybe slightly handicapped compared to other classes. But there’s still a lot there – people just need to capitalize on it better.

I really, really hope they never, ever add any natural, random % block or dodge chance.

Also, what’s the maximum uptime for Stability for each class? What does it require, what does it sacrifice, and how long is it then down before it can be up again?

Defektive.7283:

Guldur, not to be a thorn in your side but I’m going to pick apart your statement.

1) “easily kited” – With proper shout management, you can cleanse a large amount of cripple / immobilize / Chill, essentially rendering yourself mobility free. Not to mention a number of skills that provide mobility such as Leap, Earthshaker and Bulls Rush

2)“his skills are too simplistic” – This may be true if you’re running GS or Rifle builds. Even Weapon/Shield builds are relatively simplistic. But the number of skills that combo into each other as a Warrior are vast as soon as you mix in Hammer / Maxe(MH or OH) and Axe.

3)“Most of our skills are do dmg and thats about it.” A lot of our skills do important things as well: Vulnerability on demand. Stuns. Knockbacks. Weakness debuff (which would eliminate the spammy vigor players), bleeds. We can also buff allies with Warhorn. I think a lot of about being a good warrior comes down to knowing whats going on around you and reacting to it accordingly.

4) “we don’t have access to boons like protection and retaliation reliably, also we don’t have access to conditions like poison, chill, confusion,blind,burning”
Retaliation uptime of 33% of a whole fight is pretty nice, I consider that reliable wouldn’t you? We also have access to Weakness, Burning (longbow bleh), Bleeds, Confusion (traited), and Vulnerability so I’m unsure of where you get that intrepretation. Also, a NUMBER of our attacks work in combo fields that will also apply things like Poisen and Burning.

5)“we aren’t able to remove boons.” – Just grab a 60% chance to remove Boon on crit sigil and stick it on a weapon if it’s that important to you.

1- Your only way to removing conditions reliably is heavily traiting and gearing for it. Not only this limits warriors role to shout build to be somewhat less kited, but you sacrifice a lot of damage to be able to even hit your opponents constantly which just doesn’t pay off when ranged classes can hit you while still remain mobile.

Your other examples of gap closers are on long cooldown or require spending your adrenaline. Even then, any decent player will pop in stability or dodge as soon as they are free and you are back chasing them with no mobility while having to constantly remove conditions.

2- Sorry but I still see all your examples as simplistic. We don’t have conditional skills built in without having to trait for it. Look at gw1 for example, skills that do more damage if target is below 50% health, do more damage if the target is knocked down, skills that are more effective if you are at full adrenaline and so on.

We don’t have to think much about our skill rotation because they are so simple that most of them ends up being used on recharge without critical thinking.

3- The thing is, apart from direct damage, every other class in the game does all this stuff much better and reliably, and most importantly, without sacrificing so much as we have to. We are the class that has to sacrifice the most things to be marginally good on a role.

4/5 – Again, my point remains that unless you are heavily traited and geared for specific actions, you can’t do half the stuff other classes can do much easier. Warrior skills are terribly simplistic, and all solutions you provided is “change all your equipment and runes to make up for it” or “change all your trait line to make it work” to give you a chance to proc what other classes have built-in in their skills.

It is no wonder that as more and more people get used to pvp and play tpvp, less and less warriors are seen in the competitive environment. Go see it for yourself and play a few tournaments to see how we need improvements to remain competitive.

I play tournaments all day.

Kiting: Leap has a very short CD fyi. I also have very few problems being kited mainly because I cleanse the conditions as they come instead of letting them stack ontop of other buffer conditions that stop the cleanse from hitting the right condition.

Spending Adren: There are a number of methods to regain adren quickly. You should be constantly using your adren not just letting it sit there and fester. Don’t let that stop you from using an F1 that’ll give you a gap close or keep an enemy in front of you.

Also in regards to using ES as a gap close: You only need 1 bar of adren to use it and it’s on a 10 sec CD. You don’t need to save up a full adren bar to use it for multiple effects.

And we should have to trait to do certain things, if anything the classes you’re referring to should be toned down to our level instead of us buffed up to theirs.

By asking for more conditions to be added with standard attacks you’re essentially simplifying the game.

While yes we do have to sacrifice a lot to be marginally good at certain areas, I wouldn’t count us out just because of that.

It almost sounds like you’re purposely trying to find reasons to not like the class. There are plenty of reasons TO like the class.

Edit:

Forgot to add in regards to making us better for Tournaments. I’d like to see our base toughness / armor increased so we wouldn’t have to trait/gear so hard so we’re not squishy.

We don’t have to think much about our skill rotation because they are so simple that most of them ends up being used on recharge without critical thinking.

And people wonder why their abilities are dodged so easily.

Also, the way any competition evolves is that one side finds something that works and uses it. The next side then needs to find out how to counter it before the first side needs to then adapt again. If these so-called top teams are all moving away from Warrior, then the Warrior class isn’t evolving. The beauty of Guild Wars 2 is that you can re-roll whatever in minutes for sPvP. The curse is that you can re-roll whatever in minutes for sPvP. How do you know when a class is balanced if everyone is taking the obvious route?

You have to wait for people who love the class to really push it to the limit. Plus, as far as I’m concerned, free tourney queues mean about as much as hot-join. I’ll wait for organized competition before starting to see what teams choose and how comps pan out.

Also, while the warrior is mindlessly drone-chasing his target around while the target has Stability, what is the rest of the team doing?

Defektive

maybe slightly handicapped compared to other classes

That’s kind of the whole point though Defekt (it’s nice to see you finally admit it without dancing around it). In TPvP you can’t have “slightly handicapped” compared to other classes. That means you’re crap. It’s 110% power/efficiency or gtfo of the competition.

Defektive

And we should have to trait to do certain things, if anything the classes you’re referring to should be toned down to our level instead of us buffed up to theirs.

I highly disagree. On a few levels.
Firstly: It’s easier to buff one class than to nerf 5-6.
Secondly: The warrior doesn’t need blanket stat ‘buffs’ anyways. That’s counter to the issue with warriors. It needs a trait/weapon ability overhaul. Minor, but important things. QoL improvements really and some changes to bring warrior abilities up to par with their sister abilities the other classes use (for instance compare guardian shield vs warrior shield, or even engi shield vs warrior shield.).

The warrior is “vanilla” and standing next to 31 flavors of creativity. It really just needs to have something mixed into it so it’s not vanilla anymore.

Just to be clear. I dance around things for a living.

While yes Warriors compared to some classes like Mesmers or Guardians have a handicap, I’m more concerned with how much of an over reaction people are having to it. I see us as 10% less effective in certain areas (like damage compared to survivability). But I firmly believe we make up for it in control utility.