Guild Wars 2

Hello !
I am working on a full rework/change for the warrior, I’ll give some of my thought, still I need help from you guys, give me your ideas !

My point :
- to give useless skills a chance to be used
- upgrade core weapons
- nerf some strong berserker primal burst
- make the warrior feels more “crushing”
- nerf passive defense, focus on active defense
- PS damage around 20k for both Condi and Power so you choose the build for a specific encounter and not because it’s stronger
- DPS spec ! (around 30k) for Condi and Power (2 axes!)

I wrote all the physical skills and finished with some changes i’d love to see.

Mending (make it a physical skill):
Heal yourself and remove conditions.
Healing : 6.520
Conditions removed : 3
Add : gain health for every conditions removed : 500

Kick:
Breakstun and push your foe back with a kick.
Cast : 0.5sec
Cooldown : 12sec to 15sec
Damage : 292 to 500
Knockback : 240
Number of Targets : 3
Range : 300
Breakstun

Throw Bolas:
Throw bolas to immobilize your foe.
Cast : 0.5sec
Cooldown : 16sec
Damage : 73 to 200
Immobilize : 4sec
Pierces
Target : 5
Combo finisher : Physical projectile
Range : 900
Can use behind you

Bull’s charge:
Charge and knock down your foe.
Damage increase when target isnt moving : +100%
Cast : 1sec
Cooldown : 30sec
Damage : 219 to 300
Knockdown : 3seconds
Combo finisher : Leap
Range : 900

Stomp:
Gain stability and launch nearby foes into the air with a powerful stomp. Gain stability for each enemy struck.
Cast : 0.75sec
Cooldown : 40sec to 45sec
Damage : 219
Stability : 5sec to 8sec
Launch : 450
Number of targets : 5
Radius : 240
Breakstun
Combo finisher : Blast
Range : 450 to 600
Recharge reduce per hit (number of targets) : 3sec

Rampage:
No longer Physical, is now a shout

Physical skills already got a pretty big buff. Don’t misunderstand me, they still need some love, but they don’t need reworked, they just need to have better cooldowns (in cases like Rampage) and a damage buff (in the case of thinks like kick and stomp) I’d love to see more vanilla warriors running around with physical skills which can actually compete with rage skills. All in all I agree with you, I just differ in my thinking on what they need.

[PvP perspective only]

I don’t think our current physical skills are bad. I run a vanilla power warrior in PvP, with Bull’s Charge and Rampage, mostly unranked and hotjoin, but currently starting the new league. It has good mobility and burst potential, plus you have a more offensive gameplay with Reckless Dodge.

From a PvP perspectice, the problem with physical skills are:

• Firstly, a warrior cannot live without Berserker’s Stance and Endure Pain. This, in itself, is a major problem, and leaves only one utility slot available. This slot must be dedicated to stability if you don’t have any passive one such as Last Stand or Eternal Champion, and may be used for anything if you have one. In short, you may only use two physical things: Rampage and whatever you like – and it requires you to take Last Stand in Defense. Eternal Champion is not available, because…
• On a larger scale, a warrior cannot live without Defense, and be effective without Discipline – so this leaves only one trait line available. Berserker has a lot of trash skills, but also brings Headbutt, Eternal Champion, Skull Grinder, Arc Divider and Shattering Blow – which can shine in PvP. Strength is a great line as it is, but it pales a bit versus the aforementioned skills.
• The essence of physical skills is hard control – not damage or anything else (Bolas being an oddball, but immobilization has become very unreliable now). Most classes have lots of passive effects that mitigate it (blocks, stability, special CC reflect), lots of active way to clear a hard control (break stun), and finally lots of other ways to manage it (invulnerability, dodge, evade, blocks). In short – even when you try to prepare and time your usage of a physical skill, then you’re likely to be ineffective.

Thus, the problem with physical skills lies within their essence: hard control is great, but is more easily countered than it was in the past. To me, reviving physical skills would therefore require some change:

• add utility to Peak Performance. Remove the damage thing, and make it so that physical skills grant a boon (e.g. quickness or regeneration or vigor, as was discussed months ago on this forum), or even remove a boon (stability).
• add a rune dedicated to physical skills, would be usable by both warriors and thieves. It would be similar to the soldier rune, which have shouts clearing conditions. One could have the sixth effect for anything useful (e.g. interrupting with a hard control putting the opponent’s skill on double CD and so on…).

Rampage can be great, and I have reasonable success with it – but mostly because players aren’t expecting it. It can be easily countered (conditions even if you precast resistance, moa, hard CC because one stack of stab is not enough…) or kited. I’m not sure what could be done to improve it without making it too strong. The hard CC and big damage is splendid, worth the long CD, but it still lacks something.

My issue with warrior is the lack of thought behind its HOT counter part.

Adrenaline use to give us the healing based on adrenaline. Which meant timing on using it. Anet changed it to adrenaline bursts gives you the heal. That straight makes discipline the clear favorite no matter what build you run. You need discipline your condi cleanse, might stacking and most importantly the adrenaline. You need defense for the sustain/heals/ elite spec. Defense might have the 3 best elite traits for warrior in this one last trait.

Which brings us to what someone already pointed out. You get 1 or 2 spots for these skills. Rage skills give adrenaline and DO MORE DAMAGE. They also have shorter cool downs, with the nerf to rampage in time, boons and damage. There is almost no reason to ever choose these skills.

All in all the people who created elite specs really didnt care for GW2 diversity when it came to PvP or WvW.

emkelly.2371:

Physical skills already got a pretty big buff. Don’t misunderstand me, they still need some love, but they don’t need reworked, they just need to have better cooldowns (in cases like Rampage) and a damage buff (in the case of thinks like kick and stomp) I’d love to see more vanilla warriors running around with physical skills which can actually compete with rage skills. All in all I agree with you, I just differ in my thinking on what they need.

mmmmm I disagree, although I disagree with the OP on a couple of things to boot.

There is presently no viable build that uses physical skills. Some people get away with stomp as 1 of their skills, sure, but that’s pretty much it.

Would halfing bola’s existing cooldown to a mere 6 seconds when traited, justify them in my builds? nope. Would being able to use ‘kick’ every 5 seconds justify it in my builds? nope.

Would bullsrush be jusftied on a 15s cd? sure, i can see that happening tbh.
Stomp on a 15s cd? Wouldn’t have use in my builds sstill but for many pvp sure….why not.
Would having these things make ur builds op? WEll it would be a control skill, it would make u less tanky and less damage heavy in return, but bolster synergy with teammates in ways warriors just can’t achieve atm.
Is it okay to make bullrush a 15s cd as is though? no, cause of the movement gain it provides. Is it okay to make stomp 15s as is? no, cause its an aoe skill.

If though…..we made it so landing bullsrush on an enemy halfved the cooldown of the next use….then ya we could justift the 15s cd since being incombat and ramming into an enemy would seek to counter the movement gained and give ways to avoid it being abused to kite. Additionally maybe bullsrush negates stability on use now? So you can knockdown people who use it, ands its more of a timed ability. ccing some1 with bullrush maybe activates an additional effect like protection on the cc’d warrior. Conditionxcondition as some would say is what would allow us to make skills viable while not making them abusive for other things..

Hot took some good steps towards giving abilities 2ndary abilities. It even gave a few built-in weaknesses for counterplay. This is what physical skills need tbh, and on that merit I agree with the OP.

The fact that Wild Blow does like 2.5x the damage of Kick, removes blind and weakness on hit, is a launch, and CAN knockback multiple enemies, and generates a lot of adrenaline (miss or hit) , is very offensive to Kick. Kick would have to have a cooldown so low you could chain stun people for it to be better than Wild Blow.

Oh and it’s a 20 second cd to kick’s 9.5 when traited.

So what are physicals supposed to do, heavy CC? you’d have to buff them a lot to accomplish that.

Personally I think Bull’s Rush has a good identity as of now, it’s a 3s knockdown and a leap finisher, so use it through fire fields if using King of Fires for some fun.

Kick being a stun break isn’t bad and makes it the core warrior’s Outrage. It should have a leap finisher though. Although it would be fun to make it like the Tatsu in fighting games (so now the warrior with 3 physicals could have Projectile, Blast, Leap, and a Whirl).

Bolas needs to pulse immobolize (and weakness preferably) like the ranger root. The other physicals synergize with Body Blow, but Bolas is a root and does not benefit from the trait. Making it apply weakness makes it harder to dodge out of the incoming assault (I mean you did magically hit Bolas). Alternatively, make it destroy Endurance (100 preferably) but still apply only 1 long root. Thus you don’t dodge out but block, and you can cleanse to gain movement back (also lets bolas actually function against thieves since it’s super hard to hit with).

Stomp has a nice identity, but falls short due to the cd. Reducing it would go a long way, but I think making it grant protection per target hit (in addition to the stab) would let it be a good initiation tool, or res disruption (since it launches, it’ll move the down body and let you cleave on it afterwards with stab + protection). It’s a blast so that is cool too.

Rampage is rampage. If you buff the warrior version, make sure not to buff the Engi version (which has a drastically lower cooldown when traited so it’s really annoying). If anything, I’d make Rampage have its own Burst Skill. That would be a good change without drastically overtuning it.

SPECIAL MENTION:
Mending being a physical would be a good start.