Been playing Warrior since launch. Warriors has felt like the underdog class forever. I could rarely, if ever, find teams for Tpvp because “warriors suck and their niche suck and other classes do everything better.”
I would eventually leave Tpvp altogether, and take my hand at WvWvW.
Before the buffs, I struggled a little bit. Warriors lack survivability altogether at this point. It was get in>kill>die. Unless you were rolling GS+sword mainhand, you often didn’t get out of a zerg alive. I used hammer anyway. I was always a hammer warrior in GW1.
During this time I would surprisingly love to use mainhand axe. The raw damage output spread throughout the autoattack chain would punish other people who played passively and didn’t get off my face. Little did I know, axe would soon be nerfed into oblivion. The damage all moved to the very last hit of the chain. With that simple change, axe was no longer viable in PVP unless you wanted to play gimmicks and eviscerate upscaled leveled people.
It didn’t matter. I still had my hammer. I still had my kitten survivability, kitten niche, and kitten mobility. I did what I could in zergs. Glorious survival changes came. No longer did I feel like a weaker version of the Guardian class.
We gained a unique build and finally, a unique niche. No longer were we “loldamage.” We finally gained a build that gave us what we needed: survival and damage.
You see,people who don’t play a Warrior, or people who decided to FOTM, the Warrior (as stated by Anet!) was the “closest to balance” at launch. Warrior, at launch, had 2 options: Defense, and offense. If you were defensive, you lacked offensive power. If you were offensive, you lacked defensive power. This was a perfect line of balance. The problem, however, was that every other class had access to both of the options at once in some form of way via traits or class gimmicks. Warrior had none, and thus, was the weakest class. It is only until we gained both, and brought up to par with other classes, that everyone began complaining.
Hammer is broken? Stability is hard, I know. It’s really really hard to swap a skill out that counters the entire, and i mean..entire, point of a build. unsuspecting foe doesn’t work if you aren’t stunned. Push your god *** stability button or learn to telegraph and push roll. Congrats, you have royally screwed over the Warrior.
With all the tears of people not wanting to push stability and roll, we have gained a possible over nerf- massive percentage reductions in the damage hammer will do,along with inaccess to UF.
I ponder, what exactly are we to do now? At the worst end of the spectrum, hammer becomes a complete control weapon. No longer a viable weapon for solo roaming or even group play as you will sacrifice to much power. You might be able to stun someone for ~4s (Or not! Maybe they will bring stability or push roll!), but you will lack the damage to be an actual threat.
With these nerfs, our gained niche is now gone. We are longer a threat, and we are once again reduced to being either “offensive” or “defensive.” Running around with a greatsword with kitten defense because we have to trait into damage, so we end up dying to random AOE accidental from a zerg…or running around with a hammer with kitten damage because we have to trait into defense to live long enough to maybe CC someone for just a few seconds.
We are back to square one.
Make the ground even this time. Take away every other classes tricks. Make them spec full offensive or defense. Make them lose their niche altogether. Make them become a hollow shell of a class that once, after almost a year, finally shined brightly.
I will once again fade into the shadows, with my giant blade, as a weaker version with less utility guardian.
/kneel
