Guild Wars 2

Banners: Powerful but clunky and requires you to babysit them. They get left behind, lost, stolen. You waste time picking up and dropping them constantly.

My (reposted) suggestion?
Have them work using a toggle on/off system, somewhat like engineer toolkits. When toggled on, the banner is displayed on your characters back, and provides its passive bonuses to allies within range. Your #1-5 remain unchanged however, instead the F3 and F4 buttons become available. F3 is Inspire (functioning exactly like it is now, banner #3), and F4 is the banner specific skill (currently banner #2). Only one banner may be active at a time, and toggling off/swapping banners will incur a 30 second cooldown. Banners can no longer be dropped, lost, stolen, etc.

For the elite banner, which functions slightly differently…
F4: Nearby downed allies immediately rally, CT 2, CD 240, Uses Ground Targeting.

In light of the arguments and some warriors expressing their desire for banners to remain as-is, I’ve decided that it would be win-win if this proposed functionality be available via a trait.

New Tactics Trait, 10 PT: Mobile Banners

I’d settle for a much simpler version: when the banner is summoned (and not expired) it gets replaced with a recall skill like shadowstep and spectral walk, only it’s for teleporting the banner back to the player.

Then I can still use them for blast finishers, have an ally carry one, and so on, but if someone flees with it I’ll just rip it back to where I’m standing.

Like I’ve read in atleast 3 different forum posts, just set them on our back and give us 3 skills per active banner, or 1 active skill per banner. 3 Banners? no problem, just put 3 of them in a tricone flag fashion on our backs. This makes them portable, you don’t need to pick them up, and it’s essentially an active signet you can play with. Kind of like a minion or pet. But yeah, just give us backpack banners :/

Dand.8231:

Banners: Powerful but clunky and requires you to babysit them. They get left behind, lost, stolen. You waste time picking up and dropping them constantly.

My (reposted) suggestion?
Have them work using a toggle on/off system, somewhat like engineer toolkits. When toggled on, the banner is displayed on your characters back, and provides its passive bonuses to allies within range. Your #1-5 remain unchanged however, instead the F3 and F4 buttons become available. F3 is Inspire (functioning exactly like it is now, banner #3), and F4 is the banner specific skill (currently banner #2). Only one banner may be active at a time, and toggling off/swapping banners will incur a 30 second cooldown. Banners can no longer be dropped, lost, stolen, etc.

For the elite banner, which functions slightly differently…
F4: Nearby downed allies immediately rally, CT 2, CD 240, Uses Ground Targeting.

MAKE THIS MAN A DEV

#BattleStandard2013meta

+1

I don’t want banners to be part of our class. Warriors are not all buff-bots.

Although I like the fact you should be able to wear a banner on your back, it should take up a utility slot and traits.

It also would not really help us in any of our current issues.

Daecollo.9578:

I don’t want banners to be part of our class. Warriors are not all buff-bots.

Although I like the fact you should be able to wear a banner on your back, it should take up a utility slot and traits.

It also would not really help us in any of our current issues.

He meant that Banners would operate like Engineer Kits, not Mesmer Shatters =p

But different.

When you equip a banner under Dand’s edit, it would give you new F1-F4 skills.

The banners are still Utility Skills.

SharadSun.3089:

Daecollo.9578:

I don’t want banners to be part of our class. Warriors are not all buff-bots.

Although I like the fact you should be able to wear a banner on your back, it should take up a utility slot and traits.

It also would not really help us in any of our current issues.

He meant that Banners would operate like Engineer Kits, not Mesmer Shatters =p

But different.

When you equip a banner under Dand’s edit, it would give you new F1-F4 skills.

The banners are still Utility Skills.

It sounds too much like engineers.

Your making the class a bit overcomplicated, because now we have to worry about F1-F4 skills and adrenaline? (in case they do change it?)

The Developers already said they want classes to be unique, I kind of agree even though it sounds cool it just doesn’t really sound warrior.

The reason that the Warrior is so… for lack of a better word, gimpy… is because we LACK complexity. We lack options, flavor, abilities, and yes maybe we have uniqueness, but the only way we’re unique is that we’re simple and easy to counter.

The class with the deepest and most involved gameplay, Mesmer, is currently the most powerful because they have OPTIONS. Maybe not the weapons that they can use, but the THINGS they can do, and the fact that they can do it all without really sacrificing anything.

Yes, we lack options/good traits like all the other classes have.

F2-F3 skills won’t fix everything if we don’t even have any good traits. Look at brawn for example and see how worthless it is. Compare our traits to say: Guardians? We simply don’t have any survivability.

Dand offered very nice suggestions!. Banners are EXTREMELY clunky. One of the worst things about banners, is when you have it equipped in combat, and you drop it. Your weapon swap is put on cool down. This feels just wrong! Banner of Tactics. With a Clerics amulet the small heal only heals for 900. Not to mention the regeneration it provides only stacks duration with Inspiring Battle Standard. Not even worth using! Banner of Defense should be changed to Banner of Knock back and RUN AWAY!. Good luck using your banner as a blast finisher, because by the time you pick it up and plant it, the combo field is most likely gone.

Dand.8231:

Banners: Powerful but clunky and requires you to babysit them. They get left behind, lost, stolen. You waste time picking up and dropping them constantly.

My (reposted) suggestion?
Have them work using a toggle on/off system, somewhat like engineer toolkits. When toggled on, the banner is displayed on your characters back, and provides its passive bonuses to allies within range. Your #1-5 remain unchanged however, instead the F3 and F4 buttons become available. F3 is Inspire (functioning exactly like it is now, banner #3), and F4 is the banner specific skill (currently banner #2). Only one banner may be active at a time, and toggling off/swapping banners will incur a 30 second cooldown. Banners can no longer be dropped, lost, stolen, etc.

For the elite banner, which functions slightly differently…
F4: Nearby downed allies immediately rally, CT 2, CD 240, Uses Ground Targeting.

Please please please please please please please please please please please pretty please with sugar on top I’ll mow the lawn and take out the trash and do the dishes for a week please Arena.net please please please please.

In all serious banners are boring and need to be changed.

A bright green flag above my head all the time would totally ruin the look I was going for

The planting them on the ground thing is good as it is, they just need to be either 1) picked up on the fly or 2) summonable to your hands by pressing the utility skill again.

Thanks for the support all.

@Daecollo: No ones saying a banner fix would be a magical cure that would make warriors suddenly super viable. But banners are plain “broken.” Not so broken they’re unusable, of course. But what they are is….

Clunky: Ever try to manage 2-3 banners in WvW? Hell, even in a dungeon moving from fight to fight or across a large room? Picking them up can be a huge pain, especially if you run more than 1 at a time.

Glitchy: Half the time when you quick-drop a banner, it starts your weapon-swap cooldown.

Time Consuming: Compared to any other support skills, banners cannot be easily and simply used. They must first be summoned, then picked up, and THEN their ability can be used. Then you must put it down and resume fighting. Want to use it again? Go ahead and pick it back up, then use the ability, and put it down again. Compared to Shout warriors and guardians, who can even use their support abilities WHILE swinging, this is a monumental waste of time.

Half-useless: Yes, my suggestion scraps the #5 ability, slamming the banner for a blast finisher. So what?! Unless you HAVE the banner in your hand already, you’re never going to be able to run over to it, pick it up, run into the combo field, and #5 slam it for a blast finisher in time. The combo field will have faded by then. And even if you did, the time spent is not worth it. You’d have been better off just auto attacking with your weapon. If you’re waiting to summon it for a blast finisher, you’re wasting time that it could be out and providing bonuses. Same goes for standing around holding it, waiting for the chance to blast finisher it instead of fighting.

Ground Items: Aside from the clunky nature, this means they interfere with other fun mechanics like those scattered ground items all over. Metal bars, planks, moa feathers, and some gun/weapon/misc items you need to pick up and carry around during events.

MIA: Hey where’d my banner go?! SoaB, that guy just ran off with it…

Would enjoy banners being a toggle with a cool down after either turned off or reached maximum duration. It could be more aura based like Warhammer’s Knight of the Blazing Sun. You could only have one aura active at a time but you could aura twist in WAR. In GW2, obviously, we would have much longer cool downs so twisting wouldn’t be as viable but who would want to run 4 banners?

Imo i hope they should just get ride of the banners completely.
in my eyes, warrior rely only on his physic and combat technique instead of banner relying group buffer.

edit: plus on gw2 websites warrior description it says warriors rely on speed, strength and toughness, if we have to carry a banner everywhere it would just cut our speed and strength in half. banner suit more to guardians tbh

Dand.8231:

Banners: Powerful but clunky and requires you to babysit them. They get left behind, lost, stolen. You waste time picking up and dropping them constantly.

My (reposted) suggestion?
Have them work using a toggle on/off system, somewhat like engineer toolkits. When toggled on, the banner is displayed on your characters back, and provides its passive bonuses to allies within range. Your #1-5 remain unchanged however, instead the F3 and F4 buttons become available. F3 is Inspire (functioning exactly like it is now, banner #3), and F4 is the banner specific skill (currently banner #2). Only one banner may be active at a time, and toggling off/swapping banners will incur a 30 second cooldown. Banners can no longer be dropped, lost, stolen, etc.

For the elite banner, which functions slightly differently…
F4: Nearby downed allies immediately rally, CT 2, CD 240, Uses Ground Targeting.

Personally I’d prefer your way but it would be way too powerful since it would essentially make banners into a much more powerful version of a signet passive, and if they were to go that route they will probably have to nerf down the effect.

Also, under your system banners can no longer be stacked. (ie you can’t throw down 2 different banners by yourself and get 2 sets of bonuses)

SharadSun.3089:

The reason that the Warrior is so… for lack of a better word, gimpy… is because we LACK complexity. We lack options, flavor, abilities, and yes maybe we have uniqueness, but the only way we’re unique is that we’re simple and easy to counter.

The class with the deepest and most involved gameplay, Mesmer, is currently the most powerful because they have OPTIONS. Maybe not the weapons that they can use, but the THINGS they can do, and the fact that they can do it all without really sacrificing anything.

Yeah i can somewhat agree, with warrior needed a little more complexity.
My idea was to change a warriors auto attack based on what weapon it has in the off hand. You know, so we actually use both weapons in combat? like if im running axe/shield then my first attack is a chop, the double chop could be like a chop then a hit with the shield, etc. If you where to run double axe your warrior would swing both of them, possibly with less animation cool down making the chain a bit faster. same with others like dual sword, mace etc.
Obviously this wouldn’t effect 2 handed but i also think every class with 2 handers should have 2 #4 and #5 skills to chose from.

Banners are powerful, but situational.

The only “fix” I would welcome is to restrict the grabbing of a banner to our party/guild.

If you want something more mobile, go shouts.

Menaka.5092:

If you want something more mobile, go shouts

Banners are the only set of skills in the entire game, that restricts your mobility so drastically.

It’s not an issue of them being less mobile than shouts, its an issue of them being less mobile than anything else in the entire game.

Change #5 to ‘Throw’ – The same as Plant only you y’know, throw it somewhere instead of putting it at your feet. Instant cast, no kittening around. Could even be trained to include knockdown and damage if it collects anyone along the way/within the vicinity of where it lands.

Banners are already very powerful in a group setting. When traited you have 4 blast finishers that provide area regen and powerful buffs. You have an AoE that will pick up 5 downed players. You can provide your group with swiftness, regen and fury.

I run a banner spec in WvW in groups and the amount of healing it puts out is really unparalleled. You can maintain near perma regen on 20 people. Banners biggest drawback is that they’re clunky. If they had a recall ability that worked at say 3000 range and a burst I’d be over the moon.

I’d actually think of the banner on the back as a nerf. Making it so you can’t use the banners as a blast finisher and forgoing their actives would be a deal breaker for me.

Dolan.3071:

A bright green flag above my head all the time would totally ruin the look I was going for

The planting them on the ground thing is good as it is, they just need to be either 1) picked up on the fly or 2) summonable to your hands by pressing the utility skill again.

This is not a beauty contest.

I’ve always thought Banners would be more appropriate for Guardians and Spirit Weapons more appropriate for Warriors – Guardians stand their ground surrounded by Banners, protecting their allies while Warriors surge forward into battle, calling on Spirit Weapons to fight along side them. This would make more sense to me at least.

I genuinely believe ArenaNet has got this the wrong way round. Maybe they got confused and got the classes mixed up? As it is, Banners are quite unsuitable for the Warrior class.

Would rather the devs use the effort for f2-4 abilities on something that’s actually combat usable rather than on a niche utility slot.

Definitely more burst skills for f2-4.

How about making Tactic and Defense Banner useful in Dungeons? They fall short compared to all the other Banners, since you can’t facetank most dungeon bosses anyway, having extra healingpower, toughness, vitality wont help you.

I do sPvp a bit (r39 so i’m a wee bit familiar), and I’ve been playing with warrior for the last few weeks.
My build focuses on:
– Buffing and Sustaining Allies
* Great AoE might stacking (+90% might duration, woot)
* AoE +180 Vitality, AoE +180 Toughness
* Constant health regeneration buff (273 heal per second).
* Reviving allies with Battle Standard

- High Toughness and high vitality
– Medium single target cc

For weapons, I use Longbow and Mace/Shield.
Utilities are Healing Signet, Berserker Stance, For Great Justice, Banner of defense, and Battle Standard.

Might stacking is the awesomeness to this build. Using 3 different sets of runes I get +60% might duration. Then with traits I get +30% boon duration. That is a whopping +90% might duration. Using berserkers stance once, I can get 2 uses of my longbow fire AoE shot, all while out of combat. In one fire AoE with my longbow, I use longbow #3 blast finisher and Banner of defense blast finisher (summoning or #5 banner skill). So doing that about every 10 seconds gives 6 stacks of AoE might that lasts about 50 seconds. On top of that I use “For Great Justice” as much as possible for an additional 3 stacks that lasts just under 50 seconds. This allows for great team might stacking. I alone can easily keep up a constant 20 stacks of might for people around me. Of couse it takes about 20-30 seconds to achieve that much might alone, but even at the beginning of the fight, I lay down 9 stacks plus another 6 stacks 10 seconds later. You can get even more might if you have another class with easy blast finishers (Thief Cluster Bomb).

The longbow is needed to achieve the huge stacks of might, plus the “Pin Down” skill is a great immobilize. Since I’m all about buffing and won’t do much damage anyway, I chose Mace/Shield to stay alive longer and do good single target cc’ing. Mace adrenaline skill is amazing by the way.

Since I have a fire AoE almost always readily available, the blast finisher the Banner of defense has is huge. I know when the fire field is down, so I know when to quickly pick up the banner and slam it down. The banner blast finisher is huge in my opinion to help stack might.

I also have the banner traited to grant regeneration. People around my banner get 273 health a second. That is HUGE! I don’t even have to be there to heal teammates by a great amount. And since the banner gives constant regeneration, it doesn’t matter if the boon gets stripped, you will get it right back!

Many times I sit at mid point. I tell the roamers on my team to grab my banner when they run to a small fight on another point if nothing is going on at mid. (You can’t do that with your silly ‘backpack’ idea). 180 vitality gives almost an extra 2k health to their total health pool! So

Another huge and awesome thing is that the banners don’t disappear when you die! So if I die early in a fight, I’m still somewhat contributing to the fights. If banners are a backpack, the banner would go away when you die. This backpack idea is sounding like a huge nerf to me.

I think banner are great right now and only need minimal change, NOT some huge over hall…

Builds don’t need to be pure damage all of the time. I do all of my damage through my allies by buffing them and keeping them alive.

PS: Still playing with this build, I was going to make a thread about my build to throw about some ideas. Since this build is so heavily dependent on how the banners are now, I decided to post it here too, hoping to add to the banner discussion. So if you have any ideas on this build, keep an eye out for the thread!

Klinch.2964:

I do sPvp a bit (r39 so i’m a wee bit familiar), and I’ve been playing with warrior for the last few weeks.
My build focuses on:
– Buffing and Sustaining Allies
* Great AoE might stacking (+90% might duration, woot)
* AoE +180 Vitality, AoE +180 Toughness
* Constant health regeneration buff (273 heal per second).
* Reviving allies with Battle Standard

- High Toughness and high vitality
– Medium single target cc

For weapons, I use Longbow and Mace/Shield.
Utilities are Healing Signet, Berserker Stance, For Great Justice, Banner of defense, and Battle Standard.

Might stacking is the awesomeness to this build. Using 3 different sets of runes I get +60% might duration. Then with traits I get +30% boon duration. That is a whopping +90% might duration. Using berserkers stance once, I can get 2 uses of my longbow fire AoE shot, all while out of combat. In one fire AoE with my longbow, I use longbow #3 blast finisher and Banner of defense blast finisher (summoning or #5 banner skill). So doing that about every 10 seconds gives 6 stacks of AoE might that lasts about 50 seconds. On top of that I use “For Great Justice” as much as possible for an additional 3 stacks that lasts just under 50 seconds. This allows for great team might stacking. I alone can easily keep up a constant 20 stacks of might for people around me. Of couse it takes about 20-30 seconds to achieve that much might alone, but even at the beginning of the fight, I lay down 9 stacks plus another 6 stacks 10 seconds later. You can get even more might if you have another class with easy blast finishers (Thief Cluster Bomb).

The longbow is needed to achieve the huge stacks of might, plus the “Pin Down” skill is a great immobilize. Since I’m all about buffing and won’t do much damage anyway, I chose Mace/Shield to stay alive longer and do good single target cc’ing. Mace adrenaline skill is amazing by the way.

Since I have a fire AoE almost always readily available, the blast finisher the Banner of defense has is huge. I know when the fire field is down, so I know when to quickly pick up the banner and slam it down. The banner blast finisher is huge in my opinion to help stack might.

I also have the banner traited to grant regeneration. People around my banner get 273 health a second. That is HUGE! I don’t even have to be there to heal teammates by a great amount. And since the banner gives constant regeneration, it doesn’t matter if the boon gets stripped, you will get it right back!

Many times I sit at mid point. I tell the roamers on my team to grab my banner when they run to a small fight on another point if nothing is going on at mid. (You can’t do that with your silly ‘backpack’ idea). 180 vitality gives almost an extra 2k health to their total health pool! So

Another huge and awesome thing is that the banners don’t disappear when you die! So if I die early in a fight, I’m still somewhat contributing to the fights. If banners are a backpack, the banner would go away when you die. This backpack idea is sounding like a huge nerf to me.

I think banner are great right now and only need minimal change, NOT some huge over hall…

Builds don’t need to be pure damage all of the time. I do all of my damage through my allies by buffing them and keeping them alive.

PS: Still playing with this build, I was going to make a thread about my build to throw about some ideas. Since this build is so heavily dependent on how the banners are now, I decided to post it here too, hoping to add to the banner discussion. So if you have any ideas on this build, keep an eye out for the thread!

The banner could drop from your back while you are dead.

Fenrir.5493:

The banner could drop from your back while you are dead.

But in sPvp the ability to have a teammate grab the banner and bring it to a much more needed spot will still be gone with the backpack idea. The blast finisher would be gone as well. Also with this idea, AoE regen, AoE knockback (just to name a few off of my head) would be gone as well… another nerf.

The only reason why people like this backpack thing is because they think it is a hassle to carry around one banner in your normal day to day pve’ing. Any yes, with more than one banner it can be sort of a hassle. But when you are in a group who knows you are some sort of banner build, just assign a person to pick up a certain banner when you move areas in a dungeon or something, it isn’t that hard.
But this backpack idea also only allows for one banner to be active anyway which is a huge nerf as well.

I think banners are almost perfect in sPvp world. I haven’t done much pve content with my warrior, so I guess I can’t say much. But I don’t see it being such a big deal to completely over hall how banners work. And the idea people seem to be leaning on in this thread is definitely a step in the WRONG direction (Easier to manage, but a heck of a lot weaker).

Banners I think were ment to be used by any ally once the banner was summoned. It allows the warrior a great passive to help out a team without him being restricted to stand next to them. I see that in an open world, people complain that random players will grab and run off with the banner. Possibly only allow players in your party to interact with your banners then?

now I’ve seen it all someone that uses banners in spvp and thinks banners are almost perfect wtf

Fenrir.5493:

Dolan.3071:

A bright green flag above my head all the time would totally ruin the look I was going for

The planting them on the ground thing is good as it is, they just need to be either 1) picked up on the fly or 2) summonable to your hands by pressing the utility skill again.

This is not a beauty contest.

Actually in PvE, it kinda is.

Tetra Bug.7134:

I run a banner spec in WvW in groups and the amount of healing it puts out is really unparalleled. You can maintain near perma regen on 20 people. Banners biggest drawback is that they’re clunky. If they had a recall ability that worked at say 3000 range and a burst I’d be over the moon.

You mean you snipe regen from other sources that are possibly even superior. No one needs your crummy 0 healing power regen. Banner regen has to be the most overrated thing on the warrior forums.

Agony.3542:

How about making Tactic and Defense Banner useful in Dungeons? They fall short compared to all the other Banners, since you can’t facetank most dungeon bosses anyway, having extra healingpower, toughness, vitality wont help you.

Banner of Strength isn’t great either, since any given attack only benefits from one of the buffs vs. both buffs with Discipline.

someone who steals banners here: i like being able to pick them up and help warriors move to the next farm/event spot. Or when i see a warrior run off and leave it to waste, what a shame! I have to take them in so that they are not out in the cold.

being able to teleport banners to you would be helpful though.

I know im going to get flak for this but: Banners become summon able people, they carry the banner around. they can be killed, hitting the utility button hile targetting a character makes them follwo that character.

Now they are mobile, and balanced with the ranger spirit summons!

AlBundy.7851:

now I’ve seen it all someone that uses banners in spvp and thinks banners are almost perfect wtf

Yeah, I think banners do pretty well if used right. With my build and my use, what was so bad about the banner? What do you think makes it bad. What do you think would make it better in those situations? Banners could be better, but they definitely aren’t bad.

Rather than just saying some dumb-butt comment, why don’t you contribute to the conversation?

It’s pretty common knowledge that the banner skills that replace your weapon skills when holding the banner are garbage. You have to Trait heavily into Tactics to get the banner to give aoe regen and increase the radius and reduce the cooldown those 2 traits should be rolled into one.

I don’t really understand how I’m the one with the dumb butt comment when you wrote 2 walls of text saying nothing more than tooltip quotes and praising banners when in reality they are terrible. You’re essentially running a pve build in hotjoin pvp and telling people it’s great when it’s not. You’re just another person that comes into threads that are trying to bring warriors out from the bottom and saying “Hey guys I like using terrible utilities because I like them please don’t change the terrible utilities I use.” If you think you have added anything to this conversation I find that hilarious.

I’d really like to see changes to the trait that makes banners give regent to everyone near them. I think it would make a lot more sense if banners gave health per second relative to your healing power, and stacked in intensity with each banner. Stacking regen duration is completely pointless, and I think this would make banners more viable with bunker builds. And, theyd be an even better option if they were made easier to use (easier to pick up etc). I’d also like to see a larger variety of skills between each type of banner.

Klinch, you can’t be serious when you say that banners are “perfect” for sPvP of all things? Really? I can’t believe you “just assign a person to pick up a certain banner” and they do so… like that, eh, Ranger is really going to run around with your Banner and oh, I’m sure that Mesmer will drag one around for you too. Jeez-oh. “Banners I think were ment to be used by any ally once the banner was summoned.” Yeah I’m sure that was the idea but come on, we Warriors know Banners, what they can do and how they work yet no one uses them, (for well-known reasons) and again, you expect team-mates to deal with them? It just doesn’t happen.

You say that the Banner re-work ideas based on making them easier to use [like a backpack] is a step in the “WRONG” direction – nonsense! What’s the point in having powerful Banners when they’re so cumbersome, disruptive and unintuitive to use? If making them slightly weaker and mounting them onto the Warrior means that more will use them then I think that’s a fair pay-off. The occasional random player/ team-mate grabbing it and running-off with it (most likely for personal Swiftness…) isn’t exactly ideal now, is it? “I tell the roamers on my team to grab my banner when they run to a small fight on another point…” Yeah, I often see Thieves running around with a Banner when they’re en-route somewhere, dropping it to fight and then going back and picking it up before carrying on with whatever they’re doing. Actually, I never see this, from any class.

Banner effects are generally fine, it’s the practicality of using them that’s in question. If ArenaNet can find a better way for us to receive the benefits they give without the hassle of the whole pick-it-up-drop-it-pick-it-up-drop-it mechanic then that’d maybe see them used to better effect. As for replacing your actual weapons skills when you’re carrying it… no, just no. My idea of a Warrior does not involve hitting enemies with a flag on the end of a wooden pole. Sorry.

@ Doopslayer – I love the idea that Banners are carried by a summon-able NPC. It’s the same mechanic that The Lord of the Rings Online used for the Captain class and his Herald: http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Captain

Herald of War – A Herald of War carries your banner, increasing Might and Agility.
Herald of Hope – A Herald of Hope carries your banner, increasing Max Morale and In-Combat Morale Regeneration.
Herald of Victory – A Herald of Victory carries your banner, increasing Max Power and In-Combat Power Regeneration.
Herald Archer – A herald Archer carries a Bow to assist you with range in combat.

This is how it should be done. ArenaNet should just plagiarize this idea from them.

Enmity.3428:

Klinch, you can’t be serious when you say that banners are “perfect” for sPvP of all things? Really? I can’t believe you “just assign a person to pick up a certain banner” and they do so… like that, eh, Ranger is really going to run around with your Banner and oh, I’m sure that Mesmer will drag one around for you too. Jeez-oh. “Banners I think were ment to be used by any ally once the banner was summoned.” Yeah I’m sure that was the idea but come on, we Warriors know Banners, what they can do and how they work yet no one uses them, (for well-known reasons) and again, you expect team-mates to deal with them? It just doesn’t happen.

You say that the Banner re-work ideas based on making them easier to use [like a backpack] is a step in the “WRONG” direction – nonsense! What’s the point in having powerful Banners when they’re so cumbersome, disruptive and unintuitive to use? If making them slightly weaker and mounting them onto the Warrior means that more will use them then I think that’s a fair pay-off. The occasional random player/ team-mate grabbing it and running-off with it (most likely for personal Swiftness…) isn’t exactly ideal now, is it? “I tell the roamers on my team to grab my banner when they run to a small fight on another point…” Yeah, I often see Thieves running around with a Banner when they’re en-route somewhere, dropping it to fight and then going back and picking it up before carrying on with whatever they’re doing. Actually, I never see this, from any class.

Banner effects are generally fine, it’s the practicality of using them that’s in question. If ArenaNet can find a better way for us to receive the benefits they give without the hassle of the whole pick-it-up-drop-it-pick-it-up-drop-it mechanic then that’d maybe see them used to better effect. As for replacing your actual weapons skills when you’re carrying it… no, just no. My idea of a Warrior does not involve hitting enemies with a flag on the end of a wooden pole. Sorry.

@ Doopslayer – I love the idea that Banners are carried by a summon-able NPC. It’s the same mechanic that The Lord of the Rings Online used for the Captain class and his Herald: http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Captain

Herald of War – A Herald of War carries your banner, increasing Might and Agility.
Herald of Hope – A Herald of Hope carries your banner, increasing Max Morale and In-Combat Morale Regeneration.
Herald of Victory – A Herald of Victory carries your banner, increasing Max Power and In-Combat Power Regeneration.
Herald Archer – A herald Archer carries a Bow to assist you with range in combat.

This is how it should be done. ArenaNet should just plagiarize this idea from them.

Never said they were perfect. I run this build doing soloq and it works fine. Being a survival build, it isn’t bad to hold a banner for a split second (literally not even a full second) to do a blast finisher.

You also say that allies picking up the banner “doesn’t just happen”? It happens all of the time when I let them know before the match. Sure there is the occasional game where my team ignores it, but most games they do pick it up. They don’t carry it around with them point to point, just to the point they are heading too, then they leave it. Most of the time the banner disappears before or just after the side point fights end, then I re-summon it back to mid point.

All it takes is a little communication, if you know a fight is going to happen, have a teammate bring it to the battle on their way there. What is so unintuitive about hitting the ‘f’ button to pick it up, and your weapon swap button to instantly drop it? If that is too hard for people to do, then by all means, do your silly little backpack idea to make the game easier. (Although if a random player on my team can do it, hopefully you can too!)

Believe it or not, some people use the few minutes before a match starts to talk some strategy

AlBundy.7851:

It’s pretty common knowledge that the banner skills that replace your weapon skills when holding the banner are garbage. You have to Trait heavily into Tactics to get the banner to give aoe regen and increase the radius and reduce the cooldown those 2 traits should be rolled into one.

I don’t really understand how I’m the one with the dumb butt comment when you wrote 2 walls of text saying nothing more than tooltip quotes and praising banners when in reality they are terrible. You’re essentially running a pve build in hotjoin pvp and telling people it’s great when it’s not. You’re just another person that comes into threads that are trying to bring warriors out from the bottom and saying “Hey guys I like using terrible utilities because I like them please don’t change the terrible utilities I use.” If you think you have added anything to this conversation I find that hilarious.

You shouldn’t be constantly holding the banner in a battle. That would make you close to useless! There isn’t any situation for you to have to hold onto a banner for more than 2 seconds in a fight. If you do, you are playing banners wrong. I don’t go 30 into tactics just for the regen, I do it for the extra health and boon duration as well, so I feel like you aren’t wasting points into it. Constant aoe regen is pretty good. Tactics fit pretty well when building support/survival.

And you did it again lulz. You say banners are terrible without saying anything to back up your opinion (I didn’t count your first sentence as a valid point against banners).

Banners are terrible you can’t spend those 2 or 3 seconds picking it up and using one of the skills which are terrible combat isn’t that slow in this game. Banners are a fire and forget utility for situational pve that’s it

For a grandmaster trait aoe regen is crap

Yaki.9563:

Tetra Bug.7134:

I run a banner spec in WvW in groups and the amount of healing it puts out is really unparalleled. You can maintain near perma regen on 20 people. Banners biggest drawback is that they’re clunky. If they had a recall ability that worked at say 3000 range and a burst I’d be over the moon.

You mean you snipe regen from other sources that are possibly even superior. No one needs your crummy 0 healing power regen. Banner regen has to be the most overrated thing on the warrior forums.

That’s cute, you think I would trait for banner regen and not stack into healing power. With a full set of gear, sigils and runes I tick for about 400, so I doubt I’m sniping regen.

You also have to realize back in the betas there was no tiered trait system so you could essentially run Inspiring Battle Standard trait in the adept slot instead of having to go a full 30 points into Tactics.

The tiered trait system essentially killed any builds using that trait and Arenanet has done nothing to improve grandmaster traits to make them worthy of the title I guess you could count the new Burst Mastery trait but still I don’t think it’s worthy of the tiered trait system.

but then even if we didn’t have the tiered trait system you still have the clunky underpowered banner skills when picking up a banner.

I don’t understand where you ppl come from are you Arenanet’s QA ppl?

AlBundy.7851:

but then even if we didn’t have the tiered trait system you still have the clunky underpowered banner skills when picking up a banner.

I don’t understand where you ppl come from are you Arenanet’s QA ppl?

See, here we go. I too think the banner skills are on the weak side. Which is why I don’t play banners like that. Unless I’m moving the banner to a new location, I don’t hold on to it for more than 2 seconds max.

The passive abilities and the concept of banners being interactable objects are pretty good right now. But the actual skills on banners could (and I think should) be tweaked.

For example: Battle Standard has a skill on it to grant 4 seconds of aoe stability. As a skill on its own, it is a pretty meh. But having to go through the process to stop what you are doing, pick up the banner, then casting the skill really makes the skill not worth it (and that is an elite banner).

Maybe buff some of the banner skills to make that process worth going through, or make the process itself a bit easier/quicker to go through. I’m not sure how they would modify the process, but I strongly think the backpack idea is a no no.

Also, on these forums, people tend to side on the complete extreme to completely change, buff, or nerf things and anything else is completely wrong. I try to think on the opposite side of what majority of others think. This way both sides of a topic are addressed and brought into light for consideration. This is much better than just going BUFF BUFF BUFF on a topic.

And try to be a bit less hostile :P. I shouldn’t have said dumbbutt even if it was a pointless comment, and for that I’m sorry.

Banners are also a source of swiftness but since they suck we’re only left with signet of rage and with even more boon steals in the game now it’s kind of detriment to be running long duration boons it’s an even bigger target over your head. Guess we can always run warhorn lol.

I don’t understand how you can be against banners going on the back and access to the skills. It’s one of the better suggestions coming out of these forums. mind boggling

also the stability from battle standard is base 3 seconds with a 1 second cast time on a 15 second cooldown.

AlBundy.7851:

Banners are also a source of swiftness but since they suck we’re only left with signet of rage and with even more boon steals in the game now it’s kind of detriment to be running long duration boons it’s an even bigger target over your head. Guess we can always run warhorn lol.

I don’t understand how you can be against banners going on the back and access to the skills. It’s one of the better suggestions coming out of these forums. mind boggling

Can only have one at a time. – No thanks

Isn’t active when dead. – No thanks

Bonuses are only present if I am there. – No thanks

No blast finisher. – No thanks

Slightly more convenience for that warrior. – Hellz Yeah!

I see more cons than pros in this situation. Just because it is a better suggestion over others, doesn’t make it a good one.

umm You could have one banner on your back and if you want to run with more than one banner utility they can be on the ground like they are now and people could pick them up.

uhh you could have them persist on the ground after you get stomped or downed as well if you get downed with it on your back the banner could be planted on the ground again to gain it’s effect once more by another player

I don’t understand the no blast finisher comment I want to make the skills better and more usable in combat not remove them so idk what you meant there.

I see ALOT of improvements that can be made to banners. I think your arguing for the sake of arguing at this point and not putting much thought into this. Your arguing against changes to a class that is on the absolute bottom of the barrel I guess you have no shame or something but then again it is the internet.

Dolan.3071:

A bright green flag above my head all the time would totally ruin the look I was going for

The planting them on the ground thing is good as it is, they just need to be either 1) picked up on the fly or 2) summonable to your hands by pressing the utility skill again.

I’m not sure if your a funny troll or a LARPer..

The backpack idea could be made into a workable mechanic. So too could the “Herald” idea, (which I would prefer.) There are a multitude of even small tweaks that could also make Banners… just perform better.

Regardless, as they are now I think it’s safe to say that while some players (like Klinch) have found a workable way to use them, the very fact that Banners see so little use means that the present implementation of them is poor. Essentially, they’re just one more thing to contend with on the battlefield that players would rather not have to deal with – I don’t want to be “tied” into micro-managing a buff “device” (if that’s the right word,) and it seems very, very few other Warriors do either.

I think we’re all in agreement that Banners are in need of some streamlining. Hopefully ArenaNet agree also and make some changes.