Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, I’ve been around off and on since release with only about 500 hours in game, and most of those admittedly on Necro, but as a recent warrior main (and more recent warrior defector) I’ve noticed that even some simple adjustments to the weapon skills could go a long way to make warriors more viable.

That being said, here’s some thoughts I have on warrior weapons and how I would adjust them. I reiterate, I’m not a veteran warrior player (adept at best), although I have been playing MMO’s for nearly two decades, mained warrior in WoW for over five years, and otherwise have tens of thousands of hours in competitive gaming. If, however, anyone sees anything that they would change, adjust or tweak, please feel free to comment. In the end, these are just suggestions and are more likely to be band-aids on bullet holes designed to at least make life suck a little less for warriors.

Getting right into it:

Greatsword

GS is required in many builds due to mobility. When abilities are used as reconnects, warrior is often punished by loss of damage (GS3 only does dmg to close targets, for example). GS5 is very unreliable, but decent damage. GS4 has low damage and misses frequently.

GS1 – Third hit offers literally nothing. First and second strikes apply vulnerability, third should apply cripple at minimum.

GS2 – Excellent damage POTENTIAL. Possibly upwards of 9k on Indestructable Golem if all strikes land (and crit). Virtually impossible to get off more than 3 or 4 hits on a target that isn’t afk or stunned with literally no cooldowns/passives left. Damage can be reduced by 25% if you make it mobile, or reduce cast time while increasing individual hit damage and increase CD to even in out. This is GS’s primary damage ability, but yet has half the cooldown of their best UTILITY abilities. Even pressing GS2 in a fight virtually guarantees you’re losing the damage from GS3 and will be forced to put GS4 on cooldown (for twice as long as your self-snare.)

GS3 – Great skill design, but make it one continuous impact (so damage doesn’t drop off if used as a reconnect) and make it drop a small cripple/chill field upon completion. This allows the player to predict enemy movement to adequately apply snare effects. Currently, damage per hit is incredible low, with crits in the 1500 range with berserker amulet, meaning 6000 MAX possible damage to a single target, except you will only be able to strike the same target 3 times, meaning 4500 max IF you use a reconnect in melee range, sacrificing mobility down the line.

GS4 – Projectile speed is incredibly slow, easily counterable by simple not standing still. Represents the ONLY cripple/snare on GS set and is easily dodged. CD is 15s for a 4s debuff. Why? That’s minimum 11s window where you’re just chasing your enemy, being forced to trade two of your damage skills for reconnects just to stay close.

GS5 – Good skill. I’d honestly add a 1/2 second stun or immob on hit. It’s single target and only crits for ~3200 on Heavy armor, 3800 on light. Damage is fine for reconnect, but needs more utility to counter its habit of completely missing the target. Either 8s swiftness/immob on hit/etc.

Arc divider – well designed. I have no suggestions/complaints.

Popular as the “mobile” weapon. Greatsword is definitely mobile, but when used for its mobility, it sacrifices a lot of damage. Also, it’s a “moble” weapon that’s primary damage comes attached with what is essentially a 4 second root. It’s very situation oriented and very risk vs reward based, but with long cooldowns that punish you regardless of how you use it. Virtually only balanced if you have quickness procced.

Hammer

H1 – Sub 2k damage on 2/3 hits when AA has ZERO utility and has slow attack speed. 3rd hit crits from ~2400 damage on the top end. Again, ZERO UTILITY, SLOW ATTACK SPEED, and still lowish damage.

H2 – Slow attack that crits for 3k and applies vulnerability with MASSIVE CD. Cooldown should be reduced to 8s MAXIMUM.

H3 – Crits for 1400, applies cripple for 7s, 12s cooldown. First, the damage is laughable, but what’s more of a joke is that this is a longer cripple than GS4 on a shorter cooldown, AND IT CLEAVES. I would trade H3 for GS4 any and every day of the week. Ability is probably the most balanced in this kit, even if damage is on the incredibly low-side.

H4 – Lowish damage, coming in at ~2100 crits. Has a very short knockback attached for utility, and is AoE. CD is 20 seconds, making it mostly balanced. I’d love to see a field dropped where you cast that applies even a 2s cripple for anyone engaging you that you may have missed.

H5 – 3k damage crits, 1 second cast time that feels like 2 before impact, 2 second stun. EXTREMELY predictable. Offers no utility after 2s stun. Should also proc Vulnerability or grant 1s stability on cast.

Earthshaker – Well designed, mostly balanced. Only downside is how telegraphed it is.

Very easy to avoid if you’re familiar with Hammer animations. This ability would be better balanced by changing adrenaline system as opposed to the skill itself.
Known as the control weapon, hammer offers only two (three with burst skill) controlling abilities on long cooldowns with insignificant damage. Hammer is hamstrung by low damage, meaning it’s balanced around the requirement to use fast hands to switch back to a better damaging weapon.

Axe

A1 – One of the best damaging chains warrior has. Offers no utility, but has highest DPS of any weapon in warrior kitten nal. Cleaves. I can’t rightfully ask for any buffs to A1 without easily making it OP.

A2 – Two seperate hits that can total around 2600 damage if both crit. Applies 4 stacks of vulnerability. Fairly short cooldown, enough to stack vuln infinitely if you camp Axe and never miss an attack. Wouldn’t change.

A3 – Fairly quick projectile speed, moderate damage, 10s cooldown. Leaps and bounds better than GS4 for actually applying Cripple. Projectile will track target (within reason) to ensure it hits. Wouldn’t change it barring a small increase to cripple duration.

Eviscerate – Great ability, if not slightly telegraphed/predictable. Excellent damage.

Downside is related to the Leap aspect, which aren’t well programmed in GW2 causing a lot of random misses that should have hit. Mostly balanced, and primary solutions require bugfixes as opposed to tuning. To fix in the interim, an increase to 400/450 range on the leap would help.
The axe is a great weapon and probably one of the more balanced in the warrior kitten nal. It’s well designed and doesn’t punish the warrior or force any tradeoff for damage or utility.

Mace

M1 – Moderate damage, understandably slow from an RP perspective. 3rd attack applies weakness. I wouldn’t change it.

M2 – Block/Reflect (with trait) with very short duration. Gives a completely irrelevant amount of Adrenaline if it doesn’t block anything. If a counterattack is possible, damage is incredibly low given the long cooldown and melee-range requirement. Damage should be adjusted from 1218 base to a minimum of 1450 or so. The idea is for a punishing counterattack. Make it actually punish them.

M3 – Ridiculously insignificant damage (did the QA team mistype 0?) for a 1s daze on a 15s cooldown. It’s actually laughable. Yes, it’s an interrupt, but the ability virtually doesn’t do ANYTHING else and has a 15s cooldown. Can become “op” with lowered CD and perplexity runes maybe, but is otherwise a laughably bad ability.

Skull Crack – Single target stun with very low damage for a burst ability, but a better stun duration on full adrenaline than Hammer offers. However, due to low damage and single target, it’s just another mediocre ability that doesn’t offer a ton to the warrior without forcing him to swap to another weapon to actually get something accomplished.

Mace overall is the support/semi-control weapon, and offers very little to either party at the cost of the ability to do any sort of meaningful damage. Solid idea of a weapon, but very poor implementation. Currently not useful outside of gimmicky control builds.

Sword

S1 – Low auto-attack damage offset by bleed application, and a friendly cripple on AA3. Ironically the only warrior weapon whose auto-attack applies cripple, when typically used on condi builds, which do damage even after the enemy leaves melee range. If you want to give warriors a true condi weapon, I’d change cripple to a poison application instead, or possibly give it both (as this would still massively benefit warriors who have no other means to poison a target outside of armor runes. As an aside, I’d increase the duration of the cripple to 2s since sword autoattacks are fairly quick.

S2 – Another attack that suffers from incredibly low damage, but at least has some decent utility to make up for in a 600 range leap and 3s cripple application on hit. Because of the relatively low cooldown and utility, I’d call this ability balanced. If any change was made, I’d suggest adding 3s swiftness on use, which hopefully wouldn’t break the theme of the weapon.

S3 – Potentially brutal ability that doesn’t fit the concept of a condi weapon, but still a favorite for power builds when combined with S1 cripple and S2 leap. 5k+ crits below 50% in zerker gear feel a little low, but still passable. I’d suggest making the ability more useful against targets above 50%, but it’s not in a bad state.

Flurry – Low damage even in power builds, but the immobilize offers great utility and opportunity to swap for GS2. I still disagree with the idea of an ability being balanced around switching to another weapon.

Sword is supposed to be our condi weapon when in reality it’s better suited as a mobile power weapon. Bleed damage in GW2 is the worst damaging condition in the game, and the only kind that warrior stacks (barring torch/longbow). The weapon itself is solid, but will never see its’ true potential without a buff to bleeds, addition of other condis (poison) or more base utility in traits.

Shield

S4 – Good damage, 2s stun, moderately high cooldown (typical for a 4th slot skill). I’d consider adding 2 stacks of Vulnerability on hit just to give it a little more to compliment the mainhand.

S5 – Baseline 3s block that reflects with traitlines. Without Defense traitline, it’s very mediocre if not still useful. I’d suggest adding 3s regen (or longer) to make it a little better.

Longbow is pretty much well balanced, rifle is a gimmick weapon, and Warhorn is a solid support weapon. Changing those weapons wont add anything to warrior that is needed.

Just from looking at the weapons, you can see that warriors design has been based around trade-offs. I can’t speak for the other classes, but being forced to give up mobility for damage, damage for some mild crowd control or whatever doesn’t seem fair on such a blatantly straightforward class. My alt is a necromancer, and I’ve found that the Reaper skill line is more warrior-esque than anything that warriors have, and it has the additional benefit of applying various conditions. Hell, imagine a warrior 2h with nearly 100% crit on AA, a reconnect on a 6s cooldown that AoE blinds and chills, a stability ability that you can hit again to lose stability and AoE fear, a huge radius AoE cleave with great damage, and a 1.5s stun that also leaves a chill field and does increasing damage based on enemy health. It’s like every warrior weapon rolled into one. Just from the raw utility, not even taking damage into account, it’s a far superior weapon than any warrior has.

Warrior has been made into a class that can bully weak players with bursty combination builds (Shield 4 into Evis > swap > 1HB) and potentially do massive damage, but against players that are using their kits well and counterplaying, warriors weaknesses really show. Thanks to massive cooldowns on abilities, a single missed/blocked/evaded ability can significantly hurt a warriors ability to chain attacks that are virtually required to hit to have a chance at winning. Missing hammer 5 basically means you swap back to GS/bow for 30 seconds and just try to survive.

Great read,unfortunately nothing will happen until next season,just reroll your warrior to pve,and play reaper/DH/scrapper/rev for pvp.
Your ideas are great but anet wont change weapon skills because they’ll just buff some traits and call it the day making frustrating to play warrior.

Greatsword
Overall, fine as is. It’s the only warrior weapon to get any love, and there’s a reason it’s meta. Add on Phalanx Strength, and there’s no getting away from it.

Hammer
2 – Traited, you can get 100% uptime on the Weakness effect. Of course, that means taking the pathetic trait [Merciless Hammer] and getting nothing but a cooldown reduction for it. I generally like this one. It’s no Rev-hammer#2, but it does what it needs to.
3 – Hammer is for tackling groups and heavy on CC. Considering Greatsword gets nothing but damage love, the longer control time is fine in comparison. Decent, but like all hammer skills, underwhelming damage.
4 – Compare to some of the Revenant weapon skills, this knockback is low effect and low damage. (Then again, everything on hammer is low damage…) Tack on a projectile block and maybe this skill would be interesting for more than a high-cooldown interrupt.
5 – Other than bashing breakbars on bosses or catching a PvP opponent completely unaware, the skill is pretty garbage. Again, compare with Revenant: Twice the cooldown, single target instead of AoE, melee instead of range. Up the damage, up the stun to at least 3 seconds (maybe Merciless Hammer might be worth a single hit), and/or tack on a stack of Stability during the cast. Warrior needs more consisten sources of Stability anyway.
Earthshaker – I fell in love with hammer becuase of this ability. Adds another hard CC for a short-ish cooldown.

Axe
Missed offhand Axe, by the way.
A4 – The dual attack that offers Fury can be quite handy. Can’t speak to the damage, but the self-buff is a good lead into..
A5 – Silly AoE whirlwind damage. Relatively short cooldown, and doing this in a pack of enemies will spike adrenaline.
Eviscerate – I’m sure my build choices are a symptom, but I don’t often see the use in Eviscerate. It’s damage is barely good enough to exceed a good autoattack string, and I have better uses for my burst.
To think of it, Axe isn’t a terrible weapon overall.

Mace
Missed offhand Mace, too.
A4 – Another vulnerability, lowish damage ability.
A5 – AoE knockdown. Better than hammer-5, but not by much.
Skull Crack – Another burst CC, slightly faster, slightly longer at full burst.
Agreed on the overall assessment.

Sword
Decent pressure weapon overall. The choice of sword as condi always feels weird, and it could stand getting a few extra stacks of bleeding on its skills to add damage. Maybe add Torment instead of a bleed stack somewhere in the autoattack chain as further punishment for trying to run from a sword-user.
Offhand skills add a hint of range and Torment, along with a block for warding damage.

Shield
4 – A midrange closer, typically more reliable than the utility skills. Moderate damage with a decent stun. Decent cooldown when traited.
5 – Could use a little extra on survivability. Recommended Regen is a good idea.

Longbow / Rifle
While range shouldn’t necessarily be a warrior’s “good” shtick, these weapons are incredibly lackluster, especially compared to Revenant’s range option.
Longbow is slow, doesn’t pierce without a trait, and bad on control.
Rifle is even worse. Also doesn’t pierce, also bad on control, and does nothing for area effect without good damage to make up for it.

Warhorn
Decent support, and I don’t go without the trait (even after the nerf).

In the end, I’m glad you got me thinking about this, bLind. Warrior does need a lot of improvement, and weapons are a good place to start.

You bring up a good point in that many of the warrior’s skills are outdated. Axe#2 doesn’t hardly do any damage, Shield #4 distance is too short, Axe F1 distance is too short, GS#4 is too slow, Longbow AA doesn’t pierce or bounce, etc.

Warriors as a class need to be redesigned. It was designed for the original PvP on release. It hasn’t been looked at since HoT.

Only for gs, cuz I couldn’t bother reading more when I realized u did more weapons lol:

GS1: it doesn’t have highest dps I know, but it’s the most effective autoattack for warr, mainly by the fact u think it’s unsignificant + if u use it right free whirl hit.

GS2: 100b is fine. It’s good that u get rooted for a high reward, allows for more than stat wars 2, alot of positioning. And NO it should NOT be mobile with 25% dmg, let’s just auto them instead then! I’d like to think of it as a hit that does often atleast 5k dmg, and -50 endurance on the enemy. Or it will do that sweet 15-20k cone cleave on a downed and ppl ressing for example. It’s not underwhelming. Greatsword primary dmg abilities are whirl and arcing slice.

GS4: Good dmg, sure if u compare to other stuff it’s not very strong, but thats because all warrior abilities have high dmg anyways, wich is then compensated by not frequently like others, be able to hit them. But this one can hit, it’s range, kite often irrelevant wich is wat neglects other warr dmg. Besides it hits twice and nice cripple. Detarget and aim it and it’s often ez hit

I disagree a lot what you said. Obviously these are opinion stuff, but heres my input:

GS
- AA is decent, doesn’t really need a change. Does good enough damage and inflicts vulnerability. Third hit is a bit of lack luster but still ok in the big picture.
- #2 is really good damage and its where it should be. You need to setup for this. And with a low cooldown it doesn’t really matter if you don’t hit it all.
- #3 is incredible skill. Low cooldown, good damage and evade.
- #4 is a nice skill if you can make it hit twice. The first hit is the tricky one, the second should be easy enough to hit the enemy if you are close and the projectile didn’t hit a wall or something
- #5 could still use some work so it would be more reliable. Otherwise it’s really good gap closener with really good damage.

Hammer
Overall good weapon. Every skill servers a purpose in the set. It’s a pressure weapon which shines when enemy doesn’t have stability. If enemy has a good stability uptime your hammer is hard-countered, but such is life.

Mace
The #2 counterblow hits like a truck if you can make it hit. It’s effectively a level 1 eviscrate with low cooldown. If something needs help on the mace its the #3. This skill could use some extra help, it’s designed to be a disabler so that you can interrupt important heals or other skills, but could still get a buff (for ex. a 5 second blind).

Shield
Two good skills with relatively low cooldowns even without trait.

My conclusion being:
The skills have low cooldowns when you compare them to other classes to be honest. Most warrior weapon skills are lower than 20 seconds, thats a luxury if you ask me, especially when you throw fast hand in there.

If you want to be effective you need to have fast hands and you need to find the optimal complimentary weapons on both weapon sets. If you try to build around one weapon set, while keeping the other as an utility then you aren’t really going to go too far. You need to mix weapons so that they shut down their weak spots and compliment each other.

For example the usual GS + Hammer. GS being the weapon that brings burst damage and mobility, while hammer gives pressure and setups 100b. GS + Mace as well, almost the same as with GS + hammer but it’s more concentrated on single target damage and defense with mace block and GS covers the mobility issue mace has on its own.