Guild Wars 2

First of all Powerful Banners is a completely worthless trait. Even with a full berzerker set, a combo field, some stacks of might, and a utility bar(+ elite) full of banners it still does worthless amounts of damage.

Considering you would have to bring multiple banners to even begin trying to abuse this trait, I think the damage could be substantially improved without causing balance issues(or rampant banner warriors). Keep in mind, banners are on a 90(or higher) second CD, 600 range, with 1 second (or higher) casts. So even if the damage were effectively doubled, the damage might roughly equal that of a full 100blades combo with a whirlwind. This is assuming you bring 4 banners with a glass spec, which is asking to get destroyed.

Powerful Banners needs to be improved or replaced with something that has a use.

My Suggestions:
Banners – untraited:
- Do the damage they currently do when traited
- Reduce cast time of non-elite banners

Powerful Banners:
- Increases Banner damage by 100%
- Using banners grant X stacks of might for Y seconds to nearby allies
- Increases the area of effect(like greater marks with Necro)

Battle Standard:
- Battle Standard does more damage, as it takes 2 seconds to cast

Would be better if they changed it to Knockdown or something fun like that.

Oglaf.1074:

Would be better if they changed it to Knockdown or something fun like that.

That would be hilarious.
Imagine a hammer warrior with 6 aoe interruptions.

Yeah it is super bad. Probably one of the warriors worst traits.

LieutenantGoogle.7326:

Oglaf.1074:

Would be better if they changed it to Knockdown or something fun like that.

That would be hilarious.
Imagine a hammer warrior with 6 aoe interruptions.

I know, right?

Let’s play “Pin the flag on the Elementalist”!

Nonlinear.9823:

Yeah it is super bad. Probably one of the warriors worst traits.

I dunno, Short Temper and Berserker’s Might would probably get my vote for worst. Or maybe Thrill of the Kill.

Are you for real? Berserker’s Might is the best 10 trait points any Warrior can spend!

isnt there already a tactics trait that increases banner area?

… but yeh; i would love to see it changed, probably prefer something like a buff increase though

Oglaf.1074:

Are you for real? Berserker’s Might is the best 10 trait points any Warrior can spend!

That’s Berserker’s Power. Berserker’s Might is the Strength Grandmaster trait that gives you Berserker Stance every time you have more than 5 stacks of might on a 45c icd.

I would like for it to turn banner 1 to AoE’s

I wouldn’t even try to put a list of “most useless” in order because I can hardly keep track of what works like it says, should, or at all anymore. I kinda shy away from general “PuGery” these days but I remeber a time, maybe 6 weeks ago or so when I played a great deal more, that it seemed at least 50% of the groups I joined for dungeons or something had a member who wanted to "set up’ my utilities bar for me. Telling me which skill / trait worked, didn’t work or didn’t work as claimed etc. Heck, I can’t really isolate that to just PuGs (they’re just ready to kick you if you don’t take their word as Gospel). A former Guildy had me convinced that our War Banner didn’t rez at all despite it’s description.

Above all, this is my biggest gripe with this game. I’ve always just taken it for granted up until this game that I could read the tooltip and, wonder of wonders, that would be what that skill would in fact do! Then I could just take it from there in determining my build. In this game it takes some earnest research to sift through and find the factual effects of skills, traits, etc. though.

Oh yeah, and I’m not even addressing the general ambiguity of the large majority of these tooltips. Heck, let’s just take the tooltip for “Powerful Banners” shall we, the tooltip reads as follows:

Banners do damage when summoned.

Yeah… don’t know how I could have passed this trait skill up?!?! I mean, a match causes combustion technically, but technically so does a GOD KITTENED NUCLEAR WARHEAD!!! See what I’m getting at here?

Banners are not supposed to be for DPS but for support. Nonlinear.9823 seems to use a banner to great efficiency in his videos comboing with a banner to produce up to 25 stacks of might for himself and potentially a party.

It would seem that your idea of how a banner should function and be used doesn’t match how the game sees how banners function.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Video-How-to-Combo-w-your-Longbow

The trait itself suggests the devs designed (low) dps banners as a possibility. Why even have it exist if banners are pure support? Why even have damage for banner 1 and 4? Just look at it:
- tactics and discipline have 3/5 support skills 2/5 damage skills
- strength and defense have 2/5 support skills 3/5 damage skills
This pretty much says you can go either dps or support with banners

You could change powerful banners to pulse a weak aoe every 5 banner skill uses.

Attic.1562:

Oglaf.1074:

Are you for real? Berserker’s Might is the best 10 trait points any Warrior can spend!

That’s Berserker’s Power. Berserker’s Might is the Strength Grandmaster trait that gives you Berserker Stance every time you have more than 5 stacks of might on a 45c icd.

Oh yeah, my bad.

Ridgeblader.7135:

Banners are not supposed to be for DPS but for support. Nonlinear.9823 seems to use a banner to great efficiency in his videos comboing with a banner to produce up to 25 stacks of might for himself and potentially a party.

It would seem that your idea of how a banner should function and be used doesn’t match how the game sees how banners function.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Video-How-to-Combo-w-your-Longbow

Thanks for the mention. I would love for them to change the talent to add an extra effect to the banner plant instead of just doing damage on summon. Maybe a different effect depending on the type of banner (e.g. Strength does damage or grants a might stack, Tactics does a heal or grants regen or something, stuff like that) but my instincts tell me they are probably going to somehow nerf using a banner to stack might before they buff it with a trait like that.

Seetoo.9316:

The trait itself suggests the devs designed (low) dps banners as a possibility. Why even have it exist if banners are pure support? Why even have damage for banner 1 and 4? Just look at it:
- tactics and discipline have 3/5 support skills 2/5 damage skills
- strength and defense have 2/5 support skills 3/5 damage skills
This pretty much says you can go either dps or support with banners

You could change powerful banners to pulse a weak aoe every 5 banner skill uses.

Now THIS is an idea. Personally I like banners. They are clunky but provide great support. Even without the healing trait they provide a decent aoe buff and group speed+charge plus variable #2 ability. Changing the banner damage on summon (which we can all agree is very weak and even if it did like 4k dmg would still be on a patheticly long cooldown) to a pulsing condition, something like weakness or stacking vunrability would be pretty sweet. And gives you incentive to throw one down in the thick of the fighting.

That makes it so not only is the banner inspiring to you and your allies but
demoralizing to your opponents. Flavor win and usefulness win!

YojimboJones.6243:

Seetoo.9316:

The trait itself suggests the devs designed (low) dps banners as a possibility. Why even have it exist if banners are pure support? Why even have damage for banner 1 and 4? Just look at it:
- tactics and discipline have 3/5 support skills 2/5 damage skills
- strength and defense have 2/5 support skills 3/5 damage skills
This pretty much says you can go either dps or support with banners

You could change powerful banners to pulse a weak aoe every 5 banner skill uses.

Now THIS is an idea. Personally I like banners. They are clunky but provide great support. Even without the healing trait they provide a decent aoe buff and group speed+charge plus variable #2 ability. Changing the banner damage on summon (which we can all agree is very weak and even if it did like 4k dmg would still be on a patheticly long cooldown) to a pulsing condition, something like weakness or stacking vunrability would be pretty sweet. And gives you incentive to throw one down in the thick of the fighting.

That makes it so not only is the banner inspiring to you and your allies but
demoralizing to your opponents. Flavor win and usefulness win!

Resurrecting this thread to add my vote to AoE conditions on banners.

A continual low-level pulsing AoE vulnerability on a banner (2-3 stacks at most) would be great.

And it really would communicate the idea of demoralizing the enemy with your standard.

Make banners an offhand enviromental weapon so I can carry one around with me.

Changing dmg to a might buff when summoned is a great and logical idea.

Btw @Spencer.1386 check my earlier post here how to make banners usable in combat https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Full-cleric-viable/first#post1297557

I love my precision banner. It gives me crit dmg, crit chance and even a small mobility (swiftsness + dash).

My only problem is when someone steals it.
It really drives me nuts when I find a good spot to sniper the field, put my banner there and someone takes it away and goes running off with my crit dmg bonus.

Wish you could get your minipet to carry the banner for you. It would look great on my quaggan.

I had never messed with this trait. After reading this post, I went and tried it. My banner hit for 941. I laughed… and I normally never laugh except at Family Guy.

Soooo 941/120s cd = ~7 damage per second from that trait. I know I’m ignoring the comboing, but that doesn’t make it much better.

Sometimes I wonder how when a dev throws out an idea like this someone doesn’t ask, “Are you serious?” I mean honestly, do they even play their game? lol

lLobo.7960:

Wish you could get your minipet to carry the banner for you. It would look great on my quaggan.

Okay now this is like the best idea ever.

Make it happen ANet !

edit : oh and basic control like “follow me” and “stay here little boy”. That’d kick * !

Seetoo.9316:

I would like for it to turn banner 1 to AoE’s

I thought the same thing. Allow the trait to give banner the same ability as every other warrior weapon to hit multiple targets.

I’d like to see this trait increase the Banner attacks’ damage.