Guild Wars 2

CrashTheGrey.1492:

Babazhook is entitled to his opinion; if you have fun running without endure pain, good for you.

I personally take outnumbered fights super often so there’s 0 choice for me, it’s just too good. And honestly, When running full zerk/marauder power build, I really can’t think of a reason not to in normal fights, especially running eternal champion for all them juicy stabs. WvW on high tier servers are filled with big groups, tons of midfight +1’s over and over, and 25 blood lust stack thieves roaming in groups of two who actually know how to play their class.

Endure Pain for me is almost a means of saying I respect the intelligence of who I might go against. Or I respect the combined pressure of 3 people vs me where I can tank infinite power pressure for 4 seconds and kill someone who over commits and win a fight I never would without it.

Power Builds tend to indicate a person knows how to play their class because in the current meta, it’s quite a bit harder to make them work. Endure Pain for me is beating that scholar rune mesmer who knows his stuff, the patient thief who wants to reopen after proccing my traited EP from stealth, that occasional power Rev I wildly underestimate etc.

That’s all i’m gonna say on EP; because what everyone CAN agree on is that the balance team made a large misstep on shield bash and it should be changed back.

Well I tend to agree on the shield add. Headbutt I can understand but I never really thought shield bash that big an issue. THAT said

We just have different apporaches to the same problem when it comes to EP. I like Signet of might activated followed up by a second signet of might via mastery trait. This makes all my attacks unblockable for up to 10 seconds on much lower then 60 second (traited cooldown). it my feeling this puts more pressure on enemy when attacking then does being Invuln. After all what do YOU do when you Invuln for 4 seconds and they throw up a 3 second block? They see your EP and raise you with a block and you are both stuck there doing nothing.

Added to this unblockable attack , I can throw in something like frenzy for a traited 10+ seconds quickness. This wrecks them and with cleave the unblockbales and quickness work effectively against multiple enemies.

Recognizing how this can leave me vulnerable, I traited up higher armor and vitality then I used to have and ensure I get my adrenal and signet always running.

[/quote]“First as you well know WvW is not about duels”[/quote]

EXACTLY why EP is the optimal choice.

Having “fun” running without ep wasnt the issue here,its whats the right choice to do.Yeah i can run with arms,and strength,ditch def line aswell..fun for a while untill you get in the real fights where you notice you have a hard time dealing with focus on you.I ran every build possible,tried every combination possible,spend hundreds and hundreds of hours practicing everything there is to know about warr.Lots of our utilities are gimmicky and hardly optimal,where ep/berserk/outrage is one of the most optimal ways to go without lying to yourself that you can counter dodge or counter cc everything,even the things you dont see coming.I know its hard to admit youre wrong as it is for everyone on this forum,but you are.You can write whole pages of this or that,but that wont change the outcome.

Caedmon.6798:

“First as you well know WvW is not about duels”[/quote]

EXACTLY why EP is the optimal choice.

Having “fun” running without ep wasnt the issue here,its whats the right choice to do.Yeah i can run with arms,and strength,ditch def line aswell..fun for a while untill you get in the real fights where you notice you have a hard time dealing with focus on you.I ran every build possible,tried every combination possible,spend hundreds and hundreds of hours practicing everything there is to know about warr.Lots of our utilities are gimmicky and hardly optimal,where ep/berserk/outrage is one of the most optimal ways to go without lying to yourself that you can counter dodge or counter cc everything,even the things you dont see coming.I know its hard to admit youre wrong as it is for everyone on this forum,but you are.You can write whole pages of this or that,but that wont change the outcome.[/quote]

This is endless. you STILL somehow feel you have the right to dictate your experiences to me. You do not. I played WITH EP and played without and played thousands of hours as well and do not have the issues YOU do with those extra 4 seconds.

All you are talking about is 4 seconds out of 60. For the rest of those 56 seconds your warrior with EP has no more ability to evade damage then does the one without. In other words for 4 seconds out of 60 I just have to do what I was doing for the other 56 seconds, In that 4 second period I am not going to suddenly die. No where did I suggest you could avoid all damage with dodges or CC. You do not need to avoid all damage nor should you expect to , but this hardly means if you do not get 4 seconds invuln in 60 you will end up dead.

Meanwhile in that other 56 seconds depending on what I traited as that utility the build without EP will outperfrom.

As example in that other 56 seconds My Shout build warrior will have healed for 7900 more health, cleansed 6 conditions and broken 3 stuns. He is not as much in need of those 4 seconds Invuln because he took less damage and healed for more during that period.

My warrior that has taken Signet of might has output more damage in that same period of time . Added to that he has been able to get past an enemies blocks up to a total of 15 seconds more in that time period. He is not as pressed to get 4 seconds Invuln because the other guy is either dead or in worse shape.

Just tonight as example a Guardian attempted to get into a tower two of us were sieging in which there were ACS. He threw up a chain of blocks to get through us. Had I EP instead of signet of might traited he would have made it through. By making my attacks unblockable he died. I did not need to use EP because he never got into the tower to use that AC against us.

If you are taking less damage or pushing out more damage for those 56 seconds because you have taken a utility that provides more of such you are less likely to NEED ep.

Example two. I jumped into a group of three with my warrior using GS. They were in siege attacking a wall and I started with full adrenaline due to how I traited plus 90 percent crit rate. A single 100b hit all three of them for significant damage so they broke off to flee two throwing uop blocks. The blocks did not help and those two downed with cleave. I could not do this had EP been traited. Had I been running it and tried 100blades their own blocks would have prevented any damage.

I can give any number of examples of the same. I just prefer a more aggressive style of play.

Is it always a 1v1? Hardly. There are times others will show for the enemy side but just because you can throw up 4 seconds Invuln it hardly means you will win the fight or get away. It can help or not dependent on how good those enemy are.

You obviously prefer EP. That is your choise and not mine. That I found something that works better for me and that I prefer is not WRONG and that I do fine without EP and in fact do better in many ways, it hardly means it mandatory.

This will be my last response to you on the matter. You play your way and I will play mine. I encourage others that read these forums to play styles and use builds and traits that THEY do the best with and find the most enjoyable and not to let others dictate what is right and wrong.

EP is not mandatory.

I would be very interested in a development team members perspective specific to this change for shield. I really can’t understand the decision. The warrior class, looking at this in any PvP oriented game mode; has limited options at a higher level of play for creating strong damage against a target (using melee) when so many of it’s skills have a huge telegraph.

Because you power creeped everything so insanely much, it is necessary to have this already clunky class able to land a skill on someone that isn’t sleeping.

CrashTheGrey.1492:

I would be very interested in a development team members perspective specific to this change for shield. I really can’t understand the decision. The warrior class, looking at this in any PvP oriented game mode; has limited options at a higher level of play for creating strong damage against a target (using melee) when so many of it’s skills have a huge telegraph.

Because you power creeped everything so insanely much, it is necessary to have this already clunky class able to land a skill on someone that isn’t sleeping.

Well I have found if you have high access to quickness it can address a lot of those tells. It should not have to be that way. I think that they were trying to address stun lock wherein a number of these skills chained in a row and in particular headbutt followed by shield bash. I tend to think the change to headbutt was enough BUT they might well have decided if you did get a headbutt off it too easy to followup with another stun on shield bash.

Shield Bash on its own may not have seen as all that bad, but when chained with multiple stuns they felt a bit of a delay in getting the next off might allow a guy at the receiving end to respond rather then be stunlocked down.

My best guess.

Do not expect too quick an answer. We speculated a long time on the added cooldown to stealth attacks on thief before that was answered.

I can see the logic, but then I can completely trash their decision making with two words: Core Warrior.

Now there’s no headbutt, no gap close stun from mace, just a very slow and readable shield bash as you get kited to no end for days and days.

And I can also simply state, regardless of core/berserker, the general power creep has necessitated warrior to have a lot of CC because of the sheer amount of stun break and evades so many classes have. Power Creep.

I don’t know about the bad people that Anet makes patches for, but I would save my stunbreak for the 3 second headbutt thats super easy to see coming. Cause that’s what anyone who I bait dodges out of and doesnt suck does when it lands.