Guild Wars 2

So here I am, complaining about Warriors being real underdogs now. Since the release of Heart of Thorns just about every profession outshines us in almost every aspect. I played both Warrior and Guardian the most, but I also played every other profession, so I think I can compare objectively, at least to some point. Here are issues that hurt Warriors the most, in my opinion:

Lack of synergy- With the release of HoT most professions have great trait/skill synergies. Warriors have problems here. Some of our traits are spread across the trait lines nonsensicaly, leaving us with little to no synergies. Here is how I imagine warrior traits:

Body blow and distracting strikes anyone? These two traits focus on dealing conditions and yet they are in trait line that focuses on brute force. No sense for them to be there. Stuns, dazes and such are all on weapons that benefit mostly from power, such as mace, hammer and shield, while these traits apply damaging conditions…what? In my opinion they should look something like this:

Body Blow: Stuns, dazes, knockbacks, pulls, pushes, and launches inflict 3 stacks of vulnerability for 8s and weakness for 5s.
Distracting strikes: Stuns, dazes, knockbacks, pulls, pushes, and launches inflict damage. Deal more damage (10%) when you interrupt a skill. This effect cannot critically hit.
Master trait Great fortitude should give bonus to ferocity instead of vitality.

Associated with strength line come physical skills, which are underwhelming, to say the least. All they bring to the table is more damage, which is not bad itself, but they lack something more. Peak performance trait should now make physical skills remove 2 conditions when they hit a target.

Arms, which mostly focuses on dealing condition damage to opponents has traits like unsuspecting foe: Increased critical hit against stunned foes. What the hell? Should look something like this:
Unsuspecting foe: Deal 2 stacks of bleeding for 10s and 1 stack of confusion for 10s for each adrenaline bar spent when hitting with burst skill.
Take opportunist out completely, move blademaster from master to adept. Move Burning arrows from discipline to Arms master trait. Makes much more sense for bow to be here instead in tactics, since its main source of damage is burning.
The last offender here is Burst precision. While not a bad trait, it makes no sense to be here, definitely not worth a grandmaster slot in arms. Instead it should be something like this:
Burst malice: Conditions caused by burst skills last 15% longer. Increases the duration of conditions you apply by 10% for 3s after using burst skill.

Defense is pretty well designed line, but few traits could use little tweaks:

Dogged march is excellent trait to deal with slowing conditions, but the regen there makes little sense, instead replace it with swiftness.
Adrenal health, this one bugs me. Warrior is designed around spending adrenaline, and as such when you reach full adrenaline you naturally try to use F1 burst skill, depleting adrenaline, making this trait counterintuitive. Instead of regenerating health based on how much adrenaline you have, it should heal for each adrenaline bar spent.
Armored attack should give bonus to vitality instead of power.

Associated with defense line come stance skills, which are pretty good, but have terribly long cooldowns. Easy fix here.
Last stand trait should additionaly reduce recharge on stances by 15% and increase their durations by flat 2s, instead of 25%.
Defiant stance should have base heal increased to around 4000 hp, and heal for 33% damage recieved, while still mitigating rest.

Tactics trait line focuses on supporting allies, and is also pretty neatly designed, but still lacks something that would make it stand out, as the only really good trait here is Vigorous shouts and Quick breathing.

Since I would move Burning arrows to Arms trait line, I would introduce new Major master trait: Vital presence: Gain 6s of regeneration when you get vigor.
Powerful synergy is also very questionable trait, and while the idea might be nice, I dont see much practical use to this one.
Instead: Bastion- Gain 4s of protection to yourself and nearby allies when hit by a critical hit. Protection lasts 20% longer. 20s CD.
Inspiring Battle standard should be here instead of burning arrows. Should look something like this:
Inspiring Battle Standard- Banners pulse boons every 3 seconds, based on type of banner deployed: Banner of defense: 1s of protection
Banner of Discipline: 1.5s of fury
Banner of Strength: 3 stacks of might for 3s
Banner of Tactics: 2s of regeneration
Battle Standard now recharges 15% faster.

Discipline, is without question our best trait line, and a must have. Traits here are great overall, which is rather surprising, considering how other traits seem to be thrown around trait lines without much thought. Instead of Inspiring Battle standard which I would place into Tactics I would add new trait instead:
Flow of battle: Gain 2s of fury when switching weapons.

And last but not least…. Mending healing skill cannot hold candle to other healing skills. It is simply weak. Instead it could work like Healing Surge did, before it was remade into shout. Healing for more HP for each adrenaline bar accumulated.

So here is my take on how Warrior SHOULD look like. While this may seem over the top, in his current state compared to other professions, he sounds like bad joke. In any case it is just my opinion. If you have any ideas, please do share.

Some great ideas here. I hope Robert or one of the other devs read it and use it as a base from which to redesign warrior traits for greater synergy.

I don’t know how you guys still find the courage to make such big efforts to try and give some interesting, even good sometimes, ideas to make warrior a more balanced class in the current meta-game… (no sarcasm here). Not even talking about thief and ranger community…

I mean, there have been hundreds of similar topics but strictly no feedback from the devs. Not even the slightest.

Talking about it between us players is a good and sane thing to do, but with no feedback ever it is pointless and even more frustrating.

I say let them do whatever they want to do with their game, like they always did anyway, and make hypocrite statements about how precious and useful users feedbacks are to them.

Don’t waste your time trying to change things that will never change (or if they do, will only be a unilateral decision).

I agree with a lot of the other suggestions above.

Physical skills are mostly counters, but their damage is pretty pathetic and their cooldowns are long. And for group support, it’s even worse. Banners and For Great Justice do much more than a high-cooldown love tap.

Rage skills are just glorified Physical skills, which Warriors don’t even really need. Their effects are nifty and such, but it makes Physical skills worth much less.

Banners definitely need some kind of help, and possibly a big buff to their held skills. I’d recommend giving banners some some equivalence to summoned weapons that Elementalists can use. A warrior with the trait could then afford to be a mobile banner buff and still get the held effects off the banner. So, the trait upgrade would look more like:

While wielding a banner:
Pulse 3s of Regen every three seconds.
Held banner skill cooldowns are reduced by 20%
Stab has additional effects based on the banner.
-Strength: Strikes inflict vulnerability (1 stack, 5 sec)
-Discipline: Grants Quickness on hit. (1 sec effect, 5 sec internal cooldown)
-Defense: Does damage to Defiance bar and grants Protection (3 sec, 8 sec internal cooldown)
-Tactics: Heals a small area per hit.
-Battle: Gives user stability (1 stack, 1 sec) per hit.

…something like that, anyway. Give a warrior incentive to hold a banner, even if it isn’t his own. That would make a two-warrior party more desirable, since they can splity the banner load between them.

And let’s be honest, after Revenant, Warrior Hammer looks like garbage.
Revenant: Ranged, AoE, 2 second knockdown, 15 second cooldown.
Warrior: Easy to spot, long melee hit, single target, 30 second cooldown, 2 second knockdown.
Normally, I’d say don’t compare the two in isolation, but this is on such an absurd scale that it defies sensibility.

Rastislav.1652:

So here I am, complaining about Warriors being real underdogs now. Since the release of Heart of Thorns just about every profession outshines us in almost every aspect. I played both Warrior and Guardian the most, but I also played every other profession, so I think I can compare objectively, at least to some point. Here are issues that hurt Warriors the most, in my opinion:

Lack of synergy- With the release of HoT most professions have great trait/skill synergies. Warriors have problems here. Some of our traits are spread across the trait lines nonsensicaly, leaving us with little to no synergies. Here is how I imagine warrior traits:

Body blow and distracting strikes anyone? These two traits focus on dealing conditions and yet they are in trait line that focuses on brute force. No sense for them to be there. Stuns, dazes and such are all on weapons that benefit mostly from power, such as mace, hammer and shield, while these traits apply damaging conditions…what? In my opinion they should look something like this:

Body Blow: Stuns, dazes, knockbacks, pulls, pushes, and launches inflict 3 stacks of vulnerability for 8s and weakness for 5s.
Distracting strikes: Stuns, dazes, knockbacks, pulls, pushes, and launches inflict damage. Deal more damage (10%) when you interrupt a skill. This effect cannot critically hit.
Master trait Great fortitude should give bonus to ferocity instead of vitality.

Associated with strength line come physical skills, which are underwhelming, to say the least. All they bring to the table is more damage, which is not bad itself, but they lack something more. Peak performance trait should now make physical skills remove 2 conditions when they hit a target.

Arms, which mostly focuses on dealing condition damage to opponents has traits like unsuspecting foe: Increased critical hit against stunned foes. What the hell? Should look something like this:
Unsuspecting foe: Deal 2 stacks of bleeding for 10s and 1 stack of confusion for 10s for each adrenaline bar spent when hitting with burst skill.
Take opportunist out completely, move blademaster from master to adept. Move Burning arrows from discipline to Arms master trait. Makes much more sense for bow to be here instead in tactics, since its main source of damage is burning.
The last offender here is Burst precision. While not a bad trait, it makes no sense to be here, definitely not worth a grandmaster slot in arms. Instead it should be something like this:
Burst malice: Conditions caused by burst skills last 15% longer. Increases the duration of conditions you apply by 10% for 3s after using burst skill.

Defense is pretty well designed line, but few traits could use little tweaks:

Dogged march is excellent trait to deal with slowing conditions, but the regen there makes little sense, instead replace it with swiftness.
Adrenal health, this one bugs me. Warrior is designed around spending adrenaline, and as such when you reach full adrenaline you naturally try to use F1 burst skill, depleting adrenaline, making this trait counterintuitive. Instead of regenerating health based on how much adrenaline you have, it should heal for each adrenaline bar spent.
Armored attack should give bonus to vitality instead of power.

Associated with defense line come stance skills, which are pretty good, but have terribly long cooldowns. Easy fix here.
Last stand trait should additionaly reduce recharge on stances by 15% and increase their durations by flat 2s, instead of 25%.
Defiant stance should have base heal increased to around 4000 hp, and heal for 33% damage recieved, while still mitigating rest.

Tactics trait line focuses on supporting allies, and is also pretty neatly designed, but still lacks something that would make it stand out, as the only really good trait here is Vigorous shouts and Quick breathing.

Since I would move Burning arrows to Arms trait line, I would introduce new Major master trait: Vital presence: Gain 6s of regeneration when you get vigor.
Powerful synergy is also very questionable trait, and while the idea might be nice, I dont see much practical use to this one.
Instead: Bastion- Gain 4s of protection to yourself and nearby allies when hit by a critical hit. Protection lasts 20% longer. 20s CD.
Inspiring Battle standard should be here instead of burning arrows. Should look something like this:
Inspiring Battle Standard- Banners pulse boons every 3 seconds, based on type of banner deployed: Banner of defense: 1s of protection
Banner of Discipline: 1.5s of fury
Banner of Strength: 3 stacks of might for 3s
Banner of Tactics: 2s of regeneration
Battle Standard now recharges 15% faster.

Discipline, is without question our best trait line, and a must have. Traits here are great overall, which is rather surprising, considering how other traits seem to be thrown around trait lines without much thought. Instead of Inspiring Battle standard which I would place into Tactics I would add new trait instead:
Flow of battle: Gain 2s of fury when switching weapons.

And last but not least…. Mending healing skill cannot hold candle to other healing skills. It is simply weak. Instead it could work like Healing Surge did, before it was remade into shout. Healing for more HP for each adrenaline bar accumulated.

So here is my take on how Warrior SHOULD look like. While this may seem over the top, in his current state compared to other professions, he sounds like bad joke. In any case it is just my opinion. If you have any ideas, please do share.

Actually what you suggested all about banners are nerf in terms of PvP perspective where the amulet for banner is kinda restricted by only crusader and cleric.

Granting regen for all banner is better than giving those specified boon to each specified banner.(cuz usually banner warrior runs tanky bunker build, in this case regen is always top priority. Rather, it should grant Regen + boons you suggessted if you want to buff DPS part of warrior, to make both dps and support part get buffs equally)

Switching banner trait into tactics line is also nerf becuz we can’t use shrug it off with this (usually banner warrior runs it with shout together to be tankier)

Other than that, yeah, it’s fine.

FatRaKoon.1782:

I don’t know how you guys still find the courage to make such big efforts to try and give some interesting, even good sometimes, ideas to make warrior a more balanced class in the current meta-game… (no sarcasm here). Not even talking about thief and ranger community…

I mean, there have been hundreds of similar topics but strictly no feedback from the devs. Not even the slightest.

Talking about it between us players is a good and sane thing to do, but with no feedback ever it is pointless and even more frustrating.

I say let them do whatever they want to do with their game, like they always did anyway, and make hypocrite statements about how precious and useful users feedbacks are to them.

Don’t waste your time trying to change things that will never change (or if they do, will only be a unilateral decision).

if we give up then they never will respond

Something I’d like to see is a change to Forceful Greatsword so that the might component works for everything, but with a 1 sec internal cooldown.
You know how Shield Master’s benefits to blocking works for all sources of blocking, not just shield? Same idea.
Additionally, it would have to work similar to the Reaper’s Chilling Victory trait, so that greatsword isn’t punished too much by the new internal cooldown. This way, 100blades and whirlwind attack wouldn’t be restricted by the new cooldown.

The new trait would read:
Gain might on critical hit. 1 second cooldown.
(Single attacks can activate this trait more than once before recharging.)
Greatsword and spear skills deal more damage and recharge faster.

The changes to the trait would give us a more widely usable master tier Strength trait for non-gs builds. And would also create good synergy with other weapons and traits.
Flurry on sword. Triple Chop, Cyclone Axe, Whirling Axe on mh/oh axe. Volley on rifle. And to a degree Dual Wield(trait) and Berserk’s increased attack speed.

@Arewn
Why give it an ICD at all?

Greatsword (and arguably, OH Axe) have the highest potential for the greatest number of hits in the shortest period of time, and yet nobody’s saying FG is overpowered, afaik.

Choppy.4183:

@Arewn
Why give it an ICD at all?

Greatsword (and arguably, OH Axe) have the highest potential for the greatest number of hits in the shortest period of time, and yet nobody’s saying FG is overpowered, afaik.

If there’s an internal cooldown, it’s precisely because of the difference in number of hits. A 1-sec internal cooldown normalizes the effect for all weapon types.

I dont know if any dev ever sees this, but I certainly hope so. I mean, they kept the balance at least to some degree untill HoT, but once it was released, they threw it out the window. Either they dont test what they make, or just dont care, dunno which is worse. Time to listen to players and make some actuall progress on balance. And by balance I dont mean shifting bethween making professions OP, or nerf them to oblivion, but to find soemthing that works, and sticking to it. PvP will never be perfectly balanced, but right now I gave up on PvP, and I have been playing PvP for like 70% of my gametime. Time to sit down and do some extensive testing Anet.

Choppy.4183:

@Arewn
Why give it an ICD at all?

Greatsword (and arguably, OH Axe) have the highest potential for the greatest number of hits in the shortest period of time, and yet nobody’s saying FG is overpowered, afaik.

The following line is used in the Reaper trait “Chilling Victory”:
(Single attacks can activate this trait more than once before recharging.)
If I am understanding this correctly, and I haven’t tested it so I could be wrong, I think this means that a single skill with multiple strikes will be able to benefit from the trait on all of its strikes before triggering the cooldown.
For example, 100 Blades is a single “attack” that hits multiple time. If the above is correct, each critical hit of 100 blades would grant might, and the 1 sec cd would only trigger after the skill ends.
If all of that is the case, then the 1 sec internal cooldown would help normalize the effect between fast attack-rate and slow attack-rate weapons, but would maintain the interesting synergy multi-strike attacks such as 100blades have now.
You could take mace/axe for example, and not be penalized by mace’s slow attack rate, but still benefit from Whirling Axe’s multiple strikes.

edit: Okay I just tested it. I’m flat out wrong on how that trait works. Single attacks can activate the trait more than once before recharging when striking multiple entities. So one hit that strikes 3 enemies will proc it 3 times on a single cooldown.
Unless the functionality I outlined can be achieved, I guess keeping it as a no-ICD trait would be appropriate.

Rauderi.8706:

Choppy.4183:

@Arewn
Why give it an ICD at all?

Greatsword (and arguably, OH Axe) have the highest potential for the greatest number of hits in the shortest period of time, and yet nobody’s saying FG is overpowered, afaik.

If there’s an internal cooldown, it’s precisely because of the difference in number of hits. A 1-sec internal cooldown normalizes the effect for all weapon types.

Sure, but we’re talking about dealing with what appears to be a general lack of synergy and underpoweredness of warrior relative to other classes, not trying to make all warrior weapons equally good at using the might stacking of a gs trait by nerfing the trait.

Even still, OH Axe would do very well with the trait if there was no ICD, and so would longbow for that matter with its large pulsing burst field and its ability to proc twice at range per auto attack.

I don’t see any case for adding an ICD to make it so all weapons are equally good (or bad, in this case)… at all.

Arewn.2368:

The following line is used in the Reaper trait “Chilling Victory”:
(Single attacks can activate this trait more than once before recharging.)
If I am understanding this correctly, and I haven’t tested it so I could be wrong, I think this means that a single skill with multiple strikes will be able to benefit from the trait on all of its strikes before triggering the cooldown.
For example, 100 Blades is a single “attack” that hits multiple time. If the above is correct, each critical hit of 100 blades would grant might, and the 1 sec cd would only trigger after the skill ends.
If all of that is the case, then the 1 sec internal cooldown would help normalize the effect between fast attack-rate and slow attack-rate weapons, but would maintain the interesting synergy multi-strike attacks such as 100blades have now.
You could take mace/axe for example, and not be penalized by mace’s slow attack rate, but still benefit from Whirling Axe’s multiple strikes.

Well, if 100b and Whirling Axe would count as “one attack” before an ICD went in, then the ICD wouldn’t do anything to balance the weapons but it would nerf the trait hard.. All of the weapons have an auto attack speed of either a 1/2 second or 1/4 second (in a couple of cases). Ranged weapons have the advantage of never having lulls while being kited.

But if we’re talking about an ICD after each attack (including cleaves), as per above, why in the world would normalizing between the weapons be a goal? Especially when the means being proposed to do it is a nerf to the trait? Seems crazy to me.

In fact, it would be a pretty underperforming trait that I certainly wouldn’t take for any weapon except the gs, and then only for the 10% damage buff and CD reduction. Think about it… with a 1s ICD, the most might you’ll stack is 5 assuming your target just eats your attacks . That’s a massive nerf just for the sake of a pretty questionable goal, imo.