Guild Wars 2

Well, I was afraid of this. Seems the only worthwhile Rage skills are Outrage and Headbutt. Wild blow is fun and Shattering Blow can have use in condi builds, but good luck being effective without double Endire Pain and Berseker stance. There might be some use for Rousing Resilience but other than that the elite spec doesn’t really feel incredibly different.

I tried a very glassy build but without the stances I was just a joke to kill. With Chronomancers and Daredevils having access to both damage and sustain a pure glass Berserker is more risk that reward. Yes, you can do well. However I still find other elite specs to be stronger.

This may seem premature but objectively speaking it’s better to have utility than pure damage. The Rage skills bring very little to no utility. They look cool but that’s about it.

I’ve been playing berserker all day, and while it’s fun… I tend to agree. I think the existing stuff is much stronger. There are just too many “mandatory” traits spread throughout the warrior lines that it makes it very hard to fit everything you need into a new build, leaving the entire new trait line feeling weak.

This is sort of the problem inherent to Berserker, most other classes got a elite spec that allowed them to do something new and slightly different than what they usually do, warriors however just got a lot more of relatively the same thing (close combat) so inevitably you’re left trying to to fill a role neglected by warriors current ability set. This of course is difficult to do as warriors already have a pretty robust set of skills that cover most things we really “need” (and a few we don’t). So what you end up with is a bunch of “new” skills designed for very circumstantial situations. Personally I’m let down by all of them if only because none of them are really “needed” at all, they’re just mildly interesting for first couple times until you move back to our core utility skills that are tried, true and frankly better.

But hey rage skills are just one of quite a few letdowns about Berserker so you just have to keep it all in perspective.

I think the real problem with berserker is necessarily the rage machanic or the skills. Although in PvP you still need 2 stances to stay viable but like Tipper said, we have too many mandatory traits spread out through different lines. Not taking those traits in favor of the berserker trait line is too much of a trade off.

The thing is they sold us out the Berserker as the opposite of a Reaper, it’s based on high movement. I don’t really feel it that way right now, it’s just a toned down condi warrior with unnecessary elements.

hm, it seems warrior new rage line is getting mostly negative feedback.

Thx for test though!

Tempest got a 33% damage boost on some skills after feedback. So will berserker. Still, I needed stances to survive, not sure how they work around that.

Its rather unfortunate that the “old stuff” (stances, GS etc etc) manage to overshadow even the “new stuff”, meaning the Berserker.

Yeah, Berserker is fun but it doesn’t feel strong enough for someone to pick it over the good old GS burst builds.

Rage skills? Some are interesting but Defense is too kitten important to leave aside. Discipline as well. So, leave Strength in favor of Berserker? Still, GS is more efficient than anything a Berserker has to offer right now.

“Tempest got a 33% damage boost on some skills after feedback. So will berserker. Still, I needed stances to survive, not sure how they work around that.”

Tempests have lots and lots of access to boons and healing that warriors will never have.

Thieves and Mesmers have ports, blinds, evasion, and stealth so that they can apply their burst heavy specs while minimizing the chance of a glassy spec getting hard-focused and squished.

Warriors are in an odd spot. They are exceptionally easy to focus because of their lack of blocks, ports, blinds, stealth, etc. Stances provide a very potent mitigation for short durations while not necessarily changing the nature of the melee-centric class. Paired with mobility weapons (GS or SW) the warrior can sometimes manage to get out from under heavy focus, but not as well as other classes.

Warriors do not have the tools to be glassy because they cannot avoid focused CC, blocks, evades, or stealth. There are individual options to mitigate each of these such as stance stability/signet, signet of might for blocks, evades are stealth turn into disengagement to avoid the incoming burst. However, most of these tools cannot be incorporated into a build while allowing for any suvivability utilities. Sure, we could take the situational signet of might to help grind down a Guardian but then you’d be more than proportionately punished for the lack of say, Beserkser Stance.

It’s not just the mandatory traits but nearly completely inflexible choices in utilities. So many of the classes in this game have strong ranged options. The other “melee” classes, such as thieves and guardians, have pretty strong access to teleport mechanics and tons of passive mitigation through blocks, blinds, stealth, etc respective to each class. Warriors depend more on utilities, rather than weapon mechanics, to provide the necessary support.

Without weapon skills that allow the warrior to survive standalone there’s not enough flexibility to incorporate new utilities such as these rage skills. You could fix it through trait lines as well, but that’s just another avenue of inflexibility that already exists to a large degree.