Guild Wars 2

For me, stances feel a little bit weird skills in sense that they give short immunities to stuff. Like almost total immunities. And also the fact that you can have multiple stances on at one given time kinda fights against the word stance. Now there is couple things I would like to see changed in stances and how they behave.

In this post I try to make it so that stances are toned down in a sense that they are not complete immunities, but still have almost the same effectiviness as they do now.

FOR ALL STANCES:
For stance to be actually a stance I feel like they should cancel each other out. This is so that you can’t just launch three of them at once and be in balanced berserker stance (How is that even, I don’t know…). This is a huge thing, so I feel like stances should last a bit longer in most cases. But don’t rush into things yet, because I will be changing how the stances themselves behave as well, so don’t worry about Endure Pain that lasts for 10s

Endure Pain:
While interesting skill that it blocks all incoming raw damage, it could be toned down a bit. Reduce the dmg reduction to around 50% to 60%. Also a bit longer duration, maybe around 8 seconds. Now this would mean that even though warrior launches EP, it doesn’t mean you couldn’t kill him without raw damage. Of course you want to kite for a while and control him, but you can still kill him. This also affects WvW zerging a lot. You can’t just launch EP and roll inside a huge 50 man blob without harm from raw damage. Also, with 60% EP you can still gain almost full invulnerability if you happen to have protection, but thankfully Warriors don’t have any reliable source for that themselves.

Berserker Stance:
I like the Adrenaline gain in this stance, it is nice. But I feel like the -100% reduction to conditions is a bit overkill. What I would suggest here is that BS makes warrior immune to soft CC. Well not technically immune, but the old -100% reduction. So that would mean warrior with BS on couldn’t be chilled, crippled, immobilized. Real berserker, can’t be stopped to come in to your face to smack you, but is still killable. Here we could actually consider increasing duration to 10s and lowering CD to kitten . The downside is that it will probally be used to escape a fight with almost 100% success rate because you can’t slow the warrior down while he speeds away with all the rushes and leaps.

Balanced Stance:
While balanced stance is pretty good as it is and it is not overkill I would still like to change it a bit. Make it so that its not removable. Make it a real stance so that you would be balanced for the whole duration and it couldn’t be ripped off. Now, some people might be “Whoa, stop man, you crazy”, but let me explain. Firstly the duration should be reduced to 6s, CD is ok with 40s. Because without being able to rip this one off it is indeed very powerful. The downsides are though that you use it in a bad place you might actually lose more than gain. Whit the change it wouldn’t stack with stability anymore. So basically you can be wasting stability up-time by launching Balanced Stance. This said, I would propose that the trait would be changed so that it actually grants stability and not the stance, otherwise it would be way too powerful.

Frenzy:
Not much to say to this stance to be honest. I feel like it is where it should be.

Defiant Stance:
Not gonna say anything to this either, haven’t really played around with it so I rather shut my mouth than spout nonsense.

Anyways, that’s what I think would make stances more interesting and interactive for warriors. And do remember that my proposal revolves around the idea that stances cancel each other out, so you can’t be some big and mean box of destruction that is immune to everything.

PS. This is a perspective of a player who mains a warrior and is mostly playing WvW.

I think these would be OK changes but should be tested before implemented. I think that Balanced stance should act as the other stances as well and should not be able to be ripped, I think the developers just cut a corner here by letting it apply stability, instead of coding a unique buff like the other stances. And the reduction to 6 is ok, as most people who rely on stances increase the duration via trait. Also for berserker stance it already makes warrior immune to soft CC/movement impairing effects, so simply allowing condition damage to be applied (though mitigated in my opinion) would be an improvement. And edure pain change. I honestly don’t think it is that bad, with it only being 4 seconds(5 at most).

But I have to argue for them staying the same as well. Think about it, other classes have access to invulnerabilities. But for warriors to achieve the same thing they have to use all three stances at the same time, with damage invulnerability ending in 4(5) seconds. These stances go on long CD, leaving the warriors vulnerable as they have no utilities for 40-60 seconds. The only time stances are a problem is when these situations happen.
1.) A class uses their burst on a warrior after he has activated Endure pain.
2.) Berserker stance is activated, and rather than be attentive to the “Immune” message that pops up players dump their conditions on the warrior. (Mesmer, Engineer, Necromancer, Thief, etc.etc.)
3.) No one really complains about Balanced Stance, and Frenzy as they have obvious, easy counters. (Boonstrip/kite and “Dump all damage on him while he is able to take more damage!!”)

Anyways that is simply what I think. As you must always keep in mind arguments for both sides. Have a nice day.

The stances as they are, are not really broken on the current way, but I just feel that with small tweaks they could be made more interesting. Canceling each other out and actually being stances that couldn’t be ripped off (looking at you balanced stance). That way I think the stances would be more active and not “Oh, I’m taking some damage, better pop all three of ’em”.

My proposal is to make stances more interesting to use and make warrior a tiny bit more unique from other classes.

Oh and thanks for the feed back as well :P

One thing i think would be cool, is how stances in other games worked. Youd get a mediocre buff, but it was permanent. Have them on the f2-f4 with burst still being f1. Endure pain could be like 10-15% dmg reduction. Balanced stance could be control skills have a 20% chance to miss. Zerker stance could be -20-30% condi reduction. Frenzy could be all youre attacks are 25% faster.

You could only have one stance active at once, but with good timing you could “stance dance” and gain benefits from all of them. There could also be various traits to improve and add effects to them.

While I like your ideas, I don’t agree with making stances cancel each other out. In that case it’s automatically better to run signets or other utilities that can be used when they are needed without any sort of drawback mechanic from the skill itself. If I need stability and quickness from Frenzy to get that clutch res off, well I’m better off taking Dolyak Signet instead of Balanced Stance in that scenario. It just messes with synergy and bars off useful utility combos for us if they cancel each other out.