Guild Wars 2

Warrior is in a good position right now, especially during this condition meta.

I want to review the following opinions of others and discuss whether or not they need to be changed. There has been talk of nerfs so this can determine whether or not things change for us warriors.

Months ago warriors were always considered free-kill. And some may still say that right now. Per the norm things start getting out of hand as soon as a class is given something needed that they have trouble with, and as soon as someone figures out something pretty creative with their class, people can’t cope. I have some suggestions for people to take, or for Anet to correct, lets discuss.

First off. The Skullcrack>HB build. Using Sigil of Para, warriors should be getting 3.45 (its bugged right now to bring it up to 4s, but 3.45 is still a lot) second stun duration on their mace burst, easily getting a hundred blades to follow up:
I’ve been hearing things like: Skullcrack & Hundred Blades cooldown are too short. Which may be the determining factor. 15 points into Discipline largely aid the frequency of this combination. Is it really the stun people can’t get used to? IMO it is X if X=anything that leads to the effective use of Hundred Blades. If its not Bull’s Rush>Frenzy>HB its Skullcrack. And if skullcrack gets nerfed its the juggling of Pin Down and Bolas next. So, is everyone asking for warriors to use HB without the aid of anything? Or to not be able to use HB at all. If you could change the Hundred Blades skill to end the “X=hundred blades” nerf train, what would it be?

Berserker Stance. 8 seconds over a 60 second cooldown. This skill was hardly used before they introduced immunity to conditions. Personally, I’ve seen many condi users panic when they see this and use all their condition cooldowns to try to stop it. Is 8s too long. Is it the combination of stability making these warriors formidable. My suggestion is that most condition classes have some way to wait this out. Pistol thieves can keep their distance easily, as well as rangers. Necros have access to stability and protection during this period, just don’t use all your condition cooldowns. Mesmers and engineers are slippery enough to evade the burst during this period. The reason why endure pain is 4s, and berserker stance is 8s, is that endure pain can negate anywhere from 0-infinite direct damage, whereas condition damage dished out during 8s can’t amount to that. To balance out this skill, berserker stance should cleanse all existing conditions on the warrior when it is activated, and not be immune to receiving conditions, but the conditions will not have any effect until the stance wears off – meaning long lasting conditions will still matter, and well timed short lasting conditions such as immobilization during the end of the stance can be very devastating.

Healing Signet. I think many people know a lot about this already. The heal over time is about 390 per second on warriors without healing power. My suggestion would be to scale it down to what it was prior, and to boost its gain through healing power so that it is slightly better than it is right now, I’m talking about the slightest investment into healing power. Warriors that want sustain must give some love to the healing power stat, and this in turn will balance things out. I think the problem most people have is that this easily combines with adrenal health, 15 points into the defense trait. Without changing this skill however, my suggestion would be for people that have access to poison, to use it regularly, and to burst as hard as you can during this period.

I think the combination of the 3 skills listed above is what makes most people think warriors are too strong. I really think its the figuring out how to handle each of them, and then in tandem with eachother, most people can handle these warriors using proper play. There are many builds people cannot deal with, but I’d rather Anet adds more variety, and more things to make people complain about for each and every class, rather than to tone everything down to gray.

The thing that makes people think warrior is overpowered is that most of current warrior builds have extremely high efficiency at entry level. So high, that in fact seasoned pvp players find those specs hard to deal with. The combination of natural tankiness, high sustain, high damage, easy access to crowd control and resilience to conditions make warrior the most well-rounded class to play. It excels at both dueling and teamfights. It is tanky yet it deals massive damage. Never before was there a spec in this game that could do everything at the same time at a level a warrior can do it now. Eles were close long ago, but they lacked any sort of damage back then and required timing, cooldown management and some skill to be truly effective (a good thief back then could drop a cantrip ele in one good burst). This however doesn’t apply to how warriors are now. The skill is insignificant compared to the potency of the build, and that is what bothers people. The same thing applies to necromancers, they are just too easy to play brainlessly.

The core problem of warrior gameplay is that the moment you get hit by cc and your stun breaker is on cooldown the fight has ended. This wouldn’t be such a problem if your teammate could actually burst the warrior down while he is focusing on you (the way backstab thieves were countered back in the day, which is essentially what mace/GS warriors have become, except for the fact that they cannot die), but that just isn’t going to happen seeing how tanky the warrior is, or if the warrior wasn’t dealing enough damage to down you by himself while you are crowd controlled. As you have mentioned this could be achieved by making warrior’s healing scale much more with healing power, but lowering the base of the heals. Regenerative heals should be the trademark of tanky builds anyway.

Warriors are not cantrip ele OP. That’s dumb.

Healing signet needs toning down slightly, and needs to scale slightly* more with healing power.. The influx of warriors is partly due to warriors being the most rolled class, and they’ve been excluded from pvp until now.

everyone screams op about skull crack because everyone in wvw runs glass and gets destroyed by the build

blind and poison counter it

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Warrior-changes-I-foresee-happening

Blind/Poison do counter it.

Silferas, I’m glad to see people definitely agree with the healing signet suggestion, it forces warriors to play one way or the other without nerfing the skill all-together, because it wasn’t used before – why revert i back to useless.

Phaeton, I wanted to mention that yes, warrior makes a large percentage of the populace, but withdrew that comment based on how many warriors actually make up the wvw populace. The skullcrack hb method does have an extremely low skill cap. Why not add something along the lines of… daze target, if target was interrupted target becomes stunned. That would remove the shieldbash skullcrack 4s combo… but I’m not sure how many people would like this. Albeit a high skill cap to only use mace burst for the interest of interrupting someone, mace/X has zero gap closers, especially gap closers that don’t already stun/knockdown opponents.

Scorci, I think people shouldn’t complain either. You can choose to try to fight a perma-stealth thief and waste your time, or move on. Its the same with skullcrack>hb. Pop stability and move on, stealth and move on. Or develop the build, or better yet – modify your playstyle with your existing build that will counter these warriors.

I agree with original poster on the point of X > 100 blades. Personally I don’t use the skullcrack 100b build myself, I run with a sword and warhorn and I use savage leap > flurry > 100 blades. If they nerf the skullcrack thing then yeah, they’ll probably nerf whatever everyone starts using from them.

Also, Silferas complained how warriors have everything and can cope with conditions? Wait, what? We have Dogged March to help with CC, but conditions in general? What is it exactly we have that helps us cope with conditions? You mean lemongrass, which everyone else can use? Or the couple of condition removal utilities we have which pretty much everyone else gets. I’ve got a pretty solid build at the moment that I’m happy with, but I just accept the fact that I cannot go toe-toe with decent Necros. They melt me even with lemongrass. That claim is just ridiculous.

Also, I don’t feel Healing Signet needs to be toned done. I think it’s about right where it is. You have to bear in mind the mechanics that every other class has to mitigate damage. I don’t have a ranger or engie so I can’t comment there, but seriously, every other class has something. Something they can summon, or STEALTH which is a complete joke.

I’ve found some melee rangers, that I cannot beat, we just stalemate. I don’t know what they’re doing but they’re getting some sort of regen boon, and then they have protection, and by the time that’s all on cooldown, they use their heal. We have JUST the Signet to rely on, you’ve gotto understand that. There’s no point in activating it because the heal is laughable, and we have NOTHING else, no extra heals, no stealth, no minions to provide distraction, no protection.

Daecollo.9578:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Warrior-changes-I-foresee-happening

Blind/Poison do counter it.

those are BAD

From that post:

Burst Hundred Blades (1¼, 10 second cool down.)
Repeatedly strike multiple foes causing Vulnerability. Allows you to move at reduced speed.
Damage (8x): 1,416 (2.22)?
8 Vulnerability: 10 s (Each Strike causes 1 stack.)
Range: 250

While many people disagree with it being a burst, there is a greedy factor here. It takes the current HB 3.5 seconds to complete. At just 200 base damage less, and adding 8 vuln stacks. 1400 dmg over 1.25s while being able to move and change the direction of HB? I would say YES. What will this remove? Skullcrack -> HB. What will this add?
Bolas -> HB.
Shieldbash -> HB.
Bullsrush -> HB.
Pindown -> HB.
Backbreaker ->HB.
Heck, even hammer staggering blow because the new range of HB can reach them and most of its hits will land before the enemy can pick themselves up from being staggered. Along with burst crit chance and burst damage already being in traits. People should be complaining about this change, and warriors should be wanting this change rather than not, if all the numbers stay as how this person described it.

Why do I sound exited about it? Because it adds multiple ways to access HB thus more variety among weapon sets and builds and also because I want people to agree to keep how warriors are right now. Improve and fix things out of what people are complaining about. Make them want to play other warrior builds not forcefully through nerfs.

Gutts.8791:

Also, Silferas complained how warriors have everything and can cope with conditions? Wait, what? We have Dogged March to help with CC, but conditions in general? What is it exactly we have that helps us cope with conditions? You mean lemongrass, which everyone else can use? Or the couple of condition removal utilities we have which pretty much everyone else gets. I’ve got a pretty solid build at the moment that I’m happy with, but I just accept the fact that I cannot go toe-toe with decent Necros. They melt me even with lemongrass. That claim is just ridiculous.

Next time read what you write, or at least do some research before, because right now it either seems like you know nothing about warrior, or are very, VERY stupid. Cleansing Ire (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cleansing_Ire) is basically a 3 condition cleanse every 10s, and it’s just 5 more trait points investment after taking adrenal health, which most good warriors already take anyways. With proper trait setup you can cleanse 3 conditions every 7 seconds!!! No other class in game can continuously cleanse 3 conditions every 7 seconds AND have a skill that makes them IMMUNE to conditions.

Man, you went full kitten mode, never go full kitten mode…

EDIT: also.. Can’t go toe to toe with necros? Are we even playing the same game? Warriors hard counter necros lol. I don’t know what build you are running, but it’s either outdated or very stupid.

Silferas.3841:

Gutts.8791:

Also, Silferas complained how warriors have everything and can cope with conditions? Wait, what? We have Dogged March to help with CC, but conditions in general? What is it exactly we have that helps us cope with conditions? You mean lemongrass, which everyone else can use? Or the couple of condition removal utilities we have which pretty much everyone else gets. I’ve got a pretty solid build at the moment that I’m happy with, but I just accept the fact that I cannot go toe-toe with decent Necros. They melt me even with lemongrass. That claim is just ridiculous.

Next time read what you write, or at least do some research before, because right now it either seems like you know nothing about warrior, or are very, VERY stupid. Cleansing Ire (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cleansing_Ire) is basically a 3 condition cleanse every 10s, and it’s just 5 more trait points investment after taking adrenal health, which most good warriors already take anyways. With proper trait setup you can cleanse 3 conditions every 7 seconds!!! No other class in game can continuously cleanse 3 conditions every 7 seconds AND have a skill that makes them IMMUNE to conditions.

Man, you went full kitten mode, never go full kitten mode…

EDIT: also.. Can’t go toe to toe with necros? Are we even playing the same game? Warriors hard counter necros lol. I don’t know what build you are running, but it’s either outdated or very stupid.

You have to realize cleansing ire need to be hit, and as many people suggested poison+blind is the best way to counter this popular Mace/GS. Just be reminded not everyone use Mace/GS(I know I don’t), and some of the nerf that you’re asking will make other build not being effective as it is.

@Buzzcrave half the classes have no access to poison and smart people take longbow/hammer spec anyway. Longbow counters blind really hard and allows you to cleanse those conditions without relying on anything. To be honest the only profession that can spam enough blind to keep you down is thief with pistol offhand, but whatever, apparently the rest of the warrior community refuses to accept that they went over the roof with warrior buffs. People should grow up and realize that when you start owning all of a sudden, it’s not a miraculous increase in your skill but your build being overpowered. Nobody goes from zero to hero in a few days because of a skill, especially when playing against people who have played their professions and builds for far longer than this mace/greatsword (which isn’t even the real problem, it’s a no-brain cookie cutter but not the build that’s truly broken, which would be the cc heavy hammer/mace+shield or longbow).

Gutts.8791:

I agree with original poster on the point of X > 100 blades. Personally I don’t use the skullcrack 100b build myself, I run with a sword and warhorn and I use savage leap > flurry > 100 blades. If they nerf the skullcrack thing then yeah, they’ll probably nerf whatever everyone starts using from them.

Also, Silferas complained how warriors have everything and can cope with conditions? Wait, what? We have Dogged March to help with CC, but conditions in general? What is it exactly we have that helps us cope with conditions? You mean lemongrass, which everyone else can use? Or the couple of condition removal utilities we have which pretty much everyone else gets. I’ve got a pretty solid build at the moment that I’m happy with, but I just accept the fact that I cannot go toe-toe with decent Necros. They melt me even with lemongrass. That claim is just ridiculous.

Also, I don’t feel Healing Signet needs to be toned done. I think it’s about right where it is. You have to bear in mind the mechanics that every other class has to mitigate damage. I don’t have a ranger or engie so I can’t comment there, but seriously, every other class has something. Something they can summon, or STEALTH which is a complete joke.

I’ve found some melee rangers, that I cannot beat, we just stalemate. I don’t know what they’re doing but they’re getting some sort of regen boon, and then they have protection, and by the time that’s all on cooldown, they use their heal. We have JUST the Signet to rely on, you’ve gotto understand that. There’s no point in activating it because the heal is laughable, and we have NOTHING else, no extra heals, no stealth, no minions to provide distraction, no protection.

shrug it off zerker stance signet of spite shake it off (esp if your with other warriors with it) mend. theirs a trait that lets warriors with war horns turn conditons into buffs theirs also solider’s runes (which requires shouts which only war and gaurdians have) so yeah if you specify you’ll get good condtion counter but not what a lot of people wanto tm ake it out to be. forgot cleansing ire

also I agree with you on sig of healing I think a nerf would just kill the skill since it’s got a long act time a poor spike heal all it has for us is a heal over time.

Silferas.3841:

Gutts.8791:

Also, Silferas complained how warriors have everything and can cope with conditions? Wait, what? We have Dogged March to help with CC, but conditions in general? What is it exactly we have that helps us cope with conditions? You mean lemongrass, which everyone else can use? Or the couple of condition removal utilities we have which pretty much everyone else gets. I’ve got a pretty solid build at the moment that I’m happy with, but I just accept the fact that I cannot go toe-toe with decent Necros. They melt me even with lemongrass. That claim is just ridiculous.

Next time read what you write, or at least do some research before, because right now it either seems like you know nothing about warrior, or are very, VERY stupid. Cleansing Ire (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cleansing_Ire) is basically a 3 condition cleanse every 10s, and it’s just 5 more trait points investment after taking adrenal health, which most good warriors already take anyways. With proper trait setup you can cleanse 3 conditions every 7 seconds!!! No other class in game can continuously cleanse 3 conditions every 7 seconds AND have a skill that makes them IMMUNE to conditions.

Man, you went full kitten mode, never go full kitten mode…

EDIT: also.. Can’t go toe to toe with necros? Are we even playing the same game? Warriors hard counter necros lol. I don’t know what build you are running, but it’s either outdated or very stupid.

you mentioned cleansing ire and mentioned adrenal health when the skill are non compatiable that is they may be in the same chain but cleansing condition removal (which you listed as your problem with the skill) will take the use the adrenaline that fuels adrenal health there by working against adrenal health.

Silferas.3841:

@Buzzcrave half the classes have no access to poison and smart people take longbow/hammer spec anyway. Longbow counters blind really hard and allows you to cleanse those conditions without relying on anything. To be honest the only profession that can spam enough blind to keep you down is thief with pistol offhand, but whatever, apparently the rest of the warrior community refuses to accept that they went over the roof with warrior buffs. People should grow up and realize that when you start owning all of a sudden, it’s not a miraculous increase in your skill but your build being overpowered. Nobody goes from zero to hero in a few days because of a skill, especially when playing against people who have played their professions and builds for far longer than this mace/greatsword (which isn’t even the real problem, it’s a no-brain cookie cutter but not the build that’s truly broken, which would be the cc heavy hammer/mace+shield or longbow).

sigil of doom gives all classes access to a moderate posion lasts around 4-7 seconds on weapon swap.

I really dislike the idea of having to force warriors investing highly into healing power to make Healing Signet useful. Healing Power can make sense to bring on a Guardian or a Ele because they have more traits/skills that actually cause a healing effect. But what does Warrior have? Besides the heal itself only Adrenal Health, a minor perk that for many builds gives little benefit because of how frequently we use our burst skills these days, and Inspiring Battle Standard actually receive any benefit from it.

If the scaling was changed I would probably switch to Healing Surge because giving up so many stats just for my heal to be decent doesn’t seem worthwhile. I would however be OK with it IF AND ONLY IF Banners where changed in such a way that I would consider bringing one. While there are Banner Regen builds that use Healing Signet they are only useful 1v1, and GW2 is not balanced around 1v1. I would never consider bringing a Banner to TPvP as they are now. Maybe if you had the option to wear one on your back and doing so gave you access to another skill they might be useful but as they are now I’d just be screwing my team over by running one.

People like to say how good warriors have to cleanse conditions. They also fail to mention that they are build specific. Lemongrass/melendru are not going to be using soldier runes. I prefer soldier but that is because of my specific build. I prefer shouts but that again is also because of my specific build. Soldier runes are all tanky…toughness, vitality, not much damage getting put into the build here, this is all about mitigation.

I’m not saying that we have poor access, just that we have to build condition management into the set.

Clensing Ire is in a tanky line. Giving up damage out put to be able to soak up damage. We are talking about trait points. I think they are fair. This line also have several nice traits to have in the master level. I wish I could have every one of these like people claim that I can have all the time.

Conditions can still be difficult. Pop a great justice to cleanse the confusion stack and your fury and might get corrupted. Condition builds can still dish out a bit faster but I’m not an easy kill anymore. Necro’s still have a blind so when I see that happening, I tend to avoid that necro. They can still be a tough opponent without it.

Some of you are not really comparing things correctly and are using the 30/30/30/30/30 builds that everyone runs with double rune slots in my armor and extra skills.