Guild Wars 2

With the buff to adrenal health, defense tree became very strong, and even more mandatory than before. This is fine though, as it does what it is supposed to do: provide you with better survivability. Strength and berserker are also quite solid, providing us with nice DPS boost.

However, the way defense tree is designed forces us to rely on spamming our burst skills, meaning we have to go either berserker or discipline, which also puts them at direct competition with each other. As it is right now, discipline just isn’t as good as berserker, but that can be fixed by either improving damage related traits in discipline or the skills on weapons that benefit more from discipline than from berserker (like hammer).
The other 2 trees are in even worse state:
Tactics, which is our support tree, was destroyed by the vigorous shouts nerf. Warriors don’t have water fields they can blast or weapon skills that heal allies, all of the group healing comes from this trait, and it just isn’t enough.
Arms is probably our worst spec right now. It focuses entirely on bleeding based sword builds, which are completely outclassed by condi on CC from strength and burning from berserker. Sword should be made a better condi weapon, and this tree needs traits that are useful outside of sword builds.

tl;dr version: we now have a decent base, but tactics, arms and discipline need to be brought up to the level of strength and berserker to increase build diversity.

I agree that Tactics is under-powered and Arms is way too limited, but Discipline is a great trait line. If you leave it out of your build, it’s because there are 3 other trees better than this wonderful tree for your play style. That’s a GOOD thing!
There was a time when Discipline was the hands-down best trait line we had – and it didn’t get nerfed. Some of the others caught up. Be thankful.

Vigorous Shouts have a 1.0 healing coefficient, so you need investment to make it worthwhile. Its something that I wish was more present on other skills with healing.

How does the design of Defense make us reliant on spamming bursts? Unless I’m missing something, hitting a full burst every 15s isn’t spammy at all.

I agree that Tactics is underwhelming, and is probably the next place to look for an alternate/additional sustain buff by way of party support (shouts, etc). Arms could use a touch more maybe, but not a lot imo.

perko.8309:

I agree that Tactics is under-powered and Arms is way too limited, but Discipline is a great trait line. If you leave it out of your build, it’s because there are 3 other trees better than this wonderful tree for your play style. That’s a GOOD thing!
There was a time when Discipline was the hands-down best trait line we had – and it didn’t get nerfed. Some of the others caught up. Be thankful.

Using a discipline build forces you to use longbow, severely limiting your choice. In the other weapon set you can use:
-Sword or axe, both of which are really weak.
-Greatsword, which is better used with berserker.
-Hammer, which just might be good enough… we will have to wait and see.
Axe is probably the best target for a rework to make it a better weapon in a discipline build, as it really has no use right now. Sword can be made better by improving arms, although I think it needs a buff to the skills as well (more condi applications… maybe torment?). So yes, discipline can be left as it is.

Ghotistyx.6942:

Vigorous Shouts have a 1.0 healing coefficient, so you need investment to make it worthwhile. Its something that I wish was more present on other skills with healing.

The problem is that we already give up too much damage potential by taking tactics instead of strength, without having to take clerics amulet too. At least eles can still do some damage in their support build.

Choppy.4183:

How does the design of Defense make us reliant on spamming bursts? Unless I’m missing something, hitting a full burst every 15s isn’t spammy at all.

Try playing non-berserker, non-discipline build and tell me how reliable it is.

I dont get it, how does discipline force you to use a longbow?

Cataca.3867:

I dont get it, how does discipline force you to use a longbow?

Landing your burst skills becomes much more important if you don’t use a berserker build. Missing one due to a random blind can really screw you over, especially if it is the first burst skill you use in a fight (which would delay your adrenal health).

Ozzrel.9825:

Cataca.3867:

I dont get it, how does discipline force you to use a longbow?

Landing your burst skills becomes much more important if you don’t use a berserker build. Missing one due to a random blind can really screw you over, especially if it is the first burst skill you use in a fight (which would delay your adrenal health).

But who uses his burst skills without intending to land them?

Tactics should stay nerfed. I dont want my WvW commander/Guild Leaders start demanding the shout build again as I have been using it most of pre-HoT. Its bad enough that they are addicted to the Elite Banner.

Fivedawgs.4267:

Ozzrel.9825:

Cataca.3867:

I dont get it, how does discipline force you to use a longbow?

Landing your burst skills becomes much more important if you don’t use a berserker build. Missing one due to a random blind can really screw you over, especially if it is the first burst skill you use in a fight (which would delay your adrenal health).

But who uses his burst skills without intending to land them?

Not so much ’not intending to land them" as much as ’Not losing everything if the opponent counters". If they blind? You lose everything. If they dodge? you lose everything. If they block? You lose everything.

Ozzrel.9825:

Try playing non-berserker, non-discipline build and tell me how reliable it is.

Well, I do play vanilla warrior, albeit with Discipline. Without Disc, you still have 2-3 opportunities per 15s to land a full burst, which still isn’t that hard, even if you don’t use longbow. Presumably you’re taking a trait or two to help ensure your adrenaline isn’t holding you back from bursting, just the burst or weapon swap cd.

Further, the reliability of landing the hit isn’t affected by either Disc or Berserker, just the number of chances. Moreover, the 2-3 chances per 15s is what you’ve got to maintain permanent uptime of Adrenal Health… losing a couple of seconds isn’t the end of the world if you go over that time.

You don’t have to land a full t3 burst to make use of your Adrenal health. With a core warrior running discipline I don’t wait for a tier 3 burst. I use bursts when i need them and if they are not on tier 3 so be it.

Been running axe/shield & sword/mace with the new destroyer amulet in PvP lately and it’s restoring some faith in warrior. It’s still a bit hard to tell how it fits in overall with the unsettled meta, but it at least has decent tools to put up a fight against our impending mesmer overlords (sig of might + condi defense):
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQRAsZ3enMdAdhgVhA2dAElilqADpA0ACAK9gGXM4902aftA-TJBFgAEnAgy9HaOIAAPBAA

Fivedawgs.4267:

But who uses his burst skills without intending to land them?

every shoutbow user xD we need them to warm our feet.

Shoutbow sucks xd