Guild Wars 2

What could be done to alleviate this issue? I’ve had a couple ideas but in any case this problem is being well…problematic. Any thoughts?

Agreed, no matter what build you go Cleansing Ire and Fast hands is pretty much a must.

It is possible to make changes to Cleansing Ire, or other traits that won’t necessitate taking the trait. However with Fast Hands it is more difficult. Not sure how ANet could work around a -5 second weapon swap. The trait is just too Warrior defining in general but any changes to it could possibly bury the Warrior 6 feet deep and cause huge balancing issues.

Since ANet’s philosophy is minor shaves and changes and see how the meta plays out. I don’t see them ever changing Fast Hands as it is such a huge change. You would have to rebalance and tinker with so many things on the Warrior it would be a balancing nightmare so it is pretty much easier to leave it as is and just balance around it. Like I said, Cleansing Ire is more likely to see changes than Fast Hands ever would.

However, Cleansing Ire is in an overall good spot and is a well designed trait. It is just we lack other options which pretty much pigeonhole us in this trait. All other adrenaline gaining traits are garbage or require too much investment. And our condition removal is mediocre outside of Cleansing Ire.

Hi,

I could indeed not do without “Fast Hands” anymore. However I’ve been playing without “Cleansing Ire” since the adrenaline change, and somehow found it manageable. Cleansing Ire does remain one of the best warrior PvP skill though, so careful thought must be given when playing without it.

Cleansing Ire actually offers three features you want to substitute:

• Cleansing conditions. I have found that “Brawler’s Recovery” is excellent, as I swap weapons quite often (nearly every 5s). The 3 points investments from “Fast Hands” are also acceptable, as they add critical damage and burst CD reduction, as well as useful traits in between. All in all, “Berserker’s Stance” and “Brawler’s Recovery” are usually enough for me to manage my conditions (but of course, you don’t fight blindly against condition users, or any sort of player anyway).
• Building adrenaline. Honestly, I’ve yet to experiment with most traits in that regard, but we do have lots of traits that build adrenaline, and 4 (or 6) points to invest if we go away from the Defense line. It’s a good opportunity to find new builds, all the more that only burst-based builds require fast adrenaline building – full-bar-based builds (where you get damage modifiers from full bars), and adrenaline-independent builds (where you don’t need the bars) can do without.
• Toughness. Getting Cleansing Ire automatically gives you toughness. My 2/0/6/0/6 berserker warrior has 2.5k armor, which is similar to the toughness of light armor condition builds – really comfortable. My 2/6/0/0/6 berserker warrior has 2k armor, and managing its HP is more challenging (you need to compensate by using particular gameplays, as you do with other classes).

Regards.

Fast hands is a tough one, and we might just have to suck up being forced to put 3 points in Discipline (personally, I don’t mind that, as it gives access to nice passives and traits). As for Cleansing Ire and being forced to put 4-5 points in Defense… Perhaps adding condi removal to other trees could be an option?

Take the recent change to Brawler’s Recovery, that now lets you clear 1 condition as often as every 5 seconds if you weapon swap on cooldown. It doesn’t offer the burst cleanse that CI does, but it’s more reliable and constant, offering a different way for a warrior to get their condi removal if they choose.

Quick Breathing is another example, allowing the warhorn to convert conditions to boons. These and CI are all in different trees, and while you could grab more than one for even more condi removal, alone they remain decent options for a warrior to pick and choose from, depending on the build they’re trying to make.

One answer could be to add more traits that cleanse conditions in other trees. Maybe a grandmaster trait in strength to cleanse conditions on a timer, or reduce the duration of some kinds of conditions. You could even do something more niche, like burst condi cleanse when you gain Quickness as a trait in Arms.

Personally, one of the major problems I have when playing with build ideas is that CI and Armored Attack (5-point passive in Defense) are so good for most builds that it’s not worth trading them out for anything. If you have more options for alternate forms of removal, power/condi damage increase, etc. Then it becomes easier for a player to go “Hmmm, I want to make a build like this… so I can grab this trait instead of CI and still have condi removal.”

The traits don’t have to be objectively better than CI, or worse, or even balanced against it to begin with. They simply need to offer a way to purge conditions, so warriors have options and don’t feel forced into a certain trait.

Warriors suffer on many weapon sets from poor mobility and inability to cleanse conditions effectively.

A good example of this is mace and axe where failure to land a cleansing ire is a huge penalty. There’s a reason that hambow with its AoE burst has been so popular for so long.

The weapons warriors have are just too restrictive. Take the rifle for instance. The burst locks you in place and is easily dodged unless it’s a huge melee. However, even then you are susceptible to CC and the hit isn’t particularly amazing.

Warriors are fairly tanky but not nearly as much as say a meditation guardian or bunker engie. Warriors put out fair damage but cannot pursue a heavy pressure beserker setup because they only have fair mitigation and are easily CC’d.

Oddly, warriors end up mostly taking up attrition setups that try and grind the enemy down. However, specs like Ele d/d are better at this than warrior.

Really, warriors are pigeon holed because they excel at nothing. They must take lots of passive traits because they have to simply soak lots of damage and effects. It’s constrictive and they need to rethink most of the warrior weapon setups. Most aren’t very good for pve or pvp, but this problem is also shared by other classes.

I don’t think fast hands is mandatory.

vincecontix.1264:

I don’t think fast hands is mandatory.

then you don’t play a warrior. please remove it from your signature

Simon.3794:

vincecontix.1264:

I don’t think fast hands is mandatory.

then you don’t play a warrior. please remove it from your signature

fast hands is a crutch. we really dont need it.

does it give us an edge? absolutely!

do we need to use it? not necessarily.

once you know your way around the warrior and know all the skills/cd’s and timing of combos you can do everything you do with fast hands, without it.

this being said, i use fast hands. simply because it’s there. if there were other worthwhile traits to use in my build, i would use them, but there really aren’t, so i don’t

also, why are you running warrior sprint lol. u dont weapon swap inventory warhorn for speed?

What is the context of this trait setup? I’ve never run Cleansing Ire in a PvE build unless i’m shout healing. If you’re talking WvW, then yeah, pretty much necessity.

Sounds to me like if you’re doing this in PvE, you’ve got really bad pugs running dungeons with you and you need to find some guild mates that aren’t horrible.

Fast hands? Yeah, I can’t go without. I had a lot of trouble adjusting to Guardian when I finally made one because I couldn’t get to my second set fast enough. This is a bigger problem for us though because our class ability relies on the weapon set we have out, while other classes have the same ability no matter the weapon set. That being said, the new Arcing Slice isn’t as bad as people like to think it is, if you can miss maybe one burst skill out of your rotation by dropping Fast Hands to pick up a more useful trait, I’d say try it.

Assassin X.8573:

Simon.3794:

vincecontix.1264:

I don’t think fast hands is mandatory.

then you don’t play a warrior. please remove it from your signature

fast hands is a crutch. we really dont need it.

does it give us an edge? absolutely!

do we need to use it? not necessarily.

once you know your way around the warrior and know all the skills/cd’s and timing of combos you can do everything you do with fast hands, without it.

this being said, i use fast hands. simply because it’s there. if there were other worthwhile traits to use in my build, i would use them, but there really aren’t, so i don’t

also, why are you running warrior sprint lol. u dont weapon swap inventory warhorn for speed?

Let me explain to you how fast hands is mandatory for 99% of the warrior builds.
1: More sigil procsit makes you proc 4 sigils in 10 second instead of 2, which means you can get extra 3 might/dodge/ bleed application/chill application/leech/poison etc(two of the list) every 10 seconds.

2: Might stacking Combustive shot last for 9 second max, that being said, you, without fast hands, you place the combustive and blast it with arcing arrow and that’s it, congrats, you stacked 3 might for 10 seconds

while me with fast hands, i can place a combustive shot, blast it with arcing arrow then switch to sword/horn and do another blast and leap finisher for fire aura. thats 3+ extra might and burning every 10 seconds.

3.Auto attack time Without fast hands, you will spend most of your time auto attacking and dealing close to no damage. you only has 6 weapon skill, you don’t need 10 seconds to use them all, not to mention some have long CD which you won’t even be able to use. you will end up doing a lot of auto attack that does not benefit you in any offensive and defensive way.

4.Condition cleans and burst skills Burst skills are 8-10 seconds, that being said, with fast hand, you will be able to use 2 burst skills in 10 second compare to 1 without fast hands. Thats less damage, less utility and after all less condition cleans via cleansing ire.

I can make the list even bigger, but this is what i have on my mind right now.

reason why tarcis has 3 on discpline on his build, not because it just happens to be there, he can always switch to have more bleed damage crit chance or what not if fast hands is not all that

tldr:every warrior builds need it, unless you are pure bunker and don’t do any damage in the beginning.

I guess it all really comes down to semantics. Sure you can use builds without Fast Hands.

However, as Simon pointed out, Fast Hands offer so many obvious and potent benefits that it would be foolish and to your disadvantage NOT to take it. The best benefits by far are the sigil procs and not being glued to a weapon for 10 seconds. Alot of classes have to double stack sigils just so they get the benefits every 10 seconds. Fast Hands circumvents that. Another point that I would like to add that I don’t think Simon mentioned is in which I feel is important is Versatile Rage. Versatile Rage (I think that is what it is called) allows you to gain adrenaline on swap. Versatile Rage is often one of our main sources of Adrenaline gain, and if you don’t have Fast Hands, adrenaline becomes significantly harder to come by.

Also without Fast Hands, builds like Mace/GS and Hammer/Sword would be complete afterthoughts as they rely so heavily on stringing multiple skills on different weapon sets together.

If you look at it this way:

Elementalists have multiple attunements which total 20 different skills
Engineers can have multiple kits that can be accessed without cooldowns in addition to 4 extra skills
Necros have an extra bar of skills with deathshroud
Mesmer’s have 4 extra skills, not to mention AI as apart of their mechanic
Rangers have pets that also attack and have skills (ok we can admit they aren’t perfect)
Thieves have an initiative system that pretty much circumvents any cooldowns and steal which is pretty much like 2 skills

Guardians are pretty much the only class that gets screwed out of having skills that circumvent the horrid 10 second weapon swap cooldowns and pretty much have to suck it up when it comes to getting stuck on a weapon set without any cooldowns up.

Warriors only have 1 single extra skill, it requires resources which tend to be harder to come by than Lifeforce, Clone Generation and Initiative and are significantly less effective to not worth using when not at full adrenaline (save Arcing Slice). Warriors are also punished twice for missing that single extra skill. #1: is the cooldown and #2: is the loss of adrenaline (so are mesmers, but clone generation isn’t as hard to come by tbh). Fast Hands in this sense sort of becomes that medium in which a Warrior can have that offensive fluidity and continuity.

Warriors live and die so much off of adrenaline that I am even tempted to say that our own resource mechanic is what pidgeon-holes us ultimately. A huge bulk of our condition removal comes from Cleansing Ire, a huge bulk of a Warrior’s offensive ability comes from our single Adrenaline skill. And a huge bulk of our adrenaline gain that allows us to use these abilities come from Cleansing Ire, Versatile Rage and indirectly Fast Hands. Hell, even condition removal comes from weapon swap if you use Brawler’s Recovery.

Now I don’t really mind that and you can argue some of the same points for other classes. However like I said, Warriors live and die off of Adrenaline, which in turn is basically one skill. So in other words Warriors live and die off of the success/failure of one skill. Not entirely obviously, but outcomes are so heavily determined by it. This is just a perspective that I look at it.

fast hands is very important in most builds and would only be able to be replaced by another really strong trait. The ability to proc both sets of weapon swap sigils in 10s ( 6 stacks of might [ with 20s duration ] per 10s is very strong and allows your weapon swap only to stacks 12 stacks of might rather than 6 and potentially ot having an extra dodge roll [ if this is how the game mechanics really work and the icds only affect the individual sigil not all of that sigil in your possesion ]) and it does allow warriors a fluidity that other classes dont have. There are great traits in the line that fast hands is in though that would attract attention without it. As for CI ( Ckeansing Ire ) it is not necessary for people who are willing to take 3 points further into the with fast hads rather than 4 into defense because brawlers recovery has strong condi cleanse and can work as long as you have some other form of condition mitigation ( beserkers stance, evades for high condi attacks, blocks, etc..).

Completely agree, all but my PvE build run these traits no matter what and it’s limiting our builds. you don’t run these traits you’re dead and do alot less damage.

To be honest warrior needs a complete rework from the ground up, it’s recieved so many nerfs and trait shifts that it’s only one round of nerfs and trait shifts from being completely unusable outside the hammer train.

Really, there are only a couple things that can happen from here on out. Pick your poison;

-keep it the way it is. Sane warriors will continue picking Fast Hands for every build they play (not talking PvE here). It really is that class-defining (more so then adrenaline is). Which means any warrior build starts with Versatile Rage, which is pretty decent, a pick of Sprint, Signet Mastery or Vigorous Focus, which are all great minor traits, and Fast Hands. But you only have 11 points to make your build with.

-Make Fast Hands a part of warrior. Simply make this a feature of the class. I suggested this a long time ago, as it is the only viable way to overcome this problem, imo. Off course, this means warrior would need to be toned down to some degree in other areas, but all-in-all, no major nerfs would be needed as warriors currently always have this trait already if they are to be any decent in pvp/wvw. The problem is, that you would have to nerf some things, and the question is what. It would probably amount to some master traits getting moved to GM and such (looking at CI here).

-Remove Fast Hands from the game. Another option, a scary one at that. Warrior is not in a very good place right now imo, this nerf would be detrimental to it. Thus, major buffs would have to be implemented elsewhere.

As for CI, it is quite mandatory in WvW. Not because of the cleansing, which off course it does quite well depending on the weapon set. Not because of the building adrenaline, you can do this in other ways too. It is because of prementioned Fast Hands trait really. As warriors feel they must get FH, they are left with 11 trait points. Now, what does CI do? It combines two of the most nessecary attributes of a warrior in one; adrenaline build-up and controllable condition cleansing. You simply can not afford to forgo it, as it is the most trait point cost efficient way of getting what you need.

It actually spells disaster for lesser used weapons, like Mace and Rifle, as they have burst skills that are very unreliable to hit, and thus to cleanse with. To be able to make viable builds with these weapons just requires more trait points then we have got.

i think anyone not having played warrior during the last year can’t fully understand how the class feels right now, it is a very good analysis we have here it would be nice if this got dev attention.

the warrior went from being “decent to good” in every area of the game to “good in some niche areas” but it’s hard to perceive it from outside.

pve the warrior just isn’t -good- anymore, 1 is a must for every team, 2 can work, 3 is a bad team and will be lacking in either dps or defensive utility badly.

pvp warrior is kind of a joke now, it’s barely competitive at all if you ask me, despite being my main i just feel like i perform more easily and better on my other classes.

wvw is possibly the area it performs best but i’m not sure a zerg would lose out much if you simply repleaced every warrior in your hammertrain with guardians.

this SEVERE trait dependency is a good deal responsible for it if you ask me.