Guild Wars 2

Introduction

Hey there, I’m Brude and I’ve outlined a few suggestions that I feel would put the Warrior in a much better place than it is now. All of these suggestions are from a PvP perspective, as that is my main game-type, and I main the Warrior profession. To start…

Fast Hands

What a shocker… another “Fast Hands needs to be baseline” post… Well it’s a needed change! It’s the most important, and most beneficial change that we could possibly receive! But don’t worry… the rest of the changes I’m suggesting below won’t be kicking a dead horse like this one!

Blocks

We need more unblockable abilities, or more access to making our abilities unblockable. We are the masters of weapons, so shouldn’t we have more access to landing our strikes since we are supposed to be such pros at it?

Trait Suggestions:

• After weapon swapping, your next 1-2 attacks are unblockable
• Every 7-8 seconds you stay in a weapon set, gain 2 unblockable attacks

Both would be great replacement traits for Fast Hands (if it went baseline), and would even fit in thematically with the “Discipline” line. It would also keep Discipline a desirable trait line.

evAIDS

With all of the vigor and extra dodge bars being handed out… I’m not sure what the answer for this is, but I couldn’t help but notice we didn’t have an Elite Shout… A shout that totally depleted enemy’s endurance bars on a long CD would be pretty amazing… and likely OP as kitten, but I’m just throwing around ideas here.

Another possible idea would be making a trait (likely GM) that when landing a level 3 Burst Skill, you remove a bar of endurance. For the Longbow’s Combustive Shot/Scorched Earth, it would remove the bar of endurance ONLY to those hit by the initial impact of the burst/primal burst skill.

Higher Ground (queue RHCP! Or Stevie Wonder… depending how old school you are)

We need a way to combat the ease of kiting by going to higher ground. There’s a perfect candidate for the job: Sundering Leap. Allow the leap to navigate the Z axis, and there’s the answer! Others teleport, while we jump harder! Seems legit enough to me! It also makes a Rage Skill useful! Which leads me to…

Rage Skills

Rage Skills need a rework… and not even that huge of one. They each have potential, and only need some minor tweaks.

Rage Skill Suggestions:

• Sundering Leap – We already went over this one in the Higher Ground section, so moving on!
• Outrage – I’m cool with the way it is, but an added immunity to movement impairing abilities for 5 seconds after stun breaking would be an amazing addition.
• Shattering Blow – I LOVE the animation already, but I think it should be a two-part ability…
  • Part 1: Summon a rock in front of you to block incoming attacks until it’s destroyed (5 or so hits). This would be a directionally aimed block similar to the Dragon Hunter’s Shield of Courage.
  • Part 2: Shatter the rock to gain adrenaline and send rock fragments that inflict bleeding on all foes in front of you.
• Wild Blow – Lash out with a critical attack that launches your target and removes a bar of their endurance. Your target flies backward with such force that they knock back other foes in the way. Remove a bar of endurance from those hit, and an additional bar from the original target.

I just had a eureka moment! As soon as I got to Wild blow I thought back to what I previously wrote about evAIDS… and thought, “You know what?!?! Yeah! This could be the ability to land the endurance draining blow!!!” I’ll leave what I wrote earlier though as a reference point to this rambling that I’m doing now.

Anyway, the changes to these Rage Skills leave an offensive/defensive split 2-2. They each have their uses, and would make running them considerably more appealing.

Also, I didn’t include Blood Reckoning b/c that type of skill is nearly useless, and won’t see use in PvP (outside of the Revs Enchanted Daggers, and that’s only b/c they have another real heal to fall back on imo).

Blind

Blind is a condition that I feel is over-distributed… WAY too many professions have access to it, yet only one has a trait/utility that gives immunity to it (Engineer/Scrapper)… and if we are going to get technical Rangers also have a trait that removes blind on evade, but that still isn’t immunity!

Anyway, I digress… I have a potential answer for this issue!

Trait Suggestion:

• - Fury you apply also grants immunity to blindness

This trait would be a great replacement for Deep Strike (Fury you apply also grants condition damage), as it’s a granted effect, and not a new boon the needs to be created. I’m not great at naming abilities or traits, but “Blinded by Anger” or “Blinding Rage” could work. Think of the ability as a self-blind that negates everyone else’s blind… like blacking out when you get really angry, or… FURIOUS! BAAAMM! It’s almost too perfect, haha!

Summary

You probably noticed that I didn’t cover a whole lot about our survivability… Let me tell you why!

I think that we would still sustain pretty well if we had any form of counter-pressure… you know… like we did before HoT. Granted we only have two types of utilities we’d ever actually use (My Rage Skill changes would make a third, if I do say so myself), but I feel that’s pretty similar to other professions across the board. My point is that everything we fight now has too many tools to keep us from dealing our profession-defining, fight-changing damage… and the changes I listed above would be a great step forward for dealing with those tools.

I also didn’t cover hardly anything about the base class… I could add that our Adrenalin decay is a complete joke compared to how the Devs are babying other professions with similar mechanics (Druid and Necromancer), or how Defiant Stance needs to be instant, Mending STILL doesn’t have a Utility type, Quick Breathing needs to go back to converting boons, etc. The list truly goes on and on, which just goes to show how badly we need an overhaul to the whole profession.

In closing, I wanted to address what I feel is the main reason we are struggling in PvP right now, and I feel I’ve accomplished that. I’m always happy to read posts like this from other people, and I’ll look even more forward to the comments I hope to get on this one!

Thanks for reading!

-Brude

I really like your suggestions.
Especially Sundering leap jumping to higher ground and Endurance bar removal attacks.

Even though you explain your part about survivability, I still wouldnt mind a bit better survival.

Looks to me that more or less all other classes have gone up quite a bit more in survival with HoT compared to warriors. Having a little bit more access to better survival wouldnt hurt and would be fair imo.

Self applied fury giving blind immunity could maybe be a bit to strong?
A blind immunity ability would be nice though
and that name, Blinding rage, is cool.
Maybe make the trait give immunity to blindness for x sec when applying fury, rather than blind immunity being up as long as you have your self applied fury?

awesome suggestions, +1

I’d also like to add a grandmaster burst trait for Tactics, since it’s the only line that doesn’t have one.

“Burst skills remove one boon per bar of adrenaline spent.”

This would work like the Mallyx ability, ie boon removal is applied before the actual damage effects.

Ideally it would replace Powerful Synergy, with of course a different name (I like “Riddle of Steel”).

.
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.. aand I’d like to beat another dead horse about reverting adrenaline loss from way back!

an easy way to indirect buff war could be the add of Superior Sigil of Incapacitation in pvp… + leg specialist = immobilize on critical… yummy

Tristan.5280:

an easy way to indirect buff war could be the add of Superior Sigil of Incapacitation in pvp… + leg specialist = immobilize on critical… yummy

I’ve experimented a bit with those sigils in WvW roaming – mostly GS/Ax+Sh – and found them underwhelming in most encounters. The problem is that the random sigil-proc is harder to capitalise on than a guaranteed skill-proc, plus the sigil proc puts the trait on CD.

Incapacitation sigils seem to be most effective vs kitey-classes specifically engies.
Against all others the main issue is staying and keeping in range. Smart ele’s will run away once they’ve blown their long CD’s. Thieves & Mesmers will kite for days.
It makes no difference vs Rangers since the main issue is getting/staying in their faces in the first place, if you can do that then you don’t need the Sigil. Warriors lol, I think once I hit a War with it and he had his finger on GS3 ..

I ended up replacing Incapacitation with more useful/reliable sigils, have kept one spare for “squirrel-catching” on a Nike build.

Darkaheart has some vids with him using Incapacitation on a LB in a condi build, so maybe it’s more effective at range.

Fast Hands doesn’t really need to be baseline. Rather, we need skills with reasonable cooldowns and skills that friggin’ matter for weapons. Would it be nice? F-Yeah, it’d be nice. But it’s not necessary.

Blocks
I could see it happening in a trait line (Strength or Discipline?), but not at the rate you suggest. On swap means unblockable every 5 seconds. It’s game-changing enough that it’d probably be a Grandmaster trait. Something like “Activate Signet of Might after an attack is blocked.”

Evade
Focusing on Endurance makes this a purely PvP line of thought.
Besides, if I wanted an elite shout: Taunt, gdangit. It’s pathetic that Berserker barely gets access to it, and it’s absent in the rest of the class.

Closers
Change dashed out for leaps, and maybe we’ll get somewhere.

Rage / Physical
Yeah, Physical skills and their big brother skills probably need more love. I can’t specificy for Rage skills, but Physicals need, need something better before they’re worth slotting.

Blind
I like the trait suggestion, especially if it extends to other players. That would make For Great Justice amazeballs in the right situation.
I’d also be okay with a Blind Fighting trait: “When Blinded, clear the Blind condition and become immune to it for 3 seconds. 8 second cooldown.” Or something like that.

What do you all think about this for Tactics. I just merge some traits to open 2 Major an 1 Minor for some new ones… oh an i was thinking of moving Powerful synergy down to Master so a Grandmaster slot would open. (?^o^)?

PS: this is my 1st time posting Q//Q

UncleOil.7480:

What do you all think about this for Tactics. I just merge some traits to open 2 Major an 1 Minor for some new ones… oh an i was thinking of moving Powerful synergy down to Master so a Grandmaster slot would open. (?^o^)

Sounds good, in my opinion powerful synergy should also affect other combo finishers, like projectile or even blast finishers.

I have an idea for a healing skill that can be useful besides healing signet.

Since the main ’’theme’’ of rage skills is to gain adrenaline, why not do something useful with that adrenaline besides expendin it on burst skills?

Blood Reckoning: Heal yourself and gain adrenaline when you hit a foe. All adrenalin you gain while Blood Reckoning is active heals you.

Mulling.8421:

I have an idea for a healing skill that can be useful besides healing signet.

Since the main ’’theme’’ of rage skills is to gain adrenaline, why not do something useful with that adrenaline besides expendin it on burst skills?

Blood Reckoning: Heal yourself and gain adrenaline when you hit a foe. All adrenalin you gain while Blood Reckoning is active heals you.

Or as I suggested before:

Current effect plus “Delivering a critical strike reduces the cooldown of Blood Reckoning by 1 second.”

This way the terribleness of the heal is mitigated by the ability to spam it, but it remains a risky heal that rewards offensive play style instead of kiting around waiting for your CDs to get back up.

I’m really digging all of this discussion! So first I want to say thanks to all of you so far for your input, and I share that sentiment with those of you that post after my reply as well. I also want to add that if I don’t directly respond to something you said, it doesn’t mean that I didn’t like your idea. Now onto the quoting and discussion!

Yashuoa.9527:

Even though you explain your part about survivability, I still wouldnt mind a bit better survival.

I wouldn’t mind more survivability either, haha! I’ll take whatever we can get, really. But I’m all for the “The best defense is a good offense” approach, and as a Warrior it just feels right to be able to completely smash someone.

Yashuoa.9527:

Self applied fury giving blind immunity could maybe be a bit to strong?

I did a little bit of research so I had the specifics, and below is a list of a Warriors access to Fury (excluding Runes).

• Dual Strike – Axe OH (3 seconds)
• Arcing Slice – GS Burst Skill (5->10->15 seconds)
• Furious Rally – Banner of Discipline (8 seconds)
• For Great Justice – Shout Utility (8 seconds)
• Battle Standard – Elite Banner (3 seconds)
• Signet of Rage – Elite Signet (25 seconds)
• Berserker’s Fury – Critical Strikes Adept Trait (5 seconds)

With these fury numbers, I totally agree that if they all procced immunity to blind for the full fury duration that it would be too strong, and would become the next Fast Hands (a trait that most would consider mandatory). I think self-applied Fury proccing an effect with its own duration (like you suggested) would be better for balance purposes, haha.

Rauderi.8706:

Fast Hands doesn’t really need to be baseline. Rather, we need skills with reasonable cooldowns and skills that friggin’ matter for weapons. Would it be nice? F-Yeah, it’d be nice. But it’s not necessary.

I’m on the “Fast Hands needs to be baseline” team b/c of the exact reason you said it isn’t necessary. Our CDs are MADE for that kind of weapon swapping! I just think rather than changing the whole formula, we could move a decimal (an algorithm sized decimal) and get what we both want… which is essentially the same thing!

Rauderi.8706:

Blocks
I could see it happening in a trait line (Strength or Discipline?), but not at the rate you suggest. On swap means unblockable every 5 seconds. It’s game-changing enough that it’d probably be a Grandmaster trait. Something like “Activate Signet of Might after an attack is blocked.”

I don’t disagree that going unblockable would need a limited rate of accessibility… any major implementation like this would. I actually prefer my second trait suggestion over the first for that reason. With Fast Hands going baseline (in my dream world), it would require the discipline (see what I did there) to stay in your weapon set long enough to reap the benefits of going unblockable. It opens up more opportunities for player skill to shine, and those are the kind of things I appreciate most. Sure the numbers can be tweaked and ICDs can be given out, but I’m just going for ideas at the moment.

Rauderi.8706:

Evade
Focusing on Endurance makes this a purely PvP line of thought.
Besides, if I wanted an elite shout: Taunt, gdangit. It’s pathetic that Berserker barely gets access to it, and it’s absent in the rest of the class.

I did say that my suggestions were coming from a PvP perspective. And I would be thrilled to have an Elite Shout that taunts!

Rauderi.8706:

Rage / Physical
Yeah, Physical skills and their big brother skills probably need more love. I can’t specificy for Rage skills, but Physicals need, need something better before they’re worth slotting.

Yeah Physical Skills fall under that list of changes that goes on and on and on… I just didn’t include it in my summary.

Rauderi.8706:

Blind
I like the trait suggestion, especially if it extends to other players. That would make For Great Justice amazeballs in the right situation.

I’d also be okay with a Blind Fighting trait: “When Blinded, clear the Blind condition and become immune to it for 3 seconds. 8 second cooldown.” Or something like that.

Making my Blinding Rage idea shareable would be amazing! It would add a totally different layer of support that the game doesn’t have, and I’d be thrilled to see something like that implemented.

UncleOil.7480:

What do you all think about this for Tactics. I just merge some traits to open 2 Major an 1 Minor for some new ones… oh an i was thinking of moving Powerful synergy down to Master so a Grandmaster slot would open. (?^o^)?

PS: this is my 1st time posting Q//Q

Your diagram was a little hard to follow at first glance, but after I looked at it for a minute or two I like where your heads at. Cheers! And don’t be afraid to post! Your opinion is as valuable as anyone’s in this forum.

Mulling.8421:

Blood Reckoning: Heal yourself and gain adrenaline when you hit a foe. All adrenaline you gain while Blood Reckoning is active heals you.

I like where your heads at! Good idea!

Keep the ideas rolling, b/c the more replies/views this gets, ideally the chance of ANet seeing it goes up! I’m pretty busy this week, but if I have some free time I’ll try and add a bit more to my list of ideas!

Back to the Fast Hands argument (I know, it just won’t die!), I got an idea that might help.

Break Fast Hands up and disperse its effects into several trait lines. Then, replace Fast Hands with something else in Discipline, while giving some of that effect to its replacement. So long as the traits stack (which is uncommon to traits, for some reason), it would give most warriors some level of faster cooldown.

Example:
[Discipline Master Trait]: Some nifty bonus. (I’unno, gain 25 Endurance on swap) Reduces weapon swap recharge by 2 seconds.
Add to Tactics: Weapon swap recharge reduced by 2 seconds.
Add to Arms: Weapon swap recharge reduced by 1 second.

Or, give other ways built into the minors to reduce weapon swap times that are more related to trait lines:

Strength: On evade, reduce weapon swap cooldown by 1 second.
Goes well with Strength’s endurance theme and the Greatsword swirl.

Arms: On critical hit, reduce weapon swap cooldown by 1 second. (1 sec cooldown)
It’s the warrior Crit line, and a heavy-crit build could expect a 50% reduction in weapon swap times.

Defense: When hit, reduce weapon swap cooldown by 1 second. (1 sec cooldown)
Gives the defensive warrior some offensive oomph for taking hits.

Tactics: Apply a boon to an ally reduces weapon swap cooldown by 1 second. (zomg 1 sec cooldown XD)
Shouts and banners would have a 50% reduction in swap time.

Discipline: Reduces weapon swap cooldown by 3 seconds. (sounds nerfish, until you mix the above) Swapping weapons reduces the cooldowns of weapon skills by 2 seconds. (Maybe that ought to be 1 sec, or moved to Grandmaster.)
Definitely encourages swapping.

It might actually make for a more interesting and active warrior playstyle overall. Use a few cooldowns, score some hits, swap. Use other weapon for a few seconds, swap. Cooldowns start to trigger faster, so the warrior’s getting more uptime on his weapon skills, using them more often, but it’s all based on combat performance. Strength has to dodge skillfully, Arms has to hit, Defense takes damage (but not too much at once!), Tactics does what Tactics does, and Discipline is the raw bonus which ties it all together, and gives better access to those hard-hitting weapon skills.
But more importantly, it releases Fast Hands as the linchpin of so many builds, and encourages getting weapon swap cooldown reduction elsewhere.

@Rauderi
Why complicate a problem that’s so easy to solve?

Your proposal would have the warrior working harder to achieve what we already have now (5s swap) as a best case scenario if there’s a shared ICD across the different traits… often, we’d be worse off. If there’s not a shared ICD, then a 2-3s swap cooldown would be common in a lot circumstances, which isn’t necessarily better than 5s if everything is still on CD.

What you proposed in your earlier comment, a complete renovation of weapon skills to obviate Fast Hands, has been acknowledged for a long time as an acceptable, albeit more complicated, solution than just baselining the trait.

Choppy.4183:

@Rauderi
Why complicate a problem that’s so easy to solve?

Baseline Fast Hands or cutting it up into several trait lines really is the easy solution. It’s almost elegant. Thing is, it wouldn’t shake up the meta that much, because we’re still going to see FS/GS, locking in two trait lines anyway. And Discipline still has the +25% movement boost for melee, which is another “must have,” unless you’re slinging Traveler runes. A baseline Fast Hands is merely going to move the core Warrior meta from Strength/Tactics/Discipline to Strength/Tactics/Defense.

Saying so is an oversimplification of the state of warrior, of course, but we’re locked into a max of roughly 3 “decent” builds at the moment, depending on game mode. FS/PS for PvE, and a mix of Bow, Greatsword, and/or Gunflame for PvP.

I was also following a whim, partially because Warrior doesn’t have much high-end skill play, as it’s a very direct class. And while that may have been the point of Warrior, it also makes for the relatively low-reward state we’re seeing now.

I don’t expect ANet’s re-balancing to be anywhere near my suggestion, honestly. I think Warrior would do well enough with under-used weapons have reduced cooldowns and there being at least one other method for reducing swap cooldowns, so Discipline isn’t so “required.” Probably a trait revision somewhere in Arms.

Remove Signets

I have this idea from some time, and it would be to merge signets with banners, giving the signets’ passive effects to banners, and add the active effects mostly to physical skills and shouts.

With signets gone, it would be room to add another line of phyisical skills. There would be two lines, one of offensive physical skills and another one of utility physical skills.

Just a few ideas for this skills: jump, punch, blocking arm (block with the arm instead of use the shield).

Replace Signet of Rage with an elite shout, and Healing Signet with a banner (would need to balance it).

More uses for Adrenaline

Another idea would be to use the adrenaline bar for physical skills, giving those skills more powerful (or different) effects when the bar goes up.

An example:

-Stomp: each bar of adrenaline would add more radius and amount of affected targets. If increase the amount of targets isn’t posible then increase the launch distance.

How about a third weapon slot? After all, Warrior is a weaponmaster…

Atm, i feel more Weaponmaster with the Scrapper, then with the Warrior

Grandmaster trait that grants signet active effects to party. BAM signets of might for everyone! This would require balancing.

How about this idea reduce the CD on Battle Standard atm its the longest Elite CD of any class. In the past we had a trait to reduce the CD on banners including Battle Standard but now they baseline the reduce CD on every banner except Battle Standard.. I think it should be a 180 CD like most Elite CDs there are other rally skills but no way near a 240CD

In addition to already some good suggestions in this thread by other posters, I would like to suggest a few things as well.

Please share your views on them and feel free to suggest alterations, like for example improving them if they are to weak or decreasing them in strength if they are to strong.

SURVIVAL:
Stronger the longer the battle
Warriors should be fighters that can endure long in battle and become stronger the longer the battle goes on, according to the description.
Currently their sustain seems to have improved a lot less compared to other classes in HoT.

How about a buff that, as long as you are in battle, the tougher you become (taking less power and condition dmg and this could even be a different number for power and for condition dmg).
Every second in combat can give you a stacking dmg reduction up to a certain limit.
This amount of dmg reduction could be different vs pve enemies and vs pvp players, to balance it in both sections of the game. Maybe besides the stacking dmg, reduction, also a stacking dmg increase.

Lower cooldowns on:
Lower cooldowns on Endure pain and Berserker stance for more frequent access.
Cut the duration a bit as well to compensate.
Like 1 second from Endure pain and 3 sec from Berserker stance in exchange for ~20 sec from the cooldowns.

GROUP SUPPORT:

Battle standard:
Reduce the cooldown to 180 seconds for 5 targets revived and reduce the casttime some, because 2 seconds is very long.
Make it have a lower cooldown if you revive less targets.
For 1 target the cooldown will be 60 seconds.
For 2 targets 90 seconds.
For 3 targets 120 seconds.
For 4 targets 150 seconds
and for 5 targets 180 seconds.

Tooltip/how spell works
Make Defiant stance work the same as https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infuse_Light
The tooltips are the same after all.

ENEMY DEFENCES:

Unblockable:
As mentioned by others, we should have more access to unblockable attacks than we currently do.
Warriors are weaponmasters after all and more or less everyone having blocks nowadays hurts especially warriors a lot.

We should have ‘’your next x attacks will be unblockable/your attacks will be unblockable for x duration’’ on multiple of our weapons.

For example on:

Greatsword #5, Rush.
Hammer #3, Hammer shock.
Rifle #4, Brutal shot.
Axe #3, Throw axe.
Mace #4, Crushing blow.

The spells with shorter cooldowns will activate less atttacks/duration that are unblockable, compared to the longer cooldown attacks obviously.

Its also a form of group support, because we could break blocks, by using a cc when going unblockable.

Burst finishers and Primal burst finishers:
They should just go right through dmg reducing boons.
They should just burst right through it.

Dmg reducing boons like protection are flying all over the place nowadays, so in light of that, this should be fair.
The burst and primal burst finishers need to count.

ADRENALINE:
The more adrenaline you use, the lower the cooldowns of some of our spells could become (a selection about which spells should be made).

NickDanger.6015:

Grandmaster trait that grants signet active effects to party. BAM signets of might for everyone! This would require balancing.

Very sexy idea, though.
It would turn a very selfish play into a group-oriented one.
…zomg, and popping the Elite signet. Brutal.
Or AoE heal/resist.

Curse you for making me want this.

How about this idea reduce the CD on Battle Standard atm its the longest Elite CD of any class. In the past we had a trait to reduce the CD on banners including Battle Standard but now they baseline the reduce CD on every banner except Battle Standard.. I think it should be a 180 CD like most Elite CDs there are other rally skills but no way near a 240CD

All the banner cooldowns need to come down, but a fine point on Battle Standard. 180 cooldown for that, and 105 for the others.

Yashuoa.9527:

(…)

Stronger the longer the battle
Warriors should be fighters that can endure long in battle and become stronger the longer the battle goes on, according to the description.
Currently their sustain seems to have improved a lot less compared to other classes in HoT.

How about a buff that, as long as you are in battle, the tougher you become (taking less power and condition dmg and this could even be a different number for power and for condition dmg).

(…)

ADRENALINE:
The more adrenaline you use, the lower the cooldowns of some of our spells could become (a selection about which spells should be made).

I like your ideas, and I think a “simple” solution would be to add an adrenaline modifier to all/most of our skills.

So, our attacks could be stronger when our adrenaline is up, some CDs could go down, defenses could go up, could increase the radius effects, etc.

I agree that a warrior should get stronger when their are fighting, and the adrenaline bar could be the way to go.

The current values could be the ones of 1 or 2 bars of adrenaline: so with 0 would be lower and with 3 would be higher.

Nadesh.7953:

Yashuoa.9527:

(…)

Stronger the longer the battle
Warriors should be fighters that can endure long in battle and become stronger the longer the battle goes on, according to the description.
Currently their sustain seems to have improved a lot less compared to other classes in HoT.

How about a buff that, as long as you are in battle, the tougher you become (taking less power and condition dmg and this could even be a different number for power and for condition dmg).

(…)

ADRENALINE:
The more adrenaline you use, the lower the cooldowns of some of our spells could become (a selection about which spells should be made).

I like your ideas, and I think a “simple” solution would be to add an adrenaline modifier to all/most of our skills.

So, our attacks could be stronger when our adrenaline is up, some CDs could go down, defenses could go up, could increase the radius effects, etc.

I agree that a warrior should get stronger when their are fighting, and the adrenaline bar could be the way to go.

The current values could be the ones of 1 or 2 bars of adrenaline: so with 0 would be lower and with 3 would be higher.

That sounds like a good idea, but that would just make Warriors much more useful than other classes (Warriors are already one of the highest DPS classes there are in PvE) in PvE when doing Meta events and Big Bosses.

@Yashuoa
Liked some of what you put down there.

A Defense trait for survival would be in theme. Gain 10 Toughness every time you’re hit, stacks 25 times. Duration 8 seconds, or something like that.
Maybe give an offensive version under Peak Conditioning, Gain 10 Power every time you’re hit.
Or every time the warrior hits.
Either way, for a PvP setting, it encourages disengaging from the warrior, which gets even more difficult against bow/rifle swaps.

On blocks, I’m wondering if Warrior should get a unique debuff. Call it Unbalanced or whatever, and keep it off the usual Boon/Condi line. (One of those square-icon’d effects with no cleanse.) Keep it short, 2-3 seconds, but make it so it prevents Blocks from working during the duration. It works for the warrior independently, but it also opens up party play by letting allies pile on. A few of the heavier skills could have that, and a tweak to On My Mark would (5 Vuln, Unbalance 3 seconds) be fantastic.

Adrenaline and Cooldowns
An idea I like, definitely, and one that could roll into baseline. Rather than re-designing each skill’s cooldown (though that still should be done), we could encourage more risk/reward with using Bursts in order to reduce cooldown times. For every bar consumed, reduce all cooldowns (weapons, utlities, healing, weapon swap, maybe not Bursts) by 1 second. Aggressive warrior plays get a ton more skills to use, and it breaks the need for Fast Hands. It’s elegant without requiring a huge amount of complication.

Tristan.5280:

How about a third weapon slot? After all, Warrior is a weaponmaster…

This is on my wish list for the Warrior’s next Specialization, and the name Weaponmaster is perfect for it! My idea for it would be that with the addition of the 3rd weapon, we remove our weapon swap and instead use our burst skills to swap weapons… So we’d have F1, F2, and F3 burst skills over top of our adrenaline bar at all times. This is how I see it working…

Say we are using Axe, GS, and LB as our weapons and we start off in Axe… To change weapons, we would use Arching Slice to switch to GS, or Combustive Shot to switch to LB, and gain an appropriate effect/boon tied into the weapon we are switching to (each weapon set gets its own specific effect/boon duration based on Adrenalin level, with 2H weapons receiving 1 longer-duration effect/boon and MH-OH weapon sets granting 2 effects/boons, with half the duration of a 2H weapon). When a burst skill is used in combat, it goes on a 15 second CD (before traits). The weapon you start with in combat can be immediately switched back to if you want to, as it’s burst skill is still available, and once switched back to in combat, of course it would then go on CD.

The combos for something like this would be incredible if played well! There would be a massive skill cap to make sure you start with the right weapon, don’t get stuck in a weapon set for too long (by putting all burst skills on CD at once), and for the stacking of boons/effects from swapping weapons (and to the proper weapons) at the right time.

There are tons of possibilities for Utility skills, but I think Survival skills (like Rangers Sharpening Stone) would make the most sense for a Weapon Master… and no matter the Utility type, they should benefit Burst skills in some way, since the whole mechanic is based around it.

NickDanger.6015:

Grandmaster trait that grants signet active effects to party. BAM signets of might for everyone! This would require balancing.

I’m in love with this idea! It would DEFINITELY require balancing, but it’s an amazing idea! It goes back to my desire for offensive support!

Banners

A lot of discussion has gone to Banners, and while I agree the CDs are very long for what they bring, I also find them incredibly boring, and other than the Elite… nearly useless in PvP. I suggest that rather than lowering their CDs, I think the trait Inspiring Battle Standard (trait) should add something more than regen… like making banners finish downed opponents when placed, and give that a deserving ICD so people don’t run 4 banners, haha. It would make the use of banners A LOT more fun and exciting for sure!

I had this idea for Berserker atm when u enter Berserk mode your suck in it in until it runs out. In Berserk mode the F2 skill is still there but locked i was thinking why not add 1 skill to replace the F2 it can be a weapon skill or a burst idk for example Greatsword F2 might be somthing like this ((( https://youtu.be/R1o8f1BSJeA?t=52s ))) its basically Guardian greatsword 4 (Symbol Of Wrath) And Lets say u have a sword an warhorn the F2 will be a new warhorn skill not a sword skill… Hope dat made sense sry :c

With all the evade/blind/block spam now, what if we had something like:

Enraged: Every miss or blocked attack builds up charges, making your next “successful” hit deal a % more damage.
By successful, I mean the next hit that isn’t mitigated, and without losing the charges for getting it mitigated.

(This kind of on the same level of classes not losing stealth when their attacks are mitigated, or if their dmg is not direct dmg)

Or maybe:

Drunken Brawler: 50% chance that an attack that is mitigated (via block/evade/blind) still lands a glancing blow.

Regarding banners, I’d like to see them buffed in light of the new engi Gyros.

• Reduce normal banner duration to 60s and cd to 70s. Increase Battle Standard duration to 120s and reduce the cd to 180s.
• After summoning a banner, have that utility slot change to a skill that allows the warrior to basically collect a banner (in range) and wear it on their person so the field emanates from the warrior at half the radius.
• Have the utility slot become “Plant Banner” while the banner is worn
• Double the number of allies affected by a banner when planted in the ground
• Trait increases effect radii by 50% (i.e. 900 when planted; 450 when carried)
• Trait adds a specific pulsing boon to each banner: Defense – Protection or Aegis, Discipline – Vigor, Strength – Might, Tactics – Regeneration, Battle Standard – Stability. The different boon durations and pulse frequencies can be adjusted for balance (e.g. permanent uptime of protection would be ridiculous). Another approach would be to add the buffs when for longer durations when the banners are summoned and reduce both the durations and cds of the banners themselves (to increase application frequency of summoned boons)

The above gives better utility and value to banners that’s inline with gyros, imo, while filling a different niche (less dramatic but more widely applied buffs). It also makes slotting in a banner, even if running solo and/or not traiting them, more justified.

It’d increase the buffing value of warriors in large groups by quite a lot, but I feel that’s justified given the increased threat level in large fights since HoT launch and I don’t think it’s an unreasonable buff

On a completely unrelated note, I’d like to see a 2s Taunt added to “On My Mark!” or have that shout’s cd reduced by 50%. A dev already acknowledged the UP nature of that shout in relation to Sundering Leap, and we really should have more access to Taunt anyway.

I personally favour adding Taunt over reducing the cd, and I think it would even lead people not using a shout build to slot the skill.

Choppy.4183:

Regarding banners, I’d like to see them reworked in light of the new engi Gyros.

• Reduce normal banner duration to 60s and cd to 70s. Increase Battle Standard duration to 120s and reduce the cd to 180s.
• After summoning a banner, have that utility slot change to a skill that allows the warrior to basically collect a banner (in range) and wear it on their person so the field emanates from the warrior at half the radius.
• Have the utility slot become “Plant Banner” while the banner is worn
• Double the number of allies affected by a banner when planted in the ground
• Trait increases effect radii by 50% (i.e. 900 when planted; 450 when carried)
• Trait adds a specific pulsing boon to each banner: Defense – Protection or Aegis, Discipline – Vigor, Strength – Might, Tactics – Regeneration, Battle Standard – Stability. The different boon durations and pulse frequencies can be adjusted for balance (e.g. permanent uptime of protection would be ridiculous). Another approach would be to add the buffs when for longer durations when the banners are summoned and reduce both the durations and cds of the banners themselves (to increase application frequency of summoned boons)

Also make it so you can only carry a maximum of two banners at same time, and they display at the top of your head, see attachment for example.

I made a post a while ago about changing banners lol, for these same reasons, though I wanted my banners to be carried by asura progeny (untargettable/unkillable)

Mulling.8421:

Also make it so you can only carry a maximum of two banners at same time, and they display at the top of your head, see attachment for example.

Yeah, I thought about that but couldn’t decide if there should be a limit or what that limit should be. Two seems reasonable to me.

Choppy.4183:

Regarding banners, I’d like to see them buffed in light of the new engi Gyros.

• Reduce normal banner duration to 60s and cd to 70s. Increase Battle Standard duration to 120s and reduce the cd to 180s.
• After summoning a banner, have that utility slot change to a skill that allows the warrior to basically collect a banner (in range) and wear it on their person so the field emanates from the warrior at half the radius.
• Have the utility slot become “Plant Banner” while the banner is worn
• Double the number of allies affected by a banner when planted in the ground
• Trait increases effect radii by 50% (i.e. 900 when planted; 450 when carried)
• Trait adds a specific pulsing boon to each banner: Defense – Protection or Aegis, Discipline – Vigor, Strength – Might, Tactics – Regeneration, Battle Standard – Stability. The different boon durations and pulse frequencies can be adjusted for balance (e.g. permanent uptime of protection would be ridiculous). Another approach would be to add the buffs when for longer durations when the banners are summoned and reduce both the durations and cds of the banners themselves (to increase application frequency of summoned boons)

The above gives better utility and value to banners that’s inline with gyros, imo, while filling a different niche (less dramatic but more widely applied buffs). It also makes slotting in a banner, even if running solo and/or not traiting them, more justified.

It’d increase the buffing value of warriors in large groups by quite a lot, but I feel that’s justified given the increased threat level in large fights since HoT launch and I don’t think it’s an unreasonable buff

On a completely unrelated note, I’d like to see a 2s Taunt added to “On My Mark!” or have that shout’s cd reduced by 50%. A dev already acknowledged the UP nature of that shout in relation to Sundering Leap, and we really should have more access to Taunt anyway.

I personally favour adding Taunt over reducing the cd, and I think it would even lead people not using a shout build to slot the skill.

+1 to the above.

Especially the out-of-the-box statement of changing how carrying banners should work. I can’t think of anyone who actually uses carried-banner skills. Having its functionality rolled into the actual banner skill slot makes more sense.

Even if ANet wasn’t keen on it (though they should be), Banner could have a secondary skill to trigger on command with a cooldown: banner-dependent effect, wider radius, Blast finisher, etc.

Overall, banner’s already a good, unique support choice, but without a secondary effect of some kind, it’s very passive gameplay with a low skill cap. Being able to carry them without swapping to a bunch of kitten y, low power skills and actually have triggering effects on setting them back down would do wonders for the utility line.

Suggestion to the warrior rifle (damage buffs will not fix a bad weapon by design).

• Auto attack: 10% damage nerf – 10% attack speed buff.
• Tranquilizer: Shot a tranquilizer dart at your foe. Causing slow, vulnerability and blind.
• Volley: it is fine.
• Piercing ammo: Load your rifle with penetrating bullets. Your next 2 attacks are unblockable.
• Rifle butt: Push your foe back and evade backwards, gain vigor.

• Kill shot: Nerf the damage 10%. It does more damage to further away foes.

• Gun flame: Nerf the damage 10 – 20%. Shot a explosive ammo at you foe that explodes upon hitting, dealing AoE damage and dazing nerbay foes.

UncleOil.7480:

I had this idea for Berserker atm when u enter Berserk mode your suck in it in until it runs out. In Berserk mode the F2 skill is still there but locked i was thinking why not add 1 skill to replace the F2 it can be a weapon skill or a burst idk for example Greatsword F2 might be somthing like this ((( https://youtu.be/R1o8f1BSJeA?t=52s ))) its basically Guardian greatsword 4 (Symbol Of Wrath) And Lets say u have a sword an warhorn the F2 will be a new warhorn skill not a sword skill… Hope dat made sense sry :c

The berserk skill is only locked like that in pvp, in pve it shows the time remaining for berserk (unless you use Smash Brawler, then the 15s timer used gets reduced to 10s as well.)

Thanks for pointing this out for me i didnt know it did dat XD

Thanks Rauderi and Vaelen.
Yeah it would need to be balanced in pve too.

Regarding warrior representation in tournaments.

Although thiefs are not in a great position atm either, they are still seen in tournaments. I believe there were even 3 in NA ESL (compared to 2 Scrappers even, although there were 6 scrappers in EU ESL).
Thiefs will still have something they are great at and taken for. Among them is their mobility, especially with shortbow.

Warriors are nonexistant in the top teams from tournaments.

Warriors need stuff where you want to bring a warrior for to the team (besides being improved in general).
Stuff which they currently lack.
A team without a warrior has a better mix of tools from classes.
If this was not true, than topteams would bring warriors, which they dont.

As developers, you cant just let all classes have representation, except one, warriors.
That cant be left like it is for long. That needs to be changed.

Also another suggestion.

They should also make the trait Last blaze in the Berserker spec,
make rage skills/some rage skills break stuns.
To go full condi berserker you kind have to pick rage utility skills to maximize your burns.
Wich means you have to sacrafice stunbreakers utility slots and you cant pick Berserker mode breaking stuns and Eternal champion stability trait either (at least not without losing burn traits).

Tristan.5280:

How about a third weapon slot? After all, Warrior is a weaponmaster…

Cool idea. That would be awesome.
Either for base war or for a new Elite spec.
F3 could maybe be the button to swap to your third weapon.

There are too many good ideas in this thread to let it get lost in the forum ether… /bump!

Mashedwarf.8235:

There are too many good ideas in this thread to let it get lost in the forum ether… /bump!

We definitely need more ideas. I don’t know how confident I am in me doing it, but mirroring the Warrior Redone thread, if we’re going to have our ideas taken seriously, we ought to compile a (re)design document.

Outline our ideas, justify changes, and keep them consistent within the class mechanics, and we have a good chance of getting our requests, or at least some of them, rolled into a balance patch.

I’ll work on compiling a list of the best ideas in this thread into a similar format as the Warrior Redone thread. I like the ideas going on over there, but I have a different vision for what I want the Warrior to be. This kind of thing takes an enormous amount of time, but I’ll do my best to get it up and running as quickly as possible.

In the meantime, let’s keep the ideas rolling in this thread!

Here’s some more Suggestions. O/

1 : Sheath/cancel Greatsword 5 ( rush )
2 : Make poison not effect Battle Standard to fail reviveing allies.

Arenanet wants to bring balance changes in JANUARY right?

Lets make sure that our warrior suggestions are shown well.

By that I mean, those things should translate into
the thread being at the very least very well visible
(front page, thread remaining active and such).

Three weapon slots would open to new possibilities.

Just think about how many combinations could we make:

GS-Longbow-Sw/Sc
GS-Longbow-Hammer (this would be my favourite…)
GS-Longbow-Axe/Sc
GS-Hammer-Axe/Sc
and so on…

This change won’t fix warrior, but it will make it a decent option in this meta

While I think three weapon slots is a very interesting idea, the question becomes how do you swap weapons with three slots?

This opens to:

1. Rotation – Same keybind as usual, however it goes on a set pattern:
Example: Sword/Torch → Sword/Axe → Longbow → Sword/Torch
Least favorite of the options, makes it so to go from set 1 to set 3, you have effectively double the length of a normal weapon swap cooldown.

2. Individual bindings – I would imagine tricky to code (unless they set it to F3 or something), but have it where each slot was assigned a button, and pressing the corresponding button switches to that slot (pressing the button to the slot you are on does nothing)

3. Mix of the two above – Results in two buttons, one rotates weapons one way, the other rotates another. Would mean you would have to memorize where your weapons are slot wise, but turns 3 buttons into 2.
-So button one goes Sword/Torch → Sword/Axe → Longbow → Sword/Torch
-Button two goes Sword/Torch → Longbow → Sword/Axe → Sword/Torch

I’m not certain if ANet were ever to introduce three weapon slots, but there’s some ideas on how it could work mechanically.

I love these changes

Also, Smash Brawler should be baseline. I cant for the life of me see why they added this trait, nearly every build requires if for Berserker, if not, every build. This should be the base of the build so we can use the other traits lol

Yashuoa.9527:

Thanks Rauderi and Vaelen.

How about a third weapon slot? After all, Warrior is a weaponmaster…

Cool idea. That would be awesome.
Either for base war or for a new Elite spec.
F3 could maybe be the button to swap to your third weapon.

I would put the third weapon slot as a class mechanic.

As a lot of people here in the forum suggested, we should have more than just a burst damage skill on the F-buttons, such as Stances, Heal, or a third weapon slot.

For example it could be like that:
1° bar of adrenaline: third weapon slot
2° bar of adrenaline: heal
3° bar of adrenaline: Burst skill

and so on…

Tristan.5280:

Yashuoa.9527:

Thanks Rauderi and Vaelen.

How about a third weapon slot? After all, Warrior is a weaponmaster…

Cool idea. That would be awesome.
Either for base war or for a new Elite spec.
F3 could maybe be the button to swap to your third weapon.

I would put the third weapon slot as a class mechanic.

As a lot of people here in the forum suggested, we should have more than just a burst damage skill on the F-buttons, such as Stances, Heal, or a third weapon slot.

For example it could be like that:
1° bar of adrenaline: third weapon slot
2° bar of adrenaline: heal
3° bar of adrenaline: Burst skill

and so on…

So you would only be able to use a burst skill on 3 bars of adrenaline?