Tl;dr: Relying on Fast Hands is a problem, not a solution. Weapons should be upgraded/balanced to be individually useful. Weapon swap should be a choice, not a requirement.
Greetings, Ladies and Gentlemen.
I am Xalzor, 3-year warrior main and guildless Kaineng roamer. This, my first post, is the conclusion of the observations I’ve made during my struggles to make my warrior an effective combatant again. In it, I will discuss what I believe is the core problem with warrior and the reason we are now being quite literally out-classed by nearly every other profession in the game. Specifically, I will be talking about Fast Hands.
It’s no secret that the vast majority of viable warrior builds include and rely on Fast Hands. Why? Because our weapon skills have clearly been balanced around it. We warriors have been built to combo off of two weapon sets by using a few key skills on one to setup skills on the other. The evidence supporting this is overwhelming. Not only do certain combinations work especially well with each other, but the lengthy cooldowns and substandard effects on our best weapon skills actively encourage us to swap. No one in their right mind would camp hammer, for instance. And therein lies the heart of the problem. We need to swap, and often, between our two sets if we want to be anywhere near as effective as other classes can be on a single set, and so we need to trait for Fast Hands. We don’t have a choice.
The solution? Some would say “baseline Fast Hands”, and while I agree that this would fix a few issues we face as a class, I believe it to be insufficient simply because it does not address the myriad of other problems weighing down the warrior, and dooms all of our future weapon skills to mediocrity because “you can swap to compensate”. No, I propose a more radical solution – get rid of Fast Hands entirely.
Please put down the rifle and hear me out. You can gunflame me later.
What I want is to see warrior weapons get upgraded. I’m talking about lowering cooldowns across the board and reworking one-purpose setup skills to be more relevant in relation to the rest of the skills on the same weapon. We are supposed to be the weapon masters of Tyria! Why then does it seem like every other profession is better at using their weapons than us? Each and every weapon should have a rotation, and fill a role, all on its own. If I want to burst with my greatsword, I should be able to do that with just my greatsword. If I want to swap to hammer, it should be because hammer will bring the skills and utility I need for this particular fight. Not half the fight, not the first few seconds and then it’s dead weight for the rest of the fight – the whole fight. It works that way for other professions, why not us?
Think of it this way: if each individual weapon was able to bring, in its own small way, the utility and support that we need to be effective, and each of said weapons was balanced specifically with the idea of being used on its own for at least 10 full seconds, then we would be a much more effective class as a whole. Inter-weapon combos would still exist, but they would no longer be the only trick we had up our gloriously armored sleeves. In effect, we would be true weapon masters – being as capable (or more so) at using each weapon type as other professions while also being able to use more types of weapons. Implemented properly, we could even gain enough utility out of our weapon skills to be able to slot something other than stances and survive! That opens up all kinds of build possibilities.
I’ll give an example. Keep in mind that this just an example and not a direct translation of what I’m asking for. Let’s take the most obvious offender – hammer. Hammer has a reputation as the CC weapon but completely lacks any way to take advantage of the CC it dishes out. All the skills are painfully slow, deal less-than-impressive damage for their cast times, and have cooldowns longer than most fights a glass warrior will have. What if we cut all the cooldowns in half, sped up the auto-attack chain, made Fierce Blow into a spike damage skill, and Hammer Shock into a leap? What about greatsword? Imagine how much more useful it could be if Bladetrail and Rush could effectively close gaps, or if Hundred Blades didn’t require absurd setup to actually hit someone not AFK. Now couple all of that with the ability to use utility skills for actual utility instead of required burst survivability, and you have my dream.
What do you think? Too OP? After seeing the skills of other elite specializations, I have an entirely different perspective on what is and is not “OP”. Anyway, your adrenaline must be maxed by now, so go ahead. Fire away.
(edited by Xalzor.5047)