Guild Wars 2

Like many, I dream of a warrior that is not a hassle to play, or a joke to bring to PvP unless you’re running one of three semi-viable builds, and more skilled than all your opponents combined. No friends, I dream of a warrior that fits the vision of what was presented on the GW2 page, in the gameplay videos, and befitting of the lore!

A rock solid battle hardened vet who is a master of combat, destroying his foes by channeling and directing his anger and rage to fuel his boundless strength!

Below, is a long rant about what I see as being wrong with the class, and how I feel it could be fixed. Some ideas are bufff, some nerfs, and others neutral changes. Obviously everything listed is my own opinion. It is neither right, nor wrong, it simply is. And while I encourage and welcome constructive criticism, trolling, l2ping, and flaming, has no place here.

Lack of Sustain
This is our single, most glaring flaw. Warriors has no baseline sustain. We have the #6. That’s it. Whereas other classes have an alternate form of sustain (heals/evades/protection/clones/deathshroud/etc) and can further enhance this alternate sustain through trait selection and utility skills, warriors must trait just to gain access to any kind of sustain in the first place. IE: 30 in tactics via shout/banner healing.

Possible Fixes
It’s been discusses a million times, plenty of options exist.

Baseline
Mending: Increase healing for each condition removed.

Healing Surge: Heal value normalized, regardless of adrenal level. Whenever you fill a bar of adrenaline, the Cooldown on Healing Surge is reduced by 2 seconds.

Changing Healing signet to a utility skill with a new active, providing protection or vigor boons.

Adding access to protection via warrior utility skills

Traited
Defensive Bursts: New Trait, Defense Grandmaster, Each use of a burst skill grants you protection for 1.5 seconds per bar of adrenaline spent.

Adrenal Health, Rework, Provides 1 tick of regen each time adrenaline is gained

Thick Skin, Rework: Toughness increases, as your health decreases.

Vital Surge: New Tactics 25 pt, Increase your healing power by 5% of your vitality. When you revive someone, nearby allies gain regeneration.

Cleansing Ire: Conditions are now cleared before the burst skill activates.

Traits in General
Many warrior traits are inconsistent, or encourage mix/maxing instead of embracing our “weapon master” philosophy.

Consolidation of various weapon mastery traits
Two Handed Weapon mastery: Reduces cooldown on all 2handed melee weapons (greatsword/hammer/uw spear), and provides a bonus unique to each weapon.
-GS/Spear: Might on crit
-Hammer: Bonus damage vs disabled foes

Dual Wield Weapon Mastery
Reduces cooldown on all 1handed and offhanded melee weapons (axe/sword/mace), and provides a bonus unique to each weapon, based on mainhand weapon.
-Axe: Bonus damage vs vulnerable foes
-Sword: Chance to inflict burning on crits
-Mace: Bonus damage vs weakened foes

Ranged Weapon Mastery
Reduces cooldown on all 1handed and offhanded melee weapons (axe/sword/mace), and provides a bonus unique to each weapon.
-Rifle/Harpoon: Shots pierce targets
-Longbow: #1 causes burning, and 100% projectile finisher

Offhand Support Mastery
Reduces cooldown on all offhanded support weapons (shield/warhorn) and provides a bonus unique to each weapon.
-Warhorn: converts conditions to boons
-Shield: Reflects projectiles while blocking

Warrior Weapons and Skills
Greatsword
F1: Arcing slice simply makes no sense.
-It does less damage than an auto attack chain. (Mines about 2k in 1.5 seconds, while auto is a total of about 3k in 1.5 seconds).
-Its slower than its listed 3/4 CT (probably because the animation then takes another 1/2).
-It hits only a single target
-It doesn’t even match its own description, which is a fast upward strike, when clearly many characters do a heavy and slow overhand strike.

1. 100b is OP for PvE where nothing dodges or move, UP for PvP where everything dodges and moves.
2. Rush is still bugged and telegraphed as hell. It causes you to run in place, fails to properly track targets, and as a final kick when you’re down, if you DO manage to actually hit, it restarts the cooldown to the untraited cooldown even if you’re traited.

Possible Fixes
F1: Just completely rework this ability.
-Increase the damage, or the speed, so it’s at least equal to autoattacking DPS
-Allow it to his 3 targets, the same as every other melee attack out there
-Change it to an upward strike (use the same animation as the uppercut slice from rush)
-Add a new effect such as a small knockback or launch

Axe

1. It’s not a bad move, it’s just a bit lackluster. It’s damage is a good bit lower than auto and it only adds a little vulnerability, meaning you’d probably do the same damage just auto-attacking.
2. Also lackluster
3. Lower damage than auto attack, and while really cool looking, it’s simply not useful in PvP where targets can simply dodge away and used ranged attacks for a few seconds.

Possible Fixes
The axe is a somewhat immobile weapon, with a fairly tame #2 skill. That could really open the door for Axe to get a gap-closer on #2 not unlike savage leap.

1. can block, or maybe even reflect projectiles

Sword
F1: Flurry is a good move on paper. It self roots but your opponent is immobilized. However, in practice, I find that HALF the PvP opponents I use this on, get immob’d JUST outside the melee range. The first strike of flurry hits, consumes all adrenaline, but the target ends up walking another half second, THEN immob applies and they get rooted. Just outside range of the rest of the flurry, which whiffs in a spectacular display of fail.

1. Final Thrust: Hilariously slow and telegraphed, which also causes it to look lame

Possible Fixes
Speed up final thrusts animation.
Change Flurry so it “sticks” to your target, sort of how the underwater #5 Tsunami slash does.

Hammer Primarily, hammers main issue is it’s extremely SLOW. The better your opponent, the more he can exploit this weakness by simply dodging or interrupting key attacks.
F1: Earthshaker is an excellent move, but it’s glitchy when hitting targets on a higher/lower ground, and has a random 0.5-2 second delay on EVERY use. The fixes here are obvious.
#1. Auto attack has nothing attached to it.

1. is highly telegraphed and slow
2. is a perfect example of a great skill IMO. It’s responsive, and does exactly whakittens supposed to.
3. is slow, with a huge telegraph, and roots you before (intended) and after (bug).
4. is slow, with a huge telegraph, and an excessive cooldown. Especially compared to other class skills which often have either a faster cooldown, faster cast time, or AOE instead of single target.

Possible Fixes
Adding a blast finisher or a boon such as protection to the last hit of the #1 auto-chain.
Slightly increase cast time of #2
Allow movement during #4 casting, and fix the self-root bug
Slightly decrease the cooldown of #5

Longbow
Moving the base range from 900 to 1000 was a step in the right direction. But base range should be 1200, same as rifle.

1. Cooldown is too long

Adrenaline System Core
Part of the issue is that our adrenal system isn’t fleshed out properly. I feel part of the issue is that some of our instant adrenal fillers, and bonuses from sitting on full adrenaline are actually holding us back.

Reduce each bar from 10 strikes, to 5 strikes of adrenaline. This will effectively cause adrenaline to be generated at double the current rate, but from attacking only.

-Berserkers Power: Reworked: Provides 3/6/9 stacks of might for 10 seconds, whenever a burst skill is used. This bonus applies to the burst skill itself.

-Heightened Focus: Provides 3/6/9 seconds of fury, whenever a burst skill is used. This bonus applies to the burst skill itself.

-Defensive Bursts: New Trait, Defense Grandmaster: Provides 1.5/3/4.5 seconds of protection, whenever a burst skill is used.

-Weapon Swap Adrenaline: Reduced to 2 or 3 strikes, to compensate.

New F2 Burst Skills
Based on your 2 handed, or offhanded weapon, new burst skills would provide more options for a warrior to play with, without directly increasing his raw power.

Here are some example F2 skills
Shatter (Warhorn): Shockwave that daze all nearby opponents for 0.5/1/1.5 seconds, instant CT.
Shield Wall: Block for 1/2/3 seconds, and adds 1/2/3 seconds to all active boons
Cover Fire (Rifle): Rapid fire volley, in a tight cone AOE, causing bleed and chance of cripple
Dustbowl (Mace): Slams your weapon into the ground, dealing damage to nearby foes, and kicking up a cloud of dust, sand, ice, or dirt, blinding and confusing nearby foes for 1/2/3 seconds. Combo Field Smoke, 1/2/3 seconds

Utility Skills and other Misc Stuff
Banners are still clunky in WvW/PvP. Let them attach to our backs already, and toggle like the engineer toolkits, or work like the toolbelt.

Rampage is a funny but largely useless skill. Needs a hefty rework.

wow seems like there still needs more things to be done on warrior
i stopped playing like almost 6 month ago and i stopped because pvp for warrior is just simply too hard

Mostly agree.

Flurry also deals less damage than auto attack, at least for power builds (although, I’m pretty sure the same stands true for Condi builds), and you could be regenerating Adrenaline with normal swings, rather than hitting with Flurry.

Some of our traits also don’t make sense, like Distracting Strikes requiring an interrupt, while none of our Condi weapons have interrupts and taking Physical skills just to make this traits work is a giant waste.

YuiRS.8129:

Some of our traits also don’t make sense, like Distracting Strikes requiring an interrupt, while none of our Condi weapons have interrupts and taking Physical skills just to make this traits work is a giant waste.

>.>
<.<
o.O
“Some of our traits also don’t make sense, like Slashing Power requiring a greatsword, while none of our Condi weapons are greatswords and…”

Player Character.9467:

YuiRS.8129:

Some of our traits also don’t make sense, like Distracting Strikes requiring an interrupt, while none of our Condi weapons have interrupts and taking Physical skills just to make this traits work is a giant waste.

>.>
<.<
o.O
“Some of our traits also don’t make sense, like Slashing Power requiring a greatsword, while none of our Condi weapons are greatswords and…”

I am unsure if you even understood that. Distracting strikes applies confusion. Which is a condition that scales with condition damage. Which none of the interrupting weapons have application of. Which means that if you spec into distracting strikes it’s going to be very hard to apply other types of conditions making it a very bad trait for condition builds.

But the thing that makes the least sense about that trait is that interrupting people means stunning them, which means they are incapable of doing things, which means they take no damage from it for a few seconds while they are stunned.

Jzaku.9765:

Player Character.9467:

YuiRS.8129:

Some of our traits also don’t make sense, like Distracting Strikes requiring an interrupt, while none of our Condi weapons have interrupts and taking Physical skills just to make this traits work is a giant waste.

>.>
<.<
o.O
“Some of our traits also don’t make sense, like Slashing Power requiring a greatsword, while none of our Condi weapons are greatswords and…”

I am unsure if you even understood that. Distracting strikes applies confusion. Which is a condition that scales with condition damage. Which none of the interrupting weapons have application of. Which means that if you spec into distracting strikes it’s going to be very hard to apply other types of conditions making it a very bad trait for condition builds.

But the thing that makes the least sense about that trait is that interrupting people means stunning them, which means they are incapable of doing things, which means they take no damage from it for a few seconds while they are stunned.

It applies 4 stacks for 8 seconds (base, also it’s 9.6 with the condi duration from just getting the trait) so the duration of the stun isn’t going to eat it up. In a condi build you apply it using an offhand shield (sword&board) which you would hybrid, not pure condition dmg. As it sits in the strength line however, it is also positioned nicely for CC builds (but not an X/X/30/30/X pure defense build) to grab a bit of power, extra time on cripples/immobilizes, and to stick confusion on enemies between CC skills.

If they stuck it in arms a hybrid build would have to pick between it and blademaster. If it were in defense then it would be ignored for cleansing ire, in tactics you would be making a supporty build and there are much better traits again at the master level, and for discipline there’s mobile strikes. In strength it provides an option for somebody using the line for condition duration.

Player Character.9467:

Jzaku.9765:

Player Character.9467:

YuiRS.8129:

Some of our traits also don’t make sense, like Distracting Strikes requiring an interrupt, while none of our Condi weapons have interrupts and taking Physical skills just to make this traits work is a giant waste.

>.>
<.<
o.O
“Some of our traits also don’t make sense, like Slashing Power requiring a greatsword, while none of our Condi weapons are greatswords and…”

I am unsure if you even understood that. Distracting strikes applies confusion. Which is a condition that scales with condition damage. Which none of the interrupting weapons have application of. Which means that if you spec into distracting strikes it’s going to be very hard to apply other types of conditions making it a very bad trait for condition builds.

But the thing that makes the least sense about that trait is that interrupting people means stunning them, which means they are incapable of doing things, which means they take no damage from it for a few seconds while they are stunned.

It applies 4 stacks for 8 seconds (base, also it’s 9.6 with the condi duration from just getting the trait) so the duration of the stun isn’t going to eat it up. In a condi build you apply it using an offhand shield (sword&board) which you would hybrid, not pure condition dmg. As it sits in the strength line however, it is also positioned nicely for CC builds (but not an X/X/30/30/X pure defense build) to grab a bit of power, extra time on cripples/immobilizes, and to stick confusion on enemies between CC skills.

If they stuck it in arms a hybrid build would have to pick between it and blademaster. If it were in defense then it would be ignored for cleansing ire, in tactics you would be making a supporty build and there are much better traits again at the master level, and for discipline there’s mobile strikes. In strength it provides an option for somebody using the line for condition duration.

But the real problem is when you do confuse him/her with shield, you usually perform a flurry to stack bleeds. Since you root them during flurry, they do not usually perform actions (outside of cleanse attempts or full defensive cooldowns) making your confusion tick once or if your really lucky twice.

‘ey you dern kids! Stop hijackin’ mah thread!

In all seriousness, what does everyone think?

Warriors are quite dead right now… R.I.P.

They don’t need any form of protection since that actually doesnt fall in line with the warriors core style of play. If you implement protection and all those sustain tweaks/additions, people will only build along that. It would just make everything else the warrior has been sucking at unused.

Anyway, warriors are supposed to have high mobility and crazy burst potential. They are suppose to have high risk with high reward. All they have right now is high risk and less reward than every other class out there.

What they need is real ingenuity towards their structure. Warriors and necros have been the least cared for in terms of originality and personality. When the devs made all the other classes it just seems like they took their time and really thought out of some interesting stuff to make the class unique and go along with its theme.

When described, I imagine the dev’s went along the lines of “crit-heavy skirmishers. they bleed stuff. aaand.. idk.”

What warriors need are more passive effect that remove their main threat which is immobilization. It would seem as if they have plenty but when u have to trait for such counters through majors its not good. First thing, implement immobiliziation removals through minor traits. This i believe is paramount.

For some counter condition stacking:

Stir of Vengeance: Gain might for each condition applied to you.

Erm, double post? Anyway…

TheDevice.2751:

Warriors are quite dead right now… R.I.P.

I wouldnt say dead, just that there are far fewer viable warrior builds, and many builds require incredible skill and effort to get just mediocre results.

TheDevice.2751:

They don’t need any form of protection since that actually doesnt fall in line with the warriors core style of play

Every other class has protection available in some form. Why is it that you feel a heavily armed and armored melee class deserves protection any less than an Ele (light, caster), Engy (med, ranged), Guardian (heavy, melee)?

Dand.8231:

Erm, double post? Anyway…

i meant to remove the momentum skill since defense traits already do well along those lines. but I accidentally re-posted the edit.

Dand.8231:

Every other class has protection available in some form. Why is it that you feel a heavily armed and armored melee class deserves protection any less than an Ele (light, caster), Engy (med, ranged), Guardian (heavy, melee)?

Well I actually included my reasoning as why they shouldn’t have it. It’s alot like necros lack of stability. And the recent patch shows that Just because they don’t have excessive access to it like the other classes doesn’t mean they cant do well without while adhering to their professions description.

Warriors and Guardians are already so closly related in playstyle that adding just as much access to protection would do less to separate the two. In fact, every class has access to a form of minion except thieves and warriors. Should they get some too? My point is just because its in the game doesnt mean everyone should have it.

I think i would just like to see shorter cooldowns on their stability utilities and more access to immobilize removal.

Don’t know what to tell you…

The Warriors I run w/ Shout Heal me for 2k, consistantly… They are more or less, Immune to Conditions and will never be CC’d unless it is Chained on them. They have some of the best Mobility in game and some of the best AoE Knockdowns in game… all on top of a decent passive regen via Signet.

Couple that w/ 4 Dwayna Runes + 2 Water, they can have a decent Regen as well.

Maybe it’s your build….

Amins.3710:

Don’t know what to tell you…

The Warriors I run w/ Shout Heal me for 2k, consistantly… They are more or less, Immune to Conditions and will never be CC’d unless it is Chained on them. They have some of the best Mobility in game and some of the best AoE Knockdowns in game… all on top of a decent passive regen via Signet.

Couple that w/ 4 Dwayna Runes + 2 Water, they can have a decent Regen as well.

Maybe it’s your build….

They’re only immune to conditions thru melandru runes/lemongrass/dogged march, and they’re only dropping 25% CC and have 1 stun breaker that they’re also using as a heal. Warriors only have 1 aoe knockdown, it’s also a straight projectile line not an aoe and requires an offhand mace.

Player Character.9467:

Amins.3710:

Don’t know what to tell you…

The Warriors I run w/ Shout Heal me for 2k, consistantly… They are more or less, Immune to Conditions and will never be CC’d unless it is Chained on them. They have some of the best Mobility in game and some of the best AoE Knockdowns in game… all on top of a decent passive regen via Signet.

Couple that w/ 4 Dwayna Runes + 2 Water, they can have a decent Regen as well.

Maybe it’s your build….

They’re only immune to conditions thru melandru runes/lemongrass/dogged march, and they’re only dropping 25% CC and have 1 stun breaker that they’re also using as a heal. Warriors only have 1 aoe knockdown, it’s also a straight projectile line not an aoe and requires an offhand mace.

You’re right, I should have said Knockdown, Knockback and Stuns.

Lemongrass + Traited Warhorn + Mobile Strikes, Cleansing Eire…. Hell, you don’t even need Traited Warhorn, so you can keep your Axe/Shield + GS or Hammer build.

W/ only 750 + healing, your signet heals for 230… a whole lot more than Virture of Resolve does.

Issue is w/ warriors wanting to heal like a guardian and do damage like a thief. Bunker guardians don’t hit for crap… same as a bunker warrior.

It’s not all “Doom and Gloom” in the world of warriors now a days… Had you brought this up a month or two ago, the conversation would have been different.

Amins.3710:

W/ only 750 + healing, your signet heals for 230… a whole lot more than Virture of Resolve does.

Are you really comparing a 6 skill to a guardian virtue that can be aoe’ed? It’s a lot more than soothing mists too. Resolve also scales significantly steeper.

@Amins
As I have said MANY MANY TIMES the issues with warriors is they need to spec and gear for sustain. All the other classes get some baseline sustain, and can spec/gear to enhance it.

Signet of Regen is a #6 skill. You cant compare that to Guardian Resolve, because they get resolve AND their #6 skill. Everyone gets a #6 skill. And resolve is a perfect example of a class that has a baseline sustain besides the #6 skill.

And FYI, Signet of Regen actually scales worse with healing power than the Regen boon, and worse than resolve does. Go into HotM and try it out.

Assuming 800 healing power, #6 Signet of Regen will heal for 232 HP/s for Warrior. Virtue of Resolve will tick for 132 HP/s, and #6 Signet of Resolve for 9148 every 40 seconds (AKA 229 HPs). Guard 361 vs War 232. Guardian can also get easy access to protection and has a few additional heals WITHOUT speccing for them.

Add another 300 healing power, and Warriors signet of Regen goes up by roughly 12 HP/s, while Resolve goes up by 20 HP/s.

Moving along, Yes, Mobile Strikes is a solid trait. I don’t see anyone complaining about it so im not sure why you brought it up. Are you saying that having a few good traits is reason to have multiple lousy/bugged traits elsewhere?

Cleansing ire is okay, but it suffers from the catch 22 that the more you need it to work, the less likely it will, IE when you’re laden with condis and being blind/immob spammed.

And yes, Bunker guards do poor DPS. Bunker warriors also do poor DPS. But both doing the same low DPS, bunker guardians are FAR more survivable than bunker warriors. When was the last time you saw 3 people chasing a WVW bunker guardian, having difficulty killing him as he runs across a field towards his tower despite everyone hitting him, stunning him, etc? Now when was the last time you saw a warrior accomplish the same feat?

Finally, anyone can use runes and lemongrass, to make condis fall off. I dont see why you would bring that up.

Amins.3710:

Let me put this into perspective for you in your quote.

The Warriors I run w/ Shout Heal me for 2k, consistantly... Meaning he has approximately 1k-1100 healing power. To do this you need weapon, armor, and trinkets to be clerics or something like that to get that healing output. Which means he hits like a wet noodle. We don’t have burning damage like guardians for more sustained dps and we are worse at bunkering. Currently, right now, the warrior’s niche is kill or be killed and pray they don’t dodge your key attacks.

They are more or less, Immune to Conditions We have Dogged March which is 33% less duration on cripple, immobilize, and chilled. Warhorn for movement conditions and Quick Breathing which turns a condition into a boon. Cleansing Ire has it’s uses but is less effective than the devs had hoped but can cleanses 3 conditions none the less. Our condition removal is very poor. Berserker’s Stance was recently buffed and is great for stopping the stacking of conditions but they do not remove them and a condition spamming class will just have to wait 8-10 seconds for it to fall off. This is the key time a warrior has to drop that class or else melt there after.

and will never be CC’d unless it is Chained on them. Anyone can be chained CC’d if they lack stability or Stun Breakers. It’s not uncommon to chain CC a warrior missing those tools.

They have some of the best Mobility in game So basically, a warrior with greatsword, Sword + warhorn is what you call the best mobility in the game? What about all the other weapons and playstyles? Thieves and mesmers I think take the top of the list when it comes to mobility. Ele is close behind but yes a GS + Sword/WH is very mobile.

and some of the best AoE Knockdowns in game... Stomp? Have you ever played a warrior before? OH Mace would be better if it moved faster. Even with AoE stuns, knockbacks (which are counter productive to a melee centric class) and our knockdowns, it’s still not enough because they are countered easily by stability or a player with half a brain since warrior’s attacks are so televised. If all the other classes lacked stability boons or ways to get out then I might say we have a niche. Alas, mace and hammer are easily dismantled if the target(s) have a good source of stability.

all on top of a decent passive regen via Signet. You’re right, it’s decent regen in comparison to other classes but the catch is that it’s our heal ability and not a utility like everyone else. We also don’t have a trait that allows the regen to continue after activation, thus making it a difficult selection and poor choice for on demand healing.

Couple that w/ 4 Dwayna Runes + 2 Water, they can have a decent Regen as well. First off, we have the worst way to gain the boon, regneration. Why would you want to put 65% boon duration for a 3 second boon? As you well know, everyone has access to runes and sigils so it’s hard to use these examples as key solutions to the warrior’s problem. The tools are there, sure, warriors should take advantage of them but they shouldn’t have to be a necessity to perform. Good example is Soldier Runes. They are basically a go to source for our poor options to cleanse conditions. A crutch.

Maybe it’s your build.... I just don’t think you have played the class very long to understand the small ups and plentiful downs the class is facing.

Responses in quote are bolded. Thanks.

Couldn’t have said it better ArtemisEntreri. I think we only have two ways to gain regen, dogged march for 3 seconds and an ability shrouded behind the horribly clunky ground item that is the tactics banner.

I’m not against warriors who want to pay glass zerker or sniper builds. But hybrid and tanky builds should both be viable alternatives too.