Phaatonn, London UK
The main warrior questions
Here is the thing. I think for at least the next 6 months, you guys need to stop worrying about content (or put it on the back burner with a smaller team) and really focus on class balance and making all classes good and fun to play. Every patch should be loaded with class balance, LOADED.
I dont agree that there is a problem with Berserkers Power and Heightened focus I believe I even understand why they have those traits and I am newish to warrior and never rolled tanky. They are there to give those that aren’t speccing hard into Zerker/DPS and allow them to still dish out decent damage.
Actually both those traits are used in the “hard Zerker DPS” build, which also involves the Greatsword (which is the only weapon that benefits from not ever using its burst skill, or more specifically, has no need to use its burst skill). That argument doesn’t even really make sense when considering Berserker’s Power. Since it’s a percentage, it’ll benefit the full DPS builds far more than any other. However, if you looked at my suggestion for a fix, those traits are still doing the exact same thing, they’re just encouraging you to actually use your burst skill rather than saving the adrenaline.
Optimally those traits are used in the DPS build if you are going for max damage output.
Sub optimally they are still doing the samething. Giving warriors comparable damage while not necessarily speccing for dps. I understand that those traits are the optimal to take for a DPS build I am not debating that. What I am saying is that they provide builds not focused max dps but maybe some survivability, healing etc to still have good damage.
Those traits are also good to use on your burst skill as the damage increase is given upfront. So your eviscerate hits for more damage. I know GS has a burst skill not used hardly ever so it benefits it but those 2 traits benefit all weapons until you feel it is the right time to use your burst skill and it still benefits that skill.
If berserkers power is say comparable to +300 power I could as a option because of that trait shave some power off of my gear to take stats somewhere else and still pump out good damage. Heightened focus at stage 3 adrenaline is almost 25 stacks on a perception sigil for free basically. So just my opinion both of those traits are really good and provide options actually and allow you to be more flexible with your trait pts/gear if your doing something else other than all out damage build.
I’m aware of the uses of both of those traits. However if you read past the line in my post that was quoted before, I don’t talk about removing them. I talk about having them apply on use of your burst skill. The problem is that they’re passive and they promote passive play rather than use of your class mechanic. If you instead have them apply the EXACT SAME EFFECT when you use your burst skill, you’re at least letting the player actively make use of all their abilities. Again, the argument is not about the usefulness of the traits, it’s about how they’re actually applying the bonuses.
As stated by my post above they do apply to burst skills.
Those are two of our strongest offensive traits.. if you want to complain about underpowered traits then I’d start with the mh axe 10% crit damage – under 5% extra damage as a master level trait on many builds.
You misinterpreted my post entirely. Read the other person’s reply, he seemed to understand what I’m talking about.
Ah so you’re implying that burst should be used as an opener rather than a finisher. Apologies for the misunderstanding, that post may sound jarring but I’m essentially trying to help.
My point still stands however that if you time healing surge right then adrenaline, as well as the traits that it endows are never an issue. An eviscerate when timed right on a well built burst warrior is so clutch that hesitating due to traits is a bad play.
Phaatonn, London UK
Ah so you’re implying that burst should be used as an opener rather than a finisher. Apologies for the misunderstanding, that post may sound jarring but I’m essentially trying to help.
My point still stands however that if you time healing surge right then adrenaline, as well as the traits that it endows are never an issue. An eviscerate when timed right on a well built burst warrior is so clutch that hesitating due to traits is a bad play.
Yes, my original post wasn’t taking into account the fact that we have several methods of instant adrenaline generation. I still think there could be more interesting ways for us to make use of our adrenaline, but it may require a redesign of more than just our burst skills.
Eviscerate – Same damage across all levels of adrenaline. Reduces cooldown based on adrenaline level. So basically if the total cooldown is 10, each stage of adrenaline reduces it by three. (Note that this takes effect WHEN the ability goes into cooldown. You’re not speeding the cooldown up by gaining adrenaline after the fact, you’re causing the the Stage 3 Eviscerate to put the ability on a 4 second cooldown as opposed to 10). This would create scenarios where the player could think “If I wanted to deal consistent damage, I trait for increased adrenaline gain (axes already have traits for that) so that I can do an eviscerate every 4 seconds. Or if I want to do a quick burst, I do a maxed eviscerate, then immediately eviscerate again as soon as I hit one stage of adrenaline.” That allows for higher burst, but then puts the skill on a long cooldown. Obviously those exact values are pretty crazy, and it’d probably be best to increase the base cooldown of the skill in order to make the whole cooldown reduction thing feel more useful.
Kill Shot – Greatly reduce the charge time and damage, so maybe you only need to stay still for a quarter of a second. The skill doesn’t improve based on adrenaline, but instead only ever uses 1 bar of adrenaline, and has no cooldown. So basically, if you have 3 bars of adrenaline, then you can chain off 3 kill shots back to back. Again, actual numbers would have to change to compensate, this is just from a mechanics standpoint.
This is not a bad scenario. The problem is that they’ve put so many traits in place that are generalized and would need to be removed and re-tooled. Reduced burst cooldown, reduced adrenaline used on burst, restore endurance on burst, 10% burst skill crit chance, all of these would have to be considered when changing the mechanics of the burst skill as you’ve suggested.
I’m in your corner on this one though. I think they need to spend as much time, if not more, re-tooling the warrior as they have on the engineer…but will they?
Greatsword’s burst really just needs to change.
Anet has also specifically said this. I think they need to have a “warrior meeting” one of these days to just sit down and evaluate where they want this class to be. They’ve said a lot but haven’t really done much at all.
Arcing Slice just needs to be a 600/900/1200 leap skill…like it was going to be.
As do the two traits based around adranline, Berserker’s Power and Heightened Focus. I don’t think a build/playstyle that causes you to not make use of your class’s mechanic is a good idea. Why not switch those traits to apply those boosts when you use a burst skill? So Berserker’s Power applies a 7% damage boost for say… 10 seconds when you use a burst skill at 2 stages of adrenaline. The boosts would only stack in duration, with the higher damage version replacing the lower one if it gets applied. I would not make these actual boons, so the enemy couldn’t actually remove the effect (this would keep them in line with their current power), though it might help to have some sort of indication as to what your damage increase is at (if I’m not mistaken they’ve started doing this with some of the non-swiftness movement speed buffs).
Berserker’s Power, Heightened Focus, and Adrenal Health should all be given this positive use mechanic. They need to have a long, non-stacking duration buff given to you from landing your burst skill that basically equates to the same amount of bonus per adrenaline level currently available. You should be able to have the buffs up throughout the fight by using your burst skills in the situations they were meant to be used, but not be able to stack duration and carry them all over the battlefield.