Guild Wars 2

Taken from another thread.

Warriors w/o healing signet have no sustain whatsoever. The alternative heals might not seem so bad to some people but they are bad in relation to the warrior’s mechanics and competencies. People seem to forget that it was Healing Signet that allowed them to be top tier in PvP. Even with Cleansing Ire they were still bottom tier, mainly because they had no sustain whatsoever. Problem is, if you nerf healing signet into the ground, you pretty much take Warriors out of the PvP meta and in WvW they will be food to many classes whom just received some sizable buffs. It would be fairly easy to replace that Warrior with another Ele or an Engi with little regret. Nerfing Healing Signet hard will make Warriors worse than pre-signet buff because of all the damage nerfs to Hammer and Longbow and now currently adrenaline nerfs. Also ANet promised to rework the active, here we are 7-8 months later.

The skill floor might of been raised, maybe for bad warriors. Decent warriors already knew the importance of landing a burst because even before this nerf it was the difference between winning and losing a fight. Burst skills will always be missed no matter how good you are. Even if you count dodges and keep track of utilities used. It was more than a "well you can’t just spam adrenaline skills anymore" it was a straight up nerf for good players as well. Warriors, whom are simple by design doesn’t have that skill ceiling that most other classes do (a very well played alternative class can be just as effective if not more effective than a warrior, it is just more difficult to attain that level for most people).

Warriors have gotten nerfed the past 3 or so major patches, mainly because of 1 or two builds. The complaints aren’t that we are getting nerfed in general (cause lets be honest there are some places where we could get nerfed). The complaints are that the nerfs we get come from totally left field and ANet nerfs the wrong things.

For example, Hundred Blades and Whirlwind damage did not need to be nerfed. I could understand toning down the mobility but damage was never a problem for the Greatsword. And totally last minute they nerfed the damage of Arcing Slice which was totally unnecessary. The skill is still completely garbage whether it is an AoE or not.

Instead of seeing nerfs to Longbow and how it interacts with CI and maybe the size of it (which honestly is the main culprit here), we saw nerfs to Signet of Rage, Adrenaline, and indirectly sustain. These are global nerfs to the warrior. Problem is when you don’t nerf the main culprit, but just nerf everything around it, you are making underused builds even less viable. Worst part is that the adrenaline nerf doesn’t even effect longbow, which makes it a double whammy in terms of making it more essential. And no other weapon set got buffed. Mace auto attack cast time on 3rd swing is nothing, in fact I think they nerfed rifle by shifting its damage. Whirling Axes is still trash. They pretty much nerfed Greatsword because Arcing Slice is still bad.

Truthfully I don’t have a problem with losing adrenaline on missed burst. I do agree however that the instant decaying of adrenaline as soon as you go out of combat is pretty disheartening and unneeded. Maybe if it was 10 seconds after leaving combat I would be OK with it, to at least give the warrior a chance to engage in combat again if he chooses to do so. Sometimes it isn’t a warrior’s choice that he isn’t in combat, why come down on Warriors so hard for that? Adrenaline right now is probably the most punishing profession mechanic out of any class, by far.

Our burst mechanic is much less intricate than other mechanics, and arguably not as good as other profession mechanics. Necros get an extra lifebar and 4 extra skills. Mesmers get 4 skills. Guardians get three, Engis get 4 varying skills, etc. We get one skill on a low cooldown, but also a crutch that is heavily relied upon for condi removal. Yet this burst mechanic is so integral to a warrior that if you completely take it away you might as well delete the class. People act like Warriors didn’t get punished at all for a badly timed burst. If a Warrior misses a burst that is a lot of potential DPS forgone. Missing a burst is more consequential to a warrior than missing most other skills. Also, missing a burst means Cleansing Ire doesn’t proc. Missing a burst pretty much means a green light for the opponent, it means you should be more aggressive as his potential DPS at that time is low and his vulnerability to conditions is higher. This is just as punishing in my opinion if not more as a missed Shatter, mistimed pet skill, badly used Death Shroud, etc.

And of course, the next idiot will probably come in this thread and probably say something like " YOUR JUST MAD YOUR OP AND SKILLESS CLASS GOT NERFED AND HARDER TO PLAY NO MORE SPAMMING F1 TO WIN GOOD RIDDANCE TO WARRIORS THEY FINALLY GOT NERFED AFTER MAJOR BUFFS THE LAST 5 MAJOR BALANCE PATCHES NOPE IT CANT POSSIBLY BE BECAUSE I AM A TERRIBLE ELE IT IS DEFINITELY THE WARRIOR". Unfortunately, this kind of post is pretty prevalent nowadays.

Warriors honestly aren’t even that hard to beat to begin with. People are too busy going on an anti-warrior tirade without maybe getting better. And are honestly too blind to see that past the longbow, there are areas that Warriors do need decent buffs in.

Btw, I am having a blast playing the Ranger, Engi Mesmer and Medi Guardian right now

A very good topic sir, bravo bravo! I highly urge you as to read the other topics on the matter, if you haven’t done so yet, that many people, among them me as well, have posted and also join the conversations, too. This change to the warrior in my opinion is mostly unfair and let me say that like you, I am also a warrior who was fairly open to nerfs like the HamBow one, but I believe that this one was an overkill for our profession.

Dimitris.3195:

A very good topic sir, bravo bravo! I highly urge you as to read the other topics on the matter, if you haven’t done so yet, that many people, among them me as well, have posted and also join the conversations, too. This change to the warrior in my opinion is mostly unfair and let me say that like you, I am also a warrior who was fairly open to nerfs like the HamBow one, but I believe that this one was an overkill for our profession.

Most would call us innately biased as we main Warriors (which may be true). However, I have mained a warrior since launch so I’ve been through the ups and downs of this class.

In my opinion, if things keep going the way they are (most classes remaining neutral/gaining buffs and warriors receiving nothing but global nerfs), I truly think we are one bad balance patch away from unviability.

It’s not only that, the things that I think upsets me the most about this change is that ANet literally:

1: Made hambow more essential due to adrenaline changes
2: Made every other non-bow build less viable due to adrenaline changes
3: Didn’t buff any non-viable weapon sets (or barely)
4: In fact nerfed two already non-viable weapon sets in PvP (GS and Rifle)

I think ANet intentionally destroyed build diversity for the warrior because I just don’t see how it is possible to have these 4 points occur simultaneously in one patch. If that was the intention, I say well played ANet you are pro!

People are complaining because

1. A lack of clarity on just what arena net wants this class to become and how its getting there.
2. A lack of discussion and feedback on the changes arena net is making to the game.
3. A lack of proper balance patches to the game.
4. Arena nets hamhanded approach to content changes
5. Arena nets seeming lack of content oversight and quality assurance.

yeah pretty spot on, except that I think the GS change was fine. But yes, only bow builds feel viable atm (even more so than before).

Before patch i was like gs/ axe&shield setup, now i’m using gs/lbow and feel myself very confident in it, mostly cause you can’t miss you burst skill on bow and it gives you a long range benefits. As for pvp, i would better switch gs on hammer, cause controll is everything .

Interesting post, now I usually refrain myself from posting in the Warrior’s Subforum because, and no offense, I feel like I either have nothing to add, or am talking to a wall… Though yesterday, before crashing over and over, the only thing I played was a new Warrior build to test and see, and there are some good things;
I found the Adrenaline Depletion for a missed burst skill extremely interesting – not only made it me look better at mine, but I also made sure to hinder other Warriors trying to hit them (using Shield Block, Dodge, Mace Block etc. etc.) – this is a glorious change! I feel so much more active and engaged with the combat, which is exactly what I expected from a class like Warrior, constantly in combat, really really really quite good imho

Brawler’s Recovery became legit – I got in a 2v1 against a condition Thief and a Bunker Guardian, which mind you is really dangerous since the Condition Damage now comes from the source – yet the Thief was complaining about me having too much Condition Removal!
Really epic – and surely a good pick for builds now

Now I found some things quite ugly as well;
Personally, looking back at yesterday testing my brand new build, my two biggest gripes is the necessity of the Longbow, paired with the Decay, though the latter is not really that much of an issue, I found it quite saddening to see how quickly it went in practice

Adrenaline needs to be looked at ASAP, because the decay is far too punishing – yes, I get it that it was “needed” to not let Warrior’s run around with constant Adrenaline when hopping from point to point, but even as a GS Warrior, I was unable to keep up with the decay – while I chose to run GS especially for the reason to hop from Battle to Battle without being punished too hard, but quite frankly I did…

It also ensures me to run Healing Signet – imho incredibly bad as I saw some merrit on running Healing Surge instead, breaking out of combat with the GS, heal up, and get back… This is now neigh impossible…

And Longbow did not change at all, it still procs CI, which makes the lose adrenaline when you miss just redundant… I don’t get it, it is like this freaking thing get’s shoved into every Warrior’s place where the sun doesn’t shine… I did not pick up Warrior to run around in Fire Fields created by my Dwayna Bow – I did it to do manly and epic stuff, like bashing people’s faces in and laugh as they took a full 100b in that same face… Paired with the changes to Adrenaline, I feel almost “forced” to run it, or forever stay behind any warrior build out there… not good… not good at all….

Still it is early patch, Warriors in the subforum need to get their heads together, which you lined out perfectly Mayne, so the real culprit agains the Warrior’s gameplay can be pinned down… I personally hope the bugs and crashes within PvP are fixed soon (my soon, not Anet’s “Soon™” ) so I can test my build to the fullest…

This is a very well argumented and written post.

Wars were due for a little shaving, i think we can agree on that, but the way anet did it is totally illogic.

The “ONE BUILD” that was arguably too strong and evryone hated? Hambow.
The build that suffers laest from changes? Hambow.

Well played.

I’ll just add a particularly emblematic example to this:

Axe skill 5: it has always been a subpar skill because the damage was low compared to axe AA, with just the little niche of being able to dodge whitout breaking it.

What does anet do to “buff” it? Lower CD (why would i want to use it more often if i don’t use it anyway?), buff damage a bit (but still not enough to make it viable) and take away the dodge-while-spinning part.

Net balance: the skill was better when it was worse. And that’s exactly what i feel about most of anet “balance” changes. Having played condi warrior a lot i feel the only well thought nerf was reducing impale uptime, that skill was way too good.

Very very good OP and well stated the real problem on ANet “balance” changes.

Great posts guys!

After I got my head together and cooled down a bit I sat down and thought about what just happened to the warrior and how to get back on our feet.

The changes ANet made are actually spot on, its just that they went a little bit to far.
Except for the longbow abuse I honestly have to say the viable build diversity has increase a lot! At least for WvW and PvP. I am not really a PvE guy and since PvE is all about damage which I find boring I wont talk about it as much in this post. (Sorry PvE guys)

Pre-patch WvW builds were mostly about that 00626 GS/Hammer roaming and bunker builds that go deep into tactics for zergs. Aswell as the hambow in PvP. Imo, these have been the most effective at their department.

I have now crafted builds like double endure pain, Gs+sword, bullsrush or effective LB/GS builds that seem to be on par with the GS/Hammer meta in roaming for example. They work quite well atleast. Even the Shield and reflect got indirect buffs because of the probably new LB ranger meta. I certainly see a lot more viable builds now. Even for PvP although not as much.

Let me talk about the patch for a bit.
Greatsword nerfs – meh, whatever.
Other minor buffs – why not.

Now, our problem child AS. I wont see myself using AS a lot. Its more of a condition cleanse for GS/Hammer builds now instead of an execution skill. And because of the adrenaline nerf everything that uses 2 powerful adreanline skills got nerfed. Post-patch you certainly dont want to spam burst-attacks anymore.

I even see it being used in Zerg-builds. 15 conditions cleansed with one attack – lol. Brilliant!
However I feel its damage needs to get buffed or else it wont be what it was advertised to be.

Adrenlaine (If you skip large posts, atleast read this paragraph below – important!)

The adrenaline on loss – Awesome, I love it. Was needed for a long time.
Adrenaline decay is something I have to talk about now.
With the current changes its virtually a waste to use Healing surge, signet of fury or berserker stance outside of combat. The gained adrenaline just falls of the second we get it. You cant even maintain one bar of adrenline with berserker stance.

Also the decay as you go out of combat is to fast for PvE. In WvW it was an essential part of the warrior to retreat if things got to hot, let healing signet heal you up and go back in. Its not being a kitten, its smart play.

How to fix those two things while not making it as broken and lazy as it was before?
Easy.
A 3 second delay before decay begins outside of combat AND after you gained adrenaline at any time. That allows you to use Zerker stance OOC and gain all 3 bars with 3 seconds to do something with it. It allows you to use signet of fury and healing surge and actually use all 3 bars!
Also it makes it possible to open up with evis or something on PvE mobs when farming. It also helps tramendously to keep adrenaline up when a thief tries to get you ooc now. It would fix all our problems, because as it stand now 3 of our adrenaline gain skills are useless and its impossible to use our class mechanic in simple PvE farming and between elite mobs in dungeons.

Tl;DR
- Buff AS by atleast 25% damage below the threshold, or give us what you promised us.
- Implement a 3 second time window before adrenaline decay after combat and adren gain.
- Make combustive shot require a hit on enemy (not ground) to trigger CI to increase build diversity even more.

Do this and the warrior is going to be in a perfectly balanced spot that requires skill to use and is usefull for any game mode if being build and played correctly.

Aye, well-written.

Missing a burst skill is definitely as punishing as missing a shatter, though can be made a little “less bad” with a GrandMaster Trait that gives you back 33% of that adrenaline … but that’s a big investment.

I’d say it’s worse than missing a Ranger pet skill since that doesn’t kill my pet … he’s still nipping at you ;-)

I’ve always thought of Warriors as shining far more in 2+ vs 2+ as opposed to 1v1. Why? Because Warrior’s were designed very well in that I can’t think off the top of my head of any ability damaging ability that does not have some sort of tell. Warrior’s allow for counterplay. Because of this, in a 1v1 a good opponent can react to big hits by dodging, blocking, etc.. This puts you at a disadvantage when compared to other classes that can hit you hard with zero tell … possibly with multiple instant casts with no real tell to them :-/ (one of the biggest blunders by ANet in my opinion).

In group fights, the bigger the fight the harder it is to both track all the tells as well as have a dodge or cooldown ready to handle it, so suddenly Warriors shine.

This, in my opinion, is a reason why Warrior’s are so strong in PvE. Warrior damage is designed around players being smart enough to counter those strong hits when they see the tell. Mobs don’t do this so they just facetank the solid damage from warrior.

As far as the changes go …

… Losing adrenaline when you miss should quite likely stay … hopefully things like losing stealth when you miss will follow.

… How fast adrenaline is gained with and without traits, utilities, etc. devoted to it should be looked at to see if it’s in a good place with the current Warrior rulese … though with Cleansing Ire I wasn’t having any problems constantly filling my adrenaline last night.

… How fast adrenaline drains out of combat should be looked at to see if it’s in a good place with the current Warrior ruleset. When I jump from mob to mob in PvE, I don’t go to empty before the next mob … especially with Warrior’s awesome mobility. I just don’t sit at full adrenaline the whole time.

The hilarious thing is people are actively trying to get Healing Signet nerfed now.

you kitten m8

Dimitris.3195:

A very good topic sir, bravo bravo! I highly urge you as to read the other topics on the matter, if you haven’t done so yet, that many people, among them me as well, have posted and also join the conversations, too. This change to the warrior in my opinion is mostly unfair and let me say that like you, I am also a warrior who was fairly open to nerfs like the HamBow one, but I believe that this one was an overkill for our profession.

^hambow is sponsored by Anet they would never nerf that!

Azure The Heartless.3261:

The hilarious thing is people are actively trying to get Healing Signet nerfed now.

you kitten m8

If this ever happened, I would literally tell Anet to go kitten themselves via singagram sent to their dev team.

Was called a cheese mother kitten earlier in a sPvP game, as far as I’m concerned Warrior needs another fat nerf. Hopefully nerfing healing signet, cleansing ire + zerker stance to pre-buff state that way its warrior will be known universally as a free kill so people will stop pm’ing me hate messages about how my class is nothing but face roll.

i started playing a ranger today, full zerk 6/6/2/0/0 in pvp. It doesn’t get any more faceroll than that, get on a ledge, kill stuff. reflection? i can dodge too you know. never took more than 4k damage top from reflected attacks.

when they get melee it gets hairy sometimes but you know what, if it’s really bad i have a stealth and a 1100 dash on weapon swap. and they say warrior runs away too easily.

i think i’ll let my war rest for a while, fotm choochoo here i come.

I don’t play a warrior but if I may ask, how long DOES it take you all now to lose 3 bars of adrenaline after exiting combat?

Puh, not ingame atm. Out of my head I’d say it feels like it takes ~5 seconds. And the decay starts instantly when ooc. The decay rate has been twice as long pre patch but thats not really the problem. The rate is fine now, the instant decay is not.
3 seconds before decay would be optimal and balanced as it is right now. Hell even 1 1/2 seconds would help.
More importantly should there be a delay between gain and decay when OOC. I already stated in another thread that all adren gain abilities are useless ooc and in combat aswell because there are other methods to gain adren faster than you can spend it in combat anyway.

Ohhhh, yeah instantly starting to lose your adrenaline when your ooc is not good, not good at all. There definitely should be a grace period of a couple of seconds at least. Oi, hope it gets fixed for you all. I won’t lie, I did want the warrior to be nerfed a little bit but that just seems too much, it’s like the warrior nerf patch on Smite all over again….dark times, dark times.

It is really bad. To put it into perspective:

You kill a risen mob on cursed shore and managed to get your adrenaline to full.
You want to eviscerate the next risen for full damage (all 3 bars) that is about 5 meter away.
You CANT. the adren dropped below 2 bars already.

Pre-patch warrior would walk over half the map (crused shore) without combat and without loosing adrenaline at all… the difference is insane, lol.

Yeah that helped to clear things up for me. Being able to walk about half of cursed shore though (I assume that’s an exaggeration) is a bit much, but again, not being able to even attack a nearby mob is like gutting your profession. There are also audio cues for when you are building and finish building adrenaline aren’t there? So people can just high tail it the moment your character announces they are full.

yeah except those cues have always been silly because they don’t take into account wheter you’re gaining or losing adrenaline.

example: human male warrior shouts “almost ready” at 2 full bars. except it also shouts it if you were full and lost 1 bar.

TheLastNobody.8319:

I don’t play a warrior but if I may ask, how long DOES it take you all now to lose 3 bars of adrenaline after exiting combat?

After leaving combat, after building the adrenaline to full-

you lose about one bar every two seconds.

you have four seconds to get to another target and hopefully land a stage 1 burst on them.

needless to say this makes thief fighting hell.

ANet way of thinking:

Well we have 2 really strong build on this class, ppl complain that they are too strong because of the Longbow and that this weapon should be nerfed. What do you guys think?

Some random guy aka the boss
Don’t nerf it, I need to be somewhat strong in my class, nerf everything else isntead

DONE!

Fiorrello.8126:

People are complaining because

1. A lack of clarity on just what arena net wants this class to become and how its getting there.
2. A lack of discussion and feedback on the changes arena net is making to the game.
3. A lack of proper balance patches to the game.
4. Arena nets hamhanded approach to content changes
5. Arena nets seeming lack of content oversight and quality assurance.

lol…. Think of the new “enhanced features” patch, and the investment (or lack thereof) made in determining them, as an application of the principle of “adding to the bottom line.”