Guild Wars 2

TRAIT SUGGESTIONS:

Rage Training: When under the effect of Fury you have a 30% chance on hit to ignore Blind, 15% reduced damage taken from Confusion and Torment and take 5% less damage when immobilized or crippled. You gain 10% critical chance for 10s each time you are blocked (stacks intensity).

Rationale: Warriors have been having a hard time dealing with conditions and in certain occasions they can be a little too much. This would grant a conditional chance at ignoring Blind which has been a sore spot lately as well as some damage reduction for conditions that can compound situations where warriors are easily kited. The second half of this trait is meant to allow some ‘priming’ where warriors are known for having good burst and with proper timing/skill could minimize the damage loss of getting a few attacks blocked. I liken this to the major adept trait Short Temper which I believe is meant to achieve something similar but leaning towards more burst where you have a small window for a few extra/bonus crits rather than some minor sustained damage provided by the might from Short Temper. This trait would probably be good in Master tier Tactics as it fits the well-prepared and heavily drilled theme that the name Tactics gives off while still faithful to the brutish nature of a warrior.

Second Wind: Gain 5 seconds of protection when your health reaches 40% (30-second cooldown). Burst skills grants 3 seconds of retaliation. Retaliation heals for each second that expires without taking direct damage (condition damage does not prevent this).

Rationale: Being that warriors need close contact to be effective they need a little more survivability and I believe that 5s of protection every 30s would be an acceptable respite. However that momentary protection would only address situations where warriors themselves are quickly burst down and does little for prolonged survivability that should be present if their kit in general was a little more flexible than what it currently is. This is where retaliation fits in. Being a warrior you would think, thematically speaking, that if you hit them they would hit back and that is true to an extent but is not realized effectively, in my honest opinion, in their current kit where they have few options to do so. Providing them with the ability to ‘hit back’ would make them, at the very least, harder to punish on the battlefield, the increased survivability that they seem to be lacking would be less punishing by making Retaliation heal in the instance that they do not receive direct damage, perhaps make it heal 200-250+0.8 Healing Power per second where it wouldn’t make them unbalanced but would make them last slightly longer if specced into this. This would probably fit around Master tier Discipline since it there is an emphasis on Burst skills it would synergize well there and it also fits the theme of Discipline.

TheHiddenJackal.6714:

TRAIT SUGGESTIONS:

Rage Training: When under the effect of Fury you have a 30% chance on hit to ignore Blind, 15% reduced damage taken from Confusion and Torment and take 5% less damage when immobilized or crippled. You gain 10% critical chance for 10s each time you are blocked (stacks intensity).

Considering that Warriors have a ridiculous uptime of Fury, I think the starting condition is kinda silly.

And the 10% crit chance for being blocked could be abused to all hell. Think Whirling Axe, 100 Blades or Flurry. Especially in PvE. You’re talking easy 100% crit rate.

Second Wind: Gain 5 seconds of protection when your health reaches 40% (30-second cooldown). Burst skills grants 3 seconds of retaliation. Retaliation heals for each second that expires without taking direct damage (condition damage does not prevent this).

1. The Protection duration here is so situational and short that it’s a joke.
2. There’s already plenty of runes like Rune of Earth that give a better effect and yet no one uses those.
3. 3 seconds of retaliation on Burst is overdoing it. Burst heavy builds would end up with nearly 50% uptime on retaliation. Throw in Spiked Armor and a bit of Boon duration and you’ll be looking at permanent retaliation.

Olba.5376:

Considering that Warriors have a ridiculous uptime of Fury, I think the starting condition is kinda silly.

And the 10% crit chance for being blocked could be abused to all hell. Think Whirling Axe, 100 Blades or Flurry. Especially in PvE. You’re talking easy 100% crit rate.

1. The Protection duration here is so situational and short that it’s a joke.
2. There’s already plenty of runes like Rune of Earth that give a better effect and yet no one uses those.
3. 3 seconds of retaliation on Burst is overdoing it. Burst heavy builds would end up with nearly 50% uptime on retaliation. Throw in Spiked Armor and a bit of Boon duration and you’ll be looking at permanent retaliation.

Remember that simply having Fury won’t guarantee you ignore blinds it’s a 30% chance so you’ll more often than not still end up missing. The passive reductions are there to provide warriors with low condition removal a little breathing room. And keep in mind having a high up-time of Fury won’t stop your opponents from removing that buff from you.

And yes I did take the possibility of abuse into consideration but take my comparison of this to Short Temper in most cases you don’t see warriors rushing to get their skills off to get that bonus might.

IF you decide to use Whirling Axe, 100 Blades or Flurry you’ll be trading off damage from these skills for more crit chance later and, correct me if I’m wrong, these are the skills that you WANT to crit on the enemy yes? Given that most skills that block in the first place only block the next 1-3 attacks you’ll be gaining 10-30% crit chance to compensate damage lost due to the blocks. The longest blocks are time based and channeled and will match the channeling time of Whirling Axe, 100 Blades with Flurry having some spillover.

Let’s even say that you have a main-hand Axe with Greatsword and you choose to spend one to get 100% crit with the other. In PvP your opponent wouldn’t want to stay near you even if they had a channeled block if you forced them to trigger their blocking skill they would want to separate from you nonetheless. What guarantees would you have that you’ll be able to get your full channel off in that scenario then?

For the PvE scenario I’d like to remind you that I intended this to be a Master tier Tactics trait meaning that it won’t fit in or synergize with most Zerker/Dungeon-running builds and would grant you 10s of 100% critical chance in very few instances that you would be better off running traditional DPS builds for greater overall effect.

1. That protection is there to prevent you being burst down, considering that high damage opponents would want to get you down as quickly as possible the protection is there to punish them for being too hasty in trying to kill you or provide you a window to react to being caught off guard. I could point out numerous traits that are situational but for the right reasons, plus that’s why there are multiple aspects to the trait so that you are not wasting that slot just for that particular situation.
2. As I said it’s not about high up-time with protection it’s about having it when it could count. How useful would the Rune of Earth be if it proc’ed at the start of the fight when the opponent is still contemplating whether to burst you or not. Rune pops – he sees the buff- he decides to hold back, wastes your time, waits for protection to wear off then he goes offensive. Not very useful, eh?
3. Burst heavy builds are generally glass cannons having this would balance out how easily shut down they are in many instances. Spiked armor is a Grandmaster Defense trait meaning you trade off potential damage for increased survivability. If you add reasonable boon duration you’ll be making heavy tradeoffs (given that you’ll want to take 20 in Discipline – where I intended the trait to be) that even if you had very high retaliation up-time you wouldn’t be providing much threat in other aspects and would, in theory, be heavily viable in very few areas such as in WvW zergs as not every enemy you encounter will be burst heavy and be heavily punished by retaliation and not every enemy you encounter will always have criticals factored into their build leaving your Spiked Armor situationally impotent.

Note: If your protests with my suggestions are purely number based suggest a change regarding just that – numbers. I would prefer some deeper analysis of the viability – potential benefits/disadvantages – that my suggestions bring forth if anyone could provide such insights.