Guild Wars 2

These buffs are based on my playstyle. I think some may be too aggressive, but we can reach some middle ground.

So I play Strength, Discipline, Defense triple stance with gs, axe shield Rune of Durability, berzerker amu.
Strength b-m-t; Discipline m-b-m Defense t-t-t

Traits:
1) Baseline fast hands. I really want to shuffle my lines, but discipline is such a hand cuff.
2) Heightened focus icd reduced to 12sec. I would like this to proc ideally everytime I come back to gs set, but with so much pet/clone cleave, I get some wasted quickness. For a GM trait, I would like closer to 33% uptime or greater. Some classes have 5sec 5sec icd boon traits. And quickness is a direct damage buff without actually giving us bigger numbers to worry about. Here 4 ever 12sec is still kind of weak but 20% better.\

3)Now this one might be a little bit of a reach. Reckless dodge removes a boon on hit. As warriors, we just can’t handle boons. Frankly, this would synergize well with stance vigor Grandmaster. Plus removing 1 boons every dodge would not be a lot with the consistency of swiftness, might, fury, regen. And while you are dodge removing, you are not doing dps so its not a powercreep buff.

4) Balance stance needs an CD adjustment of about 20%. At 40secs, its just too low uptime. 30secs would be better, 28secs ideal for about ~38% uptime traited GM or 29% untraited.

5) Stances overall need a cooldown shave, not just balance stance. 60sec is so long. Wells, shouts, etc have AoE utility of boons and have shorter cd than individual stances. Seriously does not make sense.

6) Endure pain needs to apply maybe 1 stack of stability. Currently you cannot stun break with it out of certain skills because they are multiple successive stuns, i.e. gravity well or DH traps. Only 1-2 stacks of short duration to ensure you actually break the stun intended.

8) Thick skin and Adrenal Health still useless.
If my skin is thick, make condi do less damage while above 90% or 85%.
Adrenal Health coefficient needs to be raised. I am giving up a ton of damage and potential trait effects by not using a burst skill. And I got 300health every 3 seconds…
I don’t want heal signet 2.0, but the number does need a tweak.

9) Brawlers recovery should be 2 conditions. That way it could actually be an effective clearer. It is competing with DotE which is can be a 15% damage increase depending on the target.

10) I do not want a teleport. But even with warriors sprint, people just naturally outrun you. Increase eviscerate leap range to 600units.

11) Spiked armor I am on the fence about this one. Seems underwhelming most of the time, but in theory it is nice.

12) Berserker’s Power. This needs a rework. I am not a fan of flat damage multipliers, in an active game. This skill should be reworked into some utility. Burst skills are supposed to be fight changing. I propose the trait work something like this.

Berserker’s Power- When you land a burst skill apply a debuff that reduces healing effectiveness, damage output, movement. One of these three, and maybe it can change with the weapon. So say your pure power bursts can affect healing. Function like a deep wound mechanic. Like hit with eviscerate, debuff all incoming healing is 25% less effective.
Your utility burst skills could affect movement, so like all enemies hit with fire field arrow have 25% movement debuff
This debuff would scale with adrenaline bars used.
Would give your burst some more utility instead of just bigger numbers.

Skills
1) Axe 2 is very underwhelming at 4 stacks vulnerability. Should be at least 5% damage increase.

2) Axe 3 would be nice if it connects to have some pull effect associated with it on connect.

3) GS4 would be cool if the return blade pulled people. I would adjust the cd if that became live.

4) please fix Rush pathing. Could make rush remove movement impairing conditions all together. Need to stick to my target and rush is nice for that when it connects properly but then as soon as the channel ends, I am still impaired and cannot keep up.

5) I actually like the shield cooldowns when traited. 16sc and 24sec fits nicely.

6) Axe auto attack is in a good spot.

7) If GS auto was maybe 10-15% faster, it would be perfect.

This is all I can think of at the moment. Some of these are greedy, but I would love to see Berserker’s Power reworked into more utility and less numbers the most.

I have so many hours on the combination. I like to think I have a sense of its shortcomings. Who knows, I remember harping on some things a few years back and they slowly worked their way into the game. So I won’t lose hope yet.

The thing is in this meta, a lot of the classes like Revanant, Chrono, DH, Tempest is that they literally kitten out boons. Warriors can’t keep up with it with no boon generation of their own. There are literally too many blocks as well that it is very easy for a Warrior to miss crucial skills. And the amount of evades in this game is ridiculous.

Warriors have limited range options, for them to be effective they kind of have to be in the thick of things. Problem is that Warriors don’t have that survivability in there. Druids have alot of sustain, Necros have DS, Chronos have so many invulnerabilities/blocks/evades, Tempest has just alot of AoE CC, protection and sustain.

I would love to see the Warrior get more access to unblockable attacks. It seems very thematic and is a great counter to the meta. Or have traits that give us better access to that.

As well, I know boon removal isn’t very thematic for a Warrior, but at the very least something like "Turn an opponents stability into fear" type thing. And other various things that punish boon spammers like receive 5% less damage per boon the enemy has or something like that.

Maybe something cool like gain two seconds of resistance every time you dodge or become stunned for 2 seconds when you hit a Warrior with stability. And something more gutsy like the lower health the Warrior has the more powerful it becomes.

I agree with some of what you are saying, especially on your point about utility. The stances as it stands is very stale. Warriors have to use up utilities to get what many other classes get through simple traits or weapon sets/profession mechanics.

I do not mind not having a ranged option if we excel at the melee option. However, I cannot say this is what we really excel at compared to other classes.
I would really like to stay away from passive procs, but create more active procs, if that makes sense. The dodge removing a boon was an example, actively requires your ability.
I do not want something like at 25% health remove some boons. Just another bad passive idea. If GS was not so good, I would use a hammer or a mace. But with the cc and stability present, no way you could effectively stun lock something that is not a ranger or a necro.

Hrrmm, I wouldn’t give warrior boon removal for the sake of sticking to class themes… but I’d love a way to ignore or remove protection. That’s kinda been the problem with DotE imo, I’d rather have someone stripping boons instead of a warrior with “boon hate” because of prot.

Stance CD reduction is a little scary, especially because stance builds are already pretty decent (as far as warrior builds go).

I agree with most other stuff, but I also think warrior damage needs to stay high, so careful with changing zerk power.

Also buff physicals plox.

Traits
Reduce cooldowns on all weapon skills. Then we won’t feel the need to have baseline Fast Hands, because we’ll have our weapon skills more on demand.

As someone who uses Heightened Focus over that pathetic Hammer trait, I could go for a 12 sec Heightened Focus. It still requires a <50% HP target, but better uptime is always desirable.

All stances need cooldown reductions. They’re fantastic skills, but the huge gaps in uptime limit their utility to the point where I don’t consider them. InterInter, your assessment on AoE utility boons from other classes is spot on. Direct case of “other classes do it better than Warrior.”

Warrior needs better access to on-demand stability. A few seconds of stability on a ridiculous cooldown won’t cut it in PvP or HoT content. Warrior could really use more frequent, shorter bursts (1-2 sec) to really be the unstoppable bricks they’re supposed to be. (Or, y’know, my tiny Asura Engineer with a flamethrower is somehow a better beatstick…)

Adrenal Health: Adrenaline level 3 healing: 351, 15% return on HealPow. So, yeah, looking at about 117-170 per second, which isn’t even a 1%/second return on HP. So yeah, could use a buff in exchange for the sacrifice in damage.

Not sure on Brawler’s Recovery, especially if you’re looking for baseline Fast Hands. Granted, conditions happen way too quickly for a single condi clear to make up for it, so in HoT/PvP environments, it’s not too much to ask for.

No teleports, but closers that actually work would be grand!

Would like to see Spiked Armor’s cooldown drop or duration extended.

Skills
Axe 2 gaining a smidge of vuln wouldn’t be much to ask for. It’s decent for where it’s at.
Axe 3 is kinda meh. Not sure what to do to fix it.
Greatsword throw should apply a knockdown. You just threw a big kitten sword at someone! And it would help with closing. Not that GS needs any particular buffs. Path fixing, but not buffs. It’s already the go-to metaweapon.

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As for bringing up the rest of the unloved core:
Physicals: Mending should be Physical. Rampage needs to be dealt with to make the rest of the Physical line more adjustable. Trait needs to offer something that isn’t garbage. To stay in theme and purpose, either add Quickness or Stability to aid the follow-up attacks after the CC. Lower cooldowns across the board.
Or, add follow ups on successful hits:
Kick pushes a target back, which puts them out of melee range.

Banners: Reduce cooldowns so downtime isn’t 30 painful seconds. 15 seconds is a good compromise from the previous, traited 6 seconds before the nerf. 15% traited cooldown would be solid.

Shouts: Fine as is, mostly. Someone brought up adding a Taunt to On My Mark. That would help in group play and be the first on-demand Taunt for Warrior. Vulernability is too easy to stack in group settings, so a 10 stack chunk isn’t all that useful. Right damage boost for solo/PvP, but it needs better utility outside of that.

Hammer: Reduce cooldowns across the board. Raise damage of autoattack. (One of their design decisions was to segregate control from damage, so those skills got nerfed.) Change the trait to something a hammer-wielder can use. If it must use the “disabling” theme, add a unique debuff to the target that raises damage taken from the Warrior for 5 seconds.

Rifle/Longbow: Semi-decent at ranged damage, it’s something we begrudgingly accept. Little at all in AoE, both weapons need Piercing as baseline. (See Rev Hammer auto.) The anti-pressure skills are laughable. Pin Down and Rifle Butt? Longish cooldowns and piddling effect. Shorten cooldowns on both. (And maybe make Rifle Butt like some Halo melee kitten. Insta-down! …nah. But a 1 second daze wouldn’t be uncalled for.)

[blag, for other weapons, go see other threads. I’m tired. XD]

Boon kit: We see a good amoungs of Might, Fury, Swiftness, and Regen, with some stances giving Stability or Resistance++, but overall, there’s a lot of self-oriented boons Warrior should have filtered in its design, so that it can be melee-monster it’s supposed to be. More Stability, Resistance, and Protection. Not as AoE buffs, like Guardian, but short duration bursts that contribute to warrior sustain. If the Warrior is supposed to take punishment, more access to Retaliation.

As Brigg pointed out, being able to remove specific, troublesome effects would also add a lot of play for Warriors: to fight out of or ignore Blindness or to shred defensive boons like Protection.

when it comes to stances they should be something that can be toggled on and off on command, and have it deplete adrenaline at a rapid rate. It would have good interaction with adrenaline building traits to help stay in the fights. If the stance is not monitored and the player allows adrenaline to reach zero, there would be an exhaustion debuff putting all stances on cooldown and a negative effect to adrenaline recharge and or attacks speed.

Just some ideas that could make it more fun.

Brawl.5178:

when it comes to stances they should be something that can be toggled on and off on command, and have it deplete adrenaline at a rapid rate. It would have good interaction with adrenaline building traits to help stay in the fights. If the stance is not monitored and the player allows adrenaline to reach zero, there would be an exhaustion debuff putting all stances on cooldown and a negative effect to adrenaline recharge and or attacks speed.

Just some ideas that could make it more fun.

Making them more like Facets would provide much more skill-based play for warriors. It also adds more risk/reward and makes their buffs appear on demand, rather than waiting for excessive cooldowns.

Warriors don’t need buffs, they need CHANGES including weapons, traits and skills.

Adding damage , reducin cooldowns and stuff like that will just hide the problem.

there is always so much time and effort put into threads like this, its a real shame Anet never acknowledges any them.

Mulling.8421:

Warriors don’t need buffs, they need CHANGES including weapons, traits and skills.

Adding damage , reducing cooldowns and stuff like that will just hide the problem.

There can be change without improvement, but there can be no improvement without change.
-Historical Person (Too lazy to look up the reference. XD)

When Berzerker was coming out, I was thinking it was initially going to be some sort of stance management.

I like the idea of fighting through blinds, sort of like a utility goggles for engineers.

I would like to see dogged march maybe reduce effectiveness of movement impairing instead of reducing duration. Would make it compete better with shield mastery.

Axe 2 I forgot it was 4 vuln when I wrote the post. I think the skill should net about 10 vuln on use, similarly to some engi tool belt skills.

GS4 definitely needs to either pull or KD at this point. cripple is so ineffective at this point in the game as most classes have natural movement speed increases outside of swiftness. Plus we now have a superspeed in this game.

I mention stance cd because right now you get like 15-20% single target uptime effects. The return for a once a minute skill cd is so low right now.

Good point about the baseline fast hands and brawlers recovery interaction.

The boon hate is walking a thin line I suppose. I am thinking we need a way to handle protection. The other 7 classes in this game put out protection.

Boy I would kill for a trait that did something like ignore blindness, weakness and protection. They are the real roots of our issues. I had several 1.9K eviscerates last night and I just shook my head.

My suggested change to Berserker’s power, is a nerf to your single person dps and a buff to your team dps. I think of it like I am marking a target for kill similarly to On my Mark. If you could give a deep wound debuff, reducing the healing is effectively the same as having done the damage. Please google GW1 deep wound. The mechanic was amazing for kills.

I think the perfect idea for a unique warrior theme in the current settings would be if ALL warrior hits/skills would be unblockable to some degree. For example, regular hit 100% damage, hitting through an enemy’s block 50% damage, hitting through blindness 30% damage (I can’t see him but I can hear him, so I can still make some pain) etc…

I think it would bring a pretty unique concept to the warrior class that noone else has, while keeping the “master of weapons” – somewhat tainted – image. Basically you could never really stop a warrior from hitting you, he would always find some way to hurt you some.