Guild Wars 2

I don’t get to experience the changes yet, but that doesn’t mean I can’t rant about them. A few thoughts on what I feel are the good changes, the bad changes and finally, what really hurts about this update.

Good

Main Hand Sword Moving around the skills will hopefully result in more direct damage, the weapon lacked a power move like the new Final Thrust. MH Sword also keeps it’s lock down ability with a ton of cripples. Now, can they just make the burst skill worth using for something other than the immobilize?
Main Hand Mace: Skull Crack was already one of the few good burst abilities, now the stun lasts longer and it does more damage.
Hammer I’m looking forward to trying it out, the after cast reductions address the more annoying parts of using this weapon.
Longbow Another weapon with a lot of positive changes. Increased base range and access to 20% CD reduction.
Off Hand Mace: Increased projectile velocity on Tremor makes it a bit harder to dodge. Dual Wielding is more accessible.
Off Hand Axe: Less after cast on both skills and a big damage buff on Whirling Axes. Maybe it’s worth picking up. Also benefits from changes to Dual Wielding and Sharpened Axes
Off Hand Sword The change to Riposte may seem small but it will probably result in offhand swords getting into a few builds. It will interact well with Missile Deflection.
Stances: Reduced recharge on Endure Pain is never a bad thing. Berskerer’s Stance may be useful now? Even Balanced Stance got a buff. Vigorous Focus was never my favorite trait, but with Heightened Focus no longer an adept trait it could be worth picking up.
Physical Utility Skills: Stomp gets a reduced recharge and stun breaker, Bolas get a shorter after cast delay and Kick does more damage. Physical Training is now master tier. Overall its a number of small changes which may add up to something.
Rampage: A cooldown reduction is not a bad thing… this elite is starting to grow on me.
Signets: Dolyak is now a stun breaker, but the passive still sucks. Deep Strike is the new heightened focus for horrible warriors.
Shouts Fear Me! CD reduction means more people running over cliffs in WvW, never a bad thing.
Speargun: Knot Shot CD reduced… wait, whats this do again? It’s here for lack of a I Don’t Really Care category
Arms Trait Line Probably our best trait line right now. A lot of good choices for utility, offense and even some defense in traits and two solid choices for grandmaster tier. Even the minor traits are good. Overall it shows consistency that lacks in other trait line, with most trait choices being related to critical hits, fury or bleeding. Blademaster stands out as a weak trait in an otherwise solid selection. I will still probably never put more than 25 points into it.
Discipline Trait Line The change to Burst Damage was necessary, and it was about time. Warrior’s Sprint is icing on the cake, as well as Sharpened Axes. Vigorous Focus has always felt awkward, I never feel like the extra vigor is making a difference. Destruction of the empowered gets more accessible, and the change to Burst Mastery is an overall gain. I won’t mention the change to Heightened Focus yet…

Bad

Axe: Ouch… as if warrior damage wasn’t predictable enough this loads too much damage into the end of the chain. Axe auto chain was our one source of good sustained damage, now it relies too much on the last hit.
Greatsword: The burst skill is still not worth the cast time, Hundred Blades is still too hard to land the full channel and the auto attack still does weak damage. At least Rush will be less annoying to use…
Rifle: Brutal shot gets an aftercast reduction and better vulnerability stacking… but the auto attack will still feel like shooting spitballs and the burst skill still has an eternal cast time.
Leg Specialist: Adding an ICD is not the end of the world, but will it apply to multiple targets?
Strength Trait Line: Overall there are a lot of poor traits in this line. Slashing power has too narrow a scope and it’s hard to understand why only greatswords get a trait like this. Axe Mastery is just always inferior to Slashing Power. Great Fortitude and Death from Above are a joke. I can kind of see how Short Temper may be useful but it’s hard to find a use for such a situational trait. Powerful Banners is a useless trait… banner have too long a cool down and the damage is too low for this to ever be useful. Distracting Strikes is hard to pick up because the warrior weapons that focus on condition damage don’t have interrupts. At least the new Berserker’s Might is interesting but it’s hardly worth going up the trait line just for this trait.

Tactics Trait Line Burning Arrows is the one bright light among the rest of the changes. Desperate Power becomes a bit interesting and Empower Allies sucks less, but the biggest crime is that none of the minor traits got touched. They suck. 1 stack of might when you revive someone is not a grandmaster trait. It’s not even an adept trait. Come on. Stronger Bowstrings is still a weird trait, I’m never sure if it’s any good because it’s a big investment for a small return.

Ugly

Defense Trait Line: Maybe we should change the name of this trait line so that we can get some defensive traits in other places. Cleansing Ire is a good trait, but its hard to pick it up and still grab other defensive traits when they are all on the same trait line. Defy Pain is a better GM trait with the cd reduction. Vigorous Return is still not worth it, better grab a trait that helps you prevent getting downed. Shield Master is in a better spot. I’m surprised Adrenal Health had no scaling, but if you’re investing in healing power what are you doing in the defense tree? Finally, can we get rid of 5% toughness/vitality/power etc… traits, they are almost universally bad, especially for gm minor traits.
Heightened Focus and Berseker’s Power These traits needed to be changed, and they are in a better spot now. The problem is that instead of moving them around carefully it seems like they were yanked out and stuffed into the GM tier without looking at the big picture. Berserker’s Power is in almost all cases better than Berserker’s Might. Unless you’re getting more than 15% damage from the extra adrenaline it’s a damage loss and the only reason to go that far in the Strength tree is if you’re running greatswords, which have a horrible burst skill. Heightened Focus is probably at least comparable to Burst Mastery since different builds will want to focus on sitting on or spending adrenaline.

Overall I’m not too happy with the changes. While I do see some potential in using some of the less common weapons, overall Warriors lost power in their main combo just to make other weapon sets look better in comparison, and most of the positive changes are in a few trait lines rather than being spread out.

Don’t agree about 5% blablabla minor grandmaster defense trait. It is like 5% raw damage in soldiers-knights-cavalier gear. It much better that any warrior minor trait besides those in arms tree and damage-on-dodge minor.
If it will be removed for something like “Nearby enemies get 1 stack of bleed when you revive an ally”, i will go mad(

Yeah, my two sentence summary would be: it’s a dps nerf to the popular burst specs, with buffs in lesser used areas and maybe slightly higher sustain potential. It’s hard to say if anything will be viable until play testing.

Tested it for the last 2 hours: the warrior is not a viable class.

warrior class is dead for pvp, just delete it A-net

Not worth it for WvW either by the way:

1) If you want to play your warrior as a tank, the guardian is much better in this role (the guardian has great support).

2) If you want to play your warrior as a healer, … no forget it.

3) If you want to play your warrior as a DPS dealer, the elementalist, the mesmer, the engineer are much better in this role (they have more DPS and they can deal damage at range).

So what ? Is the warrior designed to carry banners ?

Healing sucks!, we need better healing skills!!!!

warrioir class needs complete redesign… arenanet fail

Yeah, unfortunately I love my warrior so much. I’ve worked very hard for her and all she has and time after time looked the other way as far as her weakness/sustainability in WvW pvp but there is nothing that she shines at, that other classes cannot do better. Rerolling guardian unfortunately and going to stock up on transmutation stones to bring my skins over :/

Rassst.5791:

Don’t agree about 5% blablabla minor grandmaster defense trait. It is like 5% raw damage in soldiers-knights-cavalier gear. It much better that any warrior minor trait besides those in arms tree and damage-on-dodge minor.
If it will be removed for something like “Nearby enemies get 1 stack of bleed when you revive an ally”, i will go mad(

I think you may be overestimating the amount of power you’re getting. In full Knight’s/Cavalier you’ll have around 2k toughness which is only about 100 power.

Yep. It is still around 4-5% of your power.

It is 2.5-3 permanent stacks of might, that are always with you. For comparison discipline gm trait will give you only one stack, only after a weapon swap in combat, only for 10 sec. And most likely if you change your, let’s say Hammer, on let’s say, sword+warhorn, you don’t want might, you only want to get out of place where you are now.