Guild Wars 2

I’m reposting this from the Suggestions Forum to hopefully garner some support here. If you like this suggestion, head to the link below and show your support.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Warrior-Master-s-of-Weapons-Give-us-a-3rd-Weapon-swap-slot/first#post159149

There have been plenty of complaint’s that the Warrior is a button-mashing auto pilot class on the forums here. Warrior gameplay largely revolves around using all your weapon skills without much thought, swapping to your second weapon, rinse/repeat as much as cooldowns limit. As soon as your cooldown is done, you fire that badboy off. Now while I don’t agree it’s quite so cut and dry, the class could definitely benefit from more variety.

To spice things up, I propose Warrior’s be granted a third weapon set.

Warrior’s have access to a very large range of weaponry, yet we’re still limited to the same two weapon slots just like everyone else. It’s a shame that a class defining trait that gives us so much choice still boils down to forcing us to settle on using two weapon sets. Elementalists have access to all four elements (four full skill bars) so a precedent is already set in game for such a request.

Having access to a third weapon set would give Warrior’s access to a wider variety of tools allowing us to make conscious choices about what tools to use and when. This would bring Warrior’s more in line with the Master of Weaponry design they started with.

Access to a third weapon wouldn’t grant much, if any a DPS bonus due to swap cooldown, Adrenaline and Burst cooldown. Even with Fast Hands (5 seconds) and Shorter Bursts (8 second cooldown), it wouldn’t be optimal to rotate all three to “chain” burst. By the time you swap between all three (15 seconds), the first Burst would have been off cooldown for 7 seconds.

This request is all about offering Warrior’s more choice, which I think anyone who has played the Warrior can agree, we need more of.

I don’t have an ideas off the top of my head, but I’d rather see something more interesting than a third swap slot. It feels less iconic of the class and more “throw this here because weaponmasters”.

I’m sure there’s any number of other things we could benefit from, and maybe someone has that answer.

My concern with this idea is that the majority of the time, people would boil it down to the 2 weapons they want to alternate between and function the same way. A third weapon slot will need unique coding to the gear lay-out of the Warrior only, in addition to figuring out how exactly to swap between the weapons. Do you use the weapon swap button, and it goes to the next weapon on the list? Can you choose the next weapon it swaps to?

If I were to add something more dynamic for a Warrior, it would be something like two stances that have different skill sets for the weapons themselves. So in Offensive Stance, my GS abilities would be the same as they are now. In Defensive, perhaps three abilities are swapped with a more defensive focus, like a riposte.

More realistically, you could just have variations of the same abilities. For example, in Offensive, Hundred Blades is just how it is now. In Defensive, it does 1/4th the damage (or no damage, whatever), but blocks incoming attacks from the front. Maybe Rush would be used on a Teammate to block the next attack they would have otherwise taken, and Whirlwind attack would reflect projectiles but do 1/4th/no damage.

Stances could have their own cooldown separate from weapon swap. This way, each weapon has multiple different uses that can fill multiple different roles, which is the sort of versatility that weapons master would probably be able to display.

This could be an imbalanced idea, or make balance too difficult/warriors too versatile. However, I’m concerned that adding a third weapon slot would be too many development resources for a mechanic that would potentially be ignored anyway in lieu of a more optimal weapon swap rotation (just using 2 weapons anyway).

People are equipping a “third set” by directly equipping from the backpacks already. This is just a way to make it more accessible to everyone.

Stances would be cool. I did enjoy stance-dancing in WoW. I just suggested this because Elementalist’s already have “4” weapon sets essentially, so adapting that coding to Warrior’s shouldn’t be outside the realm of feasibility.

Carrying around a third set and swapping outside of combat (for when the situation calls for the use of that set) is different from having that set mechanically equipped and ready to hot-swap to.

Cinder.4865:

Carrying around a third set and swapping outside of combat (for when the situation calls for the use of that set) is different from having that set mechanically equipped and ready to hot-swap to.

Explain how please. They’re essentially the same thing, one is just easier than the other.

Carrying a third set requires extra fumbling through your backpack and may in the end get labled an exploit and patched out.

My suggestion would make it an official mechanic and offer everyone more choice.

I would love to see Adrenaline being more than what it is right now. Afaik the stances used to drain adrenaline, rather than having a cooldown. I just think this feature would be awesome because Adrenaline would be more of a resource and not just a burst skill buildup. Some skills could be tweaked to actually benefit from an empty adrenaline bar/low adrenaline bar, like defensive abilities (Similar to the Warhammer mechanic from Slayers and Choppers, low rage = no bonus, medium rage = bonus damage, high rage = huge bonus damage, defensive malus) The adrenaline heal could heal more the less adrenaline you have, but give you offensive benefits the more you have, even shouts could use the adrenaline (eg “Fear Me” grants Stability on low rage and cause vulnerability on high rage) Obviously this would be a huge change, but that would make the warrior mechanic somewhat outstanding, similar to the elementalist

You can swap during combat, you cannot equip weapons during combat. And of course one is easier, one is mechanically supported, the other is a simple equip mechanic.

As I’ve already said, it’s a very different thing. You can carry around three extra sets outside the two swappable (in order to be prepared for differing situations), but that doesn’t mean we should have the ability to swap between five different weapon sets, which is the exact sort of logic you’re using to justify a third weapon swap slot.

I don’t agree with OP… I have played only warrior over lvl5, been lvl80 for almost a month and never needed more than 2 weapon options.

Just can’t agree. Sorry.

Elementalists use 1 weapon set according to the paper doll. Their Profession mechanic acts more like a kit that determines weapon skills based on the weapon/attunement combination chosen. It unfortunately doesn’t work like having 4 separate weapons attached to your paper doll.

My concerns are:

1. Weapon swap functionality. Currently, there’s one button that toggles. How does the toggle work with 3? Does it rotate sequentially? If not, you need to code functionality for swapping between 3 weapons for 1 of the 8 classes. Not exactly efficient.

2. You can’t fumble in your bags to swap weapons while in combat. If they were to patch out that weapon swap, then you’d never be able to change weapons, unless you were just in town. I would be extraordinarily surprised if they changed that functionality.

3. How many warriors would use this anyway? If current optimal damage spamming happens between two weapons, what would stop people from just using two weapons? Of course, other warriors might take advantage of it, and balance concerns could come into play where a warrior has too few vulnerabilities because of the versatility an extra weapon set would provide.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Elementalists use 1 weapon set according to the paper doll. Their Profession mechanic acts more like a kit that determines weapon skills based on the weapon/attunement combination chosen. It unfortunately doesn’t work like having 4 separate weapons attached to your paper doll.

My concerns are:

1. Weapon swap functionality. Currently, there’s one button that toggles. How does the toggle work with 3? Does it rotate sequentially? If not, you need to code functionality for swapping between 3 weapons for 1 of the 8 classes. Not exactly efficient.

2. You can’t fumble in your bags to swap weapons while in combat. If they were to patch out that weapon swap, then you’d never be able to change weapons, unless you were just in town. I would be extraordinarily surprised if they changed that functionality.

3. How many warriors would use this anyway? If current optimal damage spamming happens between two weapons, what would stop people from just using two weapons? Of course, other warriors might take advantage of it, and balance concerns could come into play where a warrior has too few vulnerabilities because of the versatility an extra weapon set would provide.

That’s just it. It’s choice this change would offer. Carrying a third weapon set is an expensive proposition that maybe not everyone would want to take advantage of. However, the extra utility would be a great boon to all Warrior’s.

There’s been plenty of times when I wished I had a sword/board or rifle or hammer or etc. instead of what I was currently carrying as my secondary. This suggestion isn’t a gamebreaker either way. Adding it in wouldn’t be very difficult logistically. Plenty of MMO’s all the way back to UO in 1996-97 era could set as many weapon swaps as you wanted with hotkeys.

That’s just it. It’s choice this change would offer. Carrying a third weapon set is an expensive proposition that maybe not everyone would want to take advantage of. However, the extra utility would be a great boon to all Warrior’s.
There’s been plenty of times when I wished I had a sword/board or rifle or hammer or etc. instead of what I was currently carrying as my secondary. This suggestion isn’t a gamebreaker either way. Adding it in wouldn’t be very difficult logistically. Plenty of MMO’s all the way back to UO in 1996-97 era could set as many weapon swaps as you wanted with hotkeys.

I understand and applaud you wanting to add diversity to the class. However, judging by your posts, it seems like you haven’t had any experience in project management or software development/its methodologies.

Logistically, it would be easy to design weapon swaps for a larger number of weapon sets if you start with that design philosophy from the ground up. As it stands, they specifically developed the game around two weapons you could dynamically swap between in combat. The design of the UI is built around it. Balance is designed around it. Button configuration/implementation is designed around it.

What you’re proposing is a change that will impact the UI design team to create a new weapon slot on the paper doll, the appropriate teams to decide exactly how a >2 weapon configuration swap would function with regard to user input, the team to implement that change, and the balance group to insure versatility isn’t very apparently out of balance.

You would do all of this and spend many more hours across multiple teams than you would ever imagine, all for a change to probably no more than 1/8th of the game’s population.

And it’s possible a large number of people wouldn’t even use it.

There are options for it. They could use profession mechanic buttons 2-4 to accommodate selecting one of your weapons. Squeezing a new weapon box into the paper doll UI probably wouldn’t be all that difficult. However, what you never think about are all of the processes that are put into place when you’re dealing with very large projects of any kind. Design phases, development phases, QA.

I was once told by a client of mine that to add a single line of code across every page of their website (typically a very simple proposition of modifying a footer or header file), it would cost upwards of $1,000,000 due to the amount of process involved. It isn’t a matter of what is technologically feasible, but I guarantee they are going to weigh the amount they gain from implementing a change/fixing a skill/etc. against the cost to prioritize.

Maybe their internal processes would be flexible enough to accommodate a change like this without too much issue, but it’s a mistake to assume that it should be easy.

^^^

Assumptions are fun aren’t they? Your heart is in the right place, but your tone is somewhat patronizing.

I went to school for computer animation and develop for iOS using Unreal 3. I’m not huge into the coding side of things, but I do understand that it’s never easy and implementing new things often results in breaking something else.

Logistically, Elementalists have 4 swaps with their attunements already, which I mentioned earlier. If adding a new mechanic to accommodate an additional weapon slot is too difficult, they could add it as a F-key since Warrior’s only have 1 at the moment.

Patronizing wasn’t the intent, but I can see where it would come off that way. Far too many people across every game I’ve played have made claims that Company X should implement Y because it would be easy. I’ve even seen some people say they could fix a particular bug in some tiny timeframe because they have Perl experience or whatever.

I’m sure they’ll do something, and whatever it is, odds are it’ll be more engaging than the current system, so I’m aboard.

This idea was discussed in the Beta events. People wanted weapon swapping on F2, F3 and F4, which was followed by a rant about OPness. The game was designed for 2 weapons with exceptions of eles and engies. GW1 was good that it gave you 4 weapon swaps on F1 – F4 but it didn’t determine your skills and was mainly used to swap runes and insignias(?), for me at least.

I see the warrior mechanic to be not as cool as some of the other classes and have discussed the idea of F1 to F3 being burst moves where F1 is a buff for 1 bar, F2 a move encompassing main and off hand for 2 bars and F3 as is and I see this as a better direction for the class.

Three weapons for a “weapon master” class would be good to see but I don’t think many would use it and would complicate the class. When I play ele I rarely use earth and water unless going support then I rarely use fire and air. I believe the warrior class should remain easy to understand but harder to master as many players play within their comfort zone on entering a new game. That comfort zone is generally Human for race and Warrior for prof/class as their first character unless something has caught there eye.

Slasher Sladorian – Charr Warrior, first character in beta weekends and at release, unfortunately not main.

Thats my 2 cents, like it or hate it either way, see you on the battlefield!

The warrior is far too simple compared to many of the other classes. Our utility choices are limited and as far as interest in the class, it is often limited to the fact that we carry big swords and wear heavy armor. Other than that most people don’t give two kittens..

I think a lot of this is false. Warriors have many combinations of weapons and skills that make the class more than HB. I have played with all the weapon combinations and made most of them work. It is about adapting to what you have and not just going for FOTM.

I was going to post this in a new thread but it seems it would fit in here with this discussion. I couldn’t help but feel the adrenaline system as it stands does not fit in with the ideology of the Warrior being a class that takes time to get up to it’s full potential – there are limited traits that allow adrenaline to buff your damage (but not your survivability oddly?) and then add to that the F1 skills all seem to be weak compared to normal weapon skills (I know, the amount of crying if they were better would be immense… see Eviscerate beta nerf). So I would like to propose the following;

1) Remove all of the F1 skills (read on before going gasp rant rant rant)
2) Assign F1, F2, F3 to stances; Offence, Balance, Defence
3) Adrenaline grants boons (and conditions) based on level
4) Swaping stance breaks the warriors momentum and resets adrenaline to 0

Offence; Each full bar of adrenaline grants 1 x might, 1 x attack speed, 1 x vulnerability
Balance; Each full bar of adrenaline grants 1 x balance
Defence; Each full bar of adrenaline grants 1 x toughness, 1 x regeneration, 1 x weakness

The idea here is that offence would increase the amount and speed of damage done with an increase in damage taken, defence would do the opposite, reducing damage taken and damage done while balanced stance does not affect damage done or taken instead reducing duration of CC effects (balance boon could say reduce CC duration by x% per stack), the way this is different is that the effects would increase the longer the warrior is in combat.

This could be further emphasised by changing the way adrenaline is granted, instead of a linear scale an exponential scale could be used, so say there were 5 bars of adrenaline in the new system;
1) 10 strikes of adrenaline
2) 25 strikes
3) 50 strikes
4) 100 strikes
5) 250 strikes
Combine this with a flat x% per second drop off of adrenaline both in and out of combat would produce a playstyle that rewarded a warrior for staying in combat and sticking it out rather than the current hit & run tactics we are forced to use in a lot of circumstances.

edit: removed percentage values in favour of x!

No, the warrior isn’t the so simple, the players are the simple ones. They even actually thinks that GS warrior has the highest damage.

Most don’t realize almost anything on warrior maybe becouse they asks the build from others and copies it. They don’t think theirselves. Oh well like nothing I could effect with typing here in the forums.

Given the fact the Warrior is the only class whose traits lower the weapon swapping cool down and their own Warrior rune again lowers the cool down. It’s clear by design that weapon swapping is a corner stone of the character. And since there are classes who are unable to weapon swap at all (Elementalist and Engineer) its fair to say having 2 weapon sets is by no means a universal standard in which the game must abide by.

So I’d have to agree with this suggestion of giving warriors a 3rd weapon set as it offers another unique dynamic to a game that by no means breaks the game and in essence flows really well with the foundation of what a warrior is built on.

I’m rather liking Damastes’ idea for stances.

I’m not against the idea of stances, but balancing minor stat bonuses through a consistent resource generation system sounds wildly boring to me. I’d rather there be more interactive abilities than boon juggling.

And how many warriors will be happy when they realize that for added versitility the damage would be nerfed.

Well, i agree that warrior is not so complicated to play and also agree that 2 weapons swapping is kinda limited for a weapon espcialized class. At all, i would love to have the third weapon to swapping during our fights

IMHO, this third weapon wouldn’t unbalance so much since our traits we chose reflect our favorite weapon.

With this third weapon, combats would be much more dynamic and if using the 3 weapons, combats will need you an extra player skills to well manipulate you character

Damastes is a smart guy with well thought out suggestions. That said, I’ve not played a warrior past 10ish, but I have a question: what part of your suggestion makes me not want to sit in one stance for forever and stack its bonuses? Most builds that I’ve seen – and I’ll admit to not being anywhere near the most experienced player in the game – would benefit most from choosing one of those stances and sitting in it. If you’re a glass cannon, you sit in glass cannon stance. If you’re a brick wall, you sit in one of two of the brick wall stances.

A few notes on the specifics: for starters, might sucks. Each stack is 35 power and 35 condition damage. I can hop into the mists on any character, spend five minutes rearranging my gear and traits, and come out with over 2,000 power. 35 power might maybe be significant on a naked level 80, but even then, the baseline is 914 in all stats. You really need two or three stacks of might for it to be noticable (actually, might needs to have two or three times the potency it currently does, but that’s a discussion for another thread).

Do the offensive and defensive stances apply the vulnerability and weakness conditions to you? I really hope not – I hope that you apply them with your attacks in some way, but I’m not sure what would be a good way to do that. Vulnerability isn’t a big deal until you have five or more stacks of it, which means that if it was applied to self, it wouldn’t be a huge difference in playstyle most of the time, and if applied to enemies, it would need a very carefully set method of application to stop it from being either too weak or too strong. Weakness makes sense to apply to enemies (you stop them from dealing damage to you) but not yourself (you stop yourself from being able to dodge attacks).

Your balanced stance, honestly, doesn’t impress me much. It feels like a defensive stance – as I understand it (and someone correct me if I’m wrong, so I can update the wiki page[s]) it prevents you from being flung around, blinded, crippled, etc. It almost has an offensive benefit, but instead of increasing your damage, it prevents your damage from being decreased. It also has the problem of being significantly more conditional than the other stances, making it less likely to apply to a particular fight than its brothers. I would instead suggest having the balanced stance grant a couple stacks of might and reduce incoming damage by x% for each level of adrenaline (with the usual disclaimer of “numbers tweaking happens during the week of testing before implementation”).

You say make it exponentially harder to gain adrenaline levels, because that rewards you for sticking to one stance and makes it a harder choice to switch to another. I propose to instead make it easier to gain adrenaline levels, as follows:

Level 1: 50 adrenaline (add 50)
Level 2: 90 adrenaline (add 40)
Level 3: 115 adrenaline (add 25)
Level 4: 130 adrenaline (add 15)

This makes it a tougher choice for the warrior to decide whether to switch stances – is it worth trying to get another boon if you have to go without any for a longer time? Under your model, it’s fairly easy to get to the first stage of adrenaline, which makes it less of a risk to jump between stances (should you have incentive to do so). My model also has the advantage of making “full adrenaline” a reasonably achievable goal, which is more fun than feeling like you’re grinding adrenaline for that last boon.

Finally, I disagree with the removal of burst skills. However, with stance dancing filling the role of “lose all adrenaline”, I think burst skills should make you lose two levels of adrenaline. After readjusting their damage output and general dramatic feeling and effect, this would allow a skilled warrior to recognize times when his stance is temporarily less than fully effective and utilize a burst skill to compensate.

Hell, while we’re ignoring the groans of the programmers, why not make burst skills have different effects in different stances? Perhaps Arcing Slice only grants fury while in offensive stance. Perhaps in defensive stance it blocks the next attack after the animation completes, and in balanced stance it grants two stacks of might and a few seconds of protection. Perhaps Flurry removes a condition in balanced stance. Things like that.

Edit: I accidentally a wall of text about a class I’ve barely played. Whoops. :/

The change to adrenaline has been passed around a bit in the Warrior forums, and I’m all for more utility and focus with the warrior because as the game currently stands the adrenaline mechanic is a build-up-your-load-and-then-blow resource. The only other reason not to expend adrenaline is in the favor of numbers from the Strength and Discipline traits; and I’m gonna generalize here, but I don’t think the majority of players are coming on to test their critical thinking in mathematics. Numbers aren’t that groovy, and Warriors do need more forms of being active, proactive, or reactive.

While I appreciate any conversation in my thread that keeps it bumped, you guys are kind of derailing the topic. Please create a new thread for the Adrenaline suggestion if you want to continue.

The Adrenaline discussion relates directly to your suggestion about a third weapon slot. It’s a counter-example of how the Warrior Profession mechanic could be reworked, and since it utilizes the Profession buttons, it would take the place of the suggested weapon slot change.

If anything, an interesting discussion could arise around how a third weapon might better assist the Warrior with filling the gaps in whatever appropriate roles a Warrior should fill in sPvP, for example. I personally don’t feel like a stance system that provides low amounts of general stat boons would really do much to assist the Warrior class, but I could be wrong.

Honestly, it’s completely counter to my suggestion and derails conversation away from my topic.

Personally, I think the whole stance suggestion indicated above would just exasperate the issue that I brought up in the second paragraph: That Warrior is a auto-pilot class. Any new class mechanics need to increase interactivity, not discourage it.

A third weapon set could, probably would, cause alot of balancing issues. I can think of just a few combinations that would lead to insta-gib stuns outside of stability.

Axe+Mace, Mace+Shield, Hammer. Stun, Stun+Stun, Knock Down + Knock Back, and pick your Adrenaline poison: Eviscerate, Single Target Stun, or Aoe Stun.

Alright, let’s go through everything. First of all, I don’t think that a third weapon slot would work. That would mean that warriors need a different inventory screen, and removes choice from builds. Instead of having to pick between your shield set and rifle set for a build, you’d just bring everything. Sure, it would be powerful, but not very interesting. It would be a decent buff, but is the wrong way to go for making warrior more interesting. Not to mention, warriors are already a strong enough class that making any new change a straight buff risks making them overpowered.

Next: stances could be interesting, depending on how they’re implemented, but burst skills need to stay. Hammer, mace, longbow, and axe rely heavily on their burst skill, and would need to be entirely redesigned without them. The only weapon which wouldn’t be significantly changed without the burst skill is greatsword. Attunement style stances would probably be troublesome to balance, as warrior already has huge weapon variety. Probably the best way to balance stances would be making them stat/buff based, and having them use adrenaline to maintain. Which brings me to my next point.

The biggest problem with the warrior class skills is that the adrenaline mechanic isn’t terribly interesting. The only thinking involved is if you want to use your burst skill now, or after charging it more. This is because there’s only one thing to spend adrenaline on. The easiest way to fix this would be adding more burst skills. The way I see it, there are two ways this could be done.

1) Second burst skill. If dual wielding, base it on your offhand weapon. This gives more choice in what to do with your adrenaline, while being relatively simple to balance.

2) More burst skills, but with different costs. For example: F1 stays the same-uses all adrenaline, and is stronger the more you have. F2+ use adrenaline, but a fixed amount, rather than all of it. This could mean that you can use one of them for only 1 bar, or that you can’t use a different one without a full 3 bars. Either way, it would make adrenaline more of a resource, and less of a charge bar. Possibly tie one of the skills to adrenaline generation.

More burst skills would fill the “Master of Weapons” idea, by allowing warriors to do more with each weapon set, while not significantly changing the mechanics of the class.

I think Dejh has the right idea here, and was about to post something similar until I read his post.

I am not sure about a fixed cost for a burst skill working, as there are traits which affect the cost of bursts already.

I would like to see a number of options for each weapons burst:
f1 damage (axe, rifle, longbow, sword)
f2 buff (greatsword)
f3 debuff/cc (Hammer/Mace)

Giving weapons more burst options may require some more tuning (read damage nerf), but giving warrior actual options for how they want to fight will help a lot to make the class more interesting.

Brolleun Hunter.7862:

A third weapon set could, probably would, cause alot of balancing issues. I can think of just a few combinations that would lead to insta-gib stuns outside of stability.

Axe+Mace, Mace+Shield, Hammer. Stun, Stun+Stun, Knock Down + Knock Back, and pick your Adrenaline poison: Eviscerate, Single Target Stun, or Aoe Stun.

Challenge accepted…

Let’s lay down the numbers:

1) Axe+Mace: Tremor (Stun – 25 second cooldown)

2) Mace+Shield: Pommel Bash (Daze – 15 second cooldown) + Shield Bash (Stun – 25 second cooldown)

3) Hammer – Backbreaker (Stun – 30 second cooldown) + Staggering Blow (Push – 20 second cooldown)

Now let’s do some math assuming we use the weapons in order I layed out. Since there is no official GCD and it’s animation based, let’s assume 1 second per skill used (which will be lower than reality). First untraited:

Tremor used: 25 seconds begins.
Swap: 10 second cooldown starts.
Pommel Bash + Shield Bash: 15 and 25 seconds remaining. About 8 seconds left in swap time.
Swap: Tremor = 15 seconds remaining, Pommel Bash = 7 seconds, Shield Bash = 18 seconds. 10 second cooldown starts again.
Back Breaker + Staggering Blow: 30 seconds and 20 seconds remaining.
Swap: Tremor has 5 seconds remaining. Pommel Bash is ready. Shield Bash has 8 seconds left. Back Breaker + Staggering Blow have 20 and 10 seconds remaining.

Now even if we reversed the order to put Hammer first, Back Breaker would still be on 10 seconds of cooldown and Staggering Blow would be ready again. If we assume Fast Hands is traited, then add 10 seconds to the final numbers.

In a 3 weapon system, you might be able to front load some additional CC IF you have Fast Hands but ANet could work around it with diminishing returns. In the end however, you’re going to be stuck waiting on cooldown to do it again, which is no different than the current setup.

A smart player would instead use the additional weapon as needed, rather than simply using the extra weapon to add 4 more attacks to the flowchart. Please feel free to correct my math, it’s really not my forte.

The more I play, the more I find myself wanting this feature.

When running around WvW I’m frequently swapping between weapon sets to suit the situation. What really sucks is it can be a pain to run far away from the front lines just so I can swap things out every time I need to do this, especially because sometimes combat just doesn’t want to drop at all.

I’d love it if I could simultaneously run sword/warhorn for support, greatsword or hammer for mixing it up in melee range, and longbow/rifle for ranged. This would be so, so useful.

I still very much enjoy the choice that two weapons provides. You’re forced to make a tough decision, and in doing so you put extra thought into the game that allows you to better refine your play. I know exactly what I would use in my third slot, and the fact that I wish I had a third slot sometimes makes me hope they never, ever implement one.

Not everyone enjoys the easy route. I like being challenged to think of ways to refine my gameplay that will minimize risk and maximize reward.

Cogbyrn.7283:

I still very much enjoy the choice that two weapons provides. You’re forced to make a tough decision, and in doing so you put extra thought into the game that allows you to better refine your play. I know exactly what I would use in my third slot, and the fact that I wish I had a third slot sometimes makes me hope they never, ever implement one.

Not everyone enjoys the easy route. I like being challenged to think of ways to refine my gameplay that will minimize risk and maximize reward.

You know exactly what you would use? Because I would still be very torn between several different choices. I don’t know whether I would want a Sword/Board, Warhorn, Rifle or Greatsword on my third slot. All would be extremely useful to me

I don’t really understand how you could consider this change, the “easy” route. You’d have an additional set of tools to work with, which would actually further complicate the class mechanics. It’s the opposite of easy.

The difficulty I’m referring to is deciding which gaps you want to leave open. If you have a 3rd slot for weapons, you’re freely closing an additional gap at no cost to you. Sure, you have to decide which you have to close, but when you have to leave more open, you spend more time at the drawing board deciding which exactly you want to leave open based on what you’re doing, who you’re doing it with, etc.

The less tools you have, the more specialized your role, and the more team-oriented the game becomes. I’m not saying a 3rd weapon would turn Warriors into the One Ring, but I’d personally be concerned about giving a class that much versatility.

Sure, you’d increase the number of permutations, but I don’t personally think that translates directly into increasing complexity. The most complexity I see is in practicing the muscle memory to use the three weapons.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’d be fun. I’d just prefer a different mechanic, personally.

I really want more weapons swaps (GW had 4) and the ability to make macros in game.

If I were to add something more dynamic for a Warrior, it would be something like two stances that have different skill sets for the weapons themselves. So in Offensive Stance, my GS abilities would be the same as they are now. In Defensive, perhaps three abilities are swapped with a more defensive focus, like a riposte.

More realistically, you could just have variations of the same abilities. For example, in Offensive, Hundred Blades is just how it is now. In Defensive, it does 1/4th the damage (or no damage, whatever), but blocks incoming attacks from the front. Maybe Rush would be used on a Teammate to block the next attack they would have otherwise taken, and Whirlwind attack would reflect projectiles but do 1/4th/no damage.

I love the “defensive stance” idea! It could also be adrenaline related ,i.e. you can swap to defense with one stage of adrenaline and the other 2 adding damage to the defensive skills proportionally using the F2 button.

I also like Damaste’s Idea. It’ s a bit more complex but it should work.

I’d actually prefer a simple system kind of similar to Damaste’s. Simply put, you have Aggressive and Defensive stances that would grant different weapon skills (and toughness/power bonuses) depending on what stance you were currently in, similar to the Elementalist’s attunement system.

Of course, firstly it’s too similar to that system AND it would require too much work/balance for something that really isn’t needed, so it’s just a fantasy more than anything.