Guild Wars 2

When are they going to finally do something about the state of OP Warriors in PvP and WvW?

They have WAY too much defense and damage. They basically take no damage, from using endure pain twice, then take little to no damage anyway because of toughness/healing setup while having permanent retalliation buff.

So basically you damage yourself, while healing them, while they also hit you as well. They’re immune to cc with their instant-react traits and instant-cast stun breakers that also apply stability.

Wish my Ranger had these abilities & traits…

Warrior = guardian with damage. Guardian = defensive version of warrior with less damage.

Making a warrior more defensive will give you a guardian. Warrior was meant to deal damage. A warrior and their stances honestly is nothing large. Most warriors only heal through heal ticks. Condis will wreck a warrior as will CC or pressured damage.

Guardians only have their low life pools BECAUSE they’re so defensive. To lower a warrior’s health would mean it would die always and everyone will cry for a buff.

To me the best team composition would be in the lines of Chrono, Tempest, Druid, Scrapper and Daredevil, so even if the Warrior/Berserker is very hard to fight in 1 vs 1 (at least to me) is difficult to argue about a nerf.

I tried playing GS/mace/shield zerker and i honestly felt like i had more impact in a fight by either playing corruptionmancer or marauder symbolic guardian. Even with the range on arc divider, it just felt like the enemy could recover easily from the blow. Meanwhile, if i attack a point using symbol guard, i could always drop symbols, immbolize and cc the target through test of faith to score my aoe damage on the point. Similarly on reaper, when i bomb a point i am also ccing it thanks to chill and fear and aoe corruption. And if i try to mix in some mace f1 into the chain as warrior, it really only cc’s one target.

I didn’t really like the style of the gameplay, but maybe i just need to get into the groove of it first. But i honestly felt a lot more useless playing warrior than guard or necro and not OP at all. Maybe i had more sustain than either, but i didn’t feel like i was a threat except to maybe an ele or a necro.

Warrior isnt that bad. Thief and mesmer though…..

Sorin Noroku.5342:

Warrior = guardian with damage. Guardian = defensive version of warrior with less damage.

Making a warrior more defensive will give you a guardian. Warrior was meant to deal damage. A warrior and their stances honestly is nothing large. Most warriors only heal through heal ticks. Condis will wreck a warrior as will CC or pressured damage.

Guardians only have their low life pools BECAUSE they’re so defensive. To lower a warrior’s health would mean it would die always and everyone will cry for a buff.

You just cited the warrior 2 greatest strengths as its weaknesses. High resistance uptime while out of berserk mode, spam able condi cleanse whilst in berserk mode. Care to explain how condi ‘wrecks’ Warriors? CC? They bring quite a bit of stab to the table pulsing. Even condi Warriors take the stab trait. And if faced with a cc heavy comp you’re 1 trait off meta to take passive balanced stance.

@OP, I think as much some classes are a very OP, bazerker in wvw is far stronger than pvp, and that is how Anet made it to work, its not a game of balance, its a game of use gimmick to excell at the game, and that is how Anet “balance” and design classes.
If warrior looses strenghs it would be bad for pve, making to much diferent from changing the pvp side is out of question, they have stated that in the past.

IF carries u its a balanced class…. play what makes u win, or be a mediocre player if u dont play what makes u win, with a very mediocre build.

As example i dont play some guardian builds since i felt super carried, yet im playing the game wrong since its about having fun and be carried most time, and cant do nothing using the way i like to play that class, since i play bunker stats and shouts, i dont do damage very poor support or none, and every one hits alot trough due how this game carries players trough damage output, while i barelly can damage most builds/classes.

Some classes are ment to be broken by design, that is what makes some classes playable in this game.

I would just get rid of the passive that procs at 50% hp and do something else with the trait. In fact I would do that to all 50% hp proc. It doesn’t encourage a healthy play.

I would gladly sacrifice PI for that to happen.

Dont try to figure out balance in 1vs1 or 5vs5

GW2 PvP is balanced around WvW’s zerg vs zerg and classes like Warriors and Guardians are designed to be frontline tanks, sustaining massive AoE spammage.

Zilvereen.2091:

Dont try to figure out balance in 1vs1 or 5vs5

GW2 PvP is balanced around WvW’s zerg vs zerg and classes like Warriors and Guardians are designed to be frontline tanks, sustaining massive AoE spammage.

guardian sustain massive aoe in WvW :} thats so 2012……. they are ment to be played as utility(virtues) stability bots + empower or high damage builds medi trappers, if u dont have bow nowadays and do damage ur being carried by those who do damage.

And game isnt balanced towards blobs either.. far from that, that is the most broken gameplay.. just full stacked optimized builds that are being carried by the pve mechanics classes were designed.
Its balanced towards what matters in this game… pve, reason pvp was never interesting, they putted pve classes unbalanced by default on pvp scheme.
Try to play the most defensive espect of the guardian, u will melt, if dont use traps or meditations u cant do nothing 90%+ oof the time.

Warriors have a lot of problems, some of which need nerfs, others just need changes. The nerfs need to go to Adrenal Health, Arc Divider, and Skull Grinder. The changes should go to Stances, particularly the meta ones (Berserker Stance and Endure Pain).

Adrenal Health could use a duration cut. Make it something like 6 seconds and healing for 75% of what it does at 15 seconds. This makes the healing more bursty, but doesn’t allow the warrior just to run away and regen so easily when its stances and Berserker Mode are on CD. Numbers can be tweeked, but that’s my idea for it.

Arc Divider’s Range is massive. 450 units AoE, which gives it a 900 unit diameter. 900 range is huge for something instant cast, hard hitting, is AoE, cleanses 3 conditions on hit and applies Adrenal Health. The damage of the skill itself is honestly fine. It’s meant to hit hard, but at least cut its range in half. It should be more powerful than Arcing Slice, but multiplying the range x3 is not the way!

Skull Grinder is next on the list. It dazes, blinds, confuses, cripples, bleeds, blasts, jumps you forward (not a leap finisher thankfully), and it hits really hard too. My nerf idea is simple: drop the blind, blast finisher and jump. With this, it’ll still hit hard, CC, do some condi damage, which is better than Skull Bash which only stuns a duration based on your adrenaline stage. Having the jump on it adds an unnecessary anti kiting tool to the skill, just like with Arc Divider. You no longer have to set up the burst to try and hit your target. Just press a button and they get hit (assuming they don’t dodge, block, blind etc., but that applies to any skill). Kiting should be the weakness for a Warrior. If a skilled warrior or team can let the warrior hit with this skill, the crippling helps against kiting, but Arc Divider and Skull Grinder together remove the need for such setup.

I have no good on idea on how to change Stances, so I’ll just give my terrible one. First is Berserker Stance. This provides too much condition immunity for too long, in spite of its CD. So, my idea is to make it cleanse 2 conditions every 2 seconds for 6 seconds. That’ll be a total of 8 conditions cleansed, and keep the CD the same. Second is Endure Pain. 6 seconds of total power damage immunity is too much. Just cut down its duration and CD. Third is the EP passive trait proc. Remove it. I don’t care if you don’t even replace it with anything good. Just get rid of that kitten trait. It removes all skill from every Warrior ever. Just make it proc protection for when you take a certain amount of damage over a certain duration. Like, “Gain protection when you take 5000 damage in 3 seconds. 15 second CD.” I don’t care. Anything is better than what it currently is.

One last thing that I didn’t mention before is my concern on how long Berserker Mode lasts. It’s 15 seconds! That’s 15 seconds with 2.5 second CD Primal Burst skills that cleanse 3 conditions on hit, grants 15 second of uncorruptable regen, and do way too much for any skills, especially on that CD. And then there’s pulsing stability.

So, with my ideas, Warriors might become extremely weak without any CDs, but be fairly balanced with them, meaning they would be UP overall. So, something would need to be done to help make it a bit more useful outside of Berserker Mode and Stance CDs. I have no ideas for that, but I know the community can think of them.

Gwaihir.1745:

Sorin Noroku.5342:

Warrior = guardian with damage. Guardian = defensive version of warrior with less damage.

Making a warrior more defensive will give you a guardian. Warrior was meant to deal damage. A warrior and their stances honestly is nothing large. Most warriors only heal through heal ticks. Condis will wreck a warrior as will CC or pressured damage.

Guardians only have their low life pools BECAUSE they’re so defensive. To lower a warrior’s health would mean it would die always and everyone will cry for a buff.

You just cited the warrior 2 greatest strengths as its weaknesses. High resistance uptime while out of berserk mode, spam able condi cleanse whilst in berserk mode. Care to explain how condi ‘wrecks’ Warriors? CC? They bring quite a bit of stab to the table pulsing. Even condi Warriors take the stab trait. And if faced with a cc heavy comp you’re 1 trait off meta to take passive balanced stance.

Most warrior’s I’ve seen only use a few things for condi help. Swap removes condi, Cure condi on f1, resistance.

Resistance being the easiest to fix, any form of boon corrupt/remove fixes this. Mesmer sword auto, necro scepter auto, both in meta, fixes this. Let alone more necros are taking wells now. Condi chrono is also heavy issues. This leaves the warrior to either fight through the condis and hope he can spam f1 fast enough to survive, or pop his precious resistance. Trap condi damage from ranger is also a high condi spike that baits out that stance or even worse, the healing signet pop.

CC, while most wars have stab out the wazoo or stunbreaks, any class that does a ton of CC will break a war fast (See meditrap spike). You also have the warrior being a counter to itself with MaceAids. Stun/KD/Daze for days.

Pressured damage in the form of pewpew or someone who can live through a warrior’s damage will also win over the warrior. The only thing they need to make sure of is to hit more than 1k dps while staying alive. My own playing has shown numbers around 1k healing while max adren health and healing signet with dolyak runes.

Also, a warrior is incredibly easy to counterplay. The zerk stance is thrown up almost right after a headbutt which has a huge tell and is easy to dodge/block. This will throw the warrior back a long way. Shield 4 is shorter range and similar tell. The last they can do is maybe a bull’s rush for a KD to build adren. Dodging a shield 4 or a headbutt while they’re out of zerk stance is easy. If they get into zerk, they have a 1.5 to 2 sec recharging f1 for a strong hit. However they have 15 seconds to get as many as they can in. You normally cannot CC a zerker out of that mode as most take pulsing stability, but with a few at the same time you can cost them some precious seconds.

What I’ve found from playing versus them, the fire field from a longbow is annoying but easy to move out of that most don’t stick you in it. The mace is highly damaging and annoying, kite/dodge. Greatsword is strong and even stronger under 50%, use a block or keep health up.

Rev can glint heal when in trouble, Ele has stability and heals/condi cleanse, Necros need to run, Thieves too, Guardian has blocks enough, Mesmer has enough distorts/evades/dodge/block, Engie converts condi to boon, Druid heals, Warrior vs warrior can counter each other, depending on who gets the drop.

You could nerf the range of Arc Divider from 450 to 360.

That’s pretty much it for bringing Warriors back a bit, hitting their sustain makes them irrelevant again.

It’s pretty technical to go after Longbow condi-clear, however overall the condition berserker is bulkier and less damaging imo than the Power Variant. I think it’s perfectly OK for the Warrior to be one of the best 1v1 professions, as neither build excels too well at Support or Mobility (Power has an edge in that catagory slightly with GS).

Furthermore, this meta is a particular one, there’s a lot of ‘paper, rock scissors’ involved, we aren’t seeing these daily ‘This Profession is OP’ threads for nothing, it is a direct result of compositions being outclassed by the other side. While we need to continue to look for toxic unfun builds to discourage (D/D Thief) and encourage skillful play instead, I believe we might have a better time working on Matchmaking to filter not just on skill, but professions as well to make balanced comps.

Typically I know what to expect when there’s a warrior on the enemy team. Condi war with his mace/shield etc.

They’re pretty easy. You don’t want to come at them with condi. Just hit them with raw power. It’s a pretty simple game. Knock them down to 50% health, proc the endure trait. Whail on them some more, forcing them to proc endure off the bar. They’ve got two dodges and a shield, so when blocking be sure to use your unblockable. Kiting is great as they’re usualy melee range solid. I’m smart, so I run a ranged option. The only other thing you have to know is to use your dodges/evades for when they move in close to fire a skill, preferably a burst skill. When they enter berserk, kite/evade, then engage once it’s down unless you know you can hammer them down during it if both endures are already gone.

If you do nerf warriors damage it’s gg for them because in a post HoT world, all other classes have either to much evade, to many blocks, to many invulns, to much mobility, or to much healing, regeneration, and sustain to just shrug off and out replenish a wars DPS. It takes an insane amount of your kitten hitting right now as it is just to produce a result. And you better hope enough of that kitten does hit before your stances run out because after that you’re dead meat.

~Get better, and have fun!

Zintrothen.1056:

Warriors have a lot of problems, some of which need nerfs, others just need changes. The nerfs need to go to Adrenal Health, Arc Divider, and Skull Grinder. The changes should go to Stances, particularly the meta ones (Berserker Stance and Endure Pain).

Adrenal Health could use a duration cut. Make it something like 6 seconds and healing for 75% of what it does at 15 seconds. This makes the healing more bursty, but doesn’t allow the warrior just to run away and regen so easily when its stances and Berserker Mode are on CD. Numbers can be tweeked, but that’s my idea for it.

Arc Divider’s Range is massive. 450 units AoE, which gives it a 900 unit diameter. 900 range is huge for something instant cast, hard hitting, is AoE, cleanses 3 conditions on hit and applies Adrenal Health. The damage of the skill itself is honestly fine. It’s meant to hit hard, but at least cut its range in half. It should be more powerful than Arcing Slice, but multiplying the range x3 is not the way!

Skull Grinder is next on the list. It dazes, blinds, confuses, cripples, bleeds, blasts, jumps you forward (not a leap finisher thankfully), and it hits really hard too. My nerf idea is simple: drop the blind, blast finisher and jump. With this, it’ll still hit hard, CC, do some condi damage, which is better than Skull Bash which only stuns a duration based on your adrenaline stage. Having the jump on it adds an unnecessary anti kiting tool to the skill, just like with Arc Divider. You no longer have to set up the burst to try and hit your target. Just press a button and they get hit (assuming they don’t dodge, block, blind etc., but that applies to any skill). Kiting should be the weakness for a Warrior. If a skilled warrior or team can let the warrior hit with this skill, the crippling helps against kiting, but Arc Divider and Skull Grinder together remove the need for such setup.

I have no good on idea on how to change Stances, so I’ll just give my terrible one. First is Berserker Stance. This provides too much condition immunity for too long, in spite of its CD. So, my idea is to make it cleanse 2 conditions every 2 seconds for 6 seconds. That’ll be a total of 8 conditions cleansed, and keep the CD the same. Second is Endure Pain. 6 seconds of total power damage immunity is too much. Just cut down its duration and CD. Third is the EP passive trait proc. Remove it. I don’t care if you don’t even replace it with anything good. Just get rid of that kitten trait. It removes all skill from every Warrior ever. Just make it proc protection for when you take a certain amount of damage over a certain duration. Like, “Gain protection when you take 5000 damage in 3 seconds. 15 second CD.” I don’t care. Anything is better than what it currently is.

One last thing that I didn’t mention before is my concern on how long Berserker Mode lasts. It’s 15 seconds! That’s 15 seconds with 2.5 second CD Primal Burst skills that cleanse 3 conditions on hit, grants 15 second of uncorruptable regen, and do way too much for any skills, especially on that CD. And then there’s pulsing stability.

So, with my ideas, Warriors might become extremely weak without any CDs, but be fairly balanced with them, meaning they would be UP overall. So, something would need to be done to help make it a bit more useful outside of Berserker Mode and Stance CDs. I have no ideas for that, but I know the community can think of them.

kitten , that’s quite a massive list you have there. You listed so many nerfs. They would shoot War out of every game mode’s meta like a rocket. Start small. Don’t gut the whole kitten Profession. That’s Anet type thinking. Warrior is good, in the hands of a great player, it’s great. But not above all the others. It’s pretty much the most selfish profession in Conquest right now. If it has to be nerfed, I’d say for example, change the passive EP proc trait out for a new trait. Or change Adrenal Health to give more top end health over a much shorter time or something.

Yes, there are sometimes builds that stand way above the rest in good hands, but I really do believe if many on here who make nerf threads(in every prof forum, so they’re all OP??)and spam their little nerf mantras would practice more, watch some videos/vods get better and be a better all around player. Also, some people have problems fighting Warriors, some Mesmers, some Druids ect ect. Everyone thinks a different Profession is OP.

Lets actually talk about warrior here.

Warrior was so bad Season 1-2 that Anet gave it huge healing in 1 of the trait lines that is mandatory for warrior. By buffing the F1 skill of warrior simply put it made discipline and beserker mandatory .

Ok so warrior has 1 build set up whether its condi or power. Why is it OP?

Well we are in the BOOM meta where everything dies in 3 sec. There are no bunker builds. Warrior has the strongest passives in the game so bam warrior is OP ….. in situations.

In 5 vs 5 warrior is not OP just really annoying. Warrior does not give team boons, healing and can only support fights with damage. Thief and mesmer still give more team options with mobility.

Anet has decided to not allow 5 vs 5 because they refused to balance the game and to continue not working on Match Making and the Leader Board.

This community voted for this.

Warrior is not OP, its just difficult for alot of players because of what this community voted for. You probably would not see warriors in many ESL teams but we will never know since that scene is probably gone as well.

For the low skill floor and ceiling it has, yes warrior is overtuned. Same can be said for DH.

I wouldn’t say the skill ceiling for Warrior is low, it’s around average as the Warriors who play the best can’t afford any mistakes ever. Using stances at a bad time, missing too many bursts, and so forth are things a Warrior can easily do and will cost him the game.

They have a lot in so few buttons, and since so much is put into a few keys they have to have the insight to know the best times to use said skills. Whereas something like Scrapper has a lot of tools across a lot of skills, they can mix and match a bit and are allowed to make a mistake here and there because they have a backup.

Warrior isnt low skill ceiling.

Again, they countered by mes and DH who you find 3-4 of in every pub game.

Learn2play

People talk about war If they are the most op class ingame

Hoaxintelligence.4628:

Learn2play

People talk about war If they are the most op class ingame

issue migh be bzerker, that dont sacrifice much for its damage, still that is not a warrior/bzerker issue, its just how the game works.

example: As a bunker guard(Wvw context) facing some classes i cant damage them, and they hit me like a truck, im forced to play very nooby(as in most carried by traps making hostile get back),if i use shouts well i can do much has delay 6-8 seconds and bursted if bzerker hit me with its combo, after burn blocks or force warrior to use the unblokcable skill when i use aegis skills based, thus need to dodge wich means burn a a block and dodge, to avoid geting 60-70% of health down.
Its not even the aspect of blocks that defends me, since i need to save/force the usage of some specific skills, it is the traps that do my defense(offensivly) mostly since target will not rush to me as a free kill…

What makes some classes feel OP when fighitng against them might be the poor care that ANet had by creating and balancing classes, making the principal balance towards class for PVE and then throw them to pvp, and some classes ended getting best use of stats at defense and offense, since they were BALANCED to fight A.I mobs, while some others ended with gameplay that poorly fits lots of pvp/wvw gameplay.

Imo ic it as a more serious problem then has if some class had some broken skill…

Warrior in conquest is the most selfish class I can think of. A DH is easier to play and provides more on node pressure and if playing symbolic provides aoe team healing and aoe boon spam. If playing Virtues you have team healing and condi cleanse with F2 and team Stun break on F3.

A war brings nothing to the team except DPS.

Warrior OP ..? o____O You probably just stood there and let em’ whack you didn’tcha.. in which case yeah Warriors are pretty OP.. =D

Sarcasm aside..

When dealing with a Warrior you take it one step at a time, stances have a very long cooldown.. if you say.. just stand there and go toe to toe.. that’s just poor judgement..

If you’re saying your class lacks the mechanics and defenses to successfully kite and outsustain a Warrior (specially a pure melee one).. then you better start watching some videos to start you off..

Condi Warrior is pretty strong whichever kind, but then, all Condi builds are really strong at the moment and Warrior’s not even no.1 on that list.. so hardly OP.

you gotta bait out their defense by bursting then kiting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZwk47m_xT8
this guy does it well. the warrior duel starts at about 7:50.

All of these points would have sounded so overpowered before HoT while they are hardly anything special now. I can see the need for a few things to be toned down but just can’t agree with the “WAY too much” part.
Kind of makes me wonder what you were running on ranger. The current druid meta can hardly be called weak. On the contrary, I’d place them above warriors even.
There is also the whole aspect of a bursty build being countered by a sustain focused one.

On the general discussion itself, interesting to see skill ceilings still being brought up whenever someone asks for warrior nerfs. I feel like our personal views are too subjective to be used as an indication on that matter.
Another thing that struck me as weird was asking for for a supposed low skill ceiling class to be weaker than higher ceiling ones. The actual ceilings are only reached at the highest level of play. Wouldn’t that force everyone at the highest level to swap their class? Something they already have to do because a higher ceiling usually comes with more versatility. Making them any stronger, as in more powerful at the niche the low ceiling class can do, would just make it worse.

People act like Warrior has had a big change the last few months? I was thinking what could have happened the last few months to make War something to make a couple nerf threads about all of a sudden. I doubt I missed something, but iirc Warrior/Zerker has almost exclusively gotten nerfs since Rifle was gutted like what, a yr ago? They fixed a bug for condi Zerker a little bit ago, but that’s the only buff I can think of. Could it be that with a couple other Prof were toned down enough that War is viable as DPS and back in the meta almost? DH traps getting a nerf and especially Rev’s nerfs over these last months had helped War imo. They seem to be on the same level for damage(War is probably lower because of a few reasons), but Rev, DH and almost every other Prof bring way more to the table for Conquest in way of support. War only has damage and hard CC. I know hard CC can be considered support if applied that way, but it’s not like Boons, regen, burst heals, group condi clear, aoe stealth, double res Scraper, fields and blasts, Auras ect. War does have Banners, but nobody runs banners in Ranked.

Many of these people complaining are listing all the good skills from every skill tree and weapon set from Condi and Power. It’s almost like those old 66666 build/uneducated player threads with 3 rune-sets and 4 sigils on each weapon at once. ’Member them? Yeah I ’member.

@JDjitsu
The Adrenal Health buff was within the last year, and that was big for us. Then there were other things that helped us a bunch like changes to stability, the boon duration stuff, etc.

I also don’t think we’re getting a huge number of calls for nerfs (it was way worse in the old days). But I think people get understandably frustrated when they can’t make a dent against an opponent that still seems to hit like a truck.

Berserker with durability runes OP

Adrenal Health 7.4k HP regen OP

MidoriMarch.8067:

Berserker with durability runes OP

Adrenal Health 7.4k HP regen OP

That nailed it!

Warrior OPness refers mainly to WvW. But what’s not broken in some way in WvW? Teef 20K bursts out of nowhere or Dire D/D evade spam, Surge of the Mists instant-kills, Bunker Druids. The list is endless.

WvW vise , i dont think OP went there, ever ? If he did would see, condi mesmers, thives, druds, and finally eles (skilled ones are unkillable ) eating wars for lolz, if u look at 1v1, but i guess thats where ur “war op” was leading.
Tip, when u fight war, try this : https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dodge
Its simple to use really, u just look at warrior trying to use skill, you go get some food, come back and mouse click that bar. Before he goes to cast his next skill u may even get some time to make tea.

Yeah lets nerf avatar of melandru. This warrior ulti is so OP, specialy in WvW. When you activate this ulti you will summon a whole spectrum of overpowered skills.

Oakheart Swipe: Strike a nearby enemy with a massive swipe"
So basicly you can hard CC a whole enemy group up to 5 foes incl massive crits.
A power Rev is a joke compare to this type of damage.

Cleansing Leaves: Shake, removing conditions from nearby allies"
Getting condi bombed by 5 necro’s? No worries, 1 button and you cleans your whole party in 1 sec!

Roar of the Forest: Embue allies with protection"
Oke so you basicly can carry your whole party with this sick skill. This has to be nerfed asap

Summon Healing Spring: Slam your fist on the ground creating a healing area that heals allies"
We all know that its give your party full hp with very low cd. I see allot of WvW guild abusing this. To make things even worst there is also a glitch were you can active the skill while canceled so it doesnt go on cd. Why Arenanet?!?!

Binding Roots: Entangle all nearby foes with binding roots, preventing them from moving until the roots have been destroyed"
This isnt funny anymore. 9000range?! We are not talking here about CroudControl anymore. This skill gives you MapControl aka MC. I was standing in Aldons afk, suddenly I get MC’d for the first time. I said to my friend: Omg Im getting attacked and I cant see what hit me! are we getting hacked? Hé Said: no no, dont you know the new avatar of melandru buff??

I totaly agree with op. Nerf avatar of melandru asap!

In retrospect, I wish I’d given the OP some advice on how to fare better against warriors. I hope he’s still reading the thread.

Warriors received a big buff to a passive trait called Adrenal Health not long ago, which gives us a huge amount of regen that can’t be stripped and lasts 15s. To maintain permanent uptime, we just need to land a single burst skill before the time is up.

What you want to do is deny us that burst. If you can do that, you put a major dent in our sustain, cutting our regen/heal by 66% (depending on the build of the warrior).

How you do that depends on your build, the warrior’s build, your build, and your ability to recognize when the burst is coming.

For example, most warriors run melee, which means they have to get close to you to land a burst, otherwise they have to smack your pet. If you build for it (e.g. staff/lb, staff/gs, lb/gs druid), you have a boatload of tools to keep your distance and otherwise make landing a burst difficult (mobility, stealth, cc, blind, evades, dodge, etc).

If you keep your distance, attack from range, and then reposition when the warrior gets close, the warrior’s going to blow all sorts of skills (defenses and offensive skills tied to mobility) just to get to you. That’s going to leave him low on defense, offense, and sustain (from lack of landing Adrenal Health bursts) if he does manage to get close.

Doing this may force the warrior to burst your pet instead, which is easy to do and will give him adrenal health. But it wastes a high damage skill on your pet instead of you, which makes you safer and only buys the warrior a little more time.

If the warrior is using a longbow, you generally won’t be able to deny the warrior his burst. Basically, he just needs to hit the ground with it and he’ll get it, whether he hits someone or not. The good news is, your ranged options are better because the warrior longbow sucks at range (can be lethal up close) and it has no defense or mobility, so stick with the above strategy and you should be fine.

Best of luck.

Choppy.4183:

In retrospect, I wish I’d given the OP some advice on how to fare better against warriors. I hope he’s still reading the thread.

Warriors received a big buff to a passive trait called Adrenal Health not long ago, which gives us a huge amount of regen that can’t be stripped and lasts 15s. To maintain permanent uptime, we just need to land a single burst skill before the time is up.

What you want to do is deny us that burst. If you can do that, you put a major dent in our sustain, cutting our regen/heal by 66% (depending on the build of the warrior).

How you do that depends on your build, the warrior’s build, your build, and your ability to recognize when the burst is coming.

For example, most warriors run melee, which means they have to get close to you to land a burst, otherwise they have to smack your pet. If you build for it (e.g. staff/lb, staff/gs, lb/gs druid), you have a boatload of tools to keep your distance and otherwise make landing a burst difficult (mobility, stealth, cc, blind, evades, dodge, etc).

If you keep your distance, attack from range, and then reposition when the warrior gets close, the warrior’s going to blow all sorts of skills (defenses and offensive skills tied to mobility) just to get to you. That’s going to leave him low on defense, offense, and sustain (from lack of landing Adrenal Health bursts) if he does manage to get close.

Doing this may force the warrior to burst your pet instead, which is easy to do and will give him adrenal health. But it wastes a high damage skill on your pet instead of you, which makes you safer and only buys the warrior a little more time.

If the warrior is using a longbow, you generally won’t be able to deny the warrior his burst. Basically, he just needs to hit the ground with it and he’ll get it, whether he hits someone or not. The good news is, your ranged options are better because the warrior longbow sucks at range (can be lethal up close) and it has no defense or mobility, so stick with the above strategy and you should be fine.

Best of luck.

It is kind of stupid though, don’t you think? GS burst and Longbow burst nullify counterplay somewhat completely. The GS burst is near instant and 450 range AoE, the Longbow burst can’t even be denied. Even if you do miss, you get a retry a couple seconds later. Adrenal Health is not hard to activate or to maintain, and has contributed a lot to poisonous spammy warrior builds.

Ranged options may be limited, but a warrior is close to immune to CC, both soft and hard, if he chooses to be. So good luck keeping him off you if you’re not a thief.

Cygnus.6903:

It is kind of stupid though, don’t you think? GS burst and Longbow burst nullify counterplay somewhat completely. The GS burst is near instant and 450 range AoE, the Longbow burst can’t even be denied. Even if you do miss, you get a retry a couple seconds later. Adrenal Health is not hard to activate or to maintain, and has contributed a lot to poisonous spammy warrior builds.

Ranged options may be limited, but a warrior is close to immune to CC, both soft and hard, if he chooses to be. So good luck keeping him off you if you’re not a thief.

Yeah, I’d like to see Arc Divider be given the same radius as Arcing Slice. It can already be spammed and has higher power scaling, so it’s advantage over AS sufficient without triple range.

But a smart druid can still outplay it in a 1v1 wvw situation. The mobility is sufficient, there’s plenty of stealth, and the two main cc is a pushback (so not immune, unless running Last Stand that isn’t on cd) and a cheap Ancient Seeds glitch which isn’t easy to land but will lock the warrior out of his bar.

That Arc Divider is only available when the warrior is glowing red makes it pretty easy for the kiting druid to avoid relative to other classes that don’t have the same tools. The warrior will proc AH off of the pet anyway.

A warrior that’s running lots of blocks and heals (like your Defender rune build) might be able to push a stalemate, but it won’t create a win unless the druid plays it badly, imo.

Choppy.4183:

Cygnus.6903:

It is kind of stupid though, don’t you think? GS burst and Longbow burst nullify counterplay somewhat completely. The GS burst is near instant and 450 range AoE, the Longbow burst can’t even be denied. Even if you do miss, you get a retry a couple seconds later. Adrenal Health is not hard to activate or to maintain, and has contributed a lot to poisonous spammy warrior builds.

Ranged options may be limited, but a warrior is close to immune to CC, both soft and hard, if he chooses to be. So good luck keeping him off you if you’re not a thief.

Yeah, I’d like to see Arc Divider be given the same radius as Arcing Slice. It can already be spammed and has higher power scaling, so it’s advantage over AS sufficient without triple range.

But a smart druid can still outplay it in a 1v1 wvw situation. The mobility is sufficient, there’s plenty of stealth, and the two main cc is a pushback (so not immune, unless running Last Stand that isn’t on cd) and a cheap Ancient Seeds glitch which isn’t easy to land but will lock the warrior out of his bar.

That Arc Divider is only available when the warrior is glowing red makes it pretty easy for the kiting druid to avoid relative to other classes that don’t have the same tools. The warrior will proc AH off of the pet anyway.

A warrior that’s running lots of blocks and heals (like your Defender rune build) might be able to push a stalemate, but it won’t create a win unless the druid plays it badly, imo.

Honestly, Arc Divider could be fine as a niche burst skill that allows you to land a burst reliably. It just does so a bit too easily, and has WAY too much damage. It’s so poorly tuned, I can’t really wrap my head around it tbh. I would rather it be the Fire Field creator that it was initially intended to be, get you some Fury maybe, and be a decent AoE (not as big a range as it is now, or give it more cast time). Lose like 30% of the damage, for starters.

Specifically about the drood matchup, drood can reach a tie with just about everything 1v1, because of the insane healing. It’s such a forgiving class. Like you said, on my Defender build, I usually didn’t die unless they went more offensive, which also gave me a chance to stunlock ’m to death.

About the CC immunity, what I meant was that while in Berserk, you pulse stability, so the pushback won’t work. Out of Berserk, Outrage gives you a very low CD stunbreak that also applies Stab if you break a stun. Traits like these on warrior, and others on other classes have effectively ruined a weapon such as Hammer. Mace only remains viable thanks to it’s insane Berserk skill and it’s defensive prowess.
And Cripple/Chill/Immobilize are not effective on a Warrior anymore thanks to spammable cleanse and Warrior’s Sprint.

That’s without mentioning blocks that reflect. It’s hard for a ranged class to apply real pressure.

post adrenal health I’ve seen a fair number of guardians try warrior, some have stuck with it most have not. the burst skill is nice, but guards have 3 fkey boons on tap which they can recharge with their elite (+invuln), giving them 6 on demand fkeys as opposed to charging adrenaline then firing up the xmas tree. It hits hard but that’s not a reason to nerf, if it’s about balance.

Miko.4158:

post adrenal health I’ve seen a fair number of guardians try warrior, some have stuck with it most have not. the burst skill is nice, but guards have 3 fkey boons on tap which they can recharge with their elite (+invuln), giving them 6 on demand fkeys as opposed to charging adrenaline then firing up the xmas tree. It hits hard but that’s not a reason to nerf, if it’s about balance.

The reason to nerf it is because it does too much at the same time. Insane damage, AoE, close to instant cast, gets you absurd healing and it’s close to spammable.

Cygnus.6903:

The reason to nerf it is because it does too much at the same time. Insane damage, AoE, close to instant cast, gets you absurd healing and it’s close to spammable.

In regards to Arc Divider, I personally favour either cutting the range down to roughly Arcing Slice’s range or reducing the power scaling.

In regards to Adrenal Health, I think the smarter move is having the Primal burst count as one or two stages of adrenaline rather than nerfing the trait. That would also slow down condi shedding via CI and damage through BP (assuming someone’s slotted it), but for the Berserker only (which is where the problem is).

If AH is to be nerfed, then warrior will probably need some additional sustain injected elsewhere. I’m not opposed to that route, but outside the Berserker (and its ability to spam proc AH), warrior sustain isn’t overtuned at all.

theres plenty of skills that hit as hard as arc divider, but if its balance then the warrior must take berserker, burst recharge, gs and defense to get the benefits that are ‘op’. specialist builds exist for variety. and on every class “I got hit with 15K burst its not fair” doesn’t hold any weight. the nerfs should cap skills like all hot stuff, but if 80% of people who take it are comparable to other professions don’t nerf the skill. look at it in the round and compare to other specialist builds. Warrior has a low skill cap apparently because it doesn’t skill rotate as much? so seems to get calls for nerf by every man woman and goat … warrior is about timing even the stances don’t get alot of rune of durability like other classes.

Choppy.4183:

Cygnus.6903:

The reason to nerf it is because it does too much at the same time. Insane damage, AoE, close to instant cast, gets you absurd healing and it’s close to spammable.

In regards to Arc Divider, I personally favour either cutting the range down to roughly Arcing Slice’s range or reducing the power scaling.

In regards to Adrenal Health, I think the smarter move is having the Primal burst count as one or two stages of adrenaline rather than nerfing the trait. That would also slow down condi shedding via CI and damage through BP (assuming someone’s slotted it), but for the Berserker only (which is where the problem is).

If AH is to be nerfed, then warrior will probably need some additional sustain injected elsewhere. I’m not opposed to that route, but outside the Berserker (and its ability to spam proc AH), warrior sustain isn’t overtuned at all.

We can agree to disagree about Arc Divider. I think it symbolizes everything that’s wrong with HoT, in that a few skills give you everything. The comment of the above poster about it only being OP if you combine X with Y and Z is irrelevant, because you can combine said elements. The problem exists.

Your proposal about nerfing Primal Burst to count as stage 1 or 2 is in fact nerfing AH, so I guess we are talking semantics here? Off course, you would also be nerfing the effects of burst skills, which is likely a bigger problem if you look at multiple game modes. I do think it is a good suggestion, however, as it would, like you said, also deal with the problem of excessive condi cleansing.

Personally, but this is of no importance to the discussion, I would not return to my so long favored class if this would be it. Berserk mode is too spammy to interest me anymore. That, combined with the passive nature of warrior today, has made it low skill floor, and way lower skill cap then it used to be.

And no, I don’t think nerfing warrior sustain through nerfing either Primal Burst or AH requires to buff warrior sustain elsewhere. It is overtuned as is, so nerfs are in order. One could argue that warriors that don’t take Berserker would lose too much sustain, but you can’t play warrior without taking Berserker as is. Nor can you play any class without the elite specialization without gimping yourself severely in comparison, so this is a different problem entirely. If they would have wanted base classes to be as viable as Elites, then a lot of work would need to be done.

Arc Divider range should be reduced to 300 instead of current 450. Adrenal health duration should be 10s vs current 15s so that it makes it even more important to land the burst skill. Right now the cd on burst skill is so low and duration of AH is so high you only have to land it once in every 3 tries to keep it up 100%

@Cygnus
I run vanilla warrior, which isn’t overtuned from what I can see. So I proposed a change to the way Berserker interacts with it without changing the trait itself. I personally find vanilla perfectly viable for Wvw roaming, though I’d obviously get more mileage running Berserker (I just think I’d be bored).

As for needing to boost sustain elsewhere if AH was pinched, that again was in part a reflection of wanting to keep vanilla warrior somewhat viable and also somewhat dependent on the depth of the cut to AH.

I’d also support a shift toward more active defense and sustain for the class, but I think it would require considerably more work (e.g. reworking weapon and utility skills) than we should expect at this stage of the game’s life.

Choppy.4183:

@Cygnus
I run vanilla warrior, which isn’t overtuned from what I can see. So I proposed a change to the way Berserker interacts with it without changing the trait itself. I personally find vanilla perfectly viable for Wvw roaming, though I’d obviously get more mileage running Berserker (I just think I’d be bored).

As for needing to boost sustain elsewhere if AH was pinched, that again was in part a reflection of wanting to keep vanilla warrior somewhat viable and also somewhat dependent on the depth of the cut to AH.

I’d also support a shift toward more active defense and sustain for the class, but I think it would require considerably more work (e.g. reworking weapon and utility skills) than we should expect at this stage of the game’s life.

The reasons you find vanilla warrior viable are twofold; you’re a good player and GS gives you enough mobility. When we’re talking about vanilla anything, we quickly see that if you don’t take the Elite spec, you are gimping yourself. Vanilla Choppy versus Berserker Choppy would be a one-sided matchup. So I think nerfing Elites without nerfing vanilla is a different discussion. Nevertheless, if Anet would want to move in that direction (which seems pretty clear to me they don’t), your suggestion is a good one. It’s a good one regardless, actually.

Your last remark here is what’s really troublesome. I am so tired of passives in this game, which is why I only play a class anymore that probably has the least of it in the game. It’s a sad direction Anet has taken the game, and I think you are right in assuming they won’t change that direction anymore.