Guild Wars 2

Lets not fool ourselves, in GW2 your armor class means very little when it comes to survival and sustainability. Unlike traditional MMOs your survival is based on mechanics such as Protection, Aegis, Blocks, Blind, Stealth, Teleports, and Evades. Now what warriors are painfully aware of is just how lacking we are in terms of having access to these mechanics. Now, I do not want buffs such as Protection and blocks because it would feel out of place and would make us even more guardian like which isn’t a good solution. What wouldn’t be out of place is to give warriors more skills that have evade tied to it. Here’s my list of weapon skills that would benefit from evade.

Sword
Savage Leap: This is one of the best gap closers/escape skills that warrior has. However, once you have used this skill to close this gap there isn’t much reason to use it after that. The guardian skill Leap of Faith not only closes the gap but helps with guardian sustain because of the blind it provides. Giving Savage Leap evade would give warriors a bit of sustain and avoiding that awkward situation where you get immobilized part way through the leap and Mobile Strikes won’t break it.

Flurry: Most of the time when warriors use this skill they cancel it just to get the immobilize effect, it deals poor damage and the bleeds it applies are short lived. Giving this skill an evade would make it a interesting cross between Blurred Frenzy and Rangers sword abilities and would give warriors a reason to use Flurry for its full duration.

Greatsword
Rush: The reason most warriors love GS is because Whirlwind has warriors only evade. What makes Rush such an annoying skills is that it is easy for foes to simply cripple, chill, immobilize, or even blind you and make the skill a poor gap closer. Adding evade would make staying on your foe much easier and once again keep immobilize from messing you up mid skill.

Hundred Blades: While many the ignorant player thinks this skill is good us warriors know it is a highly situational skill. I would gladly take a great reduction of damage if in return you gain evade. Even with that change it would still be weaker than Blurred Frenzy, which teleports and makes Mesmers invulnerable all while doing decent damage. Hey, maybe make it not root us anymore, I would take a even bigger hit in DPS because it would STILL not be as good as Blurred Frenzy.

Axe
Cyclone Axe: Fairly straight forward, it will give just a bit more sustainability to a weapon that frankly got screwed over last patch because all of its damage was given to the last attack on Triple Chop.

Hammer
Earthshaker: This is the skill I personally and most interested in seeing have evade added to it. The main issue Shaker has is that with blind being so easily spammable actually landing the skill can be nearly impossible if you’re the main target. The evade would make the skill as powerful as it deserves to be.

Having more evades won’t magically solve warrior’s sustainability issues but it will make it easier to stay in the fight without making us even more like pseudo-Guardians. It would still maintain the flavor of the class and would be yet another step in the long fight to make warriors TPvP viable.

EDIT: Extra thought, useless traits like Great Fortitude, Vigorous Return, and Thrill of the Kill need to be changed. Give us a trait that allows us immune to a blind every 10 seconds or further reduces the damage of certain conditions like bleed and poison the more stacks you have on you. I like being the class that is supposed to simply “power through” everything, but ANet has to give us the power to do so first.

I’ve been talking about this with some of my guildmates for a while now. It would be nice to have some defensive evades built into our rotation.