Guild Wars 2

Warrior

• To the Limit had its healing increased by 40%. Other heals similarity had their heal increased by a certain margin. Signet had its HP increased by 20 HP per second. Adrenal Health also has about a 20% increase.
• Some damage increases and some aftercasts removed so you can activate skills quicker.
• Rifle rework: Crackshot no longer grants piercing by default. It will instead apply additional adrenaline per shot. Piercing is now on a few select skills like Volley, and Killshot. Brutal Shot (rifle #4) will now roll you back.
• Berserker – King of Fires – give a fire shield on critical hits with 15s. Using a berserker skill will detonate any fire aura on you, giving 3 stacks of burning.

I cannot believe we waited three months for this. If those were the highlights of the patch, this is going to be the biggest disappointment for Warrior ever. As if we haven’t had enough disappointment for the last three years.

I guess one positive is that we can finally ditch Crack Shot and choose Warrior’s Sprint every time now.

The hilarious thing about Crack Shot vs Warrior’s Sprint is that rifle might actually be better with Warrior’s Sprint. The new Rifle 4 may break immobilize seeing as how it’s a movement skill now.

All we saw was a number increase, a rifle change which honestly was one of the weapons that works kind of well because of its high burst, and they changed a trait that nobody used into a trait that nobody will use. I don’t wanna be forced to take rifle for an effective build. Not only that they also made Defense even more of a necessity with adrenal health. The only thing that was ok was the aftercast thing, but you can’t just fix the class by increasing the numbers. Let’s hope they just didn’t wanna preview all the good changes that should be happening for warriors.

What exactly did they make baseline now? Piercing?
Not fast hands? wow.

Not sure about those rifle changes. I think I understand where they were going with the rollback thing – in that often the rifle is used as a kiting weapon when health runs low. Even so, its a bit strange and could potentially kill the user in lots of circumstances where there is a drop nearby.

My issue with this is that brutal shot is needed to keep adrenaline high. The rifle was changed a while back so that it gives extra adrenaline on targets that have vulnerability, which brutal shot gives. A roll is a handy thing on my ranger, but that’s a utility skill. Roll on brutal shot is going to be clumsy unless the rifle is changed to give vulnerability on its normal attack (which would be quite nice).

Piercing should really be integral to the weapon, rather than on just a select few abilities. A decent ranged weapon should either do lots of area effect stuff or should pierce. I run rifle but cant actually take the trait, so I am glad that some piercing is being put on the rifle itself, but its strange that its auto attack isn’t going to get it.

Don’t underestimate.

It’s not a buff so much as its a rollback on healing sig to pre nerf.

A 20% buff to adrenal healing isn’t super strong but its substantial.

To the limit is a pretty big buff.

i can’t comment on the other changes but I am happy to see rifle getting some love.

These changes look small but after you factor in the removal of several amulets like celestial, settlers you will see the sustain of several classes drop significantly. So your sustain isn’t going to be that low compared to other classes. It won’t be like how it is now where your sustain is so much lower than lets say cele ele. You will have good sustain in comparison to an ele without a cele amulet.

Keep in mind, this is just a preview. Not a full list of all the changes.

The new Crack shot is a net nerf. I don’t think anybody complained about building adrenaline on rifle, but the piercing feature on every shot actually made the damage worthwhile in zerg situations. Now, you might as well take Warrior’s Sprint.

Engineer rifle auto attack is now straight up superior. At least it pierces.

Hmm, yeah, I can work with that. Welcome changes.

Great stuff. Rifle and Healing buffs alone improve the Valkserker

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQJAURnMdAlki9dA2dAEliFlADJ0F3uAHZhAwv7N3+bTuA-TpBBABkVG44DBAAXAACOCAB8AA4f/BA

Think I’ll change to Herald runes for a defensive one (durability is going), or Exuberance for more damage + capatalise on that new healing.

It feels as if all these changes except for the king of fires one are meant to buff the discipline defense berserker gunflame build. To the limit for adren/heals, extra adren so you can gunflame more often with reduced cooldown on zerker mode and primal bursts, base piercing so you can still get movement speed while in your other weapon set etc. Still bugs the crap outta me that they show so much other stuff for all the other classes and then just this for warrior.

He did specifically say he was only touching a few changes for each profession and that more changes have been made.

• I agree with the decision to improve the other healing skills, especially “To the limit”, which only typically heals 13,080 HP in one minute- compared to healing signet’s 21,720. The 40% will bring this up to par, however, I am uncertain if healing signet needs that extra 20HP per second, when it’s already the most used healing kill for warriors. I’m guessing this is an effort to make warriors more sustainable.

• I am glad they paid attention to attack animations and after-cast durations. Mace auto attack on the 3rd attack of the chain takes too long, as do the skill, “Stab” on summoned banners.

• While I welcome the backwards roll on rifle 4, I’m not sure about the change to swap the piercing trait with the extra adrenaline gain aspect of rifle 1. I thought the piercing was suitable as a trait, and this move will make the “Crack shot” trait look more unattractive. Including the dodge roll on rifle 4 would mean almost everyone would ignore the crack shot trait and just use warrior’s sprint because it removes immobilize.

• While the king of fires change sounds cool, I doubt berserkers need any more damage or burning. The 33% increase in burning duration allows berserkers to deal burning ticks dealing over 28,000 damage per second. Warriors lack sustain and have alot of damage capabilities.

Dragon.8762:

Keep in mind, this is just a preview. Not a full list of all the changes.

Yeah, Warriors are missing some tooltips fixes.

That’s not all the changes
Rifle changes IIRC:

• kill shot pierces
• aimed shot (#2) does 5 vuln (8 seconds?)
• volley pierces
• brutal shot does 1s(?) immobilize and 400 distance retreat
• crack shot gives 1 adrenaline per hit, no piercing, still recharge reduction
  There were speargun changes, like some skills there pierce

Some of the changes look promising, it’s hard to picture right now, but keep in mind that other threats were used to right now "auramancer, constant sneak gyro, chrono bunker, etc.) are getting pushed out which could possibly move up the viability in these changes

Adrian Guardian.9480:

That’s not all the changes
Rifle changes IIRC:

• kill shot pierces
• aimed shot (#2) does 5 vuln (8 seconds?)
• volley pierces
• brutal shot does 1s(?) immobilize and 400 distance retreat
• crack shot gives 1 adrenaline per hit, no piercing, still recharge reduction
  There were speargun changes, like some skills there pierce

400 distance retreat ? Like a jump backwards ?

Caedmon.6798:

Adrian Guardian.9480:

That’s not all the changes
Rifle changes IIRC:

• kill shot pierces
• aimed shot (#2) does 5 vuln (8 seconds?)
• volley pierces
• brutal shot does 1s(?) immobilize and 400 distance retreat
• crack shot gives 1 adrenaline per hit, no piercing, still recharge reduction
  There were speargun changes, like some skills there pierce

400 distance retreat ? Like a jump backwards ?

Yup. Hard to see though, it was a fast animation.

These changes aren’t bad per-say, they’re just not really going to change much about Warrior play. They once again buffed our PASSIVE sustain instead of giving us more control over our character. Having a movement skill on rifle is what I would rather see more of, limited sustain that requires player timing to be effective.

The “To the Limit” buff isn’t that big of a deal if the other Shouts healing remain weak. That being said, maybe we could see an offensive support Shout War.

I’ve always liked rifle, so buffs to it are great with me.

Adrian Guardian.9480:

Caedmon.6798:

Adrian Guardian.9480:

That’s not all the changes
Rifle changes IIRC:

• kill shot pierces
• aimed shot (#2) does 5 vuln (8 seconds?)
• volley pierces
• brutal shot does 1s(?) immobilize and 400 distance retreat
• crack shot gives 1 adrenaline per hit, no piercing, still recharge reduction
  There were speargun changes, like some skills there pierce

400 distance retreat ? Like a jump backwards ?

Yup. Hard to see though, it was a fast animation.

Thanks,that’s a good add then,always wanted something like that on rifle.

Remember with the bunkerish meta dissapearing warriors damage will be able to shine in pvp.

TheBravery.9615:

• While I welcome the backwards roll on rifle 4, I’m not sure about the change to swap the piercing trait with the extra adrenaline gain aspect of rifle 1. I thought the piercing was suitable as a trait, and this move will make the “Crack shot” trait look more unattractive. Including the dodge roll on rifle 4 would mean almost everyone would ignore the crack shot trait and just use warrior’s sprint because it removes immobilize.

What’s important here is that the Discipline line is even less necessary when running a rifle. Someone also pointed out that if the rifle 4 roll back is considered a mobility skill, it’ll work with Dogged March.

I think you guys don’t understand that piercing is baseline. there is no reason to use crackshot now unless you want cool down redux and adrin gain. That means you can take warrior sprint instead.

Crack shot is very good choice now though as it gives pretty rediculous amounts of adrin which is much needed for rifle to be effective. Its just not mandatory anymore which is great. You have no idea how good it is to have base line piercing. Its somthing people have been asking for.

Discipline is still nessary becuase I don’t know any build that really works good without burst mastery. Without burst mastery adrin issues are pretty bad losing all adrin hit or miss is terrible. Retaining 1/3 bar of adrin on hitting is key and don’t expect Killshot to hit very hard without burst mastery.

The dodge roll on Rifle 4 is sick it is also an immob. It is a short immob but that synergizes pretty well with other traits like ones that give u fury when u immob a target. A 1.5 sec immob is long enough to get off a gunflame shot while the target is immobed. This makes dodging KS impossible if u get hit by that and don’t clear the condi.

Warlord.9074:

I think you guys don’t understand that piercing is baseline. there is no reason to use crackshot now unless you want cool down redux and adrin gain. That means you can take warrior sprint instead.

Crack shot is very good choice now though as it gives pretty rediculous amounts of adrin which is much needed for rifle to be effective. Its just not mandatory anymore which is great. You have no idea how good it is to have base line piercing. Its somthing people have been asking for.

Discipline is still nessary becuase I don’t know any build that really works good without burst mastery. Without burst mastery adrin issues are pretty bad losing all adrin hit or miss is terrible. Retaining 1/3 bar of adrin on hitting is key and don’t expect Killshot to hit very hard without burst mastery.

The dodge roll on Rifle 4 is sick it is also an immob. It is a short immob but that synergizes pretty well with other traits like ones that give u fury when u immob a target. A 1.5 sec immob is long enough to get off a gunflame shot while the target is immobed. This makes dodging KS impossible if u get hit by that and don’t clear the condi.

Piercing is baseline “on some skills”. But yah, its the important ones.

Discipline isnt necessary period, and burst mastery is only necessary if you’re running Smash Brawler on top of what Versatile Power provides, because otherwise you run the risk of adrenaline downtime while your burst is off CD, which is unoptimal. If you drop Discipline but take Smash Brawler, adrenaline generation, berserk, and burst cd’s all line up quite nicely.

All I see are changes to rifle berserker.

Meh. 5/10 same as last time you tried Anet, if that’s all.

As a primary rifle user, I have to say that the changes are up and down.

The lack of ALL attacks not piercing, including auto bothers me a tad. It was one of the perks to using Crack Shot. Being able to hit multiple enemies even whilst skills were on cooldown at least made it somewhat usable imo.

As for the Brutal Shot change, will have to see how that fares. More defensive skills for rifle aren’t bad, but I worry about it being an annoyance. However, I would have hoped they’d have improved Rifle Butt instead, which I think the roll would have been better suited for. Not to mention a fix to its rather finicky hitting.

Adrenaline gain never really was much of an issue for me on rifle, especially with the vuln change prior to grant extra ticks.

trash…………..

Dulfy notes don’t mention that Gunflame pierces which is like the most important thing? Anyone can confirm that they mentioned that in the stream? I’ve tried running the build without pierce before and it was pretty kitten stupid to have my stuff get body blocked by random minions attacking me in melee

Talonblaze.3175:

As a primary rifle user, I have to say that the changes are up and down.

The lack of ALL attacks not piercing, including auto bothers me a tad. It was one of the perks to using Crack Shot. Being able to hit multiple enemies even whilst skills were on cooldown at least made it somewhat usable imo.

As for the Brutal Shot change, will have to see how that fares. More defensive skills for rifle aren’t bad, but I worry about it being an annoyance. However, I would have hoped they’d have improved Rifle Butt instead, which I think the roll would have been better suited for. Not to mention a fix to its rather finicky hitting.

Adrenaline gain never really was much of an issue for me on rifle, especially with the vuln change prior to grant extra ticks.

I’d of asked for protection on Rifle Butt, so it had use both in melee and at range.

If they wanted to be sticklers, then the boon can proc on hit. Lose the range benefit, but at least you have to be skillfull to land it, and get something if the target has stabos and is in your face.

Ross Biddle.2367:

d burst mastery is only necessary if you’re running Smash Brawler

a lot of people will disagree with you. youre entitled to your opinion though however your opinion is not a fact its pretty far from one if anything smash brawler makes burst mastery less needed.

Choosing smash brawler over savage instict seems like a pretty poor choice also, given how savage instint synergizes a lot better with eternal champion, headbutt etc and gives you a stun break anyways.

However you are still at a huge disadvantage while not in zerk mode without burst mastery, since you are basically a normal warrior at that point. Normal warrior without burst mastery is terrible ask anyone besides yourself. You don’t really see the big picture at all and only look at it through youre small lens of how warrior works for 10 seconds in zerk mode when warrior spends most of its time not even in this mode.

Warlord.9074:

Ross Biddle.2367:

d burst mastery is only necessary if you’re running Smash Brawler

a lot of people will disagree with you.

Oh I know :D

Question for y’all…how do you interpret the king of fires change?

A) changing the entire skill so it no longer gives the burn duration

B) change the on crit effect only

Ephrum.3910:

Question for y’all…how do you interpret the king of fires change?

A) changing the entire skill so it no longer gives the burn duration

B) change the on crit effect only

the burn duration was not mentioned. the crit effect is defiantly changed, so that there is no passive burning stacks applied any longer. I think this change is a nerf to the ability to stack burns when you are taking no damage. However it leaves in place that functionality if you are taking dammage. It is more potent in that since. So if you have fire aura and I hit you 3 times i get burned 3 times and you get might. Which is buff in that sense. however 3 stacks of burning is more burst dammage in a pvp scenario if u explode it. Unfortunatly the way it sounds to me the only way to take advantage of that is to use a berserker skill which we all know most of them are trash and situational.

This seems like its only a nerf to PVE warrior. But a buff to PVP warrior. I would be surprised if they removed the burning duration.

Ephrum.3910
Question for y’all…how do you interpret the king of fires change?
A) changing the entire skill so it no longer gives the burn duration
B) change the on crit effect only

Look, this was never needed. warriors have loads of ways to get might, and sure the condition damage was nice, but way already had a way for rage skills to burn our enemies. in last blaze.

Listen, its not that the change is bad, its that it is a solution to something that was never a problem.

emkelly.2371:

Ephrum.3910
Question for y’all…how do you interpret the king of fires change?
A) changing the entire skill so it no longer gives the burn duration
B) change the on crit effect only

Look, this was never needed. warriors have loads of ways to get might, and sure the condition damage was nice, but way already had a way for rage skills to burn our enemies. in last blaze.

Listen, its not that the change is bad, its that it is a solution to something that was never a problem.

Sounds like its meant to bring down the potency of condi warrior in PVE and to buff condi warrior in PVP.

runeblade.7514:

Warrior

• To the Limit had its healing increased by 40%. Other heals similarity had their heal increased by a certain margin. Signet had its HP increased by 20 HP per second. Adrenal Health also has about a 20% increase.
• Some damage increases and some aftercasts removed so you can activate skills quicker.
• Rifle rework: Crackshot no longer grants piercing by default. It will instead apply additional adrenaline per shot. Piercing is now on a few select skills like Volley, and Killshot. Brutal Shot (rifle #4) will now roll you back.
• Berserker – King of Fires – give a fire shield on critical hits with 15s. Using a berserker skill will detonate any fire aura on you, giving 3 stacks of burning.

Its still a preview. More changes to come.

Several amulets like Celestial have been removed.
Other classes have received changes too (among them nerfs).
It seems to become less bunker, which is in warrior advantage.
So you have to see this in the light of that too.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Talonblaze.3175:

As a primary rifle user, I have to say that the changes are up and down.

The lack of ALL attacks not piercing, including auto bothers me a tad. It was one of the perks to using Crack Shot. Being able to hit multiple enemies even whilst skills were on cooldown at least made it somewhat usable imo.

As for the Brutal Shot change, will have to see how that fares. More defensive skills for rifle aren’t bad, but I worry about it being an annoyance. However, I would have hoped they’d have improved Rifle Butt instead, which I think the roll would have been better suited for. Not to mention a fix to its rather finicky hitting.

Adrenaline gain never really was much of an issue for me on rifle, especially with the vuln change prior to grant extra ticks.

I’d of asked for protection on Rifle Butt, so it had use both in melee and at range.

If they wanted to be sticklers, then the boon can proc on hit. Lose the range benefit, but at least you have to be skillfull to land it, and get something if the target has stabos and is in your face.

They’ll probably never give Warrior protection, it’s one of the few class philosophies they’ve managed to stick with since launch.

Eh… while I find what was presented for the warrior underwhelming, they did say what was presented was a small amount of what they have in mind (at the end).

So nothing to get excited about, but nothing to get worked up about either. We’ll find out in a week and a half or so.

I’m really hoping there’s a whoooole lot more because these changes literally address none of the key problems. Just slapping on more healing doesn’t fix the class … we’ll see i guess.

Warlord.9074:

Ross Biddle.2367:

d burst mastery is only necessary if you’re running Smash Brawler

However you are still at a huge disadvantage while not in zerk mode without burst mastery, since you are basically a normal warrior at that point. Normal warrior without burst mastery is terrible ask anyone besides yourself. You don’t really see the big picture at all and only look at it through youre small lens of how warrior works for 10 seconds in zerk mode when warrior spends most of its time not even in this mode.

Berserk mode lasts for 15 seconds.

With Smash Brawler you get a 33% reduction in CD, so Berserk mode comes up every 10s

That means for every 10s of berserk downtime you get 15s berserk uptime, and bursts on a 3 1/4 uptime for a single trait in a line you’re already taking.

That’s 60 seconds of berserk for every 90 seconds of play (taken from the first berserk). That’s 4 bursts a berserk, five is you do a swap after the 4th each berserk. So 16-20 bursts depending on how you play it.

Versatile Power offers comparable (though lesser) figures at the cost of an entire trait line.
1 berserk every 12 3/4 seconds for 15s, so for 60 seconds of berserk 98.25s. And in that time 3 bursts, or 4 with a swap. So 12-16 bursts in 98.25s. (possibly more with good 5s weapon swaps but this would be situational and might result in less bursts if range becomes a factor).

So yeah, I have a narrow scope, but I’m not stupid when it comes to trait lines, picks, and playstyles (but please, belittle me if that’s your thing, I don’t want to stand in your way :D). Savage Instinct is a great trait with amazing synergy, but it’s not necessarily optimal. If, for example, you’re getting in and out of berserk mode with no down time then there’s no point in saving it for a stun break (berserk always on CD). When you headbutt to break stuns, and Outrage on a 10s cd, you’re got burnable stun breaks you can use in conjunction with berserk mode should you need. In otherwords, there are build paths that accomplish the same thing at minimal cost.

**Maths might be kitten. Im tired and its not my strong suite XD

As an aside, it begins to be worth taking Discipline when you stack the two (Smash Brawler + Versatile Power). 60s of berserk over 69.75s of play (20.25s over just Smash Brawler, and 28.5s over just Versatile Power). 2 3/4 cd on bursts, so 5 or 6 easily every 15s (so long as you can manage your adrenaline upkeep XD), 20-24 bursts if the stars align.

Also it’s fair to point out that the more you’re in berserk mode over the course of a game, the more you’re benefiting from ALL of the other things that come with it. This includes the damage, fury, quickness, and STABOS.

These changes don’t really excite me at all TBH, but of course we will have to wait and see what the full changes are.

They added a roll to rifle, great. They made the #3 and killshot baseline pierce, great. They tried buffing rifle so many times and none of the buffs have actually worked at all. Maybe this time it will be different? I mean great I guess, they are buffing up rifle to be at least worthy of the title of a "wannabe" ranger longbow?

Not really a big fan of the rifle, it’s not the first weapon that comes to mind as a warrior and don’t really like the playstyle. If I wanted to pew pew I would play a ranger.

The flat increase to healing is kinda meh too and I don’t think it solves a Warrior’s sustain issues. If they remove amulets maybe things will be better? IDK. But still it doesn’t really address the core Warrior problems. a 20 hp/s on healing signet hardly helps at all IMO.

They did say they would adjust cooldowns, so I don’t know what to think. The aftercast and animations to seem intriguing. I would love to see my beloved mace be somewhat playable again.

Although utility isn’t a Warrior’s forte, I would like to see a bit more utility for warrior weapons. Such as maybe axe #2 reflecting projectiles or evading. Hammer being more AoE, etc.

The buffs are so stronk that i literally dont know what to say. When i saw cyclone axe in stream i cringed..

At the very least they could move crack shot to str adept line as there is literally nothing to choose from if you dont go for physical (read as rampage) skills.

Healing skills?
To the limit good for support shout builds..
Healing signet change? Nerf reverted, nothing else

What about mending, defiant stance, blood reckoning? Yeah w/e

And when i look at this
“Bandit’s Defense, you can now block for the full duration of 1.5s.”

I am not sure if i should laugh or cry when i look at outrage. Not much seems to be changed at all.

I guess we should be grateful for any buff at all, after three years of nonstop nerfs. But this preview showed us buffs that are so marginal they’re almost laughable. This could only be impressive in light of serious nerfs that tremendously weaken every other class except for Warrior.

It’s like trying to be grateful for a kitten sandwich when your alternative is starving to death.

An apt analogy. if a little gross

emkelly.2371:

An apt analogy. if a little gross

Thanks. I guess a less vulgar analogy would be this:

It’s like trying to be grateful for the +20 toughness buff to Thick Skin, when the alternative is getting nothing at all. Although Thick Skin is so bad that pretty much is like having nothing at all anyway.

emkelly.2371:

Ephrum.3910
Question for y’all…how do you interpret the king of fires change?
A) changing the entire skill so it no longer gives the burn duration
B) change the on crit effect only

Look, this was never needed. warriors have loads of ways to get might, and sure the condition damage was nice, but way already had a way for rage skills to burn our enemies. in last blaze.

Listen, its not that the change is bad, its that it is a solution to something that was never a problem.

It makes me wonder if they’re going to change Last Blaze too.

The changes are so underwhelming.. 2,673 hours over 640 days on Warrior is just too long a wait.. buhbye GW2 hello again Terra Online.. >____<