Guild Wars 2

Hi there,
I have summarized all Warrior related nerfs, gave my toughs to it and made an advice how to fix it. This is all only about WvW. Not about PVE, Roaming or PVP but I have taken it always into consideration as far as I know. Correct me if I am wrong with something of if you have even better ideas how to approach the problem.

Sorry for,
- wall of text
- my english maybe

1. Adrenaline Nerf
The adrenaline nerf was only minor, because you just loose your initial strike. On the other hand it makes skills like “Berserker Stance” and “To the Limit” pretty much useless for pumping adrenaline. You get enough adrenaline while in battle so you don’t really need them infight for pumping adrenaline and using it in preparation for battle while outfight is like wasting it. “To the Limit” can maybe used in PVE to get the 20%-bonus ASAP.
But why nerfing it? You want it more behave like what it is called (Adrenaline)? Then just rename it. If an initial Strike with F? is not wanted, why can other classes like Necro/Engi keep theirs. Their F-Abilities are even much stronger. If nerfing anything make it equal. The necro could loose the life force outfight, too and the Engi could loose the F-Abilities until he used the corresponding 789-abilities (like loading the tool belt)
A solution for the warrior may be to bind adrenaline to time and not to the infight-outfight mechanics. Make the Warrior loose the Adrenaline he gained 30-60s before. With this he can pump himself up and has 30-60s to strike. Infight there will be no difference because you are constantly overwriting the older adrenaline with newer adrenaline.

2. Healing Signet
The healing signet was not only slightly nerfed on 23. June… it was nerfed about a year before, too. So it was actually nerfed twice. Healing Signet is still very strong. If you just raise the value it maybe would be too strong for spvp or roaming. My suggestion would be to nerf it even more at the base, but let it scale not only with healing power but with toughness and vitality. So it is weaker on offensive builds and stronger on defensive builds.
The alternative healing skills on warrior are just not good as they are now:
“Mending” is just too weak Maybe some party-things should be added like giving additional regeneration to the party and give the condition remove as well to the party or even make it convert them to boons for the party.
“To the Limit” has lower heal than the Signet even with shouts skilled. Maybe good for PVE to gain the 20%-bonus ASAP
“Defiant Stance” is just wrong. I would give anyone the advice not to use it. You have to stand at the wrong place to get the maximum healing out of it. You get nothing when “Defy Pain” triggers at 25% life. It teaches you to be not sticky with your leader and eating the dmg. And you risk getting killed by soft cc and conditions while standing wrong. In my option it is a troll-skill. Strong but unreliable.

3. Horn
Horn was good on 10 ppl. Why nerfing it down to 5? It was a nice unique thing to warrior horn… Not converting anymore? Why? Both things were never OP infight, but a quality of life thing while moving around. Swiftness for the whole team with only a few warriors was a thing noone was mad about. Horn now is still good but the “Charge”-nerf, together with stability nerf makes Melee fights almost impossible.

4. Stability
The stability nerf raised the pirateship meta. As a warrior you just don’t really want to range anything. Just give us more stacks in wvw-mode or even infinite stacks, so that only time counts like it was before(maybe only when you carry a melee weapon). Like it is now you can’t rely on stability, because it can be striped instantly. 10 Stacks are just nothing for wvw and you die instantly if you go in.

5. Battle Standard
Maybe a good nerf for the game because it was a pain that the lord was bannered all the time, but at least it gave us good long fights and the ability the gain time for your team. Just take into consideration that this was a warrior nerf, too.

6. Banner Nerf
Banner were never good in WvW maybe while defending something they can be thrown. But now with a 600 radius they are quite useless.
Suggestions how to make banners good for WvW
- Raise the radius up to 1200 again.
- Make a cooldown-reduce on the Trait
- let everyone be able to carry the Banners without loosing their skills. Noone is using the skills on banners much. Let the usefull skills acivate passive when they are ready (swiftness on all, fury on discipline, and healing on tactics). After picking up the Banner the banner could be carried between back and backpack. One Player should only be able carry one banner.

7. Hammerstun (Earthshaker)
Once the Hammerstun was really stunning. The first-inc was made by many warriors jumping with hammers into the enemy instead of casting at each other until you find a stone or tree to hide.
This is not possible anymore due to the stability-nerf and the adrenaline-nerf.
However… the dmg in these times was better, too. Nowadays the Hammerstun does about the same dmg as an auto-attack.
It is true that it cant be buffed carelessly, because in spvp and roaming it would be too strong. So here some suggestions how it could be done.
1. Make it a Shout. Why? Simply, it is just fun having a warrior shouting “Hammerstun” and doing so. You would be getting additional bonuses if traited.
2. Raise the dmg based on vitality and toughness like a sharpening stone. It would be not OP for Zerk-Roamers/PVP’ers but a normal WvW Warrior would get some extra dmg.
3. Give us 1s of Defy Pain, Balanced stance and the new Resistance boon. It would give us the chance to Hammerstun deep into the Enemy and come out alive.

I personally would prefer 2. but the others could be fun, too

8. Shouts
Damage got buffed (most for Mesmer, Ele, Necro) shout heal got nerfed and with this the sustain of the whole party. Plz nerf the dmg output or raise the shout healing. Again it could be adjusted in a way that it is not too strong for spvp and benefits wvw like binding it to vita or toughness. A base of 1500 should be given.

9 Boons
Traiting tactics wont give you 30% Boon duration anymore. It is an indirect nerf for all skills.
Add it (15%-20%) to any Trait in Defense or Discipline so that a normal PVE-Phalanx Warrior doesn’t gain anything from it (would be too OP)

If I have forgotten something important please feel free to add it below.

The Adrenaline Nerf was not minor.
To me (from a mostly WvW perspective) it overshadows all the other nerfs put together.
I miss GW1’s adrenaline system, a thoughtfully managed resource. Here, it’s just “use it or lose it”.

C’mon Anet, if IP can be made baseline then something can be done with adrenaline for similar reasons!

And you speak of direct nerfs while there are indirect ones…

When warrior largely relies on passive defenses for survivability (toughness and large health pool) AND you increase damage output of most professions (be it burst or condi) you actually NERF warrior survivability.

When you increase damage output of all conditions except bleeding and at the same time you increase more or less the condi management capabilities of all professions AND you leave warrior condi capabilities THE SAME… its actually an indirect NERF.

I think our health pool advantage was somewhat nerfed when they added guard stacks. Let say 2500 HP on a warr is really worth that number. Those HP are worth way more on a mesmer, thief or guard. It’s like giving 5-6k more on a warrior.

A Thief/Guard/Ele with a base health pool of 12.5k HP get to 15k and mesmer get close to 20k.

Char.4209:

7. Hammerstun (Earthshaker)
Once the Hammerstun was really stunning. The first-inc was made by many warriors jumping with hammers into the enemy instead of casting at each other until you find a stone or tree to hide.
This is not possible anymore due to the stability-nerf and the adrenaline-nerf.
However… the dmg in these times was better, too. Nowadays the Hammerstun does about the same dmg as an auto-attack.

Hammer-trains are still possible now but in a different way. The #5 skill of Rampage is a free hammer stun and it can be combined with the #3 rampage skill to increase its range.

You missed one nerf… Quick Breathing had something changed, no longer is the cool down on war horn 4 the same as the speed buff, so no longer can you perma speed yourself and party

The changes to warhorn were reduction from a 10-person buff to 5, and switching condi conversion on a traited warhorn to condi removal.

The speed buff difference is entirely attributable to the loss of boon duration on the Tactics line.

Are we talking about the nerfs from June?

MangoCrush.7819:

You missed one nerf… Quick Breathing had something changed, no longer is the cool down on war horn 4 the same as the speed buff, so no longer can you perma speed yourself and party

This is because of Point 9.
I tested Rune of the Pack for this. You have Permaspeed again and additional Fury uptime for your party. Its is a nice alternative to standarts like melandru, hoelbrack, trooper.

Okamikazi.8652:

Hammer-trains are still possible now but in a different way. The #5 skill of Rampage is a free hammer stun and it can be combined with the #3 rampage skill to increase its range.

Maybe, but Battle Standard is still the strongest elite for a WvW Warrior (in my opinion) so I wouldn’t want to switch it for just an aditional stun

Koolaid.9152:

Are we talking about the nerfs from June?

More about everything from the last 2 Years. Nerf after Nerf… almost no buff for WvW’ers

Koolaid.9152:

Are we talking about the nerfs from June?

And some that happened pre-patch, for some reasons that now are gone… still the nerfs remained (adrenaline change, sword #4 torment reduction).

Something a bit irrelevant…

Does anyone know why Flurry was changed (long time ago) and it hits 11 times instead of 12 when at full (3 bars) or adrenaline? I never got why they did that…