“Warriors are masters of weaponry who rely on speed, strength, toughness, and heavy armor to survive in battle. Adrenaline fuels their offensive power – the longer warriors stay in a fight, the more dangerous they become.” (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/warrior/)
While re-reading the description, I realized that warriors don’t really fit their description. They’re users of many weapons, but don’t really have anything stand-out that would make them ‘masters’. Also, their adrenaline doesn’t really make them more dangerous the longer they’re in a fight – rather than them constantly getting more dangerous (a steady increase in power), it’s more like a sine wave (as warriors get more powerful, then weak, then more powerful, then weak, and so on).
Since the Warrior could certainly use some attention, I thought maybe a good way to do so would be to go back and actually have the Warrior fit its description. Here’s what I’m thinking:
Battle Momentum – a Warrior gains X stacks of Battle Momentum for each bar of Adrenaline spent, whenever he spends Adrenaline. Maximum Y stacks.
This buff could have various effects tied to it. It could offer increased movement speed, increased damage dealt, decreased damage taken, increased healing received, give a little healing, or any number of things that could improve or help the Warrior. I’m not sure exactly what effect(s) Battle Momentum should have, but I do have one that I like in particular: reducing weapon swap time.
For example, if you have the Warrior gain 1 stack of it per Adrenaline bar spent, then you could cap the stacks at 5 and have each stack reduce weapon swap time by 1 second. In other words, spending 5 bars of adrenaline would give you the equivalent of Fast Hands.
(It would also be possible to have something like gaining 4 stacks of Battle Momentum per bar of Adrenaline spent, and each stack reduces weapon swap recharge by 0.25 seconds. The cap would then be 20 stacks. This would be equivalent to the above, but more stacks means you can play around with more effects and their magnitudes.)
I think this could be a great change. Since there’d be more than one way to get a major reduction in weapon swap time, Fast Hands would go from ‘needed’ to simply ‘powerful’. Some builds would still greatly prefer Fast Hands, whereas other Warrior builds could rely on Battle Momentum alone for their weapon swap needs.
Battle Momentum could also help make traits based upon Adrenline to be a bit more consistent. For example, you could have traits like Cleansing Ire, Peak Performance, and Adrenal Health based upon Battle Momentum instead of Adrenaline. Since Battle Momentum won’t rise and fall like Adrenaline does, it offers a way to make Warriors more powerful consistently.
While I don’t think the above changes (adding Battle Momentum and having it decrease Weapon Swap time) would fix the Warrior entirely, I do think they would help bring the Warrior closer to how it is advertised. Battle Momentum represents the Warrior getting more powerful as a battle goes on, it allows the Warrior to keep that increase in power over the course of the battle, and it allows the Warrior to show its mastery over weaponry via faster swapping between them (something already attributed to Warriors in GW2).
So…what do you all think? Is Battle Momentum a good idea? If it is, what sorts of bonuses should it give the Warrior?
(edited by castem.5936)