I’ve only played half the classes so far, but the ones I’ve played I have put quite a bit of time into. Still, most of that is into warrior, mostly because it’s the underdog and the fun of trying to make a broken thing work.
During discussions where people are like, “X class is the best roamer, if you want burst bring Y, for home/mid defense pick two of Z class” and warrior is never in these lists and rightly so (well warrior is a good roamer, but it requires an amazing effort from a good warrior to wrest that side-point-defender who is probably themselves just casually mashing their abilities, and may themselves be average to below average at their class).
Anyway, this isn’t about what is wrong with warrior, but something I’ve noticed that it does better than any of the other classes I’ve played… a lot better. And that is the despised mechanic of Downed State. I dont mean warrior’s Downed State itself, but the dynamic of Downed State in the context of team fights. Warrior has a particular knack for controlling the flow of who gets rezzed and who doesn’t, IMO. If a warrior can hold onto some clutch abilities until someone goes down, he can swing the direction of the team fight in his favor.
Think of downed enemies as a sort of bait… keep your eye on them, and when someone goes in for the rez, pop your stability and start cleaving the hell out of them with greatsword, axe, or to a lesser extent sword. All of our stances are useful in this situation, but I just rely on stability stance personally. If you’re a longbow devotee, then this is even better with your cleaves hitting both targets and the fire field going. Stomp, as of this patch, is also really awesome in this role now – if your fire field is going, the physical damage ticks will count towards removing blind, making Stomp that much more likely to launch those kittens in different directions/off the node. So often you can turn one downed player into two or even three killed players if you can hold onto your abilities until the right moment, with this philosophy of controlling Downed State. And there are more ability/weapon combos that facilitate this “role”, like hard CC type stuff.. but I find those weapons personally to be too buggy/clunky at the moment.
The same abilities and weapons that are good at baiting and punishing enemies, are good at getting friendlies up. If you suspect a thief is stomping invis, or someone is stability stomping, just fire field > cleave the area around your buddy, then pop one or more stances/CC before going in to the actual friendly rez. You may not save him, but you’ve severely punished and drawn out stun breakers of the enemies.
Of the classes I’ve played, only thief approaches the capability of controlling other peoples’ Downed State, but he’ll get severely punished if he tries and the opposing team aren’t kittened. I admit I haven’t played Guardian yet, which might be good at it?, although they’re the ones I punish the most when they think they can rez their buddies. In general, all the classes I’ve played besides warrior, feel extremely vulnerable when stomping or friendly rezzing, and I think this Downed State control gameplay might be ANet’s idea of warrior’s role in sPvP and probably the reason why they won’t take Downed State (which everyone hates) out of this game mode.
