Guild Wars 2

I had a long think about this last night, after coming up against some bunker builds and not even being able to get them to less than 3/4 health. I looked at my damage output and when seeing figures like 750 pop up per swing I had to laugh when their standard ranged attacks would light me up for 1k+ every second.

Put it this way, if I said to you if I were to remove frenzy from warriors, would you have any fear of them whatsoever?.

When people like taugrim/yojack say ’ Well the best build is with rifles’ a ranged weapon there is clearly a problem with melee.

So why the imbalance? You get penalised for melee basically, having to stay on your target long enough to do 3 swings to get any sort of output is basically impossible with dodge + cc immunities + stability + knockbacks + PERPETUAL snares/chilled + stun + dazes + retaliation + invulnerability + moa form + stealth + having to run/dodge constantly through multiple red circles, Factor in a bit of latency/lag sometimes….you’re on a losing streak.

Removing conditions is actually somewhat pointless, as they get replaced so fast it’s a joke. ‘Shall I use it on this snare? ok then! oh kitten he’s put down another field of caltrops just by dodging once and i’m snared/bleeding all over again’.

Warriors used to be a threat before people discovered the correct builds with other classes, now they’re pretty much a joke. They’re the least sturdy, with the least dps with the least group utility. The banner line is just so bad….oh yes! I love replacing my superior weapon skills with 4 crappier versions + plant banner (which is the same function as if i press weapon swap….).

Finally….if you play League of legends, i like to compare the warrior to Tryndamere. He’s always picked at low level random matches by people who want to stomp with him because if you don’t know how to handle him, he’s pretty potent. Once you reach higher ELO absolutely no one uses him because he is so easy to counter and brings nothing to the group.

/rant off…..

Tryndamere has an aoe slow and a gap closer :O

Playing warrior in WvW for 100+ hours i say: Ranged or Repair!

Oh yeah, tryndamere in fact had more group utility than a warrior does….that’s just sad.

The only good thing i’ve found a warrior can do, better than probably anyone else (bar a thief) is run away. He is the best running away class in the game. If you want to avoid fighting anyone warrior is the class for you.

yeah we are the fastest by a large margin – use the greatsword and sword and board and bulls rush spell. now you have 5 skills to move faster and the rage signet for constant quickness. thats just imba how fast we can run back to battle from the spawn. also it explains a lot of my repair costs.

I will get tells in pvp from opponents telling me ‘All you can do is run!!!’

That’s how skilled i am at running away/escaping.

I have to agree with you guys. And if on top of that you choose to be a Norn character, besides a Warrior, you are the supreme losing character of them all! (Norns are big = easier to hit, harder to hit against enemies, etc). Getting tired of being killed so many times by Asuras (almost everyone in WvW is asura by now) that it is not funny anymore. Lost my interest in this game to be sure.

I agree with the point that warriors can be avoided in melee more than most classes. That is due to this game giving a little bit of realism in how hits land, this however makes ranged much more potent against us. Then again I live in WvW with casual Spvp and I must say I never loose 1 v 1 against a ranged class, 2 v 1 5 – 10 I can win or at least down one, if it wasn’t for the down mechanic I most likely would kill both.

The rest of the thread is plain crap, specially the whole norn get’s hit easy…my god…I wonder if people have brains somewhere in that head or maybe they just have a huge bag of tears. Over all I now roll a Charr warrior, maxed size too, I feel no difference against my size.

Considering warriors have some of the best access to swiftness, plenty of ways to cripple targets, and good access to stability, it is rather hard to actually have someone kite you around unless they have some kind of movement skill. I say this from playing a lot of warrior in spvp and doing quite fine with it.

why dont you guys stop complaining and start playing a warrior as it’s meant to be? Stop running glass cannon builds and wonder why everyone is 1 shotting you.

One example: check yojack’s min/max build and tweak it for wvwvw or spvp. I run wvwvw as a warrior and my survivability is simply astounding.

Benefits:
1) Great condition damage
2) i can remove 5 conditions on demand (2 of them converted to boons)
3) perma sprint for me and my group
4) small heals from shouts

If you were to remove Frenzy from my Warrior, nothing would change for me, because I don’t use Frenzy.

If someone says they do fine with Warriors, it’s assumed they’re playing against scrubs. If someone complains that they are being beaten, it’s assumed they’re finally facing pros.

Too much emotional response to frustration, not enough objective analysis. If the idea of these threads is to try to help the Warrior class, let’s please try to stop with the doomsday theorycrafting. If the idea is to just reach out for empathy, please don’t present the thread in a manner that tries to explain objective problems with the class.

Melee is inherently dangerous. You have to close distance in order to do damage, you have further to go to escape, and you draw more attention running at a person with a sword than someone off at 1200 range with a rifle does (perhaps detrimentally to the person ignoring the rifle, but still).

I think the trouble with a warrior is that he’s both ranged and melee. So you can’t just go ‘here, have a ridiculous amount of survival to compensate for your short range’. Health points, sure, but that alone only gives you a buffer between you and death. Otherwise, the ranged warriors could still be melee-tough and (IME anyway) do reasonable damage, making them nigh indestructible.

So, I think we’ve been balanced as a general combat class, not a melee only class. If you try to only melee, you’re basically giving up some of the potential that was considered when deciding how much life you should have, how much damage, how much heals and condition removal, and so on.

TL;DR we should all carry backup rifles/bows and learn when running around like a maniac with a three metre long sword is a bad idea.

The thing about melee, and this is true of any MMO really, is that you cannot allow yourself to be kited or stalled by builds that are designed precisely to do that. In those cases it’s up to you to make the decision not to engage in a disadvantageous fight.

I will agree that melee is much harder to play successfully than ranged, but that doesn’t make it weaker.

I still have no idea why people think rifles are so potent. They are truly the leech off other peoples engagements weapon. They’re all well and fine when no one notices you and you can plink away happily building up to that killshot.

But when I see those warriors with that rifle, it’s a guaranteed kill everytime. It’s almost sad to see them miss their rifle 5, then try and switch to their other weapon set, which doesnt do much damage since they had to spec in rifle damage.

I have never once ever thought ’ Wow, that rifle warrior sure gave me a run for my money.’

The only appealing thing about the rifle is the range, which minimises kiting. But there’s never a time i would rather have a rifle than a shield in my 2nd set. Shield+reflect trait is so incredibly useful (usually against rifle warriors.)

Support warrior is the future. You heard it here.

phaeris.7604:

But when I see those warriors with that rifle, it’s a guaranteed kill everytime. It’s almost sad to see them miss their rifle 5, then try and switch to their other weapon set, which doesnt do much damage since they had to spec in rifle damage.

Sounds like you played against bad Rifle warriors. Please come report back after you fight good ones.

A suport warrior….hmm..a warrior who provides support to their team, almost guarding their team…almost like….let’s say……. a Guardian!

A mixture of both Gun and Sword is my tech, swapping between the two in different situations. Medium health and high Crit build.

Try some stuns and AOE Sigils.

With this yes… I do die alot but I also get the same amount of kills or at least I get them down 3/4.

When there’s just me.. I try to fend them off with my Gun for the time being untill I’m backed up by my teammates and in I go swapping to my Sword, stun/immobilizing them, dealing some damage, back off and back in again.

It’s not that there bad it’s just Warriors take alot of skill to move around and in evading.

I like it.

Put it this way, if I said to you if I were to remove frenzy from warriors, would you have any fear of them whatsoever?.
When people like taugrim/yojack say ’ Well the best build is with rifles’ a ranged weapon there is clearly a problem with melee.

1. Hammer doesn’t need Frenzy to be strong.

2. Are Taugrim / Yojack supposed to be good? Last I checked Taugrim was an “above average PvPer”, but very good at data analysis and communication. Yojack also makes easy builds for the masses. No idea if he’s good or not, but IIRC he wasn’t clear in this thread that his build was not intended for actual PvP (because it’s kind of bad for WvW/PvP).

Warriors used to be a threat before people discovered the correct builds with other classes, now they’re pretty much a joke.

So what happens when warriors discover the “correct builds”?

I just wanted to lol at the op’s frenzy comment. If you use it, it leads me to believe you also use a gs, which is further lol-able and explains to me all of your pvp issues. There is far better ways to gain quickness without the debuff, and do better dmg than a gs could dream of.

The only help ill offer atm is: axe 1-3, and movement. We excellent at both.

Sigil quickness is unreliable. Trait proc is fun and I like to use it in addition to Frenzy.

Edit: Going quickness-enhanced apekitten with Axe is awesome, but GS has the escape tools after you run your course.

Gs is lolable is it? Such snobbery about using the greatsword. It’s funny how people always assume the only use of the GS is kitten bullchargefrenzyhb!! kitten !

A weapon which gives you an evade+damage + escape manouver.

A gap closer + additional escape ability.

A ranged snare+root when traited which you can throw behind you and stop multiple chasers/escapers which also does damage twice.

And finally a hundred blades, which if used correctly forces people to move out of its range so being able to prevent a rez or a stomp.

Oh..you also appear to think the only use of frenzy is with HB. That’s nice. You didn’t notice it’s also a stun break. You can do a double time stomp with it and also a double time rez. So along with shake it off that totals 2 stun breaks i have on my bar.

But yeah, you stick to axe and using adrenaline on eviscerate whenever you can. I’ll let my 3 bars of adrenaline keep fuelling all my adrenal related traits.

Please don’t tell me you run warhorn…..in spvp….because there’s nothing which stops a mesmer shatter/Hb burst/thief haste burst/ranger burst/ elemental burst like a warhorn…..I hope you have a shield in your other set.

The GS isn’t about spamming button 1 and hoping to beat them down. It’s a multi use weapon which gives you control of the battlefield and viable escape options.

This is what a warrior does, they are great at creating uneven fights and capitalizing on them due to their high mobility, cc and burst. Probably a similar effectiveness to a thief for this task, maybe a bit lower due to no access to poison and less burst. The next thing warriors do is snowball fights once your team starts downing players. Warriors put out the highest aoe damage while being frequently available which can shut down ressing. It forces players to come to a known location to res and allows warriors to actually land their skills. Engies are also great at this being able to do this from range though with less overall damage and it being a bit more delayed.

These applications are basically the only situations a warrior is a good pick over another class. There general applicability is really low due to having two hard counters, those being cc conditions and high toughness bunkers with protection. These are really hard counters too, nothing soft about them.

So for warrior to see more play they need better general application which would happen from changing those two hard counters to soft counters. This would happen by giving warriors a small amount of innate condi removal, an option to punish blind spam, an option for boon stripping, a reliable way to damage high toughness builds in while using power and a compression in the extreme damage range warriors have.

phaeris.7604:

I still have no idea why people think rifles are so potent. They are truly the leech off other peoples engagements weapon. They’re all well and fine when no one notices you and you can plink away happily building up to that killshot.

But when I see those warriors with that rifle, it’s a guaranteed kill everytime. It’s almost sad to see them miss their rifle 5, then try and switch to their other weapon set, which doesnt do much damage since they had to spec in rifle damage.

I have never once ever thought ’ Wow, that rifle warrior sure gave me a run for my money.’

The only appealing thing about the rifle is the range, which minimises kiting. But there’s never a time i would rather have a rifle than a shield in my 2nd set. Shield+reflect trait is so incredibly useful (usually against rifle warriors.)

Really? Well, i would be very happy to find you in WvW and make you change your mind, i use GS and Rifle, not because i like it, but because i need it, Gs for the mobility and rifle for kill moving targets (and bro, they always run when see you coming with your gs, they fear HB soo much).

The only trait i use for the rifle is penetrating shots, so i can hit multiple targets in a large fight, and i use might on crit for gs, and deep cuts for the bonus bleeding time, all other traits are defensive/resistence and i use imobilize on cripple.

For slot skills i use mending, fear me, for great justice, stomp and signet of rage.

Single fights its just a bonus, i never died in 1v1, even if i found some “pro” well geared character as i reach 25% heath defy pain trigger, pop stomp of fear me, swing my gs away then rush, no one can kittening chase me, and belive, as a warrior YOU ARE more tanky then regular ones, i run with 3000 armor and 23k health, ppl takes forever to kill me, as i said, even with low life, running away as a warrior is very easy, so i can say it needs at least 5 ppl to kill me (remember, thats because ill run away, not kill them all).

Changing from survivability to damage, i run with 2,990 attack and 44% crit change unbuffed, i see someone, start shooting, bleed is really good, and even if the target remove the condition you will apply again, aimed shot for cripple / imobilize, brutal shot for that invulnerability then volley (usually hit well geared ppl for 4-7k, bad geared for much more) as a lot of ppl think like you (oh a rifle warrior, lets melee kill him) oh boy, thats what i want, come closer, take rifle butt in your face, swap to GS, bladetrail for a bonus imobilize, rush to come closer instantly and HB, he can avoid tha last hits but with all those small critical hits popping up from HB my might stacks goes up to 15/19 (i often see it reaches 25) because i constantly pops great justice and signet of rage, then just imagine the bleeding damage with all those stacks.

When i started with my warrior, reading warrior forum just makes me want to reroll a thief, mesmer or guardian, but i keep it on and reached 80, no regrets, now im full exotics and bro, i dont change my warrior for anything, i kill full exotic rangers, ele, necro, mesmer (at range) all the time in a ranged fight without even picking my GS and i just imagine they thinking “wtf? how a warrior can do this in a ranged fight” and the funny part is thats just because i know how to use my character.

@Madness: WvWvW isn’t the issue. You can make just about anything work for you in WvWvW and measure your success based on your own KPIs. Level isn’t even, numbers aren’t even, gear isn’t even, etc. etc. etc.

Find him in sPvP and show him your Rifle, if you feel so inclined.

phaeris.7604:

When people like taugrim/yojack say ’ Well the best build is with rifles’ a ranged weapon there is clearly a problem

sigh

I’m taugrim, please show me a link where I said rifle is the best weapon for warrior.

Such a quote doesn’t exist.

I started using rifle in beta because I doubted its viability. Rifle is a solid weapon but we have several good options available.

Cogbyrn.7283:

@Madness: WvWvW isn’t the issue. You can make just about anything work for you in WvWvW and measure your success based on your own KPIs. Level isn’t even, numbers aren’t even, gear isn’t even, etc. etc. etc.

Find him in sPvP and show him your Rifle, if you feel so inclined.

Oh, thats a totally different scenario, in Spvp i use axe+mace/Hammer, but pvp is a parallel world, everyone is lvl 80 even if the char is lvl 1, so who cares? just create another class if u dont like the warrior style, u dont need to keep one class in Spvp as Spvp level is for your account not for your character.

taugrim.7604:

phaeris.7604:

When people like taugrim/yojack say ’ Well the best build is with rifles’ a ranged weapon there is clearly a problem

sigh

I’m taugrim, please show me a link where I said rifle is the best weapon for warrior.

Such a quote doesn’t exist.

This post pleases me more than anyone can possibly imagine.

Cheers, taugrim.

Tbh the game follows the common sense logic:

Berserk Guy comes screaming at you from 20 meters with a big kitten claidheamh mòr. You pick your ranged weapon up (pistol/shotgun/rifle) and you plant 3 bullets in the chest.

Guy lays down in blood and gore 15 meters away.

If that doesnt convince you, show me ONE game that melee combat in pvp is superior from the various forms of ranged combat (physical or magical) in pvp.

For group play, Warhammer Online. It’s all about the melee train

Wow, taugrim speaks, i’m honoured!

Arn’t you playing a mesmer in tourneys full time now?

Remo unarmed and dangerous. He could avoid bullets with ease.

And games? MOdern warfare dagger. I would literally run around and one shot everyone just using my knife.

And common logic? I swing my sword at a bunker elementalist who is wearing cloth, and it does less damage than when when i’m attacking other warriors…of course! why not!!

WvW is nothing like spvp, just a whole different ballgame. So many bads in WvW. I take my level 58 warrior out in greens and blues and can kill geared 80’s. Just bad players who are so used to zerging they can;t 1v1.

I’ve decided to stick with warrior as main. While I find mesmer hilarious imo warrior has the broadest range of playstyles and this is attractive to me.

I have been running my Hammer Gun builds in tournies. We won 2of 3 on Sunday night and the feedback from many team mates is that itworks find

So for warrior to see more play they need better general application which would happen from changing those two hard counters to soft counters. This would happen by giving warriors a small amount of innate condi removal, an option to punish blind spam, an option for boon stripping, a reliable way to damage high toughness builds in while using power and a compression in the extreme damage range warriors have.

This is a good assessment.

One thing I noticed with my Warrior is that there’s pretty much 0 you can do about boons short of running a crit build with the sigil, and/or trying to match your opponent in boon-spamming (which just doesn’t work for a Warr, obv). It’s definitely something they could replace on, say, Axe2 or other attacks/traits that are generally lackluster.

The blind effects can be mitigated by ANet re-tuning warrior attacks to make more of them multi-hit. I think a lot of the weapons sets are “ok” on the multi-hit part, but there could be a slight improvement.

a reliable way to damage high toughness builds in while using power

This is paradoxical. High toughness is specifically designed to counter power, and conditions are designed to counter toughness.

If you create a situation where Warriors can counter toughness stacking with just power, what happens in that situation where you sub out someone toughness stacking and sub in someone with a more balanced build or naturally low toughness?

Cogbyrn.7283:

a reliable way to damage high toughness builds in while using power

This is paradoxical. High toughness is specifically designed to counter power, and conditions are designed to counter toughness.

If you create a situation where Warriors can counter toughness stacking with just power, what happens in that situation where you sub out someone toughness stacking and sub in someone with a more balanced build or naturally low toughness?

Right. So we now have a situation where our condition damage is utter crap relative to many other classes and so we have no real counter to the problem of high-toughness builds.

How is the condition damage of a Rifle/Sword build that actually itemizes for condi?

I really need to start playing around with other weapons. I love Hammer/GS so much that I have a hard time arguing for other types of Warrior builds.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fgw2skills.net%2Feditor%2F%3FfIAQJASSjkOtw5OKPMRCA0jqyiLThiUFsLpQsyA%3BToAA1CtoyxkjIHbOuck5sEZIC

That’s the build I run, yes 2 hammers and I don’t rely on a rifle, kiting isn’t much of an issue also cause of the stuns, and it seems like more of the time they’re trying to run away instead trying to avoid my stuns and the Damage that i can still dish out. The only time I use a rifle or bow is in wvwvw but who doesn’t have a ranger weapon there. Oh and I don’t use frenzy

Hammer is the only weapon that isn’t nerfed into oblivion and is still good for PvP.
Reminds you of anything? <points at GW1>

I can still stomp well with hammer but I can’t get beyond the fact every other weapon is not PvP-viable, and honestly I don’t like hammers.

But Anet believes the Warrior is complete so I’ve kind of shelved my Warrior for PvP.
Perhaps one day, when it’ll get even lower in the sPvP meta, they will realize the issue.

The pvp balance in this game is aweful, 99% of the pvp involve either zerg rush wtf pwn or cookie cutter build with cookie cutter skill spam. there is a reason WoW arena and LoL was patched almost every other week due to balance issue. To make the balancing issue more complex, this game starts with 8 classes all with different work mechanic. If gw2 is ever going to make it into professional e-sports Anet better put more minds into this broken pvp system.

I wouldn’t say the pvp balance in this game is awful even though some classes can be a bit OP on the battlefield. The pvp balance is much better than WoWs pvp system. All I can say if you’re a glass cannon spec you will go down pretty quick, but if you have some type of defense build you can stand your ground and escape a lot of fights.

I am not using glass canon build (but I did try them). In fact, I have tested variety of builds each week including the two posted on this forum, one of them spending 30 on defense and 30 in discipline. I had a build for survivability but apparently mesmer, guardian and even thief can outlast warrior in most situation, which is why lots of warrior find using rifle and staying out of heat more effective. There is also less synergy between teammates without the holy trinity in this game. I also spend 1/3 of my time pvping with my engineer and thief char to pick my favorite pvp class. The more i play, the more I feel this game becomes more of a free for all style battle royale. I came to this game because people said this game focus on pvp, but I’m currently disappointed.

Zyrusticae.7245:

Cogbyrn.7283:

a reliable way to damage high toughness builds in while using power

This is paradoxical. High toughness is specifically designed to counter power, and conditions are designed to counter toughness.

If you create a situation where Warriors can counter toughness stacking with just power, what happens in that situation where you sub out someone toughness stacking and sub in someone with a more balanced build or naturally low toughness?

Right. So we now have a situation where our condition damage is utter crap relative to many other classes and so we have no real counter to the problem of high-toughness builds.

Warrior condition damage is utterly crap?
With 740 Condition damage a rifle applies nearly 800 flat bleeding.
A swordthrow adds 6k bleeding with the same amount.
A Swordhit applies 1,2k bleeding.

A Ranger with 1200 condition damage applies less than 310 condition damage /hit.

Just wow, get your facts straight, bro…

Warrior has a limited amount of conditions but his bleeding damage is hilariously high.

Edit/:
If you use signet and FGJ swordthrow damage will even hit for 8,2k
Edit:
The numbers in my mind were wrong, the Warrior bleeding damage is even higher! Adjusted it.

Bleed damage per stack at the same condition damage at the same level will do the same damage between a Ranger or Warrior, except for the difference in +% total damage traits and effects (also worth mentioning: the same stacks of Might).

The difference is the number of bleed stacks applied and any other conditions you can stack simultaneously for more damage.

And to add to what EasymodeX said, Warriors have access to 3/4 conditions that do damage. We have a lot of potential to do a lot of damage with conditions, the only problem is our limited access to cover conditions that are easily reapplied. Once you factor in condition removal, the more conditions you can put up the less likely your bleed/burn stack is going to be removed.

Bleed is the only reliable one a Warr has access to. Burning is semi-accessible via bow, but bow itself has no bleeds, so you’re dealing with an exclusive situation (why bother using bow for burning if you could just stick with your other bleed weapon?). Still useful, but it’s not like your doubling your condition damage output or anywhere near.

Edit:

The real value of condition damage in this format for a Warrior is to have moderately good and reliable DPS, in a hybrid build. A strong power build sits on 2-3 DPS stats. A condition build can get by with 1-2, leaving a lot of stat investment for Vit/Tough.

The only thing off with condition damage builds on a Warrior is the vulnerability to counters compared to say my condition damage build on an Engineer. My Engineer can apply Cripple, Immobilize, Burning, Confusion, Poison, Chill, Blind, Bleed, and Vulnerability. My Warrior can apply lots of Bleed, lots of Immobilize, and then Cripple with Vulnerability. The Warrior has more direct damage output then my Engineer (both given Carrion Amulets), but that doesn’t make up for the vulnerability to condition removal having 3-4 conditions on the stack compared to 8-9 conditions on the stack. Most condition removals only remove 1 to 3 at a time, not the entire set. As my Engineer, I often overwhelm my opponent’s condition removal with ease.

Warriors can do plenty of damage in the condition damage builds, don’t mistake that. Opponent builds that have ways of mitigating your Flurries though, in my opinion cause a lot of problems for you to deal with. The Rifle or Longbow in a condition damage build are great in team fights, but not in duels which creates a major problem. The issue isn’t the damage output or amount of control they can output, it’s the ease of being countered much more severely.

To be frank though, I don’t know what should be done in the area of condition damage builds for a Warrior. Maybe a little more damage via bleeds on Sword 2 or 3, maybe Stability during the Flurry, or maybe some better inherent defenses. I like the theme, but it doesn’t live up to what other condition damage builds are capable of.

Warriors are ok. In fact, they are great classes for PvP.

Playing a Ranger as my main. Warrior as an alt. If you think a Warrior is underpowered, seriously play a Ranger. We can do everything you can, except worst.
Ranger range weapons are worst then War, Ranger melee is worst, Ranger spirits/banners are worst. Rangers cannot burst dps. Ranger arrows have this crap bug, that if someone strives or runs fast, the arrows will miss alot. And our pets tend to miss moving target 90% of the time.

Only thing Ranger does better is traps, and any good player knows not to step into them. In fact, I am one of the many that switched from ranger to warrior to get a better ranged class.

Memsers and Thief can do great burst and thus are annoying to any class. But that is why in PvP never go glass cannon and always have a break conditions skill in toolbar. Also I have learned that if you can learn to, by instinct, dodge whenever you see large drops of HP, you tend to survive more often against burst classes. And lastly always keep moving, never stand still.

The funny thing is, I find I survive longer with my Glass Cannon builds than I do by Bruiser/Bunker builds, and its all because GS/Sword/Shield has more mobility/gap closers than any other build.

I also feel like whatever spec I use, its almost mandatory to choose Bull’s Charge / Endure Pain, without those two I either get blown up or kited.

Doesn’t help that the most Melee centric class has the most self-root effects on weapons either…