Guild Wars 2

This may be a silly question, but why aren’t banners implemented similar to the toolbelts that engineers utilize?

As it is, banners are quite weak. At the same time, though, they’re sort of class defining when you think of what a warrior should be able to do on the battlefield.

It really seems like they would be used more if one utility slot would let you select amongst the various banners (not including the elite) that are available.

Crazy thought?

I kinda like the idea of being able to carry them with you on your back warhammer style without having to wield them as weapons, but I’m not sure what you mean by one utility slot letting you select them. It would be a bit imbalanced if they didn’t each count as a different skill.

I kind of always wondered about this myself. The current version of banner is a bit tedious. You have to pick up a banner constantly to use it’s abilities, and then drop it to resume combat.

Picking up a banner wastes time, and is complicated by two other issues/bugs…
1. Attempting to pick up a banner when moving will often cause your character to autorun for about 3 seconds. During this time, you cannot stop, or change direction. I have been forced-run into AOE death rings, off ledges and cliffs, and in general lost valuable time in combat.
2. When doing the quick-swap-drop on a banner, it will sometimes refuse to drop after a single ~ press. Pressing it a second time will drop the banner, and switch me to my secondary weapon and incur a swap-cooldown. Meaning im stuck on that weapon for the next 9 seconds.

There’s also the fact that banners can be easily left behind during mobile combat. Being forced to roll out of an AOE ring, or having a zerg/bossmob barreling towards you like a train means your banner is left behind and forgotten. Therefore, I fully support Warriors being able to wear a banner on their back. I suggest it be done as such…

-Banners be changed to work like the engineer toolbelt, a toggle on/off.

-When toggled on, your character wields the banner just like when it’s currently held.

-When toggled off, the banner sits on your back, providing the typical AOE passive bonus. Yes, this means 100% uptime, which would be fine. Just slightly rebalance the stats provided. Instead of 90/90 for 90 seconds every 120 seconds (66% uptime), it could be 60/60 with 100% uptime.

-The banner trait, which reduces CD by 20%, could instead buff the passive bonuses by 20%.

-Yes, you can have 3 banners on your back (or, visually, 1 pole with 3 flags). So what? You can currently have 3 banners on the ground. All this changes is the location of the banner.

-You can still drop the banner on the ground with ~ or slam it with 5. This starts a 60 second cooldown/countdown, on your banner utility skill. At the end of the cooldown, the banner vanishes and is returned to your back. Picking it up, likewise clears the cooldown. (this is to prevent dropping and losing the banner, lol)

-Other players can still pick up the banner and use it, to them, it functions the same as always. Other warriors cannot “wear” a different warriors banner on their own back.

This idea has been brought up before, and I fully support it. As it stands, implementing it like Engineers would create a disconnect with the feature set, since there are 4 configurable Profession buttons. With a Burst skill occupying one, and the availability of 4 banners, you’d theoretically need 5 to achieve a similar idea.

At least, if you want robust functionality. I think simply equipping the banner utility should provide the passive benefits in an AoE, and maybe using it slams a banner down and allows it to be picked up. That could circumvent the profession buttons swapping to the banner itself for abilities, allow for a potentially blast finisher, etc.

Either way, I love this idea, and wish it was implemented somehow. I agree that the current banner implementation is unwieldy at best.

I want banners on my back very badly but I think it would be OP to have all 4 banners on your back, plus how would that look? The whole point of target selected banners is that you have to be close to get the benefit, having them all on your back would make you a walking perma boonmancer. I think having 2 banner on your back would be plausable and balanced.

OP to use all of your utilities and your elite to provide buffs in an AoE? Maybe, but you’d paint yourself as a huge target, and you’d be so very, very easy to kill with absolutely no utility assistance.

To be clear, I wasn’t suggesting that you be able to use all banners simultaneously. I envisioned a toggle — for example, activating the banner of tactics would remove the boon given by the banner of strength.

Regarding uptime, I would expect that it be 100% BUT (like another poster indicated) a slightly weaker effect.

As it is right now, getting me to even consider using a banner in the current state would be a hard sell. For all the micro-management, they just don’t offer enough utility.

EDIT: I might use one if I was very, very heavily invested in defense. I’m not, though.

Maybe replace the 2ndary weapon swap to banners instead until you drop the banners, this way you can swap to primary weapon set and to banners when you need to buff. this gives you the ability to transport 2 banners, 1 on your back and 1 in your arms.

I was thinking more along the lines of what guardians get with their Floating weapons, cept we get floating banners that all do similar effects that they do now, Slotting the banner dmg tactic would allow them to do a pbaoe, and the heal tactic is as it was.

The best way to fix banners would be to remove the pick-up animation entirely. If you press the interact key next to a banner, it should be equipped just as fast as switching a weapon.

I think banners are pretty strong in WvW. I’ve placed all my banners(3 utility slotted and 1 elite) in a zerg vs zerg stalemate and it felt like its exactly what my team needed to push back the enemy. Increase power and condition damage from Strength, 10% increase in crit damage when many are already maxed out, and more healing power is great for a group IMO. Especially when I dropped the Battle Standard and everyone gained fury, might, swiftness, stability and it picked up any downed allies. Or maybe that was just me imagining I was more influential than i thought :P

I would like to see the banner “sharing” reworked though. It’s kind of annoying when u set a banner somewhere intentionally because it affects the most people or something, and some guy comes along “ooh whats this do” and runs off with it.