Guild Wars 2

i probably play close to 3 dozen matches per day, maybe more. And i’m always rotating between Ele, Ranger, guardian, engineer, and warrior. but every day, without a shadow of a doubt, when i play warrior i just feel hopelessly underpowered, clumsy, uneffective, like im some kind of laughing joke. if im holding a point, i feel like im just waiting for anyone to come along and kill me without much effort.

hits not registering, or being way too slow to catch up. getting ganked by thiefs over and over. i feel largely open to damage with not many options when it comes to defence. i can put my shield up for 4 seconds, dodge, or do a 360 swipe with my hammer. thats about it.. im a fish in a barrel. burst skill on hammer doesn’t even hit 90% of the time, it’s been broken for as long as i can remember.

most of my moves are slow and cumbersome, and extremely predictable. thieves and mesmers can just play games with me, im completely useless against them most of the time, unless they just happen to be really bad at their class, or be too co…cky and get hit. but still, they taunt and play with me like im a toy.

i really want to like warrior, its the aesthetic i like and i like the idea of being a practical, active, more physical fighter with at least a semblance of honor. but i cant help but feel frustrated with it and tempted to just give up the class for good until something better comes along or it gets something new added to it..

we already know it, there’s already 9999999 post about it, your skills wont hit 90% of the time and you are the squishiest class of the game, with broken condi cleanser and with no sustain, and off course melee with no decent offensive utiliy.
Arenanet doesnt care seems like balance team have tried warrior only in hot join against pvers.
Other classes players will think they are better players than you and pwn you in any time, deal with it like all the warriors users are doing. Or change class if that makes you feel better.

That IS the challenge, hitting the long casting times.

Warrior isn’t effective because you just can’t do it.

Nier.8741:

That IS the challenge, hitting the long casting times.

Warrior isn’t effective because you just can’t do it.

maybe you are right.

guardian/ranger i seem to have a much easier time. I’m a very defensive player by nature. I think part of my problem is, im not relentless enough or i dont pressure and push the enemy enough. I guess an effective warrior would approach things more aggressive than i do.

As guardian i tend to defend myself best i can, get a shot in here and there, and eventually, i might outlive my enemy and i can call it a victory. but with warrior, unless i push push push, im a sitting duck. maybe i just dont have it in me to do it well.

-snip double post-

I am not experienced with warriors. But i am trying to do funny and exotic builds and they often work wonders.

Funny long range warrior.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQJAUTjMdQhHW5BueAnIGgCqrJCgUWH7dfIySoFmBA-TpBFwACOCABOEAEuAAF3fAwDA4aZAA

I am also a more defensive oriented player and try to avoid button mashing :-).
The funy thing is: i play elementalist ^^.

I also made a warrior that might fit me. Could´t play it till now.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJMQNApZUjMdQfH22BmdApIGICMsFkDGBWA4DOA0920bLA-T1TDAB9o0j7TIwDHiAyPAC5t/gPKDgR9nDOCAsZGiE9EgoJBjDEgCKBBw0jEPAAyAUtFA-w

The signet of fury can be swaped out for whatever fits. Berserkers stance would fit for me.

Pvp Version:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQNApZUjMdQVI22BmdApIGICMsFkDGBWA4DOA0920bLA-TpBFwAULDg4QA44EAIf/hFPAAAHBAA

Are this builds meta? No.
Will they work. Maybe.
For me doing this is fun and it often kills by surprise. So does my condi ele in WvW.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQNAneSj8cQlH25BueApIGqCKsAagAQ7hY/ByNorTBA-TZBHwAFOEAEOBALLDA4JA0b/BA

that’s the bunker warrior build i que with. im always in a duo minimum, and i find it works very well once you get the hang of it.
if your team is bad, or you don’t have faith in them swap axe for sword so you can rotate more.

Class mechanics in general need a revisit, especially our adrenaline. Stances are really the only viable thing out there right now…

Drakortha.6974:

Nier.8741:

That IS the challenge, hitting the long casting times.

Warrior isn’t effective because you just can’t do it.

maybe you are right.

guardian/ranger i seem to have a much easier time. I’m a very defensive player by nature. I think part of my problem is, im not relentless enough or i dont pressure and push the enemy enough. I guess an effective warrior would approach things more aggressive than i do.

As guardian i tend to defend myself best i can, get a shot in here and there, and eventually, i might outlive my enemy and i can call it a victory. but with warrior, unless i push push push, im a sitting duck. maybe i just dont have it in me to do it well.

He is right. I am a warrior player myself but I have seen others doing wonders as well. So for examplem two days ago there was a warrior in WvW, who managed to sustain my mesmers + my friend’s thief dmg for like 1min and then when he ran away my friend followed and he killed him wih an eviscarate and a couple of auto attacks. Finally, he became kitteny and thought could kill my mesmer with half hp so I killed him but as I told we could not kill him for like a min and managed to escape at least from my mesmer. So warriors are not in a bad spot, but certainly I will agree they need a few more tools to be able to tank better or become more tricky by other means and I dont mean something crazy like stealth, but something. Hope berserker will bring something cool.

Grandmaster
Powerful Synergy: Whenever you activate a leap finisher, it activates twice.

With traits like that …. seriously though. Trait synergy is just off on warrior it seems.
Plus it’s just frustraiting fighting mesmers etc, when you can’t even reach them between invis teleport and distortion.

You’re just a bad Warrior. It’s one of the best professions in the game and has some of the largest viable build diversity as well as the best passive defenses in the game.

Really sad how many people in this sub seem to think that Warrior is bad. It has issues but so does every profession.

“best professions in the game and has some of the largest viable build diversity”

wow i just got a headache, some people will say anything.

Well when i fight warriors with my ele there are huge diffrences. I kill most zerkers especialy when they dont´r run berserkers stance. But then i meet some that kill me because i nearly can´t hurt them …. While warrior has a low skill floor to start there is a huge diffrence if you master it. Moving and landing the close range strikes well makes the game.

The current state of game balance requires you to admit and constantly keep one thing in mind…

“Burst others before they burst you.”

To break this down…

1) GS overall is the most hard hitting weapon even when untraited. If you trait it using Strength spec, you boost its damage even more and be able to burst anything in a few seconds “window of opportunity”

2) This “window of opportunity” is being given to you in the form of Stances mostly. Use Berserkers Stance (8-10sec condi ummunity), Endure Pain (4-5sec direct dmg immunity) and if needed pop-up Healing Signet (6sec Resistance).

3) If you fail to have a result (dead or half-dead opponent) during the “window of opportunity” you can pray for the ground to swallow you but since this won’t happen, you can use Shield block, passive Defense traits (Defy Pain, Last Stand) and Disc Warrior’s Sprint to save ur @ss while you skills are on CD.

Other than these, unfortunately, requires double skill to have mediocre results.

too high risk too low reward even a condi melee ranger can kill it

i was so excited last night when i finally ran into a condi ranger that i wanted to solo with my condi build but group was being to stubborn and just wanted to kill bc it was a ranger :/ condi rangers are rare now

I think there needs to be clear about weather we r talking about WvW or pvp. My experience tell me warrior benift from the extra stats in WvW compared to PvP than most classes. Y I’m not sure but the point is that just because it’s good I’m WvW doesn’t mean it’s good in pcp

Reason why warrior is pretty much garbage post patch is dis:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist

Gonna keep it short and sweet. This kind of reasoning will apply ANYWHERE.

- Warriors have Effective but Predictable attacks.
- Warriors have no access to powerful active defenses outside of Stances, which are inhibited to being used once (twice if really elongated fight) in a skirmish. Stances also negatively influence the Warrior’s mobile or offensive utility elsewhere. (For instance, full Stance Warrior has no gap closers outside his weapons, which carry moderate to long cooldowns and as stated previously, are predictable)
- Susceptibility to conditions, specifically Blind, pigeon-hole Warriors into very few versatile builds, when coupled with the implicit predictability and the Stance inhibiting Warrior potential, makes us a counterable and unfortunately ‘routine’ fight across any build.
- Toughness has never been so weak since the balance patch.

I can go into detail, but these are the exact reasons for the Warrior status across all game-modes.

I think warriors are OK at the moment. Condis such as burning and confusion are the enemy for us though, like any other class. Burning is really strong even if you have your condi cleanse or condi ignore skills, 1-2 ticks of burning of 2-3 stacks hits for so much.

I WvW often and the only times i ever really struggle are against heavy sustain burning builds + Mesmers. But then if im not duelling then i just try to avoid mesmers like the plague, like everyone else does.

Still enjoy trying fights with mesmers though its a nice challenge! Can be frustrating but as long as you go into a fight accepting you already knew you might lose then you just laugh and carry on

(Think they should remove the ticking confusion damage for WvW and PvP though, understanded for PvE)

The enemy for warriors is still the same. Poison and blind

Sykper.6583:

Gonna keep it short and sweet. This kind of reasoning will apply ANYWHERE.

- Warriors have Effective but Predictable attacks.
- Warriors have no access to powerful active defenses outside of Stances, which are inhibited to being used once (twice if really elongated fight) in a skirmish. Stances also negatively influence the Warrior’s mobile or offensive utility elsewhere. (For instance, full Stance Warrior has no gap closers outside his weapons, which carry moderate to long cooldowns and as stated previously, are predictable)
- Susceptibility to conditions, specifically Blind, pigeon-hole Warriors into very few versatile builds, when coupled with the implicit predictability and the Stance inhibiting Warrior potential, makes us a counterable and unfortunately ‘routine’ fight across any build.
- Toughness has never been so weak since the balance patch.

I can go into detail, but these are the exact reasons for the Warrior status across all game-modes.

1) Not all warrior weapons skills are equally effective (compare GS dps output to any other wepon set, for example)

2) Toughness is a real issue for us and I don’t see it being solved easily. With the current burst damage being so high, toughness isn’t as effective as active defenses (evades, blocks, blinds etc.). Having in mind that toughness comes at an even higher cost of DPS output you end up a bit more tanky but unable to kill anything on your own. This kills tanky builds (and condi builds) and forces a warrior to go full zerker in order to “burst before get bursted”

Even if you try to fix toughness to provide more survivability, you ’ll end up making Guards too hard to die.

VagaMule.1658:

I think warriors are OK at the moment. Condis such as burning and confusion are the enemy for us though, like any other class. Burning is really strong even if you have your condi cleanse or condi ignore skills, 1-2 ticks of burning of 2-3 stacks hits for so much.

…

I disagree.

The only thing that seems to work with Warrior is the typical GS builds (I don’t play with Hammer much). These builds works OK for a reason. It can deliver its massive damage in the few seconds you are immune to condi/direct dmg.

If you don’t use GS you simply can’t kill fast enough. If you don’t use stances you probably won’t survive long enough.

If you really think that Warrior is OK and condis such as confusion and burn are the real problem go try a Warr condi build with confusion and burning and post here the results.

This topic is saying we arent in any real position for anything. The simple reply to your post is – Use GS.

My point is we are in an ok place. Sure okay Condi build are near enough useless for us, but i dont think warriors are in the position that op states:

‘when i play warrior i just feel hopelessly underpowered, clumsy, uneffective, like im some kind of laughing joke.’

Further – when i suggested those condis are a problem, i meant dealing with them since many classes can keep a high uptime on distributing them on us. Warriors just all out fall flat in distributing conditions in comparison with other classes.

Overall im just saying my opinion, which is that I dont feel any of the OP’s statements. The funny thing is, is that people are quick to say warriors are ‘an easy’ class to play. In the games current state i don’t believe that to be true, and timing has never been more important for us.

What i can say to OP is, Just keep practicing and play with some builds, after you start to see better results is very satisfying playing a warrior.

No harm in intended with my posts.

Warrior’s are strong in the right situation but easily countered. Watch the most recent Go4 Monthly if you want to see them used to decent effect. You really do need to use Greatsword, though.

VagaMule.1658:

This topic is saying we arent in any real position for anything. The simple reply to your post is – Use GS. …

Maybe OP didn’t try GS and decide to give other weapon combos a chance. Then its no wonder why he feels that way.

What we all need to understand is that with current state of balance and the Warrior class we actually play a Greatsword equipped with a Warrior.

You guys are really exaggerating the GS damage. I use sword mainhand and either sword or mace offhand. My opponents just melt against me. As long as I am not dogpiled, I can outlast practically anything out there (obviously not all champions). My opponents die pretty darn fast.

I don’t know, I have a 70% Winrate in Arena Games, only playing Warrior. That said I do NOT use Hammer and I don’t think Hammer builds are viable, they are countered by good players way too easy. Warrior Shield is one of the best Weapons in the Game and GS is kind of obligatory in my eyes. I also feel like alot of people don’t understand the Warrior concept which is not a facetanking brawler, but more a very mobile hard hitter and “melee-kiter”, at least the way I understand and play it. If you want an in your face melee tanker, Guardian is much better equipped to fill that role.

I also see alot of people not using Rampage or even crying about it, which is complete nonsense, it’s still an exceptional skill and lets you fight 2 v 1 or even 3 v 1 or secure Resses/Stomps in almost any situation. It also makes you the guaranteed winner of
1 v 1s which is an insanely strong benefit of the class.

Warrior is not always the strongest on point fighter and with everything on cooldowns you will not beat good players, but you need to understand that you don’t have to. Your natural tankiness and massive speed should always allow you to either get away and aid the fight at another point or they need to chase you down with at least 2-3 people which completely pulls their team apart and opens up alot of room for taking points.

Warrior Attacks and Behavior is often very stereotypical and telegraphed, people can react to your skills and dodge the important to hit stuff (also why I think Hammer is not viable against good players). You can use that to your advantage though, by simply playing a little bit against their expectations, try to bait their dodges.

And last thing to note on my list is, that warrior becomes massively stronger in teamfights, you can be kited alot better in 1 v 1, 2 v 1, etc. situations, but as soon as the enemy can’t focus on you alone, warriors are very hard to deal with, because of the constant in your face pressure. Which is also the reason why I think so many people are still playing Hammer, because in those situations you can actually often hit your hammerstuns, etc.

Also, as a general line in terms of enemies:
- Mesmers can blow you up with a full burst, watch out for it
- don’t chase condition kiters in PVP, especially Engineers, focus on taking and holding points, you don’t need to kill people if they run from a point
- last but not least, a good Thief will still mess you up in a 1 vs 1 situation, that said, they die pretty easy if you do manage to get hits on them, a good placed Whirlwind + Arcing Slice can instantly down a squishy thief and can be very hard to avoid, if you place it correctly

And 1 more thing, remember that your dodge roll does alot of damage, remember to use it, to hit people.

Hope you can find the fun I have with Warrior in PVP, but if you can’t there’s really nothing wrong with it. Don’t worry if you don’t “click” with a class, just play the stuff you like and feel comfortable with.

Best Regards,

Choco

We’re in the same situation we were in before the cele meta, except it’s worse because other classes just got the better end of the buffs and changes. Before the cele meta, warrior was the king of point control with hambow, but now that cele eles are a thing, hambow just can’t compete (especially if you have to contest that point vs a cele ele, gl).

As it is now, warrior gets kited more than ever. We rely entirely on Beserker Stance to do anything at all. We had our 1 week of glory where people didn’t know how to deal with Rampage, but now you’re lucky if you get 1-2 good Rampages off per game. You’ll spend most of your games trying to clear blinds off of you.

The only way to make warrior not kitten that I can think of (short of a complete revamp of its mechanics), is to make warrior the class that makes it difficult for people to get away. That could solve 2 problems: warrior won’t just get kited to kitten and it would actually fill a roll that no class can do right now.

Imagine if we had access to things like: boon strip, taunt (warrior desperately needs taunt), super speed, aoe soft cc, true range hard cc, reveal (although this can be achieved through taunt), warrior would actually be a threat.

I think a lot of our skills need a revamp. Things like:

Beserker Stance (30s CD)
Stance. Gain super speed for a short time. Gain resistance for every condition you.
Super speed duration: 3 seconds
Resistance per condition: 1 second

Defiant Stance (30s CD)
Stance. Heal yourself. Taunt foes around you and absorb all incoming damage for a short duration. If you heal for more than 50% of your health, you become weakened.
Initial Self Heal: 1,853
Taunt duration: 3 seconds
Defiant Stance duration: 3 seconds
Weakened duration: 6 seconds

Frenzy (30s CD)
Stance. Gain quickness and might. Successful hits give triple the adrenaline but it depletes completely at the end.
Frenzy duration: 5 seconds

If they designed stances to be more like “gain a valuable property, but used poorly you will suffer drawbacks” instead of “kitten gain this immunity to something and then be useless for 60 seconds”, damage oriented warrior would already by in a much better place.

I’m looking forward to seeing what the specialization will be, but my hopes aren’t very high.

Those would be… some pretty massive buffs.

We’d be condi immune with superspeed 1/3 of the time, quickened with continuous burst 1/3 of the time, and guaranteed big health while forcing people to eat our burst 10% of the time.

Plus the advantages of double cc immunity, and double damage immunity from endure pain. And vigor on every stance….

We’d rightly be nerfed within 30s of changes like that going in.

I don’t think it would be nearly as bad as you think. I might’ve lowballed the cooldown by 5 or 10s though.

I may have underplayed the benefits. Adding in Heightened Focus, we could have an enormous quickness uptime too. Under ideal circumstances, 40s per min, not including rage sigil, which we probably wouldn’t use anyway.

Also, the 20s/min of condi immune is interspersed with CI (if we trait it instead of LS) and Brawlers (and possibly Cleansing Sigil), plus condi reduction food. Then Resistance on HS if we really needed it.

Double endure pain is the same as it is now, and plenty good with Shield Stance.

We’d be the new OP class.

I’d like to see more active defenses over buffing stances, which seem to be our best utilities already, tbh.

Schokoladenonkel.7295:

… GS is kind of obligatory in my eyes. I also feel like alot of people don’t understand the Warrior concept which is not a facetanking brawler, but more a very mobile hard hitter and “melee-kiter”, at least the way I understand and play it…

Choco…

Your whole post is referring to a specific build you play. Still, by profession design warrior doesn’t follow (or fails to follow) your concept. If you try different weapons you will see that warrior isn’t as hard-hitter as a GS makes him and he can’t kill as fast as a GS warrior kills.

Personally, I would like to know what Arena.Net had in mind when they designed the Warrior but what Wiki say in Warrior description ( Warriors are masters of martial skills. They’re versatile in combat and benefit from offensive and defensive abilities. Warriors inspire allies and demoralize enemies ) doesn’t reflect the current state of warrior that good.

Ilias.8647:

Schokoladenonkel.7295:

… GS is kind of obligatory in my eyes. I also feel like alot of people don’t understand the Warrior concept which is not a facetanking brawler, but more a very mobile hard hitter and “melee-kiter”, at least the way I understand and play it…

Choco…

Your whole post is referring to a specific build you play. Still, by profession design warrior doesn’t follow (or fails to follow) your concept. If you try different weapons you will see that warrior isn’t as hard-hitter as a GS makes him and he can’t kill as fast as a GS warrior kills.

Personally, I would like to know what Arena.Net had in mind when they designed the Warrior but what Wiki say in Warrior description ( Warriors are masters of martial skills. They’re versatile in combat and benefit from offensive and defensive abilities. Warriors inspire allies and demoralize enemies ) doesn’t reflect the current state of warrior that good.

I see your point and I actually totally agree. To me personally playing Guardian feels like what a Warrior should feel like, sustaining through kitten while dishing out damage.

The thing is though, that one can’t necessarily say, Warrior is kitten just because it doesn’t play the way you want it to play, when there is a somewhat viable way to play it. I am mainly referring to solo/duo queue here btw. ,since that’s where my experience is mostly based on.

Schokoladenonkel.7295:

…

The thing is though, that one can’t necessarily say, Warrior is kitten just because it doesn’t play the way you want it to play, when there is a somewhat viable way to play it. I am mainly referring to solo/duo queue here btw. ,since that’s where my experience is mostly based on.

During the game’s life-span, at least this far, Warrior had more that a couple of viable or at least acceptable builds for each game mode.

What bothers me is that, with recent changes, instead of warriors to have more viable options and/or fixed some of the previous ones to be better… they were actually reduced to 1 build per mode in some cases with most builds having something in common… the GS.

Ilias.8647:

Sykper.6583:

Gonna keep it short and sweet. This kind of reasoning will apply ANYWHERE.

- Warriors have Effective but Predictable attacks.
- Warriors have no access to powerful active defenses outside of Stances, which are inhibited to being used once (twice if really elongated fight) in a skirmish. Stances also negatively influence the Warrior’s mobile or offensive utility elsewhere. (For instance, full Stance Warrior has no gap closers outside his weapons, which carry moderate to long cooldowns and as stated previously, are predictable)
- Susceptibility to conditions, specifically Blind, pigeon-hole Warriors into very few versatile builds, when coupled with the implicit predictability and the Stance inhibiting Warrior potential, makes us a counterable and unfortunately ‘routine’ fight across any build.
- Toughness has never been so weak since the balance patch.

I can go into detail, but these are the exact reasons for the Warrior status across all game-modes.

1) Not all warrior weapons skills are equally effective (compare GS dps output to any other wepon set, for example)

2) Toughness is a real issue for us and I don’t see it being solved easily. With the current burst damage being so high, toughness isn’t as effective as active defenses (evades, blocks, blinds etc.). Having in mind that toughness comes at an even higher cost of DPS output you end up a bit more tanky but unable to kill anything on your own. This kills tanky builds (and condi builds) and forces a warrior to go full zerker in order to “burst before get bursted”

Even if you try to fix toughness to provide more survivability, you ’ll end up making Guards too hard to die.

To elaborate, my first point on effective attacks does correlate to yours. About half of the Warrior weapons are amazing at what their intended purpose is, the Greatsword is the definitive melee damage pressure weapon, as no one wants to eat a 100b to the face. Whereas the Hammer might suffer from its rate of dealing damage, it gains in impressive soft and hard CC. Sorry if I wasn’t being more clear on that point, as I can also agree some weapons are lackluster (Rifle).

Regardless of how much Guardians might be more difficult to deal with, Toughness is a huge part of our mitigation, its our second half to balance with our health pool. Before our health meant something when coupled with Toughness, creating a substantial ‘Effective Health Pool’ that was matched or beaten only by Necros (whom although can have higher EHP, often get demolished due to their lack of passive defenses and mechanics, well until Reaper comes out).

Personally I believe we might get an advantage over Guardians, however slight, if Toughness were buffed a bit. Still, my other points stand firm.

Ilias.8647:

Schokoladenonkel.7295:

…

The thing is though, that one can’t necessarily say, Warrior is kitten just because it doesn’t play the way you want it to play, when there is a somewhat viable way to play it. I am mainly referring to solo/duo queue here btw. ,since that’s where my experience is mostly based on.

During the game’s life-span, at least this far, Warrior had more that a couple of viable or at least acceptable builds for each game mode.

What bothers me is that, with recent changes, instead of warriors to have more viable options and/or fixed some of the previous ones to be better… they were actually reduced to 1 build per mode in some cases with most builds having something in common… the GS.

Again, I completely agree with you. In fact this is pretty much the exact same thing I said immediately after the trait changes took place. And this doesn’t only affect Warrior, but I feel like the span of “viable” builds has been decreased more and more for almost all of the cast. Be it due to certain builds indeed not being viable anymore, or because some synergies are made so strong that players feel forced to go into a certain build.

I take this to be Anets attempt to make balancing easier by sacrificing build diversity, so they’d only have to balance a handful of the actually played builds, which overall is indeed a sad development.