Guild Wars 2

It’s interesting how little variability there are in warrior setups, even post-quickness patch where you’d expect them to diversify. Every warrior who is semi experienced tends to settle on a select few utilities: Balanced Stance, Bull’s Rush, Endure Pain, Frenzy, For Great Justice, Signet of Rage. For what it’s worth in this discussion, I’m rank 40 and am probably of average skill.

Why is that? I can’t speak for everyone, but for me, having tested out many setups – it’s because the rest are unreliable, lackluster effects, or just plain too long cooldowns.

The above skills are great and don’t need altering IMO, with the exception of Frenzy which has a silly penalty. I’ll go through the list and offer reasons why I don’t use them, and tweaks that would make me consider giving them a spot on my hotbar.

Kick: A confusing skill, moves toward your opponent and kicks them back. When knocking someone back, almost always the reason would be to increase the gap to make an escape or whatever. The knockback distance is suggestive as an opener for Eviscerate and Shield Bash, but those skills both take time to cast, during which your opponent has recognized a combo opening and is dodging. Also why does it have a damage value? Even with attack gear and Physical Training trait, it’d be like 600 damage. At least the cooldown of 20 seconds feels right for a thick-of-combat skill. My suggestion for making this attractive would be to have it be an instant cast, melee range knockback like rifle 5, and 300 range leap backwards for the warrior. At the very least, make it a leap finisher please?

Throw Bolas: Great skill, if you can ever get it to land on a player. The motion prediction that the game does on your fleeing opponents usually sends it in a completely useless direction, and if you’re on an incline the bolas often won’t follow the slope and instead go straight out into the air (or straight into the slope, if your target is above you). Also, has a completely useless damage value. This skill would be a lot more interesting if it was a faster projectile so that it is less subject to the goofy motion prediction that projectiles use, and the sloped surface awkwardness was fixed.

Signet of Might: Warrior has a lot of power and might from other sources, I think the only thing this is used for is the crit bonus if traited. It could stand to offer something less readily available for a warrior, e.g. condition duration or healing power (but then the problem of healing power not scaling well is another issue…)

Shake it Off!: This skill is decent, but not quite able to compete with the “good” utilities yet. Maybe if it acted like the traited warhorn and changed a condition into its opposite boon, or instead just remove 2 conditions instead of 1, I’d totally use this.

Banner of Defense: Still too weak. It should probably just add a flat 10% damage reduction instead of toughness. This would probably make the synergy with bunkers too strong, but that’s because protection boon is too strong in the first place (that should lowered to 20-25% instead of 33%…)

Berserker Stance: Adrenaline is just not a problem for any warrior to generate. This one needs a completely different effect. Going with the flavor of the skill name, maybe a 1 sec fear or daze effect to those who hit you.

Signet of Fury: Precision and adrenaline are again, things that warrior doesn’t have a problem with. Also the signet trait already adds precision, so this skill is just poorly thought out. Like the previous signet suggestion, it could stand to offer something less readily available, e.g. crit damage, burst damage, just something other than raw precision.

Signet of Stamina: The best non-elite signet, but the cooldown is prohibitive for me. 30 seconds and I’d consider it.

On My Mark: Decent, but should be 1200 range to synergize with ranged weapons, and, being a shout, shouldn’t be affected by blind.

Banner of Strength: Nice bonuses here actually, but if I’m going to devote a slot to a banner, the crit damage banner is just too good.

Banner of Discipline: The only “wow I want that” banner, but sadly requires Tactics tree traits to make it onto my hotbar (which I do, actually, on one of my builds). But this is a trait problem and not a problem with the utility itself, so I’ll just leave it at that.

Stomp: The damage value is, as usual with physical utilities (even traited), silly low. The skill effects are very good, but the main problem with this one is it roots you in place (well, moving interrupts it) and the cooldown. If I could use it while moving, and on a 30-40 second cooldown (60 seconds of downtime on a skill that likely got blinded, is just too punishing).

Dolyak Signet: The single worst warrior utility. The added toughness is meaningless at level 80, and we already have stability in a skill that is instant cast, a stun breaker, and on a 20 second cooldown. This should probably get a flat 5% damage reduction passive, and a ~30 second cooldown instead of 60, or keep the 60 second cooldown and make the active give protection boon.

Fear Me: Almost a great skill, but the amount of time in combat that a warrior is blinded makes it fail the majority of situations. Again, shouts should just not be affected by blind, it’s a different sensory organ kitten

Banner of Tactics: The problem here is the healing power algorithm. It just has no noticeable effect on healing.

Frenzy: The self damage penalty is unwaranted, post quickness patch. Especially considering that this is a stun breaker. If you’re stunned, you’re about to get hit HARD by a combo, so it’s useless in that respect. I think get rid of both the self damage penalty, and the stun breaker effect.

Elites

Battle Standard: Even in my banner build, it just doesn’t deserve the slot. The cooldown is extremely prohibitive even when traited, and the cast time / range are such that, if you want to use it for the revive effect, you have to be right near your ally and start casting within one second of them getting downed. Give it 900 range OR (not and) make it 1 second cast time. Also double the duration it can remain out to 130 seconds – traited, it’ll still be on a 192 second cooldown so that’d be over 60 seconds of downtime.

Rampage: Let’s be honest, it’s just not very good. The attacks are all slow (again, blind is ever present in close combat), and the stability can be dispelled easily. Make the stability inherent and not a boon, and reduce the cooldown to ~120 seconds. Still, I hate losing my weapon so probably wouldn’t use it no matter how good it was ;-P

Healing Skills

Not going to go through each one, they’re all good in their concepts (even healing signet is passable if used in conjunction with regen banners). But all suffer from the same problem of the healing power algorithm having very little impact on them. Also the base heal amount (regen amount in the case of the signet) on each should probably be increased a bit, considering we have no access to protection, little access to vigor, movement skills all reduced speed by cripple/chill, and mostly close combat weapons/utilities, meaning we’re actively getting wailed on.

I use signet of stamina fairly frequent. While the cd is long, it’s one of the few full conditions cleanses warriors have. Also the passive is a nice bonus.

I just hate how guardian skills do exactly what warriors one does but with an added effect. Take signet of stamina to guardian’s all condition cleanse into boons, and basic stability. Looking at warrior’s utilities against other classes is just absolutely pathetic.

Not every single skill needs to be viable in pvp.
The banner of tactics, for example is great in WvW. 10% more boon duration for half a zerg? omgyesplz!
Aside from your rants on the banners(honestly, the banners are amazing already), I share your view on the physical utilities and signets.

About Rampage: I never thought of it as much of a pvp skill anyway. What I’d actually like to see is the target cap of all AoE skills in that form being increased to 10, so it can be used for zerg busting.

Forestgreen.7981:

I just hate how guardian skills do exactly what warriors one does but with an added effect. Take signet of stamina to guardian’s all condition cleanse into boons, and basic stability. Looking at warrior’s utilities against other classes is just absolutely pathetic.

I have to agree to some extent. We get some good utilities but Like OP said its those few and the rest seem useless or underpowered. That being said it is sort of like that across the board. I have yet to bump into an equivalent for the uselessness of Berserker Stance.

naphack.9346:

Not every single skill needs to be viable in pvp.
The banner of tactics, for example is great in WvW. 10% more boon duration for half a zerg? omgyesplz!

5 ppl – half a zerg?

vorpal.1497:

Dolyak Signet: The single worst warrior utility. The added toughness is meaningless at level 80, and we already have stability in a skill that is instant cast, a stun breaker, and on a 20 second cooldown. This should probably get a flat 5% damage reduction passive, and a ~30 second cooldown instead of 60, or keep the 60 second cooldown and make the active give protection boon.

Do you realize that since Protection gives a 33% damage reduction, to make it average to 5%, you’d have to make it something like 3 seconds of Protection every 20 seconds?

In comparison, Signet of Inspiration gives out random protection at 3 seconds duration.

Frenzy: The self damage penalty is unwaranted, post quickness patch. Especially considering that this is a stun breaker. If you’re stunned, you’re about to get hit HARD by a combo, so it’s useless in that respect. I think get rid of both the self damage penalty, and the stun breaker effect.

That’s insane. Most people were already using Endure Pain to get rid of the Frenzy effect. Take away the damage penalty and the stunbreaker and you’ll just have people use something like Balanced Stance with Frenzy instead.

A very well thought out post IMO OP. I think you make a lot of good points. I haven’t seen frenzy on many bars since the nerf, its just not worth it.

And to the above poster, having to take a 90 second cool down skill, which doesn’t even stop conditions being inflicted btw, just for a flat out 25% attack speed increase is not worth it. It wastes 2 utilities of which the warrior already lacks stated in many topics.

I still advocate they get rid of most of these stances and add them to f1-f4, and instead of a burst skill they make the warrior mechanic active stance juggling. I haven’t really worked out the kinks or thought of it in depth but yeah, something like that seems to work.

Also, i’d trade of frenzy for versions of IAS in Guild Wars 1, such as flurry. Where frenzy could be you attack 25% faster but do 25% less damage, or something.

PistolWhip.2697:

And to the above poster, having to take a 90 second cool down skill, which doesn’t even stop conditions being inflicted btw, just for a flat out 25% attack speed increase is not worth it. It wastes 2 utilities of which the warrior already lacks stated in many topics.

As I said, people do that now because of the damage effect. Remove that, and most people would switch to use Balanced Stance, as its a stunbreaker and gives Stability, both of which would greatly benefit Frenzy. Heck, most people are already running Balanced Stance on their bars.

I still advocate they get rid of most of these stances and add them to f1-f4, and instead of a burst skill they make the warrior mechanic active stance juggling. I haven’t really worked out the kinks or thought of it in depth but yeah, something like that seems to work.

So you want to revamp the whole class? Nice, while you’re at it let’s give Thieves cooldowns. And do whatever else we can to totally kitten up all the class mechanics of other professions.

The thing is, there are people who love the mechanic we have.

And if you remove the burst skills, that also means you have a ton of things that need reworking. Adrenaline would be gone and all the traits relating to burst, burst damage and adrenaline would need to be redone. That’d be 14 out of 75 traits, btw. Add in the ones relating to stances and you’re up to 19 out of 75.

And you would also need to replace out Stances with some proper skills. That’d be 4 new utilities out of 20, for a 20% revamp rate.

And please don’t tell me that changing 25% of our traits and 20% of our utilities is not a complete rewrite of the class.

Stability+25% attack boost is really not that much of a boon. It’s definitely useful but, there are far more useful things to take then a 60 second CD IAS skill. For one, condition removal. I hold by the fact that if Frenzy forfeited the stun breaker asset, and lessened the CD but also lessened the damage, it would be an active IAS increase with a low cool down, used to get off various attacks which are right now very easily evaded. 100b is the obvious example of this yes but, auto-attacks which do some degree of damage for warriors can also be evaded by many players, so making them faster with the price of less damage would allow more hits to land on the opponent, meaning it would be a worthwhile or waste of a trade off depending your build, your play style and your opponent.

Endure Pain is like Mist Form, its generally used as an ‘Oh crap’ button to fall back on in case something goes wrong for a few seconds. Even if Mist form allowed the use of offensive skills, I doubt people would use it for offense, as it provides too good of a defense against those few seconds you need to recover and you’re at your most vulnerable. A warrior using Frenzy and Endure pain is very easy to take down I’d assume, that’s 2 utilities wasted if I dodge their easily predictable and telegraphed attacks for a few seconds, all while being able to apply conditions. I mean the only thing that could plant in place would be Hammer CC or Bull’s rush, and hammer has short reach apart from the stun breakable burst skill and the cripple which many classes have active and passive Condition removal for, and if the warrior is also running bulls rush, unless his offset is War Horn, one application of chill takes a good deal of his hp and makes them unable to reach you for many ranged classes and weapon sets.

Like I said I haven’t put much thought into the stance juggling. But most Warrior utilities are indeed useless in the Meta-game, as charmingly as they can be applied to some situations. It isn’t about ruining the warrior, it’s about improving it, if you disagree with my brief thoughts then that’s fair, but how do you propose they fix the sustainability for this class? The OP already highlights in a very well written fashion why the warrior utilities are an issue, and it just seemed to me that if they added these stances as an in built mechanic rather than something you have to maybe trait for (in case you take sure-footed) or not but have to have on your bar, warriors would have more options to use as utilities in new creative ways.

Anything like that, and I’d miss Eviscerate though, that skill is God kitten beautiful

i do agree with most your suggestions (although not all should be implemented to the suggested degree as that would completely turn the tides imo)

personally when i saw the dolyak signet i thought sweet – dolyak rune + dolyak signet + adrenal health +shouts = sick bunker. but then i found out dolyak signet doesnt actually give regen and the dolyak rune doesn’t scale with healing power?! woot! i was well vexed

I just hope anet listens to any of these suggestions and takes them to heart (I am not too confident on the changes coming in this patch. which means another month to wait -.-)

Olba.5376:

PistolWhip.2697:

And to the above poster, having to take a 90 second cool down skill, which doesn’t even stop conditions being inflicted btw, just for a flat out 25% attack speed increase is not worth it. It wastes 2 utilities of which the warrior already lacks stated in many topics.

As I said, people do that now because of the damage effect. Remove that, and most people would switch to use Balanced Stance, as its a stunbreaker and gives Stability, both of which would greatly benefit Frenzy. Heck, most people are already running Balanced Stance on their bars.

You mean people might actually want to use frenzy then? Bloody hell I’m glad we don’t live in a world like that. It’d be a terrible thing if people went around using their abilities without getting their butt handed back to them or having to use two bar slots. One might even call it a travesty of justice.

Good thing we don’t have to put up with that sort of nonsense here.

Olba.5376:

The thing is, there are people who love the mechanic we have.

That doesn’t excuse the fact that the adrenaline system is a weak mess of various revisions and nerfs and is in dire need of a fresh look. A good start would be to revamp the weak Burst skills and then either significantly reduce or flat out remove the CD on Burst skills. Then they could start making the traits worth a kitten

PistolWhip.2697:

Endure Pain is like Mist Form

I wish Endure Pain was anywhere close to being as good as Mist Form.

naphack.9346:

Not every single skill needs to be viable in pvp.
The banner of tactics, for example is great in WvW. 10% more boon duration for half a zerg? omgyesplz!
Aside from your rants on the banners(honestly, the banners are amazing already), I share your view on the physical utilities and signets.

I don’t agree… I think every skill should be viable in pvp, even if it’s slightly different. Also banners don’t apply their bonuses to whole zergs… there’s a cap of around 5-10 people.

I think the tactics banner was the only one I ranted about, the rest I agree are good at least in concept. Tactics boon duration is cool, it’s just the healing power that’s a problem… e.g. it’s 170 more hp healed on the active heals or 6 more hp on regen – those are roughly 2.5% increases, depending on your build.

Banner of Defense adds 8-15.7% toughness (to tanky build and glass cannon builds, respectively) and 0.7% vitality. Whatever the damage reduction is depends heavily on your attacker, but it’s extremely low.

Banner of Strength is good, the problem here is just that Banner of Discipline is probably too good…

Olba.5376:

Do you realize that since Protection gives a 33% damage reduction, to make it [Dolyak Signet] average to 5%, you’d have to make it something like 3 seconds of Protection every 20 seconds?

Yes, I agree in the current state of the game, 5% would be too strong. Earlier in the post I made a note about how protection should probably come down to 20-25%, it’s just way too strong at 33% now IMO – it’s the reason why eles can juggle 3v1 with not too much danger (they’re probably not doing much damage either, but they are holding a cap), and a good guardian can last 2+ minutes in a 3v1 situation.

But yeah, if protection was lower, I think it’d be safe to bring up Dolyak signet to add a small % of reduction.

That’s insane. Most people were already using Endure Pain to get rid of the Frenzy effect. Take away the damage penalty and the stunbreaker and you’ll just have people use something like Balanced Stance with Frenzy instead.

I don’t see how this would be insane. Some people already use Balanced Stance instead. It doesn’t make you god or something, you still take all damage and the stability can be removed or converted to fear by a necro.

I still don’t understand why “burst” skills has a cd and eats the whole adrenaline bar.

In case someone evades it or you miss it, you can’t keep spamming the burst skill till it hits. Because you don’t lose adrenaline unless it hits.

Thats what u got cd for..to prevent it from spamming.

Just to expand on a few of the OP’s comments:

Banner of Discipline: Insanely good for PvE. Allows a full berserker warrior to hit almost perma-100% crit chance much easier than usual. Not that useful in PvP due to the incredibly nerfed crit damage on gear.

Battle Standard: Often used in PvE for difficult fights to prevent team wipes. Yes it’s on a long CD, but being able to rally team members instantly can be vital.

Shake It Off! This is used very often in shout builds due to the low cooldown. With runes, it also removes two conditions. Doesn’t get much use outside of this other than as a stun breaker on a low CD.

Shouts in general: I never knew they were actually affected by blind. That’s… a little daft.

Signet of Stamina: This is a life-saver and is on many a Warrior’s hotbar. Full cleanse? Yes please. Well worth taking the cooldown-reducing trait as well seeing as Signet of Rage will always be in your elite slot.

That’s what I said Scoobaniec xD, I think I misundesrtood you?

PistolWhip.2697:

That’s what I said Scoobaniec xD, I think I misundesrtood you?

Probly..i was mean why all the adrenaline we had goes to 0 when the burst skill got a cd atm.. Its like 2x cd, first to cast a skill, second to build adrenaline.

Scoobaniec.9561:

PistolWhip.2697:

That’s what I said Scoobaniec xD, I think I misundesrtood you?

Probly..i was mean why all the adrenaline we had goes to 0 when the burst skill got a cd atm.. Its like 2x cd, first to cast a skill, second to build adrenaline.

Because we could easily pop Signet of Fury and Healing Surge to get 3 Eviscerates/Earthshakers/Kill Shots in a row.

And in case that does not seem so overpowered:

• Three Eviscerates would have higher damage than Mug>CnD>Backstab
• Three Earthshakers would give you a total of 6 seconds of stun with a cast time of 2.25s, so you would have almost 4 seconds to beat away. Think 3x Earthshaker > 100B
• Three Kill Shots would give you damage higher than three Eviscerates, from a range of 1500.

Balanced Stance. Stability / Stunbreaker is needed.

Signet of Stamina. Better condition removal options are desperately needed, and this is the best option we must settle with.

Signet of Rage — the rest of the elites suck for PvP.

One utility left that is optional for your build..

Olba.5376:

Scoobaniec.9561:

PistolWhip.2697:

That’s what I said Scoobaniec xD, I think I misundesrtood you?

Probly..i was mean why all the adrenaline we had goes to 0 when the burst skill got a cd atm.. Its like 2x cd, first to cast a skill, second to build adrenaline.

Because we could easily pop Signet of Fury and Healing Surge to get 3 Eviscerates/Earthshakers/Kill Shots in a row.

And in case that does not seem so overpowered:

• Three Eviscerates would have higher damage than Mug>CnD>Backstab
  And take about 6 times longer to execute while also wasting your heal.
• Three Earthshakers would give you a total of 6 seconds of stun with a cast time of 2.25s, so you would have almost 4 seconds to beat away. Think 3x Earthshaker > 100B
  FYI, stuns don’t stack duration. So your ridiculous fantasy wouldn’t work. And you’d still end up wasting your heal.
• Three Kill Shots would give you damage higher than three Eviscerates, from a range of 1500.
  And would take a full 6 and a half seconds to cast.

You’re a reactionary fool, do you know that?

The reason is simple, PvP meta revolves around giving CC or removing/immunity to CC or removing ‘CC-soft’ conditions. Technically, from it’s nature, Signet of Fury (with a conjunction behavior with CC given from Hammer F1 Earthshaker) is also on the list.

FGJ! (a shout that can also remove a condition when paired with Soldier Runes) is the only exception to the rule but that is because of the burst damage rule (similar to Necro’s Blood is Power).

Everything else will always be …

i have Fear Me on my bar but it only has two uses a bit of a heal and con remove and give a few seconds for a revive. its good in a small fight but if it is a zerg on zerg i still find a use for Battle Standard but yea the long CDs on war utilities is absurd, when i can get Con chained but most other’s.