Guild Wars 2

I will preface that I don’t know everything, I could be unaware to some metas, and there might be some builds out there I have yet to see which would change my outlook. However I wanted to provide balance thoughts on the warrior and see what people had to say.

the main issue is in sPvP, burst warriors easily outclass DPS and heavy CC/support warriors are outclassed by other professions utility.

Lets go with Greatsword/axeshield as our standard. Imagine a 4v4 fight occuring at the graveyard; a caster can stun a target (say a mesmer with his condition signet) and then the warrior can immideatly bulls charge in (and get a free KD since the skill is bugged) followed by frenzy hundred blades and almost guarnteed down a soft target with proper crit traits and amulet. -This is to Build addrenline mind you; once you have a full addrenline bar you can swap to shield set and stun evicerate for a guarnteed crit also isntantly removing at least half of a targets healthbar. Ironically in the current meta warriors have stronger burst than assassins at the cost of some mobility.

Compare this with say a shortsword – yea I could flurry the target but the damage takes much longer to apply than evicerate and does not fully utilize the 50% crit daze trait mastery (as the stun wears off after 1 second, and flurry lasts 4 seconds). Additionally the bleeding applied by the sword is not preferencial as typically there is not a lot of wiggle room in warrior bars to invest much into condition damage; there is already a tug of war between durability and crit (beserkers and soldiers amulet). Not only is the damage slower, it is on impression (I admit I have not actually done the math) less damage than what the burst build above provides. You would think there would be a tradeoff between total DPS and burst damage, but currently there seems not to be, burst wins.

Hammers warriors in paticular suffer from delayed casting times and relatively weak utility. the Hammer skill #4 is counterintuitive to scrims and is at best a weak peel to be used for teammates (other classes offer much better forms of defense) and the #5 has to long a casting time making it easily readable/dodged by the enemy. The earthshaker is alright, but is not worth the sacarfice the hammer kit as a whole implies.

This leaves maces and warhorn. The maces provide decent CC and defensive utility (block, interupt), but unless you are scrimming 1v1 you are generally as a warrior not the enemys first target which defeats the purpose. Additionally there are stronger builds with other professions for holding points than a warrior (guardians, necros, engineers, mesmers). The Warhorn gives allies decent buffs but they do not count as shouts, so specing into tatics to acquire vigorous shouts is ultimately fruitless. The only heals you can acquire are from utility shouts, and the only ones on a short cool down include skills with very short cast ranges (600 range) and which ultimately pail in comparison to the utility other classes can provide [for instance why create a shout warrior with shake it off when I could have a plague signet necro on my team which would demonstrate way more use with those conditions without having to sacarfice DPS in his build].

Suggestions:
Warhorn skills count as a shouts. If this proves to potent with the tatics trait you can lower the health gained per shout but as things stand the utility under tatics is not something worth pursuing. Also potentially increase the casting range of some utility shouts to 900 or so.

Rework Hammer skill #4; or at the very least increase the knockback distance to increase peel viaablity. Increase casting speed of the hammer skill #5 (the meta is currently dealing with a broken bulls charge, I fail to see the problem with faster casting Hammer KD that is just harder to dodge).

Create Traits that greatly amplify base damage for warrior weapons but does not get factored into critical strikes. There are a few 5-10% damage increase traits but they ultimately fail in dps when compared to what crit provides. Greatly increase the percentage amplifier with which these weapons can do damage but dont let these amplifications be considered in critical damage, so that you can create a meaningful tradeoff between warrior DPS and burst damage.

Mace – No ideas yet.

So yea, Have at it

LoooooL! Whenever I saw a good Warrior … it wasn’t a Greatsword Warrior ….
Please learn to Build, you will see there are more viable Specs….
NOT EVERY Weapon is made for ZomgDPS!
It depends on what Role you play! Not every Role / Weapon is usefull to the fullest in sPvP!

I play Axe / Schield only – with the Greatsword just for Movement Issues… beween Points, I can’t say that I am unhappy…

I also saw hard-to beat Hammer Warrs, which stunned, knocked me down permanently…. if he knows how to use his CC in a Chain you cannot even Dodge, cause you don’t “really” stand UP!

I play hammer warrior and dual axe warrior. I love hammer warrior because I’m all about knocking people on their butts and all of my stuff is geared towards that build. It’s a load of fun, but it’s not about cranking out the dps.

Hammer bad, are you serious? If you’re having such a hard time landing hits, perhaps invest in Leg Specialists. A lot of warrior weapons happen to pack cripples making it extremely easy to set up for the slower moves. By dismissing hammer, you also destroyed your credibility on PvP balance as a whole. Also if you think Hammer is slow, have you checked out Guardian hammer recently? You don’t even want to use the chain to the third hit, it’s twice as slow as the previous swings. Hammer on Warrior feels much more responsive in comparison.

Shouts with Cleric’s Amulet can heal for 2k each. That’s nothing to scoff at if you use it right. It’s meant to give you a boost in a pinch. You have to realize you can’t just spam heal tank your way like traditional healers in other games. They’ve been nerfing healing across the board since beta even til now (Tome of Courage just got stability removed).

Also, while Plague Signet necromancers do not need to build for defensive stats to be effective, they also won’t provide any good heals whatsoever. Well of Blood is great when you have +Healing, Transfusion is also great but on a long CD AND doesn’t heal the necro. Not to mention bringing Well of Blood + Plague Signet is pretty much signing your death wish.

There are trade offs for everything in this game. And frankly, the Warrior is in a much better place than most. Unlike a lot classes, they aren’t pigeon holed into a selective few weapons, they actually have choices. Mesmers and Necromancers for example, HAVE to bring staff. You can come up with another set up for your preferences but at the end of the day, if you aren’t utilizing staff for sPvP, you’re kittening yourself.

Play to your class’s strengths. For the warrior, it’s the sheer amount of hard control it can bring. or the LOLburst.

I met a reasonably good rifle warrior, he did kinda die to feedback but not many ppl seem to run it for some reason :S Pumped some decent damage and had a nice amount of survivability.

If by assassins you mean thiefs, they absolutely have better burst than warriors.