Showing Posts For Amargein.1569:
Vampirism is neat and keeps power primary while giving you a survival proc. I’ve never used it, so I can’t say how useful the mistform is, though. I kinda like Svarnir better for the 6 piece bonus, but at least Vampirism has life steal and power and Svarnir just has vitality or toughness or something.
Fighter is okay but gives about the same amount stats as using Orbs or Crests assuming you can use the Might proc 100% of the time. It’s worse if you already can keep Might at 25 stacks.
Soldier is good if you’re using a lot of shouts, otherwise not so much. Vitality primary on a rune is probably not the best for a warrior. I’d say Soldier’s Crests are better for their stats if you’re not using shouts.
If you had to pick one survival stat, I’d pick toughness. You could use Emerald Orbs to maintain some power and precision while increasing your toughness.
If you want a rune proc to help you survive, I think that Vampirism or Svarnir could be a good de facto Endure Pain. Vampirism is probably better if the mistform works well. The 2 piece bonus probably isn’t that useful in the grand scheme of things, though.
Runes of Lyssa are kind of expensive but can give you some very helpful boons if you use Signet of Rage. They also boost Precision which would keep your dps up, as well as having a great 2 piece bonus.
I don’t think Scholar is the best for melee classes because of the predication on being at essentially full HP. I think Divinity runes would keep your DPS high and give you 60 toughness and vitality, but they are also among the most expensive runes in the game. Ogre, Rage, or Strength may fill that role better, although some people claim that these runes’ 6-piece bonuses aren’t working properly.
(edited by Amargein.1569)
My first GW2 character was an elementalist and I think it characterizes a ‘mage’ or ‘caster’ very well. It’s a bit flashy for my tastes but I guess that fits the aesthetic of the game. I don’t like mages who mostly just shoot fire from point a to b (or ice, or lightning, or energy, etc). I like mages who can control terrain, and the elementalist has a lot more terrain and area-control than, for example (in my experience), a warlock or mage in WoW.
As far as Static Field goes, it is listed as unblockable, which should prevent people from evading through it. This has been my experience, at least, both as the creator and victim of a Static Field. This seems pretty balanced to me: You either sit unstunned but essentially tethered or rooted for 4 seconds, or you eat a 2s stun and then can do as you please. Lots of skills in MOBA games work similarly to this, to create a bit of dynamic gameplay as opposed to just “you are now stunned (in an AOE).”
Also, I think it’d be awesome to have a terrain blocking Unsteady Ground, but it’d mostly be awesome because of how powerful it’d be. I’m ok with the current version and it does fill some niches like stacking procs or giving a long cripple + some damage on enemies that won’t or can’t move (perhaps because they’re in a static field or got hit with shockwave first).
If Tornado put out some real aoe hurt like dagger storm and maybe snared/blinded on its swirling strikes, it would become a far more useful elite.
Disregarding the “hurt” part and focusing on the “blind” part- Tornado already can do this.
I don’t think it’s that different, I think Arms is the crux of a sword build. I understand Strength 20 may be a bit more useful in WvW and PvP, but I personally didn’t think confusion would be worthwhile, and preferred the shield mastery instead. Also, the condition duration from Strength points seems a little redundant because of Deep Cuts. Discipline/Tactics/etc seems like personal preference regardless.
I’ve considered using Guardian runes on my sword/shield warrior, too, but for PvE mainly. I don’t know if the weird stats (although Toughness primary is a good bonus from my perspective) will be offset by the ~600 damage per block. I do like to Savage Leap into a pack of mobs and use Shield Stance, but the rune bonus won’t proc on reflected ranged attacks.
Right now I’m just using Emerald Orbs, so I would be gaining about 50 toughness and healing power at the cost of 84 power and precision. Not sure it’d be worth it, but it may be more fun to burn things on blocks.
I actually use dual sword + shield swap on my warrior. I wanted to make a shield-using warrior and chose the sword for aesthetics and built off of that. I opted for a second sword on my swap for the extra block and bleed, as you said. Because I picked sword, I chose to go for condition damage over pure power.
I would say the strengths of the build are 2 blocks, lots of bleeds, and the leaps. Also, a mainhand sword gets lots of bonus crit due to Arms traits.
I use 30 Arms for damage and crit boosts (Deep Cuts, Blademaster, Furious) and to regain a lot of adrenaline when I use flurry. I put 20 into Defense for shield traits and eventually put 10 more points in for extra toughness, but I’m still experimenting. My last 10 points went into Tactics for banner cooldown because I wanted to try using a banner as a utility skill.
I wear Rabid armor with emerald orbs or embellished emerald jewels right now, to further solidify my ‘tankiness.’ I’m using Sigils of Blood (cheap and heals a little) and Accuracy right now, but I may switch to Strength and Accuracy instead. I considered Sigil of Earth, but I’m afraid that I will cap bleeds too often. I did some simple math and Strength and Earth should be about the same DPS boost for me with around 12 bleed stacks up.
My damage seems respectable if a little slow to get rolling, and I can keep a lot of mobs tied down between cleaving hamstring/flurry on 3 targets and using shield bash for an extra momentary stun. Shield Stance and Riposte means I generally don’t have to evade out on bosses’ special attacks. Because Riposte only has a 15 sec cooldown, I usually go sword/sword on boss fights for the extra DPS from Riposte when I block their big hits.
I use berry pies for extra healing, supplemented by the Adrenal Health trait and Healing Surge as my healing skill. I intentionally avoided taking Berserker’s Power and Heightened Focus because I Flurry a lot (Flurry doesn’t get the benefit from those traits) and most of my damage is condition damage (although I wish HF did work better with it). I currently have about 95% crit on Flurry (with Fury), and 85% on other attacks.
Edit: Using the same main-hand weapon on a weapon swap actually has one small benefit, which is that weapon swapping won’t interrupt your auto-attack chain. It breaks channeled attacks like Flurry, but if you go Sever Artery→Gash→weapon swap, you will do a Final Thrust next, instead of resetting to the start of the chain.
The beginning question just changes the style of the special headgear you start with and a sentence or two in your character’s biography.
If you want to increase the strength of a specific element, then the traits you begin unlocking at level 11 will usually correspond to one element, although sometimes, for example, a Fire trait will give you a bonus to all your elements, not just Fire.
It seems that the game is more or less designed around using all your elements, or at least several of them, fairly regularly, even if you choose to specialize mostly in one.
I gravitated toward an arcane build as well, but more so for their combo finishing than auto-crits, although that is very nice. I also focus mainly on critical damage, having only about a 30% crit chance before fury (from Arcane Fury).
My gear is mainly P/V/T armor with Berserker’s and Valkyrie’s trinkets and a Valkyrie’s weapon, although I will probably replace a lot of it with Berserker’s as I get the chance. This was my first character and I opted for available armor with more defense until I got more comfortable with what I was doing.
I use a boon duration rune scheme (2 water, 2 monk, 2 hoelbrak/fire) and a Sigil of Battle in my staff (although I leveled at first using scepter/dagger and dagger/dagger).
I hit 25 stacks of might pretty quickly in any decent fight, but I am more of a support build than DPS.
My advice:
I don’t like Arcane Shielding or Arcane Retribution because they have long cooldowns. I also use Arcane Mastery and Elemental Attunement for traits though, although with Elemental Surge as my final major trait.
I chose Bolt to the Heart and Arcane Lightning as my Air traits. I feel that Zephyr’s Boon isn’t very useful with limited aura creation and without Powerful Auras. I also took Air to 25 points for Weak Spot, but I am still evaluating this choice. Even though I didn’t focus exclusively on critical chance, I still have a 50% crit chance most of the time, and 100% on arcane spells.
My build is more about attunement switching and combo fields than arcane spells, so I ignored the fire tree, but I at one time considered burning precision as well.
I use Arcane Wave and Blast, but I have tried other spells too. From my experience and reading on the wiki, Arcane Power is very erratic. For any number of reasons, it may apply to more or less than 5 spell casts. However, it works very well with Elemental Surge (Arcane XII) for DPS. I chose to not use it because it doesn’t add combo finishers in my build.
I also save one utility slot for a cantrip as I don’t like getting stunned and being helpless. I opted for Cleansing Fire because it has one of the shorter cooldowns, doubles as a condition cure, and doesn’t require targetting like Lightning Flash.
Even if you don’t want to specifically dump points in precision, I think it’s almost mandatory to get the critical damage bonus that air has to offer. You can avoid precision on your gear if you want, but I’d recommend at least 25 in Air traits and all berserker’s, cavalier’s or valkyrie’s jewelry. Same for armor, although since crit damage is pretty low on armor you could use other stats instead like PVT (soldier’s) or something.
Hi, I also have a sword/condition warrior.
I use Rabid armor mainly (Condition Damage major, Precision and Toughness minor). I think that it’s important to have at least 2 offensive stats on my gear (Condition Damage and Precision), and to have either Power or Condition Damage as a primary stat (in this case Condition Damage). I wear Rabid trinkets too. I gem with Emeralds because I’m not a pure DPS build, but if you wanted to be wholly offensively-minded, you could use Corals for your trinket upgrades.
Offhand sword, like pretty much all the offhands, has longer cooldown attacks. I weapon swap with another offhand (shield in my case) so I have twice as many longer cooldowns. If you were to use a ranged weapon, consider whether it would be for swapping quickly in and out or for sustained ranged DPS.
If you’re going to do sustained ranged damage, I’d say the rifle has more condition damage on its autoattack. However, the burst skill on the longbow is condition-based and quite good. Also, you can leap through it or throw an Impale through the field for more burning.
For runes, you can opt for double bleeds or just stick with the 50% bonus from Deep Cuts. Deep Cuts is great for a bleed warrior at 50% more damage for only 10 trait points (which also happen to increase your crit, condition damage, and give you more bleeds).
I’ve read that condition duration caps out at +100%. Personally I stopped at the 50% from Deep Cuts, but I’m not an entirely condition-based DPS build. Anything between 50% and 100% won’t really impact your Flurry damage though, because the base duration is so short and I’ve read that fractional bleed ticks don’t count. I may be wrong though.
So basically in my mind, take 50% bleed duration + however many points you have in Strength and try to boost it to 100%. Food buffs can go a long way, so the amount of runes you should need may be minimal. Rare Veggie Pizza can give up to 40% condition duration in itself and gives 70 condition damage, too!
Runes of the Afflicted and Runes of the Krait are the best choices for condition damage/duration. Centaur can fill in for even more duration but its stat boost is Power, not condition damage. If you plan on using Strength trait points/Deep Cuts/Veggie Pizza, you probably don’t need to stack rune bonuses (2 krait/2 afflicted/2 centaur, for example) to achieve 100% bleed duration, but you could if you wanted to.
Another option would be might duration-increasing runes, because might also plays a big part on condition damage. However, it may just be simplest and best to get 5 runes that add condition damage (like Krait) and a 6th of something else, just to maximize your condition damage (assuming your duration is already maxed).
For Sigils, you could use Earth for tons of bleeds (given your high crit % and its low internal cooldown, this one should do a lot of damage). However, if you find yourself capping at 25 bleeds a lot, you could try a Sigil of Strength instead, as might stacking synergizes very nicely with condition damage. You could use a Sigil of Agony for more bleed duration, but I think there are more than enough ways to get that elsewhere. On my offhands, I use a Sigil of Accuracy.
Here’s my advice:
There are a few damage stats in GW2:
Power (this boosts all non-condition/DoT damage)
Precision (Critical Chance)
Critical Damage (as a % bonus, base crits are +50% damage, also called Prowess)
Condition Damage (DoTs)
Condition Duration
For most warriors, including greatsword (2h sword) warriors, the first three stats are the important ones. Avoid condition stats for a typical warrior.
For equipment, the first word in the name of a piece of gear tells you what stats it will increase. For example, a “Soldier’s Helm” will give a lot of Power and a moderate amount of Vitality and Toughness.
For DPS, I’d recommend armor that has:
- A high bonus to a damage stat
- at least one moderate bonus to a secondary stat
Berserker’s gear has Power (high), Precision (moderate), Critical Damage (moderate) – this is generally the highest damage gear for direct (non-condition) DPS. You can get Berserker’s gear in all 6 armor slots, the weapon slot, and all trinket slots (backpiece, accessories/earrings, rings, and necklace).
However, note that the “Critical Damage” stat is a percentage, not a double-digit value like Power or Precision. Because of the way stats are distributed (jewelry gives lower stats but the % bonuses are about the same), you get more Critical Damage value from Berserker’s jewelry than from Berserker’s armor. You can also get a whopping 9% critical damage from a 2h weapon.
If you don’t want to completely ignore health or armor, you can opt for a type of gear that has one defensive stat and two offensive ones. Valkyrie’s armor trades the Precision for Vitality (health), but warriors already have a lot of health compared to other classes, so this isn’t too popular.
Toughness is a better defensive stat than Vitality in my opinion. Cavalier’s armor gives Power (high), Critical Damage (moderate), and Toughness (moderate) instead of Precision. It’s impossible to craft Cavalier’s armor normally, though, so it may be harder to get than Berserker’s.
A lot of people also like to mix in a few pieces of Knight’s armor for extra durability. Knight’s armor has Toughness (high), power (moderate), and precision (moderate). Because power is not the main stat on Knight’s armor, you will see a lower base damage if you wear a lot of Knight’s armor, but because Toughness is primary, you can get away with only a few pieces of Knight’s gear to buff up your armor.
For upgrade slots (“sockets”), you can put runes in your 6 armor slots, jewels in your trinket slots, and sigils in your weapons. You can also put gems or crests instead of the other types almost anywhere.
Ruby Orbs are basically “Berserker’s Gems” and can go in your armor and trinkets for cheap.
Runes are more expensive but can be slighty better or give cool procs when you have a set of them. Superior Runes of Divinity are expensive but provide a lot of stats and critical damage. Superior Runes of the Ogre and Superior Runes of Rage are high-damage runes, too, but reports indicate that they may be bugged and not working properly.
Weapons should always have a sigil, and a few good choices for a DPS warrior are:
Superior Sigil of Strength – gives might stacks on crit, synergizes well with greatsword
Superior Sigil of Accuracy – gives 5% critical chance
Superior Sigil of Fire – can proc a weapon-scaling AOE on crit
Superior Sigil of Air – can proc a single-target attack on crit
Superior Sigil of Bloodlust – stacks power on kills, resets if you are downed
Fire is almost as high damage as Air and is AoE. Strength is very good but if you already reach maximum might (25 stacks), it’s not very useful.
If you like to optimize everything, you can get a second weapon with Bloodlust and build your stacks, then swap it with another weapon. The stacks will stay even if you remove the weapon. However, changing zones or being downed will reset the stacks.
Of the trait trees for warriors, Strength, Arms, and Discipline are directly damage-increasing. Arms and Discipline work well together, because Arms boosts Precision and Discipline boosts Critical Damage. Strength boosts Power.
Some of the Popular Major and Minor Traits to get for a greatsword DPS warrior include:
Strength
Berserker’s Power
Slashing Power
Arms
Rending Strikes
Forceful Greatsword
Attack of Opportunity
Discipline
Heightened Focus
I’ve done some simple envelope math and found that Healing Surge will outperform Signet of Healing in hps if you use it at 2 or 3 bars of adrenaline. It does have a cast time, but it ends up being about 40% stronger than the passive if you have max adrenaline.
If you’re not bursting and don’t mind the 1 sec cast, it is more effective in health/sec to cast Healing Surge than to use Healing Signet, even with Adrenal Health. It won’t even upset your Heightened Focus/Berserker’s Power. It also can bail you out of a hole without requiring downtime waiting for regeneration or blowing your signet, which lowers the healing/time further.
I haven’t done a lot of WvW or any PvP with my warrior, but in PvE, even untraited, I can usually manage to rally off of Vengeance.
Basically, if I think a mob is really low and going to die while I’m downed, I’ll just throw rocks at it and let the 100% rally kick in, especially if it’s a weak mob (which may not trigger Vengeance rally anyway without Sweet Revenge).
If nothing is trying to finish me and I don’t think a rally is imminent, I’ll bandage.
I pretty much only use Vengeance in one of two cases:
1) I’m being attacked and can’t bandage, nobody is reviving me. I see a lowish HP champ/veteran/boss or several weaker mobs I can cleave through. I wager that I can finish the job and get a rally. I’ve been very lucky, I feel, about using Vengeance and getting timely rallies off of even standard, non-silver mobs.
2) I’m almost dead and nobody is going to save/rally me. I’ll use Vengeance anyway and see if I can make something happen. Maybe I can rally anyway, or more often than not I can just beat on a boss for some more damage and throw out some might/fury to my team, possibly revive somebody and then croak.
Either way, I was probably going to die anyway, so I don’t mind taking another chance, even if the odds aren’t great.
I feel like it’s easy to misuse vengeance when you have better odds of bandaging/being revived/rallying off a downed kill (if you don’t trait Sweet Revenge), and I still think my Elementalist survives more downed states due to vapor form, but I like Vengeance as it is. I think it’s really powerful offensively but not a very good skin-saver, sort of the opposite of most downed skills.
As an aside, although I believe Heightened Focus works generally and probably works with instant finishers like Eviscerate, too, it does not work with Flurry (mainhand sword burst skill).
I tested this in the Heart of the Mists using a steady sword and 51% critical strike chance + 10% (blademaster) + 10% (critical burst) + 20% (fury) and a full adrenaline bar. I expected to have 100% crits using the +9% from Heightened Focus, but I noticed only about 90% crits, often getting 1-2 regular hits per Flurry.
I have tested this, and probably due to the fact that flurry has a cast time then a channel bar, a warrior’s adrenaline depletes before any (or many) hits land from the attack, reducing the trait’s bonus crit chance back down to 0.
If you manage to hit 2 or 3 targets with Flurry and crit a lot (using the Furious trait), you can re-build your crit chance during a Flurry, but your Heightened Focus will be useless for the majority of the attack.
Seems fine to me, I personally play a Sword/Shield warrior with offhand Sword/Sword because I wanted to use swords and shields.
If you max out Tactics and Defense, your damage will be pretty low, which probably is what turns off some people. Also, a warrior’s support capabilities are rather limited. I’d definitely recommend “of the Soldier” runes for the shout bonus and focus on hitting as many teammates as possible with For Great Justice and Shake it Off.
You could go for Knight’s or Soldier’s-stat armor to be even tougher but have even less damage, and basically go all-in as a harder-to-kill supporter who can tank a little bit and shield block missiles/big hits, or you could go Berserker’s or Rabid armor (Rabid only with a sword) to offset your lack of offensive traits.
I definitely think a power-primary armor set (Soldier’s, Berserker’s) would benefit you the most, as your power will be kind of low and power is the most useful stat overall for damage. Berserker’s will be a little bit wasted without traits for crits, but it still is a heavy damage stat distribution.
I don’t think a shield will turn a warrior into a support/tank able to stand toe to toe and heal through it, even with a full shout build. It basically gives you 150 toughness and 2 good utility cooldowns- a stun/leap and 3 sec blocking. From my experience, though, warriors are limited in their ‘tanking’ without regen/healing and protection from other players (which is something a guardian can provide themselves).
I feel that a one-handed sword almost requires investment in the arms tree to make it shine. If you aren’t opposed to changing your weapon, a mace would offer more group utility (weakness on up to 3 mobs and more stuns, as well as another block which synergizes very well with missile deflection as it doesn’t get “used up” when it bounces missiles). Mace/shield would be the lowest damage option but it’d have almost perpetual weakness even on unshakable enemies. It could also peel defiant stacks fairly quickly to set up interrupts for special attacks.
Axe would be a generic higher damage weapon, as it doesn’t require condition damage or crit as much as a sword does. The nice thing a sword has going for it is the lengthy 3-target immobilize in Flurry, but it won’t hit very hard without condition damage / Arms traits.
As far as aggro goes, from my experience, you won’t hold a mob from 100% to 0% and heal through it while it sits on you, but with high toughness/vit and a shield, mobs will be very interested in you. I’m not sure if it’s my damage or my toughness, but my sword/shield warrior can easily keep the attention of bosses and the majority of enemies on a trash pull, especially if i Savage Leap into the group and use Shield Stance.
I’m not really that much harder to kill than any other character, though, even with my high toughness, so after Shield Stance is used, I have to remember to Savage Leap away (with no target) or evade if there are still lots of mobs on me.
One of the best ways to keep my health up while playing a warrior is to use food that offers regeneration or healing on critical hits. My warrior has a very high crit chance with swords, so I opt for the latter.
Currently, my build is Arms 30/Defense 30/Tactics 10 right now. It’s not a masterpiece but I enjoy the crit/damage bumps from Arms with a sword, the defensive traits (at least to 20~25, going to 30 was an experiment), and I opt to use Tactics V for permanent banners. Banner of Defense may seem really lame due to its stat bumps (Discipline gives way more damage), but it fits my theme of high toughness and benefits squishier characters somewhat. The real reason, though, is that permanently having the banner out allows for 10 sec-recharge AOE knockbacks which double as whirl finishers.
After using Fear Me! and Stomp for some multi-mob fights, I started to appreciate short AoE CC. I rationalize that Banner of Defense offers a stat buff as well as extra combo finishers (burst, whirl) and a gap closer/swiftness buff for some cases. Also, anyone can use it, not just the warrior. I like it because it’s fun and useful many times.
If you’re doing high-level fractals (I’m not sure what constitutes “high” to everyone), you will probably be doing it with a semi-static group and thus can build around a support warrior. If you are PUGing and have other supports in your group, the redundancy may be detrimental but I’m sure smart people can play to their strengths. Having solid DPS certainly makes fights easier, but 5 guys in berserker’s gear constantly kiting a boss may well do less DPS than 3-4 guys with better damage uptime due to support or a character who can take a few hits (legitimately or with blocks).
I’m not even sure why ES can be completely blinded btw… it’s an AoE skill which shouldn’t be really affected by blind as it hits the area not the player.
That’s just how blinds work, though, in this game, so it’s pretty consistent. I personally could see blinds only working on single target attacks, but in GW2 there really aren’t a lot of homing, single target attacks, which would make blind fairly situational. I usually try to save my blinds for AoEs because it seems more effective that way (I especially enjoy blinding exploding mobs).
The frenzy thing should really get some attention, though.
Arcing Slice, Dual Strike and Whirling Axe does way lower damage than e.g. Whirlwind Attack, Bladetrail or the axe 1 chain. So while you are wasting 6-8s for this combo you could just use FGJ for 3 additional stacks of might + permafury + perma 12%/9% bonus and concentrate on the highest damage skills available. Add in the fact that you can get additional benefits from FGJ shout, e.g. healing or adrenaline or condition removal. Furthermore FGJ is a 600 range group buff and this is a MMORPG.
BTW: weapon procs have an internal cooldown of 5s, so you won’t see that much procs while using whirling axe. Sure you hit 5 targets instead of 3, but the damage is much lower than other skills.
Weapon procs from sigils and certain other traits have an internal cooldown.
Food procs and other trait procs, such as berry pies/ghosts, the Arms 5 minor trait (Precise Strikes), Furious, and Sharpened Axes, do not.
Getting extra buffs to your shouts means giving up damage from other trait lines, which more or less makes it a wash in the damage department.
Not always have a 30/30 adrenaline bar does not mean always having a 0/30 for the purposes of the damage-boosting traits based off adrenaline level.
Saying that X ability does more damage than Y without a citation doesn’t mean a whole lot, because, for example, the Axe autoattack chain does its damage over several seconds. It has good scaling for an autoattack but it’s not necessarily better than cooldown-based attacks, especially considering it provides no additional utility.
As far as whirlwind attack and bladetrail, I think that whirlwind attack is a DPS loss if rush is on cooldown, because it generally takes you out of attack range unless you are fighting in a special situation. Bladetrail will be on cooldown sometimes, and it is times like this when it may be prudent to weapon swap, get 20 seconds of fury, then swap back after a few seconds.
The point is not that Arcing Slice + offhand Axe is suddenly a secret overpowered strategy. Rather, my point is that there are reasons why these abilities exist and reasons why people may not want to use FGJ! and Signet of Rage. There are choices- some may be suboptimal, but are you sure which ones are? Right now, it seems to me that a lot of people are guessing. Also, let’s not kid ourselves here. Most people’s reflexes and decision making during the game will have a bigger impact on their performance than their selection of weapons, traits, and skills. (I wonder how many proponents of “max dps = berserker’s gear and just dodge stuff, it’s not hard” spend half a boss fight on the floor because they failed to dodge an attack, or got the boss’s attention and couldn’t kite fast enough.)
A lot of people like FGJ!, greatsword, signet of rage, etc, and that’s great. However, it’s pretty silly to insist that this one strategy is the only way to ‘really’ play a warrior, and all other aspects of the class should be balanced around this style. Personally, I think ignoring adrenaline as a mechanic in favor of passive boosts, and assigning multiple skill slots to basically ‘use-on-cooldown’ buffs is a simplified way to play the class. It is easy and it offers good results in theory, but it gives up a lot of flexibility and/or fun.
This is what I mean when I say that some problems with how warriors play are actual game-play issues and some are just subjective opinions that probably don’t need a lot of “fixing.”
There is a reason hundreds of thousands of Warriors do not use AL, and a very few handful do….
Care to provide some data to back this up?
Falcon, I really don’t like getting dragged into personal attacks, and I really think you should look at how you argue a point. It’s really nothing more than sensationalism and exaggeration in lieu of evidence or actual debate.
As far as “this ability is a DPS loss and if you don’t use another ability instead, you are doing it wrong”, I again invite you to provide some evidence rather than conjecture.
Many people already think that the warrior greatsword is one of the best weapons for dps, so if this is actually the case, asking for a greatsword buff would probably also have to include nerfs to other parts of the weapon’s kit.
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Here’s an example of how using offhand axe and Arcing Slice could give lots of fury for minimal investment AND maintain high adrenaline for passive benefits of 12% damage and 9% crit:
0. Hundred Blades, Rush are on cooldown
1. Use Arcing Slice (30 adrenaline) for 15+ seconds of fury and a > 1 .0 scaling weapon attack.
2. Weapon swap to offhand axe for 5 adrenaline
activate Dual Strike for 4-12+ seconds of additional fury and a 1.67 scaling attack and 2-6 hits of adrenaline before any other traits
3. Activate Whirling Axe for a ~0.9/sec scaling AoE attack, 15 base adrenaline per target, and many, many weapon/crit procs
4. Weapon swap to greatsword for 5 adrenaline and use Hundred Blades
This whole series (1-4) should be able to be performed during the cooldown of Hundred Blades and generates 19+ seconds of fury, does more damage per swing than a greatsword auto-attack chain, hits more times for more procs, and re-fills your adrenaline before your next Hundred Blades/whatever you want to do for the next 20 seconds (minimum) before you need to do this again for fury. It only relies on 15 points in Discipline, your weapon skills, and nothing else.
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As far as putting 30 points in Strength or Discipline are concerned, if someone wants to increase their damage, putting points into Tactics or Defense before maxing Arms, Discipline, and then Strength is a strict DPS loss on passive stats. A lot of the allegedly invaluable benefits of FGJ! or major traits that increase damage could be approximated simply by putting more trait points into Arms or Discipline. Especially for a berserker-gear-wearing warrior, maximizing your crit chance and damage should bear great returns.
In summation, your opinion about how to play a warrior based on the forums you read and personal experience does not equate to objective truth. Instead of presenting these opinions as a “comprehensive list of warrior issues,” I think a better title would have been “things I don’t like about the way I play a warrior and wish were different.”
Red Falcon, here is a guy who likes arcing slice:
i like arcing slice…
Most warriors desire the fury buff. Given that you think that all warriors already spend 2 skill slots and 10+ trait points to accomplish a “permanent fury buff,” I think you’d understand this. Arcing Slice is an alternative way to get some fury.
The bottom line of my response, though, is that just because some vocal people on the forums have established a conventional wisdom about some traits/skills does not make it true. It’s still subjective.
I have in fact been reading these forums, as well as unofficial forums, for quite a while. Many so-called theorycrafters even admit that they have no way to be sure about the DPS of their builds because 1) there is no tool to accurately measure this in the game 2) this game has a lower DPS uptime than many other tank-centered games, resulting in a lot of skew in actual DPS.
Just because one person, or a tiny subset of the GW2 playing community, has established a conventional wisdom about warriors does not mean it is a majority opinion or objectively true. Extrapolating general sentiment from a few vocal forum posters is highly fallacious at best, because 1) forum posters may not be a representative sample of all GW2 players 2) players may be wrong 3) opinion can be tainted by listening to so-called experts who blow a lot of hot air and convince other people.
As an aside, people may want to look up a dictionary definition of “conventional wisdom.” It’s not flattering.
I think I got them all:
Some of these seem like legitimate concerns, but many of them are subjective based on the OP’s opinions.
Eviscerate, Earthshaker (et al.)
Issues with pathing, gap closing, targeting etc. may be real problems and could probably do with some examination. This is probably more apparent in PvP and WvW than PvE.
Arcing Slice
It is subjective as to whether a fury buff, which is highly desirable by most players, is useless. Warriors do not have permanent fury inherently. Some players may like the elegance of gaining fury from their weapon skills instead of stacking classes or dedicating, for example, a utility skill + an elite skill + buff duration/recharge reduction traits in order to attain ‘permanent fury.’ Regardless, it is a substitute for “For Great Justice!” and Signet of Rage. I don’t consider it worthless.
Endure Pain.
I think a tooltip fix would be sufficient.
Brawn.
This trait line bonus does seem very weak, although the other half of Discipline is very strong for a lot of builds, and this still does something. Perhaps the tooltip could show fractional gains instead of only changing every 10 points.
Dolyak Signet.
I an envious of Guardians and their signet, but there’s probably a legitimate reason for the disparity. Maybe they could change the tooltip to state that it “increases toughness.”
Tier 3 trait issues.
This is subjective. I really like a lot of the 30 point traits because they open up build diversity like a physical utility build with 30 in Strength or using Furious with multi-hit attacks (even Burst skills) to rapidly build adrenaline. I think a lot of the dislike for these traits stems from a general abandonment of the Burst system and thinking of adrenaline as just a passive damage bonus from traits and not a resource to be spent. Not all warrior players think like this.
Axe
These are subjective balance issues and I already gave my opinion about fury under Arcing Slice.
Rampage
I think this is subjective again. It gives long-lasting stability and a lot of finishers and CC on relatively short cooldowns. Something that I think would be fun but maybe not balanced appropriately would be tagging all of the Rampage skills with the ‘physical’ keyword, allowing them to benefit from Physical Training.
Yes, Last Stand triggers Balanced Stance, which is a stun break, so (for example) if you equip that trait and get charged/knocked down, you will remain standing and gain stability instead.
Last Stand has a pretty lengthy cooldown, though- around 90 seconds. I like the trait in theory, but in practice I usually don’t notice it triggering due to the fact that it gives no visual feedback other than the stability boon, which I may or may not notice in a fight. This makes it difficult for me to judge whether or not the trait is refreshed or still cooling down.