Guild Wars 2

I’m focusing on gaining high crit chance, high hard CC, high soft CC, and a moderate amount of boon removal.

No Escape

Decay is also annoying because it’s like the game expects me to dedicate a lot of time to it, but one of the defining principals is that you can come and go as you please.

Maybe once PoF comes out I’ll want to dedicate myself to the PvE side of the game. To avoid decay however I’ll still have to come back to maintain my rank. I especially want to avoid the chaos that all the new elite specs will introduce and would rather wait for things to settle. The min number of matches to show up on the leaderboard seems like enough, why have 2 things to avoid the old problems (like when I reached #3-4 with hardly any games played)?

After fighting from Gold 1 to Platinum 1 I am noticing several things:

1. Queue times are much longer.

2. The matches are even more one sided.

3. Both sides still make very obvious mistakes.

4. Cheesy but often easily countered builds like Burn Guard are still used.

I am far from being an amazing player that never makes mistakes – but some of the errors in judgement I’m seeing is just astounding. I haven’t lost yet in Plat, but man have some teammates really gone out of their way to lose. Going far at the start without telling anyone, capping home then going far while mid needs help, not stomping or reviving. In my opinion, you should almost always go mid after capping home unless you see that somebody died before you got there. If the other team’s home player goes mid, your team is down one and will probably lose. That decap at far isn’t worth that much if you can’t defend it; meanwhile defending mid once its won is not that hard.

Anyways, it’s only a matter of time till I start to be on the victim side of things. The weird thing is I think I’d be cool with dropping back down so that I don’t have to wait 5 mins for a match. I’m playing for the backpiece as it is anyways. It’s just disappointing that the matches aren’t as competitive as I expected them to be.

Signet of Might Makes Right

I’m sure by now all of us have made our own version of this build, but I’m posting what I use here for anyone not as familiar with Warrior and is looking for a solid setup. You can opt out of using Brave Stride if you take Bull’s Charge instead of the Signet, but there’s so many builds out there dependent on blocks that I feel weaker without the ability to Shield Bash through it.

LUST.7241:

Exciton.8942:

Totally wrong.

The PvP is too complicated and too difficult for most and thus fails to attract a larger audience.

I know this thread is pretty dated…It’s funny some people here think spamming skills against top players would work out for them.

Most players will never face top level players. Balancing around the top .1% of players is ridiculous. The problem is that spam can still get you really far in this game. I played corruption Necro for achievements recently and was finding myself being really effective for hardly knowing the class. I just placed circles on the circle and applied a ton of condis. If there were 2 of us and they didn’t have a chance. It requires too much coordination to deal with. If you get focused you can drop really quick but it was still far too rewarding for how long it had been since I’d played my Necro (I got 2 birthday gifts).

Due to how raids are designed I feel like it’s way better to have a role and it be well defined is probably better than being left out entirely. They designed it around requiring certain roles to be filled and we give condi and grant might. What I’m worried about is how any of the new elite specs on other classes fill that role. That being said, if they do it equally well that’s great, more class variety. If they do it better though we’re in trouble.

I think it was a smart decision to change how berserker Bursts work because if they had stayed as is Spellbreaker would have looked worthless by comparison. Now they just need to go back and do that for all of the other Gen 1 Specs.

Hopefully the new content will be boon heavy so SB has a place in groups. I’m OK with it being PvP focused but kitten I want to use daggers everywhere.

I’ve changed my position on this.

Rather than making it baseline, it would probably make more sense to just remove the trait entirely, then adjust weapon CDs to compensate. Yes, we will lose out on the ease of comboing skills together – but I’m tired of the whole class being balanced around this single perk. Shorter weapon CDs can still be useful and will buff us as a whole. The traitline will still be great for the speed boost, while buffing builds that focus more on in combat mobility by using Bull’s Charge and weapons like sword, hammer, and greatsword.

Giving us the trait baseline will just lead to every other class saying “well I want x baseline then.” Mes getting that GM baseline was mostly because their class mechanic wasn’t useble without clones when you didn’t have it equipped. Let’s face it, all it did in the end was let them blow their Distortion on a 1 second duration shatter. While potentially useful – Chrono made this pointless because they’re constantly spamming clones anyways.

Warriors getting Fast hands baseline would just give us an ability no other class in the game has. Slightly decreasing CDs would just be to bring them in line with other classes that don’t have Fast hands. The decrease would probably be stupid low in some cases, but it’s still a universal buff that doesn’t screw us down the road when it comes to design.

Crinn.7864:

Your capture mechanic would just make outnumbering fights way stronger than outnumbering fights already is.

It’s always going to be strong, the balance isn’t fun because of how unskilled it is, but its balanced enough that I can’t think of any build that can easily win an outnumbered fight without the enemies being terrible.

This mechanic would mean that the first side to secure a kill can actually start taking the mid point instead of people constantly trying to trickle in to deny the cap for as long as possible.

On side points it’s really silly that one Druid can just hold out for ages for backup while 2 from the opposing side just wail on them. Those builds will still be good with this mechanic and can still hold for a while because the cap wouldn’t be as fast – but it wouldn’t be for the length it does now.

Do you think the current design of conquest is fine as is?

Pip Squeak.3418:

BurrTheKing.8571:

Did you try Hammer with Arms line? The DPS is insane with Unsuspecting Foe and Burst Precision. It also works with Daggers as well because of the 3 -> 4 combo. Once their stability and stunbreaks are gone you just chain together and get nothing but crits.

I didn’t try that. Sounds crazy though. You think D/D Hammer will be viable? I really hope so, I love the idea of that weapon combo.

It was really strong 1v1 but with the top line you could totally have a mass boon stripping machine in theory. Or you take all of the movement denying traits with Revenge Counter and just trap everyone around you for your AoE heavy teammates to destroy. I don’t even try No Escape and I bet that will make landing Hammer combos way easier. I used to run Leg Specialist all the time in the old trait system for that reason. This has no ICD so you could in theory go Earthshaker -> Full Counter -> Earthshaker and keep them totally locked in place. Immob might actually be better than hard CCs these days.

witcher.3197:

BurrTheKing.8571:

Capture Points Design

• Mid points should all be around Graveyard size. Side points shouldn’t be Graveyard big, but larger than they are currently. This will make putting AoE’s on point less powerful because you can actually avoid them.

That’s way oversized, but something like Capricorn middle would be nice.

• The changes above would allow for the return of more tanky ammys because one player could no longer perma deny the capture from 2 other players.

Quite the opposite, actually. With more room to kite and stand out of AoE it’d become much much easier to survive on point.

Doesn’t matter if they survive more, if you have 2 players you will end up taking the point anyways because you outnumber them. Then the second player can leave and you just have the other fight the tank for as long as they’re willing to stay there wasting their time.

The larger point size only works if the change in capture mechanics go along with it. The point is to encourage moving around and matching the number on point and fighting instead of intentionally avoiding them and going for easy decaps. I borrowed the idea from Battlefield.

Pip Squeak.3418:

BurrTheKing.8571:

Yah, the mobility of Daggers and Hammer with Featherfoot makes it hard for anyone to escape – especially when combined with No Escape and/or Slow Counter. It’s actually exciting how many build options there are compared to what we have now.

It makes me giddy just thinking about it. Stripping someone’s stability and then CC spamming them to the point that their accounts are deleted and their homes repossessed. I just can’t wait!

Did you try Hammer with Arms line? The DPS is insane with Unsuspecting Foe and Burst Precision. It also works with Daggers as well because of the 3 -> 4 combo. Once their stability and stunbreaks are gone you just chain together and get nothing but crits.

Capture Points Design

• Mid points should all be around Graveyard size. Side points shouldn’t be Graveyard big, but larger than they are currently. This will make putting AoE’s on point less powerful because you can actually avoid them.

• Need more interesting terrain than just “flat circle.” Having more destructible

• The side with the most players starts to capture the point. If there are 3 Red and 2 Blue, Red will slowly start to take the point. This will mostly benefit side point battles. It will also make the initial battle for mid more important because choosing to send some1 at far will mean the other team will have a numbers advantage.

• Decapping a undefended point is far too fast, it basically forces sitting on your home to make sure a thief doesn’t come along and instantly set it to neutral. This just encourages avoiding fighting and going for easy point flips all game.

Map Mechanics

• They have gone from being too important to almost never used. I don’t think I’ve seen a Lord kill this season.

• They should give a significant but not game defining benefit. Perhaps move them closer than they currently are; right now you end up having to go out of your way to gain access. I like the idea behind the Eternal Coliseum buffs, though the shield seems weaker than the sword. They’re useful to go for but you’re not going to send the entire team to get them.

Build Craft

• The changes above would allow for the return of more tanky ammys because one player could no longer perma deny the capture from 2 other players.

• More skill splitting. Instead of destroying a skill/trait because it’s too strong in another mode, just change it in that mode. The playerbase is not so stupid that a slight change is going to confuse them. This will allow for indirect nerfs as well by making another skill to be buffed to counter w/e is strong atm. If the counter is specific to one thing, it’s not direct power creep. When use of one strong build declines due to a counter becoming popular, there’s a chance for that build to see use again someday instead of just being nerfed into uselessness.

• #Buildtemplates

Mikeskies.1536:

BurrTheKing.8571:

YuiRS.8129:

I just don’t see how Spellbreaker alters Warrior’s playstyle at all. You don’t even dispel boons that well tbh, so it’s not like you become a hard counter to certain Ele builds or something. You just do the same thing as ever, slot the same utilities as ever (because SB utilities are pretty bad) and just melee stuff, except now you have a pretty cool defense/CC skill. The optimal way to play the spec in PvP is very similar to the age old core power Warrior. I think this is the biggest problem. The spec just isn’t different or flavorful enough.

And yeah, the spec is basically worthless in PvE, which is a real shame, since it’s the most supported game mode.

The spec is only good in zerg v zerg PvE. You suicide into the enemy zerg to put the Elite up which becomes invisible thanks to effect culling, the enemies lose Stability and your buddies can CC them to death. Wow, what a great role to have.

I disagree on the utilities thing. If you run Revenge Counter you could run Featherfoot Grace instead of Berserker’s Stance. I would also want Break Enchantments in WvW because of the synergy with Enchantment Collapse. Imminent Threat would be better if it actually had an ammo count to actually allow you to force people to focus you reliably, thus insuring your Counter gets triggered. It seems like unlike some of the other specs, they actually tried to show some restraint.

I will agree that it’s not as dramatic a change as Berserker was – that being said I really enjoyed playing shutdown Mes from GW1 and this is very similar in concept. It’s basically Shutdown Mes with Lockdown Hammer Warrior if you go Dagger and Hammer.

Featherfoot Grace is a great utility, either to chase or two escape a losing fight.

Yah, the mobility of Daggers and Hammer with Featherfoot makes it hard for anyone to escape – especially when combined with No Escape and/or Slow Counter. It’s actually exciting how many build options there are compared to what we have now.

YuiRS.8129:

I just don’t see how Spellbreaker alters Warrior’s playstyle at all. You don’t even dispel boons that well tbh, so it’s not like you become a hard counter to certain Ele builds or something. You just do the same thing as ever, slot the same utilities as ever (because SB utilities are pretty bad) and just melee stuff, except now you have a pretty cool defense/CC skill. The optimal way to play the spec in PvP is very similar to the age old core power Warrior. I think this is the biggest problem. The spec just isn’t different or flavorful enough.

And yeah, the spec is basically worthless in PvE, which is a real shame, since it’s the most supported game mode.

The spec is only good in zerg v zerg PvE. You suicide into the enemy zerg to put the Elite up which becomes invisible thanks to effect culling, the enemies lose Stability and your buddies can CC them to death. Wow, what a great role to have.

I disagree on the utilities thing. If you run Revenge Counter you could run Featherfoot Grace instead of Berserker’s Stance. I would also want Break Enchantments in WvW because of the synergy with Enchantment Collapse. Imminent Threat would be better if it actually had an ammo count to actually allow you to force people to focus you reliably, thus insuring your Counter gets triggered. It seems like unlike some of the other specs, they actually tried to show some restraint.

I will agree that it’s not as dramatic a change as Berserker was – that being said I really enjoyed playing shutdown Mes from GW1 and this is very similar in concept. It’s basically Shutdown Mes with Lockdown Hammer Warrior if you go Dagger and Hammer.

Jzaku.9765:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/I-m-Slowly-becoming-OK-with-Berserker/first

You made basically exactly the same thread 2 years ago OP. At launch too, before even the Adrenal Health buff when Warrior was lowest tier.

How do you even remember that?

Also, the spec worked out for us in the end didn’t it? It’ll still probably be the PvE meta pick.

I’m going to start by saying that I am not very good on the PvE side of buildcraft, which is why I came here. When it comes to Daggers on Spellbreaker, the common consensus is that the damage on them is too low to be useful in PvE. Despite that, I’m wondering if those people are taking the combination of several other factors into account when saying that. There are a few things that stand out to me:

Superior Runes of the Spellbreaker: These runes will pretty much mean a almost perma 7% damage increase against most enemies.

Pure Strike: This gives a 14% increase in damage vs boonless foes.

The Dagger AA: Does 15% extra critical damage.

There’s also Dual Wielding (although that doesn’t stack with quickness and didn’t work with daggers in the preview but that’s probably an oversight) and Rending Strikes might help with DPS as well.

I know the 2 target limit is also a downside to Daggers in PvE as well. Maybe the damage is bad no matter what but I didn’t want to count them out right away without at least trying to make them work.

Ahlen.7591:

Spellbreaker will be terrible in PVE as it stands, and a meme-zerg spec for WvW where you’re wanted only for suiciding rushing in with elite during clash.

Daggers are definitely NOT worth using at the moment, their damage is low, the gap closer is tiny, and they just don’t offer much over other weapons.

The damage as decent so long as you have high crit chance. The combination of 3-4 can literally insta kill squishies if you get the stun.

Im not willing to rule it out of PvE until I see the content itself. There could be a lot of boons that need removing. Also, there’s a lot of synergy with Arms if they make Dual Wielding actually work with Daggers (which assume they will) and Rending Strikes with Pure Strike. Maybe not for raids and the like but with the Spellbreaker runes even if they don’t have a lot of boons that’s a perma 7% more damage so for open world you’ll at least be able to make it work. You’ll basically be able to upkeep perma 25 Might and Vuln on your own with Strength-Arms-Spellbreaker. Hell, you might not even need Strength to maintain the might with Magebane. The biggest problem of course is the 2 target limit on dagger.

But with 100% crit chance your dagger attacks would be doing like 36% extra crit dmg vs boonless foes when you combine Pure Strike and Runes of the Spellbreaker with the inherent extra damage dagger autos do on crit. Idk what that makes the dagger autos damage come out to but maybe there’s something there.

EDIT: It’s 7% more damage in general vs boonless foes on the runes, not critical damage.

I’m normally one to complain about things in this game, especially when it comes to Warrior, but it seems to me that Spellbreaker is exactly what I wanted. What are some of our classes least favorite things to deal with? I would say that they are: boon/block spam, stealth spam/heavy kiting, and condi spam. Spellbreaker gives us the tools to deal with every single one of these annoyances.

Your Grandmaster trait shapes the focus of your build heavily. In WvW we will probably be highly valued for our boon strip, and it’ll still be useful in PvP vs some teams as well. Revenge Counter will make condis way less deadly, and may even allow us to not take Berserker’s Stance if you use the new heal and Featherfoot Grace. If you see the enemy team has multiple thieves or mesmers, you can toss on Magebane Tether and go Strength with Might Makes Right and gain sustain and damage. I need to test it but I think there’s also the amusing possibility of using Kill Shot and having it pull them instantly.

There’s no trait I look at and go “that’s garbage.” No Escape and Slow Counter aren’t super exciting, but they’re still really good for destroying kiting builds. Reused animations are a bit disappointing, but hopefully that can change before the release. Dagger feels really good with the exception of Dagger 2. The combo of Dagger 3 and 4 feels great to land and Dagger 5 deals decent damage and can be useful for closing the gap vs Deadeyes and other ranged projectile users.

Spellbreaker is going to be the answer to whatever power creep gets introduced. Sure, we can’t counter everything at once, but that would be imbalanced if we could. I for one look forward to locking down someone all game and making them worthless. I’ll probably even start to WvW again because seeing the massive chain reactions sounds great.

I agree with many of your arguments, that being said…

While I dislike passives, I feel it’s fine to have some so long as their effects are minimal. Atm Defy Pain only lasts 2 or 2.5 seconds if traited. That’s not very long and is basically there purely to give you a chance to react to a large spike. Last Stand should probably not give you a full version of Balanced Stance, but just a pulse of it on a shorter icd. It also needs an indicator when active, like the new Brave Stride does now. Once you learn what that icon means, you know not to open the fight with a CC for 4 seconds. Classes like War that ave very obvious animations would be super weak without these mechanics. That being said, what I’d rather have is a stance system like GW1 where you can only have one at a time. Bring back the old Berserker’s Stance where it’s unstrippable but you can’t combo it with Endure Pain (which should just become a big boost in Toughness and not reduce damage to 0) and it doesn’t last as long but has a shorter CD. It would make you either have to run fewer stances or dance between them as needed – but I digress.

Some passives are really flavorful and fun, like Bunker Down on Engi. So long as the passives are predictable and have only a minor impact it’s not so bad. It’s when you’re mid fight and someone’s automatic anti-CC kicks in and you had no way of knowing that things start becoming frustrating.

Another major problem with Conquest is how kitten small the points are. AoE will always be strong no matter what you do when the point is like 15 ft in diameter. It’s even worse with the super fast decap because trying to leave briefly to avoid the AoE means giving up part of the cap. It’s not actually that hard to beat DH’s trap when you can just not stand in it; most of the time however you have no choice.

We also need more skills like A.E.D that cleanses specific conditions so that you don’t get randomly screwed because the first few condis in the stack are cripple or a single stack of bleed or poison while in the middle of the pile there’s 10 stacks of burning. This would make the game much easier to balance as well seeing as you could make classes weak to specific kinds of condis. You can try and balance the amount a individual class can apply but once you get multiple condi users it stops mattering.

I don’t think we need a block that uses endurance, it doesn’t thematically make sense for many classes and adding in an ability for only PvP would be odd. We just have to make using the blocks and the like that we currently have more balanced. Another aside – you should not be able to stomp while invulnerable. Stability can be stripped or the team can focus a bunch of CC to remove it, but for all but 3 classes there’s nothing you can do when someone goes invulnerable. It totally removes any sort of counterplay unless you stealth them, which only a few classes can even do.

While the length of fights right now feel alright, the pace of them is still far too hectic. If you want people to watch this game’s PvP visibility is important. Larger points will make AoE’s less cluttered, most other animations are really well done and distinctive. There’s a lot of reuse in PoF but those moves still preform a similar purpose and are on a class that didn’t have that animation before so that’s acceptable. At launch, you generally didn’t just toss out all your skills constantly because the CDs were generally longer. I too would like to see more lengthy cast times so everyone has to use them strategically. I also find that I feel way more powerful casting a 1.5 second + ability than just throwing out .5 seconds or less actions. You could even up the damage to compensate. Right now many skills just feel weak and are there just to whittle your target down. There are still plenty of impactful skills, but it tends to just be the 5 ability. I’m biased but I feel that Warrior has always done a good job of making every attack feel important – it’s why I put up with the old versions of EP and LS. Obviously not every class needs that level of animation, but taking just a few aspects of it would help with the flow and feel of combat. Make it feel punishing to be hit and rewarding to land hits.

I feel that the real problem with conditions is when you start combining multiple classes running builds focused on them. It’s not hard to deal with a Burn Guard or a Confusion/Torment Mesmer 1v1 – when you face one of those in addition to something like Necro that has a ton of cover condis in addition to light cc’s like cripple that might be thrown out is when the game feels like a spamfest.

I’ll say it again, we need more ways to cleanse SPECIFIC condis. For example, Warrior can cleanse Immobilize by using a movement skill and A.E.D removes several damage based conditions. When using those mechanics, you know EXACTLY which condis are going to be removed. This also has a nice side benefit of being able to design classes to be strong and weak to certain conditions. For example, Warrior can focus on removing movement impairing condis while being weaker to certain damage based ones. Meanwhile, Necro can focus on transferring and consuming damaging condis while being susceptible to movement based ones.

It is much less frustrating to lose to something you’re SUPPOSED to be weak to, instead of going “well kitten too bad my cleanse removed cripple, blind, and 2 stacks of bleeding instead of the 10 stacks of burning.” All of these blanket cleanses aren’t technically random because we know how they work, but at the same time you have basically no control of what you remove, you can either reach the condi you want gone, or you can’t. It doesn’t feel good even if it’s no OP.

Doing the above would also allow the devs to tweak the amount of Resistance Spellbreaker is getting, because I can already see the amount of QQ that’s going to cause, despite the fact that as a whole War’s condi cleanse up until now hasn’t been great. Just like how those that use condi in here say “just cleanse” I’m going to be forced to say “just corrupt/steal/remove” when it comes to Resistance.

One important thing to consider is the ease of application. Let’s pick your standard corruption Necro as an example. Your marks are unblockable, and because chances are you’re not fighting on point you are unlikely to get blinded in the process. You have Plague Sending, which will just automatically transfer condis on your next critical. There’s almost no way to play around this in a team fight. It’s hard to avoid putting any condis on the necro once they pop Shroud and enter the point fight.

Compare that to the Might Makes Right Strength-Defense-Discipline Wars that have been becoming more popular. While it is possible to be effective because you can dodge constantly, and those dodges deal good damage and are unblockable as well. However, blind is everywhere, so you run Berserker’s Stance for the Resistance. But wait, Necros can just constantly corrupt that boon during the team fight, making it rather ineffective (seems like Spellbreaker might help with this because of Revenge Counter) against a Necro that focuses the War. Let’s not also forget Thieves stealing boons as well. When the Warrior hits, it does great damage, but they have to fight for that damage. By comparison, the Necro has to work much less for that damage so long as they are avoiding being focused. Just place your Marks on point that are basically the same size as most points. Combine this with a Trap DH and you end up being better off just rotating to another point because the coordination required to counter isn’t often found in your average game.

Note, I’m saying that the design of Conquest is mostly to blame here, but even if that was changed, applying condi tends to be much easier than power based damage. Power attacks tend to have much more obvious animations. As much as I hate DH the animations on the bow are very obvious – it’s the low cast traps that are the main problem. Avoiding Marks basically comes down to having enough dodges and evades because blocking is worthless. Add a cap point into the mix and it’s basically free damage.

Either condi needs to remain easy to apply but deal lower damage, or be more difficult to apply and deal high damage.

Alternatively you could give traps an actual meaningful cast time. It’s still stupidly easy to just spam them on point before a fight but those can be mitigated. It’s the mid fight traps that offer almost 0 counterplay outside of “don’t be anywhere near them” that are annoying. There’s also 0 flavor to them, they seem less like traps and more like your basic AoEs that happen to sometimes be used before combat.

I’d be cool with undoing some of the nerfs if there was like a second and a half cast.

Syktek.7912:

BurrTheKing.8571:

Ithilwen.1529:

Syktek.7912:

Funny, I’ve been having a darn good time.

Like I said, welcome back to S1. Every one of those wins are on guardian and I suspect with a duo partner.

This kind of disparity is exactly what made S1 so awful.

Hearing a DH brag about doing well is more than just a little annoying. Congrats you can place traps on a point and pull people into them. I mean, maybe they aren’t running that build but that seems unlikely.

I play an off meta burn guardian. And I duo with another person running the same build.

Traps are dumb.

I mean, even while it’s true Burn Guard has greater weaknesses than trap spam, it’s pretty easy to destroy with because of how fast the damage ramp up is. Of course this is from a Warrior so you can understand my annoyance. Sure core War with Might Makes Right as a focus is decent, but man do you have to fight for your kills compared to a lot of other classes. Also, while your sustain is good it requires making sure you miss as few of your attacks as possible.

Then you swap and try out another build and you find yourself going “wow, I have to work so much less for everything.” Of course if you kill anyone as War you get told how easy your class is.

I want to point out that it’s very possible that high level PvE content in PoF might have enemies that attack more often and spam boons Spellbreaker might be more effective. Also, something I would like to see tried would be Arms-Strength/Discipline-Spellbreaker. There’s a ton of synergy traits wise there. The Runes of the Spellbreaker gives 7% more dmg vs boonless foes so combine that with pure strike and that’s 21% more critical damage. The dagger autos first 2 attacks also do 15% more critical damage. With Wounding Precision and and Rending Strikes you should be applying a ton of vuln and if they fix Dual Wielding to affect daggers and you might have something there. The increased condi dmg aspect is semi wasted but you’ll be throwing out a lot of bleeds so it’ll still be some extra damage. Combine that with Berserker’s Power, which you can keep up by going Dagger Burst, Counter, Burst on either weapon set (probably with GS). Both Daggers and GS have good personal Might generation as well, especially with Magebane Tether. Seems potentially decent for at least open world stuff.

Spellbreaker was clearly designed to help mitigate all the broken things in the game. You pick something you want to counter such as boon spam, condi spam, or stealth and focusing making your target useless.

Combine Revenge Counter and Featherfoot Grace to make condi spammers cry.

Combine Sight Beyond Sight and Magebane Tether (and even Imminent Threat) to make thieves and mesmers cry.

Combine the entire top line of traits with Break Enchantments and Sigils of Annulment and Absorption to make anything boon based cry.

Sure, you can spread yourself out and try to do a little of everything, but that’s not what Robert seems to want. You pick your focus, which I think will probably end up being mostly anti condi in PvP, anti boon in WvW, and anti stealth in duels and solo WvW roaming, and just destroy whatever you hate most. You won’t be an allrounder like some other specs, but you can be a focused slayer. That’s way healthier for the game than having the Spec be another flat upgrade like berserker.

Ithilwen.1529:

Syktek.7912:

Funny, I’ve been having a darn good time.

Like I said, welcome back to S1. Every one of those wins are on guardian and I suspect with a duo partner.

This kind of disparity is exactly what made S1 so awful.

Hearing a DH brag about doing well is more than just a little annoying. Congrats you can place traps on a point and pull people into them. I mean, maybe they aren’t running that build but that seems unlikely.

Warrior would need Burn as well because otherwise the whole theme behind Berserker is worthless…that being said I agree with the concept. Right now many classes have access to tons of different conditions. They may not all be able to stack them in high numbers, but the extra conditions make cleansing them much more difficult. I think we’ve all had a situation where we have 14 torment and 4 other conditions but the game cleanses the blind, cripple, and a stack of 2 poison.

I would suggest breaking conditions down into Damage and Inhibitor categories. Damage would be your burning, bleed, poison, torment and everything else would be Inhibitors. You could do a lot of fun things with cleansing that way by having some cleanses only work on one category.

This would also allow them to go back on the old design principal that some classes are inherently weak to certain things. You can have Warrior frequently cleanse inhibitors while having relatively few damage cleanses while Ele can cleanse damage for days but be very weak to inhibitors for example. It would be a way more interesting system and allows for the devs to reign in condis in PvP/WvW while still keeping them effective in PvE.

They also need to look at the damage vs duration aspect of damaging condis. I understand Burn being high in damage but it still lasts ages when it has no reason to. It should be for a burst of damage and then quickly fade. Meanwhile, poison and bleed should do much lower damage but linger. Again, you can balance this by having cleanse skills prioritize certain damage condis.

If you’re facing a boon heavy team it’s very effective. As I said above, so long as you use Sigils of Absorption and Annulment you’re going to be a boon stripping machine, making Loss Aversion and Pure Strike all the more deadly.

Have you tried using Hammer with the Anti-enchantment setup? With Sigil of Absorption if you land Your F1 on both enemies Break Enchantment means 4 condis lost between them if you interrupt, and 4 more if you had just swapped with Sigil of Annulment. All those removals do damage as well.

Oh, and the fact that using Full Counter in a team fight just causes mass boonstrip in general as well.

This is an elite spec that allows you to focus on countering one type of build very effectively. I’ve tried to spread myself out but found that I ended up being a master-of-none. While at first I thought some of the Meditations were a bit weak, that may have intentional so that you have to combine them with traits to be effective. Here are some of the strongest combinations I have found:

Anti-Condi: Revenger Counter + Featherfoot Grace + Berserker’s Stance + Cleansing Ire + Healing Signet + Brawler’s Recovery

Anti-Enchantments: Entire top line of traits + Sigil of Absorption + Sigil of Annulment + Break Enchantments

Anti-Kiting: No Escape + Slow Counter + Magebane Tether + Sight Beyond Sight (seeing as most builds this is good against are stealth based)

Sustain Focused: Might Makes Right +Guard Counter + Sun and Moon Style with D/D or Shield Master with a Shield + Magebane Tether + Restorative Strength + Forceful Greatsword + Defense in general.

Damage Focused: Assassin stats + Top Line of Arms + Pure Strike + Most of the things in Anti-Enchantments

The only two roles that can overlap somewhat is Damage and Anti-Enchantment. Everything else generally requires you totally focusing on that one role. If this was the case game-wide the balance would be so much healthier because there will always be something you’re weak to. Going for high damage generally makes you weaker to condis, focusing on anti-enchantment isn’t useful against other low boon builds, anti-condi is useless against power, and anti-kiting is pointless against people getting in your face.

Anyone saying Spellbreaker is weak is wrong in my opinion, it’s just that it’s balanced in a game with a ton of imbalanced builds.

The game is not balanced around 1v1 combat. You would have to ban many elites from the game and some classes have none that are balanced for 1v1s. Have you been to a duel server? It’s almost always at least half thieves and mesmers because you can build to stall for time and just slowly pick apart your target. Stealth is just easy to abuse if you’re not built to counter it.

Dealing with that can turn you into a salty mofo real easily – believe me I know. Setting up a bunch of limitations will just bog down the mode to the point where hardly anyone will play. Many seem to duel purely just to be a pain and if you limit it they’ll just ignore the official mode and go back to custom servers.

I’d be for a 2v2 or 3v3 arena mode however. That being said the success of that would ride very heavily on map design.

Hammerguard.9834:

All i want to say is, yes, scourge does good damage but they also have the least mobility necros have ever had and their damage is, again, centered around either themselves or their sand shades. I’ve never seen so many people able to kite away from necro so easily, and pretty much every class can.

As for spellbreaker, they are one of the most broken classes and definitely need a resistance nerf. I’ve had trouble killing good spellbreakers even with god boon corrupt scourge and there’s simply no way any other condi class is going to be able to kill them. Period.

Oh no, how dare one class in the game has the ability to withstand and kill the new specs that are outputting insane amounts of condition damage at the cost of being good against non-condi specs. The Spellbreaker is a spec where you choose one thing to counter really well, or you spread yourself thin and are mediocre against everything – rather than being a master-of-all many HoT specs are.

Spellbreaker seems to be the most balanced Elite Spec they’ve made thus far. That’s coming from a War main that felt that it was going to be a totally weak spec. If every class was designed around just being good at one thing like this Spec is the game would be in such a better place.

I used to try and be more polite but I’m just getting so fed up with this mentality of the class you play being like a team you’re on. I may main Warrior but I want the class to be balanced, it’s no fun just destroying everything like back in Cele Shout Bow days. If they designed every class like they have Warrior, the game would be so much healthier. I love my Engi but Holosmith just feels too faceroll with how much damage you put out.

Yogmondminer.5173:

Oh great the same old story of “Necro OP”. Is that seriously happening again because im kindof tired of having my favourite class nerfed in every way it can be.

And we’re kind of tired of Scourge littering the cap point with AoE’s that apply a ton of conditions instantly.

Hot Boy.7138:

Just wanted to put in my two cents. Playing warrior seems like playing on easy mode of pvp. They get an active endure pain that I think is fine. But then they get a passive endure pain that automatically activates when they get hit too hard. Then to top it off, they get another trait that passively negates a killing blow and heals them instead. Those passives gotta go. It’s easy mode and it’s lame AF.

Why does Warrior always get crap for having instant activate passive sustain when half of the classes in the game have them as well. It’s especially laughable since while even traited the Defy Pain only lasts 2 and a half seconds. Meanwhile Ranger has a trait that does the same thing but with a longer CD but lasts longer. Complaining about EP and DP is even more confusing when we are currently in a mostly condi meta and most of the elite specs are condi which those traits can do nothing against. Many classes class have some sort of “save your life at x%,” which I’m in favor of removing but the last 4 or so years it’s almost always Warrior being complained about. It’s even more confusing because there’s a ton of counterplay to it. You know its coming at 50%, so get them there then stop your combo for 2 seconds or just play condi and strip the Resistance from Berserker Stance. Warriors don’t spam nearly as many boons as other classes.

ANet finally added a trait in Might Makes right which might allow players to go Strength – Discipline/Defense – Spellbreaker/Berserker instead of just always being Defense and Discipline and now people instantly want it nerfed. It seems like people on these forums just want Warrior to go back to launch where they were never played. I’d be cool if Warriors got nerfed…but only if everything else in the game gets nerfed too.

Hell, Spellbreaker seems like the only Elite Spec coming out that isn’t blatantly weak or overtuned. You can choose to counter one type of build and be very good at it at the cost of being effective against other builds. Meanwhile we have Scourge and Holosmith going around on generalist builds that are strong against most anything.

Before anyone says anything yes I am a Warrior main, but I play other classes as well and just want every class to have a handful of viable builds that are roughly the same power. It feels like ANet knew several elite specs were too strong and designed Spellbreaker to be the spec to counter them if built for it and people are already trying to kill it.

Chaith.8256:

Dragonhunter beats the crap out of most PoF specs in conquest, it wrecks Scourge, Holosmith, all the weaker specs as well. Only thing I’m not sure about is the viability when beating on Spellbreakers

You can toss on Signet of Might and basically force them to use all of their CDs and pray you burst them down before they pop their invuln and start over. That being said with the Counter being unblockable and the Dagger burst in addition to the trait Magebane Tether being able to drag them out of their traps it’s a solid counter.

That being said you have to dedicate your entire build to do it, which would be great but only if EVERY class had to do that. I’m so tired of generalist master-of-all builds.

All Matters Fecal.9560:

D/D Spellbreaker counters holosmith pretty well.

Spellbreaker kind of has the potential to counter anything it wants…but then ends up being less useful against anything else. Which honestly is how it should be, except that only Warrior seems to get this kind of design philosophy – the majority of other classes either get weak stuff or easy to use generalist traits and weapons.

WUROCKET.5182:

I think Bulls Charge is far and away the best choice for that 3rd utility, it turns your ability to stick to someone from good to god tier. And bulls charge -> arcing slice is a ridiculously strong executioner when you have might stacks built up (and you will)

I do love Bull’s Charge, especially now that it works correctly.

GW2’s PvP population hasn’t been so great due to various reasons: balance, matchmaking, and the main game mode itself – conquest. I want to start by saying that if you’ve been on these forums for a while you’ve probably seen these suggestions by me a couple times…but it’s not like any of them have been implemented so I see no harm is bringing them up again.

Changing the Decap Mechanics

This is an idea I’ve borrowed from the Battlefield series. One of the most popular modes in those games is also conquest, but it has very different mechanics. The major difference is that a single player cannot totally deny the capture if the other team has more players on it. Whichever side has more on point will start to decap – at a reduced rate.

So as an example say red sends two players to the enemy point while one tanky blue player is defending. The blue will be able to delay the capture, but eventually red will take it. In terms of how slowly it decaps, I do think it should be MUCH slower than normal so that we don’t make tank builds totally worthless. It should allow enough time for backup to arrive while still being worthwhile to send those two red players.

This change, combined with the next couple of suggestions, would make certain builds much less frustrating. In addition, it would make it possible to bring back some of the more sustain focused stat sets since sitting on your own home point will no longer have the potential of locking down multiple enemy players for a long period of time.

Capture Points are BORING

Another major problem conquest has is just how repetitive fights can feel. With only a couple of exceptions, every capture point is just flat ground with a small circle. This will clearly encourage certain builds focused on AoE since there’s not much to be done to avoid them. It also has the nasty side effect of making team fights this big colorful mess that harms both playability and watchability. Even knowing how the game mode works it can be hard to follow what’s happening when watching a pro level game.

If capture points were larger, had actual terrain decorations, and less regular shapes (while still trying to keep them all roughly symmetrical on home points ofc) fights would be much more varied. Now, the original Skyhammer tried too hard to make the environment a factor but having slightly different elevations and maybe a destructible wall or two could make each game feel a bit more unique. It should still come down to skill, being pulled or pushed into a pit isn’t generally fun, but at the same time have an effect on the fights.

MORE FREQUENT BALANCE PATCHES

I know the devs like to let the meta settle, but one major patch every 4-6 months is far too infrequent. Having your main be weak or a single build dominating for months gets dull very quickly. Balance isn’t easy and will never be perfect, but if you’re making little tweaks every few weeks it’ll at least stay fresh and sometimes it’s exciting for something to be just a little OP so long as there’s options to counter it. Also, utilize skill splitting more often as it feels awful to have your build be gutted because it’s too strong in PvE or WvW.

More frequent balance patches will also show the community you’re invested in PvP as a whole. Having some sort of test client to try out changes before they go live like Overwatch does would also help to iron out the edges may also be beneficial if possible. In fact, I could even see the possibility of making a PvP only client and making it F2P and pushing the cosmetic side of things.

Conquest is not a bad concept, but the execution in GW2 has never been particularly interesting to me because I’ve seen it done better in other games. If you can improve your main game mode enough to draw players back that will hopefully solve the matchmaking problems some and maybe you’ll even be able to add some form of TDM 5v5+ once there’s less worry on splitting the community. I want to come back and play PvP more consistently, but as it is I just can’t feel justified in investing my time in it when there are more frequently patched and balanced games out there with a larger player base.

This is what I’m working on atm

Frenzy can be pretty much anything you want, but I figure another stun break that also gives you might, quickness, AND vigor was a decent choice. So long as you land your shots you’re able to dodge so often it’s amusing. Between Mending, Hoelbrak runes, Berserker’s Stance, and Brawler’s Recovery you’re also decent against condis.

The other nerfs hurt, but this new trait is pretty boss.

EDIT: Actually you should probably take Axe Mastery to help with adrenaline gain.

I think this will come down to the amount of boons enemies will have in PoF. If they start including a ton of builds on every enemy, then stripping them away will let you deal good damage potentially. They will also need to attack more often with longer activation time attacks so you can interrupt them. If not…it’ll probably be seen in PvP/WvW only. That being said it looks to be a monster in those modes…and will probably be nerfed into uselessness.

Resouled.5614:

In the end for PvP discipline and defence are pretty much required to keep yourself alive. Warrior without fast hands is just terrible and defence has the tools for you to stay alive. I dont really see much difference tbh, but maybe the rework will do something about it.

I would say though that even if it is just always Defense-Discipline-Spellbreaker it’ll probably have a place in the meta because the boon stripping potential with not just traits but with sigils of Absorption and Revocation and the elite just looks nuts. Jumping into the middle of a fight and using counter isn’t exactly hard and with Enchantment Collapse I assume that includes sigils so if you do an interrupt and both sigils proc you’ve just removed 3+ boons from everyone in the area. I’m not seeing an ICD either.

Idk if it’s OP but man are we going to be hated. I gave up on duel servers but I might have to drop in and use Magebane Tether and Sight Beyond Sight just to make the ever numerous teefs and mesmers cry.

YuiRS.8129:

BurrTheKing.8571:

YuiRS.8129:

Some weaksauce synergies there, which isn’t necessarily bad. I see Spellbreaker as a standalone spec which can be used with anything, even Condi builds (no more Resistance for you), since it’s not like Attacker’s Insight will be wasted on those, it’s still free damage.

I feel like at the very least the synergy with Strength is very good if you want to go hybrid damage. Heck if you want to go glassy you could try Strength-Arms-Spellbreaker. The only interesting thing we really got from Berserker was Rousing Resilience and Eternal Champion – and still people mostly took CI.

The only problem is that I really don’t see anybody replacing Defense. Is Strength good enough to be used in place of Discipline on Spellbreaker? I doubt that. Warrior needs all the speed he can get to have map presence, so if you’re losing Warrior’s Sprint you HAVE to slot speed runes, which is a DPS loss. And then there’s Fast Hands. Something tells me the new warrior is going to play pretty much like the old warrior. Same traits, same U-skills, same passive healing. Except now warrior will be a bit better against eles or other boon spamming classes.

Honestly, I’m more excited about the core warrior changes that Spellbreaker. Bull’s Charge with evade? Triple Kick like mfing Liu Kang? I really hope it’s good enough so we can finally replace stances with some cool active skills.

I like to play glassier builds so I’ll probably try Strength-Discipline-Spellbreaker and maybe even Strength-Defense-Spellbreaker and just use Bull’s Charge and just focus on in combat mobility by having Dagger + Hammer.

Of course like every PvP Warrior discussion it all comes down to them finding a solution to the Fast Hands problem. Whether it becomes baseline or they remove it and adjust skill CDs Discipline will still be a great line, but I’ll take a loss in speed for some build variety. Runes of the Lynx are decent for a hybrid playstyle anyways.

I feel like Spellbreaker will see use if only for its elite that takes up the entire capture point and basically nullifies half of the classes in the game for a few seconds.

Leo G.4501:

Raine.1394:

When I look at spellbreaker I see fun. That said, I hate how they have done elite specs as it runs counter to every notion of build diversity I have ever held. Except for a couple niche applications of core builds anything “new” (elite/spec) will simply function as a new fotm build. Pretty much what you want to avoid in class and build balance, but it’s the path Anet has chosen. They often take the road less traveled, even if it’s a road less traveled for a very good reason.

I don’t think it’s a bad move. I just think they’re going too slow with their diversity. Basically, once every profession has 4-5 elite specs to choose from, that’s quite a bit of choices, skill varieties and ways to play the different game modes. It’s only “less diverse” if you feel it’s absolutely necessary that non-elite spec builds must remain as competitive in the various game modes as the optimal specs.

It’s some strange equality phenomenon that is spreading indiscriminately. Sure, it’s good to seek equality over the various professions, but within the profession? It’s not really necessary. Just because something isn’t optimal doesn’t mean it’s not viable. Choosing to be optimal is choosing to give up choice.

The problem with that last part is that in PvP if you’re not at least somewhat optimal you’re probably worthless because the optimal build tends to be far and away better than anything else. In PvE good luck running high level PvE content when the game wants you to be optimal as well. Wasn’t like this at the start but power creep has ruined that over the years.

There’s obviously always going to be a meta of some sort, but the problem GW2 has been having is that the meta is just so much better than the alternatives.

YuiRS.8129:

Some weaksauce synergies there, which isn’t necessarily bad. I see Spellbreaker as a standalone spec which can be used with anything, even Condi builds (no more Resistance for you), since it’s not like Attacker’s Insight will be wasted on those, it’s still free damage.

I feel like at the very least the synergy with Strength is very good if you want to go hybrid damage. Heck if you want to go glassy you could try Strength-Arms-Spellbreaker. The only interesting thing we really got from Berserker was Rousing Resilience and Eternal Champion – and still people mostly took CI.

duster.7013:

Look, auto attacking is not interesting. You would objectively make the game more boring by raising all cooldowns. At that point the first person to drop a spell lost the fight. There’s no skill to watch or counter play or anything if your CD’s don’t overlap.

It’s also not interesting to just watch players constantly cycling rotations while the screen becomes a mess of particle effects that is both boring to play and nearly impossible to watch. I like particle effects, I don’t enjoy my screen being a rainbow vomit explosion.

I’m not saying we need 20 seconds in between combos, just that maybe you don’t have to ALWAYS be using one.

Juba.8406:

Can’t wait for the expansion.

Just do it Robert Gee, Make Fast Hands Baseline .

At this point I’d rather they just remove it and adjust weapon CDs. Sure, we lose flavor but we won’t have everyone demanding things be made baseline for their class too. Although, teef has a solid argument there.

List of Spellbreaker traits here.

STRENGTH

Peak Performance: Every Physical skill can interrupt and Kick will be getting multiple charges.

Body Blow: Considering how focused on CC you’ll be pumping out a ton of Weakness and Bleed.

Distracting Strike: Same as Body Blow, but even better considering how many interrupts Spellbreaker has.

ARMS

Opportunist: No Escape allows for a lot of Immobilize stacking.

Unsuspecting Foe: Pure Strike increases critical strike damage.

Deep Strike: Synergy with Opportunist.

Burst Precision: Pure Strike will make every burst hit harder.

Furious: Synergy with Body Blow and Distracting Strike.

Dual Wielding: Will probably be updated to include daggers.

DEFENSE

It’s the Defense line…it’s inherently good.

TACTICS

Leg Specialist: Only if using Opportunist and honestly even then the rest of the line isn’t that great with Spellbreaker.

DISCIPLINE

It’s Discipline, it has Fast Hands and Warrior’s Sprint…

Overall the potential for cool combos are there, but until Fast Hands is less of a necessity you’re going to be losing a lot in order to use them. I do give the devs kudos though for doing a much better job at making this spec work with other lines than Berserker did.

Strength and Physical Skills should have some strong synergy with Spellbreaker. You can go hybrid and take Body Blow and Distracting Strikes with either Mace/Shield or Hammer and really just be a CC machine but with better mobility than previous options. There’s even some good combos in Arms like Opportunist and Unsuspecting Foe. Hell it makes Burst Precision a little more useful even due to Pure Strike. I suspect they’ll also update Dual Wielding to include Daggers. Furious will also be useful with it.

Now, if only they could solve the Fast Hands problem by just removing it and adjusting weapon cooldowns we would have a ton of cool build options. Every trait on Spellbreaker seems to have synergy with another core Warrior trait, which is good to see.

Sorem.9157:

This really is an issue.

And i have no idea on how to fix it. The amount of rework that would take is absurd. Practically redo all the elite specs and even some of the basic ones.

I feel like the simplest thing to try would be to simply increase the weapon CDs and ICDs of most traits then see how it feels, then adjust damage if things feel too sluggish. It would make each skill more important because missing it would be more punishing. Higher ICDs would also mean that you only have to account for certain traits maybe once or twice a fight instead of what feels like every few seconds.

This will probably require splitting the skills, but I feel like they would be more willing to adjust CDs because most of the skills will have the same functionality.

Spartacus.3192:

Rune of Perplexity is nowhere near as good as it used to be. It used to proc confusion on interrupt. Now its on Heal use which is meh on warrior.

(1): +25 Condition Damage.png Condition Damage
(2): +10% Confusion 40px.png Confusion Duration
(3): +50 Condition Damage.png Condition Damage
(4): 25% chance when struck to inflict 3 stacks of confusion for 5 seconds. (Cooldown: 25 Seconds)
(5): +100 Condition Damage.png Condition Damage
(6): +20% Confusion 40px.png Confusion duration; when you use a heal skill, inflict 3 stacks of confusion in an area for 6 seconds. (Radius: 240, Cooldown: 15s)

That’s a shame, but it was OP as hell when I last messed with it. Although, there’s some synergy with Mending to be had. Krait is probably better then.