Guild Wars 2

nicknamenick.2437:

Daniel Warren.4968:

…how. It’s a single attack. Make it so if you fire at the ground and your bad guy isn’t standing in it you don’t get to clear conditions. Boom. I’m a wizard.

WOW! what!??

So you really just do that!??

so no faster arrow or anything?
HOW THE hell do you proc CI when in WvW??

And no reply to the rest of my post?? you just now nerfed longbow into the ground for ALL wvw warriors.. kitten them you say now.

And moved the problem, because now ALL warriors use hammer

Hammer nerfed next balance patch to trash..

All warriors use Axe leap now..

So no compensation.. just nerf X and problem moved to Y

You need to smoke something dude? You seem kind of on edge.

And are you joking? WvW is a blob fest. You can fire blindfolded and hit somebody. I really don’t get what your complaint is. If you honestly cannot hit somebody with an AOE arrow attack with 1000 range and a 360 blast radius… wait are you using the burst just to cleanse conditions and sit pretty in a fire field? Cuz most other burst skills rely on hitting stuff.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Why can’t we “just can’t” do that?

>Target ground, any initial damage or damage from fire tick for touching the field procs CI.

Longbow still sets up for Fiery Aura, area might, burning, Pin down for immob, idunno, hitting more than one target with one of the only two ranged weapons we have?

There’s lots of things you can use LB for other than condireset.

Gotta be careful about that, if its not coded right (har har) it’d result in multiple condi cleanses every time someone steps into the field. Since every other burst resolves CI when adrenaline is spent, if there’s no hit on execution it shouldn’t trigger.

…how. It’s a single attack. Make it so if you fire at the ground and your bad guy isn’t standing in it you don’t get to clear conditions. Boom. I’m a wizard.

17% doesn’t sound like a lot until you factor in Rending Strikes, the mobility and the AOE. Whirling is most useful when you’re hitting a group, preferably as they’re trying to pick up a downed ally.

Why not just remove longbow’s burst and add a “health burst” that instantly refills your HP and removes all conditions by shooting yourself in the face?

It’s not so much being capable of doing anything, when spec’ed right we’re capable of doing everything:

High HP with good regen
Instant condi-cleanse on short cooldowns
Crowd control and area denial for point capture
Multiple damage immunities
High base damage and armor

You should be able to spec to do anything, but there should be downsides to it. As it stands, we’re not seeing downsides.

It’s pretty rare that I see any warriors in pvp using anything BUT HS nowadays. That either says the heal is just that good compared to other heals, or it’s our crutch for sustain. Maybe it needs a nerf, or maybe it’s our HP / Armor in combination with HS.

Course this all hinges on Anet actually testing these things, but maybe they don’t play the way we do?

It’s really hard to say that there’s ONE thing that needs tweaking. I mean, we could just go “eh our base HP is too high, lets bring that down to the others’ levels” and call it a day, but that’d be cheating us out of actual balancing.

What I’ve seen in pvp and wvw is a tendency for warriors to max their pvt and minimize their condi duration, paired with the right traits to fill any vulnerabilities in precision and healing. The utility slots are filled with the right immunity boosts or signets to prevent condition overload, and with the aforementioned PVT setup they don’t have to worry about burst sustain. Geared with the right weapons (usually hammer and something else) we become a one-man wrecking crew, which granted is what warriors are supposed to do, but when it takes three people constantly bashing one guy who’s running HS and hammer you start to wonder if there’s something amiss here.

Personally I’d get rid of Defy Pain on the Defense tree, rework CI to proc less often, and knock a chunk out of our base HP so we’re not so much of a damage sponge. Maybe change the longbow burst so it doesn’t give adrenaline for people standing in your fire field. If we want to stay viable as a class and not so much of a joke / faceroll type, we need more weaknesses.

Far as I can tell, you can make a warrior that has low condition duration, very high damage, heavy high health, very good regen, and very high armor. Maybe lower some of that?

Guess I could be more specific. OK:

Running zerker I can usually tell when someone’s running bunker setup or not. I’ve encountered warriors in the field that are somewhere in the middle, but their massive health pool and innate regen keep them above 75% even as I’m wailing on them with my heavy-hitting moves. They have enough condi-cleanse to ignore the ticks they do get, and with CI are able to clear them fairly regularly. Their CC also allows single characters to hold points from multiple attackers, which when paired with their innate regen and condi-cleanse become a bit of a pain to handle.

What else…

We as a class have access to way more immunities than we should. Traited right we get two sets of 5-sec damage immunity, 10-sec condi immunity, 10-sec CC immunity (20 if we’re running Last Stand but nobody takes that over CI), and if we’re using Defiant Stance we can facetank for ~4sec without giving a single kitten . Tho most don’t since HS does most of that work for us.

If it weren’t for that 30sec cooldown it’d be a beast of a sigil for that weapon set. Maybe paired with Last Chance / Dual Wield Agility?

The sneaking final thrust:

While im not sure if this is a bug in the animation or not, immediately after whirling axes ends, if you had dodge rolled while channeling, there is a brief animation where your character appears to roll in place. I think its trying to catch up on the animations it missed while performing the whirl. As soon as the axe whirl ends, you can queue final thrust, and the roll will replace your characters channeling motion for the thrust. On screen, it looks like this.

Whirl, roll, thrust. No wind-up. Since youre already in your opponents face with the whirl, you should be in range for the thrust.

Give it a try! It seems to work every time for me, but I never really bothered to ask if anyone saw things the way I did.

Hi.

I’ve been running a sw/axe and GS build in every mode for a few months now. I think there’s something about offhand axe that you are under-utilizing, particularly where trait points are concerned.

Since you’re using a multihit attack that can hit up to five opponents, you really want to pump that precision. Getting more crits out of your attack means shorter fights, and makes the on-crit abilities proc more often. I’d actually recommend the Arms tree over Discipline simply for that reason. Well, that and two others: Rending Strikes and Precise Strikes. With higher precision and multihit attacks, you get that many more chances to add Vulnerability and Bleeding. With axe and sword alone I’ve gotten up to 10 stacks on a single target in one rotation. This will also charge your innate sword bleeds and your Final Thrust. If you know the rotation, you can sneak that in almost instantly. I trust you do

Also, the Reckless Dodge trait works nicely with Whirlwind since you can dodge while channeling, adding two AOE 3k+ punches to your rotation.

You have sigil of Air, which is single target, but your OH axe is an AOE weapon. Why not go for Fire?

My only other contention is Axe / Shield. You’re running mighty defense for essentially one skill, and you’re counting on your opponent to wail on you for that bonus. For me, that’s too many variables. I’d also recommend a GS (since I recommended Arms tree anyway) and go for Forceful GS and Attack of Opportunity. Between CI and your auto attacks, you’ll be gaining a decent amount of adrenaline anyway.

As someone who already loves offhand axe, 17%?! Please and thank you!

While roaming and frontline warriors share the same basic principle, which is kill the other guy before they kill you, you have a much easier time in a zerg with a tanky build. Roaming opponents tend to be damage spikers or condi, so unless you’re hoping they screw up, you’ll be spiked down regardless of your toughness / health eventually.

Hammer’s great in zergs, since there’s so many people you’re bound to hit somebody, but in roaming expect most of your hits to whiff since they telegraph so hard. Since you’re also a shout build you’re missing out on some of the best zerg utilities for our class, namely Stances.

Mazdan.2071:

I like Reaper of Grenth (human) for stacking some conditions that warriors normally can’t like poison and chilled, but the duration is too short (15 sec) and/or the cooldown is too long (180 sec). Otherwise it would be a great addition for a DeathKnight type of toon.

I sometimes use it in wvw for zerg busting but Signet of Rage is the go-to elite for warriors. Hounds of Balthazaar (human) would also be nice if the cooldown was shorter.

Seconding the reaper. In zerg fights it’s a great way to tag everyone just by standing in their space, and if you’re trying to draw attention away from your zergmates the visual death cloud is a nice touch. With max Strength traited and +40% duration food the poison / chill triggers are 5sec apiece.

In a pure power build, 6 in Strength, you have 30% condition duration. That’s ten seconds of bleed on normal AA. If you’re also traited in Arms, you’ll have at most 300 condition damage. Paired with Forceful Greatsword / Sigil of Strength, your condition damage will amplify as you gain Might. Maybe not condi build levels, but enough to reduce the effect of, say, Heal Signet. Also, you get 10% extra damage from Attack of Opportunity.

For roaming yes, sword isn’t as good. For zerging, the AA cripple, leap and immobilize are more useful for dealing with multiple people than a single eviscerate.

Only the best hammer warriors are able to attack without telegraphing. Sword is at least faster on cast.

With the season almost over this year, I wanted to get some feedback on my zergin build. Gentlemen… behold.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJEQNAsXRnUJSZI2FCWhA/aGAIIw9b+IY5aaGA-TVDBABVcCAMSJmh6Da4QAMqKBppEELlC4ouBAPBAzUWQkKIFt/QCmYCAgAcz6sN3ZgEaYnDdoJ0SB80YA-w

In brief:
Stance build, regen, on-crit abilities

You WILL:

Gain mad might stacks
Apply loads of vulnerability and bleeds
Tag (and possibly down) a hefty chunk of people

You WON’T:
Miss healing signet

The idea: You’re a zerg surfer. This entails charging into the heart of the enemy, popping every stance on utilities, dumping ALL of your heavy hitters, and dodging out before they know what hit them. The main goal is to kitten off enough people that they’ll be trying to target you instead of your allies. If you’re good, you’ll spike down most of the squishier AOE classes. If you’re really good, you’ll live long enough to do it again. I added Reaper of Grenth because the visual makes you stand out a bit more, and the chill / poison may not kill anyone, but it’ll slow them down (and get you more bags). In non-zerg cases, run Rage Signet.

I’d say the frequent condition application is a form of control. The constant bleeds, cripples and immobilizes will pressure most non-warriors to cleanse sooner rather than later. I’d also say any sort of CC weapon in WvW isn’t as useful outside a zerg, since everybody (who can manage) is packing stunbreakers, blocks or stability. Also, hammer and mace are slower than molasses rolling uphill.

Mainhand sword / whatever and GS is a fantastic combination. You have access to immobilizes, bleeds, cripples, vulnerability, might (traited) and fury, not to mention the mobility. I wouldn’t recommend an offhand sword unless you have the condition damage to make the torment / bleeds worthwhile. If you’re stacked for raw damage, consider an offhand axe.

Glad you said that. I personally dont see how anyone mainlining HS in heavy zergs dont melt. The arrow carts and poison fields alone neutralize the passive heal. Defiant is the single best burst heal when dealing with all that AOE.

I’ll say this, anyone with 3000+ toughness shouldn’t need Defiant. Use other heals. If you’re running a zerker build and you want to zerg at close range, you’ll be happy to have it.

The average wvw player blows through their rotation to spike players down. With defiant, you can literally stand there and go from near 0 to full while they flip and twist and stab and shoot or whatever the hell. And actually, Endure Pain doesnt nullify it completely. It absorbs condition damage too. Itll start hurting after the times up, but for the duration bleeds, confusion, poison, retal, whatever turn into health. Also, some damage makes it through both endure and berserkers stance, so its more of a damage gap filler.

If you want to beef it up, take sure footed or vigorous focus. It doesnt need anything else.

I cant recommend this skill enough in wvw. Best crowdsurf heal ever.

Does quickness stack now? I always thought procs of quickness overwrote each other.

Your build definitely has charisma, but anything less than Defiant Stance / Endure Pain in zerg bashing is just asking to get clobbered. Defiant combos real well with that 25% damage from Frenzy.

Testing indicates that yes, ANY type of damage is absorbed.

(even condition damage)

I really dig the whirl on axe 5. Mutliprocs unlike whirlwind. Spewing leeching bolts is my jam.

If you find yourself getting retal’ed to death, might I recommend Endure Pain and Defiant Stance? Traited with sure footed, thats 5sec immunity and about 4sec absorption. More than enough to crowd surf, dump your heavy hitters and dodge out.

Fair enough. I primarily wvw, so I built myself around hitting as many people as fast as possible. Mace 5 is weird to trigger against actual people, it tends to misfire if youre not lined up perfectly. Much easier against mobs.

Offhand mace’s two attacks are on too long of a cooldown for my tastes, and Id wager 15 possible vuln applying strikes are worth more than a single and a double hit attack. Plus the fury gain from double chop applies based on every foe you hit, axe hits up to five things. Thats a possible 30sec fury from one attack. Permafurys how I maintain 100% crit rate.

Two cents on this trait.

1.)Like precise strikes, youll want as high a crit chance and condition duration as possible.
2.) Youll want as many multihit attacks as possible.

For two, the best options (IMO) are axe, sword, gs, and rifle (barely). Mace and hammer attacks as too slow.

My ideal configuration to maximize the procs on this trait are mainhand sword, offhand axe, and gs. Whirling Axes into Flurry into HB has produced as many as 15 vulnerability stacks. At 50% condi duration, those stacks last for 12+ seconds. I use mainhand sword primarily for the 7sec immobilizes.

I’ve yet to test this with DWA, but anybody who has would be awesome to share their results.

Runes of the Pack.

A nice chunk of precision paired with group might, fury and swiftness. Also, rage signet and balanced stance for perma swiftness.

Testing this trait while in pve, I never noticed the endurance gain on either flurry or arcing slice. Was wondering if anyone can tell a difference?

Vortex.3712:

you guys have to remember it also effects animation time on all other skills like final thrust and cyclone axe thingy. What i want to know is does axe 5 dps increase significantly with the 10% increase in speed

Significantly, no. I think I counted one extra hit with DWA active. But yes, activation time is effected, and Final Thrust isnt as telegraphed in a combo. Again, for this trait to get the most mileage, its better in a pvp environment where player reaction time is a factor.

Depends on the build, really. The usual skullcrack build has enough toughness to ignore direct damage while melandru and lemongrass food ignores conditions. Burst builds are so far into damage that, if theyre good, most players will be dead before the glassiness becomes apparent. This is even more true if youre running stances like Endure, Berserker, and Defiant.

If you got gold and time, start higher into toughness and gradually tweak til youre comfortable. I went from 3000 to 2700 while boosting attack power.

While I cant say much in terms of raw dps, I’d certainly say DWA has its use in pvp environments. When you are relying on dps AND hitting faster than your opponent can heal, every bit of a second counts.

The only celestial I ever made were the leggings, since I wanted vitality and condition damage on top of the 4% crit. Now… I will probably wait til gw2skills has the new info and respec a bit.

I went with Pack runes before the patch because I wanted a higher precision without sacrificing power. Gotta say, I love the changes. I’ll probably stick with it (and now I may have too much precision…)

Eviscerate I wouldnt know, but flurry definitely applies faster. With full adren, that 4sec immobilize leaves just enough time for a final thrust.

Alright, I spent a good 12hr block wvwing with the new Arms trait, and heres what I think.

Its not bad at all, actually. I mainhand sword with offhand axe, and yeah, you do notice an increase in attack speed. Final thrust hits a lot more frequently now, and though I was worried savage leap would be buggered the way it is under quickness, you still get the distance with a slightly faster connect. The autochain more reliably permacripples. Whirling axes, though nowhere near as effective as it is under frenzy, does apply one extra hit.

So yeah, not amazing, but neat. B+ I guess. Anybody else give it a try?

Fire and rage. One, just the name of the combo sounds good. Two, once you learn the cooldown youll have a guaranteed, quicknessd HB+whirlwind.

crippled frozen or quickened attacks shorten the length (usually to your advantage) but ive never seen it shortened without.

Quickness chews through tanks. I opt for Last Chance, Frenzy or sigils of rage if you dont want to give up a utility slot.

Having another player take stability for themselves isn’t really the point. The point is that you’re no longer running with Stability. In a zerg fight that most notably uses massive CC, even if you’re built for survivability, your 40sec stance just got wasted and now you’re getting batted around like a volleyball.

Dolyak signet makes perfect sense for a stability boon. A stance does not.

Back before I started maxing precision, I ran a hybrid build based around sword/shield and GS. Using superior guardian runes and Mighty Defenses, you can burn on every block while increasing condition damage. The usual rotation would be Shield Stance during multihit attacks, Frenzied flurry with sword, switch to GS to proc a Geomancy sigil, and frenzied HB to turn most unwitting opponents into hamburger.

Since I run stances now, I mixed the two together for something like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vIEQNAR8enUJSZI2FCWhA/aGQQP+iqQDPPSCmoJUFoDA-zUzAINBZKAMFBi8Ak8BTeQZvhsWYLiGrqWQWzgpLR1tIeDl1AAIA8zjezQKAY2CA-w

Because I adore skill lag and absolutely LOVE being unable to fight in big groups. Sexy.

Swap warrior’s Rush for Ele’s Fiery Rush and it’d be aces. Less range, but cleave and ACTUALLY CONNECTS would be awesome.

What I need is a stiff drink and a reason to keep playing WvW with all this lag, but anyway…

If they’re going to make every other stance an innate ability, then they should stick with the design strategy. Either they all are, or they all aren’t. I don’t really care either way, just keep it across the board.

Warrior passives (I’m assuming you mean stances / regen) are meant for zergs, in stacked groups, where everyone’s synced up their immunity stages. We die by the droves in blobs since we’re (mostly) melee and charge into AoEs for fun. Just wading in and pretending you’re the Hulk works for, at best, three seconds.

Also, any comparisons with Guardian should stop at “we both use Greatswords.” They are far more utilized in every other spot on the field, whereas Warriors are either front-linesman or stray-catcher.

ens.9854:

Becaused unlike the other stances, it is balanced

And that’s a perfectly fair complaint. If one stance can be affected, the others should too. It’s probably another case of Anet forgetting to make uniform changes to skill sets.

If it were to work the same as other stances the duration of the ability would be 5-8 seconds. For stability it wouldn’t be worth it for such a short duration.

I would rather have the longer duration and risk the boon being removed/corrupted.

…It’s already eight seconds at base. Traiting for sure-footed makes it ten. And even eight seconds can make or break a fight, especially in wvw.

because changing it would pointless just like almost everything else with warriors.

Actually I wouldn’t mind stability that couldn’t be ripped off in the middle of a zerg, especially if Anet’s design strategy was to make stances innate and not just a boon.

Here’s the rub: Every stance we use contains an innate “stance” property. Meaning, it’s not a boon. If we pop Endure Pain, there’s nothing that nulls / steals / removes that ability until the timer’s up. Every other stance does this (even Shield Stance even though it’s not a stance) but Balanced Stance is a cop-out. It gives us a Stability boon which, as everyone in here should know by now, can be stripped or stolen at any time once it’s cast. So why this particular stance? Why doesn’t balanced stance have its own innate ability? It makes no sense when compared to other stances.

Hybrid build ahoy:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNAR8ejkO1wtQGPMxBE0jroK0wzjkgJaCVB6A-jkEBINCyUAw0CQkHAJqgpqoJPBK9JZFWFRjVVTQWzATZCV3CxaG2eGwiGybAxdIrSBAzWA-w

Enjoy gaining mad might and torching for 600+ while blocking attacks, frenzying with Flurry and finishing em off with HB before they can hit their heals. Most people dont expect burning block, and they expect lots of quickness even less.

Everyone talks like the healing factor just can’t be countered, but they seem to forget about conditions. Poison, burning, two or three bleed stacks, and it’s equalized. Condition, punish, rinse and repeat. This is how I died, and this is how I kill ’em.