Guild Wars 2

While I have many questions concerning the current state of the game, I am actually posting this thread with regards to the current state of development. As a member of this playerbase in a game that is ever changing I would like to feel as being a part of it, not just a random spectator.

A few weeks ago, when the announcement came about the implemententation of different commander tags (and the associated 300g fee per colour) many people on these forums were outraged. I would argue rightfully so, but that is not the point. The point is that at the time of the announcement the update had already been prepared as it were ready to be implemented in the game at any time. The developers then quickly came back on their suggestion as the playerbase was in outrage and certain people have had to work overtime to fix their mistakes in time for the patch to come.

While acknowledging the mistake and reverting the changes before they were made was a good thing, it rarely happens that this many people voice their oppinion (unless things go really, realy bad.) Having employees work overtime to fix things that could have been easily prevented is not good for morale on either side. Not for the playerbase, not for the developers.

Unfortunately due to repeated disappointment, many people on these forums have shown a negative attitude towards Arenanet. Not just for “nerfing their toys”, but for being unable to downright comprehend how in the world the developers could have thought ‘X’ was a good suggestion instead of working on ‘Y’. There is a good bunch of feedback missing in between patches. As usually the time when some light is shown on current developments is only weeks before said patch in which they would be implemented in the game.

Some personal critique would be that even the Collaborate Development sticky thread is closed for feedback on this very forum.

Now instead of only trying to vent my frustration, I would like to show an alternative. I have started playing a different game over a year ago that is still in development. I will not name which because I could understand advertising other games on these forums is not very well respected. The thing that stunned me was the difference in mindset towards the developers and how helpful and inventive the playerbase was.

Basically a quick search on google could show many mods that had been made by players, who are now part of the developer’s team. Many guides, both professional and less so, are available within reach. But most importantly the developer’s blog is like a weekly diary. Every head of a department would share a few words about what they had been doing in the last week, even when a developer was not available due to illness this was noted.

This last part specifically makes players feel as if they are part of the development process itself. And I feel that in an MMO, in which development never stops until the game is no longer supported, involving your playerbase is key.

Thank you for taking the time to read though my post and my apologies for my poor spelling and/or grammar (as English is not my native language.)

Edit: My original title was Collaborate Development – Requires Collaboration. I think this words my intention better but unfortunately, it did not fit.

Why did you make another copy of this thread?
It is even on the same page… Sigh.

And to quote the same thing I said there:

Even if you would want to continue this debate over the Sword #1, since it is such an old topic, why would we not just revive an old thread as opposed to posting a new one.
It is not like as if anyone has anything new to say.

Uhm… I kind of just remembered I made a post about this bug about a year ago in the Ranger Bug thread.

JorneMormel.9850:

The Ranger’s Spirit of Frost has an internal cooldown of 10 seconds stated in the tooltip, which isn’t actually ingame.

…

In hindsight, I am glad they did not reply as swift as they did with the Eagle Eye bug.

Glad I can laugh about it, though. Otherwise it would just be sad.

I miss the days when a mere tooltip fix was enough to deal with these sorts of things.

Thanks for cracking me up though, I now have Another One Bites the Dust stuck in my head. Official Ranger balance theme song, anyone?

On a serious note, can anyone else confirm that it is indeed “fixed”?

Substance E.4852:

lol what else is there to talk about on the ranger forum?

Well nothing much I suppose. Use your imagination?

Even if you would want to continue this debate over the Sword #1, since it is such an old topic, why would we not just revive an old thread as opposed to posting a new one.
It is not like as if anyone has anything new to say.

Sina.9208:

Saying “it requires some getting used to it’s animation” is anything but good.

Then what would you have expected him to say? “Oooh, now I remember why this weapon was still on the to-do list!”

At least he was not completely unaware of the problems involved with the weapon in question. Oblivious, maybe. But hey, what’s new?

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

I watched an anet dev running thru the ranger profession. He had some interesting things to say.

1) sword 1 requires “Some geting use to it’s animation.”
2) Longbow does it’s best damage at maximum range, but that will also keep you out of range for boon swapping/sharing."

I stopped watching at that point.

Is that not a good sign? A developer acknowledging existing issues with the profession.
A bit overdue maybe. But then again, when was the last red post on the Ranger subforum ever since Robert Hrouda left?

Now if only we could keybind the auto-attack toggle…

On a more serious note: it has been 2 years. As said with the “Congratulations!!! You are the 100.000th person…” post, these threads have also been popping up for 2 years. Is anyone still stubborn enough to cling on to their hopes of this getting fixed?

It has been over a year and I still miss the Short Bow.

I still haven’t found it worthwhile to craft the Dreamer, even now I have all the items available/within reach, it seems like such a waste.

When I first started playing the game as a veteran Guild Wars player, the thing that shunned me away from making a Warrior was the fact that the adrenaline mechanic had changed so much compared to the first game. The lack of risk when spending adrenaline and the relative ease to gain it made the profession seem easy to master, and rightfully so.

While I am not sure how the patch will turn out in terms of balance, I am somewhat looking forward to it because it will immensely raise the class’ skill ceiling. I am not going to cry wolf at the first sign of trouble or imbalance, instead I look forward to seeing how it turns out.

I suppose that I am lucky to have little experience playing the profession. That makes it rather easy to adapt and learn. So do take my point of view with a grain of salt, I am just saying that it will be harder to play well. And to me that is a good thing.

I personally feel that damage wise, the Short Bow was in a good position at release. Someone pointed out the weapon’s mobility. Ever since the range reduction it has become tricky to kite well with it. The damage it does is generally lower than what the Axe does at range, even more so after the upcoming patch. As for kiting, chill>cripple and the lack of dodge can be compensated by taking a Dagger off-hand.

Having said all that, none of that is the reason why I dislike the weapon, which is quite simple actually. The auto-attack does, by far, the most damage. There is no burst skill on the weapon and little reward to skillful play other than positioning yourself well to make use of Piercing Arrows.

Longbow suffers from the same problem, that the auto-attack does the most damage and while that is being fixed due to the reduction of Rapid Fire’s casting time, mobility is actually more of an issue on that weapon because it lacks defensive utility.
Yet the Longbow seems to rely less on Piercing Arrows, but rewards it more.

Substance E.4852:

Would have been at least acceptable if we where the one’s with the Hammers spamming knockdowns and annoying the crap out of the pvp crowd…

We will never forget…
http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Bunny_thumper

Or touch rangers. ;-)

God how I wish I could forget about those.

Prysin.8542:

point 1: it is a bow. A bow shoots arrows. Want something else? get a musket or something, oh wait, rangers cant get those.

point 2: see point 1

Not to act all envious of Warriors or anything, but yeah. Flaming arrows, explosions. I would consider that pretty exciting. Or the Thief’s SB skill #5, original to say the least.

Not that I am complaining about the strength of the Ranger’s bow skills (I would, but that is more of a Short Bow complaint and brings up my personal and therefore biased opinion.)
And I suppose bows would be in a worse place than they are now if the animations were all that telegraphed.

Anyway, I feel like we are dragging this discussion way off topic for a mere joke. In hindsight, not even a good one, considering I had to explain it.

Prysin.8542:

JorneMormel.9850:

Cufufalating.8479:

I actually always wondered since I made my mesmer why the Scepter has an AA chain. I realise it’s not entirely unique to it, but it is uncommon for ranged weapons to have a chain.

I wonder if all ranged weapons would benift from having a chain… -wonders what the LB and SB chain might look like-

At this point I don’t know, really. Point remains that the bow attacks on a Ranger never really packed a punch.

oh really? Have you actually met a glass ranger with a bow? No? Ok, i totally understand why you say that then.

I run a mix of valkyrie/zerker myself, thank you. Now why would you make assumptions like that?
I did not mean “packing a punch” in the sense of damage, but rather that the attacks all seem very unexciting.

Shoot an arrow… Woohoo. Shoot another arrow! Why not shoot a bunch of arrows to mix things up. That kind of thing.

Cufufalating.8479:

I actually always wondered since I made my mesmer why the Scepter has an AA chain. I realise it’s not entirely unique to it, but it is uncommon for ranged weapons to have a chain.

I wonder if all ranged weapons would benift from having a chain… -wonders what the LB and SB chain might look like-

That would be pretty obvious, would it not?

Skill #1. Shoot an arrow
Skill #2. Shoot another arrow.
Skill #3. …
Skill #4. Profit!

I’ve got to admit they were pretty inventive with Rapid Fire. That’s some real immersive skill right there.

Unlike exploding arrows, because America and their Warriors?
At this point I don’t know, really. Point remains that the bow attacks on a Ranger never really packed a punch.

I will be unlocking Read the Wind, as it might finally be worthwhile.

Blanger.3162:

we don’t know until the community decides what/which each color will be used for and that won’t happen until they are in the game and folks have time to use them.

Agreed…well at first, I’d envision something like blue=WvW field commander, yellow= guild commander, red= havoc group commander, and green= PVE event commander

As far as I am concerned, blue = WvW commander. Anything else, PvE garbage.

hexecute.7612:

Welp, looks like it’s been fixed with a broad Mesmer nerf (no rune bonuses of any kind for clones anymore).

Smiter’s Boon’ed, you mean.

It is like ‘fixing’ an old pc with a sledgehammer. Asuran-like engineering, so to speak. Except with the reasoning of a skritt.

Step #1: Find shinies.
Step #2: Steal shinies.
Step #3: …?
Step #4: Profit!

Aquaman patch v2.0

It seems to be a yearly event now.

Thank you for finally fixing the tool-tips I had been trying so hard to read and comprehend. Also a nice job on fixing pets, Guild Wars 2 is almost starting to look like it could go out of beta.

/sarcasm

On a serious note though, the pet changes are very welcome, but they should have been there from the start. The Ranger is almost starting to look like its’ pet should be taken into consideration when balancing weapon scaling. Now that the profession’s bugs are out of the way, can we start balancing it out now please?

I am rather glad that I did not keep my hope up this time or wait around to see it.

McWolfy.5924:

the only one who knows what was in the Ranger CDI left the team. Nice… :P rangers are doomed!

Business as usual.

@ Allie, you will be missed.

I am not cringing with excitement for this seemingly significant change. And that is for one reason only: traits are not the determining factor for ‘trying out’ different builds or styles of play, gear is. And that remains a grind to obtain anywhere out of sPvP, where only a few types of build actually work because of the format.

What got me hooked on Guild Wars was trying out exciting new builds and ideas. In PvP, equipment was not a restriction and for PvE it was more a matter of optimization rather than the determining factor. Guild Wars 2 has changed that ideal and, in my opinion, not for the better.

tl;dr
Who cares about trait swapping ‘on-the-fly’ when Ranger traits are really all about “take Emphatic Bond and you are good.”

Carighan.6758:

Well, I don’t think so.
Rather I think – or well, hope – that somewhere while the thread was running the devs realized that direct player-to-dev input is a terrible idea for balancing and development. Especially if it’s done via the forums.

The forum community is highly biased, is a very specialized subset of the total playerbase, and often here because their opinions on what the game ought to be is at direct odds with what the community at large things (hence they’re on the forums).

Asking them for input is one thing. Giving them direct input into development and balance however is bad. Going by what I read here on the forums:

• Balance would be ~entirely based on sPvP, nevermind that it ignores giant parts of the game which are much more frequently played.
• (or) balance would exist three times, meaning only a third as many balance changes would happen per game mode, and complexity would go through the roof in a game which is already skipped by many players due to being too confusing.
• All balance would always be based on the optimal sPvP-build, but
• All specs are supposed to be perform exactly the same, so they all will be highly homogenized.
• All classes will be extremely homogenized. Great.

You can also pretend to let your playerbase influence development (this is what the Mythic devs did back in the days). But that’s just dishonest and before you know it you release Trials of Atlantis for GW2 and your game tanks to sub-50k subscribers within a handful of months. :P

Really, some feedback is nice, but if you look at how the Team Lead program worked in DAoC, it’ll just frustrate everyone even more. Most TL reports of 9-15 questions were answered with 9x-15x “Working as intended / no plans to change”, a copy-paste answer with no further explanations.
Would you like that? And people in other threads are asking for exactly that.

Thing is, there’s simply no reason to let your players interfere with development. Their opinions are too biased and they’re too passionate.

Going by that logic the balance sub-forum was a mistake to add and its’ prime goal is to fool the playerbase into thinking they are being heard and their opinions matter. Maybe it is just wishful thinking, but I would like to convince myself that the goal of this sub-forum was to gather feedback on profession balance. Shrugging that off as a bad idea totally foregoes the point of having an open discussion.
It is like saying that people who care about this game enough to put their time and effort into writing their opinions and posting them have invalid opinions because they are as you say: too passionate.

Surely people are biased, I totally agree. Plenty of people are like that, but the developers have their reasons for being like that too because they are the most involved in their product. That does not mean that we can not have an open discussion or that no good ideas will come to fruition from such a collaborate discussion.

If you are right, and I really hope you are not;

Balance forum -> No balance, there is your answer. /sub-forum

@ March 18th update.

Too little, too late.

What do you mean there is nothing?

I have been on a break since the swift retribution to the Eagle Eye bug. Waiting around until this patch because Ranger balance was announced to be worked on and to be released in March. Poor me for getting my hopes up (not really, I am not falling for that again after the infamous Aquaman patch.)

I do wonder why this same routine has been happening over and over since the second year of Guild Wars: Factions’ release. Before that, monthly updates were feasible. Arenanet decided to keep doing that, while postponing and breaking their promise to the community time after time again.
Why do they still stand by their intention to release monthly balance updates while being nowhere near capable of doing so? I could understand the desire to try and stick with your intentions. But trying to stick with impossible demands, even though the intentions are noble, is no compensation for the damage and disappointment caused in the process.

- If you play a GuildWars2 “Beastmaster” profession.
Want to play as real Ranger? Try Guild Wars 1.
- You had expectations of playing a viable archery profession.
- You have ever wondered how “throwing traps” actually works.
- You feel traits are useful.

As for the discussion about keeping the pet or not. I recall reading that AI improvement is going to be hard, but I take it not impossible. If the developers are determined to work on that, please go with it. With better AI the only thing that the player lacks is reliable control options for the pet.

It would be nice to have an alternative solution until that time has come (and some good ideas have sprouted from the “Moa Morph’ed pet experiment”), however the ever returning bullet point about pets are stowing the pet in combat and the need to dodge in the event of one-shot mechanics.

* This experiment was simply showing how the pet hits its’ target when under the effects of the Mesmer elite skill: Moa Morph. It gave the pet a lunge effect on the auto-attack, resulting in the pet dealing higher damage and being much more reliable when attacking moving targets.

Since I posted a suggestion earlier about the pet control options, I would like to also add that a player controlled dodge mechanic for the pet would help a lot also. Which I somehow failed to include in my original post.

The original idea was to have F3 trigger a pet dodge, either with a cool-down or draining a small portion of the player’s endurance bar. I had forgotten about this suggestion since the patch that toned down the trait: Natural Vigor. It would also change the associated risks with my suggestion from “Guard!” requiring a functionality change to the Ranger getting a much higher skill ceiling.

Edit: I would like to add another suggestion to the issue of pets failing to dodge. It is a simple change to the Wilderness Survival minor trait: Companion’s Defense. You gain Protection and your pet gains Aegis when you dodge roll. It would also allow the trait some synergy with Fortifying Bond (which allows pets to get any boon the player gets.)
It is more of a work-around than anything, but it would suffice in some events where the pet would otherwise die to those notorious 1-shot mechanics.

I would like to express my point of view about the trap traits and the discussion of changing them to Wilderness Survival or keeping them in Skirmishing.

There have already been a few threads about how mandatory traits are generally bad for the game, given the investment. With traps you are basically pigeonholed to 30 trait points and 3 utility skills to make the utility skills remotely useful. Taking those 3 utility skills should already be plenty of investment, in my opinion.

I would suggest at to lower the trait point requirement of the trap enhancing traits to 20 points at maximum, allowing more hybrid builds with only 1 or 2 traps (thrown or not.) And it would resolve some issues with changing them to the Wilderness Survival trait-line, which as said before, makes sense.
Not just because of GW1 nostalgia but also because you would not have to tinker with the trait-lines’ inherent attributes.

Game mode: PvX

Improving Player Input for Pet Control
I would suggest starting with the profession’s primary mechanic, while it being the pet, it is tied to F1-4 for player input. (With the exception of “Guard!”, which is arguably used mostly to trigger Nature’s Voice with.)

F1 Changed to Toggle Attack- and Passive Mode
If the pet is ordered to attack and you have the same target, or no target at all selected, it should call for a retreat. If you change target it would toggle attack. If you require the pet to retreat in such a situation, you would simply press it twice. Important to note is that it should be visible on the pet UI whether the pet is currently attacking or in passive mode.

F2 Reaction Time
Making the F2 command force the pet to first cancel the current skill order, and only then triggering the actual skill, would go a long way to resolve issues with pets.

F3 “Guard!”
With my suggestion for the F1 ability, an alternate retreat option is no longer necessary (unless you are with your pet in close range.) Yet when you want the pet to stay out of the line of fire, you would have to equip “Guard!” Since the pet is no utility skill, but rather the profession’s primary mechanic, this is unacceptable. Such control should be tied to the profession inherently, if anything.

In-Combat Pet Stowing
In some cases, it is simply not desired to have your pet out. For example, in the Jade Maw fractal map, it actually hinders the team’s progress. Being able to stow your pet in-combat should come with some sort of penalty, like a cool-down time, to prevent abuse by simply stowing your pet whenever there is a big hit incoming.

Goal of Proposal
Improving the way the pet reacts to player input would give the player a better sense of control and it would allow the profession a higher skill ceiling, while keeping the basics of pet control that are currently in-game intact.

Proposal Functionality
While it would require a complete overhaul of the pet commands, I think it would go a long way to make the Ranger viable in places where the pet is currently not.

Associated Risks
Edit:"Guard!" Would require a functionality change, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

I would personally just like some clarity from the developers about their vision of the Short Bow, what they have intended for it and what niche it is supposed to fill. This would help clarify what kind of traits are supposed to complement it and in what areas it could use some tweaking.

From my own point of view, I considered it to be in a pretty good place at launch (power-wise) but the mechanics were implemented poorly with any action other than auto-attack resulting in a DPS loss.

What I would like to see is the weapon either being the go-to weapon for bow users if they want to do condition damage, or being a more skirmishing type of weapon with a focus on interrupts, in which case the auto-attack being strongest skill would not be much of an issue.

The condition for bleeds to trigger hampers the condition damage archetype and the cool-down on Concussion Shot makes interrupting not very viable to rely upon.

Either way, more information about the intention of this weapon would add much for promoting a healthy discussion. At this point I do not mind any course of action taken for this weapon, as long as there is action taken.

I would like to add the Short Bow to the list. It used to be pretty balanced, since launch this weapon has gotten the short end of the stick multiple times in favor of animation fixes and to make the Longbow more viable (which was in my opinion still the worst reasoning in the history of this game.)

So what is its’ intended direction? Auto-attack spamming wasn’t “healthy” for the game, yet despite the nerfs the weapon still promotes just that. Except now it is also under-powered.

@ jcbroe: I take it that list is in no particular order of importance?

Just cut it out. This is turning into a personal vendetta between you guys, rather than an on-topic discussion.

As for Whirling Axe (the skill, not the steal ability) doing less damage in PvE and WvW compared to PvP. I could agree it is inconsistent, but I fail to see how the stolen ability is overpowered.

Introp.8465:

Well same thing goes than thiefs lose to a warrior. They come to forums to cry for nerfs. Btw he said OR, not 1 and another, 1 OR another. Not saying his proposal is good, but reading helps these days

I am not advocating for any class proposing for changes to the game in the name of balance, when really they ask for it because they lost and are upset. The whole suggestion came out rather funny to me, ’s all. If I would have to edit it, I would change my wording of conclusion to suggestion, although either would mean a buff to Warriors in any situation against a Thief (that has not already acquired a better “stolen” item.)

So yes, I stand by what I wrote as I was merely pointing out the irony in that post.

As for the previous argument that the Warrior would have to pop a cooldown in order to stay on point, does the Thief not pop an offensive cooldown? Obviously some counter-play is in order then.

JETWING.2759:

Yesterday in WvW i faced a thief that abused of condition, stealth and steal. I can’t fight at range with LB because he just wait i use pin down to reflect with WA, this was every time, then when i tried go melee he just stealth and appeared at range to still spaming conditions and reflecting my arrows.

My opinion:

Remove reflect projectile from stolen WA, or also give this effect to warrior WA.

Let me get this straight. You were in WvW, the epitome of game balance, you lose to this one Thief and your conclusion is to buff Warriors?
Thank you for a good laugh!

Mikhail.4961:

@JorneMormel: because, perhaps, a lot of people think what they find on reddit to be true and would spread false word (even if they didn’t know it) and we’d have a lot of (misguided) angry threads and posts about it here and when wanting a dev’s reply, said dev might be going “???” and not even understanding what the deal is. So this makes sense to me: as you’re using empirical evidence to back your theory up, I’ll do too: I knew of the reddit thread before this post here came up, and I’m glad it got stickied and addressed.

Fair enough, although I still wonder why the thread was made a sticky as any normal thread with an official response to the matter would already clear things up.

If a thread about the leaked patch notes pops up, being able to quote an official response would have been enough to keep things in line, would you not agree?

Allie Murdock.8152:

Jorne, we have spent a good part of the day removing posts. We do not work on the weekends and wanted to make sure that those on these forums and those in Reddit understand that they are not true.

If you look at the Reddit thread, many of the comments are of people reacting and believing these notes. We do not want people to be upset by fake patch notes.

Does that make sense?

It makes some sense. The thing is that by giving this official attention in the form of a new “sticky” thread, you draw attention to it. Instead of remaining silent or simply replying to any one thread in which the changes are discussed that it is not the officially announced balance patch, but rather a post on Reddit, nothing more.

For example, I was not aware of the thread on Reddit, yet when I logged on these forums the first thing I checked out was this new sticky. And instead of concluding after the patch that there was in fact a troll on Reddit (what a surprise…) and that I should not give those things too much thought, you reply to what seems to be the first time a “leaked patch notes”-thread is in fact fake.

In only 24 hours this thread has gotten more views than “The New CDI Topics” and more than half of the Ranger Balance thread which has been around for weeks.

The point is, by making this thread a sticky you draw a lot of attention to the topic. My question remains: Why would you want that?

Then why did you even bother giving this any attention? I was not aware of the thread until this popped up. That seems counter-productive, would you not agree?

You lack condition removal, but have the means to keep your pet alive. Why not pick Emphatic Bond? And since you put 30 points into Beastmastery already, why you did not take Pet’s Prowess is beyond me. Quick Draw is not exactly required just because you use a Short Bow, in fact, dropping that makes the build a bit more versatile because the weapon and gear choice can be changed on the fly.

About the sigils and runes, I would say that is up to personal preference.

Have you considered using a Sigil of Intelligence on the Greatsword? It is great for opening with Maul, and pretty reliable at that.

Thank you for sharing this solid build, even though it is not exactly my cup of tea.

@ OP: lol no.

P.S. Buy more gems.

For some time I had devoted myself to creating thread with suggestions for the Ranger. The result is that I have some work in progress about the greatsword laying around that I will probably never get around to finish. I hope you enjoy the read!

Thank you all for adding to this discussion and taking the time for it.

Maesk.8753:

Only if warriors lose all adrenalin when they miss their burst.

Be careful what you wish for, this would be an indirect improvement to the Cleansing Ire trait. If it were not for that, I would have started a thread about it already.

@ OP: I like your suggestion but keep in mind that the Thief might have to get compensation to make up for the defense and the (otherwise almost guaranteed) stealth attack.

Josh Davis.6015:

I just finished spending a few hours catching up on these responses. There’s a lot of good feedback here…and some…not so much!

I’ve seen quite a few posts mention the lack of bug fix mentions and I wanted to let you guys know that for the most part they’ve simply been excluded from the balance preview. Our designers have been and will continue to work on profession bugs all the way until this build is locked up and ready to ship.

I’ll touch base with the guys on Monday when we get back into the office and see if we’re able to provide any updates.

Thanks again, everyone.

Thank you that you have taken the time to go through this thread. I look forward to see more updates and like the poster above me I would also like to see bug fixes included, although I am fully aware that not all of them may make the actual patch.

I would also like to add that like many other players I am curious to see what direction you have intended for the Ranger (and its’ pet.) “Amazing changes” sounds… well, y’know; amazing. Although I would like to know what would be considered amazing as the Nature Spirit change was in fact a bug fix, if I am to believe the last developer’s live stream.

Could any experienced and/or knowledgeable Warrior fill me in on this one; what is wrong with the suggestion of toning down the skill in its’ current state (and in fact improving the active) while increasing the healing power coefficient? I feel like I am only going to get flamed for this suggestion, even though I am not the only one who has made it, but to me personally it would make for a very fun and active type of bunker build… Based on kiting and crowd control rather than blocks and evades to make the most out of the passive healing. Something like a hammer/mace-shield type of character.

havoc.6814:

On-demand condition removal?

The warrior has to land his burst skill to get that condition removal – which wouldn’t be to hard against those who come here to whine instead of learn to dodge highly telegraphed skills. Note that it also only removes three conditions if he has full adrenaline, which you falsely assume is always the case.

You apparently know nothing about Warrior. Your facts are untrue and your arguments invalid because they are based on fantasy. You are really just here to QQ.

Warriors weakness is criticism? What you, and the original poster call criticism is nothing more than a campaign of hate by people who can’t learn to deal with the most simple, straightforward class in the game. Don’t deny it. Here in a thread about warriors weakness, you are raging about the skills and traits, and food and runes that you think are OP. Not at all off topic. Cry more.

Don’t forget to go cry about how that OP warrior is running away from you. OP Professions always run away….

First of all, I think you might have also missed the note “Welcome to teh internetz.”

As for trying to run a campaign against Warriors. Really? Is that really what you think of my previous posts? I only replied to clear up some weird comparisons made with other professions and explained my personal point of view. Up until this point I have yet to have seen anyone claim a serious weakness or a way to counter the 20-points-in-defense Warrior builds.

About the condition removal being “on-demand”, by that I simply mean you are able to actively use it instead of being reliant on a timer like Emphatic Bond. Cleansing Ire triggers when you hit a foe with a burst skill, fair enough. But this is something you would be trying to do anyway and Berserker’s Stance is actually quite powerful for a 60 second cool down skill, as you do not get condition removal much more active than that. Also do not underestimate the -33% from Dogged March as all these pieces really do add up, although the last one less “on-demand” as I would personally put it.

Mind you, English is not my native language (I am self-taught, actually…) so I might have made my points across a bit more offensive than I would like. Having said that, discussing these traits and whether or not they are overpowered makes me grow weary. I will leave it with saying “deal with it.” And I look forward to getting this topic back on track. (Hoping that I may have cleared some of the air with this post.)

Have a very nice day!

Atherakhia.4086:

Black Box.9312:

Atherakhia.4086:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Atherakhia.4086:

Conditions.

Remove berserker stance. Make it do 25% more damage and reduce armor by 25%.
Attach condi immunity to healing signet. Slowly drains available adrenaline until out of adrenaline. Immune to condis while it’s up. 3 adrenaline a second drained.

I’ve solved the Warrior class.

0.o
Have you seen how much adrenaline generation warriors have? With this they would quite literally be permanently immune to conditions as long as they are either hitting or being hit if they took cleansing ire and signet of rage, and possibly one other generation trait. I don’t think this would really make them weak to conditions…

You’ve never actually played a Warrior I take it?

1 to 3 conditions removed every 8 seconds somehow makes Warriors immune :/

Berserker’s stance and 98% movement condition reduction would be the ~immunity.

But on a side note, what other class do you know of that can remove 3 conditions every 8 seconds with a single skill and trait?

Ranger gets 3 every 10.
Guard gets 2 every 10.

Since I am not sure about the Guardian due to a sheer lack of experience with the profession, I can not give feedback on that. Though I can tell you as much that the Ranger’s condition “cleanse” is in fact a transfer to the pet, uncontrolled (it is on a timer…) and requires 30 trait points.

Kind of hard to compare that to a 20 point trait that gives you on-demand condition removal.

Back on the subject of the Warrior’s weakness. +1 to who said criticism. I lol’ed

Harper.4173:

And while they do a lot of things well they don’t do anything better than one class or another that is specifically built do do it better. That’s why as a warrior you will never solo roam as well as a mesmer , bunker as well as a guardian or dps as well as an ele.
You are at best going to do ok, but never as good as these other classes.

The trivial part here is that while in optimal conditions you are right. Optimal conditions are rarely present in the game though, which makes the Warrior excel at certain roles.

I will try to give some examples:
Solo roaming can be done fairly well with the Warrior while not giving up group utilities in the process. If the Warrior finds himself in a pinch, the greatsword offers enough movement speed to escape. (Which is arguably the only utility you would need to “give up”, but the only situations for solo roaming are in WvW where you can change weapon sets while you have already loaded the map.)

As for playing a bunker: with a hammer the Warrior is able to dish out enough crowd control to keep the enemy under pressure, while still keeping high sustain (with no activation time, so you can keep pressuring your foes even when you need to heal.) The sheer design of Healing Signet allows for more healing than dedicated bunker builds while requiring absolutely zero healing power. Then there are the utility skills.

Harper.4173:

Except that warriors don’t have above average blocking skills or invulnerabilities. What they don’t have is access to any form of damage mitigation – so yes – they need the passive regen.

Allow me to break in on this painful subject of Endure Pain versus professions’ access to invulnerability through utility skills.

Endure Pain: 4 second duration and a 1 minute recharge.
Mist Form: 3 second of complete invulnerability and 75 recharge. Prevents capture point contribution and you can not do anything other than move during its’ duration.
Elixir S: 3 second duration and a 1 minute recharge. Also prevents capture point contribution and again you lose your active skill set for the full duration.
Signet of Stone: Requires a 30 point trait and has a 80 second recharge. On the upside it lasts for 6 seconds.
“Protect Me!”: 6 second duration and makes the pet passive during that time. Damage is not nullified but instead transferred to the pet and it also prevents capture point contribution.

And yet Endure Pain is not above average?

Concerning damage potential: in order for an Elementalist to surpass the Warrior… Do we really need to discuss sustained DPS under pressure versus optimal conditions here? Requiring boons, staying out of the line of fire and depending on your enemy to not move out of the AoE should be convincing enough.

All of these things can be achieved without changing builds. Which is for many “specialized” professions the main restriction. No profession can change role as easily as a Warrior can by simply changing his active weapon sets.

Then as for the rest of your statements I feel inclined to repeat my previous posts.

I would like to kindly ask you to stop posting such biased (and generally offensive) arguments. I can empathize with you defending the Warrior profession. But the same players acting as “Forum Warriors” while still not contributing to the actual discussions (but rather trying to derail them) gets old very fast.

And yes, I missed the note “Welcome to teh internetz”.

The Warrior’s one true weakness is that they have not developed a thick enough skin to handle feedback. Every time a thread opens about these “overpowered” traits and skills, these forum Warriors come around telling how it is a l2p issue for everybody but them in the game.

On a serious note though, the last response I read about a Warrior’s weakness was “They have a hard time fighting 2 or more players…”

Basically: bring a friend or reroll.

Personally I do not think increasing the Ranger’s damage as compensation due to not having a pet is feasible. I do however think that in-combat stowing would go a long way to fix many issues with the Ranger. For example; being able to pick just the right time in a WvW zerg battle to bring out your pet instead of having it killed on sight would promote skillful play.

Up until now though, it is all just wishful thinking. In-combat stowing would act merely as compensation for poor mechanics rather than a straight up “fix” to the Ranger. Needless to say some compensation would be in order by now…

Atherakhia.4086:

JorneMormel.9850:

Words… words… words…

Oh I wasn’t trying to say Ranger condi removal was good or the class itself was great. I main a Ranger actually and it’s awful all around.

But keep in mind that the only trait that reduces condi duration for a Warrior is dogged march, and this is only for movement impairing conditions (and several other classes have similar traits). Aside from this is mobile strikes which removes immobilize with a movement skill.

But yes, condition cleansing triggers when you use a burst skill via Cleansing Ire. But this doesn’t mean a Warrior can just go around spamming blasts every time they’re off cooldown (except in a zerg where almost all condi cleanse is left up to guardians anyway). If you look at high level Warriors or dueling/roaming Warriors you’ll see they conserve their burst skills to cleanse conditions and aren’t just spamming it every 8 seconds. And as you mentioned, there’s no way to stop a Warrior’s adrenaline flow. It’s their class mechanic and it’s built up easy (and conserved very well which is why most look at 0/0/30/10/30 build).

Which is why I do not oppose Cleansing Ire. In the right hands it is incredibly strong. Though for the trait investment it might be a little too much, if it were toned down condition builds would be in an even better place. This is one of those traits that would have to be handled very carefully…

…Which is why this discussion is not about Cleansing Ire, or how Dogged March creates issues with Melandru runes and consumables. It is in fact about the most passive of the Warrior’s defenses, so let us continue the conversation about Healing Signet before we get carried away.

The reason I am saying this is that while the other issues are with the Warrior profession as a whole (Cleansing Ire without the benefits of the rest of the Defense line traits would arguably be just fine.) Healing Signet, however, requires no investment and does not promote skillful play because there is no reason to ever activate it. (Timing the activation right requires insight and skill…)

I would personally have no problems with Healing Signet becoming the go-to skill to pick when building a bunker build (with healing power) due to better scaling, if that were to be improved. Though the people who play a Warrior as their main would have to fill me in on that. It is not the only decent healing skill the Warrior has but it currently overshadows every other healing skill because there is zero investment required for it to work.

Atherakhia.4086:

The way the Warrior counters conditions is actually pretty active when you look at what’s available to other classes. Take your Ranger for example…

The 2 main ways to remove conditions as a Ranger are Empathic Bond which is a passive condi removal while your pet is alive. The other is Healing Spring, also a passive (semi active?) condi removal while you stand in your spring.

I would be the last person to argue that Empathetic Bond is in a good place right now. The reason most Rangers trait 30 points just for this is because there is no decent alternative for condition removal. With the bug-fix, killing the pet is actually a good counter strategy for condition damage specs. As is counting down the condition removal (it has a 10 second interval.)
As for Healing Spring, to get the most out of it you need to be very aware of the situation and where you can place it. Push-backs and the like are actually a counter to that as well. Not to say the condition removal from Healing Spring is good either, I personally dislike these effects being out of the player’s control.

By the passive condition removal on the Warrior I mean that the traits to remove them either reduce the duration or trigger when the Warrior uses (not hits, I think… Please correct me if I am wrong) a burst skill. I do not know of a way to counter the Warrior’s adrenaline flow, because even if I were to evade every hit, which is not feasible, Cleansing Ire also makes the Warrior gain adrenaline when hit.

Atherakhia.4086:

JorneMormel.9850:

Words… lots of them.

I agree with you that a Warrior when specing for tanking doesn’t lose enough damage. On the flip side, when a Warrior actually does spec for doing damage they simply lose too much defense to remain viable. So something needs to be done about this.

What I have a problem with is the remainder of your point. Most would agree that the Warrior is currently over the top, but most can’t agree by how much. I think the easiest way to figure this out is ask yourself if you feel the Warrior is standing above the other classes. And try to be honest with this unlike earlier posts that claim the Warrior > * in every mode, forever.

Sure, when compared against a Ranger the Warrior is horrendously overpowered. Nearly every class is.

But when compared to Guardians, Necromancers, Thieves, or Engineers, are Warriors still seen as some unstoppable juggernaut? Or would you say they’re fairly well balanced when you look at these sets of classes?

That’s the problem I have with the overwhelming majority of posts in this thread. They don’t look at this problem objectively. The problem is the Warrior is overpowered and needs to be nerfed. We all can agree. the issue is most of you don’t want it to remain competetive like Guardians, Thieves, Necromancers, and Engineers. You want it evisceerated so no one would ever play the class again.

Slight tweaks is all that’s required for the Warrior because it’s really no better or worse than half of the classes in the game. The few ‘real’ problems the class actually has aren’t even directly related to healing signet and trying to nerf healing signet first instead of at least acknowledging the real problems with the class will end up with Warriors being worthless in this game once again.

I will be very fair about this. My main character is a Ranger and I am very knowledgeable about that profession. I can not say the same about the Warrior, however I do visit and play with some friends from time to time who have just about every profession maxed. Occasionally I do play Warrior in that manner, but that does not give me the insight to criticize the profession.

Since I am not in a situation where I can provide the needed feedback, I will not come up with numeric changes. (Like x% tweak would “fix” it. Most of these suggestions are made up on the spot anyway.)

About a year ago, when I saw a lone Warrior in WvW I thought to myself “Ooh… A snack!” I have no desire at all to see the Warrior back in that state because even if I did outplay him, he also got help from another Ranger. I still managed to kill the Warrior easily and tied with the Ranger (neither could kill one another.) Looking back I do think the Warrior has been improved very well.

The manner in which they counter the current “meta” is somewhat obnoxious, though. Allow me to explain, Healing Signet for example, is one of those passive skills where even the developers say “No no no! Don’t use that!”. Adrenal Health adds to that and frankly, with access to Dogged March and Cleansing Ire the gain from a mere 20 trait points is just too much, in my opinion.

I would have less of a problem with it if those traits required active player input to work, but they do not. The Warrior counters conditions by passive play (read: build wars) which is not fun to play against because there are no counters to these passive effects. Healing Signet is a nice example because if it were to be put into a state where you could force the Warrior to use its’ active effect, it would not be as much of a problem.