Guild Wars 2

Autoattack
As it is now:
Since the patch on the 25th of june, the damage is no more rising steadily towards the end of the chain, but rather have it spike with the last attack. This change made it obviously less attractive for PvP where you often won’t land the last attack, but as I see it, it also has some drawbacks in other situations. Against enemies with low health, you often don’t even get to the end of the chain. Therefore you are contributing less damage despite using an autoattack which fully concentrates on damage and nothing else. It doesn’t have vulnerability, bleed, cripple, weakness or anything like this.
The main reason I think the autoattack is bad, is that you often feel obliged to make it to the last attack to make it an effective autoattack (even then, there seems to be some odd aftercast time after the last attack). Meanwhile, you have some other skills ready and you might want to use them, but it would reset the autoattack, so you don’t.
What I want tosay is, the axe’s #1 doesn’t complement with the rest of the skills.

What could be done:
Make it more responsive.
Balancing the autoattack is always hard, because it’s the most used skill of all 5.
One possibility would be to decrease the time it takes to get to the last attack.
This can be achieved either by increasing the attackspeed (on-hit effects need to be considered!) or by decreasing the amount of hits from 6 to 4 for example.
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I only looked at these three aspects now, although I know there is more to it, such as synergizing with other weapons, traits and actual differencing between PvE/PvP/WvW.
This is only meant to show the main deficit of axes as I see them compared to our other weapons. I am not saying I want to see all of these changes and make axe an op weapon, these are just a few suggestions to bring it on par with the other weapons.

I wrote this, because lately I haven’t seen many warriors (including myself) running around with axes other than using the standard GS/axe+mace combo for dungeon speedruns.

no real tl;dr here (axe is lackluster and needs some utility)

The axe as it is now, is a rather poor weapon choice for warriors considering using it as your main weapon.

The axe lacks mobility/cc, useful utility in skills to make them viable and has a bad (not speaking about dmg here!) AA. Let me explain this to you:

First of all, let’s take a short look at the axe skills:

1. Autoattack: Since the patch on 25th of June, the main damage from the autoattack lies in
   it’s last swing. To get to this attack takes around 3.6 seconds by the way.
2. Cyclone Axe: This skill can attack up to 5 enemies in a circle around you and stacks some
   vulnerability on them. Furthermore it’s a whirl finisher.
3. Throw Axe: Throws an axe on your opponent and cripples him. Can only hit 1 enemy.
   This is a projectile finisher.
4. Dual Strike: Hits up to 3 enemies with 2 strikes each. The warrior gains fury
   depending on how many strikes he landed.
5. Whirling Axe: Spin around for about 3 seconds and hit up to five enemies 15 times.
   This skill is a whirl finisher and you can dodge while attacking.
6. Eviscerate: Leap at your enemy and deal massive damage. This is a leap finisher
   and has a range of 300.

Mobility/CC
As it is now:
This is kind of obvious, as axe is not made for these purposes. There is the sword for mobility and the mace for CC is what most people are going to say. So, if these two options are given to other weapons, what does the axe have? Looking at the skills listed above we can see that the axe does not offer any kind of – what I call – “controlling” effects, except the 4 seconds cripple on #3 which only hits a single enemy and can be evaded easily.

What could be done:
There is a third option of such controlling effects and many classed already have it: evade. In my opinion, this could be a nice buff for whirling axe. This skill currently has some nice effects such as the whirl finisher, but the damage is rather unsatisfying.
So why not give this skill some utility and let the warrior evade for 0.75 seconds.
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Utility in skills
As it is now:
I want to take a look at the skills #3 #4 #5 and F1 here.
#3 offers a single target, projectile finisher cripple. The velocity is slow and often misses against real players who dodge/strife.
#4’s main reason to use is the fury you get. This would be a nice thing, but warrios already have such easy access to fury via traits, utility and elite making the gained fury redundant in most cases.
#5 only shines if you can hit 5 enemies or have some nice combo field beneath you.
In PvE/WvW the damage is otherwise rather lackluster and the only other utility you may find is dodging while attacking.
F1 deals some nice amount of damage (if it hits critical) and is a leap finisher. Unfortunately its range is only 300 and furthermore reduced by cripple/chill and it is a highly telegraphed skill as well, meaning you have to prepare for it with stun/immobilize most of the time.

What could be done:
#3 could need some increased velocity. That alone should be enough for this skill.
Another nice buff would be a 1 second immobilize before crippling, however this can also be achieved by traiting 10 pts into the vitality tree.
#4 This skill…It looks good, it feels good, but there is not much coming around to be honest.
Maybe add a supportive aspect to it and grant half of the fury gained to your team members. Or, as this skill is probably meant to be offensive, just make it unblockable.
#5 This is a highly situational skill in my opinion. It should be used if you have a desired combo field beneath you or if you are surrounded by at least 5 enemies. So why don’t we add another situational use to it. Make it block (or even reflect) projectiles similar to the ranger’s skill where they also gain retaliation and inflict vulnerability, in cost of not being able to move.
F1 is an awesome burst skill, but doesn’t hit that much without preparation. My Suggestions: Increase the range to 600, to make it useful even if you are crippled or add evade frames to the attack, so it can’t be interrupted midair.

“they don’t have protection or evasion or invulnerabilities and condition removal to soak up the damage that those classes have.”

But this is what’s needed to stay at the front. We need protection, evasion and what else to do this. It can not be balanced only through the healing skill.
I think Grok has a similar opinion as I have:

Our heals need to be buffed, but not to such an extend as suggested.
It seems to me that you want to compensate for those things a warrior lacks only through the healing skills.
I’d rather have some slight buffs to our healing skills and then add other options for us to stay longer in battle. Just something like:
Balanced Stance: Grants stability and protection for 8 seconds.

btw necros often have more hp x)

@Dand
This seems like a really nice idea.

Daecollo.9578:

@Kurajin

Guardians are defensive, but team defensive. Guardians also have access to protection (An extra set of armor.) Signet of Judgement (Half a set of extra armor.) better healing traits, better traits, better damage traits (soon.) Better evades (perma-vigor.) Also condition removal all over the place…. All the things the warrior has to worry about.

That’s the point
There’s so much more we have to worry about and with your suggested changes it feels to me, that they are so huge of a buff it would be like:
“Warriors want more access to vigor/protection…? hell no, just look at their heals, they are OP”
And to be honest I don’t think buffing our heals would be enough to get on par with ele, thief or anyone else. I’d rather have sustain via several skills/traits than just only having the healing skill.

@dukefx

Of course it would be possible, but I don’t really see the reasoning behind this.
I know that adrenaline is our class mechanic, but when making use of it, it comes down to the burst skills (traits are passive and aren’t actively used).

I just compared the tree to those of other classes. If you look at the necro class mechanic, it is quite similar.
You have a bar, which fills up under certain circumstances (via life force/attacks) and can be used to gain benefits which empty the bar (death shroud/burst).

The necro’s boost in the last tree is a higher life force pool IIRC. It is directly linked
to the class mechanic and improves it.
Having something like “regenerate x% of max. HP in dependency of your adrenaline” would be dependant on the class mechanic, but would not improve it.

Therefore something like cooldown reduction on burst or similar things are more reasonable.
That’s the point I wanted to make

Wait for the patch, Anet probably buffs OH Axe, giving whirlwind axe a damage increase.

Considering Axe/Axe, its a nice damage setup where you will have 100% Fury uptime, can inflict vulnerability and cripple, have an awesome whirlwind finisher and a good burst skill.
The downside to this build is your lack of mobility (don’t know about you second weapon set)

These suggestions would be huge buffs to our healing skills. Healing Surge for example would heal for about 60% of the base HP pool + additional effects + low cooldown.
Guardians for example get a ~75% Heal + worse additional effects + long cooldown with the signet. Don’t forget that guardians are supposed to be the more defensive class.

Reducing the CD of our heal skills is probably the right way, but I don’t like the idea of having only 1 single skill – my heal skill – for sustain.
Furthermore a consequence of such a huge buff to our healing skills would mean, that there wouldn’t (or shouldn’t?) be any other means of sustain for us.

Anet should just give us another way of sustain, something that suits the way of the warrior.
A trait which heals us in percentage of damage dealt to an opponent for example or
a utility skill which provides us with protection, so we can storm right into battle.

dukefx.9730:

Regenerate x% of your max HP every second would be so much better.

I don’t really understand why so much people (not only you) make suggestions which are totally inconsistent with what other classes get.
Your suggestion could rather be a grandmaster trait in defense.

The last tree always holds a boost to the class specific ability, such as:
recharge time on steal
attribute bonus on pets
…

I don’t think Anet would consider any suggestions outside of that pattern.
Something that would make sense is a boost, which benefits all burst skills, instead of only the damage skills (as it is atm).

As I assume we have to stay in the pattern I mentionend, the only possible changes I can think of are:

recharge time on burst skills
skill specific boost (e.g. eviscerate has more range; longbow field burns longer…)

Sustainability is a nice thing, but unfortunately it doesn’t fit here.

Warrior is fine in “high end PvE”, it’s just getting harder, because you have to learn how to dodge. No more CoF facetank kitten. It’s all about movement/dodging later on (talking about fractals 40+).
In tPvP however, warriors (or at least I) suck hard. Too many conditions, too few gapclosing options. If I can’t hold on to the enemies, they will kite me to death (talking about going melee ofc)
In WvW however, you have a lot of “babysitters” around you (e.g. an ele or guardian cleaning your conditions, healing you). This makes it way much easier than fighting 1 on 1; being able to concentrate on damage and cc (which are the strong features of a warrior) you could say he’s viable in WvW.
It’s actually sad, but when it comes down to PvP, you really rely on others, because a warrior has no good access to protection or other defensive boons, gapclosers are mitigated by crippling and to clean conditions you have to spec for it.

Despite all this stuff, playing a warrior is one hell of a fun.

Tolmos.8395:

The downed state is one of the few things I love about GW2 pvp. It really encourages the ability of a small group to be able to stand up against a zerg. It’s not as simple as WoW’s PvP, where dropping their HP to 0 = instadeath and its over. There’s more strategy involved.
…

I feel that it is actually the opposite of what you just said. The downed state makes it nearly impossible to stand up against a bigger group. The more allies your enemy has, the faster he will be revived, either the normal way or because one your friends got killed.

I personally just dislike having to chop down an extra healthbar which is often impossible through the finisher-attack, either because your enemy flies away, stealths or knocks you back/down (stability would help against the last two, but those abilites got cooldowns, too), or through normal attacks. Just attacking is often not fast enough: Other enemies will come and attempt to disturb/kill you.

Removing downed state and having ppl die when their HP reaches 0 would probably lead to a more tactical/careful playstyle, as diving into the enemy zerg would kill you within a few seconds with no chance to recover fast enough, being revived, just because one of those enemies you hit with your AoE died, or being able to just retreat via stealth/mist form.

With this patch A-net updated some legendary weapons.
There’s a thread here where you can see some vids/pics of the new effects:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/New-Legendary-Effects-Share-your-vids-pics

As I think some of them look really awesome now (e.g. The Moot) I would like to know, if A-net will be updating the other weapons, too.
Particulary
1) The Minstrel (technically no effects at all, I’d think of a similar effect to the Howler)
2) Meteorlogicus (no footsteps, no special attack animation, although the skin itself looks good)
3) Frostfang (At least it has footsteps, but the icy arm effect lacks something compared to other weapons, especially regarding that gauntlets make it even less visible)

Maybe you guys have some ideas how to improve them.
I, for one, would just like to know, if it is even planned to update them with new/better effects.

Going Melee may be a bit more difficult, but it also makes way more fun than standing on 1.500 range and just go pew pew (at least for me it does). You just have to get used to dodging the right attacks and positioning yourself.

EDIT: to the guys referring to the warrior who soloed lupi. This is way more difficult than you might think, try it yourselves

Well there is http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil_of_Paralyzation
But it only gives +10%, which doesn’t add really much.

Probably the best method to prolong stuns is exactly what Evalia stated

Besides the scaling of the heals, you should also consider whether you are playing wvw/spvp or open pve/dungeons.
On the one hand, in pvp a regen build seems inferior to a shout, healing surge whatever build, because of the high damage you often suffer within a few seconds. A pure regeneration build can not heal for that much over a short time.
On the other hand, in pve monsters tend to attack slower and with a steady amount of damage. Furthermore, dungeon bosses need quite some time to be killed, which makes regeneration way more useful than a direct healing build.

This is just my opinion, playing nearly only dungeons and running around with a regeneration build.
I get about 220 (Healing signet)+120 (Adrenalin health) + 180 (Regen. boon) + 88 (Mango pie) which sums up to nearly 600 HP/s with 390 Healing Power (traits + banner).

The thing is, as DeeJay already mentioned, some runes just don’t work.
Another bugged rune for example is the Rune of Strength, where the (6) bonus
“5% more damage while under the effects of might” still doesn’t work.
On the 13th of october someone wrote this on the gw2wiki site. I tested it last week and it still didn’t work.
Of course, not all of them are bugged, yet they apply a (6) bonus which is just not worth it. Rune of the Fighter grants a single stack of might when healing. This is just meh, playing in a group even the (2) bonus from the Rune of Altruism has a better effect “Give 3 stacks of might to nearby allies when using a healing skill”.
(I know it’s 20 seconds vs 10 seconds, but it’s also 1 stack vs 4×3 stacks)

In my opinion, runes are something to make your character feel special and individual. Unfortunately, as it stands atm, a lot of runes don’t provide this feeling nor are they worth using. Sometimes it’s just way better to resort to orbs.

…which should actually be weaker than runes, don’t you think?

In open PvE, i only prefer the sword if i have to get from A to B, otherwise it’s all about the axe. Don’t forget, small mobs will die too fast to make the bleeds remarkable and the big event guys where 9999 ppl try to kill him often have max bleed stacks on themselves.
In dungeons it’s definitely axe. I played some time with the sword, but the mobility is just not needed and the overall damage is lower than the axe’s. The Axe has some extra vulnerability which comes in handy, sword doesn’t. The sword’s normal attacks are weaker (DPS-wise) than the axe’s and the bleeds won’t make up for it. Especially when taking in count that most bosses seem to have like -80% condition duration.

In WvW I prefer the sword over the axe. The reason is simple, PvP enemies run and will try to kite you around. You won’t be able to keep up with an axe. This is where the sword shines, the short cooldown on the leap and the extra immobilize skill help a lot.

I don’t know if it’s the best DPS wise, but at the wiki someone says the (6) bonus is bugged and doesnt work.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Talk:Rune_of_Strength

DUDE, finally some projectile finishers, this is all i ever dreamed off!!!…

Seriously, looking at the other professions’ patch notes, i am really disappointed – again.
Why won’t Anet give us warriors some love?

@Smilinreap: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Game-Update-Notes-November-15-2012

The weapon in which the sigil is shouldn’t matter. I also have one in my offhand and it steals life for ~500 HP. Maybe you have another on-crit sigil in you mainhand (like 60% chance on bleed) which will cause the blood sigil to go on cooldown, too.

→ yes, it also triggers from your axe attacks

Gratz to you, Ten

@LoneWolfie, just a short question: Why did you exclude me?

The pic i uploaded is below. Time played with the shown character is around 288h. Time played with all character is around 347h.
Therefore i should have met the conditions (200h<x<500h right?) to be on “the list”, but i can’t find my name on it :/

Really nice idea