Guild Wars 2

Artaz.3819:

Swap Arcing Slice with Hundred Blades (gets rid of the Mace or Hammer Stun/swap/Hundred Blades issue). Give Arcing Slice a short (300-600) leap (but provides 4s Fury boon in lieu of Adrenaline loss); 8 second base cooldown and uses damage low level adrenaline damage coefficient. Done

GS now has three mobility skills? Why?

ProxyDamage.9826:

…And then you can focus on fixing what’s broken, such as useless or dysfunctional trait trees and skills.

Cheers.

I agree with what you said about Healing Signet being backwards, but I don’t think you can pin all of “omfg warrior op nerf nerf” on Healing Signet alone.

Julie Yann.5379:

This would pretty much render the hammer completely useless, especially if UF is moved to Master.

No; what it’s doing is making the Hammer a control-focused weapon, not a damage-focused one. With the current iteration, you get your cake and you’re eating it, too, and that’s why Hammer is currently overpowered.

• Earthshaker already takes a damage reduction if you don’t have UF. I fear that nerfing it even more would make it very weak for an F1 skill (even less if burst mastery is also nerfed.)

It doesn’t take a damage reduction if you don’t have UF; it just doesn’t get an obscene boost to its damage output. It’s possible that Earthshaker won’t need the damage reduction with UF no longer being automatically accessible, but I’d like to see how it plays out before we start saying the skill is useless.

Remember, it’s still an AOE stun with a short cooldown, huge area of effect, and long range. It could do 0 damage and it would still be a button very much worth pushing.

Personally I think it’d be more fun if it launched everyone it hits, since that seems more Hulk-like, but stunning is fine, too :p

• In order to get UF once it is moved to Master you need to sacrifice either Burst Mastery (extra damage), or Merciless Hammer (extrta control) or Cleansing Ire (extra survability).

Exactly! They’re forcing players to make choices, rather than being able to get pretty much everything with a single build. Now you have to choose if you want to be harder to kill, want better control, or want more damage. It’s basically pick two out of the three possible choices. I don’t see this as being bad.

I truly believe that all of this added together is overkill and will completely destroy the hammer warrior. Why not start with just the changes to UF and the longbow and see how it all evens out with other professions being buffed?

The Hammer will still be a useful weapon. You have a colossal AOE stun for an adrenaline dump, a conical knockback, and a single-target knockdown all on one weapon, plus an AOE cripple on a fairly brief cooldown.

It’s possible and maybe even likely that the Hammer will no longer be the one-stop shop for damage, control, and everything else… but that’s a good thing. Warriors can have two weapon sets equipped at any time and swap between them freely.

Hammer/Longbow will probably still be just fine and be viable, but it’s not going to give you the damage output, survivability, and control of an entire team anymore. Most likely, you will still be difficult to kill and exert a great amount of control over your enemies, but you’ll be needing someone else to kill them while you set them up.

Or you could swap out the Longbow for some damage, or vice-versa. Choices!

sumdumfoo.1025:

-Think out your patch before you launch it otherwise it may come out as lame as the first major Bioware PvP patch.

It’s entirely possible that they felt they needed to gather more information before making changes about the blob problem.

With the league and achievements out, and boosting participation rates, they have a wealth of data to work with now.

Would you rather they waited an additional 3 months before releasing the achievements and leagues, only to find out that the anti-blob measures they came up with made things worse, rather than better? They’d still be in the same boat, with you and others blaming for “not thinking things through.”

Avenge.1478:

3) With the WvW populations of each server skyrocketing as they have been due to the implementation of PvE (achievements)

Get over yourself.

The achievements aren’t “PvE” anymore than you leading a group of guildmates to AOE-spam Stonemist Castle to death is “PvE.”

You can argue about whether adding achievements was a good thing or not, but acting like the achievements are “PvE”, or that PvE is somehow a lesser form of gameplay, is nothing more than pure ego on your part and makes you look like a kid whining about that one kid down the street having the same bike as him.

WvW populations skyrocketing is a GOOD THING. More people playing WvW means ArenaNet will become interested in spending more development time working on improving the gamemode, and it’ll give you more chances to meet new players and in general provide a less stagnant sub-community than there was before.

Yeah, I agree – the mislabeled queue system is a kitten and a half, and there are definitely some improvements that need to happen sooner rather than later, but bashing other players for being new to the gamemode isn’t really going to strengthen your argument, it’s just going to make you look like an kitten .

Immolator.5640:

I’m still really confused as to why Gandara is going through all of this despite having done none of the above and no ‘best GvG’ guilds on it or near it.

I think I’ve had to spend maybe 20 minutes in queue, like… once. On the weekend.

Otherwise? No queue. Some of the people on the server (especially the ones that talk about being “best 3 commanders on [the] server”) are complete kittens, but for the most part I haven’t had many problems poking my head in for some WvW in between doing other stuff.

I did some WvW earlier tonight and actually left because it was just too godkitten ed blobby to be any fun, though it was kind of funny seeing probably 150 or more players in a single area all just kind of lagging around in circles while spamming AOEs.

Doomdesire.9365:

They should be mobile IMO, but not THAT mobile. Some warrior builds already output a good amount of DPS/conditions while remaining insanely tanky with healing signet all while being one of the most mobile classes. And unlike thieves you can’t snare warriors who are traited properly as snares will fall off easily with all that condition reduction.

Condition reduction should probably just be removed from the game, or at least significantly reduced in effectiveness (like the 40% food becoming, like, 10% or something.)

Otherwise, Poison remains an extremely effective means of dealing with Healing Signet. Of course, this is exactly why Warriors stack condition reduction – Poison ain’t so scary once it only lasts 2 seconds instead of 6.

Jamais vu.5284:

They should drop improvements for 98%+ of players in favor of your small demographic? This is entitlement right there.

Well, yeah.

We fight very good and bravely even if we’re outnumbered (lol, we’re better than Blacktide!)

Did you really expect anything intelligent from someone that’s using that as a reason for ANY change to the game?

I dunno. WvW is pretty fun when it’s not just three giant blobs of players wandering around and either chasing each other or ignoring each other in favor of taking and re-taking the same objectives in giant circles.

I feel like dealing with the blob-iness of WvW is currently a bigger issue than worrying about player populations; if you make changes that discourage or otherwise reduce the effectiveness of blobbing, you’re also going to end up helping out the “our blobs are always smaller than their blobs” issue, too.

It seems like you’d need to change things up a bit if there was a Warhorn Warrior on their team, though; Charge will instantly clear all of your Immobilize on top of converting another condition into a boon. I’m not sure if other classes can have this potential or not, but it’s something to think about.

I’m surprised you’re taking Sure-Footed over Dogged March. The extra uptime on Balanced Stance is probably nice to have, but Dogged March is just… really, really good considering where it’s located in the tree.

I’d be leery of stacking Immobilize duration, though; it’s actually pretty easy to cure Crippled and Immobilize, so if they figured out your general attack plan and waited until after you’d used Pin Down and Throw Bolas, they could cure the Immobilize and you’d be left with your thumb up your kitten .

I’d suggest something like Bull’s Rush, but then they could get out of it with a stun break effect… Hmm.

How dedicated are you to Burning Arrows? You could drop the ten points in Tactics and get 10 in Discipline for either Warrior’s Sprint or Signet Mastery; if you did that, you could Dogged March and use Dolyak Signet instead of Balanced Stance as your stun break/stability skill.

Ashes.9586:

I agree that it’s skill could use some fancying up, but I don’t want another melee weapon. You can make decent range skills without turning it into melee weapon. It’s a RIFLE, not a musket or a shotgun, it doesn’t have bayonets etc.

Yeah, I agree there. I just like the idea that, in addition to being primarily focused on damaging single targets, the rifle also focuses on positioning, whether it rewards keeping your distance or getting in close.

Harper.4173:

Skill means what I posted above. The rest of the things you’ve posted all fall under different definitions.

Then what definitions are you talking about? Because “skill” applies to many different things, and not all of those things are just muscle memory or reaction times, even within the context of gaming.

Again: what about games which require little to no emphasis on reaction time or muscle memory? Chess, poker, and many, many other games don’t place much if any emphasis on raw reaction speed or muscle memory, but surely you’d say that there is “skill” involved, right?

If not “skill”, then what?

Harper.4173:

Skill is strictly doing things fast- based on quick reflexes.

Except… this doesn’t really work; your definition is far too narrow, and people are not using that narrow of a definition when they whine about “skill” problems.

If skill is nothing but fast, twitch reflexes and isn’t something that can be learned (wait, what? You can’t train yourself to react more quickly?), then… explain chess, poker, or virtually any other game where the emphasis is on pretty much everything but reaction speed.

Would you say that chess grandmasters have no “skill”? What about the folks that win the World Series of Poker?

Hell, what about guys and girls that win major Magic: The Gathering tournaments? What about someone that wins a game of Settlers of Catan?

Hell, even in games that are mostly about reaction speed, like Quake and UT, there’s still a significant amount of emphasis placed on things like map awareness and analyzing the opposing players’ playstyle, which isn’t related to or demanding of a player’s ability to have rapid reaction times.

Do you understand now when I’m saying that “skill” is too vague to be useful in discussion? Telling the developers to make the game more “skill” focused isn’t telling them anything that they can actually use.

Yeah, we get it – you don’t want noobs running around facerolling all those pro players (which begs the question of, if those players were as pro as you and they believe themselves to be, how are they losing to noobs?), so the game should be changed so that that can’t happen. But you aren’t providing any specifics or even useful information by going “just make the game more skill-based.”

Your definition is too narrow, and it’s like you’re intentionally doing that in an attempt to show up others by sardonically linking to a dictionary definition and going “nope, nope, it’s not there, therefore you’re wrong, lol kitten!”

Ashanor.5319:

He can post where he wants to post. Your suggestions are ludicrous and he has every right to say so.

Except that he’s not suggesting anything; he’s just spewing bile without actually providing any actual rebuttal or constructive suggestions.

The entire purpose of this was to provide a starting place; I’m not suggesting I know the perfect solutions, but just wanted to start dialogue that could result in positive, useful, constructive discussion that the developers could benefit from.

deathklock.4961:

Pizza just stop, you dont play a warrior, how do i know this? Because what warrior in there right mind would want to have the changes you suggested go thru, unless playing a totaly broken class is your goal.

Please stop posting in this thread if you have nothing constructive to say.

Lighthammer.3280:

Lunatic inquisition is most boring mini game by far. You run around for 15 minutes in a map way too big with way too little people in it, without a goal. I just don’t understand the idea behind it.

I just hope they don’t put it in daily rotation, because it sure does suck.

I think it’s more the fact that there’s almost never any communication or even socializing in the game. When villagers and ghosts are communicating and working together, it’s pretty fun. It’s funny to watch that first lone ghost spend five minutes dying repeatedly to a mob of villagers before he can finally kill one.

Sadly, that doesn’t happen very often because most people are there to play Microsoft Excel and make an arbitrary number grow a little bit bigger in pursuit of something shiny, rather than to actually play the game.

The map can feel too big at times, but I think it’s primarily a communication issue. Ghosts move pretty slow, but traps and teleports make it pretty easy to get from place to place. A more reliable radar to ensure villagers keep moving instead of hiding behind the same 3 buildings all game might be useful.

Ashes.9586:

Rifle has no aoes, longbow does and is therefor often used almost as a defense weapon where you can stand in the aoe and watch people burn.
Rifle can also not blind you or lock you in place.

They still play differently, comparing the two is the exact same as you comparing hammer and greatsword. By your comparison, that fact that we have SEVEN melee weapons already means nothing, but we better not have more than TWO ranged ones!
I seriously don’t understand WHY we need another melee one. Please, tell me why.

Longbow and rifle play differently but they both are ranged.
Greatsword and sword play differently but they both are melee.

So you think Rifle would be fine and more importantly fun if they did nothing but simple number fixes to it? You think the basic mechanics are fine the way they are?

SaintSnow.6593:

Incurafy.6329:

PizzaSHARK.2741:

Incurafy.6329:

What they need to do is nerf all of the OP builds on each profession and then work on making builds that require skill, not this spammy crap we have in the current meta.

Define “skill.” Don’t be vague.

Sure, here you go.

Pizza I hope you don’t respond because you sir just got outplayed.

Except he didn’t define anything. It’s exactly what I expected as a response; useless twaddle.

And folks like you and him wonder why ArenaNet “doesn’t listen” to “skilled players.”

redslion.9675:

For example, should be fair a player with low reflexes might get on the top and defeat quicker foes with his strategical cunning and/or an original and well thought-out build?

This is the kind of response I was aiming at.

“Skill” is a very vague and altogether useless word in the context of game balance decisions, because what “skill” is and isn’t varies from person to person.

Is having pure twitch reflexes “skill”? What about planning and leading a team? How do you determine which is more “skillful” than the other?

When you and your 10 buddies get rolled over by a group three times your size in WvW, which side is the more “skillful” side? You can say you and your buddies were more “skillful” because you were able to take some of them with you despite being grossly outnumbered, but what about the other guys?

They were smart enough to know that they’d need to significantly outnumber you in order to quickly take the objective before you can bring reinforcements over; isn’t that “skill” too?

Which is the greater “skill”? Which is the lesser? Is there a greater or lesser level of “skill” involved, or are they equal? If you don’t feel they’re equal, why don’t you feel they’re unequal?

I realize this kind of thought is a rarity among the PvP subset of MMORPG players (or seems to be, anyway), but it’d be pretty great if people would stop and think about what they’re saying before they say it.

KarlusDavius.1024:

I’d like to see a few big changes. Double the adrenaline bar to 6 bars which are smaller. Keep burst skills at 3 per use. Give us some F2 F3 abilities like kick and stomp which use one bar of adrenaline. I don’t think things like that should be skills as such, there physical. They should cost adrenaline to use.

I’d love to see offhand F abilities, but I think that’s never going to happen. I would also like to see cleansing ire changed to reduce condition duration per bar of adrenaline. So if it was 6, each bar would give 2.5% reduction.

Adrenaline should be integral to warrior, but it’s just not. It’s bolted into the side.

That’s an interesting idea, but it might cause some balancing headaches. You’d probably have to remove the stun break/stability from Stomp.

Ashes.9586:

I just have one thing to say…… WHY does everyone want to turn rifle into a melee weapon or a shotgun? T_T

Because we already have the longbow for a “stand at maximum range and peck away at them” weapon.

What’s the point of having two ranged weapons like that? Every weapon should be distinct.

When I equip a sword in either hand, it plays very differently from having an axe, or a mace. While a hammer has similarities with a greatsword, they play very differently.

Why shouldn’t the same be true for longbow and rifle? Why should they both amount to “stand as far in the back as you can and plink away”?

I’m totally fine with Rifle going the Spear Gun route, but… we already have that mechanic in place with the Spear Gun. I like the Spear Gun (though plain old spear feels a lot more effective, maybe because of how goofy water fighting is), so I wouldn’t mind being able to use that mechanic on land, but would ArenaNet be interested in essentially cloning it to the rifle?

Ashes.9586:

Longbow can also PLENTY of damage. Dat burn.

Yes, and the Longbow is overpowered as hell right now, partly because of that and partly because the Rifle is just pretty much useless when you can equip a Longbow instead.

Longbow would probably need some small nerfs, but mostly Rifle just needs to be both fun (it’s really not in its current implementation) and effective.

Ashes.9586:

……no….. I need my rifle for when I CAN’T get close or I NEED to stay away. What you’re asking for is for it to be turned into another melee weapon. We can use EVERY melee weapon except DAGGER. If you change rifle’s damage to be related to how close you are you are going to see even more warriors with longbow. There’s a reason the 5 skill is a knock back.

I’m not going to switch to my rifle just to stay in the same range as my hammer.

The Rifle isn’t meant to be a secondary weapon – it’s meant to be your primary weapon. You’d be swapping to your hammer to use hammer skills before going back to rifle, not the other way around.

The longbow is a support weapon, the rifle is a damage weapon. Or it’s supposed to be, anyway.

Incurafy.6329:

What they need to do is nerf all of the OP builds on each profession and then work on making builds that require skill, not this spammy crap we have in the current meta.

Define “skill.” Don’t be vague.

Defcon.8509:

There are any number of rationalizations that can be made for a ranged weapon doing more damage at range. Off the top of my head, a rifle (especially with a scope) is far less accurate against close erratic targets. Since there is no mechanic for miss percentage, you could say that the reduced damage with lack of distance is meant to model the average damage reduction due to inaccuracy.

Pragmatically though, it’s the way it is simply from a game design standpoint. They likely wanted to add more incentive to using melee weapons when close. If the design was inverted you’d likely have rifle warriors shooting people from minimal distance in order to maximize damage.

Yeah. I understand what people are saying, but I honestly don’t feel like the Warrior class in general is really “meant” to be used from a long distance away; longbows have pretty short range without traiting (and I don’t think very many people take those traits), and a lot of our skills are only any good if we’re up close and personal.

I’d be fine with Rifle #1 being a clone of Spear Gun #1, but that doesn’t seem likely to happen, and just removing the bleed and boosting the damage is… well, kinda boring.

Peow peow.2189:

They dont necessarily have to nerf the class. They could just make the other classes stronger so that they are as viable as the warrior.

You need to be VERY careful doing this, because it’ll quickly lead to power creep, and power creep ruins games… and is hard to get rid of once it appears, unless you’re willing to potentially alienate players.

ShinNakon.9085:

Well my warrior is not my main WvW toon atm that is my guard. Don’t really care to “support” others. Just want to burn conditions off my kitten as fast as possible.

Well, investing 20+ points into Tactics is pretty bad if you want to do much damage; anything more than 10 pretty much makes you a support build, and that means your job is mostly to stay alive, because as long as you’re alive, you can keep everyone else alive.

But I just read earlier that the Toughness boost from Mercy runes doesn’t stack with the 10 point minor trait, so I might reconsider my Mercy runes, honestly.

If you’re focusing on shouts, Soldier runes are a no-brainer.

Entertaining to watch, but I do think it highlights that Hammers do too much damage for how much control they provide. I don’t feel that a Warrior with that many points into Defense and using a weapon that gives so many control abilities should be capable of doing so much burst damage :-/

If you’re playing as support? Mercy. Being able to get people up faster (not to mention taking less damage while reviving) makes a pretty big difference if you need to pull someone out of an arrow cart orgy.

Lighter.5631:

because that wouldn’t make sense, if you are immune to condition why are you still taking damage by conditions that are already applied.

Maybe make it only apply to incoming conditions and not existing ones?

Scoobaniec.9561:

PizzaSHARK.2741:

Not really, no. I just want the Rifle to receive more than flat damage boosts; I’d much rather have Rifle be more than “stand in the back and pewpew.”

I think u want reroll to engi. A distance weapon is a distance weapon, for closed fights we have melee sets.

Haha, engi will probably be the class I try next

It’s not a melee weapon anymore than a shotgun is, though. How would a rifle’s bullet become stronger the farther it goes from the muzzle? Bullets lose velocity over time, if anything, they’d be weaker from far away, not stronger.

If nothing else, I’d advocate another 10 points into Strength for Distracting Strikes. Seems like it’d suit your goals more than Furious would.

Kwll.1468:

8 seconds is enough for a warrior to whoop any necros butt through the floor. I would imagine you don’t play much tpvp. How are you going to run away from a warrior btw? They are one of the most mobile classes in the game and necros, the main condition class, are one of the least mobile.

It’s a team game. Where are your teammates? Have them deal with the big, scary Warrior while he’s all foaming at the mouth and stuff.

Rym.1469:

Well, I thought about one simple change : Keep duration, keep cd, but make Zerker stance reduce the damage from conditions to 0 or greatly decrease it. This way, Warrior won’t take any damage from current and further conditions, but it’s possible to stack them up and, biggest thing, it’s possible to kite warrior with Cripple, Chill, Immobilize. So it’d increase counterplay when making you immune to damage, not effect of condition

Excellent idea.

Dawdler.8521:

Crawford.4135:

They did cross breed. Where do you think Charr came from ?

So if we pair a Charr and a Human, we get a Norn back?

I wonder what would happen with a Sylvari and Asura. I’m guessing Quaggans. Small size and dumb as hell. It make sense if you think about it.

This is brilliant.

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

It is very possible to win as a villager, but it requires the villagers to cooperate as a team, which I am not seeing that coordination or even the attitude that they can win this year.

If you take Mad King Says out of the picture (which is equivalent to pressing an “I win!” button), the sides are actually fairly balanced.

Remember that the game starts with many villagers and only one courtier; if the villagers band together, it’s pretty easy to mob the courtiers while turning in items to get feasts and NPCs roaming around.

Having someone take a hammer and smash the Mad King faces in the various walls to generate Boulders (which do significant damage and knock down courtiers, though they’re pretty easy to see coming) is also pretty nice.

The only problem I currently see with the game is how spamable mad king says is (and that multiple courtiers using it stacks it so you have that many different emotes you need to do or you fail all of them but I assume that’s a bug), a higher cooldown would do wonders. Courtiers still have traps that I see very few using that would cover the higher cooldown of mad king says well. Maybe perhaps just make mad king says 1 skill that randomly selects an emote for the person to do. It’s nice to have 5 mad king says and there is strategy to saving certain emotes for certain times, like saving dance because it’s one of the longer emotes, but being able to apply it back to back to back to back to back is a little much (and then having a few courtiers on you that all do mad king says)

Mad King Says needs to just be flatly removed. It’s completely superfluous; Courtiers can win just fine with some communication and good use of traps.

I wouldn’t be adverse to Mad King Thorne himself occasionally doing a Mad King Says that affects EVERYONE, though. Seems like a very Mad King sort of thing to do, you know?

The radar I have a love hate relationship with. Sometimes I don’t even use it, preferring to just hunt blind, checking the usual spots people hide. Maybe it can be disabled until the last 10 or 5 people? (Just the radar function, not teleporting around the labyrinth) By that point they’re all going to be hiding and it’s actually needed. Though I wouldn’t view this as game breaking if it did or didn’t happen. There’s always the walls that mark people as they run by (Though there was a bug with them respawning, that they didn’t respawn at all, the last time I hit them with a hammer it’s been some time since that so that might have been fixed and i’m not aware of it.)

I think villagers should appear on the map if they remain in the same area (say 200-300 radius) for more than 30 or so seconds, just to discourage extensive camping and hiding.

Grok Krog.9581:

The first one is a good minor trait.

15 point: Fight For Justice. When brought to 75% health, you use For Great Justice

Too strong to be a minor trait; all other “if/then” traits are Major traits.

25 point: Empowering Banners. Banners give a boon to allies in range on placement. (Strength: 3 Might for 5 seconds. Discipline: 5 seconds of Fury. Defense: Protection for 5 seconds. Tactics: Regeneration for 5 seconds).

Doesn’t help if you’re focusing on Shouts. Additionally, Banners already provide the best “boons” in the game. Banners maybe need some minor quality of life fixes, but otherwise they’re totally fine.

Or if they want to keep with the rezzing theme.

15 point: Protect the Injured. Use “Fear Me!” When reviving an ally. 60 second cool down

See above.

25 point: Reviver’s Might. Revive allies 15% faster and give nearby allies 5 stacks of Might for 10 seconds when you revive an ally

Drop Battle Standard to revive multiple teammates, everyone gets 25 stacks of Might for 10 seconds. There won’t be any balance problems there.

Tactics minor traits are mostly fine. Reviver’s Might would probably be better if it gave 3 stacks to the person you revived rather than one stack to everyone in a tiny AOE, but otherwise they don’t need any changes.

Seetoo.9316:

So you basically want ranged play to be punished for staying at range?

Not really, no. I just want the Rifle to receive more than flat damage boosts; I’d much rather have Rifle be more than “stand in the back and pewpew.”

And keep in mind that being 1200 range away from something is already a pretty significant advantage in itself, since that means you’re a lot less likely to get bit by something.

This sort of change would encourage Rifle to play in a sort of serpentine style, moving in close to maximize damage for bursts while backing off between cooldowns to minimize incoming damage.

Ottohi.2871:

What? Berserker’s might = 2 adrenaline / 3 sec. Rage = 1 adrenaline / 3 sec.
I stopped reading past here. If you really played a warrior this would be a HUGE GLARING fact check failure. As we all know, if you don’t check your facts suddenly you fail at the most basic reasoning (there’s a satire out there of people who don’t know their facts saying they hate Obamacare but are all for the affordable healthcare act. Same thing. I’ll link if I have the time and find it again. Proves this point well.)

Please make sure you check your facts and actually play it some. There’s a lot more passive and your type “problems” in other classes much more so than warriors, i.e. maintaining very powerful boons just from doing a mindless spammed action (mesmer vigor on crit, ranger prot on dodge) or very passive gameplay that’s near mindless (heavy stealth/dodge thief which throw off condis like crazy)

Warrior is literally the only class I’ve played.

I’m not saying that Signet of Rage’s passive is stronger than Berserker’s Might, but the fact that it exists at all makes other Adrenaline boosters such as Berserker’s Might (as well as Healing Surge, Furious, and maybe Signet of Fury’s active) less attractive by comparison.

But then again, maybe Signet of Rage would be fine if there was actually a choice between it and Rampage; as it is, Rampage is pretty bad, so there’s no real choice if you’re anything but a Banners Warrior.

But that’s not really something that’s about Traits, more about skills, so it’s not something I want to get into in this thread; you’re welcome to make another thread suggesting possible ways of improving Rampage if you’d like.

Tactics

Lung Capacity (Adept II) - Now also increases area of effect of Shouts by 50%, essentially being the Shout-focused clone of Inspiring Banners. Always thought it was odd that Banners get boosted to 900 AOE but Shouts remain stuck at 600, even after taking the Trait.

Desperate Power (Adept III) - Boosts damage by 10% whenever you’re below 50% health. Essentially the same Trait, just you’re more likely to actually get to use it without being dead three seconds later.

Quick Breathing (Master IX) - Only Call to Arms converts a condition to a boon. Charge already clears Chilled, Immobilize, and Crippled, and it also has twice the AOE of Call to Arms and a much shorter cooldown (not to mention it providing permanent Swiftness by time you can take Quick Breathing.) By shifting the condition converting to be only on Call to Arms, we’re avoiding power creep while also adding some decision-making to playing a Warhorn spec: do you want to use Call to Arms to clear a condition, save it for use as a Blast finisher, or do you really need to get Weakness on an enemy/Vigor on a buddy?

Reviver’s Might (Grandmaster, minor) - Grants the ally you revived 3 stacks of Might for 12 seconds; no longer grants Might to you or nearby allies. Essentially rather than potentially giving two or three people one stack of Might, you’re slapping the guy you just rescued on the kitten and telling him to go rip someone in half. Supports the, uh, support-y nature of a Grandmaster Tactics Warrior more than the current iteration.

I kind of like where Tactics is at for the most part, with a Shouts-focused Warrior being kind of a healer-type, while a Banner-focused Warrior is more concerned with buffing teammates than with healing them (since the regeneration provided by banners is fairly mild compared to the burst healing of Shouts.)

Discipline

Signet Mastery (Adept VI) - Swapped with Sweet Revenge (Master VII.) Signet Mastery is much too strong for an Adept tier Trait, especially when used with Dolyak Signet or Signet of Rage; if Signet of Rage’s passive Adrenaline gain gets reduced, Signet of Fury could also see a comeback (essentially being a free 3 bars of Adrenaline on demand.)

That’s the only complaint I have with this tree. Otherwise, I like it quite a bit and feel it fits the “utility” slot quite well. I do have a mild concern with Inspiring Shouts being here (I’d rather see it rolled into an existing Shout Trait somewhere, if possible), but then again, maybe it’s good to make Shout-focused Warriors pick and choose what they’d like.

Strength

Powerful Banners (Adept VI) - Damage increased by 20% (from 365 to 438); Banners now deal damage when summoned as well as when using the Plant Standard skill (this is the #5 skill while carrying any Banner.) Combined with Plant Standard being a Blast finisher, this should make this Trait a little bit more useful, especially for a Banner-focused Warrior that wants to add some damage to his kit, rather than defense.

Otherwise, Strength is a pretty good tree; I feel like Berserker’s Might is actually an excellent Trait that’s overshadowed by Signet of Rage’s passive Adrenaline generation. The most likely solution would be to nerf Signet of Rage’s passive Adrenaline generation, but this would also probably require Rampage to be substantially improved, since there are few if any situations in which a damage-focused Warrior would want to take Rampage over Signet of Rage; this is a subject for a different thread, however, since it extends beyond Traits.

I will say one thing that will make Rampage immeasurably better: since the whole concept is to turn me into the Thing for 20 seconds, can we make it automatically make me shout It’s clobberin’ time! when I activate it?

Arms

Furious Speed (Adept II) - Now grants 3 seconds of Swiftness on a 3 second internal cooldown; as long as your crit chance is decent and you’re hitting something, you’ll still be able to have effectively permanent Swiftness, but it won’t last you very long once you stop hitting things.

Unsuspecting Foe (Adept IV) - Reduced to 20% bonus to crit chance against stunned enemies. For an Adept tier Trait, 50% was far too good, making it much too easy for Warriors to skimp on Precision and still maintain very high critical hit rates. (This was an idea another poster had, but I can’t remember who mentioned it )

Last Chance (Grandmaster XII) - Grants 4 seconds of Quickness on a 25 second internal cooldown, effectively doubling the Trait’s maximum potential uptime to 16%, up from roughly 8%. Quickness is very, very good, but given that it already requires a foe that’s nearly dead to begin with, a 45 second internal cooldown is a little extreme.

As with Berserker’s Might, I feel Furious is a great Trait that will become more valued if Signet of Rage’s passive Adrenaline gain is reduced. As it is currently, it’s actually pretty hard to recommend putting more than 25 points into Arms unless you really want that extra 50 Precision and Malice.

Defense

Dogged March (Adept II) - Now reduces the first Immobilize or Chill effect by 33% and grants 3 seconds of regeneration, on an 8 second internal cooldown. Dogged March does not affect Crippled at all anymore, and no longer provides any passive benefits; it will proc the Regeneration and reduce the duration of the first Immobilize or Chilled effect you’re struck with, and then do nothing until the internal cooldown passes. As mentioned, I feel there’s far too much passive condition reduction or removal in the game (this isn’t just in the Warrior trees, it’s everywhere), and especially for an Adept tier Trait, Dogged March is far too good.

Adrenal Health (Master, minor) - Swapped with Armored Attack (Grandmaster, minor.) The healing gained from Adrenal Health is very good, especially when combined with Adrenaline boosters (such as Signet of Rage or Grandmaster tier Traits like Furious and Berserker’s Might.) Because of that, it should be reserved for people willing to sacrifice damage in order to become harder to kill; the amount healed could be increased to compensate.

Spiked Armor (Grandmaster XII) - Adjusted to 7 seconds, every 15 seconds. I kind of feel like this should be a Master tier Trait and not a Grandmaster tier, but I’m not really sure what to swap it with; maybe Cleansing Ire, but I feel like Cleansing Ire is fine where it’s at if Dogged March gets nerfed. I have a hard time seeing people choosing Spiked Armor over Defy Pain.

The main issues with Defense are primarily that two of its best Traits, Dogged March and Cleansing Ire (along with the minor, Adrenal Health) are all somewhat easily accessible for people not wanting to commit to a defensively-oriented build. I’d kind of like Dogged March (in its current iteration) and Cleansing Ire to become mutually exclusive, both being Master tier Traits, but Last Stand is far too good to be an Adept tier Trait and there aren’t other alternatives (Spiked Armor would also probably be far too strong as an Adept Trait.)

Rebalancing Warrior Traits

Howdy! I’m creating this thread with the aim of providing a location for ArenaNet to gather some useful feedback from players about issues with Warriors, focusing primarily on Traits (since they’ve mentioned that they’d like to do a more thorough balance pass on traits for all classes in the near? future.) Please note that if you want to whine about overpowered or underpowered, or insult other players or ArenaNet, this isn’t the thread for it. If you can’t post constructively, please don’t post at all.

I do feel like it’s worth mentioning that I’d like to see there be less overall passive tools for dealing with boons and conditions, though; I feel like boon removal (purging) and condition removal (cleansing), as well as boon applications (buffing) and condition applications (debuffing) should primarily be done with button presses, not something that happens automatically, though some automatic/passive stuff is alright as long as it’s kept in check; left unrestrained, I feel like having too much automatic or passive applying/removing will lead to power creep, which isn’t good for the game in the long term. I mostly mention this to give some context to my ideas, so they don’t appear to be entirely out of left field.

Lastly, before beginning, I like the idea of that another poster forwarded that Traits should generally work out something like: two Offense-focused trees, two Defense-focused trees, and then the fifth tree being focused on the class’s unique ability (in our case, Adrenaline and Burst skills.) With that in mind, if it’s not already obvious, Strength and Arms are our Offense trees, Defense and Tactics are our… Defense trees, and Discipline is obviously our Profession tree.

Anyway, I’ll list my ideas and then provide a little bit of justification of why I feel the change I’m suggesting would improve the game. Hopefully we’ll be able to develop some good discussion using these ideas as a starting point, even if we end up talking about ideas that are completely contrary to mine

And, more importantly, making the Rifle a distinct and fun weapon to use.

I remember someone talking about the Spear Gun mechanic for use with the Rifle, and that’s cool… but how about we put it in reverse? How about the Rifle’s #1 skill loses the bleed, and gains damage based on how close you are to the target? Determine how much average damage the bleed is worth, and roll that damage into the attack’s damage itself.

Then, from 0-300 you get say 10% bonus damage, 5% from like 301-600, and then base damage from 601-1200?

This could even be (carefully) applied to Volley – damage varies slightly (in a consistent way) based on distance from the target.

I feel like this, along with perhaps some selective other changes (Brutal Shot might need a faster cast time, etc), could make Rifles competitive with Longbows again (Rifles should absolutely do more damage than Longbows to compensate for them having less overall utility) while also making Rifle gameplay unique and interesting.

The idea is that you’d use skills like Aimed Shot and Rifle Butt (and maybe utility skills like Stomp, Throw Bolas, Fear Me!, or… Kick) to manipulate your target’s distance from you, trying to keep them close enough to really unload on them, but without letting them get close enough to take a bite out of you. Kind of like using a shotgun, but not?

Just an idea.

Meriem.3504:

It wasn’t like this last year that I recall. Those skills are just plain auto win, you either run unable to grab anything or you do the command and STAND STILL channeling it so you can just die…

That’s what I’ve been noticing. You’re dead if you don’t, and you’re dead if you do.

Then again, anything that makes the Courtier half of the game go by faster is great, because playing as Courtier is very boring.

NevirSayDie.6235:

PizzaSHARK.2741:

I just feel it’s dumb when PvP honestly just feels like it’s about mashing buttons rather than managing conditions, boons, and playing intelligently.

I really enjoy condition management, more from the defensive side than the offensive side. On the defensive side, there’s a ton of micro and really fast decision making, which I love. Although there’s a ton of strategy to both sides in duels and 1v2s. Not as much in team fights because guardians tend to toss out party cleansing that can’t really be predicted, interrupted or baited. So yes, that can start to feel a little spammy.

At the same time, I’d hate to see support get a massive nerf. Condition application is strong enough to make condition removal important. I guess we could nerf both across the board, but honestly, that would probably just lessen the importance of support cleanses and teamwork, as condi removal support would then be just a bunch of long cooldowns that hard counter some other long cooldowns. Honestly everyone would probably just take a a couple of personal cleanses and call it good.

I can agree with that. I guess the key is to find a happy medium somewhere. I think a starting place might be to limit accessibility to self-curing (particularly the kind with small cooldowns, such as Cleansing Ire) to deeper within their respective trait trees, to make them inaccessible to people wanting to dip into a tree to grab something juicy without sacrificing too much.

I feel Warrior trees, in particular, are bad about this (Cleansing Ire as mentioned, Dogged March, etc), and may be part of why the general consensus seems to be that they get too much for too little.

I feel like condition and boon management (the upkeep and removal of both) should primarily be the domain of support-oriented players, outside of utility skills.

infantrydiv.1620:

I totally agree… Less conditions and less condition removal would be an amazing thing for the game from a tactical and positioning standpoint… Imagine if getting a cripple or chill on someone meant you could actually kite them. Imagine if you got torment stacked it would actually make your opponent want to stay still. Imagine if poison was an actual counter to healing and bunker builds. It would be nice.

I was fiddling around with a sword/sword warrior build earlier, and I ended up dueling a (greatsword? I dunno, he was Asura and really hard to see details on) Ranger, and I noticed that even with Leg Specialist, multiple ways of applying Cripple, and even Stomp and Bull’s Charge, it was really hard to keep him slowed down. I don’t know jack about the Ranger class, so I don’t know what it was that was taking Cripple and Immobilize off him so quickly (looks like there’s a 30 point trait that transfers conditions to the pet, maybe that was it), but I was spending a lot of time slowed down, while he was spending most of the time zipping around with no conditions and Swiftness.

Near as I could tell, it was happening as automatically as me applying those Cripples and Immobilizes, and it’s not factoring in both me and him spamming our dodge like crazy. Between condition removal speed and evasion… it just feels excessive.

Switched back to my Warhorn build for the next game, and… it’s really pretty ridiculous how easily I was removing/converting conditions on myself and teammates.

I don’t know enough about the game to say what should be done about it, if anything, but it just doesn’t feel right. Maybe it’s because WoW is the only other MMORPG with PvP I’ve ever cared to pay attention to, and things worked… quite a bit different there.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

The patch had defintely improvements.
However, the huge lack of risk-reward and a non-existent skill-floor making the game for every average pvp-player a nightmare. The time spent into PvP is not necessary anymore, you can roll the meta and you’ll win.

So I guess Team-PvP will be dead till Janaury, when the reward-system will be released. Sad to see such potential being wasted due to a development-strategy for casuals, while desperately trying to make this game an E-Sport.
Are you even aware of the fact that an E-Sport has to be competitive, therefore needs a high enough skill-ceiling? Because what you do now is trying to be an E-Sport while trying to get as much causals as you can get. This strategy leads to a mess, or what we call ingame: “The Meta”

I’d argue that the most important thing if you want a game to become an esport is accessibility. Take a look at all of the really popular games out there that’re being played competitively, in huge tournaments: Call of Duty, Halo, Dota 2, League of Legends, and probably plenty of others I’m forgetting about.

What do all of those games have in common? It’s easy for Joe Sixpack to come home to after work and pick up and play, and have fun. It doesn’t matter if Joe Sixpack is good, bad, or utterly incompetent – he’s having fun, and if he’s having fun, he’ll continue to play the game.

Think about how many people attended or tuned in to watch The International 2013, or whatever the big League of Legends tournament was (The Worlds?) Think about how many people were talking about it on Facebook or Twitter or Twitch or wherever else.

Now think about, honestly, how many of those people are even any good at the game, or even really care about “skill.” No, the vast majority of those folks are watching the game because they enjoy playing it, whether it takes a lot of “skill” to play or not.

But I feel that’s where GW2 is failing miserably. See, I’m new to GW2, and most of the time, I enjoy it. But I’ve been trying to get into sPvP, because it’s the only gameplay I haven’t done much of, and every time I hop into a match… I remember exactly why I haven’t done much of it: it sucks! I’m sorry, I know that’s not constructive, but it’s just… awful, and absolutely absent of fun.

And, having gotten a few friends into GW2 (only one still plays actively, though) over the past several months, I can say that I’m not alone in feeling that way about GW2’s sPvP.

Unless ArenaNet are able to make sPvP something that’s fun for newbies to come home to and fiddle around with, it will never succeed as an esport.

I just get this feeling when playing pretty much any role in PvP; conditions are freely applied and just as freely removed, which makes it seem pointless to have them in the game in the first place. This also applies to boons, though since I haven’t played a Guardian yet, I expect my experience with a boon-focused class is limited.

I feel like crippling someone, or stacking up a bleed, or hitting them with poison, or whatever should actually mean something, not just “oh, it’ll be removed in a second or two, anyway.” But at the same time, getting that cripple or bleed or whatever should also require effort on my part – I really don’t like the fact that so many conditions are just casually applied as what amount to autoattacks, or skills with very brief cooldowns.

Hell, I’m part of the problem; I tend to primarily play a support-focused warhorn warrior. I’ve got two horn skills, each with a short cooldown (and no resource cost, since GW2 doesn’t use a resource system), and each skill converts one condition into a boon every time it’s used, and that’s on top of what they already do, and not even considering the condition reduction/removal pretty much every class has already.

I just feel it’s dumb when PvP honestly just feels like it’s about mashing buttons rather than managing conditions, boons, and playing intelligently. Maybe I don’t play at a high enough level… but how does ArenaNet expect to get players hooked on their game (in the PvP/esports sense) when gameplay feels so random at a low level?

Larynx.2453:

Yasha.5963:

I does seem easy, but I still don’t understand why the f1 skill on warrior does not go on full cd if you miss, is there some reason why warrior f1 is the exception to the rule?

Burst abilities go on full cooldown if you miss.

The cooldowns aren’t particularly long, especially if you trait Discipline.

twity.4732:

Can new people stop complaining about mesmers. I was one of two mesmers in the entire mlg tournament. the recent vvv tourney I assume only had 1 mesmer. at top levels, mesmers are very underrepresented. so please please please, can new players stop complaining about mesmers simply because they havent played long enough to tell a very mechanical looking clone from the real thing?

Balance is irrelevant if there’s a class in the game whose apparent sole purpose is to be as fun-ruining as possible. Dealing with Mesmers as a new player is an utter pain in the kitten because of how cluttered the screen becomes with just one Mesmer around, let alone more than one.

The same thing applies to pet Necromancers, and maybe even Rangers when there’s a few of them around.

It’s just a UI issue, really; the UI rapidly becomes full of meaningless clutter when classes like Mesmers are around, which makes it increasingly difficult to even determine what, exactly, is going on. I imagine it’s not a problem for experienced players, but we’re not talking about experienced players here.

Kaga.7629:

PizzaSHARK.2741:

Kaga.7629:

Also, wtf 30 tactics without regen banners. Drop burning arrows, put in regen banners.

Inspiring Battle Standard heals for less than 200 HP/sec with only 200 Compassion.

Regen is all about the layers.
Healsig + def15 passive + regen bannah + occasional dogged march regen. In pve you would add pies for another layer.

You simply don’t take 30 in tactics without taking regen banners or shoutheals, that’s just bad. Also, you could try it with purple banner if you want to go fullon regen defensive.

I don’t see how having a tiny, insignificant extra regen layer is going to outweigh having more utility from my bow, or giving a permanent 150 Power to allies just for being alive and in the general area.

I could stack Compassion to make the banner regen notable, but I’d sacrifice a ludicrous amount of HP in order to get those stats, which defeats the purpose of increasing the healing amount to begin with.

An extra 100 HP/sec isn’t going to keep me or a teammate alive, but an extra immobilize or extra AOE blind might.

Kaga.7629:

The Dolyak6 rune regen is horrible. I really don’t recommend it.
Also, wtf 30 tactics without regen banners. Drop burning arrows, put in regen banners.

Inspiring Battle Standard heals for less than 200 HP/sec with only 200 Compassion. In order to get more Compassion (by taking a Cleric accessory), I’d sacrifice an enormous amount of HP – something like 6,000-8,000 HP, and the banners would still heal for little more than 300 HP/sec.

On the other hand, Burning Arrows lowers the cooldown on Longbow skills by 20%. 20% more blinding, 20% more immobilizing, 20% more everything.

Especially when you factor in Poison, the amount of healing from Inspiring Battle Standard is pretty awful. Stacking Compassion works in a Vigorous Shouts build because that healing comes in large spikes. Inspiring Battle Standard is a very gradual healing, and sacrificing that much HP in order to increase the amount healed is counterproductive.

I’d rather replace Burning Arrows with Empower Allies than Inspiring Battle Standard.

And, yeah, Dolyak rune regen is… pretty underwhelming, about 260 HP/sec with the basic 200 Compassion I have from Defense traits. I’ll probably switch back to Mercy runes and see how much of a difference those make in being able to revive effectively.

Poxxia.1547:

In short: Yes they have … I am almost certain that it has been brought up even numerous times. But hammer-stun is AoE anyway, so … .
On top: Asuras Skull Crack is the same animation as an auto-attack. So such a crucial effect can’t even be dodged on purpose unless you have supernatural mind-reading-skills.

Honestly, all of my dodging is based on prediction rather than reaction, anyway. This might be due to latency from playing on an EU server from the US, though; if I wait for the animation to start, it’s usually too late for me to evade.

That said, Asura in general need to… I dunno, be much bigger than they currently are, at least in sPvP. It’s much harder to see what they’re doing than it is to see what, for example, a Charr or Norn is doing.

ArenaNet should probably figure out some way of making all races roughly equivalent in size somehow. I suppose that’d toss lore out the window, but do people in sPvP even care much about the lore when they’re in a match?

Nova Stiker.8396:

Is this the really the fate of PvP? Being permanently locked into gimmicky, unskillful builds?

Uncalled for buffs, unneeded nerfs. You HAVE to carry stun breakers AND condition removal. Whoever has their condition removal not on recharge wins.

Congrats on fail game design, you made condition damage viable but PvP is not.

---

Are we ever going to see the condition meta die or ‘balancing’ condition damage vs. power is the ideal thing to do?

You need to stop worrying about what is and isn’t “skillful.” Stop stroking your ego; I guarantee you that you aren’t anywhere near as talented and amazing as you believe yourself to be.

If you don’t like the path the PvP is headed in, don’t play it. Certainly no one of importance is going to listen to you if you only have something negative to say and aren’t able to produce arguments without insulting them.