Guild Wars 2

Mordremoth’s triumvirate of evil:
1. Trahearne
2. Scarlet
3. The sylvari that keeps spamming “More violets I say, less violence.”

The PvP-exclusive skins, armors, and minis are completely unnecessary for PvE. You might want them, true, but you don’t actually need them to partake in any PvE activity. This is the same rationale that ArenaNet uses to justify the existence of ascended armor – obtaining it is a bit of a grind, but it’s a completely optional grind, because it’s not really necessary for most areas of the game. At no point is anyone being forced to participate in any activities that they do not wish to undertake in order to perform well in the parts of the game that they do favor. ArenaNet recognizes that PvP isn’t for everyone – that’s why the gear obtained from it doesn’t have any special stat attributes or bonuses that would make them superior to PvE equipment. At the same time, they also recognize that PvE isn’t for everyone – that’s why PvP doesn’t use the PvE equipment system. The PvP-exclusive rewards are purely cosmetic, so I don’t see how you’re being punished for not participating in PvP. At the same time, if ArenaNet did relax the requirements to obtain them, I feel that it would detract from the inherent prestige and exclusivity of those items – the impression of “Oh, that guy has the glorious armor skins, clearly he’s put some time and effort into playing PvP” – and consequently reduce the satisfaction that other players derive from acquiring them. As I see it, this isn’t a tactic to draw new players into PvP – it’s a method of rewarding the really dedicated players who find it to their liking. Since similarly unique rewards exist for PvE (luminescent/carapace armor skins, fractal weapons), I’m fairly confident in saying that ArenaNet has deliberately designed these requirements to reflect the effort that their owners put into the relevant game mode, and barring a complete reversal of that philosophy, I don’t see them changing anytime soon.

With that said, I do agree that it would be nice if the current pool of dailies were expanded such that players didn’t have to go out of their way (or into different game modes) to hunt down their ten achievement points, but it’s really only a minor inconvenience either way.

I think this change might be acceptable, but only if they reworked Thieves to be less reliant on the stealth mechanic. With the Acrobatics trait line getting nerfed in the recent patch, Thieves are more dependent upon stealth as their primary means of damage “mitigation” than ever (it’s still possible to hit them in stealth). Giving everyone ready access to revealed without any other changes would just be a direct nerf and do little to improve game balance or build variety for Thieves. Although stealth suffers from limited counterplay, Thieves are currently in a place where a major nerf to stealth (in the form of added counterplay) would just break the class in competitive settings and remove one of their major tools for disengaging.

Mesmers would likely be less impacted by your proposal, since most of their builds don’t really rely entirely on stealth for survivability. However, that’s not to say that they wouldn’t be affected at all, and I think all of the professions with access to skills that grant stealth would need to be looked at before implementing the change.

Ciraph Firenze.8409:

Guardian Comparison

‘Shield of Judgement’ provides a block and applies both Protection and Aegis to you and up to five allies. For the same cooldown time, ‘Shield Bash’ does meagre damage and stuns for 2s.

‘Shield of Absorbtion’ pushes enemies back and absorbs projectiles, and heals allies upon second cast. ‘Shield Stance’ simply blocks incoming attacks for 3s.

Shield of Judgment and Shield Bash have the same damage coefficient. Shield of Judgment doesn’t provide any block other than its aegis application.

Shield of Absorption only activates a knockback on activation, meaning that it’s possible to just walk into the dome afterwards and land any non-projectile skill. Unlike Shield Stance, the dome doesn’t block non-projectile ranged skills (e.g. GS 1 on mesmers).

Revenant Comparison

‘Envoy of Exuberence’ is probably the silliest one, it has 10s less cooldown than ‘Shield Bash’, the Warrior equivalent, and yet has a heal and repeated Protection application. Once again, ‘Shield Bash’ does meagre damage and stuns for 2s.

‘Crystal Hibernation’ is downright insulting in my opinion, having the exact same cooldown time and Block duration as ‘Shield Stance’ and yet also providing Regeneration on top of this? What’s with that?

Both Envoy of Exuberance and Crystal Hibernation have energy costs in addition to their cooldowns. Crystal Hibernation roots the player in place for the duration of the skill. Revenants don’t have access to cooldown reduction for their shield skills via trait.

It’s also worth noting that both the Guardian and Revenant shield traits are generally either comparable to or worse than Warrior’s in most respects. Stalwart Defender provides +240 toughness while the shield is equipped and 20% reduced cooldown on shield skills. Soothing Bastion provides a channeled stationary block that procs uncontrollably at 25% health and increases boon duration by 2 seconds on shield skill activation. Shield Master provides might on block (no internal cooldown), projectile reflection while blocking, and 20% reduced cooldown on shield skills.

Shield is fine, it doesn’t need buffs.

YuiRS.8129:

A bit of buffs to the overall functionality is needed, but what we need is something else added to them. Kick is never going to be as useful as Stances, because all it is a single hit small telegraphed hit, which is going to fail most of the time.

In my opinion, Rampage should just deal 20% more damage and Peak Performance needs to change to add something to Physicals. E.g. make them restore Endurance, heal you, remove condis etc.

I agree that Peak Performance could use a change. The increased damage is useful only with respect to Rampage, since no one really uses the others for damage anyways. (30% more damage on bolas? Really?)

With that said, I have my doubts as to whether ArenaNet will actually invest the time to rework physical skills to the point of competing with stances. If that does happen, great, but at this point I’d be happy if they just adequately fulfilled their old role as 100B cc in the current post-expansion meta.

To my knowledge, people use the Inferno’s Needle spot because it’s roughly equidistant from the three spawns (OG sort of gets the short end of the stick here), isn’t situated behind any walls or gates, and has plenty of escape routes/visibility to flee from incoming zergs. The areas under the middle of the map are either too cramped or have sentry npcs that would get in the way of duels, plus the lack of accessibility would actually be a drawback if a zerg ever did come through.

An open-world dueling option would be great, but I doubt it’ll ever be implemented due to complaints that it would cause flaming/trolling in PvE maps. Personally, I think the easiest solution would be to just make OS a megaserver-ish map like EotM so that people in different tiers could fight each other there.

What, so base warriors wouldn’t be able to use Bull’s Charge without taking berserker? No thanks, Bull’s Charge is a useful skill on base warrior with all the recent buffs to it, whereas Headbutt isn’t nearly as good without access to Outrage. If you don’t like the flavor of the skill, just don’t use it.

Shaogin.2679:

It is really easy to tell who didn’t actually read through this thread, got completely trolled by op, and rushed to the bottom to leave an angry “l2p!” comment. Lol.

Someone didn’t read the L2P post closely enough.

Anyways, I too have witnessed the overpowered Berserker Warriors in action. I once saw two of them dueling, and one of them used Decapitate at the same time the other activated Head Butt. The former’s axe sent the second Berserker’s head flying mid-lunge, but the severed head just kept going and pulverized the axe-wielder’s cranium. Needless to say, both of them popped Endure Pain and were fine. For all I know, they’re still locked in combat to this day.

There appears to be a general consensus in this forum that the Defense minor trait Adrenal Health could use a rework. More specifically, the trait promotes building up adrenaline and not using it in order to gain a small buff in sustain, despite the fact that most warrior builds now require the damage or cc that burst skills provide. In some ways, this resembles the old mesmer phantasm-based builds, which disincentivized shattering illusions (their main profession mechanic) in order to maintain damage uptime. Although mesmers have now received a “fix” for their dilemma in the form of Chronophantasma, warriors are still stuck with a trait that conflicts with their profession mechanic. While most people seem to agree that Adrenal Health should be changed to heal while spending adrenaline, I don’t think anyone has really bothered to hammer out what they think the new functionality of the trait should be, which is what I will be attempting here. My general idea is as follows:

Adrenal Health:
Gain health based on adrenaline level when you hit with a burst skill.
Adrenaline level 1 healing: 1000 (0.05)
Adrenaline level 2 healing: 2000 (0.10)
Adrenaline level 3 healing: 3000 (0.15)

Assuming that someone uses a level 3 burst skill roughly every fifteen seconds or so (since they generally aren’t spammed off cooldown), this would average out to about 200 health per second without healing power, which seems reasonable to me given that it’s only a minor trait. This would already surpass the 117 health per second that the skill’s current iteration offers at max adrenaline without using burst skills.

Of course, there one clause in the suggestion that might seem rather iffy to a lot of people, which is the fact that the healing occurs “on hit” (much like Berserker’s Power and Cleansing Ire) rather than upon simply spending the adrenaline. In my opinion, this type of limitation is necessary in order to promote better profession design. As I see it, warrior should be a profession that promotes and rewards strategic gameplay. One of the warrior’s main limitations has always been that its skills are visible and highly telegraphed; it’s “fair” in that an opponent will always be able to see what’s coming. Therefore, skilled warriors can distinguish themselves from inexperienced ones by baiting out defenses and executing cc chains that enable them to finally land their key skills. I don’t think that warrior should be the “noob” profession which is simply carried by hefty numbers and passive skill effects, as the devs implied when they first revealed the Berserker. If the profession is designed in such a way that anyone can just pick it up and use it with equal effectiveness regardless of their skill or experience, it will either be completely unviable (because it simply isn’t rewarding no matter how skilled the player is) or completely faceroll (in which case people will get it nerfed). Warrior’s present inadequate state can be attributed to the fact that it’s too unrewarding even when played well. Sure, maybe you landed that 7k eviscerate or that well-timed pin down, but so what? The new elite specializations can just shrug off that piddling amount of damage (or better yet, evade/invuln/block it entirely) or break that immobilize at the press of a button. If core warrior is going to remain somewhat competitive in the post-HoT environment and the subsequent metas going forward, it needs to shift away from being a profession of ineffectual passive traits (of which the current Adrenal Health is one) to one that distinguishes between its skilled and unskilled players and rewards/punishes them accordingly.

So, with that all in mind, my proposed version of Adrenal Health has the healing take place on hit because I don’t think a player should be rewarded for missing with a burst skill. Besides, let’s be real: if it did heal on adrenaline spent, there would be some kind of cheese build that just relied on blindly spamming burst skills off cooldown for the extra healing (that might be possible regardless with Combustive Shot, but at least a warrior that only camps longbow and self-heals isn’t doing anything useful).

This isn’t to say that there are no problems that might arise with this mechanic. It’s still very easy for other professions to repeatedly prevent key warrior skills from landing (via blind spam, evade spam, whatever) in a manner that allows for little counterplay. Yes, warrior still needs to be given the tools necessary to connect with its offensive skills without sacrificing most or all of its defenses. However, I don’t think that we should rely on a minor trait in the Defense line to solve these issues, nor do I think our traits should be balanced around our skills missing half the time.

Anyways, those are my thought. This post primarily addresses the pvp side of things; I don’t have as much experience in pve, though I will say that I think toning down some of our passive buffs in favor of more active mechanics might also help with the constant powercreep the profession has been undergoing in the latter gamemode. Any feedback or criticism is welcome.

What exactly would this accomplish? Thieves are already limited to roaming/ganking backliners in WvW, nerfing stealth would just restrict them even further. Mesmers wouldn’t really be affected because their stealth skills last five seconds or less and have long cooldowns. Why the thief nerf?

Maybe it’ll happen eventually, right?

Kick – change the knockback into a 2 second knockdown.

Stomp – give it the functionality of Seismic Leap.

Throw Bolas – make the projectile unblockable. If it’s going to be buggy on uneven terrain, easy to dodge, and easy to break for most elite specializations (Daredevil dash, Dragonhunter F2, etc.) at least let it bypass some of the now-numerous projectile blocks in the game.

Bull’s Charge – replace the knockdown with a 3 second stun.

Oh, and make Mending a physical skill.

There’s already a trait for Rage skills, and Head Butt is already a Rage Skill. Also, even if Head Butt were a Physical skill, it wouldn’t really make sense to use it with the current iteration of Peak Performance, because the latter gives additional damage based on adrenaline level whereas Head Butt fills adrenaline upon hitting (and thus you wouldn’t want to use it when you’re already full adrenaline).

The other part of the trait, 20% reduced cooldown, probably shouldn’t apply to Head Butt either considering that ArenaNet already nerfed the skill’s cooldown from 20 to 25 seconds in PvP. Although I understand wanting to maintain thematic consistency, when the entirety of a trait isn’t suitable for a skill it’s probably best not to alter it. I’d rather they didn’t nerf Peak Performance’s cooldown reduction since it’s the only thing keeping some of the comparatively weak Physical skills (aforementioned Bull’s Charge, Rampage, etc.) semi-useful.

For leveling, I’d suggest taking a greatsword for the mobility and cleaves. Its 3 skill contains evade frames, so it can be used for both offense and defense. Also, the burst skill (F1) has 20 more range than its auto attack, hits in a circle, and can be used while moving.

As for a ranged weapon, longbow is generally better than rifle – it has access to a large fire field, a blast finisher with decent damage, a blind, and an immobilize. The latter can be useful for landing the 2 skill on greatsword.

Healing Signet is generally our best heal, and for the most part the passive effect is superior to the active.

Warrior isn’t one of the top professions at the moment, but it still has fairly decent damage and mobility while being moderately durable. Unfortunately, the elite specialization is basically junk, but the core profession is still viable in all game modes (though it could definitely use some tuning).

Inb4 someone calls me a Dragonhunter main or something:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia

After some testing, I’d have to say that the first build seems to be the most effective in general. While you’re correct in that Defy Pain isn’t particularly useful in 1v1 fights (unless it’s a very close duel anyways), I find that it’s rather good in team fights and for securing stomps. Since Healing Signet gives constant health regeneration, the bit of extra durability that Defy Pain adds is an excellent opportunity to get out of the fight with greatsword skills and kite around while healing up. By contrast, Spiked Armor won’t help as much if the other team decides to focus you, as the retaliation damage will be spread out among all their members.

As for the second build, although Leg Specialist is nice for landing bursts, losing 200 power, 20% condition duration, Slashing Power, and Great Fortitude (which is more valuable if you’re planning to take Defy Pain, as it reduces the chance of being one-shot) doesn’t seem worth it, especially when your only access to cripple is Bladetrail. Personally, I’d prefer to slot Throw Bolas over Bull’s Charge – they’re both rather buggy skills, but I’ve been able to land the bolas pretty consistently by only using it in melee range, which is fairly easy to maintain with this build’s mobility. Its cooldown is significantly shorter, the immobilize has a longer duration, it persists through stunbreaks, and your ability to apply trash conditions with the greatsword and longbow should be able to hinder peoples’ attempts to cleanse it off themselves. Even if someone does manage to remove it, the brief cooldown means you can just re-apply it 20 seconds later.

As for the last two builds, I’m not really a fan of relying on the on-crit traits for damage. The precision and condition damage boosts from the Arms line aren’t too optimal; you should already be able to maintain constant Fury uptime with Pack runes, Signet of Rage, and Arcing Slice, and your only damaging conditions are on your longbow, which attacks too slowly to reliably proc the bleed trait. By contrast, Strength offers additional power, which is always useful, and condition duration, which will lengthen your immobilize durations to 3.5 and 4.75 seconds respectively for more reliable bursts with Hundred Blades. As for the traits themselves, I believe you’d need to maintain around 8 stacks of might with Forceful Greatsword to match the 10% bonus from Slashing Power (and if you’re critting that often, the other person is probably already dead). The cooldown reduction on greatsword skills is largely redundant, since if you’re swapping weapons consistently they’ll almost always be off cooldown when you swap back anyways. Attack of Opportunity isn’t a bad trait, but you’re dropping Destruction of the Empowered to take it, which will weaken your damage against boon-heavy builds and/or anyone who’s being supported by a shoutbow warrior.

Welcome to the world of core warrior.

Might need to actually stow cast and bait defenses again, the horror.

witcher.3197:

If warrior would be oneshotting teamfights with autoattacks from the other side of the map this guy would still be asking for buffs.

If minions in their current capacity are too strong, they should be adjusted through actual game mechanics, not gimmicky things like bad AI or unintended skill functionality. With that being said, I’m not sure that I understand the OP’s point about them always being there – isn’t that what distinguishes them from relatively useless summons like spirit weapons or elementals? The fact that they’re always present (unless killed) makes it possible to integrate them into an actual build that plays around them, instead of constantly waiting for the summon skills to come off cooldown.

Also, I’m pretty certain that most minion masters take Consume Conditions over Blood Fiend and thus have only four same-category skills. Some other effective builds that run four of the same skill type include cantrip staff elementalists (not affected by the upcoming nerfs to fire magic), meditation guardians, and survival rangers.

Edit: Are you saying that minions differ from other heal/utility/elite skills in that they’re permanently available and providing passive support, as opposed to more conventional skills that need to be activated for immediate short-term benefits? If so, I think that’s a valid distinction, but you also have to take into account the drawback that minion masters can be locked out of their utility/elite skills by randomly cleaving them down (I’m not actually sure if it’s optimal to run with full minions – some of the more bunker-y builds I’ve fought took Well of Darkness to help sustain their minions on point). It’s also more difficult for minion masters to turn around losing fights or escape disadvantageous situations – whereas more active builds might be able to pull off those clutch invulnerabilities or blinks, minion masters are stuck with out-sustaining enemies. If they lose too many minions, they’re essentially kittened.