Guild Wars 2

Doctoris.2675:

I disagree that Signet of Rage will be important in building adrenaline in a passive state. In any situation I can think of, popping the active at the beginning of a fight for might/fury/swiftness will be more important.

The reason is that the passive generation of adrenaline on signet of rage is abysmally low. Right now, it gives 1 strike of adrenaline every 3 seconds. In other words, it is the equivalent of landing 1 autoattack every three seconds and would take a minute and a half to generate a full 3 adrenaline bars on its own. Buffing this to 1.5 strikes per 3 seconds is not an impactful (or even needed) gain at all in comparison to all of the other adrenaline building abilities we have.

Holding onto the signet passive and losing out on the fury is a poor trade— yes, over the course of a fight, you might get an additional bar of adrenaline to make one burst skill do slightly more damage or remove 1 extra condition. The cost is that the fury would’ve caused you to do more damage regardless of that slightly-harder hitting burst skill (that might miss regardless). Is it even worth thinking about that 1 extra condition that you might remove? I personally don’t think it is, and I’m heavily doubtful that the buff to the passive on signet of rage will be utilized at all. If it will be, it’ll only be because the player neglected to notice that it was off cooldown.

^^^I’m just gunna put this up again.^^^ It nails the problem with SoR. Healing signet is in the same situation.

As far as the adrenaline topic, when I read the changes, I thought to myself, “They are raising the skill floor, good. I wonder how they’ll raise the ceiling?” The short answer is, they didn’t.

All they’ve done is make the warrior less accessible to less skilled players. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but with the amount of spammable blinds, blocks and evades in this game, even the best players miss at no fault of their own. Had a tool been introduced to add complexity, or the effectiveness increased in a different area to round out the adrenaline system, this would have been a more acceptable change. As it stands now, the mechanic just got worse.

For just about every build, Rune of Exuberance will give better DPS. I’m not recommending that people use them, but odds are they’ll perform better than Wurm in your build also. At the same time, they stick to your high vitality theme. Although price is certainly a barrier.

All of this assumes WvW and sPvP:

I love the offhand shield. It’s great for burst avoidance, and you get a short range CC to help setup your big damage.

I like the idea of main hand mace (CC), and it has great damage modifiers on its skills, but I find the third attack in the chain too slow to be useful, and it completely lacks mobility, so it isn’t something I carry. Having stated my opinion, I’ve seen guys use it to great effect, and if it fits your style, it’s a good weapon.

pdavis.8031:

^
Oh I totally agree I may not win the argument. But I hope to at least give some people some thing to think about and perhaps try something different other than zerk and stop being sheep and get away from what is considered the norm.

Of course I’m not going to join a “zerk only” group. The one starting the group has every right to kick and/or leave if the group doesn’t meet their requirements. I understand and respect that.

One of the things I’m concerned about is when asked for pve build advice, its almost exclusively “zerk”. Why not present zerk as a viable option but don’t dismiss that there is other builds to be considered that may mesh well with their play style. I guess that’s whats at the core of this thread. Although there have been some good points for zerk, there is little support for other builds, and that’s what I’d like to see more of.

If someone just asks the general question, “What is a good build?” of course they are going to get that advice. It’s good advice. It’s going to save them from getting grief kicked from groups; most warriors will end up with at least 1 piece of zerker gear on their toon, so it’s a good long term investment; and it provides the best returns for direct dps. It isn’t bad advice, and it certainly isn’t always an elitist suggestion.

Now, if someone posts a more specific question, “What is a good condi build?” “What is a good support build?” “What is a tanky build?” you’ll see very different advice. Ya, you’ll get some guys flaming the OP and those trying to help him. That’s elitism, but this is the internet… everyone gets flamed by teh ub3r l337 keyboard police.

If you want to promote other gear sets, the best way to do it is post builds with math attached and show how they compare to zerker while explaining the strengths and being honest about the weaknesses. Even then, you’ll have people argue with you to the point of stupidity, but there will be intelligent individuals who take something away from your work. Just coming on the boards and being mad at the world for blindly following what has been “proven” is more of a gripe against human nature than it is against the Warrior community.

I’m all for breaking the mold, and I do my best to skirt the fringes of what’s “accepted”, so more power to you, but it takes more than a different world view to change minds.

pdavis.8031:

Maybe I am a casual player, and thats fine. But you seem to be missing the point of my thread. I’m not trying to refute the truth that Zerk builds are the best DPS, or to “extol the virtues” of a “less-than-effictive build”. I’m trying to understand why it is that players are considered bad for not being a zerker, or a build other then zerk is considered bad. I totally own my build. I love it. It’s awesome.

But what makes a build “less-than-effective”? because it doesn’t do high DPS? What if said build isn’t the highest DPS, but adds more survivability, or group support? is it less effective than DPS?

I re-skimmed the thread and no one has said “non-zerk = bad player”, but surely you’ve encountered them in-game. I know people who say the Earth is larger than the Sun… that doesn’t make it true. Just blow them off.

The non-idiots are saying non-zerk is less effective, which is true because it’s slower. The best players don’t need defensive support because they’ve the mastered damage avoidance mechanics. They need offensive support to milk even more dps out of their full zerk gear. The whole goal in GW2 is to go as offensive as you can without getting killed. In PvE, mastery of dodging and mitigation skills, hands down, trumps the effectiveness of stacking defensive stats.

Honestly, if I can easily survive a whole dungeon in full zerk, why would I use anything else? The simple answer is because I want to… maybe it’s for role-play, to have fun, just flip the bird to the system or carry a weaker player, but none of those things equal the generally accepted definition of “effectiveness” as it applies to gaming.

You’re a casual player complaining about hardcore standards.

I run A/Sh LB full zerker in dungeons. That isn’t the most effective build, but I’m not a perfect PvE player. Thus, you’ll never see me running A/M GS, but you’ll also never see me refuting an objective truth with subjective criteria on the forums… like what we’re seeing in this thread.

Don’t wanna play full zerker? Then don’t, but when you get kicked from groups, own your build and get over it. Sure Tyria would be a better place if we could all run 14/14/14/14/14 in cleric gear with no utilities, but, sadly, that Tyria will never be. Coming here to extol the virtues of whatever less-than-effective build doesn’t change that. Speed in GW2 is spelled D-P-S.

Bump. This, or a cooldown, should have been implemented in WvW long ago. GW2 WvW for the majority of players is nothing more than a numbers game. Smaller forces struggle to simultaneously defend supply lines and objectives, push the enemy off the defeated, and carry enough supply to build adequate amounts of siege. Long ago the devs said they wanted to work on breaking up the zerg… seems common sense to me that this system would be the first to be scrutinized… it’s a blast in sPvP but game breaking in WvW where, typically, anything outnumbered is an exercise in futility.

Hunter.4783:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY5VpExRvPE

Here you go, this is why the build is OP, it can wreck people in 1v2 and 1v1 settings. He casually made it home even when 4 people got to him. Im sorry but this is plain OP.

The biggest offenders are signet of healing and poultry soup.

This needs a nerf

2 up-levels, a pistol thief with no condi damage, and a guardian who can’t keep up? He isn’t even taking any damage. Healing Signet isn’t to blame, his opponents are.

The other fights were against backpedaling necros and mesmers who used GS in melee range… these were bad players… who knows what their builds looked like…

Signet and Lemongrass may or may not be OP, but this video proves nothing.

The problem with that is boon duration. 50% = 100% passive retal uptime.

They just nerfed most weakness durations in the game… I don’t see 33% passive weakness uptime happening either.

I’m sorry to jump in here, but do either of you have a source that lists cast times coupled with aftercasts for the different weapon skills? The conversation suggests there may be a resource that I’ve been unable to locate.

Sil.4560:

Veritas.6071:

So you are running a banner without regen? Did you trait CD reduction? I’ve been playing with the idea of trying this out. Fill me in on your experiences between regen and non-regen banners.

Oh, no, I usually don’t run a banner at all. I mostly meant it’s similar in that I focus on conditions and regenerating my HP.

Ah gotcha. I see now.

Well although you’d think it’s pretty cut-and-dry, there remains debate over what works best. I said what I said because it’s true. We don’t have the full build you were using to calculate damage, and we don’t have your math, so how can we check to make sure your calculations are accurate and then offer counterarguments? Two things that immediately pop out, even without your calculations:

-300 condition damage doesn’t add approximately 20 dps, it adds 15.
-% damage increase from Discipline changes depending on the build. Again, how do we know your number are correct?

Also, the builds of the other 4 players are important. Where is your might going to come from? Fury? Vulnerability? What damage type are they focusing on? If you are competing against a condi build for the bleed cap, you are handicapping the group. These are all questions that pop-up again and again in the argument for highest group DPS. If you are going for only personal DPS, the arguments change again. Feel free to post your work so that someone can look over it and enter into a conversation. Otherwise here are some threads that popped up with a google search:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1j4ocj/maximum_warrior_dps_mathematically_updated/
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/83915-axemace-dps-build-for-dungeons-and-fractals-62513/page__st__150
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/84111-an-open-call-for-best-gs-setup/

And although no one wants to advertise being proven wrong, here is a thread where I learned something:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/PvE-DPS-Warrior-Build/first#post2343138

You can also skim back through the pages. This topic has been touched on a few times.

BurrTheKing.8571:

Sami.7923:

yes you named a bunch of strong condition class and super glass burst. I am a power ranger, its simply impossible for me to burst you down, ranger power is very neglected because half our attack is going to our pet who also doesnt really dmg you anyways.

That sounds like a problem with your class and not the build in question.

And it isn’t even entirely true.

Sami.7923:

1)They dont need to take it to 200 but something like 280 with a better scaling with healing power would be a start.

2)Some many ppls saying war has been underpoweored for a long time but its horese kitten. Ive lost to plenty of good mace stun wars long before this buff but now I lose to no skill wars who no not even need to move.

3)The only class who can actually bring you guys down in a 1v1 situation anymore is a very skilled cond necro, very skilled cond spirit ranger, or your average run of the mill no skill duelist phantasm mes who kills everyone regardless.

1) This statement makes it clear you aren’t aware of HPS values. Mending’s max base HPS is 262. Do you think anyone is going to take signet if it only does 20 more HPS than Mending and removes no condis or heals 100 HPS worse than Healing Surge? Intra-warrior heal balance is irrelevant to this conversation, but what isn’t irrelevant is that you haven’t learned enough about the class to make suggestions containing anything more than arbitrary numbers pulled out of thin air. You appear to main a ranger. When I was running the old signet at a whopping 200 HPS, and you rangers were running around with Troll Ungent at 342 HPS (only 50 HPS behind the new signet) with access to regen and prot, you didn’t see me on the ranger forums crying. And look at those numbers… 342 HPS. You still have access to one of the strongest heals in the game. Plus prot, regen, on demand poison removal 0.o, or more healing if you want it (I know you can’t get all of those easily, but any one of them goes a long way to increasing survivability).

2) Just because you lost to a warrior before doesn’t mean they were not UP. It just means you lost, and based on the criteria you used for estabilshing what is UP, if you win or lose, I hardly believe you can adequately evaluate opponent skill.

3) 1v1, I’ve seen a D/D thief bring down a signet user, a Mace/Shield Hammer warrior, a GS mesmer, Axe/Shield Bow warrior, Staff necro… the list could go on and on. Your statement is pure untruth. Sure, it’s difficult, but so is killing any other strong build, especially if it’s in skilled hands.

Was that the long post you were going to make? Ideal PvE builds have been discussed very heavily, and you didn’t really provide easy to follow work for someone to comment on. There isn’t much here for anyone to argue with.

Arganthium.5638:

Veritas.6071:

Arganthium.5638:

(D – H)t > (D – H)/1.5*t, or, in other words, the damage done per second (with healing) before the additional 50% health is going to be greater (relative to 1, our total health, whether that’s 10k health or 30k health) than when we did take the additional 50% health.

Okay, I’m still following you. So my next question would be, in (D – H)t > (D – H)/1.5*t, are you giving (D – H)t an equivalent investment in any other attribute to keep the playing field level(toughness comes to mind)? Obviously, the initial numbers would still favor (D – H)/1.5*t, but with my broken math skills, I’m thinking that if, through the course of a fight, an equal investment in toughness could mitigate damage >/= hp gained from vitality, toughness would be an equally good choice and even better once its mitigated value surpassed that of an equal investment in vitality; unless, as you stated earlier, you are taking heavy condi damage, in which case I see the sense in your vitality argument.

Yes, I do take other stats into consideration. Basically, vitality reduces damage dealt to you (relative to our 1 value) more than does toughness up to a certain limit (barring a few initial stats exceptions, such as the necromancer’s extremely high base health but extremely low base defense). Of course though, as stated, against condition damage toughness does nothing, so if I’m expecting to take a huge amount of condition damage then very little toughness should be taken of course.

Gotcha, I’m glad we got that ironed out. Thanks for humoring me.

Snipped for length

BlackBeard.2873:

1)They also stated they were worried about giving too much healing…

2)Herein lies the problem. Warriors posses inherent defense vs. burst with their heavy armor and great utils in things like dolyak signet…

3)Not every warrior instantly became better than all of their opponents…

4)Warriors have access to high dps…

1)Right, if that is from the SotG that I’m remembering, it’s older than the “stay in the pocket” one. I hope they did enough testing that they won’t have to retract any buffs. I’ll probably have to stop coming to the forums if that happens, because they’ll be the inverse of what they are now. Anyway, arguing over what that number should be won’t do anyone any good because ultimately, it’s ANet’s call. I just hope they made the right one.

2)We do have strong burst counters as utilities and on shield, but those are on pretty lengthy cooldowns (referring more to EP here). I don’t want to get into the math of light vs medium vs heavy, but unless a warrior stacks toughness, he isn’t shrugging much of anything off, and that remains true with any class. Beyond that, there is still access to prot or other mitigation enhancing traits. Unfortunately for us, our only mitigation trait, period, is 30 deep in Defense. We can also get some healing with Def 15 or Tac 30 but that’s it, and the majority of us aren’t running Tac 30. Warriors that survive burst have to build that way. They are sacrificing CC, condi cleanse, utility… we aren’t innately beastly against burst. Our HP pool allows us to take it better than most classes, but that is by design because if a warrior isn’t running shield or EP, he doesn’t have 100% reliable, class specific burst avoidance, nor did we used to have sustain. We build to protect our heal. It isn’t an ability organic to the class. Those players that are running a stun break and EP have given up a lot to set themselves up for success while running the signet.

I don’t really agree with your counter-play argument. From what I’ve heard out of this thread, you guys find the warrior is too offensive and too defensive at the same time. That suggests to me you are running for your life most of the time. If you are focusing on when he’s going to heal, odds are he isn’t pressuring you… but he will be, this thread says so… I would just heal when you disengage. Anyone not out dpsing the current Healing Signet is either a bunker or eating so much damage they are spending more time running than attacking. Nerfing the heal won’t change that. The days of 200 HPS and battle of attrition against warriors are gone.

3)The warrior community was almost gone. Most of us who stayed were making a class work that was at a sizable disadvantage. I’ve compared it to training to run a 10 mile race but only having to run 5 miles. When I read the patch notes, I cringed at the though of how many fights I lost over the last 11 months that I would have won had we been given appropriate sustain from the beginning. As far as Eles, I never had a problem with their ability to heal. It was their mobility. They basically fought me thief style. RtL in, rotation, RtL out, heal, repeat until all my cooldowns were gone and my healing gave out. No properly played class should have their heals outpaced by an opponent that has withdrawn and returned over and over, but that was the state of the warrior, and that’s what I’m hearing from this thread, that players want to be able to run from a warrior without having to apply any kind of ranged pressure and still be able to out dps his healing by entering and exiting melee range at their leisure.

4)Again, untraited warrior damage, although better, isn’t tremendously higher than every other class against a non-CCed opponent, especially our ranged damage. We have weapons with strong coefficients and weapons with average coefficients, but our real damage comes from offensive traiting which is where all our +%‘s are buried, and that often precludes us from much investment in the defensive trees. Keep in mind each class has a slant towards support, dps or defense. Sure warriors have strong offensive trait options, but look at our defensive mitigation trait options compared to other classes… they are pretty much non-existent. ANet isn’t homogenizing anything. They’ve been quite clear that some classes/builds will excel in areas better than others.

Unfortunately, Ele is one of the classes I have no play time on. Having said that, I don’t believe that even a balanced Ele can’t surpass 528 DPS, and I’ve seen what a burst Ele can do… it’s far greater than 528, and if a bunker-anything can’t kill something 1v1, I don’t see an issue because he won’t be dying either unless by choice or uneven numbers.

Arganthium.5638:

(D – H)t > (D – H)/1.5*t, or, in other words, the damage done per second (with healing) before the additional 50% health is going to be greater (relative to 1, our total health, whether that’s 10k health or 30k health) than when we did take the additional 50% health.

Okay, I’m still following you. So my next question would be, in (D – H)t > (D – H)/1.5*t, are you giving (D – H)t an equivalent investment in any other attribute to keep the playing field level(toughness comes to mind)? Obviously, the initial numbers would still favor (D – H)/1.5*t, but with my broken math skills, I’m thinking that if, through the course of a fight, an equal investment in toughness could mitigate damage >/= hp gained from vitality, toughness would be an equally good choice and even better once its mitigated value surpassed that of an equal investment in vitality; unless, as you stated earlier, you are taking heavy condi damage, in which case I see the sense in your vitality argument.

Arganthium.5638:

Veritas.6071:

" It’s not like vitality magically disappears in the long run or something; it still remains and it still reduces condition damage more than if you had had, say, 5k less health."

This is the part that caught my attention. Once the HP from vitality is gone, it’s gone. At least that’s the assumption I’m opperating under. However, the health pool ceiling being raised is permanent which is what I thought you were referring to by vitality not “magically disappearing”. So once the initial health gained from vitality is taken away, it won’t help you again unless you replenish some of that extra space for hp that exists between base and +vitality heal pools. I’m getting the feeling I’m way off in understanding what you were trying to express.

Haha alright.

You are certainly right to an extent, but it’s difficult to say what health comes from vitality and what doesn’t. For example, if I have 15k base health and boost that to 20k health, and then I take 15k damage, does that mean that the 5k health that I got from vitality still exists directly, or that the 5k health was depleted and then I took 10k damage- whatever. In truth, it doesn’t really matter that much. What matters more is really how much damage opponents do relative to your level of health. As shown in the little problem beforehand, how can we say that the 5k health was depleted from the initial 5k of the 15k damage? However, we can say that, when I went from having 15k health to 20k health, the 15k damage that was dealt to me turned from being 100% of my health to being 75% of my health. So rather than looking at health as a resource that, once depleted, means nothing, we can relate damage dealt to a player relative to his or her total health to come up with a more accurate value of how much damage is done to players.

It is thus that my most recent theory crafting does not necessarily define health by numbers like “20,000 health”, or anything to that extent, but it has rather been defined as an extraordinarily simple number: 1. 1 represents the whole of a player’s health. Every player has a health level, thus, by this formula, of 1, but the damage dealt to these players varies. For example, if a player has 10k health and takes 2k damage, I’d say that the player takes .2 damage, or 20% damage. If that same player has 20k health, however, then that player takes .1 damage (10% damage).

Also, if a person has 15k health left, but had 20k health originally, then I also define remaining health by a fraction of original health. In this instance, I’d say that the player with 15k health has .75 (75%) health left. Thus, if somebody with .75 health left took .1 damage, he or she would be left with .65 health. When you look at vitality in this light, rather than acting as an arbitrary number that boosts health (which has no true meaning unless compared side-by-side with damage), vitality instead acts directly as a form of damage reduction, by reducing those decimals like .1 and .2 to numbers proportional to the amount by which you’ve increased your health.

So maybe that’ll help you understand it better. Also, realize that vitality also allows you to use your heals more productively. For instance, would you rather heal for 5k if you currently have 12.5k health and a maximum of 15k health, or if you had a maximum of 20k health? Well, in the second example, you heal for 2.5k more, meaning that you can spend 2.5k more health dealing more damage to opponents, or increasing how far away you can escape- whatever.

But yeah, the important takeaway from this is that vitality doesn’t just “disappear”; like toughness, it has long-term effects on the amount of damage that is dealt to you.

Thank you for the thorough explanation. I understand what you mean now. One question though, do your calculations ever assume that you will lose more HP overall in a fight than your initial HP pool? I think I read earlier that your current models don’t account for all the variables within player healing, but it seems to me that as soon as health starts to fluctuate, the 1 value becomes more and more outdated as the fight goes on. There are obviously an unimaginable number of variables to consider, but in my own thoughs, vitality loses its luster as a fight drags on, especially if the attacker’s DPS is outpacing your HPS; at which point the advantage of avoiding “over healing” no longer exists, and the battle simply becomes a matter of mitigating as much of his damage as possible through cleanses, toughness, and avoidance so that you can hold onto as much of your healing as possible. I know that last little bit is pretty much inline with common thought on vitality vs toughness and you’ve already refuted it in your previous posts, which I see the strength of your argument in the early or short fight but not so much in the late or long fight.

Hunter.4783:

Its funny how everyone is bringing up Thief and mesmers as viable counters. And you STILL need a particular weapon set for it.

You should read this comment. It basically suggests the devs are trying to achieve exactly what you are arguing against.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Jonathan-Sharp-comment-reply/first#post2483952

" It’s not like vitality magically disappears in the long run or something; it still remains and it still reduces condition damage more than if you had had, say, 5k less health."

This is the part that caught my attention. Once the HP from vitality is gone, it’s gone. At least that’s the assumption I’m opperating under. However, the health pool ceiling being raised is permanent which is what I thought you were referring to by vitality not “magically disappearing”. So once the initial health gained from vitality is taken away, it won’t help you again unless you replenish some of that extra space for hp that exists between base and +vitality heal pools. I’m getting the feeling I’m way off in understanding what you were trying to express.

Arganthium.5638:

Sil.4560:

Arganthium.5638:

You’re lucky that I even decided to bother reading the rest of your post after the first sentence.

I’m not here to argue with somebody who’s going to try to pull the “you’re stupid, therefore I’m right” argument.

Did you really expect anything more from this forum? >_>

Depends on who I’m talking to. -_-

Your point being that the guy who invested in 500 vitality with 25k hp vs the guy with 0 vitality that has 20k hp will always have a health pool of 25k, right? So after the initial extra 5k is stripped, any time he heals himself over that 20k mark, you consider the extra room for health, made possible by vitality, to be mitigating condi damage when compared to the guy topped out at 20k. Is that what you are saying?

BlackBeard.2873:

To clarify so that people stop just throwing around posts like “lies, you don’t know anything”:

The problem is the amount of sustain that healing signet gives, which is rediculous and trivializes the matchup vs. many specs/classes. Warrior’s need this healing right now b/c their other methods of active sustain haven’t cut it and the warrior could just be methodically kited. Buffing the signet to this level is a band-aid but fixes the problem in the wrong way. Instead, the warrior should be given:

-A 1-handed weapon for medium range (throwing knives maybe), so that warhorn could be used to give sustain through vigor without giving up completely on range. (easy to get perma-vigor with warhorn trait).
-More leaps so that warrior can stick on top of a target better, or slightly longer range skills so that kiting isn’t easy. This applies especially to pvp, as wvw has a spec that is 98% immune to control effects and has no problem sticking or running.

But the absurd passive healing, combined with the high armor (if you build knights), is unbeatable without poison. It also makes zerker warriors able to take damage for longer than any other zerker, with sustain coming by forcing defensive play all while passively healing for a ton. Its a problem that is inherently passive.

Nobody wants warrior’s to be an easy kill. I want every class to have a shot versus every class. I understand that GW1 was very much about build, but GW1 didn’t have wvw and its play-speed was a lot slower. You can’t build vs. a meta when you will come across everything in GW2 wvw.

Do you watch the SotGs and listen to what devs say about warriors and balance in general? What they’ve done so far is pretty much on par with what they announced as their goal, “Warriors should be able to stay in the pocket.” And, “We test for so long because we don’t like to give players things then take them away.” This isn’t a band-aid fix. This was their big step in the direction of sustain for a relatively pathetic class. A heal fix was in the patch notes pre-July but got pulled at the last second and commented on as needing further testing.

The HPS relationships between each warrior heal are also very specific. There is only a 70 HPS gap between base Healing Surge, and Healing Signet, and Mending and Healing Surge, when accounting for multiple uses at min and max adrenaline levels, produce the same amount of healing to within less than one tenth of a percent. These changes were very well thought out. Any change to one will arguably necessitate a change to the others; otherwise you’ll have a bunch of warriors running around with Healing Surge being less susceptible to burst, able to heal around poison, and still sporting over 80% of the raw healing of the current Healing Signet. You are fighting a community of players that has spent the last 11 months learning how to compete with heals as low as 200 HPS… Is it really that surprising that many of us are exceptionally good at staying on our feet?

Even if they change the heals up a little, it won’t be by much, and these players that are coming here not looking to improve their play will continue to get beat down by good warriors.

And the matchups are far from trivialized. I’ve yet to have any class in my guild complain over vent that the new warrior is beyond beatable; nor do our non-signet warriors struggle against signet warriors. If a non-signet warrior with zero access to poison can take down a signet warrior, so can any other class. It may require some build adjustments, but this is an RPG. That is the nature of the beast in this genre. Not even FPS’s are devoid of “the right tool for the job”. I don’t understand how you can claim things should be any different in GW2. If that was what the devs wanted, there wouldn’t be bunkers, roamers, assaulters and so on… not even mentioning these roles have a limited number of classes that fill them best and that “hard” counter builds exist or are created to keep the meta honest. This is very much Build Wars 2, and it is by design. They may not have marketed the game that way, but that is the reality of the product and it is reflected in their balancing decisions.

Daecollo.9578:

Veritas.6071:

Staggering Blow getting an animation that allows movement was brought up in a dev stream last week. The devs don’t like the skill either and are considering options for making it easier to use. The example given was to only have it reduce movement speed and not lock you in place.

Well I don’t like the fact it knocks people back when I have a hard time getting to people in the first place.

Hammer is just backwards.

I think it was meant to function as a defensive control ability when they first planned the weapon, but even in that role, they should have known any skills/utilities that lock players in place within the GW2 combat system were not going to be well received.

Staggering Blow getting an animation that allows movement was brought up in a dev stream last week. The devs don’t like the skill either and are considering options for making it easier to use. The example given was to only have it reduce movement speed and not lock you in place.

Daecollo.9578:

Julie Yann.5379:

interesting idea but I think we already have enough blocks/invulnerability in our arssenal. I would be happy with more vigor or 50% endurance refill. Dodging is a very effective damage mitigation skill. The more you can do it the better. “Evasive Burst”

Sorry but this isn’t Dark Souls.

Building Momentum

Hunter.4783:

You can no longer play the war of attrition vs a warrior.

This is how it should have been from the beginning. Backstab and stealth regen allowed thieves to out dps warrior healing along with having the ability to chain C&D for massive heals/run if they started losing. Now that we finally got some sustain, a thief has to actually fight and not just backstab, evade, stealth, repeat.

Excalibur.9748:

Cogbyrn.7283:

If I had the power to ban one person from the forums and sacrifice my ability to post in the process, it would be Excalibur.9748. And I would do it in a heartbeat.

That’s cute. All I see in your post history is you trying to get thieves nerfed. Now that someone is doing the exactly same thing you’ve been doing you call foul. How ironic.

I think the issue is that you’re the only one who has stuck around. There have been a couple more posts here and there that have yielded productive discussion, and many of us have offered tips on how to counter the signet. However, you continue to reappear, throwing opinions around as if they are facts and express zero interest in improving your gameplay. Do you honestly think coming here and posting totally unsupported opinion sways the devs’ outlook on the game and its balance? If you watched the stream yesterday with the devs, you’d know we have more buffs incoming in the future. Does that sound like something they would say if they agreed that they’ve created an unbeatable warrior of the caliber you’re describing? You’re wasting your time… and now I’m wasting mine.

Guardians get their survivability through prot and other sources of mitigation (blind/aegis/easily achieved 100% vigor uptime) and the availability of many small heals from several sources. After the last patch, Warriors just heal well. When not being focused, healing works just fine (which both classes do well), but when you are getting ganged up on, the damage mitigation tools of a Guardian quickly outshine Warrior regen.

I usually try not to make claims that are unsupported by hard evidence, but even after the last patch, I would still say a well played Guardian will put a well played Warrior to shame as far as tanking damage is concerned. “Well played Guardian” being the key statement.

That’s not really enough info to theorycraft his exact build. He was probably something like 20/30/20/0/0. What I can tell you for sure is that these condi tank warriors are running lots of toughness and regen… obviously. My point being that he is a great counter to your sustained direct dps S/D. If you want to beat a build like this with a power setup, you need burst, condis(poison), or both. Now that warriors have gotten their sustain, don’t expect to just faceroll into melee with us and beat us down anymore. You’re going to have to neutralize his tools (toughness and regen) through some asset that your class has (condis or burst) to set-up the kill. Otherwise, you’re fighting an uphill battle.

Sorry I couldn’t be of more help, but without being able to see the guy in action, there isn’t much more that anyone could provide other than an educated guess and some general guidelines for combating high regen/toughness targets.

My direct advice to you would be, try working a reliable source of poison into your build. We can cleanse ourselves a couple times depending on our tools, but against Healing Signet/Adrenal Health (which, in the absence of banners/shouts, is where lots of these builds get all their staying power), once you burn off our active condi protection, many of us have to fall back on using Cleansing Ire which reduces our healing significantly from Adrenal Health; so even though he’s still wiping your poison from time to time, he’s doing it at the cost of HPS… you’re still accomplishing your goal.

No one can really say for sure without a full build. Also, environment (WvW? sPvP? PvE?) and playstyle (adrenaline sitting or no?) matter a lot also. Having said that, even though we are totally in the dark, I’d also lean towards 0/30/20/0/20 but not because of the adrenaline regen (unless you are in sPvP… the regen will matter there for bombing points). You can set that build up to have as much crit chance on the sword as the 0/20/20/0/30 and still get the added benefit of Attack of Opportunity which far outweighs 10% crit damage or, as previously mentioned, run Furious for high buring uptime on points.

I’ve used the rifle quite a bit in a roaming role. It has always been my favorite because the #3 and F1 both track thieves in stealth if you activated the skill prior to them disappearing. As far as it being your primary weapon… I’m sure it’s possible to pull off but don’t expect to be out dpsing every class at range.

Regarding your secondary weapon, a simplified answer would be to think about the role you want that weapon to fill, Mobility? Damage? CC? and choose accordingly.

Excalibur.9748:

My build doesn’t have that much uptime on poison but it’s only -33% healing effectiveness anyways. I don’t know it seems to be at least 10 people who have complained by now. I was one of the main ones sure. Either way, ANET will be the one to decide. They have been doing quite a good job balancing thus far, I will just trust ANET’s judgement on this one…

Who knows, maybe your build is strong against those type of warriors? Healing signet appears to be too good for a passive.

Assuming base values: Poison is the difference between a 394 a second Healing Signet and 264. That’s huge. If he doesn’t cleanse it, you are effectively dealing an additional 130 damage per second because of the amount of healing he’s losing. If he’s running Adrenal Health, which most of us are, it drops from 120 per second to 81 per second. An additional 60 dps. If he’s also running regen banners, which have gained a lot of popularity because we can stay alive long enough to take advantage of them, you drop him from 130 to 91; 39 more dps. In this case, that’s, effectively, 229 dps from prevented healing by maintaining a single condi. It will differ per build, but Healing Signet and AH are very common. I’d expect you to see reductions around 200 hps pretty reliably. On my thief, I ran a full power build, but I made sure I poisoned the hell out of people for this exact reason. The strength of that condi is not in its scaling; it’s in the heal prevention.

Any class that has access to poison should be loading warriors down with that crap. We only have so many cleanses; the most available of which costs adrenaline which removes our Adrenal Health, so you’ve still accomplished your goal of denying heals and can reapply poison when able.

As far as your build, against Healing Signet, uptime doesn’t matter. Unless we cleanse, you get 100% of the effect from whatever poison you apply. This isn’t Healing Surge or Mending where we can wait for your poison to drop off or rely on the heal to protect itself from the debuff. Once people realize what poison does to a regen warrior, we’ll have to make changes.

Dembian.9257:

shadowstep is my stunbreaker but i used it to put another 1,200 yards between us which i don’t understand how he caught up to me i mean he killed me fair and square i suppose once he caught me

what i don’t understand is how 0.o but i’ll take your advice on the camera angle so ty

I’ve also seen some speed hackers around. I’m not saying he was hacking… but it happens. Thieves can be faster than warriors, but some of our most popular options provide massive amounts of mobility so keep in mind that most warriors are going to be very fast, but I think you’ll be fine with the camera change. If you can keep tabs on him while moving, you shouldn’t have any more problems.

Rok.5260:

1. Lame
2. Thank you

The sigil has a 9 second Cooldown and won’t pair well with Fast Hands, but you can still use them together. Just keep in mind that if you are flying back and forth between weapons, you won’t be getting the endurance every time.

Dembian.9257:

soon as i seen him i span around and instantly did the combo i listed (turned with mouse that is i don’t kb turn ) i stopped and checked once i had finished my combo as i figured it would of been enough distance from anyone but instead maybe 3 seconds max he hits me from no where

Well he at least covered:

1200 with Rush
and
450 with Whirlwind

It sounds like you got hit with Bull’s Charge which adds another 600. Without knowing his off-set, we can’t be sure if he had Savage Leap (MH sword) at his disposal too.

My advice, next time, if you’re gunna run, don’t stop to look back. I think the “V” key is the default binding for 180 degree camera view that you can use while moving. Or you can rotate with your mouse.

Also, it sounds like you didn’t have a stun breaker. Everyone should have a stun breaker.

Dembian.9257:

err he killed me with a greatsword i didn’t see his other sorry he was so far away

Warriors with a greatsword are really fast. Did you stop when you turned around? Or did he just straight up run you down?

Xsorus.2507:

Veritas.6071:

Xsorus.2507:

Dand.8231:

Ashanor.5319:

It doesn’t really matter whether he was right or wrong about healing on a spirit ranger. They are part of the meta, where as warriors are not. If a spirit ranger comes in here complaining about this build it is pretty lame. He probably confused spirit ranger with BM regen builds.

Yeah, sorry. Spirit rangers make excellent mobile homepoints as part of the current meta, and BM regen builds can easily top 500 HP/s, as can many other builds and classes.

Did everyone already forget what Warriors were like before the healing buff?? You could just wear them down in a fight, and they could either stay and die, or turn and flee for their lives.

You COULD move some of the baseline healing into traited stuff, for the same overall result, but then again…. that’d only pidgeonholes warriors into those very traits because they need them to survive. You’ll see MORE gimmicky builds that way, not less.

The reason his healing seems OP is because he’s also controlling you (and you’re letting him) which means you’re not hitting him all the time.

I actually have no problem with you having improvements to your heals, Just as long as you have to invest in healing power like everyone else.

If you check out this thread, you’ll see we are pretty on par when you consider other sources of healing and mitigation. Warriors don’t have the luxury of easy access to reliable regen, evades and heals attached to our weapons, or protection. A lot of us made this class work over the last 11 months, and we got pretty decent with broken heals. Now that our heals have been buffed to the point that a player can’t just faceroll against a good warrior, people are getting hefty doses of skilled players at the helm of a competitive class.

Honestly, I was surprised to see you in here. Even after all these changes, Ranger still looks like a really tempting class to me. Great regen duration; preci and crit damage in the same tree; 150 precision 20 points deep in the power tree; really strong sustained ranged damage; good uptime on fury; stuns, dazes, and evades tacked onto some of your weapons… you guys have some tools that are pretty awesome. If it wasn’t for lemongrass, I dare say my ranger would make my warrior cry.

You’re not magically kicking butt because its all skill mate…You’re doing better now because the overbuffed your class

We also have evades on your weapons like you have Block on your shield, Because you have Heavy armor (and more HP) you get less Evades then us…

I mean did you look a the class list there, You have one of the best heals in the game now with no investment.

I’ll spare the math, but I assure you, I’m very well aware of the capabilities of my class as well as yours.

As far as your response to our healing, we have a strong heal because the only other class-specific, reliable heals come from Defense 15 (at the cost of sitting on adrenaline) or Tactics 30. DM gives a heal too, but you have to count on being CCed. Meanwhile, many other classes have their heals plus easy access to prot, regen, weapon based heals… the list goes on.

I did just fine on a warrior before this buff; I still do just fine on him now, and I’ll continue to do just fine with him nerfed or not, because we won’t ever be weaker than we were. Anet may nerf the heals, they may not, but it won’t matter to me because I’ll still keep on winning. Many of the warriors that have stuck it out here are good players, and now that their class has been fixed, they are wiping the floor with players who’ve enjoyed 11 months of an advantage; I have no sympathy.

TheGuy.3568:

Veritas.6071:

Xsorus.2507:

Dand.8231:

Ashanor.5319:

It doesn’t really matter whether he was right or wrong about healing on a spirit ranger. They are part of the meta, where as warriors are not. If a spirit ranger comes in here complaining about this build it is pretty lame. He probably confused spirit ranger with BM regen builds.

Yeah, sorry. Spirit rangers make excellent mobile homepoints as part of the current meta, and BM regen builds can easily top 500 HP/s, as can many other builds and classes.

Did everyone already forget what Warriors were like before the healing buff?? You could just wear them down in a fight, and they could either stay and die, or turn and flee for their lives.

You COULD move some of the baseline healing into traited stuff, for the same overall result, but then again…. that’d only pidgeonholes warriors into those very traits because they need them to survive. You’ll see MORE gimmicky builds that way, not less.

The reason his healing seems OP is because he’s also controlling you (and you’re letting him) which means you’re not hitting him all the time.

I actually have no problem with you having improvements to your heals, Just as long as you have to invest in healing power like everyone else.

If you check out this thread, you’ll see we are pretty on par when you consider other sources of healing and mitigation. Warriors don’t have the luxury of easy access to reliable regen, evades and heals attached to our weapons, or protection. A lot of us made this class work over the last 11 months, and we got pretty decent with broken heals. Now that our heals have been buffed to the point that a player can’t just faceroll against a good warrior, people are getting hefty doses of skilled players at the helm of a competitive class.

Honestly, I was surprised to see you in here. Even after all these changes, Ranger still looks like a really tempting class to me. Great regen duration; preci and crit damage in the same tree; 150 precision 20 points deep in the power tree; really strong sustained ranged damage; good uptime on fury; stuns, dazes, and evades tacked onto some of your weapons… you guys have some tools that are pretty awesome. If it wasn’t for lemongrass, I dare say my ranger would make my warrior cry.

I deleted my ranger (my second toon to 80) after months and months of unbelievable nerfs. You really have to play it before you can even jump to conclusions. It is not one of those classes that you can look at on paper and be like, “Wow it looks good”. Forget all that you have to play it before you even attempt to comment on it.

I do play one. I stuck with the warrior because he was my first toon. I’ve been a career alt-o-holic for my entire MMO career, but I made a decision during BWE2 that I wouldn’t do that again. However, I’ve still managed to log a good amount of time on other toons while avoiding heavy gear investments. The ranger was one of those toons. While I won’t claim rangers are among the top-dogs in GW2, what I’ve been able to do with one, and what I’ve had done to me by one suggests they have a lot more viability than what a vocal portion of the ranger community seems to think.

Xsorus.2507:

Dand.8231:

Ashanor.5319:

It doesn’t really matter whether he was right or wrong about healing on a spirit ranger. They are part of the meta, where as warriors are not. If a spirit ranger comes in here complaining about this build it is pretty lame. He probably confused spirit ranger with BM regen builds.

Yeah, sorry. Spirit rangers make excellent mobile homepoints as part of the current meta, and BM regen builds can easily top 500 HP/s, as can many other builds and classes.

Did everyone already forget what Warriors were like before the healing buff?? You could just wear them down in a fight, and they could either stay and die, or turn and flee for their lives.

You COULD move some of the baseline healing into traited stuff, for the same overall result, but then again…. that’d only pidgeonholes warriors into those very traits because they need them to survive. You’ll see MORE gimmicky builds that way, not less.

The reason his healing seems OP is because he’s also controlling you (and you’re letting him) which means you’re not hitting him all the time.

I actually have no problem with you having improvements to your heals, Just as long as you have to invest in healing power like everyone else.

If you check out this thread, you’ll see we are pretty on par when you consider other sources of healing and mitigation. Warriors don’t have the luxury of easy access to reliable regen, evades and heals attached to our weapons, or protection. A lot of us made this class work over the last 11 months, and we got pretty decent with broken heals. Now that our heals have been buffed to the point that a player can’t just faceroll against a good warrior, people are getting hefty doses of skilled players at the helm of a competitive class.

Honestly, I was surprised to see you in here. Even after all these changes, Ranger still looks like a really tempting class to me. Great regen duration; preci and crit damage in the same tree; 150 precision 20 points deep in the power tree; really strong sustained ranged damage; good uptime on fury; stuns, dazes, and evades tacked onto some of your weapons… you guys have some tools that are pretty awesome. If it wasn’t for lemongrass, I dare say my ranger would make my warrior cry.

TheGuy.3568:

You know what the burden of proof has been passed onto those who point out why this is OP. All I hear is there are counters. I know of a counter build on one class. However, most of you can not post a counter build on any class that actually shuts this one down.

Do not post a skill post a build. Post a build on another class that actually shuts this build down. Here you go http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/. You all keep saying there are counters why not take the time to show them.

I have sneaking suspicion that none of you actually can.

@galandor I would love for you to show us that engi SD build so I can rip it apart and show you why it will be lackluster if not useless.

I understand what you are saying, but there is no build that guarantees you will beat another. The better players in my guild don’t have problems against this build, and they run some pretty obscure stuff. The less skilled players on the other hand… they get eaten alive, but that wouldn’t change no matter what build they ran.

I don’t even want to imagine the “what if-ing” and “no one runs that crap-ing” that’s going to occur when someone posts a build for you.

If anything makes this build OP, it’s being able to run it with 98% reduction to movement impairing conditions.

Puandro.3245:

If i run dogged march and melandru anf lemongrass i have -98% reduction. If the enemy runs vegi pizza its down to -58%. Few months back this math was being done multiplicative resulting in condition duration being worthless vs condition reduction but it has been fixed. Example a necro with 30 in its power line and vegi pizza has 70% duration to all condis, add runes or weapons and you can push 100% to all condis. This means im not immune to soft cc anymore its actuslly a wash.

This is why if you remove lemongrass you need to remove vegi pizza.

I don’t know about removed. Maybe reduced if anything. Let me emphasize, if anything. A warrior can get that -98% with food, runes and 10 points. The CCer needs food, runes and 30 points. That’s a lot of investment to maintain the equivalent of his base CC skills/traits/utilities. Meanwhile, if the guy isn’t running the melandru setup, you’ve given away tons of potential stat points for increasing your damage so you could hope to counter a single setup. Sure he’ll be CCed to hell and back, but you’re still missing out on a lot of DPS. I just think it’s a little over the top.

Manijin.3428:

Veritas.6071:

Manijin.3428:

I just posted this in another thread: WvW isn’t supposed to balanced. It isn’t made for 1v1, 1v2, 3v3, etc. fights. It’s made for small groups (5-10) and zergs, at which point your… lemongrass is basically a wash.

So it should take small groups of players to CC a warrior?

If it takes a small group of 5-10 people on your team to take down a warrior, I’m afraid I have bad news for you…

Well from your response it sounded like you were implying that because 5-10 people can CC a warrior with lemongrass/runes/and DM that there isn’t an issue.

Manijin.3428:

I just posted this in another thread: WvW isn’t supposed to balanced. It isn’t made for 1v1, 1v2, 3v3, etc. fights. It’s made for small groups (5-10) and zergs, at which point your… lemongrass is basically a wash.

So it should take small groups of players to CC a warrior?

Cygnus.6903:

Veritas.6071:

Puandro.3245:

If you nerf lemongrass you need to nerf rare vegi pizza. They both cancel each other and removing 1 but leaving the other is bad.

Agreed. This is only my opinion, but I don’t believe a player should have to worry about his base CC durations being negated by 98%… 70-85%, sure, but those skills were generated as a tool to function within the overall vision for that weapon/utility/trait. A player shouldn’t have to stack anything to get some return on a base skill. If base stun or knockdown duration could be reduced to 2%, the shoe would be on the other foot. For some builds, those soft CCs and movement skills are the only things standing between them and being forced to melee with a warrior, who, if he’s any good, will likely kick the crap out of them.

And the warrior needs to invest heavily to accomplish such a thing. Melandru or Hoelbrak runes, where you can equip anything else. Lemongrass food is not the only great food stuff. And the mandatory 10 points into defense for the mandatory trait.

Your comparison to stuns and knockdowns is bordering ridiculous. Conditions can be applied by AUTO-ATTACK, and bursted by many skills/utilities/traits/runes/sigils and I am forgetting stuff. Stuns and knockdowns either come with serious cooldowns, are hard to land or both.

Besides, rework your build if the only thing you have against any melee class is a freaking cripple. Bad comparison allround bru.

We don’t have to invest as heavily as the guy trying to push his CC condis to counter our investment.

Talking CC condis here. Not condis in general. Only classes I’m aware of CCing with auto-attack are MH sword thief and warrior. I play warrior by the way haha.

That’s a good point about the hard vs soft CC. Something like Pin Down, Muddy Terrain, Bolas or Caltrops are good examples of what I was thinking about. They all have 20 second or greater cooldown, they all are designed to provide some degree control, and they can all be 98% negated by the combo in question.

Thieves play a very different game than every other class. I hope the rpg market never sees another implementation of a stealth class as ridiculous as what GW2 has created.

Puandro.3245:

If you nerf lemongrass you need to nerf rare vegi pizza. They both cancel each other and removing 1 but leaving the other is bad.

Agreed. This is only my opinion, but I don’t believe a player should have to worry about his base CC durations being negated by 98%… 70-85%, sure, but those skills were generated as a tool to function within the overall vision for that weapon/utility/trait. A player shouldn’t have to stack anything to get some return on a base skill. If base stun or knockdown duration could be reduced to 2%, the shoe would be on the other foot. For some builds, those soft CCs and movement skills are the only things standing between them and being forced to melee with a warrior, who, if he’s any good, will likely kick the crap out of them.

That’s a really old build. Are you running PvE or PvP/WvW?

stefanplc.5234:

Hunter.4783:

Last but not least, HEALING SIGNET IS EXTREMELY OP. 400 Hp/sec in addition to regen based on adrenaline (2nd minor trait in defense line) makes for quite a ridiculous regen which is unconditional and can be further enhanced by regeneration.

I agree with this. I didn’t want to be the one to say it, but I’ve seen several warriors that are pretty bad, that wasted mace stuns into obvious blinds, blocks, stability and invulnerabilities and still ended up winning vs decent opponents just because of the signet. I dueled one of them and I couldn’t kill him. Eventually we both got bored since he couldn’t really land his bursts and he switched from his signet to something else and the fight was over shortly.

Hunter.4783:

The build i am talking about is this: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Skull-Cracker-V-3-0-The-Counter-Meta

Might as well make it popular so they “adjust” it sooner than later

The build isn’t overly strong at all. Vs decent mesmers and s/d thieves you stand close to no chance. You can beat anyone else if you play it right and it really is, IF you play it right. Missing 2 mace stuns in a row is pretty much GG. If you have the SIGNET though, things are much easier. I do agree it’s a bit over the top right now.

Currently, Mending heals for about 70 health per second less than Healing Surge, and Healing Surge heals for about 70 health per second less than Healing Signet (this all assuming use on cooldown and full adrenaline without healing power).

Mending: 262 hps
Healing Surge: 327 hps
Healing Signet: 392 hps

The problem with reducing Healing Signet is that, in the absence of adding any utility, it brings it closer and closer to the capabilities of Healing Surge without the bonus of any utility. As you strip the Signet’s ability to heal, it will lose it’s purpose, max healing. There are also downsides to Healing Signet such as not being able to burst your heal in between poison applications and susceptibility to burst damage. Up until this buff, there was no shortage of builds that could go toe-to-toe in melee with a warrior and absolutely destroy us. Now that we have decent sustain combined with our strong melee damage, fights have become more of a chess match and less of a faceroll for other classes. Sure it’s a strong heal, but it isn’t far behind what some other classes have. Not to mention that those same classes sometimes have other strong sources of healing, mitigation/avoidance, or both.

Sil.4560:

I run something with a similar concept in WvW and it’s excellent. Pop your Lemongrass and a couple of other tweaks and you can pretty well destroy necros if you want to. The only threats I’ve found so far are groups and having some coward backstab me while I’m already fighting other players.

I don’t find regen banners necessary, really, but can definitely see their appeal.

So you are running a banner without regen? Did you trait CD reduction? I’ve been playing with the idea of trying this out. Fill me in on your experiences between regen and non-regen banners.

Great video by the way, OP. I show it to all my friends.