Sigil of Paralyzation on mace, whatever you want on shield, and either an on crit proc for GS like Fire or Strength or you can get a flat bonus on stunned/disabled targets by 10%.
Guardian / Warrior / Thief / Necromancer
Black Gate – Immortals of the Mist [IoM]
My only suggestion is to implement our sustain through our weapons and light healing through traits. If we are given more options for CC such as stun, dazes, and knockdowns or even shorter duration of blocks available to all weapons then we might find our sustain without having to become a lesser version of the guardian.
Make the blocks on weapons a channel for 2 seconds (cancel to gain adrenaline) but keep the cool down low such as <15 seconds. If you give this option on all weapons, including the shield, we will have the opportunity to reduce incoming damage thus not needing protection or crazy amounts of boons to survive. Let warriors survive based on their skill with their attacks and weapons choices instead of passive bonuses. Don’t dumb down my class.
Thanks.
Guardian / Warrior / Thief / Necromancer
Black Gate – Immortals of the Mist [IoM]
Guardians are great in almost all aspects of the game in any game type. Giving them mobility on top of everything else they are capable of would be a slap in the face to all other classes. Your mild weakness is mobility and you have options. It’s not the devs fault you play something different or don’t choose those utilities.
What you’re asking would push the guardian class even higher on the totem pole when it’s, if not already, at the top. Be content that you have great options in everything else; damage, sustain, mitigation, healing, boons, group support/utility, and the ability to bunker.
Guardian / Warrior / Thief / Necromancer
Black Gate – Immortals of the Mist [IoM]
There’s no proc chance for venoms currently so I’m not sure how you could increase it.
In the betas, a venom buff would last as long as it’s CD but somehow, ANet decided it was a bad idea and made it 30s which is too short to chain use a venom even with the CD reducing trait.
I do have a collection of ideas that could be applied to make Venoms more useful without making them imba with or without venom share. Still working on it in my head though.
Edit: ah, I read your first post version. Disregard comment about proc chance.
I don’t like random chances to proc a venom. Too RNG for serious PvP for my taste. Crits are already borderline.
I’m not a fan of RNG either and would like more direct impact on when I need them applied but with the way they have them set up it just doesn’t make them effective. They give you X amount of attacks when you really don’t need to apply it multiple times. i.e. Spider Venom- next 5 attacks IF you can land 5 attacks in a row will cause poison. So, around 30 seconds of poison only to be cleansed by a utility or passive condition removal? Why even bother?
Guardian / Warrior / Thief / Necromancer
Black Gate – Immortals of the Mist [IoM]
Why not just have a few traits in DA affecting duration or increased proc chance and allow thieves to have a max of two poisons (utilities) that turn on with a proc %. It dubs it down but allows it to have an option of being useful.
Prior games have done this and it just seems the most logical way to do it.
Having a 10% chance on hit to apply a X condition for Y time would also allow for a more condition build to be more viable. Toss in a trait deep into DA that increases proc chance by 10% then create synergy around another tree. Give more poison options i.e. Poison, Weakness, Crippling, Immob, Burning(acid), leeching, torment, etc or even combine them to allow two X conditions to proc for Y time.
Venomous Aura can have a pulse that goes off every 5 seconds or whatever that wouldn’t be considered overpowered but effective enough to pick up. Make the thief choose the higher proc duration or the ability to share poisons with his team.
There are so many possibilities.
Guardian / Warrior / Thief / Necromancer
Black Gate – Immortals of the Mist [IoM]
Using two swords is like using two pistols. Looks cool (to some) and uneducated people think you can learn to do it, but it’s just bad and impractical.
What do uneducated people have to do with a two weapon fighting style? Had no idea we were applying reality to a video game. I would imagine using two long swords in real life might be a difficult and awkward technique but not impractical.
Guardian / Warrior / Thief / Necromancer
Black Gate – Immortals of the Mist [IoM]
Thieves have always had more options than the bursty backstab builds, some are just easier than others. I was using sword/pistol for the first 3 months
(from a solo perspective)
P/D at the time was very lackluster and I saw some decent bunker p/d builds but I didn’t want to slowly kill my target.
S/P was ok but really required either devourer venom or haste to be effective after the nerf in damage. The most recent reduction on the delay between the stun and the attack is a great step in the right direction. Regardless, during that time it was rare to come across a S/P thief and lose to them. There just wasn’t many out there nor was it fluid playstyle but clearly you made it work.
S/D was effective if you had condition duration, mesmer runes, and the sigil of paralyzation. That daze was OP until they adjusted it. Flanking Strikes was always bad and required a lot of patience and luck getting the attacks to go through. OR I was just bad at it and saw the functionality of the attack wasn’t worth the frustration.
SB has always been effective. I was a little disappointed to see the drop in range for cluster bomb but I had already deleted my thief by then.
P/P - Was laughable.
Guardian / Warrior / Thief / Necromancer
Black Gate – Immortals of the Mist [IoM]
I run a solo roaming condition bunker and it’s a hell of a lot more fun being able to sit there and melt entire 20-man zergs with conditions while I maintain 100% health while I watch them drop like flies as they stand in my caltrops. The hype behind GC builds is so overrated. People respect the fact that I can still take them down and I don’t go with the “M” word.
I advise that you try everything before you settle down with a build.
Back on topic, I see no reason why you’re running dagger offhand. You have no condition duration to increase dagger 4, no condition damage for LDB to actually be useful with your build and the only thing useful is CnD. I’d run pistol offhand with that build personally. The applications for GC builds are far greater and you still have a stealth with the BP/HS combo, as well as CC for survivability and heal hate, and D/P dual hits harder than a truck and also acts as a gap closer.
Take it how you will, but dagger offhand isn’t the best choice for that kind of build.
PVT gear isn’t great on thieves IMO. Thieves have the lowest Diminishing returns on toughness due to our low health pool, you’d be better off with cleric’s gear if you wanted a higher EHP (more toughness plus healing in stealth = higher effective HP and lower incoming burst damage). Just make sure to keep Condi removal in stealth traited and you’ll have no need for vitality either. In my experience, healing power is a far greater asset with thieves than vitality, which only acts as a buffer which you’ll never get back until you’ve died or you’re out of combat.
Rambling over, good day!
Cheers. I tried to do the whole BP + HS for stealth proc and it is something I would definitely need to get use to. I was looking up Shadow’s Rejuvenation to make sure it was worth picking up and it seems, if i read this right, I can potential earn back approx 1300 health if I stay in stealth for the full duration. I wonder if this would actually make my Hide in Shadows slightly stronger on top of the normal heal + regen?
Guardian / Warrior / Thief / Necromancer
Black Gate – Immortals of the Mist [IoM]
I use to run the 25/30/0/0/15 build and I dabbled with a 0/30/30/10/0 build right before I up and deleted my thief. Even then if I did happen to roll with the zerg, I was more of a scout and a straggler killer. Doing these things though tend to reduce the amount of badges, karma, and wXp I could get. I figured to run D/D for my high end burst and swap to s/d when I need to steal heavy boon targets (guardian, eles, and engi).
Guardian / Warrior / Thief / Necromancer
Black Gate – Immortals of the Mist [IoM]
I rolled thief at launch and played a DD thief in WvW for a few months running the OP 1 shot build before changes had been made. Full GC. After a long night of roaming and killing yaks with the occasional stagglers I got tired of, what I thought at the time was the purpose of a thief who had no place among a zerg or large group for that matter, and salvaged all my gear and moved everything I had to my guardian and begun leveling my warrior just after deleting the class. I played multiple stealth classes going as far back as my DAoC days and never had I been so dissatisfied by Thieves in this game. Today, I understand my error. With the changing of the game and class mechanics I should have waited till they gave thieves more options besides the gimmick Steal - Mug - CnD - Backstab - HS x1-3 times then CnD - Stomp (of course it was more complex if a class actually put up a fight but it was still almost a guaranteed win).
So I am on the rise again for my thief and wanted to just do some pre-game planning on how to play them now. I goofed around in Spvp one night using S/D packing the soldier ammy and was shocked at the mobility and survival that S/D packed with the constant boon stealing.
They are both equally fun and depending on how you enjoy playing, you can spec your guardian to be this group/zerg buff machine and dodge roll around and heal up to 5 people for 1500+ or you can spec your warrior in to offensive damage and be pretty effective in groups.
I will say, in most 1v1s, depending on spec, a guardian will have a better chance of surviving compared to a warrior currently right now but it’s gradually going in the right direction for warriors. I think once Anet figures out what purpose they want warriors to have we will make sense of the changes they are making.
Guardian / Warrior / Thief / Necromancer
Black Gate – Immortals of the Mist [IoM]
I wouldn’t mind a spinning attack channeled for 2 seconds that deals damage to the targets and does a small knockback similar to Cyclone out of Tera (minus the charging required).
Just a brief demonstration but it could also cause a small knockback effect + we can move at a reduced rate.
As it stands now I have to time a staggering blow and hope it lands when they walk in to range or I do it in a combo of: Backbreaker > Staggering Blow > Fierce Blow > Hammer Shock > Swap to Axe > Shield Bash > Eviscerate.
Guardian / Warrior / Thief / Necromancer
Black Gate – Immortals of the Mist [IoM]
If you are hanging out in the back with a hammer, you’ll want a sword/GS/reliable source of swiftness for mobility to avoid getting separated. The rear of a zerg is commonly skirted by thieves and roamers looking to pick off stragglers. The hammer alone won’t give you the mobility to keep up and is in a tough spot against good thieves. You’ll either want to disengage or bring utilities/a 2nd weapon set that will help you deal with them.
What Artemis is getting at with staying close to the commander pretty much eliminates your lack of mobility due to AoE swiftness and puts you in a position to use your hammer CC offensively or defensively. As far as targeting the enemy commander, once that blue tag disappears, zergs have a tendency to port back to the commander or fall apart.
Agreed. Sword/Warhorn would be solid with hammer mainly for the savage leap and warhorn’s swiftness + blast finisher.
Save the Cheerleader, save the world! errr Kill their Commander and watch them crumble. Zergs follow the blue dorito and if it stops, so does the zerg (typically speaking).
Something in this general direction is what I’d recommend.
Hence, this is why I believe the key to balancing warrior is through our burst attacks and weapons.
Give us a way to mitigate damage or stop attacks without giving passive defenses and you will make even some dps builds somewhat reliable of living longer.
Guardian / Warrior / Thief / Necromancer
Black Gate – Immortals of the Mist [IoM]
Not that I couldn’t see a bunker warrior not going 30 in to Defense and Tactics tree but then we’ll get the warriors complaining that they can’t kill and then we would start the river of tears all over again. i.e. "Well elementalists and guardians have great sustain and mitigation and they can still do good damage, why can’t we?!"
And then history repeats itself.
Guardian / Warrior / Thief / Necromancer
Black Gate – Immortals of the Mist [IoM]
personally, im more into passive %dmg reduction than protection (can’t be stripped and possibility to gain protection from external sources)
They could offer a similar trait like Heightened Focus granting 5,10, and 15% damage reduction based on adrenaline levels. The only problem I could see with this is that warriors would feel pigeon-holed into the Defense Tree even more so now for spvp and WvW aspects.
I have more interests in to active ways to mitigate damage. We had passive damage reduction in past other MMOs and feels dubbed down. Anet prided themselves on active combat (evades, dodges, and blocks) so they should maintain that idea.
I’m with you when it comes to being a little apprehensive about putting our sustain in a trait tree. The one thing that seems to be affecting all but the tankiest warriors is difficulty sustaining. By attaching survivability to a tree, especially at the Grandmaster level, we end up in a situation where a large portion of the community would, arguably, feel forced to go for that trait, which for builds not already running 30 in Defense, will come at potentially significant penalties to damage, flexibility, or group support.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about “give this to get that”, but with some of the recent trait changes, the DPS and Hybrids, have already had to give a little. Placing sustain deep into a tree that typically sees a max of 20 points invested by non-tanks has the potential to make the very builds that suffer from sustain issues sacrifice even more of what they need to fulfill their role, damage and flexibility.
Additionally, because warriors don’t have a viable bunker, I would argue that we need sustain across the board, and for that reason, I believe we need a solution organic to the class that comes to all builds without sacrifice.
Are you thinking, they need to implement something into the minor traits so all builds have the option without investing too much to gain this sustain? It’s plausible but then you just made the whole warrior class stronger instead of a specific build or playstyle. This is where Anet struggles I think. They really can’t find a way to add more sustain and mitigation without pigeon-holing the warrior class to take it or making the class as a whole too strong.
Guardian / Warrior / Thief / Necromancer
Black Gate – Immortals of the Mist [IoM]
Tis sad there are some pretty intricate ideas that float around to make the warrior class diverse and challenging but Anet isn’t equipped with the tools or the ingenuity to implement them.
Guardian / Warrior / Thief / Necromancer
Black Gate – Immortals of the Mist [IoM]
Oh ok well I usual just look around on here until I find a pretty good build that I like I might need to look around more until I find a build I like and make some changes to how I like it but I don’t know the sort I play I sort of do both of what you said there sometimes running and then others staying back and helping more of my teammates by cc the enemies around
If you bring up the rear, you will always have the opportunity to get separated from the Commander and the rest of the zerg. Noble but you’re looking at a lot of deaths. On the up side, you do present a possible threat if Stability has fallen off by the time the enemy zerg moves through yours and you can assist with stopping a flank.
Guardian / Warrior / Thief / Necromancer
Black Gate – Immortals of the Mist [IoM]
It has pretty good merit. Reminds me of what Tera did for the Lancer in regards to a block bar so you couldn’t blocking infinitely. It would bring about some more depth to the class and your ideas are good but not balanced like you explained.
"When you take damage as long as you have morale in your pool, damage taken is reduced but that reduction comes straight out of your morale. Empty morale and you’re back to taking full" - This idea is interesting but there would need to be a % reduced instead of a full blow going straight into morale and not your HP.
Sadly, that is a big mechanic and probably something Anet would not want to develop and perfect since they have a hard enough time balancing their current classes.
Guardian / Warrior / Thief / Necromancer
Black Gate – Immortals of the Mist [IoM]
There are a lot of hammer users on these forums. If you search Hammer, you’ll definitely have a lot to read.
Another option would be, go here and show us the build you’re considering. Also, let us know if you have any “must haves” (3k armor, certain traits, crit chance,…) and a little about how you intend to play the build. For example, if you are ZvZing, are you wanting to be in hammer range as often as possible? or will you stay at range and only push to CC runners?… There are a million variables, so the more info you provide, the more accurately we can respond. I promise you’ll get feedback.
Exactly. Usually, if you’re hammer you are packing a solid defense, sometimes with shout heals and you are sticking to your Commander through everything . In a Zerg, I tend to be the first one to engage the oncoming zerg with a stun and staggering blow. If you can pick out their commander, SHUT HIM DOWN. If he doesn’t move, the rest of the zerg does and your zerg drops their AOEs on his head. Watch as his zerg either melts or scatters.
Guardian / Warrior / Thief / Necromancer
Black Gate – Immortals of the Mist [IoM]
personally, im more into passive %dmg reduction than protection (can’t be stripped and possibility to gain protection from external sources)
They could offer a similar trait like Heightened Focus granting 5,10, and 15% damage reduction based on adrenaline levels. The only problem I could see with this is that warriors would feel pigeon-holed into the Defense Tree even more so now for spvp and WvW aspects.
I have more interests in to active ways to mitigate damage. We had passive damage reduction in past other MMOs and feels dubbed down. Anet prided themselves on active combat (evades, dodges, and blocks) so they should maintain that idea.
Guardian / Warrior / Thief / Necromancer
Black Gate – Immortals of the Mist [IoM]
If we are going by opinion of damage, both? Axe will have your consistent auto attack as long as you can finish it but off hand axe may fall short of a good shield or warhorn. Hammer is a solid weapon for running in zerg/groups for aoe CC and damage. Depending on what you do they both have a place in WvW, just like every other weapon.
They question you want to ask yourself is: What do I enjoy? Am I a roamer, zerger, or small group player? What do I feel comfortable with? What is my spec and gear layout going to look like?
Once you figure those questions out, you’ll know which to get.
Or....just get them all an try everything out in WvW
Guardian / Warrior / Thief / Necromancer
Black Gate – Immortals of the Mist [IoM]
I would enjoy burst abilities being a little more conservative offering a decent attack damage/effect and taking longer to reach max adrenaline. The fact you can reach max adrenaline so fast from signet of fury, Furious, sharpened axes, cleansing ire, and the others I am missing dilutes the burst ability idea. In the video eviscerate damage was high but it wasn’t because axe needed toning down it was because they made adrenaline so easily accessible. Ten seconds or less to prep an eviscerate, not to mention there wasn’t a shared cool down when he weapon swapped, regardless that it was axe again. If they wanted to make warriors deadly without being overpowered then should have dialed back adrenaline gain making a burst abilities less used but maintaining their potentcy.
I’d also promote more ways to mitigate damage via weapons. More stuns, dazes, and blocks on a shorter cool down making combat more exciting than popping a shout granting 10 seconds of protection or passive ways to obtain regeneration. The guardian class has that part down and it’s boring.
sorry for typos and bad grammar. typed on phone.
Guardian / Warrior / Thief / Necromancer
Black Gate – Immortals of the Mist [IoM]
I’ll try to do some testing of my own over the weekend. I run Axe/Shield + Hammer. My build is practically identical, just different weapons. 0/20/20/10/20. I like Leg Spec even after the nerf.
If I would run m/sh + gs I would probably go 0/20/30/0/20
Guardian / Warrior / Thief / Necromancer
Black Gate – Immortals of the Mist [IoM]
The problem with reaching 2k toughness is the rest of your stats will be lacking. The higher you go in toughness the lower your power, precision, vitality and possible crit damage will be.
Guardian / Warrior / Thief / Necromancer
Black Gate – Immortals of the Mist [IoM]
Banners for power/cond dmg and prec/cdmg with FGJ for might/fury. You can swap between Battle Standard or Sig of Rage pending on what you’re doing. Banners grant regen and your warhorn converts conditions to boons.
Guardian / Warrior / Thief / Necromancer
Black Gate – Immortals of the Mist [IoM]
That’s good to hear, I was thinking of going mace/sword + shield on swap as well and maybe swapping out leg specialist for something else.
I like high crit damage because even with a modest crit chance, i’m still going to get a fair amount of them hitting multiple targets and also I don’t need a lot of crit chance to proc sigil of fire, so I don’t rely on crits but when they happen, it hurts.
I’m finding the concept of slam dunking hordes of enemies rather entertaining.
What stats were you trying to shoot for? What I have noticed is that warriors need crit chance and damage if you plan to kill anything. You can build a super frontline fighter and just drop the consistent high damage if you roll high PVT. Sadly, compared to Guardian’s burning damage, that’s the only consistent damage we have.
Guardian / Warrior / Thief / Necromancer
Black Gate – Immortals of the Mist [IoM]
There are a lot of warriors on here that like to not see other warriors succeed so I wouldn’t ever take anything of what they say wholeheartedly. There are some of us that enjoy and have success stories with the warrior then there are some on here that refuse to adapt or improve and think they are entitled to get buffs to the class. The warrior has some shortcomings in almost every department, but I wouldn’t say they are a broken class at all.
Guardian / Warrior / Thief / Necromancer
Black Gate – Immortals of the Mist [IoM]
