Guild Wars 2

I prefer ele bunkers to warrior bunkers, just not as strong in 1v1s.

Phaeton.9582:

Can someone tell me if this is a joke thread before I read it?

Not a joke, and a somewhat legitimate argument. The title is just trolly, because there’s many unlisted reasons a good player would play zerk. He’s really just saying with tanky characters, the player that plays consistently better wins, not who gets one lucky big hit.

But of course, there’s tactical and strategic reasons to play zerk, also it’s more fun.

Good thread, ty. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time but have had a hard time coming up with a good idea. Obvious effects you could add would be invuln, condi clear, speed boost, damage boost … but all of these things are kind of common to warrior already… so I don’t think they’re that great of ideas (and would probably lead to qq that warrior has too many of whatever it is).

I’d really like to see an activation that either has counterplay, or is more of a team-support ability instead of personal-benefit.

Maybe just keep it simple: make the heal aoe, keep the cast time the same so it’s easily interruptable.

GS/LB Zerk build is absolutely capable in SPVP and WvW:
20/0/20/0/30

LB #3 is your main power hit
LB #5 can be used to land 100b
LB burst is used for condi clear and added damage

nerf passive, buff active

Except that zerk stance is an activated, small uptime skill. It can actually be played around, unlike the other passives which can be unbeatable if you’re pure condi.

From a different perspective though, are these skills just evidence of the devs not wanting people to play pure condi for dps? That could be a legitimate game balance strategy. Kinda funny to see this thread and see people complaining about tanky/condi builds in another.

Arms VII—Unsuspecting Foe: Moved to the Master tier.
Discipline XI—Burst Mastery: Reduced the damage increase from 10% to 7%. Removed the erroneous adrenaline gain fact.
Earthshaker: Reduced the damage by 20%.
Staggering Blow: Reduced the damage by 23%.

what is this thread about?

Reduce everything… it’s just so unspecific and overreaching. I can understand where you’re coming from with the criticism , but it’s not really a legitimate suggestion for fixing the game. If you really want to make a suggestion, say specifically, exactly, what you’d change.

Along those lines too, I really think only a few classes/builds are over the top for the defensive spam you’re talking about. Mesmer would be on my list, maybe warrior and thief, but that’s about it. Condi spam I would agree is an issue for necro, engi, and maybe mesmer.

Yeah, I see what you’re getting at and I think you’re right.

Banner’s are probably the biggest offender in my mind; the abilities are bad, and it’s just used for the boring (but good), passive buff. The simplest thing I could think of is revamping the active abilities.

Signets are pretty close to ok imo. If they can be balanced so that there’s a legitimate choice of when to use the active/passive, then I like. Unfortunately not all are well tuned for that.

Shouts could use some work. Guardian shouts are much more interesting.

I’m fine with stances. It does seem like a “stance” would be a more permanent state, but I think they work fine as short duration, powerful abilities. Maybe they should have just been called something different.

You can play 30 0 0 0 30 + 10 anywhere, and it feels a lot like prenerf warrior. Good luck doing that with all the condi spam now though.

Don’t forget the quickness nerf also, that hurt. You can still use it, but it’s rough. Best with axe or sword imo.

Thanks for posting this, really cool stuff.

Just a suggestion though: plotting score vs. wins/losses would look great as two separate PDF or CDF plots.

Also have you considered posting your raw data? Might be fun for other people to poke around in.

I don’t have my numbers in front of me, but from what I remember final thrust is DPS neutral with sword AA when over 50% health.

I have no problem with that implementation. Imo dps abilities in this game should never be about using them on CD, it should be about using them at the right time or in combos.

The only thing I’d change is maybe giving it slightly longer range.

Is this a troll? Id you’re running ranger GS, that’s almost double the distance of savage leap. You should have no problem catching a warrior.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-sFw7B0-NKkP0X4cL-60;9;4J-J-T49;248;229A5RV45;1KJG4KJG45Ba

This is a soloqueue roamer build. I’ve played this build almost exclusively since the last leaderboard changes, and it’s got me to top 25. I’m not the best warrior ever, nor is this any kind of super-secret sauce op build. It’s just a kitten fun, non-meta build that’s proven to be successful in soloqueue.

First:
I made this build because I missed my burst warrior. Meta warrior builds provide better aoe, and can have a bigger presence in teamfights. This build however, is a true roamer; mobility and single target burst dps/lockdown are the strengths. If I don’t think the team comp needs that (maybe some thieves on the team already), I reluctantly switch to GS/LB* or another class.

Traits/gear:
I’m not going to bore you with a lot of trait explanations, just point out the big ones.

• Burst mastery and mobile strikes are central to the concept of the build. You get on demand immob breaks with both weapons, and frequent eviscerates.
• Power line is a solid investment for your axe damage, and it grants the very underrated minor: “building momentum”.
• Cleansing Ire vs more damage. I tested both, but the added sustain from taking cleansing ire + healing signet wins out. Most fights aren’t won in one burst rotation, this trait keeps you in the game longer. If you want to play man mode though, switch to healing surge + 30/0/0/10/30**.
• Lyssa runes supply much needed precision and a big condi clear. I typically try to save my lyssa proc to be my condi clear when I can’t get a cleansing ire off, then pop zerk stance and do my dps rotation.
• Shield reflecting is just awesome to use. Try to reflect pin down vs LB warriors, rapid fire vs. power rangers, illusionary duelist vs mesmers, scepter spam vs guardians.
• Sigils are up to personal preference. I put a suggestion up there, but you can use others. I’ve been playing around with more crit chance, not sure if it’s worth it.

How to play:
The most crucial part of this build is playing against your enemy, this isn’t a faceroll build. You’re going to get creamed if you try to burst while blinded or weakened, or waste skills on a prot/stab/aegis opponent. The good news is you have the dps to take out any class/build in the game, as long as you land your hits.

The second most crucial part of this build is managing CDs. Every stun and utility is precious, use them to accomplish a goal, not just because they’re off cd. Fear me in particular has huge teamfight impact, and while it can be used to deliver dps, it should be a last resort. Ideally you try to win a fight without using any of these tools, so they’re available for down state management. Zerk stance is great for rezes against condi pressure, stab for safe stops, fear for rupting stompers/rezers, etc.

What else?

• Only use final thrust on a <50% opponent
• Your standard burst juggle is Mace #5 -> Axe burst-> Swap -> Shield #4 -> Sword #3
• Sword is a great tool for engaging and disengaging, use it. Leap to los cover if you’re getting lit up, start your eviscerate from behind LOS so it doesn’t get dodged.
• Eviscerate during enemy dodges/evades (practice your timing), for nearly unavoidable damage.
• Really there’s lots of combos and set-ups to be done if you get creative. Flurry can be used to land final thrust, or axe autoattacks. While in melee range, axe 3 to cripple then fear to land big axe AA dmg.

That’s about it. Not always easy to play, but fun, rewarding, and something different. Let me know questions/criticism, I love discussing stuff.

-Briggz

‘*I shouldn’t say reluctantly, I love gs/lb. Never been a huge fan of hambow gameplay though.
**Playing 30/0/0/10/30 is so unforgiving that it forced me to get much better at playing this spec, and it’s fun.

Link says shoutcasters are Blu and Sireph.

Also, seems like poor taste to put your qq here. I mean, regardless of how you feel about the game there’s clearly a lot of player effort (and funds?) going into this thing, at least show some respect to them imo.

Anyways, thanks in advance to GFs and any others who are supporting this.

awesome, I’ll be watching. So soon after the patch though, I can’t wait to see what people are trying.

There’s not one yet. Many people are leaving the hambow build now after the nerf, but it still works to some extent, especially against players that can’t dodge hammer attacks.

mace/axe, sword/shield could work in a power build

pvp, wvw, or pve? I only see this able to work for pvp.

Final thrust and Impale (Rip), do great power hits. I think you could certainly use this weapon set in a power build, might work as hybrid. I think sword/shield would work better (shield bash → final thrust combo), but you could try it.

I’d recommend something like 20/0/20/0/20, with the last 10 points up to your preference. Important traits would be slashing power, cleansing ire, mobile strikes.

Skullcrack change is totally justified imo. I wouldn’t argue with a slight increase to range though, that would bring it more inline with similar warrior bursts.

For pin down qq though: I would agree it needs cast increase IF we looked at it in a vacuum. If you give it to a condi nade engi, it would be OP. However when you look at warrior as a whole, this is the #1 ability to cleanse. There’s not loads of different types of condi pressure and cover like other classes, so the counterplay is there.

Fighting LB war you should specifically save your condi cleanses for pin down, and with a medium cd that’s not a lot to ask imo.

Dahkeus.8243:

Brigg.6189:

Dahkeus.8243:

So, you want all the perks of having multiple characters with all the skills you want unlocked, but you’re not willing to pay anything or go through any effort to attain this?

Yea…you got no sympathy from me. =P

For pve fine. But one of the fundamentals of pvp in this game is an even competitive playing field, and it’s a big reason I play it. This is the first change ever that flies in the face of that.

You don’t need to reroll characters all the time like you’ve stated to be competitive. That’s ridiculous.

If you don’t have 25 skill points to buy the new heal, either you’re new to the game or you just have avoided PvE so much that you probably don’t even realize that you can get this easily.

You’re trying to argue against the principle on this, but your claim is really, really weak, especially considering that in almost every other MMO you have to do a decent amount of PvE before you can even touch PvP. Giving all players access to PvP gear and skills the way GW2 does is virtually unheard of. Even in GW1 where you could roll an instant maxed character, you still had to play to unlock other skills and gear upgrades to have any build outside of the default one.

Just because other mmo’s don’t do this doesn’t mean GW2 should. It’s one of my favorite things about this game.

It’s not purely a question of being competitive either, it’s also freedom to experiment that I like. Even if I main one class 90% of the time, I like being able to try out other classes for fun, and to learn to play better against them.

Interesting idea, if it got popular, maybe it could influence future balance decisions. Anyways, I like it.

Coming from a long time warrior though: banning healing signet should be sufficient. Without full power frenzy, old school warrior was pretty bad, and it’s going to be even worse if you limit the weapons so heavily.

Think about those weapons you’re suggesting banning. Many of them at their core are very well designed, and the recent nerfs (hammer/mace) put them in a good balance place when you remove healing sig.

Dahkeus.8243:

So, you want all the perks of having multiple characters with all the skills you want unlocked, but you’re not willing to pay anything or go through any effort to attain this?

Yea…you got no sympathy from me. =P

For pve fine. But one of the fundamentals of pvp in this game is an even competitive playing field, and it’s a big reason I play it. This is the first change ever that flies in the face of that.

Yeah, not a classy thing to do. You’re not punishing anet, you’re punishing fellow players.

Keep in mind also, there’s lots of players that actually like skyhammer. I’ve seen polls here that have actually shown them in the majority.

^You’re not wrong on a lot of those points, but it seems like you’re ignoring things like: melee weapons have higher dps, spvp encourages melee range, every class has ranged options.

Warrior in particular can take advantage of all of those things, and has a wealth of ways to deal with condi.

Just a couple other tips for dealing with condis:
Runes of lyssa – use as a condi clear
Zerker stance – use after a condi clear, as a supplement to deal burst damage (try to use it after your opponent has wasted a defensive cd or is already in melee range).
LB cleansing ire – use this actively and strategically as condi removal, not just dps. It’s the most reliable cleansing ire proc warrior has.

I’m not saying condi doesn’t hurt, or range isn’t strong, it certainly is. So maybe one of the last things also is to respect the condi pressure. Warrior has a lot of mobility options, so sometimes when you burst unsuccessfully, waste CDs, or a condi class gets the drop on you, it’s time to reset the fight. Classes like the OP mentioned can be a huge uphill battle when you don’t have the tools to deal with them, you can disengage/los and choose to burst on your terms. That’s the advantage you can leverage against ranged condi.

You can try GS/LB with bulls charge in these situations. Required traits would be fast hands, mobile strikes, and cleansing ire.

• Bulls charge and LB#5 are used to deliver 100b damage.
• Whirlwind can be used offensively or defensively (and can break immob).
• Rush can be used to engage/disengage.

The classes you mentioned are all very different so I can’t really tell you a catch all strat to win. In general though, you want to put pressure on them and get into melee range (you can use LB while doing this), without using cooldowns. If you pressure them into using defensive cooldowns, you can respond with your offensive ones. Save your bull’s charge against a staff mesmer for after they use phase retreat, for example.

it evades, and moves you a fixed distance (not modified by cripple/chill).

Well, people loved huttball in swtor. The formula for that was: easy to land CC for positional advantage, difficult to land cc for kill.

The merit of hotjoin is that its a low stress environment to work on your mechanicals imo. I don’t actually play to win most of the time, just pick fights and test my abilities against different classes or 2v1s etc.

I think unrated matches make sense, but not to replace HJ. Unrated would be good for practicing playing to win, but I think you should still have HJ to give people a place to just screw around. Take away hotjoin and I’d be afraid unrated tournies would just be hotjoin 2, now with a queue.

Were we not fair and just overlords?

Didst we not deliver righteous justice to the glassiest of cannons?

Didst we not fell our foes in the most humane of manners, stunning them before the final blow, sparing them a painful death?

Wouldst thou go back to your necromancer rulers, those that burned and consumed their foes live, forcing their subjects to live in terror?

Ask yeselves this before you cryeth nerf.

Don’t worry, I’m sure when the update comes out there will be a new build to qq about and we can all talk about how the last meta was so much better.

Just speaking historically, don’t get your hopes up. There will never be a patch that fixes everything. This patch has a lot of things getting mixed up, it will probably take a subsequent patch to get it balanced out.

Finals were awesome, cool event.

I’m a big fan of 5v5 and don’t do gvg in this game but I think people are really underestimating the fun/skill of it.

Large scale fighting is a totally different paradigm than small scale. Personal skill matters very little, it’s all about coordination, composition, and tactics. In some ways it’s actually much more difficult than spvp. Yes at the low level it seems spammy, zergy, whatever you want to call it, but there absolutely is the potential to optimize not just builds but group compositions, roles, and plays.

It is probably much harder to watch, not that tpvp is that easy.

^That’s fair, nicely written. Although I am worried that reducing the damage is just going to make subpar and boring to play. I can understand about the unsuspecting foe though, that seems reasonable.

a t s e.9614:

Warrior passed from Hard mode to ez mode braindead spam.

I know this is really popular to spam the forums with these days, but it’s a really strange thing to say. Hammer is not an easy weapon, it’s telegraphed, it’s slow, weak to blind/aegis, and it’s only really effective when you combo your cc well. I really don’t consider it a faceroll weapon at all.

I blame this perception on healing signet. If you have high sustain, you can afford to make mistakes, and it does make it seem easy to play.

It’s not that warrior is a braindead class, it’s just really strong.

In short, I think it’s slightly overtuned. Not to beat a dead horse but here’s a couple thoughts:
- I think it’s overshadowing surge and mending
- The passive is so much stronger than the active, you almost never want to activate it. I have no problem with signets, but I want reasons to activate them.
- I can see that it’s frustrating for new and low dps players (hard to out-dps).

And for the hambow build, I think they’re taking a huge chunk out of being able to play hammer as a dps weapon. I know the idea that it was too much sustain+control+dps, but when you can be fairly tanky while running a zerker amulet, seems like the sustain is the problem. Also, I think hammer played better when it felt like you needed to be really careful about landing your hits. With high sustain, it feels like you can whif a couple stuns and it’s no big deal, I think that contributes to the faceroll impression (false) that people have gotten about warrior.

I was really looking for a lowered passive HS component, but a buff to the active.

I’m just really confused why they’re going after hammer damage and not healing signet.

Julie Yann.5379:

I posted this in the balance thread but will add it here also

JonPeters.5630:

Warrior:

• Discipline XI – Burst Mastery. Reduced damage increase from 10% to 7%. Removed erroneous adrenaline gain fact.
• Earthshaker. Reduced damage by 20%.
• Staggering Blow. Reduced damage by 23%.

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

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

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

• I can unerstand staggering blow being toned down a bit since it has become mobile and can actually hit something but -23% seems a little harsh.

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

This is exactly right. Nerfing hammer damage may very well be a good idea, but this looks like a case of too much too fast. I think we’ve been down that road before.

Thedenofsin.7340:

I’m still scratching my head on the Signet of Spite Change. Lots of people don’t take it, but it gets 1 bleed removed…

Weird. I used it all the time in WvW for camps or to finish someone off.

However, I didn’t use it for the damage it did; I used it either to combine with Epidemic for AoE blind + weakness against NPC’s, or I used it as condition insurance so I could finish someone off.

Taking 1 bleed off doesn’t make any sense to me.

There’s a couple bleed reductions on necro. I think they’re just trying to shave some of the raw condi damage slightly.

Thanks for the great communication devs!

As for the warrior changes, coming from a longtime pvp warrior and “shaving” supporter.

• I’m worried the hammer dps changes are a little heavy handed. Hammer abilities are already difficult to land against good opponents, I’m worried that a large dps nerf right after the sigil of para nerf is too much too fast, and will make it an unused spvp weapon.

• Healing signet really seems like the base passive heal should be lower, with the active component boosted to compensate. There’s very little reason to use the active effect (better gameplay). This could also be used to reduce the all around effectiveness of hambow, instead of a dps nerf.

• Great change on the mace, perfect.

I prefer the passive capture. It makes sense to me, and I like the kb/cc games that comes out of it more than the interrupt game with stand and click mechanics. I’d also rather be fighting on the point and not trying to stand still and wait for a bar to fill.

actually very nice to see people trying new things. I’ll watch this when it happens.

Why did you decide on teams of 6 instead of 8?

The cc cap was good in that it punished people for randomly throwing cc… but that’s about it. You could still stun someone for 13 consecutive seconds, which was more than enough time to get a kill. I prefer GW2 multiple stun break options and stability, and I wouldn’t try to combine systems.

You’re right that huttball was fresh and awesome, but it’s also nearly impossible to balance. Classes with movement skills, cc, and instacast abilities were clear favorites. I’m sure you could theoretically balance that game mode, but you’d have to be pretty much focused on that only imo.

So, I’m a little biased maybe because I left SWTOR pvp for a reason, but I thought those were pretty big flaws. I think cc immunity could have worked if it was tweaked down (needs to be balanced carefully vs TTK). Huttball was awesome, but it would be hard to balance in gw2. There’s already a lot of qq about orb carriers here, and rightly so.

1/10 troll. There was no balance changes this patch.

In another news, didn’t people use to qq about necro nerfs how many months ago? All that came out of that was like 1 bleed stack reduction right?

What’s the point?

Unless you tweak the values to make TTK much different than it is now, all this changes is making healing stronger.

My point stands, hambow didn’t work in tournies until healing signet buffs were in. That’s pretty bold to insinuate that players weren’t trying to make it work before that.

I’m not saying warriors weren’t overtuned, but I will argue they’re closer to the cliff of being useful than people realize.

Some of the GW1 modes may be a good starting spot.

^ You do realize that barely anybody played warrior before the HS buff right? That was with long stuns, zerker stance, and CI.

Yes, the game is more complicated than just building a character/team that satisifies X number of roles. There’s other aspects such as 1v1 strength, survivability, sustain, general role efficacy, and role diversity (one character being able to fulfill multiple roles) that all play into how effective a team is.

However, I think all roles listed here are absolutely worth considering when making a team. I think it’s also especially useful for new players in understanding why meta builds are meta.

Take Adian’s necro example, he’s completely right that a staff necro is decimating to downed players. That’s part of the point though. The necro is an amazing teamfight asset because it’s got huge spammable cleave and multiple fears at range, it’s brutal for body cleave and rez/stomp denial. If you want to remove your necro from the team you better have a class that can do similar (good luck).

Also really nice job so far though. Forgot to mention that.