Guild Wars 2

emkelly.2371:

In the future Gunflame and killshot will get nerfed very badly. (they need to be) but the problem is that the warrior has had nothing but nerfs for over a year with crappy buffs that don’t actually fix the problem the class has.

I hope it gets nerfed too (with corresponding buffs elsewhere, of course). But I disagree about the “nothing but nerfs” sentiment.

Imo, the new trait system released in the summer boosted us from where we were, though some classes did better during that process (and were subsequently nerfed). The buffs to shield and Last Stand a few months ago were also very good buffs.

Imo, thieves hold the title for longest stretch of continual nerfs, with the most recent patch being the c-c-c-combo breaker (Daredevil excluded).

Ah, in that case I think the response is that Gunflame builds aren’t well suited to very much in pvp, even if they are a decent counter to trap-heavy DHs, and that’s why they (and warrior generally) are considered low tier.

Forestgreen.7981:

It’s not 1v1 people are complaining about its when the enemy team decides to condi dump on you, you get screwed. Before the good warriors dropped zerker stance just before an engage or getting focused on and make the enemy waste their skills. Now its just faceroll instant kill a warrior.
People are complaining about warrior team viability, they lack their team condi immunity which they so desperately needed.

In your scenario, the old stance has the warrior assuming he’s the first target. If he wasn’t, he’s wasted Berserker Stance and won’t have it once he actually does get targeted. You’ve also assumed the opponents are all incapable of noticing the telltale Berserker’s Stance icon on the warrior’s bar, or that their condis aren’t being applied, and mindlessly continue to spam their condi attacks anyway.

The way it works now, the warrior can wait until he’s actually condi bombed by everyone before using the stance, so there’s no chance of wasting it, giving him immunity for considerably longer than the original stance. The price for this is the potential for the protection to be stripped or corrupted, which is mitigated by the 3s pulse and the randomness to boon hate they introduced several months ago.

Don’t you have that backwards?

Arcing Slice is the only one in which stages don’t matter much (except for Berserker’s Power, which is common to all) because we have so many sources of Fury. The damage is the same at every stage.

Conversely, the damage or duration of primary effect increases with every stage for each of the weapons.

@Warlord
I didn’t assume sitting on adren at all. I just corrected some numbers.

I don’t have a dog in this race at all, frankly. Hell, choose both Strength and Berserker if you can make a go of it.

It’s 45.2% bonus damage with the Strength line, and 32.2% with the Berserker line assuming a Berserker amulet and Fury (when in Berserk mode; otherwise 24.9%).

The above is based solely on the bonuses listed by nicknamenick.

As per the wiki on damage calculation, the bonuses get multiplied together,

“Damage multipliers combine in a multiplicative fashion rather than additive; i.e. they stack on top of each other instead of being calculated separately. For example, the Superior Sigil of Force (5%), Superior Sigil of the Night (10%), a 10% trait, a 20% trait and the (6) bonus of the Superior Rune of the Scholar (10%) combine for a final damage bonus of 1.05 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.2 * 1.1 ? 1.677 or approximately 67.7%.”

Note: Blood Reaction doesn’t provide 14% damage unless it provided a bonus 210 Ferocity at 100% crit chance (I just used the quoted figure for simplicity’s sake). Further, that ferocity would be added up with the rest of the ferocity to calculate a single crit damage multiplier, rather than multiplied into base crit damage.

Pollux.2346:

Agree…fight vs necro its a nightmare right now. You can’t absolutely make anything against condy/corrupt spamming.

Let’s continue this trend. Excellent idea for improvement Endure Pain now!
Lets change physical absorb effect on 5 sec protection! Arena net?

I’m killing condi necros/reapers as well or (slightly) better now than I did before the change. If you’re getting hammered 1v1 against a condi necro now but weren’t before, the difference is the necros you’re playing against.

I’d also gladly trade up Endure Pain’s current function for 15s (base) of 3s pulsing protection on a 40s cd. I wouldn’t even have to think about it.

It would improve warrior sustain by a tonne, injects counter play to EP (due to damage still getting through and boon hate), and it would fix the mysterious EP bug. Warriors would be the net winners of the change.

Also, since on the subject of warrior pseudo nerfs (might seem like nerfs, but aren’t), I’d cut the Gunflame (and Kill Shot’s) damage by a tonne and dump it all into the rest of the rifle skills, to make the weapon less rewarding of lazy bad play while rewarding more skillful play.

Seeing all these Berserkers stand in the back of a fight or on ledges spamming unblockable Gunflames makes me sad in the pants for the class.

Off topic, I know. </vent>

Protection and resistance feel like the natural fits for physicals, imo. It helps address our sustain problems, it helps cover for the loss of stances in particular when taking physicals, and it fits with the concept of physicals (and the name Peak Performance).

Something like 5s of each on successful use of a physical skill?

Just keep an eye on your bar or on your character for the telltale indicator to see if you have resistance up when you’re having the issue. Necros can corrupt boons like a boss, but mesmers and thieves can remove them a bit too.

The thing is, Beserker Stance is supposed to reapply resistance every 3s so, even if they strip it, you should only feel it until the reapplication.

Resistance makes you immune to the effects of all conditions, so you want to use Berserker Stance differently than you used to. In the past, you had to guess when an opponent would condi bomb you and then activate before that. Now, you want to wait until you’re already loaded with condis or just need to stop a few condis messing with you (like blind spam, etc).

Are you saying people are stripping your resistance every 3s? Because resistance makes you immune to blind, immobilize, and fear.

Fivedawgs.4267:

Nope that will be too Op, if you want fast hands then go with discipline.

Lol, no it wouldn’t. What do you think would make it op?

No joke, Death from Above is one of my favourite traits. Imo, it far surpasses the utility of the other two traits in wvw.

I’d weep salty tears if it was removed

Anyone who calls either of those builds cheese has some serious l2p issues.

The intent of the design was to make the weapon more viable in competitive play. The rifle’s not “unbalanced” because you have an evade tied to a skill that just gained a longer immob.

Frankly, if you can’t be bothered to press space bar to avoid rolling off a cliff, then the l2p issue isn’t with Ross.

Have you considered dropping Cleansing Ire for one of your other choices?

It looks to me like you’d still be able to generate enough adren for the amount you burst, and your condi situation looks good too between Brawlers, Berserkers Stance, Healing Signet, and Savage Instinct.

Of the two options, and given your play style, Last Stand looks the clear winner, giving you stability, which you currently lack, and 29 sec/min of Vigor based on the rest of your build.

I dropped CI for LS for roaming about 8 months ago and haven’t looked back.

Varezenem.2813:

In group buff for pve though they really are amazing 1k power and 880 condi damage 170 precision and 170 ferocity is nothing to ignore.

I kind of suspected as much (and I know they used to be), but I don’t really play pve so I wasn’t sure if they’d been eclipsed by something else in this regard.

Thanks for setting it straight.

Honestly, I don’t know that there is anything we do better than others. Maybe group offensive buff? Even then, it only plays out in pve and I’m not even sure if it’s true anymore.

That said, I don’t even know that we have to be the best at anything in particular. There’s an argument to be made for being really good at a lot of things without necessarily being the best at one (especially if you can be good at a couple of things at the same time). We’re not that either though, imo.

Which isn’t to say there isn’t fun to be had with the class. But I don’t think there’s a particular role they’re especially great at relative to others, no. At least, not outside of group buff in pve.

@Tumult
Have you tried jumping when you use the skill? Also, what have you lost even if you do perform a half second roll back in pve?

As for additional benefits for people who don’t need the evade, you gained an immob.

EDIT: I just noticed you’d said we shouldn’t have to jump to “evade the evade”. Honestly, I don’t have much sympathy for the position. As Ross says below, we now have options where we didn’t before.

You’re effectively saying this new evade, which is a very useful addition in pvp/wvw, and could be useful in pve in some cases, wrecks the entire weapon for pve… even though you can easily prevent the evade if you don’t want it, and lose a 1/2s (one auto attack) if you don’t while performing the evade (though you gained an immob that lasts 3x longer).

The benefits dramatically outweigh the cost here, jumping as a way to avoid this “cost” is nothing, and in no way would a 1/2 sec delay trash weapon (especially when a 1 1/2 sec immob was added to the skill).

Tumult.2578:

Please clarify whether your writing about PvP or PvE becaused there is a vast difference in the effect of the change to rifle’s Brutal Shot in the two modes.
The skill actually has a use in PvP and makes the weapon basically useless in PvE.

How do the changes to Brutal Shot make the weapon useless in pve?

They added an immob and an evade, and otherwise left the skill as it was. If you don’t want the evade, you just jump and shoot. Even if you couldn’t do that, the immob lasts longer than the evade.

If you don’t have HoT, I believe Greataxe (gs/a+sh) is supposed to be one of the more viable builds for pvp (Str-Def-Dis). Use stances, and try to kill things before they kill you.

Warriors have a pretty tough time with higher level pvp, so know that you’ll be at a build disadvantage when up against experienced players. you can still do alright otherwise.

If you mean general/casual pve, you can stick with the above or anything else you like. In organized groups, a gs-based build that uses Phalanx Strength and (I think) a banner is the way to go. Iirc, you want to max out the damage buff you apply to your party, and then yourself. Metabattle (google it) probably has a build for this, but you can find them elsewhere too (referred to as a PS build).

If you do have HoT, you have more options with the new Berserker spec, but it’s still a but up in the air. It’s a relatively weak spec, but there’s some truly crazy burst you can pull out. All of the builds posted here the last couple of months have involved Berserker in some way, so you could try those out.

(sorry I’m not more specific here, I’m just not able to look anything up atm)

KhainPride.3987:

Well i wished it worked b4

anyway can we get a fix for cripple and chill affecting evis please

Eviscerate’s still restricted by cripple? Yeah, then that’s definitely an oversight since all other movement skills were made cripple-resistant months ago. I missed that part in your original post… I thought you just meant chill, and I don’t recall them saying anything about chill and movement.

The V.8759:

Block in stealth, stun (if they escape repeat), dps
Done

Not if they’re using Basilisk though. At least, not anymore.

Quickness no longer affects skills that have movement attached to them, including Eviscerate. It’s just a direction they started on in June (starting with swiftness and cripple), and they’ve been cleaning up some of the last hold outs since (like slow and quickness). It seems chill is the final frontier.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Wall of text hits you for 9 million damage.

I dodged it.

Hansen.3264:

Hmm. Yes if they couldent corupt ressistance. But they Can.

So… you’re thinking they’ll corrupt the resistance (every 3s) AND corrupt the swiftness? Would you care to describe the sequence of events that makes that risky enough to worry about?

ryandeniszorro.6735:

Choppy.4183:

You could use Pack Runes

Truth to be told i dont wish to trade complete rune set just to get what other classes have for “free”. Disci line is useless to most roamers who are not into using rifle, and lets be clear some ppl actually still wish to have chance to play gs/ham or gs/sw.sh.
This type of speed buff should be related to berzerker line as minor.
Ofc this would not make war viable for wvw roamers since war is far from viable in anything but “stacking pve” but hell its quite needed.
PS.
And no , boons are really NOT something i wish as “fix” , why give necros even more ways to laugh at us.

Which class doesn’t have to trait or use up a utility to get a speed buff, if they don’t want to use a rune set? There’s always some trade-off, and warriors and chronos are the only ones who get +25% as a minor, afaik.

As for discipline line being useless for roamers, I’ve been almost exclusively roaming as a warrior for the last 2-3 years, and it’s an excellent traitline as far as I’m concerned. I’ve been running gs/sw+sh since about July, and ran h/gs for about a year before that. When running the h/gs, I was using pack runes rather than warrior’s sprint, and maintained permanent in-combat (and virtually out-of-combat) swiftness to good effect.

Warrior’s Sprint is useful for more than just the speed buff as a roamer. Brawler’s Recovery and DotE are excellent for a roamer, especially the former. Any of the grandmasters work well for a roamer, depending on what you want to do and your weapon comp. Plus Fast Hands, which is truly the indispensable trait on the Discipline line for a roamer….

And are you saying your strategy for dealing with roamers is to run with no boons? That would be nuts. Having a large amount of boons we can stack on quickly, combined with our now greatly enhanced access to resistance, is a much better approach to corrupting necros than trying to run a kitten build that avoids boons altogether or just the ones you need. Besides, being chilled or crippled is far more likely than getting swiftness corrupted.

You could use Pack Runes with SoR to give yourself pretty much permanent uptime of in-combat Swiftness. Combine that with a food that also gives you bonus condi duration, and it’s a guarantee.

Pack Runes are very good offensively, and swiftness provides a better speed buff than Warrior’s Sprint. Or you could use any of the other +25% movement runes.

@emkelly
Why would you say Discipline doesn’t support melee weapons? Seems to me it supports melee as much as it does ranged, like the rest of our traitlines.

Caedmon.6798:

Choppy.4183:

How can thieves blind spam when the resistance is up? You should be in better shape against blind spam with the new stance than the old based on duration alone.

It’s what i noticed,somehow the blind got through the resistance each time..It were 2 thieves though..But usually i popped berserk when it happend and i Knew for sure i would not get blinded when trying to burst.

We should run some tests then to figure out what’s going on. It shouldn’t matter how many thieves are spamming blind, tbh, resistance should stop them all. So if it’s a bug, we definitely need to document and get that sorted out.

Fwiw, I haven’t experienced it myself and I was fighting two thieves today. They lit me up, but they didn’t blind me with resistance up.

How can thieves blind spam when the resistance is up? You should be in better shape against blind spam with the new stance than the old based on duration alone.

Caedmon.6798:

You still had healsig for the resistance..The change is a nerf,not a buff.Resistance can be ripped,the old berserk immunity could not.It was a free 9 sec of non condi spam on you.

I literally just addressed the relatively low risk of being stripped vs the advantage of up to double the no-condi period…. And you still have the HS active as before.

Cerby.1069:

Well melee warriors had a fighting chance against necro with the old berserker stance in their build. And we could traverse in group/zerg fights with it. ‘Now’ it’s insta death. I think it important we recognize the difference. I’ll gladly take “hard” over “impossible”. And what other necro are there in wvsw if not chill/power/condition? Tank? lol…

I honestly have trouble syncing this up with my own experience, which has been the opposite, for the most part.

The old Berserker’s Stance bought you 8-10s at most… if you were lucky, they’d use all their condi burst while the stance was up. If you were unlucky, they’d know to wait, or you’d use it when they weren’t about to bomb you anyway.

The new Berserker’s Stance allows you to wait until you’ve actually been bombed, and lasts 12-15s (or up to 18s if you have boon food on and aren’t in EBG). Resistance is less obvious on a boon bar than the old stance icon but, even if they see it, there’s little for the necro to do but try to corrupt the boon. But corruption is random, so the necro has to get lucky to actually corrupt the resistance (vs your other boons), and it’ll reapply in 3s or less anyway.

And it’s not as though every skill corrupts. Plus they’ll be busy kiting like hell while your resistance is up.

Honestly, while necros/reapers were the only thing that had me a bit hesitant about the stance change, the experience hasn’t really born out the concern.

inb4 pistols at dawn…..

Looks like a pretty straightforward situation though….

Ross’ build is going for more sustain to outlast all the expected condis while still being able to down most people who’ll no longer be bunkered up. It looks to be striving for just enough killing power to get the job done while having enough stick-around power to dish out pain for as long as possible.

Meanwhile, PassionWiskey’s build’s going for the “I blow your face off before you even see me, fool!” approach. Lacks the sustain, but will be sure to put down even the tankiest opponents holding a point.

As for what’s better… it doesn’t much matter. Go with what works wherever you’re playing (at whatever level), and switch up when it doesn’t.

It says it’s been removed for violating youtube’s terms of service when I click on it.

Works for a non-condi gunflame build.

Azure.8670:

I think youve got the wrong guy

But my 2 cents, I was just in wvw (didnt pvp yet) and a necro folded my warrior easily a few times over. However it wasnt boon corrupt that killed me it was poison and I could not clear it or heal through it regardless of anything I did. I think Necro is def in an amazing spot right now, but im not convinced warrior cant hold its own yet. I had a simple build on and wasnt meant for true combat as ironically I normally pvp/wvw on my necro

Haha, sorry about that. I just threw the name on as an after thought once I’d added a reply to Cerby at the bottom. It’s been corrected now.

I also agree with you about Necro (and reaper… ouch). That condi reaper I mentioned in the earlier post, I beat him once out of 10 attempts, and that was the first round. Then he adjusted his playstyle (like watching for the old Berserker’s icon) and no build I tried could get through him (at least, not with me running it).

The poison was unreal, and the vuln stacking too. Add in chill, bleeds, etc, and it’s an ugly business.

@Smoosh
Is that how the fights go for you though? Ignoring that the skill works better than the old skill against condi builds without boon hate, when fighting a necro they’re not usually in a position to just auto attack me because I’m also attacking them.

If a necro did what you described, he’d be a dead necro in well under ten seconds.

I completely disagree with you about Last Stand too. Vigor is one of the best boons in the game, it synergizes extremely well with the Strength line, and you absolutely do take damage when using Endure pain. Dodging condi attacks and cc’s is a very good thing to do too.

Cerby.1069:

I’m assuming you are running a melee and a ranged set though so you don’t have to always jump through necro aoe. Full melee seems like suicide atm against necro.

No, actually. I ran a gs/s+sh all night that uses a tonne of might stacking (so boons are important to the build and I’m full melee).

I didn’t find necros any more difficult than usual, tbh. But I haven’t tested it much (e.g. dueled with a condi necro who I know is skilled). But I can say I dueled a skilled condi reaper before the change, and he just kited me while the old Berserker Stance was up and then ripped in.

I’ve yet to feel threatened by condis with the new Berserker Stance up, and I was even doing a little zerg surfing last night.

I actually did really well with it in wvw tonight, to the extent that I prefer it. And
i fought several reapers too.

I prefer it because I now use it when I know I need to, rather than when I think I’ll probably need it. I like the extra duration, what was 10s (traited) is now 15s (due to my food… would have been longer on other maps, I guess), and stripping didn’t seem like that much of a problem since one strip leaves me open for whatever’s left of the 3s interval before I’m back on top.

Frankly, at this point, I’m more worried about losing my 25 stacks of might than I am 3s of resistance that I’ll get right back.

Electric Puha.6729:

You sure? I press the button and there is 45 sec cooldown on skill when resist runs out. Without it 48 sec. There a prob with my method?

No, it’s the same method I used. I’ll test again later tonight. It could be that I’m mistaken, or it could be that there’s a weird/inconsistent interaction with the +20% boon food I had on at the time.

Will report back.

UPDATE:

So, this is interesting. You get the extra pulse of resistance in ALL areas EXCEPT the Eternal Borderlands Map in wvw.

I tested in my home Borderland Map, PvE (just outside of LA), and PvP.

So, the next question is, which is the intended effect? That the only place Last Stand doesn’t provide a benefit is one map in wvw, I’d assume they intended the trait to give the extra pulse. But by the numbers, it shouldn’t (9 sec x 1.25 = 11.25, when it should need 12 for the extra resistance; applied at 0s/3s/6s/9s/(12s))

Electric Puha.6729:

You do get 15 sec of resistance with last stand

Update:
Just tested this and Last Stand doesn’t give you any benefit to the resistance provided by the trait. You get adren longer, and then the vigor from the trait, but that’s it.

If they increased the base stance duration from 9s to 10s, it wouldn’t really impact how it functions now untraited, but you would get the extra pulse if it was.

Ross Biddle.2367:

If your resistance application can outpace their corruption then there’s really nothing to worry about. This is, of course, if you’re not even bothering to dodge/evade/block/mitigate their corruptions -_-u

This is basically going to be the focus of my observation period before I pass judgment on it. By the notes, it looks like there’s a whole helluva lot of boon hate flying around there.

But if the reality of it is actually a lot less, then this could be a major improvement.

I’m doubly interested in the boon hate thing because I normally run on a lot of might, and losing that might to have it replaced with perma-weakness would have me sad in the pants (and looking for a new build).

Definitely by design.

Electric Puha.6729:

You do get 15 sec of resistance with last stand

For sure? I haven’t tested it, but if you have, that’s great. I’d assumed it wouldn’t because it would be just shy of 12s for the fourth pulse

If you’re right, my standard roamwr is going from 10s of no condi application to 18s of pulsing resistance. Frankly, I don’t see that as a nerf. They’re more counterpart to it, sure, and necros will be a nightmare, but it’ll probably be better in most situations I see.

RIP classes crutching on blind spam.

Electric Puha.6729:

I did have a little cry when I first saw it, but if it gets corrupted it will reapply a couple of seconds later. You get 12 seconds of resist btw. I’m making no comment on the overall result of the change. Just mentioning those two things.

It’s a pity that Last Stand won’t give it an extra 3s. Then again, boon duration buffs will. An extra 2.4s with a +20% buff is nice.

DHawk.2687:

Choppy.4183:

Arewn.2368:

I don’t get it…
Not only did we barely get nerfed, while other classes did, we also received what is arguable the best end of the stick regarding buffs.
It doesn’t look like any other class got buffed more then warrior this patch.
Not to mention there’s no way you’ve had the chance to even try the changes, nor has enough time passed to see what new builds will emerge or what changes to the meta will happen.

Yeah, you’re right that he was being overly dramatic and premature. I’d put necro and thief buffs above warrior by a lot though.

Ultimately, it’s still too early to say.

thief buff is useless, so what if the thief does about 100more dmg on an autoattack, you hardly even notice it, acro is still useless, the other weaponsets are in an even worse place now and sustain hasn’t improved one bit. i could do 4k dmg with autohits, who cares if thieves get oneshotted by almost everything and EVERY class has some sort of invuln frame. thief is in the same state as prepatch.

Eh, the comment was about who was buffed more, not the end state of the class.

Also, iirc, thief sword got a 30% speed buff on the auto. That’s a significant buff right there. And, while I agree the fragility of thief is a problem in large fights or on a point, an invuln state for thief would be broken as hell.

It really comes down to the nature of the fight. If you think it will be shorter or more burst based, TtL might be better. If it’s more protracted, HS.

If you’re going defensive, HS passive still heals more than a traited to the limit.

Arewn.2368:

I don’t get it…
Not only did we barely get nerfed, while other classes did, we also received what is arguable the best end of the stick regarding buffs.
It doesn’t look like any other class got buffed more then warrior this patch.
Not to mention there’s no way you’ve had the chance to even try the changes, nor has enough time passed to see what new builds will emerge or what changes to the meta will happen.

Yeah, you’re right that he was being overly dramatic and premature. I’d put necro and thief buffs above warrior by a lot though.

Ultimately, it’s still too early to say.

Warlord.9074:

We got a lot of buffs and only a couple nerfs that have no effect on PVP.

The only nerf to PVP is zerkers stance but zerkers stance is now stitutionally better.

Exactly right. Do it for science!

Spartacus.3192:

gee thanks ANET

At least they buffed hammer i guess.

How long do you want?

Eh, we’ll have to see.

It’s become a much better “oh kitten!” button than it was in that you don’t have to preemptively use it against a condi bomb, and the total duration is considerably longer if I understand it correctly (12s of resistance applied at 0/3/6/9 for 3s each, otherwise just 1s longer).

It’s also still good against most condi classes we’ll come up against, and it won’t be as obvious to an opponent that they should stop using their condi bomb when it’s up.

Against necros though…. yikes. As it was, killing condi necros who knew what they’re doing was tough. Their now greatly enhanced boon corruption combined with Berserker Stance becoming resistance will probably make them impossible for us to kill, at least in melee.