Guild Wars 2

I don’t think it would be game breaking, no. I don’t know if it fixes anything, tbh, but it’d be a buff for sure.

Why do you think Balanced Stance is currently broken, or did I misunderstand when you said, “Balance is already broken”.

Got it, yeah. I watched your video in the other thread and immediately saw that getting to the burst wasn’t a limiting factor anyway.

To the OP, that puts Arms ahead of Discipline, but make sure you’re not using the Dire gear you had in your Discipline build. Mallis’ video gives tips, though I think you had Rabid gear selected for your Arms build so will at least have the condi damage and precision sorted. Be sure to review your Arms traits… I think you had Signet Mastery (which I normally love) and Blademaster, but you should have traits to boost your condi damage.

Mallis.4295:

For PvE Tactics+Arms+Berserker LB is the best DPS. For PvP I wouldn’t recommend condi war but you can try. Idk if I would run arms though.

Without getting too deep into the math, why would Arms have higher dps than Discipline on a Berserker condi build?

It seems to me that Arms gives some minor bleed advantages, and some fairly minor boosts to condi damge. But with burns being the focus of the Berserker condi build, and those burns being largely focused on bursts, Discipline improves the frequency of those bursts (reduced cd, adren conservation, adren on swap) thereby increasing your burn damage, which outshines bleed damage by a lot.

I don’t know if I have any condi warrior experience in pve, so where am I going wrong in my thinking here?

Mercurias.1826:

Correct. This one is for PvE.

I’d be interested in input for PvP or WvW, I suppose. I’d imagine more focus on condi cleansing and evasion?

The biggest weakness I see for pvp or wvw is condition management. You basically have the ability to remove one condi per swap, one condi through Shake It Off, and then the 6s of resistance you’ll get on the HS active, should you choose to use it.

That means any condi-based opponents would light you up, and they’d be able to do it before you generated much adrenaline to get one of your bursts off, though your high health pool will help mitigate a condi burst somewhat.

Your defenses against bursty direct damage and against cc skills is also low, so your best hope is that people focus other targets so you can start laying burn fields in the melee scrums.

Your burns will hurt like a mofo, but your condi diversity isn’t high. So groups packing frequent aoe condi clears will cut your output by a lot. So will opponents who know to step out of those fields.

Still, it can’t hurt to try it out. Swap out the banner for something else… maybe Fear Me, Outrage, or Endure Pain or something.

Other quick comments:

• You’ve exceeded +100% burn duration, so you can start swapping out some of your +% burn bonuses because they’re doing nothing for you
• I haven’t done the math, but I disagree with Syde’s advice. I think Burning Arrows will give you more damage than Arms will, or it’ll be close and the benefit of Vigorous Shouts will make Tactics a better choice than Arms for this build.

Imo, I’d expect Discipline to be the better route by a lot.

The benefits to bleeds that come with the Arms line aren’t that good, and your build’s tuned up on burns. Discipline helps you get your your burns out faster, plus you’re less likely to be locked out of the weapon set you want for long.

Burst Mastery over Heightened for this build too, I think. Pumping out those bursts is your money maker, and Burst Mastery will help with that.

This is for pve, right?

I got hit with a 10.8k True Shot today in wvw…. So I guess it depends on what’s meant by “DH is a joke”.

Eh, I wasn’t being sarcastic.

When telling me you weren’t concerned about being interrupted, but that signets themselves, “can interrupt other warrior’s skills with cast time. Like, when you’re charging and you use the signet, the charge is gonna get interrupted” I assumed you were saying that’s an issue you come across.

I suppose, at the end of the day, I don’t really see the problem. The two signets that have lengthy cast times are the ones you’ve said are good. Half of the other ones don’t have cast times, the other two have the shortest cast times possible, you can’t really get interrupted when using them, you say you aren’t using them while charging (the first example you gave), and the second example you gave (100b→Evis) seems like a non-issue to me for a couple of reasons.

Anyway, whatever the issue, good luck with it.

Oh, I see. I’ve never noticed. Must be slight differences in how we play (like maybe I don’t use them during a charge), not sure.

The biggest issue I’ve had with them is adren decay when I use Fury. Makes me sad in the pants.

Hawke.1094:

oops, I haven’t used signet for so long I didnt realize might is instant cast :P
but by bad in pvp, what I mean is they’re pretty interruptive in PvP. The cast time is like a wall stopping the flow of combat for warrior. I’m only talking about the stamina and the fury one btw, but mostly stamina xD

Stamina and Fury both have a 1/4 s cast time… the lowest cast time of any skill in the game among skills that actually have a cast time. It’d be hard as hell for someone to interrupt them, and, if they do, you can just recast it a few seconds later.

Also, for what it’s worth, the Stamina signet should be your among your last lines of defense against condis anyway. The passive is just too good, especially in pvp (if you can afford to slot it on your bar, that is).

Best of luck, though.

If you think the signets are bad in pvp, then insta-cast won’t do anything to change that.

That being said, afaik, other than Sor and HS, they pretty much are insta-cast. Both Might and Dolyak are, and then the other two are 1/4s cast.

And the signets actually are pretty good, especially when traited. I mean, if I didn’t feel like I needed stances to stay alive, or could get the trait as the Strength adept, I’d totally use them more.

Signet of Stamina is the equivalent of unstealable perma-vigor…. Pretty solid in its own right, but rarely makes the cut on my bar due to other constraints.

Maybe Dire gear and pack a sw+sh as your alt set, along with stances? You won’t be great around condi clears due to lack of condi diversity, but you’ll do solid damage otherwise and have more sustain.

GenoGar.5497:

I do like the idea. Weapon specific traits are way too conditional for a class that is all about the variety. The worst case is when the weapon itself is pretty terrible without the matching trait to make it good (Forceful Greatsword being the most egregious example).

The problem with taking out weapon specific traits is that you need to rebalance the weapons that depended on that trait. Without FGS, GS will probably not see too much play since Axe/Axe can achieve the same effect that PS GS achieves (if it had the might on crit effect) with a much much better auto attack and overall more forgiving skill application (because kitten HB channel) and a more convenient vulnerability stacker. You would have to make GS way better to balance it against other better weapons. Hammer GM would make GreatAxe pretty stupid. Some traits plain don’t translate well at all like Longbow or Rifle trait.

It would probably be best to take the Guardian approach where the weapon trait is not a super big difference maker. You can still use Hammer, Scepter, Sword, Mace, Shield, Focus, and Staff to great effect without the specific trait that makes it better. GS has a small case to be made. I think this is true because there are so many traits that compliments the Guardian that affect multiple weapons. Things like burning related traits, stat and damage modifiers that aren’t weapon specific but strewn across entire categories of weapons (Right-Hand Strength, old Two-Handed Mastery), or straight up buffs to the base class (Virtues line).

I don’t think balancing the weapons would be that complicated, tbh.

First, look to the cooldowns. If the traits continue to exist but spread the non cooldown bonuses to any weapon slotted, the first thing to look at is the loss of cooldown reduction. I’ve noticed weapon cooldowns getting shorter overall, so determining whether to apply a blanket a -20% on all (or some) weapon skills or to leave them as is would be the first step.

Second, some thought should be given to the role a given weapon should have, if any. Meaning, should axe be the raw damage dealer, gs the damage and mobility weapon, mace the cc and vulnerability weapon, etc., of should we make them fairly generic so it’s just down to personal taste? I prefer the “role approach” personally.

Third, it’s a matter of looking at how the different weapon skills could/would interact with the specific traits available. We can’t really do that in advance of actually mapping out those traits. Assuming we knew what the proposed traits would do, then we’d look for any overpowered trait-weapon combos and decide whether to address the trait or the specific weapon skill interacting with it.

Seems like a pretty methodical straightforward process to me.

As an amendment to my original post, what do people think about dropping weapon specific traits altogether? Someone, I can’t remember who, suggested this ages ago, replacing these traits with more generic status effects to weapon attacks.

An obvious example that people have called for is making the might stacking of Forceful Greatsword apply to all weapons. But we could take the concept further, like adding or boosting various conditions and buffs without naming the weapon.

Weapons would retain their core attacks but, in this way, someone could trait to make any weapon a halfway decent damage, condi, hybrid, or (soft) cc weapon, recognizing that some weapons would be naturally better for a particular role than others.

Weapons with lots of iterative attacks (gs, offhand axe) would be better for effect on hit or crit, weapon with lots of hard cc (mace, hammer) would be better for effects triggered by landing hard cc, dedicated ranged weapons would be better for effects tied to ranged attacks, etc.

The rationale for this approach is much clearer for warrior than any other class – we have so many weapons to choose from, slotting weapon traits in a way that doesn’t create conflict is nearly impossible. Taking this approach, players select the effects they like and have them interact with any weapons they choose to equip.

Leg Specialist is an example of a trait that takes this sort of approach.

Thoughts?

@Phantom
Yeah, I went to a pve area to do some tests and concluded at least some of my problem was a weird skill lag that sometimes occurs in wvw. It crimps the movement when it happens.

What you say about the animation is right on point.

Arcade.8901:

Henry.5713:

Kind of wondering why this hasn’t happened already. Would fit the simple and beginner friendly design idea ArenaNet keeps talking about.
They could finally change stuff like having to pick between Berserker’s Power and Axe Mastery or Merciless Hammer and Burst Mastery.
Those balance changes feel completely outdated now. Back from an acient time when anything but Shoutbow was being played.

Because all of that takes developers time and testing. Currently while our trait lines should get a massive shake i hope it won’t happen since, it’s easier for Anet to redesign Berserk in terms of up to date needs rather waiting 6 month + for massive trees rework…

Agreed. I presume there are a lot of things competing for the designers’ and developers’ time. Plus, it’s easier for someone like me to say, “traits should be overhauled to do _” than to actually do it. Plus, everyone’s got an opinion and then they have that multiplied across all classes.

As to why it wasn’t done before, I think this is well within the concept the designers had in mind, but they probably didn’t know exactly how they’re game was going to evolve at launch, the original trait system had aspects that got in the way of this sort of approach, etc, etc.

@Cygnus
You’ve mentioned Fast Hands a couple of times and I haven’t responded to it. It’s a tough one for the kind of model I’m proposing because i’t’s a general sort of trait that fits for any kind of build, so the question is where to put it. Warrior Sprint is kind of like this too, but less so.

I’ve been a long and vocal proponent of making Fast Hands baseline for warrior. If that’s not an option for some reason, then it presents a challenge to what I’m proposing in that at least one of the goals is to make it so no traitline is mandatory (and Fast Hands feels like it’s doing that now).

In that case, I’d probably favour scrapping the trait altogether but making changes to warrior weapon cooldowns and weapon skill effects to make camping one weapon for a full 10s more viable. I’d also go back to the days when we didn’t lose adrenaline if a burst doesn’t hit or make building up adrenaline way faster too.

Cygnus.6903:

A problem I see is that if every warrior line offers a ‘theme’, you can only take so many traits that benefit you. For example, if you put all condi traits into 1 line, you will lose out on a few traits simply because you have to pick another in that spot. At least now, you can arguably still get all the condi traits by picking ‘awkward’ traitlines. The over-discussed topic of Fast Hands baseline comes to mind here.

As of right now, the gank heavy class that is warrior can do just that reasonably well; ganking. If you take Str, Dis and Berserker, your damage is absolutely batpoop crazy right now.

Still, Anet should follow this topic closely.

On the issue of having to pass up core traits for your build (e.g. condi traits on a condi build) because they’re all located in one or two spots, I actually see that as a good thing.

One of the reasons Anet shifted to the current approach to traitlines was to make balancing easier than it was, and this would help with that. Warriors have too much condi pressure? Well, we know where to look for that… Arms and Berzerker. That sort of thing.

Besides, being able to take 12 full traits dedicated to condi (via Arms and Berserker), or direct damage, etc, is probably better than we have now anyway.

And, yes, additional attention would have to be paid to new combinations. For example, we shouldn’t want warriors that can one-shot opponents, especially at range, by way of some crazy new trait combo.

But here again, I think Anet’s current approach to traits (three full lines, rather than trait points) makes balancing way easier than it used to be under the trait-point system. Failing that, the skills that are disproportionately benefiting from a particular trait combo could always be adjusted (e.g. Kill Shot on a full YOLO setup).

That’s the intent here… to set up clear roles for each traitline that corresponds to a major plank in a given build so better support build synergy, player options, and maintaining balance for the good of the game.

I think Berserker provides this already… a bit of a wildcard that could be used for condi, direct damage, or survival. Which path you’d take would depend on your other trait choices and your objectives.

Spreading condis to Strength or direct damage buffs to Arms, I can’t see though… it would just feel like muddling up like we have now, spreading the relevant traits for a build across more than three traitlines.

In another post, I proposed an approach to traits that’s described below. In retrospect, it deviates from the intention of that thread’s OP, so I’ve moved it here. I’ve obviously focused on warrior traits, but I think it’s a better conceptual approach for all classes.

I also think this is inline with what the game designers always intended, but various limitations, especially at game launch, forced them to muddle the concept a bit.

Anyway, I’m curious what other people think about it.

Choppy.4183:

Strength: All things direct damage focused, including weapon traits for weapons with no real condi aspect. Can have traits that augment burst, but only with respect to direct damage.

Arms: All things condi related, including weapon traits with a primary condi focus. Can have traits that augment burst, but only with respect to condi damage.

Defense: All things related to going tank Can augment burst, but only with respect to personal survival. Shield trait stays here, obviously.

Tactics: All things related to team support, whether offensive, defensive, and healing buffs. Can augment burst, but only with respect to party buffing. Warhorn trait stays here, banner trait goes here too.

Discipline: Principally focused on optimizing the burst mechanic. While the other traitlines might have some traits that interact and improve the burst mechanic, this is where the best stuff would be. For example, Strength would keep Berserker Power, but Discipline would keep Heightened Focus, Burst Mastery, pick up Embrace the Pain (taken out of Cleansing Ire), a trait to increase Adrenaline gain on crit, etc., etc.

Berserker: Pretty much what it is now, largely (but not exclusively) focused on the Berserk state with paths focused on direct damage, another on condi, and the third on survival.

Also, I think Robert Gee’s concept of 3-paths in a traitline is fantastic, and it would be great to see that reflected in the other traitlines to the extent possible.

For example, Strength could have a path for raw damage buffs, another for crits, and a third for a few power burst and weapon traits. Discipline could have a path for augmenting bursts toward raw power, another for condi, and a third for survival. that sort of thing. Or, if that invades too much on the burst territory of the other lines, Adrenaline gain, Adrenaline conservation, and additional burst effects (like adding Taunt, Fear, etc).

Of course, the idea would be to make it so no traitline is mandatory, rather they just allow you to focus on different things. By not taking Discipline, you still have a powerful build with an ok to good burst, but you’ve specialized in other areas. You could skip Defense in favour of keeping yourself (and your allies) going through Tactics and maybe some of the survival traits in Berserker. You could go YOLO hybrid by taking Strength, Arms, and Berserker, or YOLO power by taking Strength, Discipline, and Berserker, YOLO condi by taking Arms, Discipline, and Berserker, supertank by going Defense, Tactics, and Discipline or Berserker, etc..

Does that sound appealing to anyone else?

Good point about the burst, Capa. Having a burst mechanic that’s decent, and then a traitline that really makes it shine would have been better.

In fact, wouldn’t this be a better layout?

Strength: All things direct damage focused, including weapon traits for weapons with no real condi aspect. Can have traits that augment burst, but only with respect to direct damage.

Arms: All things condi related, including weapon traits with a primary condi focus. Can have traits that augment burst, but only with respect to condi damage.

Defense: All things related to going tank Can augment burst, but only with respect to personal survival. Shield trait stays here, obviously.

Tactics: All things related to team support, whether offensive, defensive, and healing buffs. Can augment burst, but only with respect to party buffing. Warhorn trait stays here, banner trait goes here too.

Discipline: Principally focused on optimizing the burst mechanic. While the other traitlines might have some traits that interact and improve the burst mechanic, this is where the best stuff would be. For example, Strength would keep Berserker Power, but Discipline would keep Heightened Focus, Burst Mastery, pick up Embrace the Pain (taken out of Cleansing Ire), a trait to increase Adrenaline gain on crit, etc., etc.

Berserker: Pretty much what it is now, largely (but not exclusively) focused on the Berserk state with paths focused on direct damage, another on condi, and the third on survival.

Also, I think Robert Gee’s concept of 3-paths in a traitline is fantastic, and it would be great to see that reflected in the other traitlines to the extent possible.

For example, Strength could have a path for raw damage buffs, another for crits, and a third for a few power burst and weapon traits. Discipline could have a path for augmenting bursts toward raw power, another for condi, and a third for survival. that sort of thing. Or, if that invades too much on the burst territory of the other lines, Adrenaline gain, Adrenaline conservation, and additional burst effects (like adding Taunt, Fear, etc).

Of course, the idea would be to make it so no traitline is mandatory, rather they just allow you to focus on different things. By not taking Discipline, you still have a powerful build with an ok to good burst, but you’ve specialized in other areas. You could skip Defense in favour of keeping yourself (and your allies) going through Tactics and maybe some of the survival traits in Berserker. You could go YOLO hybrid by taking Strength, Arms, and Berserker, or YOLO power by taking Strength, Discipline, and Berserker, YOLO condi by taking Arms, Discipline, and Berserker, supertank by going Defense, Tactics, and Discipline or Berserker, etc..

Does that sound appealing to anyone else?

EDIT: To respect the OP’s intention for this thread, I’ve moved this post to another thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/A-Better-Approach-to-Trait-Organization/first#post5736945

What sort of build did you have in mind?

Most Berzerker builds I’ve seen have been built around the idea of maximizing damage and then otherwise getting the hell out of Dodge (e.g. gunflame or bow burn), both of which lack the healing and general sustain to take advantage of the non-offensive benefits Celestial gear offers.

I thought maybe adapting some version of Szeraf’s condi shoutheal build for pve might work for the same reasons celestial works for shoutbow. But I think it would work worse for roaming than shoutbow will due to lack of defense, and shoutbow itself isn’t optimal for roaming anyway (especially since the nerf to shouts).

It would probably work ok if you were running in a havoc or larger though, mostly so others could get the benefit of your heals and so they could peel people off of you if you were getting focused (because you’re a sitting duck otherwise, especially against multiple ranged attackers).

Were you thinking this sort of thing or something else entirely?

Just nobody go “King of Fires” and we should be fine….

Add Whirlwind and Savage Leap to the list of movement skills that need a second look.

Not sure if it’s just me, but I find most/all of my skills have been getting a 1/2 – 1s delay on activation, which seems to cut into the movement skills like those provide (in addition to really impairing reaction time for all skills, obviously).

The likelihood of landing the cripple with Savage Leap also seems to be low these days. Not because of miscalculating position like with Rush and Bull’s Charge, but because of the delay at the end of the leap.

YuiRS.8129:

Berserker can indeed drop a burst every 3,25 seconds with the Smash Brawler trait. And it’s really not that insane… at all, actually. Landing all that stuff is hard, gaining adrenaline is hard, plus Arc Divider hits for potato damage on enemies above 50% health.

Ok, but I’ve never landed Arcing Slice for that much damage, and it’s supposed to hit for more damage than Arc Divider. The amount of adrenaline required for max damage and the difficulty in landing the two are identical.

As for being above 50%, let’s look at that. Those hits would have been about 7k each… that’s not “potato damage”, that’s about what Arcing Slice normally crits for against people below 50%. (My normal range is about 6-9k, depending on stacks, etc).

With respect to adrenaline generation, accumulating 10 is pretty trivial, even within 3 seconds., especially in a group fight in wvw.

Anyway, I’m just saying that if what I described is typical, something appears to be off in the skill description and Berserker is definitely not underpowered relative to core warrior.

Somehow I got hit by a 12.8k Arc Divider followed shortly by another 13.7k Arc Divider (last night in wvw).

Obviously, that took me out. But I have no idea how that was possible, unless others in the Berserker’s group managed to stack 25 vulnerability on me and the Berserker had 25 stacks of might and bloodlust.

By the numbers, that shouldn’t really be possible, should it? If it is, and Berzerker can drop a burst every 3s or so, that’s insane damage.

Fwiw, I main a warrior, typically run zerk gear, and usually don’t have much trouble beating thieves (I have to pay attention, but I’ll win most of the time).

The daredevil elite completely flips that on its head.

I’d personally like to see the core thief get some buffs in a few areas but, yeah, the thief elite looks like it absolutely brings something good to the thief class. I’ve spoken to a few of the people running it after they’ve beaten me, and they’ve pretty much said the same thing.

I suspect it’s a bit inferior to a standard GreatAxe, but it’s more or less the same concept.. So it should be ok where GreatAxe works, and should come up short in the same places.

I suppose the only edge is all your stun breaks and whether you can pull something off by using Headbutt effectively. Your burst is on is on about the same cooldown as a warrior with Discipline, but you do run greater risk of not having the correct weapon set available when you need it (and the extra swap benefits available through Discipline).

Still, good to see you’ve found something you enjoy.

Can you post your build? Gameplay video too, if you have it.

It’s kind of hard to comment without seeing what you’re talking about.

Szeraf.5781:

I figured multiple foes Bow also the melee hurters get bow, single targets get sword/torch. Also as the first adrenalin filler sword/torch is faster!

That surprises me, but maybe it’s because I don’t understand how the fire field from the Torch interacts.

The reason I figured bow would build addren faster is, even though the attack speed is a little slower, you build two addren for each auto attack, three from lb3, and your burst field (when you’re able to use it) pulses, giving you extra hits. As a bonus, the bow does more damage too.

Still, if sticking on sword against single targets works better for you, then keep going with it!

Great to hear! I’m glad the feedback was helpful toward increasing your effectiveness while maintaining your fun.

Just as an experiment though, try to stick more on your bow for a while. You can overlap your fire fields, you can give yourself some might by blasting, you should build adren slightly faster, and your burn damage is much stronger than your bleeds (plus the burns will hit more targets).

If you don’t like it or find the results aren’t as good, keep sticking with what you enjoy the most. Having fun trumps maximum effectiveness in my book.

Probably Balth runes, though you’ll have to do the math. Flame Legion runes are a good option, but they only increase burn duration by 30% vs 45% with Balthazar.

But if you have your burn near +70% before runes, you’re happy with your condi damage already, and are looking to boost your direct damage, then Flame Legion is the way to go.

Rekt.5360:

After some extensive playing of berserker in PvP im of the opinion that a normal warrior is gonna have a very hard time with a berserker warrior in a 1v1. Here’s why: Eternal Champion. A major portion of a warrior’s burst regardless of his build comes from being able to CC his opponent and land his relatively slow telegraphed heavy hitters. Eternal Champion trolls the kitten out of normal warriors because every time you’re going to go for a CC it gets eaten by the stability, and even if you do catch the berserker out of berserker mode any smart one will have Outrage with them and just stunbreak your CC and give himself stability on top of that, preventing you from chain CC’ing him. On top of that the frequency at which a berserker can dish out primal bursts is wayyy bigger and the dmg isn’t all that lower (I hit 6-7k+ arc divider and decapitate crits on low armors and up to 6k on heavy armors in Spvp and that is when running disc/berserker/def, If I run strength instead of defense I could probably reach 9k without issues on lighties) no matter how hard people try to make them out as bad.

On top of that a few of the berserker primal burst give low duration dazes which are annoying because they tend automatically trigger traits like “Hard to Catch” on teef, or “Last Stand” on warrs when nobody would want their last stand to get triggered by a 0.5/1 sec daze which unfortunately can be used pretty much every 2.5 seconds.

Remember, he said his pvp build is, “strength/arms/berserker, with mace/sword and hammer, exploiting body blow and confusion on interrupt.”

Do you really think that will beat a standard warrior? I don’t, even assuming he’s got near cc immunity. That being said, I’m certainly willing to try my hand against it if anyone’s up for duels.

Sure, I can see why someone who ran condi warrior in pve before Berserker would be happy about it now, no question. But remember that condi warrior was suboptimal when compared to both condi builds on other classes and direct damage warrior builds.

But in pvp or wvw, dude, a standard warrior of equal skill should wreck your face if you’re running the build you’re describing. And that’s a warrior… most other classes should too as long as they know how to recognize an incoming skull crack or earthshaker (or their berserker equivalents)

Again, I’m really happy that you’re happy because your play style has been buffed in the area where you like to play, but that has nothing to do with what most people are talking about.

I see what you’re doing with your build, and it makes a lot of sense.

That being said, I think you’re getting less out of Arms than you’d get from Defense or Discipline. Of the two, Discipline is probably the better choice. If you’re willing to give up Tactics too, I’d recommend taking both Defense and Discipline.

If you really want to keep Tactics, I recommend taking Burning Arrows over Shrug It Off. With the gear changes recommended below, you’ll add way more damage to your longbow than you’d get from the extra Shake It Off, even with Vigorous Shouts traited.

In terms of runes, I agree with Capa’s recommendation of Balthazar. If you wanted to maintain more of a balance between power and condi damage, I guess you could go Elementalist, Baelfire, or Fire, but Balthazar looks better to me, frankly.

I also strongly recommend you drop the Cleansing Sigil on your longbow in favour of a Smoldering Sigil.

Here’s the result of most of the recommendations I made above. I didn’t mess with your utilities (though there’s probably more optimal choices), but I did swap Shake It Off for Outrage, since you mentioned having an issue with lack of stability and the combination of a 10s stun break and Balanced Stance should be enough. Personally, I’d probably go with the Big Three Stances on my bar.

I also didn’t change your gear stats, mostly because I didn’t want to do any calculations to figure out which would be best.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQNAsfTnMdAVeglkCmhAciglqATpHE7yBILuGQA4d0uajtA-TRiAABX8AA+U9HY2f4alfEqPAgDBQ0nAg0UCCyRAgUA3N2C-e

In the above, you want to be using your bursts as much as possible, especially your longbow bursts. Overall, your longbow is your main damage dealer due to the spammable bursts (more so if you keep Tactics for Burning Arrows), though your burst on the sword when up close and in Berserk mode is also ok. as is the rest of the set.

Be sure to savage leap through your fire fields to maintain permanent flame aura too, and be sure to use Longbow 2 at close range against groups of enemies when you can (it pierces, and you can stack a lot of burning if all three arrows hit your targets). Obviously, be sure to blast Combustive Shot with Arcing Arrow every time too.

If you find you aren’t getting that much from your Torch, consider dropping it forr a traited shield. I’m not familiar enough with the Torch, nor the challenges you’re facing, to say which is the better choice for you. You’re running pretty glass and traited Shield 5 is amazing, but if you’re not getting downed a lot then the extra aoe burn from Torch might be better.

Anyway, just my two bits.

EDIT: note that some things on the editor aren’t updated yet. For example, your food only gives you +20% condi duration now, afaik. Also, it’s only counting +30% duration from your weapons instead of +40%,, King of Fires now gives +33% burning instead of +20%, and it’s not calculating in the Smoldering Sigil, no doubt because the build exceeds the +100% cap. Still, it gives you a rough idea and enough of a head start to figure out which condi bonuses should be swapped out for something else to maximize impact.

EDIT2: You could probably safely switch your weapons to Sinister and drop the Smoldering Sigil for whatever you want (e.g. Doom) and still maintain roughly +100% burning, while also increasing your condi damage and power. Alternatively, you could keep the Smoldering Sigil on the bow and go with something like Elementalist or Nightmare runes to still maintain +100% burn, but either increase your power at the expense of condi damage or increase your bleeds by a bit.

I’d probably go with this. The bleed damage is almost as high as your original build (less duration, but higher condi damge), your burn damage is way higher, and your survivability is better too. So your original concept is still respected, but enhanced by a lot.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQNAsfTnMdAVeglkCmhAciglqATpHE7yBILuGQA4d0uajtA-TBSGABA8AAQU9nM2fAYlf6eCA9BSpEMhjAABHCASBc3YL-e

Conceptually, I rather like the idea of a raging damage machine and/or unstoppable force, and I think the “I’m so mad it BURNS!” thing is a rather clever way to boost warrior condi damage while still loosely maintaining the Anet goal of “warriors don’t do magic”.

I also like that they’ve tried to create those three separate paths, damage machine, burninator, and unstoppable force, in the traitline.

I just don’t think they’ve pulled it off, and there are probably a bunch of things getting in the way. The opportunity cost when you take the Beserker Traitline is just too high, and you don’t escape any of the regular fundamental warrior weaknesses when you do it, from what I can tell.

Berserker is the only elite specialization I haven’t seen in wvw, and I don’t think I’d feel compelled to tread carefully if I saw one unless it was running a rifle. Even then, I’d keep my reflect ready and otherwise burst him down first.

Amaya.1483:

yanoch.7051:

Amaya.1483:

Okay besided the warriors cant catch your target, he is right. Warrior is still the most mobile class.

Quick funny add : He apparently doenst know there is a Necro / Reaper Class. xD And the Video after his i got shown by Youtube, "Extreme Dinosaurs Episode 38: Cliff Notes " LOLZ

Warrior is not the most mobile class anymore. Since they changed the boon/length change.

Doenst matter, noone has this much skillz to close a gap or get away. GS 3,5 Sword 2 etc. BUUUT dont get all over it. Its the only thing warrior is that good at atm.

Eh… don’t forget they also made it so movement skills are no longer affected by speed buffs, which used to extend the distance traveled. Rush and Bull’s Charge (former movement staples) seemed to get slower when they instituted that change, as well.

Also, I don’t know if it’s just me, but for the last few weeks I’ve been finding skills like Savage Leap and Whirlwind often get a weird skill lag that shortens the distance traveled. For example, the other day I used Savage Leap (sword 2) and I traveled the equivalent of about 1 meter.

Honestly, I find warriors pretty middle of the pack when it comes to running these days, and on the lower side when it comes to in-combat mobility, and I run a sword/gs build.

In general, the only times I’ll “get away” if I need to bail from a fight is when my opponent is at range and I have my run skills ready to go in the opposite direction. In terms of chasing someone down, eles, engineers, rangers, thieves, mesmers, and possibly others will generally escape you. The latter two, especially if they stealth, but they don’t necessarily need to (the mesmer will need an elevation to port to in the event of a long chase if they can’t stealth for some reason).

Tzozef.9841:

The problem is that people developed a sheep-mentally and try to make Berserker work with the previous Meta pre-HoT, and if it’s not compatible they whine and say it doesn’t work.

Soooooo…. how about you post some links and/or footage of these new, non-sheep builds in action?

Rauderi.8706:

Choppy.4183:

@Arewn
Why give it an ICD at all?

Greatsword (and arguably, OH Axe) have the highest potential for the greatest number of hits in the shortest period of time, and yet nobody’s saying FG is overpowered, afaik.

If there’s an internal cooldown, it’s precisely because of the difference in number of hits. A 1-sec internal cooldown normalizes the effect for all weapon types.

Sure, but we’re talking about dealing with what appears to be a general lack of synergy and underpoweredness of warrior relative to other classes, not trying to make all warrior weapons equally good at using the might stacking of a gs trait by nerfing the trait.

Even still, OH Axe would do very well with the trait if there was no ICD, and so would longbow for that matter with its large pulsing burst field and its ability to proc twice at range per auto attack.

I don’t see any case for adding an ICD to make it so all weapons are equally good (or bad, in this case)… at all.

Arewn.2368:

The following line is used in the Reaper trait “Chilling Victory”:
(Single attacks can activate this trait more than once before recharging.)
If I am understanding this correctly, and I haven’t tested it so I could be wrong, I think this means that a single skill with multiple strikes will be able to benefit from the trait on all of its strikes before triggering the cooldown.
For example, 100 Blades is a single “attack” that hits multiple time. If the above is correct, each critical hit of 100 blades would grant might, and the 1 sec cd would only trigger after the skill ends.
If all of that is the case, then the 1 sec internal cooldown would help normalize the effect between fast attack-rate and slow attack-rate weapons, but would maintain the interesting synergy multi-strike attacks such as 100blades have now.
You could take mace/axe for example, and not be penalized by mace’s slow attack rate, but still benefit from Whirling Axe’s multiple strikes.

Well, if 100b and Whirling Axe would count as “one attack” before an ICD went in, then the ICD wouldn’t do anything to balance the weapons but it would nerf the trait hard.. All of the weapons have an auto attack speed of either a 1/2 second or 1/4 second (in a couple of cases). Ranged weapons have the advantage of never having lulls while being kited.

But if we’re talking about an ICD after each attack (including cleaves), as per above, why in the world would normalizing between the weapons be a goal? Especially when the means being proposed to do it is a nerf to the trait? Seems crazy to me.

In fact, it would be a pretty underperforming trait that I certainly wouldn’t take for any weapon except the gs, and then only for the 10% damage buff and CD reduction. Think about it… with a 1s ICD, the most might you’ll stack is 5 assuming your target just eats your attacks . That’s a massive nerf just for the sake of a pretty questionable goal, imo.

@Arewn
Why give it an ICD at all?

Greatsword (and arguably, OH Axe) have the highest potential for the greatest number of hits in the shortest period of time, and yet nobody’s saying FG is overpowered, afaik.

Some great ideas here. I hope Robert or one of the other devs read it and use it as a base from which to redesign warrior traits for greater synergy.

Aoe reveal on Torch 5 would be very good, and thematically sensible. I really think thieves should get major buffs to their non-stealth builds before or when something like that got implemented though.

As it is, the stealth-based dagger burster is (appropriately) fragile, but it’s largely their only viable build outside of Daredevil. More reveal in the game would make the class even less viable.

That aside, reveal wouldn’t be enough to make me take the torch. Maybe if it was accompanied by a large increase in damage, improved condi removal, and/or cooldown reduction?

Totally agree. I was trying to craft some builds I might use, and the Torch didn’t make the cut on any of them because it (combined with the traits you have to give up to even get Berserker) wasn’t enough to be viable.

Much more damage output or much better defensive options are in order.

That being said, I don’t have the answers.

For Blaze Breaker, maybe replacing the cripple with a knockdown? It’s consistent with the animation, the skill description, can set up for a burst or just provide sustain by interrupting attacks from opponents for 2s.

For Flames of War, destruction of projectiles is one option. A blind field due to “smoke” might be another. I know people hate the proliferation of blind fields, and with good reason, but other new specializations of crazy long evades, blocks, etc. with significant offensive components along with them. So the torch needs something good.

lighter.2708:

Choppy.4183:

I’d put thief there.

i’m happy to duel your war on my thief any day.
here’s a hint, i have 1/10 games played on thief.

Deal! When are you usually on? (I’m generally NA prime time, but could probably make anything work).

FatRaKoon.1782:

lighter.2708:

warrior right now is the highest risk lowest reward class compare to the rest.

This. Thousands of time this.

I’d put thief there.

I dunno, lighter, I burn up thieves pretty consistently in duels. They need to come into melee range to do damage, and there’s a good chance they’ll die if they make the slightest error while there.

That being said, they aren’t as hard to play as Keitaro wants to make out, nor has he characterized the warrior class right. But there has been a bit too much hand wringing over warrior in the forum… much more than there ought to be, imo.

Keitaro Dragonheart.9047:

This. And warrior players crying over how supposedly bad warrior is? Pathetic. Try thief. They’re FAR worse off than warrior. A lobotomized pigeon could crap randomly over the keyboard and still be good at warrior. Especially compared to thief.

EDIT: I take that back; warrior actually does require skill now. JUST like everybody else has for a long time!

“-le gasp- You mean I can’t faceroll the keyboard anymore?! QQ ermagerd, we’z unapowuhed, need buffs, switch class, durr durr!”

Agree on thief. They need some love after having been nerfed so long and hard because peoples be fearing the gank. Imo, it limits the class in a way that’d be a lot like warriors having to run killshot all the time.

Happy to see the edit there. I’d say with warrior, it’s easier to survive and contribute something than some other classes (notable exceptions include pew pew ranger), but the extra armor doesn’t give you much, the invulns are short lived, and the health pool only carries you so far.

To be good at a warrior, especially against good players, it ain’t no faceroll. It takes some skill to conceal those telegraphs, etc. And this isn’t a new thing either…. In fact, I’d say thieves used to be able to manhandle most warriors and didn’t need a lot of skill to do it.

Remember condi p/d? That was a faceroll over melee warriors… standard gank also didn’t require much skill against most warriors, but times have changed. Thieves need some help (don’t know if the new specialization is enough or not), and warriors aren’t in a terrible spot.

@gannondorf
I think you mean Berserker mode. A 15-20s Berserker Stance would be insanely OP.

I’ve long thought Physical Skills were lackluster, and I know I’m not alone. So…

Bull’s Charge: Charge and knock down all enemies between you and your foe. Foe dies instantly and is launched 12,000 units, knocking down all enemies in flight path.

Kick: Kick your opponent from the game entirely, as though the game client crashed.

Throw eBolas: Inflict new Disease condition that increases in severity, cannot be cleared except in the first second of exposure, and spreads to other opponents each tick. (Initial damage 1k per tick, increasing by 1k for each second until death. All foes within 500 radius of your target becomes similarly infected, and can spread condition to additional foes.

Rampage: Grow 5x larger, turn green, and burst through all clothes except pants, which are now purple. You are now indestructible, can insta-kill any enemy, and can use any ambient or non-ambient feature as lethal projectiles (includes NPCs, other players, houses, towers, keeps, and bunnies, etc). Duration lasts until all enemies are vanquished or you calm the kitten down.

I’d still never take it as a warrior.

Immobs yes, stuns no. The former’s a condition, the latter’s a non-condi control effect.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Control_effect

As title, I made it through a mob busting into Quentin and into the portal in the EBG map of WvW..

Anyone who’d targeted me was still able to shoot projectiles at me through the reinforced wall, downed me, killed the NPC that started rezzing me (I assume piercing through my body rather than a new target acquisition), then killed me too.

Don’t know if this could have been done through any wall, any tower/keep, etc.