Guild Wars 2

ensoriki.5789:

Eduardo.4675:

It doesnt make much sense. It only benefits pistol whip build, which already has a evade built into the pistol whip skill already. Plus, it eliminates the proper use of HIS, which is the only reliable cond remover on a build without shadow embrace. And would make SR tricky to use. A PW with high crit chance will generate a lot of revealed debuff, denying use of both HIS and SR, and to the ones that use it, Blinding Power utility. I wouldnt use it.

That’s not strictly true.
Assuming revealed does not stack. It is a semi constant 3s of reveal every 5s.
Meaning after 3s, you could stealth. With 33% damage reduction you would need to stealth less to begin with, and because of how traits work to begin with, this would not trigger off cloak and dagger of the S/D.

This would actually make an S/D build significantly stronger as it’s crit rate (sustain and burst dmg) would increase by 10% and at the same time it would take 33% more damage.
This would be fairly devastating for WvW and pve as Tactical strike can last 3s. This would literally mean, you can CnD, tactical strike, have 5s of protection while visible and do it again. In other words, you’d be far harder to kill while still being able to reap the benefits of Stealth.
It would be clearly outrageous in a 10/30/30 build. Perma protection so even if they whack you in stealth you take relatively weak damage, and when you’re not stealthed it’s up anyways, so you’re a freaking tank and heal when in stealthed and possibly gain regen everytime you come out. Which is worse since for 3s they can’t attack anyways.
Lol wot!?

Now assuming it does stack.
With an ICD the most reveal you’d have on you at any time is 6s. Which you’d be protected for, and if you take 30 in acrobatics your protection would last 6.5s.
Can easily be protected the entire time you are revealed without qualm.
Not bad in this situation since it justifies using Acrobatics again.

If not in either of the two defense traits and going into trickery, it still means you’re glassy behind is now a lot sturdier, same if you put 30 in DA for some reason.
Think of what you’re trading off? If you’re going to burst them regardless it means practically nothing.

Edit: 5s of reveal? Lol wot? Still would mean kitten if you’re bursting and if you have prot all the time up, you need stealth less to begin with, and can easily take other defensive/offensive skills instead of refuge (say SoA or Roll) to deal with targeted attacks.

Well, that means you would need 30 in acro and 30 in the defense tree, remember this trait is in the critical strikes tree, you can’t have a 30/30/30/30/30 spec.

It would also make S/D significantly more skill based as well, your saying all that, but your denying that if you “screw up.” which can easilly be done less your constantly looking at your revealed timer (with only 1.5 seconds of protection without revealed window to actually stealth.) your actually not getting that much protection from it when your not paying attention, since you can’t just immediately attack after you stealth, you still have to move around and hit his back.

This makes S/D a little stronger but much much harder to play, and for all that you said, if it takes the extra effort its not something a normal player could do.

Eduardo.4675:

Daecollo.9578:

Eduardo.4675:

It doesnt make much sense. It only benefits pistol whip build, which already has a evade built into the pistol whip skill already. Plus, it eliminates the proper use of HIS, which is the only reliable cond remover on a build without shadow embrace. And would make SR tricky to use. A PW with high crit chance will generate a lot of revealed debuff, denying use of both HIS and SR, and to the ones that use it, Blinding Power utility. I wouldnt use it.

Actually, it states that its 5s and 5s of revealed, and it won’t proc again if you already have protection, meaning it won’t matter if you use Flanking Strike or PW, it won’t generate anymore or less protection. Flanking Strike has an evade as well.

CnD is a dagger attack, so it won’t proc this trait, so if you wait 5 seconds, use CnD when ya need condition removal and stealth it would still work.

Really? And how am i gonna use proper tactical strike control build if i generate revealed debuff constantly with sword attacks, which are the dps of a S/D spec? This doesnt serve a S/D spec. Only a PW spec, which has no cond removal outside of HIS and Shadowstep, with the latter being very poor at it. That was my point. Deny stealth and you are conditioned in your usage of HIS or Shadow Embrace.

That is entirely the point, to deny heavy use of stealth, yYour a duelist and fencer and you stand and fight, your not a ninja who stealths every 4 seconds.

PopeUrban.2578:

Daecollo.9578:

PopeUrban.2578:

Daecollo.9578:

Tell me what you think of my idea above.

Its definately interesting (the confusion on crit) in that it creates a much more offensive rather than defensive setup for a theoretical “non-stealth” trait, but do you think that, combined with sword’s other shutdown abilities and the increased damage output of this trait might be slightly much?

I admit the idea of a sword-based condition build using such a setup sounds hilarious, but I wonder if giving thieves that much confusion would step on mesmers too much.

Then again they stole some of our stealth. Might be fair.

What about blind on crit?

Black Powder? Cloaked in Shadow? We already have that. Lol.

Confusion is the only condition that punishes people from missing and evading you, and its not like the Sword has a Bleed on it or poison like daggers, so it would only be able to apply the confusion condition, Mesmers can do Confusion + Bleeding.

True, but blinding powder is extremely temporary and cloaked in shadow is… well… a stealth trait. Confusion punishes people when they hit you as well, so it might be a little off-theme. Blind on crit might by a little more thematic with the sword and actually prevent you from taking hits. It’s basically bizarro-aegis and is really good at mitigating damage, but takes some finesse and skill to use properly which would seem pretty on-theme with the “skilled fencer” idea of the trait.

S/D has Cloaked in Shadow.
S/P has Black Powder.

They are both very good at blinding the opponent, but blind on critical is and sounds very OP, and just would not be practical in PvE where bosses just completely ignore blinds, it also makes evasion less good, and makes you rely more on attacks, if I could blind on critical, I would just attack, why should I evade?

If I blinded on critical, why use cloaked in shadow or black powder? I could just attack.

PopeUrban.2578:

Daecollo.9578:

Tell me what you think of my idea above.

Its definately interesting (the confusion on crit) in that it creates a much more offensive rather than defensive setup for a theoretical “non-stealth” trait, but do you think that, combined with sword’s other shutdown abilities and the increased damage output of this trait might be slightly much?

I admit the idea of a sword-based condition build using such a setup sounds hilarious, but I wonder if giving thieves that much confusion would step on mesmers too much.

Then again they stole some of our stealth. Might be fair.

What about blind on crit?

Black Powder? Cloaked in Shadow? We already have that. Lol.

Confusion is the only condition that punishes people from missing and evading you, and its not like the Sword has a Bleed on it or poison like daggers, so it would only be able to apply the confusion condition, Mesmers can do Confusion + Bleeding.

Confusion on Sword-critical would be the ultimate anti-bunker setup though, and probably very fun to play, especially against people who stack prot/tough/vit or elementalists who spam there abilities and seem invincible.

Eduardo.4675:

It doesnt make much sense. It only benefits pistol whip build, which already has a evade built into the pistol whip skill already. Plus, it eliminates the proper use of HIS, which is the only reliable cond remover on a build without shadow embrace. And would make SR tricky to use. A PW with high crit chance will generate a lot of revealed debuff, denying use of both HIS and SR, and to the ones that use it, Blinding Power utility. I wouldnt use it.

Actually, it states that its 5s and 5s of revealed, and it won’t proc again if you already have protection, meaning it won’t matter if you use Flanking Strike or PW, it won’t generate anymore or less protection. Flanking Strike has an evade as well.

CnD is a dagger attack, so it won’t proc this trait, so if you wait 5 seconds, use CnD when ya need condition removal and stealth it would still work.

Tell me what you think of my idea above.

With your build your speaking of, it would be more sense if it was like this:
“applie 3 seconds of confusion on critical hit with a sword or spear.” – This means dagger storm and other skills won’t proc it, its obviously an overpowered trait, but it would go moreso with the evades thing you said before, which thief needs more of, evasion type benefitting skills.

This would make evades and such for a thief much more powerful, because they damage themselves each time they miss the thief.

PopeUrban.2578:

Daecollo.9578:

PopeUrban.2578:

Daecollo.9578:

PopeUrban.2578:

Daecollo.9578:

ensoriki.5789:

inb4 bunker thief.
inb4 needacondtspectokillthisthief.
inb4 hekeepsremovingmyflippingcondis.

Looks at Guardian Board.
Comes back here.

What?

What he said. Perhaps in stead of protection add passive non-boon regen based on initiative like the warrior trait that regenerates HP relative to adrenaline? This makes sure you’re still relying on the thief’s superior mobility, and rewards the mobility and smart tactical strikes while playing mostly visible than just spamming down to zero initiative all the time.

Thieves have Regeneration in stealth already, thats already a play-style thief has, this play-style is non-stealthy, you arn’t in stealth and you cannot gain stealth, its very active because (especially in pvp.) you don’t have stealth anymore, so you can’t rely on culling or anything to win, just your evades and shadowsteps.

You don’t have regen in stealth with this particular trait though. That’s the point I think. It’s the “non stealth” trait.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mck9oMFvlmMFvlm9Mx9Mcmq

That build is already available, and it would be 100x better because they cannot see you, so why even have the trait then if its going to be much much worse then whats already available, protection is needed because you cannot stealth.

Because it wouldn’t be worse if the “You can’t stealth hardly ever” trait had passive regen to actively reward periods of dancing as well as stealthing rewards being unseen. Heck, tack on a little but of endurance gain on crit while you’re at it to really hammer home the non-stealth nature of the trait and make it a viable build enabler.

Stealth users also have access to dodge as well, with Traits that give them a lot of regeneration and condition removal. This would offer protection, but no stealth or condition removal or regeneration.

PopeUrban.2578:

Daecollo.9578:

PopeUrban.2578:

Daecollo.9578:

ensoriki.5789:

inb4 bunker thief.
inb4 needacondtspectokillthisthief.
inb4 hekeepsremovingmyflippingcondis.

Looks at Guardian Board.
Comes back here.

What?

What he said. Perhaps in stead of protection add passive non-boon regen based on initiative like the warrior trait that regenerates HP relative to adrenaline? This makes sure you’re still relying on the thief’s superior mobility, and rewards the mobility and smart tactical strikes while playing mostly visible than just spamming down to zero initiative all the time.

Thieves have Regeneration in stealth already, thats already a play-style thief has, this play-style is non-stealthy, you arn’t in stealth and you cannot gain stealth, its very active because (especially in pvp.) you don’t have stealth anymore, so you can’t rely on culling or anything to win, just your evades and shadowsteps.

You don’t have regen in stealth with this particular trait though. That’s the point I think. It’s the “non stealth” trait.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mck9oMFvlmMFvlm9Mx9Mcmq

That build is already available, and it would be 100x better in your scenario because they cannot see you, so why even have the trait then if its going to be much much worse then whats already available, protection is needed because you cannot stealth.

Protection is much more powerful then regeneration, and it should be… rightfully so, you cannot stealth, thieves have almost no defense out of stealth.

Shadowy Protector used to give thieves protection, but it was changed to regeneration due to its overpoweredness combined with stealth…

PopeUrban.2578:

Daecollo.9578:

ensoriki.5789:

inb4 bunker thief.
inb4 needacondtspectokillthisthief.
inb4 hekeepsremovingmyflippingcondis.

Looks at Guardian Board.
Comes back here.

What?

What he said. Perhaps in stead of protection add passive non-boon regen based on initiative like the warrior trait that regenerates HP relative to adrenaline? This makes sure you’re still relying on the thief’s superior mobility, and rewards the mobility and smart tactical strikes while playing mostly visible than just spamming down to zero initiative all the time.

Thieves have Regeneration in stealth already, thats already a play-style thief has, this play-style is non-stealthy, you arn’t in stealth and you cannot gain stealth, its very active because (especially in pvp.) you don’t have stealth anymore, so you can’t rely on culling or anything to win, just your evades and shadowsteps.

You have to be smart, if you do need to stealth, and you have this trait, you can’t, so you will have to stop attacking and wait 5 seconds to stealth again, if you keep attacking mindlessly you will keep getting the revealed debuff.

So its very tactical.

tom.7468:

You do realize this is a heavy nerf to guardian right? this is why they have so low health pool because they rely on boons to stay alive so the only way for this to healthy for the game is to give them the base hp of a warrior.

Buffing Toughness would make guardians a lot more powerful. (since they have the best toughness tree in the game.)

I’m saying: nerf protection and buff toughness enough to compensate so they would be about the same.

All it would do is give you more builds, because now you don’t have to rely “so much” on one boon to keep you alive.

darkace.8925:

Daecollo.9578:

Luckily there are cookie cutter builds anyone can fall to.

The fact that so many people are complaining about this deserved nerf to life-steal food tells me there are indeed cookie cutter builds that anyone can fall back on.

Honestly, I don’t think any other nerf in the game got as much attention as this one.

tom.7468:

This is a really unfair change only if guardian get 10k more hp and damage increased by 25% or longer protection duration.

I can agree with the second, protection should be a longer boon, but not give a second set of armor.

Buffing Toughness would be a lot to improve a lot of the games health.

ensoriki.5789:

inb4 bunker thief.
inb4 needacondtspectokillthisthief.
inb4 hekeepsremovingmyflippingcondis.

Looks at Guardian Board.
Comes back here.

What?

Columba.9730:

Daecollo.9578:

Folk.2093:

a lot of these builds were floating around, they were just as cookie cutter.

Well, lets see we probably had about 8 different viable and awesome builds for each class, now we have about 2-3, something needs to be done.

Why does something need to be done? Get creative with some builds and make them viable. Don’t rely on a broken consumable.

There really arn’t enough viable traits to some classes to do that, tell me… How will P/P thieves ever be viable in PvP? They won’t. (i’m saying this because your in that forum a lot.)

Folk.2093:

a lot of these builds were floating around, they were just as cookie cutter.

Well, lets see we probably had about 8 different viable and awesome builds for each class, now we have about 2-3, something needs to be done.

Critical Strikes
En Garde
- Increases your critical-hit chance with a sword and spear by 10%.
- Gain 5s of Protection and revealed on critical hit with a sword or spear. (The protection and revealed applied by this trait will not apply when protection is already on the character, this is to prevent boon stacking and the fact that if the pirate is not in melee, he should not gain any benefit from running away.)

This trait allows for a “duelist” type thief who mostly focuses less on stealth and more on staying alive with sustain, the protection allows him to sustain melee combat with other classes, but he is also revealed as well so he cannot stealth as long as he has this protection.

Note: It would also be very nice is sword skills were more fluid like ranger attacks, and had more fluid looking animations, we don’t rely on brute force like warriors, we should be attacking with our movement and body, not just our arms.

Another Note: I would also like to add, that I love pirates, and I would like to see more pirate thieves then ninja thieves…

darkace.8925:

Daecollo.9578:

darkace.8925:

If your build is dependent upon, rather than supplemented by, food then you’ve done it wrong.

If your build depends on the developers next balance patch, then your doing it wrong.

Luckily for me I had the foresight to NOT build my characters around a single skill, trait, attribute, and certainly not food.

Luckily there are cookie cutter builds anyone can fall to.

Boon removal just takes away from builds, only Necromancers and Thieves need boon removal, and they pay heavy prices for it.

PopeUrban.2578:

Daecollo.9578:

Signet of Malice isn’t that great, it needs its healing increased by atleast 80% so S/P and P/P are more viable.

P/D benefits a lot more from the Stealth heal.

The reason S/P, P/P need improved signet of malice is because they lack a lot of condition removal because they don’t have access to stealth.

While I wouldn’t be upset to see the ratio increased on SoM I think 80% would be completely overdoing it. With just a life sigil I’m pushing 134 per attack, on top of trait heals for about 420 per c&d that’s a solid 1k heal every stealth attack, plus whatever I’m getting from stealth trait-heals. Not to mention the heal pulses from the birds on my mad king runes, every time something takes a tick from dodgetrops, or the stupid amount of ticks given when a zerg runs through a field of caltrops.

At an 80% increase I’d be quite literally unkillable, pushing nearly 2k heals while never stopping damage, on a build with 20k HP and 2700 armor with bleeds that tick for 130.

Yeah, it would be awesome, but it also feels like too much bunker, something that was just toned down a bit on the ele for a similar reason. Durable should be possible, but unkillable is a fine line, especially when we’ve got so many really good passive heal traits.

Remember that ratios exist the way they do to account for the entire picture. Sustain heals on any class/build are only as good as your investment in them. SoM is tuned the way it is on a thief specifically because of our trait passive heals, and because of our ability to continuously spam high hit-per-minute attacks.

All three thief heals are very good heals. Hide in Shadows and withdraw are situationally useful to soak big damage once on some pretty generous cooldowns. One’s got a stealth, and one’s got a dodge. These are really solid skills. Signet of malice is a little more tricky to use as its usefulness is in its passive effect, and in stead of a cooldown (because the active is just shooting yourself in the foot) the drawback is that you can’t one-button recover from big damage. You can come close however with some creative choices of gear, skills, and combo fields.

Personally I’ve found that my overall survival rate increased when I experimented with speccing around it a little. Not because it’s better or worse than the other heals, but because I specced for it.

That’s the difference I think. HiS and Withdraw are about as useful as they’ll ever be right out of the box. Sure, you can scale them up a bit with healing power but it’s not a good investment for something that’s not healing you very often, and you’re taking them because of their “all this stuff rolled in to one button with a pretty good heal” mechanics. Especially with the CD change to withdraw they’re both nearly perfect in their roles and make a good case for thief having possibly the most diverse and useful selection of self-heal skills of any class.

SoM is exponentially more effective when you gear for it, favoring healing power as a replacement for some vit and toughness. It doesn’t have the one-button utility of the other heals, but the point is that it has some very viable build options, including S/P control builds.

I will agree with you about P/P needing… something though. It’s just a headless mashup of too-expensive control skills, one power/crit dump, and all that rolled in to a condition-based auto.

Thieves with Healing Power are completely worthless (we don’t have many healing abilities, and P/W+Unload are our only high-hit-rate abilities, it should be buffed 80% like necromancers minion was, that thing heals for almost 950+ every ‘2’ seconds, along with all there other heals, with NO healing power.

“At an 80% increase I’d be quite literally unkillable, pushing nearly 2k heals while never stopping damage, on a build with 20k HP and 2700 armor with bleeds that tick for 130.”

Omnomberry Pie + Malice healed me for far far more, and I was hardly unkillable, you forget that thieves have the lowest health pool and some of the lowest armor. [I wear full Knight’s Gear.] (No access to protection or a damage reduction signet.)

P/P and P/W have no stealth, and stealth users don’t really benefit from Malice that much, they hit hard, but only hit once.

Remember, you have to actually “hit” for SoM to proc, unlike other things… So if the enemy dodges or is slippery like an elementalist, getting those hits off is much much harder then it appears to be.

Buffing SoM to heal for 926 and giving it an internal cool-down would also be in favor. (But that would just make people want to go into more backstabby nonsense…)

darkace.8925:

If your build is dependent upon, rather than supplemented by, food then you’ve done it wrong.

If your build depends on the developers next balance patch, then your doing it wrong.

Darksome.5647:

Just think toughness should reduce crit chance against you. Not too much of course.

THAT WOULD HELP a LOT…

Its just the difference between people with and without toughness is so low, its no wonder people some times just ignore it and stack boon duration/critical chance and bonus so they can have perma protection instead.

Lighter.5631:

Draygo.9473:

Columba.9730:

It’s the combination of the highest dps, best mobility and permastealth that’s wrecking WvWvW.

Thiefs are not the most mobile.

Warriors and Elementalists are both faster. The thief however is far more evasive, because you dont know which direction the thief is running in, its very hard to chase.

Please, please tell me how is warrior faster and more mobile, very please

Greatsword ‘5’, Sword ‘2’, Perma Swiftness.

Problem with Warriors is they don’t have sustain or condition removal and elementalist does.

So if a Warrior gets CCed while running away he can’t do anything about it, BUUUT if he does get far away, nothing can catch him, not even an Ele.

For our traits, allow us to pick our secondary stats so we can make new builds, is tired of being pigeon-holed into certain things. could you also change some of the traits to give classes that deserve it more sustain, and give up more minor/major/master traits to pick from?

Basicly in groups it means you need to bring a Guardian for melee, otherwise without protection you are kittened in instances.

“Fury” is an awesome Stat, but its basicly giving the group 420 Precision.

Would you rather have 420 Precision, or 1500+ Toughness from a single buff?

Fortuna.7259:

digiowl.9620:

And honestly, while i would love to see every other class lifted up to guardian level of sustainability, i suspect that what we will get is guardians nerfed into the ground.

Pretty much… But hey it will probably take ANET another 6 months so live gloriously while you still can!

I can foresee a Guardian nerf in the future…

There are hundreds of threads dedicated to people wanting the food back, and the same 10 people on each telling them to LTP, this just backs up the fact that there really arn’t enough choices in the games traits.

The food was simply a “band-aid” fix that made the builds “work” however a lot of people exploited the food in some dungeons (CoF+Old AC), where they would be overpowered due to how many mobs and how many hits you could get from them, you didn’t even have to move from AOEs (some classes still do not.) and gave them sustain in full offensive gear.

However, people who used it defensively how it was meant to be get punished moreso because now they can’t do anything with there older builds, and when they asked for more defensive traits to make up for it, they pretty much got “tough luck.” Combining this with the “LTP” from the forums… its kind of hurtful, and its honestly making a lot of players just leave the game.

Developers should listen to all there player base, not the most elite.

ArtemisEntreri.4138:

True. Though I haven’t been able to make a layout of guardian that included 3k armor, 3k attk, 50% crit, 100% crit dmg, and 15k+ health. If I could reach those numbers I wouldn’t want to roll a warrior unless I wanted crazy burst. Sadly, I can’t think of any ideas how to make warriors more interesting and have their own niche.

You wanna go for 2.6-2.8k max armor, getting armor after that isn’t really worth it.

havoc.8569:

Yeah why did they fix an obviously OP food? My entire build revolved around it! One piece of food was the only thing that kept my glass behind alive! Surely that doesn’t deserve a nerf…

It’s pretty obvious food was never suppose to have that kind of effect. The fact that people fell on such a crutch and now are whining incessantly over it is just shows how ridiculous it was . You should be glad you weren’t banned for exploiting, just like the karma weapon fiasco. No game designer would have knowingly added such a thing to the game. I hope the Devs are just reading these threads and having a chuckle.

I think its an exploit that people can stack toughness, run around with aggro while glass cannons can beat on the mob and do all the damage without getting a single point of aggro.

if they changed aggro instead to how it was in other games, then Glass Cannon’s COULD not do this.

A lot of people I know quit due to not having enough viable builds, the food was one of the only things that made a lot of weaker weapons for many classes and weaker builds more viable, with no compensation for those available builds and the food now gone (which I believe they should of removed it, but greatly improved the builds effected most by this, and no I don’t mean zerker warriors, I mean people who actually used this for tanking and survivability in HARDER content, where some times dodging just isn’t enough.)

It should of been done when they balance the classes to have more sustain, not before… which makes me believe that the entire thing was poorly planned.

digiowl.9620:

LyzeUH.1398:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Food item life steal on crit Cooldown: The best heal in the game can’t be 100 blades or other similar attacks. If you want to play a glass cannon, there should be danger involved, and the food buff mitigated the danger and allowed glass cannons to stand and trade blows without having to utilize their own heals or dodge rolls. They could just stand still and win – and that’s not the type of dynamic combat we want for our game. We test our content without the food buffs to ensure they are capable to players without access to them, and make sure the balance is good enough for players who don’t have those buffs. There are a lot of other viable food buffs in the game, and this one food buff meant a core few items were dominating all the others.

For those also thinking I went rogue and did this, I went through all the checks and balances, and discussed the changes with leads. While I do have the power to change dungeons, things that affect the world outside of dungeons is handled through meetings to make sure everyone is on board with a proposed solution.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Dungeon-Patch-Discussion-2-26/page/2#post1528771

Thanks, tho i honestly wish one could opt out of all this “dynamic” fighting via build choices. It seems no matter if one have a uber bunkered guardian or glass cannon elementalist, you will be spending most of your time dodging and running in circles.

This gets especially frustrating when the fighting has to take place inside narrow tunnels and similar, and if you try to move it elsewhere the mobs will just reach the end of their leash and the fight reset to square one.

Or if you get rooted over/over.

digiowl.9620:

Ricky Da Man.5064:

High risk , High reward, you kill things faster but you risk wiping, sounds fair.

Now if only i actually felt safer going heavy on vitality and toughness.

All toughness does for warriors is get you aggro, toughness stops being good after 2600 armor.

They should of changed the way aggro works so mobs targeted people with more critical bonus, not nerfed something without any compensation. They pretty much removed almost 2-3 builds from every class.

ArtemisEntreri.4138:

HannaDeFreitas.4236:

The problem of full-out healing power builds on Warriors is they make you hit like a full support Guardian with just 1% of what he gives.
You cannot replace a Guardian where it’s really needed on that build, and if you have a Guardian then your healing is not really needed (but your DPS really really is).

Anet needs to find a way to make support Warriors useful.
For instance vigorous shouts could give 3s of protection and regen (4s due to boon duration from tactics tree).
That would give a lot of survivability to your team compared to meaningless heals shout give now.

Well, honestly, I don’t want to replace what the guardian can do. I would be happy to let them keep defensive boons if warriors could have more options to give offensive boons. Might, Fury, and swiftness is about all I can see them giving people that is considered offensive. Vigor from horn is nice but that’s about it. If anet gives us more defensive options than they have to give more offensive options to guardians which would be great lol (80 guardian main). The only problem I see with this is you’re now combining class characteristics and that defeats the purpose of the two separate classes.

I would go to a full banner build if the bonuses will a little more attractive.

If it was more like 200 precision and 15% crit damage, it would then be more worth it. 90 precision is like maybe 4.3% crit chance which is not significant enough to turn the tide. Instead of stats it should just give solid stats. 10% crit chance 20% crit damage within proximity of banner (would make banners a good target for the enemy but who targets banners because they feel threatened?). Examples:

Banners have a 600 radius (900 with traits) and have 5,000 health or 65 seconds (at 80).
Banner of Tactics: 250 Condition damage + 20% condition duration.
Banner of Discipline: 210 precision, 15% crit damage
Banner of Strength: 250 Power, 250 vitality
Banner of Defense: Removed.

Battle Standard is tricky. It’s hard to fathom how to make this better since it offers boons. It lasts 65 seconds on a 4 min cool down. My idea is to make it worth picking up.

Place a battle standard that revives downed allies and grants Fury and Might to allies as long as it is being held (600). Lasts 90 seconds. Cooldown 240 seconds. 10,000 health. Only usable by the warrior. Buffs last 3 seconds before next pulse(3 seconds). While holding takes advantage of Inspiring Battle Standard Trait giving Regen (130 + 0.125 * Healing Power per second) and Inspiring Banners.

Skill / Recharge(seconds) / Description

Stab / .5 / Stab at foes with your banner hitting three nearby targets (range 200) and inflicting wounds. (Bleeding 3 stacks at 10 seconds)
Call Taunt! / 15 / Taunt five nearby enemies causing weakness (7s) and chill (3s). (400 radius).
Call Charge! / 30 / Inspire nearby allies granting stability for 10 seconds as you charge forward (600 range).
Call Route! / 20 / Grant Swiftness for 15 seconds and cause cripple for 7 seconds to all enemies.
Bolster Morale / 30 / Plant your banner in the ground and give vigor to your allies for 10 seconds as you engage the fight.

Could be toned down if any seems outrageous but I tried to try keep in mind what other utilities offer similar bonuses. The trick is the warrior has to take himself out of the fight to might and fury bonuses to his allies. He can stab at enemies but the point is to keep calling orders out to benefit your team. He can stab enemies with a 200 range (slightly longer than melee), he can debuff nearby enemies while granting bonuses for his allies while sacrificing his damage. He can jump in and fight but his allies will lose the might and fury buffs when they fall off.

You have to make it worth while to cause a warrior to want to drop his weapon to support his allies but you can’t make it too outrageous so that is my dilemma.

Sorry for wall of text.

The problem with that is, the Guardian can offer all there support without giving up utility slots or being “taken out of the fight.” with full toughness tree they still have +30% Critical Damage and you can just get the precision lost with gear like maint oil and other things to bring your critical up as well as sigils.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Master_Maintenance_Oil

Guardians can still bring the hurt specced fully defensive with all toughness gear mixed with valkyries and still heal well, with no healing power.

That is just class difference though.

Zepidel.5349:

Alot of thiefs/warriors really depending on that food to have a snowballs chance in hell to live in melee range of bosses (since every single boss is anti-meele, and no “tanks” in this game means the boss is spinning constantly cleaving anyone near).

Instead of a 1 second cd lets make it so… every time you crit you get a heal over time equal to what it is now per second. Each time it procs it gives you +1 second duration on the heal over time. This removes the burst healing problems from things like pistolw whip and 100 blades, but will still keep you up.

For example say it heals you for 100 dmg (66% chance on crit) and in 1 second you crit 4 times and it procs 3 times then you get a 3 second heal over time that healed for a total of 300.

Or they could make it proc 3-5 times a second, and every second refresh it. (capping out the amount it “can” heal per second.)

They could also revamp Runes of Vampirism and Sigil of Blood to do the same effect so you could sacrifice more and get around the same effect.

The way it is now, theres almost no difference between the level 80 food and lower level food.

Its almost impossible due to slow initiative regeneration, because you would never have enough initiative to run both weapons.

It would be a lot better just to go ranger.

ArtemisEntreri.4138:

Hey guys,

I’m new to the warrior community. I have an 80 guardian which I play frequently and I switch between support/defense and offensive/support and a thief at 80 (shelved till Anet decides how to balance and make them fun).

Anyways, I was looking at the majority of the boons that the warrior gives and they seem pretty offensive in opposite aspect to guardians. I was wondering if anyone has tried to create a boon/shouts (vigorous shouts) build for spike healing and offensive support. Unfortunately, the class lacks multiple sources to buff others but anyone rocking 2.4k heals is pretty helpful in my opinion. Weapons are hammer for CC, sword+horn for aoe weakness, cripple (+1 second immobilize), vigor, swiftness, and mobility.

At 1500 healing at level 80: 40 + 1152 + 1200 = 2392 per shout.
Also heals nearby allies.

Or would a banner warrior be more supportive with all banners instead of burst healing from shouts?

Utilities(gems used to reach 1500 healing):
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQFASngOk8YzDSBxEhAApwKuOFUSVwu0DxQLNA;TwAgzyvEMJ9S1kiJquMeJ8yqkrLpSA

Build/Gear:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/warrior/?8|2.1k.h1f|c.1k.h1f.g.1k.h6|1k.71g.1k.71g.1k.71h.1k.71h.1k.711.1k.711|1k.68.1k.68.1k.68.1k.68.1k.68.1c.68|0.a4.k2a.u18c.a6|2m.1|e

The problem is, it does less healing and damage then guardian hammer build, has no sustain besides burst healing and little to no damage.

The boons it gives are “ok.” but thats just it, they are “ok.” you could just run 2 warriors with no points in the vitality tree and both have “FGJ” and have perma fury for the group the entire time.

The healing is “ok.” but unless you stack healing power (which is warriors weakest stat.) the heals are only about 1.1k.

A guardian hammer build stacking Knights/Valkyrie gear can put out more healing then that and have all the damage with much better boons like protection and regeneration and vigor for the party.

As far as fun factor, its really not fun, your running in melee, doing little to no damage and providing “mediocre” support at best, if the group has a support ele or guardian you are easily replaced.

With traits and boons and 1500 healing power, Guardians can heal for 620 (I did the math using 1500 hp, with all the boons and healing traits I could use for my build.) every second, plus they have perma vigor and perma protection. Not only that, with Empowering Might, Altruistic healing has a chance to grant even more healing to the guardian, and if anyone stands in that circle and gains protection as well, it could buff the guardians heals up to about 1050ish per second, depending on how coordinated the group is.

PopeUrban.2578:

Daecollo.9578:

Drawing Guy.3701:

Ahhh, all these posts of “broken food that I completely relied on to not have to actively play is now fixed, breaking my build”. This supposed nerf has driven every aoe/rapid attack build to the ground. The simple fact is, these in of themselves are not “builds”, but setups that exploited an OP food and were reliant on that broken mechanic.

Honestly the thief has the highest combat mobility in the game. Almost every weapon combination contains spammable mobility moves, a ton of evade and blind moves. They have so much going for them to allow them to control a fight that I don’t see there as a bad weapon choice if traited right. The only thing is culling breaks stealth in WvW, so any build that doesn’t exploit that is comparatively weak now that the food exploit is gone.

Of course, you pretty much got rid of the rapid attack healing option, but that is ok because we still have backstab. Now we can all be the same!

Except you still have that option. It’s called Signet of Malice. The difference is that now you have to choose it as part of your build rather than having extra gobs of passive healing on top of what are already some of the best active heals in the game.

I don’t see a problem with that. Signet of Malice, with the attack timing of the thief, is still one of the most powerful sustain heals in the game. I use it religiously on my P/D and it’s actually even better on S/P. Believe it or not, thief builds in both PvP and PvE exist that aren’t all crit damage and evasion/stealth. Toughness, vit, and healing power actually do increase durability while sacrificing damage, just as they do on any other class. The bonus is that you can still make that sacrifice while losing none of your access to our powerful stealth and evasion-based active skills.

The difference here is that the pre-nerf food allowed you to sidestep any tradeoffs for the survivability it offered, on every build that was using it as a “main heal” an simply stacking zerker and playing glass cannon like it was a more balanced stat build, or worse, stacking it on an already defensive setup and becoming far more durable than was reasonable.

Since the fix, glass cannons are glass cannons again and balanced builds actually have more value compared to glass cannon backstab than they did before.

Signet of Malice isn’t that great, it needs its healing increased by atleast 80% so S/P and P/P are more viable.

P/D benefits a lot more from the Stealth heal.

The reason S/P, P/P need improved signet of malice is because they lack a lot of condition removal because they don’t have access to stealth.

http://www.gw2armor.com/sylvari/male/honor/heavy/display.php

Tell me this doesn’t look wrong…

Can you please remove the Neck-part of the male chestplate on the Tier 2 Cultural Armor? Or change it so it looks more functional with other pieces of armor. Its one of my favorite sets but the neck piece just ruins it.

Can you also change the T3 Male Shoulders to go on both sides and not just one? they are amazing looking shoulders, but with nothing on the other side it looks kind of ackward.

http://www.gw2armor.com/sylvari/female/c2/heavy/display_looks.php – Female.
http://www.gw2armor.com/sylvari/male/c2/heavy/display_looks.php – Male

The Bulky Neck part ruins the armor completely on the male T2 chest, I can understand protecting the neck, but it looks like it would do more harm then good.

Doctor Orderly MD PhD DDS.7625:

omnom pies/ghosts are still good lol. They were OP earlier, plain good postpatch.

They are absolutely horrible, and Warriors now have no sustain at all.

The funny thing about the food nerf is, there is almost no difference between the low level life steal food and the higher level one, because now they all have 1 second cool-downs.

They should of at least made them all a static (30% chance on critical.) and buffed the higher level ones to heal more.

frans.8092:

Return skills having more range then the initial makes sense, as you’d frequently move around while combat. But, I’d rather see the return range limited to, say, 1600 or 2400. As it is now, the long return range is more of a con then a pre in many situations.

Not true, its more of a con not knowing where your going, or getting stuck on terrain.

bluewanders.5297:

Players create builds… not developers… and players shape the meta.

Devs have the power to put in new traits… but throwing new traits in for all the classes with every patch would be a bug and balance nightmare.

Player builds have been all mostly made, there are tons of “builds” but without new traits they will just remain unplayed. (There are currently 2-3 “viable” builds for every class [some classes have less while some more], whilst the other things are “playable.” but are 2-3x weaker so nobody uses them.)

They don’t have to make new traits, just improve ones that are not used to be on-par with other traits. (For example, Thief P/P is worthless due to slow attacks, poor damage, no access to stealth or movement, nothing that helps the thief at all, and poor ranged.)

Sorry, but games will “never” be balanced, its impossible to completely balance a game, all classes are different, unless we all played the same class then that would be an impossibility.

When fun items are removed from the game, fun being put back into the game via new builds/new traits and also new metas…

This is one of the worst mistakes an MMO can make, and its always the hole in the sship that eventually sinks it.

Braxxus.2904:

Daecollo.9578:

Warriors really need some sustain.

Besides the issue with chill and cripple essentially completely shutting a warrior down, sustain is seriously the biggest issue facing warriors. With it we might even be able to see some other ‘fun’ builds get played (not that they’ll suddenly be super viable).

Next on the list would be a baseline movement ability (F2 perhaps) so we’re not completely pigeonholed into GS and/or sword in every weapon set.

IMO anyways.

Our “Movement Skills” giving evasion and our other skill improved to cure cripple/chill would also go a long way to improve this.

Chris.6105:

I also totally dislike these on-hit-effects, they are not granted, when hit, and furthermore are useless, if save in backline. Same for on-heal-effects, healing is not thought to be spammed…

Still, your suggestions are totally OP, of Altruism is like playing without rune, but with an elite-heal-skill. of Infiltration is far weaker now, but also totally OP on Thiefs and Mesmer.

Its all very “Overpowered.” and all the runes have different effects, some heal you when your hit, some runes have heals when you hit. (I have runes which have effects on hit and ones that effect when hit, they are spread all around so people can pick and choose what they want.)

The design was to make all runes overpowered, so they can mix traits with them and make many many different kinds of play-styles and builds.

I balanced Infiltration to when they fix culling and stealth isn’t as much as an issue as it is now.

Columba.9730:

I can avoid their high dps attacks. So yes’m thieves have the highest dps.

DPS = Damage per second, which warriors currently beat almost every class hands down in.

Thieves may have good conditional damage (they can’t be avoided as easilly.) but saying they have high DPS is kind of wrong, because they really don’t have good dps at all.

Thieves have high burst+conditional damage.

style.6173:

EasymodeX.4062:

If the food buff makes or breaks builds, then the food buff is broken.

End of story.

WRONG. If the food makes or breaks builds, the BUILD is broken. In this case, S/P is just plain weak.

I agree, Signet of Malice is very weak and we don’t have any traits, we deserve a trait that steals health when we hit the target like necromancers.

Necromancers minion heals for 987 almost every second now, non-stealth thieves deserve some life stealing, we really need more sustain builds.

Warriors really need some sustain.

Something is wrong with that post… and nothing I can do fixes it….

TL;DR: Guardian can have sustain without sacrificing damage or tankiness.