Guild Wars 2

Hey, my name is Blaze and I love Warrior class, currently having over 2000 games on it. It’s really a shame the class has been on the bottom of the food chain ever since people figured out you can dodge Bullscharge-Frenzy-100b. It’s obvious devs have a serious problem with balancing it. I’ve seen a lot of suggestions around the forums, some are quite good, others not so much.

What I love about the class is how manual it is compared to all the others. As a Warrior you can’t just press your skills and be sure they hit, you have to MAKE sure they land through right positioning, aiming and watching the range. While it puts Warrior at the disadvantage compared to other classes, it’s also what makes the class fun to play.

With that in mind, I decided to go over every single skill and trait and propose a complete redesign to improve class’ performance without dumbing down the class and sacrificing the ‘manual’ element that makes it fun to play. I think months upon months of number tweaking is not working out and it’s high time for some real changes.

1. Expanding Burst Mechanic

Burst is a rather poor mechanic compared to what other classes have, and I believe it has a lot of room for improvement.

There are three things which can be done to make bursts more meaningful:

• Improving current F1 skills – I’ll be talking about those in each weapon’s section.
• Introducing new ways of spending adrenaline – Bursts should be able to provide more diffirent effects than a single extra skill per weapon set. I propose adding extra burst skills to let us choose which of the effects we want – F2 ‘utility’ burst skill for every main hand weapon, as well as F3 skills for off-hand weapons (F3 not avaliable while wielding two-handed weapons). I’ll provide example skills in each weapon’s section.
• Streamlining adrenaline-related traits – Currently there are two types of traits countering each other – either spending adrenaline or holding onto it. I believe all of those should be changed to provide their effects either while earning or spending adrenaline to promote more active usage of it instead or sitting on it for passive effects. I’ll go into detail about each of those in traits section.

Nice ideas. I’m working on my own suggestion list, though much, much longer… should be ready in 2-3 days.

Siric.3589:

You don’t HAVE to do PvE to get these skins. You do get achievement points from PvP. You just will get them faster if you do both… just like PvErs will get them faster if THEY do PvP dailys too.

I fail to see what all the huff n puff is about, it’s just skins.

Yeah, PvP achievements…

r53, 4417 games played, 813 PvP achievement points, out of 6k+ total I got.
I feel the chance of getting skins through PvP achievements only is… zero.

Time for some more PvE.

Glory boosters don’t affect rank, just glory itself.

Khenzy.9348:

Why’s that? what’s the reason? Sorry if this is offtopic!

2h weapons have higher base damage than 1h ones, the tradeoff is losing one sigil slot.

Khenzy.9348:

Please please please ask this one:

Do you plan to add a second sigil slot for Two Handed Weapons?

Not gonna happen, no need to ask about it.

redslion.9675:

However, I have also a serious question: which one do you think is better? Berserker’s Power or Heightened Focus?

Berserker’s Power. In general, flat +dmg% adds more damage than +crit%.

redslion.9675:

IMHO it would make more sense if we were technologically/magically enhanced sodliers. Taking from everywhere to improve our combat prowess.

Well there is a Guardian for this ‘magic warrior’ thingy already.
Though steampunk-y mix of Warrior and Engi sounds quite awesome…

gwawer.9805:

Is it me or did the ESL tournament just go over everyone’s heads and backsides? It seemed very under promoted.It was streamed in 360p. that is just inexcusable these days.

The exclamation on Reddit was Guild wars twos lack of viewership meant that they could only opt for 360 quality video from the ESL website. But heck, I think if arena net was more diligent, the could have even subsidized their stream for 720 P by paying ESL some money.

I don’t know where you get your info from, but on Blu’s channel stream was avaliable in both 720p+ and 360p for those with worse connections.

matjazmuhic.1649:

When is next state of the game?

“Tuesday, July 2nd, 4:30 pm PST with Jonathan Sharp!”

It’s in the first post.

If you use quickness, stomp happens actually a bit after animation is over. Most likely you moved and cancelled it before the stomp actually registered.

1. Have they considered the big picture while preparing last balance patch? Warrior were supposed to become less vulnerable to conditions, yet with buffs to Necro, Weakness and Blind they’re now weaker than ever before.

2. Why was the leaked change to Warrior heals removed from the final build? Are they considering diffirent change than simple cooldown reduction?

3. Some time ago we heard them mention toning down AoE damage, is there any progress? Often it feels like game is about who can spam more AoE while avoiding those spammed by your enemies, making game feel more like Worms Armageddon and less like E-Sport worthy title.

4. It seems game is starting to get dominated by condition builds, as there are far less possibilities to mitigate this damage compared to power builds. Are there any plans to bring both build types in line without making any of them obsolete? Perhaps up the condition removal slightly on classes that lack it?

5. Any details on rewards rework? Are recently datamined Permament Finishers part of it as items avaliable for glory, or will they be placed in gem shop?

6. Solo/Team Q, split Leaderboards. How close to completion are those features? Can they give any details on those features?

7. Leaderboards and Matchmaking. Decay doesn’t seem to work as intended, are they working on improving this feature? My team stays within #100-250 range most of the time, yet 80% of our games we face teams from top20-50. Are there any improvements to matchmaking planned?

8. It seems with every tournament amount of viewers is getting lower and lower. Are they considering promoting GW2 PvP beyond simply posting stream links on facebook and twitter? Perhaps a marketing push once Solo Q, the final must-have feature we’re waiting for is in place?

Thanks for making this thread, Cutie, lots of great questions in here. Perhaps you should share some with Grouch and other guests, since I doubt you’ll have enough time to ask all the stuff you noted down by yourself :P.

Ok so I’m finally home and did some games on every class…

Tier S:
Necro – Dhuumfire really skyrocketed their pressure potential. Hell, you can do condi combos that do damage faster than Thief burst…

Tier A:
=Mesmer – Nerf to Blurred Frenzy was really good step, 20%+ invul uptime was getting old.
=Ele
=Guardian
—Engineer – Hard to decide between ’ – ’ and ’ = ’. Elixir R did too much for a single skill and I agree with toning it down, Engi is still strong though. New Rocket Boots are amazingly fun!

Tier B
+Thief
=Ranger – Pet nerf hurt non-BM builds a lot, imo pets should be made to scale with ranger stats instead of this flat nerf.

Tier C
—Warrior – For all the changes made, indirect nerfs put this class in a worse spot than ever before. (Necro buff, weakness buff, blind buff etc)

samo.1054:

Players that leave should be forced to finish 3 tournaments playing Warrior only!!!

The punishment build is as follows:

Weapon sets: Sword+Sword, Mace+Warhorn
Utility skills: BANNERS!
Healing skill: Heal signet
Elite: Rampage

Traits… Uh, I don’t know, but you definitely need Death From Above!

Sounds like a fun build to troll around hotjoins, might actually try it when I’m bored.
That or Engi with Mortar.

Holland.9351:

snip

Sir, I guess you missed ‘Structured PvP’ part on the top of the page.

<- PvE forums are this way
WvW forums are that way →

samo.1054:

I strongly agree with exactly what Geff and Empathic Fighter said.

Warrior is actually how all classes in GW2 should be. No cheap moves, no cheap AoE, no 1 button miracles. Work for the kittening kill!! That’s how true e-sports should be like.

Tone down aoe, tone down stealths, illusions and all the crap that’s poluting the game, and we might just see some playable spvp then.

+Infinity. Someone actually gets it.

seraphenslaved.6235:

SG back into SWall is so fun

It’s not so fun on the receiving end ;<

Julius.1094:

Daecollo.9578:

New stance idea for warrior.

Bend Over (Cooldown: 25 s)
Frenzy: 6 s: You take 25% more damage.

Lol…. you just won warrior forums.

http://youtu.be/ryQBTtTlExY?t=35s

jimmyimo.2089:

You forgot Well of Corruption. However, the high burst damage necros do not have Reaper’s Protection ( they will have to sacrifice the burning, which is about 6k ), nor do they have Nightmare runes as they rather have 20% longer Fear duration from the Rune of the Necromancer.

• Not using stability when you’re close to a necro is as simple as not trying to heal inside a Chaos Storm.

Also,

• 1. Block or dodge the Mark.
• 2. Avoid Spectral Wall.
• 3. They have extremely low life force, so if you hit them with any high damage attack once they go into DS, you completely nullify their torment, and fear.

Do two of the three above, and you are victorious. They have two dodges, and a single blind; that is it. They cannot use DS as they use it for their burst. I cannot think of a more squishy build than the current Fear Necro one.

Gw2 is hard. [/end sarcasm]

I was just listing possibilities, never said every Necro has them all, just like not every one runs Spectral Grasp for double fear from Wall.

Necros have really huge access to Fear:

- Deathshroud #3
- Staff #5
- Spectral Wall (Which you can be pulled/knocked into for another fear)
- Corrupt Boon (When converting Stability)
- Reaper’s Protection
- Nightmare Runes

It allows Terror Necros to do quite a bit of direct damage on top of condi spam. IMO that amount of fear is over the top.

What I’ld change is:
- Make Spectral Wall capable of affecting each target only once every 3-4 seconds (Kinda like what was done to Lotus Poison on Thief).
- Make Stability immune to Corrupt Boon (still suspectable to all other boon removals tho), so it counters Terror Necros just like every other CC build, instead of providing them with an extra Fear source.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

State of the game?..awesome I can go fish for them?..why not just publish them, you know…like they use to.

No devs on this month’s SotG man.

Defektive.7283:

Don’t think of it as just another attack.

I like to do a lot of combo / juggling builds (hammer preferrably). I can usually combo someone into Final Thrust without much resistance. Those sweet sweet 7k+ crits are very satisfying.

I suppose it has better synergy with your playstyle. I’m more into ‘dancer’ playstyle – being all over the place, jumping around opponents, going in and out of meele range, so I usually have GS.

1. Cleansing Ire is alright, as long as you can land the burst at some range (Hammer/LB/Axe). Condition classes won’t usually sit patiently in your meele range.

2. For 15s CD damage is not so impressive. With 30/0/0/10/30 I tested (Berserker Power, full adrenaline, being <50% for Desperate Power, enemy <50%) highest crit I got was 8,9k. I still find this skill quite clunky. It’s easy to see, so often gets evaded unless enemy is stunned/immobilized (guess Shield Bash helps you there).

3. I’m not really sold on new Berserker Stance. Pretty much any Condi class has extra condition duration. 4s is really short time and no good Necro/Engi will burn their CDs when they see you pop it.

4. Yeah, Desperate Power is alright.

5. It’s good I guess, though I still prefer Mobile Strikes over DotE.

6. What works on them, also works on you, I’ve seen Necros having quite good uptime on Weakness. Not to mention Engis with Elixir Gun. And it hurts us much more than it hurts Condi builds.

I like Balanced Stance also giving Swiftness now.

When looking at the big picture (complete patchnotes, not just Warrior) we got indirectly nerfed though (in addition to direct damage nerf by moving Berserker Power and Hightened Focus)

Scoobaniec.9561:

5 signet jojo

Made my day. I seriously needed something to make it brighter after Warrior changes.

Jonwar.9205:

Congrats necros. So, who will be our new bottom tier class to commiserate with as warriors?

No one. Warrior remains in ‘Warrior Tier’.

dooger.2640:

Dissapointed offhand axe damage increased only in spvp and not in wvw. The 5 people playing spvp on the planet are probably very excited /eye roll

Actually it’s still complete crap in sPvP, you can have it.

Defektive.7283:

Axe OH damage is still extremely poor, I wouldn’t recommend putting to much time into it.

I second that.

2/10 – Any build I could think of over last 3 hours – sPvP

Very solid player.

GL with finding team bro, (this kitten timezone) :P

They mean leaked notes posted on reddit and pastebin.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Leaked-Patch-Notes/first

Templates → Last SOTG.
Rewards → https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Pvp-rewards-2/page/1
Solo/Team Q → Last SOTG.

For Solo Q, not this patch for sure, let’s hope they’ll have it finished for next month. For rewards rework we’re gonna wait longer I guess since it’s lower in priority than soloq. Templates? Who knows, it was announced in the last SOTG, so might be anytime from tommorow to reward patch.

Compared to leaked notes, that’s not much…

Demosthene.2195:

“Final Thrust: This skill has been moved to slot #3. Now does more damage and extra damage vs foes below 50%.
Hamstring: This skill has been moved to the end of the skill chain. Cripple reduced to 1s.
Savage Leap: This skill now applies 3s of cripple.”

Final Thrust is currently the third combo chain of autoattack, it’s simply swapped with Hamstring in the patch release.

Ah, missed this one, thanks.

This actually makes sword kinda sexy… just wondering what the CD will be. Probably 8-10s.

On the other hand if Hamstring damage is left as it is, auto chain damage will be much lower…

Problem with Warrior is the class seems to have completely diffirent balance principles. It seems designed for classic trinity, and it’ld really be ‘unstoppable beast’ with pocket healer. Problem is every other class was designed with FPS ‘every man for himself’ mindset.

BM will still be strong, just unable to win 1v1 so easily due to high pressure pets provide. Biggest nerf to it is probably reduced pet range, taking away the advantage of being in 2 places at once (destroying gates/trebs, aiding fights on mid while still watching your point).

Warrior notes are kinda… disturbing. On one hand moving best dps traits to 30p is gonna seriously hurt damage. On the other hand, if you wanted to go for new 20p defense trait, you wouldn’t get much use of them since you’ll probably be spending adrenaline all the time to get rid of conditions… Gotta wait and see how it turns out, bit I have a feeling Warriors still won’t be picked for tourney teams. At least it seems they managed to make Necro viable now.

Overall notes seem legit but kinda unfinished, some things are obviously missing, like new Warrior Sword #3 skill. Probably from one of the earlier builds.

pelicankilla.4281:

/15charrs ? is that the person that you want me to message? and i added you in game

/15chars is just the usual way of filling 15 characters requirement on short posts.

prozon.3561:

Hehe. A point you never would reach. We onky playing during the prime time like all the other teams there infront.and only get matched with them.mmr allows us not facing a solo q grp ….. maybe 2games 100. But u cant understand it i know. Cause you solo qers omly get wiped by 0815 newb premades

Not that there are many teams playing, when #100-200 are matched vs top 20 ;P

Forum rage even before the patch, what a surprise.

See, that’s why there’s a need for PTR (actual PUBLIC test realm). Or at least for notes to be made public as the changes are developed.

Is not working. Just saying.

If you get autobalanced out of the winning team, it’ll still count as win for you.

Nah, it’s just one of guild logo options, been there forever.

Have to PvE.

Let the rage begin.

Ice, we’re not talking about porting through walls here, but about dozen or two ledge blink spots that suddenly got ruined.

Those blinks are part of the reason I like playing Thief, it adds dynamic my other classes don’t (and shouldn’t, since they got many diffirent tools) have.

I spent many hours learning those blink spots, as well as practicing to keep my cool and pulling them off in clutch situations, just like Mesmers do with Phase Retreat. Now I find one of the most interesting Thief mechanics taken away from me and all the time spent on mastering it being time wasted.

Gixxz.7824:

Great suggestion, hopefully ArenaNet takes into consideration.

Maybe this thread better fits in the spvp section, because it should get the attention it deserves.

We learned quite well that mods like to move our threads out of sPvP forum, so might as well make it here and save them the trouble.

I like these suggestions. The only reason I do PvE is because I just can’t get gems and all the cool event skins through PvP. I find PvE boring and finding myself forced to do it is kinda…. meh.

I remember devs saying they wanted to up the mobility on all Thief weapon sets to the Shortbow level. Instead with this one change they nerfed mobility of all blink capable classes down to Warrior/Necro level. Ofc it hurts Thieves most and as Xeph said, I don’t see them being viable on Kyhlo with this change.

Most annoying part of it is how what used to be skilled play got turned into RNG. Right now you never know whether old blink spots will work or not, you might get lucky and escape with your life, or just pop 2 meters from where you started and die.

All this seems very similar to weapon/utility lock added couple months ago. It seems devs are again trying to eliminate things r10 players consider unfair, while making PvP boring and frustrating for more experienced players.

This change seriously needs to be reverted.

Also, could do same thing with Kegbrawl, guess many people are unaware of its existence :P

1. Find files for all ‘PvP’ minigames created so far for the events.
2. Throw in some glory rewards.
3. Make them permamently avaliable through the mists.

Quick solution which would make many people happy.

PvE.

/fifteenchar

50 normal boxes (farmed while doing holo mobs achiev) and I already got a pet and ticket.

People who wasted gems sure feel bad now.