Guild Wars 2

Is hammer dps viable? Yes. Is hammer dps preferred? No. Hammer brings a fair amount of group utility, especially when combined with a longbow for blast finishers in the fire, but if you’re looking to match greatsword/axe dps, forget it. I prefer hammer for safer, more fun runs, but a lot of groups just want the damage. YMMV.

Don’t forget that Backbreaker should give permanent, unbreakable knockdown. Maybe we can do the same for the blowout on Stomp, and send people flying into walls FOREVER.

On second thought, I like this. Let’s do it.

Ya know what I’d like? A mesmer weapon skill, maybe on scepter, that swaps positions with the target it hits. Or maybe an earth elementalist skill that creates a long-duration area which cripples opponents for a second when they move through it, or a necromancer skill that blows up a nearby dead ally that heals nearby allies, or…

Agree 100%, OP. I’d love to see the game make itself different from GW1, and from a lot of other MMO’s by really utilizing movement across the Z axis, or by rewarding clever use of area denial and tactical abilities.

If we did this, and added an effect to an existing stance trait that reduced the cooldown by 20%, I might actually consider using it.

Might.

Point to Olba for referencing something that’s actually related to MMO’s.

As for the rest of you: No. I would link a picture of grumpy cat to further show my disdain, but I fear that would do nothing but reinforce your silliness.

…

Oh, what the heck.

It looks fine, but a couple of things:

1) Poor condition removal: Don’t get me wrong, warhorn cleanse traits are nice, but that’s two conditions every 20-ish seconds. If you’re saving Shake it Off to break stuns (and you should), then the cleanse isn’t going to be enough to counter condition heavy opponents. If you’re going to go with triple shouts, consider runes of the Soldier instead, or swap in Mending for Healing Signet for the burst cleanse, at least as the situation requires.

2) No stability: no stability, combined with only one stunbreak, means you’re quite susceptible to chain stuns/dazes. Classes with teleports or secondary survival mechanisms (protection, Death Shroud, etc.) have less of a problem with this, but as a warrior you’re just BEGGING to get owned, especially in teamfights. Consider slotting in Dolyak Signet or Balanced Stance over For Great Justice or On My Mark.

Other than those things, the build seems okay. I run with a variation that uses longbow/hammer and grabs Cleansing Ire for the condi-cleanse, but other than that you should do fine.

I actually run a build almost EXACTLY like the warrior build mentioned, with some subtle variations and a little more team support. You know my player ID now (it’s over there <——-), so send me a friend request and I’ll talk more when I get on.

Master’s Bond and Steady Focus are both great in PvE, either for levelling or for damage in dungeons, or just in PvE in general. I don’t see why these should be changed to serve PvP.

Invisibility is not invulnerability. Just… no. I’ve fought, and downed, enough stealthed thieves in sPvP to know that. If you pack AoE, stuns, and immobilizes, or any combination of those, you can learn how to fight them. It takes time, and patience, but it can be done, and eventually with relative ease, at least with thieves that have stealth up constantly. I’ll admit, really aggressive D/P thieves get me, but that’s mostly because I’m a warrior, and that blind spam just wrecks me, not because I don’t see them coming.

Stealth is one of the two primary thief survival mechanisms, the other being evasion (either direct or via shadowstepping). Aside from these, they have very little survivability, so it is the moments between these that must be capitalized upon. Watch for the shadowsteps, and immobilize when it seems they can’t get away. Save your stuns for when they are about to stealth away (typically at around 50% health), and burst them down when you KNOW they’re gonna be locked down.

There isn’t a hard counter to stealth, but as I said, it’s a thief survival mechanism. Guardians have regen/aegis/protection, mesmers have clones and teleports, rangers have high health regen and evasion, and thieves get stealth. The only thing you can do is either interrupt, or cope, just like anything else.

Conan.8046:

Manijin.3428:

Well, the video is mostly a compilation of one burst combo that’s become popular on Warriors these days. I’ve fought many like it. The thing is, outside of that combo, there’s little the warrior brings to the table with this build. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s important to remember our limitations.

I disagree I think a good warrior is well worth his weight…for example spirit rangers are the big thing…well a good warrior counters them very well, they also counter necro’s well so the two big classes at the moment have trouble with warriors, take the advantage!

Oh, I’m not arguing that a good warrior is bad. I play warrior almost exclusively, and frequently prove an asset to my team. I just don’t appreciate a post that does nothing but showcase warrior damage against unprepared players when there is so much more they can bring to the table. Almost any class can do decent to high damage. Warriors just have 1 combo that works well assuming your opponent doesn’t have sufficient evasion/stunbreakers.

That’s not meant to be a dig against the OP, I’m glad he had fun playing a warrior, and clearly he was an asset to his team. My issue is that the video doesn’t really… well, do anything. It showcases a popular combo for about 5 minutes, and that’s about it. It’s effective, but hardly proof of the benefit a warrior can provide a team.

In regards to the overall effectiveness of the build, it seems to be doing fine. In larger team fights it’d require considerable support (due to being immensely squishy), but in small skirmishes or 1v1’s it shines, which is the point, I assume. As long as you use your greatsword mobility to help harass far and home, sticking to small skirmishes, you should maintain maximum effectiveness.

Well, the video is mostly a compilation of one burst combo that’s become popular on Warriors these days. I’ve fought many like it. The thing is, outside of that combo, there’s little the warrior brings to the table with this build. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s important to remember our limitations.

It’s a decent start. I appreciate what you’re doing, OP, and I wish we saw more posts and ideas like this to help the community.

As a warrior player, however, I fear that, as an introduction to PvP and trait synergy, this page doesn’t bring enough to the table. You introduced the traits, yes, but there isn’t much to this other than a basic introduction, which most new players could figure out simply by clicking on the traits to suit their playstyle. If a new player wants to use a shield, and focus on the shield, he’ll look for traits for it. I fear that the info presented here is a little bit TOO shallow to make for an effective introduction.

A means of improvement, perhaps, would be to introduce players to the basic concepts of sPvP survivability (condi-cleansing, stun breaking, evading + vigor uptime, etc.), and then perhaps examples of trait sets and weapon sets that are complimentary. For example, Greatsword traits and Stance traits are very complimentary because one is unlikely to use the Greatsword burst very consistently, which means Cleansing Ire is not a strong choice for it (generally, not always), which means that Berserker’s Stance provides excellent condition damage reduction. Things like this.

I would. This game is the most fun I’ve had with PvP in an MMO I’ve had. It has a steep learning curve, but I really enjoyed it, even if it was littered with failure at times on my part. I’ve played a few other games PvP and never got into it, but I did with this one.

I think one thing that may be confusing players is the idea that a kill, or sidecap, doesn’t necessarily help the team. I’ve been watching the DOTA 2 championships this week, and I was struck by a couple of things:

1) Going for a kill isn’t always advantageous. Just because you CAN gank someone doesn’t mean you SHOULD gank someone. Sometimes you’re needed elsewhere, and sometimes the time it takes to solo someone is time that could be spent somewhere better for the team.

2) Kills don’t really count towards anything significant in regards to winning the game. When you kill a player in DOTA 2, you get gold, but no “points”. Being a capture and destroy game, this makes sense. GW2 could benefit, I think, from having player kills grant either very few points (1-2), or even no points at all. This way, a team that wipes trying to cap mid doesn’t automatically have not ONLY a cap deficit, but a 15-ish point deficit from wiping. This would also encourage better teamplay in hot-join/solo Queue as well, since you don’t get points by zerging. In fact, it COULD be counterproductive if you aren’t actually able to keep points captured.

3) Team synergy is vital. Being able to keep your teammates alive, or make them even better, by calling targets and bringing group-oriented abilities should be something that is expected. With all the solo-oriented classes in the current popular meta, I’m surprised something like this hasn’t been made more common. I can’t tell you the number of times my shout heals + condi removal have saved a crucial team member during a team fight, or that the extra power my allies got from combo finishers and traits took us over the edge and nabbed a small victory. We should see more emphasis when it comes to coordinated assaults, rather than solo skirmishes happening in the same general area.

Excellent job, OP. +1

Hoonani.5714:

120 games here! If I didn’t have a research paper due Monday, I’d be doing another all-nighter. I have over 2,000 games solo queue in League of Legends and a majority of my Team Arena games were solo so I think I’m more used to the solo queue mentality than new players.
My advice to my yolo queue friends is to find a balance between having fun, trying to win the match, and personal growth as a player.
Having fun/Staying Positive: You have to realize that at the end of the day you’re playing a video game which people play for fun. If you’re not having fun, I recommend taking a break or changing your attitude. I found the greatest players are those that can reset to a neutral state of mind quickly so they perform consistently throughout the match.
Player growth: This ties in to staying positive because it’s hard not to feel good when working out at the gym, right? When you’re seeking to improve your personal skills, a lot of the stress is taken off your shoulders especially following a loss. In fact, I’d recommend doing solo arena instead of hotjoins to learn how to play your class. The quality of the enemy team in solo arena is always going to be better.
The important thing to do is learn from your mistakes. I have this mentality that if I die, it’s mostly my fault. Yes, my teammate could have tried to res me. Yes, my teammate could have interrupted the stomp. But if I can look past all of their bad plays and realize what I could have done better to not get downed in the first place, I just grew in to a better player.
Just remember that it shouldn’t be “My team could have done better. They’re so bad.”, it should be “I could have played that better by doing _______.”
Trying to win the match:
For the general playerbase, play the class you’re best at, communicate well, and make smart decisions. I personally like to play all classes. The advantage that brings in solo queue is that I can fill in different roles for my team. I’m not saying to go out and research every class’ internal cooldowns but it definitely helps if you can play at least one other class. Teams are usually missing a bunker but sometimes we’ll need burst or a bruiser Warrior to counter multiple necros. Before the match has even started, you’ve shifted it in to your favor by creating an ideal team composition.
Communication is almost like cheating but it can be hard if you’re like me and play during asian primetime (not many english speakers). At the minimum, use your minimap to ping and draw routes for teammates to go. Ideally, you want your team to communicate before the match starts and say who’s going where. “I’ll cap home then come mid” etc. Then during the game you have to realize what your team’s doing wrong and what your team’s doing right. Example: My teammate said “WTF is this necro doing at far point. [He’s] so bad” but I just reworded it into something positive like “Necro come with me mid” Then after the fight ended I asked him to help close point.

To answer your question, compared to solo release day (Tuesday 8/13) I’ve noticed people have stopped playing dramatically. It feels like most of the people since Tuesday have stopped playing and I’m now stuck with the 8-15 people who solo queue during asian primetime. On release day, the queues for solo arena were 3 minutes max and during the weekend, they were about 8-10 minutes average and 15 minutes max (again, late night PST). The first two days of solo arena release, I saw a lot of PvE players and some old players logging in for the first time in months to try out the new solo arena. That probably explains why the queues were so short at the time. For some perspective on how many people were playing actively, when the solo arena leaderboards came out it only went up to rank 200 or 300 and you need something like 11 games played to show up on the leaderboard.
Hope that helps. I’m just waiting for an official blog or something by ArenaNet addressing not just Solo Arena, but tPvP since PAX is coming soon. Honestly, it’s still too early to be making conclusions on how I feel about Solo Arena. It’s like getting a new music album, listening to it once, and saying I don’t like it.

Sorry for the wall of text. (?

People like you, Sir, are why I like solo queue. We need more people like this.

/hats off

Petition signed.

Interesting. I’ve been running Hammer/Longbow for about 3 months now and I absolutely love it. Lots of group support with AoE cripple, you can stunlock groups trying to rez AND knock them back with Hammer 4, OR drop some AoE pressure via Longbow burst, longbow 3, hammer burst, which also finishes your blast finisher twice for 6 might on your party, which is nice.

Derps.7421:

Manijin.3428:

I would take Troll Unguent over Healing Signet any day of the freakin’ week. Heck, I’d take Healing Spring, too, with all the blast finishers warriors get. Don’t complain to me about healing. When warriors can bunker like a ranger, then you have my permission to QQ.

This gives DPS warriors a small amount of sustain in small fights, and a trivial amount of healing under concentrated burst in team fights. Tougher warriors finally have a heal that provides valuable heal-over-time when stacked with other warrior healing abilities. This is a good thing.

Listen to tellah. The build he just said heals way more then rangers. Also use banner of tatics with it you can get up to around 1,588 healing power. Also you get 3 passive heals adrenal healing the signet and regen. You are healing insanely with it

Oh, I know. I’ve run a build like that before. The problem is not the healing in solo skirmishes, but in groups where the warrior can get focus fired. If you’ve got 2+ people bursting you down, healing signet does not provide enough sustained healing to counter the burst. Adrenal Healing isn’t that great UNLESS you sit on your adrenaline, and if you’re truly trying to bunker/help your team/cleanse conditions, you’re expending it with relative frequency, either to stun opponents for open damage/cooldown windows, or to cleanse conditions with Cleansing Ire. That 1588 healing power doesn’t mean much when you’re health pool gets vaporized by burst (unless, of course, you have sufficient burst healing capabilities for it to matter, which regen/adrenal healing/healing signet are not).

I would take Troll Unguent over Healing Signet any day of the freakin’ week. Heck, I’d take Healing Spring, too, with all the blast finishers warriors get. Don’t complain to me about healing. When warriors can bunker like a ranger, then you have my permission to QQ.

This gives DPS warriors a small amount of sustain in small fights, and a trivial amount of healing under concentrated burst in team fights. Tougher warriors finally have a heal that provides valuable heal-over-time when stacked with other warrior healing abilities. This is a good thing.

A couple of things:

First, you only have one stunbreaker, and no stability. Given the prevalence of stuns and the like, that’s just begging for trouble. I would suggest removing On My Mark and going for Balanced Stance or Dolyak signet instead.

Secondly, you have the 6 rune dwayna bonus, but with Healing Signet it’s not a bonus you’ll be making use of very frequently, if ever. In order to get a decent bonus from that rune choice, you need to either lower the cooldown of your signets (via moving 10 points from Defense into Discipline, which I would suggest anyways), trade out Healing Signet for Mending (to help deal with Condi-weakness), OR trade out your runeset for Soldier runes, allowing you to heal conditions on shout, which is arguably much better than regen you won’t be getting very frequently without sacrificing the much better Healing Signet heal.

Thirdly, the warhorn is okay, but in a shout heal build, IF you decide to go with the shout cooldown reduction and soldier runes, you cleanse more conditions and get more healing while freeing up an offhand slot for something more directly preventative (shield for the stun/block, mace for the knockdown, heck even sword would be better for this build with Torment stacking and the bleed-on-block). It’s not that the warhorn is BAD, per se. It’s actually quite good. However, if your goal is to outlast your opponent, you need better proactive tools in small combats and skirmishes, rather than reactive tools (which the warhorn is).

sid.9870:

This is the problem… you cannot see further than the end of your nose.
You can’t bring nonsense warrior into a team comp, only because he can clean himself – theres 4 other people to deal with him, if necro isn’t suited for this task.

You can clean 9001 conditions? Great, I’d be the first one to send a power thief after you, and what you gonna do then? Even so, how exactly does your team benefit from your ability to 1v1 a necro in a 3v3/4v4 scenario?

Instead of telling people to stop QQing try comprehending the problem from tournament, not 1v1 pov.

My point isn’t that I can do well in a 1v1 situation. My point is that if warrior, generally considered to be one of the weaker sPvP classes, can do something about conditions, then anyone else can. If you are having issues with conditions, especially with the current condition-heavy meta, then your build/approach needs to be changed. That’s really all there is to it.

The team benefits from my AoE fire field adding to burns and granting might/fire shield, my AoE condition cleansing for the group plus the heals, my AoE stuns, knockbacks and cripple, plus my Immob for focused bursting by the group. I can lock down the enemy team’s primary form of AoE damage pretty regularly, assuming I play well and don’t blow my cooldowns.

I’ve actually thought about this a fair bit, and I think it’s a bit presumptuous that I haven’t. I’m built fairly tanky, even against power builds, and provide decent group support as well. If the thief comes after me? Awesome. I’m on the necro while the thief tries to take me down, while the other members of my group are bursting down enemy players faster than the 2 on me can burst me down. Win/Win in my book.

Oh, and I don’t run berserker stance. If you’re going to use Soldier runes effectively, you need to slot 2 shouts (FGJ and Shake It Off), and as a warrior you need a source of stability (for me, Balanced Stance with vigor on stance trait for extra dodges). Combine that with the awesome Warbanner for Rez’s, and I’m feeling pretty good.

Hi, I’m a warrior, and I regularly wreck characters that spec for condi-damage. Heck, I recently fought a necromancer and had my health INCREASE from 50% fighting a necro, and regularly match engineers in survivability, at least 1v1 or 1v2 (not in my favor). Ya know how I do it?

I bring a TON of condi removal. Seriously. Soldier Runes, Cleansing Ire, and Mending. I can cleanse 9 conditions in about 3 seconds, and continue at about 3-4 conditions every 4-5 seconds from there, with occasional additional burst cleansing.

If you’re having trouble with condi classes, stack condi-removal and solve your problems instead of QQ’ing about condi’s.

Wait, someone was trash talking and insulting you in PvP? Wait right there while I call the WAAAAmublance.

It was a day like any other in the mists; a dark day; a red day. We were still fresh to the mists; we hadn’t yet experienced its horrors. We had a few keep victories under our belts, and for a group of fresh, young recruits we were feeling pretty sure of ourselves. Then he came.

No one can quite remember what he saw. Some say he was an asura with a pair of huge horns strapped to his head: Some say he was a charr, armed to the teeth and covered with spikes: Still others say it was a sylvari, dancing in the moonlight like a flower. All we know was that, whatever it was, it hit us hard.

We saw it coming from a mile a way, and laughed and laughed at what appeared to be a rookie cadet jumping into the fray, but the carnage was overwhelming. We tickled him and tickled him, but our massive 400 damage crits seemed to glance off him. He carried a heavy mace, and with it managed to single handedly clober every member of our squad over the course of over a minute as we screamed in horror. We had never seen these “stuns” before, but they were absolutely crippling, and we discovered there was no way to defend against them, only to weep as we were slaughtered by the next monstrosity: his greatsword.

It was truly monstrous. He stood perfectly still, chopping at our stunned bodies again and again, regenerating despite our combined effort of just under 1000 DPS, and still he kept on coming. It was like watching a bear tear through a flock of sheep, so great was his power and mastery of passive abilities. He would whirl and leap and stun and bash and slice so quickly, we couldn’t turn and face the direction he was in fast enough. Then he began to slow down and we thought “Perhaps we can slay this beast!” Oh, we were wrong; dead wrong.

He took out a pair of mighty shields, a feat we didn’t even know was possible and proceeded to block every incoming blow for 8 grueling seconds, his troll-like regeneration utterly undoing our minutes of damage, and then, after the 8 seconds had passed, he resumed his slaughter of my companions. I watched them fall: stun, chop, stun, chop, stun, chop. It was like watching the grim reaper walking really slowly as people tickled him and cried like children. I’ll never forget the screams, or the horror in their eyes; the horror; the HORROR.

As a Warrior, I can’t understand the complaints about stealth. My cooldowns are generally short enough that, IF the thief needs to run to reset the fight, I’ll be back at full strength by the time he gets back, and he’s just gonna get stomped again. Did he drop Shadow Refuge? Thanks for telling me EXACTLY where you are so I can drop the Hammer/Longbow burst right on top of you. Cloak and Dagger to take a breather? Just giving me a few extra seconds of skill recharge so I can live through the next burst. Honestly, stealth isn’t that bad: Just stop treating it like an invulnerability ability and keep blasting where the thief was, or where you think he’ll be.

Longbow is a fantastic weapon. In PvE, where utility in a weaponset doesn’t typically matter as much, it loses some of it’s potency unless you’re in a strong condi/hybrid spec, but in PvP the weapon is AMAZING. It’s the only access warriors get to blind, a 4 second immob, an ENORMOUS fire field that is great for purging conditions with Cleansing Ire and even laying down a good bit of pain, and a decent burst hit. It’s my go-to weapon in PvP, and I pair it with hammer for when I need more CC or enemies get into melee, PLUS I get to add extra might to my team. Win/Win/Win.

Whirling Axe + Bleed on Crit = good AoE bleeding in PvE, and stacks adrenaline faster than sword skills, allowing you to spam F1 without going a full 30 points into the burst line, which doesn’t really benefit a condition-based PvE warrior build. It also leaves room open for utility and healing skills not devoted to adrenaline gain, and even provides a means of getting some extra fury (and bleeds with a double attack), which also leaves room for more diverse utilities and elites, like the physicals or banners.

It’s not GREAT, but it does have its uses in the right build, even if it is a bit niche. Plus, you can actually tack an “on crit” sigil to it and expect it to proc, unlike most other off-hand weapons for warrior.

Veritas.6071:

Manijin.3428:

I just posted this in another thread: WvW isn’t supposed to balanced. It isn’t made for 1v1, 1v2, 3v3, etc. fights. It’s made for small groups (5-10) and zergs, at which point your… lemongrass is basically a wash.

So it should take small groups of players to CC a warrior?

If it takes a small group of 5-10 people on your team to take down a warrior, I’m afraid I have bad news for you… And if your complaint is about lemongrass… then fine. Complain about lemongrass. As I said: WvW isn’t supposed to be micro-balanced. It’s macro-balanced. That has ALWAYS been the point. If you don’t like it… don’t get in 1v1 fights with warriors that have mace/shield. Save yourself the time, save them the time. /shrug

Sidenote: And, it’d be just as hard to CC anyone else with lemongrass. Why are we bringing up warriors when, clearly, the problem is lemongrass? I always hear about these uber-warriors owning people in WvW, and I think: “Well, gear isn’t balanced, skills aren’t as fine-tuned, and you have access to consumable buffs that tip the scale. Why does EVERY warrior build for WvW, then, require lemongrass?”

I just posted this in another thread: WvW isn’t supposed to balanced. It isn’t made for 1v1, 1v2, 3v3, etc. fights. It’s made for small groups (5-10) and zergs, at which point your… lemongrass is basically a wash.

WvW isn’t supposed to be balanced. It’s not designed around 1v1. It’s designed around small groups (5-10) and zergs. IF a warrior goes mace/shield and greatsword, he loses 2 important tools. 1) Ranged Combat, and 2) Mobility. Now, Greatsword has nice mobility, but Mace/Shield doesn’t have ANY, so that part of the combo isn’t giving warriors more than they have, and the complaint would be better leveraged against Greatsword, which is fine.

@Ljiona and Daecollo: There was a misunderstanding. Ljiona was referring to classes other than warrior complaining about warriors.

@Excalibur: There’s a reason teams bring S/D thieves: Their high evasion uptime combined with low-cooldown healing and movement allow them to entirely avoid large chunks of damage while still putting out respectable, if not high, damage of their own. That’s why you see most of them with Berserker jewels; they don’t need built-in durability because it comes from weapons and skills.

In order for a warrior to get “extreme” amounts of health regeneration, you need to get some healing power. Period. Otherwise, yes, Healing Signet is now a pretty darn good heal, but, with no way of avoiding damage, warriors are still more susceptible to burst that a lot of classes unless we pack a shield and Endure Pain, which already eats into our damage. And yes, while it’s true that Hundred Blades does great burst damage, actually HITTING with it is quite difficult. People complain about the currently popular Skull Crack/Hundred Blades combo, but the fact is that the amount of dodge and stun-breaker baiting that goes into pulling it off with any margin of success is, in fact, extremely difficult to do against players that know what’s coming.

Kwll.1468:

Warriors arent op but that stun lock build is bad gameplay plain and simple and another typical lazy A-net type fix. Every PVP MMORPG I have played before started out with some kind of stun lock type build at release and quickly nerfed it out of existence. A-net think this is something to add to a game mid course to buff a class. I know there is nothing more fun then to be stunned over and over again until dead. Not! A-net loves it CC. Its somehow justified because of dodges and stun breaks. Maybe if everyone had three stun breaks. Most people run 1.

You do know that this build has been around for ages, right? The buff to Skull Crack came many months ago… it’s just that people are finally starting to notice. Don’t wanna get stunlocked? Stay out of melee, watch for a mace, bring stun-breakers/stability. Warrior: Countered. It’s EXACTLY like people complaining that necros are OP because they have heavy condi. application and don’t bring the appropriate tools to deal with it (condi-removal/prevention). You know how many Rangers with Longbows/Shortbows I’ve hit with Skull Crack? Hint: I can count that number in the most warrior-esque way possible; with my FIST.

No. No mounts. It’s a pipe dream, like my complaining about the lack of leveling up and skill/gear progression in Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles that would’ve made an okay game an amazing one with multiplayer… you just have to let it go.

Actually, tokens and the like will be getting their own wallet separate from your inventory, so there won’t be added clutter, and if you don’t want the gear from PvE/WvW, then you don’t have to get it. It’s not like Gold, Karma, or w/e will be better in this regard.

Defektive, I will join your team, and together will shall bring warriors officially into the meta.

Oh, I suck though. Is that a problem?

I agree with the Banner Merge idea. It’d make warrior actually capable of REALLY awesome support. You could go Banner Regen AND Shout Heals, and the combination of those two might actually make us feasible bunkers, not to mention providing FANTASTIC group support.

I don’t like the idea of reducing the cooldown on sigils, though. Sigils exist as a separate mechanism from class mechanics, even if they’re designed to synergize well. Rather, I think some defensive benefits for weapon swapping might be in order. Heck, maybe something cool like “You and nearby allies gain 3 seconds on vigor when you swap weapons”, or maybe “Nearby Allies gain 3 seconds of vigor when affected by one of your shouts”, on 10 second cooldowns or something like that, once again reinforcing warrior mechanics associated with leadership while providing more indirect means of party survival that make sense with the tree.

Some of the lower traits need to be changed around as well. Reviving 10% faster is nice in certain situations, but you generally don’t see the difference except for super-clutch situations, which aren’t frequent enough, imo, to warrant this feature. It should be rolled into the “The warrior and allies gain might on revive” trait. Instead, lets focus more on boons and team support: If you want something cool on revive, how about stunning or dazing nearby enemies for 1-2 seconds when you revive someone? Maybe we could go for granting nearby allies 3 seconds of stability when you plant your banner? Or, let’s give a boon to other skills to make them support oriented: Maybe physical skills apply 5 stacks of vulnerability to targets they hit; maybe Stances grants a lesser version of their benefit to nearby allies when you use them; maybe signets keep their effects after being used, or the use effects are increased; the list goes on.

I think the main issue right now is that the warrior is INTENDED to be more durable than other classes, which is supposed to make up for it’s general lack of maneuverability in combat (barring very few weapons), or access to vigor/protection, but in reality warrior isn’t really that much more durable, and keep in mind, I say this with healing shouts and a cleric’s amulet, which is about as tanky as a warrior can get including a shield and some stability and stunbreaks.

Now, conditions are something I eat for breakfast. I cleanse conditions SOOOOO fast with soldier runes and Cleansing Ire on a longbow that I can actually keep up with just about any condition application, and I cleanse a few off the group, too. However, straight damage, ironically enough, is my Achilles’ Heel. All it takes is a couple of well placed crits, typically 1 more than normal than would take down an unprotected guardian (so no aegis or protection) and I’m down for the count, heals or no. A higher health pool isn’t going to save me from these mega hits, even if I am more able to withstand steady pressure.

I even tried spec’ing more offensively to counteract my lack of damage (Valkyrie amulet), and while my healing was only slightly worse, it didn’t help my damage enough to make the difference, and I think this is where warriors need help: They don’t have a focus (unless you count being a CC master, which I guess you could). If you bring a CC warrior, you’ll be… okay. If you’re a good player, you’ll be great. But going for anything else screws you over because, while your damage may be good, your survivability you sacrifice to gain that damage goes down the CRAPPER, with no way to get it back outside of a few seconds of invuln. On the flip side, if you specialize in tankiness, you lose the ability to finish your foe, and lack the sustainability to withstand multiple foes due to a lack of steady invulnerability frames (dodges, blocks, etc.). It’s not that warrior is BAD. I love it, and frequently do well enough for myself… but I made a bunker thief that holds points better than my warrior with half his health and half his healing, and WAY more easily. THAT, I think, should show the power of damage prevention/avoidance over healing or base armor.

I would like it as a an ability unique to the warrior, perhaps as an addition to On My Mark!, or thrown onto some of the lackluster weapon abilities (axe, for example). However, I wouldn’t want it as a condition: Make it a unique affect, like Sword 4 or Guardian greatsword 5.

I recommend the following:

Hammer/Longbow build, 0/0/10/30/30, with reduced burst skill cost, shout for adrenaline gain, and banner regen.

For utilities, bring For Great Justice, Shake It Off/On My Mark, and Banner of Discipline. Signet of Rage as your elite skill, and Mending as your heal. Gear up with Clerics gear if you want decent regen, but it’s not necessary. Runes, pick Runes of Altruism, which grant bonus healing, and essentially make your heal into another For Great Justice!

Battle Rotation: Get enough adrenaline to pop Longbow burst at full, drop longbow 3 on it, drop your banner, pick it up, hit banner 5, double shout swap to hammer, hammer burst. This should get about 15 stacks of might on allies while doing decent damage, then cast your heal skill for more fury and 3 more stacks of might. Combine with permanent regeneration, the easiness of reapplying those buffs (6 1/2 second cooldown for low cost? SPAM IT.), you can easily get 25 stacks of might on the party at all times, do decent damage because you get all that might, too, plus the extra crit chance and 15% crit damage on Banner of Discipline give you a base of 45% extra crit damage without having to gear for it, which is pretty darn good.

I was struck recently by how much I enjoy the warrior class in GW2, and realized that, while the class is fun, it didn’t do much to remind me of my old warrior back in GW1. Now, I know that these are completely different games, but I think there are a few things we could take from GW2’s predecessor that would help warrior feel more… fluid and engaging. This is by no means a complaint, rather something that I think would add to the complexity of the class without drastically unbalancing it, and what could serve as an idea for the devs, should they be interested.

It seems that the idea for a warrior is that, unlike many of the burst or bunker classes (speaking in a PvP perspective), it functions by dealing steady damage to its opponents and has the durability to withstand attacks and unleash attacks of his own. However, I feel that the current mechanics don’t really provide this feeling. It seems that a warrior can either be somewhat durable with low-medium damage or squishy with decent damage, but it seems that, outside of a few abilities, the class isn’t very adaptive to combat, which can lead to frustration.

My suggestion? A slight alteration of the Adrenaline mechanic which allows it to function more as a hybrid of Initiative and Life Force: It is built up much like it is currently, perhaps with more levels of adrenaline, but expended to use warrior abilities, including utility and healing skills, which would likely come with reduced cooldowns, and perhaps a minor change in functionality. Suddenly, utility skills have the ability to drastically alter a fight, and warriors could choose which of their abilities are most important dependent upon the situation (choosing to focus on healing if they need to bunker for a bit or heal through a big boss burst, etc.).

This would also increase the importance of moderating consumption of adrenaline, as opposed to using it either very frequently, or rarely. Traits such as Cleansing Ire would require better timing (as opposed to “switch to Longbow for cleansing time!”), and traits that increase your attributes by X% based on adrenaline would require more of a sacrifice in PvE (which I see as a good thing, since they basically have NO downsides).

This does run the risk of becoming an ability spam-fest, but if all of your abilities draw from the same adrenaline pool, it would serve to make warriors more versatile and adaptable in all modes of gameplay without (theoretically) overpowering them by letting them use all of their abilities simultaneously.

Thoughts?

For centering around GvG competition, the game sure had a lot of great PvE content, and even team-based PvP content. I never really got into the whole GvG thing, but that didn’t make the game’s name false advertising any more than it does today.

Also… I’m not quite sure why there is so much hate towards ANet from a lore perspective: I rather enjoy it, and enjoy the direction it took. I mean, you can have creative differences, sure, but they didn’t ruin it or anything. They took it in a direction you may not like. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just not your thing, and that’s okay.

If, however, the problem lies in the community (and to be fair, it does in some ways), then it’s our job to set about changing that perception, and encouraging the community to move towards a more positive outlook on the game, though this problem isn’t just a GW2 issue… it’s a video game issue in general.

1) The name “Guild Wars” is a lore-based title from the world which played more importance in the 1st game. I recommend checking the wiki for its relevance.

2) They are called conditions because that’s what they are: Conditions. You could call them Debuffs, but they aren’t DoT’s: Bleeds, Burning, Poison, and Torment are all in the same category as chill, cripple, immobilize, blind, and weakness in regards to methods of application and the means by which they are removed, barring specific condition removal.

I love it when thieves SR. My bow makes me happy in those circumstances. “Oh no, he just popped stealth… /AoE the whole circle. Oh look, he’s down.” It’s even funnier when I get my 4 second immobilize off right as the thief pops it.

Well, let’s look at it from this perspective:

Necromancer and Warrior are two of the least combat-mobile classes available (with a few exceptions, like Greatsword Warrior). Other classes rely on high boon uptime to provide mobility, or rely on built in skill mechanics to avoid damage. The result?

Classes with high protection uptime (Guardian & potentially Elementalist) in addition to high regen uptime will take far less damage per hit. Classes with high mobility/evades take less damage via completely negating various hits. Assuming all classes have the same amount of dodges (2), Necromancers and Warriors SHOULD take approximately 25-50% more damage than other classes in the same time span (assuming equal opponents, based on starting HP values). However, due to the predominance of burst damage, evades, protection, and other means of damage avoidance are more effective than simple damage reduction.

If a warrior gets hit for 8k damage, an equally geared guardian likely gets hit for about 5.5k, plus his latent regenerative abilities, plus his greater access to aegis and blinding abilities. Sure, the warrior has a larger health pool, but 6k HP is gone so fast in current PvP gameplay that it’s basically a single hit. Extra HP DOES NOT provide greater attrition value or survivability: it serves as a small cushion.

milo.6942:

Daecollo.9578:

Regeneration is a boon, and all boons should fairly effect classes the same. Thief/Guardian/Elementalist take less damage then Necromancers/Warriors, so naturally regeneration should heal them for more to compensate.

you contradict yourself in the same paragraph

Actually, that’s not quite true. Fairness mean treating something not EQUALLY, but according to its needs. Necromancers and Warriors have fewer defensive tools beyond their base heals and a few attrition mechanics (Death Shroud and… I dunno endure pain?), so it’s actually more fair to imbalance regeneration favorably towards them.

I don’t always agree with Daecollo, but I think this is a good idea. Then again, I also think we should go back to the GW1 way of regen stacking intensity instead of duration >_>

Total and complete proof that the forums can, and will, complain about ANYTHING, even if it has an easy counter.

Uh…. extra 8% crit and 15% crit damage, anyone? C’mon, I’m not even a DPS warrior and I know that’s awesome. Warrior banners are freakin’ amazing, and the fact that some people still do not realize this blows my mind. XD