Guild Wars 2

I have to second this. The whole heirloom research is detrimental for the rescue of citizens, as there will be many people that will just wander for the map searching for those items instead of actually partecipating to the events or saving people.
Having a strict time to get both the potions – assuming we’ll have only those two weeks – only adds to the problem.

Albeit, it did give the rewards at the tiers. So probably is just a matter with the counter.

I second this. Quite hilarous, actually.

Sure there is a defense force for anything here. Quite astounding.

If they didn’t put those airship passes with all the stations and forge, i could have called it an accident. But they did put those.
They did remove a convenience and they did put it under a paywall. That much is certain.
And i don’t like it a bit.

The forum subtitle sounds quite ironic as now.
“The end begins.”
Heh, if only.

What i find especially annoying is that there was no problem at all in pve, yet they had to nerf it there as well.
Same for the old flamethrower/juggernaut.

More like due to it requiring an hundred people.
And those people won’t go there – they’ll go where they already know they can find enough people, be it desolation or other servers known to do it.

Personally, i think i’ll define the act of making a trait useless as kitrefinement from now on.
Example: this trait was so nice, but it has got kitrefinemented.

Aberrant.6749:

IMO AR is also what’s probably keeping non-AR builds from having better cond removal. I would be happy to see it go if it meant a better ability to deal with conds outside of that.

Like we got a reliable source of stability after they removed it from Juggernaut from the beta, you mean? Oh, right, it happened…in the last october, after more than 12 months since the change happened.
Feel free to dream. What will probably happen is that they’ll kitrefinement it and make it utter useless. While giving nothing of those removals that would be so useful.

What i don’t agree with is you saying a skill is too strong when you’re considering it along a lot of bonuses put together. Even your first example is considering it along with 66% condition duration apart from the trait – since to get grenadier, you will end up with 30% bonus condition duration.
You’re making the same error devs are doing with grenadier: considering the best case possible, instead of the default one.
And as far as damaging conditions go, all that grenades offer are bleedings and poison. If it didn’t deal at least those bleedings, it would be useless for any build that isn’t a zerk one.

Indeed. Kits are all about switching of the fly. This trait is completely against it – those effects are as situational as they can get.
And it does get more unreliable as the kits you use increase, making it even less useful.
Basically a wasted slot.
And it was so nice before. But no, they had to ruin it for the sake of pvp.

Neither can shrapnel grenade alone. Unless you’re talking about traiting with shrapnel, grenadier, short fuse and thus having bonus condition duration from the explosives tree and, maybe, other sources. Obviously, that’s only if all the grenades hit their target.

But that’s called specialization. If it didn’t work well after spending almost half of the trait points there, it wouldn’t make sense.

First and foremost, they should clearly say what’s the philosophy behind turrets. As now, it doesn’t even seem there is one. They could have low dps but supposed to resist for a long time, they could be strong yet disposable…as now, they’re weak, disposable and with relatively long cooldowns in some cases.

Bombsaway.7198:

Yams is the winner. What a brilliant idea.

When in a node, all knockbacks become knockdowns.
Now you have more than solved the problem.

There are already no reasons to use a flamethrower apart from air blast and, occasionally, smoke vent. Whoever would even touch it after such a change?
Same for throw mine.

Doing 1.5x direct damage of an autoattack in the best case (on 2 skills, and around the half in the other 2) isn’t exactly something phenomenal for a weapon – that’s why any of those grenade skills apart from the autoattack also deal some kind of condition.
That, and to make the damage of a sustained type. Bursts on kits would be a nightmare as far as balancing goes.
And no, the weapon must be balanced in its base form – exactly as any other weapon or utility in the game is.
Saying the weapon must be balanced upon it being fully traited is nonsensical – traits should be optional, non mandatory. You can’t make a base weapon useless just so the traited weapon is balanced.
If they’ve got a problem with the fully traited weapon, they should fix the traits, not the weapon. And demote them to lesser tiers if necessary.

And why sharpnel grenade should be op, exactly? For 2 stacks of bleeding per 12s on a five seconds cooldown? Cause that’s the base skill, after all.
Many other classes can deal bleeding just with their autoattacks. We can’t even do that unless we explicitely trait for it.
And sure, they do quite a good amount of conditions. They’re supposed to – that’s their source of damage, since the direct damage they deal isn’t much different from an autoattack.

Tulki.1458:

Dynnen.6405:

Because getting 1m 21 seconds of poison because you got root spammed in poison clouds makes sense

If you got root-spammed anywhere in pvp, then a few poison ticks are going to be the least of your problems. I’d wager that the warrior up in your face swinging away for thousands of damage is going to be more threatening than poison.

Anyway, yes, the direct damage of poison grenades is really low. The AoE markers are shown to you before the grenades land, and the only way you get the full duration is if you stand where all three circles intersect for the entire duration of the poison, which is really really stupid. We’re talking certifiably stupid, here.

Balancing the grenade kit with the assumption that everyone has it traited is a dumb way to do balance. Specialization is supposed to be strong. Grenades are strong against stationary targets. If you are stationary against a grenadier, you should die because you’re playing right into their hands. There seems to be this balance strategy recently where if a build is incredibly strong when it’s supposed to be strong, it needs a flat nerf across the board and I don’t agree with that at all.

Quoted for truth.
Especially about the grenadier part.
If you have to spend a grandmaster trait on it, it is supposed to be strong. Not balanced. That should be the base weapon.

Well, maybe people shouldn’t be standing still for 5s in the middle of a skill that has the sole purpose of applying poison over 5s and complain for the obvious aftermath (that is, getting poisoned badly).
Does it happen because you were immobilized? Well, it means you failed to dodge said immobilize, first and foremost.
Also, if we were to apply this logic to anything else, we could nerf anything. Hundred blades? It does too much damage if you get hit by the whole skill. Ice Storm? Such high damage. And so on.
You aren’t supposed by get hit for the full duration to start with.

Swagg.9236:

An inversion to the way that Grenades cluster themselves over their flight path would reduce the effectiveness of point-blank grenade spam, make long-range grenade attacks into clutch, lethal strikes and relegate most grenade-related combat to mid-range (at which grenades are the most balanced). I don’t see a problem with this at all.

Because they would be inefficent at short ranges due to the invariance, inefficent at mid-long ranges because enemies just won’t stay still getting hit when you can just walk out of the aoe (or come toward you, in pve) and you’re putting all of this in a weapon that hasn’t got any particular “high reward” skill, being all about sustained damage? (the only bursty one is the toolbelt, basically, as far as bursts go…)
Heh, it would affect even the autoattack, as it wasn’t already annoying to use to start with.

Swagg.9236:

If we just keep Grenadier as a “refund the base power of [Grenade Kit]” trait, the [Grenade Kit] will never be good on its own nor will Grenadier be an interesting trait. Grenadier needs to introduce a new functionality to an Engineer’s play-style that may not even necessarily involve the [Grenade Kit].

No, it doesn’t necessarily need to be “interesting”. Seeing how it worked so far, i would be content enough with a trait that doesn’t hamper the base weapon to start with.
Especially seeing they continue balancing it toward the traited version, nerfing the base one even further (see: poison grenade nerf).
They should just make a balanced base version, and make grenadier gives some buff that isn’t overly good – and that probably means making it a master trait. But having it as a grandmaster trait – especially with effects that increase damage – is a sure way to make a mess.

Swagg.9236:

Balancing a game around PvP is actually ideal because a game balanced around PvP requires that PvE be filled with encounters that imitate player-vs-player encounters in order to keep everything consistent. Imagine PvE filled with enemies like Svanir, the Chieftain, the Heart of the Mists dueling NPCs and such. Combat wouldn’t require things like Defiant to sustain itself, it would require players reacting to enemy onslaughts and responding with proper positioning, organization, use of light of sight, terrain and CC. It’d be much more active and engaging that the current “hit it repeatedly until its dead” paradigm that pervades most of PvE.

It is just wishful thinking. We can’t have an AI comparable to real players for any monster out there, it would be too heavy as far as computational costs go.
And PvP is quite different in scope, anyway. Small maps, capture points…you don’t even need to kill enemies, if you can stay alive and push them out.
The rest of the game doesn’t work like that.

Swagg.9236:

Yes, I thought it was a good idea too.

That it would be, like, near useless. Dodging its aoe at long range is a problem only in pvp, and only because you’re forced to stay in a small area. And the high traveling time would even make attacking from a distance difficult in PvE, and useless in WvsW – you can already move out of the way by walking, and that’s with them being spread out.
Again, it would be a nerf just for the sake of PvP.

Swagg.9236:

That’s actually a very good point to argue. Traits like Grenadier really do pigeon-hole trait distributions for the Engineer because of just how much stronger (SERIOUSLY, A 50% DAMAGE AND EFFECT INCREASE) that that trait makes the [Grenade Kit].

I wonder about that. If the [Grenade Kit] were to be nerfed at its base level and then the Grenadier trait were to be changed to effectively refund those nerfs back into the [Grenade Kit] are we really solving anything there? The trait would be even more necessary than ever. I feel like the whole thing needs a full functionality change that would either add some new functionality to the [Grenade Kit] itself (maybe an on-swap effect) or have something to do with tool belt skills.

You’re missing a point here – they already balance it counting the traited version as the baseline. That’s why having it traited is so important – the untraited version is terrible to start with.
As now, instead of having a balanced base version and a good traited version, we’ve got a subpar base version and a balanced traited one. The trait is effective in what it does…but they’ve nerfed the base weapon for the sake of the trait to do so.
No other weapon or utility is balanced like that in the whole game.
There is no need for nerfs – they’re already balancing toward the traited version, after all. Since they don’t want to give a balanced version as a base one because a serious grandmaster trait would end up making the weapon too strong, then just shift it down to master and give back some of the power to the base weapon.

Manuhell.2759:

And i can’t agree with the range reduction as well – it would be another nerf just for the sake of pvp.

Why would a pvp-related nerf worry anyone? PvE is ridiculously easy in this game. I’m not trying to be facetious here—I’m serious.[/quote]

Because PvP plays by its own rules, and they’re different from any other situation you can meet in the rest of the game.
Balancing all the game toward PvP is just detrimental: every mode should be balanced on its own.

That’s nice and all, except…
—-the whole point of said skill is applying poison, as the damage is negligible. It does just that. And it does so on a 25s cooldown (20 if traited). And the build you’re talking about must both have grenadier and either food or other sources of condition duration – basically, be specialized upon it.
Basically, they’re nerfing it because if you heavily specialize and trait upon that kit, it ends up being strong.
That’s like, the point of specialization.
Also, they’re nerfing even the base kit, not only the traited version. Way to go to make it even more useless, heh.

And i still have to see a single other class being balanced upon being fully traited. What about making warriors’ shouts damage allies by default? After all, if you have the trait, they end up being healed anyway.
That’s the logic we’re talking about, after all.

If they’ve got issues with grenadier, they should nerf it, not the base weapon. And demote it to master if it ends up being too weak for a grandmaster trait.
Instead of nerfing the base weapon all the time and require a grandmaster trait to get the “balanced” version.

What did you expect? No one could have seriously said that warriors and guardians need buffs when they’re the meta classes for any endgame.
And thieves are mostly hated due to stealth, people are always asking for nerfs about it.
And i’ll repeat it anyway: people will likely vote the classes they know, rather than the ones they don’t know.
The results can’t help but end biased due to that.

Xaylin.1860:

This is not even remotely true.

Just look at Warriors who would have been first in this case. Most people who voted for Warrior actually wanted them nerfed and didn’t think they needed help.

What part about

Manuhell.2759:

except thief, warrior and guardian

did you miss?

It is true for all the other classes involved. As far as the infographic goes:
Ranger:14%
Elementalist:13%
Necromancer:12%
Engineer:10%
Mesmer:10%

Xaylin.1860:

Rangers and Elementalists simply suffer from the most severe issues since they are structural, meaning innate since they are caused by their class mechanics. Although, I main Mesmer I’m very happy that people have been honest about that and voted for Professions which really need help. That doesn’t mean that other classes do not face issues. But someone has to be first.

And who do you think people will vote, they classes they know – because they’ve played them – or the classes they don’t even know to start with?
Warriors are out of the questions – saying they “need help” right now would be nonsensical.
But Rangers and Elementalists are respectively the 2nd and 3rd most played class. Obviously there are more people accustomed with their issues than with the ones of the least played classes.
It just ends up solving the issues of the most played classes, instead of helping the classes that have severe issues.
And while they can coincide, it isn’t necessarily true.

juno.1840:

It was exactly about balancing… not buffs. I thought it was pretty clear from the original forum post, but I suspect most people assumed it was what profs to buff.

Two of my three votes were profs that I felt needed to be toned down.

It was about what classes “need help”. Not exactly the terms i would have used for classes that must be toned down.

So that we have no precision when the travel time is minimal, and high precision when the travel time is maximum and the enemies have all the time to move out of that precise spot. Sure, what could ever go wrong with that?
Also, grenadier has an issue you aren’t considering. That is, the whole kit is balanced about having said trait, instead of being considered as an added bonus. The changes proposed wouldn’t address that issue at all.
But obviously, if a weapon should be balanced in its base form, a grandmaster trait that works only on it can’t give anything other than big bonuses – enough to shred any balance there was.

Thus the issue, imho, is that grandmaster traits relative to single weapons/utilities shouldn’t exist to begin with.
Some of the effects should be transferred back to the kit, and the remaining part in a master trait – something like 10% increased damage and range – akin to ranger’s eagle eye.
And i can’t agree with the range reduction as well – it would be another nerf just for the sake of pvp.
Grenades are quite easy to dodge from a range…you have all the time you want to move out of their AoE. That is, unless you’re in a game mode that forces you to stay still in a small area…

The class designed to have a lot of control is strong in the single game mode where you can win just using control skills. Surprising. Who could have ever thought about that?

Because he’s the hero Lion’s Arch deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So, we’ll hunt him, because he can take it. Because he’s not our hero. He’s a silent guardian. A watchful protector. A Dark Knight.

Not surprisingly, all the classes except thief, warrior and guardian retain their relative placement about the player breakdown by profession.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-the-first-year/

Basically, most people just voted their chars, regardless of actual balance issues.

Imho, most people were just fed up with failures (either due to low numbers or bad players ruining it) and the ones who were really interested on it started guesting to the servers known for doing it consistently.

The same thing that happened with Tequatl, overall.

EverythingXen.1835:

peterpat.8196:

Approximate estimate and not reliable, but an overview for those interested (thanks to JS and regex) votes up to (including) page 24. (if someone voted multiple times, the newest was used)

Prof               voted 1st   voted 2nd   voted 3rd   total
ele                    200            188               166                 554
mes                  60               57                  86                 203
war                  11                26                49                   86
ranger             446             259             116                  821
necro               90               132             167                 389
guard               7                  6                  9                     22
thief                30                 54                84                  168
engi                 46                157              179                382
total                890               879             856               2625

Even if I would have missed 100 votes, ranger and ele are currently first and second.

First and second is putting it mildly. They make up more votes than all the other professions combined.

I wonder if they’ll take count of the respective player base. As now, apart from thieves, guardians and warriors, all the others are exactly in their respective order according to the profession breakdown in the first year infographic.

Yamsandjams.3267:

They could perhaps nerf magnetic inversion by making it so that it cannot be activated until one second after activating magnetic shield. It would be a similar change to what was done to the temporal curtain skill.

And ruin its utility in combo field blasting in doing so.
Another nerf in PvE for the sake of PvP? No, thanks. I’ve had quite enough of those.

As far as PvE goes, there is my opinion…

1. Engineer
2. Ranger
3. Necromancer

Albeit, i’ll talk mostly about the engineers.
Imho, the engineer should be reviewed in lieu of its fixed penalities applied to optional traits/utilities. It is no surprise that people use kits: their main weapon is nerfed in its dps to begin with (at least according to the balance philosophies) and they have a single weapon to start with – basically starting at a disadvantage compared to any other class. Sure, elementalists too have no weapon swap…but their mechanic is basically having four themed weapons. Without kits, the engineers find themselves with a single weapon and utilities comparable or worse to any other class (turrets and most gadgets aren’t that good, and even elixirs aren’t much good unless traited).
Thus relying often on the poor autoattack. Sure, there is the toolbelt – but any other class has got its mechanic, too. Guardians have got basically 3 signets. Is a single additional mini-utility – they aren’t comparable in effects as utilities, after all – as important as a second weapon? I doubt about it.

Also, balancing kits around their traited version just forces players using their traited version or avoid using it at all – that’s what happens with grenades, since they’re almost useless when untraited. No single weapon/utility should get specific grandmaster traits, they’re just prone to utter unbalancing – as they have to get really strong effects to get that slot, but yet they risk making a balanced weapon too strong to be considered balanced. Imho, such traits should be at most master ones (and they usually are, except for engineers and a necromancers’ one).

And i would add…there are too many traits about kits, and almost nothing about the actual class mechanic and gadgets.

By putting it as a grandmaster trait, working on a single weapon/utility, they had to give it quite remarkable effects.
The problem is that they then balanced the whole weapon by taking the trait in account, instead of considering it as optional, like it should be.

Yet, imho, the destruction of Lion’s Arch is exactly what was needed to make them playable – lion’s arch and the dominion of the winds were too nearby, after all.
Imho, what will happen is that the ruins of lion’s arch will be contamined by the powdered-up toxic spores, making them uninhabitable. During the next two living stories there will be negotiations with the tengu’s, and it will end with us getting access to the dominion of the winds and probably some sort of encampment built there to accomodate all the refugees, making it the new central hub. Along with it, with the content and balancing patch released after the end of the first season of the living story, tengu may be made a playable race.

You had one job, Ellen Kiel. One Job.

I’ve noticed the vendor near the laurel ones at lion’s arch is accepting fortune scraps now (even if you haven’t got any with you). Maybe they just moved the function there.

Swagg.9236:

Flamethrower has [Flame Blast].
Elixir Gun has [Acid Bomb] and to an extent [Elixir F] if you use it on a lone player while you are within 400 range of the target.
Tool Kit’s [Pry Bar] is crazy spike damage.
[Grenade Barrage] and [Big Ol’ Bomb] are potentially enormous burst and function as extensions of Grenade Kit and Bomb Kit respectively.

All of those skills are very effective in power-based builds.

Flame Blast is the only other direct damage attack beside the autoattack in the whole kit.
Elixir gun is quite hybrid as a kit, and acid bomb attack isn’t so high to consider it a burst imho. Also, the area is quite limited (but still a nice and versatile skill due to the other functions).
Tool Kit, same as the flamethrower: no other direct damaging skill outside of it and the autoattack.
And both grenade and bomb kit are hybrids, too. Sure, with some good power you can have some nice damage with the toolbelts…but you’re losing out on all the other damaging skills outside of the autoattack, as they’re mostly condition based.

Swagg.9236:

When every attack is potentially proccing bleeds, vulnerability and even burning, it becomes difficult to discern when to actively mitigate damage. For the health of the game, it is for the best to make powerful attacks well-cued, give powerful attacks appropriate cool-downs and have powerful attacks pose a certain risk to the user for their use/activation to prevent players from spamming them whenever they see fit.

You aren’t supposed to mitigate all the damage, anyway. And all those passives are part of the design of the class and its sustained damage. Traits like Shrapnel and Incendiary Powder aren’t much different from a “+X% damage when using Weapon” – they’re just a condition-based versions of those. A way to increase average damage over an interval of time, while posing conditions more or less strict for their use (Shrapnel requires constant use of explosives to have a good enough uptime, incendiary powder required a good amount of precision before the first change, and still a moderate amount to properly process it now).
What you’re suggesting is the antithesis of sustained damage. You can scrap the engineers with your suggestions, they should totally rework the class, starting from kits and the class mechanic.

Swagg.9236:

A 100 minimum range is a very short distance. Such a limitation merely prevents Engineers from throwing grenades directly under their feet and turns the attacks into something resembling a cone attack since the player has to aim in front of themselves now.

First, there is nothing wrong about engineers throwing grenades directly under their feets. They’re aoes, used like aoes like every other class.
And the result you obtain is being locked out from a good amount of skill if the enemy is near enough – that means, quite often. While nerfing all the skills to kite enemies at the same time and putting channeled skills everywhere.

I would also add that engineers should be viable even with a single weapon and no kits. What do you expect to obtain by nerfing main weapons if not a further unbalancing between the no kits – full kits situations?

Anyway, suggestion like the ones you proposed can’t work with the class. Engineers have a single weapon that is nerfed in damage to begin with due to kits and the possibility of jumping between them and using combinations of skills to achieve a good sustained damage. You’re removing any advantage of kits, while still leaving all the reduced effects and disadvantages we were designed with.

Blame the design of the events, not the players.
When you put events that require one hundred players and more to even try – let alone to succeed – people will flock where they can find them. And they’ll have to get there earlier than anyone else to do it.

Swagg.9236:

GRENADIER: “THE SPAMGINEER
The typical Engineer is a walking cloud of passive trait, sigil and rune procs. Fighting an Engineer is fighting a cloud of spam that quickly comes off of cool-down and requires little planning, positioning or timing to cast. It is no big deal for an Engineer to throw the entire [Grenade Kit] either off-handedly in mid-combat or as a combat opener the skills all have very short cast-times and come off cool-down rather quickly. This kind of play-style is a symptom of Engineer game-play. There are a lot of skills use, but none of it is particularly thoughtful given short cast-times and/or easy-to-land AoEs. Moreover, it’s not just [Grenade Kit]. Most meta Engineers are very spam-centric; throwing away skills left and right with little down-time because doing so is very, very effective and skill recharges are typically rather low. What’s worse is then everything is compounded by the sheer number of passive procs that most Engineers run to constantly amplify their skill spam.

Through cast-time and recharge adjustments, some over-tuned Engineer weapon sets are brought in line to a more thoughtful play-style revolving around positioning, timing and aim.

Ok, you haven’t understood absolutely anything about how the engineer is balanced.
That is, upon sustained damage.
Have you ever noticed that kits offer virtually no burst damage?
It is done on purpose: it would be a balance nightmare otherwise. How would they balance something that can be taken either alone or with other 2 of them?
So all that could be done was putting skills that dealt sustained damage – that is, mostly damaging conditions, that have their damage already regulated by their own mechanics, cast times and opportunity costs.
Those passive traits you loathe are just another way to improve sustained damage, while avoiding bursts. Aside from making some traits near useless (grenadier wouldn’t be worthly of an adept slot in your version of grenade kit, let alone grandmaster).

The only thing you would obtain with such an overhaul is to make it even more clunkier and unrewarding to use, especially for the effort required.

Oh, i forgot: putting minimum ranges to half of the skills is just terrible.

JETWING.2759:

Very long CD and very easy to counter…

Could say the same about any invincibility skill. It still has got a better uptime than those, other than being able to actually do something while it is active.

BazeDragon.3927:

If you are referring to the Deso, NiP and friends team, all of our runs up until that kill were done on Deso main. The reason we left Deso main was because we were getting abuse from a group of people, who all went Amber without going on TS, so weren’t getting the communication, who didn’t like spending 2 hours waiting for an event and then failing due to them not paying attention to the fight in the slightest. We still want to run on Deso main, but we will probably also be doing organized overflow runs now for members of our community and those who are dedicated to kills.

Like the time where you concordated in ts when to retry to avoid having said guests (the second kill, if i remember well).
It is nice to see such organization, but when all of this is being done to avoid the open world nature of the event and making it as much as a private instance as possible, i feel like it should be made clear of the contradictions involved in such an approach.

An open world event will have people like the ones you speak about. They can’t be kicked, and you can’t do anything about them. If the event isn’t balanced taking in account there could be people like that, then it isn’t fine as an open world event.

Oh, nice for you. Now what about doing it on the main server along with guests and random people?
You know, like an open world event.

Terrahero.9358:

And now we’re trying to come up with some big changes just for the sake of this one-trick pony build. All because we know that arenanet is just going to punish all engineers, across every gamemode, for this builds existance.
Meanwhile other professions run dominant across all the gamemodes.

Profession balance is such a kittening joke.

It wouldn’t even be the first time it happens. Old juggernaut/flamethrower, old kit refinement…

Had to cut some parts to fit in a single post.

Sykper.6583:

-about defensive conditions and other classes-

And they have those because they don’t have either the health or armor given by default to warriors…

Sykper.6583:

I think Warriors are right on the mark in how much defensive conditions they can have, right now it is a matter of number balancing, and asking for pure sustain nerfs without offering other healing alternatives is a no go (The other healing skills are bad).

Or maybe there is one skill that’s simply overpowered, especially when compared to…well, anything else in the game.
And the only solution that will probably implemented is basically a “let’s make the active more overpowered than the passive, else no one will have any reason to use it”.

Sykper.6583:

Poor argument, because if you establish that the warrior might not be alone than at the same time you or people who might be fighting said warrior might not be alone either. And how a warrior plays during a team setting is an entirely different discussion than the context of what you are asking which is pertaining to Warrior Weaknesses. I can just as easily say “Well a Guardian might not have a health pool UNLESS there is also a warrior with Defense banner nearby! We gotta nerf Guardian health pools because in a party scenario their weaknesses can easily be compensated for!”

Poor argument, i’m not the one saying that guardians are balanced toward the lack of defense banners. Whereas you’re saying that of all the classes that don’t have reliable access to that, warriors must be balanced upon their lack of protection.

Sykper.6583:

Every profession… -cut- …is an easy tell.

Personally i would say they’re more powerful than the “pure immunity” counterparts, considering that you can actually do something and heal while they active, but that’s just my opinion on the matter.
Not much to argue about the rest, though.

Sykper.6583:

The boons a Warrior can apply to a group are not actually that many, outside of FGJ and Warhorn the only buffs a warrior can apply are banners, which have their own entirely different issues. Ultimately, Banners are specialized in PvE and some SPvP specs.

At least banners work and they are reliable in what they do. I can’t say that for the counterparts of other classes (ex: turrets – broken since the start of the game, over 20 bugs still to fix, rarely used outside of the elite…that is, ironically, the less worse elite engineers have got).

Sykper.6583:

I want you to name the other methods a warrior can cure conditions without Cleansing Ire. No, let me do that for you:

- Berserker Stance is not condition removal but helps with the condition pressure once you know it is there.
- Shake it Off cures a single condition on yourself and nearby allies every 25 seconds. 20 if traited for.
- Signet of Stamina can activate to cure all conditions every 45 seconds, 36 if traited.
- Mending is three conditions every 20 seconds. …Wait its a healing skill? That heals for a terrible 5k? Absolutely ridiculous.

You know what’s missing from all of these? Sustained removal. Before Cleansing Ire Warriors had no sustained condition removal, every single warrior build, every warrior had a crippling flaw much to A-Net’s original motto where Warriors would be the class to have the most trouble with conditions. When conditions became more powerful, warriors became less viable as a whole, we became absolute trash. The image of warriors being weak to conditions made the profession the worst one ever in this game, there still is not a profession that was as bad as pre-buff Warrior, and I hope there never will be.

In a way, I agree that Cleansing Ire being the only removal we can do is a bad thing, if it were nerfed but another similar trait was made into a DPS tree like Strength or Arms to help alleviate condition pressure without the need to go 20 into defense, that would be superb!

Except that “sustained removal” warriors have got ended up being more powerful than the ones of the other classes that shouldn’t be weak to conditions by design.
So, if the weakness of the warrior got removed, as you’re saying above, where is the balance in there?

Sykper.6583:

If you are indicating that profession’s popularity should directly impact how they should be balanced, then you are out of your mind.

Sure, but what if a class is popular because it is also more powerful and easy to use than the others?
In PvE (and partly WvsW) that’s exactly the case of warriors. Since the start of the game, and it only got better (or worse, as far as balance goes) with the time.

Sykper.6583:

Longbow blind is the only blind we have.
Greatsword evade is the only weapon evade we have.
Counterblow is mace only block, Riposte is off-hand sword block and shield stance is promptly the only reliable block that won’t get terminated by a melee swing unlike the other two.

Unless you think every warrior runs five weapons, I don’t think you are making any valid points here…you are just making statements.

It still isn’t true there is no access to them. You have them, and even at relatively low cooldowns – there is just fewer of them (and as far as blocks go, it is second only to guardians).
Or do you expect warriors to have the same access of all those defensive mechanics despite having higher armour and hp to start with?

Sykper.6583:

The innate high HP and toughness of the class helps deal with the fact we don’t have Protection at all. Utilities like Endure Pain and Berserker’s stance are almost a must to have, and take up precious utility slots that we could use for other utilities. It’s probably the only reason you are not seeing more warriors running Throw Bola or more Signets, because it is required to have some sort of mitigation when we possess nothing else.
As for not being the only class without protection, other said classes have a mechanic that can situationally make up for it. Stealth, actual invulns, impressive amounts of boons and mobility, another health bar, if a warrior’s only gimmick was that they had an extra 3-5k life, that is probably the weakest benefit for the warrior by far.

Again with the “we don’t have protection” excuse. You aren’t alone, and those other classes must as well spend their “precious utility slots” for many of the mechanics you mention – especially actual invuln (and they can’t do anything while they’re activated, unlike endure pain/berserker’s stance).
Also, it isn’t like warriors are immune to protection when in party content. Saying it’s sustain is balanced upon not having it means admitting that it is unbalanced when that is taken into account. Not that it would be surprising, seeing the amounts of 1 guard/4 wars parties or variants of those.
And it isn’t like warriors haven’t got access to boons either – they’re just more offensive oriented, and usually area wide. Or straight out passive boosts, like banners.

If our only benefit was being a toughness/health based class, both things are completely outplayed by Conditions and High Crit Damage (The latter being addressed, the former not quite addressed at all)….

The former should be the class weakness by design, and yet cleansing ire provides much more removal than other classes could hope for. The latter…heh, as if getting bursted wasn’t a weakness for everyone…

Then Warriors would be rolled back to when we were free bags. There was never a viable option for warriors back then, we were the worst profession to play in any circumstance.

Sure, it isn’t like warriors are the most played class since the start of the game after all.
Oh, wait, they are.

DuranArgith.1354:

1: see my previous post. Warriors have no other viable sustain. Before you nerf it, consider the side effects of that nerf to the class, At the very least propose another viable sustain for a predominantly melee class with no access to protection, blinds, evades.

Beside having an area blind on longbow (smoldering arrow, 15s cooldown) and an evade on greatsword (10s cooldown) and several blocks (counterblow, riposte, shield stance). And those are just weapon skills.
Obviously that’s without counting the innate high hp and defense of the class. And the utilities like endure pain and berserker’s stance.
And it isn’t like warriors are the only class without direct access to protection, in any case.
Not that it matters much, though…it isn’t like they’re immune to it, and since quite any party ends up having a guardian, it will be applied anyway…and along with a sustain supposedly balanced about not having said buff.

Grenadier is just a bad designed trait, since they’ve balanced the whole weapon upon having it. Thus making the kit subpar and quite useless without it.
The analogies you’re making don’t make sense at all: those classes aren’t balanced upon having those things by default. Unlike the grenade kit.

And i would add, while it is quite obvious that a grandmaster trait should give quite a big effect it is applies to a single weapon…making the weapon bad to start with makes no sense.
If the issue is that the traited weapon would then be too strong, than the trait – not the weapon – should be nerfed…and put as a master one as appropriate for its effect. That is what happens in any other class (with a single exception given by a necromancers’ scepter trait, but at least the weapon doesn’t seem to be balanced upon having it).
And that’s also why many other classes have buffs for an entire category of utilities as grandmaster traits: to avoid having to give a large one to a single one, something that would likely break its balance.

The class has already too many kit traits as it is. No need to add another one of those, and especially in a grandmaster slot.

There are two problems. One is that the whole kit is balanced upon having said trait. Making it almost useless otherwise.
The second is shared by other kits and has already been mentioned – overdependency on traits. I would add, we’re the only class that has got grandmaster traits working on a single utility…and even if we were to consider weapons, there is a single other example in the game (a necro trait about scepters).

Assuming that the “automated” theme would still be maintained,what about a buffed-up version of Purity?
In short, “lose 1 condition every 5s” (it would have half the cooldown of Purity, but that’s an adept trait after all).
It would be automated, should be worthly of a grandmaster trait and while strong versus conditions, it doesn’t grant straight immunity.

Regarding Transmute, the suggestion to tie it to the toolbelt is nice too.