Guild Wars 2

Reading the massive number of comments about incoming changes, i’ve noticed a common issue on warrior’s weapons (at least, this is how people commented about their perception). Seems that certain weapons belong only to specific situations, and the new patch of december could increase this gap between them.

-Longbow
People like it. Someone complains about new changes. As a Wvw oriented player, i think it’s a great weapon. Good for siege time and zerg fights. Useful to stack might (only field of warrior), to catch someone and give some conditions. Not the best dmg output.
2 traits in a defense oriented path (tactic) to have it 1200 reach and CD reduction.
-Suggestion: Remove “Stronger Bowstrings”, remove the bonus damage against burning foes on “Burning arrows”. Do a master trait with 20% CD reduction and range of 1200.

-Rifle
It’s fine. Easy to use, dmg oriented. Not the best weapon, but could be a good secondary weapon for warriors. Moving Crack shot to adept will be a slight buff.
-Suggestion: none, except maybe to find something more interesting for skill n°1. Bleed is fine, but this weapon is not conditions oriented.

-Sword
I like sword. A good compromise between mobility, CC and condition damage. I think it’s the most interesting weapon for warriors.
-Suggestion: Sword lack of a CD reduction feat. Skill n°3 is a bit too slow. Burst skill is a bit underpowered. Still I really like this weapon.

-Axe
Not funny, almost zero CC. Good for sPvp (because of high dmg and easy to use).
-Suggestion: give axe a bit more CC. Change skill n°5. This things could be done togheter

-Great Sword
High mobility, very low CC. In heavy needs of stun or immobilize.
Skill 1 is autoattack, ok. Hundred Blades should not stop the warrior. At least, move with decreased speed, but not immobile. Skill 3 and 4 ok. Skill 5… another gap closer.
-Suggestion: Give the chance to move a bit with Hundred blades. Skill 5 could have a form of light CC (stun 1/2 sec?). Give F1 a form of CC, or AoE damage.
In this way it could be used in more situations.

-Hammer.
Well, hammer is strong. Good damage, good feats, hard CC. Now there is a big problem. Reduce the damage, and in pve it will be totally useless. Reduce CC and it will almost useless in pvp or wvw. It lacks hard of mobility.
-Suggestion: don’t reduce damage. Just remove unespected foe, or change it.
Burst skill could be too strong. Other skills are easily avoidable. F1 could have its CC reduced, maybe?
Consider to lower the amount of CC and add something like vulnerability (armor is cracked by the strenght of the hammer).

-Mace
I’d like to use mace. But if you are not in sPvP…
-Suggestion: F1 animation is fine. Instead, lower the stun duration (this is the real issue, with condi duration augments).
Skill 5 has a bit too much CD.

-Shield
Very high CD for bit reward.
-Suggestion: lower CD, or try someting else. Now shield it’s used to add another CC skill on warrior kitten nal. Skill 4 could be an active block (like sword and mace) that stun for 1/2 second if a melee attack is blocked. 15 sec CD would be fine.
Skill 5 could be a stance that gives damage reduction, but last longer and with less CD than the original shield stance.
Or skill 4 could be a hit that “disarm”, giving and addictional 2 second of CD on all weapon skills of target.

Warhorn
Works as it should do. Nice feats. Nothing to say.

I will not discuss underwater weapons, by the way I think that are balanced.

Scoobaniec.9561:

Purifer.3946:

My warrior is a tank with hammer / LB-sword horn.
30 defense, 30 tactics, 10 arms (shouts give adrenaline).
Knight armor, soldier rune. Knight weapons, soldier trinkets.
Still crit almost at 50% with fury for 7k dmg on keep bosses in wvw. Reach 35k hp when buffed, and almost 5k power. Traits are all in defense or adrenaline gain.

Buffed def and tact 25, nerfed dmg of 2 hammer skills. So 2 skills will do less dps, but all of my attacks will do a bit more. I think this will not change at all my build, maybe it will be a bit more powerful.

So why this changes? sPvP. And for this hammer in pve will be trash.
I suggest to give bosses a special features. For skills that do CC they are immune add a slight bonus on damage. Bosses will be not stunlocked, hammer will not be useless.

P.S. care about build variety. Seems tank condi will be a must.
Give sword a cd reduction trait, change axe gameplay (not funny as other weapons, weak).
Nice buff to rifle

I want to see screenshot of stats or it dindt happen
And rifle wasnt buffed so idk what u talking about again.

I don’t even bother about what you think My post was for the developers.
In Wvw you can have 10+ stacks of might quite easy (i can give myself 11 in one second) and from this comes the high power. The crit is not on autoattack, of course.
Check again rifle’s feat. Moved to adept tier, it gives the chance to have 20% cd reduction an pierce with only 10 traits in arms.

My warrior is a tank with hammer / LB-sword horn.
30 defense, 30 tactics, 10 arms (shouts give adrenaline).
Knight armor, soldier rune. Knight weapons, soldier trinkets.
Still crit almost at 50% with fury for 7k dmg on keep bosses in wvw. Reach 35k hp when buffed, and almost 5k power. Traits are all in defense or adrenaline gain.

Buffed def and tact 25, nerfed dmg of 2 hammer skills. So 2 skills will do less dps, but all of my attacks will do a bit more. I think this will not change at all my build, maybe it will be a bit more powerful.

So why this changes? sPvP. And for this hammer in pve will be trash.
I suggest to give bosses a special features. For skills that do CC they are immune add a slight bonus on damage. Bosses will be not stunlocked, hammer will not be useless.

P.S. care about build variety. Seems tank condi will be a must.
Give sword a cd reduction trait, change axe gameplay (not funny as other weapons, weak).
Nice buff to rifle

The other strange thing i noticed is about weapon swap and elemental attunments.
First of all, i have 2 main characters. A warrior and a ele, so I think I’m quite prepared to debate about differences
Btw, a lot of ppl continue to tell " but eles have 20 skills"…
kitten .
This is true, BUT:
1) No chain
2) Every CD reduction trait is less effective (more or less half effective of those of a warrior).
3) You have to swap, is not a plus, but mandatory.
4) You have always the same range! This is the biggest problem. IF you are weilding staff, you will suck in close range. D/D? You are suck in melee.
As a warrior, i can use bow as main and swap in S/something else. I can be a ranged and have perma swiftness, and switch in close range, with good gap closer.
5) Ok, elementalists can heal, take protection and so on. Things that you will not need if you had the HP and armor of a warrior. While ele is trying to avoid hits, healing and protect, warrior is giving dmg and passively reduce damage and regen HP.

It’s different in WvW. There i consider eles to be one of the strongest class in game (staff only, until new patch maybe). More funny, lot of aoe, awesome utilities. In this situation switching to different role is really powerful. Also, if you go knight or cleric you are really hard to kill.

I noticed some strange things. First, CD reduction traits moved to master tier for eles, because “all this traits are master”. Then, to swap with unespected foe, crack shot (cd reduction for rifle warrior) is moved to adept.
I know that is difficult to fix the unespected foe issue, but lol!

Also, why don’t warriors have a CD reduction for swords? It’s the only weapon that lack of that
Axe, GS, Mace, Hammer, Bow, Rifle, Shield, Warhorn all have it.

-Strength 5 – Reckless Dodge. Increased Damage by 25%

Fine.

-Strength III – Great Fortitude. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 7%.

Fine. A bit more hp even for damage oriented warriors.

-Arms IV – Unsuspecting Foe. Moved to Master Tier.

Sure it belongs at least to a master tier.

-Arms VII – Crack Shot. Moved to Adept Tier.

Really? I think it’s even too good for adept. I remember a discussion in Ele’s forum, about the fact that ALL weapon reduction cd were master tier. Now, warriors got shield at adept, but it’s a only off hand (it affects 20% of the skills considering swap).
Rifle is 2h weapon, so this feats would reduce cd of 50% of warrior skills plus givin a real useful effect. Ele’s elements reduction cd reduce 25% of the skills without giving extra effect.
I don’t get the logic, but my warrior will appreciate this change.

-Arms XII – Last Chance. Increased the threshold form 25% to 50%. Reduced the cooldown from 45 seconds to 40seconds.

Still not worth a grandmaster tier.

-Defense 25 – Armored Attack. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 10%.

More power for defense oriented warrior. Good. The conversion rate will match those of other classes (and I see this will happen for other classes, too, like ele’s earth trait).

-Defense XII – Spiked Armor. Reduced the recharge from 15s to 10s.

Really nice. Now in combo with tactics this will be a almost perma retaliation.

-Tactics 5 – Determined Revival. Now correctly displays the amount of toughness.

Ok.

-Tactics 25 – Reviver’s Might. Now applies 3 stacks of Might instead of 1.

Before was meh, now it could be something. Better than nothing.

-Discipline II – Thrill of the Kill. Increased Adrenaline gain from 1 to 10.

x10? It’s a lot of Adrenaline, but seems fair.

-Discipline XI – Burst Mastery. Reduced damage increase from 10% to 7%. Removed erroneous adrenaline gain fact.

A 3% damage reduction. This is meant to reduce all burst damage or only to fix the strongest burst skills? Could be a problem for F1 skills that were not strong before, and after will be even worse.

-Earthshaker. Reduced damage by 20%.
-Staggering Blow. Reduced damage by 23%.

I think it’s right to don’t give too much CC and Dmg in one weapon, but care. Weapons with zero CC will be useless in pvp, weapon with low damage useless in pve.
By the way, utilities can change this.

-Skull Crack. Increased the cast time from 1/4s to 1/2s. Updated the animation and effects of this skill to be more clear.

Single target F1. Let’s see how it will be changed. I think the big problem with high CC warriors is not that, but the big numbers of CC skills and relatively short CD.

-Combustive Shot – Increased pulse duration to 3s. Increased burn duration per pulse to 3s. Normalized damage per pulse. Updated pulses per tier to 2, 3,and 4 respectively for tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3.

With Burst Mastery nerf this is nerfed 2 times. I know that bow > rifle, but now rifle will get a good buff, and to get Crack Shot a dps oriented warrior should put at least 10 traits in Arms tree, that give damage oriented stats and Precise Strike.
To take Burning Arrows a bow warrior should put 20 feats in Tactic tree, obtaining Determined Revival and Fast Healer. Plus, Stronger Bowstring only to match rifle range.
Considering this, i think that Crack Shot should stay in the master tier (to balance with all other classes), Burning Arrows should be removed. Stronger Bowstring should go to master tier, upgrading Bow’s range and giving 20% CD reduction on skills.
Determined Revival and Fast Healer should be togheter, Adept Tier. Instead, at master tier there could be a trait like this “5-10% more damage on burning/burning and bleeding/with movement impaired”, something that adds damage on tactics tree at some condition (more frequent the condition = 5% dmg, less frequent = 10%).

I like the way you want to change the passive traits for damage in fire, condition damage in earth, and so on.
I still want to think and maybe try the active traits you propose.

What i’d like to discuss is about CD reduction traits.
First of all, why warriors don’t have a sword CD reduction trait? Just a joke.
By the way, it’s true that almost all CD reduction traits are master tier, but they impact on 50% of the skills.
A hammer CD reduction trait will lower the CD of half the warrior kitten nal, while a trait that reduce a element CD will influence 25% of the elementalist skills.
I think this should be compared with the shield CD trait (adept).

SO:
Or this traits give more bonuses (like warriors CD reduction traits) to empower this element, or they should be adept tier.

Or maybe you could introduce new off hand weapon, entirely linked to an element.
With this (huge) change all main hand will use the element attuned, but the off hand will have always the same element. This should give 2 spells per attunement or only 2 spells? I don’t know.
This change will be better with new main hand options? I don’t know. Should be discussed seriously. Btw, i like the idea of torch on an elementalist.

In synthesis:

Element trait CD are too weak for master tier. Possible changes are:
1) adept tier
2) add some extra effect that increase the power of the spells, like those of weapons traits for warriors.
3) add some features that gives more spells per element.
New weapons? Special upgrade? Dedicated focus, dagger and staff? This will raise the number of spells of one element, thus permitting someone to specialize in few elements. Maybe the 3rd tier of an element could give this option.

I know that this changes are not only fixes, but for what i can see reading the forum it’s clear that a lot of players would love to have a more dedicated elementalist. Fire / air elementalist for damage and movement, earth / water for support and protection, and so on. 2 elements or only one?
Of course there would always be the possibility of the normal 4 element character (btw i think the real issue of this class is a l2p problem).

I’m almost a only wvw player. I have a warrior 80 and a ele 80.
With my warrior i think i used at least 5 different viable build, ending with a lot of loot or at least with the perception of being helpful to our zerg, with damage, cc or support (shouts healing build).
Playing the ele i noticed even leveling a higher skill cap. When i build it for wvw i went straight for the only viable zerg build, staff damage / support.
Even if not 80 i think my job was more effective than the warrior. Maybe because was not my first character, but i found having more loot, very big heal (despite level and gear difference) and very good CC.
What i also noticed is that dying with my ele is very uncommon. Distance and evasive move helps a lot, but to play it properly (at least in wvw) you should understand something about the class.
First of all, position. Good position let you place spells with insane effect. Spell 5 of fire, spell 4 of earth, and so on.
Eles have good dmg, good heal and good CC. Use all your spells. Don’t try to do only damage, because you will be useless in part of your attunement swapping. I built my ele cleric staff, for now at least, and this means he got good survability, good heal and decent damage (poor crit chance, 30% with fury, but still i have almost fury perma up).
Even if not D/D, you should use all your spells, traits (for example with dodge) and consider that you should always manage to find the best use for all of you spells.
My 5 cent:
With staff auto attack is not so good, use it when you need time to think or when you really know you need (water for example).
Remember that you create fields, use it properly for yourself and much important the army.
Fire is good for damage, but don’t focus on it. You can have an insane damage if you force the biggest number of your opponents to shower in your fire. So…
Spell 3 and 5 of air, spell 4 of water, 4 and 5 of heart, plus traits, runes and so on. Stop them, move, cast, swap, heal allies, give reg, stability aoe, protection, tune to fire, buff and dmg.
Make this not only in this sequence, constantly, and you will have a great performance.
People will love you and you will have fun.
It’s clear that the problem is get used to this and keep focus. I don’t know why but i found ele easy, most of my friends not. It’s a l2p issue, even if i admit some class are a bit op (but not REALLY OP). For example with war sure i’m not very good Good, but not much than this.

If you want to roam go D/D. And remember, roaming is making something useful for server. Not kill random invaders that try to reach the zerg (if you don’t kill A LOT of invaders, of course). Even if a hammer warrior can beat you, he can’t kill you. Go for the dolly, kill it and run faster than him to another target. Keep fortress contested, and so on. Btw, i’m not expert in this role so don’t take this as the roamers’ bible.

I’d like to see a good trait for 1h swords. It’s the only without 20% cd reduction