Guild Wars 2

A bit strong for Physical skills, but:

1. They need a good boost to be useful as more than buggy interrupts.
2. We need to filter more Stability and Resistance into the core class.

In this case, adding a few stacks of Stability for a few seconds (2 stacks, 3 seconds) and a an increase in damage scaling (200% as the old trait) might make these more attractive.

Some intriguing ideas overall, and I’m glad you thought them over.

Peak Performance needs a better damage boost in order for Physical stills to not suck.
Not sure what the rationale was for pushing condi damage to Arms. Its position battles with Sword for, but Sword doesn’t use interrupts so.. Not quite sure how I feel about it.
I really don’t think ANet’s gonna fly putting Fast Hands under Arms. Admirable in trying to break the supposed Discipline hegemony, though.
Disappointed with Hammer and Mace lumped together and still not given a trait that’s worth it. The stun duration boost in the GM Minor trait should be rolled into the appropriate weapon traits.

The traits still miss a lot of what Warrior’s been needing in the new environment: Stability and Resistance. Those boons need to filter into the core class.

Ambitious re-write, and I applaud you for it. Let’s hope ANet takes some of these ideas seriously.

smiling.9028:

BTW unless you’re into pvp tracks good luck finding groups to gather the 500 tokens for the gift. Since no one runs dungeons anymore it’s proving to be the hardest part of making a legendary nowdays.

I had a hard enough time charming two other people in my guild to do a story run for Twilight Arbor. For some reason, even though I’d done it before, the PvP track was locked. >_>#

I really wish they’d catch a hint and make their platforming appropriate to their game’s physics. Climbing mountains in any MMO is bad because of weird slope detection, but ANet actively encourages that b.s. in order to find the few stray pixels that don’t look climbable but are.

Swift.1930:

Wait, there’s text on the loading screens? I haven’t seen that. Huh. When did that start?

Yeah, there are these little numbers and icons that tell you about zone completion!
/gasp!

Really though, don’t give a single whit about their attempts at professional PvP. I don’t watch other people play video games, and I don’t care about people getting paid to be professional containers for feminine hygiene solution. Especially when “PvP balance” is ruining PvE balance.

Axe
While Vulnerability is slated to be more Mace, I like the idea of giving Axe a benefit like this. It echoes Greatsword’s group support as an alternate.
I could also see removing Blind when the burst triggers. It doesn’t completely negate attempts at counter-play, but it does stop lingering Blind-spam from affecting the ability to use it.

Rifle
Anything that gives Warrior the Stability buff is an improvement. Rifle already has an adrenaline accelerator, so I’m not sure it needs another. Perhaps a minor “more damage per bar” tricks? Aside from the burst skill, if Rifle is going to be a single target attacker, it needs damage that shows it.

Hammer
I’m not fond of “the best way to use this weapon is to never use it” approach. If it had lower cooldowns and raised auto-attack damage, it could be a solid main weapon for brutalizing groups. The devs want to keep high damage and CC apart, but hammer needs some basic damage to be competitive.
The trait is a backhanded joke, especially for a Grandmaster, for the reasons you stated. If hammer is going to remain a slow weapon, it’d be appropriate to give a bonus every time its effects are denied. None of the standard buffs really work out, but here’s my thought:
Bonus: 20% damage OR attack speed (Or maybe 10% to both?)
Duration: 10 seconds, refreshes every time an attack is Evaded, Blocked, Missed, or triggers Immunity.
This turns hammer’s slow nature into a harder wrecking ball, with the best avoidance being to disengage with the warrior for a time. (10 seconds might be a bit much. 6 seconds?)
Or, as I said before, giving Stability to Warrior in more places is always welcome. Having a single stack with 1 second stability would get a hammer warrior through most of their non-auto skills with much less interruption.

Sword
Certainly a huge help to sword. I really do believe the Might on Crit should go to Phalanx Strength (maybe even with no cooldown?).
Warrior doesn’t have any really strong condition weapons, so I’d like to see Sword really commit to the role. Bonus crit versus bleed is handy, but if it’s going to really deal condition damage, adding stacks of Torment should be a part of Sword’s kit (besides Rip). So I’m thinking on-critical Torment.
Then dig into the Strength trait line and swap out the weird on-interrupt Confuse for equivalent stacks of Torment. It adds synergy and further punishes those who try to escape from a Warrior.

Longbow
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen such a powerful boost to an auto-attack before. If anything on Longbow is needed, it’s better anti-pressure skills. Wouldn’t argue with a projectile speed boost, either.

Mace
Solid damage prevention/interrupt set, though it mingles Hammer’s Weakness infliction and knockdown. I actually does the knockdown better than Backbreaker and on a shorter cooldown. As for its trait:

Mace skills cause vulnerability to foes that are dazed, knocked down, launched, or stunned. Reduces recharge on mace skills.

It runs into the same problem that Hammer does. Mace is relatively slow, so it only gets a few 5-stacks of vulnerability before a stun/daze/knockdown wears off. I don’t know if I have an appropriate fix, since I don’t know mace very well.

Shield
Shield is actually in a good spot, for Shield. It would be a better trait if the evades on warrior skills were changed to Blocks instead, which would add synergy to the Shield trait.

Warhorn
Gimme my kitten condition convert back. -_-#
Or 2 condi clears instead of 1. I’ll consider the nerf forgiven, then.

Arcade.8901:

I think they need to nerf GS. So other weapons wouldn’t be so bad on its Back ground.

You can consider it as a buff to all other weapons.

Greatsword as a weapon isn’t so overpowered. Hundred Blades is a self-root, which leaves the warrior vulnerable, and in most PvP play, easy to dodge. High damage is the reward. Otherwise, it has decent mobility, if the whee-evade on whirlwind on a fleeing warrior means anything.

The “problem” with Greatsword is that its traits are too good, and thus required to be competitive with other classes. Forceful Greatsword and Phalanx Strength need redesigns to shift power/support to other weapons. Pull Might on crit from Forceful Greatsword, put it on Phalanx Strength. (If no internal cooldown, we’ll end up seeing a lot of whirlwindy off-hand axe users, but ICD will make QQ.)

A lot of warrior skills mostly need cooldown buffs.
Hammer 4 should either commit to bigger knockback (for PvP point defense) or eschew knockback for knockdown (for PvE). Or trade out knockback for Daze (1.5 sec). Adding a projectile block to Hammer 4 or Hammer 3 would give it more defensive utility.
In light of Revenant hammer’s severely OP nature, we’ve got cause to ask for a 15 sec, high damage, single target knockdown, 3+ seconds.

Greatsword
Much faster projectile on GS4.
Convert evade to Block on GS3. (You’ll see me advocating Block over Evade for warriors for possible synergy with Shield Master, and no traits synergize with Evade.)
At the risk of being OP, give Protection during GS2.

Longbow
Piercing is baseline.
Pin Down cooldown dropped to 15 sec.

Rifle
Piercing is baseline. Better damage. Swap Rifle Butt for a ranged knockback.

Axe
Better auto damage. Longer vuln duration on Axe 2.

Mace
(I’ll leave that to someone else. :P)

Sword
Auto: Additional bleed stack on first swing. Torment on second instead of bleed.

I could probably recommend more, but it’s really the traits for warrior that are holding us back. For weapons, I could mostly recommend more appropriate cooldowns and having warrior be the class that just spams lower-power but more frequent skills.

Xalzor.5047:

I think most warrior skills need rebalancing if we want warrior to have a future in any kind of PvP setting.

A pull on GS4’s return trip would be an improvement, but I don’t think it would be all that useful. The projectile is far too slow and too likely to be destroyed for it to really make much of a difference. Seriously, when I use GS4, I don’t expect it to hit the enemy beyond the initial throw (assuming that even hits).

In my opinion, a better upgrade to GS4 would be to remove the boomerang effect entirely and keep the horrible projectile speed, but move the cripple to the final hit of GS1 and replace it with a knockdown. That would let us use the skill to chase down runners as originally intended, but as an added bonus, we would also be able to use it to setup GS2.

Heck, while I’m at it, GS5 should have a leap, and GS2 should have evade frames for at least the first half of the channel (EDIT: Before anyone cries OP, that’s only 1.75s of rooted evade. Compare that to other channeled skills that also give evade). Doing all of that would make GS a completely self-sufficient weapon with enough utility to get a skilled warrior through just about anything. Then we could work on bringing the other weapons up to the same standard.

But that’s probably not gonna happen.

Your GS4 proposal makes me laugh, with joy. It’d be absolutely hilarious and in theme to throw a greatsword at someone and the force of it bowling them to the floor. I might even use greatsword for that. XD

I chafe at any buffs to GS2, but you’re right. When I look at all the massive damage mitigation other classes get and think about how worthless “armor and slightly bigger HP pool” are as defenses, I wouldn’t object to 1-2 seconds of Block (I mean, we’re swinging around a wall of metal, here), though it might mean dropping Hundred Blade’s damage a smidgen.

GS5 and most other charges that Warrior gets ought to be leaps, to be honest. I’m not sure it would help the accuracy of them, and warriors often use charges as escapes just as frequently so.. Maybe not so much on that idea.

Khisanth.2948:

With the amount of people crafting stuff. If the ecto rate was nerfed the prices should be going up while the supply should be going down but the opposite seems to be happening. Where are the extra ectos coming from if the salvage rate has been nerfed?

Edit: Just thought of the answer to my own question. The overall drop rate of rares feels like it has increased but that aside pushing more people to fractals also means more rares being added and salvaged. Fractals has always had a decent drop rate for rares and account bound exotics so that could account for the additional supply.

There are also more people in Orr again for the map rewards, one of which being ecto.

Salvaging was indeed nerfed. I thought it was just the T5 materials, so their value would rise, but I always suspected they did the same to rare/ecto. My salvages were pitiful before, but now it’s just ludicrous. I can break a rare and get one (1) T5 material. It’s maddening.

Throdin.8061:

We’re not in a position for “let’s make incentive to use other weapons by nerfing the overused ones”
If anything, its the other way around.

Far too much truth in that statement. With where warrior is right now, in order to really “break” the constant need for Greatsword, other weapon sets need improvement.

Axe gets two applicable buffs, on top of being the other “high damage” weapon option for power warriors. Assuming you don’t go warhorn/shield offhand, at least :P But Dual Wielding and a ferocity boost per Axe is pretty decent.
But it’s selfish and pale in comparison to Greatsword/Phalanx Strength.

Blade Master gives bonus crit chance in each reach and can still benefit from Dual Wielding.
But it still pales in comparison to GS/PS Might stacking.

Shield’s benefit is very conditional. Greatsword’s bonus is faceroll.

Mace requires something to be hard-CC’d before it matters, and the benefit is a piddly small %-jump in damage from vulnerability. Greatsword’s bonus is powerful and faceroll.

Hammer can’t even use its own trait because the weapon is so slow. It gets, at best, one (1) autoattack at a weak +20% bonus before a stun ends. Heightened Focus ends up being better because it’s more reliable. Greatsword’s bonus is powerful and faceroll.

That’s the trend. In two traits, Greatsword gets a ton of damage and group support for more damage. I mean, I know ANet has a kitten for greatswords (Mesmer, Guardian, Eternity/Twilight/Sunrise, Reaper), but it’s seriously overplayed, and Warrior ends up locked into it for any meaningful PvE play.

I’m certainly open to suggestions on ideas to forward to the devs, but it’s going to have to be absurdly broken to compete with GS/PS.

Greatsword still has good damage, but I would love to spread the might-stacking to other build/weapon choices. Not to mention, a blanket +10% damage on an already high-damage weapon is unnecessary.

I look at Hammer’s trait and just.. sigh. It’s so pathetic, unless you have a thief friend offhand pistol. Conditional damage boost on a low-damage weapon that it can’t even take advantage of because it’s so slow.

To bring greatsword in line, shift Might on crit to Phalanx Strength, give the trigger a 1 second internal cooldown, then change the Greatsword bonus to Ferocity bonus instead of +10% damage. It would still pair well with a general damage boost and Arcing Slice’s Fury effect.

Greatsword doesn’t need any more love.
But, the throw on 4 does need some work. Faster projectile, at least.

Hard CC is a Hammer thing.

Physical skills ought to ditch the dashing and work on pulls instead. Or, y’know, fix the dash glitches. Maybe add a pull to Bolas. Not to say we don’t need better closers, but Greatsword isn’t where it’s needed.

There is the question of should it be a complete solo instance or just a small population shard of its own. On the one hand, seeing other players can help with pathing or technique, but they can also interfere, like in the Salvage adventure.

Still, instancing would have the benefit of removing players who might be too close to meta-events without participating, and it would make them available.

Relying on Fast Hands is a problem, not a solution. Weapons should be upgraded/balanced to be individually useful. Weapon swap should be a choice, not a requirement.

Sums up what I’ve been saying about Warriors for a while. If warrior is going to have substandard, low power skills, they should be able to spam those skills without mercy or disguise. Other classes have better synergy between weapons, utilities, and traits, and if that’s not conceptually appropriate for warrior, then make them the raw power class to make up for it.

While trying to limit this discussion to weapons, it should be noted that some warrior skills are condemning. Stances don’t last long enough and cooldowns are too long. Physical skills are paltry, adding mostly ineffective control/interrupts while glitching on closers and having shameful damage, again on very long cooldowns.

But yes, weapon skills need an overhaul to keep up with the new class and elite spec weapon design.

Gonna start a firestorm here but..
Option for upright stance on Charr.
/smokebomb

Not to say I’m a proponent/opponent either way, but some players have asked for it in the past.

That aside: More custom colors for head accessories!

To be blunt, the minimap is kinda garbage. Or at least woefully insufficient. Places that look like paths actually aren’t, and vice versa. Not enough height change markers to deal with HoT maps’ verticality.

To fix that, I’d love it if the devs could work in an account-bound custom map marker system, so players can identify their own points of interest. Things like:

• Access points to height changes
• Entrances to jumping puzzle, starts of winding paths to hero point markers
• Treasure chests
• Champion and special enemy locations
• Warning areas
• Really awesome RP spots

It would help a lot, and it would add an extra element for explorers who want to track their own special and favorite locations.

With some time in on it and playing on something other than my Nerfior, I can say my opinion’s gone up for HoT.

Solo play is still low, like 5/10.
Bringing a friend raises that a few notches: 7/10.
Both are impressionistic numbers. Breaking things down a bit X out of 10:

Character growth/options – 7
Now that I’m past the worst parts of the mastery grind, I look forward to unlocking the rest. It’s still long, grindy poo, but I can at least say that the improvements are account bound and permanent, the “it could have been worse” line.
New specs are interesting, and while the mastery grind for each character grates, the exploration and getting swept up in event threads remains one of GW2’s big draws.

Exploration – 6
This would be at least 2 points higher if the minimap didn’t suck. I’d love to have a permanent marker for me to add my own account-bound symbols to the map, so I can find my way around better. The mastery limits and Metroidvania feel are also a huge barrier to actually exploring the zones, so you can forget about completion until you grind out masteries.
All that aside, gliding is hilarious, and it gets me killed as often as it saves my tail. Auric Basin is especially gorgeous, and Verdant Brink is decent to get around. I’d be fine with turning Tangled Depths into a crater. I’m sure the chak would survive anyway. The time gate on Dragon’s Stand isn’t fun either. Remember Majora’s Mask and having to restart the time right in the middle of exploring? Yeah, that sucked, and Dragon’s Stand is no different.
With gliding in place, the zone design gained some interesting verticality. Problem is, there aren’t enough ways to go “up” in most of the maps.

Event Metas/Group play – 4
Harsh rating, right? This is largely from Tarir and Dragon’s Stand having huge event gates to major chunks of the experience. If HoT content gets old, and it already has for some, underpopulated maps just won’t be able to succeed, due to bad scaling. Octovine is a sin bigger than Triple Wurm; No Romeo/Juliet fights in open world! It’s appropriate for raids and guild challenges, but open world needs mechanics that are easily understood.
Most events are decent, at least. Shame about those group hero points, as map populations are either dwindling or busy dealing with meta-events. Otherwise, playing with a friend is the best way to purge the boredom of roaming and dealing with mob groups.

Story – 6
The story is decent, but it bulldozes into its major plot points, so it feels empty in places. Much the same, there are some very satisfying moments (but shhshh, no spoilers, folks).

On the PvE end, Warrior is in a rough spot for newer content. Years-old weapon skills don’t compete with new enemy design, and a majority of what Warrior needs as a base class is wrapped up in Berserker. Other classes and elites are getting many tricks on much shorter cooldowns. Warrior condi without Berserker is laughable (maybe sword/Strength-interrupt-confusion…), and HoT mobs usually have higher toughness to ward off direct damage.

Thing is, if Warrior is going to be a selfish, self-sustaining class, it needs tools to do so more strongly. It needs better access to Stability, Resistance, and Retaliation in its weapon and utility skills. Might and Fury are already prevalent, so Warrior is good there. For the most part, the only decent weapon is Greatsword, because of frequent Fury and Might boons, along with Phalanx Strength. Besides anything with Berserker, that means having one decent build.

Warrior’s ranged weapons are a joke compared to Revenant hammer or Guardian longbow. No counters or anti-pressure (Rifle Butt does not count in the new environment), and the damage is substandard. If not for longbow’s burst, Warrior doesn’t even get decent ranged AoE.

Greatsword: About the only “good” weapon for PvE, and good support with Phalanx Strength.
Hammer: Needs to learn from Revenant about area damage and stun. Trait is garbage, and it needs Stability as a part of its kit. Slight damage boost to auto-attack couldn’t hurt, since ANet wants to keep hammer-CC and damage apart from each other. It does beat the kitten out of a breakbar, though.
Longbow: Needs better antipressure skills, and the three-arrow spread is lackluster when not at point blank. Pierce should be baseline (like Revenant).
Rifle: Pierce should be baseline. Needs better antipressure skills and a damage boost to be taken seriously as a single-target weapon.
Axe: Decent enough, best pairing for warhorn as dps/support. Offhand access to Fury and silly Whirlwind on low cooldown are beneficial.
Mace: Defensive with vulnerability stacks, it’s lackluster for PvE, but a good ‘tank’ weapon with Shield, if your raid needs it.
Sword: Base Warrior’s only condition damage besides Longbow burning. Decent at pressure and offhand block.
Torch: Actually handy, especially with the mobile fire field. Condi compliment to sword with Berserker.
Warhorn: Good as is, actually. Wish the trait hadn’t gotten nerfed.
Healing: Aside from Healing Signet, Warrior sustain still needs help. Mending needs to be Physical.
Banner: In a mostly good spot. Time between banner end and cooldown needs to be closed somewhat. 30 seconds is too much, 6 seconds (with trait) was too little. 15 seconds seems like a fair compromise.
Physical: Sigh. Long cooldowns, skills that don’t work right after 3 years, low damage that needs to be raised significantly. Then, they might finally be worth using, even while competing with Rage skills.
Shouts: Generally good, but lacking a taunt that should be there. On My Mark and Fear Me need shorter cooldowns, but trait-healing is a decent addition to support. Very little need to bring On My Mark in group play, since vulnerability is so easy to stack. Dropping the vuln to a 5 stack and adding a short Quickness burst would do much better.
Signet: A decent ‘selfish’ play. For HoT content, Dolyak Signet’s cooldown needs to come way down. Other signet effects are actually fairly strong and do well enough traited.
Stance: Excellent effects on a too-long cooldown, even when traited. Less than a 20% uptime, closer to 5-15% at best.
Rage: Better versions of physical skills, smidge powercreepy, but.. Headbutt? Seriously? The short cooldown at least is useful for triggering certain runes, but it’s otherwise pretty bad.

Ayrilana.1396:

Rauderi.8706:

Much agreed, Xil. Hard timers are boring, immersion-breaking, and deny build experimentation.

I agree that something should happen over time so a full-defense party can’t just faceroll things, but a death countdown should never be a standard for good, complex fight design.

How many people are experimenting with their builds currently when doing raids? I’m sure people have all gone full zerker and failed so there’s more to it than that.

I see people using this phrase often. Exactly how are timers immersion breaking?

So what ends up happening is:
1 tank in Soldier gear
1 healer in Zealot gear
8 Full-meta DPS in Berserker or Sinister (or Viper?) gear.

Forgive the sarcasm, but …woo. Such choice, many playstyle. Wow.
If you’re not doing that, you’re bringing down the entire raid, because the devs decided that using highly experienced playtesters was a good idea for balancing the encounter.

So, looking at the bad-design/time-limited option using fluffy hypothetical numerical comparisons, the party is on the hook to do 12.5% of the boss’s HP per minute, while contending with environmental mechanics. Each player, then, needs to do 1.25% per minute. Except you have tank and heal, which won’t be damage spec’d, so it’s more like 1.4%.
If a defensive party can buy just 30 seconds, the necessary dps drops by roughly 6%, given them breathing room to deal with other mechanics. But that’s 30 seconds of enduring mechanics that could rightly make them fail. In a proper soft-enrage scenario, their odds of surviving damage and mechanics damage drop every few seconds, so it’s still riskier to draw out the fight. It becomes about actually balancing defense and offense than “don’t screw up, not even once” and having your dps utterly fail because someone mis-timed an Eviscerate somewhere in Minute 2 of the fight.
Even in a hard enrage scenario, an 8 minute fight should take 7 minutes, with the last minute allowing for variation.

When I say “immersion breaking,” I don’t just mean someone’s head-canon or a group’s RP.
To go from “hard fight, we can do this” to “suddenly dead because cheap mechanic said so” doesn’t feel good. It hardly makes sense. There’s no story in it. Unless the story is baddie finishes some mcguffin task that explodes all the things, then by all means put a timer on it. But it shouldn’t be a standard.
Soft enrages come with a building tension and the possibility of clutch win. Players are gritting teeth and yelling “Go go go go!” into their mics, making desperation plays and sacrifices so the rest of the team might pull it off, while, numerically, the game is smugly continuing to amp up. “110% damage not enough for you? How about 120%? More damage, more!” until the party endures for a win or they can’t sustain and inevitably topple.
So, if the fight already has a compounding damage mechanic where the boss gains stacks of power when the players fail, let that be the limiter rather than an arbitrary timer.

Much agreed, Xil. Hard timers are boring, immersion-breaking, and deny build experimentation.

I agree that something should happen over time so a full-defense party can’t just faceroll things, but a death countdown should never be a standard for good, complex fight design.

A – Not really a Q/A thing.

B – If the open world is too difficult to solo, I recommend bringing a friend. Not only does the game get easier, it makes the slough through mastery levels less boring.

Whatever it is, it’s you losing a full second of dps, so unless Headbutt damage itself is amazeballs, I wouldn’t use it. As for adrenaline gain, there’s tons of ways to get it, and I don’t usually have a problem using my burst every time it comes up.
You don’t need to put the onus of smashing a breakbar on yourself, in a raid setting. Everyone on the attack should have at least one hard-CC skill for that. Headbutt becomes more of a breakbar insurance in case the rest of the raid’s not paying attention.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Knighthonor.4061:

Hi playerbase. Lets have a discussion on Inventory in GW2. Are you satisfied with it?

Do you want it improved? If so how?

Should more inventory be added or no?

Could there be any balance issues from increasing inventory?

For most people, the issue isn’t inventory, it’s inventory management. Too many hoard stuff & too few make use of the TP to sell the stuff they don’t need and buy the stuff they do.

I’d rather ANet work on helping those that hoard learn to manage their inventory, rather than expanding the number of slots.

’Tis the Gasseous Law of Stuff: Stuff shall expand to fill the Container provided.

Kidding aside, Key items need to be in the wallet. Collection trophy items should be grey, sellable junk, unless they’re needed for actual recipes (ie, Mistward gear).

Rin.1046:

- Mechanics that simplify your character’s capabilities (breakbar). The breakbar turns your chills, fears, taunts, immobs, stuns, dazes, etc, into the same thing, a way to reduce the breakbar. There are 3 stages to the breakbar, and in each stage the mob is immune to control effects. While some encounters have interesting effects attached to those breackbars, the fact your capabilities have been simplified can reduce the amount of fun had in my opinion, as it is taking away our ability to control the mob in a more precise way.

One of the more critical problems with the breakbar is that the immunities are all-inclusive. In some cases, downgrading CC would be more fitting than ignoring it entirely. Stun/Daze/Immobilize becomes functional cripples to help with kiting. Weakness should almost always be an option to mitigate damage. The “stun on break” mechanic could shift to “vulnerable to conditions” so that during the recharge phase, the boss takes Weakness/Immobilize/Cripple/Chill like it’s supposed to.
That’s much deeper gameplay than CC being “damage” to a breakbar.

- One hit kill skills (in particular ones that are hard to see or predict). I don’t mind wipe capable skills, providing the players have a half decent chance to deal with it. Thankfully, most encounters in GW2 do offer you a chance to stop or avoid these one hit skills.

I doubt ANet is going to get rid of that. It’s one of the problems that pushed and continue to push the game into a nothing-but-damage situation. If the party armorball takes 30k from some overpowered attack, all his toughness and vitality is worthless. It’s expecially noticable in large group content, where basic mobs eventually get so much damage, normal mitigation can’t really keep up. The answer to large groups isn’t to punish a single individual with overwhelming damage, but to target multiple people at once with the same or slightly higher damage of what they’re already used to.

- Bad camera angles or visual noise as part of the challenge. It is frustrating enough when these things get in the way of gameplay, but when developers use those difficulties as an actual part of the challenge it just causes even more frustrations, and is an incredibly bad way to design content in my opinion. I don’t think the visual noise was intended to be part of the challenge in GW2, but I have seen instances (in other games) where bad camera angles or poor visibility from skill effects are used as part of the challenge, so I hope Anet does not use this tactic as well. If it is poor visibility from environment effects, such as bad weather or fog, that is fine, but poor visibility from your normal skills effects is not ok. No one likes that.

Quoting for lawl. I had this happen to me last night. Pitched battle, 4v1 or something like that. Foliage clogged my screen aaaand.. Elite Sniper’d to death because I couldn’t see. “Seriously?” was about all I could muster before shrugging it off.

- AI with a large variety of skills, so it can react better to player actions and give the players more things to watch out for and deal with. The most enjoyable (non champ/legendary) mobs to fight in GW2, for me, are the practice NPC’s in the PvP lobby, because they have the same skills and traits set up as a full profession. They are thefore able to react a bit better than most mobs, because they have more tools at their disposal, and can through more things at you to deal with. If they made more mobs like that in game it would be a hell of a lot more entertaining. I understand that this is a difficult thing to do, I suspect it would put a lot more strain on the servers to achieve this, but I think it would be good to do for a select few mobs, such as champs and legendary bosses.

I would love this. Oddly enough, snipers and no-range frogs are two of my favorite enemies from a design perspective. (Elite snipers can go to Hades. That much damage shouldn’t be on an HP sponge…)
Snipers are sufficiently threatening, low HP, have anti-melee pressure, susceptable to control. A few tweaks and I’d be quite happy with them.
No-range frogs could be better if they actually “dodged” instead of standing there doing nothing. Make them expend a resource and give them counter-play. As it is, they play mostly like a shortbow thief, for the good and bad of it, but it makes their dodging and stealth rather endless. Better AI would be grand.

- Encounters where you don’t just fight the boss. Things like secondary objectives can add a lot of fun, but this depends on how fun these objectives are. This can often be linked with positioning, such as having to activate pressure plates at key moments. But it can also be things like keeping adds away from turrets, or collecting eggs and delivering them to NPC’s, while fighting mobs trying to stop you.

I’ve said in older threads that monolithic fights just don’t work well in GW2. Bosses ignore CC (partially fixed by the Defiant shift), monolith design leads to one-hit-kills for ‘challenge,’ and the whole thing eventually becomes a zerg-mash. Thaumanova is actually one of my more liked boss encounter sets. Subject 6 requires a lot of damage mitigation (dodging, healing poison), punishes mindless damage, and requires managing adds that need to be murdered/CC’d.
The reactor boss uses the environment as the enemy, and for as many times as I’ve fallen in kitten and died halfway, nothing feels as good as being the last one standing with the last 5% left to go and pulling that clutch win. But it still requires decent damage, since the last burn phase starts to permanently remove platforms, there’s a ‘soft enrage’ built in.

Overall, agreed that I’m glad to see ANet continuing to grow. 3 years is still young-ish in MMO terms, and they’re just now settling into a groove on character design, so encounter design will soon follow, hopefully.

TheLastNobody.8319:

Ephemiel.5694:

It’s a bit obvious that Anet wants to eventually replace Destiny’s Edge with the “new generation” [Taimi, Kasmeer, Marjory, Braham and Rox].

Why else kill both Traeherne and Eir, have both Zojja and Logan MIA and still keep us in the dark about Caithe’s loyalty?

If I could just touch on Caithe for a second, can we put her on trial or something? After the stunt she pulled I am never trusting her with anything ever again.

Oh, come on..
I could trust her with holding knives.
..with her kidneys.

Throdin.8061:

I just switched to sw-torch/bow condi zerker for sPvP because I just felt like giving zerker one last shot.

Over about 6 matches I won more 2v1s and 3v1s than you can count on both hands.

It was amazing.

Hope it wasn’t just bad enemies.

I believe it, yo. Burning is HoT right now.
…get it? Burning? Hot? Heart of Thorns?
…Nevermind, I’m gonna go play my Rev now.

Julie Yann.5379:

jeremiah.3974:

So what I’m understanding is that anyone who can’t play Warrior has serious l2p issues..I have ran nothing but Warrior since GW2 release, and I have NEVER had a nerf or anything be a problem. Find out what Anet does to their game in updates, find out what needs to be fixed, and adapt. I am still very balanced and have no problems killing ANY class. 3.5k Power, 3.3k armor, 56% crit, 19k health, etc. Condi is useless to me, but I can still kill without it and I don’t need to worry about survivability: I have that no problem.

It’s not that we can’t play warrior, it’s that we don’t want to anymore cause of Anet game design decisions. They basically took what was the most polished and versatile class in the game and slowly sucked the fun right out of it over 3 years.

And then added all the cool decisions to Revenant. Why bother with Warrior when there’s a class that, despite its restricted utility sets, is more versatile and powerful than Warrior?

I’m sure the best build involves Greatsword, Phalanx Strength, and full zerk gear.
Just like everything else. :\

But bring Condi/Torch/Berserker-traitline as an alt in case you need to fight the condi-only boss.

Elite banner is going to be preferred with any organized group. It minimizes mistakes from getting downed, and Headbutt doesn’t have much utility beyond managing a breakbar. An organized group is going to plow through the breakbar, so the extra 1 sec stun isn’t going to mean much, especially if it stuns you in return.

Otherwise, meta hasn’t changed for warrior.

Greatsword
Overall, fine as is. It’s the only warrior weapon to get any love, and there’s a reason it’s meta. Add on Phalanx Strength, and there’s no getting away from it.

Hammer
2 – Traited, you can get 100% uptime on the Weakness effect. Of course, that means taking the pathetic trait [Merciless Hammer] and getting nothing but a cooldown reduction for it. I generally like this one. It’s no Rev-hammer#2, but it does what it needs to.
3 – Hammer is for tackling groups and heavy on CC. Considering Greatsword gets nothing but damage love, the longer control time is fine in comparison. Decent, but like all hammer skills, underwhelming damage.
4 – Compare to some of the Revenant weapon skills, this knockback is low effect and low damage. (Then again, everything on hammer is low damage…) Tack on a projectile block and maybe this skill would be interesting for more than a high-cooldown interrupt.
5 – Other than bashing breakbars on bosses or catching a PvP opponent completely unaware, the skill is pretty garbage. Again, compare with Revenant: Twice the cooldown, single target instead of AoE, melee instead of range. Up the damage, up the stun to at least 3 seconds (maybe Merciless Hammer might be worth a single hit), and/or tack on a stack of Stability during the cast. Warrior needs more consisten sources of Stability anyway.
Earthshaker – I fell in love with hammer becuase of this ability. Adds another hard CC for a short-ish cooldown.

Axe
Missed offhand Axe, by the way.
A4 – The dual attack that offers Fury can be quite handy. Can’t speak to the damage, but the self-buff is a good lead into..
A5 – Silly AoE whirlwind damage. Relatively short cooldown, and doing this in a pack of enemies will spike adrenaline.
Eviscerate – I’m sure my build choices are a symptom, but I don’t often see the use in Eviscerate. It’s damage is barely good enough to exceed a good autoattack string, and I have better uses for my burst.
To think of it, Axe isn’t a terrible weapon overall.

Mace
Missed offhand Mace, too.
A4 – Another vulnerability, lowish damage ability.
A5 – AoE knockdown. Better than hammer-5, but not by much.
Skull Crack – Another burst CC, slightly faster, slightly longer at full burst.
Agreed on the overall assessment.

Sword
Decent pressure weapon overall. The choice of sword as condi always feels weird, and it could stand getting a few extra stacks of bleeding on its skills to add damage. Maybe add Torment instead of a bleed stack somewhere in the autoattack chain as further punishment for trying to run from a sword-user.
Offhand skills add a hint of range and Torment, along with a block for warding damage.

Shield
4 – A midrange closer, typically more reliable than the utility skills. Moderate damage with a decent stun. Decent cooldown when traited.
5 – Could use a little extra on survivability. Recommended Regen is a good idea.

Longbow / Rifle
While range shouldn’t necessarily be a warrior’s “good” shtick, these weapons are incredibly lackluster, especially compared to Revenant’s range option.
Longbow is slow, doesn’t pierce without a trait, and bad on control.
Rifle is even worse. Also doesn’t pierce, also bad on control, and does nothing for area effect without good damage to make up for it.

Warhorn
Decent support, and I don’t go without the trait (even after the nerf).

In the end, I’m glad you got me thinking about this, bLind. Warrior does need a lot of improvement, and weapons are a good place to start.

Alexander.6250:

For example I don’t have a problem with evading enemies. But those hylek just evade almost every ranged attack just by standing there. I think that is a very cheap way too lengthen fights and compensate for their artificial stupidity.

That’s where I see the flaws too. I find the ‘haha dodge range’ kind of amusing, actually, but it’s a cheap trick with no cost to the enemy. If it had a stamina cost, it would be affected by Weakness, and it would be limited by how often they actually dodge. It would allow for better counter play.
The Hylek knife murderers just need a second tell on their stun-murder attack, and they’d be good, I think.

Smokescales at least have to stay within their circle, and they’re fairly squishy once you reach them. The cooldown on the ability is a tad short, but not game breaking. I actually have few complaints about snipers, either, as long as the mob cluster doesn’t have too many at once.

There are just so many lazy designs that lead to cheap, one-note enemy AI, and that’s why there are accusations of ‘fake’ difficulty. Mushrooms, arrowheads, charging dinos, etc. Chak should fall under lazy AI, and they’re fairly low damage, but you seldom catch them alone, so they’re fine.

Choppy.4183:

Rauderi.8706:

I’m hoping so, OP.

If Revenant is a “new normal,” then Warrior has a lot of catching up to do in comparison.

Lol, I came across this Rev yesterday and all he did was spam Coalescence of Ruin just out of melee range so he could hit me twice with it, and then ran like hell whenever I got close.

The crazy thing is, even though I was clearly a far more competent fighter, he would have won if I actually pursued the engagement after he tried that a few times. I’d have burned up all of my mobility getting to him and he’d still have more to keep away. Meanwhile, I’d have burned up all of my defenses on his early attacks, and he could have kept spamming his #2 skill every 2s for 8k at range….

And that was a matchup between an incompetent Revanant and a Competent warrior, if I do say so myself.

Part of my “catching up” statement was indeed literal. =P
Warrior closers are garbage, and looking at an untraited Revenant, I start to get really jealous for what Warrior should be for both range and melee. I get that they’re supposed to be different play styles, but Warrior is just so basic kitten that it has no power in the new environment.

PvE case, dealing with HoT content. Warrior has insufficient stability and other tools to deal with many of the constant-CC mobs. My Ranger just lobbed my pet at it and laughed. My Mesmer laughs from her absurd condi damage. But base Warrior struggles, and it needs help across the board.

The fight started off pretty easy, but there’s something amiss in the tells for her damage circles. I would be standing outside them but still taking damage. The final third of that fight was stupidly frustrating.

Like many former-Warrior players, I’m at the crux of moving on to Revenant (or Dargonhurrdurr), because Warrior has been nerfed and ignored into the ground. I had a lot of thoughts that wouldn’t go well in disparate threads, so I’m giving it a shot and brain-drooling them here.

Weapons
Weapons need a revision so there is more than Greatsword. Start comparing weapons across classes to establish a new baseline, including effects, defenses, and cooldown times. Change the nature of closing skills, so they actually work. A lot of base Warrior weapon skills are based on 3-year-old design ideas, and they need an update.

Traits
Could do with some reorganization and tweaking. Without going into huge detail, the trait structure right now supports Phalanx/Greatsword and ShoutBow with little else really working. Given that some players have tried their hand at complete re-writes, it might be time to re-evaluate where Warrior is in PvE/PvP and sort traits accordingly.andsomethingaboutbaselinefasthandsthatpeoplewant

Skills
Shouts Decent, but lacks the new taunt mechanic that could give Warrior solid purpose in the ‘tank’ role. Leaving that for Berserker feels empty and shoehorned into the elite spec. (There isn’t even a Rage skill with a taunt..)

Banners Unique benefit, which is good for synergy and buff stacking, but the 30 second gap between the banner ending and the cooldown closing is unsatisfactory. I realize the reason the trait was nerfed was to prevent near-100% uptime, but 75% uptime has me looking for more reliable skills. I recommend a 75sec effect/90sec cooldown split, leaving only 15 seconds in between. Banners might be in a decent spot then.

Signets. Haven’t really used these since my early Warrior experience, except the heal/elite. Decent options, and I wouldn’t begrudge someone using them, though they’re a bit self-oriented.

Stances. Some suitably effective and nifty abilities, but the cooldowns are too long, even after being traited. I would say a minimum of 20% uptime should be the goal: Balanced (OK), Berserker (17%), Endure Pain (…8%), Frenzy (12.5%). Even traited, Stances fall short of decent utility time.

Physical. Oy. Again, cooldowns are too long, and the closing skills need fine tuning to actually work. Perhaps if the skills did more damage (Peak Performance is a disappointment), it might be worth the longer cooldowns, but really, each skill is a grab-bag of mediocrity. At least Rage skills show more consideration in being pseudo-Physical skills. (Even if Headbutt sucks.)

Adrenaline decay
My concession would be still have decay immediately after combat, but much slower. As it is now, it’s hard to build up the hits necessary, since most regular mobs are dead by the time a warrior tips enough for a burst skill.

Sustain/Defense
Healing skills need some fine tuning, mostly upward. Healing Signet is in a good spot, but most of the others seem lackluster. Mending as a Physical skill.
Warriors get very few active defenses (little/no access to blind, evade, minions to draw aggro, stealth, repositioning, block, reflect, stability, resistance, protection), so they must rely on active interrupts spread out among their weapons and Physical skills. Excellent in PvP, but in PvE, those defenses get ignored more often than not.
If Warrior is going to feel like a bruiser-tanky McBadKitten, it needs better access to self-buffs for Stability, Resistance, and Protection (and maybe more Retaliation), so it can withstand the hits most other classes use tricks to evade. Stances are actually fairly good for this, aside from the uptime issue noted above.

There’s a lot of artificial difficulties in ANet’s enemy design.
Well, to say “a lot” is inaccurate. It’s the same one-note fake difficulty, spammed ad nauseum.

Namely, excessive hard CC mostly used as a base attack.
Blinds from dust mites or Twilight Arbor Zojja.
Arrowhead side-roll.
Charging knockdown mushrooms, dinosaurs, and cavaliers.

I’m absolutely fine with these being mechanics, but when it’s their only mechanic, it’s excessive and poorly designed. Sure, you can dodge/block some of it, but you run out of defenses before you can even mount an offense at that point, and you can’t CC them because of an immunity or needing several to shave off the break bar.
Stability? That’s a joke, because those cooldowns are far too long and the effects far too short, and most classes don’t (or barely) get access to it.

ANet’s fetish for one-hit KOs is also a problem, ..but less so? Big attacks should be threatening, and low-HP, high risk play should come with that as a counter, but it feels like even an armored warrior is going to take fatal damage from the one-shots in GW2.

I’m hoping so, OP.

If Revenant is a “new normal,” then Warrior has a lot of catching up to do in comparison.

I suppose that means we need a new guild out there: [DBSG] Dreamer Bystander Support Group.

Preach on, fellow victims. If, one day, our voices somehow rise above the shrill din of that Six-forsaken bow, ANet might finally put an internal cooldown on it.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

Throw a cat out the window and see how they act.

On second thought, don’t do that. Forgot this was the internet.

Seriously.

The notion of throwing a cat out of a (hopefully first-story) window and not recording he hilarity is blasphemy in the modern era. “See how they act.” Pff. Press Record first.

Azure Prower.8701:

Simple solution: Pick guardian. It’s basically the same armor archetype and weapons set.

I tried Warrior, so as not to get Focus.

..I got more Rifle weapons than is natural for peace of mind. :p

Really ANet, time for Rev chest.

Dargonhurrdurr got a huge boost in damage after weak showings in beta weekends.
Herald does everything Warrior wanted and more.

I.. thought the adventures were supposed to issue daily/weekly rewards. Maybe I mis-read a blog post somewhere, but wasn’t that panned to be a thing? o_O

Vayne.8563:

Alicornus.7095:

Vayne.8563:

The story isn’t Shakespeare, obviously. But I haven’t played any MMOs where it has been. In most MMOs stories are a motivation to do something. They provide the motivation for your character to act. If I want actual story I read a book.

Weasel-words. There haven’t been open world games telling compelling stories either until a developer actually tried to push the boundaries of the genre and blew the contenders out of the water in the process. Video games in general have a lot of potential to tell compelling and even complex stories, whether this is something you as an individual look for in a video game or not is an entirely different matter.

As Doam pointed out, the HoT story was a step backwards from living season two. That’s not what I’m looking for from a developer, I’m looking for a company to man up and try to push boundaries, to knock the competitors down a peg instead of surrendering to mediocrity.
HoT is mediocre, unfortunately.

Nah the hot story was told better and the event chains in the open world are certainly better. Story isn’t just the instanced story, you know.

And the story’s nowhere near done. (It better not be, anyway :P)
A wise MMO will release that content over time, and that’s what I expect from HoT.

Maybe not 100% in this direction, but I won’t be surprised at all if the egg was corrupted by Mordy, becomes a big green dragony menace that was have to destroy properly.

There wasn’t really enough build-up to justify Mordy’s death that easily. So, evil egg, yay.

Agemnon.4608:

The wedding dress outfit is cute too, all that’s left is a princess outfit (males can dress like kings with the traditional robe and crown I’d totes buy that! ) which would be amazing on asura and human females

Excuse me.

If there’s going to be a princess outfit, it kitten well better make my burly Norn ranger look like a bloody princess.

I would buy the kitten out of that outfit, by the way. XD

ArchonWing.9480:

As an owner of a watchwork pick, I would support nerfing or removing the bonus, or make it so that all infinite picks grant something special.

I’d prefer the latter, honestly. Azurite still doesn’t show up, and Molten picks would be good for that.

Granted, it’s not the best use of design space, either, since every cosmetic pick would have to provide some kind of bonus. (And it’s still kinda pay-to-win.)

And then, “what about the other gathering tools?” …well, crap.

Majic.4801:

I really doubt they have enough time for this, but maybe they could achieve something similar by choosing Precursor Champions to compete on their behalf.

If it comes to that, doesn’t it say something about the system in place? :P

Andraus.3874:

This is why a lot of responses here are like “grow up, get over it, Ect.” Because to counter this type of negativity you have to rise above it and realize it isn’t worth getting upset over so you simply block report and move on.

Actually, the “grow up, get over it” crowd are the very people that would get silenced/kickbanned if ToS they agreed to when they bought the game were enforced properly. :P

DarcShriek.5829:

Rauderi.8706:

Vayne.8563:

But you don’t need every hero point to completely unlock your spec. If you want the extra hero points, you don’t start the event and you organize in map chat.

Because unlike other hero points, you get 10 hero points for these, so why wouldn’t they be harder? The reward is much higher.

Why should something be just as easy for a reward 10 times as great? How is that good game design?

Let’s not pretend the 10x hero points was a design choice for challenge. Not that I’m bitter about how they handled elite unlocks (disappointed is the closest I get), but it’s easy to spot that the hero point structure was designed to force acquisition of points for the elite specs.

These are character-defining trait lines, and they shouldn’t be locked behind “group” content, especially without indications of which challenges are group and which ones are “commune” gimmies. Granted, “locked” isn’t 100% true, since old Tyria completion fills out a majority of the skills and trait line, thanks to polite acquiescence by the dev team.

There are enough soloable hero points on Verdant Brink that no one needs to group up with anyone to get these so called “character-defining traits”.

Which is still no excuse to support bad game design.

Had one or two bugs with NPCs not converting or becoming Immune to the rift pull.
Oddly, that was less frustrating than the murder-floor phase with no proper tells of what to do.

Vayne.8563:

But you don’t need every hero point to completely unlock your spec. If you want the extra hero points, you don’t start the event and you organize in map chat.

Because unlike other hero points, you get 10 hero points for these, so why wouldn’t they be harder? The reward is much higher.

Why should something be just as easy for a reward 10 times as great? How is that good game design?

Let’s not pretend the 10x hero points was a design choice for challenge. Not that I’m bitter about how they handled elite unlocks (disappointed is the closest I get), but it’s easy to spot that the hero point structure was designed to force acquisition of points for the elite specs.

These are character-defining trait lines, and they shouldn’t be locked behind “group” content, especially without indications of which challenges are group and which ones are “commune” gimmies. Granted, “locked” isn’t 100% true, since old Tyria completion fills out a majority of the skills and trait line, thanks to polite acquiescence by the dev team.