Guild Wars 2

Or loot!
But yes this does kind of ‘kill’ the kill streak exp bonus and the 50% on kill exp boosters.

At first I thought this weapon was quite good, did some reasonable damage, made a fire field.
But there is just one issue, you either play with Sword or Axe. (mace is way too slow to really consider using in PvE… Unless you’re a reigning champion in the grand knit off competitions!) Axe, Great for physical damage and a bit of vulnerability.
Sword ok for conditions (New F1 Great for burning), but I find using the sword in the new HoT maps is more likely to get yourself killed than kill the foe. (due to it having horribly clumbsy animations (f1) and Sword 3.)

It also got me wondering.. Why didnt the warrior get a one handed ranged weapon instead of this offhand which im finding very awkward to use in any game mode. A one handed Pistol is fitting to the warrior, and would allow for way more builds and weapon choices to come out!
Pistol/Mace
Pistol/Shield
Pistol/Axe
Pistol/Sword
Besides what does the warrior really lack in its current state? A ranged one handed weapon, I really thought it was going to be one when we were told about elite specialisations.
Now I’m stuck with a soulbound Rodgort, which is now going to be more than likely stuck in my bag doing nothing. I guess we could always have H.O.P.E that the next Elite specialisation will have a one handed ranged weapon ^.-

We unlocked our guild hall with just 5 people.
Its just the final boss which can catch you out if you play melee/melee… Which forced me to play 1 melee weapon 1 ranged weapon (warrior). But these encounters make me wonder why on earth did the warrior get a Torch as an elite weapon and not a main hand pistol? Since I’m finding the need for a one handed ranged weapon more important than a silly offhand weapon that does very little other than create pretty effects (of course it causes burning and cleanses two conditions).

But anyways, the guild halls are possible to be unlocked with 5 or so players, it may take you a few tries, but you’ll get it in the end when you finally know the attack animations!

EvilSardine.9635:

Emersky.4872:

This is very helpful as I wasn’t sure if the Greatsword would be obsolete as a Berserker. I’ll be picking the Ascended Greatsword. Thanks!

GS won’t be obsolete since berserker isn’t a good spec and there really isn’t a reason to be running it over a normal warrior.

Warrior might actually be able to pull off this elite spec in Sinister gear, being that you will have maximum Condi damage while maintaining your Crit chance and slightly lower Power.

To me it looks like this elite spec was designed around this stat type. As an example the Longbow’s rage burst skill will actually do more damage via burns than the standard providing that the target is either running towards you or away from you.

It is too early however to say the elite spec sucks, we only had 2 weekends to play it (too soon to jump to conclusions).

I however was hoping for a pistol main hand for the warrior (look at that H.O.P.E.. oh.. ok that’s ironic) Being that we lacked a 1h ranged weapon.

Time will tell how good the Torch is, but from what I used it for, I actually found it not that bad at all! Lets find out on friday!

This is why I made the proposal for the rifle, to change how it plays all together.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/The-Rifle-The-shotgun-Proposal/first#post5579869
(Heh.. Shameless topic bump).

Rifle to me on the warrior feels to simple and basic, with nothing else going for it other than flat, boring, damage.

For me I have found it to be very useful as a warrior to have all of the weapons you can use in your bags with you at all times. This means you can swap in and out of weapons depending on your circumstances.

The torch really acts as an offhand utility weapon mixed in with burn application.
Skill 5 allows you to clear two conditions while creating the fire field around you, which can be used in an organised group to stack might on the boss rather than before the boss. Also means all your blast finishers will be doing damage and be giving might (Thief Short bow comes to mind).

Greatsword however, will forever be the bread and butter of the warrior class. Might on critical hits + so much utility.
If you don’t have an ascended Greatsword already, pick that. If you do then pick what you think you will use/need.

Now, lets change this around, spec yourself for burn duration and a bit of physical damage, Sadly I could only test this with Rampager stats (and not sinister).
The longbow then actually does 3,398 more damage after all the skills are used once.

In the PvP setup.
Berserker amulet, and rune of strength.

The Rifle total was :
26,088 damage

The Longbow total was:
20,106 damage

So yes the rifle does do more in that scenario, but when you start playing with sinister gear (which yes will become important with the elite spec) the longbow then wipes the floor with the rifle.

Totals ranged from (Rampager):
25,047 damage (not speckled for burn damage (still in strength runes)
and
29,486 damage specced for burns (with the rune of Balthazar).

I should have put it this way instead of the way I put it.. but ontop of all this the longbow has greater utility all across the board, making it the only true viable ranged weapon… also you can AOE farm with it, if you are into that kinda stuff.

How did the necromancer ask his crush out on a date?
Queens Gauntlet and Chill?

I do love the changes made to the Zerker!
Its become quite a class to play in the PvE environment (didn’t play it in PvP due to me not wanting to miss out on rewards.. HA!) The condi damage on Sword / Torch is great! When specced for pure burns, you can see your burn numbers hitting a constant 4-8k damage tick. 10-16 Avg. Burn stacks in PvE.

Physical damage on the GS and Axe Rage skills seems an improvement from what they were before. And these two burst skills work like a charm with Blood Reckoning, the AoE Cleave and heal, might make me change my mind on keeping healing signet! However, this heal does not work with a Condi setup, being that it is based on damage dealt, conditions do not contribute to this healing.

Rage skills are really like Marmite as it stands. I can see a place for Outrage, Sundering leap and Blood Reckoning in Zerker setup, but the others i really cant see any play in the PvE environment. Unless there is some kind of a boss who sends out OHKO projectiles which you need to knock back to the foe to kill?

Traits are much nicer now and work well with other builds.
However I did notice that Dead or Alive does not scale with healing power.. well it does but 10 HP increase isn’t scaling.

It would also be nice for Last Blaze to give rage skills a cooldown reduction.

Further more, Fatal Frenzy: how come this doesn’t give 2s of super speed instead of Swiftness? Would mean the F2 can be used to get in closer and faster to land that burst … or run away.

To me as it stands, the rifle has a very boring play style to it. Its just a flat out ‘damage’ weapon. (Damage in quotations of course haha). I find that you can more or so essentially AFK with the rifle while playing, as the longbow forces you to aim your skills with skill shots. Its a mix of utility and player interaction which kills the rifle for me.

Ok saying they dont want to change the rifle too much, what if they were to change or merge the cripple in with vuln, so you’d fire aimed shot (which ironically is a hip shot) which would cause both cripple and vuln on the foe.
Then you could add in a new skill called [Blind Fire] where you fire (12x) shots in a small arc over the space of say 2-3s (like the new Zerker F1 skill) meaning some will miss, but up close the damage will be decent.

What gets me, is that even after the ‘Buff’ to rifle, the 1 skill does less damage than a longbow 1 skill… Now my Longbow is Cele, and my rifle is Zerker, yet the bow still does more damage per shot. Wasn’t the rifle made out to be the single target DPS go to weapon? As currently its failing on that goal.

As it stands currently the rifle has a very niche role in Gw2, Back line sniping or roaming. When put against the longbow in PvE the Longbow wins on both Auto attack and skill damage + Utility. Even the overall damage done on [Combustive Shot] does more damage over time than [Kill Shot] does. (providing the target stays in the field for the duration).

Now what I would propose to create a wider use for the rifle across all game modes is to change the rifle into more of a brawling weapon; A shotgun. Built for your 0-600 or 0-900 range encounters.

Reason for the rifle being a shotgun rather than a sniper/machine-gun:

Lets face it, the warrior isn’t an assassin, we’re a brawling class, meant for close in your face fights. I can see the kill shot builds working for classes such as the thief and ranger but not the warrior. The purpose of this shotgun would be a short range cone cleave weapon hitting up to 3 targets in front of you. This would then allow the warrior to fit the shotgun into a melee bruiser build designed to keep up constant pressure in close range encounters. This would then allow for more utility and use for such a weapon. giving it that multi target range attack option.

Types of skills to expect:

1:
Frag shot (3 foes):
Fire a shotgun blast hitting foes in front of you, Will be a narrow cone aoe getting wider the further away the shots go, because of this being able to hit 3 foes the range would drop from 1,200 to either 600 or 900 being max range. (most fights arent done beyond 600 range anyway(unless in WvW))
Max range 600-900

2:
Slowing Flechette round (3 foes):
Fire a shell filled with flechette’s coated in a toxin designed to slow reflexes.
Causes 2-3s of slow
Max range 600-900

3:
Buckshot (3 foes):
Fire a heavy blast of shells at a foe causes more damage the closer they are to you and cause vulnerability equal to the distance from you (more vuln the closer).
High damage 0-200m 8% Vuln
Mid damage 200-350m +6% Vuln
Low damage 350m + 4% Vuln
Max range 600-900

4:
Beanbag round (Single target):
Fire a beanbag at your foe winding them and causing cripple to the foe.
Cripple duration 3-5s
(Can be made range dependant too, closer they are, the longer the cripple)
Max range 600-900

5:
Slugshot (Single target):
Fire a high powered round at your foe inflicting high damage with increased range.
Max range 1200m

F1:
High explosive round (Multi target AoE 5 foes):
Fire a high powered shot which explodes on impact causing a small knockback and damage.
Knockback range 50-120m (Small knockback)
Max range 1200m

Alright that’s my suggestion of a rifle rework to be remade into a shotgun brawling weapon, giving it more support to your party and greater viability for all game modes. This proposed change would give so much utility to the rifle and hopefully create a more enjoyable mid range combat setting.

Tell me what you think about this proposed change, what you’d suggest and what you like or don’t like.

I want to use the torch but feel held back with the ‘elite’ specialisation. Why can’t we have another skill training tab made for the weapon where you have to ‘Train’ to use it, once unlocked it can be used with all specialisations rather than just the elite. (But you must have HoT to unlock).
((Still feeling pretty bummed out about making Rodgort to be disappointed by the specialisation, ha!))

Ohoni.6057:

Maybe I went too glassy in my build (I went like 40% zerker, 40% soldier, 20% rabid?), but I was on my back more often than on my feet. Those snipers would just obliterate me, way more than other classes I played.

I played a little on the reaper just to see how the changes made this class, and wow! Mordrem actually feel like paper bags! Hitting the reaper like little wet noodles! YUM!
The Reaper feels like it has high sustain and high damage while not having to worry about being CC’d as you always have enough Death Shroud around to pop into it and pop your Stability skill.

On the warrior however, you’re right, in full berserker, its the other way round, you’re the paper bag and get shot into the ground in a few seconds. (Anet did say they wanted Berserker and Reaper to do the opposite things, ha! Guess we didnt see this one coming.)

When the Berserker elite specialisation was revealed, we were all sold an opposite of the Reaper, a fast attacking raged filled killing machine. However, after playing the Berserker elite specialisation, it actually felt like it was lacking this fast paced rage filled rampage… which funnily enough we already have with the skill [Rampage].

The concept of the Berserker sounds amazing on paper, but in practice it really felt like it was lacking something… Ommph? Power? Damage? Wow factor? Use and utility?
As an example of this, I can present the following skill as the biggest disappointment to me (Burst skills):

Sword:
[Flaming Flurry]
Lash out with a flurry of strikes that destroys projectiles and shoots fireballs at foes in front of you.

This sounds great! but the damage is just so low! Over two seconds I was able to put on 2,000-3,000 damage in full berserker gear (HA! The Irony) While Normal Flurry does from 6,000-10,000 damage. Even the condition damage feels low due to the incredible low burn time.

Axe:
[Decapitate]
Wow! this sounds brutal… Oh. It’s basically [Eviscerate] with less damage and a shock wave, It would have been a nice twist to change this skill to a ranged skill, like what was done to the Sword with[Flaming Flurry]. This would then give the player the choice of a risky close range burst attack or a medium ranged burst. But akin to Sword the burst feels clunky.

Greatsword:
[Arcing Sear]
Probably the one we all waited for! And.. its exactly the same as Arcing slice, just with a little less damage and no fury (which plays a big part in synergy (fury) Arms trait line master slot – 150 Condition power when you gain Fury), this means if someone is playing on a Sinister warrior, they would have to gain maximum adrenaline use the [Arcing Slice] burst, gain maximum adrenaline again and use the [Arcing Sear] burst to gain the highest potential damage via use of traits (which furthermore don’t seem to compliment each other as well as hoped.). Nether the less, this F1 PBurst skill is ok.

Hammer:
[Rupturing Smash]
I only tested this weapon a small amount, Sure the weapons burst actually does a little more damage this time around… But I’m pretty sure if anyone see’s a warrior using a hammer in Berserker specialisation while dungeon running, they will be asked to leave. It’s just simply counter productive to push everything away from you (unless there are mobs you need to disperse which we haven’t seen yet). The only thing that bugs me with the hammer leaps however is the odd occasional skill delay after button press. I’ve had this happen to me countless times where the hammer decides to have a tea break in the middle of combat and then suddenly jumping across the map to where you clicked 1 second ago.. This issue transfers onto the [Sundering leap]…. Shudder. Would be nice if the skill was a directional skill (aimed by player) where the warrior dashes forwards and slams the hammer into the ground, creating shock waves of rock in the forwards direction. Now.. this doesnt change the CC issue, so it could be suggested to replace the Knock back effect with an immobilise and short daze.

I will skip out the other weapons, as I personally am not a fan of their 1-2-3 and 1-2-3-4-5 skills (Or in other words, I find them very boring to play with…I’m looking at you Rifle and Longbow).

The Torch:
I heard the hype! I saw the video, I made the weapon! [Rodgort] And…. its slow… really slow, you slam your torch into the ground and summon a rock that can be outrun after a huge delay. For an elite specialisation thats all about speed, the weapon which comes with it… is.. well I’d have expected the Reaper to get this!

[Blaze Breaker]
3/4s is a long time for a skill like this, 3/4s cast time doesnt make combat feel or look fluid at all. It’s a torch, a light torch made of wood or metal.. unless you know of a torch made of lead which takes a longer time to hit the ground than a massive hammer then please do tell me (referring to the Hammer 3 skill [Hammer Shock] 1/2s). The damage on this skill’s tool tip actually made me think, ‘Whoa nice! works well for a hybrid or Berserker build’ Which it does, the damage of the skill is good and acceptable, when placed right, you can land all kittens! Making it a good choice of weapon for boss fights. However against the smaller foes, (the ones which matter the most) The players, this weapon becomes inconsistent in the amount of times it actually hits. Be it 0-5 times, may the odds be forever in your favour. I furthermore found a bug with this weapon, When casting [Blaze Breaker], before the animation finishes, if you are to dodge (to avoid something pretty dangerous) this will put the skill on a full cool down and no damage or skill effect will be carried out. 1/2s cast time would be acceptable.

[Flames of War]
3/4s
Same as before, the cast time creates a clunky clumbsy warrior… But you look pretty cool setting the place ablaze! Casting this skill in the middle of combat seems to interrupt the game play and fluidity of the combat system. Lets say you want to get a fire Aura to deter those people from attacking you. You wind up this long cast time.. ‘oh.. hello lead torch!’ and you then leap through it. Being that this is however a condition cleanse as well, it may need the long cast to be interruptable… On the other hand, since we now have a massive rise in condition damage builds and the ease and ability to just simply spam conditions till the other player finally runs out of health to avoid the inevitable… a burnt out death (Ha! Burn puns.) Maybe we do need more condition cleanses which are fast paced (like the Berserker specialisation… well at least its meant to be!) and keep up with the speed of the Guild Wars 2 game play.

At the current state of the Berserker, I feel that I have wasted the time and money to craft this legendary weapon in hope that the Berserker specialisation was going to be amazing (It feels like I bought a pet dog to find out that it didn’t come with any legs to play fetch with).

The F2 button, I think its clear… all players say the same about this one. ‘Whats my cooldown again?’
Pressing the F2 button is another issue, I think I realise only now why they gave us Rage skills… since its kinda what we’re doing when we go to press F1 right after pressing F2, That 1s delay needs to go (Insert video of angry Germany kid(I do hope you know which video I am referring to!(Don’t infract’ me bro!))).

The Traits, I wont go into each one of them in too much detail, but its been batted around a lot! And its something that cant be ignored, the traits on the Berserker specialisation line aren’t bad.. well not that bad at all actually! the lack of a trait for Rage skills however… well that is bad, Thief gets a Physical trait, Guardian gets a Trap trait ect ect… might as well merge Physical skills and Physical 2.0 together, since they are actually exactly the same thing just with more glitter on them (will get onto these… ‘skills’ in a moment). Now.. back on track the part which is most disruptive is the organisation of all of the vanilla traits. the order of the traits actually make build crafting very very hard, as right now I’m struggling between picking three specialisations (for PvP); Strength, Defence and Discipline… oh. As you can see this is the black hole for the warrior. Set your engines for warp 10 and you’ll still be sucked right back into these traits.

Defence, has the tools to survive, Discipline makes the warrior not feel like a Reaper stacked up with self chill, along with fast hands.. or as we shall now call it, vacuum hands.. since you just cant get away from it!! (especially in Berserker!) And if you drop Strength, you will drop 10-40% in damage… that isn’t a small amount either! How can this be avoided? well.. we could swap the Hammer trait from Discipline with the Berserker Power trait, that way… oh wow… no way! most of the burst traits in the burst tree!! (what synergy!) Well stuff like this does need to happen to make builds… well easier to work around. Currently to play Berserker you sacrifice too much to gain so little back.

Now… Time to rage… well the skills that is anyway:

[Blood Reckoning]
Nice, we get a 30-50% damage to heal skill, I’ve wanted this for a very long time! (always personally thought that the Warriors stance should have been swapped with the Guardians Meditation, but now we have this.. I actually dont care about that swap now!) However, being that this skill actually does nothing by just pressing the button, the 1/4 cast time feels clumsy. If this skill was made instant cast, would it really be that much of a game breaker? Since it doesn’t actually heal you till you attack, you could actually say that that is when the healing starts making the cast time range from 0-6s! (which sadly happened to me in the Beta maps… got CC’d then the mob ran away leaving me there on the floor to QQ about my failed heal which could have saved me if it didnt have a cast bar.)

[Outrage]
Cool, a stun break, which breaks stuns. Lets look at the thief’s version I’m sure it wont be as am.. oh. give that stun break the same effect as [Balanced Stance] with Rousing Resilience, (1,000 toughness regardless of stun break or not) give this skill at least some base stability for a short time maybe even create a small 180 AOE slow for 1s (its not a block or Knock down.).

[Shattering Blow]
… thinking of use for skill… ERROR 404 Use can not be found. This skill could be amazing. one use for this could easily be made into a two step skill! (I love this concept!) First it acts as a pull! You pull the foe towards you, then you carry out a smash into the summoned rock! Causing Daze, Confusion and cripple. Only this way can you redeem its horrible clunky locked in place animation. Try using this skill in a realistic combat scenario as it stands currently… It’s just another bleed skill.

[Sundering Leap]
Suffers the same issues as the current [Earthshaker], sometimes has a cast delay due to the nature of the leap. All this skill is, is a glorified [On My Mark] Just with more glitter and more targets on yourself rather than the foe. as soon as you use this skill in PvE, you have every mob attacking you… Thus making ones self the most vulnerable target in town… oh how Ironic. Warriors currently have a lot of access to Vulnerability… so why on earth do we need more?! This skills effects need to change to become useful in any combat scenario. We could change it to Knock down with leap.. but then its just another CC skill. To avoid the issue this leap has the animation could be changed to that of Sword 2 leap, and then upon landing cause a small launch (say 100 range) along with a cripple, and daze (at the end of the launch effect Could be carried out by a 2nd part skill)… Sundering their body from the floor along with their mind from their body (with the follow up skill(if there ever will be one)).

[Wild Blow]
‘Hey all, welcome to the party, who is Phalanx?’ WHAAMMM! XXXX has voted to kick you oh yes… as if Longbow rangers in dungeons wasn’t a CC problem already!!
The skill just looks like Rampage 1, would have been nice if it was a dash attack like [Bull’s Charge], upon contact the foe would go flying (short range of course). But why oh why would anyone want to use this skill in a current dungeon? ’It’s part of my rotation!’ says the ex-ranger player. The idea about being a warrior is about being up in some ones grill constantly, not slamming them away from you to then walk back up to them to say sorry. The skill is counter productive as it stands. the best use for this skill is PvP and blow outs for Res prevention.

And last but not least the one skill I actually carried out in real life as soon as I got to play the Berserker.. funnily enough I actually got a stack of self confusion too! (current bug in game when traited for distracting strikes).

[Head butt]
A 3s stun on a 20s Cooldown. Works with the whole in your grill I’m raging at you kind of play… aaaaand then it gets ruined with the self stun. Forcing you to specialise yourself in stun breaking.. Guess that’s the new thing for warriors then hey? Stun Breaks ha! If you pick this skill, you’re pretty much forced into either taking the Adept trait for F2 being a stun break, or by taking our so impressive 10s glitter filled CD stun break! The range of this skill, ok I understand it, but as soon as you go off and hit anything with a defiance bar.. you just wonder.. why on earth is this skill in the game?! You hit them with your head, you stun yourself but the target decides now’s a good time to turn up the heat and spit lovely arrows at you, or fire, or any attack really.
What made me laugh was the tool time. Best laugh I’ve had in a while actually. By picking this skill you get a stun break which causes a stun to the guy who stunned you which in turn stuns you making you need another stun break to break the stun which you just did to yourself… oh… how.. stunning.
How to fix Head Butt? well, I’d say replace the 1s stun with say, 1/4-1/2s daze and see how that plays out, if it works Good Game, if not.. Back to the drawing board!.

Over all I feel that in the current state of the Berserker, the elite specialisation feels sub par to the standard warrior. It feels clumsy, it feels sluggish (the transition of F2 > F1) and feels heavily restricted with a 15s time limit of actually berserking. The traits don’t synergise too well with others due to the nature of the shotgun trait specialisations the warrior has. I had high hopes for the Warriors elite specialisation before the beta and feel that I’ve wasted time preparing for this specialisation in terms of weapons [Rodgort](Which I’m now considering to sell) and armour. I do hope to see a viable build which can be used, useful in many scenario’s, fluid, fast, compliments the warrior, is user friendly and doesn’t just see use in 10-20% of the game. Rage skills as a whole on top of all this just feel like glorified physical skills in their current state (With sparkles and glitter).

“If that was the case then we’d need to reflect the player when they hit a Wall of Reflection! To answer the question, though, we don’t have the capability to make players count as projectile finishers, so this isn’t part of what the skill does.”

So no, you cant

Something tells me this weapon will be used as a hybrid, Just like the Sword mainhand. It provides you with a ranged cripple and burn, along with a mobile Fire field allowing you to carry out blast finishers, leap finishers and projectile finishers without having to worry about positioning.
I am hoping this weapon is a hybrid of condi and power so i don’t have to bring out my sinister gear again.

My only issue with this glider skin, is that the green glow seems way too far out and too large, so large in fact that it becomes distracting and obstructive.
Rather than having two massive glowing green balls of plant goop on each wing, I’d rather it were two smaller wind streamlines and closer in to the wings themselves.