Guild Wars 2

Looking at necros briefly all I can really say is that many of their abilities and capabilities stem from the profession being capable of punishing the attacker through conditions or being near the necro passively. Even if you land the most perfect CC imaginable, many of the traits a Necro has will counter you for it.

THAT said, I think necros could use a slight bit of stability somewhere, like 1-2 second duration traits placed in a few places across the trees. They do not need much stability, rather I think they have other issues than being CCed down…

Sorry, got caught up with errands.

@BurrTheKing, Cleansing Ire is perfect as it is. Until the moment where conditions aren’t ripping people apart thus the trait becomes broken for any builds still running the hypothetically nerfed conditions, it should stay in Master. …Or until Arenanet puts options in things like Strength Tree or an alternative in Discipline.

@JETWING, Burst Precision is a Grandmaster in Strength, there is no conflict.

@killahmayne and @perko (Same inquiry and discussion), good points.

- I will say that the Tactics Minor Traits when compared to the other tree lines are in relative strength much weaker than the counterparts. On that same token, the Tactics Major traits are the most synergetic of the trees, as you know exactly what traits in the line to take at each tier for any support build the warrior might run with slight variation and the relative power very much the same.

- My worry is that by making the minor traits too appealing that the delicate balance of the Tactics tree might get nerfed as a whole to compensate, it already does its job very well for Shout Warriors, Phalanx Warriors and some regard, the semi-underpowered Banner Warrior. If we start saying Reviver’s Might should be something like “Banner bonuses are now 10% more effective” or “Fear Durations are reduced by 25%”, you can expect something like hard nerfs to other major traits or worse, the abilities themselves.

- But if you want, I did have some ideas for the minor traits which I did not put in, if this is an avenue people wish to pursue?

killahmayne.9518:

I do agree that Cleansing Ire does need a rework, however putting CI as a Grandmaster trait is the worst possible thing you can do to it.

Tactics however, the minor traits are garbage for the most part. Nobody has a reason to go into this tree other than shout healing, or might stacking in pug parties in dungeons.

Determined Revival is fair for a minor trait and actually isn’t bad. 400 toughness while reviving isn’t terrible at all and does have its good uses. It is probably our best minor trait in tactics

However Faster Healer and Reviver’s Might are completely garbage. I don’t know if any of you guys have tested Faster Healer but literally the revive is only a second faster.

And seriously 1 stack of might to your party when you revive?? How can anybody justify this actually being a good grandmaster trait.

Tactics would be a more viable choice in sPvP/roaming builds if it had worthwhile minor traits. You don’t even need to change its identity as a quote on quote support tree. Just rework the traits. Tactics as it stands right now is more of an all or nothing tree with no in between.

Minor traits aren’t supposed to be ground-breaking, although I will confess the single stack of might for a grandmaster minor upon revive is a touch…weak. Regardless there are about 3 different builds (and to each of those their variations) that commit already to this tree for 30 (6) points, which is why I can’t really validate given the tree an unnecessary buff. …Maybe the grandmaster could be increased healing power?

Fast Healer is absolute good as it stands, a single second is definitely the difference between someone getting revived or someone getting stomped. It has its nitch, and that’s perfectly fine for a minor trait. Hence the name ‘Minor’.

bigmonto.4215:

I don’t understand why you think that warrior is so broken that you have to fix warrior from the ground-up. Do you play warrior at all?

The traits aren’t quite 100% ok, some aren’t synergetic at all with gaps between what makes a condition build versus what helps a power build, and so on and so forth. It’s also getting rather stale to keep insinuating I do not play warrior, I know how strong they are, I know where they are weakest. I also know we are not in a good state as everyone seems to think, my changes are to prevent a worst case scenario.

bigmonto.4215:

In fact I would say warrior is the embodiment of good RPG design. Why? it encourages experimentation. With a warrior you really just need CI + 10 to 15 in Discipline to get warrior’s sprint and maybe fast hand. Other than that everything else goes. Some are more effective than others, but none are very terrible. If you just look around the warrior forum, you will know that the number of warrior build is just staggering.

What I bolded is not build variety, that’s build necessity. You have implicitely proven the issue with our profession in a whole half of this game. There are multiple other builds other professions can work with that don’t involve using the same exact traits over and over again, why are we choked into going into Defense tree every single time?!

Don’t you see the issue with that? Warriors are flawed from the get-go, so rather than continuing to call for nerfs to various things making Warriors “Viable” now, why not start from the beginning, set the groundwork and then work on things like the Miserable incarnation of Mending, the contrary mechanic of Healing Surge, the stupid clunky Physical utilities, Riflelol, etc.

I am extremely aware of just how close we are to being somewhere near where we were at Launch. Why do you think we are so much fun to balance?

bigmonto.4215:

In almost all RPGs I play there are perhaps 1 to 2 meta builds per class. You can in theory try other builds, but they are just so bad that they get destroyed instantly.

Fortunately Guild Wars 2 seems to have flunctuating amounts of meta builds across professions, in which can get molded into either WvW comps, PvE comps or SPvP comps. This game seems to have the most freedom, as you described, for builds. The problem is that warriors, unless I am mistaken, are the only profession which is forced in over half their viable builds to run CI. Is there any trait in any other profession as needed as Cleansing Ire?

bigmonto.4215:

I also don’t feel Warrior is OP, as base on my experience, I get destroyed as much as I have destroyed. But the biggest thing is that as a warrior I can always survive a while so that I feel like I am contributing to something. I cannot say that playing as other classes.

I would say Anet should try to give other classes the same options.

Of course other professions have this issue as well, but everyone seems to be under the impression that warrior can’t possible lose power. We have only a single tree that keeps us viable in any Player versus Player setting. No other profession that I recall has this issue, and the sooner we make it so Cleansing Ire is not the only viable solution for dealing with conditions, the sooner Warriors can achieve REAL build diversity.

perko.8309:

- snip -

I really can’t agree on not moving it up to grandmaster, honestly grandmaster traits MAKE the tree line, they have the biggest impact on builds and capabilities. You can actually see and notice the impact they have, and Cleansing Ire does exactly that.

We would not even be having this discussion if Conditions were not in such a good state as they are now. Maybe CI might not need to be moved now, but if and when certain condition-‘abusing’ (Not all condition-like) builds become more in-line with the rest of the game, will we see Cleansing Ire become something of an immunity as a Master Trait.

My changes might be a bit soon, perhaps anticipating a rework that will never come, but I am purely looking at the trait-lines and I see Cleansing Ire as a game-changing trait.

With that said, since there is such an apprehension, I will edit the post changing it to a relative change in the future. This only means that the current state of the game can’t afford warriors not having it as a Master trait, but it should be changed if warriors are going to be balanced.

Now, the minor traits of the tactics line. Your biggest qualm is that they are the weakest point of the tactics line. I disagree heavily, they are reactive support traits that balance out nicely with the Shout, Banner, and Phalanx warriors that run them in any setting. Shout Warriors are probably the least likely to like them that much in WvW, unless it is some sort of small scale combat where they can pull off a rez and that 400 toughness, 10% rez speed, and a bit of might on revive helps. Banner Warriors I would like to see a bit more in PvP, but rezzing allies is HUGE in that environment, and having my suggested change to Powerful Banners in the Strength tree would help make them more of a thing. Lastly, Phalanx Strength Warriors are more in between, but 400 Toughness makes them a hell of a lot less glassy when someone stupidly gets down by Mossman to get them back up.

Tactics is EXTREMELY balanced and worth the investment for Support orientated builds.

BurrTheKing.8571:

-Snip-

Brawler’s Recovery in my incarnation is absolutely a situational trait, but the thing is that of all the conditions in this game, Blind really impacts our playstyle. It can stop most of our burst skills save a few, it prevents adrenaline gain, and every profession has some amount of builds with decent blind uptime. The trait’s purpose is to eliminate this threat all together, but bear in mind it also involves said warrior having to weapon-swap constantly to keep the immunity going so the warrior can’t just sit in Main-hand axe swinging the whole time.

And yes, as long as conditions exist as they currently are, and there are not more options for warrior in other trees to help alleviate condition pressure, CI will continue to be a must.

And I ultimately agree with what you said about the other healing skills, but my discussion here is purely on the ground-work for the warrior, the traits. Once traits are established in a better state can we move on to things like Weapons, Utilities, and other warrior mechanics.

bigmonto.4215:

Man I just don’t see what is up with the CI hate. Personally I am glad that you are not a game designer for this game. I totally agree with what Cygnus said about CI. All you do is force all warrior to go 30 in defense. And no the tank-ability is not the issue, you are just decreasing build diversity. Have you been to either wvw or spvp lately, I can’t survive very long at all without Berserker stance even with CI and other conditional clear utilities. And when I play as a conditional warrior, I have no problem ripping other warriors to shreds. CI is not the issue.

You are posting as a warrior in the name of warrior balance so that you can nerf them. It sounds like a big lie, I am sorry to say.

I…I don’t know what to say.

I suppose my small rant about CI might have implied to some that I thought it was OP, in actuality I think it is a wonderfully needed trait for warriors needing a means to use their mechanic to deal with conditions that needs to consistently stay as it is now.

But as I have stated it has too much power as a Master Trait, and the current state of the game forces it as a necessary trait to survive.

I actually think it is disgusting that Warriors are FORCED to take up this trait regardless of where it would be. If this trait was nerfed to Grandmaster in Tactics, Warriors would STILL take it out of the gross misuse of condition spam that wrecks the profession, and any profession in this game.

And if you take into fact the impact it has, and its power level relative to other traits in this game, putting it in grandmaster is not so far-fetched.

I can go into a talk about how bad other healing utilities are, how dreadful the physical ones are, the unpracticality of unviable weapons…but if you want to fix the warrior, you have to start from the ground-up. Do not automatically assume every post that wants to touch the warrior is a nerf, my suggestions are meant to help ground out the traits we have now so the profession won’t keep getting nerfed in terms of numbers on our abilities. Because honestly, if I see one more Healing Signet nerf thread, I might toss something out my window.

Cygnus.6903:

Your suggestions for brawlers recovery is overpowered. Whereas your suggestion for CI just ensures that every warrior has to go 30 in defense.

Other then that, good read.

If I may, can you explain where my change for Brawler’s Recovery is overpowered? For near 100% immunity from a single condition in the game you trade away Burst Mastery for it, is that an issue? Would a gap of a second or two (so instead of 5 seconds immunity, 4 or 3 seconds immunity) be more in line? Please get back to me on this when you can.

As for CI, it may guarentee that during the course of this condition meta CI will practically always be a requirement, however I am attempting to tone down the rest of the defense tree in so much that it might be more difficult to pull off the tankibility warriors have now, and instead might end up going more towards other trees than Defense and Discipline.

Discipline Tree:

Finally the final tree, feels like I have been typing for a while now. I hope you guys understand where and why I am suggesting these changes to the trait trees. The Discipline tree is a very utility, raw damage focused tree whose sole purpose is the bursts of the warrior profession and their weapons. Looking at it as a whole, is there any wonder why it was so appealing before? Bonuses for weapon-swapping on minor traits, buffs to utilities and weapons across Adept and Major traits, and the fabled Burst Mastery in Grandmaster.

….However it could use just a tiny bit of work.

Adept Tier:
No changes.

Master Tier:
No changes.

There is a lot of acceptable utility and power in the Adept and Master Tiers. The weapon-swap in Master I have been thinking about for a long time. Despite the changes to Sigils, I think it is in a perfectly fine spot since not every Warrior build will require 5 second swaps. If I am wrong about it, and I could very well be it could be swapped for the Grandmaster and thus make burst attacks less frequent. Could be a decent nerf to Cleansing Ire…but I got a different solution.

Grandmaster Tier:
Burst Mastery: Burst Skills deal more damage and cost less. Interacts against Cleansing Ire.
Brawler’s Recovery: Remove Blindness when you swap weapons, and provides blind immunity for 5 seconds, no cooldown.

- The Burst Mastery idea was not my own, but I did find it quite genius and it made the most sense. Think about it, Burst Mastery has you spending LESS adrenaline. Cleansing Ire requires MORE bars of adrenaline to be spent to remove conditions. It’s the perfect counter-synergy to give warriors a CHOICE! I suppose it’s hypocritical of me in that this entire time I was busy trying to balance out trait lines and build lines that I suddenly decide to have two Grandmaster Traits negatively impact one another, but that does not mean it still is not powerful. Having these two Grandmasters contradict one another is the most simple, logical way of nerfing the x/x/6/x/6 builds while still making them threatening enough.

If you decide Burst Mastery is no longer needed anymore, and you absolutely LOATHE blinds, I have made Brawler’s Recovery into something other than a punchline. Blind is to Warriors what Chill is to Elementalists/Mesmers, its just dreadful. A full discipline tree spent to hard-counter blind-spam is a great way to make variety and reduce Burst damage in the tree. It also can be used with Cleansing Ire for its full effect, I see potential.

Overview of Discipline Tree after my proposed changes:
The Discipline Tree as it is fits the profession perfectly. Adding a small negative to using Burst Mastery with Cleansing Ire will make the overall power level of abusing both less, and making Brawler’s Recovery a real Grandmaster trait whose intent shuts down blinds adds build variance.

Tactics Tree::

Support based tree huh? Looking at the timeline of changes to this tree in particular, it has been getting buffs non-stop. And for good reason, it kinda…what I mean is…well it sucked. In the grand scheme of things, Warriors do not provide too many boons until very recently with Phalanx Strength really making them capable of granting group might. For the most part, all the traits in this tree are thought-out quite well! The only reason it is not a popular line is solely based on the emphasis on tankiness, CC, DPS, and conditions versus providing massive boons (Guardian’s job) and support. If anything, this tree has roles in every aspect of this profession, it is the MOST balanced of all the trees!

- That is why I do not want to change anything. This tree in particular is fine as it is, if I had to change ANYTHING, it would be adept traits Leg Specialist and Desperate Power. Leg Specialist I originally thought would synergize with Hammer Shock’s AoE cripple to apply a 1-second immobilize on all targets hit. It would be NICE if it did, but would that be broken? Probably, because hammer trains need more reason to be too strong…

Desperate Power gives 20% more damage while under 25% health. Synergizes well with Defy Pain but it is not in-line with the use of other traits in this tree. Maybe threshold at 30-35%? …Nah, forget about it, this tree is extremely balanced, I don’t want to upset it. Maybe something to think about for the future.

Overview of Tactics Tree after my proposed changes:
I proposed no changes, the tree is fine as it is. …Horrah!

Defense Tree:

Hmm hmm. Oh where to start? If you guys thought at any point thought I was ‘out of control’ before or going beyond what was thought possible…well I am not going to hold back now. I know exactly how potent Defense Tree is, without it Warriors melt faster than anyone else, but with it they are capable of almost unlimited survival. The relative power of traits on all three levels is so far out of whack it is no wonder warriors always go into this tree.

But what if while the relative power decreases, the amount of builds rises?

Here is what I got.

Adept Tier:
Adept Minor Change, Vigorous Return: Health and Endurance are increased when you rally.
Adept Major Trait, Thick Skin: Gain 100 extra armor when above 80% health threshold (from 90% health).
Sure-Footed: Increases stance durations by 40% (+/- 10%), up from 25%.
Cull the Weak: Increases damage to weakened foes by 8% (+/- 1%), up from 5%.

- Part of the problem with defense tree is that it emphasizes being extremely tanky without too much trade-off. Thick Skin passively made you hard to burst down while at high health if someone got the jump on you, and movement-impairing conditions would also roll off you with Dogged March. So to alleviate this, Defense Warriors will passively rally with more health and endurance, and end up having to choose between a recently nerfed Dogged March, a substantially buffed Sure-Footed (Stances are really impressive on a warrior, I could see Stance warriors even more now with the buff to this trait), or control warriors wanting a bit more damage on weakened foes. It’s all about relative power.

NOTICE: My changes to Cleansing Ire and Rousing Resilience I have decided they are not worth switching about until the current state of the game is changed. Conditions are just too strong, and there are not enough options in other tree lines to deal with conditions that Cleansing Ire as a Master Trait will suffice. I will still keep my arguments below for viewing.

Master Tier:
Rousing Resilience: _Moved to Master Tier from Grandmaster Tier.

Grandmaster Tier:
Cleansing Ire: Moved to Grandmaster Tier from Master Tier.

- “Oh man how original, nerfing cleansing ire lol nub condition meta op.”

And…so what? There is one, irrefutable fact about Cleansing Ire. It is extremely reliable condition removal that synergizes so well with the playstyle of every warrior. It is potent, more potent than other condition removals of the Master tier and as potent as Grandmaster traits like Diamond Skin. It keeps warriors alive in the midst of this meta of conditions, yet even if all damaging conditions were nerfed by 50% warriors would STILL pick up this trait because of movement-impairing conditions. It’s a grandmaster trait in the master tier, having Cleansing Ire and Defy Pain together ought to be considered a sin!

Rousing Resilience is more in line of a Master trait and numerically provides close to a Protection’s worth of mitigation against raw damage. It is quite clear that with my changes I have made the Defense tree less potent, it needs to be in order for warriors to stop being so binary.

Overview of Defense tree after my proposed changes:
Ultimately, Cleansing Ire where-ever it is placed will be needed in order to survive the conditions in this game as they stand. Thus you will likely only see Defy Pain being taken over CI in a very specific Stance build utilizing the new Sure-Footed, thus instead of a single line of traits one could run extremely viably in this trait line I have made a few very decent trait lines viable for PvP. This is better in the long run…

Arms Tree:

This is one…difficult tree to mess with. Where to begin? First off, this tree has the biggest hole in build variance I have seen. Look at it, Adept Tier has a blend of condition and power build variance which is fine. Master Tier is RAW power builds, with the single point of synergy for condition being Blademaster sword crits which can apply Precise Strikes Bleed. Finally we have the Grandmaster tree which is more hybrid, same as the Adept tier. Ironically enough…I think we need to…uh…well you will see. Just don’t be drinking anything, and put away your pitchforks please…

Adept Tier:
No changes. It’s got plenty of options and the power level is relatively decent among all of them.

Master Tier:
Attack of Opportunity: Moved from Grandmaster to Master, increases damage against bleeding foes by 7% (+/- 1%).

- Alright, I can see the red in your eyes, I know what you are thinking. I can feel the rage pent up by both PvE warriors screaming at me for ‘toning down their DPS’, and the PvP anti-warriors wondering why I could make it easier for warriors to get one of the most powerful minor traits for warriors. I can assure you…its for a good cause. Let me just continue before you impale me with whatever weapons you have on your person…

Grandmaster Tier:
Critical Burst: Moved from Master to Grandmaster, Burst Skills have a 15% increased critical chance.

Last Chance: Gain Quickness when you strike a foe below the health threshold. Cooldown reduced to 30 seconds from 40 seconds, duration increased from 4 seconds to 5 seconds.

- HA, and you thought Attack of Opportunity was the biggest change- WAIT WAIT WAIT NOT THE FIRE!! Ok, let me explain. First, as I mentioned before there was a huge rift in the Arms tree, big enough that not enough warriors IN PVP/WVW could consider going a lot of points into the tree unless they were a) using Rifle, b) PvE Raw DPS, or c) Unsure of exactly how many points they would be able to spend, thus gimping their build some amount.

I have merely cleaned up the tree, reallocating power and making it more clear where just how far you could go before your build did not need to go any further. Arms now has enough incentive to go 20 (4) points into it for said builds to actually trade off defense for more damage. However 10% would be a bit too much, which is why I suggested a nerf with a variance depending on how strong or weak it might be after.

The grandmaster tree is still hybridish with Adrenaline spending condition builds wanting Furious and a substantial buff to Last Stand opening the way for potential power builds seeking reliable Quickness every 30 seconds if they time it right on low health enemies. More variety the better the profession. You go 30 into arms, you can’t go 30 into defense and 30 into Discipline. You see what I am trying to do?

Overview of Arms Tree after my proposed changes:
Arms tree now has focus, definitive reasons for both Power Builds and Condition builds to go into it at least 20 (4) points. That’s better than it currently is now in PvP and WvW, and despite the 2% nerf to Attack of Opportunity for that PvE raw DPS warrior those 5 points can now go into…I don’t know, Discipline or Strength? Negligible difference in DPS for a profession already wanted in PvE for banners, reliable DPS on an profession that hardly dies, and recently the capability to Might-Stack.

Strength Tree:

I think every warrior knows this tree is the one to look forward to for Personal PvE DPS, mainly due to Berserker’s Power and the raw damage going 30 (6) into it gets you. But there isn’t enough in this tree to have flocks of PvP / WvW warriors go into it as a viable option when you can just Hammer Train, CondiBow, Hambow, etc. There needs to be something to synergize growing adrenaline and expending it as this tree ironically caters towards (Really, look at how the minor traits want you to use adrenaline).

Let’s give it some synergy huh?

Adept Tier:
Restorative Strength: Using a heal skill removes conditions (chilled, cripple, immobilize, weakness) and provides Regeneration and Vigor (3-5 seconds, hard to decide the duration).
- This one trait could be the key to us seeing more warriors without healing signet, and systematically going into Strength Tree more. It also makes it an extremely appealing trait to be used in more than one situation unlike OTHERS of its tier. *Cough*ShortTemper*Cough*
Powerful Banners: Banners do damage when summoned and provide Vigor to allies.
- …YES I am serious. Why? Because it adds more power to banner builds in a tree they do not go into at all, and consistent vigor uptime MIGHT be an option they could choose if they want to lose something else. This, people, is how you make the warrior both weaker as a build and stronger as a profession at the same time. …Not to mention the trait sucks now, unless they decide to quadruple the damage on it so the crits it can do will one-shot someone for standing in a place for 2 seconds. That would be hilariously awful.

Master Tier:
Here’s a fun tier. As it stand it is pretty solid on many builds, and actually I think it doesn’t need any changes as long as the Adept tier has some amount of depth. If I had to pick and choose, or if people really think this tier is underwhelming, you could probably add duration to the Confusion in Distracting Strikes for the impressive interrupting warrior. Physical Training suffers not from the trait but the utilities it buffs.

Grandmaster Tier:
Stick and Move: Damage Increase changed from 3% to 5%.
- Hngh. Honestly I can’t change the major traits in this line. The issue is not necessarily the traits but what we have on the field right now. Superior Sigil of Intelligence sort of laughs in Burst Precision’s face, Berserker’s Power is solid and Berserker’s Might enables reliable adrenaline gain. The issue I have is that even without Berserker’s Might, getting Maximum Adrenaline on every weapon swap is pretty easy without it. Ultimately this is why I wanted to encourage a buff to Stick and Move to something at least noticable if you are dodging all the time.

Overview of Strength Tree after my proposed changes:
With Adept Tier given more power, warriors will have an easier time putting their points into the tree and Restorative Strength will hopefully be a MUST for any warrior actually using their healing skill.

This is not a Warrior QQ thread.

Just felt like highlighting that since the slightest inkling or mention of the profession is enough to cause witch-hunts akin to Monty Python’s Holy Grail.

Instead, I wish to discuss in a respectable and thoughtful manner the aspect and thought behind warrior traits, ONE of the main causes for their current state as of this moment.

Just traits, just changing traits around or coming up with new renditions given that utilities, weapon skills, numbers and so forth are left alone. Let’s start with traits first, and perhaps we can get somewhere. I thank you beforehand.

(Skip this if you just want to see my proposals, who needs context?)

So, currently right now as we saw from the ToL in both the NA and EU, Warriors aren’t exactly in a bad spot, despite nerfs to the profession during the April Balance Patch they are still a dominate profession in every single aspect of this game. This is good however the same cannot be said of other professions, who might excel better than warriors in one aspect but fail miserably at another. Thus it puts Warriors in an odd spot since they are wanted everywhere and at the same time, HATED everywhere.

My position is that instead of outright breaking warriors in some aspect, bring the relative power levels down by helping other professions who are really lack-luster. Rangers still have a ways to go but the recent strain of buffs and reworks brought them to a competitive tier and made them an actual threat! Elementalists got some nice buffs as well, not quite to their perhaps former glory but kitten well close.

All that said, instead of calling for public outcry demanding harsh number nerfs to warriors, the relative power gets thrown out of whack and we might never see Warriors in TPvP again. I want to avoid that, let’s adjust the traits instead and see if we can’t see build variety instead of constant Hambows (Though A/S and LB was a nice sight, but might outline an issue with those weapons in general.)

(Alright skipped context, read below!)

So what did I come up with? This will take a couple of posts…

All this means is that Pure Swiss tournament format for WvWvW is not the perfect means to balance rankings, although it is better than before.

Maybe a blended format using Swiss and later on, server rating and points proximity to determine match-ups might make for interesting competition. With population imbalances as it is, there is no shroud over why we are caught in a loop of same match-ups across all the leagues. The swiss style would have been more appropriate if the servers were more closely matched, thus able to have the same match-ups with different results thus more difficulty in determining who comes out on top.

My biggest fear is that only Coverage in the past, now, and in the future will determine real victors. Of course, unless you pull off a 2v1 which actually decimates this outstanding problem outright. If servers were fearful of being double-teamed by bringing too many people to their side, there would be a much more even spread of coverage, thus defeating the biggest incentive to double-team since everyone has an equal chance to win.

ReesesPBC.4603:

Sykper.6583:

HS is fine as is. The reason it is used 99.9% of cases (and thus making it a good scape-goat for criticism) is that the other healing options for warrior are severely outdone.

Also with the nerf to Dogged March which was far more important, warriors are sustaining for a ‘right’ amount right now.

I strongly disagree. If they were to bring up other heal skills based on HS right now they may be even worse than HS. There should be adjustments to all the heal skills. Like the OP and others I’d rather have the war class be more active and many people are defending its passive nature but in truth the unbalance is in just that, it’s passive vs other signet heals.

HS would be better served if it were to be activated with its current healing by actually hitting something (and of maybe blocking as well, debatable), not granting regen that can be removed/stolen. There should be that understanding to encourage more active play/reward instead of the current passive boring tank/spank.

I don’t mind the option of removing some amount of passive play, at the same time Warriors are nowhere near the point where the changes suggested by the OP wouldn’t cripple the profession to obscurity. It has been pointed out that of all the weaknesses of the warrior, that they are highly telegraphic. If healing signet were reduced to successful attacks for regeneration, then it would be in a worse state then Mending is currently for the Warrior to use.

Warriors are strong, but for all the wrong reasons. People aren’t defending the passive play of warriors as much as trying to prevent the class from going back to Launch-State level of horridness. And for the record, the only heal that has remotely close potential to start being used as an alternative to HS is Healing Surge, but its own mechanic diminishes it from any real competitive use.

HS is fine as is. The reason it is used 99.9% of cases (and thus making it a good scape-goat for criticism) is that the other healing options for warrior are severely outdone.

Also with the nerf to Dogged March which was far more important, warriors are sustaining for a ‘right’ amount right now.

…I didn’t realize Last Stand was in such a good position, being on a 90 sec CD for an automatic Balanced Stance as a Master. If anything, it’s probably a touch weak.

What’s next? Aside from a multitude of bug fixes and balancing issues with the Megaservers, when will we expect to see more content?

When’s the next Living Story arising? Is there a timetable for patches in May, June, July?

And last but not least…

Will we finally see new zones permanently added to expand the…I want to say ‘teasingly’ large World Map we have? I mean, let’s face it, having a majority of the world blurred out is making me sad!

dancingmonkey.4902:

The issue with grenades is not so much the conditions. You have to remember that they scale extremely well with power. You could remove every bit of damage from grenades (which is weird that players feel they are such a strong condition weapon since only 2/5 grenades do condition damage) and engineers will destroy just as well or faster with direct damage builds.

It is funny because for the first year or more of this game all everyone complained about was the direct damage of grenades. Then when players shifted to the “condition meta” (even though no direct damage was nerfed and no conditions were buffed) for some reason, a lot of grenade engineers did also. Yet grenades have a higher direct damage out put capability then a condition damage out put capability. And in the last update 1 of only 2 damaging condition of grenades took a very large nerf of 40%.

If you truly think grenades are such a threat based on condition damage, then you truly do not know enough about the kit at all if you ask me.

I didn’t mention the power aspect because I know all too well how effective Berserker Nades were. There were quite a few videos, I have friendly memories of 100 nades….

That said, I agree that the power aspect of each nade does tack on quite a bit of damage in very small chunks, and I could even argue power nades are still viable even with the new changes.

But you can at least influence power nades with toughness and protection, there are no such options with condition nades. And remember my other point? Layers. There are so many conditions an engineer can output in a short amount of time, with little warning (I suppose different grenades shine or glow differently, but they are flying AT you while the attack is going off, bit late eh?). Poison, Blind, Bleeding, Burning, Vulnerability, Chill….

Of course if you want to play it smart and run something like Lyssa and cleanse all those if in the ‘oh crap’ instance you are nailed with all of them, you are given at most 25 seconds before the LAST cooldown of the nade kit is off-CD. But again think about how kitten ing the condition Chill is to a fight, go ahead ask ANY elementalist how much they love being chilled.

TyPin.9860:

Sykper.6583:

I have no problems with conditions as they stand now, they are mechanically sound.

My problem is how easy it is to reapply the same conditions without any true downsides, the ease of going condition-spam (meaning tossing out the same damaging condition well before the enemy’s only mitigations against it are up) is too high.

Even slightly nerfing the cooldowns of certain commonly spammed skills by condition-based classes so that actual counter-play can exist outside of running Immunities or Cleanses would drastically improve GW2 for the better.

You have to clarify. Give examples of what you mean. Because as of now it sounds you wish to completely nullify condition damage. That might be a misconception on my part, but you don’t give much to work with.

Certainly. I’ll point at the elephant in the room, Condi-Nade.

Whether people like it or not, Condition-Nade Engineer is probably the prime example of a build whose purpose is to dismantle someone with constant AoE bleeding and burning, amid other cooldowns that can invoke blinding, freezing and even poison. Of course, Poison Grenade was nerfed for the pulse level due to being able to literally stack a minute of poison on someone, but skipping that for now the condition nade build has the following pay-offs:

- Strong AoE Pressure, mostly UNAVOIDABLE AoE pressure. You can mitigate / dodge out of the freeze, the poison, the tool belt skill burst. Whatever you decide it scarcely matters since pending on what the condiengineer is running, the basic nades can inflict bleeding, vulnerability, and/or burning at the same time.

Three different conditions from what is considered an auto-attack, not just any auto-attack but an AoE ground-targetted attack at melee or range. Which goes on to my next point….

- Layers of conditions. Most people here can figure out how to deal with one or two damaging conditions, but once you start applying more conditions than what can be mitigated or cleansed, the roller coaster descends into a cesspool. This is why pre-update Burning Guardians and even older, Confusion Mesmers were rather impotent, their single condition for nuking condition damage was nullified by a single cleanse.

Whereas a Necromancer with a staff utilitizes the full bar to inflict potentially the book of conditions onto someone, and epidemic and all hell breaks loose under ideal circumstances. Fortunately ideal circumstances don’t quite apply all the time which is why I am not complaining about them, but what Necromancers have is rather balanced, long cooldowns for abilities that can literally turn a fight around if they land.

On the other hand, we have CondiNade ravaging someone without a single break. There is no moment where said engineer can only get one condition on you to cleanse and then attempt to counter, it is CONSTANT, non-stop conditions, each effect rending you apart. Where is the opening? Do you rush down the engineer? Oh right, that won’t work since the ground-targetted AoE of the attack will nail you with every hit, invoking duration/intensity stacking of untold levels! It is literally in the CondiNade engineer’s favor for you to get close to him. So that takes care of every melee build…I guess we can range him down- Magnet. Oh right, A nade engineer isn’t just about the kit, its the entire profession bent on utility.

To be fair, I am not just ranting about Nadegineers, they are just the best illustration of what spammable conditions entails. PU Mesmers, the still existing Condi-Hambow (Seriously…), a certain necro build…I could probably name some more, but I think you catch my drift.

My point is that conditions are fine as they are now, many other professions and builds have conditions that synergize well with what they are doing. There has just got to be more weaknesses, or even difficulties in playing a build that invokes some passive power.

There is a difference in counter-play when you dodge a killshot and when you dodge grenade barrage at close proximity. The killshot took a lot to set-up, likely would have downed you if it hit but it takes a LOT to land correctly. The grenade barrage would have made you cry with intense bleeds and a long burn, but you wouldn’t die yet. Not to mention you have wasted a dodge, your opponent still has Poison Grenade, Blinding Nade, Shrapnel Grenade, and normal nades to pepper you with, and you do not have NEARLY enough anti-condition.

I have no problems with conditions as they stand now, they are mechanically sound.

My problem is how easy it is to reapply the same conditions without any true downsides, the ease of going condition-spam (meaning tossing out the same damaging condition well before the enemy’s only mitigations against it are up) is too high.

Even slightly nerfing the cooldowns of certain commonly spammed skills by condition-based classes so that actual counter-play can exist outside of running Immunities or Cleanses would drastically improve GW2 for the better.

I freaking LOVE it!

Why A-Net haven’t you brought this out sooner?! I know, I know that everyone here was likely already conveying the fact that SPvP really needed a new mode to break the stale ‘hold the point’ mentality that has been here since day 1.

It feels so good to have a SPvP matchup dedicated in full to just slaughtering each other, the victor being the one side that slaughters harder. In fact, it is not just the side that slaughters harder, I have seen some profound slingshots back and forth! With every death comes a quicker end to a matchup!

The best part? Team Deathmatch requires a multitude of viable builds. Bunkers can bring the CC and Support to hold enemies down, DPS put targets down, but have to keep an eye out when being focused, Healing builds keep people alive through the fast respawns of their enemies, in order to prevent a whiplash and the cost of the lead…I could go further but let me just say I haven’t really seen a role not used yet that did not have a use!

…Actually remember when I said ‘the best part’? I lied, the real, TRUE best part is that it is pure ACTION, lovely lovely action everywhere! Props to the map design, it is a delicate balance of height, open space and obstacles that gives low health retreaters enough space for a brief break to heal up….yet not so far away that the ganking thief can’t find them alone!

I am in bliss, please implement more Deathmatch maps. Make the mode into Tourneys and Ranked.

Thank you for finally making it Arenanet.

I finally managed to get my hands on a full set of the runes, but I am debating on what armor stats to assign them for PvX, mainly WvW. Originally in large or small scale play I was thinking either Knights (for the higher crit chance with Forceful GS to apply more might on the damage fly) or PVT because ~%40+ crit chance with fury up is still good enough to apply ample might to the group…

So conflicted!

Carpboy.7145:

Then what will we use for PVE? Not axe cus its horrible dmg. Not shield cus its even worse dmg. Not horn cus its also 0 dmg. Not sword either cus its for condi. Crushing blow= a 4% DPS increase for the entire team. Thats pretty significant if you look at it that way

In terms of speed-clearing, two things:

- Mace-offhand DPS/Support wise is the choice for an alternate dual-weapon set. Axe is only good for Fury and AoE, Shield is blocking in case you seemingly forgot how to dodge, Horn provides AoE weakness/Vigor, as well as rips roots and slows off for speeds and sword…erm, sword looks nice!

- None of the changes I suggested nerf the mace-offhand, in fact all were BUFFS, mace-offhand needs BUFFS! Please re-read again, and if I was not clear before, I intend to buff or rework Mace 4!

Thank you.

Hello fellow warriors!

I imagine at this time you are either doing one of two things:

- Looking up Crushing Blow on GW2Wiki.
- Thinking Crushing Blow is the Burst of the mace.

Or you might be the only person seemingly aware of every name of every weapon skill on the warrior, hence you know its is in fact the Mace 4, in which I still inquire onto you the following like everyone else: Is it weak?

Obviously I would not ask if there wasn’t a dilemma for the skill in itself, I think there actually is once you take into account what it is. For reference, here is the link to Crushing Blow:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Crushing_Blow

For those who aren’t capable of opening the link, here is the simple version:

- It is a melee cleaving target attack doing about ~35% more damage than the auto-attack of the main-hand mace (the 1st or 2nd), with another quarter second channel (exactly 50% longer, mace is funky).
- Said cleave inflicts four stacks of vulnerability for eight seconds.
- The cooldown is 15 seconds.

….Giving you a moment to process the information while I get another drink.

…..
…….
………

Back. So, reflecting on the mace off-hand as a whole, the only thing I believe holding back its true potential would be this skill. Mace 5 does a linear knockback nuke on a long but respectable cooldown. And, its target limit is unlimited. …Unless they changed it since the last time I checked a month or two ago, but if you popped mace 5 without a target, it would send a rippling knockdown nuke through a zerg, leaving a nice reminder that they just got flattened by one warrior!

Then comes the black sheep, Crushing Blow. What was the intent of this mace skill? It seems like it was meant as a means for additional vulnerability from your off-hand weapon which no other weapon provides. However, think about how we as warriors apply vulnerability in general. I am willing to bet the first thoughts were of ‘On My Mark’ or the minor trait Rending Strikes. Heck, even the Rifle Brutal Shot applies 8 stacks of Vulnerability on a 12 second duration, the cooldown is EXACTLY THE SAME AS CRUSHING BLOW! Some would argue that the rifle is a 2-handed, and I have previously talked about the rifle’s disadvantages…but from my point of view the mace-offhand is the least used weapon we warriors have! Is that off the mark folks?

I often consider why Off-hand mace warriors are in such low-play in any environment, and I must say, when you compare the other off-hands, at least each skill has an influence in the fight.

Crushing Blow as it stands leaves no impression of crushing anyone.

Ergo, I propose one of the following:

- Crushing Blow applies Weakness as well for the same duration. Synergizes with Sundering Mace, makes Mace builds a bit more viable I like to think.
- Increase duration of Crushing Blow Vulnerability to 12 seconds, successful warriors should be rewarded by landing the blow again and again with more stacks.
- Change it. I do not know, that’s another reason I called you all here.

So, do you agree with my assessment? Am I wrong? I want to hear what you think, please.

Boonprot.6274:

Shrouded.6450:

I laughed out loud when you chased off a certain server to T2. ;3 They wouldn’t shut up about you guys. I truly wish you guys get coverage you deserve, I kinda want to see an encore. :p

Except no one would voluntarily xfer to YB. Poll on GW2WvW.com a while back had YB rated as the worst server in NA, or something to that effect.

I can’t find it either.

Instead I decided to ask hundreds of people across every server imaginable, and then I asked people outside on the streets the same question “Does Yak’s Bend suck?”

Here are my results. Oddly enough I had a few individuals give me unexpected alternatives to my inquiry. I haven’t a clue what they were thinking, but for the sake of consistency I took only the 100 answers that matched the creteria.

Does this help?

….After much consideration, deliberation, debate, retort, inner-conquest, whatever.

I feel it might be time to actually concede some points.

“Warriors are extremely easy, their power level versus execution is severely in their favor versus an elementalist in the same role.”

“Warriors have too much passive capabilities, other professions have to work towards what a warriors gains innately.”

“For a profession whose entire premise is based upon the lack of removing conditions they sure do not feel weak in that area!”

Obviously as a warrior fan, across multiple MMOs, with untold hours of experierce with playing a warrior across all parts of this game… (Seriously, I love my warrior to death, I must have an armor set for everything!)

Anyways, I have sampled other professions, their mechanics, their playstyles to an extent. I can understand and relate to the rage over things like Warrior Hambow, their passivity. I agree that something must be done.

But straight nerfs won’t cut it. No, I demand a REWORK!

Why? Well, warriors surprisingly are just a touch too simple. A profession- no, a class specialized in weapons and brute force, somehow the skills versus the power of said skills is a tad too high. Warriors are meant to be beefy, physically damaging, yet they feel a touch too immortal with the current healing signet (to be nerfed slightly, we can see soon how that goes) and rises in power in other professions. …Well, save those professions losing power, let’s not talk about those even though overall, it affects balancing.

WHAT I am getting at is that mechanically, like many of you have said and the likes of me have denied is that the Warrior is too powerful in many of its capabilities.

My counter-response has always been “Well, you got illusions, magical defenses, stealth, etc. That is a sort of passive mitigation warriors must compensate by using utility slots for pure defense!”

Welp. At this point, looking back, looking forward, I will concede that overall, the group that established that Warriors need a nerf or a change are indeed CORRECT.

Warriors need a rework, one that lowers their power from a basic stand-point or even moderate stand-point like the common thief, yet raises them in potential in competive tourneys!

But…I must ask….

How, my anti-current-warrior friends, would you deal with this? Another Burst skill with lower power across the board? More complicated weapon skills for a similar or better effect? I must inquire for my own interest or for A-Net to inquire if they haven’t already any ideas, to pursue a balancing routine for Warriors. Please, fill me in.

My best regards,
Jornosh

I wonder if there is like this rotating wheel, with dozens of different things about the warrior from minor traits to individual weapon attacks, that anti-warrior individuals walk up to and spin. And once the wheel stops, they will complain about that on the balance forum. No matter what it is.

Because that is what this seems to be. It’s gotta be real, right? Tell me someone put you up to complaining about Warrior Deep Cuts of all things.

Hey again.

Just reading through the thread and it seems to have taken an interesting turn.

Due to certain personal circumstances, I won’t be able to comment quite yet on some of the other suggestions Swagg has posted but I can give my general thoughts.

First, it’s rather unproductive to go back and forth on ‘change implementation’. I doubt Swagg considers doing all of these changes at once, and I think there are some extremely good ideas or at least prospects we can take from it.

Second, the biggest hurdle for the warrior, and everyone agrees is that the skill-floor and ceiling for a warrior are far too close. Warriors get a lot for little, but they can only do so much, the level of impressive plays you see from high-level warriors is nothing special. What you have to do then is two things, make mechanics for warriors more complicated, where playing them as they are now rewards you a bit less. At the same time, the ceiling for warriors expands dramatically, Warriors are all about their weapons and brute power, make that their theme!

Warriors in their current state are ‘close to balanced’ but broken. Rather than being a well-built wagon wheel where everything fits perfectly, we have a wagon wheel made of good parts but put together with flimsy tape and glue. Mind you both wheels work just fine, but you would want a better-looking wheel wouldn’t you?

To that regard, I will be posting more frequently intricately detailing my thoughts on every change you came up with Swagg, my likes and dislikes. Nike, I also encourage you to help me in this thread to come up with some fluid designs that would be appealing to A-Net.

Thanks!

Uh…17k in six seconds isn’t actually that bad. I do not see any reason to complain about being given at least 5 seconds to react after the first LB.

Did you just stand there?

Gray area, but more or less if the person absolutely refuses to listen to what the group is saying would help progress the dungeon, then it is likely no fault of the group to kick said person to bring in someone else who will listen.

Whether it be a guildie or another stranger has no bearing.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

On the live servers, special Dev abilities (like immortality or teleportation) are limited to GMs, and all dev commands are logged and reviewed to make sure no one is abusing the system. The integrity of our live servers is very important to us.

So…with great power comes great responsibility right?

Hold on, now for some reason I am envisioning the Charr equivalent of Spider-man…

Hmmm….

BlackBeard.2873:

McWolfy.5924:

Warrior is viable in wvw,pvp,pve and i think its good. I want to see every other proffs to be good in every aspect of the game

This is very true, and a good aspiration. The reason why it is at the top of viability in all modes, however, is because its relative power (compared to other classes) far exceeds other classses. You could buff everyone else and get into a power-creep issue, or you could intelligently nerf (more like fix b/c they are broken) warriors so that the relative balance of power is more….balanced.

Not quite. As it stands, Warriors have the most viable builds for just about every mode, and if you want to make the game more dynamic and balanced, you should not have a single profession stand out among the rest. Bring other professions up. Not a single one down.

It is a harder process than just nerfing warriors, but it is a needed process if you want to balance the game right. If there are more viable builds across other professions than the one in question, the relative power level of said ‘strong’ profession drops.

With A-Net looking at Rangers with more intent in the next CDI, we might see Ranger power across all modes rise drastically provided we give them a direction. There are a few solid Ranger builds in PvE, but they can definitely use some help in either SPvP or WvW.

Edit: Power-creep won’t happen if the balancing is not major. Things like adding Evade to Ele Burning Speed are the kind of changes needed.

So far A-Net is 2/2 for letting us know of something the magnitude of Triple Wurm and Tequatl, so I would not worry about not getting the content done. Heck, if it is of the same vein as Twisted Marionette, then I am even more excited for it.

Hello Swagg!

First, let me say that even though there will very likely be a lot of criticism for changes like this, I actually enjoy some of the creative suggestions you have listed. The way you suggested the Burst skill for greatsword to work is actually something I want to implement across all bursts, where more substantial effects are attached to a burst if the warrior continues to build it up, offering SOME strategic play. There are good ideas involved, and I would not be against getting behind some of them.

Now, with that said, I think I have to bring up some questions so I can understand what you might be trying to do.

- Why did you suggest giving Warriors access to Protection? This is actually my biggest issue, and because even with your proposed changes to healing signet, after your changes the profession would be even easier to win with, Protection is likely the best boon in game and I see a rather impressive access to it that Guardians would love to have. Why not take protection away and simply make the healing sustain or burst side of warriors 10-20% higher across the board?

- Stability nerfs, fair enough but did you come up with 5 seconds on your own or did you want to nerf the uptime by a certain degree? I think it might be a touch too much, since warriors do not have too much access to ranged skills outside of their ranged weapons and have to deal with the variety of Wardings or Fields that can stop them in their tracks in some manner.

As for weapons and utilities…those I can reserve for later when I can fully comprehend the changes proposed. But just from a general overall glance, you are adding a LOT of power to almost everything and losing a bit of healing and stability. The problem is Protection.

@Cygnus:

Pretty much the nail on the head of a skritt, Warriors have probably the top amount of passive strengths in order to somewhat compete with all the active mechanics of other professions. Things like Stealth, Blinks, Clones, Traps, Pets, etc. are out of reach, and the only real unique feature I can think of when I say ‘Warrior unique mechanic’ are banners and stances.

Though, I must add that I was not saying that elementalists or thieves beat warriors, I was saying that the level of play between those two professions and warriors is vastly different, and actually elementalists if I go so far to say are at a higher play level than thieves if you consider the difference between maintaining cooldowns on four different attunements versus initiative management…though that could be debated.

Good to see my fellow warriors taking this with a bit of humor!

However! Let’s start collaborating on how we can fix such a thing. It’s going to be difficult, but I have thought of a idea for a new rendition of Vengeance:

- Vengeance rallies you, the duration of the effect is 10 seconds (There is a reason for this nerf).
- Upon the effect ending, the warrior takes Half his maximum health pool in damage, if it downs him he dies immediately. If alive the warrior resumes normal play with a low health bar.
- Bear in mind that a warrior just can’t keep spamming vengeance, it has a 20 second cooldown, ergo if a warrior gets downed soon after he outlasts the vengeance effect, not only does he have to deal with the Rally penalty but his vengeance might be on a longer cooldown than before!

How’s that sound?

Bran.7425:

Harper.4173:

phaeris.7604:

Really, want to play that game?

Aoe stun frequency warrior > all

Best mobility in game warrior > all

Highest health + highest armour warrior > all

Highest single target damage at range warrior > all

Highest invulnerability uptime warrior > all

See…i can do this all day.

You may as well type : Class who is called an Elementalist : Elementalist > All.

Warriors don’t have invulnerability. Try again.
Warriors have good mobility – true.

High armor and health – you need those because no soft damage mitigation.

And if highest single target range damage means Killshot then allow me to laugh.

Please get your facts correct before posting:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Endure_Pain
Skill text Take no damage from attacks. You are still susceptible to conditions and crowd control effects.
The no damage is in fact Invulnerability:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Invulnerability.

So…anything else you’d like to share with the group?

This is one of those moments where the way they phrased the description of invulnerability makes me facepalm. In that very first line, it says word for word:

“Invulnerability is an effect that prevents the target from taking damage or receiving conditions.”

Whoever thought to put down ‘or’ there should have put ‘and’ instead. Because true invuln does in fact prevent condition reception as well and Endure Pain does not.

Brb, going to find the wiki guy to slap him.

Again, I just want to emphasize that although warriors are quite strong in the condition mitigation department right now, as opposed to just flat-nerfing their options now the best course for balancing the profession would be implementing weaker alternatives in other traitlines to keep viable build diversity.

Aka: You want to nerf Cleansing Ire’s effect severely, offer a new kind of condition mitigation in Strength or Arms. Let’s help balance traits to make the warrior in a better state for everyone.

nicknamenick.2437:

after 2 nerfs on combustive shot and income nerf to pin down you want another nerf for pin down?

Also a nerf to arcing arrow because it does nice damage in zerker stats? why? that’s the best skill to even use longbow in zerker stats, if you nerf arcing arrow base damage it wouldnt be a hybrid weapon anymore and you make the longbow complete trash for zerker warriors, because after arcing arrow you only have AA for pure damage and everyone knows that AA sucks.

All anet is been doing after we got some good sustain is nerfing every weapon and its damage, soon every weapon does average/even low damage but that wouldn’t be enough, nope they nerf the sustain more and we are even worse than before.

I don’t think there is any reason to nerf longbow more, its a solid weapon as it is now and with the incoming nerf to pin down there is also more counter play.

I think it might be just because it does hybrid damage that it absolutely needs to be carefully balanced. It is doing a bit too much even if you go purely condition or power, and it has amazing utility as well. What I should have said was ‘Nerf the base, but provide a better coefficient’.

On the subject of a very visual and longer cast-time for Pin Down, indeed you are correct in stating that there is a major amount of counter-play going to be applied once the patch hits.

However…

Condi-Wars are just a touch too good with conditions, joining the ranks of Condi-bunkers we all know and love endearingly- erm I mean hate and loathe. A stack of bleed is the only thing I can think of ensuring that Pin Down on its own does not continue to reduce someone’s life drastically, since bleed coefficients with condition damage work so well.

…An alternative to my suggestion would be to outright nerf the bleed formula all together. I doubt that will take off too well. As for longbow damage, I think you might be slightly underestimating what a double-attack enables a warrior to attack through. There are some pretty high numbers you can get with it as well when you run power.

Julie Yann.5379:

One thing that could tone down Cleansing Ire is having it be affected by Burst Mastery. At the moment, you get all the benefits of cleansing 3 conditions when only using 2 bars of adrenaline and a bigger burst on shorter CD so you cleanse more often. Fixing it so that it will only cleanse 1 condi per bar used would tone down it’s potential and force us to make a choice between offense and defense. It’s not much but I believe it would be enough to bring it back in line.

That is…actually brilliant, I am all for this idea if Burst Mastery negatively affects Cleansing Ire. After all it seems like both would be contrary traits. +1.

Hey folks!

First I have to thank you all for providing some responses and feedback to my thoughts, it seems that there is a number of individuals who are of the position that warriors are not so far off from being balanced and the issue is that other professions do not have the same luxury of viable/near viable builds as we do.

With that said, I think I could elaborate on some things questioned.

@RashanDale: Healing Surge does require some thought process and timing to pull off right everytime, however unlike Healing Signet and even Mending, the payoff is less than what it should be when considering the heal amount is directly corresponding to a profession’s mechanics. I made the comparision before in a different thread that Healing Surge needs to compensate with more healing for having:
- An extremely long cooldown
- Suspectibility to Poison (much like other heals)
- Can be interrupted easily (1 second channel)
- Every other stage than stage 3 makes the heal a waste.

However, there is a stipulation that because Healing Surge will also refill your adrenaline to full, that ‘instantly makes the skill viable’.

Well I say nay!

Adrenaline is a relatively easy resource to increase, especially when recently changes to Berserker Stance and the new Cleansing Ire, our Adrenaline overall has become easier to fill. I agree that Healing Surge should punish you for using it improperly, but for the general warrior health pool across all builds, the burst heal is not quite enough for the 30 second downtime.

Now, I also stated that the active effect ought to be something different, my original proposition in a different thread suggested the same passive as Signet of Rage, so it becomes easier and more reliable for the warrior to have stage 3 Healing Surge to hit that true burst healing. However I do not think redundancies are needed, so if you have another idea for it then let me know.

Also, as an additional thought experiment, I want to hear some thoughts about how we can deal with Cleansing Ire should it be nerfed, but still provide an alternative lesser cleansing in a different traitline.

- Maybe a trait for reducing specific condition durations akin to Dogged March in Strength or Arms (conditions like poison or weakness)?
- Maybe a trait that makes physical utility skills burn a condition off you?

Couple of thoughts…haven’t considered whether those two are balanced.

Bombsaway.7198:

Cleansing Ire is a problem. Warriors are supposed to keel over from conditions. That was (at least at start) their weakness. It should be made their weakness again.

Not when conditions are prime right now.

I know Warriors need to be more suspectible to conditions, but let’s face the facts that until either mechanically or numerically conditions get changed to be less passive to implement as opposed to active damage from swinging your weapon, that the warrior needs to have something to deal with it. For months we have been seeing a steady stream of buffs to handle the conditions (imo, a bad way mind you) through immunities and less active cleansing. If A-Net wants to handle conditions in this manner, then we can’t leave Warriors to eat everything.

Posting some more!

Axe: Ngh…how many Eviscerates have I hit with 60%+ crit chance and not crit?! Mechanically balanced, but there should be some way for a warrior to have his burst skills crit 100% of the time on a Cooldown, make some skillful play. I know! Make it a Grandmaster Trait in Strength or Arms! That’s an idea, give me some feedback on this.

Mace: I would love to see more off-hand Maces, how about making Crushing blow apply more stacks of Vuln? Aside from that recent nerfs have made decent counters to the lockdown of Mace Burst.

Sword: Sword is tricky, the bleed ramping of its auto-attack might be just a touch too fast and spammable. However if LB Pin-down gets my proposed nerf, you might not need to touch it. Friends, let me tell you the simple counter to Impale, if you see three stacks from the impale, cleanse it then. That way you don’t decide to take huge torment damage if you decide to wait for all the stacks to come up, and it helps you out if you are a sustain build.

Shield: I uh…I don’t think people actually hate the shield.

Warhorn: I think we as warriors should be the prime candidates of providing Vigor to everyone, and Warhorn builds utilize this so well. No complaints here.

Traits:

Cleansing Ire is a must for every warrior to deal with how strong conditions are. If I were to suggest that warriors would cleanse 2 conditions for a three bar adrenaline bar and only 1 condition for 1 and 2 bars, you would see Warriors keel over about as fast as pre-buff HS warriors. Personally, there needs to be more methods for a warrior to deal with the condition output than just Cleansing Ire, but not on the same level as this trait in other trait-lines. If done in this manner, and if you all like, make Cleansing Ire a Grandmaster trait, then I can see variety of warriors rising and the power levels of ‘badly-played’ warriors decreasing.

Warriors ARE simple to play, but it has been restated again and again and again that they fall off at high-skill play. I want this to change. I want more complicated mechanics, I want warriors to put in just a bit more play to be around the level of a insanely good elementalist or thief.

That is all I got for now folks, I won’t go into too much detail in each trait unless you bring it up here. Thanks for reading.

Some really good points on what a good balance would be for a Warrior, gained from the thread so far:

From Julie Yann,
“One thing that could tone down Cleansing Ire is having it be affected by Burst Mastery. At the moment, you get all the benefits of cleansing 3 conditions when only using 2 bars of adrenaline and a bigger burst on shorter CD so you cleanse more often. Fixing it so that it will only cleanse 1 condi per bar used would tone down it’s potential and force us to make a choice between offense and defense. It’s not much but I believe it would be enough to bring it back in line.”

Over the course of multiple threads, and some feedback, I think the following balancing of the warrior might bring the class up in a better state than just flat nerfs. Personally, I would rather see other professions buffed (Rangers, poor guys, I know the feeling of being ‘down there’) than making Warriors binary. If I do not touch on a certain aspect, it might not have come up in my thoughts or I might not think it needs any changes. Also I compacted things as opposed to long-winded paragraphs, you are welcome.

Healing Skills:
Healing Signet: After 8% nerf, see how it goes, probably could take another 1-3% off before the signet loses value as the sustain warrior’s heal.

Healing Surge: Needs a revamp, burst heal can go up another 10% healing across the board and the active effect needs to complement and not punish warriors for using their Burst and Adrenaline. It’s a silly contrary heal to the profession.

Mending: Out-dated. Specifically due to the recent strain of traits to assist warriors with the formerly worst condition cleanse/mitigation of all the professions, now Mending falls behind for two reasons. The heal is pitiful, and the condition cleanse does not deal with spams. Needs either a rework or a huge buff.

Defiant Stance: Situational, don’t touch.

Utilities:
Endure Pain/Berserker Stance: These are perfectly fine as their durations and cooldowns, expending two slots which could have been used for other gimmicks or skills to have pretty much mandatory defenses to deal with other profession gimmicks is what the warrior NEEDS. And trust me, if the warrior pops both these stances at once, then you forced his big trumps and now you should rush him down.

Banners: Oh how I want these banners to be reworked. SO clunky…I have a few ideas but for the context of this thread I won’t go into detail. I suppose for now they are ‘fine’.

Shouts: I don’t think these need to be tackled at all, with the recent buff to support warriors Shouts might be just right.

Other Signets: In line with other profession signets, its too bad the condition meta is so strong that it is forcing the Berserker Stance or Die mentality in warriors. You would see more play from these otherwise.

Elites: I would love to do something about Rampage, like make their boons unstrippable and maybe add protection…or just increase the health pool, but whatever, warriors love the Signet of Rage.

Weapons:
Greatsword: You can nerf Rush range, if and only if you make the hit from it reliable everytime. Kthx.

Hammer: The things I would do to have leg specialist apply Immobilize to all of Crippling Wave’s targets… Anyways recent nerfs have made a simple stun-break capable of getting you out of the lock without having you near death. Going to get a lot of yelling from my fellow warriors, but stun-break either Earthshaker or Backbreaker, trust me.

Longbow: I actually agree with many of the complaints here, the damage on this weapon is insane. Not only does it build so well into condition, but power as well with Arcing Arrow. Ergo I say make Combustive Shot have the same max radius across all adrenaline levels, slightly nerf Arcing Shot’s base, and Pin Down loses a stack of bleed. I am curious to see how the double-hit from Longbow AA affects the new sigil changes.

Rifle: Although Killshot-build is silly and entertaining, I think the Rifle needs a serious buff and some changes to make it viable compared to Longbow. Ergo, Killshot now shows a special icon on target’s head (In case you can’t see the kneel…I can understand from a ZvZ point of view I guess..), Rifle auto-attack slightly buffed, Volley gets buffed in line with how the auto-attack is now, Brutal Shot applies 5 stacks of Vuln, but it’s cooldown drastically gets reduced in order for a single Rifle Warrior to rapidly stack Vuln on someone for a powerful Killshot. With these changes, Rifle becomes the Power Warrior’s dream and takes more skill to play.

I think I reached the limit for the OP, going to post more as I go down the list. Also just to let you know, I absolutely will be talking about Cleansing Ire in a bit, but bear in mind that a Warrior who does not run Cleansing Ire in this current PvP state of the game is a dead warrior.

Alright so as much as I want to use the GW2 forum’s astounding search engine, I think it might be better if I just make a new thread to talk with my fellow warriors about the skill we all appreciate.

I think we can all agree that between warriors and our friends in the necromancer department that we both share the lowest tier of Downed State skills compared to anyone else. Not only do we get a pitiful single target knockdown on 1 second channel to potentially interrupt (HAHAHAHAHA, that’s a good joke) our opponent finishing us off, we have like everyone else’s down state 3, a whole eight seconds before we can even activate our ‘favorite ability’.

As much as I want to have a drink with the necros on down state, I propose that we as a whole lot of angry warriors, come up with reasonable ideas and suggestions on how to make OUR down state more in line with everyone else’s.

So…

As the title suggests, let’s have a back and forth on this. Let me lay down a few facts about Vengeance taken straight from http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vengeance that might clear up some things here, if you don’t believe me, there is the link. Seriously-

- Vengeance will rally the warrior to fight normally for 15 seconds. After the duration ends, the Warrior dies.
- There is only a 25% chance per kill that grants XP credit to said warrior to remove the Vengeance effect and the warrior rallies for real.
- Vengeance does not contest points in SPvP or WvW. If you die again under the effects of vengeance you are instantly defeated (This last part isn’t actually in the wiki, but it’s an actual fact and it makes sense).

So, pretty much I just explained Vengeance to everyone here, in which might have been pointless but I do not want silly misconceptions to happen. Which is good for me because I have many issues with the skill that are based on personal experience and how Vengeance actually functions.

First off, Vengeance is the only downed skill that will punish you for using it in attempt to rally.

“Wait what?”

Let me explain, other 3 skills have a good potential to rally you faster and hopefully before someone blind/invis/invul/stabil stomps you. Guardians get a powerful heal to synergize with the common heal, Engineers…actually Engineers might be just above the Necro and Warrior tier, I might suggest they get something better as well. Elementalists actually have a Mist Form AS soon as they get downed to utilize, with a stacking immobilize if given enough time. And…I don’t feel like going through the rest, laziness and the fact no one likes Mesmers and Thieves.

The thing is, that while under any circumstances where any other profession but a warrior tags targets and has a potential to rally, if a warrior pops HIS 3, he might actually NOT RALLY AT ALL! Because of that silly, STUPIDLY low percentage of 25%, if a warrior gets up to fight (again putting himself in danger, cause he isn’t immune from damage in Vengeance) he will have to pray to Zommoros to grant him a rally for a mechanic that punishes him for getting up to test his luck! What other profession has this issue? If a warrior wants to rely on a rally to get him up like everyone else, then he can’t actually use Vengeance, leaving him an ability less than everyone else!

NEXT, Sweet Revenge, Master Trait in Discipline. You have to spend 20 points and a master trait to get a potentially reliable Vengeance to work when you actually kill someone! I…I don’t even want to talk about how silly this is. I think the trait is actually a punch-line for a warrior joke somewhere.

Finally, Vengeance without contesting. This one is actually hard to gauge, and I think I can live without since no other profession can contest the point either with a down-state skill or capability. But, considering all the flaws with Vengeance currently and the ridiculous chance to pull off a rally while in it, I don’t suppose we could still contest the point, perhaps make us a real threat in some scenarios while Vengeancing? Just saying, would be an interesting thought.

Anyways that’s what I got folks.

Manuhell.2759:

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

Armor and Health are benefits the warrior trades for things like stealth and spammable conditions. Warriors gain armor and an expanded health because they don’t have wonderful things like stealth or minions or things like that.

Manuhell.2759:

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

In what manner?

I have always wondered why you have to always compare Healing Signet to other professions and their heals, yet forget to include things like Effective Health, Mitigation, etc. I have spoken on this many times before but frankly you cannot straight up put healing to healing until you objectively cover mitigation and effective healths of the professions in question.

Manuhell.2759:

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

No, Warriors are balanced from their lack of Protection, Stealth, Condition spam and redundancy, and considerable boons. In exchange, we get Health, Toughness, CC, and both Raw damage and more recently fair to viable condition damage. Our healing, or I should say our sustain, should be flexible and capable of matching to our health pool. Right now and currently even after the nerf coming to the healing signet, having the sustain from the utility do a bit more than other professions is entirely fine.

Manuhell.2759:

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

I agree, but that in my opinion, helps make the warrior profession unique. They won’t have a total immunity, but can achieve it through a few utilities yet still be active in combat! That might be their biggest perk, but as I have always said about fighting warriors, once you know the weapon sets any warrior is using you can guess what to watch out for. The biggest defect in any warrior is just how easy it is to tell what they are doing, the Warrior profession has the most tells of anyone!

Manuhell.2759:

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

Don’t worry, warriors have a slew of defects, especially in the movement mechanics…rush, bull’s charge-

ANYWAYS, although the banner mechanics work, it does not mean they are ‘fine’. They are a situational area based buffs, which can only be moved using a sub-par weapon set. It’s clunky really….

Manuhell.2759:

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

The original design can change. However I agree to some extent that the current state of warrior versus conditions is a bit better than the other professions. Cleansing Ire could probably have a cooldown associated with it to help make them a bit more suspectible, however the fact that conditions are strong needs to change as well. Balance should be a two-way street, warriors are entirely kitten on healing since the only heal they have viably good is Healing Signet (They should have other options).

Warriors can take a nerf, but not anything like what anti-warrior enthusiasts are trying to do. I want my profession to still be viable and not completely shut down from any content.

Manuhell.2759:

- First Snip -

We have access to defensive conditions yes, but we don’t have any luxury of spamming them to the extent other professions have on a mechanical basis. There are a multitude of builds other professions have that can stack the kinds of conditions warriors have little access to, or even no access to at all.

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

Manuhell.2759:

- Protections, banners, removal snip -

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

Every profession has a synergy with their weapons and what capabilities a set accomplishes. Thieves CAN gain access to spammable blinding fields and perma-stealth for powerful engages or disengages, Mesmers CAN gain similar access but for a more sustained condition damage based combat. Warriors and their weapons are extremely physical, but do not have a variety of conditions to pull off as a whole. With that said, in order to compensate for a lack of utility with brute strength, we have utilities which can deal with the rampant utility of other professions and their potential. There is a ‘simpleness’ to these utilities, but it is because they are so simple that makes them balanced. Endure Pain is a perfect example, a fairly decent duration utility that can provide raw damage immunity for a short time. A means for the warrior without the use of stealth or pure immunity from all damage to deal with power burst. However it is suspectible to conditions still, and the animation and buff is an easy tell.

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

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

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

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

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

Manuhell.2759:

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

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

Manuhell.2759:

DuranArgith.1354:

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

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

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

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

The innate high HP and toughness of the class helps deal with the fact we don’t have Protection at all. Utilities like Endure Pain and Berserker’s stance are almost a must to have, and take up precious utility slots that we could use for other utilities. It’s probably the only reason you are not seeing more warriors running Throw Bola or more Signets, because it is required to have some sort of mitigation when we possess nothing else.

As for not being the only class without protection, other said classes have a mechanic that can situationally make up for it. Stealth, actual invulns, impressive amounts of boons and mobility, another health bar, if a warrior’s only gimmick was that they had an extra 3-5k life, that is probably the weakest benefit for the warrior by far. If our only benefit was being a toughness/health based class, both things are completely outplayed by Conditions and High Crit Damage (The latter being addressed, the former not quite addressed at all)….

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

New World Boss: Ancient Deep Sea Kraken

Difficulty: Tier 4) Insane
Recommended number of players: 80+
Timer: 20 minutes
Background: Claw Island, still under repairs from the war against Zhaitan, finds itself dealing with some amount of karka, aggressive sea creatures and the remaining Risen. However, something else is coming up, something that should never have seen the surface…

Description: A monstrous Kraken rises from the deeps of the sea as it retreats north from whatever is scaring it from the south, finds itself blocked by Claw island itself.

Battle Flow and Mechanics:
Lionguard and the group feel the ground quake as multiple tentacles rise up on either side of the island, the beaches.
Beach Phase: The objective of the zerg is to deal with lashing Tentacles on both sides of the island, there are three champion tentacles on the east side of Claw Island and two on the west. Along with these tentacles are vicious veteran karka both small and large. This is not difficult as the tentacles do not carry too much life but they do inflict poison, daze on an AoE, blow-out and knockback. Rather this phase’s intent is a simple delay for the zerg in terms of the timer.

Sieged Phase: This is where things get difficult. Quite a distance from the eastern beach of Claw Island the Kraken begins to show its shadow and itself in the water. This part of the encounter the group’s objective is to deal enough damage to the ’Kraken’s Shell’ to break it, and proceed to the final phase. To accomplish this the group can work in three ways, either use the four trebs with good aim to hit the beast, or attack it straight on using underwater combat, or a mix of both.
Some things to note during this phase:
- The tentacles respawn (Kraken has a lot of them). During this phase these tentacles can be killed like before, however while each tentacle is alive adds will continue to spawn on an interval. If a tentacle dies, a few more champion karka spawn under its location and that will be the end of spawns for that area.
- The intent of the tentacles is to send karka stampeding to kill the trebuchets and players operating them. Realistically the trebs are really wanted in hopes of finishing the encounter sooner by breaking the shell faster than those trying to deal with the Kraken underwater.
- For those wanting to swim and attack the shell directly, there will be merciless attacks of waving tentacles (with animations and AoE fields) as well as ink being spewed everywhere, blinding and slowing DPS. It is possible to swarm the Kraken in this phase with raw numbers, but you might lose quite a few people.

Enraged Phase: The Kraken finally decides to come ashore, forcibly as it shakes Claw Island itself landing where Blightghast led an assault, its size equally as formidable, with tentacles flailing off the edges, some tentacles cut off! Its body is leaking ink and other parts are fuming with hot steam! This is the real fight and where the group can finally attack the Kraken on land!
- Like most world bosses, there are multiple areas to target, however because the Kraken is spanned so wide it is not possible to cleave three parts like other bosses. However there is reason to deal damage to the left and right sides of it.
- The Kraken’s main body will volley smoldering ink across the field of battle! These are blinding fields that also apply burning that stacks intensity. The burn is substantial and is recommended to be cleansed! It will also screech periodically and daze everyone in a cone in front of it.
- The left and right sides of the Kraken are a series of Tentacles, which much like the previous parts do the attacks but in rapid linear AoEs across the battlefield. The damage is also adjusted up a notch so that any glass cannon might only take one to two hits from one before they get downed. Considering the WP is at the dock, the walk is rather far…
- Finally, and constantly as the left and right sides exist more Karka will spawn from the east and west sides of the field of battle, turning the entire south side of Claw island into a warzone fast!
- However, to alleviate a lot of the pressure going on, the Lionguard have set up ballistas which will ‘pin down’ the left and right sides of the Kraken respectively to prevent excess AoE lashes. The Karka however will continue to rush the siege like always…
The main objective of this phase is to kill the Kraken, whom is at full health. Even under ballista support, the tentacles will get a few lashes out and create chaos thus forcing the DPS to slow down. If the ballistas are not kept in check, the karka will swarm them! Without ballistas the dodging of tentacles becomes twice as hard! Too many defenders however and you might not kill the Kraken in time!