Guild Wars 2

DirtyDeeds.6075:

Those of you complaining Rangers have bad shouts I disagree. There is nothing wrong with Battle Roar at all. While it may be slightly weak for solo play, it borders on overpowered because of its 1200 radius that buffs everyone with +20% crit chance for 6.5 Secs plus a decent Might buff(60Pwr/60Cond Dmg) for 16.5 secs.

Dude, even the devs agree that ranger shouts are bad. :P

Maybe no nerfs are necessary at all, like I said in the other thread, maybe the rendering bug should be fixed before the profession gets nerfed, and see if it is still necessary then. If there is a bug that makes a profession too strong, then I think it makes more sense to fix the bug before nerfing the profession.

Though causing mug/steal to interrupt casting skills, might solve some problems too. That gives players a lot more time to react once mug hits, due to CnD’s long cast time. That way a player just has to dodge away or use a defensive or control skill to stop the whole combo from ever happening.

Maybe make it so when you have mug traited, steal interrupts casting skills. As far as I can tell, that would solve the whole problem.

I think it’s really important that the rendering problem gets fixed before the thief profession gets nerfed. Because if you downgrade the profession now, it might come out completely useless in pve first, where it is already too weak, and then later in pvp as well once the rendering problem is fixed.

I also really would not touch any repeatable skills such as backstab, but focus on lowering damage on mug for example, since nerfing skills with a long cooldown has a much more controllable effect.

If you downgrade short CD skills like backstab and CnD and Heartseeker significantly now, I’m afraid the profession will have several broken builds and become mostly useless. Going from overpowered to underpowered on one of the most-played professions will just cost the game more players.

It is the question if thieves will really still be so strong at all, once rendering is fixed. Maybe they don’t need any downgrades at all after that, so yeah I suggest to first fix rendering before possibly wrecking one of the most popular professions.

Thieves aren’t popular just because they’re so powerful, they’re also a lot of fun to play. I’m afraid if they get downgraded now, they will be useless when rendering gets fixed. I also don’t think things such as stealth-finishes should be removed, they give the game flavour. I don’t play a thief anymore now, but I would be sad if the option for me to play one gets removed in the future by overnerfing, just like my option to play ranger and elementalist was removed the same way.

I think the only changes thief needs, is a big damage nerf to mug, and a small damage nerf to CnD, and in return upgrade some pistol (vital shot and body shot especially) and sword skills. That way the one overpowered build gets balanced and other builds that were too weak, get improved.

A lot of these “changes” seem to be coming from people who want their own specific favorite build improved, with no regard to other builds. A lot of these changes would completely destroy thief build diversity, such as removing stealth from CnD would be a complete disaster for several major thief builds, basically ruining the whole profession.

Thief doesn’t need any changes like that at all, it’s one of the only properly working professions in the game other than mesmer, so I hope they don’t get ruined like some suggestions on this thread would accomplish.

A few simple changes to spike damage is all that’s needed, a good start for example would be to remove the huge damage hit on the mug trait, there’s no reason for mug to do more than 1K or so. I would suggest to slightly reduce the effect of power on CnD, plus lowering mug damage, and then see how it goes, instead of totally trashing the profession with wild changes.

In return, some skills should get upgrades, such as pistol’s vital shot and body shot.

As a new player if you want to level, start out just stacking as much power as you can.

I think thieves need to stop comparing themselves with warriors though.. generally hundred blades will do barely 10K damage, even though it takes almost four seconds to complete, roots the warrior and gives you ages to react. A large amount of skills can be used to stop hundred blades, such as any stun breaker, a simple dodge, a daze, a knockback, a knockdown, a stun, etc..

Where as backstab, it just goes bam from stealth and it’s finished.. doing the same damage instantly, with no warning to allow for dodging or any kind of reaction. That’s hardly comparable in any way. Hundred blades is not a pvp skill, only afk people will eat a full hundred blades, it is only used for pve, dungeons, leveling and for destroying structures in wvw.

That said, I don’t think thief needs a damage downgrade, they should kill squishies very fast, but having toughness should completely prevent getting instagibbed.. so I think that improving toughness will solve all spike damage problems from all professions, without having to nerf pvp professions such as thief and mesmer. Improving toughness will in general make fights less frustrating as they are longer then, and give people more time to react.

Actually hammer rewards stacking power quite strongly, it has a very heavy hitting auto attack, and together with the tier 2 defence trait, the hammer hits quite hard.

When you use a hammer, every point of power grants a lot of result, I just wish hammer skills were better for pvp, or better in general, it only really has two useful skills, the burst skill and the #5 skill, the latter having a way too long 30 second cooldown, considering it is single target.

Imo, they should make hammer skill #4 better (now it’s a tiny knockback), and cut off 10 seconds from the hammer skill #5, or else cut off 5 seconds and make it aoe. Hammer skill #2 could also use some love, it’s only useful for pve.

I agree with some posters, I don’t think thief damage needs to be decreased that much, because you’ll make it impossible for thieves to pve that way due to their low survivability in pve.

The problem is that toughness just doesn’t reduce enough damage, toughness is too weak. If you reduce toughness diminishing returns and increase toughness protection, you can make better hybrid builds where every point of toughness matters. Less people would go full glass cannon because it’s not worth getting any toughness, more people would get say, 400 toughness or so without going full bunker, and then they wouldn’t get instagibbed anymore.

But right now getting toughness means almost nothing, a thief will still burn you down real fast just with auto attacks even.

My suggestion is, leave thief damage alone for now, nerfing their damage will just prevent them from being able to pve anymore, but significantly increase toughness efficiency. Then we can put in some knight armor pieces into our gear to prevent getting instagibbed. Full bunker builds will get stronger, but considering they don’t do much damage at all I don’t see any problem with that. I rather have a fight drag out over a long time against a bunker, than get instagibbed by a thief or melted downed by a mesmer.

Also stop making up numbers, it’s quite hard getting even to 10K damage with hundred blades on a light armor golem in full berserker gear. In general hundred blades will do around 6K if nothing is dodged, any other numbers are a result of insane might stacking (unrealistic in pvp), luck and targets with the least possible toughness.

It’s the same as people claiming they get hit by 30K backstabs, in general a backstab will do around 5-6K damage, unless you stack a ton of might and prenerf signet. The difference is that landing a backstab is a thousand times easier than landing a full hundred blades, even though they do the same damage.

In other words, it takes a ton of skill to somewhat counter the warrior’s innate weakness in pvp. But we don’t really have any builds or weapons that reward skill much, all our mechanics are very simple minded.

Deep strike is only useful at low levels, once you’ve leveled up you move to proper utilities like physical, banners and shouts. I do use signet of might sometimes tho, during times where I don’t need endure pain or balanced stance, just for the extra power against veterans.

A lot of fun in pve, more or less useless in pvp.

There is no profession that can chain CC Fellknight, a hammer warrior can chain maybe 5 seconds effectively, but only once every 40 seconds at most, and they don’t do a lot of damage in that time since the hammer has no high damage skills, only debuffs.

I use longbow, but I only put 10 points in tactics for stronger bowstrings, and don’t have a lot of condition damage. I just use it for sieges and events and kiting powerful veterans really. The auto attack is just way too weak for the weapon to be viable as a main weaponset, and lack of short cooldown cripple makes it very hard to use.

I’d like the physical utilities to have shorter cooldowns though.. kick is cool, but all it does is knock your opponent back a little bit every 20 (16 traited) seconds. If it had half cooldown, 10 (8 traited), then it would be a bit more useful to keep interrupting opponent combo chains.

Bull rush and stomp have a really, really long cooldown, I only use bull rush cuz it’s cool, fun to use and gives extra mobility, tho it feels a bit buggy when the animation doesn’t end the moment I reach my target.

I did like kick on my pve rifle warrior, nice to get some distance, and it looks awesome.

The whole point of the mesmer is irl confusion, so you don’t know which is real.. why would you want to remove that when the entire profession is based on that confusion aspect.

Playing against mesmers is a matter of skill, in itself a mesmer isn’t overpowered when moa is on cooldown (moa makes mesmer win any fight, but it has such a long cooldown that I don’t mind), it just takes experience to beat them, new players will never defeat a skilled mesmer, and they shouldn’t.

I have no problems with haste being removed, it seems to make skills that are otherwise fine, overpowered. Then instead of haste getting nerfed, the skills get nerfed, making them too weak outside of haste.

Maybe a change to haste could be: Haste no longer causes skills to be executed 50% faster, but it now causes skills to recharge 100% faster. Then if necessary you can adjust the cooldown and time. In the case of thieves haste would obviously cause initiative to recharge twice as fast.

I use greatsword and longbow. Rifle is more powerful on single targets, but longbow is amazing on multiple opponents, and I don’t need a ranged weapon for single targets anyway, so rifle is redundant for me.

Using the stronger bowstring trait also makes longbow dual shot a 100% projectile finisher, on top of adding 300 range. Rifle bullets will only ever be a 20% projectile finisher.

I think fixes is exactly what the ranger profession needs, more than upgrades. If ranger pet could hit moving targets, if pet F2 abilities could be reliably used in pvp, then the ranger profession would become very powerful very fast regardless of its incredibly weak weapon skills. If you put 30 points in Beastmastery, on a pet that is able to use all its skills on moving targets, you’ll be quite successful. But that is impossible now since pets cannot hit moving targets, cannot have any impact on pvp.

I find it sad though that no pet AI fixes are ever mentioned, even though it’s what rangers need more than anything. Pets can do massive damage, they are very powerful compared to other MMO pet classes, but their pathing and AI behaviour is so subpar that they are a null-factor in pvp, having a pet out or not makes no difference in pvp, since simply moving around completely prevents the pet from ever hitting you with either its auto attack or any other ability it has.

This is why the weak ranger weapons stand out so much, in pvp all rangers have are their own weapon skills and utilities, and because they are balanced considering the pet, they are very very weak especially in terms of damage output. Weapons like shortbow are not only very weak now, they are also the most boring weapons of the game. When I leveled my ranger I only ever used crossfire, nothing else, not because it was so powerful, but because there was nothing else to do if you didn’t want to cut your dps in half by using other weapons.

All this makes rangers the weakest pvp profession of the game, and I don’t think this can be solved without changing pet pathing/behaviour, because if you boost weapons to the point that a ranger can compete in pvp, they will be far too powerful in pve, where pets are able to hit their targets, since you’d have to effectively double weapon dps.

I don’t think 100b builds are viable for spvp or tpvp.. all it takes is a dodge or a stun break and you can’t do anything for a full minute waiting for frenzy to recharge. You’re not exactly much value to your team that way.

Even if you down someone that way, you’re helpless for another minute, while a hammer build for example is far more helpful to lock down players so your team can down them easiier.

I don’t think greatsword is a weapon that should be used in spvp or tpvp.. at most for group play (not roaming) in wvw along with the longbow or rifle. It’s just not useful in any situation where you have to down someone on your own, even with a friend few skills hold someone down for the time it takes your hundred blades to finish.

Hundred blades is a pve skill, to destroy structures and npcs.

I prefer full knight armor: toughness/precision/power.

I feel toughness is more useful than vitality, since we already have like 18K base health, though a few vitality trinkets won’t harm.

Isn’t that what legendary weapons are already supposed to do, to give special effects to your armor?

I don’t like the idea, it would just be a first step to simplify traits and go the way of WoW, which has now 6 talents per class instead of the previous 80 or so. I’m against anything that simplifies building and traiting.

Once you’re level 80, you don’t look at the stats anymore anyway, you only look at the minor and major traits. The stats only really matter at low level, which is when traits don’t matter yet, so it’s just fine the way it is.

I’m sure this idea has already been suggested, but I can’t read all twelve pages.

Add in environmental mounts.. not player owned mounts you summon, but mounts you find in the open world and in dungeons, on which you can jump and ride, maybe having its own set of skills for mounted combat. When you get off the mount, it will disappear after a while and respawn at its original location.

Given there are environmental weapons, I think environmental mounts would fit in perfectly.

Whirlwind Axe does really low damage though, if you look at the actual numbers.. about 35-40% of hundred blades dps. It ends up doing a lot less than your axe auto attack, it’s just got a nice 360° hit arc, and gets pretty brutal in combo fields such as fire.

I do wish axe mainhand had cooler auto attack animations.. it looks like you’re chopping wood.. the axe #2 also seems very weak and pointless, the axe #3 is somewhat useful, the #4 is very weak with low damage and 2 seconds of fury won’t do much either. While again the axe #5 looks cool, but the actual numbers, the dps, is very very low.. it’s only really useful in a fire combo field.. which luckily we can provide with the long bow.

I think I will try axe-axe/longbow again.

Makes the master greatsword trait worth it on its own. From 10s cd to 8s is nice.. along with 6s hundred blades, 16 rush and 12s bladetrail. The greatsword is called underpowered by experienced players and overpowered by newbies, but I just love it above all other weapons regardless. My healing zweihander greatsword skin as a sylvari makes me look like an anime character with those huge rectangular blades, very cool.

It has a weak auto attack and a mostly useless #2 in pvp, but warrior isn’t meant to be dueling other players anyway, we rock at pve, sieges and group wvw with this weapon.

The druid would be a nature mage and shapeshifter.

It starts out with F1 being human form, using 5 abilities granted by staff or trident, no other weapons available.. and F2 being the first available animal form at lvl1. Then at level 5 it would get a second animal form with F3, and at lvl10 a third animal form with F4.

In human form it wields a staff, or trident underwater, giving 5 skills based on nature magik, focusing on ranged combat, since the animal forms will be mostly melee combat. This gives the druid a nice choice between melee (shapeshift forms) and range (human form staff skills).

The F2 shapeshift would be based on direct damage. (Maybe a stag.)
The F3 shapeshift would be based on condition damage. (Maybe a feline.)
The F4 shapeshift would be based on control and support. (Maybe a bear.)

F1 would be available at any time, F2-4 would have a 10 second cooldown,
which can be lowered in the specialized trait by 30% to 7 seconds.

Utilities would be:

1. 4 signets.
2. 4 summons (ethereal elementals such as faeries, pixies and sylphs).
3. 4 earth utilities, such as rooting yourself for stability and retaliation (spikes on the roots), tremors to cripple and slow, rock walls that need to be destroyed during which the druid can cast spells safe from attacks, etc..
4. 4 herbalist-based skills, where the druid has access to salves for condition curing and potions for buffs.

Elite skills would be:

1. A summon ability, such as calling upon a massive flock of ravens, counts as summon concerning traits.
2. An elite signet.
3. A short term transformation into something fierce like a gryphon or unicorn, granting 5 weapon skills just like the shapeshifts, with the difference that it only lasts a short while, where as shapeshifts are permanent until canceled. Counts as a shapeshift concerning traits.

I think a druid class would fit perfectly with GW2 mechanics.

I don’t think new classes will happen anytime soon, the current ones pretty much covered every single fantasy class-type that exists.

Guardian > priest, paladin, cleric, monk
Warrior > fighter, berserker, sword saint
Ranger > hunter, druid
Thief > rogue, swashbuckler, assassin
Elementalist > mage, wizard, sorcerer
Mesmer > witch hunter, duelist

etc.. I’m sure I missed a ton.

etc.. I’m sure I missed a ton.All possible fantasy professions types except death knight are covered, and I really don’t think anet is going to copy that from WoW as first new profession just like they did.

etc.. I’m sure I missed a ton.All possible fantasy professions types except death knight are covered, and I really don’t think anet is going to copy that from WoW as first new profession just like they did.I think anet did a pretty good job stuffing as many class types into eight professions, it eliminates the need to create a new one anytime soon.

etc.. I’m sure I missed a ton.All possible fantasy professions types except death knight are covered, and I really don’t think anet is going to copy that from WoW as first new profession just like they did.I think anet did a pretty good job stuffing as many class types into eight professions, it eliminates the need to create a new one anytime soon.Personally tho, I would love a real caster druid type of profession. Ranger kind of already covers it, but I’d love to see a shapeshifting druid profession with nature magic. The profession mechanic would be four forms to shapeshift into F1-4, F1 being human form, and F2-4 being three animal/beast forms that each grant 5 weapon skills. No weapon swapping, would only get to use staff and trident.

Email support, they gave me my backup rytlock in a matter of days, but they’ll only do it once.

Nah Gilosean, thieves really do too much damage, but only against high toughness targets. The problem is that there’s no way to build to counter these huge spikes thieves put out, because stacking toughness doesn’t grant you much result.

Don’t nerf thieves, but improve toughness.

I think that in general, toughness needs to reduce more damage.

It also shouldn’t have such high diminishing returns.

I don’t think thief damage should get nerfed, imo they oughta be able to one shot or near one shot other glass cannons, they’re assassins after all. But when someone specs for high toughness, then it should matter a lot, which right now is not the case. Even if you go all out on toughness, it just doesn’t do much, even though you sacrifice all your offense.

Having super high toughness should enable you to easily cut off at least 65% of direct damage gone, considering how much offense you sacrifice for it. I also wish your stats would show how much % resistance to direct damage you have.

I think improving toughness significantly, will solve a lot of complaints in the game, both pvp and pve.

I already wrote that I base my opinion on tpvp and spvp on the experiences and posts of those players who are very experienced in these areas. Players experienced there, consistantly write about how horrible the warrior performs in tpvp and spvp compared to other professions, so I included this in my thread. Just because I don’t have much personal experience in those areas, doesn’t mean that what I write is wrong. The point of this thread was to list warrior strengths and weaknesses for new players, not boast about my knowledge or skill.

Scythes is not gonna happen, a scythe is a farming tool, not a weapon of war. At most you can have staves that look like scythes, for the caster professions, which I think already exists.

Morningstar would be pointless, as it’s basically the same as a mace, and a lot of maces already have morningstar skins.

I could see flails (a stick with a chain and a spiked ball), but that’s too similar to maces again.

The most likely weapons I can see coming, is either a two handed axe, or a halberd. Spears already exist as underwater weapons, so they’re not going to come for dry combat.

I can’t really think of any other options apart from twohanded axes and halberds. I don’t know about any other type of weapon that exists in real history and isn’t already covered.

I love the warrior profession, maybe my original post made it seem like I think we are bad or something, that wasn’t my attention. I basically only play warrior, as I find the other professions to always have some area where I get frustrated. I don’t like Tpvp and Spvp, and I don’t bother roaming on my own in WvW, but I enjoy big sieges and group fights, I enjoy dungeons and solo pve, so warrior is perfect for me.

The point of this thread, is that if a new player wants to be good at 1vs1 or structured/tournament pvp, then warrior is not the profession they will have much fun with in these areas. I’m not saying warrior is so absolutely horrible in these areas, I’m saying that most other professions are simply a lot better at them, and eventually most players will reroll after seeing other professions perform much better at the content they enjoys most. Having to reroll after putting so much time into one character, is just not cool, therefor I made this topic to help starting warriors realize what their profession is good at, and what not.

There is just no arguing that warriors are better at pve than at pvp.. it is a simple fact. Some people just love coming to a topic and hating on the OP, posing their superior knowledge and skill, but that doesn’t make me wrong in this case.

You will not have any fun with the ranger profession sadly. Even if our dps wouldn’t be so incredibly low, the weapons we have are exceedingly boring. Your only viable main weapon is the shortbow, and all you EVER do with it, is auto attack.

With my warrior, I use 3 weapon skills in easy fights, 5 skills in tougher fights, and 10 skills against veteran enemies and harder. On top of that I use all of my utility skills and my elite skill on a regular basis.

As a result I destroy solo pve content at a very rapid pace, while having tons of fun.

With my ranger, all I used was, in any fight no matter how hard or easy, 1 single skill: shortbow auto attack. Just strafe around the target and go pew pew pew with auto attack.. nothing else.

Not because the auto attack is so powerful, it’s quite weak especially after the last overnerf, but because there’s simply nothing else to do, no other skills have any point in using them. Against a veteran you might sometimes use shortbow #4 if your pet is dead, and that’s the pinacle of skill use as a ranger.

If pets would become able to hit moving targets, having the devs add some actually useful beastmaster major traits, then putting 30 points in BM, would make the ranger quite powerful. After that it wouldn’t matter so much what weapons you use, since your pet would do the vast majority of the damage.

Imo, pet should provide consistent and reliable damage, as well as long cooldown burst damage, while the ranger should provide short cooldown burst damage (longbow), conditions (shortbow), and utility.

But that will only work if pet AI gets seperated from npc AI.

nldixon.8514:

Dante Dragonhand.2538:

nldixon.8514:

If you do just fine on your Ranger, why are you always on the forums complaining about Rangers? Yes, Rangers have some issues. Rangers are also totally playable and there are some amazing builds and play styles that make them fun and effective.

I have yet to see any positive or constructive posts from you on the Ranger forums. So what’s worse: people coming to the forums trying to promote effective play styles and builds (and coming off as “cool” as you put it) or people coming to the forums and complaining incessantly and providing absolutely zero constructive feedback?

Who are you talking too? I personally do just fine on ranger, not because the class is great, it sucks, but I outplay people, and I only outpreform people because I stand on a cap point and farm points. In team fights there are far better ranged options, rifle warrior, shortbow thief, engineer, ect.

Obviously not you since we posted at exactly the same time.

[Edit: I totally disagree with you that rifle Warriors and shortbow Thieves are better ranged combatants than Rangers. And Engineers are more of a short to mid-range class than a true ranged class, so they don’t really count. Past 1000 units a Ranger totally dominates an Engineer.]

Engineer rifle auto attack (not using any other abilities), does over three times the damage a ranger can do by using both auto attack and rapid fire.. and it is VERY easy staying within 1000 range, it takes no effort at all.

Grenades at range past 1200.. will outdamage ranger dps even more, since grenade dps when traited is even higher than rifle dps.. PLUS it’s aoe.

Ranger right now, is a very, very broken class. Before the -30% shortbow nerf, at least they had one single weapon they could use for damage, but that got taken away for some undisclosed reason, and now rangers have nothing at all. There is nothing a ranger can do to match up to other professions, even elementalists are better now.

If shortbow #2 skill gets changed to make up for the damage nerf, then shortbow will be viable again, but that puts rangers back into the same situation of having one single viable weapon/build. There is no way longbow gets fixed, because the numbers needed to fix it are too huge, so there is very little hope I have for the ranger profession.

If they have some signets and spirits fixed, that will really change nothing at all, since ranger problems are the pet and the weapons, not the utilities. The weak utilities are just a minor problem that have little impact on ranger viability.

As long as the weapons don’t get upgraded (longbow needs to be made even stronger than it started out as in beta 1, since it started out underpowered not considering the trait bug), and the pet behaviour doesn’t get changed, by using a seperate AI pathing for ranger pets, nothing will change and rangers will never be viable. Even giving them the most powerful elite skills and utilities of all professions, will not make any difference.

The only reason someone would say a 50% increase is way overpowered, is if they have absolutely no idea about longbow damage numbers. He wrote those numbers down right there in the OP, so I guess these people simply didn’t read the OP at all and just responded to the topic title, which is not a mature way of engaging in a discussion.

Right now the longbow is literally the weakest weapon in the entire game, and not just by a bit. It cannot even be used for solo pve, for leveling, especially in storymode, because the damage is just so incredibly low. Against single opponents anything works I guess, but a longbow ranger entering any situation that’s slightly tougher and more dangerous and he will get downed. Longbow does incredibly low damage yes, but on top of that it only hits single targets.. making the weapon entirely useless as it is.

Increasing long range shot damage by 50% and reducing range penalties, is just a start to make longbow viable, it will still be a weak weapon then, because all it’ll do is normal damage against single targets, where as many classes can do higher damage against multiple targets. Rapid fire in comparison is even weaker than long range shot, so rapid fire damage would have to be increased by somethnig like 65% to be anywhere near viable.

And all that is considering pets actually hit their target.. if you want to counter them never hitting, you’d have to increase the damage of long range shot and rapid fire even more.

I don’t think people realize how incredibly weak the ranger longbow really is. It was very weak in first beta, it was underpowered, but then for some reason they decided to downgrade it even further, by something like -30%.. turning an underpowered weapon into a total trash weapon.

Aside from going totally crazy, there is no way to make the ranger longbow overpowered.. it fires slow moving projectiles at a very slow rate (longer than one second per shot), and it only hits single targets (barrage is only used for cripple effect, its damage is negligable).

The longbow doesn’t just have boring, straightforward, expected skills, its damage is so low that the weapon is simply trash.

Looking at total numbers of long range shot and rapid fire is pointless, if you don’t consider that long range shot has a firing rate of over one second, and rapid fire needs a staggering five seconds to complete. So seeing 6K appear at the end of your rapid fire, means your actual damage was very, very low.. as it took five seconds to get there, where as attacks like hip shot hit for 1800 every half second.. that’s 18K damage with an auto attack, against 6-7K damage from the highest damage longbow ability. Except that rapid fire is interrupted and avoided very easily, just use LOS or stun or daze or knockdown or knockback.

Threads like this make me wish anet would use the playing experience of their own staff to balance professions, and not go by these kinds of threads. So what if an elementalist can avoid the first stomp? Just follow him and stomp him as his vapor form ends, nothing he can do against that. Elementalists are the weakest profession of the game, their only viable build is pure bunker, which not a lot of people enjoy playing, I can’t believe people are whining just because it gets a bit harder to finish them.

Nah, the elite banner is already pure defense, a rampage change or replacement should either have offensive uses or hybrid (both offense and defense) uses. It should also be an active skill, because signet of rage is already passive.

Popular doesn’t mean effective, warrior popularity in pvp is very rapidly dying as well. I also don’t understand why you mention mesmer, but not thieves, by far the most powerful and easy to use one vs one profession when moa morph is on cooldown. Their signet update really didn’t make them any weaker.

But in general, I don’t think you should expect to be viable as a warrior in one vs one or spvp or tpvp, with any build.

The only offense warriors have is rifle, which will only ever hit people that aren’t paying attention, axes, which aren’t viable due to no mobility, and greatsword, which isn’t viable because you only get to use hundred blades once every minute, and totally waste your opportunity when someone dodges or uses a stun breaker. On top of that you have to sacrifice all survivability to make any of that low-quality offense work.

Warriors are only good for dungeons, solo pve and wvw sieges. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you like those things more than real pvp.

I like mixing utilities, rather than getting three of the same kind.

Shake it off + a signet + a stance or physical. That way you get to avoid triple shout, as you asked for.

I do like shouts though, and somewhere I hope they will remove rampage and replace it with an elite shout.

The ranger’s greatest power, is his pet. Pets do a ton of damage and have very powerful utility skills.. this forces the ranger to be weaker by itself. This wouldn’t be a problem, if pets would actually be able to deliver their damage and utilities.. but they cannot, and they never will.

Pets use the game’s innate npc pathing system I guess, making it impossible for them to hit moving targets, and any change to make ranger pets be efficient, would require far too much work and effort and probably money.

That is why the OP (JonPeters) made no mention of pets, despite pets being by far the greatest issue for the ranger profession.

Rangers are balanced around their pets, but their pets are a null-factor in pvp, they do nothing against other players, this will not get fixed, and that is why rangers will never be as good as other professions in pvp. All you can hope for is a damage increase to unlock other viable builds/weapons for pve, such as the now useless longbow and greatsword, but I doubt you’ll even get that.

It’s only useful as a gap closer, maybe they should just remove the uppercut, decrease animation time to ranger swoop, and reduce the cooldown by 5 seconds.

Imo, it should be replaced completely, by a shout.

That will give a lot more synergy: then we have an elite signet, an elite banner and an elite shout, all of which are affected significantly by traits, and would allow us to make better builds.. i.e. signet build, banner build or shout build. Rather than an awkward set of rather lackluster skills that on top disable your utilities.

That would also place us closer to guardian support efficiency.. another heal/condition removal plus whatever powerful effect it would have innately.

Any suggestions on what effect an elite shout would have?

Maybe a 4 second aoe stun with a 60 second cooldown, not as good as moa morph or dagger storm, since any stun breaker will negate it, but close, and good for dungeons.

Well, a lot of very experienced tournament/structured pvp players completely disagree with your opinion on this, so I wouldn’t be too quick on calling mine awful. I don’t have much experience with tpvp and spvp, that’s why I based my opinion on those players who do have a lot of experience with that content.

I just wanted to make this topic for new players to learn about warrior purpose (in my opinion, which is not an absolute truth), before they spend all their time leveling their warrior and then figuring out they can’t do what they planned on doing.

- Warrior profession is viable or very good at:

1. Solo pve, grinding and leveling, farming and exploring tough areas.
2. Group WvWvW pvp, staying with the group in sieges, group offense/defence.
3. Being a valuable asset to explore and farm in tough dungeons with groups.

Warriors are the best and among the best of the professions for these purposes.

- Warrior profession is NOT viable at:

1. Structured pvp play.
2. Tournament pvp play.
3. Dueling other players.
4. WvWvW pvp roaming.

Warriors simply cannot be used, at all, for these last four content points. If you want to do mainly any of these four, you have to roll another character or you will waste a lot of effort and possibly real life money if you spend it on gems.

A warrior cannot perform in any way in pvp in a situation where there is one or more skilled players in the vicinity.. being skilled doesn’t make a warrior stronger in such situations, the warrior profession mechanics just cannot deal with this game content.

Anyway, this is just my opinion, I do not think that my opinion is a fact, it’s just my opinion, more experienced players know more about this profession than me, so do with it what you want.

I find guardian traits to be really bad, really boring, unsynergetic and chaotic. Some guardian weapons aren’t supported in traits at all, or in a totally negligent way, and the latest change to greatsword completely ruined guardian greatsword for me.

In pvp, guardians are only good at full bunker builds, anything else is just pure fail. Their health is far too low and their ranged options too weak, to build for dps, for when you want to beat another player on your own. All they’re good at is support, and support doesn’t get you any reward in places such as wvw, which I find is the most thrilling pvp because there is a risk, a cost in silver when you die due to repair costs. In spvp and tpvp it doesn’t really matter if you win or lose, you only gain and never lose.

In pve, pump your warrior full of toughness with full knight gear and defence traits, and you’ve got plenty survivability while having 3x more offense than a bunker guardian. Spiked armor also gives you an automatic 33% upkeep of retaliation in pvp.. which is quite good.

I use a greatsword with longbow, full knight gear, and my traits are 10/20/30/10/0, not very common, but I enjoy it greatly as long as I stick to what warrior is good at (pve, sieges and support play, not full support but as in helping other players do their thing, reviving them and such, clearing mobs out of the way, rather than roaming on my own).

With that setup I get fun at every part of the game except tpvp and spvp, but that doesn’t matter cuz warrior just doesn’t have any build at all that is viable for spvp or tpvp. If you want to spvp or tpvp, or if you want to roam in wvw killing whole groups of upleveled noobs on your own, make a thief or mesmer, those two professions are 10x better at this content than any other, an imbalance that I guess will someday be fixed.