Axe, Sword, Mace and Where Do We Go From Here?

EDIT: All of this is from the point of view of a wvw player.

As we've seen, axe has received a significant boost to damage this patch. Warrior now has a 900 range pseudo heart seeker in Throw Axe. Cyclone Axe got straight damage boosted. That's all fine and dandy since now we can get away from the whole "auto chain or lose damage" scenario. Good job there.

But a few weapons are ignored in this era.

Mace, while a strong CC tool, has basically no damage on its own. The only time it was good was when Skull Grinder was super annoying, and that was only for berserker. But the question I want to ask is what is its identity. Barring Skull Grinder, Mace has only been here for 1 purpose, to land 100b or whichever slow channeled attack you were going to use next. But that was when landing a 3 second stun meant something. Nowadays, stun breaks are so low cooldown mace has a tough time fitting in, or the Skull Crack is just dodged or otherwise negated. Now in the off chance you have blown EVERY defensive cooldown on your target (not likely), you can gloriously swap to your Greatsword and 100blades that sucker. For ok damage. Honestly, nowadays GS Rush and GS Whirlwind are the things I focus on dodging, eating 100b's full damage basically never happens, plus you can just walk THROUGH the warrior to negate it. Heck, going off the wiki, you do more damage in the cast time of whirlwind (if all hits land, it's a 2.4 ratio over 1 second) then over the course of 100b (5.3 ratio over 3.5 seconds).

Additionally, Mace doesn't even have a gap closer. So its setup is almost strictly inferior to Bulls Rush, which now when traited leads to a 33% damage boost. Skullcrack should at least do that much (be a setup tool). And don't get me started on OH Mace, which makes pretty much 0 sense (more vulnerability, and a strange PROJECTILE based knockdown that is very narrow but huge range).

But hey, don't like not having a leap to setup? Try running Sw/Sh/GS, you can Savage Leap to your target, Immob them with Flurry, THEN do 100b. It even scales better than Skull Crack, going from 2s and adding 1s of immob per adrenaline bar spent. Except you still get no reward. Plus Sword doen't even work in terms of hybrid damage. Flurry has the worst power ratio ever for a burst skill, does a negligible amount of bleeding, and is a channeled skill. A level 3 Flurry does 11 2 second bleeds. That's 22 seconds worth of bleeding, which sounds neat except that your warrior auto chain applies 24 seconds of bleeding in less time (full chain is about 1.8 seconds compared to flurry's 2.5). That's pretty bad, but hey, maybe the other sword skills can carry the weapon. Savage Leap is probably the lowest cooldown leap in the game for its range. Doesn't do much damage, but hey, a warrior needs to get around. Final Thrust looks pretty good, although its damage is kinda pathetic if the target isn't under 50% health. Also it has no synergy with the rest of sword. How are you supposed to get enemies under 50% when your burst skill is a wet noodle, and your auto chain is condition based. Are you supposed to be some sort of Viper's Warrior? Too bad you have to channel your damage (that is only on par with auto attacking). But hey, maybe OH sword is ok. OH sword has nothing to do with dual wielding and is basically just there for show. OH sw 4 just has the warrior toss away his sword, and then he can rip it out doing good damage. Too bad the warrior has no torment traits, not even in Arms, so it's basically wasted. It also stacks slower than a Scepter Necro auto attacking you then using scepter 3 for a burst amount of torment.

So how do we fix it?

Some suggestions from me:IF Mace is a SETUP Weapon:1.) Skull Crack increases the incoming damage by 10%/20%/30% (lasts 2,4,6 seconds, works for any player), stun duration stays unchanged.2.) All parts of the mace chain cause Cripple. Pulverize (last hit of chain) destroys stability.3.) Mace 2 becomes a full block at range, like sword 5 and dazes for 1/4 seconds.4.) Mace 3 works like Power Block and such, increasing the cooldown of the skill it interrupts (daze stays the same).5.) Mace 4 causes weakness and cripple in addition to vulnerability.6.) Mace 5 damage increased, more against targets that are Soft CC'd (cripple, chill, immob).

IF sword is a HYBRID Weapon:1) Flurry reworked. Does 1 hit, immobolizing up to 5 targets around the warrior. The warrior gains "Flurry" buff for 3/6/9 seconds, causing all attacks cause an aoe bleeding strike around the targets. Something like the old 100 Blades skill from GW1, flurry lets you take aoe condi cleave to a new level. Use 100b to rapidly deal 8x attacks, or use longbow to make a giant pulsing bleed and burning field. The power damage should be negligible on the buff, but the initial hit can do about half an eviscerate.2) Auto chain is solid, but last hit should do 2 bleeds.3) Savage Leap is pretty much fine. Gain might per stack of bleeding, up to 5 stacks.4) Final Thrust adjusted, consumes all bleeding stacks to do more damage (10% per stack, max 150%). Instead of doing double damage under 50%, Final Thrust instead refreshes all bleed stacks on the targets (4s base duration).5) Impale is a melee strike, 1/4 cast time, can strike 3 targets, pulses bleed instead of torment. Rip is instead changed to Deep Wound, causing poison to targets with Impaled.6) Riposte turns into an offensive flip skill instead of auto countering. Strike with both weapons causing ok power damage and bleeding.

These are just my thoughts on the weapons, but what about you other warriors? Should OH Sword die in a fire? How would you rework the weapons to maintain their identity while opening up new synergy with other warrior kits?

warrior is such a design fail, a "weapon master" with the most weapons available, yet they won't give good utilities/tools/different functionality.how can you have the most option in weapon slots and still be the simplest at the same time?have all the option be the same and boring. how is this even good designlike wth...

if you want to keep a class simple, give it less option. so you can actually have variety and the weapons can actually be viable...

Actually i like how sword 3 is working, what it needs is cast time reduction, a bit of more range 170 ~ 200, a slight move forward even better.

I'm going to have to disagree with "Axe has seen significant damage boost"

My dps benchmark is showing an overall improvement of 7.2%. Condi is still performing better by a MASSIVE margin of 39% more DPS.

Also, now that might generation has fallen flat on it's face, I'd say that power warrior has overall declined in value.

I like the Flurry Change.

For No.2 Savage Leap just make it an Ammo type skill, It gives Sword Utility while Axe gets Damage.

Although Final Thrust needs a buff, Either damage, cooldown or cast time.

Sorry, I forgot to stipulate a PvP and WvW focus, where those damage boosts are very noticeable.