An Alternative To Fast Hands (Thought Experiment/Brainstorm)

As I'm sure we all know, Warrior is basically tied to Fast Hands. Weapon autos are janky, and the cooldowns just mesh soooo well with the 5 second weapon swap.

There have been many pitches for Fast Hands being baked in to Warrior, including without Discipline.

I would like to propose an alternative (for a thought experiment mostly, pretty much will never happen).

Mechanic change: All offhand weapons will gain burst skills. 2H weapons gain a bonus burst skill. All burst skills will lose potency due to there being more of them (50% probably over the top but it'd be around that since there will be double the number of skills).Mechanic change: Core Warrior (no traits) will now gain F2-F4. These represent EVERY burst skill you have equipped based on your current weapons (F1 and F2 for the top two in your build screen, F3 and F4 for the bottom two).Trait change: Fast hands removed from the game. Move Brawler's Recovery here instead.Mechanic change: Using any burst skill will swap to that weapon set if it is not active, triggering On Swap sigils and traits. The previous weapon set's burst skills will be put on a 15 second global cooldown, reduced by Versatile Rage.

This style could open up a lot of versatility for warrior, especially when paired with Burst Mastery for Core and Berserker (use T3 Skullcrack, then immediately a T1 burst of your choice, even on the other weapon set).

Brawler's Recovery's Trait Slot would be replaced with a new trait:
Combo Disciple~ Landing a burst skill grants a stacking buff, your next burst skill gain 3% more damage/condition duration, lasts 3 seconds. All stacks are refreshed in duration when gained.

Heightened Focus would be adjusted: Burst skills grant quickness (.5 seconds). Great for Combo Disciple or other followup skills (Mace 3 into 100 blades without depending on Frenzy).

Vengeful Return deleted, replaced with a significantly changed Fast Hands: Weapon Swapping reduced to a 1 second cooldown, but costs 10 Adrenaline. This counts as 1 bar of adrenaline spent for traits, but does not trigger Versatile Rage.Purpose: Warrior can struggle with some opponents who heavily kite them, whether through CC, Conditions, or mobility. This is because they cannot trigger any of their On Burst traits without landing a burst (except Longbow, a very odd weapon). This trait will grant them access to a quick and easy stack of adrenal health, berzerker's power, whatever, without doing any damage to their target.

For those worried about chained bursts with just Versatile Rage/Burst Mastery and no other factors, the maximum number is 2. Note that versatile rage has a cooldown, so it's literally impossible to do more than two bursts (30 to 10, 10 to 3, + 5 from Rage is only 8) in a row under this system without Cleansing Ire or other adrenaline traits.

Any thoughts? Fast Hands has been pretty much done to death so I wanted to try brainstorming an interesting alternative.

Personally I’d just love to see more FX skills for the Warrior in general. Most, if not all, of the other classes have tons of them and the lack of them is definitely what makes the Warrior feel “simpler” and less complex...

Honestly, this might be a controversial opinion, but hey lets go.Everyone sees fast hands as a must have, many of them say that warrior needs the 5s cooldown. Imo it doesnt. Warrior can just play without 5s switch, but the thing is, I rather think that the advantages you get with opting for discipline in general are much higher than any other trait line.Therefore, I'dd say they should look into strength and tactics as trait lines more to see if they could make it compete with discipline

@The V.8759 said:Honestly, this might be a controversial opinion, but hey lets go.Everyone sees fast hands as a must have, many of them say that warrior needs the 5s cooldown. Imo it doesnt. Warrior can just play without 5s switch, but the thing is, I rather think that the advantages you get with opting for discipline in general are much higher than any other trait line.Therefore, I'dd say they should look into strength and tactics as trait lines more to see if they could make it compete with discipline

nope, its def. fast hands, nothing annoys me more than not being able to play fluid when i dont play disci, because i cant swap as fast to my other set

you just cant do much other than autohitting after you used 4 skills...other classes can swap to other skills even without swapping weaponele and engi since forever, guard has tomes, necro has shroud, ranger can merge with pet or go druidmode, only ones are pretty much warri/thief and mesmer but i feel like thief(can spam skills as long as he has ini) and mesmer have enough stuff to do on their weaponset to not feel clunky

would definately up the skill ceiling of warrior

to op, they will probably not do it, its too much work for just a rework...maybe for a new expansion, but i doubt it

@RedShark.9548 said:

@The V.8759 said:Honestly, this might be a controversial opinion, but hey lets go.Everyone sees fast hands as a must have, many of them say that warrior needs the 5s cooldown. Imo it doesnt. Warrior can just play without 5s switch, but the thing is, I rather think that the advantages you get with opting for discipline in general are much higher than any other trait line.Therefore, I'dd say they should look into strength and tactics as trait lines more to see if they could make it compete with discipline

Not every guardian plays firebrand. Dragonhunter also doesnt have other skills to use in the meantime. A lot of Scrappers only use elixir gun, which is situational to use (not spamming skills while others are on cooldown). If this is seriously the problem, then cooldowns on warriors should maybe be reduced a bit to make it feel smoother or open more beside stances like physical skills. Currently most of the useful warrior skills are extremely passive.

@The V.8759 said:

@RedShark.9548 said:

@The V.8759 said:Honestly, this might be a controversial opinion, but hey lets go.Everyone sees fast hands as a must have, many of them say that warrior needs the 5s cooldown. Imo it doesnt. Warrior can just play without 5s switch, but the thing is, I rather think that the advantages you get with opting for discipline in general are much higher than any other trait line.Therefore, I'dd say they should look into strength and tactics as trait lines more to see if they could make it compete with discipline

yea so you either give him fast hands baseline or change his skills, doesnt change how warrior is played right now and everyone who played warrior over a longer period of time will tell you that it just feels clunky w/o fast hands

what scrappee use is irrelevant, they still have a choice to go some kit to get other skills

Not just “clunky” but downright terrible as it doesn’t matter if you go Power Core/SB or Condi Berserker: jumping between weapons to trigger Bursts and other weaponskills at the right time is integral to maintaining meta-worthy DPS.

Honestly, for the sake of build diversity: baseline it, Anet.

Please.

I think baselining fast hands, doing what you suggest adding fx skills, or/and reducing certain cds on skills are all good ideas.

They haven't added baseline fasthands yet? Jesus christ, ANET having trouble vs. a class that doesn't spam evades while attacking. That's why they think baseline fasthands is overpowered. Zero skill developrs who can't even figure out how to counter their own class even if fast hands theoretically happened, such fail sigh.

We don't even have geomancy procs and hydromancy procs anymore, so wtf is ANET's problem?

It's a change that won't make Warrior broken because it's not as effective as evading while attacking anyways.

This is why I think ANET has ZERO character development and ESL was right to drop GW2, because ANET's logic is worse than bad.

Baseline fasthands will never happen. It’s too big of a change. I have been asking for it since year 1.

@Schwahrheit.4203 said:They haven't added baseline fasthands yet? Jesus christ, ANET having trouble vs. a class that doesn't spam evades while attacking. That's why they think baseline fasthands is overpowered. Zero skill developrs who can't even figure out how to counter their own class even if fast hands theoretically happened, such fail sigh.

We don't even have geomancy procs and hydromancy procs anymore, so kitten is ANET's problem?

It's a change that won't make Warrior broken because it's not as effective as evading while attacking anyways.

This is why I think ANET has ZERO character development and ESL was right to drop GW2, because ANET's logic is worse than bad.

lmao what is the thought process behind this

They didn't change something they don't have to change -> it's why GW2 isn't an esport

Put the tinfoil hat away for a few minutes mate

on topic: imo just leave it all as it is. it's too much work for near 0 gain. let it be the defining traitline, nothing wrong with that

Have you ever played around with runes of the warrior? I've always looked at it but never made the leap. Your post is inspiring me to try this out, thanks!

We don't need baseline fast hands, but we do need them to just copy the minor trait to the tactics line. Replace on of the useless tactics minors with a copy of fast hands. Or change it to add sigil of renewal+ fast hands so it seems more supportive there. So you have 2 traitlines with fast hands.

@Warlord.9074 said:We don't need baseline fast hands, but we do need them to just copy the minor trait to the tactics line. Replace on of the useless tactics minors with a copy of fast hands. Or change it to add sigil of renewal+ fast hands so it seems more supportive there. So you have 2 traitlines with fast hands.2 locations would be helpful, but id say put it as a major slot so you have to opt in to it.

@Warlord.9074 said:We don't need baseline fast hands, but we do need them to just copy the minor trait to the tactics line. Replace on of the useless tactics minors with a copy of fast hands.

How would that change anything except making Tactics the mandatory traitline instead of Discipline? A change, by the way, for the worse as Discipline is a far superior traitline than garbage Tactics. Discipline has tons of goodies like Warrior’s Sprint in addition to it so if Fast Hands has to be in a traitline, Discipline is the optimal choice (at least in contrast to Tactics) so that you’re not stuck with a bad traitline just to get one good thing out of it.

But I digress. Fast Hands should be default to the class as part of the whole master-at-arms schtick/“mechanic” if you ask me.

@Oglaf.1074 said:

@Warlord.9074 said:We don't need baseline fast hands, but we do need them to just copy the minor trait to the tactics line. Replace on of the useless tactics minors with a copy of fast hands.

Well, technically powerful synergy would benefit IMMENSELY from having a fast hands effect in tactics, boosting the power of hambow (still bad though). If only winds of disenchantment was mobile (5 target cap , 40 second cooldown, no longer destroys projectiles) so you could use leap finishers through powerful synergy for more dazes.

@Kiroshima.8497 said:

@Oglaf.1074 said:

@Warlord.9074 said:We don't need baseline fast hands, but we do need them to just copy the minor trait to the tactics line. Replace on of the useless tactics minors with a copy of fast hands.

Too bad Powerful Synergy is one of the worst Grandmasters in the game, eh?

@Oglaf.1074 said:

@Kiroshima.8497 said:

@Oglaf.1074 said:

@Warlord.9074 said:We don't need baseline fast hands, but we do need them to just copy the minor trait to the tactics line. Replace on of the useless tactics minors with a copy of fast hands.

Mainly because most combos have weak effects.Improve combos to make them very attractive, and suddenly, powerful synergy will be strong.

Making tactics a good trait line, not only for one trait but several, should be done anyway.

@Aigleborgne.2981 said:

@Oglaf.1074 said:

@Kiroshima.8497 said:

@Oglaf.1074 said:

@Warlord.9074 said:We don't need baseline fast hands, but we do need them to just copy the minor trait to the tactics line. Replace on of the useless tactics minors with a copy of fast hands.

Indeed. But before a total overhaul of it, we definitely should not be moving the goodies from other traitlines to it.

@Oglaf.1074 said:

@Aigleborgne.2981 said:

@Oglaf.1074 said:

@Kiroshima.8497 said:

@Oglaf.1074 said:

@Warlord.9074 said:We don't need baseline fast hands, but we do need them to just copy the minor trait to the tactics line. Replace on of the useless tactics minors with a copy of fast hands.

If anything Fast Hands would fit more into Arms, since arms is a weapon/damage focused traitline similar to Discipline. the major minor in Arms currently could be an adept minor and move Fast Hands to Major minor in Arms, take the current adept minor and put it into burst precision.

Honestly, when I opt out of Discipline it's not Fast Hands I miss, it's Warrior's Sprint. It is not funny being unable to catch up to a freaking necromancer.

@Yannir.4132 said:Honestly, when I opt out of Discipline it's not Fast Hands I miss, it's Warrior's Sprint. It is not funny being unable to catch up to a freaking necromancer.

And the Adrenaline gain from Axe Mastery.

I feel so extremely starved without it.

Love axe mastery! Truth!

A copy of fast hands minor would fit in any line, lets be real.

I think it is possible to make the whole discipline line less required for warrior.So, what provides it (mainly)?

• Faster weapon swap
• Better movement (higher speed, condi remove)
• Adrenaline management
• Dmg boost
• Other more or less useful utility

The first two are the reason, why most warrior builds requires discipline.But maybe we should think about adding this to elite specializations.Just a few ideas:

• Successful primal burst halves weapon swap cooldown
• Gain super speed in berserker mode
• Move speed is higher in berserker mode
• Weapons swap cooldown is reduced in berserker mode
• Move faster with active full counter
• Successful full counter resets weapon swap cooldown
• Using an meditation skill reduces weapon swap cooldown for 2 seconds
• Gain super speed after using an rage skill
• ... There are so many more options...

Add this to the elite specs (while removing less useful things) will open up so much more possibilities, because warriors can go without discipline! (While core warrior will still stay with it. And elite specs will still have it as options.)