Arewn.2368

It's actually useful when used as part of a build template. You may have one build with a backpiece, and another build where you don't want the backpiece to show. Normally, you'd have to manually toggle the back piece's visibility when swapping between builds. Now you can just outright set the skin to be invisible.

Yeah no freaking kidding you don't have a specific visions. That's been blatantly demonstrated for the past several years, and people have been screaming at your for it.

At this point, I do wonder if adding a new weapon is for some weird reason fundamentally difficult to do in their engine/code. Intuitively, from a third-party perspective, I would assume not. But maybe there is some sort of issue with the way they have the weapon categories coded into the game. And as a result, they haven't been able to add new ones (even moving something from "under water" to "land"). The skins being the other obvious, and most likely, reason. They would be accepting a permanent increase to their development costs for adding new weapon sets if they elected to add a new weapon type. Even spear/trident/harpoon gun. Yes, there's some existing skins. But they haven't kept up with that since... HoT I think? Also, they seem allergic to adding new animation. So fat chance of us getting suitable looking skills to go with it, even if they do add new weapons. Hope you're ready to "triple chop" with your spear, when they inevitably recycle the animation again lol I think we're going to see them try to find new uses for exiting weapons instead. For example, maybe one of the magic professions will get main hand focus as a melee weapon, but it's used as a magical whip (air attune Ele dagger auto-attack animation, but with different VFX). Or the infamous main hand shield.

My concern with this direction is that it feels very similar to weapon traits.

Regarding the EU communication issues: Try looking at what games such as FFXIV have done to offer tools for multi-lingual communication. It can as simple as a list of pre-set, auto-translated words/phrases that are common to the WvW environment. This would not resolve the issue, but it can go a long way in alleviating it. A simple example: Typing "Bluebriar needs defenders", when using the auto-translate feature, would appear as "Bruyazur a besoin de défenseurs" for French clients. And would like-wise be translated to other supported languages based on the what language the players has their client set to.

Still bugged. Tried several times on two different maps.

Sprinkling some passive stab generation into the build isn't bad. But considering the use cases of stab, I'd prefer to see it sourced from areas that aren't routine. I don't want to be in a situation where I need to delay berserk or exit early in order to apply stab. Berserk and bursts are things we need to do regularly. I think adding stab to warhorn, or reviewing current utility skill sources of stab, would be a better direction. Though I guess it depends on your expectations. If the expectation is that we maintain stab on the group at all times, then yes, I like your idea.

What we see in spellbreaker is a spec with sufficient open design space to fit support, and a lack of conflicting mechanics. Its as simple as that. draxynnic.3719 has already provided a good rundown of why Berserker and Bladesworn's primary mechanics don't mesh well with support. But if I were to put it more generally: support gameplay requires flexibility and reactivity. So mechanics that require strict upkeep or that lock you down frequently aren't very compatible. We've seen this demonstrated several times. The most effective support specs have been those that can pump out their boon with one or two buttons, and don't have to lock themselves into a strict rotation+skill loadout to upkeep them. A design direction Anet has embraced and is actively moving towards. They could add all the best utility skills we could ever want to warrior, but it wouldn't mean anything for Berserker or Bladesworn support builds. Look at those builds and what they have to bring to maintain their effectiveness. There's almost no space to bring any prospective shiny new support kit in the build, because both specs require utilities to feed their mechanic effectively. And even if they didn't, the mechanic itself is still problematic. Berserk isn't Celestial Avatar. It doesn't give you a suite of support skills, it just makes Rampart Splitter a bit more spammable. And sure that increases your hps a bit, but that's it. It's hardly a benefit at all when you consider the requirements for it's use. You start with zero adrenaline, can't keep your adrenaline OOC, it's balanced around maintaining high uptime which requires slotting several utilities, continues to require reaccumulation of a resource to use the primal burst even while in Berserk, no other weapon has a support burst skill to pair with it so you can't even spam it that much, etc. Also, Battle Standard is an amazing support tool in most groups. The fact that you're pushed to slot headbutt for adrenaline/berserk upkeep is a point against Berserker, not in favor of it. And the problems Dragon Trigger pose should be self evident to anyone who has played the spec. It takes too long to accumulate flow, locks you down when you use it, is fundamentally a damage oriented skill, and needs to be done frequently for effectiveness. I guess they could fix it with traits that completely modify all of DTs skills to provide support... But that would be pretty extensive. And again, flow and utility requirements leave little space for support kit. You say that it's an "imaginary ideal" for spell breaker to get a full rework. But that's exactly the problem people have with Berserker and Bladesworn. It would be an even larger rework to make either of those two specs compatible with support. Spellbreaker would require the LEAST extensive rework between the three. Spell breaker utilities are essentially empty slots, they have plenty of space to easily add new functionality and need a rework anyways. The two bars of adrenaline and one-bar burst skills add flexibility in how you consume your resource, which is actually great for support. And Full Counter is a second, always available, burst skill that could so easily be modded by a GM trait to provide support that it's practically screaming at Anet to do so. Even in terms of fluff, it's arguably the most thematically on-point spec for support.

We've all seen what gets delivered at the quarterly balance patches.... The scope is limited, and we should make suggestion within that scope if we want to hold any expectation of them actually making it into the game. Any individual suggestion could be reduced to "just slap X capability on Y skill/trait/spec". It takes a collection of changes to make a meaningful impact. But Anet doesn't listen to long intricate post listing collections of changes. They cherry-pick popular individual suggestions. Warrior's support shell isn't nearly as bad as you are making it out to be, and could be resolved with just a few changes. The by-far more critical issue for support warrior is, like others have pointed out, the fact that Berserker and Bladesworn are fundamentally unsuitable for the gameplay required of a functional support spec. This won't be resolved by adding tools to Warrior's kit. Berserk and Dragon Trigger, mechanically, are just incompatible with a support gameplay style. Others have given reasons why in this very thread. Which is why there is so much focus on getting Alacrity (or quickness) on Spell Breaker. Because the most important step we can take towards support warrior is moving the baseline requirement of any support build (alacrity or quickness) onto a spec whose primary mechanic doesn't fundamentally conflict with support gameplay. I.E. Spell Breaker.

Even without skill splitting, I feel like there's still plenty of ways this can be implemented without being broken in PvP. For example, something like: Replace 'Revenge Counter' with a new trait, 'Counter Enchantment': Full Counter no longer blocks/evades or deals damage. Instead, it has a 1/2 sec cast and executes on its own (doesn't require being hit to activate). It now applies alacrity and heals nearby allies. Implementing it that way would force you to trade damage for support by giving up magebane tether, losing full counter as a damaging ability, and forcing you to spend adrenaline on a non-damaging bursts. Which is necessary for PVE balance. And this resolves the skill usage problem as a support/boon skill, since it no longer requires being hit to activate. On the PvP side, taking the alacrity trait would mean losing block and damage on full counter, which would significantly impact the build's bunker/side-node performance.

I think "do events to fill the bar" story steps can be good, but they have to be done right. In this case, they were not. In many cases, you can blow through the whole story without doing any of the map events. But the events often add context and weight to the story. So doing them can help shape the over all experience in a positive way. But in the case of the two SotO releases, they just ended up feeling like filler meant to pad out a meager amount of story. I think the ideal would be: -Story steps and instances lead you to a new map, where you establish a foothold as part of a story steps. -Followed by an interlude where you do events and other open world map objectives. Ideally, the player will end up participating in and completing the map meta at this time. But for very obvious reason, don't make successful meta completion a requirement. -Then resume the rest of the story steps/instanced content, finishing the release. I recall blowing through the HoT story and beating Mordremoth (story instance) without even realizing there was a map meta VS Snakedremoth. Which is not ideal. There's a lot of contextual information on the map that enhances the story, which you miss (or experience out of order) if you focus purely on the story missions. So I think open world objectives and event completion does have a place. But it shouldn't replace the story content itself.

Honestly at this point they should just add a lore tab to the UI where the content of all of the books are stored. Not an item in your inventory, or a collectibles tab in your bank, or an achievement. A new part of the UI dedicated to books/lore entries. Basically the same treatment they gave minis when they removed them from the collectibles tab in your bank.

Can confirm. I lurk these forums several times a week just to check-in on the same handful of people wistfully pining for the future of warrior in the 128th reiteration of the same couple of threads. Stay healthy friends.

Having multiple conditions act as a balancing tool. Even if burning and bleeding do the same thing, they can fine-tune a build's balance by targetting one condition or the other. For example, through a trait that increases bleed damage. Also, it is an MMORPG, so some there will inevitably be some elements of the game that are just there for flavor/theme.

I've had some nice moments with spell breaker where I can just stand in the bad to greed some extra damage, which nicely exemplifies this idea. But there's still some problems with it. I still do zero damage in situations where I can't reach the boss. And reduced damage when the boss moves around a lot. And on the flip side, the build can probably be considered unfairly tanky in a lot of situation. Is it a good thing for the game if they make all melee builds so tough that they can ignore mechanics? A mixed approach is probably needed, and they are definitely not doing that right now. Imo one strong factor should be that range comes at the cost of mobility. Melee skills should rarely be animation locked, while ranged skills should be more often. A lot of Ele builds get terribly screwed on this front. They are very squishy, forced into melee, and have a bunch of skills with animation locks. Then on the flip side you have builds like Virt, with 1200 range, decent defense, and almost no animation locks.

Really wish they would put their animation budget towards player-character skill animations instead of mediocre story cinematics you watch once. The game has barely received any new skill animations in the past 10 years. And a lot of what we do have/get ends up looking janky. Mobs are getting pretty stale too. A few new skins, sometimes new models, rarely new rigs. The new kryptis mobs look cool, but it's hard to tell them apart since appearance-wise they are very samey. And they are almost all just reused mobs from past content. It's getting boring fighting the same thing.

I more or less agree, but melee uptime vs range is a whole other can of worms that requires its own discussion. On the subject of support vs dps, it wouldn't be the first time we see a meta form around particular group comps reliant on specific builds.

It's still not a good thing for the game over all. If another build can pair with a quickness-only Zerker to fill in the missing boons, it's going to destabilize group compositions (again). When it comes to group composition and related balance decisions, Arena Net has shown themselves to have terrible vision and control over the direction of their game. They tend to get led by the nose by whatever the players-base does, leading to an incoherent mess of a meta. So it wouldn't surprise me if we once again find ourselves in that situation. If this "golden combination" is discovered, we'll probably end up with a really awkward group comp centered around an over-performing quickZerker paired with some other build that brings the missing boons while also fulfilling it's primary role. This will last for 6 or 8 months, people will get sick of it, and ultimately ANet will nerf quickZerker into the ground and leave it dead in the water for a couple years.

This is a nice list of changes, so I almost feel bad harping on it, but.... You did an Arms rework, but did nothing for Dual Wielding? This trait has been bad through pretty much the entirety of the game's history. And it has aged terribly, only getting worse with time as the prevalence of quickness increased. They haven't changed it at all since PoF released in 2017. This is like... the key trait I expected them to change for an Arms rework. And it got nothing. It needs to be modified in some way so that it isn't rendered worthless as soon as you have quickness. Especially given that Warrior has a fair amount of quickness access itself. I don't really care how that's achieved. They can make it stack with quickness, or just change its functionality altogether. But whatever it is, they need to resolve this trait's relationship with quickness.

Just stick to what you find fun. This goes for the forums as a whole, not just the warrior section, but you have to keep in mind that the regular posters here tend to be jaded veterans who have been playing the game for the better part of a decade (myself included). Anet's balance approach (or lack there of, depending on how you look at it) has been highlighted as a major point of criticism and concern in the community for the past couple years. And the handling of Warriors' balance has been consistently among the worst during this period. Last June being a particular low-point. Even with that being the case, warrior still has many good builds across different game modes, even at the higher end of play. And regardless of the state of balance in competitive play/high-end content, it'll probably be a while before a new player such as yourself reaches the point where that's relevant to you anyways. And you're probably not far off about them balancing around some sort of soulless metric. If we're going purely by the numbers... balance has actually gotten "better" in recent years. There's a very wide selection of builds across the game that are "good" if you look purely at specific metrics, such as DPS, or raw boon up-time (buffs) for key support roles. But these often don't translate into well balanced and useable builds in actual play.

Arena Net has once again decided to launch an expansion without an accompanying balance patch. Despite making major additions to professions in the form of the weapon mastery system and relics, the launch's balance changes amount to little more then a foot note. Going by the posted schedule, it will be at least a couple of months before a major balance patch. If not longer, if it is coming with the new weapons in "the second major quarterly release". They did this with EoD as well. Arguably even more egregiously in that case, with the addition of 9 new elite specs. Arena Net, you have been consistently criticized for your poor approach to the game's balance. Especially in recent years. How is this an acceptable time-line? You can't just throw a bunch of new things into the game and then go "meh we'll see how it plays out and adjust it later". Determine a vision, do testing, make changes, and then launch your expansion with a major balance patch like every other game on the planet.

I mean... There have only been a handful of decent-sized balance patches in the past 3 years, periode. Warrior's been my main since beta. And I've been posting right alongside everyone else about the problems the past few years. But a lot of "warrior" problems, in terms of how they are treated by the devs, are just plainly true of how Anet treat professions and balance at large. Edit: Case in m*f* point. They just once again launched an expansion, which will have major balance implications due to new additions, without doing a balance pass. Anet treats balance as a whole badly. Even if Warrior has had a rougher ride recently. The same has definitely been true for other professions through the years. This isn't a failure towards warrior specifically. It's a problem endemic to the developers approach to balance as a whole. This isn't to say Warrior's don't have problems. It's to dispel the narrative that "we" are being "targetted" by the Devs as victims of some sort of explicit directive to waylay Warriors. Or that they don't care about Warrior's in particular.

I get where the negativity is coming from, but this kind of doomer topic does more harm then good. People looking in from the outside are going to think this is comically dramatic. And they would be right. Warrior has extensive problems, but it still has good builds with fun gameplay as well. It's honestly not that far out of line with other professions in that respect. A handful of good builds, and a lot of broken or forgotten ones. You should remember to surf other profession forums (and other forums outside of this one) occasionally to keep your perspective in line. This kind of thread just makes it harder to take feedback seriously. The warrior-sub is starting to sound like the Mesmer-sub the past few months. Let's not aggrandize a victim complex here.

Oh I really like your point about weapon swap traits. That would be a great focal point of a revised Discipline line. And yeah, we have a fair few options for generating adrenaline. Those utilities skill that give full adrenaline could be made all the more valuable based on how burst skill are being used. I'd like to see Adrenaline be something important that we pay attention to. But one way or another we really need the flexibility of being able to use burst skills, even if only at T1, right off the bat when entering combat

Hm I'd almost say the opposite. The only thing functioning as a limit to how frequently you can weapon swap using this mechanic are the limits on how frequently you can burst. I'm proposing this with the idea that it would have no internal cooldown, so as a balancing factor I would posit that Bursts can't be free. Keep in mind that in addition to this mechanic, you still retain the standard weapon swap button on a 10 sec cooldown. I absolutely support the removal of adrenaline decay though. Or at the very least, a floor to adrenaline decay (for example, it stops decaying at 10). You should be able to open combat with a Burst skill if you want to.