TugboatSteve.3607

The healing numbers alone are another category of weapon compared to anything else, which feels weird. There's no other choice.

Dual axe is the only combo I've found that makes any sense. Even though it's basically just for the derpy and easily interrupted spin 5, at least it feels synergistic as a composition and has some throughput. If sword mh was actually power it might be okay. I think the fact that it does split damage makes it feel weirdly incomplete. I only like it because it has a leap and a tiny bit of cripple, since nothing else has cripple to allow you to stay on target. Out of all of the utility skills, none of them have cripple, which is nuts to me for a warrior who is entirely dependent on time on target to do damage. I cannot use mace for this reason. The mace burst skill whiffs every time.

I honestly just don't understand what the purpose is behind rolling bleed into crit procs. Crit is kind of an all-or-nothing power stat that has no inherent synergy with bleed damage. The trees in this game are weird and restrictive, whereas from a design standpoint they're supposed to provide more flexibility than other comparable systems for different build options. I also feel like the most common complaint, the lack of sustain in Arms, wasn't addressed. I don't know that I buy that Spellbreaker is a DPS spec since it's pretty bad at that. It revolves around full counter and boonrip for the most part, and a lot of the abilities break in PvP, presumably because FC comes on to a new role defensively and as a crowd control option. When I look at the actual Spellbreaker tree, I don't even see a single thing that jumps out at me as a clear "DPS" optimization choice. Mostly, I just don't like Bladesworn because the playstyle just feels awful, and it locks you out of a weapon slot in combat. Anyway, the billing behind the game from the beginning, as I understood it, was to explicitly avoid the holy trinity archetypes. I find the entire concept of a "DPS" spec or even DPS in general as a mechanic to be pretty galling. You can see this in pristine form in World of Warcraft where the entire game design revolves around avoiding deathtraps while perfectly executing mechanical button rotations. Side note, but the boon standardization doing a great job of making group composition an equally if not moreso annoying puzzle fit to the Holy Trinity games. What is the point of bringing a boon that you already have? This game doesn't need any more "defined roles," it doesn't need boon puzzles and "bring the boon, not the player" garbage, it needs flexibility and build diversity, and this ain't it. The call from the community has been "why can't class X have boon Y." Further reductionism and bad game design choices follow this criticism. They keep going further down this rabbit hole with every major class patch. That said, I will admit that the boon puzzle fit design does at least avoid the worst trapping of the holy trinity games. DPS and healer specs in other meterboard games are entirely reduced down to raw number throughput, with utility being a distant secondary. So people simply look at the meterboards and make their class selections based on whichever class has the highest theoretical or realworld DPS/HPS throughput. This is also why Blizzard is so reluctant to make class numbers tuning during raid seasons - people pick whoever is at the top of the leaderboard at the start of the season, and they wait until world first to make any balancing decisions to avoid upsetting world firsters.

I wonder about sword. How well does it scale with condi? How well does it scale with power? Sword 2 has no condi, sword 3 only scales with condi at <50%. To what extent could this be an efficient condi weapon, even if you tried? There is literally no pure condi melee weapon in the entire arsenal. For an ideally melee class, no less. So what are the ideal stats for sword? As far as I can gather, the best condi weapon is actually torch, which is offhand only. It's a curious thing. To be fair, this was made better in the PvP patch, ironically for PvE. The PvE patch will probably make this appealing on a defense/strength build with hammer and mace/shield if you go all in on CC. I would give up on "class fantasy." This game doesn't even try. It IS the weapon swap. Swap is mandatory, I wouldn't bother trying to avoid it. I'm a shieldclown too (prot warrior in WoW) and I have to admit that going without, at least on your main set, is usually the way. The clampdown on CD reduction traits will only amplify the swap mechanic. There is really no way to make a "protection warrior" or "sword and board" type build. I currently use axe-axe with shield+something on the side just to maintain the flavor. I rarely even use the shield in combat. Think of it this way, how could shield possibly be viable when its big 5 involves you turtling for 3 seconds, doing no damage? It is antithetical to DPS.

Honestly, my favorite part about playing Berserker is Headbutt. I unequivocally detest all the other elite skills in the game. I really wish they would just add another core elite skill because it annoys me that everything is gated behind e-specs. Obviously, stab is an issue because it neuters headbutt as an opener. But it's got an 18 second cooldown. It was also pretty dope when you could stunbreak from berserk, leading directly into your burst. It was a nice surprise opener.

Yeah, that's what I meant. You have two options to autofill your adrenaline bar and go straight into your burst, failing that you can obviously build it the regular way. Headbutt also has an 18 second CD in PvP, IIRC. It's not any different from the burst abilities on any other warrior spec, you have to build adrenaline before you can spend it, and pretty much anything, a blind, a well-timed immobilize, a dodge, or any hard CC will negate your ability to land. When I was playing Berserker primarily in arenas before the PvP balance patch, whether I landed that headbutt was typically the difference between me taking out the kill target or being on the backfoot. It's a powerful combo due to the lengthy stun, and the burst usually takes them by surprise, so they have to focus on recovery. I used To the Limit as a backup to get into Berserk. You could conceivably try some kind of a set-up to land the headbutt? I see what you're saying, that it's ultimately dependent on your performance and target selection/timing. I'm just not sure I see why the adrenaline cost needs to be, say, 10. If so, shouldn't it scale, similar to any other adrenaline ability? If I use 10 adrenaline on, say, arcing slice, it does less damage. If I use 10 adrenaline on skull crack, the stun duration is less. Why should it be the full berserk duration if I only use 10 adrenaline?

To the Limit! 30 adrenaline Headbutt 30 adrenaline

They obviously are, just not in the way you want them to They seem to think that the boon vomit is the way the game should function. Deathball or get out. I have to say, the whole "LF Quickness DPS" thing is quite a staple now in LFG. You will get your boon puzzle and you will like it.

I'm just waiting for the Canthan Tigris Griffon skin to reappear https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Canthan_Tigris_Griffon_Mounts_Pack I was on deployment when it came out and it hasn't reappeared since. I've been waiting for it to recycle. Does anyone know how long these things usually take to come back on the store? I bought the Jackal Tiger skin, it's gorgeous, I just wanted the version for my Griffon too.

The whole "of a kind" build ethos feels weird to me, e.g. "stack this many [shout, stance, sigil, physical, banner, etc] to get a bonus" traits are just annoying, leading to build inflexibility when maximizing that bonus, and I wish they would knock it off. That's the whole reason you're lacking utility in the first place, and it's the whole reason so many balance passes were spent on tuning Vogorous Shouts instead of tuning core abilities that provide those utilities. I don't want to stack this many abilities of the same type, I want to make a functioning build out of legos that suits my playstyle. I don't even look at meditations, for example, because they don't have an associated trait on top of being mostly bad.

One thing I hate about this is that cull the weak is in another traitline entirely. And that's a big deal if you're running an elite spec, since you only have two choices, and it means you can't go tactics or discipline. I still don't understand why they would have it inflict weakness on CC. I think it'd be better to proc weakness some other way. The 5 stacks of might is the only spicy thing in that suggestion. And it also doesn't work that well because of the grandmaster trait split, you have one favoring crowd control that is in the same tier as MMR. It's the same reason I don't understand why they have a trait that gives slow on FC, if they're already dazed for 1.5 seconds, and they can't attack. And they aggressively reduce the slow duration in competitive split. The spellbreaker traitline has a lot of dud traits in PvP. I think they need to go the route of what they did with merciless hammer and rousing resilience, just scrap it and replace it with a new idea altogether. I'm confident with the last patch that the new balance team has the capability to do that and still make it interesting.

You're still paying on the budget for the overlap. Absolutely wretched if it's designed with this in mind. Again, it's going to be part of the ability budget. How about something that is more or less useful all of the time instead? Because it only procs on hard crowd control, you know, the thing that's explicitly not supposed to do damage in competitive split? And the thing that only exists in the toolkit on power weapons, precluding you from maximizing its value efficiently? Relegating it to doing, at best, a few hundred damage in arena on a crowd control ability. People are generally selecting traits based on their perceived efficiency and synergy with other traits and abilities, not for things that were designed from the ground up to be situational or inefficient. Most of the value of the weakness is, per the above, wasted value as well. We can only hope that body blow gets thrown in the trash in the PvE patch.

I don't understand why the hell I would care if a target has weakness when they're dazed/stunned. They can't attack when they're dazed or stunned. Someone please explain the logic. Also, mace, dagger, hammer, rampage, all power. What is the point of the bleed? In the strength tree, no less, which is power focused. The trait is a fundamentally bad design, it doesn't need a tweak.

One of the reasons that mace has always felt awful to me is that it has no leaps, pure melee range, no cripple/immob, no movement speed mods. It requires some type of movement speed bonus to make use of. On top of that, long cast times that are badly telegraphed, and most of its damage is kept behind the third auto attack swing, which usually lands right after someone dodges or slips out of melee range. The range requirements just exacerbate the lack of movement. It is quite frustrating that movement speed is gated behind discipline. I think it would be nice to have some more core utilities, including a basic cripple and swiftness. Alternatively, a reliable gap closer. Bull's Charge is badly telegraphed, but at least it does make you move. Stomp is extremely clunky, with limited range, long cast time and awkward targeting. Easy to miss as a result. I think this is a large reason why greatsword is so popular, it has two movement skills, one of which doubles as an evade, and a cripple. I think mace is so unpopular because it is so slow, both in terms of movement and in terms of swing timers/output.

I'm dead and I give up bro