CalmTheStorm.2364

@Cal Cohen.2358 I appreciate the attention that BS got in the last balance patch; thank you! I do, however, think that BS needs more help in order to truly compete with other professions. A few thoughts: Review of the Recent Gunsaber Changes: Ranged AA: Good. Doesn't do much dmg unless you have a bunch of might, and the aftercasts don't feel great, but all-in-all it's a pretty solid upgrade. Blooming Fire: Terrible. This skill is hot trash. In fact, I would go so far as to say that you should not use this over auto-attacking in virtually any circumstance. The cast time is too long, the damage is too low, and the small radius of the explosions mean that most will miss if the shot is fired at a moving target (resulting in your attack frequently doing 400-700 damage). This skill needs some serious love. Ideally, this should be a powerful melee attack. We now have a ranged AA and artillery slash and cyclone trigger are also ranged dmg...we really don't need another (and it's honestly a liability to have all ranged attacks when there is so much projectile hate/reflect in the game currently; you want to have tools for every occasion, especially on a mandatory weapon like gunsaber). Returning this skill to its previous form and buffing the dmg by 25-33% and reducing the cast time to 1/2s would be ideal. However, if you're sold on keeping it as a ranged attack, I suggest increasing the explosion radius to at least 240 so the whole attack will reliably hit moving targets. Reduce cast time to 1/2s. Let each explosion apply 2 stacks of vulnerability. This will make it preferrable to an AA as well as help it a) cleave (because of the increased AoE) and b) have a niche use (applying vuln). Artillery Slash: OK. The fire-all-your-charges-at-once thing isn't as bad as I feared, especially because it is compensated for by reduced CD per charge. The daze with 2 charges is decent (but not game-changing), too. However, the 3/4s cast time feels awful. Please reduce to 1/2s. The projectile is already fairly slow and has wonky targeting (very unreliable beyond short range, esp if the target is moving--which is almost always), so it does not need to be further hindered by long cast times. Cyclone Trigger: Great. The extra aegis is wonderful. This would be even more powerful if the rest of the kit, esp blooming fire and artillery slash, were more reliable damage sources so you could use CT primarily for defense and not as one of your main sources of damage. Bladesworn's Biggest Issue: Dragon Trigger: There's no way around this: trying to charge DT for any length of time in the middle of a warzone without stability is a low-probability endeavor. This results in being denied your main class mechanic--and all the burst-related traits attached to it--a significant part of the time. And when you get knocked out, you lose all your charges AND DT goes on full CD. Imagine if CC'ing a necro in shroud (or a holo in holoforge, or a druid in Celestial Avatar, etc) knocked them out of shroud, made them lose all their shroud pts, and put the whole thing on full CD. That's what Bladesworn is being asked to put up with. Combined with the fact that you only get one burst, this causes BS to really struggle to maximize burst-related traits like Berserker's power, Adrenal Healing, Cleansing Ire, etc--a problem, because that further reduces BS's build diversity. As an aside, please fix the bug that puts DT on full CD when interrupted. BS needs stability to protect DT. I think the best way to do this is to return it to Dragonscale Defense with no CD. Getting a fully protected DT every time could be pretty obnoxious, I admit, so I propose that the stability duration be only 2s. This is enough to protect a partial charge of DT; the player thus needs to choose between trying for a maximum charge that will not be protected by stability, or a weaker charge that will be protected. This both potentiates BS's gameplay while allowing for counterplay....ergo, balance. If you don't want to do that, you should at least put stability on Triggerguard and reduce the CD to 40s per charge. That averages out to 1 Triggerguard being available every 20s (a little more frequently if you use Tactical Reload), or about 1 in 3 DT attempts. I don't think that's too much to ask. Dragon Slash Reach Needs to Be a Proper Projectile: It jumps over targets and is thrown off by any change of elevation. This severely limits its usefulness. Terrain is an important part of the game, and not being able to use your best attack vs players above/below you is a real issue. Dragon Slash Force Needs to Not Be Jumpable: Just make the hitbox taller. Pistol: It sucks. It has neither the damage, defense, or utility of other OH weapons. A few suggestions: Gunstinger: Increase range to 450 and give it a second ammo charge. Dragon's Roar: Reduce cast time to 1/4s and remove aftercasts. The explosions themselves roll out over about 1/2-3/4s, so there really doesn't need to be a lengthy telegraph and animation lock on this skill. It makes it too hard to hit moving targets. This change, combined with an extra charge of Gunstinger, should significantly improve the usefulness of the skill. Traits: Most traits are useless/far inferior to other traits. Some ideas: Unseen Sword: This hits for 1/2 the damage of an auto attack. You could easily triple or quadruple this damage, especially since it would only be a significant source of damage if you run Discipline for Fast Hands, which itself is a significant sustain/dps loss. Fierce as Fire: way too much work to gain/maintain stacks for the amount of the dmg mod. Look at Guardian: +10% for having resolution (which they can upkeep almost indefinitely), or Lethal Tempo providing up to +15% dmg with refreshable stacks. Or Vindicator getting +15% dmg mod just for dodging. Not gonna lie, it's really frustrating to have to point out just how inconsistent the balance is between professions here...Warrior plays by a different (and far worse) set of rules than everyone else. Anyway, FaF should provide either +2% dmg per stack, or +1.5% with refreshable stacks, or +1% and gain 1 might (5s) (or some other boon). Simply put, it needs MORE. Lush Forest: needs a complete rework. I made a thread on that if you're interested. Unyielding Dragon Or Bust: UD is the only reasonable choice for a GM trait. The other 2 will only be remotely viable if you make Dragon Slash attacks unblindable/unblockable at baseline. Daring Dragon: So clunky. Should not HAVE to immediately enter DT. It's further nerfed by having a flow cost to enter DT. I think it would be healthier (especially if you make all DT attacks unblockable/unblindable) as: DT charges twice as fast. Max charges =5. DT CD reduced to 6s. Thanks for considering it! I hope to see some positive changes for the May patch!

Thanks for the builds! Putting stab on trigger guard would be fine, but BS needs more than one stack every 60s (which is what you're proposing with removing ammo from it). Seriously, DT is BS's core mechanic, and it's already saddled with the need to generate flow, then convert it into charges, THEN land a telegraphed attack. Hell, as @Infusion.7149 is fond of pointing out, it doesn't even do that much damage, especially at low charges. It's just not gonna work if the tiniest daze can knock you out of it and put the whole thing on full CD. A better option is to put short stability (1.5-2s) back on Dragonscale Defense (every 8s) so that you can cover at least a partial charge of DT.

This skill is routinely landing for 10k+ dmg. This is ridiculous for a fast, relatively low-CD mobility skill that also heals the user and blinds the enemy. Not even Decapitate hits that hard, and that skill has none of the other perks LoF enjoys. Some have said this is a bug and that the skill is using the PvE power coeff. Whatever the case, it definitely needs to be toned down.

It shouldn't be on par with Spellbreaker. It should be better than Spellbreaker. If the defensive antimage is doing more damage than a balls-to-the-wall berserker...I think ANet needs to rethink its fantasy tropes.

Blood reaction: Gain +7% critical chance AND 7% critical dmg. Bonuses are doubled in berserk mode. Can increase the numbers more in PvE since power zerker is struggling there, too.

Please re-read the poll question 😅

Right??? You know that your rooted-lenghty-channeled-DPS ability is crap when you can't outcleave someone handrezzing a downed body. ANet, do you realize how ridiculous that looks??? A big warrior whaling on a guy with a huge sword is apparently less powerful than some dude rubbing and whispering sweet nothings in his buddy's ear. If 100B can't be relied upon to be a meaningful DPS ability even when the target is stationary (spoiler: it can't), it really warrants buffs if not a complete revision.

Umm... How about: Dagger 4 is a worse axe 4 that only hits one target and only does equivalent damage if the target is not using skills? Dagger 5 is a worse axe 5 that does little dmg, hits foes only in front of you, and has a longer (and irreducible) CD?

Meanwhile, Guardian's already far stronger whirling wrath gets buffed so that it moves faster when channeled. Because, you know, balance.

I think it's fine for some matchups to be problematic for a given spec/profession (e.g. zerker struggles against everything Mesmer), but I think it's a problem when one profession more or less hard counters another. You never want to have a situation where you're like, "oh there's a [insert spec here]; guess I lose."

That's not true. Since the patch, AS has a 10s CD per charge, max 2 charges. Also I'm not sure what point you are trying to make in response to me saying AS should have a 1/2s cast time? I often get 7-8k on DS Boost of I have high charges and high might (tho 5-6k is probably more usual). Heck, sometimes I can get 5k+ on DS Reach. DS does underwhelming damage if you don't have might, it is true. That's why the most successful BS builds (in my experience at least) are running FGJ, usually with tactics. But the dmg you can do with that much might is certainly serviceable, esp when you consider that the attacks are unblindable and unblockable CCs, and a few have considerable range. The main issue is that it is so hard to actually get a highly charged DS in the first place because anyone who looks at you funny knocks you out of DT.

Yeah, it's more of a "feels great when it works; feels bad when it doesn't" kind of build. Lately, I've been having some fun/success with this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PKABwed7llyuYWMMmLmSXexSA-zZILjGTgMLATGAA Has much better sustain than zerker builds and does consistently solid dmg. Getting knocked out of DT 50% of the time definitely holds it back, tho.

I agree; buffing DS damage is just going to get it nerfed. However, they should absolutely put stability back on Dragonscale defense. Making charging DT more reliable is an indirect buff to dmg since you can more consistently get off higher-charged DS attacks. Buffing gunsaber is also good. Blooming Fire should either be completely reworked, or at minimum the cast time should be reduced to 1/2s and the explosion radius increased to 240 so that more than 1 will actually hit a moving target. Would also be nice if the explosions granted might or inflicted vulnerability on hit. Artillery slash should have cast time reduced to 1/2s. Break step should have its CD reduced to 15s. Or keep it at 20s but let it cleanse immobilize.

I think 3-4 stacks for 5s would be reasonable.

More likely they waited to see how the MAT would play out. The classes listed on the site are (probably not coincidentally) the ones used on the winning MAT teams from NA and EU. Back to the topic at hand, SpB is certainly still competitive in the meta. The bigger issue is likely that elementalist remains overpowered and is gatekeeping a lot of other specs out of the meta. Pruning back cata and tempest some more would probably open things up quite a bit. For instance, I bet you'd see a lot more ranger specs if ele's and all their damnable reflects weren't so prevalent. Warrior specs that aren't SpB certainly aren't vying for spots in the meta, though, so the OP's list of suggestions is still worthy of consideration.

Personally, I'd rather they NOT make any more especs but rather balance what they already have so that each has a place. Imagine a world where core, zerker, Spellbreaker, and Bladesworn all had distinct--and viable--playsyles in every game mode....sorry, just got a little misty-eyed there for a second.

You're right; BS badly lacks for dmg baseline. It requires large amounts of might to be competitive. I suspect that ANet always envisioned it being used primarily with shouts (bc the whole ammo mechanic) and made the dmg low expecting players to have tons of might from FGJ spam. Whatever the case, I've found that BS sorely lacks dmg without running FGJ. That said, this is my go-to BS build for PvP: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PKAFcE2ZYZpsLmFDj5iFtUasE-zZIPjMlABsAk1AA The build enjoys excellent sustain, relatively high toughness, high might output, and guaranteed DS crits with a couple of dmg mods for good measure. It's good but not great; BS will never be truly viable until the put stability back on Dragonscale defense (or do something else to mitigate getting knocked out of DT so often and thus being denied the benefits of all your burst-related traits). Nonetheless, it is still pretty good for casual play and I've had a lot of fun with it.

Idk about the AOE taunt, but I totally agree about resistance on BoA. I think a few stacks of unblockable attacks when entering berserk mode would be really good on Bloody Roar. When you look at the most successful warrior specs (SpB and pre-nerf shoutsworn), some of the things they have on common are a) access to unblockables, b) counters to blind, and c) good sustain. Zerker currently lacks both A and B, and mostly C as well. The new EC helps a good deal with C (although we could still use some buffs to Dead or Alive). Providing sources of resistance and unblockables might be just enough to make power zerker relevant.

And this is why detailed feedback remains (or should be) important.

Re: the might:. I was actually thinking that most BS builds run some variant of a shout build that gets a ton of might and fury from FGJ. The might from Unyielding Dragon helps, too, of course. I haven't forgotten AI (I believe it is now 40 power/precision/ferocity in PvP, idk about WvW). A fully charged up SpB can definitely slap. But that requires CCing targets or stripping boons to perform at that level, whereas BS can just pump a few shouts and might cap and then pump from range. BS generally has better dmg spikes than SpB, in PvP at least, but SpB is no slouch. It just takes a little bit to get going.

I can't speak for WvW and its nuances, but I can tell you that the coeffs don't tell the whole story. You're right that, on paper, DS doesn't do that much dmg. However, the coeffs don't factor in might generation, dmg mods, and things like guns and glory, which spots you an extra 15% critical dmg (250 ferocity) on every dragon slash. I play around with BS a lot in PvP, and I find that BS does some of the best power dmg out of warrior's power builds (tho a distant second to glass berserker builds, of course).

Let's hope it doesn't take 3 months to get some balance tweaks...

BS will never be a competitive pick in PvP until they put stability back on Dragonscale defense. I have very little experience in WvW, but I imagine that, in addition to stability on DSD, they probably need to increase DS-3's range to at least 1200 (if not 1500). That way, BS could participate more in the pirate ship zerg fights. In fact, it would be nice if they made all of gunsaber's ranged attacks 1200 range.

T r y I t. Especially try it on a non-Spellbreaker build. You'll see. While you're at it, try out brave stride, which resembles in principle what you're asking SS to become. Also, needing to CC someone to get stab us objectively not the same as getting stab every time you get an aura (something that is entirely under your control) or some similar mechanic. This made me smile 🐄🐄

Huh? Spellbreaker power builds are very viable--meta, even. In all content. Power bladesworn is probably B+ tier in PvP but definitely playable in casual games. This whole thread is about semi viable power zerker builds...