covahlam.6391

Combo-ing off of the unleashed pet skill "enveloping haze" worked for me

Touche I just remembered the whole 'choose your map' angle. What a great thing. Sometimes you just don't want to play skyhammer or on Coliseum for the umpteenth time in a row. I'm convinced. Bring back hot joins!

Sounds like we're in full agreement. DT aside, the gunsaber is too weak, and your ideas are good for how to allocate the necessary power budget toward saber skills 2-5 rather than toward having this mega burst skill. That being said, if your ideas were implemented, I think it would be fair to throw on some superspeed and maybe quickness that take effect post burst and scale with charge time. The idea would be that as a reward for standing still for 2.5s, you get tools for finishing off a surviving opponent. Thematically, these buffs would fit really well with the whole idea of standing calmly before exploding into impossibly quick actions. Another thought, perhaps a little too out there... what about an effect that increases the effectiveness of your 'on burst' abilities by a scaling amount? I'm thinking adrenal health would heal for ~450/s after a fully charged hit, CI would cleanse 5 conditions, etc. Regardless of the specific effects, I'm thinking these bonuses would be inherently a part of DT. The existing GM traits could be left as is or, ideally, improved. Also, I know this thread is about DT, but I honestly think it would be fair for the off weapon set to retain a tier 3 burst. The gunsaber replaces an entire weapon set rather than adding something extra like berserk mode or FC.

Well, yeah, there is that blunt-force solution 😀but I doubt they're going to scrap DT. Evidence? See druid, berserker, etc.

Actually, DSB with unyielding dragon would be ok-ish if the rest of the gunsaber kit was compensated with a proper power budget. Needless to say, the whole concept behind DT is broken (dumb). I disagree with giving the DT skills crazy power scaling. Either there is not enough reward, as is currently the case, or the reward is far too great and therefore the skill has to be a moonshot. I doubt a middle ground exists because neither a massive 20k hit nor standing stationary for several seconds is a fun experience for those involved. So assuming DT is here to stay, a more realistic approach might be loading DT with other effects (full counter style) or improving the rest of the gunsaber kit while leaving DT as is. I favor the latter approach as this would provide an alternative style vs the rest of the heavily-burst reliant warrior kit.

Hot joins were how I got into pvp back in the day. I am not a great player, mechanically speaking, but I was downright horrible when I started. The super casual environment was therefore much more appealing than jumping straight into solo arena play. There is a big segment of players who would be similarly well-served by hot joins, especially if rewards could be worked out to a reasonable degree. On the other hand, a hot join environment inevitably teaches a lot of bad habits that don't translate well to regular ranked play. Regardless of whether the new player / casual environment is hot joins or unranked, the game still needs a better way to teach players how to play conquest.

If there is a problem with skill circles being too large, then change the skills. On the whole, it's a good thing that different maps have different mechanics. Let's not homogenize them all.

Thanks! 2 charges would be nice, was just trying not to be too greedy haha.

I don't really play pve much these days, but #4 would be unpopular there unless the launch is set to 0. #5 is pretty cool but no way you get a 20s cooldown on that type of skill. 30-35s is more realistic based on guard hammer/longbow. Also, #5 seems to really play into the theme of untamed, which makes me realize it would potentially be awesome if unleashed ambush skills could change with your offhand weapon. My proposal for changes to torch #4 and #5 would be: #4 - add a 4s blind upon hit #5 - after dropping the fire field, flips over to another skill which converts the fire field into a smoke field with a duration of least(remaining duration, 3s)

Assuming you meant in terms of playstyle, it's prob gotta be thief

Thanks. Warrior is my main alt and not my main class, so it's helpful to consult with the experts. I'll give OH axe a try in lieu of OH mace. The CB+FT combo chunks HP decently and tremor is good for chase potential, but you're totally right that OH axe offers better, more reliable damage. While I was playing, I didn't come across any condi uber tanks, but I imagine the extra axe damage is probably necessary vs. such builds. I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with OH sword. For now it seems to be working so I'll keep it. The great thing about roaming is being able to swap a broken or subpar piece on the fly. I have almost zero roaming experience, so I'm still adjusting to how it differs vs spvp. I realized draining sigils don't have an ICD, so I should swap to using those on both sets if I end up keeping OH mace. An extra 1k+ damage (+ healing) per interrupt is nice. Also, even though berserker isn't the best for might stacking, I will try working it in over strength, swapping OH mace for torch. The berserk mode bonuses combined with FGJ work out to be a considerable stat boost.

So I recently acquired an ascended set of celestial heavy armor and decided to do some roaming on my warrior with the following build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PKABwmlzlJwSYXMMGKOOTlLfA-z1IY1onvUqMB6ME6NCCvAc/QEm9wbJ+JL-w It actually seemed to work pretty well. Anyone try something similar or have some optimization tips? Also, that setup is the goal, but I don't have the tokens on hand for aristocracy runes. For the time being, I'm just using hoelbrak runes cause they were cheap.

What about a conditional threshold where the higher rated player's rating is used for both players if the gap between partners is greater than say 200, otherwise the duo's ratings are treated as they are today? I mean, there will always be issues around the margin with any threshold used and there is the fact that rating is a nonlinear representation of skill. Still, I think something like the above would help alleviate manipulation from high-low duos without ruining things for the majority of players.

So one idea I had to give warrior more z-axis mobility without resorting to full on ports would be to add a z-axis to a couple of leap skills, sundering leap and stomp being the prime candidates. Basically, the travel distance would be the hypotenuse of the triangle formed between the warrior, the destination, and the ground. A higher jump would mean less horizontal distance traveled whereas using the skill on flat terrain would mimic the current behavior. So with the addition of the z-axis component, a warrior could 'high jump' up to a ledge such as the clocktower on battle of kyhlo. Thematically, this idea fits well with berserker IMO. Both sundering leap and stomp would have to be sped up quite a bit, but I don't see that being unfair. Stomp provides stab, too, which would help reduce the risk of being interrupted mid leap. Also, I know way back in like 2014, anet patched leaps to prevent them from being able to scale certain terrain, but the game has changed so much that there is no need to be bound by that philosophy. Orrrr, warrior could, you know, just get an actual port skill.

You know, I had typed up a thoughtful response to this but decided not to bother given the silly ad hominem you led with. I hate to have to be this pedantic, but given that viable simply means "capable of working successfully", I did in fact use it correctly btw. Go spend some time playing a few matches as a warrior with those mixed weapon sets I 'glossed over' and you'll see that I'm right about shield. That's the beauty of this being a game. We all can actually test things for ourselves.

Currently, every master tier trait interacts with ammo charges, which means they're useless on some builds or mostly useless if your only ammo skill is SiO. An explosions trait at this tier would always have some effect by virtue of there being explosions in the gunsaber kit. Something like losing a condition for every explosion used with a 5-10s icd or maybe a resolution proc would be nice. The latter would provide a bit of synergy with defense since taking that likely means not taking shouts (nobody is taking a bunch of armaments 😛).

So by competitive, I meant builds for competitive modes lol i.e. spvp and wvw. That was pretty clear in my original statement. Additionally, you have simply repeated yourself and refused to engage with my argument that the 'choice' to take fast hands has effectively been removed because the trait is so critical that there is simply no viable alternative. Btw critical doesn't mean OP. Again, I am speaking practically and not in the literal sense of being unable to equip a different trait. Some need that clarification as reasoning is hard, apparently. Think I'm done here.

Heh. I have some idea actually because I am willing to use common sense plus rely on actual corporate experience. A trait swap is guaranteed to be less time consuming than reworking a bunch of weapon skill effects, animations etc. You're right in the literal sense that I don't know if anet agrees. However, myself and countless others have made arguments to hopefully persuade them to agree. As I pointed out previously, one condition that is present now that was not prior to feb 2020 is that cc skills do no damage. This condition increases the need for fast hands to the point where the meaningful choice of whether to take fast hands has been eliminated. Given the state of warrior weapons, builds without fast hands don't work. Full stop. See my example about alternatives to warrior's sprint. Those involve meaningful choices, especially when each competes with good alternatives like shield master in the case of dogged march and lynx runes vs say fighter runes. You also ignored my question about demonstrating a competitive build that doesn't take discipline.

I covered your first point already. Much more development time would be required to rework everything that is currently built around fast hands than would be required to simply make fast hands baseline and replace it with another trait. It's not a question of fast hands being too good, it's that warrior is too bad without it. I have yet to see anyone provide a real example of how this is not the case. @ProverbsofHell.2307provides clear examples of why warrior is broken if it's locked into one set for ten seconds. Can you provide a build that works consistently or even footage of competitive play where a warrior is succeeding without fast hands? As far as removing fast hands goes... that would be one of the hardest kicks imaginable to the class that is already on the brink. Might as well consider deleting warrior at that point.

I literally covered that in my post. Shield is really the only viable offhand for most builds (warhorn works for support), and it provides neither damage nor enough mobility to compensate for the one-handed weapons' weaknesses. Taking offhand mace, axe, or dagger means having a weapon set with no defensive skills. Try camping such a set for ten seconds in pvp and let me know how it goes. Offhand sword is ok on paper but too clunky in practice to actually work well. Also keep in mind that most warrior weapon skills have a range of 130, so mobility is extremely important. Range actually compensates for a lot on other classes, be it in the form of an actual functional ranged weapon like say ranger axe or in the form of increased melee hit range like rev s/s.

That's because this is an obvious point, as is the one implied by this thread, which is that warrior is broken without fast hands. Mace does nothing but cc, axe does nothing but damage. Neither allows you keep up with your target. Sword does but also doesn't do any damage. At the same time, none of these offers any defensive abilities outside of a single block (lul). So you take shield, which doesn't fix the problems above. Spending ten seconds in these sets is terrible. I'll concede that greatsword is better as it at least has damage, mobility, and an evade. It's also no coincidence that greatsword is the best pvp weapon warrior has. Another thing to keep in mind is that removing damage from CC skills in competitive modes has exacerbated the hyper-focused nature of several warrior weapons. Hammer used to do decent damage but is now just a cc stick, and bull's charge formerly provided important supplementary damage. The feb 2020 patch made fast hands even more critical than before.

I agree that making 'mandatory' traits baseline is a slippery slope. Every class has at least one trait that feels like a critical must-have and and surely most should not be baseline. I'm sure every thief main would love for preparedness to be baseline for instance. It's true that nitiative costs are priced assuming preparedness will be equipped. However, there is a simpler solution for that trait than there is for fast hands, which is to replace preparedness and re-price initiative costs. This gets at why fast hands should be baseline. Fast hands is so critical not because it 'feels better' but because warrior weapons are so specialized that they literally don't function without it. Just about every weapon on warrior would have to be reworked in order to function without fast hands whereas weapons on other classes typically have multiple functions. So in other words, there is no simple solution for replacing fast hands, which in it's current state, hamstrings warrior build diversity. This would be less of an issue if warrior were in a good state in competitive modes, though warrior being good would just mask this problem. There are reasonable alternatives to the other traits in discipline (dogged march + lynx runes or warhorn in lieu of warrior's sprint, for example), but fast hands is irreplaceable. Tl;dr - the assumption of fast hands is built into every warrior weapon and since there is no reasonable way to fix this, fast hands should be baseline. Being locked into discipline for one irreplaceable trait in literally every build destroys warrior build diversity.

The more I play bladesworn, the worse it feels. Some of the other especs got significant buffs since the previous beta and bladesworn can't keep up in pvp. - The gunsaber damage is still badly undertuned. Here's the thing. We're forced to take it in exchange for losing a set of sigils and weapon swap, so if anything, the gunsaber needs to be slightly overtuned as compensation. - The gunsaber provides literally no defense besides a bit of projectile block. Again, this thing is mandatory (inflexible), so it needs to provide more. - Make dragon trigger work on the regular weapon set or better yet, return the core bursts. These weapons were clearly designed around having burst skills and are completely neutered without them. Seriously, go use mace or longbow on bladesworn and tell me that they work. Giving up one weapon + its burst for the gunsaber + dragon trigger is fair, the current implementation is not. -Pistol should be mainhand. Remember how gunsaber offers no damage mitigation? At least let the bladesworn poke from range before wading in. Bow and rifle are not great in general but are utter trash on this spec, so they can't reasonably be used. -Give the bladesworn a major master tier trait that doesn't rely on taking ammunition skills. All three of them are literally useless with many weapon/utility combinations. -Give the bladesworn a real teleport skill as a utility. Flicker step is a meme. Literally every single other class has one now and several of those classes that had them previously picked up new dashes and leaps. Not giving bladesworn a real teleport is tantamount to saying that you want it to be bad. -Related to my point above, rework the utilities because they are incredibly weak. This marks the second wartior espec in a row with basically all garbage utilities.

Just some basic warrior advice, take your home node at the beginning of a match if you can and try to stay out of big team fights. Operate on the side nodes, but be aware of the respawn reinforcement potential at far. As a warrior, you're most effective fighting 1v1. If additional enemies disrupt your duel, simply run away unless your teammates arrive simultaneously. When you're fighting, weave in and out of close range so that you can land your skills but avoid the enemy's damage (don't stand in red circles). This is key because you lack the defenses to simply tank this damage. Whirlwind attack is good for this. Dagger 3 can be really good for setting up shield bash -> weapon swap -> arcing slice because its cast is near instant and it immobilizes your target. Landing full counter is really important for creating windows to burst your enemy down. Good luck out there.

Ya, a few swaps could lead to each espec fulfilling its role to a much better degree. I know we're benefiting from hindsight at this point, but it's a bit sad Anet didn't wait to release certain concepts until they had developed the tech to execute them properly. Untamed might have been better as our first elite spec and druid as our third. Imagine the following: Untamed - conceptually similar but with mainhand dagger and more of a hybrid dps focus Soulbeast - same merge mechanic and stances but with a hammer and a few more frontline-oriented traits Druid - ideally no pet or maybe a wisp, an F2 skill for triggering related traits, pet-swap traits triggered on CA, staff+glyphs I would argue each of the above would be better at fulfilling their respective beastmaster, frontliner, and support roles than the current especs.