howdy.7604

-I play on EU -I selected Reaper's corridor -Fortune's Vale -I play about four days a week, more or less depending on chance. Usually by night, between 21:30ish and 23:30ish. -I have mixed feelings. First match was a bit sad, with Moogoloo being quite ubiquitous, a long queue for a loosing EBG bout and my team being outnumbered especially in the borderlands. -No guild, I have none -No -One or two tags, but mostly closed ones that required discord and an invite. I find this a huge turnoff, as I dislike using discord or hearing a stranger's greasy voice uttering unintelligible commands where I should be having fun in quiet peace. So I ended up roaming and capturing minor objectives with random players. I did follow a tag three days ago, and I took part in some siege action, but I wasn't in the squad and I mostly trailed ahead, pursuing lonely kills. -The second match was better. Haven't partook in much large scale fighting, but the skirmishing and raiding was great and somewhat even, and we weren't outnumbered. The borderlands where especially pleasing with how populated they were.The first week had fewer hands on my side. -The second match provided me with a steady stream of helping hands in the borderlands, where much of my action is. -I'm guildless. The new system is based on guilds. This leads to closed and numerous groups of players that come online together and drop out together. Especially in the first week, there wasn't the stream of lonely players I usually band with and fight against, and not many alternatives, given the closed tags. This meant that not many autonomous hands were there to answer calls in the team chat. The second match was much better in this regard, but the prevalence of small scale fighting brings to the fore a few issues that don't really matter in large scale fighting. When it's a brawl between some ten people or less, classes that benefit from exceptional mobility and/or otherwise niche stat distributions, such as celestial stats, are particularly punitive to play against. I've seen consistent arguing on the latter, especially, and I think it's worth taking another look at the bonuses it provides with small scale wvw in mind. Same goes for the availability and consistency of boonstrips, a key counterplay tool when, one on one, the disparity of boon generation and upkeep between the two contenders is taken into account. With the new matching system, I foresee a lot less tagging and a lot more skirmishing for players like me, and the quality of balance for small scale fighting will largely dictate the quality of my wvw time, and ultimately what I can do for my team.

I remember seeing an excellent suggestion here a while ago. Forget elites, make body blow also inflict bleeding, torment and/or confusion. We have unfinished business with the latter two, and not nearly enough of the former compared to stuff like earth weavers and reapers. Courtesy of main hand sword being janky and having an awful burst skill. Also, another thing I saw here: stick somewhere in a core traitline something that makes weakness inflict bleeding. Still body blow? Somewhere else?

Oi mate, thanks for testing. Haven't got the relic yet, and from the other posts I see it might be a bit borked in implementation. However, this has the very interesting side connotation. Natural Healing counts as a boonstrip, and this means the following 1-The main logical leap that lead me to believe it was so (the fact that you gain Attacker's Insight) is substantially compounded by the fact that Natural Healing interacts with Nourys. G R A T I F I C A T I O N 2-There is now room for an interesting hypothesis: does Natural Healing trigger Loss Aversion and Enchantment Collapse? Still pretty useless, but there would be room for popping Endure Pain, hopping in the fray and popping Natural Healing to allow more unblockable cascade boonstrip, adrenaline because you boonstrip, damage because you boonstrip, cleanse, and health because despite being pretty useless it's still a heal skill. Since most strips are based on Dispelling Force, and the required bonk doesn't work if the enemy has stab, stacking the Natural Healing trigger with Break Enchantment before hammer time could work as a primer to ensure the cc and further stripping goes off. Additional Attacker's Insight is also welcome, I guess Addendum and correction: wiki says point 2 is correct. Listed under Related Traits. Also of notice that Natural Healing, as per wiki, has some 2000 health gain more than mending. I need to see this in game, but if it is so, and it eats 7 conditions against Mending's 5, and it additionally heals for each boon it consumes, then it might be worth it. Even against peak performance, that's attacker's insight, loss aversion and enchantment collapse going off. And a bit of Nourys fuel, even if less than hoped

Yeah, I hope it gets some competition

Zerg wise you'd get most of it back, I think. Besides, it seems like a fair price for immediate max attacker's insight, whatever boons you get on heal, a lot of health, cleanse, and Nourys

If Natural Healing were to work for the purposes of Hunger, it would be a pretty surefire way of triggering Nourys when you need it

Fair. Guess it will require more discipline (no pun intended) to coordinate strips and trigger Nourys on time. Besides, if you're close enough to use the boonstrips we have, you're likely already in melee, and therefore out of position for what concerns a coordinated spike, or otherwise already engaged and triggering defensive cooldowns instead of applying the counter pressure strips entail. I'm not home yet. Won't be on pc for another 5 hours I think. I rarely watch steamers. This night, no pun intended, I'm gonna have a field day getting this new stuff and testing it out. I'm super curious

Hehe, warrior is so full of awkward, dated and forgotten stuff that, given new conditions, I always check if some of these things suddenly come out of the left field as new, viable and unorthodox variants. Love this class. If Natural Healing suddenly becomes the trigger of a possessed ooga booga build, I am going to pioneer such a thing and slap meta folks with it

I'm gonna dream a bit more: I hope that either we get control over when to consume Hunger stacks, or that dedicated builds get ways to trigger it as often as possible no matter what. Besides, if "by chance" I use break enchantment (man, I would, but it just strips 1, bit hard to slot it) and plink off a firebrand, and this makes me Chuck Nourys, I ask you this: would I ever not want to murder everything anyways? Big demon dude, I take less damage and heal for part of what I deal. Since I'm in the fray stripping stuff, is there really a wrong time for me to become a hulking beast? If I "erroneously" strip a firebrand, you bet I'm gonna make a very serious attempt on butchering that firebrand and anything close, which is going to be much better if I'm Chuck Nourys. We are just oogas, brother. We must booga

I just hope those stacks scale with how many boons you remove in one go, instead of 1 per any skill that removes any number of boons and then the cd. I'm very curious, though I see that my hope is very unlikely.

Fair points, all. What tipped me off to a possible interaction is the fact you gain Attacker's Insight, which is weird. I hope the ICD isn't per single boon, but per boon removal in the sense that if you pop a skill that removes 3, you gain 3 stacks instead of just 1, then the ICD goes off. Otherwise mass boonstrips would be punished in favour of continuous and steady application of single strips. Might be the latter, since consistent "bomb" removal such as old WoD got essentiality axed. The relic would be very slow to escalate, in this case. One can hope, still.

Hello gents, how many of you use Natural Healing? Few, I assume. You consume your own boons, along with your conditions. Up to seven. What you gain is Attacker's Insight (so the Wiki says) per consumed boon, as if you stripped one off of someone, despite that someone being you. And health, of course. Enter Nourys, which will be based on boonstrips. For unintelligible reasons, said boonstrips get nerfed into uselessness basically every patch. Now, I haven't checked the upcoming patch, and I don't even know if it's live yet, but does Nourys specify that you have to strip off of enemies? If it does, does Natural Healing count as that? If so, and bear with me a second, Natural Healing could be used to ramp up Hunger and trigger Nourys. Picture you're a classic hammer spellbreaker in wvw. You strip boons more than most, but that's not saying much. Not even WoD has a place anymore. But here you go: if you can't eat enough enemy boons, you eat your own. And become very hungry very, very very fast. In a zerg? Even better. Everybody has every boon in a zerg and the application is continuous. Even if you eat seven boons, you'll get them back immediately. Free hunger, attacker's insight and health, then you consume the hunger and become beastly. Depending on relic ICD and duration, Natural Healing may very well make us a walking nuke. I know it sounds ridiculous to use meditation skills, but even if this weren't the case, I hope Anet considers this option.

Good point. I assumed it would affect the user like, say, traits that cleanse allies or grant boons to them. If I remember correctly, things like rev's Eluding Nullification trait in Salvation cleanse the user too. Also, Heat the Soul is worded like this: "Grant Boons to nearby allies when you use a burst skill", but it works on the user too. You do get fury and might. Based on this, I hope my hypothesis for these relics to directly benefit the user is more solid. Granted, it's relics and not traits, but an uga booga such as myself has to believe

Whatever the ICD, I hope the given fury per cc is enough to allow burst windows where you're actually bursting an not weaving ccs in to maintain fury. I got the headbutt in, the set up is successful, now reward me for it and let me burst. If it's going to have 20s ICD, I want at least 10s of Fury and 5 stacks of Might, like the old Pack Runes effect I used to have. In fact, I'd rather have long fury duration instead of 1s but no ICD.

@Lan Deathrider.5910I am mainly exited for the Midnight King. If you bear a bit with me, I will elaborate why. I ask a bit of patience. The main reason is, for what I play, fury. I speak mainly for wvw, both solo and a bit of zerging. I have four builds which will greatly benefit from fury. 1-Power Berserker. Tactics mid-bot-top/Defence all top/Berserker all bot. The "crimson path" build, my favorite ever, the one that allows me to not only survive extreme amounts of damage, but also trade favourably during immunity windows. Axe-Axe and Mace-Shield. I run it all Marauder (60ish crit chance and some 25k health when things go sideways) with dragon weapons. Rune of the defender for heals on blocks (including aegis from sundering leap. No heal on reflects when shield mastery triggers, but aegis reflect abuse is worth it). Thanks to axe mastery, Ferocity is ludicrous for how much punishment I can endure. The main thing that hinders my damage is lack of fury coverage. Axe 2 is way too low in fury uptime, so I am forced to squeeze a decapitate, axe 4 and axe 5 in a very tight window to bank on that 215%ish crit multiplier. Maybe an axe 3 if axe 2 hits more than one target. If I give up Dead or Alive for Heat the Soul, I give up a surefire way to heal during a damage immunity window, which I routinely bank on thanks to eternal champion and high health. With the change to pack runes, I lost the fury they gave me. With Midnight King, depending on how long it is and its ICD, I will get it back. My set up is made of a shield 4, mace f1 if I can, and headbutt. If these gave me fury, the pressure I could apply would be massively improved. The other main benefit is for the variants of this build that I run. Pistol offhand has a lot of uses, contrary to what people here think. Pistol 4 has high vuln, it has aegis (with everything this entails), it triggers warrior's sprint, it's a gap closer, it's an ammo skill and it doesn't even need to hit to get the pistol 5 refill. And pistol 5, despite the knockback, still triggers warrior's sprint because of it, it eats through aegis and blind and can be used in rapid succession at full power. It suffers the same issue above, however: not enough fury. Berserk, Axe 2, pistol 5, pistol 4, decapitate, pistol 4, pistol 5 isn't wholly covered. If you give me fury on the set up, the amount of damage increases significantly. With offhand dagger instead of pistol, a dagger 4 opener when you enter berserk mode, just after headbutt, would hit very hard. I'd even consider ditching main hand axe and getting mace or dagger, which would both give fury, provided that Midnight King gives enough of it. In fact, the mobility from dagger-pistol could substitute shield 4 as headbutt set up, and with the quickness from berserk mode I think you would pull off even a parting gunflame on your f2. With fury. Would be unadultered kek. -Strength Spellbreaker variation. Strength-Tactics. One with offhand pistol instead of shield. I tailored this specifically to butcher thieves. No shield because thieves often ignore blocks and landing shield 4 on them is especially difficult. And they get superspeed when entering or exiting stealth. Pistol is there because it eats through blinds and it has a lot of movement, and movement is key to killing thieves. If I get fury on cc, I get it on full counter and main hand dagger. And bull's charge. This means that I'm no longer pigeonholed in landing a greatsword f1 first before going at it with the dagger and pistol setup. And the might will be welcome, because mmr. The same things here that help me butcher thieves usually help me butcher willbenders, catalysts and harbingers if I can manage it. I'd gladly sacrifice the "fastest hands" mode granted by relic of the warrior. Same goes for the two builds below. 3-Defence Spellbreaker. You know it, I hope you love it. Fury on cc would allow me to ditch the greatsword for a proper defensive set of mace and shield, because I wouldn't need gs f1 to get fury. More cc, more boonrip, more weakness, more banking on no escape and all the bottom row in Defence. And fury on full counter. Hammer 2 will be an inexorable truck after that, and most importantly it will not require me to waste skills on building and ensuring greatsword f1 prior to hammer time. 4-Hammer core. The ultimate "begone, harbs", applicable to eles and guards too. Defence bot-bot-bot or mid/Strength bot-mid-bot/Tactics mid-bot-bot. Hammer and greatsword. The greatsword is still there to give fury, while might is accessory and Forceful Greatsword is there only because I'm pigeonholed into greatsword anyways. If you take Cleansing Ire, like I often do, you could be the one soul other than me that uses Destruction of the Empowered (best trait name in game). If I had fury access on cc, I'd be able to either pull off the rifle f1 kek from build 1 (with quickness from Aggressive Onslaught, too, and possibly stab from Stalwart Strength) with room for rifle 5 setup, or better yet get the mace and shield combo to again bank more on Defence. Works like a proper defensive set, too. Also notice the fact that, as much as we belittle mace damage, its auto chain is hilariously backloaded. Add reliable quickness to it, and surprise, 4k hit before or after your hammer time. Also, since I wouldn't run greatsword nor mmr, Forceful Greatsword would be near useless. Body blow too, because I already have enough weakness spam. So Great Fortitude, my beloved. "Nooooo stat increase traits are bad reeeee" oh come off it, I'm still sad about Armored Attack getting removed, you will not deprive me of this, too. More health and ferocity is always good and very on brand for warriors. As you may have understood, I dislike greatsword. And I like pistol. "reee why pistol isn't ranged reeeeee" my brawny brethren, if I wanted range, I'd have picked another class. Warrior is so good that even the gun is melee. Only understandable complaint for me is the knock back on pistol 5. Make it a gap closer too. I must be in their face even more. As for Midnight King, I am also very exited because it would benefit the one other class I truly like after warrior: mesmer. The power mirage sword-pistol build benefits greatly from fury on cc, because it has a ton of that. A lot of sustained damage, but little burst. I play it when I want to feel like a cackling troll. It does what the warrior does for me (cc and attrition), but with a confusing spin to it.