[Ladies and gentlemen...here are some banner warrior tests]

Here's the base build using the above information

(used Diviner's instead of Minstrel for Amulet/Ring/Ring, GW2Skills hasn't been updated with the Aug 2nd patch, but this will match what @JTGuevara.9018 put in their notes)

[Banners: August 2nd]

1 hour ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Wherever it resides I think Double Standards should cause the summoned effects to happen around the warrior and the banner at the same time.

 

Actually, if they split the difference and just give banners 2 charges it would probably be the best of both worlds with a little bit of QoL as well (the "cost" would be the cast time)

Gives the exact same effect as "occurs twice" but the Warrior can dictate where and when. 

Combo chaining more readily possible by putting down Tactics/Defence (Light Field) and then blasting with Strength/Discipline (Blast) without burning the on-cast effect

More on-cast effects but Warrior has more control over what effect occurs when

Edit: The elite would be a little OP, but... I dunno maybe make it so instead of double charges it provides a fire field or something? Good for burnzerkers, good for Might generation via Blast effect of Banners, etc

[Banners: August 2nd]

What are thoughts if ANet moved Double Standards to the Tactics tree?

In Discipline allows Warriors two different Quickness-focused support options using Tactics (Burst, synergizes with Discipline for ease of access) or Discipline (Utilities, synergizes with Strength for sustain). Lower results; higher customization

In Tactics allows Warriors a super Quickness-focused build. Higher results; lower customization.

I would argue the higher customization is better for the health of the game as the game should promote choice and diversity within professions since it is moving towards homogenizing professions across the board.

(Note: this ignores the various reworks required for Warrior as a whole; just focusing on purely Double Standards placement in the tratlines)

[Banners: August 2nd]

7 minutes ago, Lighter.5631 said:

a skill that grant aegis and barrier every 30 seconds.

With the revision, it will be Barrier + Aegis + Pulsing Regen. In essence it'll function like a soft "extra heal skill".

• Aegis - Use the skill prior to telegraphed big attacks (where possible) to cancel out that single attack.
• Barrier - Cover healthbar and allows Regen to do its work
• Regen - Additional healing (Regen needs to be reworked.... personally it feels less valuable than even swiftness but it's something)

Mending Might (Tactics), Might Makes Right (Strength), Banner of Strength, and Banner of Defense will be a decent self-sustain while retaining an emergency button.

I would recommend to ANet that Mending Might be revamped to also provide Healing (or Barrier) to allies upon Warrior applying Might to them.

Soldier's Comfort + Empower Allies + Phalanx + Banner of Strength would easily become a healing build (coefficient dependent) and would provide Warriors with another toolbox for a support build that is:

• thematic ("stay in the fight")
• synergizes with the traitline but still dependent on other build components (Strength Traits, "For Great Justice" shout, etc),

keeps Tactics line from becoming overpowered; self-sustain still is not as good as Strength, but leans the Tactics line further into the "commander of armies" design

[I don't think this patch will change much.]

The August 2nd change specifically will not change much.

It was stated early on that it would focus on Chronomancer weapon coefficients and Warrior Banners--although we assumed there'd be a little bit more to it.

August 23rd there is another interim balance patch scheduled:

Quote

FYI: we’ve also added an additional balance update to our release schedule on August 23, focused on buffing a larger set of specializations. We’ll have more information on what that build includes in the coming weeks. Thank you for your continued patience and support as we address your feedback from the June 28 professions update.

 

They're tinkering, and while Mechanist and Firebrand are still insanely overperforming, the changes for Warrior Banners shows that ANet has some good ideas in the pipeline--we'll see how it all pans out.

Warrior just simply needs a massive dedicated rework. There's no scenario where a Warrior (including the High DPS Bladesworn) is 1:1 better than the alternative professions due to others' abilities to just do everything.

100% DPS + 20% CC will always be inferior to 70% DPS + 10% CC + 40% Support (percentages used for optics only).

Covering more roles and offering more to the team is always better than simply providing high damage because being able to CC or Support keeps the team alive longer and makes mechanics less of an issue.

You can argue that "high DPS does the same thing", but it leaves less room for error (i.e. wipe). By cracking open the meta so that there is overlapping support in teams, it makes it so PUGs are more easily able to complete challenging content--whether this is to the benefit or detriment of the community is a different argument altogether.

PvP/WvW related--really all skills should be split between the two modes. I know ANet doesn't like balancing 2 sets of skills but really Competitive Modes in GW2 are sooooo vastly different from PvE that it might as well be another game entirely. By divorcing absolutely everything (yes, even auto-attacks) then it lets the Competitive Team make balance changes in a vacuum. They can still adhere to "X skill still does CC" so the skills are roughly similar between modes but it makes it so that if X is overperforming in WvW, you aren't brutalizing it in PvE by nerfing.

[Banners: August 2nd]

Double Standards: instead of doubling the boon duration it should be changed to provide the "on cast" effect both when it was cast and when it disappears, in addition to the quickness they currently have.

Depending on the values of the "on cast" effect (and no, 2 stacks of bleed for 3s is not enough for the Discipline one....), this would provide Warriors with several things:

1. 80% uptime of quickness by sacrificing 2 skills and some stats. It's not as good as what other professions get, but we don't want to be made OP--just competitive. The slight stat dip should be mandatory if someone wants to cover high duration of a specific boon; and no one should be able to cover Alacrity or Quickness 100% by themselves.
2. Damage & CC or Support (Sability, Superspead, Barrier, Aegis, Quickness) that occur once every 15s (with Double Standards) would be great. While Warrior is sacrificing some stats (Signets) or damage (Adrenaline Generation), having access to a skill that allows offensive support is incredibly decent.
3. Two blast finishers via Strength/Discipline would go very well with a Tactics-Burnzerker build, as the Might generation would be great for sustain and with a Longbow or Torch, Berserkers bring fire fields with them wherever they go.
4. Plays towards the concept of "support through offense" more readily which seems to be their thought with regards to Warriors, rather than "overwhelm them in magic".

Given that most of Warrior's utilities come from their Utility skills, it's not unreasonable to have the "on cast" effect occur twice, as it still requires a traitline and at least 66% commitment via utilities to make it cover 100% uptime. 

• Without Alacrity, a Warrior with max boon duration (+100%) would be able to maintain 80% quickness by taking 2 banners and cover 100% quickness via 3 banners. 
• With Alacrity, a Warrior with max boon duration (+100%) would be able to maintain 80% quickness by taking 1 banner, and cover 100% quickness via 2 banners.

[August 2 Balance Update Preview]

Okay, kudos, points, and handshakes for these changes to the banners. I'm curious what else might be in the pipeline with working on the banners.

To address the pickup/drop of them, is the team looking into the purpose of being able to pickup/drop them at this time? Mechanically it has never been enjoyable and with the reduction in CD and the focus being on a big "initial hit" followed by pulses afterwards (effectively Traps or Wells), there's just a lot of disincentivizing to move around the banners. Edit: Missed the part of them no longer being able to be picked up and only lasting 15s. Effectively traps/wells now.

Unknown until we see the full notes if the boons are sufficient to make a banner support warrior viable compared to the other alternatives, but this is a good step in the right direction.

Personal note: different fields (Smoke on tactics, Fire on Discipline, etc) or a blast finisher on pickup would would incentivize positioning regarding banners and having Warriors interact with them; is there the potential for these being looked into? Having an easily accessible fire field outside of Torch would be very convenient for Berserkers, although this runs the risk of horning in too much on Catalsyst.

[Am I reading this correct??]

At one point they understood what Warriors should be like:

• Devona - A leader, the tip of the spear, the unmovable object around which all battle flows.
• Killroy Stonekin - The one man army, the relentless charge, the joy and fury of war unleashed
• Captain Langmar - A commander, the one who shapes the flow of conflict, rallying their allies to hold on for just one more push
• Koss - The fighter, one who will take on any challenge against any foe and through sheer grit and determination hold out longer than any other and still refuse to yield
• Jora - A force of nature, primal fury condensed into steel and iron, as unstoppable as a landslide.

Now, we have:

• Warriors who abandon the rush of adrenaline and rely on the powers of others to do their fighting for them, who are so desperate to hold onto said power they would unleash destruction upon the world itself
• Masters of Weaponry who rely on only 1-2 weapons out of all possibilities
• Berserkers who are so out of shape they need a rest period between wildly flailing around, stripping off their own armor during such senile spasms while others look on in concern.
• Spellbreakers whose Winds of Disenchantment are so feeble that spellcasters don't even realize boons were lost, as they have such overwhelming magical power they can reapply it several times over within seconds
• Bladesworns who abandon mastery of all weapons to focus on a singular one, put all of their training and skill into drawing it from its sheath.
•  

[Alternative Bladesworn playstyle]

The various traits seem like they were designed to provide different playstyles but ultimately didn't hit the mark.

• Minor:
  • Flow on Weapon Swap Attack - Intent: Promote current Warrior design of swapping in combat. Hampered due to forced use of Gunsaber (F1 instead of normal weapon swap) but that's fixable via Keybinding. Less effective due to loss of a true utility weapon set as Gunsaber is mandatory (not enough utility) and Pistol is nearly mandatory (due to trait setup; Axe is the only mainhand worth using on Power Warrior).
  • Flow on Heal - Intent: Promote... healing yourself.... Questionable since.... Warriors struggle with self-sustain so this one is essentially an easy gimme since nearly everyone will use Might Makes Right or some other source of sustain.
  • Flow on Swiftness - Intent: Promote movement and tactical repositioning. Provides Swiftness on movement skill, basically the only trait that provides a playstyle that Warriors don't normally focus on outside of Greatsword. Probably would be better by making it provide Superspeed, as Swiftness in combat really doesn't have much of an impact, especially for a melee-focused profession.
• Major:
  • Recharge Skills upon ammo usage - Intent: Promote usage of ammo skills. Promoted a spamming playstyle. Not terrible in itself, but poorly implemented. Invalidated Daring Dragon due to ease of recharge of Dragon Trigger/Slash. After rework, nigh useless compared to other selections.
  • Barrier upon ammo usage - Intent: Promote sustainability via ammo skills. Poorly implemented, as amount of Barrier gained (and limited to "on final ammo") provides too little to be of any worth to Warriors. Would have allowed Warriors to branch out to other playstyles if Barrier would cover some of the sustainability issues.
  • Strike Damage for each round of ammo - Intent: Promote ammo setup prior to slash. Near mandatory for Bladesworn's DPS. Promotes nothing except spammable ammo skills regardless of damage or impact of said skills.
• Grandmaster:
  • Immortal - Intent: Sustainability via slash. Kind of a gimme since Warrior's sustainability is already tied to its bursts. It's just not worth it compared to Unyielding.
  • Unyielding - Intent: Single powerful "all or nothing" slash. Makes slash deadlier. Due to sustainability via Might (Strength, Tactics) this makes Immortal pointless as it does what Immortal does but better, and already synergizes with the primary trees that all Warriors take regardless
  • Daring - Intent: Faster Slashes more frequently. Pointless. Damage at 5 charges is too low and builds already exist to generate flow. Loss of Protection/Healing/Damage is not sufficiently covered by a single stack of Stability.

[We will get a preview for next weeks balance patch today right? RIGHT!?]

Quote

August 2

As we mentioned earlier this week, we’ve added a follow-up balance update to our schedule on August 2. For that release, we'll be looking at addressing warrior banners and chronomancer’s relatively low damage output through chronomancer-specific traits and increasing the damage on core weapons (like the treatment ranger is getting today). Once we’ve released today’s hotfix we’ll move onto planning the details of this update.

October 4

The next major professions update is slated for October 4 (reminder that release dates are subject to change). A public preview of that update and its design goals will be given well in advance. As promised, prior to that release we’ll also share the long-term vision for Guild Wars 2 profession balance and how it applies to PvE, PvP, and WvW.

 

If I'm reading this right, it means:

• Update on August 2nd; no preview promised--historically this means we could receive the preview today (Tuesday), Friday, or on August 2nd when it goes live.
• Unknown date, but prior to October 4th, long-term vision for GW2 balancing will be stated
• Update on October 4th; possibly rescheduled; public preview "given well in advance" which can mean about any range.

[3 Simple questions about gunsaber]

48 minutes ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Its like , if a person asks why they dont get a living wage and you answer "Because your boss is greedy".

Sorry, I was trying to take opinion out of the response so I didn't clutter things with my normal ramblings.

ANet really hasn't sat down and provided reasoning for why they developed the Gunsaber the way they did. I would say there are arguably better ways it could have been implemented but I honestly don't know--I assume it was largely due to trying to shoehorn that into GW2's spaghetti-code.

We can infer a lot of stuff but the biggest assumption is that it was less resource intensive to just co-opt largely what stuff was already in game and just apply them to the new Elite Specs. When HoT was released ANet made sure to create an entirely new animation for the Daredevil staff fighting because the original was... awful (magic fidgetspinner stance).

From what I've seen, nearly all Elite Specs of the EoD just re-use animations already in-game or at most have 1-2 new animations for 1-2 skills?

[Profession Balance: Next Steps and Preview of June 30 Balance Update]

They mentioned they would "address Warrior banners" and "chronomancer... damage through... traits and... damage on core weapons". It sounds like the weapon damage is going to be focused only for Chronomancers and all that Warrior is going to be touched upon is the Banners.

Have they noted anything else in different sources? If multiple professions are going to be given the Ranger treatment then that would be a welcome bump to sate people for the 2 months until the major update.

[3 Simple questions about gunsaber]

1: Weapon was designed as a kit, therefore not stowable. Animation for Rama is NPC only

2: Depends on what you mean:

• Damage - Overcompensating cooldowns due to ammo design. Overfocus on Dragon Slash over Gunsaber with regards to damage.
• Utility - Unknown; assumed to be a lack of developers' understanding of Warrior, whereby Warrior weapons provide damage & utility and utility skills provide sustainability & "stat bonuses", unlike most other professions where weapons are damage, Utility are utility & sustainability, and Traits are stat bonuses.
• Mechanically - Attempted to make it a "weapon" but it is effectively a weapon kit. Does not allow interaction with current "weapon" coding of GW2. F1 co-opted to get around this to provide a "kit instead of burst" instead of simply providing weapon kit.

3: Easiest copy/paste. No additional coding, animation, or processes required. Similar to many re-used animations for all EoD Elite Specs.

[greatsword is outdated]

We could actually provide Warriors with a slew hybrid weapon by simply co-opting Terror and revamping a staple of Guild Wars 1:

NEW Trait: Deep Wound: Vulnerability inflicts damage

This would provide a hybrid damage type to:

• Core Warrior:
  • Axe 2
  • Greatsword 1
  • Rifle 3 & 4
  • Mace 2 & 4
  • "On My Mark" (Shout)
  • Sundering Burst (Arms)
• Berserker
  • Sundering Leap (Rage)
• Spellbreaker
• • Dagger 5
• Bladesworn
• • Pistol 4

Suddenly you've added a hybrid and condi aspect to multiple weapons, it ties into the Warrior playstyle of not being condition heavy and focusing on "non magical conditions" (i.e. Vulnerability), and depending on traitline it's added to (probably Strength....) it can provide Warriors with another "condi" choice for traits other than the usual Disc/Arms/Berserker.

Note: The sheer amount of vulnerability Warrior can stack on is wild. Yes, it means that Vulnerability needs to be revised (unlimited stacks, +% damage only applies for first 25 stacks), but this has the potential to provide Warriors with a lot of build and playstyle opportunities. 

[[Rant] The 4 Reasons i dislike Bladesworn.]

There's a lot of potential with Bladesword but it was poorly implemented. The design of it largely does not synergize with the Warrior kit which shows a lack of truly understanding how the Warrior kit is designed and hangs together. It's perfectly fine for them to push a new playstyle but because nothing was done either to revamp the core Warrior and since "+adrenaline now = +flow" was the extent of their integration of it to the baseline Warrior kit it really failed hard from a Warrior perspective.

There's a lot of potential for Bladesworn but they need to move away from the focus on the aesthetics and focus more on the mechanics.

• There was the potential to make Munitions skills alter what Gunsaber skills you have access to.
• Make Ammo skills have various effects (Master Traits) on each usage to create different playstyles.
• Make Trait selection change what kind of Dragon Slash you have to create different playstyles
  • Unyielding: Slash, focuses on powering through defenses
  • Daring: Boost, focuses on mobility
  • Immortal: Reach, focuses on range
• Provide a weapon kit (Elite Skill) instead of making the Gunsaber a mandatory F1 weapon
• Create a mid-range specialization via
  • Pistol Mainhand & Offhand: #1 being a shot, #2-3 being Gunsaber 2 & 3, #4 being a combination of Gunsaber 5 & Pistol 4, and #5 being Dragon's Roar
  • Gunsaber having two modes: Gun, for a rifle style gameplay, and Saber, or the katana style gameplay

What we ended up getting was Engineer Gadgets blended with Ranger Traps (poorly) and a mandatory weapon kit that simply doesn't have the utility (and is far more clunky than) compared to the normal weapons Warriors have access to.

The biggest issue with Bladesworn is that they're trying to "fix it" with Traits and Skills which then just make those Traits and Skill mandatory for make it function rather than providing alternate builds and playstyle. The primary Bladesworn choices (Fierce as Fire, Tactical Reload, Unyielding Dragon), mandatory (Gun x Sword), and optional choices (Overcharged Cartridges, Dragonspike Mine) could literally all be entirely replaced at zero gameplay difference to the Bladesword simply by reducing Dragon Trigger CD and increasing Damage.

That's it--there's literally no point to all of the interconnecting skills other than as soft fixes to Dragon Trigger. The skills are not impactful enough on their own to warrant using them in any situation other than as a way to access Dragon Trigger more often, and the traits are selected purely to increase damage. Both of these can be solved simply by looking at Cooldown & Damage on Dragon Trigger/Slashes so why even bother with those skills at all?

Conceptually they have a really cool idea but its current implementation would suit other professions far more than Warrior in the current design.

[greatsword is outdated]

It's kind of gross that Greatsword is outdated, yet it's still one of--if not THE--best power weapon that the warrior has access to (and very high up there as a utility weapon due to evades, mobility, and trait synergy).

[[Idea] Give warriors a shroud mechanic]

I figure Berserk should've been a Shroud Mechanic, using "Rampage" Elite Skill as a rough template as to what you'd get access to. No thoughts on how it'd interact with the other burst skills, or if every 2-5 skill counts as a "Primal Burst" at T1.

[The Open World Raidboss Build]

It definitely can get some insane builds, though I agree I'm not a fan of it in End Game or just normally. It just feels way too clunky compared to the other Warrior specs (not saying there isn't clunk to those too, just feels better; might be confirmation bias from using them for the last decade though).

Shout out to Lord Hizen!

[PLEASE don't listen to Teapot regarding Hammer!]

49 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Would be cool though. Things like buffing Body Blow and Unsuspecting Foe in that way gives some weapon versatility in that the weapon itself isn't the source of condi, but the traits. That gives room for adding utility/defense to the weapons.

Oh absolutely, Body Blow not having an ICD and allowing it to layer on multiple stacks of bleed would be great. It not only provides a new lease on life for Mace/Hammer but also give condi options for multiple other weapons & utilities:

• CORE: Mace, Hammer, Shield, Rifle, Kick, Bull's Charge, Rampage
• BERSERKER: Wild Blow, Headbutt
• SPELLBREAKER: Daggers, Full Counter, Magebane Tether
• BLADESWORN: Detonate Cartridges

In this way, you could see

• Warriors running Sword/Shield, Mace/Mace, Mace/Shield, Sword/Mace (+ some utilities) with condition builds - finally providing Warriors an alternative to Longbow+Sword/Torch as the (near) sole condition build set.
• Warriors would gain additional hybrid weapons via Hammer & Mace, allowing further build exploration
• Bladesworn will gain some condition synergy via Unyielding Dragon - my opinion of Fierce as Fire causing burning on explosion would need to be revamped

It's the simplest possible change to implement that provides massive build & playstyle diversity for Warriors.

Edit: Simplest possible, but any tweaks to it will have massive cascading effects due to the number of things it would touch. If the condi was baked into all weapons then they can tweak each one individually rather than mass across the board--was my concern.

Edit2: Sorry, one more thing; rather than focusing on bleed/burn, it would be best if ANet took another look at Deathly Chill prior to 2016 & current Terror. By allowing soft conditions to do damage it opens up options for ANet to allow unique profession traits to interact with them. 

• Cripple: via Leg Specialist, Cripple now does X damage while the target is moving, Y damage while stationary ("soft pre-revamp Torment")
• Vulnerability: Via Sundering Burst, Vulnerability now does X damage to target, stacks in intensity ("soft Bleed")

There's a lot of options ANet can add that open up massive variety for Warriors for either minimal effort (Body Blow) or moderate (Edit2)

[PLEASE don't listen to Teapot regarding Hammer!]

I'm thinking if they were going to make Body Blow & Unsuspecting Blow powerful enough to turn power weapons into condi weapons, they might as well just revamp all Warrior weapons to be hybrid similar to Sword, with traits revamped to provide multiple choices in each tree for focusing on condi, power, or a combination.

(This would be way more effort than just Body Blow/Unsuspecting Blow, just babbling)

[What needs to be addressed about balance philosophy]

I feel cadence and revision would help with the design philosophy.

The current cadence is described as a a big balance patch touching on some combination of mechanics and coefficients every 3 months, with smaller tweaks in between each patch. If something is determined (by whatever ANet metric) to be a negative mechanical change, is there room for either reverting to a previous version or are the mechanics locked in until it reaches an acceptable balance? (related to #13 in OP)

As well, if something is overperforming (by whatever ANet metric) what's considered an acceptable timeframe to address it? The longer an imbalance persists the more extreme the community becomes, which can cause cascading issues such as skewed metrics towards/away from certain things.

An example of this would be X profession overperforming, causes Y & Z professions to stop using skills A & B (respectively) due to those no longer being required. Therefore, professions Y & Z use skills C & D (respectively) more frequently. These skills are then considered "commonly used" and may be balanced or left alone (depending on metric). However, the only reason they're used in the first place is because profession X is overperforming, invalidating skills A & B on other professions. 

The whole "anything you can do I can do better" situation, so people stop using A & B because X is better at it, which hides the issue that A & B individually or X overall need to be addressed.

[Anet, bite the bullet and just do a comprehensive rework on warrior.]

Prior to the release of EoD, ANet specifically stated that Warrior was balanced in every single game mode for multiple roles (power, condi, tanking, support, etc) and that the level of balance applied to Warrior (at the time) was the desired end goal for every single profession.

Post-EoD & post-June 2022 patches this viewpoint may have changed, but ANet has not yet released their new design/balance philosophy (overall nor for each individual professions), so it's hard to guess if it is on the radar as requiring rework.

[Give Core War an F2. Give Back Core Burst to Berserker.]

29 minutes ago, Logos.3042 said:

I like this idea very much.  My initial thought was a defensive skill like a single block, but with Spellbreaker's "Full Counter" it really would not be great for SB... unless they got another block!!!.

Full Counter is a huge boon (Ha!) for Spellbreaker already and a lot of people tend to view Spellbreaker as Warrior 2.0 due to to having better subjective survivability. I wouldn't recommend them getting another block, but I do believe Full Counter should be revised slightly (the various *Counter traits are... pretty bad).

14 minutes ago, oscuro.9720 said:

Good ideas except the Master of Arms trait imo. Remember that trait would still apply to things like spellbreaker and berserker. Being able to have random bursts that are in associated with weapon sets could be problematic IMO. 

My thought for Berserker/Spellbreaker was that they would not be able to change F1 (Berserk) or F2 (Full Counter) respectively. They can choose whatever burst they want for the other burst slot though.

 

16 minutes ago, oscuro.9720 said:

Also, for the F1 and F2, I would not have the burst location be selectable, but rather have F1 be the current weapon set and F2 as the currently stowed weapon set, with them flipping when you swap weapons. Locking a singular burst skill for spell would be quite problematic, and, while it would be better than nothing for Berserker, still worse than having regular bursts like berserker used to. 

This was my original thought too; I added the whole "select" bit as a way of further customizing things for Warriors.

Spellbreaker, again, I'm leery about.

Berserker you could simply have it that F1 is Primal, F2 is Regular. If they wanted to add some additional effects, F1 available while in Berserk, F2 available while not in Berserk.

This was all slapped together based on a random thought within 2-3 minutes while reading this post though, so I definitely have not put a huge amount of thought into the whole interplay, haha. It was just to get around the investment of ANet needing to create entirely new skills or interactions and just loosely co-opting the Revenant F1/F2 system.

(I feel bad that my first suggestion for "improving Warrior" ends up being "copy different professions"...)

[Give Core War an F2. Give Back Core Burst to Berserker.]

If they're not willing to create entirely new skills, why not have F2 be the burst for your 2nd weapon set? 

Would decrease the issue of not having Fast Hands (trait or baseline). Some weapons have low enough cooldowns that you technically don't NEED to swap, we just do so because we have the "on swap" traits and to gain access to the other burst. Sometimes the situation demands delaying swapping period because you're in the middle of a channeled skill.

By having access to both burst skills regardless of what set is currently active it has the potential to provide additional playstyles for warriors:

• Power Hammer (Active) with Greatsword; can use the Greatsword burst to assist DPS while doing CC damage.
• Condi Longbow (Active) with Mace; can fight from range, but if people get too close you spike/stun them with Skullgrinder
• Crit Dagger (Active) with Hammer; can use different Utilities as the Hammer Burst as F2 provides additional CC for Attacker's Insight

Additional mechanics could include:

• When you equip both weapon sets you can select which one sits in F1, and which in F2. These no longer move when you swap weapons.
• When you equip different Elite Specializations, different selections happen:
  • Berserker replaces F1 (Berserk + Primal Burst), keeps F2 [potentially a direct upgrade]
  • Spellbreaker replaces F2 (Full Counter), select which Burst Skill is in the F1 slot [potentially a direct downgrade]
  • Bladesworn replaces... unknown. [I argue Gunsaber should be a weapon Kit via the Elite Skill but that's personal opinion]
• Replace Dual Wielding Trait --> Master of Arms:
  • Option 1: Warrior Burst skills (F1 & F2) can now be selected regardless of what weapon sets are equipped. (i.e. Axe+Axe & Greatsword equipped, but with Mace F1 and Hammer F2 Bursts)
  • Option 2: Gain F3 - Select 1 burst skill that you otherwise would not have access to (i.e. Sword+Torch & Mace+Shield equipped, with Longbow Burst as F3)

[Design Notes for June 28 Professions Update]

15 hours ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

I'd say they're good candidates for some upgrades, yep. There are a lot of out-of-meta weapons across professions that the team would like to bring up a bit. Generally speaking, there are weapons that need more mechanic updates/reworks (like updates to the engi rifle), but others may only need number tuning to bring them into play a bit more consistently.

Is the overall or per-game-mode use of each weapon per profession a possible metric that can be shared with the community? Official numbers would be more reliable and it help guide community discussion on both critically underused as well as critically overused weapons.

Also (or alternatively), would it be possible to share what weapons are being reviewed (mechanically or just retuning) for each profession, if such a list is available?