Grith.9534

sPvP is a dumpster fire of poor balance and terrible build variety. I haven't had fun in sPvP since 2014. WvW isn't perfectly balanced either, but most classes have at least a few builds that can compete in zerging and/or roaming. I'd recommend getting into WvW if you enjoy PvP.

Spellbreaker isn't the problem. Just stow your weapon when they use Full Counter. It's easy to outplay. Spear was overturned, but probably did get nerfed a bit too hard. They'll probably give some damage back to it in the future. For now, put those spears away. They should just lock staff for Warrior in sPvP at this point. They clearly don't want people using it. It would be easier than progressively nerfing it every patch. A few more patches and it will start healing the enemy 😂

Willbender, just as Anet wants.

With the (in my opinion) mostly justified nerfs out of the way, could someone at Arena Net @Cal Cohen.2358 please look into updating the numerous broken/outdated traits, utilities, and weapon skills that have plagued the class for years? Many could be fixed fairly easily. I'll throw out a few of my ideas as a 12 year Warrior main for what it's worth. To name just a few... *Crack Shot* - Slightly improves the auto attack chain of rifle, longbow, and harpoon. It doesnt even reduce the cooldowns of said weapon skills anymore (apart from rifle 4 randomly?) yet retains the tool tip. Utterly useless trait. SOLUTION: Gain a stack of Crack Shot for 15s when striking an enemy at 600 range or greater. You deal +1% Strike and Condition damage per stack of Crack Shot, up to a maximum of 10 stacks. This would be similar to Physical Training in Strength or Fierce as Fire in Bladesworn. It would provide a decent incentive for the Warrior to stay at range and stack the buff. *Sun and Moon Style* - Provides 0 benefit unless you have daggers equipped, and even then it's generally just worse than the other options outside of PvE. Instead, it should stay with the bottom row's theme of disrupting the enemy, without being useless unless you have daggers equipped. SOLUTION: Disabling an enemy grants a stack of Sun and Moon Style for 20 seconds (5s cooldown). Your next attack deals +25% damage and heals you for 33% of the damage delt. Similar to the Opening Strike mechanic for ranger, except that it rewards landing CC rather than Fury generation. Would syngerize nicely with a variety of builds without being dependent on dagger usage. Using high damage skills after a CC would be incentivized. *Revenge Counter* - Still increases the damage of Full Counter despite Full Counter no longer dealing damage in PvP/WvW. The trait is never used, not even against condition builds. SOLUTION: Revenge Counter no longer increases the damage of Full Counter by 20%. Instead, it transfers (rather than copies) 3 conditions and grants 4 seconds of Resolution in addition to Resistance. This would give it a niche use against condition builds. *Dragon Slash* - Ever since losing the daze from the trait Unyealding Dragon, Bladesworn has fallen into a state of near unviability in sPvP and WvW. However, the power of having a daze on your Dragon Slashes made the trait an auto-pick. SOLUTION: Simply adding a 1/4 or 1/2 second daze to Dragon Slash - Force baseline would go a long way in my opinion. It would reward the Bladesworn for landing the most difficult of the three Dragon Slashes to land without making Unyielding Dragon an auto-pick. *Natural Healing*: This heal skill has never even been close to viable. The cooldown and cast times are far too long to justify its use. Additionally, removing boons from yourself is rarely worth it, even on Spellbreaker. SOLUTION: Reduce the cast time to 1s. Instead of removing conditions or boon, Natural Healing grants 5 seconds of "Dwayna's Favor". While under the effects of Dwayna's Favor, removing a boon heals you for some small amount. *Throw Bolas* - A borderline useless utility. SOLUTION: Throw Bolas should be an AoE skill that can hit up to 3 targets in a small radius. Additionally, it should apply a 1/4 second daze on hit. It would still probably be bad, but might have some niche uses in group play. *Kill Shot* - The long cast time and self root make Kill Shot one of the worst burst skills in game. The damage is decent, however the skill is extremely easy to avoid and results in only a minor DPS gain due to the long cast time. SOLUTION: Allow movement while casting the skill. Reduce the cast time to 1 second. *Eviserate* - Not a bad burst skill, but its highly telegraphed and doesn't have enough pay-off when it lands. The mediocrity of Eviserate has held Axe back now for some time. SOLUTION: Increase the leap speed to make the skill harder to dodge. Increase the might granted on hit from 1 to 3 stacks. Reduce the aftercast. *Hundred Blades* - This skill can be pretty good with quickness against a CC'd or downed target. However, the pay off is not enough considering how much work you have to do to make it land. If you compare it to Whirling Wrath on Guardian Greatsword, you'll realize how much room for improvement there is. SOLUTION: Reduce the cast time to around 2.5 or 2.75 seconds (this would give it a similar or slightly better DPS than Whirling Wrath) and increase max targets to 5. A melee skill that requires you to be immobile needs to be extremely rewarding to land in a game with so much movement. A 2.5 or 2.75 second cast time would make it possible to land the entire skill on a CC'd target without quickness. These are just a few easy solutions to Warrior's most outstanding problems. There are still many other issues that need to be addressed, however this would be a good start. Please Anet, don't make me play Willbender like everyone else. I love Warrior, but its really starting to show its rust.

In regards to the Warrior changes, I appreciate that they are trying to improve the Strength and Tactics lines, and while the changes are good changes overall, some don't make much sense. In particular, why add resistance to Restorative Strength? We need resistance on traits/skills that we can quickly activate in reponse to weakness, blind, etc. Additionally, most Warriors use Mending which will typically clear all your condis, making resistance almost useless. If they wanted to give Strength some more tools to deal with conditions, why not add some resolution or condi clears to the trait? Either of those would make more sense than resistance IMO. Then maybe we could take a heal skill other than Mending. Maybe reconsider your Restorative Strength changes Anet? Your heart is in the right place, but those changes would be more of a side-grade or even a nerf to the trait. A trait that was already arguably worse than the other options. I know you all can do better.

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This has always been the status quo. Anet is absolutely terrible at responding to player feedback and communication in general. If we do get the patch as is, what the heck was the point of the preview? I've never seen a patch preview so universally criticized by the player base. The hate for this patch might even up there with the infamous Feburary balance overhaul disaster. Some excellent points have been raised by the community, lets see if Anet actually gives a kitten about this game.

I made a post about this a few weeks ago. Would giving Mending a 16s cooldown baseline break Def SB? No lol. The build is mediocre as is and far from meta. Regardless, something should be done or this is just a straight up nerf to the already dead Str builds. The easiest solution would be to buff either Restorative Strength, which is is a laughably underpowered trait, or increase the healing of MMR, which is probably still a bit undertuned. Two easy solutions. I suspect Anet will do neither and instead continue to destroy the build diversity of Warrior.

I made a post similar to this one a few years back, trying to provide ideas for improvements that could realistically be implemented. First off, from a PvP/WvW standpoint, the skill isn't terrible if you have a build that can utilize it properly. From my testing its about a 40% increase in DPS compared with autoattacking so it does do respectable damage. The problem, in my mind, is that much of the damage of the skill is tied up in the final hit which, without quickness, will essentially never land on a good player, even if you get a long CC like Bull's Charge to connect (this is why I love using Sigil of Celerity on my GS). This is not an acceptable state for a skill and it desperately needs QOL changes. Many people have argued that we should be allowed to move during 100b, similar to what Anet plans to do to Flurry. While this would improve usability, the problem with this suggestion is that the animation of 100b would look very bizarre if the character model were moving. Thus, Anet would have to either create a new animation or replace it with an existing animation that would work better with player movement. Neither is likely to happen. Additionally, the stationary channeling of 100b is what gives the skill its unique feel. So, what should be done? Well, I think there are a two easy changes Anet could implement to dramatically improve the usability of the skill without changing its identity or power level significantly. 1. Reduce the total channel time and damage of the first 8 strikes proportionally, but add damage to the final hit The goal here would be to make the final hit easier to land and more rewarding when it does land, without significantly changing the DPS of the preceding 8 strikes. I think a total channel time of 2.5 seconds would be ideal. Thus, even without quickness, it would be feasible to land the entire skill on a CC'd opponent. The damage of the first 8 strikes would be lowered so that their DPS does not change, but the final strike would have its damage slightly increased to make it more rewarding to land. I think the final strike should hit for a little less than a >50% health Arcing Slice. This would dramatically improve the usability of 100b and incentivize Warriors to channel the entire skill to get the damage of the final hit. 2. Increase the max targets from 3 to 5 I mean, the skill is called Hundred Blades, why the hell does it only hit 3 targets?

The skill will probably be better in 1v1 fights in PvP and WvW, especially against good players who can easily dodge or interupt the current iteration of Arc Divider. Its definitely a nerf for zerg fighting in WvW. In PvE it will just depend on the numbers.

Would literally be a dream come true. People have been asking for this QOL change for years though so I'm not holding my breath.

Well said. This would be a disaster. They need to slow the balance patches down, the game is mostly well balance across the game-modes right now. This feels like change just for the sake of change.

It's weird how they said they are reducing the cooldown of Mending from 20 to 16 seconds in PvE only, but Mending already has a cooldown of 15 seconds in PvE? Some decent changes overall, but if they don't reduce the cooldown of Mending in PvP/WvW that will basically be the last nail in the coffin for Strength-based builds. That, or they need to add more sustain to the Strength tree to compensate. Weird change there.

If the cooldown reduction to Mending is PvE only, it will further nerf all of the Strength based builds that rely on having a shorter Mending cooldown for sustain. I assume it may be a typo because Mending already has a cooldown of 15 seconds in PvE, but if it is not then they need to add some sustain buff to the Strength tree to compensate for this heavy nerf.

You don't understand what I am saying. This is an unintentional nerf to ALL of the Strength-based Warrior builds. (i.e. Core Warrior, Strength Spellbreaker, Strength Bladesworn). These builds are mediocre at best and will become even WORSE. They must add some sustain to the Strength tree as compensation or simply reduce the cooldown of Mending to prevent this from happening.