Bladesworn Feedback Thread

[Wielder Of Magic.3950]

Bladesworn feedback, round 2:

 

Nerfs to Lush forest and Dragon Slash were needed, they overshadowed things to the point it was hard to get a feel for the specs actual performance. 

This was needed, because it shows us exactly what I was afraid of: Take the 2 outliers away, and you get left with a spec that does not excel at anything, and does not really provide a new unique playstyle.

 

Lush Forest feels weak now. I’d revert to the older version but give the proc an ICD so it cannot be spammed. 
This feels like a sledgehammer nerf. The old version was way overpowered, granted, but the new functionality feels counter-intuitive and it also kills off (imo) an interesting shouthealer build that was taking shape.

Damage nerf overall might have been a tad too much. 

Dragon slash was OP, but you hammered it out to the point the entire elite spec feels like it lost its value. It needed a nerf, but not this big of a nerf.

Fierce as fire trait change looks promising. 
Yes it is better, but it is also boring in the sense that it does not make us do anything different from what we already did, being camp the Gunsaber for the hell of it.

Flow Stabiliser change from stab to fury is thrash, please revert. 
Fury is not a problem to generate, the stability was of amazing value.

Stab on dragon trigger minor is great. 

Good change imo.

Did not adress targeting issues in PvP or with elevation. 

Damage in PvP is still horrible, and you can still miss with Dragon Slash (or, if on the receiving end, walk/jump out of it).

Pistol needs more help. 

It begs to be used, especially with the Fierce as Fire changes, but will I ever?
Consider changes/buffs or even adding a pistol mainhand.

Gunsaber still has an identity crisis and does not know what it wants to be (and is now inferior to all).

Less damage than pretty much every warrior DPS weapon, no condis to speak of, no actual range, no actual cc, this weapon is nothing. Think about the role that you want Gunsaber to have, and balance accordingly.  This is without going over the clunkyness of many of its skill that still isnt fixed.

You still cannot swap into Gunsaber with weaponswap. 

Please, allow weaponswap to get us in/out of Gunsaber.

Dragontrigger should be moved to F1 like all of our regular bursts.

Current way of doing this goes against the muscle memory of all other warrior specs, including core.

[gmmg.9210]

On 9/21/2021 at 9:43 AM, Fire Attunement.9835 said:

Let us know what you think about the bladesworn! What do you really like? What needs to be improved or adjusted?

Found a bug? Let us know in the bug thread.

There are some basic things you can do to make BS (Bladsworn) fun and viable. Many of them are QoL improvements:

 

1. Remove the secondary weapon set altogether, it's just confusing and doesn't really work with the theme you're going for. instead make it to where the secondary weapon will ALWAYS be the gun-saber. 

Due to this change, the f1 burst skill doesn't show up with the primary weapon. Instead, it's simply the secondary weapon. The old f2 ability would instead be the f1 burst ability while wielding the gun-saber.

 

2. Make Fast Hands Baseline. This allows synergy to be created between the primary and secondary weapon sets, without relying too heavily on the gun-saber weapon spam with shouts. Also, as a bonus to the theme of the BS, make it to where the gun-saber is always showing at the hip of the character. Like a stowed katana of a samurai ready to be unsheathed. This will fit better once skins are (hopefully) introduced. 

 

3. Fix Arms, Defense, and Discipline. Not really too much to say here other than fixing these trait lines will open up build potential for the Warrior altogether, including the Bladesworn. This will make it so BS doesn't get pigeonholed into using Tactics. (Used to be Discipline but now Tactics because Fast Hands is still not baseline,....)

 

4. Allow Ammo to be Stowed once it's Charged.  Charging ammo should allow the "bullets" to be stored, so that they can be used for later. This would help with the QoL for BS and allow for more synergy between the gun-saber and the charging ability.

 

 

 

[Dragon.2536]

Fact that dragon slashes usable only when holding gunsable force us stay on it all time if build dont have "Fast Hands".
Fierce as fire: what about getting stack refresh duration to all stacks? While charging dragon slash we lose 50% of stacks.

Dragon slashes: now easer to use but damage very low, feels unrewarding.
Daring dragon: intresting mechanics, but reduce already low damage, not rewarding for unable to move that long.

Lush Forest: useles in combat now, force us dont use skills like core war burst before.
Gunsaber skills: insanely high cooldowns for mediocre damage skills.
Flow Stabiliser: stability was much better.
Pistol: dont see her place, in melee range we have better weapons for cc, utility and damage.
Disabled weapon swaping in combat is bad idea, feels clunky with that.

Edited December 3, 2021 by Dragon.2536

[Rimour.9260]

Bladesworn | Weapon: Pistol (off hand)  | Skills: Armament | Playstyle: Melee DPS (Gunsaber)

This Elite Specialization has a unique playstyle which can only be called Gunsaber, as the Elite Specialization traits only support the Gunsaber; therefore focusing on anything else would be a waste. This new mechanic replaces Adrenaline with Flow, which means the only other weapon you have won't have a burst skill anymore and will feel like an add on, this is the trade off to have gun on a longsword. (Hint: use Rifle) Based on theme this is a interesting Elite Specialization, However, in the field there are a few issues. 

Based on my gameplay experience I found that Flow generates much slower than adrenaline unless you completely make a build that is about simply generating Flow, which I did. However, I found that enemies would be nearly dead by the time I had enough Flow for a powerful Dragon Slash, and their low health at that point in combat would always result in a 1 hit KO. Sometimes it wasn't even worth using the Dragon Slash unless I was facing a Boss or multiple enemies, generally 3 to 5, which resulted in my character dying from overwhelming numbers. The few times I was able to get into dragon trigger my Gunsworn got interrupted by enemy CC which canceled the Dragon trigger.  A work around is to use warrior stance or shout skills for CC protection.

I feel if there where more ways to generate Flow faster or keep it up longer would help the Elite Specialization greatly but I imagine this may come at a cost of reducing damage from the Dragon Slash abilities. I also recommend a free aegis when entering dragon trigger to ensure that the time spent won't be wasted or interrupted.

Overall: 3 / 5 

Edited December 3, 2021 by Rimour.9260
Typo

[Ronnie Hu.1694]

gunblade just ugly as kitten

[anbujackson.9564]

8 hours ago, Nayaru.4716 said:

#3 I don't remember if dragon trigger had a different cooldown before but now I'm sat waiting for this cooldown while I'm also sat at max flow for several seconds before I can use it. I'm not even trying that hard to build flow after the first. This does not feel like an improvement.
 

Old lush forest reduced the cooldown of everything including your dragon trigger F2. With this gone you cant spam it as much anymore. Pretty sure that reduction of F2 wasnt intented anyway.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

As someone who plays pvp primarily to entertain myself between story beats and parties doing content, I don't think I can put into words how much I dislike what Bladesworn brings to the table, but I will do my best to try.

I got into this game with the silky-smooth flow of warrior gameplay, but it completely and utterly baffles me how the elite spec presented here manages to:

> fail to address any of the problems that generate losing matchups for warrior (being rooted/needing to be close range for heavy hitting attacks makes warrior struggle against more mobile classes/classes that can frequently output blind and interrupts from range. The mechanic for this new spec requires you to stand still to utilize it, using the spec at all removes a weapon option from you that you could use to mitigate until you were in a position to use the gunsaber, and the gunsaber itself has unsubstantial options for mitigation.)

>Introduce more of the aforementioned above problems, via dragon trigger

>Call the mechanic that breaks up the already good flow of warrior gameplay "flow", while every aspect from the gunsaber skills, to needing to give up a weapon to use the gunsaber, to dragon trigger as a concept seems to be inclined to disrupt combat flow, as if making a cruel jest. What is "flow"y about stopping in the middle of a battle to charge an attack with only a single aegis and a very short port to help facilitate that attack landing, vs any player that is well versed in dodging?

I'm not even angry about this, I'm more just stunned and confused as to what that direction means for potential pvp balancing, going forward. The spec feels like it was designed by people who don't understand or wish  to support competitive interactions, despite having a game mode that fosters that. 

I don't wish to offend any developers that spent time and energy putting this together, but it feels like the hundreds upon hundreds of threads in the warrior forums, rife with complaints about very minor fixes that would help warrior where it struggles now, were completely ignored due to the End of Dragons expac requiring all hands on deck, only for the results of that effort to make the problems warrior already had worse.

It feels like the dev team was so panicked to ship something they didn't stop to think if the thing they were shipping would be useful.

It feels like the foundation balancing that pvp underwent to make room for the incoming elite specs was a robbery of warrior's functionality, because nothing was given back that is pvp viable.

Seeing as how warrior is pretty hard to use already because of the issues that Bladesworn only exacerbates, that reality is so gross to me. I'm sure it's fine in pve, but it feels almost contemptuously sabotaged from the pvp angle. 

I hope it gets overhauled before february. some part of me knows it won't, because pve already likes it. Alas. 

Edited December 3, 2021 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Ronnie Hu.1694]

As a 9 years main warrior player i really ddont like bladedworn. Gunblade need to rework . Anet please listen to us warrior players . Bring back Normal warrior burst and weapon swap , dont add engineer kitten on warrior

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Anet, I'm honestly astonished that you somehow made Bladesworn WORSE.

It's obvious that you are going for a Warrior/Engineer cross over, but you've vastly overcomplicated the execution of it. Take a lesson from how you made Machinist.

Here is an alternative for you.

Scrap Armaments as they are now. Turn them into weapon kits proper. You can keep calling them Armaments if you want, doesn't matter really outside of whatever future runes you make.

I say this because you took weapon swap from us, and weapon kits are the reason why Engineers don't have weapon swap. This opens design space for several of these new kits to be support focused, which is what the warrior mains really wanted out of a new espec. Make Gunsaber the elite Armament skill. Combat Stimulant and Flow Stabilizer would be candidates for offensive support/healing kits, Dragonspike mine would be turned into a mine kit with evasions, blinds, and smoke fields, Bulletproof barrier would be utility including projectile blocks and group defense support, and Electric Fence would be turned into a CC based kit with immobs and stuns at range. Gunsaber would remain as it is. With the increased kits the high CDs would be less of a factor. 

From there remove Dragon Trigger and place it's 5 skills on the function keys directly, so Dragon Slash -force, boost, reach are F1-F3, Triggergaurd is F4, and Flickerstep is F5. Remove the 'Charges.'

Each Dragon Slash should have it's own CD, each now consumes all built up flow and deals damage as per your damage calculations per 10 flow consumed rather than per bullet charge consumed. CDs should be 8s, reduced as normal by Discipline's Versatile Power.

So, Dragon Trigger essentially becomes a warrior 'tool belt' but 3 of the skills require a resource. The Dragon Slashes would function with burst related traits as they do now.

Dragonscale Defense should activate when equipping an Armament kit.

Daring Dragon would need to be changed, let it recharge all Dragon Slash skills if a Dragon Slash skill hits, gain 10 flow per Dragon Slash recharged to replicate the prior theme.

This would be far less clunky, would flow better, create more depth, and in the event you turn the Armaments into worthwhile kits would also open up gameplay diversity to a large degree.

The weeb pose would be lost, but the weeb pose is holding it all back. Please do not let this bad theme cause you to roll out a bad espec on release.

[Issette.3248]

I played Bladesworn mainly in PvP and a bit in PvE. I will also repeat some of my feedback from beta 1. Some of my opinions did change, others stayed the same and I want to call them out.

In general I had a lot of fun with it, but it still needs a bit of work to be on the level I really want to see it. But that's doable! And without breaking the game and the balance even more 😉

Gunsaber:
Gunsabre is THE signature weapon of the Bladesworn. It should never ever underperform in anything as long as we are forced to use it! 
Currently it seems to lack a lot of damage. While this is true, I think we cannot fix anything on warriors by just increasing the damage. The skills need to work in more possible use cases. For example:
Cyclone Trigger is made as a defensive skill with some offensive potential. This is fine, BUT the defensive aspect is just too weak. Adding weakness or blind to the projectiles will give more defensive potential. Adding weakness also opens some trait synergies!
Break Step gives a bit of Fury and is a really short, low damage movement skill. At least it could be a combo finisher. Or it could leave a combo field at its position.
Blooming Fire should give some Might or Vulnerability with its hits. That also would give these skills more combo potential as an opener for a damage rotation.
And the auto attack chain is, compared to other classes weapons, pretty weak and uninspired and just does damage. On a signature weapon like the Gunsabre, there should be much more on everything, even the auto attack skill. (See it as compensation for the combo potential we lost because of losing a weapon set and regular burst skills.)

Dragon Trigger:
Dragon trigger is still clunky to use: You have to swap into Gunsaber first before you can activate Dragon Trigger. From a gameplay perspective there is no reason to do that, as long as your F2 button doesn't do something else outside of Gunsabre.
It is also a big problem that every movement button disables the Dragon Trigger. This is a problem if you simply fat fingering, it is also a problem with higher input delays and additionally makes it clunky to use for people with disabilities. A simple bad input can destroy the flow of the spec entirely!
As others also mentioned before: moving the burst skill (Dragon Trigger) to another button then the one that all other burst skills use is unintuitive, against the muscle memory and makes Bladesworn less accessible.
Dragon Slash - Reach: This skill still feels clunky... I missed a lot of attacks with it. Even more since beta 1 because it is now a smaller projectile. Plz fix that! Higher projectile speed maybe? And because you can use it from the safety of a higher distance, you get more time to charge it. So make the damage scaling more to the later levels.

Traits:
Even when Bladesworn brings a lot of synergies with nice core stuff (Strength, Discipline and Tactics) and even with outdated trait lines (Arms or Defense), it does feel bad to use traits like Berserker's Power, Cleansing Ire, Opportunist or Marching Orders. That's not just an issue of Bladesworn, it is more of an issue with the warrior class itself. But it becomes confusing and unintuitive because of how different Flow works. In that sense it could make sense to rethink the Flow mechanic entirely or bring it back to the well known (and mostly working) adrenaline system.
That will ofc. not solve the problem that warriors are outperformed by other classes by design…
Bladesworn is still missing a trait for the new weapon and the armament skills.

Utility Skills (Armaments):
Utility skills are mostly not good. They are designed too weak compared to similar working skills on other classes and, again, has no trait to boost the effect in any way.
In PvP it felt best to still stay on the skills we use for years now: Mending, Bulls charge, Shake it Off... Skills like Endure Pain, For great justice or Rampage depend a lot more on the build we want to play on Bladesworn, but in any way, they are still better than the new utility skills.
To be honest, I can mostly repeat my whole Feedback from beta 1 here:
Actually a nice design idea is that you get another effect of the skill if you had the effect before. But some skills feel misplaced and not designed with any game mode in mind.

1. (Heal) One of the most interesting Heal skills so far. But I think it is still hard to compete with Mending in a PvP scenario.
2. Flow Stabilizer: Is fine. Changed to worse... why Fury? For great Justice is still the better option for Fury, even without the Flow generation.
3. Bulletproof Barrier: I don't know when to use this skill. It feels misplaced and seems to have no synergies. Why no combo field?
4. Electric Fence: Still, it is the same for this skill as for Bulletproof Barrier. Change Light combo field to something more exciting!
5. Dragonspike Mine: The evade is fine and makes this skill actually helpful. Stunbreak is fine. Overall not sure if somebody will take this skill over Shake it off!, Endure Pain or even Balance stance. More synergies with the BS would probably help with that.
6. (Elite) Is fine, even if I get interrupted with it. (Feels a lot more than just 1/2 second of cast time.) Still a bit boring and could be more interesting by adding things like a combo field/finisher or Explosion or something like that.

Pistol:
Pistol offhand still doesn't feel good to use, esp. if you compare it with other offhand options: Axe is still more damage. Shield is still more defense, even Sword has more Defense because you can block multiple projectiles. Mace has CC, what pistol doesn't. And Pistol also doesn't have any support, which Warhorn does.
So far, Pistol has no place, many changes are needed! From changing it entirely as offhand to adding mainhand pistol, there are plenty options.
If you really want to keep the melee offhand pistol as an option: fine, do that! But please add a range option for the mainhand so we finally have a range option we can combine with warhorn (or other offhand weapons).

Additional thoughts:
Support options:
Please end slavery! Warriors doesn’t want to play the banner slave for all the time. But as it looks now, we will do it with Bladesworn again for some more years!
Make armament so that they are relevant in group content for the entire group in any way.
As others mentioned: Bladesworn also overlapped in what it does with Berserker by a lot. Except that Berserker has the option to play on condition damage. The only difference is, HOW it is done, but both just do power damage. Imo, the HOW is okay, because Bladesworn is actually fun to play, but it would be more exciting if it could fulfil another role.
Make it a supporter by adding group wide Quickness or Alacrity to Armement skills or some traits. You could also make the heal from Immortal Dragon group wide… There are plenty of options! Just don’t be afraid to make a warrior overperform. This currently happens with other classes too and you can nerf it later 😉

Combo fields and finishers:
When changes to combo fields and finishers were added, I hoped for a warrior specs that makes a lot of usage from that. Maybe we get more interesting finishers for the new field on Banner skills or something like that? Maybe some comeback of the Powerful Synergy trait?
You could add some more interesting combo fields to the new Armament skills, maybe as a trait?
Also add some more finishers to Gunsaber and Pistol?

Gunsaber skin
Just one idea: Add three different skins that change with the selection of the grandmaster trait 😉

Explosions
Do More With Explosions! Just one trait is boring and gives us no options! Change one of the existing traits to synergies somehow with Explosions. Or rework the Arms trait line to be Explosion based. But please don't waste the potential of having fun with Explosions!

 

Edited December 3, 2021 by Rettan.9603

[Alabastrum.9361]

Dragon slash Boost scans for hits at least 3 times can deal arround 5k dmg and  stun for 1s, its also a finisher ans a movrmentskill. Furthermore the hitbox is so high you can stun somone standing on the bridge (forest map pvp) even though your under the bridge.

 

This allows you to use the skill like thiefs dagger 2 to hit anyone in your path catching a lot of different roll timings. 

Oveall its a skill that requires no sense of timing and has way too much payoff unlike other warrior skills.

As I write this i start wondering if it can bypass aegis, blind etc... (hopefully not)

 

It would make a lot more sense if it only hitscanned one single time at the end then dealt dmg.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

2 minutes ago, Alabastrum.9361 said:

Dragon slash Boost scans for hits at least 3 times can deal arround 5k dmg and  stun for 1s, its also a finisher ans a movrmentskill. Furthermore the hitbox is so high you can stun somone standing on the bridge (forest map pvp) even though your under the bridge.

Can you show a video of this?

2 minutes ago, Alabastrum.9361 said:

This allows you to use the skill like thiefs dagger 2 to hit anyone in your path catching a lot of different roll timings. 

Oveall its a skill that requires no sense of timing and has way too much payoff unlike other warrior skills.

As I write this i start wondering if it can bypass aegis, blind etc... (hopefully not)

Unyielding Dragon will bypass aegis and blind and stun them.

2 minutes ago, Alabastrum.9361 said:

It would make a lot more sense if it only hitscanned one single time at the end then dealt dmg.

Depends on their intent on how it is supposed to function. Like WWA where it hits along the path or like Rush where it hits at the end.

But to your first point it sounds like they F'd up correcting the overly small hitbox from the last beta. Personally there is so little cheese available to warrior that I don't mind it staying in.

[Infusion.7149]

It seems most of the prior feedback is based off of the older ridiculous damage it had in PvE modes. PvP/WvW players were able to see the flaws already because it didn't have broken damage there. That's why I think it's important to separate damage issues from actual functionality problems.

Functionally bladesworn is still the same at its core, you have a DPS spec that relies on burst that has an obvious tell. Since you can only go into Dragon Trigger from Gunsaber it means it is the main weapon and there is near zero flexibility. Even if it becomes usable it isn't exactly engaging gameplay to charge a burst and just use it , that's about as exciting as Gun flame Berserker , rifle deadeye, or full zerk Sic Em longbow Soulbeast.

As maximum charges went down in PVE for the Dragon Trigger skills yes it does less damage on hit but you also get to use it more often. People joked that after the novelty wears off you realize you're basically spamming a button.

People complaining about PvE DPS must not have seen 36K Banner bladesworn: given some classes are 36K as full pDPS with more skill use than just spamming a burst skill , PVE isn't going to be the major problem for the spec.

 

[DKRathalos.9625]

Aside from all of those already mentioned like too much damage nerf on dragon slash and low damage on gunsaberskills, don't you guys fell like the whole armament utility almost useless? Except the Flow Stabilizer for generator and Tactical reload? The other is like no one even think to use it.

 

Like I am glad we got a new spec but doesn't change the fact that our utility slot is not bringing much value and boring, also someone above mentioned we still have the "Core Warrior" problem which I agree.

[Mesket.5728]

1 hour ago, DKRathalos.9625 said:

Except the Flow Stabilizer

 

Yeah but this skill is there to mend a problem. That is why it works. Compare it to other games where you have an active skill to increase your "energy source regeneration" temporarily. Such skill works if you build to spam or something of the sort. But it is not needed for every build because that "energy resource" is well designed and offers game play on its own. It would be really, reeaaally weird, to join that hypothetical game forums, and read feedback where from all the skills, people say "the skill to regenerate mana is great". That would speak of a broken class with a broken resource (and frankly, quite a boring class if regenerating resource was the best skill).

[Loboling.5293]

So Bladesworn... in PvE

The Good:
Once I got over some of the chunkiness, I actually had fun. The spec is really hard to get rolling, but landing those dragon slashes still feels good. 

The spec seems semi balanced for PvE

The Bad:

• The utility skills could help free warriors from banners. If they were impactful enough, allowing for +40k dps when slotted. Right now, the utilities suck. (Besides flow stabilizer, which is good because of how hard it is to get it up in the first place.)
• The spec is pretty clunky still, although I think for PvE it's manageable, but I agree with some others that it felt a bit better if the charge could be a bit longer in PvE
• The gunsaber skills have too long of cooldowns. 
• No burst skills makes some weapons feel really weak, this leads to almost no excitement for the new pistol. 
• The new pistol is fun, but weak, plus it doesn't serve any real purpose, without directly competing with other warrior weapon skills.
• The spec doesn't deliver much more than a slowed down berserker. It could be so much more. (add range, add support, or add utilities so good it makes bannerless optional. Or everything ;P)
• Gunsaber must be stowable and shouldn't be required to activate dragonslashes.

The spec is actually growing on me a bit more, but I don't even want to bother in PvP or WvW. It's just not tuned right, like the rest of warrior kit. Bring back damage on some cc skills, bring back bursts, bring back weapon swap, make gunsaber better, improve utility skills, increase the usability of dragonslash 2 (speed) & 3 (size), allow dragonslash from other weapons to start charging, redo pistol skills (range/mh), give a support option trait, resolve/protection/resistance on slashes 360 aoe, increase damage of dragonslash 1 in pvp/wvw.

It's a lot of stuff to be done, but I think this spec could actually be salvaged. Good luck devs to get this done or some of the other interesting ideas I've heard here. (kits, which could make the loss of weapon swap and burst skills tolerable)

 

[Mesket.5728]

5 minutes ago, Loboling.5293 said:

The utility skills could help free warriors from banners. If they were impactful enough, allowing for +40k dps when slotted. Right now, the utilities suck. (Besides flow stabilizer, which is good because of how hard it is to get it up in the first place.)

I might be wrong but, afaik, there are only two things that saves a warrior from carrying banners and that is:

a) another warrior with the banners.

b) doing 10k+ dps than anyone else (since if im not wrong that is the average dps banners applied to the team provide).

[Loboling.5293]

10 minutes ago, Mesket.5728 said:

I might be wrong but, afaik, there are only two things that saves a warrior from carrying banners and that is:

a) another warrior with the banners.

b) doing 10k+ dps than anyone else (since if im not wrong that is the average dps banners applied to the team provide).

I chose option b.

\__/O\__/
--o^_^o--

__l      l__

[Kunavi.2407]

Break Step
- As it is now, it has no point as part of any rotation. Warrior already has better gap closing abilities.

My suggestion; Damage should be at the end, not at the start.

Tactical Reload
- Interrupted too easily.
- It clutters rotations too much in its current iteration.

My suggestion; It may be best that it is turned into a passive that speeds up ammo replenishment. If it remains an active ability, it should be instantaneous and it should not interrupt or get interrupted by using other abilities in a rotation.

Flow Stabilizer
- The extra Flow does not justify the loss of Stability.

My suggestion; This needs to provide Stability, whether that means it has to lose the extra Flow(I see no reason for that) or not.

Dragon Trigger
- As GW2 is fast paced, losing shells(By shells I mean the bullet icons that light up while DT is charging) is devastating for any rotation. Recent damage adjustments and loss of Stability off Flow Stabilizer, accentuate the issue.

My suggestion; Shells should not be lost if DT is cancelled or interrupted ETC, regardless of how Flow Stabilizer will ultimately work.

Fierce As Fire
- The % increase is too low thus it only pays off at 10 stacks, and those decay too fast and individually(As far as I could tell). The fact that this % is gained through GunSaber skills which themselves are weak and unintuitive(It could be argued they in fact sabotage a good rotation, there is no incentive to use them currently over other weapons' abilities), perhaps plays a major role in this.

My suggestion; Either A)Decrease the total amount of stacks required to give the full benefit, or B)Increase the % of each stack or finally C)Allow any stack gained to refresh all existing stacks. Or any combination of the above. Further testing would be required, especially since we don't know yet how other BladeSworn and GunSaber abilities are going to be in their final form.

Daring Dragon
- It seems this trait was designed with PVP in mind, so I am not sure I should comment on it, but as far as PVE is concerned this is entirely pointless.

My suggestion; Daring Dragon should be a passive which grants a free 50% powered Dragon Trigger activation when receiving damage(Think of this as a counter strike off a X" Aegis for example, though this does not have to be about Aegis).

GunSaber
- Even with FAF(As that is difficult to fully utilize, on paper this part may not be true, but it is in practice), GunSaber can't even compare to dual axes(To clarify, not with a different Elite/Core specialization but with BladeSworn slotted). In detail, using just this and spending ammo to boost DPS(As optimally as I could at least), is half the DPS of simply using dual axes and going through the typical rotation one would use for those. In other words, the core of dual axes is far superior to the core of the GunSaber, rendering the specialization somewhat pointless . In fact, Dragon Trigger aside(The only reason to slot BladeSworn is in fact Dragon Trigger's "Dragon Force - Slash"), despite being tedious and cluttered, using the ammo abilities of the GunSaber then switching to axes to boost their DPS instead, is far more beneficial than focusing on using the BladeSworn's own unique weapon.

My suggestion; This is a fundamental issue that seems a little too complicated to try and address, for me. This is where I have to unfortunately say, if BladeSworn has to bounce from one extreme to the other, perhaps it's best to delay its release in particular and take it back to the drawing table.

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It is worth mentioning that during my tests, the highest DPS values were quite ironically achieved by using Banners and Signets, and by slotting Strength and Discipline(Exactly how a Berserker would set them up in fact) and using dual axes(GunSaber weaved in opportunistically only to boost axes' DPS), rendering any BladeSworn abilities useless. BladeSworn itself seemed to lose significant DPS if anything other than Bottom-Mid-Mid was picked(Especially when picking Daring Dragon).
To be absolutely fair, in that configuration it did fare better than Berserker but it wasn't by too much and its DPS wasn't impressive on its own when compared equally(Same gear ETC). A hollow victory, at best, if BladeSworn(And Warrior by extend) is supposed to be DPS focused.
I wonder if it was necessary to tone down DPS this much.

I must say, it felt like a Berserker prototype except Berserker skips all the middle phases and button presses and goes directly to gaining and spending meter. It's basically Berserker with Dragon Trigger.

I may be biased but I really am disappointed with where Warrior(In fact where Power DPS classes) is in general. I am tired of it being all about Banners.

Thank you for reading, I hope this feed back helps.

Last Minute Edit - I did not include any criticism on pistol OH, because as Warrior is right now, it can't afford to sacrifice axe OH, no matter what. That on its own, is in fact quite a shame as Warriors are supposed to be versatile.

Edited December 3, 2021 by Kunavi.2407

[Red Haired Savage.5430]

One thing I was thinking about was how bad the rooting on dragon trigger is, you would think they would have realized it wouldn't be very well received as much as we hate the rooting on 100 blades.

[Jijimuge.4675]

I don't think this has been brought up before, but it looks like the gunsabre has the behaviour that's common to other bundle skills, in that the "weapon strength" stat is fixed and doesn't seem reliant on the weapon strength of one's equipped weapon.

This applies to the gunsabre as well as to the "dragon slash".

This seems similar to holosmith's photon forget and is presumably intentional.  Looking at older posts, I see something from Irenio about how it wasn't possible to have photon forge skills (thus, I assume, any "bundle" skills) scale with equipped weapon strength.

Of course, this may not be a bad thing, depending on one's perspective...

[Infusion.7149]

1 hour ago, Jijimuge.4675 said:

I don't think this has been brought up before, but it looks like the gunsabre has the behaviour that's common to other bundle skills, in that the "weapon strength" stat is fixed and doesn't seem reliant on the weapon strength of one's equipped weapon.

This applies to the gunsabre as well as to the "dragon slash".

This seems similar to holosmith's photon forget and is presumably intentional.  Looking at older posts, I see something from Irenio about how it wasn't possible to have photon forge skills (thus, I assume, any "bundle" skills) scale with equipped weapon strength.

Of course, this may not be a bad thing, depending on one's perspective...

I don't think that's a huge problem, it likely uses 922.5 (bundle) weapon strength. 2 handers such as greatsword, rifle, or hammer are 1100 weapon strength while one handers are usually 1000 weapon strength.

Photon Forge is using "transform" / 772.5 weapon strength.

A far larger issue as far as damage is the minimum damage on Dragon Slash Force is 1.16 coefficient in PVE, maximum damage is ~1.3 coefficient (in competitive modes) meaning the disparity is huge. Since the scaling is a second order polynomial per CMC it means if you don't have a full charge Dragon Slash you might as well not use it in PVP/WVW.

Edited December 4, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[Cebcurg.4850]

Please let us use the dragon trigger outside of gunsaber and not make the dragon trigger a weapon swap, but it's own cooldown.

[Jennie.3825]

I have been playing warrior for 5 years since I started the game,  I really enjoy the class so much especially the Berserker and the spell breaker.
My thoughts for bladesworn.

1. I dont like the fact that im stuck in gunblade even if you use discipline trait. Its really awkward using the gunblade tools most of the time , especially that they balance the damage through the amount of time channeling the dragon trigger.( we cant even stow the weapon) in pvp is pretty underwhelming the damage is really low very clunky to use.

2. warrior has a unique character which it can wield pretty much 80 percent of the weapons. Blade sworn spec makes the warrior limits its uniqueness in terms of wielding the weapons because you pretty much stuck on the gunblade tool kit.

3. Make blade sworn atleast good in any content
bc right now
spell breaker( is good in wvw maybe in pvp)
Berserker ( is very good in pve or maybe in some content)

Bladesworn( I really dont where is this class belong).

 

for fun( I even crafted all the weapons that a warrior can wield and now im stuck on a gunblade that is not even have effects on the legendary that I crafted ). because end game content is fassion wars

i posted in the wrong section lol xD

 

[Gatvin.6510]

Using in PvP and WvW. I'm ignoring the damage numbers for now since they're the thing most easily changed anyhow.

 

Lots of minor improvements since last time, class is still lots of fun.

 

Weapon-swap is still a rough spot. Since we can only use Dragon Trigger from the gunblade move set, swapping weapons at the wrong time (or by accident) can lock us out of dragon trigger at critical moments and leave us with a full rage bar we have no way to empty.

 

Survivability seems kind of low in PvP. I'm not the best at PvP, but as far as I can tell, the only way to survive long enough to actually use the Dragon Trigger is by using the shield (which also kind of kills the idea of pistol being something we "get"). So many ranged attacks are aoe-fields that the reflect is great against some specific ranged weapons (Most ranger weapons, most thief ranged weapons) and worthless against others (Most ele, most necros, most mesmer).

 

Mobility feels like I'm playing a necro, which isn't the worst, but we also don't have a way to pressure at range. And I'm not saying we need one, the spec is obviously designed to be up-close and personal, but we need the tools to do that.

 

The utilities aside from flow stablizer and Tactical Reload are pretty niche. They are decent for WvW zerging, where its good to be able to drop persistent obstacles to split up the zerg and reduce incoming ranged damage. This works well in WvW zergs where the number of players is so high that you're guaranteed to block some significant damage throwing it at the right time. It's pretty bad everywhere else though. I'm not going to run a utility that has good odds of being useless if I run into another melee class or basically any caster solo or in PvP.

Of these, the most critical to fix are the weapon-swap issue and the mobility issue. Survivability has improved since the last round, and it could be I just need to get better. Most classes have large numbers of utilities that are basically non-starter meme abilities (I'd love to see effort put into all classes to improve their existing utilities, but it's not a trivial task). This class needs mobility to be able to fight though, and similarly needs to flow quickly in and out of Dragon trigger.

It's possible one solution here is to give the Bladesworn normal weapon swap back and make Dragon Trigger the F1. I like the gunblade moveset, and if you really want to preserve it maybe you can replace the Greatsword moveset for Bladesworn warriors so if they want to use it they can, but otherwise they can use the weapons they want. Of course, not having greatsword would be awkward, as it's warrior's most mobile weapon. In theory you could give the gunblade moveset to the pistol and make it a main-hand 2handed weapon, but I imagine that would create at least as many problems as it solves.

Edit:  Ran another PvP gauntlet after adjusting my build to a more standard heal-shout/condi-clear setup and performed much better. Still on Shield+Axe as the base weapons and Weapon-swap mix-ups still occasionally kill me when I try to enter Dragon Trigger, but most of the time I can start daring to dragon all over the place. The stability when entering is critical to it working. That was an excellent change.

TLDR:
Dragon Trigger good!
Lots of fun to play!
Weapon Swap/Dragon Trigger interaction is still clunky.
Warrior pretty slow.
 

Edited December 4, 2021 by Gatvin.6510
Did some more playtesting.