Bladesworn Feedback Thread

[Grand Marshal.4098]

Dual Pistols may sell the spec, if it wasn't for the terrible mechanic...

[artharon.9276]

literally bought eod for engi and rev especs. I was a bit salty for not having a rifle for my ranger, which makes perfect sense btw a rifle and a ranger, but this bladesword situation just took it to the next level and made me forget about it.

 

Electric Fence - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W)

 it's simply useless. it could have share some boons with our team. but nope.

 

Bulletproof Barrier - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W)

 

they could have gone with something creative with this skill like making it a toggle skill and activating it would drain flow. or each hit could have drained flow. but nope.

 

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Flow_Stabilizer

there are more ways for a warrior to gain fury than the numbers of the stars in the galaxy!

[Fueki.4753]

8 hours ago, Tungsten Monarch.6058 said:

At what point is it acceptable to have an offhand gun ONLY, that fires within melee range ONLY? ... ... this makes zero sense. Why aren't players more upset there is NO MAIN HAND GUN? ... with an actual Pistol Range.

Many (if not most) of us already have given up in Arenanet giving Warrior anything good. At this point it's obvious that they don't want Warrior to have anything good. Given Arenanet's track record, there's a very high chance that the announced Banner change will make Bannerslave (and thus Warrior as a whole) redundant for high end content.

[Sinester.3572]

Anet just keeps forgetting PVP and WvW exists what a crap new content for warrior, wth, just joking whit warriors at this point. Like play the game to understand what warriors are feeling.

The skill charging slice, what a F JOKE, you can dodge it blind.

Edited February 17, 2022 by Sinester.3572

[Jzaku.9765]

Bladesworn wasn't updated much, but thank you for letting us go straight into Dragon Trigger without going through Gunsaber.

Most of my post-launch feedback remains the same as Beta 4. 

GENERAL GAMEPLAY

--------------------------

• There is a serious issue where Flow is very annoying to build up at the start of combat, and yet when the combat gets going its possible to feel like you have too much of it. This is badly exacerbated by Open World PVE content where dropping in and out of combat frequently is the norm.

Suggested change: It's difficult, but probably something like let the out of combat default Flow value be ~20. You can still drop to 0, you just start every fight already a little powered up. After all, Revenant starts every fight at 50/100.

--------------------------

• Pistol is (still) actively competing with Axe Offhand as what is basically a pure DPS weapon

I believe making Fierce as Fire ramp DPS with with explosions was an effort to mitigate this - but I think that's a backwards way to go about it. Pistol should, baseline, carve it's own niche without considering trait synergy. 

Suggested change: Increase the leap distance of Gunstinger to 600 range. Let pistol be a weapon to take if you need a ton of mobility packaged into a melee-oriented offhand. 
--------------------------

• Dragon Slash's damage output was essentially halved while playing optimally (landing a fully charged Dragon Slash off-CD),

• and Lush Forest was practically removed from the game (thankfully),
• yet Gunsaber itself had no changes to compensate for these 2 changes, and remains feeling weak.

Before, we could say that all the power budget of Bladesworn went into Dragon Slash. Gunsaber itself also has (and continues to have) sky-high CDs - 25s / 35s / 40s / 40s - Shockingly uncharacteristic of a Warrior Weaponset, much less one we are forced to use. The highest CD on a weapon skill before Bladesworn was 25s.
I'm fairly confident these CDs were only so high because early on in testing it was found that Lush Forest combined with Tactical Reload provided such strong CD reduction that the Gunsaber skills had to be this high to provide a balanced experience while the player was running both. Now that both Lush Forest AND Dragon Slash are significantly reduced in power level, it might be time to reassess.
 

Suggested change: Significantly reduce the CD on the Gunsaber skills, or make them stronger. Blooming Fire does barely more damage than Ranger's Maul, comes out slower and has less effects, and has literally 6x higher CD (Maul is 4cd). As it is, I avoid using the Gunsaber because these very slow casting, high CD skills do not feel like they are worth their cast time. 

--------------------------

• Lush Forest now isn't a particularly impactful trait anymore, and yet would be degenerate if buffed. 

Suggested change:  I would suggest that it provide the Warrior self-Alacrity instead, on using an Ammo skill, to prevent conflict with whatever the Banner changes come summer are. Hard CD reduction has the threat of being busted OP, and Alacrity has proven itself to be a pretty balanced Boon. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

UTILITY SKILL FEEDBACK

• Flow Stabilizer

Now that this doesn't even grant Stability I really don't see why this needs to exist. There are already 2 core Warrior utilities that grant Adrenaline - make them upscale really well into Flow to recycle these skills. Fury is astoundingly easy to come by. 

• Electric Fence

Could be bumped up to have the same range as Bladesworn's other escape denial skill, Gunsaber's Artillery Slash. Bump it up to 900 range.

• Dragonspike Mine

Has a truly ridiculous CD for what it does. Dragon Slash does less than half what it used to when this skill was designed to reset it's CD, and it was still overpriced back in Beta 2. Willbender's stunbreak is on a 15s CD. Lightning Reflexes on Ranger naturally cleanses Immobilize without traiting for it and has a 30s CD.

 

UI FEEDBACK

• There should be some kind of more obvious Flash or Sound Effect accompanying reaching fully charged Dragon Trigger so I don't have to keep looking at my UI. Make the last bullet pip sound more distinct to cut through the noise of combat. 
• There should be something similar to the revenant energy pip display to tell us how much flow rate+ we're racking up currently. The white text on blue icon of the Flow Rate buff is insane to look at in the middle of combat. 

Edited March 1, 2022 by Jzaku.9765

[Cloud Windfoot Omega.7485]

I would get rid of flow stabilizer, and come up with something new.

I would also take  electric fence and bulletproof barrier and combine them a little. Make them block ranged and  slow people who walk through it, instead of making both skills kind of pointless to take themselves.

Dragonspike mine needs a rework,  drop the mine closer to where you initiate or right where you initiate it so it has more opportunity of being triggered, also might be nice if it respected edges as to now fling you off them due to its long jump range.

 

Dragon trigger is also not noob friendly, with not many easy ways to read the dragon trigger skills. And not too much of a time frame to be able to read the skills so you know which one is which.

 

Honestly, for a spec with a mechanic called "Flow" there is not that much flow or chaining of attack combos that are really able to be done with the kit it brings. It really lacks flow.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

The Gunsaber skills all have too high of a CD in PvE.

Cyclone Trigger needs to be a full block or Break Step needs to be an evade.

Dragon Slash is still way to weak considering the double charge time required to use it in Competitive (charge the flow then the bullets...). For something that requires so much flow you missed an opportunity here to break the Adrenaline paradigm. What you should do is allow flow to not decay out of combat, or at least make it decay much more slowly. Make it a trait within Bladesworn if you have too.

The utilities are meh. The reasons have all been stated. 
Bulletproof Barrier: The count recharge is too high and the range it too short. Reduce the CD to 20s, make the range 1200, or at least 900.

Electric Fence: Make it 900 range. Change it so that it immobilizes foes that walk through it. Make it pulse the immobilize.

Dragonspike Mine: Reduce the CD to 30s. Make the mine place at the start location.

Flow Stabilizer: The fury was not needed. This was a poor choice of a boon. Put the stability back on it. 

Lush Forest: Make this 5 man alacrity when using the last charge of an ammo skill.

After having added extra explosions on other weapons you really need to add more explosion related traits, otherwise it's just useless fluff. Since you've added explosions to some core weapons, feel free to add such traits to core traitlines, but Bladesworn needs at least two selectable explosions related traits.

[Red Haired Savage.5430]

On 12/6/2021 at 6:57 PM, Red Haired Savage.5430 said:

Looking at the bladesworn concept as a whole and how it operates they didn't create anything that warrior isn't already doing. 

• PVE
  • In high end PVE content it was a BS before and it'll be a BS still, which doesn't really take any CC capabilities.
    • Yes I know the burst is a CC if you trait, but it's wasted to use it on a breakbar unless you have no other options, looking at you Samarog.
  • Open world PVE most mobs are dead before you get to use the "super cool" dragon trigger, I mean seriously I actually struggled to get to kill a veteran without it dying before I had enough of a charge to do some meaningful damage or someone would come along and finish off the "almost" dead veteran while I'm charging the skill.  And honestly my lazy spellbreaker build killed them faster than I could on bladesworn while trying to use the dragon trigger and that's mostly auto attack.
• PVP
  • In PVP I can't comment as I don't do a ton of that but from reading a bit of the feedback it's rather lackluster it'll be stuck side node dueling, which it doesn't do that very well from what I heard. 
• WvW
  • For WvW about the only thing that it "might" do better is maybe shout heals, but that's purely because of the elite skill which warrior has better elites if you're shout healing because warrior's shout heals don't make up for enough of what other support classes bring to the table. 
    • Guardian for example brings staff support which has heals on it, mace/shield which has heals aoe blocks projectile absorb. Group AoE stability, area denial.
    • Firebrand has tomes which are broken as a profession mechanic, mantra boons on demand.
    • Scrapper brings lots of condi conversions, different kits for heals, condi cleansing/conversions. Mobile AoE stability and projectile block, barrier, super speed, stealth.  Ranged AoE res/finishing.
    • And in general they're both more of a constant heal pressure than warrior, which is more of a "burst" of healing which compared to other's bursts that they can push out for heals is really lackluster.
    • One thing a warrior can do about on par with scrappers is condition cleansing and the tactical reload could mean more potential condition removal.  Which we only remove the conditions while engineers convert them to boons, so us just removing conditions means less boon potential for the squad.
  • If you're trying to be damage in a WvW zerg then you'd have to be doing your bursts to do any decent damage which about the only one that's not easily avoided is the melee burst which means you'll be in the thick of things charging the dragon slash which if one thing I've learned in WvW if you're sitting still (especially in the front line) you're dying.

One thing I haven't said much about is the utility skills and honestly other than flow stabilizer they're all just cheap knockoffs of other profession's mechanics. 

• Electric fence is just a cheapened version of temporal curtain with no pull ability which is a big reason why mesmers use it. 
• Dragon spike mine is just a cheap knockoff of lightning reflexes on a longer CD that doesn't remove immobilize or give vigor, the damage is even the same with the same damage modifier, and they have to hit the mine to get the damage/cripple. 
• Bulletproof barrier is just wall of reflection (didn't even try to make it look different) without reflect, has a lower duration, on a shorter range about the only thing better about it is you have 3 charges of it but they're on a longer CD.

Tried playing it again and my thoughts are still basically the same.  Overall it feels extremely clunky, did the story trying it and quickly went back to my normal build and I'm glad I did because there were some fights I never would have been able to get off a dragon trigger burst before getting CC'ed and so the fights would have lasted forever not having any burst potential.

[oscuro.9720]

I’m going to keep this super simple;

1. Add stow to gunsaber. 

2. Increase the range (to 240) and damage on blooming fire in competitive modes. This skill is beyond useless, and when I accidentally hit it, I can’t even cancel because I can’t stow. Please add stow to gunsaber.

[Zevix.1479]

Profession Mechanic:

• Dragon Slashes-Force should be a blast finisher.
• Dragon Slash-Boost should be a leap finisher.
• Dragon Slash-Reach should be a projectile finisher.

 

Main-hand Pistol See:

Gunsaber:

Remove cool down from gunsaber swap. If its a kit, let it be a kit. Its frustrating to use Dragon Trigger and feel stuck in gunsaber when I wanted to be in my main weapon set.

 

Utility

Flow Stabalizer should give Stability.

 

Electric Fence should be a lightning field.

 

Dragonspike Mine's explosion should be a blast finisher.

 

 

Traits

• Dragonscale Defense should instead pulse stability for few charges gained from flow. Like give it an internal cooldown so you can potentially get one 3 second Stability pulse every 3 seconds.
•  
• Lush Forest should trigger on each round spent, not just 1st round spent.

 

Unshakeable Mountain should trigger on each round spent, not just 1st round spent. Maybe lower the barrier amount recieved.

•  
• Daring Dragon should also make it so your charges from flow fill instantly instead of building up. It would give an option to people who DO want to play Bladesworn but DON'T want to feel like they're vulnerable and taking forever to attack. It would also make it more practical for PVP game modes.

[Orack.4825]

Hello !
Here is my early feedback ! 

1 - Gunsaber :  feel useless, sorry if it sound harsh, but I don't see the point to use it instead of my Greatsword or any base weapon, didn't tested the pistol yet.
2 - CC : For an extension who seem so heavy focused on breakbar (even every elit got one), warrior got only very few option and have to sacrifice a lot to have enough of CC for those, sadly, not worth it then. Better to just blast ignoring the breakbar.
3 - Dragon Trigger :  I may not get friend on this, but so far I like it. The blast feel very satisfying, but maybe a bit to tied with crit, dmg are very not rewarding when no crit.

I've test only in PvE with pretty much easy content. I'm not sur how it will work for harder boss/HP like HoT one if soloing. Core and Spellbreaker are amazing for this, so I'll test as soon as I can ! 

Have a nice day ! 

Edited March 2, 2022 by Aznarb.6347

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Dragonscale Defense needs to pulse stability while in Dragon Trigger for this to be viable. That or it needs more than 1 stack of stability and a shorter CD.

[Shprokets.9746]

Not really experient enough to suggest changes, but I feel so bad that the adrenaline attack changes my weapon to gunsaber. I may be just a bad player, but this class does not "flow" like berserker, spellbreaker or core

Edited March 2, 2022 by Shprokets.9746
grammar

[Cloud Windfoot Omega.7485]

1 hour ago, Shprokets.9746 said:

Not really experient enough to suggest changes, but I feel so bad that the adrenaline attack changes my weapon to gunsaber. I may be just a bad player, but this class does not "flow" like berserker, spellbreaker or core

It is a holdover from when you could only go into dragon trigger from gunblade gunsaber, they obiovusly forgot to hold the last state, so it does as it was programmed to do before, which is return to the presumed gunsaber you had out before.

 

Basically, they did not even try

[oscuro.9720]

7 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Dragonscale Defense needs to pulse stability while in Dragon Trigger for this to be viable. That or it needs more than 1 stack of stability and a shorter CD.

I don’t personally think this is necessary. I think that the current version is sufficient. It has good okay and counter play atm. It doesn’t guarantee you get off a DT, but it greatly increases the probability and prevents low hanging interrupts. 
Granted I’m not one to say no to extreme amounts of stab access xD

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

2 hours ago, oscuro.9720 said:

I don’t personally think this is necessary. I think that the current version is sufficient. It has good okay and counter play atm. It doesn’t guarantee you get off a DT, but it greatly increases the probability and prevents low hanging interrupts. 
Granted I’m not one to say no to extreme amounts of stab access xD

I would counter with engi Juggernaut, but that is in the crosshairs so...

[CalmTheStorm.2364]

1 hour ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

I would counter with engi Juggernaut, but that is in the crosshairs so...

I agree with you, though...a 60s CD for one stack of stab is ridiculous. Even more so because it only lasts 3s. Maybe if it were one stack that lasts 5s on a 30s CD it would feel impactful.

[DemonCrypto.6792]

this e-spec is really weird,
slow as kitten and spammy at the same time
 mouvement weapon (not a good one) and a static gameplay,
utilitys (fields) who put long range gameplay in front to be optimal on a close to middle range class(i'm still sour about no-range pistol)

and  this espec is really easy to farm and predict on competitive.

So now i ask what was the deal here ? the point ? anyone find this e-spec playable ?

(also the simple existence of berserk make it a thousand time more worst in compare)

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

15 hours ago, CalmTheStorm.2364 said:

I agree with you, though...a 60s CD for one stack of stab is ridiculous. Even more so because it only lasts 3s. Maybe if it were one stack that lasts 5s on a 30s CD it would feel impactful.

Anet didn't like my very accurate reply to this apparently.

But in kinder terms, Bladesworn has been butchered in competitive play, and it has to have been on purpose, and frankly feels out of malice for the profession.

[Cloud Windfoot Omega.7485]

On 3/2/2022 at 9:23 AM, Cloud Windfoot Omega.7485 said:

It is a holdover from when you could only go into dragon trigger from gunblade gunsaber, they obiovusly forgot to hold the last state, so it does as it was programmed to do before, which is return to the presumed gunsaber you had out before.

 

Basically, they did not even try

after further testing,  entering dragon trigger  from  out of gunsaber counts as a weapon swap.... so trigger only works in gunsaber mode, hence why it does not switch back... which allows unseen sword to be done twice in a row even if unsheath gunsaber is on cooldown

[CalmTheStorm.2364]

5 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Anet didn't like my very accurate reply to this apparently.

But in kinder terms, Bladesworn has been butchered in competitive play, and it has to have been on purpose, and frankly feels out of malice for the profession.

On the bright side, I guess this means they read the forums 😂😅😭

[RedShark.9548]

logged into the game to see what they gave warrior. im absolutely sad about this abomination you call an elite spec.

 

Ive played gw2 since release for around 7 years with some breaks inbetween, mostly with warrior with around 6000hours alone on that class. i looked at this spec and lost all motivation to play the new story. its such a sad thing. 

why not give warrior this, while letting him keep his other 2 weapon sets and alteast let him use his basic 1 bar adrenalin burst skills. Are you worried that the warrior in pvp will have "too many options" on skills to use, so ppl cant actually predict everytime what he will do next ?

this spec is the clunkiest kitten ive ever seen anybody come up with. if i didnt preorder the expansion months ago id actually want a refund, im this disappointed about what arenanet is doing with warrior.

[Hesione.9412]

Went back to spellbreaker.

[Puck.3697]

I actually do like the specc, I think it's cool and unique enough however I think there are some improvements that could be made. 

- pistol 4 needs a Daze. 

- Gunblades skills don't do enough damage really. 

At a minimum 

Otherwise seems pretty decent 

[Noko Anon.9154]

I love most of the feel of bladesworn. I enjoy the idea of Dragon Triggers. I like having a profession that takes advantage of ammunition skills, which I feel is a mechanic that can be expanded upon not just for bladesworn, but perhaps for other classes that use ammunition skills. I'm having a tremendous amount of fun combining shouts (which are ammo) with Lush Forest and DT-Boost (during pushes) or Reach (frontlining ranged) to trigger Soldier's Comfort to play a support spec in both PvP and WvW.

However, that's almost all that I can do. As others have said, the damage coefficients on Dragon Triggers in competitive environments are way too low. Force in PvE has a coefficient of 20.4 at max; in PvP and WvW, it's gutted to 1.295 at full charge, lower that a level 1 Eviscerate (1.333) or Kill Shot (1.4). Getting to full charge also takes more than 3 seconds, more than the stability offered by Dragon Defense, and one stack of stability that doesn't last the whole flow charge, that also happens only once every 60 seconds (in PvP, it's 8 seconds in PvE and feels great against veteran hydras). The inability to deal damage on burst, the inability to stay grounded to deal any damage with burst, and its elite mechanics being undertuned or just plain bad, make it difficult for me to try and suggest someone play a sidenoding bladesworn over a spellbreaker.

Others have also rightly put out the issue of being forced into gunsword after a dragon trigger, which is why I can only say that I love most of the feel of the elite, and not all of it. As others have also pointed out, engineers take advantage of weapon kits and still get procs on swap sigils. If gunblade is going to have such long cooldowns, then it needs to be treated like an engineering kit; if it's going to be treated like a standard weapon set, then it needs shorter cooldowns. It shouldn't have the worst of both worlds.

I like the feel. I like the movement. I like the traits not being as ostensibly boring as other profession elites this expansion that are so obviously "power", "condi", or "support" options. Compare Unshakeable Mountain with Fierce as Fire: Both want you to burn through your ammo skills, but the former wants you to burn your skills in terms of attrition against an elite mob or another player, while the latter wants you to hit as hard as fast as possible. That's fantastic! That's what more trait lines should be, changing the way players play the profession beyond milquetoast "deal extra condi damage while wielding X".

I say all this to say that the elite's framework is there. It is so close to being an elite warriors want to use. You've done great work designing it, and we all look forward to your fine-tuning of it.

Edited March 4, 2022 by Noko Anon.9154