Is it really this bad?

[imweird.3197]

Hi,

 

Bought the base game years ago and have just picked it back up. Coming from WoW and FFXIV and I ALWAYS play a warrior. There's just something about running around with a GS and feeling like Guts. I've noticed that the class is pooped on a lot. Is it really that bad? I'm duo with a Firebrand and wondering if it's better for me to just play something like a Soulbeast or Dragonhunter for PvP?

[nopoet.2960]

It's not.  I've had a lot of fun playing warrior even though it's not my main class.  People who post here are fanatical (yeah you are) but they wouldn't post here if there wasn't something they still enjoyed about the warrior.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Warrior is on a rough spot in competitive. Almost every other class is able to pump out damage much more easily, to the point that it almost feels like warrior isn't allowed to be even decent.

 

That said you can do okay with it, and have fun, but you'll have to try hard to do so whereas with something like a Soulbeast you can just spam your 2 skill and get kills while playing blindfolded.

[imweird.3197]

11 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Warrior is on a rough spot in competitive. Almost every other class is able to pump out damage much more easily, to the point that it almost feels like warrior isn't allowed to be even decent.

 

That said you can do okay with it, and have fun, but you'll have to try hard to do so whereas with something like a Soulbeast you can just spam your 2 skill and get kills while playing blindfolded.

Ahh, I see. Do they not do balance updates to fix these things like in other games?

[Noz.4650]

Warrior isn't straight up bad or unplayable and if you enjoy playing it by all means keep playing it. I think it's a pretty good carry up until maybe gold 3/plat 1 if you're decent because you can hard skillcheck less experienced players that don't know how to manage their cooldowns and don't pay attention to you. The real issue right now is that warrior keeps getting the short end of the stick when it comes to balance and elite specs, to the point where other specs (in general) just have way more stuff, don't have to work as hard and get punished less for misplays. And at higher ranks or tourneys, it's more difficult to justify slotting in a warrior because other classes do what it does better or is too easily punished by a single decent thief. But by design it's a very rewarding class to play because you don't have any gimmicks and winning anything feels like you deserved it so that appeals to some people, and if it does to you then stick with it. I will say that the new elite spec coming out addresses a lot of issues with the class and I think it'll end up being very strong.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

1 hour ago, imweird.3197 said:

Ahh, I see. Do they not do balance updates to fix these things like in other games?

The last real balance update, that covered more than just a handful of skills/traits was Feb 2020.

[imweird.3197]

3 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

The last real balance update, that covered more than just a handful of skills/traits was Feb 2020.

Oh I see. Is this game no longer really under active development? That seems like a very long time ago for balance updates.

[Grand Marshal.4098]

2 hours ago, nopoet.2960 said:

It's not.  I've had a lot of fun playing warrior even though it's not my main class.  People who post here are fanatical (yeah you are) but they wouldn't post here if there wasn't something they still enjoyed about the warrior.

I have sadistic tendencies🙊

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

45 minutes ago, imweird.3197 said:

Oh I see. Is this game no longer really under active development? That seems like a very long time ago for balance updates.

No, it is under active development. What happened was that CMC had a large scope on mind for the Feb2020 balance patch, with the intent to revisit things like the hard cc damages on an individual basis, do frequent reoccurring balance passes, and for the 300s CD traits to be reworked, but then COVID happened, and then mass layoffs at Anet, and then they went all in on an expansion, so competitive balance has been left to rot.

 

We've been promised that after EoD launches that there will be a large balance update, but of CMC is involved in it you can bet your Tassets that it will suck for warrior.

[oscuro.9720]

Warrior is fun. If played to the highest skill level, it can compete with majority of classes 1v1, but the risk-reward ratio for doing so is significantly higher than majority of classes. 
If you enjoy it, it has a skill ceiling high (atleast on spell) and will let you kill most people of lesser skill. In fact, if you kill someone in a straight up 1v1, you are most likely a better player than them (unless they play reaper, warrior kittens up reaper). That’s part of the fun of playing warrior.

If you enjoy it, play it. If you are fixated on top 10 in pvp or something, than maybe switch classes. Warrior is capable of doing everything else, it just takes more skill/effort vs another class in the same role.

[Zekent.3652]

For pvp: yes
For pve: no
For wvw: no

 

Just wait for the pre expansion balance patch if you wanna play warrior on pvp, and they're pretty good on wvw zergs and pve content, on pve just use axes and gs to land some good dmg.

[jpsssss.7530]

The most fun I have on warrior is playing berserker, but you only get to do damage comparable to other classes while you're in berserk mode. I will say that for WvW roaming it can be pretty spicy. 

[Grand Marshal.4098]

7 hours ago, Zizekent.2398 said:

For pvp: yes
For pve: no
For wvw: no

 

Just wait for the pre expansion balance patch if you wanna play warrior on pvp, and they're pretty good on wvw zergs and pve content, on pve just use axes and gs to land some good dmg.

I'd put an ok in wvw zergs but a meh in roaming. 

 

Meh cause: I wa dueling some core necro tryhard (mega tank power build) and trying to find a way to kill them. Then some randos arrived (1 reaper, 1 scourge). I wa ridiculing them 2v1 with SpB and when I killed the reaper i didn't let rez. Then Mirage joined and kept doing my thing. Soulbeast joined and i started kiting to a monument. Only soulbeat had remained standing and then accidentaly killed myself with fall dmg (got the soulbeat when I returned, he was low anyway). So warrior can shine real time. in zergs and roaming but inroaming, shortly after i met this herald duo that clowned me in 1v1s.

 

The higher the skill ceiling of the enemy the tougher is to keep up.  

[Fueki.4753]

Warrior is mostly underwhelming. It's utility and damage are outshined by all other professions.

It's only role is DPS (with all three specializations), while other professions got different roles with their specialization.

Spellbreaker's gimmick is useless. Most enemies either don't have any boons to rip, or they spam their boons (especially sPvP) so that ripping them becomes nearly meaningless.

Bladesworn's primary damage ability requires it to stand still for several seconds, even though the game encourages movement.

In the beta event, said ability was easily be avoided by jumping, strafing or being on a slightly different elevation.

Berserker is the elite specialization that comes to closest to the other professions, while in Berserk mode. But that mode is locked behind a resource that depletes out of combat and has a time limit.

There are too many things Arenanet ought to address on Warrior, but as far as I know they have yet to acknowledge any of them.

To answer the title of this topic: I think it really is this bad.

Edited November 22, 2021 by Fueki.4753

[Broxxgar.6801]

No, not at all. You can play a lot of builds and still be effective with it. But if you are Spellbreaker biased player so yeah is bad.

[oscuro.9720]

On 11/14/2021 at 8:24 AM, Fueki.4753 said:

Warrior is mostly underwhelming. It's utility and damage are outshined by all other professions.

It's only role is DPS (with all three specializations), while other professions got different roles with their specialization.

Spellbreaker's gimmick is useless. Most enemies either don't have any boons to rip, or they spam their boons (especially sPvP) so that ripping them becomes nearly meaningless.

The first paragraph is a good summary of warrior.

However, I’m going to push back on the spell breaker part. Spell breaker’s “gimmick” is far from useless. Full counter and ample boon strip allow warrior to have a high skill ceiling and have some sort of counter to the high level of boon output in the game. Aegis and stability completely shut down warrior, the ability to strip that and actually land CC is a major difference maker.

[ChronoPinoyX.7923]

On 11/14/2021 at 4:24 PM, Fueki.4753 said:

Bladesworn's primary damage ability requires it to stand still for several seconds, even though the game encourages movement.

In the beta event, said ability was easily be avoided by jumping, strafing or being on a slightly different elevation.

Let's not forget the fact that they didn't even give us a passive Stability on Dragon Trigger to stop us from getting interrupted by a single touch lel

You could literally knockdown a Bladesworn in DT and it bleeds their Burst Gauge to nothing. Even in PvE it's maddening how much an enemy could interrupt the only source of DPS you actually have. 

 

[Joxer.6024]

3 hours ago, ChronoPinoyX.7923 said:

Even in PvE it's maddening how much an enemy could interrupt the only source of DPS you actually have. 

 

But aren't the Gunblades weapon skills strong? Looking at logs of Bladesworns I see that peeps mostly use them and of course Dragon trigger, not seeing alot of axe use?

[ChronoPinoyX.7923]

Just now, Joxer.6024 said:

But aren't the Gunblades weapon skills strong? Looking at logs of Bladesworns I see that peeps mostly use them and of course Dragon trigger, not seeing alot of axe use?

They're about as strong as GS Warrior, nothing to really write much on. The main reason people use them more frequently is because you need to be in Gunsaber before you can use DT, you can't access DT outside of Gunsaber, so people have to do a mandatory swap to Gunsaber to use their only Burst. 

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

I don't do PVP, but in WvW there's some new Spellbreaker build out there that's been giving me a hard time.  The thing can chain-cc people to death, and it is nearly impossible to either catch or run from due to all the dashes that it has.  As far as I can tell, it is Greatsword + Axe/Shield, and it has either Superior Rune of the Air, or Surging.  Utilities are a lot of CCs.  The thing is pretty good at dueling and small-scale WvW.  

[Fueki.4753]

6 hours ago, oscuro.9720 said:

The first paragraph is a good summary of warrior.

However, I’m going to push back on the spell breaker part. Spell breaker’s “gimmick” is far from useless. Full counter and ample boon strip allow warrior to have a high skill ceiling and have some sort of counter to the high level of boon output in the game. Aegis and stability completely shut down warrior, the ability to strip that and actually land CC is a major difference maker.

In PvE most enemies don't have boons, so most of that ripping potential doesn't do anything.

In sPvP, the ripped boons get applied so rapidly most of the time, that ripping them is pointless, as they are back on the enemies in almost no time.

If Arenanet would massively scale back boon application in sPvP, or boon ripping prevented boons from being reapplied for a bit, then I could see Spellbreaker being somewhat useful. But in the current state of spam everything that sPvP is in, it's really not that useful.

1 hour ago, Joxer.6024 said:

But aren't the Gunblades weapon skills strong? Looking at logs of Bladesworns I see that peeps mostly use them and of course Dragon trigger, not seeing alot of axe use?

The Gun-not-a-sabre is the new shiny weapon replacement (aside from Dragon-not-triggering and the melee pistol), so people testing it out, rather than using already well known weapons, shouldn't be surprising.

 

Edited November 16, 2021 by Fueki.4753

[Mesket.5728]

5 hours ago, Joxer.6024 said:

But aren't the Gunblades weapon skills strong? Looking at logs of Bladesworns I see that peeps mostly use them and of course Dragon trigger, not seeing alot of axe use?

No, its actually a very, very weak weapon. A weaker and clunkier greatsword. Its only purpose is to appease the weebs

[Sleepwalker.1398]

On 11/14/2021 at 4:37 AM, imweird.3197 said:

Ahh, I see. Do they not do balance updates to fix these things like in other games?

They hit Mirage with a nerf balance bat so hard that it lost one of its dodges in PvP and WvW.

Meanwhile things like Scrapper is just getting buffed up.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

6 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

I don't do PVP, but in WvW there's some new Spellbreaker build out there that's been giving me a hard time.  The thing can chain-cc people to death, and it is nearly impossible to either catch or run from due to all the dashes that it has.  As far as I can tell, it is Greatsword + Axe/Shield, and it has either Superior Rune of the Air, or Surging.  Utilities are a lot of CCs.  The thing is pretty good at dueling and small-scale WvW.  

I bet it had the life steal sigil going too.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

14 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

I bet it had the life steal sigil going too.

Suddenly I realized I wrote the wrong thing.  Dagger + Shield.  I meant Dagger + Shield.