My Dear Warriors, I Expect Disappointment on the 28th

[Yerlock.4678]

I'm really sorry to be such a cynical person here to my fellow warriors, but I've been let down too many times to see what's coming and not bring the hammer down on this xpac as far as Warrior changes are concerned. The last beta when we saw Bladesworn Warrior will most likely be the version we get, only with a better burst skill Dragon Slash (that can still easily be maneuvered around like by jumping over it..) and nothing else. 

 

I'm making this post because I desperately want to be proven wrong. I want Anet to show how foolish and cynical I am by making this spec outstanding. And everyone can come on here and post how dumb I was and how they made many changes that deeply improved the spec. But I have been hurt too much at this point. I know what's coming.

 

CmC showed us half of his hand... and there was nothing concerning balance with the present Warrior specs. That alone is a yellow flag. This suggests that either they've solely been working on big improvements on the new Bladesworn spec, or (more likely) that they're playing it safe and only buffing/improving Dragon Slash (the burst skill, not even the weapon kit) in the viability department.

I.e. .... a bit more dmg in pvp and maybe wvw, and that's it.

 

Again I hope very sincerely I'm wrong, but I have every reason to believe from past events that I won't be. We've stated for months, nay, years the basic things we've wanted for warrior in terms of balancing:

 

• Fast Hands Baseline
• Reworks to Arms
• Giving life back to Defense post nerfs
• Giving Berzerker love so it's not just a damage meme joke
• Giving SB skills/traits help after so many previous nerfs so that it can compete
• Making it to where Fighter Rune isn't Mandatory

 

And on and on and on....

 

But all we've gotten in all of this time was one promise to rework banners in the summer (which is VERY appreciated) and one "balance" patch where the now infamous quote came from:

"Berserker has been in a great place with strong support, power, and condition builds that are successful in all content."

 

 

We never liked banners, we never wanted to have Tactics forced on us, we never wanted to lose so much sustain

 

And no CmC only mentions us when talking about support builds... It's like he wants to rub salt in our bleeding wounds.

WE DON"T ALL LIKE SUPPORT WE DON"T WANT TO BE A SPAM ONLY SHOUT CLASS ANET PLZ LISTEN TO YOUR WARRIOR COMMUNITY 

 

 

[Grand Marshal.4098]

Agreed. 

 

I am waiting the inevitable as well.

 

1 week now I have been playing Scourge in WvW zerg scenarios.... I won't say more...I get rewarded for so low effort...

 

A DPS, non-minstrel sucker warrior, will either be dependent to supports or have to maneuver like crazy for some good hits. 

 

Anyway, point is, I will welcome a full-on rework of banners if it makes them WvW viable. For real. I'd love to theorycraft things, even if I don't rly play them that much. But I, once again, fool myself with expectations, which I should not have.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

I want a support build for Warrior in WvW but that's hard to do when nothing competes with Firebrand + Scrapper combo in Wvw. 

Hell... They double nerfed the only other 2 builds that were "playable". Ventari Rev and Tempest. 

 

By the all mighty lyssa. 

Balance, good class design and a meta shake up every few months is all I'm asking for. 

[Grand Marshal.4098]

Just now, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

I want a support build for Warrior in WvW but that's hard to do when nothing competes with Firebrand + Scrapper combo in Wvw. 

Hell... They double nerfed the only other 2 builds that were "playable". Ventari Rev and Tempest. 

 

By the all mighty lyssa. 

Balance, good class design and a meta shake up every few months is all I'm asking for. 

Ikr? Just give us some change!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Oh wait, I suppose we did get some change with the Cele buff and all the nice builds that we must fight as warriors now, with that sweet boon duration they got for Stability XD

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

I'm withholding my doom and gloom until I see the final product. I fully expect to enjoy the new PvE maps, story, and strikes though so EoD is not a loss for me.

Balance wise, yeah we've been pretty fcking clear for years now on the forums as a group what we want for this class, but they don't like to read apparently.

Our only real hope honestly would be for CMC to far less involved in balance decisions post EoD launch. The former ele main's bias is showing pretty hard.

[Fueki.4753]

The least Arenanet needs to do is let Jokesworn have a weapon swap. If it doesn't get at least that change, it's worse than even core Warrior. But I doubt that'll happen.

Warrior is not one of Arenanet's love children.

Edited February 23, 2022 by Fueki.4753

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

4 minutes ago, Fueki.4753 said:

The least Arenanet needs to do is let Jokesworn have a weapon swap. If it doesn't get at least that change, it's worse than even core Warrior. But I doubt that'll happen.

Warrior is not one of Arenanet's love children.

If they moved Pistol to MH I can see Jokesworn being salvageable otherwise in its current state. Maybe not in PvP, but in WvW at least.

[Fueki.4753]

11 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

If they moved Pistol to MH I can see Jokesworn being salvageable otherwise in its current state. Maybe not in PvP, but in WvW at least.

Even MH pistol would not justify the loss of weapon swapping just to get the failure that is the not-a-sabre.

I just wonder, why did Arenanet think it's fine for Jokesworn to lose it's weapon swap and core mechanic in inequivalent exchange of a garbage mechanic? That mechanic is even lore wise tied to Amber, which Arenanet confirmed to have lost the worth it once had. As far as I remember, it's the only specialization that they admitted using inferior material.

Meanwhile, Firebrand gets three decent kits and gets to keep weapon swap, while also having a trait that let's them retain the passive parts of the core mechanic, even if the tomes are on cooldown.

Short if literally admitting that they despise Warrior, they couldn't show more negative bias towards it, if they tried.

Edited February 23, 2022 by Fueki.4753

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Just now, Fueki.4753 said:

Even MH pistol would not justify the loss of weapon swapping just to get the failure that is the not-a-sabre.

I just wonder, why did Arenanet think it's fine for Jokesworn to lose it's weapon swap and core mechanic in inequivalent exchange of a garbage mechanic that is lore wise tied to Amber, which Arenanet confirmed to have lost the worth it once had.

Meanwhile, Firebrand gets three decent kits and gets to keep weapon swap, while also having a trait that let's them retain the passive parts of the core mechanic, even if the tomes are on cooldown.

Short if literally admitting that they despise Warrior, they couldn't show more negative bias towards it, if they tried.

No it would not justify loosing weapon swap for the joke saber, but then we'd have a MH pistol to pair with Warhorn and have a better weapon bar for support builds.

Gunsaber needs heavy work done to it, as does Dragon Trigger.

And yeah, thanks for bringing up the great insult that is Firebrand getting 3 new weapon bars but gets to keep weapon swap. Really, for DT and Gunsaber there is no reason to give up weapon swap as a tradeoff. Loss of core bursts is already the tradeoff.

[Fueki.4753]

Just now, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

No it would not justify loosing weapon swap for the joke saber, but then we'd have a MH pistol to pair with Warhorn and have a better weapon bar for support builds.

It'd much rather have the MH pistol on a fourth specialization (if the game ever gets that far) that actually focusses on support with all traits in it than having to bend and break Jokesworn into a subpar support.

GW1's Paragon is a great example of how a support Warrior can look like. And don't comment about Guardian on this one. We all know Guardian is nothing like Paragon.

 

[Mungrul.9358]

Monk was always more interesting than Paladin Guardian. I still think it's a massive shame we lost that reasonably original profession and got Paladin Guardian in its place.

[Hotride.2187]

Its impressive you weren't disappointed already on espec reveal. The only thing war got was the shout ammo restock.

Though to be honest the same can be said about almost all the especs, if not on reveal then latest during the betas. Its just that warrior is already in a crap spot.

Edited February 23, 2022 by Hotride.2187

[Caedmon.6798]

Dragon slash or w/e its called,the slow af build up skill,needs to have a proper barrier ontop of it while standing still if they want to keep this slow gameplay. So you can use it defensively aswell as not getting spiked to death while charging for 4 or 5 sec..

[Grand Marshal.4098]

19 minutes ago, Caedmon.6798 said:

Dragon slash or w/e its called,the slow af build up skill,needs to have a proper barrier ontop of it while standing still if they want to keep this slow gameplay. So you can use it defensively aswell as not getting spiked to death while charging for 4 or 5 sec..

To make it pay off with it's current dmg at full charge, it needs to make you a bunker.

 

4k barrier, pulsing stab resolution and prot every 4 sec and aegis on cast.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

Not gonna lie, I'm not even sure I'll pick it up.  The utilities and ammo skills are contradictory, there's no good main-hand weapon to use with pistol, the gunsaber itself isn't stellar, and I don't see much point to the spec other than big DPS.  Warrior is my second-least favorite profession (next to ranger, which I don't even play).  I only played it because I didn't want to waste the character design, and also because Banners was easy to get into groups.  Now that banners are being changed and I'm done with fractals/raids, I'm not sure I'm even going to play warrior anymore.  

[Geoff Fey.1035]

I so badly want to be optimistic but Bladesworn needs such a massive design overhaul to jive just with the Core Warrior design, let alone stand on its own. Comparatively, other professions needed tweaks and rebalancing but largely fit with the overall kit of their specific profession, mechanically, utility, and trait-wise.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

The balance team all played really frilly wizards and rangers during their DnD/RPG days and it shows. None of em played berserker. 

#InternalizeWarriorAsSupportAndCannonFodder

Edited February 23, 2022 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Gorem.8104]

I mean, we choose to play Warrior, nuff said 🙂

 

The real amazing thing is that, with standards so low, its amazing that they seem to manage to lower them still. Expect the worst and somehow its not as worst as you expected 

[Caedmon.6798]

11 hours ago, Grand Marshal.4098 said:

To make it pay off with it's current dmg at full charge, it needs to make you a bunker.

 

4k barrier, pulsing stab resolution and prot every 4 sec and aegis on cast.

Something like that yes. There needs to be some sort of damage reduction or stabi or aegis/barrier going on while charging up. Otherwise remove the entire charge up effect because this currently has no place in pvp nor wvw. I'd honestly rather grab berserk/zerk and do more damage in a much shorter time. And if i want a sustain build i'd grab a spellbreaker. I dont see the point of this new spec,it does nothing better then what we already have available. Besides it just feels really slow and clunky to use,with lots of missed hits aswell on the charge up ones.

[draxynnic.3719]

Hard to be disappointed for warrior on the 28th when I'm not expecting anything anyway. We'll see what happens later.

 

18 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

No it would not justify loosing weapon swap for the joke saber, but then we'd have a MH pistol to pair with Warhorn and have a better weapon bar for support builds.

Gunsaber needs heavy work done to it, as does Dragon Trigger.

And yeah, thanks for bringing up the great insult that is Firebrand getting 3 new weapon bars but gets to keep weapon swap. Really, for DT and Gunsaber there is no reason to give up weapon swap as a tradeoff. Loss of core bursts is already the tradeoff.

The distinction there is that gunsabre genuinely acts like a weapon swap or kit - you can stay in gunsabre indefinitely if you want to. Firebrand can't - each tome is 5-8 skills and it's done. (Tome of Justice might refresh, but that requires a second trait line and to score a kill.)

Mind you, I'm still not convinced that the bladesworn kit is fully worth giving up weaponswap, but it's closer to being an equivalent to a weaponswap than anything other than engineer kits or attunements since there's nothing stopping you from staying in gunsabre permanently if you want to.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

1 hour ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Hard to be disappointed for warrior on the 28th when I'm not expecting anything anyway. We'll see what happens later.

 

The distinction there is that gunsabre genuinely acts like a weapon swap or kit - you can stay in gunsabre indefinitely if you want to. Firebrand can't - each tome is 5-8 skills and it's done. (Tome of Justice might refresh, but that requires a second trait line and to score a kill.)

Mind you, I'm still not convinced that the bladesworn kit is fully worth giving up weaponswap, but it's closer to being an equivalent to a weaponswap than anything other than engineer kits or attunements since there's nothing stopping you from staying in gunsabre permanently if you want to.

While true that you can stay in it indefinitely, for that to justify losing swap like Ele or Engi, then they'd have had to have Armaments functioned instead like upgraded kits rather than upgraded gadgets. 

[Fueki.4753]

1 hour ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

While true that you can stay in it indefinitely, for that to justify losing swap like Ele or Engi, then they'd have had to have Armaments functioned instead like upgraded kits rather than upgraded gadgets. 

Honestly, scrapping the Dragon-does-not-Trigger and simply having the Gun-not-a-saber be a pseudo-shroud that only replaces weapon skills and uses Adrenaline as its resource (instead of Life Force on Necromancer), while retaining the ability to swap weapons in combat, would have been better. Removing Dragon-does-not-Trigger would also open up all of the Major Grandmaster traits, so they could actually have useful benefits that aren't effectively useless due to a mechanic that hardly even works on stationary targets.

All the Flow stuff could be scrapped and the traits that currently deal with Flow could be simple stat raises.

Armaments need to become Gadgets, not just function like them. That way Engineers can also profit from the Rune of the Junksworn (if it deals with the utilities). Something like "Gadgets gain one additional Charge" as the 6th Rune's bonus would be neat. Also, Combat stimulant needs to equalize both initial and delayed healing to be 5210.

Edited February 24, 2022 by Fueki.4753

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

1 hour ago, Fueki.4753 said:

Honestly, scrapping the Dragon-does-not-Trigger and simply having the Gun-not-a-saber be a pseudo-shroud that only replaces weapon skills and uses Adrenaline as its resource (instead of Life Force on Necromancer), while retaining the ability to swap weapons in combat, would have been better. Removing Dragon-does-not-Trigger would also open up all of the Major Grandmaster traits, so they could actually have useful benefits that aren't effectively useless due to a mechanic that hardly even works on stationary targets.

All the Flow stuff could be scrapped and the traits that currently deal with Flow could be simple stat raises.

Armaments need to become Gadgets, not just function like them. That way Engineers can also profit from the Rune of the Junksworn (if it deals with the utilities). Something like "Gadgets gain one additional Charge" as the 6th Rune's bonus would be neat. Also, Combat stimulant needs to equalize both initial and delayed healing to be 5210.

Making Gunsaber function more like Shroud or Photon Forge would be best for sure, though the utility bar would have to remain open like in Forge. They can move Dragon Slash into one of the weapon slots with an ammo charge and make it's damage a static value (4.0 in PvE, 2.0 in PvP/WvW). Give it three charges, and have it function like the Pistol where using it consumes all charges for a T1, T2, T3 effect for the burst related traits, the increases effects would be extra damage ontop of the above amount (so 1 charge is the listed 4.0/2.0, T2 is 4.5/2.25, and T3 is 5.0/2.5). 4s recharge between charges, so 12s for a full T3 DS unless you blow tactical reload for it.

The GM traits could more or less remain as is except for Daring Dragon as DT would be gone. Dragon Scale Defense would have to affect Gunsaber mode rather than DT.

But NOOOO, Anet had to make it super complicated.

[Mesket.5728]

You cant expect dissapointment if you are already displeased with what we saw.

I expect it to be exactly as bad as it was showcased. I dont expect any sort of fix to it because i dont think its possible. Tunning maybe, but you cant tune this wrong enough into a right. It'll be like perfuming rotten eggs. 

[Geoff Fey.1035]

8 hours ago, Caedmon.6798 said:

Something like that yes.

How about rather than all those boons, the Flow & Charges work separately from one another?

Charges can be made at any time (no Flow required, limited only by cooldown of the Dragon Trigger).

Flow is harder to generate/maintain (think Beta 2) but when you go into Dragon Stance it reduces all incoming damage (strike/condi) by 50% similar to Rite of the Great Dwarf., but once you run out of Flow you no longer have that damage reduction.

Could have X trait that provides pulsing stability or X# of stacks on an internal cooldown when going into Dragon Stance

Could have Y trait that increases the damage resistance by a % of toughness or something.

That way you get

1. the tank feeling that they are pushing for with regards to Flow and Dragon Stance being a "calm focused state"
2. it synergizes with the gameplay by providing the ability to weather incoming damage while charging
3. solves the issue of Flow/Bullet, reducing the charge time to 2.5s was a move in the right direction but unlinking the two lets you balance Bullet generation separately from all Adrenaline-focused traits/skills
4. solves the issue of Bursts limited by Flow by having it Cooldown/Charge-up based (make Dragon Trigger have 6s CD baseline since it's just the 1 weapon; grabbing Burst Master trait would make this 4.8s CD, roughly in line with Fast Hands access to the 2 bursts). I'm leery about the "charge-up" but the whole point of that is for damage so there's the tradeoff
5. fits with the Flow->Ammo->Slash focus of the current traits letting you customize playstyle/trait of each mechanic (I feel Master traits should focus on the Stance, maybe Unseen Sword pulses slashes instead of stability/damage reduction for more of a Glass Cannon? I dunno, not enough coffee)