The problem with support warrior and its options (PvE)

[anbujackson.9564]

So I kept thinking about the problems of support warrior and why its not adressed. Thanks to the banner changes some of these problems wont be adressed anytime soon. 

- No real support weapon. Warhorn only does so much. The more powerful part is always your mainhand though. The existing weapons simply dont fit a support playstyle. Hammer or mace AoE barrier/heal? Yeah no. That would be straight up copied from guardian and engineer.

- Double standards in discipline. Now this is a true gem. A trait so missplaced but yet in there. Why wont they switch it with tactics? So far I didnt know but now this wont happen at all. Since quickness and banners are all core, putting this in the master line of tactics would promote even more degeneate dps stacking since you would get free 50% boon uptime AND martial cadence.

- The tactics traitline. Oh boy. With the rework of Martial Cadence you wont see any cooldown decrease of soldiers focus in the near future. So the might and healing on burst stay redundant. Your most important traits are all grandmaster. Shout healing is a meme in PvE. Seriously you only heal with your utilities. And only two shouts are worth it to be taken while yet one of the two should be used on cooldown for the boons. The other shouts besides FgJ and SiO are worthless. But that doesnt really matter because if you want other key boons like regen (wow we got regen back finally!) you need to take 1 or 2 banners. So you cant take them that much anyway. Also just healing isnt good enough at all so you want decent might stacking at the very least or quickness. Well turns out might with PS and MA are your other two grandmasters. This just doesnt work. 

- Banners are not fun design. Banner (only 1) should have been an elite spec mechanic. You have one on your back permanently for cosmetic purposes and get F skills as mechanic to do all kinds of stuff. Maybe those F skills could have worked like firebrand tomes and on each F skill you take the banner from your back to perform different actions. Anything really.

 

This forced support on warrior just hurts the class in the end. If you dont want to change an elite spec / a weapon, then please focus on general issues first and drop the idea of support. Warrior will never be a competitive support in PvE. Or maybe.. someday, after you fixed the problems you created (like class stacking, no banner skills, bad base boon uptime and so on..)  and THEN build in some actual support.

 

[Jzaku.9765]

41 minutes ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

So I kept thinking about the problems of support warrior and why its not adressed. Thanks to the banner changes some of these problems wont be adressed anytime soon. 

- No real support weapon. Warhorn only does so much. The more powerful part is always your mainhand though. The existing weapons simply dont fit a support playstyle. Hammer or mace AoE barrier/heal? Yeah no. That would be straight up copied from guardian and engineer.

- Double standards in discipline. Now this is a true gem. A trait so missplaced but yet in there. Why wont they switch it with tactics? So far I didnt know but now this wont happen at all. Since quickness and banners are all core, putting this in the master line of tactics would promote even more degeneate dps stacking since you would get free 50% boon uptime AND martial cadence.

- The tactics traitline. Oh boy. With the rework of Martial Cadence you wont see any cooldown decrease of soldiers focus in the near future. So the might and healing on burst stay redundant. Your most important traits are all grandmaster. Shout healing is a meme in PvE. Seriously you only heal with your utilities. And only two shouts are worth it to be taken while yet one of the two should be used on cooldown for the boons. The other shouts besides FgJ and SiO are worthless. But that doesnt really matter because if you want other key boons like regen (wow we got regen back finally!) you need to take 1 or 2 banners. So you cant take them that much anyway. Also just healing isnt good enough at all so you want decent might stacking at the very least or quickness. Well turns out might with PS and MA are your other two grandmasters. This just doesnt work. 

- Banners are not fun design. Banner (only 1) should have been an elite spec mechanic. You have one on your back permanently for cosmetic purposes and get F skills as mechanic to do all kinds of stuff. Maybe those F skills could have worked like firebrand tomes and on each F skill you take the banner from your back to perform different actions. Anything really.

 

This forced support on warrior just hurts the class in the end. If you dont want to change an elite spec / a weapon, then please focus on general issues first and drop the idea of support. Warrior will never be a competitive support in PvE. Or maybe.. someday, after you fixed the problems you created (like class stacking, no banner skills, bad base boon uptime and so on..)  and THEN build in some actual support.

 

IMO you have identified a correct issue but come to the wrong conclusion. Yes, Warrior is completely incapable of being a real healer support (a build that competes with stuff like Healbrand, Healmech, Heal Tempest, Druid) without dramatic reworks to trait synergies and probably an espec dedicated to the idea (which is only right because a core spec should not be able to compete with even ground with an elite spec).

But support is not restricted to healing - Support can also come in the form of utility to enable your team. This is a build that something like Quickbrand, Scourge, Alac Spect, and any Mesmer build absolutely excel in. 

These builds essentially almost purely spec for dps and yet have the option to alleviate pressure or provide unique tools to the team to make the run easier many times over. Firebrand, Scourge and Virt have dramatically low opportunity cost to taking utility skills to access Guardian, Necro, and Mesmer's amazing toolbox of utilities like Advance, SYG, Sanctuary, Spectral Grasp, Signet of Undeath, and Portal. Specter and Scourge, as part of their meta builds, are also able to pump barrier to allies.

 

 

It's just too bad that whoever is handling Warrior had a prime opportunity to recreate an entire class of Utility skills into high value, stat agnostic support skills, to enable Warrior to have this similar low opportunity cost access to a deeper toolbox - and instead decided to make some of the worst ****ing skills in the game. Warrior still has the shallowest toolbox of all 9 professions.

Not only that, they decided to slam Bladesworn with nigh mandatory DPS utility skills when it didn't have to before - You don't have the space to take Warrior's only projectile destruction, you need all 3 utility slots (and Elite) to make the DPS rotation even work. As if the last 2 times they tried to do this to Warrior with Peak Performance and Rage skill zerk extension weren't enough. 

Anyway it would not be that hard to make a build competitive with Quickbrand. Warrior just needs more tools and less cost to access them. 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Three words. Modernized Banner Bundles.

[anbujackson.9564]

4 hours ago, Jzaku.9765 said:

IMO you have identified a correct issue but come to the wrong conclusion. Yes, Warrior is completely incapable of being a real healer support (a build that competes with stuff like Healbrand, Healmech, Heal Tempest, Druid) without dramatic reworks to trait synergies and probably an espec dedicated to the idea (which is only right because a core spec should not be able to compete with even ground with an elite spec).

But support is not restricted to healing - Support can also come in the form of utility to enable your team. This is a build that something like Quickbrand, Scourge, Alac Spect, and any Mesmer build absolutely excel in. 

These builds essentially almost purely spec for dps and yet have the option to alleviate pressure or provide unique tools to the team to make the run easier many times over. Firebrand, Scourge and Virt have dramatically low opportunity cost to taking utility skills to access Guardian, Necro, and Mesmer's amazing toolbox of utilities like Advance, SYG, Sanctuary, Spectral Grasp, Signet of Undeath, and Portal. Specter and Scourge, as part of their meta builds, are also able to pump barrier to allies.

 

 

It's just too bad that whoever is handling Warrior had a prime opportunity to recreate an entire class of Utility skills into high value, stat agnostic support skills, to enable Warrior to have this similar low opportunity cost access to a deeper toolbox - and instead decided to make some of the worst ****ing skills in the game. Warrior still has the shallowest toolbox of all 9 professions.

Not only that, they decided to slam Bladesworn with nigh mandatory DPS utility skills when it didn't have to before - You don't have the space to take Warrior's only projectile destruction, you need all 3 utility slots (and Elite) to make the DPS rotation even work. As if the last 2 times they tried to do this to Warrior with Peak Performance and Rage skill zerk extension weren't enough. 

Anyway it would not be that hard to make a build competitive with Quickbrand. Warrior just needs more tools and less cost to access them. 

You are right, absolutely. Support isnt just healing or boons, its other utility that helps your team. And like you already said, there are absolutely none (that are useful anyway). The only thing it has is cc on demand, only as berserker though. There are no pulls, no rezzes that you would take in an actual boss encounter, no unique stuff.

Bladesworn gets hyped because of 39k (its not by the way, the golem just calculated the full dragonslash damage on 1%, it was at 37,5ish before the last hit) but has no room for utility slots. Then again it can freely go tactics, to provide some might or quickness I guess? Not like that matters. 

Not hard? I disagree slightly here. They cant add powerful utility on core with low cost. It makes every elite spec which can theoretically abuse it much better (bladesworn). They could put an kitten of utility on spellbreaker. Would it be played? Well... 

Reworking utilities, adding new animations, considering balance, make it cost effective.. Those things take time. And if they kitten up inbetween (cough banners) you fall all the way back to square one. Like you could say that they worked towards these changes we have now over the past months/years. And they are useless now. Tactics is still weird and banners are a mess. All the time put into it that could have been put into reworking utility skills to get said pulls or whatever or just QoL on the general gameplay via trait changes which people ask for here since forever.

 

And thats what I meant. No one cares about quickness or boons, screw that. We need those special things that make an encounter easier (pulls, core projectile block/Reflect and so on). But such things dont fit in the thematic of warrior. Having no elite spec just requires too much work. They either indirectly powercreep elite spec with core changes or make them worse. 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

42 minutes ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

You are right, absolutely. Support isnt just healing or boons, its other utility that helps your team. And like you already said, there are absolutely none (that are useful anyway). The only thing it has is cc on demand, only as berserker though. There are no pulls, no rezzes that you would take in an actual boss encounter, no unique stuff.

Bladesworn gets hyped because of 39k (its not by the way, the golem just calculated the full dragonslash damage on 1%, it was at 37,5ish before the last hit) but has no room for utility slots. Then again it can freely go tactics, to provide some might or quickness I guess? Not like that matters. 

Not hard? I disagree slightly here. They cant add powerful utility on core with low cost. It makes every elite spec which can theoretically abuse it much better (bladesworn). They could put an kitten of utility on spellbreaker. Would it be played? Well... 

Reworking utilities, adding new animations, considering balance, make it cost effective.. Those things take time. And if they kitten up inbetween (cough banners) you fall all the way back to square one. Like you could say that they worked towards these changes we have now over the past months/years. And they are useless now. Tactics is still weird and banners are a mess. All the time put into it that could have been put into reworking utility skills to get said pulls or whatever or just QoL on the general gameplay via trait changes which people ask for here since forever.

 

And thats what I meant. No one cares about quickness or boons, screw that. We need those special things that make an encounter easier (pulls, core projectile block/Reflect and so on). But such things dont fit in the thematic of warrior. Having no elite spec just requires too much work. They either indirectly powercreep elite spec with core changes or make them worse. 

Throw bolas could turn into a pull on flipover if it hits. Easy. Bladetrail could easily pull targets on the return path like Path of Scares on Ranger OH Axe.

[Infinity.2876]

Propaganda speaker:

*Third weapon swap, staff, and offhand burst skill required.*

*pls swap professions until then. thank you for being accommodating.*

* Pls refrain from using warhorn until re work. *

Edited July 12, 2022 by Infinity.2876