SICK of pvp bladesworns already...

[Grand Marshal.4098]

Pistol whip with quickness is a better iai slash than dragon slash, change my mind. 

[Psycoprophet.8107]

Honestly the dragon trigger is a cool idea, just wish they made its cast time instant with no charge, having the 3 different strikes on trigger is enough, or at least now they could speed up the charge and or add a stunning onto one of the gunsaber skills for a set up to compensate for having a charge skill in a fast paces combat mmo, least my opinion anyway. Imo the idea of bladesworn is amazing, implementation not so much.

[KryTiKaL.3125]

10 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Let's be realistic here - ArenaNet isn't going to change the core mechanic. They've invested too much into the iaijutsu fantasy, and there are people who genuinely enjoy it (at least in PvE).

Which means that the only practical way to make it viable in competitive modes is to accept that having Dragon Trigger instead of the more conventional options is a handicap and buffing everything else to compensate. That means the weapons, the traits, and, because bladesworn gets special benefits with ammunition skills that make them stronger on bladesworn than other warrior specialisations, ammunition skills (including shouts). 

However, this doesn't change the reality that they're compensating for what is, for competitive at least, poor design. They're just finding ways to paper over the flaw.

Yes. ANet clearly has a course set in their mind in regards to this mechanic, they aren't going to miraculously change course. However the key thing here that they do need to do is make it actually feel better to play in competitive modes as well as do some major tuning to Core, Berserker and Spellbreaker to improve their current state in competitive play and arguably even PvE. Banners were a start to this, but more needs to be done to drag Core, Berserker and Spellbreaker out of the ditch that ANet tossed them into.

A large part of this needs to include reworking Defense, Arms is another one but Defense is probably in the worst state of any of the other Warrior Specialization lines and reworking it would go a long way to possibly absolving some too long lingering issues with not just Core Warrior, but also Berserker and more recent issues (basically just that addition of Bladesworn) that have shoved Spellbreaker into the same deep pit.

It is likely a daunting enough looking task for ANet to even do this, and by far Warrior isn't exactly alone in this because this is what expansion releases do in GW2...they overshadow their predecessors due to embedded power creep, but Warrior has probably suffered from this the most egregiously out of other classes, especially since the Feb 2020 patch.