Toxic design choices strangling the future of the Warrior class

[Jzaku.9765]

- Full quickness uptime via core Warrior skills and traits, effectively hamstringing any further updates to it's elite specs.

• This means that Warrior will never have access to Alacrity.
   
• We've seen this exact story play out with Alacrity on core Revenant - to give Herald access to Quickness, they had to rework core Revenant's Salvation traitline and remove all the Alacrity generation from it, effectively killing a budding new build in Heal Vindicator, and made an older build like Heal Renegade much worse to play.
   
• Effectively what this means is that it has added a lot of overhead to future Warrior changes, so they are much less likely to happen. Should they ever do go through with it (like say, making Spellbreaker the official Quickness Support build), it would be removing builds that you are familiar with now. It's a lose-lose situation. 
   
• Don't get me wrong, I truly appreciate the effort that went into Banners 2.1 - but because they are so far superior to the bad Warhorn and Martial Cadence implementations, all Warrior quickness builds that have come out on top are straight DPS builds that rely purely on having a utility bar of Banners that you spam off cooldown without regard to their actual effects, which leads me into the next point:
   

- An over-reliance on Utility slots to perform what other classes would have as basic functions.

• The Warrior skeleton (that is the class without any utilities or traits) is absolutely barren of utility. Elementalist's skeleton can heal and block projectiles. Guardian's skeleton constantly applies boons. Thief's Skeleton blinks and blinds. Ranger's skeleton has every pet in the game for options. Warrior's Skeleton swings it's sword, and swings it again.
   
• This effect gets even worse when you start factoring in Elite Specs, since all 3 of Warrior's Elite Specs are melee Bruisers.
   
• This means that, because the skeleton offers nothing, Warrior is badly TAXED when it tries to do anything outside of swinging it's sword. 
   
• The worst offender here is Vigorous Shouts.
  • To achieve anything resembling the support of other classes, Warrior needs this one exact trait, and has to lock all their utility slots with Shouts as the major source of healing, and at the same time, effectively denying the Warrior from using the Shouts as they were originally intended for. (most of them are proactive Buffs/Debuffs when Healing is inherently Reactive and to be saved for when needed.)
     
  • This single trait has decided the fate of Warrior in PvP for years untill the very recent Defense rework, and it single-handedly defines the support Spellbreaker build anet has specifically stated as being a thing they are trying to push despite Spellbreaker not having a single support bone in it's body.
     
  • The fact that this trait exists is also why CMC knew Tactical Reload was going to be divisive when he showed it off on stream in the Bladesworn reveal stream, and history has obviously shown that he was right, effectively wasting a lot of dev time when this problem could have just not existed.
  • Look at the changelog on the wiki page, this is not good design.
     

- The repercussions of stat-giving Banners being so strong now taxes DPS Warrior utility slots long after the death of stat-giving Banners

• It started with Berserker Rage extension to try and separate Banner Warrior from DPS Warrior, taxing your utility slots with 2+ hyperspecific Rage utilities to even be your DPS build
   
• Then they wanted to push DPS Spellbreaker, so they made Peak Performance effectively do exactly the same thing, taxing your utility slots with 2+ hyperspecific Physical utilities to even be your Spellbreaker DPS build
   
• Now they have made a pattern, so Bladesworn is the worst possible progression of events where your utility slots have to be EXACTLY [Overcharged Cartridges][Flow Stabilizer][Dragonspike Mine][Tactical Reload] to be your DPS build, with no free slot at all. Despite this being the post-stat-banner world. 
   
• Compare this to a DPS build like Mechanist or Firebrand where you have free access to a deep well of actual utility because your utility slots are not worth that much DPS. The new Defensive Banners are so strong and yet I bet the statistics show almost 0 flex usage of them the way a firebrand is constantly flexing in [Stand Your Ground] or [Advance!] as the encounter asks for, exactly like what utility slots were intended to be (UTILITY).
   
• Please attempt to quantify how much DPS a utility skill should be worth and standardize it across all classes. 

There's quite a lot more that I can think of but this OP is already too dang long, so feel free to bring up any long-term damaging design choice you can think of.

Edited October 25, 2022 by Jzaku.9765

[eXruina.4956]

totally agree, you'd think these are some of the primary things a balance team would consider.

 

and yes there's more problems to be addressed and brought up. its just stacked up so much. i wonder when they're going to actually start producing some results.

[Grand Marshal.4098]

Warr design outdated and bad 

[Jzaku.9765]

They're doing a balance philosophy livestream on Friday: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-balance-philosophy-livestream-this-friday/

Hope some of these issues are specifically identified on stream while they talk about Warrior.

[prototypedragon.1406]

Knowing warriors luck the design philosophy shall be mostly mechanist as the runner up🤷‍♂️

[Grand Marshal.4098]

7 hours ago, Jzaku.9765 said:

They're doing a balance philosophy livestream on Friday: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-balance-philosophy-livestream-this-friday/

Hope some of these issues are specifically identified on stream while they talk about Warrior.

Why do I feel like they will simply justify all their bad decisions that led to this point, add a "we will look more into these issues in the near future" and just skip warrior within 5 minutes? 

[CalmTheStorm.2364]

2 hours ago, Grand Marshal.4098 said:

Why do I feel like they will simply justify all their bad decisions that led to this point, add a "we will look more into these issues in the near future" and just skip warrior within 5 minutes? 

Aw, c'mon. Give them some credit. They did a lot of good things for warrior in the 10/4 patch, but 10 years of poor balance and design decisions can't be undone in one patch. I'll remain cautiously optimistic until the new balance team gives me reason to be otherwise. 

[eXruina.4956]

36 minutes ago, CalmTheStorm.2364 said:

Aw, c'mon. Give them some credit. They did a lot of good things for warrior in the 10/4 patch, but 10 years of poor balance and design decisions can't be undone in one patch. I'll remain cautiously optimistic until the new balance team gives me reason to be otherwise. 

i commend you for your strength. 💪

 

i've been shattered way too many times, just put me out of my misery. 😵🦋

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

55 minutes ago, CalmTheStorm.2364 said:

Aw, c'mon. Give them some credit. They did a lot of good things for warrior in the 10/4 patch, but 10 years of poor balance and design decisions can't be undone in one patch. I'll remain cautiously optimistic until the new balance team gives me reason to be otherwise. 

This is true, 10/4 was about correcting some bad things and laying a foundation. There are bugs from that which need fixing for sure, but it was a good start. I hope that 11/29 has at least as many goodies in it for warrior that 10/4 did, which is the least that can be down after years of little to no items in the warrior section of previous patch notes.

[DaniTheHero.6318]

ANET has been constantly bullying warrior,  there is no objective reason to play Warrior anymore when Guardian is superior in every way.

Warrior serves no real meta role other than DPS, and even that it doesn't do as well as other classes.
I feel like i'm troll picking whenever I do instanced content with my warrior. And don't let me get started on the butchery that has been happening to Power Berserker.

Edited October 29, 2022 by DaniTheHero.6318

[Warscythes.9307]

I don't really have much to add other than is nice to actually to read a thread on the class forum that is not completely filled with gibberish and personal bias. Yes having core boons like quick/ala for core utilities strangle utility slots and future spec designs. Ideally I would want it to tie it to the class mechanic instead such as burst. I think they should have went all into bursts providing quickness if taking this X trait with maybe one other thing with a bit of quickness so there is a bit of leeway so is not 100% burst reliant. But overall I agree with the points presented.

Edited November 6, 2022 by Warscythes.9307

[firedragon.8953]

Agree that warrior needs work and many points. But, gotta give credit where credit is due. There have been improvements, which at least gives some copium for me to breath. We're just not there yet though...

Can't fully agree that we'd never get alac. An elite spec could easily have a trait that "converts quickness to alacrity" for example. The devs built a box, but they just have to think outside it when (hopefully) they give us our next e-spec that is a staff-heal/barrier alac warrior (please). Spellbreaker is not really a heal/support. We need a defense/support focused weapon (i.e., staff).

Martial Cadence just needs to be changed. Group quickness should be confined to a single traitline for simplicity. Also prevents a design that Anet obviously wants to avoid (e.g., stacking dps bladesworns for 100% quick uptime, etc.).

Banners should have a flip over skill (wave banner, rally allies, etc.) so we have reactive gameplay with our current on-placement AoE group utilities like stability, etc. (This is a common issue with some other professions as well). It's just poor design for an active combat game. Most of all, it's boring.

For me, the saddest thing is they essentially gutted dps beserker (even worse now with headbutt and stab changes) to make room for bladesworn. I loved playing power berserker. I loved decaping and dropping banners. Simple, yet high pace rotation. I never felt overpowered, but I did feel powerful, and useful. When bladesworn came in, anet shuffled things to basically make berserker our condi spec and bladesworn our power dps spec. I don't like playing bladesworn (fine for those who enjoy it), even with its big numbers. I wanna play around with all my weapons, not just a gunsaber and axe/pistol. That's why I chose warrior in the first place. I thought the recent tweaks to power spellbreaker would satisfy me (it is pretty good tbh) but it's just not the same. Warrior was my main, but now I barely play it. Not in raids, not in fractals, not in strikes... Just open world stuff... So more than anything, "thx Anet for removing my playstyle" to make room for "just another melee stationary playstyle greatsword dps spec".

[Warscythes.9307]

14 minutes ago, firedragon.8953 said:

For me, the saddest thing is they essentially gutted dps beserker (even worse now with headbutt and stab changes) to make room for bladesworn. I loved playing power berserker. I loved decaping and dropping banners. Simple, yet high pace rotation. I never felt overpowered, but I did feel powerful, and useful. When bladesworn came in, anet shuffled things to basically make berserker our condi spec and bladesworn our power dps spec. I don't like playing bladesworn (fine for those who enjoy it), even with its big numbers. I wanna play around with all my weapons, not just a gunsaber and axe/pistol. That's why I chose warrior in the first place. I thought the recent tweaks to power spellbreaker would satisfy me (it is pretty good tbh) but it's just not the same. Warrior was my main, but now I barely play it. Not in raids, not in fractals, not in strikes... Just open world stuff... So more than anything, "thx Anet for removing my playstyle" to make room for "just another melee stationary playstyle greatsword dps spec".

One to note is that I don't think they removed power Berserker for BSW, is just bugged....for a long time. Bloody roar bonus is additive instead of multiplicative. If that is fixed then the dps will jump right back. 

[Peacekid.1463]

they shud make a way for warrior to be fast to bcoz currently they are turtle slow

[Potato Slayer.3107]

21 hours ago, Peacekid.1463 said:

they shud make a way for warrior to be fast to bcoz currently they are turtle slow

I would like to see charges on movement skills, but improvements to swiftness/superspeed and more counters to movement impairment in trait lines would work better for all builds.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

I would say that the most toxic design choice is the power disparity between range and melee dps skills. If Whirling Axe, 100Blades, and Flurry did not have such long channel times it wouldn't be so bad. But it feels like other classes, who do have great pressure in range and melee, are able to wombo combo faster in melee than Warrior can.

Please, Anet. More Wombos for my Combos.

Decrease the cast times on 100Blades, Whirling Axe, Flurry, and Flaming Flurry.

Another big issue is the lack of pulsing damage on warrior. Banner of Strength and Banner of Discipline could be easily changed to alleviate this.

Banner of Strength: Damage and daze foes when summoned (the current effects). Grant 20 might (10s/5s PvE/Comp) to allies in the area. Pulse damage each interval (Same as on summon damage, but no daze).

Banner of Discipline: Damage and bleed foes on summon (same as current). Grant allies in the area 15s/10s of Fury (PvE/Comp). Pulse damage and bleed each interval (same damage and bleed numbers).

I'm open to number tweaking on the pulsed damages, but the pulsed effects for these two banners are too weak to justify using them over other utilities.

[Verdict is Vengence.6912]

9 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Banner of Strength: Damage and daze foes when summoned (the current effects). Grant 20 might (10s/5s PvE/Comp) to allies in the area. Pulse damage each interval (Same as on summon damage, but no daze).

Banner of Discipline: Damage and bleed foes on summon (same as current). Grant allies in the area 15s/10s of Fury (PvE/Comp). Pulse damage and bleed each interval (same damage and bleed numbers).

Having a caster warrior through the use of banners would be fun as hell.

[Kodama.6453]

10 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Banner of Strength: Damage and daze foes when summoned (the current effects). Grant 20 might (10s/5s PvE/Comp) to allies in the area. Pulse damage each interval (Same as on summon damage, but no daze).

Banner of Discipline: Damage and bleed foes on summon (same as current). Grant allies in the area 15s/10s of Fury (PvE/Comp). Pulse damage and bleed each interval (same damage and bleed numbers).

Making the damage pulse seems like a promising idea, but the numbers seem a bit overtuned in my opinion.

Banner of strength has currently a power coefficient of 2,0. Summon damage plus the same damage on each pulse means that we talk about a skill which will deal a power coefficient of 12 in total. Which is huge, considering that you want it to keep the daze and also apply 20 stacks of might on it's own.

Banner of discipline would go to a power coefficient of 3,0 and application of 18 stacks of bleeding, each lasting for 8 seconds. As a comparison, ranger's sharpening stone, which is a staple in their condition damage builds, has the same cooldown and applies 10 stacks of bleeding with 8 seconds duration each. So this skill has almost double the bleed application, while also hitting for a power coefficient of 3,0.

If these banners start pulsing their damage with their boon applications, then they need their coefficients and bleeding stacks altered. Keeping them as they are would make them too powerful in instanced PvE.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Just now, Kodama.6453 said:

Making the damage pulse seems like a promising idea, but the numbers seem a bit overtuned in my opinion.

Banner of strength has currently a power coefficient of 2,0. Summon damage plus the same damage on each pulse means that we talk about a skill which will deal a power coefficient of 12 in total. Which is huge, considering that you want it to keep the daze and also apply 20 stacks of might on it's own.

Banner of discipline would go to a power coefficient of 3,0 and application of 18 stacks of bleeding, each lasting for 8 seconds. As a comparison, ranger's sharpening stone, which is a staple in their condition damage builds, has the same cooldown and applies 10 stacks of bleeding with 8 seconds duration each. So this skill has almost double the bleed application, while also hitting for a power coefficient of 3,0.

If these banners start pulsing their damage with their boon applications, then they need their coefficients and bleeding stacks altered. Keeping them as they are would make them too powerful in instanced PvE.

Like I said, the pulsed values can be tweaked, but the lack of persisting damage is one of warrior's problems.

[Jzaku.9765]

10 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Like I said, the pulsed values can be tweaked, but the lack of persisting damage is one of warrior's problems.

This specific topic I'm fairly certain is an intentional decision by the devs, and Thief also falls into this category of not having many pulsing damage effects. Ultimately, damage is just damage and they can bump up our single hit coeffs as much as they want to get any class to where they want it to be. 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

2 hours ago, Jzaku.9765 said:

This specific topic I'm fairly certain is an intentional decision by the devs, and Thief also falls into this category of not having many pulsing damage effects. Ultimately, damage is just damage and they can bump up our single hit coeffs as much as they want to get any class to where they want it to be. 

That is true, but I'm thinking more of when the warrior has to kite, without the pulsing damage sources a warrior that has to move is no longer doing damage. Condi Zerker suffers less from this, but then it has more ranged options that are effective, but with how Anet is building high end PvE instances they are becoming exceedingly unfriendly to melee builds. If these two banners had pulsing damage effects instead of two boons we can provide via other means, then that helps the melee warrior during those encounters.

[TugboatSteve.3607]

The whole "of a kind" build ethos feels weird to me, e.g. "stack this many [shout, stance, sigil, physical, banner, etc] to get a bonus" traits are just annoying, leading to build inflexibility when maximizing that bonus, and I wish they would knock it off. That's the whole reason you're lacking utility in the first place, and it's the whole reason so many balance passes were spent on tuning Vogorous Shouts instead of tuning core abilities that provide those utilities.

I don't want to stack this many abilities of the same type, I want to make a functioning build out of legos that suits my playstyle.

I don't even look at meditations, for example, because they don't have an associated trait on top of being mostly bad.

Edited November 9, 2022 by TugboatSteve.3607

[Shadowpeixera.2918]

On 11/7/2022 at 8:23 PM, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Like I said, the pulsed values can be tweaked, but the lack of persisting damage is one of warrior's problems.

Maybe this is naive and singleminded of me, but i would love to have some proc-based traits similar to Engis but more in line with Warrior's theme.

Something like "Agressive Onslaught ( added feature ) : When you use a Burst skill that applies a crowd control, you churn the earth below your target's feet, causing damage as the ground quakes and breaks" or like "Thunderclap: Your Physical skills create a thunderclap at the beginning and end of their effect, causing damage and ( insert effect here )."

"Spiked Armor: You deal retaliatory damage while your Stances are activated." / "Tactical Approach: Activating a Signet blocks and counters the next attack you receive." / "Greater Thunderclap: When activating a Elite skill, you stomp the ground, dealing massive damage in an area around you and slowing/confusing/stunning enemies around you." / "One-Warrior Rampart: Activating a heal skill gives protection to allies. Light Field." / "Scorch the Earth: When you apply Bleeding above the threshhold, you instantly slice enemies around you, dealing damage and applying burn. Fire Field"

Those are some ideas, none of them i thought much about balance. Engineer was my main proff before i became a Warrior, and honestly a lot of the Warrior traitlines are more to make the class playable, when the Engineer has traits that improves the class as a whole. I would love some more themes while Warrior gets the core features baseline.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

On 11/9/2022 at 11:00 AM, Shadowpeixera.2918 said:

Maybe this is naive and singleminded of me, but i would love to have some proc-based traits similar to Engis but more in line with Warrior's theme.

Something like "Agressive Onslaught ( added feature ) : When you use a Burst skill that applies a crowd control, you churn the earth below your target's feet, causing damage as the ground quakes and breaks" or like "Thunderclap: Your Physical skills create a thunderclap at the beginning and end of their effect, causing damage and ( insert effect here )."

"Spiked Armor: You deal retaliatory damage while your Stances are activated." / "Tactical Approach: Activating a Signet blocks and counters the next attack you receive." / "Greater Thunderclap: When activating a Elite skill, you stomp the ground, dealing massive damage in an area around you and slowing/confusing/stunning enemies around you." / "One-Warrior Rampart: Activating a heal skill gives protection to allies. Light Field." / "Scorch the Earth: When you apply Bleeding above the threshhold, you instantly slice enemies around you, dealing damage and applying burn. Fire Field"

Those are some ideas, none of them i thought much about balance. Engineer was my main proff before i became a Warrior, and honestly a lot of the Warrior traitlines are more to make the class playable, when the Engineer has traits that improves the class as a whole. I would love some more themes while Warrior gets the core features baseline.

 

I like and respect that drive, but trying to design around theme gets us so much bad design when it comes to pvp I have no faith in theme first designing anymore. 

Continue to suggest, don't let me dampen that. Just..yknow remember that got us bladesworn and mirage. 

Edited November 11, 2022 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Shadowpeixera.2918]

9 minutes ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

 

I like and respect that drive, but trying to design around theme gets us so much bad design when it comes to pvp I have no faith in theme first designing anymore. 

Continue to suggest, don't let me dampen that. Just..yknow remember that got us bladesworn and mirage. 

I cannot in good conscience blame Bladesworn on theme. It's perfectly plausible for them to make a "street samurai" without resorting to wonky design. It's bad because it's bad.

My two issues with Bladesworn are that 1- it goes completely against the way the game flows, and the class flows. Warrior moves, BSW stops. Stopping momentum for charging strikes just doesn't fit well with this game. And 2- it didn't add a good ranged option for us ( nor it reworked the ones we have ), instead it put pistol into this really weird melee spot where it competes with offhand axe and the only reason it's used it's because it synergizes too well with BSW traits.

But theme? I don't think BSW was designed fully with just theme in mind, there are other ways to design a good samurai theme without resorting to these shortcuts of bad design. Why didn't they give us mainhand-offhand pistol with midrange, and they didn't give us the gunsaber, instead giving us better and more fitting bursts ( in theme and design ) with the flow mechanic? I think they deliberately designed BSW with the mechanics in mind too, and when they realized it was bad, it was too late to rework the spec.