Decayuss.8062 Posted November 26, 2022 Share Posted November 26, 2022 As a bit of disclaimer before I get into the meat of this post: the first is that I am exclusively talking about End of Dragon's Strikes. That's because for the past few months, it's basically all I've been doing in the game; not much else about it appeals to me anymore, and my own static switched to running those every week. But I think it's paramount to address Bladesworn in this context, as its not the same as an Elite Specialization being retroactively underwhelming or overpowered in a previous expansion's content. And if the nature of strikes in End of Dragons is anything to go by, Bladesworn might have an even rougher time in the future. As of right now, however, I'm no longer going to be playing the game for a while. The upcoming patch notes addresses basically zero of the core problems I have with Bladesworn (and I presume some other people have as well), and Warrior is a class that I adore. But across the board, it's suffering, and its most powerful specialization is unfun to play. I am well aware that Bladesworn is, in actuality, doing very well in its DPS. And I think Warrior as a top tier DPS whose sole job isn't to just give people banners is a long time coming (unfortunately, I don't think this extends to the rest of its specializations). But what I'm mostly talking about here is how FUN it is to actually play the class; how well does it feel to play Bladesworn in End of Dragons Strike Missions? Especially in Challenge Mode. Kind of awful. The biggest issue here comes in its most prominent source of damage, the main 'draw' for the class, what all of it revolves around: Dragon Trigger. From the moment this ability was revealed in the livestream, I knew that it was going to be a balancing nightmare. Because Dragon Trigger is the opposite of fun; what made it 'fun' in its beta stage was its absurd amounts of damage. But even then, it was still a chore to use. Since then, that damage has been severely downgraded; still exceptionally powerful, and it charges faster, but that doesn't address the core issue. Dragon Trigger is an extremely frail move that ironically requires little effort or skill to pull off, and despite being the highest single damaging skill in the entire game, still feels weak because of how essential it is to Bladesworn, and how easy it is to mess up. There are so many negative thoughts I have about this skill that it's actually hard to articulate it into words, but I'll do my best. The first being that it is the antithesis to Guild Wars 2's fast paced combat; no moving, no dodging, and waiting several seconds to push one button. One slip up of the player's fingers, and it's all over. There have even been some EXTREMELY unfortunate circumstances where I, say, use a fully charged Dragon Slash, watch the animation go off, watch my skillbar change back to Gunsaber, and I just so happen to move forward, which for some reason CANCELS the animation and in the end no damage comes out. Nevermind the countless ways a Dragon Trigger can be canceled on purpose for someone interested in keeping themselves alive--it's so frustratingly easy to accidentally cancel it and lose all of your DPS. Bringing this back to the title, the End of Dragon Strike Bosses make it such a hassle to actually land this skill on them: Mai Trinn does NOT stop dodging, moving, or turning herself invincible for the first part of Aetherblade Hideout. Scarlet's phase is a hazardous minefield and her slams make the already strenuous timing of Dragon Trigger an absolute headache. Ankka constantly jumps and gives herself invincibility animations, and her fight is bloated with floor traps, crowd control suction, one-shot exploding Quaggans that require constant movement, and more ways to make a Bladesworn move at the worst possible time. Kaineng Outlook is the only time where Bladesworn starts to become a little bit fun, until you hit the final phase of Minister Li--trying to stand still for a few seconds to do your DPS rotation in a phase that is bloated with movement and positioning based mechanics that will kill you or your entire static is just asking to have a bad time. The problem that arises from this is how fewer and further between Dragon Trigger's can become, and when almost the entirety of your DPS output revolves around that ONE skill that is mind numbingly easy to miss, cancel, be knocked out of, or just use at a bad time, that isn't fun. Nevermind the fact that I think Dragon Trigger isn't fun to use; it's frustrating to try and use. A lot of other classes in the game do have some skill, or group of skills, that they rely on for heavy DPS; but not only is Bladesworn's lifeline connected to this one skill, but failing to use it correctly is monumentally punishing to the player in a way that turns it into high risk, mediocre (but mandatory) reward. The Flow required to actually go into Dragon Trigger goes against Warrior's core principles as well: Adrenaline is a simple, straight forward mechanic with the intent to reward the usage of skills and abilities with a single, powerful burst skill. Bladesworn, on the other hand, doesn't do that; the flow is generated passively, with little input from the player. There are ways to increase its output, but they're all passive, lackluster skills with no actual power behind them. And even once that is built up, it takes further time to actually channel the intended move that you were waiting for the entire time. Make no mistake, just one or two flow skills in the middle of combat makes its presence abundant, but when it all circles back to standing still and waiting, it gives the class the feeling of further passivity; you're not actively trying to get flow. You're just going through your skills (one of them is quite easily my least favorite weapon that I'll get to in a moment), until you can stand still, wait, and pray that your one 'good' skill actually lands. If it doesn't because you: Pushed the movement skill too early, were forced to dodge, got CC'd, your target was smart enough to get out of range (or just so happened to jump/dash out of range like a few EoD strike bosses), your target turns invincible, and so, so, so many other things. What I'm trying to get at with this is that Bladesworn's excessive reliance on this one skill that goes against the core of what makes Guild Wars 2 fun feeds into an endless cycle of what is, in my opinion, just disheartening. It does feel nice to pull of a Dragon Trigger, but that's the only thing about the class that feels nice; and what that's the only thing that you need to do, while simultaneously being the one thing that is so easy to mess up, it's not satisfying as much as it is frustrating. The last bit of criticism I want to tack on here is that I don't think the forced weapon on Bladesworn is a great weapon at all; its damage is lackluster and its cooldowns are excessive, making the elite skill Tactical Reload a necessity rather than a complimentary skill to take. Its synergy with Dragon Trigger is nonexistent; nothing you do in Gunsaber really affects your Dragon Trigger aside from Fierce as Fire, which even then, Pistol 5 does a much, MUCH better job at fulfilling that quota. On the topic of skills, Overcharged Cartridges was a nice change from the previous one, but it adds yet another small thing to cast before using Dragon Trigger; and its complete lack of any sound effect, very subtle animation, and slight change in its skillbar doesn't make it easy to keep track of whether my character actually used the thing. In the past I've tried vouching for Gunsaber to not only be a stronger weapon, but it (and explosions in general) to have a more substantial impact on using Dragon Trigger. I'm certain there's someone else out there that's made much better suggestions than I could ever, but I wanted to voice my opinion now that I'm more or less taking a break from the game; as it stands, Bladesworn is an incredibly unfun specialization to use. Its damage is fantastic, and I'm sure the top players perform very well with it. I couldn't be more glad that Warrior has FINALLY gotten something that can be seen as a top tier DPS. But the amount of hurdles a Bladesworn needs to both jump through and avoid in a class that is excessively reliant on one slow, lackluster skill is what really brings down the specialization. That, and everything else just seems like a mish-mash of skills you can use in the meantime before you expose yourself and pray nothing bad happens when you go into Dragon Trigger. Mai Trin, please do not dodge, do your revenant invulnerability attack, or dash when I have finished charging my one DPS move and push that one button; and I sure hope that I don't press the W key too early after watching its animation go off. I think that's about it. Thanks for reading. 7 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jzaku.9765 Posted November 26, 2022 Share Posted November 26, 2022 I can completely empathize with you OP as a heavy endgame PVE player myself. Just a heads up that it will likely be the case that the majority of people responding to this detailed and well thought out post have no idea what you are talking about yet will respond positively just because it aligns with their worldview that Bladesworn needs to be changed for completely unrelated reasons. There are aspects of your post I strongly agree with, and yet others that I don't. The primary one I want to point out is that many of the EOD strike mechanics you point out are what I would describe as "Melee hate" and it is not Bladesworn that is causing these problems. Everyone groans when Mai Trin evades. All melee builds cringe when Quaggans and Krait spawn on Ankka. All melee builds also suffer when they get any of the position related mechanics on Minister Li. The proper criticism to make would be that the Ranged builds in this game do comparable and even sometimes outdps the melee ones - creating this situation where you feel punished when these mechanics happen, instead of feeling rewarded for playing a build with less damage uptime but easily outdamaging the ranged build when you minimize your downtime. For a 10 year Warrior main like me, Bladesworn is very fun to play because it's core gameplay loop is such a huge departure from all the previous Warrior Elite Specs (which all basically play the same as Core Warrior). Having the foresight and fight knowledge to be able to land every Dragon Slash is in itself the feeling of reward for playing this elite spec. Sure there are situations that make Bsw total garbage to play on certain fights, but you can probably think of similar situations for other existing classes where they are similarly "forced to swap" to something else, or suffer bad performance. As for your criticism of Flow and Gunsaber itself - I can only completely agree. Flow feels to me like they saw the problem Core/Zerk/Spb was having being absolutely beholden to Adrenaline-overflowing Grandmaster Traits and decided to resolve it by creating a new problem - and selling you the solution in the form of wasting an Adept trait slot purely for Flow generation and locking a utility slot for the same purpose in [Flow Stablizer]. [Overcharged Cartridges] is nothing but a terribly designed utility slot tax. You're forced to take it just because its so ludicrously strong, and yet It's a skill with close to ZERO flavour and absolutely cripples your damage when you do try to use it's knockback. And Gunsaber, as you point out, is a very ineffectual weapon in PVE that does not interact with the Espec Mechanic at all despite being forced on you as part of it. 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blood Red Arachnid.2493 Posted November 26, 2022 Share Posted November 26, 2022 Guess I'll have to be the Bladesworn's advocate again. The part that I agree with is the Gunsaber being lackluster, and other warrior specs being neglected. Maybe it is because one of my most played specs is the Rifle Deadeye, but I haven't found the stick-and-move playstyle to be much of a limit. Dragon Trigger rewards good positioning and timing, and as you do this content you'll learn when it is a good time to plant down and cut things. There's two bits of advice I can give on how to stop worrying and love the Dragon Trigger. First, disregard the benchmark advice to blow DT-4 and 5 to build up stacks for DPS. The Aegis and Shadowstep are extremely useful for protecting yourself and landing hits with DS-Force. Blowing them for a percentage point of increased damage isn't worth all of the safety and accuracy they afford. The second bit is to learn to love DS-Boost. Boost is a 16.3 scale attack while Force is a 20.4 scale attack, so at first glance Boost is a 20% drop in damage. However, consider two things: Boost hitting 5 targets is equivalent to Force hitting 4, and Boost has a much greater range. Second, there are times when an enemy moves just out of range, meaning it is better to use Boost to get 80% of the damage back, rather than doing none at all. This is more advice for the overworld and fractals, since enemy clustering is more important there, however this does show up in KO and HT, where it is possible to achieve greater damage with Boost over Force in many circumstances. The reward is the visibility of your efforts. As much as I love something like Sword Weaver, one of the things I lament about it is the even spread of its damage arc. The boss's health slowly drains down, and it is hard to see if I'm having an impact at all. With Deadeye, and likewise Bladesworn, those big hits causes enemy health to chunk down, letting me see the impact that I am having. My brain likes seeing the big numbers with big hits, and this is an advantage that is seldom replicated in this game. The skill required to pull these hits off is to have proper positioning, proper timing, and proper knowledge of a fight Also, the 5 second stun every 13 seconds is a pretty nice payoff, too. While there is a mechanical cost to these massive damage spikes, there's mechanical advantage, too. Having so much damage located in Dragon Trigger means that you can neglect the other skills more. Forced disengagement can be a massive detriment to damage output. Dragon Trigger lets the Bladesworn hit and run very effectively, whereas other melee professions need to stay in constant melee range to do their damage. Your comments on Flow generation do not make sense to me. First, my flow builds up almost immediately from To The Limit and Flow Stabilizer, and once it is up so long as I don't completely forget about Flow Stabilizer it stays that way. The only points in the fight where flow might drop off is during the Dragonspike Mine portion where DT is used consecutively, but even then Tactical Reload recharges Flow Stabilizer and is usually used in conjunction with that portion. Second, the time that flow is building up isn't spent waiting. It's spent using all of the weapon skills in a particular order as to maximize damage. Whether the adrenaline is gathered at a more constant rate (flow) or if it is gathered from attacks but I'm constantly attacking (adrenaline) has made very little impact on my gameplay. Either way, I'm using the F1/F2 mechanic off cooldown. As I've said in other places, Bladesworn is the first time I've actually had fun with warrior. I find Berserker to be overly simplistic and yet repetitive, being forced to mash F1 over and over again to do damage. I found Spellbreaker to largely be impotent, lacking impact in most places and relying on awkward weapon swaps and Full Counter to do mediocre damage. 3 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dadnir.5038 Posted November 26, 2022 Share Posted November 26, 2022 Isn't Bladesworn a RP spec? I mean, the gameplay is a virtual parody of those animes where the main character do a big attack after charging it for 2-3 episodes. In fact I find it surprising enough that the spec manage to get more than just damage out of such gameplay. 30 minutes ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said: As I've said in other places, Bladesworn is the first time I've actually had fun with warrior. Different player, different kind of fun. Personally, when playing warrior, I find my fun in using Axe/Axe, I just love how fast the attack rate is on this weapon set. Bladesworn promote something that's at the opposite of the gamemplay I find my fun in so I do understand why some player can dislike this spec. I can also understand why some player aren't thrilled by the warrior's e-spec as I have yet to find a spec that truly complement the "fun" I have with this Axe/Axe gameplay. You could say that Berserker logically complement it but, no, from my point of view it doesn't, it never did. I'd rather play core warrior than any of it's specs at the moment (And, yes, 10 years of core warrior is boring). 3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jzaku.9765 Posted November 26, 2022 Share Posted November 26, 2022 11 minutes ago, Dadnir.5038 said: Isn't Bladesworn a RP spec? I mean, the gameplay is a virtual parody of those animes where the main character do a big attack after charging it for 2-3 episodes. In fact I find it surprising enough that the spec manage to get more than just damage out of such gameplay. Different player, different kind of fun. Personally, when playing warrior, I find my fun in using Axe/Axe, I just love how fast the attack rate is on this weapon set. Bladesworn promote something that's at the opposite of the gamemplay I find my fun in so I do understand why some player can dislike this spec. I sincerely hope you come to recognize the dramatic irony of deriding Bladesworn as being an RP spec then immediately in the following paragraph describe how your enjoyment of the class comes entirely from the RP of being an Axe/Axe Warrior. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dadnir.5038 Posted November 26, 2022 Share Posted November 26, 2022 1 minute ago, Jzaku.9765 said: I sincerely hope you come to recognize the dramatic irony of deriding Bladesworn as being an RP spec then immediately in the following paragraph describe how your enjoyment of the class comes entirely from the RP of being an Axe/Axe Warrior. Isn't this game a MMORPG? 😁 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eXruina.4956 Posted November 26, 2022 Share Posted November 26, 2022 2 hours ago, Jzaku.9765 said: For a 10 year Warrior main like me, Bladesworn is very fun to play because it's core gameplay loop is such a huge departure from all the previous Warrior Elite Specs (which all basically play the same as Core Warrior). i enjoy bladesworn's gameplay for the same reason, its a step away form traditional warrior, that and i also love its aesthetic.🙂 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanAlcedo.3281 Posted November 26, 2022 Share Posted November 26, 2022 (edited) Bladesworn is what happens when the first question on the New Elite Spec meeting at Anet HQ is: " What would be cool?" And not: What does the class need?" Bladesworn is when you ask your Husband to get groceries because the kids are hungry and he comes back with a lifesize Spiderman Statue instead. Bladesworn is like getting socks for Christmas the third year in a row. Only a different color each time. Bladesworn is like giving a starving Person who begs for food a lifelesson instead. Edited November 26, 2022 by DanAlcedo.3281 2 3 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zekent.3652 Posted November 26, 2022 Share Posted November 26, 2022 Other classes getting weakness on a few hits: meh, just a bit less of dps Bladesworn getting weakness on DT: oh Not even counting the frenetic fights coditions, like bosses moving a lot, if anet dares to nerf pve bladesworn, it will mean that their balance philosophy didn't really changed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kodama.6453 Posted November 26, 2022 Share Posted November 26, 2022 (edited) 1 hour ago, Zizekent.2398 said: Other classes getting weakness on a few hits: meh, just a bit less of dps Bladesworn getting weakness on DT: oh Not even counting the frenetic fights coditions, like bosses moving a lot, if anet dares to nerf pve bladesworn, it will mean that their balance philosophy didn't really changed. Weakness just makes it feel worse for bladesworn, since their absurdly high damage number gets reduced by a hefty amount. But the general damage reduction is the same on average for all classes. Since it is a 50% chance to reduce your damage, you can also say that 50% of the time a bladesworn would think "wow, weakness didn't affect me at all". Edited November 26, 2022 by Kodama.6453 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jzaku.9765 Posted November 26, 2022 Share Posted November 26, 2022 (edited) 38 minutes ago, Kodama.6453 said: Weakness just makes it feel worse for bladesworn, since their absurdly high damage number gets reduced by a hefty amount. But the general damage reduction is the same on average for all classes. Since it is a 50% chance to reduce your damage, you can also say that 50% of the time a bladesworn would think "wow, weakness didn't affect me at all". Dragon Slash takes approximately 1s to apply it's damage on cast. Within this 1 second of being affected by weakness is approximately ~65% of your total DPS. Source: https://dps.report/KvZq-20220814-032804_golem (Click on the Player Summary tab to see the damage breakdown.) The benchmark casts Dragon Slash 13 times over 98 seconds, meaning that it is possible for the Bladesworn to only be affected by weakness ~13% of the time to destroy their DPS by ~65%. And that's being kind assuming a Boss with 0 phases. In fractals it's completely possible for you to phase within ~2-3 Dragon Slashes, meaning a single one of these slashes being affected by weakness absolutely eliminated your contribution within the window of this burn phase. Edited November 26, 2022 by Jzaku.9765 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kodama.6453 Posted November 26, 2022 Share Posted November 26, 2022 13 minutes ago, Jzaku.9765 said: Dragon Slash takes approximately 1s to apply it's damage on cast. Within this 1 second of being affected by weakness is approximately ~65% of your total DPS. Source: https://dps.report/KvZq-20220814-032804_golem (Click on the Player Summary tab to see the damage breakdown.) The benchmark casts Dragon Slash 13 times over 98 seconds, meaning that it is possible for the Bladesworn to only be affected by weakness ~13% of the time to destroy their DPS by ~65%. And that's being kind assuming a Boss with 0 phases. In fractals it's completely possible for you to phase within ~2-3 Dragon Slashes, meaning a single one of these slashes being affected by weakness absolutely eliminated your contribution within the window of this burn phase. It is still a 50% chance, dude. If from 2-3 dragon slashes just one is affected by the weakness and gets the damage reduced, then this means that the other 1-2 slashes were not affected by the weakness and dealt their whole damage, while the other people in your party got their damage reduced because it is way more likely for them to have glancing strikes in this phase because of them applying multiple little hits instead of a single big one. The end result is still the same. Because it is a percent chance to get affected by it or not, on average, bladesworn is affected the same as other classes. There will be phases where the bladesworn is "unlucky" and gets multiple of his dragon slashes reduced, but there will also be opportunities where they are "lucky" and they are not affected at all. It all averages out. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Decayuss.8062 Posted November 26, 2022 Author Share Posted November 26, 2022 13 hours ago, Jzaku.9765 said: I can completely empathize with you OP as a heavy endgame PVE player myself. Just a heads up that it will likely be the case that the majority of people responding to this detailed and well thought out post have no idea what you are talking about yet will respond positively just because it aligns with their worldview that Bladesworn needs to be changed for completely unrelated reasons. There are aspects of your post I strongly agree with, and yet others that I don't. The primary one I want to point out is that many of the EOD strike mechanics you point out are what I would describe as "Melee hate" and it is not Bladesworn that is causing these problems. Everyone groans when Mai Trin evades. All melee builds cringe when Quaggans and Krait spawn on Ankka. All melee builds also suffer when they get any of the position related mechanics on Minister Li. The proper criticism to make would be that the Ranged builds in this game do comparable and even sometimes outdps the melee ones - creating this situation where you feel punished when these mechanics happen, instead of feeling rewarded for playing a build with less damage uptime but easily outdamaging the ranged build when you minimize your downtime. For a 10 year Warrior main like me, Bladesworn is very fun to play because it's core gameplay loop is such a huge departure from all the previous Warrior Elite Specs (which all basically play the same as Core Warrior). Having the foresight and fight knowledge to be able to land every Dragon Slash is in itself the feeling of reward for playing this elite spec. Sure there are situations that make Bsw total garbage to play on certain fights, but you can probably think of similar situations for other existing classes where they are similarly "forced to swap" to something else, or suffer bad performance. As for your criticism of Flow and Gunsaber itself - I can only completely agree. Flow feels to me like they saw the problem Core/Zerk/Spb was having being absolutely beholden to Adrenaline-overflowing Grandmaster Traits and decided to resolve it by creating a new problem - and selling you the solution in the form of wasting an Adept trait slot purely for Flow generation and locking a utility slot for the same purpose in [Flow Stablizer]. [Overcharged Cartridges] is nothing but a terribly designed utility slot tax. You're forced to take it just because its so ludicrously strong, and yet It's a skill with close to ZERO flavour and absolutely cripples your damage when you do try to use it's knockback. And Gunsaber, as you point out, is a very ineffectual weapon in PVE that does not interact with the Espec Mechanic at all despite being forced on you as part of it. First off, thanks for your insight on this topic. Since I'm more or less taking a break from the game (and haven't done all that much on it the past few months), I probably won't have much more to reply with, but it's nice to know at least some of the sentiments I have are shared. While I do agree that so many of the EoD Strike Missions are anti-melee, I still think Bladesworn suffers the most from it. And it goes back to my thought that its over reliance on Dragon Slash is what makes it unfun. Perhaps changing Gunsaber to make it stronger as opposed to changing Dragon Slash would create a solution wherein I'd find it less crippling, but I still think that other specializations have it easier when it comes to position-based mechanics and timing. If they mess up their timing; oh well. Maybe they missed one skill, maybe they just need to wait a few seconds to continue their rotation. If you mess up Dragon Slash? The punishment is monumentally more burdening on your DPS than it is with any other specialization in the game. But again, maybe that wouldn't be a problem if Gunsaber was a more reliable source of damage. I can certainly see the sentiment in how satisfying it is to be able to have the foresight to land Dragon Slash, however. And how it is appealing as its departure from the core Warrior. Though personally, I don't see it as a positive; Bladesworns need to have that foresight (and sometimes luck) just to keep up their DPS with classes who can go through their piano (or sometimes simplistic) rotation while dodging, moving, and hardly risking anything going wrong. It does cycle back to what I said just a few moments ago, but my point is more so that Bladesworn's skill floor (which can still be riddled with unfortunate timing, needing to use a lackluster utility skill, and bad luck) is far too high to be fun in my book. But I still respect your opinion on it either way. And I'm glad we see common ground with Gunsaber; I've hated this weapon from the start. (Why does Blooming Fire still have that nasty end lag on it?) 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
felix.2386 Posted November 27, 2022 Share Posted November 27, 2022 i gone to break as well, the game design has gone to garbage, i've played preferred warrior because i detest teleport classes, now it's just teleport jerkfest, i too have my fair share of teleport abuse, thief/rev my second most played classes. but yea never managed to completely switch main because teleport just isn't fun to play, it kills all the fun in the game, positioning is gone to complete pointless, rotation route just completely ignored, map complexity is deleted. and yea warrior just simply too clunky and slow and can not keep up with the jerkfest 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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