The future of Warrior support

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Anet, I'm excited for staff, and I hope it does the job well. But unless you over tune it then there will still be a few holes in warrior support. Namely, Tactics being inefficiently constructed, and no espec truly providing a team support role outside of two shoehorned traits that could have been done better.

Here are my recommendations. Yes, I know these are probably falling on deaf ears, but these are worth considering.

Tactics
This suffers mainly due to all three GM traits being desired for what endgame support builds are expected to bring. There is also a great deal of selfish sustain in this traitline, and selfish dps increases where this is supposed to be the support traitline.

Marching Orders: Remove the 10s interval, remove the buff icon from the buff bar, remove any particle effects from the buff. Just straight up, your bursts grant 3 might for 15s to allies within 300 range. Make it work on use, not on hit.

Soldier's Comfort: Tier the healing based on adrenaline used, keep the protection duration as you planned to buff it to. Make it activate on use of the burst, not on hit. Make the base healing low on each tier, but with great scaling so as to force stat investment and to keep it from bunkering in PvP. You could also add a rider to it that it heals the warrior itself for less than others. Remove the CD.

Remove Empowered. Move Phalanx Strength to the second minor trait.

Warrior's Cunning: Move this to the GM tier, increase the damage modifier appropriately.

Move Martial Cadence to the Master Tier. If another support has stability covered the warrior can take Empower Allies to increase might and healing or Shrug it Off for more condi cleansing/healing if might is covered elsewhere.

Marial Cadence: Remove the CD, reduce boon durations to 2s. Make this activate on use of a Burst, not on hit with a Burst.

Shrug it Off: Increase the condition cleanse to 2. Make the healing apply to non-damaging conditions as well, but lower the base healing somewhat, like a 20% reduction. Again, if we want to avoid PvP bunkers a self-healing reduction on the trait can be added in for PvP.

Mending Might: Heal allies you grant might to. Same scaling and base healing. Basically, the same trait, but the healing is extended to allies you grant might to as well.

This leaves one slot open in the GM tier, but now also have two strong heal options in the Minor and Master tier, and a good minor, but steady healing source granted by the minor traits. There is a good heal option in the GM tier, and Warrior's Cunning is great for clearing Barrier off of targets, which is a kind of offensive support in its own right.  What is needed here is a decent boon option, but we don't want a mandatory boon or we run into the same problem as before.

Bolster Allies: When you grant 5 or more stacks of might to an ally at once also grant them 1000 (0.5/0.25) barrier (PvE/Comp).
Note: I see this more as an alternative to Vigorous Shouts, mainly since SC, Shrug, would be stronger, and that PS would be baseline to the traitline and MM grants potentially lots of healing to allies already. This with Empower Allies would be a steady flow of barrier to the party, and can be synched with FGJ or SoR, or Axe burst in PvE to add barrier to the party in lieu of the bursty healing of VS. If another player in the party is bringing barrier along, like a Scourge then VS is obviously the choice to take. This just provides an option that is equal to VS.

 

Spellbreaker
This is really where alacrity should have found its home. There is already a great deal of self-boon support here, and like Tactics it is currently it is pretty selfish, and like Tactics we can make it non selfish really easily.

Make Full Counter Count as a Meditation as well as a Burst.

Guard Counter: Meditations grant Protection for 3s. In PvE Meditations also grant 2s of Aegis.

Slow Counter: Meditations inflict Slow and Cripple for 3s and grant Alacrity for 3s to allies. Remove Alacrity from Daring Dragon and return the old Daring Dragon functionality.

Revenge Counter: Meditations grant Resistance for 3s. The rest of Revenge Counter remains unchanged.

Natural Healing: Remove the boon removal portion.

 

Now, I can hear people saying that the meditations and shouts would compete, but remember I suggested having Full Counter count as a Meditation, and it has a short CD, so with BD investment you would need at most one other Meditation, maybe two, one of which would be NH since it's Grenth Cursed drawback would be removed. 

One final change I would make would be for Double Standards to pulse resolution rather than grant a chunk on summon.

This way, you have a Tactics/Discipline/Spellbreaker that can grant all the boons needed sans quickness for a defensive support, good healing, and good barrier. A Berserker could also be a functioning offensive support with all the boons needed sans alacrity and also have good healing and barrier. This would also potentially a very strong Barrier support in PvE with the suggested new Tactics GM trait above, which certainly fits a theme with a Berserker ignoring damage...

Again, durations, base healing, base barrier, and scalings on the caster can be reduced as needed in WvW or PvP to stop any bunker builds.

 

[Myror.7521]

@Lan Deathrider.5910 let me get ya some Feed Back (Not read it full yet).

Taktics:

Soldire's Comfort: This one does not have any cooldown right now ^^. Also great Idea for this one (tho i still think If support weapons are allready doing some amount of healing that the version rn would be allready good enough)

Marching Orders: remove the cd complete from it would be hella broken (specialy in comb with soldire's Comfort cause Marching Oders trigger it but also cause of Berserkers decapitate got no cooldown at all)maybe a cooldown on the weaponsweap lvl would be good so make it 5 Seconds instead of 10 would end up being more than enough.

Mending might: this one is a realy good idea tho i think it could also end up being too strong in Comb with Regeneration but juuust give it a try ^^

Booster Alies: Great Idea for a traitline tho maybe you wana take it in the same line with Marching Orders so you can't overhealing but also let it share some other boons (maybe regen and/or resistance)

Rest of the things your planing are totaly good ideas just keep it Up!

Spellbraker:

Overall a good idea BUT first off all. You need to get hit into full Counter to Trigger it so Holding the alac boon will be a complete no against Bosses that doesn't just hit you fast enough to let u use full counter often enough. In this case you might wana use the utility meditation skills but sadly all of them are just useless (specialy in PvE). Short Said..... Before you can doing something like that you should just rework spellbrakers Meditation skills so they are not Hella useless^^

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

22 minutes ago, Myror.7521 said:

@Lan Deathrider.5910 let me get ya some Feed Back (Not read it full yet).

Taktics:

Soldire's Comfort: This one does not have any cooldown right now ^^. Also great Idea for this one (tho i still think If support weapons are allready doing some amount of healing that the version rn would be allready good enough)

It's technically inherited from Marching Orders, which itself shouldn't have a CD.

22 minutes ago, Myror.7521 said:

Marching Orders: remove the cd complete from it would be hella broken (specialy in comb with soldire's Comfort cause Marching Oders trigger it but also cause of Berserkers decapitate got no cooldown at all)maybe a cooldown on the weaponsweap lvl would be good so make it 5 Seconds instead of 10 would end up being more than enough.

For the base 3 might on burst? Nah that won't be broken with out a CD.

For the special case of Decapitate, they've shown they are aware of that with the changes coming on the 28th, and I would expect that same treatment here, a CD only for Decapitate. That special case aside, which they've shown they know how to address, this wouldn't be broken.

22 minutes ago, Myror.7521 said:

Mending might: this one is a realy good idea tho i think it could also end up being too strong in Comb with Regeneration but juuust give it a try ^^

Depends. Chip healing is needed though. Values can always be adjusted.

22 minutes ago, Myror.7521 said:

Booster Alies: Great Idea for a traitline tho maybe you wana take it in the same line with Marching Orders so you can't overhealing but also let it share some other boons (maybe regen and/or resistance)

Marching Orders is in the minors, silly. Boon sharing within PS, beyond the might, is something I suggested before, but people crap all over that idea.

22 minutes ago, Myror.7521 said:

Rest of the things your planing are totaly good ideas just keep it Up!

Spellbraker:

Overall a good idea BUT first off all. You need to get hit into full Counter to Trigger it so Holding the alac boon will be a complete no against Bosses that doesn't just hit you fast enough to let u use full counter often enough. In this case you might wana use the utility meditation skills but sadly all of them are just useless (specialy in PvE). Short Said..... Before you can doing something like that you should just rework spellbrakers Meditation skills so they are not Hella useless^^

Meditations still need work, sure. However I can see SBS being used in this case purely because it is an ammo skill. Anet could also tweak the boons from the Counter line of traits to grant them when FC is pressed rather than when the strike happens, the pvp forum would 💩 itself over that though.

[Myror.7521]

3 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

the base 3 might on burst? Nah that won't be broken with out a CD.

For the special case of Decapitate, they've shown they are aware of that with the changes coming on the 28th, and I would expect that same treatment here, a CD only for Decapitate. That special case aside, which they've shown they know how to address, this wouldn't be broken.

@Lan Deathrider.5910 no not cause of the 3 stacks of might but right now Soldire's Comfort is bound though Marching Oders cooldown^^. This would end up in being a permanent healing+might (+even more healing by new Mending Might) Spam per decapitates 0 cooldown ^^. 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

9 minutes ago, Myror.7521 said:

@Lan Deathrider.5910 no not cause of the 3 stacks of might but right now Soldire's Comfort is bound though Marching Oders cooldown^^. This would end up in being a permanent healing+might (+even more healing by new Mending Might) Spam per decapitates 0 cooldown ^^. 

Again, Anet has shown with the upcoming Nov 28th changes that they know how to balance around Decapitate, and I would expect the same thing to happen here.

[Fueki.4753]

I was about to comment about you forgetting again that they should remove the particle effect from Tactics. But after re-reading, I noticed you actually added that.

6 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

This way, you have a Tactics/Discipline/Spellbreaker that can grant all the boons needed sans quickness for a defensive support, good healing, and good barrier. A Berserker could also be a functioning offensive support with all the boons needed sans alacrity and also have good healing and barrier. This would also potentially a very strong Barrier support in PvE with the suggested new Tactics GM trait above, which certainly fits a theme with a Berserker ignoring damage...

And these are the reasons, why I can't see them do a meaningful number of your ideas here. But I'd love to see Warrior properly being able to support groups.

Meditations themselves need a lot of work though. I can't see your Guard/Slow/Revenge Counter have enough impact to make Meditations a good choice to put on your bar.

Most importantly, Natural Healing needs to change. Removing your own boons is just stupid, especially considering only other boon rips keep getting nerfed. If they can't do that, it should at least heal more for each boon removed.

Edited November 22, 2023 by Fueki.4753

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

23 minutes ago, Fueki.4753 said:

I was about to comment about you forgetting again that they should remove the particle effect from Tactics. But after re-reading, I noticed you actually added that.

I actually remembered you as I wrote it 😛

23 minutes ago, Fueki.4753 said:

And these are the reasons, why I can't see them do a meaningful number of your ideas here. But I'd love to see Warrior properly being able to support groups.

Realistically, most of what I put there is what needs to happen, or something along the same order of magnitude. These were just the easiest things to do with the current set of traits. If Anet decided to wholesale radically change things up, then who knows what they would do.

23 minutes ago, Fueki.4753 said:

Meditations themselves need a lot of work though. I can't see your Guard/Slow/Revenge Counter have enough impact to make Meditations a good choice to put on your bar.

If NH had the boon removal removed, I can see that plus SBS on the bar. But, yeah Meditations themselves, as individual skills need a hard rework beyond what I put here.

23 minutes ago, Fueki.4753 said:

Most importantly, Natural Healing needs to change. Removing your own boons is just stupid, especially considering only other boon rips keep getting nerfed. If they can't do that, it should at least heal more for each boon removed.

Make it an AoE boon rip on the enemy instead that heals the Spellbreaker for more per boon ripped. Would never happen, but if warrior were ever balanced the way other professions have been in the past then that is the kind of buff that would happen.

[draxynnic.3719]

My personal thought was to apply alacrity when triggering boon removal, possibly with an additional effect that you apply a debilitating condition when attempting to remove a boon from a target with no boons. You're draining energy from the boons, or from the target directly, and giving it to your allies. Could have an interesting interaction with Natural Healing.

Triggering alacrity off meditations and having FC count as a meditation could work, especially if the trigger happens on skill activation (so it doesn't matter if the FC doesn't go off). Arenanet seems to be moving away from 'all skills of type X grant important boon Y', though.

A better approach might be the firebrand approach - rework one utility meditation to grant a decent uptime of alacrity, and have traits that can increase the uptime to 100%, perhaps with a bit of boon duration, while still leaving utility skills free for other purposes rather than encouraging bringing a full bar of meditations so you can stay in berserker gear.

Ultimately, though, the long-term approach would be for ArenaNet to identify the gaps present in several professions, and introducing a support warrior elite spec along with elite specs that fill some of the other gaps in 1-3 years.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

10 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

My personal thought was to apply alacrity when triggering boon removal, possibly with an additional effect that you apply a debilitating condition when attempting to remove a boon from a target with no boons. You're draining energy from the boons, or from the target directly, and giving it to your allies. Could have an interesting interaction with Natural Healing.

That is also an option. Great idea.

10 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Triggering alacrity off meditations and having FC count as a meditation could work, especially if the trigger happens on skill activation (so it doesn't matter if the FC doesn't go off). Arenanet seems to be moving away from 'all skills of type X grant important boon Y', though.

It, and the other boons might have to work in that way. The main push here though is putting them on FC, but tying them to overall meditations to fill gaps. If those boons triggered on just pressing FC and not require it to activate or hit, then this isn't necessary and something else can be done with Meditations.

10 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

A better approach might be the firebrand approach - rework one utility meditation to grant a decent uptime of alacrity, and have traits that can increase the uptime to 100%, perhaps with a bit of boon duration, while still leaving utility skills free for other purposes rather than encouraging bringing a full bar of meditations so you can stay in berserker gear.

In this case I think the prior suggestion of making those boons tied to using FC, without it activating may be that path. That leaves room for Banners and/or shouts.

10 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Ultimately, though, the long-term approach would be for ArenaNet to identify the gaps present in several professions, and introducing a support warrior elite spec along with elite specs that fill some of the other gaps in 1-3 years.

That is what is needed long term. Short term though Spellbreaker being that spec and tweaked to fit it is very easy to do.

[MisterDantes.1384]

Give OP a cookie! These re great suggestions

My hot takes too:

Give us an elite shout

Apply quickness for Berserker on activation and not on hit by burst. Still doean't make sense why warriors have this limitation when very few other professions have to deal with this.

[Grand Marshal.4098]

Elite Shout, Heal Skill Baner, Elite Stance are gonna add a lot for the core warrior if we ever get them, with 2 of these skills being team-oriented and 1 granting some necessary survivability or damage output. Maybe next expac who knows.

3 hours ago, MisterDantes.1384 said:

Give OP a cookie! These re great suggestions

My hot takes too:

Give us an elite shout

Apply quickness for Berserker on activation and not on hit by burst. Still doean't make sense why warriors have this limitation when very few other professions have to deal with this.

 

[draxynnic.3719]

Filling out the gaps in utility skills would probably be equivalent to a weapon in granting new combat options. Would need to come up with something for revenant, though. The obvious choice would be a fifth core legend, possibly condition-oriented.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

8 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Filling out the gaps in utility skills would probably be equivalent to a weapon in granting new combat options. Would need to come up with something for revenant, though. The obvious choice would be a fifth core legend, possibly condition-oriented.

Vekk please.

[draxynnic.3719]

On 11/25/2023 at 10:44 AM, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Vekk please.

I'd prefer something that isn't just a member of an existing profession.

[Guy.9207]

On 11/24/2023 at 7:08 PM, Grand Marshal.4098 said:

Elite Shout, Heal Skill Baner, Elite Stance are gonna add a lot for the core warrior if we ever get them, with 2 of these skills being team-oriented and 1 granting some necessary survivability or damage output. Maybe next expac who knows.

 

Give "Feel my wrath!" from Guard to Warrior tbh

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

1 hour ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

I'd prefer something that isn't just a member of an existing profession.

Eh, Jalis is pretty much a warrior, and Shiro was an Assassin, so it would still be on point for Revenant. They need an Asura and Norn legend for that matter still.

I'd rather see Vekk, if only for the NPC chatter when Ogden is around.

[Grand Marshal.4098]

18 minutes ago, NeverLoseGuy.3894 said:

Give "Feel my wrath!" from Guard to Warrior tbh

Better yet a low CD elite shout like 30 sec (to match relics) which grants defensive boons like Prot,Resistance,Resolution, stab for a decent duration and some superspeed sprinkled. You'd have to forego the elite banner for a blast finisher and offensive boons as well as rezz potential to synergies the shout. But I think it's kinda OK since you'd focus on not letting your allies die and ideally you should not rely on the banner to win.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

1 hour ago, Grand Marshal.4098 said:

Better yet a low CD elite shout like 30 sec (to match relics) which grants defensive boons like Prot,Resistance,Resolution, stab for a decent duration and some superspeed sprinkled. You'd have to forego the elite banner for a blast finisher and offensive boons as well as rezz potential to synergies the shout. But I think it's kinda OK since you'd focus on not letting your allies die and ideally you should not rely on the banner to win.

Can it have ammo though?

[Grand Marshal.4098]

5 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Can it have ammo though?

Probably not, but I'd be happy if it was a blast finisher shout for some karakosa and field synergy. Weird that no shout is a finisher.

[Eekasqueak.7850]

Gonna +1 on Spellbreaker being the alac spec, putting it on bladesworn was silly. 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

1 hour ago, Grand Marshal.4098 said:

Probably not, but I'd be happy if it was a blast finisher shout for some karakosa and field synergy. Weird that no shout is a finisher.

I'd like to see that, but that would be too much healing and you know it.

[draxynnic.3719]

23 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Eh, Jalis is pretty much a warrior, and Shiro was an Assassin, so it would still be on point for Revenant. They need an Asura and Norn legend for that matter still.

I'd rather see Vekk, if only for the NPC chatter when Ogden is around.

Jalis is pretty much channelling the Rite of the Great Dwarf, and Shiro is at least partially channelling the Jade Wind, which distinguishes both from just being a variant of warrior and thief respectively. Vekk, as far as we know, has no such distinction. I did consider Zinn pre-EoD, since he's become a much more legendary figure and could have a bunch of golem- and infusion-related skills, but now that feels like a case of "but mechanist exists". I did have a couple of ideas for norn legends, but both involve invoking something beyond "a really good member of some other playable profession".

Revenant legends should, IMO, be aiming to have something unique about them, rather than simply copying an existing playable profession. The vassal pair was a pretty big disappointment in that respect as it was, but at least it had the "two legends in one" thing going for it. But I'd really rather see revenant in the future taking a lot more inspiration from... well, anything that isn't a playable profession, really. Because what's the point if all it's going to do is re-tread ground that other professions have already covered?

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

26 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Jalis is pretty much channelling the Rite of the Great Dwarf, and Shiro is at least partially channelling the Jade Wind, which distinguishes both from just being a variant of warrior and thief respectively. Vekk, as far as we know, has no such distinction. I did consider Zinn pre-EoD, since he's become a much more legendary figure and could have a bunch of golem- and infusion-related skills, but now that feels like a case of "but mechanist exists". I did have a couple of ideas for norn legends, but both involve invoking something beyond "a really good member of some other playable profession".

Revenant legends should, IMO, be aiming to have something unique about them, rather than simply copying an existing playable profession. The vassal pair was a pretty big disappointment in that respect as it was, but at least it had the "two legends in one" thing going for it. But I'd really rather see revenant in the future taking a lot more inspiration from... well, anything that isn't a playable profession, really. Because what's the point if all it's going to do is re-tread ground that other professions have already covered?

Asgeir Dragonrender is probably your best bet then for Norn, or the Nornbear.

[draxynnic.3719]

30 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Asgeir Dragonrender is probably your best bet then for Norn, or the Nornbear.

Waaaaay ahead of you there, if you followed the link.

Didn't get around to compiling my thoughts for Zinn - that was next on my list, but life intervened and enough had been revealed once I had time again that I didn't see a lot of point.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

7 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Waaaaay ahead of you there, if you followed the link.

Didn't get around to compiling my thoughts for Zinn - that was next on my list, but life intervened and enough had been revealed once I had time again that I didn't see a lot of point.

lol sorry, on morning duty with a sick 5 yo and didn't open the link.