A Proposal For Warrior's Profession Mechanic

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

BLUF: Warrior's adrenaline mechanic has not stood the test of time and needs a refresh for 2024 and onwards.

Simply put, Adrenaline is the only profession mechanic resource that decays to absolute 0 between fights., and no Rev's energy going back to 50% does not count, they still have 50% of their energy, no I am not going to count mesmer's shatters either since they can use them with zero clones. Warrior cannot use Bursts without adrenaline. Not only is warrior forced to begin at 0 adrenaline, adrenaline begins to decay very quickly after combat and at a rapid pace, meaning even if there was another enemy close by, but far enough away that you leave combat on the way to them, you start out behind.

From a game balance point of view, every other profession being able to use their profession mechanic from the beginning of a fight, while warrior is unable to, is bad balance. It is requiring the warrior to play by a separate set of rules, and that isn't fair.

The length of time that it takes to begin decaying and the rate of decay need to be reverted to what they were prior to September 9th, 2014. That update doubled the decay rate, caused it to decay the moment combat ended, and caused all adrenaline to be spent even if an attack missed.

I'm not asking for all of that to be reverted, I am asking for the decay rate to be returned to the original rate, half of what it is now, and for there to be a delay post combat until it begins to decay. The delay does not need to be the original delay of several seconds, a second or two would be fine.

Additionally, several weapons have poor adrenaline management considering the main way to gain adrenaline is through hitting a target, so any weapon with single strikes, or slow rates of attacking, will fall behind. There are some very OP traits that make adrenaline gain trivial on certain weapons, but that just forces taking those traits. I think this needs to change.

I believe the following mechanics should be added to Adrenaline, or Flow in the case of Bladesworn:

• Gain 1 strike of adrenaline when struck.
  • This is removed from Cleansing Ire. Cleansing Ire now clears blind on using a burst in addition to its previous cleanses.
• Gain 1 strike of adrenaline on a critical hit.
  • This is removed from Furious and Axe Mastery. Furious now grants expertise and condition damage on each stack. Axe Mastery now inflicts vulnerability upon scoring a critical hit for 4s per stack in addition to it's ferocity gain.
• Gain 5 strikes of adrenaline on inflicting a Crowd Control skill or inflicting movement impairing conditions
  • This is removed from Opportunist and Hammer Mastery. Opportunist's ICD is removed. Hammer Mastery's damage bonus is increased to +25%.

All other traits that grant adrenaline remain unchanged.

Would all these changes be needed? I'd like them to be added, but I think it can be debated if they are all needed. Adrenaline can be too hard to gain, and too easy to lose. I'd rather correct both those issues first and then reevaluate it.

[Dirame.8521]

I definitely agree that Adrenaline when struck and when we critical should be native. As for on CC... that's debatable. Considering AoEs in team fights and in PvE, the speed of gaining Adrenaline will be incredible already.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

12 minutes ago, Dirame.8521 said:

I definitely agree that Adrenaline when struck and when we critical should be native. As for on CC... that's debatable. Considering AoEs in team fights and in PvE, the speed of gaining Adrenaline will be incredible already.

That's fair. If all those are rolled into Adrenaline, then 5 strikes on CC or movement impairing conditions may be too much. I think what is more important is addressing the slow base rate that adrenaline is gained and how needed certain traits are to counter that on certain weapon types. Having Adrenaline on Crit and on being hit will not help Hammer or Longbow very much but having it on CC and movement impairing conditions helps them greatly while the inverse is true for things like GS or Axe.

[StraightPath.3972]

I've a different idea, inspired by GW1 (least the small exerpt from Captain Crapface's vid):

Give us 5 bars of adrenaline, 10 adrenaline each.
Pressing F1 consumes the adrenaline we gathered (but only up to 3 bars) and makes our next skill empowered.
And with exception of elites, any and all warrior skills will be able to use this mechanic for enhanced effects.

As for burst skills - they would stay.
Simply the moment you consume adrenaline to empower your next skill, F1 flips over to the burst skill,
becoming your first (but not only!) option to spend your gathered adrenaline.

This design would greatly both weaken and empower the Warrior.
Base versions of skills would likely be weaker than current ones, but you'd have way more
options on the table with empowered versions.

A bad warrior would be paying left and right with adrenaline to empower his healing and utility skills to make up
for his misplays. A great warrior would become the master of positioning and timing  in order to overcome challenges without spending adrenaline on unnecessary things, in turn getting moments of extreme power and impact using it at the right time and the right skill.
This type of Warrior would make current one look like a core necro during dps benchmarks.

Edited June 26 by StraightPath.3972

[Smoothpine.1895]

I have to say right now, I'm really liking both @Lan Deathrider.5910 and @StraightPath.3972 proposals in here; Lan's ideas on how to make adrenaline management more manageable and StraightPath's idea for another way adrenaline could be utilized. My only suggestion is a combination of both proposals. Adrenaline shouldn't be punishing to gain or to maintain, and it should allow for more options for how it's used.

4 hours ago, StraightPath.3972 said:

Give us 5 bars of adrenaline, 10 adrenaline each.
Pressing F1 consumes the adrenaline we gathered (but only up to 3 bars) and makes our next skill empowered.
And with exception of elites, any and all warrior skills will be able to use this mechanic for enhanced effects.

As for burst skills - they would stay.
Simply the moment you consume adrenaline to empower your next skill, F1 flips over to the burst skill,
becoming your first (but not only!) option to spend your gathered adrenaline.

My biggest problem personally with the current adrenaline system was how it is strictly focused around one button that drains all your adrenaline resources, no matter how much you built up.  So I'm all in favor of having the option to use a chuck of adrenaline, not all of it, to activate the profession mechanics, and having options to spend it on, other than just the burst skill. 

Edited June 26 by Smoothpine.1895

[Dadnir.5038]

Just make sure that all "F2" (or F1 for bladesworn) don't need any adrenaline to be used and tie a few traits to this slot and here we go, warrior no longer find himself without main mechanic at the begining of the fight.

For core warrior they woould just have to add an F2.

For example, warrior could have an "unarmed" skillset as a hidden main mechanic and core could have an F2 with no adrenaline cost that allow you to keep your weapon is sheathed while in combat, having access to these skills.

[Fueki.4753]

I think that Adrenaline should simply not decay out of combat.

Alternatively, Adrenaline could simply become 10 when leaving combat (similar to Revenant's 50).

Either of these would make Bursts more reliably usable at the start of combat.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

4 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Just make sure that all "F2" (or F1 for bladesworn) don't need any adrenaline to be used and tie a few traits to this slot and here we go, warrior no longer find himself without main mechanic at the begining of the fight.

For core warrior they woould just have to add an F2.

For example, warrior could have an "unarmed" skillset as a hidden main mechanic and core could have an F2 with no adrenaline cost that allow you to keep your weapon is sheathed while in combat, having access to these skills.

'F2' to me is a separate issue. I think there needs to be a core F2, then several traits can be redirected to key off of F2, or some new ones made. A core F2 could be a second set of burst skills, or the F1 from your second weapon set that swaps you to that set when used, or a basic boon button. It just needs to be there and be functional.

[Dadnir.5038]

1 minute ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

'F2' to me is a separate issue. I think there needs to be a core F2, then several traits can be redirected to key off of F2, or some new ones made. A core F2 could be a second set of burst skills, or the F1 from your second weapon set that swaps you to that set when used, or a basic boon button. It just needs to be there and be functional.

WHich is basically what I propose herre 😉

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

36 minutes ago, Fueki.4753 said:

I think that Adrenaline should simply not decay out of combat.

I get their concept, and is a holdover from GW1, but it was done better in GW1.

36 minutes ago, Fueki.4753 said:

Alternatively, Adrenaline could simply become 10 when leaving combat (similar to Revenant's 50).

That would require a trait, I think.

36 minutes ago, Fueki.4753 said:

Either of these would make Bursts more reliably usable at the start of combat.

That or making it easier to gain overall without trait investment.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

How about we undo the nerfs to adrenaline first they made like 10y ago. 

[Fueki.4753]

1 hour ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

That would require a trait, I think.

If Revenant doesn't need a trait for that, Warrior shouldn't need one either.

Edited June 27 by Fueki.4753

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

7 minutes ago, Fueki.4753 said:

If Revenant doesn't need a trait for that, Warrior shouldn't need one either.

I think stopping the decay rate from happening right as combat ends, and starting the decay after X seconds would achieve that in the end though. We still have several means to instantly fill our bar, its the decay that stops that from being truly useful at the onset of a fight. Revs can't do that other than burning Arcane Echo or swapping legends. That and their energy is what fuels everything besides AA. That is more limiting in a way.

[cryorion.9532]

What really triggers me is when I do meta event, the battle area is filled with gazillion mobs and I get out of combat because mobs I hit died. So I run to other mobs that are nearby (literally battlefield with tons of mobs) so I can use primal burst since I have full adrenaline left but game says kitten you and begins the adrenaline decay so my primal burst gets cancelled and goes on cooldown. This happens uncommonly but it still does and is absolutely stupid.

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To the topic: I fully support all the adrenaline changes, especially adrenaline gain on being hit. It makes no sense that warrior doesn't naturally generate adrenaline when being hit (and needs trait for it). It's like when you get slapped in public in front of crowd and you don't mind it and it doesn't bother you.

Great example is axes and Decapitate being able to generate adrenaline so smoothly and intuitively (excluding the fact that it requires Axe Mastery trait to work). That is how warrior mechanic should be as baseline. Not to specifically pick traits in order for the adrenaline and burst mechanics to practically work. Just take any build that doesn't use traits that improve adrenaline generation (including Discipline's Versatile Rage that gives 5 adrenaline on weapon swap). These builds are 🤢.