Janthir Wilds Spear Beta Event Feedback: Warrior [Merged]

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

The beta event for spears has begun and is open to all players with an account in good standing! The event runs from June 27 at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time until June 30 at 10:00 p.m. Pacific Time and we'd love to hear your feedback. Let us know what you think of the new weapon for warriors in this thread!

[ZEUStiger.3590]

Spear dps seems to be balanced for a ranged weapon. I believe this is a bug. The existence of virtuoso clearly communicates to players that ranged weapons should be overpowered dps-wise and be on par with melee weapons. Spear is not. Please fix this silly oversight.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

I have not found a single purpose for the spear yet.

Dmg wise, its worse than Rifle.

The 2.5s cast time of the Primal Burst kills the weapon for me in openworld as it is not possible to keep up Selfquickness via Heat the Soul.

(Without major Boon Duration. 50% is not enough for example)

I see no reason to play it on spellbreaker over something like Dagger/Mace in openworld.

Its also not fun to play at all.

You never want to press Spear Swipe as it moves you away from the enemy.

Harrier Toss is another self root.

 

For me, its a purely worse version of Rifle.

Which as we all know, is already in dire need of buffs.

 

Edited Thursday at 04:47 PM by DanAlcedo.3281

[Jzaku.9765]

Exactly what it looks like on the tin. Unbelievably boring weapon. The only thing to care about in PVE is the DPS which does not seem great since thats basically all Spear does. Not hyped for the expansion. 

GAMEPLAY FEEL FEEDBACK

• Extremely boring weapon both visually and gameplay-wise. Lack of effort put into it extremely apparent.
• [Harrier's Toss] (core burst) animation locks you when the exact same animation is used on Ele Fire Spear 2 with no animation lock.
  I really don't understand why. Is an evade that lets you move too powerful? On the Burst skill? The Burst skill isn't just another weapon skill, it's Warrior's entire profession mechanic! 
• Sluggish aftercast on many skills and the long cast times AND weird delays before hits are applied (especially on Spear 5) make you FEEL like you're just waving your hands around doing nothing surprisingly often. This is completely separate from DPS by the way, just talking about how it FEELS. 
• Barely does anything different from Rifle. You could probably just have buffed a Rifle power mod by 1.0 and it would be Spear.
• If I wanted to cleave in melee I would use a MELEE weapon. The fact that this weapon's cleave gets weaker at range is nonsensical.

PVE ENDGAME FEEDBACK

• This weapon doesn't feed itself enough Adrenaline so it's not replacing Axe, which means it's competing with a million other weapons such as GS for your "other set". And replacing GS is a very tough sell.
• Again, using this weapon as "a ranged swap" is literally the same role Rifle could be filling. It's not like Spear is doing anything else. 
• T1 Burst seems to be doing ~2.1 power mod and is competing with Earthshaker's 2.0 power mod (which stacks Attacker's Insight) and Breaching Strike's 3.75!! power mod. Since Spb is literally the only build actually using this version of the Burst I think it could stand to be buffed to do more damage in PVE. As it is, dropping Hammer for Spear makes it hard to upkeep Attacker's Insight.
• Berserker's rage extension mechanic relies heavily on being in melee since most of the Rage skills (notably Outrage) are melee.

BUGS

• [Wild Throw] (Berserker Burst) is refunding 3 Adrenaline when Burst skills shouldn't grant any Adrenaline. This bug is obfuscating how bad the Adrenaline generation is on Spear. Seems to have to do with how the skill is coded as 2 different skills alternating per hit, and the version that hits a total of 3 times (and doesn't have CD or Cast Time shown in the Combat Log) doesn't have the "Burst skills don't grant Adrenaline" clause. 

Edited Thursday at 05:23 PM by Jzaku.9765

[ZEUStiger.3590]

(PvE)

Seconding DanAlcedo.3281 here, I don't see any reason why warrior spear exists.

It has comparable dps to rifle, which is already in a sorry state. The only benefit over rifle is that you can't be ammo-starved. You will have much the same issues with berserk uptime, since only Shattering Blow and Blood Reckoning are available to you to extend berserk's duration with no enemies in melee range.

Adrenaline generation is an issue with spear just like it is with rifle. You're basically forced to use Burst Mastery, otherwise you simply won't generate enough adrenaline in time for F1 to come off cooldown. And using Burst Mastery means you can't use Axe Mastery, which pretty much locks you into playing only ranged weapons, and both power options for warrior ranged weapons are terrible. If the intended purpose of a ranged weapon is to briefly get out of melee range when the situation requires so, and then return back to melee ASAP (which, I will reiterate, can no longer be considered good design because of the existence of ranged-only builds that are as good at damage as their melee-only competition) - rifle was already serving that purpose, and spear adds nothing new to the table.

Inverse-range-scaling mechanics are antithetical to the whole idea of a ranged weapon. If it's best used in melee - why would I use spear over a more capable melee weapon in the first place?

The aoe radius on #1 is way too small to provide any value unless the targets are really clumped up.

Using skill #2 at all is a net dps loss. And the 120 radius is smaller than melee range. And there is no visual indication on the aoe decal of what the radius WILL be. Surely you can implement a dynamically scaling decal if this mechanic is here to stay.

Dodge backwards on #3 is as "PvP design" as you can get. Rifle #4 already committed this sin long ago. It's going to be a "never press" button in PvE.

Skill #4 is a CC. Using it on cooldown is not a dps loss, but neither it is a dps gain. Therefore it will be used only for CC when needed.

The delay on #5 skill seems like it was shoehorned in in a desperate attempt to add something to scale depending on range but not affect the dps negatively. A solution to a self-created problem.

Which leaves spear with only 3 usable buttons for the purposes of dealing damage: 1, 5 and F1. And spear hardly has any other purpose besides dealing damage - it has zero boons or utility. Its toolkit is a barebones as it gets. It's somehow even more bland than axes, but at least axes are good at their job of dealing damage. Spear is not.

900 range is like adding an insult to injury.

You can tell the weapon is in a dire state when even resetting all cooldowns every 5 seconds in the golem training area and using all spear's "most powerful" skills with virtually no cooldown still yields about 50% of what the current standard of dps benchmarks is. It needs 50-100% damage buffs on all skills to compete with the currently prevailing ranged builds.

I really didn't want to make this statement in conclusion, but I feel like it's the only statement that's appropriate: scrap everything and start over from scratch. This ain't it, chief.

---

An actual minor bug: damage numbers are not stacking up properly on berserker's F1 burst, I assume because it uses 2 different skills under the hood to throw spears using alternating hands.

The "arrow swoosh" audio on berserker's F1 sounds like it's mono with low bitrate, it's muffled. But even if it didn't - it still sounds like arrows being shot from a bow, it might even use the same sound as ranger longbow #2.

---

After more tests, best I could manage to accomplish with spear/rifle was about 26k on a golem, out of 43k needed to provide competition to cvirt, meaning that both spear and rifle need 65%+ damage buffs. But even then ranged warrior would still be indisputably worse than cvirt and never a preferred choice by anyone except diehard warrior fans, due to the lack of utility and self-sustain. It's almost as if there is a bigger problem in the room, and it isn't warrior-shaped.

Berserk uptime is less of an issue than I thought, bursts+shatteringblow+heal can keep it up for about 2 mins. Adrenaline gain has pain points, but the biggest issues are mitigated by Burst Mastery and Versatile Rage. Commentary on spear skills remains valid, basically pressing any buttons besides 5 and F1 is a trap. Both spear and rifle remain incredibly uninspired and bland, both feeling like they're stuck in 2012 design, surpassed by every other new weapon of every other class.

Edited Friday at 01:38 AM by ZEUStiger.3590

[devastoscz.9851]

Well, besides the extreme simplicity of the weapon skills themselves and the lack of any visual flare, I find two major problems:

Skill 2 and 5 both suffer from needing the enemy to be standing still in order to land the damage hits. The aftershock on 2 can be literally walked out of by enemies in starting zones, and the spear bombardment on 5 trails behind a walking enemy landing ZERO hits.

[Frozey.8513]

Spear 3 feels very counter intuitive in the sense that it helps you stay further away from the enemies, while rest of spear mechanics reward you for being as close to melee range as possible. Should the design for spear to stay as rewarding melee range combat, then please make Spear 3 into gap closer instead, preferably with at least 600 range leap.

[Genesis.8572]

4 minutes ago, Frozey.8513 said:

Spear 3 feels very counter intuitive in the sense that it helps you stay further away from the enemies, while rest of spear mechanics reward you for being as close to melee range as possible. Should the design for spear to stay as rewarding melee range combat, then please make Spear 3 into gap closer instead, preferably with at least 600 range leap.

Another problem is that if you are playing a Berserker, you are typically going to use Head Butt to get into Berserk mode ASAP. However, Head Butt has a 400 range, and you are encouraged to be up close and personal with that. This means that as far as a ranged weapon option, it's likely going to have a MUCH SLOWER ramp-up time for damage and berserking as a Berserker than melee options. 

[GeneralWut.7426]

Spear autoattack seems fine at the moment, reasonably well-balanced. Disrupting Spear could probably have a slight tweak to make it more viable to use on spellbreaker to fuel attacker's insight, maybe have it daze a target that's struck when not using a skill, and stun when a target is using a skill. That or maybe instead of the evade, slap a stun on Harrier's Toss.  In addition to this, Spear Swipe feels awkward to use in melee with the distance it moves you backward.

[Captain Crapface.7528]

Spear skill 5 [Spearmarshal's Support] can be fully avoided ny simply running in a strait line.

No superspeed or swiftness required just F-ing walk forward.

Video evidence (posted on twatter due to lack of better/faster option):

 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

13 minutes ago, Captain Crapface.7528 said:

Spear skill 5 [Spearmarshal's Support] can be fully avoided ny simply running in a strait line.

No superspeed or swiftness required just F-ing walk forward.

Video evidence (posted on twatter due to lack of better/faster option):

 

That right there. That was my worst fear about spear 5...

By Balthazar's Beard... *sigh* I am actually not looking forward to getting off of work soon...

[nobleboivin.4102]

Skill 1 animatiosn could be sped up a little bit.  Feels slow and sluggish

[Kitty.4806]

Forceful Greatsword trait NEEDS to apply to this.

[Torq.4926]

Tested spear mainly in wvw roaming/duels, here are my thoughts so far:
-root on core/spellbreaker f1 is terrible for competitive, if you are trying to use the skill defensively a decent player will just channel something into the end of your evade frames, the skill is 900 range ground target aoe so you can't even cast it from backline like kill shot/gun flame
-2 and 5 are almost impossible to land on anyone that moves and/or has a brain, also 900 range means it can't really chase well
-auto attack does about as much damage as the weakest hit of staff auto (lol) and has the same cast time
-3 has an animation lock and the evade is shorter than the cast time, tried about facing it for mobility but I think you would move the same distance by holding w key
-4 is the best skill on the weapon, 1200 range skillshot with immob/daze, the cast is 0.75s so I doubt you can reactively interrupt anything with less than 1s cast time
-berserker f1 is good damage, but you might as well go condi berserker and use sword f1 instead since it's a better weapon

Overall warrior spear seems underwhelming for competitive modes, I think I'd play power longbow or even rifle over this.

[Kitty.4806]

Spear primal burst takes too long to cast. Needs to be half-length cast, or instant to be decent damage.

Spear 3 needs to be a gap closer, not gap creator.

Something needs to be an ammo skill.

Cast times need to be shorter overall and a little more damage on spear 1 in all modes.

 

Suggestion: make spear 5 an ammo skill like pistol 5, where it stores up charges and unleashes all the spears stored up at once. Also make them explosions.

Edited Thursday at 07:17 PM by Kitty.4806

[Zekent.3652]

Ranger getting a melee animation while getting closer and not warrior that gets extra damage by getting closer.

The "balanced ranged combat" on autos, meanwhile, kid named virtuoso.

Not a single boon for some reason.

Better autos while getting into melee with NO gap closer, ok.

Please fix all of this, there are 3 skillshots but there's no real reward for half of this weapon being just skillshots.

Ranger almost ALWAYS gets the better thing, longbow, greatsword, maces, etc, and now spear.

Ranger just feels like a better warrior at this point, soulbeast with the same role as berserker and it's just better than berserker in PvP, a whole support based spec (druid) and warrior has none, i hate to compare classes, but it's hard to not do it when warrior gets the goofy things while classes like ranger exists, with a notorious design favoritism, just look at the slow longbow compared to ranger's longbow, faster for everything and 1500 base range... if this is not favoritism, i don't know what it is.

Edited Thursday at 09:40 PM by Zekent.3652
Mistake when talked about the ranged 'benefit' while getting closer

[Laughingman.9537]

Initial impressions, spear can work well in WvW zerg fights, other than seems pretty meh...

[Snowskau.4369]

The more I compare it to rifle and bow, the more I realise spear doesn't actually add anything. It's berserker burst is a rapid fire attack much like rifle 2, it gets a dodgeroll just like rifle and a knockback just like rifle. It gets ranged on-target AoE much like rifle, but additionally one you can ground target--with a blast finisher, just like longbow. It also gets an immob akin to longbow, but multi-target. It basically just takes what warrior can already do but does it potentially better. At that point you can just buff rifle and have the job done. Effectively the only thing this spear will add to warrior is the ability to roleplay as a Paragon for flavor. Perhaps this weapon was supposed to fill some flexible midline niche but in it's current state it just feels like it fails to be either a ranged or melee weapon in practice--it has seemingly less power than warrior's already weak range weapons, and even though it encourages melee it has a skill to put distance between you and the target. I don't think it will be bad with it's current design--provided corrections to values and Spearmarshal's Support targeting--but it will be pointless.

I could harp on how every other class' spear gets awesome unique mechanics while warrior doesn't, but that'd be beating a dead horse at this point. Spear's lack of purpose could be remedied by giving a spear skill or two mechanics that interact with allies a la Paragon that the weapon is very obviously supposed to emulate. It seems remiss to not at least give it some generic PBAoE boons like might or aegis like Paragon was known to do.

Also, it would be good if the telegraph for Maiming Spear dynamically showed the effective radius.

Edited Thursday at 08:26 PM by Snowskau.4369

[Napster.8290]

I'll give some feedback about WvW, mainly roaming and smallscale/cloud fights (3-4h). The Weapon overall is mediocre at best, even tho I like the general skills (but nostalgia kicks, because my main character and GWAMM was Paragon in GW1). Like on the staff feedback I'll go over the skills separately

1) Autoattacks: 

- Change the name lol. Mighty Throw was the hardest hitting pure power dmg spear throw in gw1, would better fit the F1.

- Very plain skill. Boring but overall fine.

- Little speed up would be great

- Low damage, increase the power coefficient a bit pls

 

2) Maiming Spear:

- Super low dmg for a delayed skill shot, it almost feels like a bad AutoAttack at this point

- Remove the radius disadvantage for being far away, let warrior finally have a ranged weapon

- Reduce the delay, enemies just walk out of the aftershock

-  I'm fine with it being a skillshot

- Blast Finisher is good

 

3) Spear Swipe:

- Fun skill and the only good skill so far, cool animation

- Reduce CD to 10sec to match the evade skill from Greatsword and better fit the scheme of increasing CDs from #1 to #5

- Make range bigger/jump further backwards to also be able to use it as mobility in about-face

 

4) Disrupting Throw:

- Braindead to put a Skillshot on a RANGED stun with 3/4sec cast time AND a hitbox like playing Call of Duty sniper! It's impossible to hit a player who knows how to use WASD...

- Remove Skillshot and make it track enemies

- Reduce cast time to 1/2sec. It is a RANGED daze!

- Good damage tho, but way too inconsistent to land

 

5) Spearmarshal's Support:

- Decent Skill if it would land

- Improve tracking please. Often times enemies can just walk away from the "rain", I'm not sure if this is intended?

- Increase radius slightly so you are just about able to cleave people trying to rezz their mates.

 

F1) Harrier's Toss:

- Decent skill in general, but switch names with Autoattack pls!

- yet another skillshot...

- Blast finisher is good on it, makes sense

- Pump the damage up! It's already hard to hit (even tho evade frame helps ofc, it's not enough to make it good tho), but it still ain't tracking and does about the same damage as staff F1 which is giga easy to land, heals you and spreads weakness...

- Animation lock is very bad for competitive modes

- Keep the Skill Shot but make it hit like a bomb as a reward, so it finally feels like a burst skill on warrior.

 

Overall the skill ideas are nice, but the numbers don't quite add up. It feels underpowered. It has absolutely zero boons, no mechanic and small damage numbers. Let it at least be a good kitten mid-range power weapon for warrior! Make it hit hard for the missing boons, mechanics and for the lack of warrior powerlevel overall. Warrior specs are weak compared to everything else running around + cele crap is still ruining WvW. Give warrior at least big NUMBERS to fight those disadvantages. 

 

Once more, it is a very simple and straight forward power weapon. It does nothing else. LET. IT. DEAL. DMG.

Edited Thursday at 08:39 PM by Napster.8290

[Atrom.1564]

14 minutes ago, Napster.8290 said:

I'll give some feedback about WvW, mainly roaming and smallscale/cloud fights (3-4h). The Weapon overall is mediocre at best, even tho I like the general skills (but nostalgia kicks, because my main character and GWAMM was Paragon in GW1). Like on the staff feedback I'll go over the skills separately

1) Autoattacks: 

- Change the name lol. Mighty Throw was the hardest hitting pure power dmg spear throw in gw1, would better fit the F1.

- Very plain skill. Boring but overall fine.

- Little speed up would be great

- Low damage, increase the power coefficient a bit pls

 

2) Maiming Spear:

- Super low dmg for a delayed skill shot, it almost feels like a bad AutoAttack at this point

- Remove the radius disadvantage for being far away, let warrior finally have a ranged weapon

- Reduce the delay, enemies just walk out of the aftershock

-  I'm fine with it being a skillshot

- Blast Finisher is good

 

3) Spear Swipe:

- Fun skill and the only good skill so far, cool animation

- Reduce CD to 10sec to match the evade skill from Greatsword and better fit the scheme of increasing CDs from #1 to #5

- Make range bigger/jump further backwards to also be able to use it as mobility in about-face

 

4) Disrupting Throw:

- Braindead to put a Skillshot on a RANGED stun with 3/4sec cast time AND a hitbox like playing Call of Duty sniper! It's impossible to hit a player who knows how to use WASD...

- Remove Skillshot and make it track enemies

- Reduce cast time to 1/2sec. It is a RANGED daze!

- Good damage tho, but way too inconsistent to land

 

5) Spearmarshal's Support:

- Decent Skill if it would land

- Improve tracking please. Often times enemies can just walk away from the "rain", I'm not sure if this is intended?

- Increase radius slightly so you are just about able to cleave people trying to rezz their mates.

 

F1) Harrier's Toss:

- Decent skill in general, but switch names with Autoattack pls!

- yet another skillshot...

- Blast finisher is good on it, makes sense

- Pump the damage up! It's already hard to hit (even tho evade frame helps ofc, it's not enough to make it good tho), but it still ain't tracking and does about the same damage as staff F1 which is giga easy to land, heals you and spreads weakness...

- Animation lock is very bad for competitive modes

- Keep the Skill Shot but make it hit like a bomb as a reward, so it finally feels like a burst skill on warrior.

 

Overall the skill ideas are nice, but the numbers don't quite add up. It feels underpowered. It has absolutely zero boons, no mechanic and small damage numbers. Let it at least be a good kitten mid-range power weapon for warrior! Make it hit hard for the missing boons, mechanics and for the lack of warrior powerlevel overall. Warrior specs are weak compared to everything else running around + cele crap is still ruining WvW. Give warrior at least big NUMBERS to fight those disadvantages. 

 

Once more, it is a very simple and straight forward power weapon. It does nothing else. LET. IT. DEAL. DMG.

I second this. It literally does no damage unless you play glass cannon zerker. The skills dont feel good in general.

[NicoX.9385]

My feedback is purely from a gameplay/visual view (i leave numbers for the more profound ones) but so far as a GW1 Paragon main i was waiting for the GW2 version since launch and i'm a bit dissapointed. 
First of the "weapon drawn stance" (https://imgur.com/a/B8DC1Bv) i think it needs to be more straight up feels more like gollum with the wide feet stance and bent back, in comparison paragons in gw1 were very elegant in their animations. And as well due to this weird stance running with weapon looks incredibly stupid....

 

Secondly the berserker primal burst variant of the F1 skill has the same animation as rangers offhand Axe 5 whirl which doesnt fit at all it would be physically impossible to throw spears that fast in that positions 😄

Also i personally find it unfitting for a range weapon that you do more aoe spread etc when you are closer. I know meta in raids, fractals etc is usually stacking on bosses but just doesn't fit that you need to stay close for a range weapons max potential. And the spear swipe skill is also bit weird when the playstyle you made is stay meele but than add a skill that brings you away.

So overall PLEASE take a look back at how elegant gw1 Paragon was and integrate that into the spear animations.

 

[AWACS.6537]

Spear Swipe doesn't make any sense in the theme of the weapon as three of the skills are better when you're closer, while spear swipe sends you away. It's an odd choice for an offensive oriented ranged weapon.
It would make more sense if it sent you towards an enemy with a knockdown instead of a knockback, like Bull's Charge.

Mighty Throw doesn't give might... maybe it could give one might per activation or something, it feels terrible to use anyways.

 

Spearmarshal's Support is fine... in PvE.
It's not against actual players, since you can quite literally W key away from it, it has a longer delay if you're farther away, and it's fairly easy to see coming because of the marker. Great for finishing downs I suppose since it puts pressure on them, but otherwise, it's not doing real damage without a setup, which is a lot to ask given the fact that there are so many ways to cleanse or ignore non-damaging conditions. It should track better.

 

I think Disrupting Throw is fine, it's fun to use and feels rewarding to hit, but Maiming Spear needs to be changed.
It's easy for the second portion of damage to whiff, it penalizes you for being far away, and it just feels awful. I'd remove the aftershock entirely and add the damage to the initial impact of the weapon. It doesn't do that much damage, and it's very easy to avoid. Maiming Spear needs also come out much faster, since you have to toss it, wait for it to land, and then wait for the aftershock.

[Zekent.3652]

Spear needs at least 1 boon, and please be fury since warrior really struggles with that if they're not running greatsword.

And please provide some unblockable since the whole weapon it's almost all projectiles, the current status of the game really hates projectiles in competitive game modes.

[cryorion.9532]

I just don't understand one thing: why warrior can't have more flip skills? Spear is absolutely slacked off with nonsensical "mechanics". Please do better beacuse current warrior spear is disappointing. Literally no one will look at the spear in its current form and say "Wow, this weapon is so good, what a good job devs did with it." It is pretty sad when devs are unable to nail as if they didn't know what players want (which is most likely the case).

I think a lot of people here already pointed out biggest flaws and good feedback for spear. I was waiting to see if spear being good will convince me to finally preorder the expansion (as I care only about warrior spear at this point) but this is not it. I feel bad for supporting such bad and slacked off design...

If anything, at least please increase damage and range of all skills to 1200. It feels bad to fight other ranged classes where they can hit me but I can't hit them with ranged weapon.

Edited Thursday at 09:28 PM by cryorion.9532

[Kitty.4806]

1 hour ago, Zekent.3652 said:

Ranger getting a melee animation while getting closer and not warrior that gets extra damage by getting closer.

Damage gets lower the further away you are "balanced ranged combat", meanwhile, kid named virtuoso.

Not a single boon for some reason.

More damage while getting in melee with NO gap closer, ok.

Please fix all of this, there are 3 skillshots but there's no real reward for half of this weapon being just skillshots.

Ranger almost ALWAYS gets the better thing, longbow, greatsword, maces, etc, and now spear.

Ranger just feels like a better warrior at this point, soulbeast with the same role as berserker and it's just better than berserker in PvP, a whole support based spec (druid) and warrior has none, i hate to compare classes, but it's hard to not do it when warrior gets the goofy things while classes like ranger exists, with a notorious design favoritism in them, just look at the slow longbow compared to ranger's longbow, faster for everything and 1500 base range... if this is not favoritism, i don't know what it is.

while I mostly agree with you, they did not implement a damage factor on spear range. They decided it would cleave more the closer you are (aoe gets bigger)