Ambrosius Custard.8137

Wow, they really did it. Looking forward to trying out a support warrior. I'm still not sold on the barrier on warhorn 5 and I think it's kinda lazy. It'd be cool to see Soldier's Focus be more interactive too, like the benefit you give scales depending on how much adrenaline you expend with the burst. Can't wait to try it out though.

IMO I think reworking Tactics alongside Warhorn is the key to making it a truly viable option. Not to say that improving the Warhorn isn't welcome, but even the proposed changes won't make it a meta pick anywhere or even a tier 2 build pick in all honesty. To be honest, the 'tools' are kind of their already but I feel that the minor traits in the Tactics spec are really, really lacklustre. You could do the following for the minors to make it more workable: (Minor Adept) Combined Determined Renewal + Reviver's Might (lower the reduction from DR if needs be but it's such a minor thing) > (Minor Master) Powerful Synergy (combos have kind of been left behind with the powercreep but having access to this and 2 blast finishers on Warhorn would be pretty sweet) > Inspiring Presence (as is now) + Phalanx Strength (PS is a decent idea for a trait but I feel it should be core to the Tactics specline, this would open up the door to other Major traits allowing for other boons to be shared, as a potential balancer you could reduce the radius and add an increase in radius as part of the trait that shares other boons) As for a rework on Quick Breathing, IMO it should add something to each Burst one hander you pair with Warhorn to make it more supportive. Even if say it reduces the damage on said Burst abilities as a drawback.

If you're talking about open world then I'd swap out mace and shield for double axes and swap Discipline for Defence (3-2-3). For utilities I'd take slot Healing Signet for your heals, Shake it Off, another stunbreaker (Dolyak, Frenzy, Featherfoot, one of the stances whichever you prefer) and finally a physical skill (whichever one you prefer but I generally think Kick and Stomp are best for overworld PvE, Kick gives you high up time on Peak Performance and Attacker's Insight and Stomp is another stunbreaker). For gear grab a mixture of mainly Knights and couple of bits of Cavaliers. Runes are Rage (nice and cheap) and both sets of weapons take Energy and Agility (the former being the only real expense). This is pretty much the Hizen Spellbreaker and is my go to when I want to switch my brain off in open world. You do good damage (good might generation, axes for AoE and your high toughness is also contributing to power) and have pretty incredible sustain against most open world fights through self heals (heal on might generation, heal when stun breaking, regen after using Burst skills, regen from Healing Sig etc). The only are it really struggles in is bosses that constantly vom condis (though this is usually where I'll slot Featherfoot).

I've tested them against a longbow and they both feel like they're around 0.25s slower than their tooltips. Anecdotally Riflebutt doesn't seem to be as quick as Fan of Fire despite the same cast time on the tooltip and Brutal Shot feels like it's closer to Arcing and Pin Down in terms of cast despite apparently being 0.25s quicker. Edit: Alternatively maybe longbow skills are just faster than their tooltip suggests hmm...

If we're talking about zerker rifle then I kind of agree that it is 'okay' as a backup weapon even if it is carried largely by volley + gunflame burst. If we're talking core rifle, then no I don't agree that rifle is really 'okay'. I can't think of anywhere that I'd use a rifle even as a backup weapon in pretty much any game mode unless I'm fooling around. I'd honestly rather take long bow, even on a power build, if I want to just plink at things in open world. Back in the day core rifle did see some use in WvW, but not really in the current state of the game outside of what are really tier 2 zerker rifle builds that pretty much just switch out to lmao with a volley + gunflame combo. I actually agree that just flat out buffing AA isn't the answer but it's also pretty pointless to make comparisons between Brutal Aim and Fierce Shot in isolation of the rest of the kit. As a start, Brutal stacks vuln and casts faster (despite the tooltip saying they're both 3/4, it's slightly quicker) and Fierce only gets a very slight adrenaline increase against vulnerable targets. My own suggestions, along with explanations, would be: 1) Bake in the bonus adrenaline from Crack Shot to Fierce Shot. I think something along these lines is better than just out and out increasing rifle damage further like it was in 2018 (and still seldom used). Numbers wise even with this buff, we're still talking 10 AA shots against a vulnerable target to max adrenaline, which seems reasonable. This would basically make core rifle a good adrenaline generator when you can't stick or engage a target in melee, which seems like a good place to be. Crack Shot is quite neat but it's rarely ever taken due to it being next to Warriors Sprint. I'd consider moving Crack Shot or combining it with another trait, but I couldn't say where (potentially to a different tree than Discipline as to actually create some trade offs). If the adrenaline gain were to be baked in baseline then a possible addition to the trait could be basically adding bleed back to auto (back when Fierce Shot was Bleeding Shot) as it was relatively minor and inline with similar ranged traits like Burning Arrows. 2) Reduce Brutal Shot from 1/2 to 1/4 cast time. The main reason is that Brutal Shot has always had this weird bug where it goes on cooldown if the target moves behind or walks past you, having 1/4 cast time would potentially eliminate this bug and also make sense given that one of the purposes of Brutal shot is to quickly create distance between you and the target. Given that it doesn't pierce or cleave, this doesn't seem like a big change. 3) Either unroot Kill Shot but keep the current cast time or keep the root and reduce the cast time to be 3/4 like Gun Flame. In either case, Gun Flame is still the better burst skill (and should be as it's kind zerkers whole shtick) but the original intention of Kill Shot was to be high risk/high reward and in the current state of the game it's kind of high risk/mediocre-at-best reward. In the current state of the game, now that we've got elite specs and all the power creep, Kill Shot feels pretty out of place. Unrooting would bring it more in line with the other 'long' cast time rifle skill Volley and make the weapon overall less clunky I feel. I think these are really just QoL changes overall. I do think that any further buffing of rifle needs to be carefully considered and I think the best way would be via giving some good traits to rifle as to create a trade off.

It doesn't even have to be the numbers you've outlined tbh. Rifle just needs looking at in some capacity. If Anet are worried about the knock on effects of buffing rifle base damage and cooldowns and how it'd interact with spellbreakers in PvP then I'm cool if they instead shift it to a trait that creates a trade off. If they're worried about a true power ranged option for warriors full stop then I'm cool if Anet redesigns the weapon from the ground up. As long as it gets a purpose somewhere other than running round in open world (where it's not necessarily good per say but works because well anything works) or gunflame meme builds then I'm happy.

These. I don't want more ranged 'options', I'd prefer that the rifle is just adjusted a bit.

I kind of get why they're slower, I think they wanted them to feel 'impactful' as weapons, but IMO they just feel a little awkward at their current speeds. The lack of cleave on 5 always felt really odd for a weapon that is essentially specialised towards AoE control and damage, even if it only knocked down the primary target but caused some cleave damage to others close by it'd be something. Not tried the hammer with Arms and Spellbreaker yet but been meaning to.

The hammer is unironically pretty good in open world already. In fact it's one of my favourite open world weapons to use along with spellbreaker. The only objection I've ever really had to hammer is that I'd prefer it if backbreaker did some cleaving and I think some of the skills (along with the mace to be honest) should charge a little quicker. Beyond this I've always disliked that the good/interesting traits for a hammer (bodyblow and merciless hammer) compete with other really good traits like forceful gs and berserker's power. That's just the trade off though.

Some battle support stuff would actually be really nice.

I'd just try to move on at this stage. If you're not really into WvW and going support Scrapper, which is still pretty good due to the core engineer aspects, then there's not really much left and I doubt anything will be address until at least (if ever... Anet thinks this is a 'fix') September. Either continue playing the scrapper (warts and all), try and get into Holosmith (which is honestly a better 'bruiser/bully' at this stage and playing it this way isn't even the full extent of Holos power) or move on to a different class.

If you aren't running sneak or bulwark gyro, I'd honestly consider just running core engi if you prefer supply drop. The heal and condi cleanse on the toolbelt is just too good to pass up compared to nonefunction gyro.

Nerf everyone. Simple as.

Med Scrapper wasn't OP in the first place haha. Have fun though!

It still holds up. It has no way near the same personal sustain as pre-patch (and a little less group HP/s from the loss of RR) and you now have to swallow having -400 Vit to get access to Bulwark, Purge and Sneak Gyros if you run the latter two, but the abilities and traits from core engineer that made it strong support were largely untouched. The issue is that even pre-patch you could go down to spike damage and post patch that's even worse, even with the new trait Damage Dampener.