Kalthea.4326

Quality of life patches are a necessity for games like Guild Wars 2, not because of any particular mechanics or class problems (which are their own thing, don't get me wrong), but simply because in over 10 years of development time in anything, you need to take a step back and re-assess where you are. Whether or not you think you've done a good job, there is bound to be something you missed, some issues that you haven't seen, some way to optimize or clean up that you learned more recently than when you first implemented something. Take the time to do it right.

To be clear, I have no issue with it being a support weapon. I've wanted Warrior support since launch.

Great. Another melee weapon on a class that is relegated entirely to melee and struggled with betting picked off, just what we needed. On top of that, it's a melee support weapon with a skill that urges you to block incoming attacks, which screams "We built this entirely focusing on WvW/PvP". I'm not one of the Spear enthusiasts, so I don't mind that it's not a spear (though I do like the idea, and Paragon did exist in GW1). However, I feel that having yet another melee weapon on warrive just bevs the question"Does ANET play warrior at all?". Just feels tone deaf, especially considering that the only heartfelt response a lot of people get on the Warrior forums are the dude-bros that wear their wife-beaters and shades while running around with Guts' sword and proclaiming how "godly awesome and mighty" warriors are (love you guys, not hating <3) or people who are too set in their ways. Maybe touch up everything on warrior first before adding in yet another melee weapon, that way we can have a solid base to start from.

Back when the game first launched, every class had their unique buffs. This caused some issues, sure, but each class was unique in what it could provide to a team. When alacrity came out and was forced onto Chrono, I agree, that was awful. However, I feel like the issue with Alacrity on Chrono and Chrono being a requirement was because of just how strong Alacrity was. If Alacrity itself wasn't so powerful, and there were other competitive options, then we wouldn't have the problem with being forced to run Chrono. And no, I wasn't pointing out that the issue was boons being group-wide. I was more suggesting that having multiple professions that all provide the same boon with others that just do it better and with more is a bad state of balance for the game to be in. You call it "being able to play how you want", I call it "being directly compared to other classes for the exact same benefits but some just come out on top because they are clearly better." I can respect the concept that you feel you can play what you want, however. But I think getting rid of unique buffs and just making boons the only way to support was the laziest way of doing it, and it has caused far too many imbalances in how classes are played. Though I do like your attitude. Disagreement is fine, and if you enjoy the game how it is, then I hope you continue to enjoy it. I'm just vying for the classes to become more unique and less homogenized.

"But if we were back to how slow the game was playing at release, I'd be most definitely out, just as I walked away back then because only thief felt satisfying for me - it was one of the rare classes not suffering from merely auto-attacking because all other skills were on 40s CD or more (you can still see the remnants with some CDs going up 180s on racial skills), but it quickly grew too repetitive spamming the same skills." You do realize that you can remove the boons by making them baseline, right? If you always have them up 100% of the time already, baselining them would change nothing. "Besides, these effects lead groups to find synergies and accept builds that are otherwise not the top damage dealers. " Hard disagree. What happened is that ANET completely stripped every unique buff in the game and made them all into 5 person boons. Wow, exciting, I can give the whole team 3 seconds of protection. Or I could play this other class that gives 6 seconds of protection on a shorter cooldown. Oh, but this class gives protection and regen and might! You see the problem? People aren't bringing synergies. They're bringing what offers the most in the limited pool of boons.

When only TWO BOONS are required to turn a 10k DPS chart into a 30k DPS chart, then boons are the issue. Quickness and Alacrity have been massive issues since Alacrity was introduced. Once you introduce the option to speed up gameplay, then those automatically become the "must haves" for any group that runs any content, full-stop. Initially, getting quickness wasn't a guaranteed thing, and it was in small bursts that allowed for "setups" where you could pop quickness, get out a usually slow attack, then go back to the normal rotation. But now that Quickness is up ALL THE TIME, there's no point in acting like it's not an issue. And Alacrity is worse! Having any buff in a game that reduces the cooldown on skills automatically makes it a "We need to have the class that can provide this" situation. You don't even need to be in end-game content to understand why it's so powerful. I'll keep typing it until something is done about it. Remove Quickness and Alacrity from Guild Wars 2.

Whenever you have a weapon drawn, you will run on two legs. The running animation that NPCs do is due to them being slightly slower than players.

I can entirely understand where OP is coming from with this post. I'm a casual PvE player who dabbles into the more "meta" side of things to check on performance and balance and whatnot, even have done some raids. The problem with Warrior isn't numbers perse, as someone pointed out they're one of the top options on a target dummy. But that's just a target dummy. Playing the class out in the open-world where I have to dodge mechanics get crowded by mobs and random conditions or CC, the struggles with Warrior really start to show. (Inb4 "just dodge" or "just kill them faster) we lack a lot of utility that allows us to use our DPS in tight situations, and we have to tailor our builds very specifically with one or two abilities in order to have half of the functionality of other classes who manage to gain stability/protection/healing while just throwing out their normal abilities. Say what you want about strikes and DPS numbers, but for a casual player? Warrior just feels off.

Warrior has been intended to do support since the game launched, which is why we have TWO base skill-lines that are support focused, those being Shouts and Banners. I never really understood why people think that Warriors can't support just because they're the front-liner? But besides that, the issues with Warrior stem from, like others have said, just a really poor design philosophy. ANET can't seem to make up their mind as to whether or not they want Warrior to be purely front-line, or have some aspects of support or what, and it just causes it to be a horrible mess of abilities that are sub-par when compared to other professions.

Allow me. Build diversity is horrible due to the limitations that specific traits and weapons provide in regards to which stats your equipment has. Sure, "you could just go buy another template and set and then just swap between them" is the currently the solution to that. But not everyone does WvW, or farms out all of their dailies, so the prospect of getting a new piece if equipment is exhausting to them. That's what I got out of this anyway. My viewpoints are a bit in-line with this idea, but I also wanna smash the balance in this game to pieces with the state it's currently in, so take that as you will.

Ah, okay. So it's distinct interactions where the Warrior's survivability comes from. I also forgot that endure pain existed, won't lie. Most utility skills on Warrior are so forgetable.

So the options seem to be "be squishy" or "Use this one trick that ranged players hate!". Or just running shield on your backbar in every build? Cuz even when focusing on healing aspects of warrior, it's a tough run.

I must be missing something, cuz everyone seems to think that Warrior is healthy and hard to kill, but in my experience it's rather squishy and abundantly exposed.

I've said it once, and I'll keep saying it. Change pistol to a focus, and make the 4-barrel pistol into a 4-barrel wrist-rocket. Then it would leave pistols on the table for other stuff.

I've been an advocate for removing Alacrity and Quickness for many years now. A lot of folks disagree with that viewpoint, and they're free to hold their opinions. But I'd rather play the class because it's fun, and no feel forced into one direction on that class just because Alacrity and Quickness are so powerful that not having them is an active hindrance. The classes themselves should be powerful enough to compensate for the removal of boons.