December 10th Warrior Changes

#1 - Nov. 4, 2013, 8:19 a.m.

We need a consolidated thread of all discussions revolving around the upcoming Warrior changes like the other Profession boards.

From:
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview

Warrior:
The overall goal here is to reduce the damage for the very high control warriors. This means reducing some dependency on going 30 points into discipline for Burst Mastery, making warriors spend 20 points in Arms to get the benefit of Unsuspecting Foe. We also reduced the damage on the hammer’s burst skill to separate the control from the damage. We don’t mind warriors doing massive damage, or doing great area of effect control, but we’re trying to prevent them from easily doing both. We also increased the readability of Skull Crack, which will allow opposing players to more easily react to it. Combustive Shot on longbow also saw some rework. It will scale better with adrenaline levels, and still provide strong burning per adrenaline level, but the raw damage was toned down slightly.

Strength 5 – Reckless Dodge. Increased Damage by 25%
Strength III – Great Fortitude. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 7%.
Arms IV – Unsuspecting Foe. Moved to Master Tier.
Arms VII – Crack Shot. Moved to Adept Tier.
Arms XII – Last Chance. Increased the threshold form 25% to 50%. Reduced the cooldown from 45 seconds to 40seconds.
Defense 25 – Armored Attack. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 10%.
Defense XII – Spiked Armor. Reduced the recharge from 15s to 10s.
Tactics 5 – Determined Revival. Now correctly displays the amount of toughness.
Tactics 25 – Reviver’s Might. Now applies 3 stacks of Might instead of 1.
Discipline II – Thrill of the Kill. Increased Adrenaline gain from 1 to 10.
Discipline XI – Burst Mastery. Reduced damage increase from 10% to 7%. Removed erroneous adrenaline gain fact.
Earthshaker. Reduced damage by 20%.
Staggering Blow. Reduced damage by 23%.
Skull Crack. Increased the cast time from 1/4s to 1/2s. Updated the animation and effects of this skill to be more clear.
Combustive Shot – Increased pulse duration to 3s. Increased burn duration per pulse to 3s. Normalized damage per pulse. Updated pulses per tier to 2, 3,and 4 respectively for tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3.

Discuss.

JonPeters

#13 - Nov. 4, 2013, 12:41 p.m.

Here are my comments on what we have seen discussed so far with the warrior changes.

Unsuspecting Foe
I’ve seen some concerns about moving this to master tier. This comes down to the core philosophy that drove the warrior changes for this build. Warriors by nature have a lot of survivability, and we need them to make a choice between heavy control and heavy damage. This trait is a way for them to circumvent that and is therefore build defining. In many ways it exemplifies what a grandmaster trait is all about, however we felt that moving it all the way to grandmaster was overkill, but that placing it at the master tier allowed warriors to still run this with other traits, but have to make some sacrifices to do so.

Thrill of the Kill
I’ve heard some concerns about this being permanent max adrenaline in WvW zerg fights. We understand that, but given the fact that this trait competes with Warrior’s Sprint, Vigorous Focus, Signet Mastery, and Inspiring Shouts, we feel like players that take Thirll of the Kill we be giving up a sufficient amount of effectiveness to counter this. There are so many other reliable ways to gain adrenaline as is that I can’t imagine this tipping the scales as much as one of the other adept traits in this line.

Hammer
We are taking damage away from the hammer skills that do CC, because we don’t think it is ok for skills to do both of these things. I see a lot of comparison with Greatsword damage, but the Greatsword has no interrupts and a single cripple on the Bladetrail. We left the skills that do not do hard control alone such as Fierce Blow and Hammer Shock, as we are ok with those skills hitting hard because they do not actually disable. We also left Backbreaker alone because it has a long cast time and a long cooldown. The standard hammer build is still going to be very strong after this change, but it will open up options for mace to make a comeback as the control weapon.

Longbow
A lot of thought went into the change to combustive shot. This skill was simply too effective at renewing itself. One of the drawbacks of the burst skills needs to be losing your adrenaline, but this skill was easily able to restore all of the adrenaline it lost. Rather than reduce the burn duration we reduced the # of attacks this skill creates because we felt it made it more counterable in PvP and less reliable in PvE as an adrenaline builder.

Mace
I highly suggest being patient with this change. I understand this skill did not need an increased cast time in PvE, but this change just makes this skill feel a lot more impactful, and a change of 200 milliseconds of cast increase is not going to impact its use against creatures, but will greatly make this skill more counterable in PvP and WvW. Some discussion here revolved around defiant, which is causing a lot of control builds to be neutered in PvE. We agree and we will start making strides towards solving that in the future.

Sorry I got to you guys last, I truly did just go through these in alphabetical order.

Thanks,

Jon

JonPeters

#17 - Nov. 4, 2013, 1:04 p.m.

Moon.7310:
JonPeters.5630:
Hammer
We are taking damage away from the hammer skills that do CC, because we don’t think it is ok for skills to do both of these things. I see a lot of comparison with Greatsword damage, but the Greatsword has no interrupts and a single cripple on the Bladetrail. We left the skills that do not do hard control alone such as Fierce Blow and Hammer Shock, as we are ok with those skills hitting hard because they do not actually disable. We also left Backbreaker alone because it has a long cast time and a long cooldown. The standard hammer build is still going to be very strong after this change, but it will open up options for mace to make a comeback as the control weapon.

What about us pve hammer warriors. It is not like groups appriciate us while playing since our damage is lower than greatsword and most of the time knockdown is not needed or on bosses is useless. When lowering damage now, this will make groups even more wary of hammer warriors.

For this I would refer you to what I said about Defiant in the Mace section.