Current Warriors - What works and what doesn't?

Rivius

So a few years ago warriors had a major ground-up redesigned. I was wondering what aspects of new warriors people felt were successful and what aspects they would have liked to keep from old warriors?

My personal opinion is that old warriors only really suffered fundamentally from the following:
- Hard to standardize because of large variability in rune investment and racial disparities (solved in overhaul)

- Miss rate (Solved in overhaul)

- Lots of useless unhelpful affs (Not really solved all that mich in the overhaul).

Just prior to the overhaul I felt like they were in a gokd place. Obviously needed further balancing but that would be facilitated by some of the changes above.

What I really liked and miss are:
- Universal head-based instakills
- Swing vs Strike mechanics
- Devastating affs once wounds pile on
- The ratio of wounds to health healing and timing
- I actually liked the RNG. It favoured upper tier warriors, but if we had equalizer everyone to be closer to upper tier warriors (as the overhaul ended up doing anyway) it would have been fine.
- Warrior lines - Very varied based on health, and affs had a very graphic and visceral feel.
- RIP cavalier heft


Now I'm sure a return to old Warriors would never happen but if there were elements you could add back, what would they be?

Xenthos

Things that are better gone:

Weapon stats.  This allowed runes to be nixed, and for a much more universal experience as far as how warriors are treated.  The investment cost plummeted.

Things I miss:

1-body-part instakills in addition to the other ones; this meant a warrior had better options.  You had to protect your head, but doing so left you more open elsewhere for other stuff.  Or the warrior could try to batter through your defense, with friends.

Wound curing with health potion.  Doing more damage helped your offense.  A small group could synergize with a warrior just by doing damage and slowing down the wound curing.

Real affliction progression.  Right now you have to choose between building wounds and doing affs.  This is just not a fun progression; you're contributing nothing to a group fight while building up your main kill.  Other classes do things like deliver afflictions as they build timequake (as one example), but it was decided that warriors needed to have a very long build and then do absolutely nothing effective during that build.  Why???

Unique flavour lines for hunting things.  Warriors became so much flatter and blander, and it's been this way for years now.  I don't know why they had to go away, and why it's been so hard to get them back.

As a note I kind of liked the RNG too.  It was way better than what we have now, and it gave me a little thrill when I would hit the button to see what would happen; head pop off, whack into the chest, or smash my face into a parry.

Edit: I had unique flavour lines in the wrong area for some reason.

Lycidas

To echo some of Xenthos
Things I miss:

Being able to kill -anyone- in a reasonable time
Specialization viability
Maneuvers

Enya

I agree that old warriors just needed some spit shining and mild streamlining, as well as fixes to artifacts. 

Shango

Right now, warriors are too damned slow. 3.5s base balance time especially cripples us, when pre-overhaul even nonPK specced weapons had a faster time than that, though anyone serious about combat would go closer to the 2s that I think was the max. The fact that Wounds are both statically generated....ONLY Balance recovery times and Power expended hasten the process, and a weird squeamishness existing about giving more ice poisons or even wounding affs...and the entire system is literally alien to every other class's methods in the game. Almost nothing anyone else can do to help the Warrior build wounds save a few limb damage breaks from monks...and almost NOTHING the warrior can dish out that will help allies get their kills. Warriors are just not integrated in anything right now as a result.

Speed could honestly be addressed with the Weaponenhancement Speed buff, but sadly a -0.1s increase to balance does all of nothing, yet is essential due to how Warrior is coded. Frustrating  is the most polite term I can post to quantify the feeling that gives.

And if there is no Warrior...say you ran away to escape them or they died because everyone else WILL get the kill far faster than a warrior can...you can literally ignore the deepwounds entirely till everything else is handled, as they have zero effect on anything else. ALL bodyparts critical...no warrior in sight? You're good to go. A lot of Ice applications and thus quite annoying to deal with...but you won't be otherwise hindered or effected by the damage that technically doesn't exist. How does that make sense? There's a Report right now in consideration (won't have enough votes to get to the next phase) that was geared to address this, using Ianir's suggestions on the discord...and people just don't want anything to do with it. Meant to make it easier on the warrior, comments given that warrior is already 'fine and balanced' and would need a nerf if secondary effects were put into place.

Gives a strong vibe that there's a strong anti-warrior mentality in the game, to say the least. A new overhaul, done properly given attrition isn't a thing when all other classes are burst based, may very well be in order. Since smaller fixes that had been suggested....there was a speed boost report that got downvoted as well with the same foolish comments made by people that turned around and said the opposite when warriors were NOT being offered a chance to be fixed, plus the current secondary deepwounds effects...and just get shot down. So eh.

Shango

I went from, pre-overhaul, to being able to actually hold my own against people AND kill them...which lets face it is the entire point of combat, NOT to be a punching bag that hits back (which is all warriors are good for now against anyone with half a brain to handle the few ways they have to get a kill)...to needing 5+ minutes average to get a damned kill, per person that isn't running away the instant one bodypart is at heavy even if NOT the kill req one, or parrying effectively.

'lol you're crazy if you don't like attrition combat' was a comment given post-Overhaul on the envoy channel. Warrior has so many problems, people admit it has so many problems, the admins admit it has so many problems and just DOES NOT WORK as intended, people quit the class if they try to take it up (days of warrior guild leaders being literally any other class BUT Warrior...just in the Guild for the free Council seat) for just about any other class, cannot keep a novice warrior from doing that soon as they learn what a pain in the ass it is being one....but 'Overhaul is finished and done' given back. All efforts to fix the issues met with strong, staunch resistance. People dig in their heels to prevent any progress made beyond suggesting a second (third? Do we count that bandaid non-fix that was the new skills to give 'utility' to the class and still not address lack of killing power as an overhaul?) overhaul as needed. People insisting that Warriors are 'just fine' because of 'guaranteed insta kills' so shouldn't get fixed or addressed at all...despite GETTING TO THE POINT YOU CAN USE THE DAMNED KILLS is the whole crux of the problem. 

1 minute 14.5s needed as a bare minimum, hard coded time requirement to get a kill, with 2 handers that expend full Power usage available on a single target, that doesn't run away, parry, or hinder the warrior in question....all factors that are both unreasonable and impractical to claim balanced in any perspective as that just does NOT happen in a practical combat scenario. Presuming it's a Pureblade or Blademaster, as sadly Axelord and Cavalier require a bit more time due to needing more than just one bodypart at Critical for their kills, but two more at Heavy as well. And NOT counting the mistake caused by requiring Pureblades to need 750 Hemo on top of the Critical Gut wounds...which is very much impossible due to passive hemo cure rate, need to maintain wound pressure, slow speed of Warriors in general including Pureblade, and abysmally low rate of hemo build from the handful of skills that generate it (Twist, Pinleg, Pinarm) That is the quickest any spec has to gaining their kill requirement, 1 handers take even longer due to lower rate of wound building to compensate for ability to split their attacks including wounding AND afflicting in the same balance if they chose to sacrifice some wound pressure for it. Also discounting use of any balances to apply afflictions instead of wounds, use of Puissance, Gedulah/green or other Power using skills EXCEPT the double wounds ability, but that calculation does take into account the rate of Wound healing during the course of things of 4 wounds/2s for Ice balance.

Any other class....usually tops at 47s to get their kills, and those get called inviable due to long periods required to get to that point. This all ruins any fun playing as a Warrior, or even fighting against one.

Side note to back the feeling of bias against Warriors in general, when the rate of hemo build was addressed after the change to Exsanguinate to need it at the max level needed by monks to kill someone AND their Critical Gut wounds (which have to be built separately, usually Wounds first as you can Twist on the Gut for +100 hemo at crit gut per balance, at 3.5s rotations)...arguments were made to only increase hemo build by +50 or less for pinleg, or lower, because of complaints of working too well with monks. Fair argument...then why is a monk req slapped onto a warrior's kill? That sort of thinking is at the core of what's wrong with warrior now.

Deepwounds cripple warriors with the slow rate of balance, high Power cost to double it, constant voicing from nonwarriors that just don't want to deal with a class made viable and used against them DESPITE literally all orgs having access to warriors so such fixes only help everyone in the end...and no viable suggestions really being offered. Go back to pre-overhaul? A NEW overhaul instead? That's about it as alternatives that I've been hearing for years. 

Shango

PPS: report 01190502 is in Consideration again as it didn't have enough votes in Pending and thus forced back to scratch. 5 days from the point of this post till I can put it in Pending. But it exists to deal with the Exsanguinate issue at least, that is likely the easiest solution fix (and also one I had suggested over increasing Hemo generation in the first place, but for some reason everyone was against due to making the Warrior's life easier, go figure). Please vote on it when it gets there so we can get at least some level of viability back to one of the specs.

Daxi Strongleaf

Uhhhh...forgive noob question...why are players in charge of balancing combat? I know the admin approve or reject final reports, but why does everything have to be generated by players? We are all biased. Crowsourcing some from players is a good idea as part of an overall balancing strategy, but not as the only strategy. Do we not have a neutral game designer somewhere watching combats going, "Hmmm, in the past few months, warrior kills have been significantly less than other classes, lets try buffing them." And if not, why not?

Orael

Not everything is generated by players. There is a process in place for players to suggest changes to mechanics (check out HELP REPORTS) but it isn't something that's definitely going to happen.

It's pretty much what you are describing, crowdsourcing ideas and concerns and getting player input is part of the process, but not the process. 

It boils down to we don't have time to fix everything all at once, the current focus in Timequakes and then hopefully finally (barring something unforeseen) the mage revamp. 

Enya

Is it possible to get a more robust IDEA syntax to suggest non-envoy-report changes.  Basically, let players fill out a report like syntax and submit it as an idea, instead of having to contain it in one solid block of text? That way, things that aren't appropriate to the report syntax can still be communicated in game, take it or leave it?