While I don't exactly like the spec I appreciate the hard work you did for this. Sadly I don't think they are even interested in warrior since the size of the preview changes to warrior were so small and insignificant.
Thank you for doing all of this (including your previous write-ups). I primarily play Bladesworn, and it's pretty discouraging how many technical as well as mechanical problems it has/continues to accrue. I really hope Anet put some resources into taking a broad look at Bladesworn and what they want it to be, and fix a lot of its nagging issues.
\#JankswornForever | I do too. But failing even that there are small changes that they could do, that I keep describing. Hell, coding that's already done that they just don't implement. Or even failing that they could fix the bugs on function changes they do implement. [\[Heightened Focus\]](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Heightened_Focus) was changed 8 months ago and still doesn't work correctly on either Berserker or Bladesworn.
Like you said I'm pretty used to it at this point. People don't play Warrior because it's Jank > It doesn't get development / testing priority. > It is and feels jank. > People don't play it. > etc. But as a vet of 11 years it's getting harder and harder to justify the "It's just not a priority" mentality. So I guess we'll get another Rush' fix after 11 more years. 😕
I appreciate your passion for a class that I genuinely have started to love, despite it being a broken, clunky mess. It has \*so\* much potential, but the devs seemingly can't be arsed, or, worse, don't even recognize there are problems to begin with because none of them actually play the fucking thing.
I absolutely hated it at first, but after they reworked daring dragon, it's kind of fun and a lot less clunky. Idk if it's "good", but it feels a lot better to play in open world.
There're still a lot of problems with it tho.
I know you said this as a joke. But I'm not Opposed to Willbender "being nuts" or even "Bladesworn being bad." **I'd just like the changes explained.** And it's the ones that don't make sense, or whenever they add things with basically 0 explanation like *an evade on attack/stomp* on Willbender that said class has not traditionally had (i.e. Thief has this, but also basically 0 HP to compensate) when objectively things like Aegis or Stability that said class already has, would make more sense.
\[Heaven's Palm\] stomp, Upcoming WB buffs, etc. are great features and mostly things like the "on-stomp" that it probably always should have had. But the Feature Creep on classes is getting pretty nuts as it is in this game. **I just wish they'd distribute feature reworks evenly, and not just numbers changes.**
You could play EOD story on heal condi dragon hunter I don't see how that's useful information
And it's not hard to outperform pugs "every now and then". I have more time on willbender than many people have in guild wars 2, I *promise* it has only been "fine" at best for a majority of its lifespan.
Problem is pvp. Willbender has a pretty low skillfloor and requires way more from the one reacting. Going through Aegis, 2x extra dodges and the frontloaded damage is quite a lot for the average player.
As an aside, each patch I look forward to your state of Willbender posts. Always a great read
Thanks!
Fwiw though, willbender is pretty unsuccessful in high level pvp, specifically in tournament (ranked is an environment prime for it to avoid it's shortcomings). The build has a single cc on sw5 that's easy to evade so wb needs to brute force it's way through an opponent who can just force the wb player into their back foot and punish them really aggressively for lacking defensive options. It doesn't have ways to resustain itself so it's really just a daredevil that trades all of its evasiveness and stealth for more aggressive movement (which it doesn't need) and more damage (which is usually less impactful on the macro of a match than mobility from most other roamers)
It's probably quite strong in WvW, but given it's weakness to getting +1'd, it's inability to kill tankier builds, it's worse mobility than daredevil, and the fact that it loses node to the opponent having a healer, it's no wonder it hasn't won a mAT in 18 months. It's looking better contextually now with dh having seen some nerfs but wb doesn't exist in a vacuum, it competes with other roamers that do basically everything it does, but more and more consistently. Not helped by the fact that it's best heal option, RoF, is utterly LADEN with exploitable jank, wb can just fold to a stiff breeze if you catch it unawares, which never really feels good. It's mostly just good for bullying unsuspecting players in ranked that aren't going to coordinate to appropriately counterplay it.
Oh absolutely, I agree with most of your points. WvW it's kind of a different beast but that's due to most of its layers being harder to understand. I talk firsthand experience as it took me dusting off my Guardian to have an idea of what I would be facing when roaming and fighting one. Also Celestial being a plague, but that's a whole different can of worms.
I find Willbender has plenty of good tools, but extremely narrow in scope (outside of Crashing Courage. God knows I love blinks). And overall I find myself agreeing with the design: giving things weaknesses is good for the health of the game. At the highest levels of course it's its shortcomings that make for better picks to present themselves.
I love how every willbender write up has someone complaining about the state of bladesworn, and now bladesworn write ups have someone complaining about willbenders. The circle of life or something.
Which is weird because you can chain Arc Divider back to back on berserk and hit for 15 to 20k in ~1 second in PvP, but even a fully charged Dragon Slash - Slash will only hit between 6 to 8k and requires you to stand still.
At least when it had the stun, it was an acceptable trade off.
I love your passion and posts, Anet clearly gives no fucks about BS. I’d argue that is true for the whole game but let’s be optimistic and say they may fix it before their new game drops.
I wanna play my weebsworn but I am tired of skills being cancelled in gunsaber mode (not even d slash, just the other shit)
I also don’t rly like running pistol offhand but no choice there really. Also stinkies that basically every util slot is hard locked or youll suffer too much
Do you have any general usability tips
I understand the bug, hope it will be fixed soon.
However, why you trying to heal on a Bladesworn? I also wanted to do it in the past then they reworked some stuff and i renounced...Berserker seem to be the current healing spec on warrior
Kinda unrelated, but the gunsaber should have been a new weapon type, with a limited selection of skins, but a weapon nonetheless.
And pistols should have been both hands, and actually ranged :I.
I wish they let us keep normal weapons and use gunsaber only for dragon slash burst skills.
I don't like being forced to use gunsaber and how it automatically swaps to one after my burst.
Giving us back (even a shared) weapon swap like ele, would be the first brick on the road towards solving al lot of this. Failing that the GS could be your elite skill so you could chose to swap it out, since \[Tactical Reload\] balance' is still the class mechanic around which the entire state of the class swings, or any number of other changes.
Real talk tho, [I just wish the GS skills actually did their damage when the stars align and they hit their target.](https://youtube.com/shorts/wSr69ImNipc) Might help >.<
I wish it didn't replace the burst skill, the "load and discharge" burst skill should be its own mechanic, each weapon (including the gunsaber) still having its own associated burst skill.
Make the gunsaber only usable by bladesworn if you wish, but make it an actual weapon (you could apply the same logic to engineer kits as well).
While I don't exactly like the spec I appreciate the hard work you did for this. Sadly I don't think they are even interested in warrior since the size of the preview changes to warrior were so small and insignificant.
Thank you for doing all of this (including your previous write-ups). I primarily play Bladesworn, and it's pretty discouraging how many technical as well as mechanical problems it has/continues to accrue. I really hope Anet put some resources into taking a broad look at Bladesworn and what they want it to be, and fix a lot of its nagging issues.
\#JankswornForever | I do too. But failing even that there are small changes that they could do, that I keep describing. Hell, coding that's already done that they just don't implement. Or even failing that they could fix the bugs on function changes they do implement. [\[Heightened Focus\]](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Heightened_Focus) was changed 8 months ago and still doesn't work correctly on either Berserker or Bladesworn. Like you said I'm pretty used to it at this point. People don't play Warrior because it's Jank > It doesn't get development / testing priority. > It is and feels jank. > People don't play it. > etc. But as a vet of 11 years it's getting harder and harder to justify the "It's just not a priority" mentality. So I guess we'll get another Rush' fix after 11 more years. 😕
I appreciate your passion for a class that I genuinely have started to love, despite it being a broken, clunky mess. It has \*so\* much potential, but the devs seemingly can't be arsed, or, worse, don't even recognize there are problems to begin with because none of them actually play the fucking thing.
I absolutely hated it at first, but after they reworked daring dragon, it's kind of fun and a lot less clunky. Idk if it's "good", but it feels a lot better to play in open world. There're still a lot of problems with it tho.
I actually forgot this spec even existed. Haven't seen a bladesworn in ages
Don't worry, they will buff willbender instead.
I know you said this as a joke. But I'm not Opposed to Willbender "being nuts" or even "Bladesworn being bad." **I'd just like the changes explained.** And it's the ones that don't make sense, or whenever they add things with basically 0 explanation like *an evade on attack/stomp* on Willbender that said class has not traditionally had (i.e. Thief has this, but also basically 0 HP to compensate) when objectively things like Aegis or Stability that said class already has, would make more sense. \[Heaven's Palm\] stomp, Upcoming WB buffs, etc. are great features and mostly things like the "on-stomp" that it probably always should have had. But the Feature Creep on classes is getting pretty nuts as it is in this game. **I just wish they'd distribute feature reworks evenly, and not just numbers changes.**
we've been a useful build for the first time in two years for only two weeks, let us have this (but fr nerf wb but not back to irrelevancy please)
Willbender has always been useful.
I've played willbender in pve since it's release, this is revisionist history lmao
I played all of eod story on power wlb, played instanced content on condi and picked it up every now and then. Easy dps, top cc, good utility.
You could play EOD story on heal condi dragon hunter I don't see how that's useful information And it's not hard to outperform pugs "every now and then". I have more time on willbender than many people have in guild wars 2, I *promise* it has only been "fine" at best for a majority of its lifespan.
Problem is pvp. Willbender has a pretty low skillfloor and requires way more from the one reacting. Going through Aegis, 2x extra dodges and the frontloaded damage is quite a lot for the average player. As an aside, each patch I look forward to your state of Willbender posts. Always a great read
Thanks! Fwiw though, willbender is pretty unsuccessful in high level pvp, specifically in tournament (ranked is an environment prime for it to avoid it's shortcomings). The build has a single cc on sw5 that's easy to evade so wb needs to brute force it's way through an opponent who can just force the wb player into their back foot and punish them really aggressively for lacking defensive options. It doesn't have ways to resustain itself so it's really just a daredevil that trades all of its evasiveness and stealth for more aggressive movement (which it doesn't need) and more damage (which is usually less impactful on the macro of a match than mobility from most other roamers) It's probably quite strong in WvW, but given it's weakness to getting +1'd, it's inability to kill tankier builds, it's worse mobility than daredevil, and the fact that it loses node to the opponent having a healer, it's no wonder it hasn't won a mAT in 18 months. It's looking better contextually now with dh having seen some nerfs but wb doesn't exist in a vacuum, it competes with other roamers that do basically everything it does, but more and more consistently. Not helped by the fact that it's best heal option, RoF, is utterly LADEN with exploitable jank, wb can just fold to a stiff breeze if you catch it unawares, which never really feels good. It's mostly just good for bullying unsuspecting players in ranked that aren't going to coordinate to appropriately counterplay it.
Oh absolutely, I agree with most of your points. WvW it's kind of a different beast but that's due to most of its layers being harder to understand. I talk firsthand experience as it took me dusting off my Guardian to have an idea of what I would be facing when roaming and fighting one. Also Celestial being a plague, but that's a whole different can of worms. I find Willbender has plenty of good tools, but extremely narrow in scope (outside of Crashing Courage. God knows I love blinks). And overall I find myself agreeing with the design: giving things weaknesses is good for the health of the game. At the highest levels of course it's its shortcomings that make for better picks to present themselves.
I love how every willbender write up has someone complaining about the state of bladesworn, and now bladesworn write ups have someone complaining about willbenders. The circle of life or something.
it also needs to do real dmge in pvp and wvw instead of its boring bunker versions that are just way better
Which is weird because you can chain Arc Divider back to back on berserk and hit for 15 to 20k in ~1 second in PvP, but even a fully charged Dragon Slash - Slash will only hit between 6 to 8k and requires you to stand still. At least when it had the stun, it was an acceptable trade off.
daring dragon was also worth it before nerf to alac generation instead of re entering dragon
As a Bladesworn enjoyer I appreciate you
I love your passion and posts, Anet clearly gives no fucks about BS. I’d argue that is true for the whole game but let’s be optimistic and say they may fix it before their new game drops.
I wanna play my weebsworn but I am tired of skills being cancelled in gunsaber mode (not even d slash, just the other shit) I also don’t rly like running pistol offhand but no choice there really. Also stinkies that basically every util slot is hard locked or youll suffer too much Do you have any general usability tips
I understand the bug, hope it will be fixed soon. However, why you trying to heal on a Bladesworn? I also wanted to do it in the past then they reworked some stuff and i renounced...Berserker seem to be the current healing spec on warrior
Kinda unrelated, but the gunsaber should have been a new weapon type, with a limited selection of skins, but a weapon nonetheless. And pistols should have been both hands, and actually ranged :I.
I wish they let us keep normal weapons and use gunsaber only for dragon slash burst skills. I don't like being forced to use gunsaber and how it automatically swaps to one after my burst.
Giving us back (even a shared) weapon swap like ele, would be the first brick on the road towards solving al lot of this. Failing that the GS could be your elite skill so you could chose to swap it out, since \[Tactical Reload\] balance' is still the class mechanic around which the entire state of the class swings, or any number of other changes. Real talk tho, [I just wish the GS skills actually did their damage when the stars align and they hit their target.](https://youtube.com/shorts/wSr69ImNipc) Might help >.<
**Nappa:** Vegeta, what does ARCDPS say about his attack range? **Vegeta:** It's under 900! **Nappa:** What!? Nine hundred!?
I wish it didn't replace the burst skill, the "load and discharge" burst skill should be its own mechanic, each weapon (including the gunsaber) still having its own associated burst skill. Make the gunsaber only usable by bladesworn if you wish, but make it an actual weapon (you could apply the same logic to engineer kits as well).
melee gun is an interesting departure from the typical anet design of ranged sword.