State of the Warrior 1.5

[Lunacresia]

-38 RW paragon/champ/rb is still good, warriors are still able to regularly top the DPS charts in raids. However, the build selection is limited as warriors currently have no good dual wield options. 38 para and BM are still the top specs for warriors in this meta.

-Although warriors have many DPS options, many warrior dps builds are relying on only a handful of skills in order to be effective. These include: deadly strikes, rising waterfall, fiery burst, and strike like iron. More variation needs to be implemented concerning the effectiveness of many warrior finishers and abilities. This comment is mainly regarding PvE and raids. Many 51 point builds fail and are unplayable, the exception is 51 champ and 51 RB. Both of these builds still underperform when matched up to the hybrids and both of these builds still rely on Fiery Burst for almost 50% of the build's dps. Root tree like RW are sometimes 200-300% more effective than 30 or 51 pt. talents in many of the warrior dps trees. Many 51 and 30 pt. talents like deathstrike and swiftblades are absolutely useless and not worth the point investments. The current PvE meta for warriors is hybrid with fiery burst or do bad dps.

-Physical damage is still very bad in PvP when compared to elemental. PvP warriors are forced into subdue specs, RB combinations, or VK combinations in order to be effective. Subdue also has been broken with this patch, and although subdue is still very strong, the loss of Sergeant's Order as a separate CD hurts subdue based builds pretty badly. In PvE, the loss of SO on a separate CD has impacted warrior threat but has still not diminished the warrior's ability to control mobs. Warrior still remain as the best physical mitigation tank in the game. Almost all warrior threat is centered around BA, reaver is still EXTREMELY bad outside of passive mitigation for mob control and needs to be redesigned/tweaked.

-Loss of OGCDs has severely impacted warrior burst abilities. Dps warriors have not recieved any compensation in survivability along with this change. Playing a frontline warrior without a pocket healer is nearly impossible now. With the strength of marksmen and the ability of them to spread Vampiric Munitions, the current PvP meta does NOT favor melee combat. Heavy DPS warriors still lack the proper elemental survivability to be effective in melee range (where there are usually fields of AoEs). Many ranged classes can now deal the same amount of DPS from a 30m safety zone than a warrior can in melee. A warrior with pocket healer is still effective, but no more effective than a marksman or warlock paired with a healer. This comment is mainly attributed to PvP.

-Warrior DPS is still relying on high physical crit and AP still is very lackluster outside of 51 RB. Warriors do not have reliable main stats and their abilities scale very badly with attack power. The sustained DPS of warriors is still very bursty and alot of the warrior's damage is front loaded on to strange abilities like Rising Waterfall (a follow up that deals superior damage to most finishers), and Fiery Burst (an OGCD finisher DoT). Punishing Blow, Reaping Harvest, Deathblow, and many other warrior finisher abilities are still marginally useless. Warriors have very few mechanics that take advantage of their attack point system and even less abilities that are worth spending AP on outside of SLI and fiery burst.

-A combination of the above factors makes warriors the most inflexible calling out of RIFT. While rogues and clerics have many different mix and match combinations that yield equal effectiveness, the warrior has very few and only 2 roles in the game that it can play.

-In short there are many upset warriors out there because of the illusion that 1.5 warriors have many different playstyles, but this is far from the truth. Among all of the soul combinations that a warrior has, very few work and many trees are ineffective at the role they were designed for. This forces the entire warrior community to run the same 1-3 tanking builds or 1-2 of the top dps builds to be competitive. A combination of these factors is giving the impression that 1.5 warriors really are a one trick pony and many warrior players have resorted to rolling alts for when they aren't needed as a HK main tank or 38 RW.

-Warriors are not at all ineffective in 1.5. In fact they are very effective, the core problem lies in the fact that warriors have very few paths that they can take in order to be effective in groups. You can say that warriors are pidgeonholed into one of the following builds:

-51 VK tank with BA

-21/20/25 reaver/pal/vk 54% magic mitigation tank

-38 rising waterfall 2h para (best PvE dps)

-Beastmaster/champ/RB dps

-RB-based PvP builds


TL;DR

---------------------------

Warriors in 1.5 are not bad, but their inflexibility is making them very boring to play.

[Gumdrop]

Eh, there are more tank options than that, but pigeonholed they are.

[Sorano]

Your post is well thought out and makes legitimate points, but unfortunately I believe Trion will use this information as a guideline on what souls to nerf next. Spotters Order no longer triggering BA anyone? The writings on the wall already.

I think we just need to stop helping Trion. The warrior community has always been one of the most open and informative communities, but its come back to bite us in the butt time and time again. Its getting to the stage where a change like Seargents Order now sharing a CD with our force taunts, was explained away by Elrar based on a PLAYERs theory on why the change occurred. It shows you how much of a grasp the devs have on their own game.

[Lunacresia]

Your post is well thought out and makes legitimate points, but unfortunately I believe Trion will use this information as a guideline on what souls to nerf next. Spotters Order no longer triggering BA anyone? The writings on the wall already.

I think we just need to stop helping Trion. The warrior community has always been one of the most open and informative communities, but its come back to bite us in the butt time and time again. Its getting to the stage where a change like Seargents Order now sharing a CD with our force taunts, was explained away by Elrar based on a PLAYERs theory on why the change occurred. It shows you how much of a grasp the devs have on their own game.

The warrior community's fear of nerfs should never stop us from providing positive feedback and constructive thinking concerning the state of the warrior. Warriors have been changed alot since nerf, but have never truly been unplayable. This is antagonizing Trion more than needed.

Effective balance and tuning takes time and it's our responsibility to continue to provide feedback if there are problems with our class.

Trion has to balance current changes with future changes planned for the game and warrior. Many of the changes we are seeing or failing to see may be because of major planned changes that will be occurring later in the game (such as a a change to stat weight or one of the core mechanics to the warrior).

Positive feedback from players is ALWAYS important in a game like this. Stop tricking players into thinking that player feed back is not important to Trion. This game has been community driven since day one and that hasn't changed.

Making people believe that their opinion doesn't matter does nothing but hurt both the devs and players. Success of this game is based on ideas coming from both sides of the fence.

Just because a change occurs that players don't like doesn't mean that the devs are not listening. We do not have access to the source code of the game and have no idea who difficult some of these ideas (as good as they might be) are to implement. Also big changes take time. Constant bandaid fixes will not remedy the current class problems with warriors in RIFT (or any class for that matter).

People who antagonize the devs because every outcry concerning change that they want isn't put into the game will not help, those that provide constructive feedback and take time to explore the deeper mechanics of the game in order to provide good insight will become the voice of the community (and 99% of the time make better players).

[Chronic Man]

Great post thanks. I couldn't have said it any better myself. Warriors are still wanted in Pve but in pvp you said it. The damage is mediocre with no burst. Being on the front line is tough even with a pocket healer because physical damage does not scale well. I hope there are some changes to better pvp. A good rogue that knew how to play his class before the patch could still take out a warrior easy. Now it is just stupid.

[rednek]

Very well stated. Agree 100%

[Knorm]

22 champ 38 para 6 RB is still viable as well, for dual wield, however, I did notice a loss of dps on my last raid run.

I plan on verifying tonight.


by the way, understanding that everyone has different builds, macros and gear, there will never be a "cookie" build that everyone can do and come out the same dps numbers.

[Rangasm]

what's your dps look like on your DW? just curious what mine is compared to it after all the updates.

[Lunacresia]

what's your dps look like on your DW? just curious what mine is compared to it after all the updates.

Running in full T3, full crit source engine (BIS stones), 2 inflitrator's axes (34.0), and running the based 38 paragon DW build, I am lucky to get 1370 or so on a parse (tablet, dummy, self buffed with 2 exquisite whetstones). With a greenscale relic and similar gear Kruunch states that he is able to pull 2k in raids. However, he does mention that any DW build is 15% lacking in efficiency compared to 2h RW. I parse about 1290-1310 or so solo on my DW 51 RB (same setup), but the rotation is much easier. People can parse high on DW, but it does take a tremendous amount of effort. Most DWers will likely not break 1800, especially without relics or HK weapons.

[Greyform]

Unfortunately the state of the Warrior is "what now?" every patch it feels like OK "what now?"

throw my shield at a melee mob go to grab the caster.... Sergeant's order is on GCD? "what now?""

I recently moved servers to join a guild that has a better play time schedule than my previous guild. Guess "what now"? they only have two warriors left in that entire guild. Their MT and me the new guy. The 5 they had in the guild previous? Gone.

You can't tell a class "OK we think we're done tinkering with you", and then continue to tinker. People get fed up with "what now?" and they move on. Folks who move on normally don't look back.

And that's the state of the Warrior in 1.5

Yeah, it's an MMO things change, but every patch the same class? C'mon man.

[Tonyis3l33t]

Add me to the list of people that cancelled sub after 1.5. This will be my last post.


Bye.

[tinkertoy]

No relic 1h sword dropping from LGS/Alsbeth (daggers still rule ), no warrior 1h sword when they implemented the new crafted item sets, same story with axes. Seems as if they made loot tables before they finished soul trees and then just forgot to put in items that fit all souls. Now a planar attunement without dagger bonus. A dual wield soul that is best used in a 2H spec. Seems pretty obvious what they want, go get that crafted 2H sword, LGS relic (i don't pvp and find it silly that pvp weaponry rules in PvE, maybe just me thats crazy) and beat things up while thinking, i had more fun with my dual wield spec . Then keep beatings things up until they realize 38para 2H is OP and swipe something off champ soul as well. Not really opposed to changes, just bugs me that so many changes which are made primarily due to pvp issues affects pve so severely. But hey, our rogues do more dps now at least we have a small bonus there in our raids .
Now fix DW so i am not forced to use those ugly big sticks

[Greyform]

Add me to the list of people that cancelled sub after 1.5. This will be my last post.


Bye.

Not canceling here, I did change my renewal from 6 months to monthly though.

I really don't care much for the way things are done with class balance, but the game is a good one if they could lay off the nerfs.

It is baffling to me why so heavy handed with the nerfs and why such huge pendulum swings when they buff, it really seems amateurish

[Kreachur]

yes we have had alot of nerfs but we have to keep in mind that this is a fairly new game and they just havent completely worked everything out. yes i agree that all the changes are getting a little annoying but we just have to give them a little while and they will get it all straightened out. most games take a little while to get everything where it needs to be

[Kott0n]

Perfectly said