Warrior Feedback after interview

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Puliver#7825 wrote:

Wondering how many players have the same feeling of the class as they do? Even the profesional ones.

Of the people that say warrior is "fine" throughout the campaign, I have never heard them address the specific critiques people have of the life-based, mace, warrior archetype. Usually their opinion of warrior being "fine" starts and ends with that assessment and does not substantively engage with the criticisms of slow animation speeds, being locked-in to moving on a singular movement track (specific direction + slow speed), unpredictability of stuns (shorter durations, enemies sprawling out in random directions, on-ground effects near stunned enemy position), janky ability combinations (armor break -> leap slam; stun buildup -> tiny heavy stun window for boneshatter; earthquake -> stampede[???]; all skill combos being TOO SLOW to create effective combos), and inherently bad effective life pool.

Absolutely zero people that criticize the warrior+mace archetype (that I've seen) have said that the campaign is impossible or too hard. I wish that the framing of this conversation would stop snapping back to this tired trope.

If the campaign isn't the problem and it already feels slow going through it as warrior now then I expect some nerfs to all other classes to align the speed of clearing content to the 'warrior is fine in campaign'. This is from having a lvl 87 pathfinder and lvl 90 titan. Ranger playthrough was a cakewalk on the campaign. It feels like they need to improve skill speed by 20-25% faster or remove those already slow penalty nodes.

Warrior is clunky due to the mace, slow attack animation, slow walk speed, bad armor, some lackluster trees that need work, and negative penalty on speed with shield/heavy armor. The one-handed mace becomes irrelevant too if you use Giant's blood. You don't one-shot bosses until you get sunder or hotg and by then you're like level 40-50 in Act 3. Try one shotting Act 1 Geonor on hardcore with the skills you have from level 1-18. Rolling slam is garbo and you're only best option is perfect strike at that point.

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Porpszin#5438 wrote:

"we dont see like you guys see"

its the same thing to say "we dont care about warrior", So why just dont delete this class from the game?

Happy to translate:
It's corporate for "go fck yourself".

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LadyValkyrie1#3750 wrote:

I'll bet a nerf incoming to HoTG too somehow. RIP warriors
Guess only the Executioner Boss in Act 1 is the real warrior.

If they nerf HoTG, they will ironically nerf Executioner as well.

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babsa90#0800 wrote:

Absolutely zero people that criticize the warrior+mace archetype (that I've seen) have said that the campaign is impossible or too hard.

The gameplay isn't hard, its tedious. You clear at 1/2 the speed of every other class at best. Often its much slower than that. I can clear much faster on my mage or ranger compared to my warrior. The class is so far behind every other class in terms of clear speed and boss clearing. HoTG doesn't show up until level 52.

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LadyValkyrie1#3750 wrote:

If the campaign isn't the problem and it already feels slow going through it as warrior now then I expect some nerfs to all other classes to align the speed of clearing content to the 'warrior is fine in campaign'. This is from having a lvl 87 pathfinder and lvl 90 titan. Ranger playthrough was a cakewalk on the campaign. It feels like they need to improve skill speed by 20-25% faster or remove those already slow penalty nodes.

I agree with every part of this. I don't want the campaign to be easier, I felt like the campaign difficulty as a warrior was perfect. I had to buy a new two handed mace in A2 to beat the A2 boss, for example. I probably could have just beaten him if I was simply better (git guud). None of this, however, changes the fact that a lot of the warrior skills feel like absolute dogshit. If they want the giant club wielding warrior to be thematically slow & strong, then our character model SHOULDN'T be bullied out of position by a bunch of fast little gremlins as we line up our super duper big boi slam. Our character, who is locked in to a 2-3 second stampede animation, SHOULDN'T be stopped by a bunch of fast little gremlins. If we charge up a SUPA DUPA OMEGA perfect strike (which has like a 0.2s perfect window, btw, and is affected by accuracy, btw) maybe the payoff should blow up at least a quarter of the screen in a cone? Playing as a warrior in the campaign felt like a little boy living out the fantasy of being a big bad brute.

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babsa90#0800 wrote:

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1453R#7804 wrote:

Does that mean the Warrior is in a good place? No. Armor sucks more than it has any damn right to, and a lot of mace skills are too much investment for not enough payoff. it does, however, mean that the common idiot answer of "just make every mace skill three to ten times faster!" is dumb and bad, however. does Sunder need that forced five-year windup? probably not. Would Sunder work convincingly as a heavy and impactful skill if it fired as fast as a Mercenary crossbow shot? No. No it would not.

I have never seen anyone say that every mace skill needs to be 3-10x faster. I personally advocated for starting at 20-30% increased skill speed for some skills; the quick buff would make that locked-in feeling of committing to a slam/attack not feel as bad. IMO, that's a pretty modest proposal when you see a lot of builds blowing up the screen in .3-.5 seconds.

They should start by removing fixed attack time from skills. And let them scale off attack speed like every other ability. That would instantly make mace a lot nicer to play.

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babsa90#0800 wrote:

I think that I would have taken the interview and patch preview videos a bit better if they said they were going to increase the skill speed of most mace skills by 30%. The most annoying part about playing this class is how slow and locked-in I feel when I play it. Meanwhile, I watch other classes clearing entire screens in .5 seconds. I think I am going to take a break from this game and possibly wait for the official release.

doing the same, just uninstalled. game is beautiful but just tedious and not fun at the moment. this interview didn`t give me too much hope for the immediate future so I`m out until some major balancing happens

While clear speed concerns need to be addressed for sure, the Warrior's biggest problem isn't actually that he's slow, but that he lacks the tools to compliment a slower play style. We need physical heralds, more persistent buffs that work with slow speeds and wind up/charging skills to enhance survivability and clear (without necessitating lots of atk speed stacking), and support gems that also supplement slow skills and those with wind-up/charge times. For real, I get another mace with comparable damage AND increased attack speed and I am absolutely getting that line of -atk speed because 4 nodes gets me 92 fucking percent increased physical. That is immense for only 4 nodes investment down a passive line most warriors will run down in any build.

His biggest problem is that he is a slow moving 100 ton train that somehow is made of paper mache. Make him a slow moving 100 ton train that is made of tempered steel and we're getting somewhere. Do something to improve player vs mob and world collision in general (especially how little "push" players have versus monster "push" flinging us like ragdolls while we can't jump over a fucking foot tall monkey) and provide tools that enhance collision further for melee specifically and we're going to be in a great place. Love my slow boy, just feels like I'm perpetually half cocked, like I'm driving on 3 brand new tires while the fourth is a Fischer Price plastic thing pulled off a toy truck.

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babsa90#0800 wrote:

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Puliver#7825 wrote:

Wondering how many players have the same feeling of the class as they do? Even the profesional ones.

Of the people that say warrior is "fine" throughout the campaign, I have never heard them address the specific critiques people have of the life-based, mace, warrior archetype. Usually their opinion of warrior being "fine" starts and ends with that assessment and does not substantively engage with the criticisms of slow animation speeds, being locked-in to moving on a singular movement track (specific direction + slow speed), unpredictability of stuns (shorter durations, enemies sprawling out in random directions, on-ground effects near stunned enemy position), janky ability combinations (armor break -> leap slam; stun buildup -> tiny heavy stun window for boneshatter; earthquake -> stampede[???]; all skill combos being TOO SLOW to create effective combos), and inherently bad effective life pool.

Absolutely zero people that criticize the warrior+mace archetype (that I've seen) have said that the campaign is impossible or too hard. I wish that the framing of this conversation would stop snapping back to this tired trope.

So let's try getting the new framing right then. A few questions:

1) Is this "warrior archetype" allowed to go look at skills in other classes so long as their mace skill is their main DPS? Or are we going puritan "must only stick with what's shown under Mace for all skill gem cuts"?

2) Presumably we're talking mapping. Is clear speed the issue or survivability? Is the "warrior archetype" allowed to put down shield wall (and glacial bolt plus a totem) before say, a Sunder wind up?


Mace skills have interesting combos with Quarterstaff or Crossbow skills. There certainly are jank combos that I feel are newbie traps - I see no reason why anyone would want to Leap Slam to consume the full break (ok, maybe a 1v1 against a boss). Now if Sunder's wind up was fully affected by attack/skill speed modifiers, Sniper Mark -> Sunder (with Ferocity support) would be a more satisfactory way to eat the full break. High Velocity Rounds is also better than Leap Slam.

Earthquake is much more useful to the Mercenary than the Warrior. It's an AoE slow, exactly what a knockback spamming ranged character wants. Meantime Monk has most skills doing ice/lightning but has Wind Blast that's ideal for Boneshatter setup.

I feel it's a losing game to try and do a strike after a heavy stun. It is good time to set up an AoE (Seismic Cry) or shape the terrain more. Volcanic Fissure into Earthshatter or Sunder feel good once set up - slow, but satisfying. Likewise, Molten Blast really wants a wall in the way to splatter through while simultaneously affording the time to do that wind up.

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babsa90#0800 wrote:

Absolutely zero people that criticize the warrior+mace archetype (that I've seen) have said that the campaign is impossible or too hard. I wish that the framing of this conversation would stop snapping back to this tired trope.

It's not impossible, but you feel more of a relieve than success by beating the campaign. You don't want to retry again for the second ascendancy. It would be practically the same pain again.