Originally Posted by Phades

I’ve been rather frustrated with the warrior class in general as of late. The game design revolving around pve creates a situation where every character has tools (in varied degrees) to combat small to large groups of physical damage orientated monsters. Each class appears to have been designed to be stand alone if necessary, but the stand alone concepts do not work at all in pvp.

Part of my frustration is the realization that the large majority of the pve game revolves around deflecting melee attacks through various methods as the primary method of defense. This can be observed through the many defensive spells that give automatic evasion or block rates specifically against melee damage. While this is all well and good, it leaves a large hole in the "to do" list for what a warrior can achieve with most setups. Granted, there are skills available that help diffuse that situation, but unfortunately many of these defenses can be kept up indefinitely, while the method to defeat them via the warrior skills are either energy hungry to be chained or recycle every minute for every ~10 seconds of use. This creates a huge damage gap in the already large potential damage that warriors are supposed to achieve vs. a target. This is beyond what already exists in terms of traveling to the target, snares such as cripple, iron mist, prison of ice, and conditions such as blind and to a lesser extent weakness. I think some of this complication is a design oversight in general as things such as blind does not affect rangers, nor does snare (in terms of being able to apply skills effectively), due to the nature of bows and ranged combat. Granted, many of these skills can be countered via monk or necro means, a warrior cannot be a warrior if loaded up with the spells designed to counter all the warrior counters. Part of the problem lies in energy, the other in the maximum skill allowance. Granted this is a team game, when it comes to both pvp and pve, but in many instances the monks have other things to worry about than if a warrior is snared, blind, or otherwise rendered incapable of performing their intended role.

This has lead me, to a somewhat pre-mature conclusion, that the only viable sub for a warrior is a monk in order to help sustain their ability to perform in melee combat. This, unfortunately, causes the warrior to only be able to remove detrimental effects upon him and not counter the numerous effects that also counter him via wards or enchantments existing upon an enemy. While in a good team setup, other teammates can mitigate some of the burden of defeating defenses, but they are too easily stacked to be overly reliable in many cases. The chillblains appears to be a very valid solution for another warrior to compliment a warrior who can easily remove hexes and conditions, but it takes half that number to do both defenses and apply conditions towards the would be melee combatants. But, as a previous poster stated, the energy cost is very preventative towards productive use of said skill with a warrior.

Considering the skill lineup of a warrior, combined with the low energy count, non-existent energy regeneration bonuses, and the inherent bonuses available to the armor, I believe that warriors were designed almost exclusively for pve. The ability to focus as a pure warrior using strength and weapon skills for offense and tactics for defense, appears to be one of the best possible setups for a warrior for pve, but is virtually worthless for pvp. Given the high armor value and the inherent armor traits (+ defense vs. physical), and the way stances work, it would appear that warriors were designed to counter other warriors. This seems a little strange given the nature of the other jobs within the game and how flexible they can choose to be in performance. Granted there are a few skills out there such as fear me, hamstring, and axe rake, which do boost performance in pvp. They tend to be marginal at best, given the condition that the warrior must be in melee combat and have the ability to successfully strike the target without outside aid to perform these skills. I call them marginal, due to the fact that simply running away from a warrior can prevent the accrual of adrenalin necessary for a large portion of the warrior skills, in addition to being out of range for the melee attack to land. This is partially due to how the game animations work, requiring the warrior to stop moving on every melee attack performed. It is also compounded by the nature of how the game registers movement in general, relegating skills such as bull's strike and bull's rush to be called buggy at best, as they require that the target be moving at the beginning and end of the skill and also strike the rear of the target.

As far as inter-class balance is concerned, the warrior job feels lacking as it has no utility, less energy, less energy regen and fewer varied defense options. The warrior is not faster than other jobs, even side by side comparisons of movement buffs leaves the warriors slower and requiring elite skills for many of them. Given the lack of innate bonuses within the armor, I would almost expect built in health regeneration and health + bonuses to make up for the largely absent +energy bonuses and completely absent +energy regen. In exchange for these drawbacks, the warrior is given higher base armor, which is rendered largely useless due to the lack of ways to diffuse non-melee inbound damage. The innate penetration values of chaos, damage over time, holy, air, dark, and select earth magic damage sources ensure this state of being. This makes other sources of defense, such as protection magic or earth a much better damage sink (or tank) than the basic warrior template will provide, while at the same time possessing the tools for damage deflection and forms of healing.

Warriors aren’t all bad, but they really don’t seem to get the job done at times, especially when it comes to pvp, when compared against other jobs.

Originally Posted by Nexx

Awesome.

Was I the only person who read this?

Originally Posted by ZING

It's weird...but I chose the character I did for a specific reason. I checked out all the skills available and I truly think a W/R with a sword is as good as any other character class.

Here's my mini FAQ:
Why a sword?
Only Warrior weapon that causes bleeding AND also causes a 'deep wound' that lowers maximum health. Sever Artery, combined with Gash I find to the be the single most effective Warrior tool. Try using them on the battlefield; even though it seems lame that two skills you pick up right at the beginning of the game would come in handy so much, they produce great results. The two combined can make any regen spell/skill almost completely useless, and no greater pleasure exists then applying this technique to a monk who tries to run. The monk will have a choice to make: keep running and die from the slow bleed, or stop to heal and let the Warrior get another crack at him.

Why a Ranger Secondary?
Not because of Nature's Renewal (thought that's a nice bonus); the biggie is Tiger's Fury. No other skill exists that will boost your attack speed by 33% for 10 seconds. Tiger's Fury can be used for 10 seconds and recharges in 10 seconds -- it's ALWAYS on for a Warrior/Ranger. Attacking that fast for that long allows a Warrior to become entirely adreneline based. Even the most powerfull adreneline skill becomes useable right away (and often). You combine Tiger's Fury with Battle Rage, and your adreneline will seem like it's constantly at max throughout a battle.

Just my two cents; but it works for me, so I'm stickin with it.