I Tried Alac-Heal Staff BLADESWORN - Thoughts 

I wish that Alacrity or Quickness was on the Spellbreaker instead. IMHO, that should have been made into the more support-oriented e-spec over either Bladesworn or Berserker.

That feeling of the weapon doing its propuse well is so good. I hope they put that on every weapon that needs this love. Like rev hammer, staff elementalist, guardian hammer.

warrior staff is awesome, but warrior as a class needs major reworks the class is fundamentally stuck in it's Design from 2012 with just some new crap slapped on it, Discipline being mandatory for any reasonable build to work is one of the biggest issues

one thing i did notice is that u can weapon swap by pressing f1 rather then the normal weapon swap button and the f1 is effected by alacrity when normal weapon swap isnt. so that can help ya get out of gunsaber a little bit quicker

When tanking Gunsaber has slightly more value, it can supplement staff block by giving you some on-demand aegis and you can make use of Unshakable Mountain to give yourself barrier.

Regarding soldier focus, it would be great if my character shouts out something instead of me looking at the bar. like a loud "focus!" or something. then we can learn to use that as cue

as a warrior main, I hate trying to focus on soldier's focus. Zerk heal is very fun on the other hand. Primal bursting on cooldown really isn't so difficult if you've been practicing your dps rotation for 5 years. It's basically the same idea

The reason you needed FGJ on berserker and not on bladesworn, cuz your berserker build didn't have empower allies. You can keep empower allies on both, ditch the banner of defense too, as regen is covered by staff. That way you have shake it off and 2 slots you can change, one will be mostly used for stability. Sidenote: if they changed the boons on staff to swiftness/vigor/prot, you could keep up all necessary boons with just staff and utilities, meaning it would be better for bsw and berserker would also just bring another weapon depending on the boss

I don't know if GW2's engine will allow it, but I hope we can place UI icons anywhere we want like BDO. So you can place stuff like Soldier's Focus somewhere on the screen where you can easily identify if its up or not just from your peripherals. It would also help boon watching to know if certain boons are down.

A little tip about being stuck in Gunsaber, it's faster to swap back to Staff using F1 instead of your normal weapon swap button, since the F1 is affected by Alacrity.

Appreciate you testing out both, Muk. Gonna give heal zerk the go then the tim3 comes!

Me: *Is gravely injured* Asura in Shiny armor that beats people with a stick: "Oi!, are you a ch... hang on, just swapped to my hi-tech Samurai blade... you still with me?" Me: *Is ded*

Core heal warrior is super fun with staff but of course, you don't have access to alacrity or quickness. Will definitely try out heal zerk at some point, as much as I enjoy bladesworn, the gunsaber feels horrendous as a support for me aswell. Excited to see your video on heal chrono Muk!

Regarding staring at the ui to see when the icon shows up, you could easily just count to ten or eleven between activations instead, so you could watch the rest of the screen.

They need to make daring dragon give barrier per charge, because currently as healsworn there's no reason to fully charge your slash. Would also be cool if a trait gave gunsaber boon support. I think it's better to use For Great Justice, because thats another ammo skill to trigger lush forest and with vigorous shouts it's also more healing. Then use shrug it off for a free cleanse/stunbreak every 25s. I use banner of tactics for stab and battle standard for rezzing and swiftness(although not enough). But with lush forest I was able to have battle standard off cd every damage phase on drakkar to rez people that get slapped.

Been out of touch with GW2 due to scheduling, shifting goals from ANET, and discovering other games, but the one thing that I'm interested in seeing that is GW2-related is another Mukluk video detailing his careful experimentation of classes and gameplay. Lord only knows how much you probably deserve that recognition from ANET, and I'm sure Felicia Day wouldn't mind if an official Mukluk wizard NPC stole the spotlight for a bit!

as a warrior main, i heavily agree. core warrior is kinda better since you can something like strenght traitline, and use all the mid lane to generate might and endurance [note that reckless dodge gives you might on dodge as well, so your endurance bar uptime will be crazy], or defense to improve your survivabilty a lot, or even arms so you can try to go condiheal or overall reduce effords on keeping up adrenaline.. spellbreaker doesnt add a lot, but you can access some boonstrip and be definitely impossible to kill with fullcounter, so yeah, alac on spellbreaker would be way better. imho, bladesworn should stay as the dps oriented specialization, but i would be ok even with only the "dragon trigger into base weapon" change we're so damn close

the Warrior Staff is great, I love it, but the builds that can use it don't feel great with it at all, at least for now. Heal Boon Berserker requires so much APM for so little boon uptime (bad with my ping playing from asia), and then this video explains the Bladesworn version well. working around Soldier's Focus and Gunsaber imprisonments just hurt my soul, I am glad the DPS Boon versions still function well

"Bladeswearing" is pretty accurate from the dps standpoint since that's what you're doing the second you have to move while trying to get a full charge on it and the boss decides that of course that's the best time to drop an aoe marker after your 5 in Dragon Trigger is still on cooldown that's just big enough that you can't sidestep out of it with both charges of your 4. I'm guessing that a warrior main that somehow hasn't burned out their last brain cell on berserker could practice enough with it to the point that they could get into a rhythm for Solder's Focus and not have to look at it to get a feeling that it's up. As for the gunsaber part, while I wonder if Anet would actually do something about that, I also wonder if it's possible to have enough concentration to be able to ride out that alacrity timer long enough to be able to use it only on parts of a fight where you know that there wouldn't be as much healing necessary.

Anet has stated that they will do a pass on Warrior traits to improve the support trait lines

You mentioned lush forest on gunsaber which is a quite important part of your utility output, but you should also use one charge of the dragon slash 4 and 5 for the same effect. Heal bsw works better with axe/warhorn for more boons and more CD reduction from axe 2. Staff is better for the extra aegis, prot and block

There's a lot hidden down there in the boons, the ranger mace counters are pretty bad too. hopefully they can do something to overhaul this at some point.

The thing with bladesworn is you need a few utilities for flow generation, that way you do more dragon triggers and it makes it so you don't need concentration and makes it so soldier focus is just an extra you don't really need to mind that much cause its gonna triger as soon as its up (that's for de alac dps) so i wonder if a zealot hybrid tank build could do good healing, decent damage and provide 100% alac 🤔

My two Favorite is the Staff on My warrior and the Necromancer skills/weapon

imo the lush forest trait with gunsaber is rly strong. I play with tactical reload to reset my skills faster (one combo are 7 seconds and thats huge). A full rotation of dragonslash (skill 4 and 5) and gunsaber (2,3,4,5,) with tactical reload (2,4,5 again because 3 has only 2 charges) is a reset of 9 seconds. With shake it of u have 10 seconds.

two improvements i would love to see for warrior move soldiars focus or trait specific buffs in general above ur hp bar and 2nd change banner maybe instant cast and around u as u hold them on ur back. In destiny 2 on one class they solved it really cool. U do a meele kill u get a pulsing aura around u healing allies and buff them. why not copy paste that for banners.

Maybe try a core Warrior solo heal with offensive boon classes? Could be interesting.

Your insights were slsuper awesome to see Muk and agreed Warrior is ironically the worst part of this build, not the Staff lol. My only feedback is ya tbh the high APM is kinda normal on Warrior builds generally so alot of Warrior mains and players who've enjoyedd the class for a long time will barely notice that.

"He's beginning to believe."

Getting relic of the warrior would lower down the weapon swap cooldown letting you switch away from the gunsaber sooner.

Hopefully they will take a better look at warrior' fundamental flaws now that big creators are criticizing it

No you're totally right, Staff is an incredible because it has to be, as a band-aid slapped on top of the anemic Warrior shell in terms of Support. This build being in direct competition with say, Ranger Mace MH being an unbelievably good weapon slapped on top of a meta healer with a massive toolbox of support options.

None of warriors elite spec utilities have any group support so you end up missing out on a lot of the specs class mechanics while running a support build.

will there be any more low intensity builds with the new weapons

I've tested staff healzerker and think its pretty fun (although as a MMO mouse user, it doesn't give me as much carpal tunnel 😁). I haven't tested staff bladesworn (yet, maybe) but I feel spellbreaker would be a more suitable warrior heal spec than bladesworn as its profession mechanic doesn't force you out of your healing weapons for a bit. Similar to berserker via offhand warhorn on swap. Although I suppose unlike berserker, there isn't as much urgency on spellbreaker to weapon swap to maintain quickness or alacrity for your group. Speaking of, Its a real shame imo that we are so reliant on quickness and alacrity to be a (more) attractive healer or support dps spec.

Since you're going through new support weapons, the new Ele pistol is bugged in water spec. The auto gains no benefit from Healing Power despite the tooltip saying so, and only heals you not allies in your party

This is how heal alac tempest feels when you have to water overload for an emergency situation and now you hope nothing horrible happens for the 17s while waiting for it to come off cooldown.

I use Core Warrior a bunch for things like WvW and PvE just because I want my lvl 3 burst. Maybe core warrior healing will be viable if the group already has quick and alac?

About "Soldier Focus"... is it at that moment, when you wish this game had stuff like WEAKAURAS from World of Warcraft... or at least a way to customize your UI... like moving stuff, hiding stuff & increasing size of things... that'd be great.

I know this doesn't apply to 99% of people but with staff, warrior can combo with FB in no heal fractal runs really well. It is an alternative to rev alac and quick fb/ scrapper

u can use relic of warrior with this build to immediately on into staff after dragon trigger, u will lose 10% heal but will still put massive heal no.

What would happen to GW2 if Anet got rid of the entire elite specs system and just allowed players to choose any nine currently selectable traits, plus nine of each level of the automatic traits that are now available in the trait lines? Would it ruin the game, or make it impossible to balance? Seems to me that this wouldn’t be much worse than it already is and it would make for some interesting builds.

Hi Warrior main here! Yea. It’s a problem. And I will die upon this hill. Damnit, I will return with my shield or on it.

Doing Healer mesmer next i can only guess? they did update the weapon since beta, im sad that it only works on 1 elite subclass (healing wise anyways)

Did you try using the relic that reduces weapon swap cooldown? That might help with you being stuck in gunsaber

Personally I didn't like giving up staff F1 for bladesworn kit. I warrior main, but i'd rather swap to my druid to provide alac-heal. I'm hoping to see something come from Spellbreaker other than almost entirely PvP focused skill and passive sets... That or give boon rip a reason to exist outside of that 1 enemy type in Inner Nayos and the super occasional boss that only gives itself a boon once in a great while. But spellbreaker would be amazing if it could provide either alac or quick among other defensive boons. Or if they added a trait in there that gave a few seconds of AOE quick when you use any skill that provides healing, rather or not it actually heals. IDK. Hoping to see some warrior changes eventually.

As a warrior main who has played many other classes as well, such as ranger, reventant and guardian but mainly warrior, all i have to say is that ALL this.. is expected. I knew that in order for warrior support to have even a small chance of success, they had to give him an Overpowered staff. AND EVEN THEN, warrior would still not become meta or maybe not even viable. The class , holds itself back... it's amazing how fucked up the warrior is actually. The problem is that.. Basic things that warrior NEEDS in order to function are locked behind Discipline ( for pvp defence as well). So you are always forced to take those + your elite spec... Those BASIC things-problems, needs to be implemented into the base line of warrior ( such as adrenaline problems-management) and the traits needs to be reworked. the staff will probably see play for REAL in the future, If and when they fix some traits and the adrenaline problems.. Although realistically speaking, it needs MORE than that. The staff should've come with an elite spec Like druid...Capable of some cheese condi builds but mostly a support elite spec. Warrior is like.. the ONLY class that has a Mechanic of it's own, a warrior mechanic that instead of giving him Power , an edge, a trump card... the mechanic itself that it's supposed to HELP the class, is HOLDING the class back. Judging by other things on warrior, i just think that the devs simply don't give a shit about the class.... Greatsword is the most outdated weapon EVER , with 2 and 4 being GARBAGE and 5 being BUGGED untill recently ( fixed after 12 years) and, just with 2 skills ( 3 and F1) the weapon was still meta for multiple specs in multiple gamemodes.. cus the alternatives were WORSE. That's how bad the state of warrior is. Another fun fact is, that untill recently, DISCIPLINE ( the most used and basically mandatory traitline for warrior in every gamemode and spec) had a trait that was boosting your downstate skill. I repeat, a trait in the most used warrior traitline, untill recently had the sole purpose of buffing a DOWNSTATE skill. I literally burst in laughter as i write this.. lol It's AMAZING. And also, i've seen the person who is actually in charge of "warrior balancing".. he seems slow, stupid and stoned.. not to mention that he has absolutly NO IDEA about how to play the warrior. I feel like anet is mostly playing Guardian and Necro anyway...

For warrior focus, I'm pretty baffled that blish uid doesn't seem to have a weak aura. Maybe somebody can tackle that tbh. GW2 clarity can do that, it is a bit cringey tho, it is very poorly implemented but it is a middleground that has the merit of existing.

The buff icons are a tad bit to small. If they were a bit bigger; we'd be able to see them better. My eye sight ain't the best in the world and having an option to make the icons bigger would be a boon. 🤔 Also thank you for all the test build videos.

As a warrior main, Spellbreaker is def the spec which should have given alacrity. Unlike Bladesworn it can weapon swap, can use weapon bursts, and it doesn't get stuck using a non-support weapon that doesn't benefit the build. Most Spellbreaker utilities are also complete trash so there would have been a lot of room there for support-oriented adjustments. I won't be surprised if Bladesworn receives adjustments to accommodate heal alac, but they really screwed warriors over by choosing it as the alac spec.

The JoJo "to be continued" --> Arrow is especially appropriate here b/c That's been ANet's approach to Bladesworn development since the class was introduced 1.5yrs ago. Except this far all of said development has been downhill into a ditch.

Doesn't F1 swap faster than Weapon Swap (it is effected by your alac)?

I wish you could just select which of the boons you provide either alacrity or quickness. Never made for me sense to hard code them into professions. I prefer alacrity over quickness specially currently where you play certain content either without all boons or with fewer people because not enough are here.

What if you use warrior relic to make the weapon swap faster. I do play SB and give 25 stacks of might. I do wish I gave quickness instead of swiftness cause I don't spend my time running from a fight.

I have no idea why they gave bladesword alac, it should have been spellbreaker. Alac bladesword is just clunky, and a healing one is even worse, the whole point of staff is the burst skill.

You can actually swap out of gunsaber faster via F1 vs Weapon Swap. Idk why but you can But about 1.5 secs. Still sucks but there's that.

Warrior: Healing by screaming at the party and swinging a big stick around

Alacrity on Spellbreaker NOW!

Honestly, warrior just needs a dedicated elite for support.

No Mukk, you only almost get it. That's exactly the reason we need specialisations for the classes.

i have very limited knowlede about bladesworn, and especially heal variant, but wouldnt using the dragonspike mine to reset dragon trigger and use it twice in a row, while ur waiting for staff to be available thus stacking lot more alac, and allowing for more uptime on staff and going saber less often help?im not sure about other boons, since not sure what the sabed does other then alac, and im not even sure if the swap cooldown progresses while ur recasting dt this way, but it would definitely beat casting pure dps skills that dont even give out boons. also id probably try out flock relic with this build. since while on saber u cant heal the group, and flock would act as an additional cooldown for this downtime. monk does nothing if u cant cast any heals, right :D

Warrior as a profession needs to be majorly overhauled, its a profession with features that have remained the same since the games release in 2012 while every other profession has changed with the state of the game. Unroot 100 blades and change Arc Divider back to triple slash!

gunsaber 3 is cc at least

Needs to be core warrior.

Bladesworn needs alac removed and Spellbreaker needs the Chrono treatment with a trait where you can provide Alac or Quickness They are so close to greatness

when EoD came out, they bound the elite spec weapons incredibly close to the elite spec they were released with. now with these new weapons, they don't have an elite spec bound to them, and all the stuff that SHOULD be in traits are now stuffed into the weapons. I get that balance is hard, but it's such poor design that the game suffers for it. They should really reevaluate their current trajectory. Start redesigning traits and weapon skills to keep BOTH in mind, instead of first trying to FORCE an elite spec to use a weapon and then trying to force a weapon to be viable without any trait support.

Muk: *complain about bad icon buff design of Soldier's Focus* Any Virtuoso having to stare down Deadly Blades for 5 seconds every shatter since the EoD elite spec release: "First time?" UI design at its worst

ah yes, the warrior conundrum of it being awkward when you aren't a dps

Anet: hm... we have to either buff warrior other weapons and trait, or we just nerf new staff support skills. after a long thoughts... Anet: nerf warrior staff, we do not like warrior enough to fix it.

nah, youre right. i main this class, but warrior is a mess and it shows even more now. trying to make a decent support build that can do what other supports can, have some flexibility and be enjoyable to play, is not possible. i was very excited to finally be able to play every role on my main, but im not going to play support warri. its really badly designed.

Yep it's always funny how people really want bladesworn to be a good support but it just isn't....if they actually did something like they did with Druid and allowed your traits to make your dragon abilities actually useful for support then it would but otherwise it's just a less good healer.

Something to keep in mind about Healsworn is that your trait from bladesworn Lush Forest allows you to use the first charge of ammo skills to refresh cds of all of your other skills (excluding dragon trigger), this allows you to use everything more and gives gunsaber a purpose in the build, not as much as you might hope for but definitely something that was left unmentioned here...

I'm glad that I'm not the only one who sees that this gun saber is useless

Bladesworn should never have been an e-spec it should have been the polearm spec in it's place tbh

all normal ppl switched from war, its class stuck in 2012 for decade.

4k+ hours into warrior, yeah warrior is clunky, has bad boon distribution and sucks. I love it.

Remember that "warriors are just some guy with a pitchfork" analogy you made a while back, Mukluk? The design potholes make it a closer analogy than you'd probably believe.

first!

wow, a class that has strenghts and weaknesses...ins't it how it was supposed to be? has everything got to be perfect and broken? I would rather have every class to have a MAJOR weak spot like this one rather then the actual state of game today, where every meta build has a weakness, but not really.

Ok, WHO is Captain Crapface, because my husband may want to take this bloke out for a drink so that they can commiserate and laugh about their warriors.😂 Edit: Apparently it sounded like "crab" instead of "crap." My bad, fixed!

Lol, this is so bad... -You definitely don't need to run monk relic here. Use durablity relic or febe. -You can start on gunblade, use healing skill to generate energy and immidiately slash on the beginning of the fight to provide instant alac and be able to swap back to the staff. -You don't need to always wait for soldier's focus. I often use the cd on the weapon swap to keep on the gunblade and the slash second time to cap everyone on alac before swapping to staff. -The biggest benefit of Bladesworn is to cap everyone on boons and heal them up to full in few seconds, then fuck off away for 20s to do whatever kiting or other shit is needed (for example Dhuum kite, HTCM kite). -You have access to condi cleanse passively from traits, so unless you're in a fight that requires lots of cleanse (like in W2), you can swap to a different utillity. -In gunblade skills 3, 4 and 5 are all ok for what they do. Spend all charges on 2 whenever you're in it as it will give you some flow stacks. There were more stuff, but I forgot by now.

Still the worst healer,

Please say that warrior is clunky, outdated, and needs in depth analysis louder. You aren't alone in feeling what warrior mains have been shouting for years.

This game is senseless - just eternal farming of something.

Yet another reason that gw2s, frankly, dogshit UI needs an update with some options for customization.

Warrior is getting redundant. No point playing this character since Anet prefer magical than physical damage. Even raids, or fractals CM, warrior getting kicked for doing low DPS. And for WVW? Warrior at back line or just going solo capping, not worth for zerg. Goodbye my warrior.