Warrior, and mace skills feedback

Hey there, you clicked the link! Grab yourself a drink and pull up a chair, this is going to be long.

I've been playing, or rather trying to make warrior work since the EA began, and with some varied levels of success and failure, so here is a big compilation of all my feelings about the big guy. I will try to format it in a way each topic is separated, because I might cover most mace skills and other warrior mechanics.

Disclaimer: English is not my primary language, I will try my best.


Starting at level 1 at the beach, your first map. Warrior is without a doubt, the hardest class to kill the Miller. Every other class has a way to hit him without trading blows back and forth, even the monk can outrange him with the lightning skill you get. And if you died to the Miller on your first warrior, you are not alone.


RAISE SHIELD

This is not a warrior specific skill, but warrior is the only class that gets it on the first zone, so I will start with this. Raise Shield works, does what it is supposed to do, and after you are high enough level with 60%+ block chance, you just forget about it almost completely. I wish the shield bar was thicker and/or brighter, it blends way too much with the interface. Also wish it showed above your character if you have the HP/Mana minibars enabled, as a third bar that shows up when you block.

MACE STRIKE

The basic attack. No other class will use their weapon's basic attack as much as the warrior will. It costs no mana, it swings your mace, and it deals damage. You can socket it, and it gains more socket slots as you level up. This is a crutch to help warriors go over several of the class and skill issues. And speaking of issues, let's start with them.

MANA

Mana is an issue. I understand why warrior needs to have mana instead of a rage/energy mechanic. In PoE, I can make a minion warrior, or a caster warrior. So it is necessary that all the classes use the same resource. But why do the mace skills have to cost so much? Boneshatter costs more than spark, more than lightning arrow, more than fragmentation rounds. And before someone points out: "You spam spark though", Boneshatter costs more than Essence Drain as well.

Your very first skill at the beach is the most costly skill out of the 6 classes. Why?! Warrior does not invest in INT, there are no mana regen nodes around. In fact, most warriors will invest in reduced maximum mana nodes so they can get enough STR for Giant's Blood. Sure you will eventually transition to Blood Magic or Semi-blood magic to convert about half of the cost to life; But that doesn't change the fact the base cost is too darn high.

It leads to the worst gameplay loop of all for SSF or new league warriors: Using mace strike all the time. Because if you are undergeared, you will take more rolling slams to kill your enemies, and the cost will be higher than the speed which you can replenish your flasks.



Let's talk about the mace skills and the mechanics within.

EARTHQUAKE

I legit have no words to express how disappointed I was when I picked this skill in town with my first quest reward, left to clearfell and tried to use it on a pack of wolves. This skill is a joke, a bad one. Whoever thought four seconds delay before a skill does damage was a good idea? Sure you can put fast forward in it, you can maybe get less skill duration on the tree to build around it. But look at it this way: This is quite likely the first skill a new player will get on their own. They have no support gems, no passive to work around a way to make this work. I'm willing to bet more than 90% of warriors used this once, had a chuckle and destroyed the gem. Two seconds GGG, no more than that.


BONESHATTER AND PRIMED FOR STUN

Boneshatter is mostly fine, the issue is the "primed for stun" mechanic, so let's skip to that!

Primed for stun is a mechanic that highlights enemies who can be heavy stunned by certain skills when their stun bar reaches a certain threshold. (40% for normal enemies, 60% for magic, 70% for rares and 80% for Unique/Bosses). So you hit a mob, the stun bar goes up to 40%, you use boneshatter, and it does a AoE wave that is very satisfying and the best way to clear for a -VERY- long time.

The issue with that is how warriors get punished by investing in stun buildup, or having a good weapon for their level. If you have decent-ish (not even great) gear, what will most likely happen is: You hit a white mob with Mace Strike, it'll die. Then you can't AoE clear, you move to the next white mob... it dies. And then you move to the 3rd mob... it dies. And if you have a bad gear, you better not have a lot of stun build up. Because hitting a mob and stunning it instantly is just as bad. You can't use boneshatter on that enemy anymore.

So the gameplay is quite bad. You are praying you don't hit hard enough, but also that you don't stun the mob in one hit; Otherwise you have to kill every mob with your basic attack while other classes are AoE clearing.

It feels so bad when you find a rare enemy, hit it once, and the stun is like 60% of the bar, because now the enemy is not primed for stun, but if you hit it again you'll stun it and now you have to... mace strike the minions one by one.

You will mace strike A LOT...


ROLLING SLAM

I love this skill aesthetically and thematically. The 50% stun build up on the first slam so you can deal extra damage on stunned enemies is great.

Honestly my only complaints about this skill are the ABSURDLY HIGH mana costs, and how the tutorial mentions you can redirect, but doesn't say: "Holding down the key, you can redirect it while moving.", so some noobs will take a while to figure it out and/or have to google it. (Totally did not happen to me... >.<)

While I was writing down about Leap Slam, I realised I forgot to add here: The skill would feel better if the +1.5s to attack time was lower, maybe +1.2s. Maces are already slow and will add to the timer anyway.

ARMOUR BREAKER

Pretty useless skill tbh. The base attack is 80% at level 1, you are better off just killing enemies with Mace Strike again. Warbringer gets this on every attack later, and Titan does not need it, you can just get Armour break on stun support, so you can properly line up your many "Increased damage on heavy stunned/immobilized enemies" with the broken armour.


SHOCKWAVE TOTEM

My only complaint about this skill is how you scale its damage. I wish the totem used your main hand weapon damage for te shockwave, because if you are a totemic character, your weapon is just a stick for +X to Melee weapon skills.

Probably would need different balancing because weapons can get pretty crazy damage, so I'm not unhappy with how it is either.


INFERNAL CRY

This is not bad, helps with clear early on since you can't use boneshatter on account of prime for stun. The mana cost is a lil salty, but every mace skill is. At least it works to empower our main skill. (You guessed it, Mace strike!)


SHIELD CHARGE

Zero complaints, skill does what it set up to do, and it even drifts pretty well on curves and avoiding terrain. It also makes so your shield is raised as you charge, mitigating most damage. 10/10 skill. (Just don't level it up, keep it at level 3, because of mana again!)


PERFECT STRIKE

Eh... I don't think those "If you release at the perfect moment" skills work with melee, specially not with the visual polution on the screen and enemies being able to push you while you are charging it. Can be a skill issue, but it also turns the game into a High attention endeavor where every click you must pay attention to do the damage. Decent for bossing if you are going the fire route I suppose. This is a skill that is hard to judge without seeing the last ascendancy. Feels like it was made for a fire based melee ascendancy like Chieftain, which is not out yet.


MOLTEN BLAST

While I was writing this, I realised I never tested this skill. So I went out on my titan and tested it for a bit and my conclusion is that if the ball hit the location of your mouse instead of its static distance, it'd be a much more fun skill. It'd have the skill expression of calculating where you want the ball to explode so the shrapnel hits the highest amount of enemies.

I will not say much more about this skill for the same reason of Perfect Strike. I feel it was made for a fire based melee ascendancy like the Chieftain.


RESONATING SHIELD

10/10 animation, best skill to spam on a hideout while waiting for someone to trade with you. Pretty bad for combat.


LEAP SLAM

Does what it is set up to do. I think the travel distance could be longer and the animation about 20% shorter. It has a base of +0.65, and +0.5 based on distance. I think if those numbers were tweaked to 0.5 and 0.4, the skill would feel way more fluid.


EARTHSHATTER

Solid, I'd say, rock solid. A complaint I have about this is how the spikes are often invisible, specially when used by the Ancestral Warrior Totem.

My experience with this skill is on a Corrupting Cry Warbringer, using it on the totems, and yeah, I like it a bunch.


SHIELD WALL

Just bad. The damage is bad too. This skill suffers for two issues: Leveling warriors probably will not be using a shield because 2h is way superior to 1h, and high level warriors with Giant's Grip won't use this because they have better stuff.


SUNDER

FINALLY! You leveled from 1 to 31 pretty much using Mace strike and killing enemies 1 by 1. With the ocasional rolling slam and mana pot overdose. Here is the first decent mace skill.

Probably the very best skill in the whole mace tree, and the solo reason for not getting Resolute Technique.

Good job GGG.



VOLCANIC FISSURE

At this point, every other skill will suffer from "not being Sunder". But this one suffers because the whole "use a skill, then slam it with another skill" mechanic is lame and clunky. Ain't nobody got time to prep and smash over and over during a breach. The damage is not even worth it.


SEISMIC CRY

Great skill. Works amazingly for corrupting cry, and also for Heavy Stun setups where you heavy stun an enemy, use seismic cry, and then a slam skill. Most likely sunder for the garanteed critical hit!


SUPERCHARGED SLAM

I like this skill, probably more than it deserves. The issue is the same of Perfect Strike through. Channeling stuff in melee range while being pushed around and with ground mechanics happening... it is tough. But the damage and the repeat is very satisfying when you get multiple repeats and have enough AoE passives. I think the time between stages should be lowered though.


STAMPEDE

Stampede is for Warbringers what Sunder is for Titans. It is the best way to proliferate chain armour explosions. Good skill, fun to use.


ANCESTRAL WARRIOR TOTEM

Same feedback as the shockwave, I wish my weapon mattered here.


HAMMER OF THE GODS

I don't like this. This is a meme or a highlight montage skill. It is the skill people will point at and be like: Warrior is fine, I saw this guy kill X boss with a single Hammer of the Gods.

I think the damage is too high and the cooldown is too long. Making it a skill to use only on bosses, but the way you can only have 1 support gem per skill makes for a bad gameplay "workaround" where you'll remove your best supports from your main clear skills and put on this just before the boss for the 1 shot potential.

Sure you can have this as an "oh shit" buttom, but lets face it, if you are in an "oh shit" situation, by the time the hammer falls (2.5s) you are dead.

And that is the perfect moment to talk about being alive as a warrior...


ARMOUR

It's bad. And honestly, I've typed so much, I don't even want to type how bad armour is in this game, so I'll just leave a link of Kripparian explaining it for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=henLgTe4Ztk


FINAL THOUGHTS

Warrior suffers the most from the current state of early access. If you look at where warrior is located on the passive tree, there is no released class above it, so no flail skills or primal skills to complement the set. There's no marauder and no duelist either, so you also don't have axe or sword skills to play with.

Invoker is made better by having access to elemental spells to cast on crit/shock/freeze. Merc and Ranger both can swap to each other's weapons. I've seen good crossbow ranger builds, and the best ballista setup for merc uses a unique bow to increase the +X to projectile skills. Witch's most popular build uses sorceress' skills (Raging Spirits and flame wall)

The point is, warrior is isolated, with no extra weapons and skills to play with. Sure you can make a minion titan, but it's not even better than the infernalist because armour sucks. Mace skills are pretty lackluster except for 3-4, on top of that, warrior has the highest amount of "Coming Soon" skills out of any class.

With armour being as bad as it is currently, and mace skills lacking the proper clear speed of all other classes, there's only one reason to play a warrior right now: You are a warrior yourself. And hardship is the fire that fuels your desire to keep slamming, shouting and looking badass!