Warrior class is getting useless

You are obviously clueless about PvE.
PvE is all about what class can kill things the fastest, keep thing alive so they can kill faster, or buffing another class so they can kill ridicilously faster.
poison pressure is a joke in PvE, the fact that you even mention it makes me want to slam my head against the wall in awe.
Degeneration does absolutely NOTHING in PvE.
Poison tip signet is worthless, and you cannot take apply poison when you play a barrage bar.
Barrage in itself is not even that great.
as has been stated before, ms/db sin train in pve or a 100b warrior/vos derv will tear things apart faster, even when mark of pain is not involved.
Sure they can use other weapons then the bow, but it will still be subpar.
Sure it is fun, I run several sword/spear/dagger builds on my own ranger.
But its still subpar.
expertise on daggers lose vs higher specced dagger mastery+crits+e-managment of a sin. not to forget that the IAS of the sin is also permanent, refreshes on crit, and is 33% and not 25%, and adds a noticable armor boost. ( assuming you meant NRA when stating a perma IAS for rangers, if you meant dwarven stability+lightning for perma block&ias you just used two skill slots where the sin used one)

Sure you can spam spirits, but reduced expertise cost does not win from more health from spawning and higher specs. Energy managment on a spirit spam rit has never been an issue since spirit siphon got introduced.

And spears..lets not go there, thats just pure novelty without any form of AoE capabilities. At least a paragon brings shouts and other buffs for the party along with the spear. a ranger can't do that ( or perhaps for 10 seconds after which energy hits 0 because of shout and chant costs).

Block is not that awesome in itself.
At least not in PvE.
you are there to kill stuff, and everything on your bar should complement to that. The best defense is to kill things before they have a chance to kill you.
Basic PvE knowledge.

The poster above you clearly based his post around PvE situations, so I do not understand why you decided to get pvp involved.

No and no.

The issue with eles has got nothing to do with the ele itself.

And so we get back to the point of the thread , which is warriors are useless at damage dealing compared to sin and dervish.. Nice try though...

I'm not going to disagree that a bow ranger isn't that efficient , but it surely is more than a warrior or a paragon( and the same applies for a warrior or a paragon using a bow)

And here I thought that 100b/Whirlwind combo was pretty insane damage spike when coupled with such unheard of buffs like splinter/MoP

In my quoted post you speak about the ranger.
Do not convert back to the original topic when I was not talking about that, and neither were you.

Still, I will explain to you why a warrior or a paragon are more efficient then a bow ranger.

the paragon supports the party with shouts and chants. that somewhat makes up for his/her lack of AoE. I have to admit that there is not that much for paragons at the moment besides Imbagon ( that is: things that get accepted in your average PUG ), but it makes the paragon more efficient then a ranger, because the party support makes up for the lack of damage output.

Now for the warrior.
I cannot comprehend why you think that the warrior is worse then a ranger wielding a bow.
A warrior has numerous AoE and support capabilities.
as said before, hundred blades and whirlwind attack alone offer great DPS, combine with mark of pain for even more fun.
Hammers, although less used, also have their uses with AoE KD from earthshaker and several AoE attacks.
Perhaps not that popular or known to the crowd, but certainly viable.
And then we have the support section with Dragon Slash + SY! spam.
Not to forget that a warrior can take advantage from SoH something a ranger cannot, but a warrior can benefit just as much from a splinter weapon as a ranger can.
Right now there really isn't much about the warrior that is terrible.
Perhaps axe could use a slight PvE buff, but I wouldn't really change that much.
Warrior is one of the more balanced professions, and skill changes should be minimal, because the slightest change might push warrior into the ridicilously overpowered department.

With all due respect, if you think that a warrior is worse then a ranger wielding a bow, you are not playing your warrior very well.

On the concept of paragons and warriors using bows:
They don't have to because weapons of their own classes provide way more fun builds that are also way more damaging then everything they could possibly do with a bow.
Perhaps paragons are an exception to this rule ( with many thanks to Khomet for his enjoyable P/R builds), but that is up to debate.
The bow in itself is underpowered.
Sure a ranger can wield a bow better then any other profession can ( with the exception of perhaps barraging ritualists/ spirits strength+volley rits, but once again, thats up to debate), but why would any other profession do that when their own weaponry is way more efficient?

To go back to the original point of the topic:
Nothing wrong with the warrior.
They can stand their ground next to assassins and dervishes just fine.
perhaps a small tweak into the axe mastery and tactics line, but for the rest I would be reluctant to touch anything.

Swords are weak only in comparison to Dervishes. Swords were customarily used for pressure builds whereas Axes were used for pressure-spikes (calling spikes every 7 seconds with the intent of pulling monk energy, not necessarily killing) and hammers were used for utility and shutdown. Unfortunately, Dervishes have eclipsed warriors for pressure and sword has become obsolete. The ideology behind the dervish update was to make dervishes the pressure melee class. There is no way for sword to compete unless it is revamped to do something entirely different. Right now it conditions and snares (something axe and hammer fail in comparison) but it would have to be reworked from the ground up if you want it to see play because the entire Dervish class's main responsibility is conditions and snares.

This argument was applied to the Dervish for years. It was never too significant and never convincing.
The difference here though is that the argument is clearly false.
Don't ever touch the Warrior, at all.

Speaking purely from a general PvE perspective (not talking about SC at this point), I think Warrior is the most well-rounded frontline profession in the game. Sturdier then the Assassin and not reliant on enchantments like the Dervish, while dealing comparable damage to them both. I cannot see how you can argue that the damage is significantly worse then either profession. 100b AoE bomb is still fantastic, DS is great single-target and Hammers for knock-locking. Heck you can even go Daggers or Scythe if you feel like it and do well. As someone said, a Warrior able to keep the 33% IAS rolling is going to rape faces (it is a 50%~ DPS increase after all). The fact that you aren't tied up as a Warrior secondary to run SY! is an added bonus.

In SC, the 100b + MoP bomb is still insane.

No, just no. Poisons doesn't mean shit, the ranger block skills are fairly useless most of the time, energy shouldn't be an issue with the right build and the IAS is worse then the Warrior alternative (easier for the scrubs to use though, I'll give you that). Basically you want to trade the best armor ingame, passive armor-pen and Strength+Weapon runes for some shitty condition spreading and survivability skills you shouldn't need in the first place.

I cannot comment on your ability in PvP but as for the PvE side of the matter, you have no clue.

Oh dear...

Pve wise the warrior isn't as wanted as maybe a ritu but the ranger is even less so and for good reasons. They are in a worse situation than mesmers pre-update wise since they are a pvp class with pvp skills in a pve environment. Warriors got hundred blades and granted it was moronic of arenanet to take what is good from one profession and make it better on another (vow of strength) but it is still and option. It is pretty darn powerful. They can sy spam effortlessly, got high armor penetration and big damage in a packet of high armor. And do not compare to dervishes that way, dervishes needs nerfs and warriors should stay where they are. Warriors are the kings and queens of pvp but they aren't to bad in pve either which is interesting.

PvP wise: Are you kidding me? They rule the pvp with only their bulls strike! Loldamage, lolarmor, loladrenalinespam, lolkdchains, lolarmorpen, loldeepwoundswithspike (this is what physicals kills with) are all part of the warrior beast rampaging on your liners. Yes warriors are easily shut down but it is like in strategy games: build anti air fast or get f**ked. Warriors are the nukes and bombers of guildwars, if you do not get those flack canons up in your base fast you will be squashed within seconds by nukes and aircrafts. But if you do the aircrafts becomes less of a threat so that it forces the enemy team to use other resources to pressure in other ways or open a gap for your aircrafts. Tripple melee has been a staple in the meta for a long time now with aegis gone and yes this month we have had a surge of dervishes but already after this recent nerfs we are seeing triple wars again. What do you want? 5 warriors? Rangers are extremely useful in pvp compared to in pve but they are still only a (good) utility box compared to 3/8 of the team.

And wait-

Did you say a ranger using warrior weapons is better? I played RaO for teh lulz a while and it was okay, but the warrior is still better. RaO is expensive even for a ranger and other than that single hammer build what is there? When you use attack skills, each point of Strength gives you 1% armor penetration. <- See that thing? It is kinda important. That + that strenght is a wonderful attribute in it self and that the ranger fails with runes for weapons and that about every useful warrior attack is either adrenaline or strength.


I for once i agree with you.

Totally agree.

Ranger with a melee weapon = probably the best way to use your ranger in PvE but not nearly as good as a Warrior, Sin, or Dervish.

Ranger pumping out spirits = also a very solid way to play a ranger but again not nearly as good as an actual Ritualist.

Rangers have always been a "jack of all trades" type of profession, very newbie friendly and open to lots of experimentation but ultimately a little weaker when you finally focus on a particular build and realize that self heals and survivability are really not important in PvE. In the end, the warrior is going to blow things up more effectively than a gimmicky ranger.

On topic, I really don't see why we always need to obsess about making every profession absolutely equal for end-game content. The reality is that most people are most likely just playing NM missions which ALL professions can pull off just fine and any elite player should be capable of addressing the various handicaps of any particular profession that happen to like to play. It's a huge exaggeration to say that any particular profession is "useless" just because you perceive they might be a little weaker; they will just get the job done just fine.

You guys really aren't understanding the point ( well overall maybe i didn't explain myself clearly ).... It's not about the warrior skills but about the class itself... I will argue about the only thing you guys are all telling me : 100b ....

- Almost all damage relies on mark of pain use
- A sin can do it also...

So , where in that is warrior unique and a must for that build ??? All my arguments aren't about the warrior alone but about the warrior in comparaison of other classes especially sin and dervish... An other issue though about PvE is that it can be done with almost anything , so maybe my arguments can be less valid... but still..

How about...
more armor/higher specced 100b?
Sure a sin can do it.
But a warrior simply does it better.
Following your logic DPS assassins would be useless because warriors and dervishes can also use dagger spam.
sure they can!
but assassins can still do it better.

Well sorry you need to define for me whether you are talking pve or pvp buff.

You sound right now like you are speaking pve, but then your referance to the ranger sound like you are talking about pvp.


And as above: When you use attack skills, each point of Strength gives you 1% armor penetration.

And: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Strength

Very few people are trying to argue that the warrior is BETTER than the assassin or dervish. They're just pointing out that the initial assertion ("the warrior is useless/becoming useless") is not correct. The warrior is extremely useful. The warrior deals significant damage when played well and has the ability to bring other things to the table (knockdown, conditions, high armor rating, armor piercing damage).

Also, and probably more importantly, the warrior is a LOT of fun to play for people that play them. Guild Wars is a game, a game is supposed to be fun, warriors are fun for many of us, ergo warriors are not useless. QED.

You're trying to define "useful" very narrowly. Sure, if you limit your definition to "the class that is best at this one aspect of the game", you can argue that any class is useless. Monks are useless because they don't do as much damage as elementalists. Elementalists are useless because their armor sucks. Assassins are useless because they look like they got kicked out of circa 1985 heavy metal bands.

Ok, sure, I know at least Assassin and it's DB spam outclasses anything DPS wise, most likely. Not sure on the numbers for dervishes per-say, but Warriors aren't the most DPS centric class anymore, but that doesn't mean they don't have their options and fortes.

TBH, when MOST of your damage comes from Orders, SoH, MoP, ect, what class you are matters little, so much as the strengths and weaknesses of your class, how fast you are dishing out packets of physical damage to trigger the latter mentioned buffs. A Monk, nowadays, can strap on 100b build, dagger spam, or what else, and as long as they have those physical buffs, they will be pumping out damn good damage.

The argument between class is simply nitpicking about who can wipe everything off the map faster, because last I checked the builds that made Warriors still desirable PRE dervish buff still exist, you're just neglecting to mention them. WE Axe still exists. WE scythe still probably does, it just might take some innovation. Not to mention even warriors can still dagger spam, on top of 100b, Earthshaker, and what else.

A lot of what people forget is that Tank and Spank isn't the only way to play this game, so all of you really need to stop talking as if it's the only thing anyone ever does in GW.

Not to mention that if Anet kept buffing every single class JUST because another class does it better, then there would be an endless stream of buffing, because they can not account for the very innovation that goes on with build making. With Dervishes it was different, because they realized a fundamental flaw in how the class was made up from the beginning.

But, as I said. Warrior still has some damn good builds, and I've never felt my warrior lacking in any department, though I will say that some other classes might need their faults to shine through.

For instance, assassins could deal with having the armor buff on CA removed. there is no reason that sins must deal ungodly damage AND self-tank like a mo-fo. Seeing as they have Jagged Strike>Fox Fangs>DB that leaves their build elite-flexible, there's no reason the elite can't be used for protection if need be.
Dervishes have the same base issue, but in nature they tend to have more downsides as well, seeing as they regularly deal with spells and suffer a lot of the same consequences as casters do.

TLR: Warriors are fine, ot

I think the most important question is, how do you balance a profession/attribute line when they become underpowered due to powercreep?

I cannot speak for anyone else but if you aren't speaking about specific builds but rather the class as a whole I would say that is in the Warriors advantage. Sure an Assassin can do great damage, but they are fragile while doing so and their attack-chain can be interrupted. Sure a Dervish can be sturdy and do a lot of AoE damage, but they are vulnerable to Enchantment-stripping and anything that prevents them to use said Enchantments. The Warrior class suffer from nothing like that, the only thing that can stop a Warrior are the same stuff that can stop the Assassin and the Dervish.

Overall I feel the Dervish and the Assassin has one or two really good but sometimes somewhat limiting builds. Assassin for example has decent but not great AoE, there really isn't a build that can remedy that. Dervishes do great AoE damage, but their single-target is nothing special (as far as I've seen, might be wrong since I ain't a big Dervish player). The classes are niched to a certain degree, Warrior aren't. The Warrior class is kinda like a Ranger that way except, you know, Warriors are actually good. Sturdy, good single-target damage, good AoE damage, nice utility and no glaring weakness besides general melee hate.

Sounds like a pretty strong class to me.

lol seriously...plz reread that...if there is an issue with eles then obviously it has something to do with eles or there wouldn't be an issue. Everything aside...that's just common sense.

Not really. The "issue" with eles can really be traced back to how HM monsters have huge amounts of armor, and the only class that relies almost exclusively on non-armor ignoring damage is the ele. Ele damage is fine in NM, because it was originally balanced around that.

In other words, the solution to the issue isn't to buff eles like mad (just like the solution to rangers isn't to buff their damage). In the ele's case, the solution is to reduce the amount of armor mobs have in HM. That buffs eles while leaving everyone else's damage effectively constant (still crazy OPed most of the time, but still).

Alternatively, and preferably, all armor ignoring damage should be nerfed such that you can't steamroll HM mobs faster than the skales outside of Ashfrod. If the rate of kills went down, ele damage wouldn't look so terrible in comparison. In other words: kill powercreep, stop buffing to compensate.

Of course, that's never going to happen. It takes more work, and it'd piss off players that ANet needs to buy GW2. I can't speak for anyone else, but the main reason I even participate in these kinds of balance discussions anymore is so that ANet hears what the community thinks as they're tuning GW2, so we don't run into this mess again.

I'm guessing that he's referring to the flawed mechanic of elemental damage in general in relation to armor.


It's kind of a chicken or the egg thing. If we didn't constantly buff everything in an attempt to make every single profession equally desirable for high end PvE (which only a tiny fraction of population probably plays), the power creep wouldn't exist in the first place. I'm perfectly content with the concept that maybe some professions just aren't as good as others and people can choose to play them if they want a challenge or a significantly different play-style.

I think the ultimate flaw in this game is people's obsessions with title tracks which forces them to put all their attention into a single character and profession. A lot of players identify themselves as a single profession and they take it really personally if they feel neglected. I'm perfectly content to use specific professions to do certain things that they are better at.

Unfortunately the flawed mechanic and eles are intertwined, making an issue of one an issue with the other. I stand behind my post reguardless...one cannot rightfully say that an issue of something has nothing to do with that same something, no matter what it is.

You can. Easily.

Lets say every area in the game suddenly had the Shroud of Darkness environmental effect, causing all physicals to have a 50% miss rate (and lets pretend you couldn't even bypass this with Asuran Scan). Is that a problem with physicals? No, that would be a problem with PvE.

Inflated armor is exactly the same for Eles, every skill they use is most often reduced to 50% effectiveness, if not 20-30%. Eles essentially enter every HM area with an invisible "You do 40-80% less damage with every skill, because RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO eles" environmental effect. The same goes for any other class trying to use armor-respecting damage.

This is indeed the ultimate flaw of the game (though it is more the fault of the game designers than the players). The designers made a game where the ultimate "end game" of PvE, once one has completed the campaigns, is getting titles. If anet had taken more care to make all or most titles account wide, this wouldn't be such a problem. As things are, though, most people are locked into a single profession that they play much more than the others. I wish it were different - I would love to be able to do one vanquish or dungeon on my ritualist and then do the next on my paragon and then the next on my mesmer, but that is not the case. As it is, I have to do them all on my paragon, since he's my main title char.

This is the reason why I dislike anet spending so much time on skill updates for single professions at the time. I remember back in the day when Izzy headed the team, most updates would contain skill changes for a variety of different skills for different professions. Thus, whenever a new skill update came out, I would always be really excited because I knew that at least a few paragon or rit skills would be changed. Now... well I dont even have a dervish that I play. You can imagine how disappointed I am that anet spent 9 months on an update for a profession that I dont play. I am fine with certain professions being the focus of updates, but some skills for several (if not all) of the other professions should be considered in each update as well.

Other than anything but D-slash, swords are completely trashed by D/W swords with Ebon Dust Aura, but I don't see how warriors are terrible. Nobody runs D/W swords in PvE afaik so it's pointless to talk about swords.

Earthshaker
Dev hammer bars
W/P spear chucker with SY!
W/any Enduring Axe with SY!
W/any Eviscerate shock axe for PvP

The latest patch made things better as far as Dervish balance, mainly due to the IAS changes. Warriors have higher bonus damage, more unconditional armor, ability to use a shield.

I've been meaning to test out enraged smash as well in areas where crude swing isn't as good due to sparse/spread foes. +4 adrenaline every 5 seconds is counter blow/yeti smash/dwarven headbutt fuel.

Re: Eles in HM. I feel HM Eles are comparable to mesmers that use domination in Normal mode instead of keystone or clumsiness/illusion spam , but without the utility. The most sustainable damage (with no utility), SF eles with glowing gaze, does about 40-50DPS per target due to aftercast. Eles and Rangers in HM are in the same boat. Barrage rangers only get about 17 (or 22 with vamp) damage on barrage to be armor ignoring, which is maybe half of their total damage (~36-40DPS with vamp, energy permitting ... ~28DPS otherwise). I just tested this on MoD.

Your missing the point....in your example it would be like saying the problem with miss rate has nothing to do with miss rate...or.....the problem with physicals has nothing to do with physicals....or the problem with enviormental effects has nothing to do with environmental effects...or the problem with armor respecting dmg has nothing to do with armor respecting dmg. All of those statements are hypocritical.....they say there is a problem with something...then contradict that point by saying that subject of said problem is unrelated.

One could say..the issue of armor reduction has nothing to do with eles.

Let me see if I can add an analogy to this...

Incorrect: The color green has nothing to do with the color green
Correct: The color green has nothing to with the color red
Debatable: The color green has nothing to do with the color yellow

Eles and armor is in the debatable catagory...but the original comment was:

Paragons do worse than that, and when the imbagon build is nerfed (which is hopefully will be soon), paragons won't really have anything.

I missed the Derv build that could run Hundred Blades and Ebon Dust Aura.

If you want to be pedantic, literally everything is always related to everything else in some way simply because that is how the universe works. When people say "Ele problems have nothing to do with Ele skills", they imply that the source of the problem that needs to be fixed is not in Ele skills.

I have to agree, my own selfish reasons for wanting a PvE Smiter Monk buff, because I title hunt on my Monk. RoJ is kind of a joke in PvE. And the only other good skills are too reactive and situational to be dependable DPS or are strictly support.

First solution: Wouldnt nerfing HM armor increase the base damage of physical attacks? Making Dervs, Sins, Wars, Minions, and Orders builds even more OP?

Second Solution: I concur, if you also nerf the armor ignoring damage to attack skills, that might work. But I doubt Anet has the will or ability to undertake a mass nerf of that scale.

Aside from the occasional nerf to OP skills(with SF I wonder what Anet's criteria for OP is), it seems ANet is content on fighting powercreep with powercreep. Which is why whenever I discuss skill balances, I favor powercreep. Not because its the best possible solution, but because its the most likely to be implemented.

Not enough for people to really notice. Eles are supported by that more than anyone else.

Generally, lower armor wouldn't help the OP Derv/Sin/War builds all that much. At most, they will gain about +10-15 single target DPS, which doesn't matter because the OP builds are OP because they are doing ridiculous amounts of AoE. The physicals who aren't using OP AoE builds are the ones that would see the most benefit (and who are underpowered still now and need it). The only forseeable thing that for players really gets any buff at all is Hundred Blades/ Vow of Strength, who's power could be cut by about 30% to keep them at current damage levels. Not that VoS/HB are imba because of their damage anyway, they are only imba because of their reaction to MoP + balled enemies but we could easily keep parity with their current base damage. MMs do get a pretty decent buff, probably about 40-70 DPS for a full army but its not too bad, and MBs that use low level minions still do almost no minion damage.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, at least one other melee skill would definitely need a nerf if armor level was lowered. That being Sand Shards. There are probably a handful of others, its fairly easy to know which ones if you are knowledgeable about them and just look through the listings, but I'm not going to do that right now.

Nerfing armor ignoring damage is needed, but not really on attack skills. Very few builds are steamrolling PvE because of +30 armor ignoring damage on a single attack (Death Blossom Sins and PR Dervs are the only ones I can think of), most of the melee builds are steamrolling PvE because of +40 damage on every single attack along with 50 AoE damage from a combination of OP buffs.

Your barrage build must be terrible. Also, barrage spike damage scales with number of foes because of a little skill called splinter weapon. MoD doesn't let you test that.

Very little, if any, of the damage from these sources are in fact reduced by armor. Physical classes get the majority of their damage from their +damage skills. The reason that melee damage is ridiculous is because it can be pumped with things like orders, barbs, MoP, SoH, weapon spells, etc...all of which do armor-ignoring damage.
An unbuffed physical really isn't that bad. Take out the crazy +dmg stuff I listed above (and some key PvE only skills) and the attack skills themselves can stay the same. Save for the dervs (and hammers, iirc), attack skill damage itself hasn't changed terribly much over the years.

All you say is true, but eles DO have some really stupid things to fix apart the lack of damage: E-storage isn't a energy-management as should, Glyphs aren't really useful (apart Gole and some niche situations), static wards can't compete to all other party protection out there (SY>every wards summed toghether), water is a joke (apart maelstrom and deep freeze), and stuff like this. And this sums with the "Skill listed damage: 103. Effective damage:36.".

And agreee with your points about nerf everything else or mob armor. But as you say:
Buff 1 prof vs. nerf all armor-ignoring dmg + nerf mobs armor +....

Which means that any update to ele will be a powercreep madness to be effective.

You hardly have to nerf all armor ignoring damage. The vast majority of armor ignoring skills aren't that bad. When was the last time you saw life stealing necros or degen mesmers? Didn't think so.

For the most part, there are about 5-10 armor ignoring skills you would want to nerf to balance all physical professions, and there are about 10-15 or so armor ignoring skills that casters abuse and need to be nerfed.

Nerfing mob armor is easy. Any developer who doesn't have their head up their ass could easily write some kind of script to go through all enemies and automatically cap their armor at the normal lvl 20 maximum. After that you might want to go through and manually up a few enemies by about 10-15 armor just to make them a bit more durable, but 95% of the work can easily be automated. One would hardly need to manually tweak every single enemy in every single area.

With "Armor-ignoring damage" i mean things like Foc, Esurge, RoJ, and so on.
Generally when you talk about this kind of dmg Degen doesn't fall in this category, but is useless in pve anyway so who cares.

And about nerfing armors, i'm not a GW programmer, but do you recall how much time took them to implement some plain "IAS+IMS+Scattering+Fast casting+ultra-armor" mobs that we usually call "HM"? Months maybe?

I think that if reducing armor rating would be just "fix 2 numbers here and there" they would have done it ages ago.

Was just throwing them out to make the point. There are lots of skills that are armor ignoring but still not overpowered. No one is complaining about Backfire, Empathy, Chaos Storm and Energy Burn being OP. Domination magic is considered one of the more OP attributes in the game and yet half the skills are either fairly balanced or even under powered.

Degen wasn't useless at all before the massive power creep from Nightfall. Getting 20 DPS on every enemy in a group is pretty impressive compared to both an unbuffed or much more weakly buffed warrior and a pre-power creep ele against pre-armor creep enemies.

I can't fathom a means by which changing armor game-wide would be a difficult thing. The statistic has to be stored in some kind of data structure that can be both read from and written to. There is no conceivable way that changing it could be all that more difficult than:

for( x == 1 to x ==N) ;x= 1 is first monster in monster list, N = last monster in the list
if GetProf(x) == warrior AND GetArmor(x) > 100, SetArmor(x) = 100
if GetProf(x) == ranger AND GetArmor(x) > 70, SetArmor(x) = 70
etc.

So I very much doubt there is any programming limitation to making the change. What else could be slowing down the process overly much, I don't know.

I really don't think it's about the time or difficulty involved in making any of these changes, I think it's about retaining players for GW2. Sure, we would be happy if PvE was a little less stupid, but the majority? I doubt it. Getting WoC out the door is much, much more important to keeping people happy.

Just sit back, relax, let people grab up their titles; GW2 is coming, and hopefully they learned their lessons from GW1. Collapsing damage types, armor types, prots/enchants, and hexes will hopefully go a long way to making the game easier to balance (also: abolishing secondaries).

What holds up small software changes?

Testing, debugging, specifications, documenting the changes, managerial/business approval, getting developer resources, scheduling work, unexpected side effects from working on 6 year old code, legacy data, the fact that the guy who sits across from the person who is going to make the change decides that he wants to read XKCD and IM his favorite ones to the person making the change, the fact that the person making the change probably finds XKCD way more amusing than updating ancient databases, wifi decides that today is the day it will intermittently disconnect itself from the internet, it's sunny out and everyone blows off work to go to Starbucks for 2 hours, the guy who was supposed to make the change got hired away by a social media startup promising lots of stock options that turn out to be worth less than Chick-Fil-E wrappers, 100 things to do but only 2 programmers, Apple released an update to iOS and the developer's girlfriend's iPhone annihilated itself on the day the change was supposed to be made because the developer jailbroke it with a malware infested kit, some guy in a suit killed the initiative because working on GW2 will have a higher ROI for ArenaNet, QA guy can't find the right music on Pandora, project manager is overwhelmed and doesn't have time to sign off on the work, developer is busy reading GWW flamewars instead of working, DBA only speaks Russian, tester trying to figure out what PC Load Letter means, DR testing scheduled for the weekend so code is frozen, GWAR tickets trump work every time, manager needs report of # of whippet grommits sold per unit-nectule and it must be in Excel pivot table embedded in Powerpoint and he needs it in 8 minutes, whole team ditched work to go see Thor, developers would rather solve problem in interesting way that just happens to accidentally cause power outages in Zanesville Ohio, tech lead burns out and goes to meditate with Nepalese sherpas for a week, someone at NCSoft accidentally deletes a zero on a spreadsheet and project funding dries up, dude's new boss could be a jerk and developer passive aggressively tries to make him fail by working slow, reddit is seriously more fun than work, three words: epic snack run

And playtesting. Lots and lots of playtesting.

/bow

Fantastic read, good sir.

Funny! Yes, playtesting would probably be the big thing here definitely - you can't just do a blanket nerf on all armor and expect everything to remain balanced. The actual coding would be quite simple and probably not crop up any bugs unless something stupid was done (though this is always a possibility). But just because you can do something doesn't mean it is a good idea to do it.