Warrior is in dire need of fixes! The class is a 2016 class that still moves and plays like a 2016 class. As much as I would love for other classes to become as unprotected as warrior is during movement, and as much as I feel that would balance the game....the reality is that pearl abyss continues to release classes with excessive protections. Even if current classes were balanced around having fewer protections, as they release new classes, amnesia kicks in and warrior and the classes that took protection nerfs would be left in the dust once again.

The only way to fix warrior for both large scale and small scale combat is to modernize the class so it is in line with the other classes in the game. These fixes are focused around awakened warrior, however, I do believe what I am going to recommend for movement will also benefit our succession counterparts, and make us a viable class in both largescale PvP such as Node Wars, Siege Wars, and War of the Roses, as well as small-scale arena combat such as Arena of Solare and the Arena of Arsha.

Let's begin with Combat. I will list changes, and why they deserve to be altered. Then I will cover movement, which would affect both Awakened Warrior and Succession Warrior.

COMBAT

o Add Stiff to Solar Flare by default.

o Shift the core skill from Solar Flare to adding Super Armor on Heaven's Cleave

This change will improve awakened warrior mobility and protection. Heaven's Cleave is a very unpopular ability because it lacks complete protection. It is an excellent attack skill that has great mobility when used as a flow, but due to it's utter lack of protection, most warriors will choose to lock this skill. Shifting Solar Flare's core skill to Heaven's Cleave allows Warriors to make a difficult decision that will either improve their combat prowess and movement, or give them an AoE Knockdown in the form of other core skills that currently exist. This is a very fair trade-off and allows warrior to enter and exit battle with some basic level of protection from CC, but not damage. Allowing Solar Flare to stiff would give Warrior a fair engage against ranged damage dealers, allowing them to effectively penetrate the backline from the front as a proper frontliner should. In the current meta, ranged classes can dominate Warrior with little-to-no-recourse as Warrior has no CC they can engage a ranged class with.

o Put Frontal Guard on Frenzied Strikes by default

o Increase the Speed of Frenzied Strikes by 15%.

o Shift the Frontal Guard core skill for Frenzied Strikes to adding a stun effect to Knee Kick

In PvE in, Frenzied Strikes as the core skill is not only a no-brainer, but a basic necessity. By shifting adding frontal guard to this ability by default and increasing it's speed, this ability becomes comparable to Scars of Dusk while in the awakened stance. Adding the ability to core-skill Knee Kick would put a viable stun in the Awakened Warrior's kit. This is a CC-effect that Awakened Warrior currently lacks. These three changes are strictly for the benefit of warrior in PvE only. They have no real affect in PvP situations. This would also create an interesting choice between adding the stun to Knee Kick, or adding frontal guard to Merciless. These two abilities are pretty unfavorable for most warriors and would at least give them some greater PvE viability.

o Take the effects of Hilt Strike, and add them to Balance Strike. Remove hilt strike completely.

o Replace Hilt Strike with a new ability (possible names: Devastating Sunder or Soul Rend) described below.

Hilt Strike is a redundant ability and doesn't provide anything outside of dealing a little bit of additional damage in PvE. Improve the PvE damage of Balance Strike. Replace Hilt Strike with a frontal cone attack with good PvE modifiers & strong PvP down attack modifiers. This move would behave as a heavy damage dealer in PvE, and would serve in PvP as a finishing move for a target laying on the ground. The animation for this ability already exist in the game, and could be added immediately with no additional animation cost from Pearl Abyss. The ability's animation would be an exact replica of the current Warrior ability "Elvia: Divided Will". This new ability could have a really cool name, such as "Devastating Sunder" or "Soul Rend" (which I like most). This is a slower ability, but it is perfect in PvP for punishing ground targets, and it having a high PvE modifier would make it a valuable assett in PvE. The reason I recommend down attack modifiers is that it does not do substantial damage unless the target is on the ground. Keep the cooldown and the speed of the new ability in line with Divided Will.

o Add Air Attack damage modifiers for Gravedigging  & Slashing the Dead.

Currently, if you use the Gravedigging Core Skill, it adds a knockdown on the final tick of the attack. This last tick is also the heaviest hitting part of the skill with the highest modifier only on the last hit. Due to the fact that the last hit creates a knockdown, it moves the target into the air during the attack animation. This completely negates the "down attack" modifier on the skill. This can easily be restored by adding air attack damage to the ability. It would add no other benefit. Since Gravedigging & Slashing the Dead are linked, add the air attack modifier to Slashing the Dead as well so that the 50% BSR ability actually deals damage in line with it's intended down attack modifiers.

o Add Frontal Guard to Severing Thrust

Severing Thrust is the Warrior Magnus ability. This ability is extremely unfavorable to warriors as it is totally unprotected and most warriors lock this ability or do not even learn it, to include the #1 Warrior globally, Bobobuddy. Adding frontal guard to this ability would make it viabled and I believe many more warriors would become interested in using this ability in PvP, because it is a fun one to use!

o Add an iframe to the "Jumping" animation part of slashing the dead, then revert it to SA during the attack portion.

By the "Jumping" part of the animation, I mean the first few frames of the attack where we leap into the air, before we begin flipping with the sword. This is actually how it exists on BDO mobile, and it's honestly very fair given how verticality on many classes turns SA's into iframes due to the fact that no attacks can reach them. With slashing the dead, the jumping portion of the animation would give us a second very short iframe that we could use to get out of very bad spots.

MOVEMENT

Since Warriors lack any real form of SA or Iframe movement, I propose the following changes:

o Add a Super Armor affect to Charging Thrust.

Charging Thrust is strictly a movement ability with a fair cooldown. This would help warrior with engages and disengages in PvE and PvP at every scale.

o Add a Super Armor effect to Frenzied Dash.

Frenzied Dash has a long cooldown, and provides a fast and fair distance in terms of movement. Having this ability provide super armor would give Warrior the opportunity to enter and exit combat safely in line with other classes in the current meta. Remove the left-click float from Frenzied Dash.

**EDIT**

An important note here is the our Q-Block is the weakest in the entire game. I think it would be fair to make ours as durable at least a guardian's.

Lastly, Adding a .1 to .2 second Lingering Superarmor on Q-Block in both awakened & succession stances would close up the LMB Input bug that creates microgaps in our attack kit for the limited superarmors we have, especially gaps created by desync.

This includes the gap at the start of iframe movement abilities such as headchase.

It's not much but it would help tremendously.

I'd also like to shoutout all the abilities in our kit that are useless to include every version of our Rabam skills due to low damage or lack of protection, and both of our 100% abilities due to their time-to-execute, static nature, and low damage.

----

These changes would modernize Warrior to allow the class to feel like a 2025 class, and allow it to perform in large scale & arena combat more efficiently. Currently, the warrior's kit is 80% of gaps. Outside of just sitting in Q-block and moving at a snail's pace, most of Warrior's attack abilities are grapple-bait, and Q-block is only as strong as a warrior's shield is. Once the shield power dissapates, the warrior must move around, and this makes you completely vulnerable. Since Awakened Warrior's shield is the weakest shield of all shield classes, these changes would fairly balance the class.

These changes also would cost PA nothing in terms of animation or design. These are mostly pen-and-paper modifier, protection, and cc opportunity changes which would ultimately result in a mere swapping of skill priorities. These could be done in a single patch.

Thank you for your consideration. 

I completely share the sentiment of the post, but I do not agree to the changes suggested, with the exception of integrating hilt strike. 

The fundamental problem that needs to be adressed before any changes are made is the RMB/LMB W/A/S/D input bugs that force the character to autoattack/walk before any and all skills that require the input of these abilities (all of them except heaven's cleave, F).

How I'd go about it:
- Add 0.1s LSA to Qblock (instantly applied, unlike our AP/DP buff that takes a second to kick in). This solves all the grievances with the bug interactions, without actually fixing said interactions, as PA has clearly shown they're incapable of figuring it out.

- Add 4 hits to Flow:Overwhelm again so it can be used to Qcancel skills. This would mean we can actually benefit from Qcancelling, which we never did in the past, as it only allowed skills to work slightly less badly, instead of better. 

- Add the interaction of Qcancelling Flow:Overwhelm into Frenzied Strike's 3rd hit. This would allow the skill to actually be used in PvP, as it'd allow for the use of the CC AS WELL AS actually using it because it'd be protected with LSA. You reward high skill play.

- As OP Zeroden said, include Flow:Hilt Strike in it's entirety stat and hitbox wise into Balance Strike.

- Remove Core:Frenzied Strikes.

- Add Core:Heaven's Cleave (SA).

- Increase CD on Chain:Heave's Cleave 5s to 6s.

- Double Chain:Heaven's Cleave dash length.

- Chain: Heaven's Cleave float to knockdown.

- Reduce CD on Solar Flare from 5s to 4s.

- Reduce CD on Balance Strike from 4s to 3s. 

- Add back bound CC on Groundsmash.

Will any of this happen? Will PA even read this thread? Last time I made a thread it had 1000 upvotes and it was about not nerfing the class in PvE and it got ignored. Good luck zeroden.

It really is time to fix warrior! Fully agree with the sentiment, but i think we all have different wants for how to fix our beloved class, which also speaks to how many different styles of Warrior players there are. Love it! Wish PA would stop trying to pigeonhole us all into being grabbots.

Biggest thing i would really want to add to the lists, is the improvement of the Frontguards of awakening warrior. For a class so reliant on the sustain of our FG abilities in groupfights, we have the weakest of the bunch with T1 frontguards across the board (including our block). Give us T2 frontguards like Succ Warrior and Valk has. Its time.

Sure. Good things pointed out. I wouldn't take time to propose exact changes in skills due to PA dislikes that for some reason, but I'd like point out a few things too.

You wrote about mainhand movement. We lost a lot there due to mousemove changes. PA gave us 0,1 sec of more iframe in awak as compensation. They probably feel that our movement is lacking, but too afraied to implement the long due changes you pointed out, hell i'd say frenzied dash should be iframe while dashing. But again this was the perfect opportunity for them to give us something but it went all to zerker and ninja.

I'd also love if there was safe ways to hotbar or lock main skill for input swapps between main and awak like many other classes have. Like musa got crosscut, and many more have hotbar able skills for swapps. Also our awa - main swap is lacking even fg. Cant count how many times im getting hit out of a perfectly executed slashing c chopping.

We should be a brawler / bruiser by design but we can't fit the role due to the massive powercreep over the 5-6 last years. Blocks break in a blink of an eye and thanks to the gimmicky shield class nerf mechanic (that is long overdue to be reverted in this state of the game) we do not get to recover it for a while. In that interval we do not have any means to survive, no iframes, no sa vertical movement, no sa long distance movement either. Classes these days without any of those are in a serious disadvantage not to mention the lack of healing aswell.

Warrior needs touchup in a lot of areas. I have infinite short videos of the gaps Yber mentioned above. If it helps understanding it (talking to you dear PA) i can collect and post them.

THIS/\THIS/\THIS
THIS|||THIS|||THIS

I agree with the input issue being a problem versus pressing a hotbared versions of any skill. Whether it is through your suggestion with 
a .1 SA instantly on input startup of qblock(for cancels to connect better) or another fix they decide to come up with, Ill take anything that will make it work, but also hoping them trying to add/fix this does not break how our class works in the process.

Pretty much with the changes to qblock .1 lingering SA this would fix the gaps between startups of inputed skills, the amount of times I've been cc'd out of gravedigger/slashing or any other skill(sometimes this still being due to HIT stutter/acceleration) at the start or end of the skill(usually in between inputing next protected skill)

I miss overwhelms clean cancels into other skills, this was definetlely something that probably frustrated me most when the hit changes occurred. So I agree with adding hits back to this(and redistributing the damage numbers properly).

I do like the idea of either increasing the animation speed of Frenzied strikes or rework the skill maybe making this skill on top of having an animation speed increase make each of the slashes(total 3) move the character forward with no hit collision with camera movement. *Edit(all 3 slashes would be either different charges you would have to input command/hotbar. Use up 3 slash charges within a certain time and skill goes on cd, but you can use different skills in between each slash to add variety and combo/movement potential)* Something similar to animation below and making this CORE skill for SA or just take the KD off of the skill and not require the core to make it SA

Agree with the suggested Hilt strike combining into balanced strike.

For heavens cleave I agree with the distance increase, maybe with the distance increase add an iframe to the movement drag before the upward swing is going to hit a target(attack/hit unprotected). No core needed as this would only cover the movement part instead of the Attack/hits. 

Agree with Solar/balance cds might be a bit much maybe 1 or the other with shorter cd

Ground smash getting bound back would be huge

With some of the suggestions Zeroden made:
-I personally could live without Solar stiff. Making Heavens cleave core would be nice depending on other changes suggested

-agree with faster animation of frenzied strikes(can look at my suggestions above), but do not care for knee kick I would rather have a completely new skill, as this skill is mostly locked for most players. 

-Agree with the hiltstrike/balance combination as I metioned above, not sure about the suggestion for hilstrike replacement, but ill take anything that can be combined into our kit cleanly

-100% agree with gravedigger/Slashing the dead having air attack modifiers

-My only issue with using Severing thrust, is the input usage, I mostly use this skill in pve, but for pvp I prefer to have deep thrust/jump thrust as the main inputs due to it canceling well with other skills and I still use this for jumping off high cliffs faster. The input for deep thrust/jump thrust sucks on the hotbar as you cannot use it as a cancel. I prefer the reverse, keep deepthrust/jump thrust as the main shift+LMB input and Severing thrust on Hotbar

-I agree somewhat with either making Charging thrust or frenzied dash SA, I do think it would be interesting to maybe have something similar with guardian where they can choose to use preawaken guardian Juggernaught skill(https://bdocodex.com/us/skill/5097/) or Awakening: Juggernaught(https://bdocodex.com/us/skill/5173/). The awakening version would be full SA movement and would basically be the Black desert Mobile version of Berserker(awaken warrior on this version) called Berserkers charge video of it below. So the choice would be Charging thrust(keep frontal movement) or Awaken: Berserkers charge(full SA movement).  

Ill take any suggestion made even if its just 1 of them.

On top of the list would be

1. fixes to startup frames of skill used with inputs versus hotbar mentioned by Yber

2. SA on movement skill suggestions  listed above

3.Overwhelm hits reverted

4. hilt strike/balanced combined and hilt strike replaced with new skill

5. Delete Knee kick and replace with new skill

6. ground smash bound back without losing SA

and any others are a wishlist

1 SA movement on skills. Please, it's 2025... and maybe a 2nd iframe...

2 balanced strike combined with hilt strike and make a new skill.

3 completely rework how merciless/frenzied strike/knee kick looks like, these 3 skills are absolutely useless.

4 give back the bound on either chopping kick or ground smash.

AND STOP REMOVING THINGS WHEN YOU GIVE US A COUPLE OF LINES WORTH OF CHANGES ON THE PATCH NOTES, WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU??

Warrior and awk ranger need to be brought into 2025 the devs have kept them in this awkward frontal gaurd state while everyone else is just zipping around at the speed of light  with no stamina issues with full SA damage trading so they can't even be CCED  its soooooo stupid!!!!!

We want our classes to be balanced is what the devs keep saying but thier actions say otherwise!

Adding a .1 to .2 second Lingering SA on Q-Block in both stances would close up the LMB Input issue that creates microgaps in our attack kit for the limited superarmors we have.

This includes the gap at the start of iframe movement abilities such as headchase.

It's not much but it would help tremendously.

• Warrior losing almost all its ability to slow from Gravedigging (the skill itself) and slashing add-ons, as well as attack speed not affecting our grab speed, has definitely hurt our already beaten-down class. We literally get 20% attack speed from the Warrior passive as well as skill add-ons. I can understand nerfing E-Buff attack speed so it doesn’t affect grab speed, but our Q-Buff AP doesn’t even stack with our E-Buff. So I’m basically pressing E-Buff for 13+ AP and 500 HP. (A lot of classes still haven’t had their move speed + attack speed reductions nerfed while some did.)

• I’m not saying we need to be on par with these newer classes, but at least fix Q-Canceling that was affected by the hit changes.

• Give back Stiffen on Solar Flare, or at least put it on the Core: Solar Flare, and give SA to base Solar Flare. (ngl a lot of people, including myself, don’t even feel the SA since it’s so short)

• Hilt Strike is useless now since it doesn’t even have an accuracy buff and the damage isn’t worth it. (Not asking for another CC)

• Ground Smash and Chopping Kick lost the ability to bound but don’t do any damage anyway. (Not bad for SA, but other classes at least deal damage even with their pre-awakening kit)

• Rabams aren’t great except Frenzied Spear, but even then not a lot of people use it because it’s unprotected. (The other two Rabams do no damage)

• Magnus skill isn’t worth taking on Awakening Warrior since we lose the ability to use Deep Thrust (one of our good catches). Even for Succession Warriors, the range is terrible even though it has a float they might need. (Awakening already has plenty of float options)

• Merciless is another skill that’s not as useful anymore since it doesn’t provide the Crit Damage Buff, which Frenzied Strikes (another unused skill in PvP) also used to provide. Both Merciless and Frenzied Strikes could be used to Q-Cancel and get the Crit Damage Buff, but that was removed. Merciless and Frenzied could use a skill effect change. Merciless could send out a Force Slash just like Energy Counter. Frenzied Strikes could be reworked into an actually useful skill. Right now it just looks like a bunch of auto attacks that do nothing and only get used in PvE because it’s worthless in PvP.

• What’s even the point of Ground Roar now that it doesn’t provide a debuff? (Low damage in PvE, can be used to pull while grinding, but it’s not even a real taunt.) It used to add depth to the class by letting you fit it into long combos to kill higher DP enemies. Can’t even use it to unstealth Ninjas anymore.

• Piercing Spear does low damage nowadays since people are tankier (its modifier is outdated). I can understand not buffing this, tbh.

• Both 100% BSRs do no damage while others have multiple stiffs or keep you stunned while they straight up kill you in theirs. Even with the new 200% changes, it still feels unusable/not worth it since you die while slashing the air. Not even worth mentioning 25%, as I assume a lot of classes don’t have great ones.

• Sure, a lot of these skills might have had good damage in the past when people were still at 3,000 HP, but currently people are around 10,000+ and we could definitely use some changes.

• These are just some of my opinions on Warrior. Not everyone might agree with these changes, but I’m not asking for a lot. I just want to enjoy my class like everyone else. Q-Canceling, mixing up combos from pre-awakening to awakening, and being stylish is part of this class. A lot of these new classes are overtuned nowadays, have vertical mobility, and other strengths. A few older classes still have good damage from their pre-awakening kit.
  Anyways, thanks for reading. Hopefully Warrior doesn’t die with the Savior release. (PLS GIVE WARRIOR COOL GREATSWORD SKILLS)

Warrior has always been very good at 1 thing, and 1 thing only. That is 1v1 and very small scale content, although still not even that great at it and no matter how skilled one is, especially compared to the power creep of new classes we have seen. Unfortunately that content does not matter in the main focus content of BDO which is PvE and large scale PvP. We have no place anywhere. Greatsword class should be tanky but we're not. We get deleted by ranged. Warrior is almost like an assassin class, but we can't even do that with the current kit. So where do we fit? In the pearl shop buying crons to hopefully massively outgear opponents to perform worse than most people who are fresh reroll FotM classes?

Warrior used to have utility, speed, and special use case scenarios. But all that has been taken away while other classes got to keep theirs. Slows? Removed. Cancelling? Removed. CCs? Removed. Any sort of tech that made us viable? Removed. Attack Speed Buff/DP stacking/CritDmg Buff? All removed. Preawakening skills? Almost all useless aside from movement and grab.

All we can do is sit in Q block hope to not get cced the moment we try to do anything because of so many gaps that shouldnt exist. No top guild wants Warriors except the top 0.1% because they provide close to 0 value to the guild in Pvp anymore.

I do agree with most of Zeroden's takes on how this class can be buffed and it's not that crazy of an ask compared to everything that every other classes have. I have been playing Warrior for many years now and have seen the ups and downs, but too many downs to where the class is just not fun anymore. I play many other classes and just see and dream how good we could be if we got balanced properly. I was excited when Warrior was finally decently good in PvE and then that was nerfed twice back to back and we're basically back to square one.

Please take into consideration of Zeroden's and other's thoughts of how we can make this class viable. Warrior is still played by many, very passionate players who have endured alot throughout the years and are constantly hoping it could be better. Many of us who still play Warrior, are not playing because it's super good. If we wanted to play meta class we would be on other classes. We play it because we fell in love with what it once was, all the tech, skills, animations, aesthetics, and many more. And I'm not saying we are the only ones suffering, because there are a couple other classes that are suffering from other things as well. But we do deserve to get a rework at this point.