Here is a link to a little test I did today with Barrin. I was originally performing the test to see if converting my fighting katana to a bashing weapon, but still using it to fight would work, so Barrin was only using rebounding and his Acro dodge to "hinder" me. I had 18 strength and 16 dex at the time, and I'm swinging a 256/255/310 katana at around 2.5 seconds. So max possible DPS with my hybrid speed/damage katana against Barrin sits at around 294, NOT factoring in cleave/miss/dodge/rebound, and without any sort of hindering, stancing or parrying. That doesn't exactly seem like high damage to me, and it's against a demi (larger health pool so scaled to higher damage) bard in robes. Despite my katana, which has higher damage than any specialized wounder that is being used, there was no issue in healing both damage, bleed, and wounding. I got a single tendon the entire test despite almost constantly hitting the left leg, to illustrate how well the damage was being handled. Only 58.5%ish of my swings and jabs connected, effectively lowering DPS to 172. and that's much more damage than I'd be doing if I'd been using a wounder, been hindered, and been working around parry. Barrin does have acrobatics, but if you look at the log, you'll see it isn't just the Acro that's crippling me.

I have Transcendent combat, pureblade, and all forging runes, along with two cosmic knight runes on my katana.

So you couldn't build wounds or damage with a katana that only has 255 prec? I feel that's a given, the damage stat on katana's seems to have the least impact, compared to prec and speed. I guess I'm confused on how a log of a katana with iffy stats contributes to warrior woes.

It was just to illustrate the realities of warrior damage being low, mainly for Estarra's benefit, to counter the assertion that warriors have higher damage compared to other archetypes and to show just how the RNG affects the chances of a swing or jab connecting with the opponent in the first place. I'm not worried about my wound building not working, it was the result I expected.

A lot of the argument against things like burst damage are about group fighting. To my mind, there is no getting around being at a disadvantage against groups of any archetype except not to fight in groups.

Haven't really thought this out but here's a random idea for a skill in Combat: back-to-back fighting

If you have a partner, you can both agree to fight back-to-back (assuming you both have the skill). This will mean that only one other person can directly target you (and likewise for your partner). In other words, the first person who directly targets you is 'locked' in as your target until that person leaves the room or targets someone else or you directly attack someone else (though that wouldn't create a lock). So long as you are locked, no one else can directly target you. Your partner cannot hit the person you are locked with (since you're both back-to-back, of course). This only affects direct attacks and not things like ongoing songs, demesnes, etc.

This may be able to be gamed by groups so not sure if it's a great idea but something a bit out of the box.

Edit: Basically, balancing warriors is near impossible due to the warrior weapon runes causing such wide shifts. If you balance it for the standard warrior, warriors all decked out just tear through the non-plate populace, so... yeah. I'm still not a fan of a return to the old days though, it wasn't terribly fun for anyone but the small handful of us with runes.

This, I'm still all for reducing the need for thousands of credits on warrior stuff, lessening the effect of all that stuff (and the cost)...

Make it cost thousands of credits for the other classes to become viable. Balance.

I'm a bit iffy. While it does sound like it would force some fun 1v1 fights, I think this might break group fights, which I, and I'm sure others, wouldn't like too much. I agree that if you're being targeted by multiple warriors/monks/guardians/mages/wiccans/druids then you should probably not expect to stand there and survive. But at the same time, I can see situations with burst damage/wounding where a single target is killed/beheaded before they even had a chance to react. Which is more or less why I think it isn't the route to go.

I agree with Sidd that buffing us is pretty hard due to how well we perform in numbers, but I think some RNG amelioration here and there would benefit 1v1 and barely affect group fights at all.

Some thoughts:
-Dominate and other force order skills should not count for this (so I couldn't order some lowbie to attack me and lock everyone else from it). And you shouldn't be able to dominate into using this.
-I assume by mentioning 'directly target', that demesnes and other aoe abilities would still work. Classes/Orgs with strong aoe would be at an advantage.
-Some classes are weaker or inviable 1v1, but strong in a group. This would devalue those classes.
-Would prevent allies from targetting you as well to heal you, gust you out, teleport, whatever?

I fell that as long as there are outliers due to massive credit expendature, warriors won't ever get fixed. I have very limited number of artifacts that are useful to me as a druid or will really unbalance me (this is true wiccans? Guardians also, for the most part. Some mages and bards get more out of damage, Monks generally don't need it) . Rune of demesne helps, but doesn't actually increase my fighting ability, magic damage runes make me do more damage, but I'm a lockdown based class and... that's all. Druids don't have to be balanced around people spending huge amounts of credits, so they all get balanced to about the same level. I feel like people have been making nerfs/changes to warriors with the top level in mind, which leaves the lower level of people (people at totally trans, might I add, the place we're supposed to balance around) totally in the lurch. I advise prospective novices away from warrior (any time they ask), because it's very expensive.

You don't need to rework arties Estarra! Just make new ones!