Guild Wars 2

Posting because of second page bug.

You’re right, Shelter usually serves its purpose most of the time without fail. I’d agree for a more Skillful way to use it with more risk/reward.

Swagg.9236:

Black Box.9312:

Retaliation is a key part of a bunker guardian’s potential. Getting rid of it would break a key component of the class, which means it’s not going to go away.

Retaliation should just stack in intensity. It makes it balanced in 1v1s and it removes its ability to burn down an entire group of players’ HP simultaneously.

This would very seriously change WvW. It’s already possible for an engineer to spike himself to death with grenades or flamethrower in large scale encounters.

Not to say it’s not a good idea, it would certainly be an interesting change and could offer them more room to make interesting abilities (block→retal with intensity could make spamming against a block very fun), but it would be a very big change.

Sarrs.4831:

Swagg.9236:

Black Box.9312:

Retaliation is a key part of a bunker guardian’s potential. Getting rid of it would break a key component of the class, which means it’s not going to go away.

Retaliation should just stack in intensity. It makes it balanced in 1v1s and it removes its ability to burn down an entire group of players’ HP simultaneously.

This would very seriously change WvW. It’s already possible for an engineer to spike himself to death with grenades or flamethrower in large scale encounters.

As rude as this sounds: I wish that I could care more about that. Let’s be honest here: WvW is by far the most imbalanced game-mode in GW2. WvW deserves and should have no complaint against any balance-related changes that originate from sPvP. The sheer numbers of players combined with the inflated player stats in WvW will always off-set even large changes made for the sake of sPvP. If anything, big changes would breathe new life into typical WvW combat by affecting small-scale battles as well as perhaps even influencing the writhing, stability-bathed, stealth-opener mess that is large scale WvW battles. Imagine if large scale WvW battles had to actually employ organized groups and timed/staggered charges due to stability and retaliation limitations instead of being able to just cloak everyone in everything, ball up and run in circles at enemies.

Sarrs.4831:

Not to say it’s not a good idea, it would certainly be an interesting change and could offer them more room to make interesting abilities (block->retal with intensity could make spamming against a block very fun), but it would be a very big change.

It wouldn’t stack in intensity; it would simply stack in charges.

Stability should do the same thing as well.

Protection would also be far more interesting if it stacked in intensity (1% damage reduction for every stack). If protection stacked in intensity, it wouldn’t be out of the question to add it as a type of finisher bonus (3 stacks or something). Instead, we just get “Press button, receive 33% damage reduction.” Dunno, though. Protection being a static 33% damage reduction is really a symptom of this game not having any viable way of reducing damage. In order to protect one’s self from a lot of the burst nonsense in this game, you sort of need a flat 33% damage reduction—as brain dead as such a boon really is at its core.

I’m still baffled by the static nature of many boons that would clearly be more balanced if they stacked in static charges instead of duration.

Additions made to the first page.

I’ve taken a look at a lot of suggestions made throughout the course of this thread. A lot of the suggestions that I read revolved around simple damage and cool-down adjustments. I’ll firmly defend that Guardian damage is in a pretty good spot at the moment, but I made a few concessions and even added a few more functionalities to shield off-hand to give the set a better control feel.

A 50-range knock-back is more like forcing the opponent to stop in their tracks for just a moment which could either serve as an interrupt or to buy a Guardian’s allies a second of time to pull something off.

I may make a few more additions to the newest changes to this thread as time goes on, but for now, I just wanted to put those up.

Black Box.9312:

Retaliation is a key part of a bunker guardian’s potential. Getting rid of it would break a key component of the class, which means it’s not going to go away.

Not self retaliation but the group part. Like someone else stated in this topic ever threw a few grenades while defending a keep/tower? Well there goes half your health and you are stuck doing nothing because of it. It’s a bad boon for WvW.

Having Retaliation stack in intensity for a VERY short duration would allow for counter-play though. So lasting 5-10 seconds on some skills(finishers), you could have it last 1-2 and return more damage.

Regarding balance, what is your current take on Spirit Weapons and their traits. Personally I believe ANet should have never made them mortal as even in their immortal state it was difficult at best to create an effective means of utilizing them without completely gimping oneself (and believe me, I tried).

So what would you suggest on making Spirit Weapons more viable?

I am just re-posting my thoughts on the op.

GS-
Whirling Wrath: I honestly believe that the projectiles be removed. I can’t even count on 1 hand how many times those random bolts have done anything at all. Just increase the damage of the whirl itself and remove the projectiles.

Symbol of Wrath: This is a huge change but i’d like to see this become a mobile aura. Remove the damage ticks and apply 1 stack of a condition and continual stacks of boons for you and your allies. Again, I can’t count on one hand anytime I’ve ever been able to keep my enemies inside this thing for more than a second. Not to mention that it would promote dynamic game play instead of you just sitting in a circle.

Hammer-

Ring of Warding: I don’t think this needs to be buffed. It would be too strong if you could cast it on the move.

Shelter: If you’re going to make it only block 3 attacks(like shield of wrath) then you need to either up the healing and/or reduce the cd. This would require a more skillful approach to healing instead of just getting a free heal. Also, this would remove the only duration block the Guardian has and i’m not sure if that’s a good idea.

Signet of Resolve: It used to be similar to what you’re suggesting back in beta. 30 sec cd with a lower heal. Not sure if they want to revert this.

Swagg.9236:

Black Box.9312:

Retaliation is a key part of a bunker guardian’s potential. Getting rid of it would break a key component of the class, which means it’s not going to go away.

Retaliation should just stack in intensity. It makes it balanced in 1v1s and it removes its ability to burn down an entire group of players’ HP simultaneously.

Mightymealworm.8409:

Shelter has risk, its a very bad heal if timed incorrectly.

Every heal is bad if timed incorrectly.

Mightymealworm.8409:

It just happens to be difficult to time it poorly due to current guardian meta builds.

What about a Guardian meta build actually makes “timing” [Shelter] poorly difficult to do? Do you even have an actual explanation for this sentence?

Yes, therefore every heal skill has risk. A poorly timed shelter is one activated when you are either not being focused on with physical attacks (could have used signet instead for 2x the healing) or when you should be attacking instead (opponent can take your block time as a free heal as well, and very well may receive a larger benefit). As a very melee focused class with poor mobility outside of porting into battle, guardians are almost always in the middle of fights. This makes using shelter in fight when it would not block any attacks very difficult to do.

I’m not saying its a heal that requires ant great skill to use, but guards already have high risk heals. They just aren’t worth the risk. Make shelter difficult to use and you will see the masses flock to signet of resolve. That’s all.

Arken.3725:

GS-
Whirling Wrath: I honestly believe that the projectiles be removed. I can’t even count on 1 hand how many times those random bolts have done anything at all. Just increase the damage of the whirl itself and remove the projectiles.

This is actually something I forgot to mention, but have been desiring as well. With the current way whirling wrath works it requires the player to be stacked on top of the target for the full damage output, which is poor design. It really should just be a melee-range spin that deals the full damage to anyone that gets hit by the full attack, regardless of positioning within the radius.

As far as I remember, the sPvP meta always required at least one guardian per group. Why should we consider the guardian balance to be almost perfect when the class has been a must have for as long as GW2 existed?

stof.9341:

As far as I remember, the sPvP meta always required at least one guardian per group. Why should we consider the guardian balance to be almost perfect when the class has been a must have for as long as GW2 existed?

Because it means it is in a good spot and ANet should strive to bring the other classes to its level so all classes would be equally desirable to have in a group? As I recall that is what balance is all about.

And to me the Guardian feels like it is the most balanced class there is at the moment; so it could serve as the perfect example for ANet to use as a base when working on the others.

Aveneo.2068:

stof.9341:

As far as I remember, the sPvP meta always required at least one guardian per group. Why should we consider the guardian balance to be almost perfect when the class has been a must have for as long as GW2 existed?

Because it means it is in a good spot and ANet should strive to bring the other classes to its level so all classes would be equally desirable to have in a group? As I recall that is what balance is all about.

And to me the Guardian feels like it is the most balanced class there is at the moment; so it could serve as the perfect example for ANet to use as a base when working on the others.

Except that’s impossible. There are 8 classes and only 5 people per group. If guardians are a must have then that means there is only 4 spaces for 7 classes to fill. 3 will always be left out and that assumes we don’t start stacking double or triple the amount of a single class per group. We could argue that different scenarios means different team comps but anet has shown that they can’t move past the conquest/zerg/zerk stacking game they created so the scenarios will really never change which means what is good will always be the same unless they mix things up and a new wanted/unwanted meta emerges.

Aveneo.2068:

Regarding balance, what is your current take on Spirit Weapons and their traits. Personally I believe ANet should have never made them mortal as even in their immortal state it was difficult at best to create an effective means of utilizing them without completely gimping oneself (and believe me, I tried).

So what would you suggest on making Spirit Weapons more viable?

Given their nature in GW1, I personally saw Spirit Weapons as a weapon-skill overlay profession mechanic (something similar to Engineer weapon kits) rather than a tack-on AI NPC utility skill. It’s a real shame what they actually are in GW2. Fixing them would require A LOT of work maybe to the point of making them similar to destructible Engineer Kits that the Guardian must summon or something. The fact of the matter is, giving up a Guardian utility slot for a destructible NPC with very narrow utility is not worth it. They need more skills in order to be something worth taking.

If it were up to me, i’d love it if Virtue’s were stances, sort of like elements to allow for more active play. Pick one weapon, swap between 3 virtues, sounds awesome. Unfortunately, we don’t have that so I thought of something for the meantime.

I had an idea to make the passives on each virtue actually decent. As it stands they’re very weak signets. This is event more exasperated when you trait into virtues since the active becomes so much more worth it in either a solo/group setting. Here’s my proposal:

Virtue of Justice: Every 10th attack, you gain fury for 2-3 seconds. Active stays the same

Virtue of Resolve: Regenerate 150-250/s. As it stands, the meager 84 health/sec is a joke. Keep the active the same.

Virtue of Courage: Every time a condition is applied to you, you gain protection for 2-3 seconds, 10 second ICD. Active stays the same.

With their incredibly long cd’s, I honestly don’t see a problem actually making the passive’s worth it. They’re supposed to be strong for the Guardian alone and then when activated, you lose that effect for a VERY long time. As it stands, if you were to remove the passive’s of each virtue, I probably wouldn’t notice it since it’s so insignificant.

If any of these sound too strong, lets discuss a way to make them better without doing so. I’d rather not hear more “omgggg too strong” comments and actual constructive conversation.

Aveneo.2068:

Because it means it is in a good spot and ANet should strive to bring the other classes to its level so all classes would be equally desirable to have in a group? As I recall that is what balance is all about.

And to me the Guardian feels like it is the most balanced class there is at the moment; so it could serve as the perfect example for ANet to use as a base when working on the others.

It could be balanced. But it could be a perception problem. See, there’s complaints that the Thief in it’s current state overshadows and destroys so hard the other backpoint capping/roaming classes that they go no spot left in the meta. One could say the thief is OP.

What about the main bunker guardian? The class is so OP in that role that nobody every contests it. There’s nobody trying to say “Hey, my main bunker engineer is too weak compared to a guardian, guardian OP” because we’ve been conditioned to the point nobody even thinks about filling that role with something else.

So yeah, the guardian for that role is balanced compared to the other alternatives, which don’t exist. Which doesn’t mean the guardian is OP or anything, but it does feel a lot like the “must have a monk” that ANet was trying so hard to prevent.

Arken.3725:

If any of these sound too strong, lets discuss a way to make them better without doing so. I’d rather not hear more “omgggg too strong” comments and actual constructive conversation.

Gotta keep in mind that these are the baseline virtues. How much AOE healing could a guardian specced and geared for passive Resolve put out for doing nothing? Then add on their already existing bunker ability?

I think that the passives are more or less okay, with that in mind. Resolve does its job; it heals, you can pop it to give you and your friends a big lump of healing, and you can trait it to be bigger and better and condition cleansing. Courage synergises with all the Aegis-affecting traits, and therefore with all the Retal affecting traits, not to mention its own traits in deep Virtues. Justice is really the only weird one, as far as I can tell, because Burning’s the only damaging condition they can get- But even then you can trait it up to do quite a few things.

I don’t actually know whether they end up in a good place after all this is done, but it’s still important to note that Guardians have huge amounts of traits that feed into their Virtues.

They do but the problem is that the passives are overshadowed even more when you actually trait into it. Nothing needs to change with the actives, they stay the same. This would actually put both on somewhat equal footing in terms of effectiveness. On one side you have a powerful buff for a profession and on the other, you have a nice support buff which in turn sacrifices the selfish one.

OK, I did some trait updates as well as shifted some things around. I caved when I suggested a buff to Guardian Greatsword skills. Nothing really needs a buff. However, for the sake of the traits section, I’ll open this up to the thread:

“BAD TRAITS”

• State up to 3 “bad” Guardian traits.
• For each trait, state why you think that that trait is bad.