Guild Wars 2

I was hoping, beyond all hopes, that they would actually touch guardian in this feature patch. But yet again we get the same line we have gotten for the past year: “Guardians are in a good spot right now.”

Why do the developers never do anything to spice up guardians? We are just the bunker buff bot of the game, and it gets boring. It’s sad that I honestly believe the reason for the lack of changes is because the developers don’t really understand guardian at all (the live stream where it took them 45 seconds to find the most commonly used utility for guardian -.-)

And all of the “spruce-ups” that they do for us are around things that are useless to us. Adding 10% damage to sword in a trait line very very few guardians go into. Adding Litany of Wrath which is a useless skill. Adding in things focused on burning, yet we don’t do condition builds because we only have access to one damaging condition.

I love my guardian, and I have spent a lot of time on him, but this same line of “They are in a good spot” is getting very old. Everyone else gets neat changes, and we play the same builds we played since day 1. Is it too much to ask for you to be a little daring with the class?

It’s a pretty well balanced profession. Only the spirit weapons could use a boost, but then that’s with all pets and pet like summons: they go down in seconds if they don’t fix overlapping AoE damage. Other games fix that with immunity to AoE or drastical reduction of AoE.

I don’t understand how you can twist “Guardians are in good spot right now” to be negative. Your class is balanced. It’s in the spot where every class wants to be! Why would you purposely destroy that for the sake of ‘spicing it up’?

However I do agree that the lack of conditions does leave little room for condition builds to exist. Here’s hoping ANet address it in the upcoming feature patch?

Not every trait is going to work in every game mode.
For example, I hardly play PvE with less than 25 points in Radiance and usually pick the 10% sword damage bonus there.
There are too many burning related traits for the niche use they have, that’s true. Ironically, I have used some of them recently for soloing Knights during Battle for L.A. (they were useless ofc if it wasn’t a solo).

I agree.

And putting the +vit grandmaster trait into the healing and condition cleansing tree which is also the most overloaded was just a bad move.

I’m not arguing that the class is not balanced. I’m arguing that it is getting stale. They made it so that it fits its niche roll. You can either be a bunker and deal no damage. Or you can be decent dps and be as glassy as a thief (thief has stealth as a defense where we do not, so I would argue they are less glassy than us, and ele has movement which we do not, so they also are better GCs than we are). What they haven’t done is given it a new face at all. They have left it alone because they actually did something right. Just because it is balanced doesn’t mean that you never touch the class again. I would rather they break the class and then nerf us, than remain the stale left alone one balanced class in the game.

If we are the only balanced class and the others keep changing, we get screwed quite often when others hit the lime light. Honestly if they sold a gemstore item allowing me to change professions of any two of my 80s, I would change my guardian into one of my other professions in a heartbeat. I mean my warrior can do everything my guard can do, but at the same time, and better. If I didn’t have legendaries and ascended armor that was soulbound, I would name change and never use my guard again….

Honestly, I don’t mind that they leave us alone. I just want them to realize what the buffs are that we need and when we need theses buffs and where they are needed. Guardians have had several glaring weakness built into them for a long time.

If we look at our basic skill types:

Shouts = Great for WvW team support
Meditations = Popular for SpvP
Consecrations = Great for PvE

At leas that is where I mostly use those. But I have slotted Meditations in WvW along with consecrations etc. Those were only the most popular examples.

Spirit Weapons = Garbage? other then the Shield in rare spots I don’t recall when I last used it.

Signets = Again, can’t remember when the last time I put one of these on my bar was..

What we need is some fixes for those. To make them more useful at something. I feel that the new GM trait we are looking at Force of Will I think it was called would be better off in Zeal, if we want to make a power guardian better.

In regards to “Guardians in a good spot.” Yes, we are, but when you start buffing other classes to make them better but leave us where we are, eventually that good spot isn’t looking so good anymore.

Talyn.3295:

snip
In regards to “Guardians in a good spot.” Yes, we are, but when you start buffing other classes to make them better but leave us where we are, eventually that good spot isn’t looking so good anymore.

Absolutely this. Other classes get buffed, and slowly guardians are sliding behind imo. We really are the less needed heavy class. People really only want us in wvw to be might, protection, and stability buff bots. In high end PvE/sPvP (not the average runs where people need the support to stay alive, but a run where everyone knows how to play their class to keep themselves alive) a Warrior is far more useful to have in your party since they can support as well/damage more, or bunk better if they want to.

Sword 10% damage is a great trait, and radiance tree is standard in PvE, so I’m not sure where you get that from. However…

There is no doubt that guardians are a strong class, but it’s mainly because they have some very strong builds that work, and the choice is quite limited thus we feel pigeonholed. That’s because we have so many traits, especially grandmaster, that are useless in every game mode. Nobody goes 30 deep into zeal because stuff like Kindled Zeal is a slap in the face. All of our condition removal is deep into virtues/honor and requires a lot of traiting there. It is great when you DO trait there, but it leaves you with little room for any kind of creativity aside from meditations which would mean you eschew practically all your support.

It’s understandable that concessions always have to be made. If you want to spec dps, you should give up survivability. It’s the degree of concessions that have to be made if you venture out of the tanking lines that people complain about. The guardian dps meta build for PvE is exceptional in this regard, and they really don’t need any changes there. But then again why are we balancing 3 modes simultaneously where changes in one area will break the other? Well, I take that back. WvW is intentionally a balance trainwreck because nobody cares.

We’re in a good spot because we have one working build for the majority of situations in game; unlike say the failure of a class design that is the ranger, or the schizophrenic design of the necromancer leading them to rock in some game modes and suck in others. Now certainly, build diversity takes a backseat to good design and balance, but you can’t just buff everything else and decide nothing has changed especially in wvw/pvp. Take condition removal— the conditions that other classes can put out are stronger than they were before yet our ability to combat them remains the same. No wonder why we have a condition meta that gets dealt with by giving other classes hard counters to conditions. Not that it would be right to give it to us either, but let’s not pretend everything is ok.

In other words, just because other classes are more badly designed than this one, doesn’t mean we should be ignored either.

IMO, they shouldn’t make more grandmaster traits that will get ignored anyways. Instead take these new concepts and merge it with the ones they have. Instead of competing for so-so GM traits, make it a real dilemma instead.

what! stale? really? I recently experimented with a condi spec and one that actually works in pvp :p decent survivability, decent power and condi dmg and decent support to allies and debuffs to enemies.

Then there’s the healway guardian.

The zerker GS guardian with spirits (50% boost to spirit dmg is crazy).

Shouting standard guardian

Pokeball hammer guardian

etc. you’ve got plenty of choice and there’s even still some uncharted teritory. Try elementalist all they can do is put 30 in water and 30 in arcane just to be able to have sustain on par with other classes.

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

what! stale? really? I recently experimented with a condi spec and one that actually works in pvp :p decent survivability, decent power and condi dmg and decent support to allies and debuffs to enemies.

Then there’s the healway guardian.

The zerker GS guardian with spirits (50% boost to spirit dmg is crazy).

Shouting standard guardian

Pokeball hammer guardian

etc. you’ve got plenty of choice and there’s even still some uncharted teritory. Try elementalist all they can do is put 30 in water and 30 in arcane just to be able to have sustain on par with other classes.

You just put spirit guardian down as a viable build…. Along with condition damage…

I mentioned I’m talking high level pve/pvp both of those builds will get you kicked in less than 5 seconds from a group in pve, and make your teammates cry in pvp.

And I run a zerker staff ele with 30/30/0/10/0 and I survive pretty well in pvp and rarely ever die in pve.

eleshazar.6902:

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

what! stale? really? I recently experimented with a condi spec and one that actually works in pvp :p decent survivability, decent power and condi dmg and decent support to allies and debuffs to enemies.

Then there’s the healway guardian.

The zerker GS guardian with spirits (50% boost to spirit dmg is crazy).

Shouting standard guardian

Pokeball hammer guardian

etc. you’ve got plenty of choice and there’s even still some uncharted teritory. Try elementalist all they can do is put 30 in water and 30 in arcane just to be able to have sustain on par with other classes.

You just put spirit guardian down as a viable build…. Along with condition damage…

I mentioned I’m talking high level pve/pvp both of those builds will get you kicked in less than 5 seconds from a group in pve, and make your teammates cry in pvp.

And I run a zerker staff ele with 30/30/0/10/0 and I survive pretty well in pvp and rarely ever die in pve.

yup the condi is just a tag for the build I created its not the major focus.
The spirit focuses on a quick dmg burst with all spirits and GS, it works decently in 1v1’s but anything beyond that fails.

That’s nice to hear that you get the zerker staff ele to work

eleshazar.6902:

And I run a zerker staff ele with 30/30/0/10/0 and I survive pretty well in pvp

no you dont.

Guardians are and have been the most balanced class since launch. No major changes is a good thing. Most of the other classes have had rides from the top to the bottom of the balance roller coaster.

Only issue of guardian is to few weapons, to make the profession (lol at cla-ss getting censored) less boring. And perhaps a bith more depth to some skills (shield is just plain stupid imo, skills should become more valuable, and dual purpose like temporal curtain). If they ever add weapons + current state of guardian = perfect. So if that’s their plan in long run, guardians need now nothing at all, really nothing, just bugfixes, and improving apon the worst trait (cause guardians have some of that).

I get what the OP is saying, but to be frank, you should be praying to your god(s) that your class is in a solid place as opposed to the tumult every other class community is in. Sure, if they keep bringing other classes up, eventually Guards might not be in a “good spot” anymore, but then, WAIT FOR IT….

You get the attention you are looking for.

Grass is always greener. “Awww, but that class gets a whole bunch of changes this patch!”

Other class: “Not enough changes, we’re still broken and terrible in some way, robble robble robble bugs robble”

Just like how everyone complains when a WvW match gets stale, then they get into a new match with some other world and beg to be back in their old match. Ridiculous, really.

Cogbyrn.7283:

I get what the OP is saying, but to be frank, you should be praying to your god(s) that your class is in a solid place as opposed to the tumult every other class community is in. Sure, if they keep bringing other classes up, eventually Guards might not be in a “good spot” anymore, but then, WAIT FOR IT….

You get the attention you are looking for.

Grass is always greener. “Awww, but that class gets a whole bunch of changes this patch!”

Other class: “Not enough changes, we’re still broken and terrible in some way, robble robble robble bugs robble”

Just like how everyone complains when a WvW match gets stale, then they get into a new match with some other world and beg to be back in their old match. Ridiculous, really.

I have every class but engineer at level 80 (he is almost there) and I play them all quite frequently. So I don’t really think this is an issue of perception of something I don’t know about. I play the other classes so I know their problems and their strengths. I enjoy the way that they change and have new opportunities. Sometimes those changes stink, and sometimes they are awesome. I would rather have that roller coaster on guardian than the run the same build for over a year because that’s all anet really wants guardians to do.

eleshazar.6902:

I mentioned I’m talking high level pve/pvp both of those builds will get you kicked in less than 5 seconds from a group in pve, and make your teammates cry in pvp.

And? Warriors are expected to bring a zerker build and banners. Eles are expected to bring LH, FGS and Icebow. You can’t just get a weird shout-condition warrior in a “high-lvl” group. That applies to all classes. Just be glad you have a important role with your guard in organized PvE. Rangers are still waiting for a niche to fill.