Guild Wars 2

Real Talk: A post meant to outline the problems with the Guardian, this one is for the hammer. These comments are coming from the idea of wvw since pve mobs don’t move and spvp has hampered the evolution of Guardian with its focus on point defense.

Hammer 1: Auto attack chain needs to be faster. Its been said on the forums by non-devs that its slow because it applies a symbol to the ground, but I haven’t been able to find a dev post confirming that. It needs to be faster, 1 second cast time is plenty long considering that most people will get out of the symbol before it can do any serious damage. And since you need to stick to your target you as the Guardian will be out of it as well, sometimes before the 2nd pulse. Symbols I will discuss in another Real Talk later in our program

Hammer 2: Low cooldown blast finisher, good damage with a 300 movement attached. Really solid ability unless you are using it up or down a slope. The ‘explosion’ on hammer 2 does not go up or down on the X Axis. Instead the damage goes out. So if you are trying to hit an Asura down hill, or the leap doesn’t track up or down the slope well, you’ve just wasted an attack. This has been in since the beta and never mentioned or fixed.

Hammer 3: Moderately low cooldown ranged root. Solid ability. The telegraph is quite long, but so is everything else on a Guardian.

Hammer 4: 750 launch, short range, and low damage. For an ‘aoe’ weapon it doesn’t make sense to have it as a single target attack. It should be changed to a cone attack (max 3 targets), 180 range, 500 launch attack. This will bring it from a trolling ability to a useful CC. Someone mentioned this change in a previous weapons post and I can’t find it, but its still a very good suggestion.

Hammer 5: Brings what little CC we Guardians have to bear…but if the target is running from you it will be out of range before its cast is done. To get around this you basically have to combine it with Judge’s Intervention. This skill has the EXACT same clunkiness that Hammer 4 on warrior did have before it was changed. Why this hasn’t been changed as well is beyond me.

Please post suggestions or comments in the posting below and keep it civil please =D

Also, put weapontype (hammer or @sword) to make a comment about it in bold at the start.

This post is for the scepter. These comments are coming from the idea of wvw since pve mobs don’t move and spvp has hampered the evolution of Guardian with its focus on point defense.

Scepter 1: This attack is the tip of the frustrating iceberg that is the scepter. Its slow, its a projectile (but not a finisher), doesn’t track well, mediocre damage, and isn’t a chain attack like necro (chain attack + condis), mesmer (chain attack that continues even without a target that creates a clone at the end of the chain), or elementalist (no chain attack, but applies condis and has 4 attunements). This doesn’t make any sense when looking at other classes abilities on scepter 1. It needs a major rework, it requires so much rework in my opinion that I don’t even have a suggestion for it.

Scepter 2: An ‘aoe’ RNG attack that hardly hits. The little smite fists that attack have a pretty good chance of missing if the target is slightly out of the center. The fists that attack in the area need to have a 5 target aoe cap so that it can do some aoe, and make it a symbol. The RNG needs to be taken out of the attack, its insanely frustrating. The attack needs to be cleaned up.

Scepter 3: A medium range, medium duration root that does mediocre damage and an insanely long cooldown. I think this cooldown is still this long because for some reason having the slowest class in the game means that we should have long cooldown CC as well. The cooldown should be lowered to 15 seconds, maybe even 12 seconds considering other classes ability to just about spam root abilities.

This one is for the mace. These comments are coming from the idea of wvw since pve mobs don’t move and spvp has hampered the evolution of Guardian with its focus on point defense.

Mace 1: This is probably one of our best chain attacks. Solid damage and a heal on the end. The only improvement to this would be if the attack on the end of the chain was PBAOE and the heal was a larger, maybe 180 instead of 120.

Mace 2: A regen light symbol that does solid damage on a nice cooldown. Again, I’ll cover symbols later in our program.

Mace 3: High damage aoe after you block and if you don’t a whirl finisher that gives protection. Solid ability.

Heres my problem with mace…there is ZERO CC. None what-so-ever. In every other MMO the mace has always been a weapon that dazes, stuns, or does high damage with some sort of armor penetration. But following along with our severe lack of CC this makes sense. This would be fine if we had CC somewhere else and the warrior class didn’t have 2 hard CCs and a 3 second block that will keep blocking if you aren’t facing a target on MH mace, and an aoe knockdown on offhand mace…ohh and warrior auto-attack cleaves. Compared to the only other class that can use a mace, ours needs some improvements, mainly CC.

This one is for the focus. These comments are coming from the idea of wvw since pve mobs don’t move and spvp has hampered the evolution of Guardian with its focus on point defense.

Focus 4: Long cooldown, low regen duration, blinding attack. Its got a lot of utility and cures a condi per bounce. But the cooldown is insane. It should be around 20 seconds, and to be honest a Guardian should be able to target a friendly player, and cast it on the friendly player to initiate the bounce. Because if the target is at 900 range and running from you while you cast it will miss and the ability will be wasted for nearly half a minute. Ohh and it actually tracks! Why sword 3 can’t do this or scepter 1 can’t do this…I don’t know.

Focus 5: Blocks three attacks, blast finisher at the start, high damage if it explodes…but has an insanely longer cooldown than a lot of utilities abilities. It needs to be shortened by 5-10 seconds.

This one is for the shield. These comments are coming from the idea of wvw since pve mobs don’t move and spvp has hampered the evolution of Guardian with its focus on point defense.

Shield 4: Mediocre damage, long cooldown, protection applier. Like the focus this cooldown is way too long for what it does. It also doesn’t really do what a shield is supposed to do. Here is what I think it should be changed to. Block attacks for 3 seconds. At the end of the three seconds apply protection to you and 5 party members for each attack blocked, 6 seconds max, 600 range. Not only would you be able to protect yourself from attacks, but you’d be able to provide support to allies. If you felt like you could also add a small damage explosion to give it some more utility, similar to what it does now.

Shield 5: Knock back, instant cast, and a heal. Again…insanely long cooldown for what it does. Lower it by 5 seconds.

This one is for the torch. These comments are coming from the idea of wvw since pve mobs don’t move and spvp has hampered the evolution of Guardian with its focus on point defense.

Torch 4: The activation needs to be properly explained in the tooltip for one. Also when you initially cast it, the ability should have a wider area that it burns. 120 is a joke. It needs to be 180-300. Also when you activate torch 4 and throw the fire at someone the target should get direct damage and burning, and anyone around the target that was hit should get 2 seconds of burning. Projectile speed is perfect, I have no idea why scepter 1’s attack isn’t like this.

Torch 5: Needs to apply burning per pulse…I mean you’re literally breathing fire on someone. It should also cure condis on yourself, elementalist water dagger 2 heals the elementalist as well as allies, I don’t see why this doesn’t cure condis on the Guardian as well.

This one is for the staff. These comments are coming from the idea of wvw since pve mobs don’t move and spvp has hampered the evolution of Guardian with its focus on point defense.

Staff 1: The ‘zergling prod’. If anyone has a suggestion on how to improve this, please post it. Other classes’ staff 1 attacks are insanely better than what we have…so post away!

Staff 2: Low cooldown, extremely high utility ability. If you need some extra damage on target, don’t detonate the orb and you can throw it again in 2.5 seconds. If you need some extra healing, blow it up for some. Solid ability.

Staff 3: I’m still not sure what to think about this ability with the recent change to how it applies swiftness. But if you stand in it you get quite a bit of swiftness and if you’re already on the move with swiftness you get an extra 4 seconds when it pulses, so theres some give and take with it.

Staff 4: This should be able to cast on the move so that when the battle line changes your heal/might isn’t wasted on nothing because you couldn’t keep up with the fight.

Staff 5: Holy cooldown batman…Please shave off 5 seconds from this.

This one is for symbols. These comments are coming from the idea of wvw since pve mobs don’t move and spvp has hampered the evolution of Guardian with its focus on point defense.

First we need to discuss the traits. There are currently 5 different traits that improve you symbols spread out over 2 trait lines. These need to be combined. Writ of Exaltation and Persistence need to be combined as either a adept or master trait. Symbolic Power and Exposure need to be combined in the 25 point talent and a new 15 point zeal trait should be created that adds chill to your symbols. This would not only give us some soft CC, but add some much needed customization and utility to symbols.

I can’t really agree with most of your observations.

Hammer – Hammer is already one of the most prevalent weapons for guardians. I don’t see much need for changes.

Hammer 1 – Reducing recharge on skill 1 would make it possible for permanent protection without symbol traiting.

Hammer 2 – I wouldn’t mind seeing the Z axis issues fixed for Hammer 2 (As well as Sword 2 and GS 3.)

Hammer 3 – Telegraphing abilities is added to quite a few skills and classes. Killshot for Warriors for example. Being able to immobilize 5 enemies is strong enough to warrant the telegraph in my opinion.

Hammer 4 – AE on this skill would be too much. It really is more than just a troll skill. It causes guardians to be deadly when near cliffs. The skill combined with JI makes it also very strong in 1v1.

Hammer 5 – Hammer isn’t a chase weapon as it is. This skill is better as choke control. The channel isn’t that long. We also have access to JI for skill synergy. The channeling isn’t too much of an issue.

Scepter – As our only long range weapon choice, it really needs a little looking into.

Scepter 1 – They already increased orb speed once, but it could really use a bit more. It’s a single target attack as it is with no additional effects. Missing with half your orbs just makes it lackluster.

Scepter 2 – This skill is already potentially the most damaging skill in the game. Adding 5 AE limit would make the pressure that a group of scepter weilding guardians can place on a zerg to be rather freaking high.

Scepter 3 – The cooldown is only 20 seconds, It is also not only an immobilize but it also applies vulnerability and can be traited to give even more vulnerability.

Mace – You can’t compare our version of the mace with another classes version. It just doesn’t work that way. The lack of CC is the tradeoff for the defensiveness of the weapon. If you want CC you use our other options, if you want defense you use the mace. That’s how the choices work. Each weapon has pros and cons. That’s the pro/con for mace.

Focus – My favorite off-hand.

Focus 4 – I could see being able to target an ally as useful. You can use it untargeted to force it to travel over your ally, but it won’t bounce. Could see a use while running away to help cleanse your allies.

Focus 5 – Reducing the recharge by 5 or 10 seconds would cause a traited focus to be on a 28-32 second recharge. That’s far too low for a skill that blocks, can be traited to provide might stacks while doing so, and if not broken it does a decent amount of damage as well as being one of our few blast finisher abilities.

Shield – Many people tend to try to add too much to the shield. While I agree that it could use some help. Skill 4 is especially problematic when you factor in honorable shield.

Shield 4 – 24 second recharge 3 blocks (Exactly equal to focus 5) with increased defense after the 3 blocks with up to 6 seconds of protection to 5 allies. Puts focus 5 to shame. And you further suggest the possibility of leaving the damage component as well.

Shield 5 – I agree that this skill has a recharge that acts like the shield blocks people from moving when it actually only launches nearby enemies. It doesn’t help for choke points like ring of warding, line of warding and such which have the same recharge. It could use a reduction of recharge or act like warding as well as the other skills that are similar.

Torch – I really don’t like torch myself.

Torch 4 – This is a skill that is intended for PB range. No need to increase it. You are setting yourself on fire, the enemy should be in PB range to be affected. The throw however is fine. A torch traited is already really quick on the recharge at 12-18 second depending on use.

Torch 5 – Removing conditions on yourself I can agree with. Adding 10 pulses of burning on top of decent damage on a short cooldown is too much.

Staff – Another popular weapon for wvwvw guardians.

Staff 1: One of the few weapons that can hit through doors. It hits up to 5 enemies. It’s one of the reasons people like it for wvwvw. The bags are plentiful with this ability.

Staff 3: Traited this skill produces more swiftness than the recharge on the skill. You can stack a lot of swiftness with the skill.

Staff 4: You really shouldn’t be using this skill before the charge you will replace the fire field blasts of 20s might with 10s mights. It’s better used after you hit the zerg as it will rebuff might as well as heal allies.

Staff 5: The cooldown is the same as all the warding skills.

Symbol traits – Combining the traits would cause them to be a bit much. Especially exposure and power together. 10% more damage as well as vulnerability. Chill on symbols would be a bit much as well since we can litter a field with symbols it would be like permanently chilling enemies. Chill is rather strong as it is without making it so prevalent.

Dynnen.6405:

This post is for the scepter. These comments are coming from the idea of wvw since pve mobs don’t move and spvp has hampered the evolution of Guardian with its focus on point defense.

Scepter 1: This attack is the tip of the frustrating iceberg that is the scepter. Its slow, its a projectile (but not a finisher), doesn’t track well, mediocre damage, and isn’t a chain attack like necro (chain attack + condis), mesmer (chain attack that continues even without a target that creates a clone at the end of the chain), or elementalist (no chain attack, but applies condis and has 4 attunements). This doesn’t make any sense when looking at other classes abilities on scepter 1. It needs a major rework, it requires so much rework in my opinion that I don’t even have a suggestion for it.

Scepter 2: An ‘aoe’ RNG attack that hardly hits. The little smite fists that attack have a pretty good chance of missing if the target is slightly out of the center. The fists that attack in the area need to have a 5 target aoe cap so that it can do some aoe, and make it a symbol. The RNG needs to be taken out of the attack, its insanely frustrating. The attack needs to be cleaned up.

Scepter 3: A medium range, medium duration root that does mediocre damage and an insanely long cooldown. I think this cooldown is still this long because for some reason having the slowest class in the game means that we should have long cooldown CC as well. The cooldown should be lowered to 15 seconds, maybe even 12 seconds considering other classes ability to just about spam root abilities.

Your not alone on scepter1 with your guardian class.. did you ever used longbow on warrior and used dual shot?

Scepter 1 is WAY faster compared to dual shot, and damage is the same.. so scepter does more total damage, use is more in close combat just like longbow for warr

Hammer is fine, it’s mainly a self AoE high damage weapon with some control attached to it. (Banish/RoW/ZE) As much as i’d like them to buff hammer (due to maining hammer on my guard) it would make it grossly OP by pumping out perma prot and even more damage without traiting for it.

@ Kumu Honua: Just because there are a lot of Guards out there that use hammer isn’t a reason not to fix it. Shaving off that 1/4 extra time of cast for the auto attack chain on hammer will not give Guards perma-protection, fights move around too much plus symbols aren’t worth putting points into since you can’t keep a fight locked into them. The hammer really magnifies the problem with Guardian’s inability to keep people in melee range and I think the changes I mentioned will give them better chase ability. There are 7 classes in the game that have cripple on their weapons, 1 that doesn’t. There are 4 classes that have direct application of chill on their weapons, so I don’t think chilled is all that prevalent. Giving symbols the ability to chill will allow the Guardian a little measure of control in a fight by keeping people in it. Plus combining the traits will give Guards a reason to go into the worst trait line for the Guardian. Also leaving banish as it is really hampers our CC. We have so little of it and this would be a perfect place to add it. You bring up an interesting point with the cliffs however, its one of the things I dislike about the Guard, and it follows this formula.

X ability is garbage or decent by itself. But X ability + Y ability = Good ability.

As far as your comments on scepter…I just don’t get it. Yes, its lackluster but we shouldn’t have un-reliable damage based on poor weapon design. For scepter 2, I’m not sure you know how it works. The entire area that is the aoe point doesn’t get hit with the fists flying in the air, its a portion of it that gets attacked. So you can literally walk around inside of it and avoid most of the damage thanks to the RNG. And for scepter 3, look at other things that apply immobilize. Look at their cooldown, if they are AOE, and what other conditions they apply. Ours is the worst.

@ nicknamenick: This is for Guardian weapon mechanic discussion, but I will mention the warrior longbow. Warrior longbow has much better tracking than scepter, its leaps and bounds better. The nice thing about longbow is that the other abilities on it actually work right, where as scepter’s abilities really don’t…

@xsquared: Hammer isn’t fine. Shaving 1/4 second off the attack timer wouldn’t give Guards perma-protection, plus the fights move out of the symbols so quickly anyway. Even when I was trying out a symbol build with expanded range on symbols the fights hardly stayed in them for the full duration. Also RoW requires the person to run into it for them to be CCed. So its an area denial ability, not really a CC.

I agree with your thoughts on the hammer especially on 4/5 I do find use for the #4 though knocking someone into a wall effectively stuns them for quite a long duration. But making it AOE definitely fits with the weapon overall and the QoL change to the 5 is long overdue.

As to the shield I actually think this weapon has alot of potential, AOE protection is always strong and the 5 ability does alot for a single ability (AoE Heal, AoE knockback, Projectile Block also it’s a light field). I really don’t think the 4 is in need of a rework but agree that both the 4 and 5 need drastic reductions in their cooldowns. I would say 5 seconds is too little, shaving 10 seconds off of each ability’s cooldown would make the shield a very desirable weapon.

The scepter 2 also needs to be turned into a pulsing AOE or turned into a hard hitting single target ability. Right now it’s essentially a single target ability that can hit for heavily reduced AOE dmg (or simply not hit anything at all).

Hammer suffers from repetition. In most instances you are stuck auto attacking and using mighty blow. Anet should make it so that zealot’s embrace, banish and ring of warding have more practical uses.

Mace feels sluggish. Its last auto attack skill “faithful strike” needs to have its cast time significant reduced. Landing this blow against a non stationary target is almost near impossible.

Like wise symbol of faith suffers a similar issue, its casting time is so long that by the time its finished casting the enemy has already run out of range. If both faithful strike and symbol of faith had a reduced casting time, then Mace would be a much better weapon.

Mikau.6920:

My suggestions to skills:

WEAPONS:

Mace: It is awful at PvE and very weak at PvP/WvW. It is just too slow and boring to use.

• Reduce the cast of the last hit of #1 to 3/4 sec, down from 1s;
• From skill #2, reduce the cast to 1 sec or even 3/4 sec;
• Make the “Grant protection to yourself and nearby allies if you are not struck” from #3, a sequence, allowing to use any time when casting the block.

Scepter: In theory have a good DPS, but all skills hardly hit, you can go full zerker and do no damage at WvW. I think that all skills should be redesigned. All main weapons should have a symbol.

Torch: Half support, half DPS: They don’t combine very well, even considering that the #5 don’t affect yourself.

• Make the #5 affect you or increase its damage. If the Cone of Cold (#2 dagger from Ele, can affect the Ele, why it cannot the Guardian?)

Shield: It have way too much CD for its effects.

• #4: Make it also apply cripple or weakness on enemies and reduce the CD to 25 sec;
• #5: Allows it to move with the Gaurdian, and increase the duration of the bubble to 6 sec or reduce the CD to 35 sec.

Hammer: Some skills are awful to use.

• #1: Before the “buff” (fix) on Writ of Persistence trait, the Symbol of Protection was really bad (too much cast time), now it can be good, but you’ll be forced to take the trait;
• #4: This skill makes no sense at all. This may be only used to throw people off cliffs, only for that. And I hate when some troll pushes away the guy that I was going to stomp, really annoys me. Suggestion: New skill: “Hammer Throw” – Throws the Hammer, hitting foes in line, knocking them back. Does decent dmg. Cast: 1 sec. CD: 30~35 sec. (I’ll feel like Thor =P)
• #5: Is almost impossible to land without Judge’s Intervention. Allows it to cast while moving.

Sword: Somewhat good.

• #1: The last hit from the chain (Sword Wave) can be sometimes really awful to hit objects or be reflected/blocked as projectile;
• #2: Is one of the sources (there are really very few) of mobility that Guardian has, in my opinion, this is what makes this skill “good”. This should be a leap finisher, both Phase Retreat (Staff #2) and Swap (Sword #3) from Mesmer are leap finishers, why it cannot be? Also it should have a sequence skill to create some symbol (all main weapons should have symbols).

I don’t agree with pretty much anything here, it has a gigantic negative influence on pvp and I don’t see any this helpful. Sorry? I guess.

I’m not judging your scepter and focus “Real Talks” because I haven’t used them enough to review them, but the rest is pretty much “Buff this buff that for no real reasons. Too long cooldown this too long cooldown that. I want this I want that because other classes have this and that.”

Dynnen.6405:

Block attacks for 3 seconds. At the end of the three seconds apply protection to you and 5 party members for each attack blocked, 6 seconds max, 600 range.

I mean, seriously?

Jax.5261:

I don’t agree with pretty much anything here, it has a gigantic negative influence on pvp and I don’t see any this helpful. Sorry? I guess.

Thats fine, although I don’t know what you mean by a negative influence. Do you at least agree that the guardian weapons are largely ineffective against a target that isn’t running straight at you or standing still? Because that was the point I was trying to make.

xFireize.6318:

I’m not judging your scepter and focus “Real Talks” because I haven’t used them enough to review them, but the rest is pretty much “Buff this buff that for no real reasons. Too long cooldown this too long cooldown that. I want this I want that because other classes have this and that.”

Dynnen.6405:

Block attacks for 3 seconds. At the end of the three seconds apply protection to you and 5 party members for each attack blocked, 6 seconds max, 600 range.

I mean, seriously?

The only thing I can compare to in effectiveness are other classes that have the same weapons. The weapons we have are very effective on most other classes while on ours they are either lackluster, do mediocre damage, or don’t track/hit that often. As for the shield thing I was looking for another block to throw in, someone mentioned aegis application on the Guardian forums that was a better suggestion but I couldn’t find it. And also when compared to warrior or engie we dont have anywhere close to the amount of block/invuln that these classes do, while at the same time they can offer more healing (blast finisher spam in healing turret, and shouts if they run healing shouts)

Maybe I am whining, but I’ve played this game for a long time spending 90% of it roaming in small man. I get to see where these weapons fail and where they are effective. Most of the time these weapons are moderately to very effective when paired with other abilities, while other classes’ weapons usually function well on their own.

Scepter’s Orb of Wrath AA can be cleaned up to be not so easily glitch with A and D. Smite and Chains of Light are fine.
Sword’s Sword Wave could be improved when it comes to striking objects and not being reflect-able because that’s nonsense for being part of a melee weapon’s auto-attack.
Sword’s Flashing Blade could have a bit of extra oomph to it, either a leap finisher or a damage boost.
Sword’s Zealot’s Defense doesn’t need to root but it’s not that big of a deal.
Mace’s auto-attack combo is slow for a crappy heal in Faithful Strike and doesn’t do any of the damage like Hammer does through SoP to make up for this. Speed up the third hit for the Mace on all classes or else it’ll remain a rarely used weapon.
Mace’s Symbol of Faith takes too long to cast.
Mace’s Protector’s Strike is just bad. If you’re not immediately hit you’re much better off canceling and resuming AA.
Hammer’s Symbol of Protection charge is long but more than that the combo is too easily reset once interrupted. One and a quarter seconds is a long time to cast an autoattack but it’s even worse when you have to dodge and lose your combo. This isn’t really an issue for any other weapon.
Greatsword is fine in general.
Staff is fine. Orb of Light could work better when your enemy is 90 degree to the side though.
Focus is fine. Ray of Judgment has a bit long of a CD.
Torch is okay as an alternative to Focus when you have no danger of being hit for whatever reason.
Shield is terrible. I’d make arguments but they’ve already been pretty well summed up earlier in this thread.

from the wvw roaming viewpoint I run great sword focus almost always now which is quite effective but only because they are together! the BIG BIG issue is that we can’t land auto’s from greatsword hammer and mace on moving targets even with traveler runes our dps is unstable due to landing attacks and keeping targets still long enough to burst is the best time a guardian can never ever have

sword feels nice to me auto attacks are good dps and proc our burning quite often ability to hit moving targets it has more range then a GS (seems perfectly logical lol) leap 2 is great you can blind teleport and drop agro in v XX also much needed gapcloser combo leap would make this perfect! zeal 3 is just good its one of our best damage dealers and aoe projectile block very very stable damage tracks decently too

focus( never leave home without ) 4 is okay but it’s only useful when your virtually next to someone or about to get CC’d needs a rework its slow moving nature is not good also it should cleanse a condition on you as you fire it and the ability to target allies focus 5 skill is amazing defensively and offensively great for stomping and protecting your allies that stack on you but once you burn it your probably not going to be see it the rest of the fight!

Greatsword well its an epic all rounder whether your 1v1 opening a small to medium fight or escaping good mobility a blind and a symbol plus best pull in game. symbol whirling combo will save you from a condi bomb my only complaint is whirling wrath is unstable dps (PLOX STAND STILL I HAVE A PRESENT FOR YOU!)

shield I haven’t spent much time shield except point hold tpvp so I wont comment

Mace is interesting but lacks CC I did like it on a dps symbol healing buildin tpvp havent used it enough small man roaming so wont comment

hammer auto noone will play with me#no frands# while I belt auto’s into them would def like to see a .5second cripple on start of chain or not slow me down while using it smash2 is nice with short cd and blast! solid solid solid! (X Y axis issue already brought up PLOX FIX) a very nice burst aoe especially chained to smite. 3 skill its easy to read and its slow and clunky i avoid using unless point blank 4 skill launch is just fun but wvw is always v XX I would like to see1 launch+ Aoe that stuns or interrupts within range ward5 skill great control but cast is slow useless on moving without judge it can however be faked out with weapon stow for 1v1 ! and one of the best choke holders in game tbh havent opted hammer for actual fights since 0 5 30 30 5 days(long ago) except when i chain 5 warding to judge for catching runners for my squad hammer just sits in my inventory.

scepter is great auto has good dps and range and tracks reasonable well and 3 2 synergy is awesome the number 2 skill solid regardless of the situation but when your fight is XX targets lol your going to wishing for any any any other weapon to be equipped before you get absolutely wrecked and loaded with condi

I know people bring up the cooldown reductions but because of the the current viable traitline specs and that you need both weapons in conjunction to be effective in battle your going to have to drop something vital out of your traitlines if you want the reduction. Oh except 2 hand mastery is good.

lol sorry for wall of text guys =p

Dynnen.6405:

Jax.5261:

I don’t agree with pretty much anything here, it has a gigantic negative influence on pvp and I don’t see any this helpful. Sorry? I guess.

Thats fine, although I don’t know what you mean by a negative influence. Do you at least agree that the guardian weapons are largely ineffective against a target that isn’t running straight at you or standing still? Because that was the point I was trying to make.

No, watch my videos, you just need to use them well for the skills/damage to land.
The only awful weapon is the greatsword, it’s the only weapon that’s completely underpowered on Guardian.

You’re talking about making actually balanced weapons overpowered, I don’t agree.

Dynnen.6405:

@ Kumu Honua: Just because there are a lot of Guards out there that use hammer isn’t a reason not to fix it.

I didn’t say that it was a reason not to fix it. Just that it must be doing something right to be the most used weapon. I think that hammer is mostly fine. I do agree about the Z axis issue with mighty blow however.

The hammer really magnifies the problem with Guardian’s inability to keep people in melee range and I think the changes I mentioned will give them better chase ability.

Hammer isn’t really a chase weapon though. Greatsword and Sword are the chase weapons.

There are 7 classes in the game that have cripple on their weapons, 1 that doesn’t. There are 4 classes that have direct application of chill on their weapons, so I don’t think chilled is all that prevalent. Giving symbols the ability to chill will allow the Guardian a little measure of control in a fight by keeping people in it. Plus combining the traits will give Guards a reason to go into the worst trait line for the Guardian. Also leaving banish as it is really hampers our CC. We have so little of it and this would be a perfect place to add it. You bring up an interesting point with the cliffs however, its one of the things I dislike about the Guard, and it follows this formula.

X ability is garbage or decent by itself. But X ability + Y ability = Good ability.

Adding chill to symbols would cause the hammer attack chain to not only provide permanent protection but permanent chill simply by traiting in symbol duration. Symbol size makes it easier to snag your opponent and since it’s a symbol it’s an area of effect. That’s rediculously powerful. No other class has that much access to chill as far as I know.

As far as your comments on scepter…I just don’t get it. Yes, its lackluster but we shouldn’t have un-reliable damage based on poor weapon design. For scepter 2, I’m not sure you know how it works. The entire area that is the aoe point doesn’t get hit with the fists flying in the air, its a portion of it that gets attacked. So you can literally walk around inside of it and avoid most of the damage thanks to the RNG.

I made a post recently about how smite can be traited to deal quite a bit of damage. You can read that here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Cheat-Or-is-it-a-real-build/first#post3505883

If you change it so that it strikes up to 5 people at a time then you make it capable of striking 75 times, which is a LOT of pressure on a zerg ball. It’s a 6 second recharge, not dealing full potential of it’s damage is still a damaging skill.

And for scepter 3, look at other things that apply immobilize. Look at their cooldown, if they are AOE, and what other conditions they apply. Ours is the worst.

And look at the classes that can do such things. They are designed for such things. Elementalists, Necros, and Engineers for example. We are not a CC heavy class. In fact we have about the least amount.

We have more sources of block than everyone else. Doesn’t mean they should get it.

I agree with most of what you posted.
Hammer 4 – keep short range 3 targets good 400 launch
Scepter 3 – its fine, necro dagger 3 is 25 sec recharge
Mace 1 – the last attack needs to be faster and the heal smaller
Mace 3 – shouldnt proc on ranged. reduces range damage by a small amount for the duration of the channel
Shield – reduce recharge by a bit
Torch 5 – yea cure condis on self for sure
Staff – is fine
Symbols – yes. combine exaltation and persistence for a master trait

I use staff and hammer as my main weapons on my guardians. I don’t think they need any changes, except the changes to staff #3, symbol of swiftness, should be reverted. Now you need to pause down to get full effect of it, making it really clunky for solo roaming (previously it was much better). While the longer duration of swiftness with some boon duration runes and stuff can give around 30 seconds swiftness from single use, which makes it way too good for zerging situations.

Hammer auto attack can already give you more or less permanent protection duration if you just gear or trait your guardian properly. I use it all the time and having protection on almost all the times makes killing the pve mobs easy.

Hammer #2, mighty blow, is one of the best skills in the game. 300 leap, nice 180 radius, huge damage and a blast finisher on a really low cool down. Can also hit up to 5 targets. Tell me any other very low cool down blast finisher in this game which is as good? (thief’s clusterbomb comes close)

Hammer #3, zealot’s embrace, is already a bit too good in zerging situations. A skill should do either two weak or mediocre things at same time or one really powerful thing, but not more. Now it is slowly telegraphed skill, but can immobilize up to 5 targets in a line.

I feel the skills should be in line with skills from all professions:

Let’s compare two skills:
Hammer #3, zealot’s embrace:
1200 range
15 s cooldown
1 s activation
does decent damage + 2 second immobilize
can affect up to 5 targets in a line
easily telegraphed
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Zealot%27s_Embrace

Engineer rifle #2, net shot
1000 range
10 s cooldown
no damage, 2 second
can affect just one target
fast activation, but slow projectile speed makes it easy to strafe or kite from a distance (even no need to dodge)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Net_Shot

Let’s also compare hammer #4, banish:
25 s cooldown
1x damage multiplier
130 range
750 launch (single target)
telegraphed
no penalty using it
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Banish

Engineer rifle #4, overcharged shot:
15 s cooldown
1x damage multiplier
450 range
450 launch
not telegraphed
engineer knocks back itself (I would argue this is a big penalty, especially in zerging situations or maps like Skyhammer)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Overcharged_Shot

Launch is very powerful. Recovery from launch takes longer time than from knockback and it also serves as an interrupt. Making it affect multiple targets without any penalty would make it too powerful in my opinion. It would be effectively as good as warrior’s stomp (besides stomp being a stunbreak) and stomp has kitten cooldown and requires a utility skill slot.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stomp

Staff #1 is really great (good damage, very wide cone, perfect for tagging the pve mobs and enemies in in WvWvW zergs), but max 600 range. I have always felt that guardian lacks in long range. Scepter auto attack is still pretty slow. I think making it a bit faster projectile speed while keeping the auto attack dps the same would make sense. Now the key to win bunker guardians 1 vs 1 is to use the range advantage against them and while there are some gap closers (judge’s intervention, hammer #2, sword #2, greatsword #3) guardian is easy to dodge at >600 range.