Guild Wars 2

i would like to point out some traits that are completely useless, not chosen on any rational build, i main guardian so ill want to point out the ones im aware off, i know there will be trolls saying ALL of this are GREAT traits… but lets face it there is allways people lurking on forums to do that.

zeal
4 Revenge of the Fallen Increased damage while downed.

10 Eternal Spirit Spirit weapons are not destroyed when commanded. (welcome to say blablabla great for spirit weapon guardian but if i ask you do you use this? if the answer is no then don´t complain )

12 Gain condition damage based on your power. our only condition dmg is a burn, there are condition builds for guardian on pvp (pve it just sucks never seen 1 using it) the burning from the guardian is neglectible if an enemy has a single debuff removing skill, this trait isn´t useless but come on is the XII they should move it to tier -3 and people would still not use it

radiance

1 Healer’s Retribution Gain retaliation when using a heal skill.
(never seen anyone using this because it doesn´t do what it says, you can use “heal skills” but it only counts for your main healing skill which is 30/32/40 seconds depending on traits)

valor

3 Strength of the Fallen Lose health slower while downed.
no comments here…

5 Purity Lose conditions at a set time interval.
wait this one actually does something, but why does the thief “remove condition at set time intervals” while stealth start from 0, as soon as you go stealth it already start with 1 condition remove instead of having to wait the same interval, might need a rework but deffinetly something useful (for some).

I think Anet has the statistic of people using traits, why not rework those that are completely useless and noone has ever used, why people have to bring up this topics. There are some classes like rangers that have practically a whole line of useless traits.

You have missed a lot. This is a very incomplete list. Very difficult to read..

You know, all I want is for the devs to start caring about the guardian.

Zanshin.5379:

You know, all I want is for the devs to start caring about the guardian.

Pretty much this. At launch Anet claimed that guardian was a pretty well-balanced class, and for the most part I agreed. But the game has changed quite a bit over the course of a year and a half, and just because something was working well at launch doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s just as effective after these changes have been made.

Black Box.9312:

Zanshin.5379:

You know, all I want is for the devs to start caring about the guardian.

Pretty much this. At launch Anet claimed that guardian was a pretty well-balanced class, and for the most part I agreed. But the game has changed quite a bit over the course of a year and a half, and just because something was working well at launch doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s just as effective after these changes have been made.

I don’t think that guardians have reached ele- or thief-tier badness yet (let’s be fair, they are at least a little balanced). Nonetheless I agree that the extremely large number of useless traits should be cut down.

Arganthium.5638:

Black Box.9312:

Zanshin.5379:

You know, all I want is for the devs to start caring about the guardian.

Pretty much this. At launch Anet claimed that guardian was a pretty well-balanced class, and for the most part I agreed. But the game has changed quite a bit over the course of a year and a half, and just because something was working well at launch doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s just as effective after these changes have been made.

I don’t think that guardians have reached ele- or thief-tier badness yet (let’s be fair, they are at least a little balanced). Nonetheless I agree that the extremely large number of useless traits should be cut down.

I’m not suggesting that guardian is a bad class. It’s just been pigeonholed into a very limited set of roles. You can either build tanky and bunker with one, or you can go for a very glassy burst DPS build. There aren’t really any other viable options and there isn’t much room for a middle ground between those two polar opposites. Now take into account the fact that Anet has been rebalancing other classes to become competitors in these build categories and you have a problem.

Black Box.9312:

Arganthium.5638:

Black Box.9312:

Zanshin.5379:

You know, all I want is for the devs to start caring about the guardian.

Pretty much this. At launch Anet claimed that guardian was a pretty well-balanced class, and for the most part I agreed. But the game has changed quite a bit over the course of a year and a half, and just because something was working well at launch doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s just as effective after these changes have been made.

I don’t think that guardians have reached ele- or thief-tier badness yet (let’s be fair, they are at least a little balanced). Nonetheless I agree that the extremely large number of useless traits should be cut down.

I’m not suggesting that guardian is a bad class. It’s just been pigeonholed into a very limited set of roles. You can either build tanky and bunker with one, or you can go for a very glassy burst DPS build. There aren’t really any other viable options and there isn’t much room for a middle ground between those two polar opposites. Now take into account the fact that Anet has been rebalancing other classes to become competitors in these build categories and you have a problem.

No, I get what you mean. It has been pigeonholed, and a lot of that brings us back to the original discussion: because most Guard traits are useless.

Though I’d say that those “other” classes (warrior especially- highest base health, armor, best condi clear, and best HPS-that-you-don’t-have-to-spec-very-specifically-into-to-get make it the optimal class for virtually every role in the game) probably need nerfs anyways, since a lot of the competitiveness they have had with guardian in certain fields is only because they’ve been overly buffed.

Minors: Pretty much the majority of these except for a select few: Radiant Power, Elusive Power, Might of the protector and Vigorous Precision. The only reason I don’t find Inspired Virtue a good trait because without it, Virtues in my opinion, are very sub par.

I would very much like to see some changes to the rest of the traits in the future.

Useless traits are only part of the problem, no soft or hard CC (aside from VERY few weapons with very predictable and slow attacks), no escape mechanic, almost exclusively melee centric (unless you count that granny slow scepter attack). Next to useless virtues due to the huge cooldown for what little they give. 60 secs on Virtue of resolve, even traited for condi removal there’s purging flame that does the same thing on a 35 secs CD. VoC? Block one mighty random auto attack every 40 seconds or block one mighty attack of choice on a 90 second cooldown, even if traited for stability… 3 secs of stability on a 60 secs cooldown vs stand your ground’s 6 secs of stability AND a stun break on a 30(24) secs cooldown? I mean really? Virtues need to be reworked and either their cooldowns be dropped significantly or the benefit of using them to warrant that cooldown.

I feel that VoJ is probably the only one of the three, that has the right cooldown for what it does (if traited into radiance +5). And when you think about it, it does the same thing as VoC and in some situations it’s even better (think 1vX), on 3 times lower cooldown.

Then there’s the matter with the weapon skills (you know which ones) that require for you to be stationary for them to go off. By now the meta has evolved to the point where nobody will stay in your face for a second (consider latency) for you to put ring of warding on the ground, or banish them. In the current meta with everyone running at 25% speed it’s next to impossible to land a stationary Zealot’s Defense for more than a third of its total duration.

Finally, we finally deserve an alternative to Renewed Focus. Both Tome of Wrath and Tome of Courage are completely useless for anything outside of PvE and probably even there considering the huge cooldown and cast times on the good skills they provide. Renewed Focus itself isn’t something inspiring by any means, it’s mainly used as a tool to refresh the huge Virtue Cooldowns so you can squeeze another second or two of survivability while being on a low Cooldown (for an elite skill). It’s uselessness comes from the fact that:
1. It doesn’t bypass Daze so you’re likely to die in crowd control without even getting the chance to use it.
2. Invulnerable doesn’t really mean invulnerable as it prevents incoming direct damage but any applied conditions still tick so you still end up dying while being “invulnerable”

When you think about it, mesmers have a sword attack that does the same thing on a 12 second cooldown with an extra second of duration and dishing high damage at the same time. Renewed Focus might as well be demoted to utility skill as it can hardly be called an Elite Skill.

I’m sure there will be people to disagree with a lot of these points and people that would say those skills are really useful when paired with other skills (example being RoW/Banish with JI), but come on we ain’t supposed to have to use a second skill to get the first one to work.

fadeaway.2807:

You have missed a lot. This is a very incomplete list. Very difficult to read..

Some of the other traits might be used by someone, as an example having burning damage on spirit weapon hit, kinda double the dps (which is lame anyways) so i went for the ones im sure are useless both PVE and PVP.

Guardian is my main ive seen other classes but ive never theorycrafted deeply enough to give a list with anything else but my own opinion, which isn´t fair.

LoL yea those traits are parody. They should really fix things in game…
Can anyone think of something useful. Why would they do something stupid that nobody would use. And put it in game ? Is it their lack of creativity ? Did some kids had school practice in their office so they created such bad traits ?
Or maybe they made those traits so people can insult those who took those traits and call them noobs. And then those “noobs” will report them for insulting them and they will ban their accounts. So all those people will need to buy new accounts which means ===? PROFIT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The last thing I need is for the Guardian to be too strong. However, I just want some variety and usage out of more of these traits. Some require you to be rezzed/kill to refresh a virtue, others have large icd’s with a very small benefit attached.

Useless or unworthy GM traits:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Wrathful_Spirits
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Kindled_Zeal
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Perfect_Inscriptions
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Permeating_Wrath
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shielded_Mind

Arken.3725:

The last thing I need is for the Guardian to be too strong. However, I just want some variety and usage out of more of these traits. Some require you to be rezzed/kill to refresh a virtue, others have large icd’s with a very small benefit attached.

i don´t know how strong is the guardian actually, i don´t know what class you play but if my guardian tried to chase u to the end of the world, i would have 0 chances of keeping you in auto atack range, 1 dodge roll forward makes an enemy already out of auto atack range.

so the guardian strenght is relative, GW2 gave classes completely different types of strenght, But the problem this forum has to deal with is the little diversity when playing 1 class with different traits.

For example i once tried to kill a tanky warrior using healing signet, the one that give ton of passive regen, since he had lots of toughness it was imposible for me to deal more dmg than he regen.

I decided to go full crit 100% crit chance, full zerker Scholar gear with max critical dmg, and guess what? exactly the same thing happened, i wasn´t able to deal dmg and the guy was only running and shouting.

Other classes can kill this build with lets say poison, and conditions that pierce trough toughness, guardians can´t, there is no build allow them to do this, this is the flexibility i feel gw2 lacks.

give everyone a 1 minute cooldown 3 second stealth detection, give all classes the chance to spec against threats, even if it means sacrificing power and utility.

List of underwhelming traits, and what I would change:

Revenge of the Fallen and Strength of the Fallen need to be combined into one trait.

Shattered Aegis is still very subpar. Either up the damage on it, or go back to the previous burning.

Focused Mastery, not really a bad trait. However it needs something more to make it more viable. Such as remove a condition when using focus skills.

Kindled Zeal, this whole trait needs to be redesigned.

Glacial Heart- Current CD is too long, making it useless. Reduce CD to 10-15 seconds. Also make it increase hammer damage by 5%. Or they could make it apply to all weapons.

Retaliatory Subconscious- Make this a Grandmaster trait. However let it also apply stability. Increase CD to 48 seconds.

Elite Focus- 50% duration increase and 20% reduced CD.