Guild Wars 2

Warriors received:

Sustain buffs in the past
After that warriors only recived multiple nerfs on there dmg by skill/traits..
And now the last updates where more nerfs but more focused on sustain nerf..

Overall warr received huge dmg nerfs but some sustain

Now guards only received multiple dps buffs in the past, there burst attacks deal warrior like damage on very easy setup (no stationary 100b or obvious kill shot skills) now this spec (medi) ofc cost them some sustain.. but it looks like they are getting a sweet sustain buff.

I wonder how this will affect pvp/wvw

mesmers over thiefs in pvp soon?
guard over warrior in pvp soon?

and

guard over warriors soooon in wvw????
(Now warrs cant engage with hammer stun due to adrenaline chance..big nerf for wvw warr)

condi mesmers will be the master race in pvp.
guards have a solid buff yeah, but nothing like what mesmer are getting.

Mesmer aren’t a race

Mesmers will be getting a fix and a weird buff. But yeah, that will hugely impact balance.

HA! HA HA HA! I’ll remember this post next time I’m chasing down somebody in WvW and am unable to keep up with them and laugh.

Or maybe cry.

I’ll probably cry.

I’m actually surprised that meditation guardians got such a huge buff, meditation guardians could already beat many Warrior builds as it is.

killahmayne.9518:

I’m actually surprised that meditation guardians got such a huge buff, meditation guardians could already beat many Warrior builds as it is.

We got one worthwhile buff to a skill that was already used anyway… Hardly huge at all IMO.

I hate reposting, especially my own stuff since it seems self centered, but… since I know not everyone actually reads the guard forum, or may not play a guard themselves. I’m gonna repost what I summed up in that forum here:

CMF.5461:

I see a lot of people going crazy and over exaggerating the changes, saying dps guards are going to be op.

Here is my take on the changes, for what it’s worth.

Elite focus

• Stability will allow players to activate the 5 skill on both tomes, the tomes themselves are still underplayed – Ineffective change

Tome of Wrath

• More damage, faster cooldown, they are begging for us to use these tomes…but see below on renewed focus change – ineffective

Tome of Courage

• Better cleansing, but cleansing is not why people picked up this tome, elite focus change will help players get the group full heal off though. Niche change and ineffective, again see renewed focus change below

Glacial Heart

• More frequent soft CC is a good thing, 15 seconds sounds like a solid middle ground and the devs are listening, hammer is highly under utilized except in wvw, and has problems with gap closing anyway probably best in zerg play – Nice but ineffective change

Spirit Weapons

• Reducing the auto attack cooldown by trait will provide more burst for spirit weapon users, but the spirit weapons will still be prone to easy death and unpredictable with movement patterns
• Providing blast finisher on hammer is interesting, but hard to control and monitor when it is in a combo field or not, and will miss probably more times than naught
• Sword of Justice vulnerability is interesting and will help increase percent damage done by not just the spirit weapon but the guardian and any surrounding allies
• Aegis on shield activate is welcome, but wont see much play
• Ground target bow activate should have been in game since launch
• Bottom line, some quality of life changes, but spirit weapon builds are still limited by utility slots being taken up and heavy investment in traits. They tend to be weaker in the long run due to the above reasons, and only effective in bursts of cooldowns then totally ineffective till spirit weapons are back – Ineffective change, but nice that they are testing new things

Merciful Intervention

• Thank you for trying to provide more mobility and control, something we guards have been asking for with this skill since launch, limit of ally in field is a catch 22, but it may help while grouped. Pointless solo. – Possibly good group escape ability….

Renewed Focus

• People are freaking out about this providing fury, I just want to remind people that the fury will last about 4 seconds, with 2 of those being the channel of renewed focus in the first place, thus 2 seconds of fury (1 maybe 2 hits), not a dps increase.
• Biggest plus on this change is providing a cooldown reduction on the skill, thus further ingraining the ability is a mandatory for all guards and further pushing tomes out of play (redacting any changes they had above). Also this is an easily accessible trait to pick up in valor 1, so any guard can get this if they want.
• Good survival change for all guards, will make bunkers even stronger, not as much help for dps, but nice.

TLDR – Renewed Focus and Glacial Heart are the only real changes we may see, and RF mostly helps bunkers even further bunk. Good try, thanks for more than just tooltip updates, although not revolutionary to the guard class as a whole in the long run I don’t think.

Feel free to continue discussion there if you like.

Warriors will still be much more popular then guardians for reasons

1: They have higher burst potential

2: They can bunker just as well if not better in some situations, they also do so without loosing nearly as much damage potential due to having double the starting health pool
(guardians may have protection but given the god awefull cool downs for abilities that apply it & how slow the hammer auto chain is it just is to easy to counter.)

3: they have more build options that are viable at higher levels of play

4: Warriors have a great deal more crowd control, snares, cripples, stuns, dazes etc…

So in the end all the guardian really excels at is condition removal & being tanky as long as the long CD abilities last (assuming they are not immediately converted to conditions or stripped or stolen.)

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Warriors will still be much more popular then guardians for reasons

1: They have higher burst potential

2: They can bunker just as well if not better in some situations, they also do so without loosing nearly as much damage potential due to having double the starting health pool
(guardians may have protection but given the god awefull cool downs for abilities that apply it & how slow the hammer auto chain is it just is to easy to counter.)

3: they have more build options that are viable at higher levels of play

4: Warriors have a great deal more crowd control, snares, cripples, stuns, dazes etc…

So in the end all the guardian really excels at is condition removal & being tanky as long as the long CD abilities last (assuming they are not immediately converted to conditions or stripped or stolen.)

Ehhh, I agree on everything but your second point. Warriors cannot really…‘bunker’ to the extent that Guardians can, I can think of only one or two builds a Warrior can run to ‘play at bunker’, but those are really only solid on points. As you said, Guardians are without peer the best at condition removal and being tanky innately across all their builds.

But, that is not to dismiss the other three points, Warriors will still reign supreme in popularity.

maybe it’s just me, but i play my medi guard far too glassy to be on par with warrior.

i wonder if i can still use merciful intervention as a second heal though, now that i need to target.

Wtb Warrior Hammer stunlock and loads of soft cc. Decent swiftness without having to lose a arm and leg for it.

Sykper.6583:

As you said, Guardians are without peer the best at condition removal and being tanky innately across all their builds.

They’re not tanky or good at allied condi removal innately across all builds. You have to trait defensively for that.

Black Box.9312:

Sykper.6583:

As you said, Guardians are without peer the best at condition removal and being tanky innately across all their builds.

They’re not tanky or good at allied condi removal innately across all builds. You have to trait defensively for that.

^

Want to be a great party condi clearer, triple shout build, 6 in honor and 4 in virtues. Initially survivability is low without Monk’s focus or Healing power with 3 in honor. Tanky comes from gear and, traits and protection access. So you suffer somewhere else if you want to be tanky and clear condis teamwide.

Sykper.6583:

Ehhh, I agree on everything but your second point. Warriors cannot really…‘bunker’ to the extent that Guardians can, I can think of only one or two builds a Warrior can run to ‘play at bunker’, but those are really only solid on points. As you said, Guardians are without peer the best at condition removal and being tanky innately across all their builds.

But, that is not to dismiss the other three points, Warriors will still reign supreme in popularity.

Guardians are tanky when they trait for it. A Guardian build for damage is far more fragile than a Warrior build for damage and has less CC options in return for maybe more condition cleansing. Overall, Guardians also have only a few tank builds, with most of them evolving around the boring staff+ah crutch.

Rangersix.1754:

Sykper.6583:

Ehhh, I agree on everything but your second point. Warriors cannot really…‘bunker’ to the extent that Guardians can, I can think of only one or two builds a Warrior can run to ‘play at bunker’, but those are really only solid on points. As you said, Guardians are without peer the best at condition removal and being tanky innately across all their builds.

But, that is not to dismiss the other three points, Warriors will still reign supreme in popularity.

Guardians are tanky when they trait for it. A Guardian build for damage is far more fragile than a Warrior build for damage and has less CC options in return for maybe more condition cleansing. Overall, Guardians also have only a few tank builds, with most of them evolving around the boring staff+ah crutch.

Not just that, but when we trait for it we are still far behind warrior, because at the same level, they contribute a good deal more DPS and CC. Also, being tanky on a guard also depends on being around teammates, most of the tank builds will melt and hit like a wet noodle if they are caught alone, and forget about trying to run away.

I mained guard since beta, and sadly only tried out warrior for WvW after all the “nerfs” came about, and even though I was new to the class, I was pretty close to the performance level I was on my guard. After playing it more and more I was seeing how high the skill cap was on them and really started to realize why so many people played them and then realized how bad most of them were with the ability and tools they had on hand yet I was still winning most encounters on my guard with them, when facing guards on my warrior I only laughed about how easy it was. I then changed up from a roaming build to a zerg build and ran around with some….The boons, the healing it was unreal, I was thinking to myself about all the people I have heard saying how much better a guard can sustain in a zerg over a warrior, it was laughable. 90% of the time I was the last one standing and a good number of times I still got away! That is unheard of on my guard, unless I am in a roaming medi build, and even then, only if I have not invested to the fight.

I see the most complaints being about not getting a free do over on burst skills, when I first started my warrior I thought that’s how it was, I never spammed it hoping I would get lucky, then after a few days I ended up missing a group on my timing and noticed I didn’t lose any adrenaline…I thought at first it was a glitch or something, and tried it again, it is one of the things I could not believe was normal for the class, which is what brought me back to how low risk, high reward the class is.

Mostly agree with CMF.5461

Medi guard will get more healing and the potential for more group support. Also, Mercriful Intervention is usable. It doesn’t raise the skill ceiling much, nor does it give medi guard a clear role in tPvP. It just makes it unnecessarily stronger in hot join.

The only real thing this is going to change is people starting to use Merciful Intervention in Meditation builds. Renewed Focus with the meditation traits makes it better, Lower CD (72s) a 2k emergency heal/virtue bomb, with fury. Other than that I don’t see how this makes it Op now. The rest of the stuff is glacial heart, tome and SW buffs so they’re much more attractive to use. A over all good buff.

Why everybody think the hammer is the main cc weapon of a warrior? Everybody run with stabilitys. Sword burst skill is the main kitten out there. This changes not touch wvw warriors. We hit multiple targets, gain adrenalin from shouts. Full adrenalin befor the skill recharges

McWolfy.5924:

Why everybody think the hammer is the main cc weapon of a warrior? Everybody run with stabilitys. Sword burst skill is the main kitten out there. This changes not touch wvw warriors. We hit multiple targets, gain adrenalin from shouts. Full adrenalin befor the skill recharges

This. In wvw at least adrenaline is a joke, and most people use flurry as the main CC now because of how immob stacks and can’t be countered with stability. The nerf to adrenaline will affect wvw as around 30-40% of my flurries are either blocked or miss due to blind, and even if it’s blocked you will still end up using it. It still won’t be a problem regaining that adrenaline however, more of a nuisance than anything really.

And to the OP, no guards will never replace warriors (they already co-exist so why would on ever replace the other?) for the reason stated above. CC. A guardian cannot compete with warriors on CC and warriors (shout at least) bring a lot of damage and condi cleanse. Don’t forget about banners.

Sykper.6583:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Warriors will still be much more popular then guardians for reasons

1: They have higher burst potential

2: They can bunker just as well if not better in some situations, they also do so without loosing nearly as much damage potential due to having double the starting health pool
(guardians may have protection but given the god awefull cool downs for abilities that apply it & how slow the hammer auto chain is it just is to easy to counter.)

3: they have more build options that are viable at higher levels of play

4: Warriors have a great deal more crowd control, snares, cripples, stuns, dazes etc…

So in the end all the guardian really excels at is condition removal & being tanky as long as the long CD abilities last (assuming they are not immediately converted to conditions or stripped or stolen.)

Ehhh, I agree on everything but your second point. Warriors cannot really…‘bunker’ to the extent that Guardians can, I can think of only one or two builds a Warrior can run to ‘play at bunker’, but those are really only solid on points. As you said, Guardians are without peer the best at condition removal and being tanky innately across all their builds.

But, that is not to dismiss the other three points, Warriors will still reign supreme in popularity.

Have you played with rousing resilience with a regen warrior?

I can’t link the build atm but it has endless condi removal with something like 4.5k armor 20+k health and a lot of blocks/evades. Their group regen is incredibly strong.

Lucentfir.7430:

The only real thing this is going to change is people starting to use Merciful Intervention in Meditation builds.

i already did, because have you seen how much that heals for with traits? it’s like a second heal skill that also gives fury and heals allies a good chunk, on an instant cast.

i’ll try and care when i see a hambow with five signets eating my necromancer alive.
i’ll probably fail at that though.

NinjaEd.3946:

Sykper.6583:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Warriors will still be much more popular then guardians for reasons

1: They have higher burst potential

2: They can bunker just as well if not better in some situations, they also do so without loosing nearly as much damage potential due to having double the starting health pool
(guardians may have protection but given the god awefull cool downs for abilities that apply it & how slow the hammer auto chain is it just is to easy to counter.)

3: they have more build options that are viable at higher levels of play

4: Warriors have a great deal more crowd control, snares, cripples, stuns, dazes etc…

So in the end all the guardian really excels at is condition removal & being tanky as long as the long CD abilities last (assuming they are not immediately converted to conditions or stripped or stolen.)

Ehhh, I agree on everything but your second point. Warriors cannot really…‘bunker’ to the extent that Guardians can, I can think of only one or two builds a Warrior can run to ‘play at bunker’, but those are really only solid on points. As you said, Guardians are without peer the best at condition removal and being tanky innately across all their builds.

But, that is not to dismiss the other three points, Warriors will still reign supreme in popularity.

Have you played with rousing resilience with a regen warrior?

I can’t link the build atm but it has endless condi removal with something like 4.5k armor 20+k health and a lot of blocks/evades. Their group regen is incredibly strong.

I will be trying to mess around with Rousing after the balance patch when it gets buffed, but I am going to state that I believe Defy Pain is a better option since Endure pain negates raw damage while higher toughness simply lowers it. Rousing might be better once it doubles after the patch.

Endless condi-removal, absurdly high toughness, blocks and evades (20k+ health is innate in almost every warrior build) and group regen? You are likely talking about a banner warrior (the only source of the Regen Boon) alongside ‘Shake It Off’ Skill and ‘Cleansing Ire’ trait. That particular build, of which I can very like guess, involves catering 12 points into Defense and Tactics to achieve. For those less-informed, those are trees without offense capabilities.

In other words, it is about as tanky and supportive as you can get without having any meritable offensive power aside from your weapon set (One has to be Longbow).

This links back to Black Box, Lucent, and Ranger’s post. Where you described the Guardian needing to compromise with traits to achieve that bunker I said was innate in every guardian. Warriors also need to do the same exact thing…but my issue is just how many boons Guardians have access to, and by design I understand WHY they do which is why I am not complaining about Guardians too much here. Whereas Warriors are supposed to be more offensive bruisers. In fact, that might make more sense to describe the two professions side by side.

Don’t get me wrong, the Adrenaline nerf was entirely justified, it was something that should have been in since launch. But for the sheer fact that Guardian Virtues can apply their effects to themselves, and to allies, shows and demonstrates the guardians has a greater role at support and defense than anyone else.

If you compared every viable build a guardian has to warrior, with respect to role in a fight**, you will see the guardian fill the role equally or greater every time with concern to defensive capabilities.

Guardian was my second main, after Warrior of course. I like to play the melee front-line, it’s something I picked up from my previous involvement in MMOs. Going through the traits from 1-80, and looking through the weapon skills and virtues Guardians have, I have gotten the sense that most of it IS support, rather than defense. But that shouldn’t diminish how capabilities like Aegis on demand to block that eviscerate, or middle-tier blind power (If I do my corrections right, Guardians have the 2nd best access to blinds across all professions, or at least they are up there), that Guardians are the class to go to for bunkering.

Overall, I extremely oppose the idea that Warriors will be the king of bunker, but they are a strong candidate for pushing points. …Actually in that same vein, we might see an increase in Mediguard after seeing the Ready-up.

Thank you.

• Warriors do have more viable builds than any other profession, that is a given, I simply want to address that across all viable builds of all professions, guardian still dominates the bunker role innate. However I would love to see the treatment given to viable build access for warrior across the board, Condi-Guardian I would not mind being a thing.

I don’t pretend to know anything about how gaurdians work since it’s the one class I don’t have an alt for, but I have one thing to bring up and if someone has more to say on it then by all means explain…

Isn’t Gaurdian’s meditations on relatively large cooldowns? I thought that a lot of their burst came from their utilities, and those had high cooldowns. That makes me think they they won’t really be that overbearing considering they need to time when they engage I suppose.

I don’t know, like I said I don’t know much about it.

WhiteRose.6934:

I don’t pretend to know anything about how gaurdians work since it’s the one class I don’t have an alt for, but I have one thing to bring up and if someone has more to say on it then by all means explain…

Isn’t Gaurdian’s meditations on relatively large cooldowns? I thought that a lot of their burst came from their utilities, and those had high cooldowns. That makes me think they they won’t really be that overbearing considering they need to time when they engage I suppose.

I don’t know, like I said I don’t know much about it.

the thing meditations provide for the burst is fury, which you can get 4 seconds of per meditation used. the CDs aren’t that long either, especially if you bring smite condition as a fury dispenser.

WhiteRose.6934:

I don’t pretend to know anything about how gaurdians work since it’s the one class I don’t have an alt for, but I have one thing to bring up and if someone has more to say on it then by all means explain…

Isn’t Gaurdian’s meditations on relatively large cooldowns? I thought that a lot of their burst came from their utilities, and those had high cooldowns. That makes me think they they won’t really be that overbearing considering they need to time when they engage I suppose.

I don’t know, like I said I don’t know much about it.

Smite condition has a 20 (16) sec cooldown which is pretty good, but the rest are pretty steep.

Best warrior build is hambow. It’s not because of the damage output but because of the control it has over a node and team support through that control.
Guardian dps in a pure dps build is very high indeed. It’s also reliant on whirling wrath/symbol+smite which are all easily avoidable. You can argue it’s the same for axebow but it’s gonna be nerfed into the ground by the adrenaline “fix”. Missing an eviscerate is bad for axe war but after the nerf it will mean you are useless.
Guard is stuck in a bunker build like warrior is stuck in hambow like necro will be stuck in condi(zerker necro was decent but highly gimmicky).
RIP in peace build diversity. Too hard to balance.

Sykper.6583:

NinjaEd.3946:

Sykper.6583:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Warriors will still be much more popular then guardians for reasons

1: They have higher burst potential

2: They can bunker just as well if not better in some situations, they also do so without loosing nearly as much damage potential due to having double the starting health pool
(guardians may have protection but given the god awefull cool downs for abilities that apply it & how slow the hammer auto chain is it just is to easy to counter.)

3: they have more build options that are viable at higher levels of play

4: Warriors have a great deal more crowd control, snares, cripples, stuns, dazes etc…

So in the end all the guardian really excels at is condition removal & being tanky as long as the long CD abilities last (assuming they are not immediately converted to conditions or stripped or stolen.)

Ehhh, I agree on everything but your second point. Warriors cannot really…‘bunker’ to the extent that Guardians can, I can think of only one or two builds a Warrior can run to ‘play at bunker’, but those are really only solid on points. As you said, Guardians are without peer the best at condition removal and being tanky innately across all their builds.

But, that is not to dismiss the other three points, Warriors will still reign supreme in popularity.

Have you played with rousing resilience with a regen warrior?

I can’t link the build atm but it has endless condi removal with something like 4.5k armor 20+k health and a lot of blocks/evades. Their group regen is incredibly strong.

I will be trying to mess around with Rousing after the balance patch when it gets buffed, but I am going to state that I believe Defy Pain is a better option since Endure pain negates raw damage while higher toughness simply lowers it. Rousing might be better once it doubles after the patch.

Endless condi-removal, absurdly high toughness, blocks and evades (20k+ health is innate in almost every warrior build) and group regen? You are likely talking about a banner warrior (the only source of the Regen Boon) alongside ‘Shake It Off’ Skill and ‘Cleansing Ire’ trait. That particular build, of which I can very like guess, involves catering 12 points into Defense and Tactics to achieve. For those less-informed, those are trees without offense capabilities.

Actually the build doesn’t use cleansing ire, or soldier runes. I’d love to post it but the build site seems to of exploded because it don’t work no more (and it was great for pvp build templates). Would love a link to something like gw2skills.net/editor if anyone has one.

In a group it can actually be adjusted to dish out heavy spikes if need be. I have 0/0/30/30/10 and if I want a little offense put on might defenses. I stick to mace/shield and rack up some might, especially if there is a mosh pit at mid, swap to sword/wh which has int sigil. I immediately savage leap to a target or if they’re in range flurry 1 time, move to interrupt any additional hits (first 1 immobilizes before it even hits somehow) and final thrust them. If they have the sustain I won’t even go after them but in a team fight I can stay on point, not go down without a hell of a lot of focus fire, and dish out 5-7k spikes at people depending on their toughness while pumping out heavy healing and condi conversion.

Having heavy armor, cleric amult, toughness from trait line and rousing resilance+3 stun breakers its good against power and will be even more powerful with the duration buff to RR. With wh conversion (and the #4 actually removing conditions) with vigor and purity sigils with water runes and shake it off I just brush them off or evade them or better yet regen through it. It’s fun to play if you have people with you, but 1v1 its just sit still and do nothing.

The HUGE BUFF the meditation guardian is getting is having a slightly smaller cooldown on the elite skill ‘Renewed Focus’ and having it heal like other meditations. The fury from it will almost be nullified by the skills own casting time
Merciful intervention doesn’t work without an ally within the small casting area near it. And that’s it.

If anything, they gave Merciful Intervention a small buff/nerf.

Previously you could put it on your bar and use it as targetless instant heal from ability and a second heal from Monk’s Focus trait. This was pretty much a second heal skill like using shelter.

Now we can’t activate it WITHOUT an ally nearby, thus nixing some of that sustain it previously provided BUT giving us a shadow step IF allies are in range.

CMF.5461:

Now we can’t activate it WITHOUT an ally nearby, thus nixing some of that sustain it previously provided BUT giving us a shadow step IF allies are in range.

Im pretty sure the showed in the stream, that you can still use the skill.
So if you missclick, you will still get heal and fury, but not the port.

ah ok, didn’t watch stream. thanks for clarification.

edit:

I watched the stream, and that is inconclusive on if it heals without an ally or not.

Since the life bar was full, there were no green numbers, so you could not tell if there were two ticks of healing or just one.

I honestly feel like except for wvw, guardians are more popular than warriors

Azure.8670:

I honestly feel like except for wvw, guardians are more popular than warriors

Idk where you play, but in zergs a guardian is usually more popular than a warrior. If built right they are usually tankier and with staff they tag way more than a warrior could. It’s like a lootbag machine in a blob, and both guards and warriors are pretty necessary.