Guild Wars 2

Good discussion here. Let’s keep it alive.

I agree we should be able to move our skills the buttons we desire. Or at least have character specific key bindings.

I mostly second the OP, but would request a 15sec max on symbol of wrath lot of builds rely on symbol cast time… or revise guardian traits as well !

[A Logical Solution]

(a) Rather add an internal cooldown to the Retaliation proc on the field, though current scope of the engine may not allow this from what i have seen.

(b) Swap out an existing defensive trait, or merge a reduciton cooldown of field with one of the traits that would have some sort of balancing effect on defense/dps.

I feel there may be more options that could be explored and alternatives found, hopefully in the near future. We all feel there is alot more that has been affected by this change than just retaliation uptime. dps from symbol uptime, talent bonuses, not to mention cleansing bolts being affected, which is particularly useful in situations where group is taking massive amounts of condition damage.

Also, this class is a Guardian afterall. It is meant to take less damage or have more reduction than other classes, sure its not a Tank per se, and we have been encouraged to forget this mindset, but tbh this is the reason i chose this class in the first place, i had a miserable time as a elementalist in terms of survivability, and i really wanted a warrior, but decided to opt for guardian which i was led to believe dished out a fair amount of damage, and had far more survivability and group utility. In effect i wanted a DPS guardian. The Hammer is far too slow and clumsy, whereas greatsword was amazing, the sound effects, damage, combos.

With regards to the skill slot changes, I can sympathize for some but after a few minutes of play i am use to the new layout. However, please do add to your To-Do list, a customization feature in which for example, u are able to enter an edit mode of sorts, and drag and drop skills around. Having this on the actual options panel, and defining for each and every weapon set will be cumbersome both for developer and end user alike. The Drag n Drop feature would be rather simple to implement from my perspective and would be much more friendly. But then players would need to adjust to the Arcade mentality of referring to skills as 1,2,3,4,5 rather than name.

On a sidenote, for those truly unhappy with these changes, and do not wish to continue playing their guardians, would it not be possible to perform a class swap of sorts. To be honest, i would now far rather have a Warrior as it suits my playstyle. is this possible now or in the near future, even at a cost. There may be certain challenges or limitations which i cant really think of. Perhaps and im not even sure, but Personal Story Quests may be tied to specific classes. If this is the case. i would far rather you reset them, and redo them from scratch and be able to do this class swap. i really think you should look into this for future. I have heard about race/appearance change that is coming soon, and yes perhaps class change feature may introduce some risk of unbalance, but perhaps in situations like these it may be warranted.

And lastly, i honestly feel alot of the balancing and adjustments you have made to the game and economy, while perhaps being in everyone’s best interests, have had a severe impact on enjoyment of the game and “funness” levels. I now have this sense of instability and fear of what might be changed in the future. it truly leaves a sour taste, and is distancing me away from the game slowly but surely.

I would really like to see some sort of platform whereby developers and the community can interact with each other constructively, and issues such as this are tabled ahead of time, and alternatives may be discussed or compromises, or even being prewarned, so as to be expecting such changes.

If anyone can come up with some more constructive ideas and perhaps more insightful ones, it would be great. My experience with the class may be limited, but definately love it just as much. we’re just going through a rough patch right now.

Runiir.6425:

I counter that with the simple fact that a melee that doesn’t have ranged weapons in the weapon slot is a fool that limit’s themself to all options. He who wins on the battlefield does so because they are not tied down to a single strategy.

I would support players being forced to use 1 melee + 1 ranged weapon set.

But as I am given the option to use 2 melee weapons, I resent being forced to have a ranged weapon.

Using 2 ranged weapon sets does not put you at a disadvantage.
Using 2 melee weapon sets does.

That is bad design, but that’s a different thread.

Runiir.6425:

I would support simply removing retaliation from wrath as long as they revert everything else back to how it was. Seriously it only provided a single second of retaliation after all. As for the light field, if it provided such a benefit then change it into a fire field as it falls perfectly in line with the flavor of the guardian skills.

Considering the necessity of condition removal, I think changing the field from light to fire would be a severe nerf to greatsword.
It would be worse than what it is now.

Our cleansing frequency was reduced, but our mobility and blinding was improved.
My only gripe is the damage loss.

Recent changes convince me that “all classes can play all roles” model does not function anymore, as Guardian is being continuously pushed into a pure support role. Every patch leave us with less and less damage options and we didn`t have a viable range weapon to begin with. If GS change was just a mishap and will be reverted, I`d give a game a second shot – if not, I do not think I`ll continue playing, as the “all classes play all roles” was the only interesting point that game had for me.

I heard an opinion that the changes (in the CD) are as much directed at Ret as on making the cooldowns 10-15-20-30 “like is the rule with most other classes”. I just checked the CD with GS and Guardian has the longest CDs of all the classes that can wield it…

My GS+symbols build just got hit oh so hard, and I really don’t care about retaliation all that much :/

Change back the skill order at least… At least give us that if you cannot stop changing and nerfing the class in general. Lets see… no good ranged weapon, nerf to our best ae weapon (especially bad for events when you can hardly get any loot anyways as the ae options of other classes were better anyways,…) – why did I choose to play this class again? It gets harder to remember…

I agree in that downing the effectiveness of a Greatsword Guardian seems almost random. We are not more powerful than other classes in terms of damage and though I can understand Anet’s desire to experiment on retaliation, which I agree is part of what makes playing a newly released online game fun, however, what I do not appreciate is that this has to happen at the expense of what is essentially our combat effectiveness and thus gameplay fun.

As a player, I have faith that Anet has our best interests at heart, but this patch feels like a really bad typo; a mistake.

I second this.

I really appreciate that the Devs are actively working to improve GW2 combat; it is a positive thing. BUT, what I don’t understand (and also frustrating me) is how the Devs automatically chooses how we should play our weapon skills — was the rearrangement of the Guardian greatsword skills even necessary? Just because the skills have different cooldowns doesn’t mean it would also be better to rearrange them.

So please, give us the feature to rearrange our weapon skills. This will also give many competitive players the customization that they need.

On a side note:
Has anyone realize that before the 10/7 update, the Elementalist’s Fiery Greatsword Leap skill #4 was also similar to the Guardian’s greatsword Leap skill #4?

Post-update:
Ele Fiery Greatsword, Leap skill #4
Guardian greatsword, Leap skill #3

^ Now that just confuses the heck outta me whenever I wield a greatsword.

Has anyone from Anet commented on anything we have written so far?

I haven`t seen any official responce. I am going to stick around until I can hear some explanation on mutilation of my gameplay.

Guys, have you noticed skills are arranged in order of cooldown?
No cooldown, small, mid, big, biggest cooldown.

That’s the only reason they rearranged the skills.
Don’t try to read too much into it…

While it is confusing to some, it may be refreshing to others.
Leap is now #3, the same as Ranger’s GS

My gripe here is only the damage loss. I wish they improved the damage on WW or LoF to compensate.
Or even increase SoW damage, if the change was truly to prevent constant uptime on retaliation.

Nurvus.2891:

Guys, have you noticed skills are arranged in order of cooldown?
No cooldown, small, mid, big, biggest cooldown.
That’s the only reason they rearranged the skills.

Yea, we got that. Like I said in the OP, I can deal with it. I just hope they aren’t planning to make a habit of swapping skills every time they adjust a cool-down unless they give us skill-order customization. I don’t want to relearn skill orders every time they issue a patch.

I’m more concerned about the precedent this suggests than the change itself.

I didn’t read everyone’s post, so someone might have made this point….

Personally, the change irritates me because it is obviously a change for PvP and WvWvW……Neither of which I actively play. Yet, I have to suffer in PvE? I don’t get it…..

I would rather have Anet just completely remove retaliation from symbol of wrath rather than messing with the cooldown and rotation like they did. Not only are they nerfing the only boon a greatsword user can rely on to make their enemies think before attacking, but they also messed up a large amount of symbol based traits.

GreyWraith.8394:

I will suggest that you give us the ability to rearrange our weapon skills on our skill bar and save the order in a character-specific local game file.

Using character-specific files doesn’t solve one of the issues with GW2’s skill order, which is that it doesn’t seem to follow any “logical” or “functional” pattern between weapons. For example, if you have a guardian using mace+shield as primary and greatsword as secondary, the two symbols are now on completely different slots (both used to be #2). Same thing with double-dagger elementalists when switching from fire to air attunement (the mobility skill is on different slots), and so on.

Sorting skills “based on cooldown” seems like the kind of thing an accountant would do, not a game designer, and certainly not a player with any experience. Maybe it’s to make the game friendlier for those players who just spam whatever ability if off CD, without caring what it actually does…?

We need a way to reorder skills per weapon combination and attunement (and also per character, naturally, or at least per profession). This could be done easily by letting us edit a .CFG / .INI text file, like Team Fortress and other HL-based games do, if Arena Net doesn’t have the resources to develop a nice drag-and-drop UI.

Simply let us edit a file like this:

GUARDIAN_MH_MACE_OH_SHIELD 12345
GUARDIAN_MH_MACE_OH_FOCUS 12543
GUARDIAN_GREATSWORD 14235
(etc.)

Adding up all the weapon combinations it the game, this would take up less than 1 KB of memory, and the code to make the correspondence shouldn’t be hard to write, either.

Anyway, this was a bit off-topic, but just wanted to point out that having a different order per character wouldn’t solve the issue of reordering individual weapons.

Account.9832:

Using character-specific files doesn’t solve one of the issues with GW2’s skill order, which is that it doesn’t seem to follow any “logical” or “functional” pattern between weapons.

Or maybe you simply are not the best at figuring out patterns.
The skills are arranged by recharge duration, and that was the sole reason their order was changed – because the recharge times changed.

I would prefer that skills with similar effects were in the same spots, but that is just impossible.

Why?
Because there are plenty of “types” of skills.

Let’s say you want Symbols to be in the same spot for every weapon; every Leap in the same spot; every multi-hit skill in the same spot.

At some point you have skills that belong to more than 1 of those categories and hell breaks lose

The best sollution is to let players arrange the skills, indeed.
Even more so since – I hope – ANet will eventually add more skills to each weapon.

Nurvus.2891:

Runiir.6425:

I counter that with the simple fact that a melee that doesn’t have ranged weapons in the weapon slot is a fool that limit’s themself to all options. He who wins on the battlefield does so because they are not tied down to a single strategy.

I would support players being forced to use 1 melee + 1 ranged weapon set.

But as I am given the option to use 2 melee weapons, I resent being forced to have a ranged weapon.

Using 2 ranged weapon sets does not put you at a disadvantage.
Using 2 melee weapon sets does.

That is bad design, but that’s a different thread.

Runiir.6425:

I would support simply removing retaliation from wrath as long as they revert everything else back to how it was. Seriously it only provided a single second of retaliation after all. As for the light field, if it provided such a benefit then change it into a fire field as it falls perfectly in line with the flavor of the guardian skills.

Considering the necessity of condition removal, I think changing the field from light to fire would be a severe nerf to greatsword.
It would be worse than what it is now.

Our cleansing frequency was reduced, but our mobility and blinding was improved.
My only gripe is the damage loss.

I counter the need for a light field to remove conditions when we have several shouts doing the same thing, a trait to remove them every 10 seconds, and a healing signet for every 10 seconds (trait+signet=you will never have conditions on you for longer than 5 seconds). If you worry about conditions then build (all of 10 points even) to counter them, don’t rely on fields.

As for the melee+melee being disadvantaged. Well…sadly in MMOs melee is almost always disadvantaged if you focus upon it. Be it large mobs AOEing in cones or shockwaves, or the requirement to get through damage fields just to deal any damage at all.

I fully support rearrangement of skills. I don’t want Anet’s hands to be tied in any way when they want to make big changes to skill sets. Probably just because I’m an engineer and big changes are that professions only hope.

My feedback on this topic is simple. I do not like the reordering of skills nor the nerfing of retaliation by changing the cool down times. Quite simply, put it back the way it was and stop trying to ‘re-balance’ PvE. It’s a shooting gallery. Nobody cares, let it be fun. Split PvP and PvE into two skill trees (a fine idea from GW1) and worry about ‘balancing’ where fairness actually matters. Nobody’s going to lose any sleep if the mobs die a little faster and/or we take a less damage in PvE. Leave it alone.

Account.9832:

GreyWraith.8394:

I will suggest that you give us the ability to rearrange our weapon skills on our skill bar and save the order in a character-specific local game file.

Using character-specific files doesn’t solve…<snip>

Apparently I should have been more specific: I was referring to weapon-and-character specific rearrangement of skills, as you suggested.

I’d like to see it added to the Hero panel/weapon skills tab. This tab does nothing at the moment but list known weapon skills, if we could drag-and-drop (for example: GS2 —> GS4) to swap skills around it would be perfect.

Nurvus.2891:

Account.9832:

Using character-specific files doesn’t solve one of the issues with GW2’s skill order, which is that it doesn’t seem to follow any “logical” or “functional” pattern between weapons.

Or maybe you simply are not the best at figuring out patterns. The skills are arranged by recharge duration

Maybe you’re not the best at reading, since the post you are replying to mentioned exactly that:

Account.9832:

it doesn’t seem to follow any “logical” or “functional” pattern between weapons.
[…]
Sorting skills “based on cooldown” seems like the kind of thing an accountant would do, not a game designer, and certainly not a player with any experience.

I don’t see where is the problem.
GS Guardians now have the opportunity to spam 1 for 13 more seconds.
You could even have the time to through in one more double tap,and enjoy the view of your heavy armored class rolling like a ninja.
Or you can just leave it to auto attack and relax whilst playing this skill demanding rpg.
Isn’t this one of the goals of GW2?Not having to spam the same stuff again and again?
Guess not.
Sorry.
Wrong game.
11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

GreyWraith.8394:

I’m not going to argue the ‘refocus’ of retaliation; I can understand why you’d want to go that direction from a balance perspective.

I’m not going to complain about the rearrangement of skills on the bar, although I would ask you to minimize this sort of thing. It’s really going to screw people up, especially with pvp-trained twitch reflexes. I will suggest that you give us the ability to rearrange our weapon skills on our skill bar and save the order in a character-specific local game file. This will resolve the issue for those who surely will complain about it.

I am going to complain about the cooldown changes:
Symbol of Wrath – cooldown increased by 100% to 20s
Leap of Faith – cooldown reduced by 25% to 15s

Like I said, I get the Retaliation change, but if you are going to remove/reduce our ability to reflect damage then give us a better chance to get into melee and deal damage by hitting things. I request a 10s cooldown on Leap of Faith.

[Edit] I have to agree with several other posters who have pointed out that Guardian synergy is closely tied to symbols, including our traits, damage, buffs, debuffs, heals, and survivability. Doubling the symbol CD is a big hit to all of the above.

I want symbol of wrath down to 15s
I want leap of faith down to 10s

Then, I will be satisfied

I’d like to see Symbol of Wrath being placed back to a 10s cd. If the retaliation aspect was the main point of concern, ANet could replace it with Might. That way it synergizes perfectly with the #1 ability without running the risk of becoming overpowered.

Also, as their apparent plan is to make Retaliation more into a situational tool to use only during specific bursts instead of it being up 100% of the time; it might be an idea to revise it from duration as it is now into stacks.

That way ANet could key Retaliation to certain utility skills and/or F-keys only, where traits could then be used to increase the number of stacks upon activation. As the maximum number of stacks is 25, it could be potentially easier to manage in terms of balance and could provide players that wish to make a ‘Retaliation build’ the means to use traits in order to increase Retaliation stacks when activating certain abilities.

This would also remove the need to increase the cooldown on our Symbol of Wrath as it is no longer part of the equation and set it back to skill#2 where it will once again provide a better synergy during combat.

The way I see it, the flow with how a greatsword could be used has been severely diminished at present time with this change. Before the patch it felt like a very nicely balanced weapon that allowed a pretty fluid style of combat where your abilities could blend into eachother. After the patch however, combat with a greatsword suddenly felt pretty clunky and unresponsive from my perspective…

So personally I am hoping that ANet will see and agree that changing the cd on Symbol of Wrath may have done more harm than intended and will take the proposed suggestions under consideration. To me, changing it back to 10s whilst replacing Retaliation with Might would be a very elegant solution.

Well i agree whit all ppl that dont like this change on GS, but be creative.
I like the solution of SOW with 10 sec cd and another boon instead of retaliation, but in these days i was thinking that guardian is a “field control fighter” and simbols are the first thing he use to control his field.

so why dont add more simbols on the weapons skill?(longsword and scepter dont have one) for now we have Light simbols, why dont add dark simbols with different effect?so if a weapon have a slow light simbol, maybe can have a fast dark simbols (and viceversa) and dev’s can modify trait to have different sinergies for light, dark or all simbols.

ok its only and idea to have a really original guardian whit different builds and different playstiles.

The simple solution would have been to leave everything the way it was except to remove retaliation from SoW! Can’t get any simpler than that. Now if Anet wanted to keep it similar to what it was before, then they could have swapped out retaliation with protection!

It’s terrible what they have done to us with this patch.

They effectively made Guardians who use greatswords and rely on symbols less viable. Why would you choose a greatsword over a hammer now?

Before this game was released, Arenanet said that we could make our characters our own and contour to our playstyle, and it has proved to be somewhat true, but what happens if I want to play a greatsword/symbol Guardian?

The added 10 seconds on the symbol really hurts as it affects our damage output (Which for us is average damage compared to some of the other classes, but some will say our damage is terrible and it’s understandable.), healing (Also supporting party heals) and our condition spread.

Not saying the Guardian is dead, but I agree with OP, this was a massive blow.

I talked about this in my thread too…

Changing characters means movespeed buffs/heals/gap closers are all in a different order, so I suggested free mobility of choosing where skills go in the hotbar

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/HUD-Customization-Tweaks/first#post413300

first of all, combat in GW2 is supposed to be active. With so long cooldowns it’s not, because it’s mostly about running around the enemy, auto attacking it. I seriously don’t like skill design in Guild Wars 2.

It’s quite funny, because skill bar in Guild Wars 1 was 2 slots smaller, yet I felt as if I had more skills than in GW2. It was simply because skills had alot shorter cooldowns. For example onmy warrior I had dagger build with skills that had less than 10 secs of cooldown.

Runiir.6425:

I counter the need for a light field to remove conditions when we have several shouts doing the same thing, a trait to remove them every 10 seconds, and a healing signet for every 10 seconds (trait+signet=you will never have conditions on you for longer than 5 seconds). If you worry about conditions then build (all of 10 points even) to counter them, don’t rely on fields.

As for the melee+melee being disadvantaged. Well…sadly in MMOs melee is almost always disadvantaged if you focus upon it. Be it large mobs AOEing in cones or shockwaves, or the requirement to get through damage fields just to deal any damage at all.

The point of a light-field / whirl combo is not removal of one’s own conditions, it’s the removal of other people’s conditions, and the support (and potential self-heal via Altruistic Healing) that provides.

I understand the need to tweak/nerf skills for balancing and I think that’s fine – I’m sure all that will change again in a future update anyway. However, moving the skills around on the Guardian’s skill bar rubbed me the wrong way.

Whenever Anet makes changes like this, I fondly think back to Colin Johanson’s “Is it fun” blog post: http://www.arena.net/blog/is-it-fun-colin-johanson-on-how-arenanet-measures-success (its a good read – gives me a lot of hope for Anet)

One challenging aspect of making the game fun is that “fun” is subjective – we all think that different things are fun. Some people think folding paper is fun. Some people think jumping out of airplanes is fun. There’s a wide spectrum, and that’s the key. Anet shouldn’t force players to play the way they want them to play – they should encourage players to play their own way by providing the means (options/customizations/etc) to do so.

Why? Because we’ve been able to do this for years. Countless games have given us the ability to choose how we want to play: keymappings, camera views, UI window positioning etc. Usually those games are the most successful/fun. When a modern game doesn’t provide enough customization options, it becomes frustrating for us. It’s no longer “fun”.

The long and short of it is, ANet took aim with a nuke at “perma-retal” builds, missed wide, and instead annihilated Greatsword’s synergy with its PRIMARY TRAIT TREE as well as a completely unrelated and widely used greatsword/symbol support build.

My guardian is shelved until they remove retal and bring the symbol back down to a sane cooldown, and no money parts from my bank account for ANY reason until this happens.

plasmacutter.2709:

The long and short of it is, ANet took aim with a nuke at “perma-retal” builds, missed wide, and instead annihilated Greatsword’s synergy with its PRIMARY TRAIT TREE as well as a completely unrelated and widely used greatsword/symbol support build.

My guardian is shelved until they remove retal and bring the symbol back down to a sane cooldown, and no money parts from my bank account for ANY reason until this happens.

From the lack of even a response I am beginning to believe they were not aiming at retaliation but using it as a scapegoat. I am starting to believe that their intent was at GS symbol builds!

(Taken from my post in the Guardian sub-forum, from the Greatsword topics there)

Changes made to Greatsword by Patch

The stated goal of the Greatsword nerf was essentially to nerf Retaliation builds. So, in order to nerf Retaliation builds the following changes were made to the Greatsword:

GS #2 Whirling Wrath: No change, still a 10sec Cooldown
GS #3 Leap of Faith: Cooldown down to 15secs from 20secs
GS #4 Symbol of Wrath: Doubled Cooldown from 10secs to 20secs

While I am mildly miffed at the rearrangement of the skill order following these changes (as weapon skills are organized in order of Cooldown on your hotbar) that is NOT my complaint.

THE PROBLEM IS HERE

The nerf to Symbol of Wrath on the Greatsword did NOT nerf Retaliation builds as intended.

The nerf to Symbol of Wrath on the Greatsword did nerf SEVERAL OTHER builds that utilized that symbol.

Breakdown of Negative Effects

Symbol of Wrath was previously on a 10 second cooldown, exactly the same as Whirling Wrath. This allowed a Greatsword Guardian to branch into several builds and varying combat options.

If you wanted to deal a hefty amount of AoE damage, then the Greatsword was your go-to weapon. Between the Symbol of Wrath and Whirling Wrath the Greatsword let the Guardian be an AoE damage-dealing machine. This simply isn’t possible like it was before, as a Guardian simply cannot get the same damage output in the same time-frame thanks to the increased cooldown.

This isn’t only about the loss of damage though. The Greatsword also provided BUILD DIVERSITY/VERSATILITY by having a symbol in it’s weapon skillset and some synergy in the Zeal trait line. Unfortunately, all symbol-based trait builds that utilized the Greatsword took a huge and UNNECESSARY hit this patch:

If you wanted to use the Symbol of Wrath as a large AoE (by traiting for increased radius) in conjuction with other Guardian AoE’s (such as Purging Flames) for great AoE damage, you could do that.

If you wanted to use the Symbol of Wrath to heal yourself/allies (by traiting for symbol healing) and thus provide AoE support, you could do that.

If you wanted to use the Symbol of Wrath primarily as a damage-dealer and way to apply Vulnerability, you could do that (by traiting into the Zeal line).

If you wanted to use the Symbol of Wrath to chain with other weapon Symbols you could do so readily, as the Greatsword symbol had a cooldown that would typically be ready to go on weapon-swap if you cycled between a Mace or a Staff as your other symbol weapon.

Basically, the Greatsword previously had a reliable AoE symbol that would be up every fight, would help with your damage output, could catch many enemies in it (if you traited for increased symbol radius), could heal yourself and allies (if you traited for symbol healing), could apply Vulnerability to foes (if you traited for that via the Zeal line), could do increased damage (again, if you traited high enough into the Zeal line), and could be chained or used in tandem with other symbols very readily.

Yeah, the Greatsword can still do those things…but now it’s every 20 seconds. In the meantime, you’re practically stuck spinning with Whirling Wrath, using Leap of Faith 5 seconds sooner than you previously would, and then auto-attacking the rest of the time while you wait for the now abhorrent cooldowns of the Greatsword’s main damage-dealing skills.

Closing/Summary

The Greatsword gave build variety and versatility. With this unnecessary nerf the Greatsword has become only a tool for finishers, and the symbol synergy it did have has been so severely hit that it’s simply not worth using the Greatsword in any symbol/AoE builds anymore. Yeah, it CAN still be done…but it’s nowhere near as fun or as effective as it used to be, and there is no reason for it to be the way it is now (especially since the nerf was supposed to be to perma-Retaliation builds!).

If Retaliation builds REALLY were the intended target, then work on Retaliation.

There is NO reason for the Symbol of Wrath cooldown to be THAT high. The nerf to the Greatsword has put a huge dent in the build variety and versatility it had previously, as well as hitting the damage and AoE ability of the weapon by more than any reasonable amount. On top of that, many symbol-boosting traits simply do NOT benefit the Greatsword like they used to, and this is a huge problem considering the Greatsword has a symbol in it’s skillset, and that the main trait line that boosts offensive symbol usage (Zeal) is tied to/provides traits to encourage Greatsword usage!

If the Symbol giving Retaliation is the problem, then simply make it give Fury or Might instead! I cannot believe that ArenaNet went through with this change without considering any of the ramifications it would have on other builds involving the Greatsword.

I have to say my heart sank when I saw the recent patch notes and saw that great swords were getting a chance. The skills being moved around was inconvenient but manageable but the fundamental changes were horrendous.

I went full zeal and found that too many of my traits were ending up wasted because the cool-down for the related move (symbol of wrath)was doubled. That meant the zeal traits which gave vulnerability to the symbol as well as increased its damage were much less valuable.

The cooldown reduction on leap was only so-so and did not change much for me. While it is appreciated it does not have enough “wow” factor to make up for big a loss the symbol was.

I found GS to feel less tactical and more hampered by this change. I could no longer use my symbol to help allies or to stack up more damage as reliably as before. Which removed a fun aspect of GS.

So I changed my traits to utilize a hammer and found it was at least more functional. I could get some defense up, I could do some CC and while it feels a tad clunky I could make do. At least my traits could go into things that would be more beneficial.

Going full zeal was fun and I really did like the whole dynamic of it, but unfortunately a lot of what you could do with it revolved around having the symbol available a bit more often.

seems just fine to me. I really haven’t noticed any real difference in the game play. Just have to hit a skill in a different spot then before.

Krosslite.1950:

seems just fine to me. I really haven’t noticed any real difference in the game play. Just have to hit a skill in a different spot then before.

There is a fundamental disconnect here if you do not see the problem. Either you are new to playing Greatsword on a Guardian, or you have failed to see the hindrance is not in the placement of skills, but in the cool down time of the symbol. The added 10 seconds means that your symbol traits have all been reduced to 50% effectiveness, and that you are now forced into an auto spamming “1” mode while you wait for cool downs. In cases like sPVP this will get you killed. Outside of the fact that the Greatsword used to combo well which it no longer does.

I’m not going to waste my time arguing the so-called re-balance of skills in GW2 as years of experience in GW1 have taught me Anet will do as Anet will do in this area.

HOWEVER, please Anet, stop micro managing my game

Whichever developer thought OMG I need to re-arrange these skills for better manipulation, have you ever had a thought that maybe not everyone thinks like you do in combat, not everyones finger to mind mapping is the same as yours or even simply not everyone is right/left handed?

Please just allow us to re-arrange the skill bar how we see fit for our own personal tastes.

I’m not asking you to let us move weapon skills over to the right in place of or mixing with the utility skills. Just let us re-arrange the weapon skills within the weapon skill area. Just like you let us assign our utility skills in whatever order we want.

DEMAND

1. REVERT THIS CHANGE.
2. Change Symbol of Wrath’s boon from Retaliation to Might or Fury.

REASONING

• Retaliation gets the nerf you wanted to give it.
• Combo abilities are not accidentally nerfed.
• GS retains its old keybindings.
• Symbol-based GS builds are not nerfed to oblivion.
• GS remains a fun & intuitive weapon to use.
• GS roughly retains its effective DPS.
• Thematically, Might or Fury would be as fitting for Symbol of Wrath as Retaliation is.
• 5x 1s Might or Fury would give SoW a comparable offensive boon support role
• The problem of easy permanent Retaliation is avoided.

I hope this sums up the thread in a short, concise manner. All involved parties should be happy with this.

While I don’t play a guardian, my wife does. If you are increasing the time it takes for a guardian to use abilities that reflect damage, could you increase their base HP a bit?

Otherwise they need to become a light armor class and retooled. A heavy armor class having as little health as an elementalist seems wrong. Toughness only get’s them so far.

a +10% damage on SOW is a joke! we lost sinergies not damage…

Why simply don’t delete retaliation from the simbol?
Is the damage of the simbol in the shot time the problem? so do something like this!

-20% damage (based on the value before the 22\10 patch)
another boon instead of retaliation
10\12sec CD.

so, less damage, no retaliation if we dont activate the combo field, but we dont lost the sinergies!

I think Symbols should be re-thought.
Perhaps they should not necessarily provide boons, or perhaps Retaliation could be given Intensity, the current Retaliation becoming equivalent to 3 stacks, and Symbol of Wrath only granting 1 stack, for example.

Quite a few options.

In the meanwhile, alternatively, Leap of Faith could get a Chain skill.
I suggested it here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Greatsword-New-Chain-Skill-More/first#post399393

LOP for me was fine with his 20 sec CD.

Indeed, it felt right.
I personally don’t mind it either way, as long as our damage dealing and activity isn’t hit like this.
Now we auto-attack too often due to long cooldowns.

That’s why I suggest Chain on LoF.

Nurvus.2891:

Indeed, it felt right.
I personally don’t mind it either way, as long as our damage dealing and activity isn’t hit like this.
Now we auto-attack too often due to long cooldowns.

That’s why I suggest Chain on LoF.

i know but LOP have sinergy only for the GS traits… the simbol have 5 dedicated traits+weapons traits.

Add chains to other skill, add damage to Sow, etc etc, dont fix what we have lost for the sake of the retaliation boon.

LoF allows you to apply Vulnerability on blind, now every 15 instead of 20 seconds.
Not much of a boost, but not negligible either.

LoF’s chain-attack could count as a Symbol, without actually having a duration.