I’m been playing a guardian through beta and since the first day live. Several things I’ve noticed.
1) elite skills -
a) the tomes: are both almost more of a hassle than a gain. Currently you loose access to your virtues and skills during the use of the tome. You only gain access to the abilities for a short time.
b) renewed focus: this skill doesn’t really make you invunerable per say. Anything that is currently aflicting you when you activate it continues to damage you. I’ve actually died while this skill is active. On top of everything else again you spin around on your weapon for 3 seconds during this… why is there a neccessary animation like this?
all 3 of these are too situational, at best, to be useful and the refresh way too long to add any benefit.
I’d suggest allowing the tomes to enhance your virtue abilities for the duration of the tomes usage. Warth tome add additional damage or buffed damage stats to the guardian and his party while still allowing the guardian to act. Both passive and active enhancements. Courage Tome giving active and passive buffs for defense while adding a healing component to your attacks. I’d also encourage lowering the timer on this from 180 to 120.
As far as renewed focus… I guess the intent is correct by refreshing your vitues, more beneficial for some than others since its 30/60/90 on the timers. I personally think the 60 and 90 second refreshers should be lowered. But seriously if you are going to give invunerability for only 3 seconds it needs to be all encompassing. Personally given the health pool of the guardian it needs to be 5 seconds or longer since its on a 90 second refresh.
All in all I think the elite skills are mostly unuseable or un-effective the way they are implemented today. The guardians skills seem almost upside down in power with some of the most unseful skills coming early and the most useless skills coming late.
2) When you compare some of the high level skills with the effectiveness of a well placed wall of reflection in WvWvW it makes the others seem worthless. Running out and dropping wall of reflection in front of a keep door being attacked, and rushing back in the other side is one of the most rewarding, next do using it as an escape certainly works better than the “retreat!” movement buff for saving your life. Sometimes it pays to be the small asura that no one can see
But consdier the cost of Wall of Reflection to the Tome skills.
The guardian class is noble in effort but really should compare to a “paladin” where they would have a higher burst damage but lower damage on par to the warrior. The sheer lack of ranged attack options should almost dictate them being the defensive powerhouse which they are not. And for a group you want the buffer/healer they are supposed to be to survive so certainly they warrant a bigger health pool. Honestly with all the skills we have with a retaliation component it would be nice to have a higher health pool for that to be more useful.
3) In addition to what I have listed above, I have noticed a problem with the traits as well. If you have invested 30 points into radiance you will notice the ability of “perfect inscriptions”. “Signet passives are improved”. Well after equiping it and then loading my skills up with signets I noticed that Bane Signet still only raise my power by 90. That being the case I would assume that that trait ability is not working across the board since the other signets are too “general” in their descriptions to accurately measure. This would actually be quite useful if the boost was significant enough to add to say Signet of Judgement’s reduced incoming damage.
All in all this is quite a focusless class… jack of all trades and master of none. If the all the other classes buffs and heals weren’t already as powerful as they are this class would serve a better purpose. As it stands no matter how you stretch them they all still end up serving the same purpose… which still sort of illudes me.