Guild Wars 2

I love the style of the guardian but the range weapons are horribly boring. It also has always bugged me that we can summon a spirit longbow when we can’t use a longbow… we can use every other spirit weapon we have.

1: [900rng, 118dmg, if hit from behind shatters causing bleeding (3s)]
2: [1200rng, cone (5x):150dmg, 12sec cd, grants might(3s) to allies in path]
3: [1200 rng, channeled (5x): 900 dmg, 12sec cd, causes crippled (3s)]
4: [symbol at location, granting protection to allies and damaging foes]
5: [range 130, strike foe causing daze (2s), 20sec cd]

I was thinking something along the lines of that, lower damage than other classes still but with some small support built in… anything would be more fun than slow blue orbs in my opinion.

If Guardians get longbows, Rangers get staves.

Deal?

Handshake?

Bow doesn’t seem we’ll fit for guardian. Guardians are supposed to stay in the thick of battle, not stay a good distance away (even with scepter and staff, you can only be so far away.). I don’t think having a long ranged weapon on a very-durable guardian will work, unless most skills just shoot symbols on the ground for buffs only

Guardians = melee range only is bullocks. Every class has options to range/melee effectively (even guardian’s various 1200 currently). Some fights are designed where melee is idiotic and some punish range, hence everyone having weapons swap (or "attunement).

The issue is guardian range is freaking boring and until they make supporting reward badges of honor guardian needs a more viable/fun range weapon for WvW. Not to mention the skills I posted still would keep you “in the thick” since your symbol/cone would require you to keep by your team -as a support guardian ought to.

I’m fine with Rangers having a staff, have no bloody idea how you’d design it to fit them and I’d be more concerned with trap builds = ruined underwater but feel free to design something. Also why do rangers not have guns… greatsword = ranger but a bloody gun doesn’t? shrug I guess I don’t find most the rifle skills fun anyways. (pistols can be great though).

For the record all the damage/styles I posted were weaker than less durable classes (if you want to pretend warrior/engineer/ranger can’t be durable… also bullocks).

edit Also, the profession page never said guardian = melee. Nor does having one of the lowest HP pools suggest they should always be forced to be in melee range.

I fully support this thread.

Although I already like the guardian scepter, a longbow would be cool, and can button 4 be run speed? Guardians need more run speed…

…and rangers need some tanky melee. I’d have to reroll and name my toon John Little, but it’d be worth it.

I disagree not every class NEEDS to have both great range and great melee for example the only melee an engineer can pull out is the tool kit that has a prybar attack in it, and engineers dont even get a weapon swap they do have multiple kits but those take up utility slots too.

Well Engineer can use gernades/flamethrower which aren’t reflected by bosses are they? Not to mention the lack of a minimum range negates any issues with being a range specialist in WvW…. 1500 range AoE is pretty great for WvW (espeically badge farming).

Regardless, I never asked for the range damage of an engineer. Just think the spirit bow is stupid when we can’t use a bow and I happen to find the scepter/staff boring for range (due love empower with altruistic healing though).

one, yes gernades can be reflected and flamethrowers too buggy so i dont touch it, and yes it would be nice to have long range in WvW on my guardian but i don’t think the whole game should be balanced around WvW besides that guardians have scepter with 1200 range which is pretty good, same range as an untraited longbow for ranger

As a Guardian i’m pretty limited with ranged weaps. :P

WvW was a big appeal for the game to many people and classes should be balanced to work well in all regards. Flamethrower use to be very cool (they did remove the pull though and I haven’t played around on Engineer in a long time so I’ll defer to others on that one).

Regardless failure to successfully implement a function for one class (engineer) is not an excuse to avoid work on another, or balance both to work against the various game modes and mechanics. If you don’t like engineer’s current state, make a suggestion to fix it.

A lot of people have wanted guardian to get its ranged reworked (many would settle for faster scepters) but I’d prefer a longbow. I don’t think we should have high range dmg but we shouldn’t have kitten range either. Or they could just change spirit bow into a staff/scepter and I wouldn’t be as annoyed that we can’t use bow and would go back to thinking of what works/fails about scepter/staff.

Yes I understand what you are saying that all aspects of the game should be balanced which will probably happen such as they did it in Guild Wars one by changing the functionality of skills in different modes, but to be honest is your guardian speced into range? and second if you want range rather than longbow for guardians I would suggest an offhand scepter if you want to be more focused on ranged DPS getting a new beneficial damage skills for ranged 4 and 5. all that being said I believe I longbow on a guardian would be unbalanced as guardians already have the best survivability in the game (my opinion) so giving them a long range high DPS AoE weapon would only increase their surviability even more in certain situations, making them overpowered in some ways leading to a disappointing nerf later

(sorry for the slippery slope argument at the end there)

I actually switched to a shout build, which I love (in melee… or when groups don’t run from my buffs). I run greatsword/staff most of the time (altruistic healing makes sharing stacks of might much more beneficial). I also carry a scepter/focus around since staff just doesn’t cut it for many fights (fractals/dungeons).

If you look at the damges I picked it wasn’t any more powerful than Scepter, it would just avoid the slow ball stuff associated with scepter (and still staff although change lowered that some). Actually scepter might be stronger than what I posted -except from behind where my auto-attack would function like a weaker engineer pistol. (Scepter 1/2 do more damage than I listed but 1 is slow and 2 is easy to dodge so I made 3 lower cd with some dmg and slow instead of a root). Also giving a bleed would add more justification to builds around keeping burning up since condition damage would become a viable stat to throw into the mix.

Scepter is just so easy to dodge and imo boring. Don’t worry about the slippery slope… it’s an exageration but points to a legitmate concern, balance goes overboard plenty of times. It is why I made sure I didn’t make a more powerful version of any existing characters range.

[I’m not so sure guard is the most survive btw… In PvP theif/ele can control hit/run so well they’ll kill and live where a guard can’t escape or last long.] Regardless, I have to head out now.

Kuraikoto.1957:

I love the style of the guardian but the range weapons are horribly boring. It also has always bugged me that we can summon a spirit longbow when we can’t use a longbow… we can use every other spirit weapon we have.

1: [900rng, 118dmg, if hit from behind shatters causing bleeding (3s)]
2: [1200rng, cone (5x):150dmg, 12sec cd, grants might(3s) to allies in path]
3: [1200 rng, channeled (5x): 900 dmg, 12sec cd, causes crippled (3s)]
4: [symbol at location, granting protection to allies and damaging foes]
5: [range 130, strike foe causing daze (2s), 20sec cd]

I was thinking something along the lines of that, lower damage than other classes still but with some small support built in… anything would be more fun than slow blue orbs in my opinion.

Longbows on those who follow the path of light is a very japanese concept actually.

I can actually see that as an option tho they would have to do a tremendously better job at bows for guardians then they did longbows for rangers. Weird how rangers can’t shoot multiple arrows for their #1 yet the clunky warrior is supposedly agile enough to pull it off…riiiiight.

How about something simple like, UNLOCK, all control mechanism’s and let us wear and equip whatever we want. Just have classes that can UTILIZE them with functinal scaling.

For example, if an ele wants to wear heavy armor, there movement speed and power output tanks.

Another is, if a Warrior wants to wield some Pistols…. I… um… We’re a freak’n Warriors! I think we should be skilled enough that pistols shouldn’t confound us ;-) Why we we’re denied those idk.

Anyway, you get the idea… I want to remove some of the hard roadblocks of the game. To be replace by a more logical system of functional scaled utilization. I think we’d all appreciate more customization. Either that or just make more and more skins and skills so we can create with.

There’s a difference between having “great ranged” and “Acceptable range.” Right now the scepter is unacceptable; staff really isn’t a ranged weapon it’s more of an extended melee weapon considering shooting one orb of light every few seconds really isn’t ranged.
I’d prefer we get the scepter buffed to an acceptable level rather than getting a longbow, although if crossbows were ever introduced…. bottom line is scepter needs work, DESPERATELY.

staff does range

i don’t think its the lack of ranged weapons that’s the problem, it’s that the sceptre & staff just aren’t very good at it. the staff is an AoE attack, which is ok against parties/zergs, but the sceptre is just awful. slow moving orb?! not very good imo. at least 1 of these needs to have a quick moving projectile, so we can at least join in whilst taking (for example) an oil pot down. our only other option is offensive spell book & while its powerful, it takes up elite & has a long cool down.

Staff is range (although the 1 is short range cone)… at a longer range you are forced to 2 3 2 2 2 3 2 2 2 3… assuming you don’t explode the 2 which would increase the cooldown x4. It is pretty unengaging and the damage is hit/miss depending on how much the target moves (3 is symbol ).

As other people pointed out the scepter orbs are slow, combat breaks down into autoattack until 2 is up, hit 2, autoattack… with the occassional 3 in to root if you aren’t fighting something immune to CC. The focus range attack is lower damage than your autoattack so it really only adds a shield which can dmg in melee range and a regen/blind for team/enemy. [Torch does add one range attack into the mix… easy to dodge again thanks to the need to light yourself up with blue flames first -does look cool at least…. the other one is a channeled cone in close range.]

So really it comes down to unegaging/boring ranged weapons to some of us, some people do actually enjoy scepter but it seems to be a minority.

Since Paragon is baked into Guardian, I’d much rather see us get Spear as land-weapon… well, you’re allowed to dream, aren’t you?

Can be used both ranged and in close combat.

I’m going to disagree. If you want to use a bow as a heavy armor class, roll a Warrior. It’s good to maintain variety between classes.

I’d rather have them add two handed axes for both Guardians and Warriors.

Korrigan.4837:

I’m going to disagree. If you want to use a bow as a heavy armor class, roll a Warrior. It’s good to maintain variety between classes.

I’d rather have them add two handed axes for both Guardians and Warriors.

“maintain variety between classes” looks at thief and ranger 1h sword, scratches head looks at every class using a gun/bow/harpoon gun having a pewpewpew skill looks at mesmer and thief both having stealth, at warrior, thief, and guardian having spinning melee attacks

variety…….wha?

xCrusadentx.2784:

Bow doesn’t seem we’ll fit for guardian. Guardians are supposed to stay in the thick of battle, not stay a good distance away (even with scepter and staff, you can only be so far away.). I don’t think having a long ranged weapon on a very-durable guardian will work, unless most skills just shoot symbols on the ground for buffs only

I still think Guardians should have atleast 1 range weapon. As Guardians are similar to Clerics (Group support/healing/buffs) just without a revered ‘God’ from which they get their attacks and power from, Clerics are able to still use Bullets and Slings for blunt damage. And by going with longbows.. that would be more a Japanese ‘Zen’ route to it, which would work for me too. Both weapons would stay within the ‘spiritual focus/specialization/mind and weapon as one’ feel.

Ok the spear idea isn’t bad…. shame that is a pipe dream since they did that underwater. I just went with longbow because we already command a spirit one. The variety thing is utter crap. No offense but just having the same weapon doesn’t mean you would have the same weapon skills…. Not to mention we command a bow already, just a mickey mouse magic one that for some odd reason shoots only itself unlike the NPC counterparts which have range.

I’m not a fan of greataxe… not to mention an axe is typically thought of in regards to berserks. Guys who go all out to kill you at while ignoring defense seems like the antithesis of guardian. Then again, you could make the same claim for hammers but we are knocking people around with those.

I didn’t make the Zen conection when I was thinking about it earlier… but now I’m hoping a Samurai style class is added if they add Tengu in an expansion. XD It’d be like FFXI with real pvp.

If we’re going to add Zen, then how about adding the Warrior Monk class? I mean, I know this is going off topic but, my main is a Norn Warrior. We believe in ancient animal spirits yet, except for the entertaining and utterly useless transformations, we have no abilities to show for it. We’re just dumb slow hulking masses of muscle with little spiritual or intellectual skill. Quite annoying! My second toon is a new Norn Guardian. I’m just starting out and already noticing the same thing again.

For the Guardian wishing for a range weapon to attack the pot of oil, is that really your job? As a guardian you shouldn’t you be helping defend those of us attacking the oil? I was asking repeatedly last night in WvW for a guardian to help me as I blasted away with my rifle at a pot of oil. I received NO HELP. You’re supposed to help “guard” the front lint, not be the front line

It’s worse enough that all the other classes that can use a bow have the cool skills that belong to a ranger, no need to have even more classes use a bow and most certainly not a guardian. If you have problems with the range you need to learn how to play your class.

Yaksha.6342:

It’s worse enough that all the other classes that can use a bow have the cool skills that belong to a ranger, no need to have even more classes use a bow and most certainly not a guardian. If you have problems with the range you need to learn how to play your class.

…….So only the ranger should have a bow? Okay, Let’s give all the ranged weapons to the ranger, it makes sense since their name comes from using ranged weap……wait a minute, it doesn’t at all! Everyone else should be happy with a 130 range, and if not than they need to learn how to play their class! How dare you want a different play-style!

Guardians get Longbows, Warriors get Pistols.

Deal?