Guild Wars 2

I think there are 2 things wrong with Giver’s armor that ensures that nobody uses it.

1) The buff duration bonus is not really good enough to warrant losing a stat category over it. I think the buff duration should be increased to 2% from 1%. If you think that is too high then you could potentially give 3 pieces of armor 2% and 2 pieces of armor 1% to give a full set 10% more boon. Though I think just giving everything 2% would be better.

2) There is no offensive stat. This is the only set in the game not to have one as far as I know. People with extremely low damage numbers are usually seen as a hindrance and not a benefit. Also if you look at how boons are set up there are both defense boons (i.e. Protection, Regeneration) as well as offensive boons (might, fury). I think the set should reflect both boon types and not just one to give the set more versatility. So for instance Giver could have something like healing/power/boon duration instead.

As it stands now I don’t know anyone that runs Giver’s armor.

Kojiden, I feel I need to second your opinion. I really wanted to make a strong boon support build that maybe focused on might stacks with retribution to try and think ‘outside the box’. The problem is what you pointed to: your paying for an exotic set whose damage output is horrific. I can’t justify this, its not good enough. I look at boon duration and see first, that the 1% adding up to maybe 6%? What benefit is a 6% boon buff by itself? Only naturally long boons like might benefit even slightly (1 second maybe?) from this while shorter duration boons would get 0 benefit. And your giving up a lot to get it. I think no one has commented here because everyone has written off this armor is irrelevant. I have a set, but I am holding off wearing it because its terrible to have no offense and the one stat it was made for being worthless. I was excited to go with the Giver’s support buffs…but not anymore. I am just saddened by it, and I hope someone with the ability to give it 2% or the option to have power or precision as a stat for instance will read this and take pity on the players who really like support, like to use boons, and give them a chance to make a build that does that.

One other question I have as well; stats usually scale with the size of the armor, with chest getting the largest buffs. Why wouldn’t boon duration scale as well? Its already minimized at 1%, so what was the reason for doing so?

I agree with this. While I’d like to buff the boon duration of my healing elementalist from 30% to 34% (>33.333%) to get some bonusses, it requires me to use four armors …

But the main reason I’m writing, it to add “give two-handed weapons also a higher condition duration than single-hand weapon”. It’s awkward that two weapons give double the bonus of a two-handed weapon.

I would like to update this topic with one other thing: I think the buffs being all defensive should be changed. Lets give it two changes if I may: Buff boon duration to 2% per armor piece. Take out one other defensive buff and replace it with either power, precision, or condition damage. My preference would be either power or precision. This way the skill has a damage buff, a boon buff that is more fair and not total throw away of points, and a defensive buff for normal defense like Toughness for instance.