Guild Wars 2

Suggestion: Please fix Guardian GreatSword Traits/GS Symbol.

As per what i posted in this thread.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Did-you-notice-what-the-SoW-change-also-affected/first#post381927
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As per the notes.
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•We are moving towards retaliation being more of a counter to taking many hits rather than a general boon to keep up all the time. We also wanted to improve the combo finisher of the guardian, so we reorganized guardian greatsword skills to the following:

•Skill 4: Symbol of Wrath (20 second recharge)
Now incase anyone doesn’t know, that’s double it’s old cooldown.
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Symbol traits in general affected by the GS symbol nerf.

Now from the patch notes this seems to have been done to affect retaliation and inprove combos, however here is a list of all the things the doubling of the symbol affected with the GS.

Symbolic Exposure – Symbols apply vulnerability to foes.
Symbolic Power – Increases damage of symbols.
Writ of Exaltation – Symbols are larger.
Writ of Persistence – Symbols last longer.
Writ of the Merciful – All symbols heal allies.

All the above traits have had there usage halfed on GS because the symbol doubled in cooldown, add to this the loss of DPS on the GS itself due to the cooldown (and less ticks on VoJ).

So this nerf to curb retaliation affected a lot of builds THAT DON’T USE retaliation – was this spotted and if so, how come nothing was given to make up for it? (the 5 second reduction in leap really doesn’t cut it for all the builds it affected).

So as per this, how about perhaps at least doubling the duration&damage of the symbol or simply putting it as it was (10 seconds) and removing retaliation from it instead.
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Regarding Zeal and the GS.

Part of the Zeal trait line it is clearly aimed towards the GS and Symbols (the standard traits are symbol traits, and a number of selectable traits are aimed at the GS) and well, considering the 20s Symbol cooldown on the GS’s symbol it’s kinda broken the GS/Symbol build along that trait line

Zealot’s Speed – Create a Symbol of Wrath when your health drops below 25% (30-second cooldown).
Fair enough, no change here.

Symbolic Exposure – Symbols apply vulnerability to foes.
Usage decreased due to SoW cooldown.

Symbolic Power – Increases damage of symbols.
Usage decreased due to SoW cooldown.

So if you went full Zeal for the Greatsword (not saying i do, just saying if you did) it just got a massive (not slight) nerf. I myself used Zeal for my spirit weapon build, but i used a GS sword with it, so i got nerfed not only on the GS, but also Symbolic Exposure and Symbolic Power.
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So i ask, can we get all the traits adjusted towards the GS in Zeal (as there is no point in taking Zeal with a GS now) or perhaps put the GS symbols cooldown back how it was and change the retaliaiton aspect in another way that doesn’t affect a trait line so much.

Zeal has a few other problems, while we’re on the subject. The Major Master Trait holds the improvements for Scepter and Focus. Neither of which creates a symbol, but to get at them you’re forced into Symbolic Exposure which requires a Symbol to use. In fact the only other synergistic Trait for Scepter in Zeal is Binding Jeopardy and none for Focus.

Mind you, my personal take right now is that the only worthwhile Trait in the entire Zeal line is Fiery Wrath. But objectively it’s a mess if you want to build for anything but GS, Symbols or Spirit Weapons.

This post completely outlines a great deal of the issues regarding the greatsword. You sir are both a gentleman and a scholar and I wish you well in the effort to get anet to fix our class.

Good post! Make with the patch testing servers already. Live is not the place for that!

Major changes like this should be given more thought, and more justification. I fail to see why they couldn’t have altered the retaliation aspect of the symbol, or the retaliation trait, or the retaliation light combo mechanic, instead. Destroying most trait combos and halving combo field combos on a weapon just to retaliation in pvp is simply unacceptable.

Either it was a massive oversight, or Retaliation wasn’t the main target of the changes, and is simply an excuse to outright nerf Greatsword Guardians.

Let’s consider for a second that maybe some traits were being overused, and others underused.

vv They greatly reduced the frequency with wich GS can remove conditions.
vv They greatly reduced the effectiveness of various Traits that revolve around Symbols.

v They reduced overall damage.
v Reduced skill usage on GS, making the weapon duller than before.

^ They improved the frequency with wich GS can Blind.
^ They improved the effectiveness of Traits that revolve around Blind.

ANet should either:
- slightly increase the damage on skills 2, 3, 4 and 5, to compensate some of the damage loss from Symbol of Wrath itself and any Traits affected by its double recharge. The damage increase should not be focused on 1 or 2 skills or it might give GS too much spike damage.
- Give Leap of Faith a secondary skill – Wrathful Verdict – that deals moderate AoE damage, dealing extra damage and applying Daze against Burning targets.

Please un-nerf some of the changes for GS guardian, after spending so much time on exotic armor and a GS weapon that is now basically useless in effectiveness – compared to other builds..

There is nerf bat, and then there is 2h nerf hammer smash! You shouldn’t really overdo things so much in one hit!!!

Nice thread, and I’ll restate the obvious yet again – the patch didn’t affect most of the guardians running around with 100% uptime retaliation builds in PvP that people love to complain about. They are still there, and no less annoying.

The reasoning given in the patch notes makes no sense. Even if it refers to PvE it doesn’t make much sense – vast majority of PvE mobs are slow hitters, and even the fast hitters tend to have low health by design.

If the notes stated concern about symbol builds with GS in PvE with AoE damage and healing, then it would be remotely believable. Even then symbol builds tend to sacrifice the better traits like shout CD reduction in order to achieve said result (and last I checked the symbol lengthening trait didn’t increase the damage of the symbol outside of the retaliation boon as it was set damage). Not to mention the obvious that the mob(s) would have to stay in the static, non-mobile symbol.

I could dissect it further but I think that’s plenty for now.

Change it have it apply might or another boon to a reasonable stack?

I would very much like to know if I should even wait for any reply from dev team.
If Anet is not going to do anything about the last fix, please just tell us so we can move on.

Well guardians are supposed to be beefy, not super strong dps like warrior, gs don’t need a buff. Your only upset because they got “nerfed” from being insanly op b4, if you want dps go thief or warrior.

Beefy, like in “lots of HP”?

I don’t primarily play this class. I did choose to build my Guardian using the greatsword because it was very fun to play. The greatsword had a great feeling to it and very fun rhythm. When I saw these changes in the patch notes I frankly found it baffling. I still logged on and went to see what the actual effect was. There isn’t a lot to say about these changes that would be positive. Perhaps some of them can be worked out and you can do some ironing on your character to compensate but I am left with the major screaming problem that the changes made cannot have had the fun of Guardian players in mind. Of course I do not engage in PvP at all. I have no idea whether the earlier design caused problems here. Apparently it had because I see that mentioned. What is really confusing to me is that this is such an odd and irrational way to fix that problem. Why change so much? Why completely reinvent what many abilities in the Zeal trait line do? Why not just scale/change the effect of retaliation itself? This change is more like throwing a wrench in the machine. It’s not subtle and it’s not an elegant solution.

I also caution you. There is a statement here that reflects the old way of thinking in having classes locked into certain roles. It has seemed consistent to your new ideas to believe that each class is capable of fulfilling all three roles if the player chooses to build their character that way. Which should mean that the Guardian should have access to a trait line that makes them a high damage character. There shouldn’t be any way to say that if a player wants to do damage that they must play a certain class. That’s a major step backward and it is important that you stay focused and not let the lingering remnants of an outdated attitude influence you to undermine your system and reinstall the old holy trinity. Make sure that what changes you make will make the experience of the player playing that class more fun.

If it’s a problem in comparing the Guardian to some other class then I remind you that “overpowered” can be solved in two ways. You can nerf the class that’s causing the problem or you can buff the class that’s having the problem. One of these solutions is obviously superior. The first way of solving the problem causes more problems than it fixes. The second way fixes more problems than it causes. A nerf doesn’t only affect PvP. It also reduces the effectiveness of a class in PvE. A buff increases the usefulness and enjoyment of a class in PvE and can simultaneously improve PvP balance.

Revert this patch please.

Greatsword is fine now. Yes, I’m a guardian. 2 should do more damage for the slot it’s in but right now there’s a lot of possibility with this weapon.

If they’re going to un-nerf the symbol they would have to remove retaliation from it. It seems like they drastically rethought retaliation even PRE release. The mechanic cannot be balanced without hitting it in a hard way to limit it’s uptime and overall damage done.

I’m not against the changes that were made and understand that these were done as just the first step toward curbing retaliation builds.

I agree that Leap of Faith’s CD was to long and that Symbol of Wrath’s was to short. I actually agreed with the changes to the skills but have also noted the unfortunate consequence to the damage curve of the Greatsword. As such I don’t think a revert is in order but perhaps a smaller change.

-Add 1-2 seconds to the duration of Symbol of Wrath
OR
-Increase the damage boost Symbol of Wrath provides to other Great Sword skills

I actually favor the Increase in damage boost provided to Symbol of Wrath because it helps recover the damage lost in PvE while upping the required awareness for it in PvP. I’m also talking about a very small boost here where total damage output would only be increased by 2-3%.

Regarding the traits that effect symbols, I don’t think you can analyze each one individually as that is not how traits are intended to be viewed. Yes individually you can argue the effect this change had on those traits but at the same time it demonstrates why this nerf was necessary. If you were really taking all those traits with only Symbol of Wrath in mind then Symbol of Wrath was to strong. If you took them all in order to focus on so many of the other Symbols we have then this change doesn’t really effect the build that much.

Drop retaliation and replace it with aegis, restore the cooldown to SoW.

There
— a more balanced defense put in place of retaliation
— Symbol support builds and GS related traits get restored.

Server maintenance done, no change, and even worse, no reply from devs on the guardian’s forum.

i still have faith on Anet work , but this silence, its really disappointing.

Being pretty new and not ‘getting’ the complaints due to only ever having experienced post-change Greatsword I can say pretty decisively that Symbol of Wrath is completely messed up right now.

I don’t have any proper insight as to what the proper CD should be on it but as-is it is absolutely too long. The people saying/joking/complaining about how much auto-attack spam there is are absolutely correct.

In terms of Retaliation itself I’m nowhere near able to go in-depth on it, however the suggested alternative method to “Targeting Retaliation Builds” of replacing the Retaliation effect with Aegis/Swiftness/Might is so incredibly and so obviously superior to what was actually done that it addles the mind to imagine how such an option was missed or overlooked. It’s simple and effective and such adjectives are the only ones you ever want to use to describe a nerf. This deserves to be acknowledged and the question of why it was not done instead deserves to be answered. Such a solution would have required much less effort on ANET’s part and would have caused zero to no problems in addition to having the intended (and more importantly, non-problematic) effect on Retaliation builds.

On Leap of Faith. The cooldown is either too short or too long. Implementing the idea of reverting Symbol of Wrath’s CD and replacing its Retaliation effect with Aegis would call for restoring LoF’s previous CD as well and I feel this would actually be more fitting, as its current utility is baffling. It can’t be used often enough to fill in the missing gap in Things To Do that ANET obviously anticipated when they doubled Seal of Wrath’s CD and yet it comes off CD just soon enough to completely miss opportune timing for just about anything, be it self-combos or combo-finishing with others. Its current CD isn’t friendly at all.

On Greatsword Guardians as a whole: as soon as my friend started playing with me on her Mesmer I started noticing just how much damage I was taking. Some of that was not properly using my utilities like Wall of Reflection, but most of it is simply because as a Guardian using a Greatsword, having nothing to do for long periods of time between Whirling Wrath CDs means there are long periods of time where I have to run from enemies so they don’t butcher me. That’s part of the game and I love it, but it lasts too long and happens too many times during the same fight. Judging from comments I’m seeing everywhere this is not something that other professions deal with and it was not previously the case with Guardians either, and having an active build that seems to have previously existed where I’m not just sitting there waiting to be able to push buttons (as one of ANET’s own articles states it aims to achieve in all cases) would greatly alleviate that problem, a problem which again does not seem to have even existed prior to these… kind of really not well thought out changes.

All in all, having never experienced the previous CDs I believe that whatever caused the current incarnation of Guardian’s Greatsword setup to come about was at least, if not a mistake, extremely premature. If these effects were fully intended then they imply other changes that would lead to the balance Greatsword seemed to have previously and which is so desperately craved now. Such a huge change in a Profession’s dynamic requires the additional effects of changes not yet made or it should not have happened at all because as stated by others and observed and restated by myself: simply replacing Retaliation with an Aegis/Swiftness/Might effect would have achieved all of ANET’s stated goals of the change while causing none of the problems. Simple and Effective.

Im not a fan of guardian PvE so i wouldnt know about PvE change however i was happy with 5 seconds shorter leap. Lost some damage for some Utility which i find a good thing.
Maybe, it was much better before as i did not play it for a long time, before the nerf, however its still a very viable weapeon.