Guild Wars 2

Get rid of the Tomes and bring in more Spirit Weapons and/or Burning damage. Every other Profession is thematically consistent with their elites, so too should Guardians be.

Fun as it is to claim you’re so powerful you can sit around reading a book in battle, it’s just not consistent.

Not that all Guardians are human, but muse over something like ’Kormir’s [Weapon]’ which would obviously be a weapon of some kind or ’Balthazar’s Armor’ which would act as a more powerful Fire Shield that could be graphically represented similarly to our Torch skill that cloaks us in our signature blue flames, except perhaps larger/more intense and longer-lasting and it could, in addition to causing Burning, give us/those within a certain radius the same boons that Tome of Wrath can give.

Thematically consistent, and being named after a god would appropriately represent the greater strength of the Spirit [Object].

If the skill-swap effect needs to be kept for the replacement Elites for balancing reasons might I suggest making the Spirit [Object]s work similarly to an Elementalist’s Flame Greatsword? Honestly, a Greatsword/Hammer Spirit weapon could suitably replace Tome of Wrath’s graphic entirely and the only effect it need have on the game is to be more suitable for a Wrathful Guardian than a big book. As there are no Greataxes in the game, perhaps one can make an appearance here with some kind of divine motif instead of another Greatsword/Hammer Spirit [Object].

Totally support that idea. Never really understood why the elites of the guardian completely change my skills. Biggest problem is, that all other professions have a “go to” elite that can be used in almost all situations and always has a positive effect. Warrior got their signet of rage – you pop it and get some sweet buffs, nothing to think about.
Guardian elites are all way to situanional. There rarely is a time I want to use Tome of Wrath against a veteran because it takes away all my utilities and barely inproves my offense. Sure, I can use renewed focus for some minor damage prevention and to regain my virtues but virtues shine more in a group environment, which I consinder to be situational.

Guardians should get a good, solo-play supporting elite. An elite spirit weapon would be great. Just to get an idea:

Greatsword of Might [Elite]cast: 2s, ; cd: 90s
Summon a powerful spirit greatsword (20s) to cleave and burn your foes with powerful area attacks for (1s of burning per hit).
– Command: creates a powerful bladestorm at the spirit greatswords location. This destroys the greatsword.

This would be an elite you could use in every battle and it would always have a positive effect on your damage output.
Situanional elites that are powerful under specific circumstances are great because they require thinking, but giving every class a slightly less powerful but generally more “splashable” elite would be great.

Also, Elite should help define a build. All other classes get an elite that shares a skillclass with there utilities and is therefore effected by traits. An ele that like summond wepons can go for an elite weapon, thief that like venoms can go for an elite venom and so on. Guardian get no elite consecration or elite spirit weapon giving their elite the feeling of being “just kind of thrown in there because glowy books are cool”.

Now that I’m no longer sleepy while typing I’d like to add a further suggestion to this:

If the skill-swap effect needs to be kept for the replacement Elites for balancing reasons might I suggest making the Spirit [Object]s work similarly to an Elementalist’s Flame Greatsword? Honestly, a Greatsword/Hammer Spirit weapon could suitably replace Tome of Wrath’s graphic entirely and the only effect it need have on the game is to be more suitable for a Wrathful Guardian than a big book. As there are no Greataxes in the game, perhaps one can make an appearance here with some kind of divine motif instead of another Greatsword/Hammer Spirit [Object].

Let’s assume the skillsets of the Tomes need to remain as they are. Give each Skill of the Elite a different Spirit [Object] association. For Tome of Wrath’s Affliction have a Spirit Bow materialize in the Guardian’s hand as he gets into a shooting stance (nothing fancy, should be plenty of time without compromising the 3/4s cast time). For Judgement, a Hammer (a very big one, or perhaps multiple regular ones) and so on. This would be an excellent representation of the Guardian’s versatility rolled up into an Elite skill without compromising the current skillset associated with the Tomes.

That said, the current skillsets associated with the Tomes are not that great and there are a number of racial Elites whose use are not nearly so situational and are therefor better options for a Guardian most of the time. The general consensus seems to be that racials were not intended to outshine Profession-specific elites, and as such I think the current skillsets of the Tomes need a little reworking if they are not going to be outright changed as per the first part of my suggestion.

Indeed I have seen many guardians using theire racial elite, most common is human with hounds of balthazar which I would take myself if my guardian wasn’t a norn and there racial elite transformation suck even more than any profession elite ever could.

On step might even be to introduce an ammo system to tomes because I find the duration to be too short and just keep spamming stuff instead of tactical usage.

Kefke.2435:

On step might even be to introduce an ammo system to tomes because I find the duration to be too short and just keep spamming stuff instead of tactical usage.

This isn’t actually something I’d thought of, but it definitely falls in line with making the function similar to an Elementalist’s Fiery Greatsword. It has a longer timer than our Tomes and operates on whether the charges or timer runs out first. This would be an excellent way to limit the power of any replacement Spirit Weapon elite and it would just be a nice tweak in general to our Tomes as they are if no other change is made. It would certainly make them a bit more worthwhile than “use preferred skill and drop” as they currently seem to be used.