Guild Wars 2

Can you please do something about Guardian having to kitten themselfes by not using half their skills half the time in high level fractals because of the Boon Thieves instability that kinda causes everybody to die if you use anything that gives retal at the wrong time (GS #4, any virtue besides f3, leaps or blasts in light fields).

I mean sure I can just not use my skills, even swap out zeal so I don’t have the automatic symbol proc on 50% HP but it’s just not fun at all and I don’t think one class should have such a huge disadvantage just because it has this useless and super counterproductive boon as their “trademark” boon.

Let retal from oponents do less damage (not let it scale with their power to ridicolous ticks as 900 per hit), replace retal on symbol of wrath with might or fury, replace the automatic symbol proc with something else, think of something else yourself but please do something about it so I can do proper DPS rotations without camping longbow or mace for 90% of the time if I don’t want to risk wiping my party.

Since I kinda like the idea of getting punished for attacking brainlessly by dying to retal my favorite option by far would be replacing retal on symbol of wrath though.

Inb4 anet ignores that serious problem.

Use a mesmer/necro to remove the boons. Like in level 41-50.

But I agree, retaliation is a bit too strong in PvE.

You can always just not play Guardian.

:^)

Bring thieves to steal boons D8

Retaliation is just fine. I love how I can kill myself with one skill on ele Its nearly as good as being the only profession that manages to spawn two fractal avengers by using downed skill meant to avoid stomping, thereby actually ensuring a stomp on either myself or… some poor soul that had the bad luck to get downed beside me ^^

Yobculture.5786:

You can always just not play Guardian.

:^)

In all seriousness, maybe this is actually anet’s mentality. Why else would fractals (one of the least alt friendly areas of the game) give tomes of knowledge?

Yasi.9065:

Its nearly as good as being the only profession that manages to spawn two fractal avengers by using downed skill meant to avoid stomping, thereby actually ensuring a stomp on either myself or…

Ikr! Ele downstate skill is kittening BS in fracs now..

Yobculture.5786:

You can always just not play Guardian.

:^)

:^)

I always kick the Guardians that dare to buff retaliaton, because if Anet hates Guardians, i hate them as well.

I see people complain about “Fractals not hard enough, not challenging! Q_Q” everywhere in this forum, but this? Seriously? all I hear is “Please make it easier for us, take it away because it’s too hard! we get killed by our own skills” pretty much. Please get serious. This is a l2p issue.

Oh, BTW here’s a tip: What do you do when the Archdiviner or Shaman starts reflecting your Range attacks? You stop attacking till it stops. Problem solved.

ThyShadowPaladin.9521:

I see people complain about “Fractals not hard enough, not challenging! Q_Q” everywhere in this forum, but this? Seriously? all I hear is “Please make it easier for us, take it away because it’s too hard! we get killed by our own skills” pretty much. Please get serious. This is a l2p issue.

Oh, BTW here’s a tip: What do you do when the Archdiviner or Shaman starts reflecting your Range attacks? You stop attacking till it stops. Problem solved.

It’s not the same, pretty much everything a guardian does can proc retaliaton, 3 of your best trait lines add retal to either virtue or just passively, trying to strip it is useless because it’ll come back just as fast. So you either kitten yourself extremely ( both power and condi build ) or juat do what everyone is doing, and not accept any guardian for 91+

IE : can’t use any symbol, wall of reflection because someone might leap, dodge (daredevil leap dodge) or blast it by mistake, can’t use zeal line because of passive retal symbol, can’t use virtue line because of added retal. So you pretty much just autoattack with horrible traits. Or get a revenant.

ThyShadowPaladin.9521:

I see people complain about “Fractals not hard enough, not challenging! Q_Q” everywhere in this forum, but this? Seriously? all I hear is “Please make it easier for us, take it away because it’s too hard! we get killed by our own skills” pretty much. Please get serious. This is a l2p issue.

Oh, BTW here’s a tip: What do you do when the Archdiviner or Shaman starts reflecting your Range attacks? You stop attacking till it stops. Problem solved.

Pretty funny to read such a comment from someone who obviously doesn’t know that ele has more f-keys than just f2.

ThyShadowPaladin.9521:

Please get serious. This is a l2p issue.

You seem to be having the same issue then

Change your build to not use retaliation, or get another class, “hard content” is designed to force people to change strategies/builds/gameplay, if you don’t like, or don’t want to, don’t do high tier fractals, nothing forces you to.

harold.3526:

Change your build to not use retaliation, or get another class, “hard content” is designed to force people to change strategies/builds/gameplay, if you don’t like, or don’t want to, don’t do high tier fractals, nothing forces you to.

Have you ever played guardian? Retal is part of pretty much everything they have, condi or power build, if you want to play without it, you’re stuck autoattacking with bad traits, rendering a whole class useless, I did it and it was horrible, I was either useless or giving retal, no middle ground.

But you’re right, just use another class, guardians are the new necros in 91+

harold.3526:

Change your build to not use retaliation, or get another class, “hard content” is designed to force people to change strategies/builds/gameplay, if you don’t like, or don’t want to, don’t do high tier fractals, nothing forces you to.

I am pretty sure that the op has already changed his build and aswell played other classes, however not allowing a certain class to bring half of it’s skills and traits is bad design. It’s not that this instability is hard or challenging, it just makes one certain class really really weak compared to others.

There will be always fractals specific classes are bad, specific instabilities some classes sucks, specific raids some classes are bad, some raids some classes sucks.

BUT there will be always fractals specific classes are awesome, specific instabilities some classes are awesome, specific raids some classes are awesome, some raids some classes awesome.

Guardian sucks for this instability, so or you change everything to work around or you change class,

New mechanics/instabilities will require new strategies/compositions.

Lendruil.9061:

ThyShadowPaladin.9521:

I see people complain about “Fractals not hard enough, not challenging! Q_Q” everywhere in this forum, but this? Seriously? all I hear is “Please make it easier for us, take it away because it’s too hard! we get killed by our own skills” pretty much. Please get serious. This is a l2p issue.

Oh, BTW here’s a tip: What do you do when the Archdiviner or Shaman starts reflecting your Range attacks? You stop attacking till it stops. Problem solved.

Pretty funny to read such a comment from someone who obviously doesn’t know that ele has more f-keys than just f2.

It’s so funny how easily my team breezes through fractals every day & the initial push to 100 yet you choose to base your opinions of me from 1 vid. Hilarious. Are you jelly that we basically EZ-moded mai 100 on our first time by just winging it? I don’t get it.

Heck, we gave those mobs 25 might, 25 stability, perma protection, ALL the buffs, and it wasn’t even a challenge. Please go on with your rants about my healing or elementalist gameplay.

ThyShadowPaladin.9521:

Lendruil.9061:

ThyShadowPaladin.9521:

I see people complain about “Fractals not hard enough, not challenging! Q_Q” everywhere in this forum, but this? Seriously? all I hear is “Please make it easier for us, take it away because it’s too hard! we get killed by our own skills” pretty much. Please get serious. This is a l2p issue.

Oh, BTW here’s a tip: What do you do when the Archdiviner or Shaman starts reflecting your Range attacks? You stop attacking till it stops. Problem solved.

Pretty funny to read such a comment from someone who obviously doesn’t know that ele has more f-keys than just f2.

It’s so funny how easily my team breezes through fractals every day & the initial push to 100 yet you choose to base your opinions of me from 1 vid. Hilarious. Are you jelly that we basically EZ-moded mai 100 on our first time by just winging it? I don’t get it.

Heck, we gave those mobs 25 might, 25 stability, perma protection, ALL the buffs, and it wasn’t even a challenge. Please go on with your rants about my healing or elementalist gameplay.

You keep bragging about your team being super pro and fast and that people shouldn’t judge by one video, but you don’t show anything to prove people wrong.
All you have on your channel are 30 min+ old fractals with extremely sub-par gameplay and more amazing “healer ele” performances.

Who gives you the right to tell people to “l2p” when its pretty clear you struggle to even understand your class’ potential.

ThyShadowPaladin.9521:

how easily my team breezes through fractals every day & the initial push to 100

If you think this is a worthy feat, then you obviously have l2p issues.

ThyShadowPaladin.9521:

I see people complain about “Fractals not hard enough, not challenging! Q_Q” everywhere in this forum, but this? Seriously? all I hear is “Please make it easier for us, take it away because it’s too hard! we get killed by our own skills” pretty much. Please get serious. This is a l2p issue.

Oh, BTW here’s a tip: What do you do when the Archdiviner or Shaman starts reflecting your Range attacks? You stop attacking till it stops. Problem solved.

I’m not complaining about Retal on its own. As I stated in my OP I like retal killing brainless people. I think it’s a nice mechanic. It’s just stupid how bad guardian is because of this instability. I played without GS and without zeal and I can tell you that it’s definetly not worth bringing a guardian if he has to do that.

As I said my favorite solution would just giving guard other stuff instead of retal, especially on such a key skill as symbol of wrath.

I actually enjoy the instability for the very reason of having to think outside the box. Though what sucks about the instability is that it’s for 10 levels. It’d be better if we have the older instability system where we just had to put up with it for one level and have a new challenge on the next.

savacli.8172:

I actually enjoy the instability for the very reason of having to think outside the box. Though what sucks about the instability is that it’s for 10 levels. It’d be better if we have the older instability system where we just had to put up with it for one level and have a new challenge on the next.

The instability I’m reffering to lasts for 20 levels actually.

Keksmuffin.1450:

savacli.8172:

I actually enjoy the instability for the very reason of having to think outside the box. Though what sucks about the instability is that it’s for 10 levels. It’d be better if we have the older instability system where we just had to put up with it for one level and have a new challenge on the next.

The instability I’m reffering to lasts for 20 levels actually.

…burn it to the ground.

Does retaliation go up with higher levels?

Wethospu.6437:

Does retaliation go up with higher levels?

On 40 it does like 200-300 and on 100 it does like 500-900 so yeah.

savacli.8172:

I actually enjoy the instability for the very reason of having to think outside the box. Though what sucks about the instability is that it’s for 10 levels. It’d be better if we have the older instability system where we just had to put up with it for one level and have a new challenge on the next.

This.

I’ve made sure to pass this topic and issue onto the Fractals team, so they’re aware.

Rising Dusk.2408:

I’ve made sure to pass this topic and issue onto the Fractals team, so they’re aware.

^-^

Rising Dusk.2408:

I’ve made sure to pass this topic and issue onto the Fractals team, so they’re aware.

Ok….so what happens then? 8 month old but still an issue. The Boon Thieves instability is a pain and for a guard thats a big problem, the meta build for fractral includes virtue and symbols. I play guardian and been on “fractal” break awhile Ive now even noticed “non reta guard” in lfg. Lol, well better just say no guards are welcome at all then.

EKAN.4051:

Rising Dusk.2408:

I’ve made sure to pass this topic and issue onto the Fractals team, so they’re aware.

Ok….so what happens then? 8 month old but still an issue. The Boon Thieves instability is a pain and for a guard thats a big problem, the meta build for fractral includes virtue and symbols. I play guardian and been on “fractal” break awhile Ive now even noticed “non reta guard” in lfg. Lol, well better just say no guards are welcome at all then.

@Ekan: best to start a new thread (linking to this one) — a moderator is sure to close it (since the last post before yours was 8 months ago).

On the topic: alas, you’ll have to adapt to the boon stealing. The only prof that I didn’t have to modify for high-level fractals has been necro; all the others have required tweaking from what is sufficient/superior in low levels. (Although clearly, some profs need more changes than others.)

Yeah, adaptation as a guard to boon thieves is a pretty simple thing: play another class which doesn’t get wrecked by this kind of stupid design -.-

But it’s pretty fascinating that this issue is much older than I thought (recently got back into the game after a long break). Clearly the devs haven’t changed a bit during the last three years.

I love the Mesmers playing with persisting images trait

CptAurellian.9537:

Yeah, adaptation as a guard to boon thieves is a pretty simple thing: play another class which doesn’t get wrecked by this kind of stupid design -.-

Not everyone has multiple classes with the needed equipment to rock 150 AR. For some people, they have one toon who is the only toon that can do fractals due to Ascended equipment and AR availability, and if that toon is a Guardian, they basically cannot do the highest fractals through no fault of their own. Guardians do retaliation. It’s essentially their main mechanic. Making things HARDER is one thing, making them unplayable for an entire class is another.

Boogiepop Void.6473:

CptAurellian.9537:

Yeah, adaptation as a guard to boon thieves is a pretty simple thing: play another class which doesn’t get wrecked by this kind of stupid design -.-

Not everyone has multiple classes with the needed equipment to rock 150 AR. For some people, they have one toon who is the only toon that can do fractals due to Ascended equipment and AR availability, and if that toon is a Guardian, they basically cannot do the highest fractals through no fault of their own. Guardians do retaliation. It’s essentially their main mechanic. Making things HARDER is one thing, making them unplayable for an entire class is another.

You can wear same armor weapon and jewelery on a warrior

Boogiepop Void.6473:

CptAurellian.9537:

Yeah, adaptation as a guard to boon thieves is a pretty simple thing: play another class which doesn’t get wrecked by this kind of stupid design -.-

Not everyone has multiple classes with the needed equipment to rock 150 AR. For some people, they have one toon who is the only toon that can do fractals due to Ascended equipment and AR availability, and if that toon is a Guardian, they basically cannot do the highest fractals through no fault of their own. Guardians do retaliation. It’s essentially their main mechanic. Making things HARDER is one thing, making them unplayable for an entire class is another.

CaptAurellian exaggerates the issue. It’s not impossible to play guardian at higher levels; it is, however, a lot harder on the team if the guardian isn’t careful enough. That’s why a lot of high-end fractallers do as the Capt suggests: bring another prof; it’s a lot easier, by which I mean, you don’t have to pay as much attention.

If you are dead set on using guardian through L100 despite the recommendations, that you really have to play it a lot better than (for example) I ever have. You have to be an expert at mitigating damage, about ensuring that your team has a way to quickly strip retaliation off foes (not to mention recognizing that it’s an issue), about protecting them from the non-retal damage, and so on. You also have to be highly effective about using the guardian’s strengths against foes.

It’s definitely doable — I mostly ran guardian through the 40s under the old system and through about the 50s or 60s in the new. I mostly changed to other profs to fill gaps in the team’s support or DPS and not so much because I thought guardian was unplayable. Although, as it turns out, I’m really glad I did: it’s a lot less work being effective with the other profs.

tl;dr if you want to play guardian, you can. It’s going to require upping your game a lot.

Reroll to a Necro. I did swap my fractal gear from Guard to Rev until ~70; then I did craft a light ascended armor, did extract my resistances to the new clothes and got the gains. Never saw back, no remorses.

Keksmuffin.1450:

Can you please do something about Guardian having to kitten themselfes by not using half their skills half the time in high level fractals because of the Boon Thieves instability that kinda causes everybody to die if you use anything that gives retal at the wrong time (GS #4, any virtue besides f3, leaps or blasts in light fields).

I mean sure I can just not use my skills, even swap out zeal so I don’t have the automatic symbol proc on 50% HP but it’s just not fun at all and I don’t think one class should have such a huge disadvantage just because it has this useless and super counterproductive boon as their “trademark” boon.

Let retal from oponents do less damage (not let it scale with their power to ridicolous ticks as 900 per hit), replace retal on symbol of wrath with might or fury, replace the automatic symbol proc with something else, think of something else yourself but please do something about it so I can do proper DPS rotations without camping longbow or mace for 90% of the time if I don’t want to risk wiping my party.

Since I kinda like the idea of getting punished for attacking brainlessly by dying to retal my favorite option by far would be replacing retal on symbol of wrath though.

I fully agree, its ridiculous to have a gimmicky instability lock out a full profession or require them to kitten themselves and turn them into a pathetic excuse of a guardian.

Boogiepop Void.6473:

Not everyone has multiple classes with the needed equipment to rock 150 AR.

Should I have planted a giant “Warning! May contain sarcasm!” sign next to that post?

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

CaptAurellian exaggerates the issue. It’s not impossible to play guardian at higher levels; it is, however, a lot harder on the team if the guardian isn’t careful enough. That’s why a lot of high-end fractallers do as the Capt suggests: bring another prof; it’s a lot easier, by which I mean, you don’t have to pay as much attention.

Big surprise, people (including myself) use hyperbole as a stylistic device. I played my guard, which I still consider to be my main, till F100 and till my mesmer had 150 AR.

However, the hyperbole actually isn’t very strong in my post above. It’s not just the guard player who has to be extremely careful (better don’t fall below the HP threshold or the wonderful reta symbol from Zeal will spawn), it’s also everyone else. Playing a guard without light fields is virtually impossible (if you do, an empty slot in the group is approximately just as effective), so blast finishers are effectively forbidden. Good luck ensuring no one ever uses one. If reta appears in the wrong moment, and that’s bound to happen sooner or later, people will go down, no matter whether you have boon strip in your group or not.

Sadly, the easiest solution to all those issues is simple: don’t take a guard to boon thieves fractals. It’s horrible design and I wish someone at FailNet would find one or two brain cells enabling him to correct it, but I doubt that will happen in the foreseeable future.

With boon thieves getting a cooldown per player, there really isn’t any issue with retaliation any more. You can’t reasonably build up enough duration to murder your own team unless you seriously focus fire blast light fields quite intentionally. I pub with Guardians all of the time now and we yolo boon thieves without worrying about retaliation and there are no problems.

Boon Thieves is just a mechanic that people need to play around. It is possible to form your party composition so that you don’t get killed by boons. In a good comp, someone will be boon stripping, so retal wouldn’t matter much (maybe a couple of seconds before a boon strip procs).

If you aren’t trying to get a specific comp, maybe just joining a general lfg or something, then everyone needs to be ready to change to something not as meta if the group is struggling. I normally run PS warrior, which can get in a similar situation where the mobs kill us with 25 stacks of might. If my group is struggling with that, then I’ll switch so some other build with much lower damage to keep us alive.

Necro has to switch out of minions sometimes to avoid bad aggro. Same with mesmer clones. Revs sometimes might not want to run glint. Every class needs to be aware of the boons they are putting out and sacrifice a little if their group is struggling.

Also, you can tell your party that you will be dropping light fields, so they should be careful with their blasts. If a daredevil blasts your symbols a bunch and then dies to the retal, that’s his/her fault, not yours.

Tl;dr With good comp, retal is fine. With pugs, all classes might need to sacrifice. Guard isn’t in a special situation.