I get that there is a currently a campaign to nerf retaliation. However, targeting Symbol of Wrath simply because it gives a retaliation boon makes little sense.
First of all, the most offending “bunker” builds that people complain about most in spvp do not use Greatsword to maintain retaliation in the first place. Secondly, it would have been just as easy to remove the retaliation boon from SoW and replace it with another boon such as might or fury. Instead, what you have done is nerf the dps output of our most offensively-oriented weapon as most people use this symbol for it’s actual damage and not the boon that it gives.
You have also left us with traits that are simply not desirable (Symbolic Power, Writ of Exaltation, Writ of The Merciful). These traits of course are all designed around symbols yet you nerf one of our biggest reasons to invest in those traits. You have also left us with a SoW ability that is pretty much garbage. If I want retaliation to deal with a fast attack then I will use a shout as I don’t have to stand motionless in a symbol to use it.
I think that I speak on the behalf of most Guardians when I ask that you revert the SoW change and replace the retaliation boon with something else that is more useful rather than radically changing the greatsword playstyle.
ps – I’m not even addressing the ability position changes which has opened up an entirely different can of worms and is causing just as much uproar.
SoR – Nethernoz (Necro), Zealot of Pain (Guardian), William The Butcher (Ranger)
The cooldown was doubled yet we didn’t get a damage boost to to other skills to make up for the loss of DPS or a protection increase to make up for the loss of 50% of our retaliation ability.
Good thing I was playing sword and shield up until a day or so ago so I have something to fall back on now that GS is nearly as useless as Hammer is.
hammer’s not useless With the trait that extends the duration of symbols you have protection up almost all the time.
Great in PVP not so awesome in PVE… At least I found GS to be much more useful in PVE because all the skills had a use, where as the ranged root and ring of warding were pretty much useless in PVE. Maybe if ROW had a damage component it would be better. The knockback was somewhat useful but only situation-ally; basically only if you were getting beat on very heavily. And the last attack that triggers the protection skill with hammer is WAY too slow in firing. Maybe if it activated twice as fast it would be better.
What damage nerf? Basically they switched the cds of symbol with leap. Now leap as symbol’s old cd and symbol has leap’s old cd. No nerf on the cds really but they definitely screwed the combo up by doing this.
1. Symbol of Wrath was much more damage than Leap of Faith.
2. The only Symbol of Wrath CD was 10s, but the new Leap of Faith CD is 15s.
Overall, it’s a damage nerf in most cases. The exception is when you can benefit significantly from the reduced downtime granted by Leap of Faith (e.g. very mobile enemies).
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD ANET, CHANGE IT BACK TO THE WAY IT WAS!!! By changing the cds they’ve basically changed the combo sorta. We can still use the old but with the extra timer things wont flow.
I hate the change.
1. It’s uncomfortable to use Leap of Faith when moving with the ‘W’ key.
2. The CDs make the combos weird.
3. Everything is in the wrong place!
I don’t understand Anet. The key order for guardian greatsword skill was perfect before. It just flowed. Now its assbackwards. Symbol of wrath was one of the great things we had with the retaliation.
What were they thinking? We have no ranged weapons to speak of. Staff and scepter are mid-range at best. They killed guardian.
There’s so much broken stuff in this game. Why mess with something that was working?
They want every Guardian to roll Warriors, don’t you guys get it?
Geez, I gotta explain everything…
/sarcasm
Now, instead of making the less popular professions more attractive (from their report on professions popularity released some time ago), they make them LESS attractive?
Though it’s probably due to balance but… I still don’t see how a Warrior who can combo something stupid like Stun/Immobilize and hit #2 can deal nearly 10k damage to someone who can’t Break Stuns…
But well, probably the 2500ish damage every 10 seconds from Symbol of Wrath was clearly out of the line. It had to be nerfed.
And yeah, this change to guardian made me lose all faith in anet’s gameplay philosophy. I loved the guardian greatsword, I loved the damage and I loved how the skills were placed, now both the damage and the placements are ruined.. good job breaking yet another profession/build.
I doubted between guardian and ranger, this change to guardian got rid of the doubt, as there’s no way I can play a guardian like this, but then they went ahead and destroyed the only ranger build as well, in the same breath, by cutting shortbow damage in half.. not sure what to do now.
The only thing I can think of is that they are so afraid of high ranged dps, that they rather completely break all ranged options.
They want every Guardian to roll Warriors, don’t you guys get it?
Geez, I gotta explain everything…
/sarcasm
Now, instead of making the less popular professions more attractive (from their report on professions popularity released some time ago), they make them LESS attractive?
Though it’s probably due to balance but… I still don’t see how a Warrior who can combo something stupid like Stun/Immobilize and hit #2 can deal nearly 10k damage to someone who can’t Break Stuns…
But well, probably the 2500ish damage every 10 seconds from Symbol of Wrath was clearly out of the line. It had to be nerfed.
Still love my W. Up until this patch I loved my guardian almost as much. Well, that’s pretty much over now..
It’s almost as if the team that created this beautiful game, was fired, and got replaced by another team that is now systematically ruining the game, build by build, profession by profession.
And yeah, this change to guardian made me lose all faith in anet’s gameplay philosophy. I loved the guardian greatsword, I loved the damage and I loved how the skills were placed, now both the damage and the placements are ruined.. good job breaking yet another profession/build..
^^This^^
It was the one good weapon we had. With the necessity to be up close to use any healing skills (not to mention a lack of any raged weapons) They killed the effectiveness. Then they hurt us even more by nerfing symbol of wrath ….Sigh.
It’s almost as if the team that created this beautiful game, got replaced by another team that is now systematically ruining the gameplay, build after build, profession after profession.
It seemed to have started at the last beta.. professions such as elementalist got broken completely, weapons such as ranger longbow became entirely useless for any kind of game content, instead of making guardian scepter useful, then just added range, which changed nothing, etc..
At first I still had faith, just initial balance issues I thought.. but this last patch is rapidly breaking down what trust I had. The weakest profession in the game (elementalist) got downgraded even further with a 33% damage decrease, one of the most fun weapons (guardian greatsword) was made completely counter intuitive, as well as much weaker.. etc.. it’s just devolving from bad to worse now.
It’s almost as if the team that created this beautiful game, got replaced by another team that is now systematically ruining the gameplay, build after build, profession after profession.
This a hundred fold. It’s sad because it’s true. The game can’t stop being any more beautiful and the challenges are alot of fun, but my god these classes (except warrior) have taken a colossal beating with a single update.
Increasing the CD on symbol of wrath hurt my survivability too.
Used to be able to throw it down in melee every 10 seconds in dungeons and watch the Altruistic Healing keep me up.
Doubling the CD halved its healing over the course of a fight
80 Guardian: WvW role = Front-line Infantry
80 Thief: WvW role = Scorpion wire trolling
They need to buff altruistic healing to compensate by a fair bit. Not all our weapons even have symbols that they create so nerfing the main one that is used for symbols is destructive to say the least.
They need to buff altruistic healing to compensate by a fair bit. Not all our weapons even have symbols that they create so nerfing the main one that is used for symbols is destructive to say the least.
Exactly, the synergy between the trait and symbol of wrath was quite a big part of my build for surviving on the front end. Why didn’t they just change retaliation for another boon? They wanted to change the guardians retaliation upkeep, so they nerfed the great sword dps and made a lot of the GS and symbol traits less effective.
wow you guys are over reacting. and I cant believe the OP thinks the hammer is useless. Do you even play a guardian? its one of the best weapons. RoW is amazing if you know how to use it. The ranged imm. is incredibly powerful. The hammer is arguably the best guardian weapon.
Symbol of wrath was hardly the best skill on GS, sure it’s annoying that they rearranged the skills and increased some CD, but good lord people learn to adapt.
Guardian is widely considered the most powerful classes in the game. They change one skills CD and all of a sudden its over, NERF they cry. The DOOOM, anet hates their own game! How dare they change one skill!
@wollie i agree to a point but it’s not just the symbol of wrath change that is getting people’s goat up. They’re systematically nerfing retaliation builds with every patch.
The change to the order of the skills on the bar is something i can’t get my head round, it seems so pointless and almost them saying we want you to use the skills in ‘this’ order… eh?
I understand the change to the skill mechanics and im not too bothered by that since imo Retalitation was getting a little out of hand, However Anet if your reading the posts in this thread please change the order of the skills back to how it was originally. The new placement doesnt flow and feels very strange.
I agree the the skill order change is lame, no need for that. But the retaliation change (SoW) was prolly needed.
All I’m saying is that guards and in a great place. and people shouldn’t over react. They will continue to nerf/buff things throughout the life of the game.
Guardian is extremely strong. Although, I’d rather them bring other classes to their level rather than nerf my Guardian but balance is balance.
I still would have liked clarification on Wrath causing “Burning” as in the description or if that is just a typo Would kind of balance out the longer cooldown than.
agree i used it for damage and not retaliation why couldn’t they just change it with protection or stability instead. they said it was to nerf retaliation uptime yet they also nerfed the actual damage from the skill.
also greatsword have some very nice traits while other weapons don’t.
except for 1hand sword but then it require you to invest in radiance the worst trait to put points in for a guardian.
in my opinion the skill slot change is more annoying than the symbol damage. now i have to push 4 then 2 instead of 3 then 2.
the leap attack is less used than symbol and is more a situational skill.
Stop over playing it. Small nerf was fine. Coming from a Guardian andvI still do well. Its still kitten easy mode.
No offense, but you probably don’t play a level 80 greatsword guardian as your main to make a statement like this. The nerf was by no means small. It is a large dps nerf as well as synergy nerf (altruistic healing being a biggie). This nerf has killed one of the biggest reasons that I loved playing a guardian. I could give two craps about retaliation.
SoR – Nethernoz (Necro), Zealot of Pain (Guardian), William The Butcher (Ranger)
I actually completely forgot about Altruistic healing, That was the trait that made is possible for me to do good damage without feeling like i was made of paper. Now i have to agree to bringing symbol of wrath back to normal and just replacing the Retaliation.
I just wish they’d respond to us – was it a mistake that didn’t they spot?, was it supposed to affect so much?.
As stated this change affects a number of Symbol traits, and as number of them are on the trait line that has a number of GS and Symbol traits (the Zeal line) it makes no sence at all. Then of couse if you head into other trait lines the GS Symbol nerf gets even worse.
I just don’t understand how they didn’t realise (or just didn’t mind) that adjusting the cooldown on the Symbol would affect so much, and i really don’t get how some people are claiming this was a minor change.
It ruined my GS Spirit Weapon build, as to get the traits in the Zeal line for the Spirit Weapons you get all the Symbol traits, and as the GS Symbol is now doubled in lengh it’s a massive nerf to my GS damage to say the least.
The guardian is still very strong though the change is massively annoying.
What I have found out since the patch is, now, I can chain kill faster with my hammer than with the greatsword because the cooldowns are lower. Maybe that was their intent in a very roundabout way.
They’re systematically nerfing retaliation builds with every patch.
Not the more popular ones with 100% uptime. If they are trying to do this, they really aren’t doing a very good job.
They really just need to rework (or remove) retaliation and quickness instead of taking the lazy way out and targeting skills they THINK would help them avoid those tackling those issues.
With the trait that extends the duration of symbols you have protection up almost all the time.
Would kind of balance out the longer cooldown than.