Guild Wars 2

Title.

Hey there,

I’m a bit of a lurker and rarely post but news of the expac has got me back.

With coming back, digging into the classes and getting to know the weapons/traits associated again got me thinking.

What weapons need a new identity or some strengthening or focus to what they do?

For one, particularly with the recent 1 range nerf – Guardian staff needs an entire rework.

Perhaps taking 1-5 skills from DnD war cleric spells

What are your thoughts on such things?

Are there any weapons you would redesign?
If so, how would you reshape their workings?

Thank you for reading,

-Phyrak

Guardian Staff is fine and people are blowing it out of proportion. Engineer Rifle needs an update.

The Guardian staff probably needed rework since launch. The nerf to its hit range has little to do with it. It’s not an exciting weapon to use, and there are two reasons it’s popular:
1. Lootstick
2. Swiftness Symbol
The orb is clunky to use and doesn’t really have much effect, and the Empower is a grounded heal/might where other classes and skills just do better for it. And the Ward skills on Guardian weapons just confuse me. No trait support and they don’t do much besides make the bland AI thump it twice before it goes away.
So, yeah, I’d like to see Guard-staff fit GW2’s combat better. No idea how, though. Hm. Thought exercise for a different day.

The Guard staff is a Support weapon…. and players tend to not grasp support concepts anywhere near as a good as attack/defense skills. Thats not to say the Staff doesn’t have problems; but its shown by this latest round of balance threads that they aren’t even aware of the 4 things its been good at outside of being a loot stick.

The real glaring issues are ultimately with the Autoattack and Light Orb not really having clear purpose or synergy, causing them to come off as passively used because their there. Given how the Staff only sees thoughtful use in PvP/WvW, they may as well redesign both skills to be more directly useful in both modes…. or specifically leaning toward WvW, so it has utility beyond the pre-fight stacking.

Just as an example, have the Orb of Light’s targeting/movement mechanics changed to be similar to Astral Wisp. This has the advantage of being fast enough to trail through a friendly group for healing, while eliminating the bigger issue of terrain collision. It also enables a guard to attach an Orb to a target in order to stage the Detonation skills. With Detonate now having Light Aura as part of its effects, this becomes a reliable way to trigger/time it for group retaliation once combat is already heating up.

For the Auto attack, have the Staff trait grant stacks of Outgoing Boon Duration per hit, so it enhances their other support utilities when using staff mid-brawl.

Clearly the Engineer rifle.

Longbow for ranger only 2 skills are worth using the other 2 – knock back and invis -
are not very good and i would replace them in a heart beat