Guild Wars 2

Hey, guys. Today, Arken Elric and I did a webcast (perhaps the first of several), discussing the game from a Guardian perspective in sPvP. We first talked about the different specs available to Guardians, the things these specs do well, and things they may be lacking to be more effective. Later we moved on to the various other classes and how the Guardian stacks up to the different builds we encounter in sPvP. We started off the discussion just the two of us, but later on we were joined by various other members of the NA sPvP community (including Bear, Countless, Blinx, Cruuk, and Wakkey), and got their valuable input as well. If you’re interested in sPvP balance discussion, you won’t want to miss it! Link below:

http://www.twitch.tv/arken_elric/b/466823707

As should be obvious, the contents of the webcast are only our opinions, and shouldn’t be taken as anything other than that. If you have your own opinions, feel free to share! If you like what we’ve done, feel free to follow Arken to show your support and to be part of future podcasts, as we always try to include the viewers in the discussion.

Arken Elric is definitely my favorite streamer on twitch by far

I want to watch this, but I gave up after the first 15 minutes. The pacing was way too slow. For what I did watch, it kept going in circles about Altruistic Healing, repeating the same three points: it’s okay for solo, scales great with group play, and really caters to staff.

Fair enough; we didn’t really have a list of talking points, we more or less just winged it for this one. In future videos we’ll have to set a list of items to hit and try to stick to a time limit so we don’t end up going overboard. Also, I’ll make some cliff notes tomorrow for those that can’t or don’t want to watch the whole thing. Thanks for the comment.

I “think” I’m surprised that this doesn’t get more attention, but I guess I just expect it at this point in the game.

I do believe that it should have been more focused in discussion and streamlined to “get to the point” as it is sort of long, but still a good attempt at bringing up issues regarding guardians, and thank you for that.

I have not finished watching all of it, but so far a lot of it is what I and other had addressed months ago, and some of it on release. It is only now being noticed by a larger population because as it was pointed out, we have stayed pretty much the same without any drastically large buffs or nerfs, while the rest of the game has advanced. So the downfalls we do have are not more highlighted.

I somewhat disagree that the only useful AH build involves a staff, as hammer and/or mace apply symbols frequently enough, that even if people do not stay in for the full duration, there are enough symbols falling on the ground you will get a frequent enough application of boons on allies to proc AH. Although I do understand the dislike for the lack of mobility with symbols and that does present a problem.

I also concur that fury on meditations is nice….but not what the problem was.

A common theme has risen with guardians, and that is that we can’t get away and we can’t lock someone down to get a kill. Thus we are forced to fight.

Many feel the solution is to give us more control and ability to keep a target in combat with us.

That is one solution but not the only solution.

Other solutions are to either increase the staying power of all builds, not just bunker builds, to maintain melee range combat at a hearty pace.

This can be looked down on as people feel guardians are unkillable right now (popular opinion and many times over exaggerated, but still has a hint a truth).

I suggest a increase in base healing of VoR to open up more build diversity instead of being forced down AH or Monk’s Focus, or building full healing power and relying on Regen. Although I believe this is an unpopular opinion.

Another solution would be to increase the burst potential of guardians across the board, and make it so that when we do connect it hurts and is lethal, but we remain easy to kite and get away from. Right now we do good damage sure, but not amazing burst damage much in the way that you might see other glassy builds pull off.

As mentioned in the video, much of our burst is easily telegraphed and avoided, and even then I still think it is often not enough to push it over the edge and become as threatening as other classes. This is probably another unpopular decision.

The last option is the one mentioned. We gain more control to set up burst and keep targets within reach and inside of our damage radius. Keep the damage where it is and the survival, but make it so we can land our attacks reliably.

The biggest advantage that guardians present is the group utility and support. Yes we can be bunkers, but I agree with Arken, we are not the “best” bunker. But we are the more versatile bunker and excel in team fights.

I still need to finish watching the video, but the 2 hour long thing cuts into my time, so I will continue more later.

I agree that we have a lot of cool things, that start out as great ideas, but need a little more polish and push to make them “effective”. There are just areas where we just aren’t there yet.

Again, thank you for trying to bring up guardians into the discussion light instead of “they are ok” and we get ignored again.

CMF,

This is a well thought out post, as usual.

My perspective is, even when enemies are in guardians control space it doesn’t feel that punishing. Were as its punishing for a guardian to fight against characters who can maximize their zoning while doing damage or classes that have the ability to disengage.

I feel that guardian’s area control needs to be buffed. So enemies are really punished for getting caught in guardian’s space. Perhaps this can be done with symbols? Which is consider rather on the weak end at this time.

Something interesting about the upcoming balance patch is the devs said they would be buffing guardian support skills that go unused. This makes no sense, because its a area guardian already does well in so why buff them more?

I think the preview of the support changes are good, but not really needed. They should of focused on key issues on why you only see guardians in support roles and nothing else.

Just as Ken stated, we kind of just winged it. Towards the end we had quite a few people in the channel with us giving their opinions on the matter. Sorry for the long video, we’ll try to have talk points in the next video.

Guardians may be the most pigeonholed class in spvp. Sure almost every groups runs one but the vast majority its mid point bunker. I hate that play-style. Its basically why I do nothing but solo q anymore. I love my guardian but I am not going to be forced into playing a bunker to get on a decent team.

Just finished watching the whole thing.

I think this video branches out to more than just guardians, but the state of the game as a whole, which is good general feed back that should be noted.

Again, I think build variety needs to be looked at, as a whole, but yes for guardians as well.

I do agree that there are a lot of passive effects that are pretty prevalent at this time, with that famous quote about how we need to “actively react to the passive effects” being a frustrating thing to be told.

Bringing down the amount of dodging and the 100% vigor is good and bad. On one hand, if you talk about PvE, there are encounters that are built around a certain amount of dodges per second, so those would have to be relooked at.

This is about pvp though, so vigor in pvp does create a lot of dodging, but it is a paced and steady(slow) return of energy. I think the biggest issue where people are frustrated in opponents that evade a lot are when the evade is built into animations. Especially to point when the animations are on short and spammable cooldowns.

Dodge by itself is not that detremental, and there are large enough windows of opportunity to lock down a target, but again, in conjunction with the evading animations and weapon skills, then it becomes a problem.

You can argue that some classes are more squishy and thus the need for evasive styled fighting, but then you need to create a “control” counter for said evasions, and also to point, I think that it is nto evenly distrubuted on who we consider “squishy” and not.

To the guardian’s case, we are squishy while being tanky as well. The lowest health tier, but the highest armor tier. The armor/toughness is not as crucial, especially considering conditions at the moment, so the active gameplay aspect in “evading” and avoiding attacks is more pertinent, which we do not have the same avoidance per second ability as other classes.

By being mobile other classes can avoid being hit in the first place, with invisibility/dodges/blinds/evading attacks it compounds the “survival” aspect of not being hit. Those have a longer duration for the most part to provide longer “survival” for many times, multiple attacks.

For the guardian we have blocks, blinds, and perma vigor. Blocks only stop the next attack, blinds as well just the next attack, and I expressed that I don’t think perma vigor is as detrimental by itself as attack evasion animations, because those last for a few frames, versus just the next attack.

So we are “squishy” (we are tanky, and the classic bunker, but in terms of skill survival and lowest hp), without the ability to break combat, and on top of that, shorter “survival” skills versus evasive classes.

What we do have is good healing, and two really strong duration survival utilities (shelter and renewed focus). Is it equivalent to mass evades? If we built to it yes, I think so, but goes back to the one build type is viable idea.

This post is more just a ramble to respond back to some key points brought up in the video, I’m sure there are holes in my thought process, but I hope I got the main idea about evades through.

Guardian’s have played the same role in PvP since launch, utterly pigeonholed and the specs have not changed much.
Boons, condi removal, rolling around on the floor, rezzes and finishers on mid point.

DPS Guardians lack the ability to stay on targets, and you HAVE to take Altruistic Healing or Healing Meditations or you get ripped apart too quickly due to low hp.

Symbols don’t do enough damage, and also don’t seem to provide enough support, they aren’t good enough for team mates to sit on them in team fights.
Attempting to stand in a Guardian’s symbols in a team fight would mean dying to AoE damage and melee cleave.

So they don’t provide enough boon support to the team and AH procs for the Guardian in team fights. They generally don’t do much damage either as GW2 has such a large amount of ranged damage.

Symbols take too many traits for basic benefits, they need a real trait to make them more mobile and versatile against the AoE spam that GW2 has always had.

We need a trait that makes Symbols into auras that provide 1s pulses of boons and damage around the Guardian for the 5s duration.
Make it a Grandmaster trait that replaces Battle Presence.

That trait alone provides a whole range of options for Bunker, Support, DPS and Solo Guardians. Diversifying the build possibilities for GW2’s most stagnant profession.

Best guardian discussion I’ve seen.

Both CMF and Ezrael have nailed what I have felt for a long time.

Here’s a summary of what was discussed in the video for those that don’t have time to watch it:

Guardian

• Altruistic Healing DPS

1. Few different ways to build it, most involve staff
2. Good build with some good and some bad matchups 1v1
3. Could lower CD on “Retreat!” to enhance viability of non-staff versions
4. Works well on double guard teams in combination with a bunker guard for additional suppport
5. Symbols promote static gameplay, perhaps make them traitable to become auras

• Meditations

1. Lacks ability to stick to targets (no swiftness, few snares)
2. Lacks a good way to escape bad fights
3. Upcoming fury trait is ok but doesn’t help above weaknesses, swiftness or chill would help more
4. Could add ground-target to either of the 2 teleport meditations to help above
5. Chill-on-blind trait would be another option
6. Zeal should have a good GM trait to pair with Meditaions instead of being forced into Radiance and one-handers

• Bunker

1. Still strong, EU altruistic healing bunker build just as hard to kill as warrior bunker
2. Virtues bunker still offers the best mid support in the game
3. Would like to see more support options added for other classes to compete with bunker guard

Dodge Spam

• Some classes have too many dodges
• Classes with Vigor traits (like “Vigor on crit”) should see a lowering in the amount of Vigor given since these classes typically have near 100% Vigor uptime
• Sigil of Energy should change to 25% endurance return in PvP
• A slight damage nerf across the board may be needed to compensate for the lower number of dodges

Warrior

• Bunker build strong in solo queue, doesn’t offer enough support compared to guard to compete in team queue
• Healing signet overbuffed, very strong in combination with soldier/cleric amulet and CC
• Berserker Stance is very strong, maybe it should match the tooltip rather than complete immunity
• Skull Crack is a very long stun for an instant-cast skill — should either have a short (1/4-1/2 sec) casting time or have lower stun duration
• Sigil of Paralyzation is currently bugged to round up to the nearest second, going to change on Oct 15th but perhaps they should be removed from PvP entirely if current stun durations remain as long as they are

Thief

• Sword/Dagger bulid currently has too much evasion and is hard to punish when overextending
• Its ability to pressure and stick on other glass cannons is currently keeping Mesmer and Ele out of the meta
• Sword #2’s Shadow Return perhaps should not be usable while CCed
• Stealing 2 boons may be a bit too strong (instead steal 1 boon or remove 2)
• Slightly decrease the evades in addition to lowering Vigor access (maybe reduce the effect of Feline’s Grace)
• Shadow Trap offers too much map mobility and has no good counterplay other than running your own thief/mesmer

Ranger

• Currently relies a bit too much on passive traits
• Access to a lot of protection and capable of being offensive with pets + spirits while having a lot of defensive utility to fall back on (evades/fears/blinds)
• Spirit build currently has too much flexibility (good 1v1er, good teamfighter) compared to other classes
• Currently very locked into Wilderness Survival tree since the passives + traits in the tree are too good and they lack good stunbreaks and condi removal

Necro

• No tells on their marks; can’t tell which mark is being cast
• Set up perfectly to deal with DPS Guardians with good ranged damage, snares, and Corrupt Boon
• Able to take down a Bunker Guard relatively quickly
• Still very strong, only class keeping them in line currently is CC Warrior

Engi

• One of the toughest matchups for DPS and Bunker Guardian due to kiting + grenades and bombs
• Good ability to kite and play defensively when needed and can close to melee and drop bombs/nades at their feet when winning
• Elixir R can be used to sometimes win a losing duel
• Grenades could have a minimum range in PvP (240?) so they can’t be thrown at feet and have every nade hit
• Bomb damage is a bit high in PvP, could see a slight reduction
• Lacks good stunbreakers but otherwise still a very strong class with high skill cap in PvP

AoE cleave too strong in PvP, lowers the viability of single-target damage builds when AoE is so effective at winning teamfights, also AoE needed in the meta to counter AI

Mesmer

• Currently has a tough time in the meta due to the strength of s/d thief and AoE condi damage
• Toughest matchup 1v1 is the Countless “on clone death” build
• Against shatter, AH DPS Guard has a lot of ways of cleansing immob and blocking shatters

Elementalist

• D/D has seen too many nerfs and fallen out of the meta especially with S/D Thief boon stealing
• Best option in the meta is 0/30/20/0/20 build with Rock Solid to cover Ether Renewal and deal with CC Warrior
• S/D build is great burst but a bit too narrow to deal with the various threats in the meta including S/D Thief
• Bunker Ele needs more group support options to compete with Bunker Guard

Power meta more fun to play and watch than the current condi/attrition meta

Awesome, thank you for the summary cymerdown.

Ken, you’re the man. Awesome job.

I only lasted about 45 minutes but heres what i gathered…

-Give guardians a bunch of things to make them better
-Warriors are the best bunkers
-Nerf Warriors

cymerdown has a good summary and as you can see its pretty much negative talking points and nerfing other classes, esp war and thief, and improving guardians, because you know no team wants to field a guardian in pvp.

reeks of “buff the class I play because I should be god and nerf everyone else”

Not exactly, we only mentioned small things that could help the underplayed specs like AH DPS and Meditations. We did say that on the whole, DPS Guardian’s in a pretty good spot (and bunker is in a great spot), so long as some of the more broken specs in the current meta are brought into line.

As for Warriors, I did state my opinion that they’re still underpowered as mid bunkers in team arena due to not providing enough support. And we mentioned that other classes need some help in terms of support so that other classes can compete with Guardians as bunkers. The only things that we asked to have looked at for Warrior are things that a lot of others agree are on the broken side, like Healing Signet and stun duration.

For thief, we only really talked about their most powerful spec and Shadow Trap, and we’re certainly not the first to bring those items up. It’s not their damage that’s too strong, it’s the evasion and mobility of the spec that’s making it oppressively good at the moment, and again, there are many who agree with those points.

So yeah, I’d say your post reeks of gross exaggeration.

Read over the talking points again Dekk,

Yes, some of it is saying other classes could use a tone down, but not because they are hard for guardians to fight, but because as a whole they are causing problems for all professions.

They speak up for mesmers, elementalists, and any other professions to gain more bunker viability, besides guardians.

So it is not all “my class sucks buff me”. I think it was a fairly balanced discussion, with additional view points from representatives from the other professions as well.

Yes it is from the guardian perspective (name of thread?!?! omg!) and that will inherently have some bias, but they maintained an even discussion well.

We tried to be as unbiased as possible but when discussing about how everything else is currently balanced from a single classes perspective, it slips sometimes.