Guild Wars 2

And it contains 4347 words, that is 4 words per hour gameplay, to me that is brief and condensed.

For the ones that can’t focus for 20 minutes, you can stop reading here and scroll down to the last post of OP and you have a very brief summary. This is a wall of text since it’s a summary of my thoughts and feedback from over 1000 hours in game.

Background
After spending most of my in game time playing a guardian I thought that it was time to write a review and try to give a balanced perspective on the profession. As all reviews it’s not objective, just a set of opinions based on my own experience of the profession.

I played just over 1000 hours now and on my first account (about 700 hours) I played almost exclusively wvw and dungeons with the larger portion of my time in wvw. I finished all dungeons in both explorer mode and in story but only done a couple of fractals.

In wvw I played with both great guilds and on great servers but also solo roamed and played with small premade parties.

On my other account (350 hours) I focused solely on Tpvp and SPvP but I will try to stay focused on WvW and PvE.

The reason I decided to write this was that unexpected change to the spirit weapons and it was over the top, even though I don’t like them, myself. And with that in mind if think it might be worth the effort to try and give Arenanet a players perspective on the profession.

Overall, the good stuff
This is a great profession which really feels like a boon warrior and its an excellent frontline pusher and main tank, yeah I know there aren’t supposed to be tanks in this game but there are, with the proper setup you will have aggro 90% of the time and guardians are without the doubt the strongest profession in dungeons and just by building a tank you are the most important ingredient when it comes to making content easy mode for your group. I also played dungeons on my warrior and my ranger and whenever there is a high toughness guardian in the group content is facilitated. The only thing that makes content even easier is to have two guardians, ie stacking stability and protection.

In wvw its also great fun even though we aren’t as powerful here. Sure we can push the frontlines with nice impact and we can defend the team but the lack of ranged options makes us limited. But overall, in premade setups, we are a great addition and especially our amount of stability.

I personally find the profession to be super fun and with a great potential.

The bad things
Well I truly enjoy my guardian and especially skills/traits that are visually pleasing and that has some umpf! On the other hand I tend to get very annoyed when stuff aint working or are clunky or I cant understand the use of them. So in this review I will focus on those things and if something isn’t mentioned it because I don’t find it to be bad. This is the complete improvement list from my perspective.

Weapons
The paradox to the above is that, imo, the profession isn’t implemented properly. I also play Ranger, Warrior and Thief in wvw and the weird part is that I find those to be more “complete”. With my warrior and ranger its actually possible to be successful in wvw and pve and not even use your utilities. For instance I kill almost everything in organized raids with my ranger without even using my pet and just use three passive signets as utility. And the same goes for my warrior, im not that dependent on my utilities as I am on my guardian.

My conclusion is that the professions above have much better implemented weapon sets, which are enough for an acceptable effectiveness.

One viable option in builds
There are also other flaws and one of those is that if a world championship was held amongst guardians, 99% of the build used would incorporate AH and MF. 30 points in Valor is mandatory if you want to be able to be the frontline pusher and/or boon soldier. Sure there are other builds as well but to be honest they aren’t competitive compared to AH/MF but they can be fun.

One aspect of this is ofc that those are strong traits for survivability but if we just assume that we wouldn’t use them, where would that leave us? Imo there is no easy answer but in comparison to warriors, that have heal on shouts with shorter cd and also group wide heals, I find that I can play a warrior without those shouts as a frontline pusher but its almost impossible with a guardian without AH or MF, at least if you want to have some impact with your dps.
From that perspective we have an issue with our traited survivability (heal on dodge, AH, MF, Aegis, etc) and the size of our healthpool. Imo all the active defences we have justify a small healthpool but at the same time the size of the healthpool forces us to invest in AH and MF for longevity.

Symbols
Symbols are a huge part of a guardian and in pve they work as intended and I can see myself use the traits that can be found in Honor. The issue is that we just have to be the only profession that have to invest in traits to get certain weapon abilities to work as intended. And if you are into symbols and want a 100% symbol build then you need to invest 30 points in Honor and 25 points in zeal which pretty much makes it impossible to reach AH and MF. So basically if you trait for your symbols (3 major traits and two minor), which has max impact in melee range you more or less have to leave out the traits that gives you survivability within melee range. This is just really weird imo. Another aspect is that symbols isn’t normalized in casting times and mobility either, this means that some are really slow to place and some immobilize you and both these aspects are huge drawbacks in pvp and to some extent in pve. The way symbols work with the boons also make them less supportive, you team has to stay in the symbol which is just stupid in both wvw and pve, so basically we move for the team and place a boon which the teammates then have move out from in order to survive. Its counterproductive.

There should also be more attack focused traits connected to symbols and in the trait list below there are some suggestions that would increase the choices in building your symbol guardian.

Mobility
Well we have really poor mobility, from a macro perspective, when moving around and in order to be able to not slow down the group or teammate we have to invest heavily in both traits, utilities and gear to have the mobility needed for a melee centric profession.

From a micro perspective we lack some of the tools needed to stay in range and frankly if I play my other toons in wvw and face a guardian the only thing that can touch me is retaliation. Not even Judges Intervention is enough, you just need to look for the animation on WW/banish/RoW/ZD and dodge when they start doing it at a distance and when they teleport you just aint there anymore. But what we really miss is innate weapon based cripple and especially mace, hammer and 1h sword should have this.

1h contra 2h
In pve and wvw the two handers are greatly favoured and one of the reasons for that is in fact AH and its placement. Basically you need 30 points in Valor and in order to make 1h weapons competitive you need to invest 30 points in Radiance to get Right Hand Strength. A marvellous tool but if you go for it in combination with AH your healthpool will make the game play to risky and being upfront and pushing is out of the question. Basically you can’t be the melee centric in your face soldier with 1-handers.

Zeal
Just as with “1h contra 2h” zeal suffers from AH and its placement, even if just AH was worth taking zeal isn’t an option and frankly, Radiance, Virtues and Honor are also more worth investing in even though Radiance feels almost as bad as Zeal. Both Zeal and Radiance need to increase in value

Range
Well there has been tons of posts written about this one. Both our ranged sets are just underpowered in wvw or very poorly implemented with low synergies within the weapon even though they can be situationally strong and both of them feels kind of dull imo. Once again we need to trait, staff and empower+AH+ SoS, to get a decent working weapon. And the scepter is a joke as a ranged option In wvw, sure, I use it but frankly it’s a melee weapon with a poorly implemented option to use it at range. Tbh the main reason why I use it is the immobilize.

Boons and virtues
I have two major gripes with the boons we have and both are boons that we have plenty of, ofc in relation to the other professions.

The first one is retaliation. It just feels like a left over from WoW or any other traditional mmo where they had the holy trinity intact. Arenanet has put in a lot of effort in the combat mechanics and focus being to avoid damage and I just love this part of the game that we have a system that focus on skill instead of gear and traditional healing. Retaliation is just bad, having a boon that actually works in the opposite direction and the worse you use the great mechanics this game offers the more relative damage you inflict. I just cant stand it and it smells old and very traditional

The seconds one is Aegis, in pve and duels this is fine and worth it but in wvw incorporating more then 10 players this is just a joke. A single hit will remove it and when you push in melee this has little to no value and the traits that’s connected to this is also very poor due to that.

Virtues and boons are tightly connected and frankly I adore the idea of virtues and find them super fun to use and to time for max benefit for my team. But I feel that something is lacking, and that is a powerful offensive option for the team, sure we have VoJ but stating that VoJ is powerful is kind meh since it packs the worst condition in the game and frankly in any balanced groupbased encounter there are other professions that can do it better then active VoJ. Never the less it as low cd so the power of it feels balanced. No, what I miss is a really good tool for attacking and that is fury and swiftness.

Conditions
Well the only condition we have is burns and we aren’t really good at this since we apply less than other professions and it stacks in duration. Basically we are kind of useless in a balanced team when it comes to condition builds.

Weapons
As a summary they don’t feel as well thought out, as warrior weapons in particular, and since we should have the same niche when fighting (melee centric) they are somewhat of a baseline. None of them, except the staff, needs an overhaul and only a couple of small changes would make them go from ok to really fun/good.

The weird part is that I find that our underwater options are more enjoyable and competent then our regular weapons, its weird.

Traits
Well compared to my warrior there are just so many bad traits in the guardian lines so I don’t know where to begin. Often its not the function but just that they are weak and suffer from poor underlying mechanics. One example is the traits that boosts burns all of them would be really nice if burns stacked in intensity instead of duration.

Utility
Well I think we have great utilities, great elites and also very nice heals, its here we shine imo.
Ofc there are some that are mediocre but overall a job well done.
One setback was the unfortunate change Arenanet did in the last patch when they more or less destroyed the spirit weapons. But I see that as something that’s gonna be fixed

Solutions and fixes
The AH/MF-build dilemma
Well the first thing that comes to mind is to nerf those traits but then the profession will be unplayable as Arenanet intended it to be played, as a melee centric frontline boon pusher. So instead of decreasing its value, so other lines becomes more worth the investment, they should increase in availability.

Personally I just adore AH and I think its great and the main reason for that is when you actually support the team you will survive, it gives you instant feedback that you actually play the game its intended. This is the rawmodel, imo, of a boon soldier.

How should we make it more available? Well I also miss a fourth virtue so why not have a Virtue of Altruism? Passive effect would be what AH does today, heal on boons on ally and the active effect would/could/should be the fury (if traited Inspired Virtues) and swiftness on activation, 20s cd and 10 s duration. And place a 50% increase on duration, for this virtue only, as a trait in zeal. This would greatly open up more ways to build and would address not just builds but mobility, increase the value of zeal and give us an offensive virtue.

Well wouldn’t that be overpowered to have AH with no investment at all. Yes it might be but read on, there are some nerfs/improvements incoming further down that affects AH.

Symbols
First, symbols should apply their entire boon duration when placed, not as pulses. Pulses are great in pve and for AH but in wvw and TPvP its just annoying to force people to stand in them when there is massive aoe going on. For them to work as good support you need at least 40% extra boonduration so you can stack duration and you shouldn’t be forced to trait and gear in order to get weapon skills to work. This is a huge nerf to AH and this alone would justify implementing Virtue of Altruism.

Second, increase the size of the symbol from its present size to what it is when traited. Size matters and traited size is a minimum for it to be valid in pvp.

Third, normalize casting time, SoS castingtime being the norm here, and make all weapons be able to move while placing the symbol.

Fourth, investing 55 points to get max effect from a weaponskill is just silly. Merge all symbol traits in Honor into one single trait and make it a master trait. If you want a symbol build its still 45 points to invest. 10 more points is subtracted in the section about Zeal trait line below.

Fifth, replace Smite with Symbol of Fire, ofc a firefield.

The above would address both symbol builds and their value, tone down AH, especially for pve, and increase the enjoyment of using our weapon skill without heavy investment in traits.

Mobility
If they implement Virtue of Altruism then the macro perspective would be solved but we would still have issues in the micro perspective and especially with mace, hammer and 1h sword. Frankly I don’t know how to address it but as someone suggested a master trait in zeal (2s cripple on swap would be nice) and it would increase the value of zeal and also address the mobility issue.

1h contra 2h
Tbh I find that Virtue of Altruism would address this as well. If we had that virtue I can see several builds that would incorporate a 1h in wvw and pve. Sure there are more to do but more about that in the Zeal section. One thing that should be in Radiance though is a trait (master minor) that converts x% precision into vitality. Replace perfect inscriptions and replace it with a trait that gives you 20% extra crit when in symbols. This trait was in place during beta and it was one of the things that made symbolbuilds worth it, unfortunately Arenanet removed it. But its in the game and can easily be brought back.

Zeal
There should be a minor grandmaster (remove the increased damage on symbols) trait that converts x% of power into vitality. If this was in place with a similar trait in radiance and in combination with Virtue of Altruism then 1h dps builds would be valid.
More stuff can be done to make zeal worth it but I actually think the above would make zeal interesting enough to be worth investing in.

Ranged
Easy solution for the scepter, just speed up #1 and make Smite a symbol, Symbol of Fire. This is the single target ranged option. #1 should be a projectile finisher with a x% chance.

Staff, even though I personally like it in certain situations, it feels like its not put together very well, there is no “theme” or internal synergies imo.
For the staff switch places on #1 and #2
Replace the old #2 with #1 from the trident. Low damage, bouncing aoe and low aoe heal.
Keep the function on Wave of Wrath as it is but increase the damage with x% and add in a x sec cd and place it as #2.
As stated under symbols, increase the size of the SoS and make it apply the full boon duration when placed, leaving the damage pulses and light field as it is. This would also solve the bug with stacking from SoS.
Make Empower an aoe with 1200 range which also pulse burn in the target area when channelled. Ofc a firefield. Keep the “selfroot”.
Make it possible to move while casting Line of warding and also make it pulse damage after its placed. Make it possible to place it in z-axis.

Imo this would make the staff much more competent in all aspects of the game and making it the ranged aoe option with semi decent damage and still great support capability and fun to play with.

Personally I find the trident to be a very nice weapon indeed and it should be looked upon when/if Arenanet decides to fix the staff.

Boons and virtues
Well the fourth virtue is mentioned in the text so I will leave it at that but retaliation and aegis should be altered.

I would prefer that Aegis stacked in intensity. Basically if you trait for it you could stack 4 stacks of aegis and then 4 hits would miss. This would also make some of the aegis related traits more worth it, like 20% more damage while under the influence of Aegis.

Regarding retaliation I would like to see something skillbased that harmonize with the other game mechanics. Why not also make this stack in intensity. You pop retaliation and when hit upon you get a damage bonus for each hit so the next attack deals more damage. And each attack you do, that hits, consume a stack of retaliation. So pop it, get hit 10 times and the next 10 attacks deals more damage. That damage should be equal to todays retaliation and increase based on power (zeal) and added to the damage of the skill used. This would mean that retaliation could crit and as a dps tool it would in fact be stronger then todays retaliation but it would take an effort to apply the damage.

Imo this would also make aegis and retaliation to have some really nice synergies and also make retaliation skillbased.

Conditions
Burns should stack in intensity, it would solve so many issues guardians and other classes have with burn builds. Its just as simple as that.

Weapons
1h sword.
Remove the root from zealots defence and make it a proper aoe
Increase range slightly on the teleport

Scepter
See under ranged

Mace
Increase the size and reduce the casting time on SoF.
Divide protector’s strike into two skills. First push activates the block and if you want the protection you “release” protectors strike with the second push before you are hit by the opponent. This reduces the reactive gameplay this weapon has and increases the capabilities to support.

Torch
Zealots flame should grant you fury when you traited Inner Fire.

Staff
See under ranged

GS
Remove the root from SoW, increased mobility and usability on the symbol in pvp

Hammer
Remove one tick from SoP and adjust animation time on #1 accordingly, this would address the issue that 2h Mastery in fact doesnt increase dps in pve.
Increase size on SoP when untraited, see symbols
Make it possible to move while casting RoW, increased mobility.
Make RoW a fire field instead of a buggy light field, we have enough of lightfields as it is.
Increase damage from Banish and Zealots Embrace so 2h mastery adds dps when traited. This would increase the fun in pve so you just don’t spam two skills for max dps.

Traits
Zeal
Unnamed Trait, 50% increased boon duration in Virtue of Altruism

Zealots speed, it makes no sense that you are about to die and then drop SoW, Change it to SoP or SoF.

Symbolic Power, merge it with Symbolic Exposure it its already huge investment to a full symbol build and its enough with 35 points if the changes above are adopted.

Revenge of the fallen, replace it with with 10% of power is converted to vitality.

Greatsword Power, make it 10% to all 2h weapons.

Focused Mastery, make it Offhand Mastery and incorporate all offhand weapons

Scepter Power, make it Right Hand Power and make it an increase of 10% to all main hand weapons.

Eternal Weapon, make it so spirit weapons are invulnerable, I don’t think Arenanet will increase toughness or health on SW so this is a quick fix.

Zealous blade, Make it Zealous Weapons and make it so it heals on all weapons and increase the heal, 50 per hit would be about right.

Radiance
Healers Retribution would be great if retaliation is altered according to my text above.

Inner fire should be connected to the torch so when you use #4 on the torch you gain fury

Searing Flame, keep the boon removal and add remove condition on self, reduce cd to 15 s.

Radiant fire, make it 10% increased damage on all offhands.

Powerful blades make it Vital Blades and it adds 10% of your precision converted to vitality.

Perfect Inscriptions, make so it adds 20% crit rating when in a symbol

Valor
Strength of the fallen, Change the name to Strength of the Prepared and function so it adds precision based on unused shouts.

Strength in numbers, to weak, increase it to it actually have any impact. 200 would be more balanced or a percentage of the allies armour value, the latter would be easier to balance.

Mace Of Justice, changed to Weapon Of Justice. Next attack, after swap, cripples the enemy for 3 s. 10 s cd.

Glacial Heart, affect all weapons, next attack, after swap, chills for 2s. 10 s cd.

Honorable shield altered to Honorable Weapons, reduced cd on swap, we are supposed to be melee centric then this trait is just a must. If this is the right traitline can always be discussed

Altrusitic Healing, revamped as a virtue and replaced with Altruistic Power x% more crit damage based on the number of boons you have on your allies.

Monks Focus, Keep as it is but slightly lower the heal to compensate for Virtue of Altruism. It’s a solo trait and we should have those as well.

Honor
Merge all writs to one single trait. Its just to much to invest in a working symbol as I mentioned before. If we increase the size of the symbol this trait would be “nice to have” and not “need to have” in a symbol build.

Empowering might, increase the cd to 1,5s and increase duration to 10 s on stacks, this would increase the supportive part but decrease the effect from Virtue of Altruism.

Pure of voice, truly amazing if they just fix the bugs.

Virtues
Inspired virtue, add that fury is gained from activating Virtue of Altruism
The only major trait in virtues that I think need some attention is Supreme Justice but if burns stacked in intensity supreme justice would be a great tool for a burn guardian and so would Permeathing Wrath. Virtues, Zeal and Radiance would be a condition guardian’s wet dream.

Utilities
Signets
Signet of wrath, if burning was changed to stack then this would be fine; atm the passive effect is just useless. Make it increase precision instead.
Signet of Mercy, great signet just put it on much lower cd so it’s worth using.

Spirit Weapons
Even before the patch they were mediocre and at the same time easy mode and totally lacked a need for skill, they sincerely needed a revamp and it’s even more evident after the patch.

Shouts
Retreat, reduce the cd. 50 sec would be about right
Hold the line, reduce cd, 30 sec would be about right

Meditations
Merciful intervention, make it target an opponent instead but keep the healing part and reduce cd to 60s. This would increase the value greatly and people would start using it. It would increase mobility as well and our ability to support.

Consecrations
Hallowed Ground, just add damage to the skill, it is a firefield after all. Shorten duration and decrease cd would increase availability and make it more fun than waiting on a huge cd.
Purging flames, make it so it actually purge conditions while its up.

Summary

-Adjust our weapons with a couple of small changes except staff that needs an overhaul.

-Fix so its not a 55 point investment when playing a symbolbuild.

-Make 1h weapons as viable as 2h.

-Make Altruistic Healing innate which frees up room to diversify in builds.

-Give us a proper ranged option for single target and one proper ranged option for aoe.

-Fix Spirit weapons

-Clean up Radiance and Zeal and add traits that make it worth not investing in valor/honor or virtues.

-Tweak a couple of utilities

-Make Aegis worth it in wvw and mass encounters

-Make retaliation to harmonize with Arenanets ambition of a skillbased game instead of favouring lack of usage of dodging, block, and other mechanics that makes you avoid damage. In short make it skillbased.

- Make burning stack in intensity, as our only condition we are useless in balanced teams when using conditionbuilds.

-Increase our ability to move around in the world without investing heavily on both gear and traits.

Fix so we have options to stay close in melee fights, similar to warriors, after all we fill the same niche, guardians being melee centric boon defensive soldiers/supporters and warriors being melee centric weapon specialist and offensive supprters.

Fix so Zeal and to to some extent Radiance are worth investing in, and at the same time.

Well the first part is very accurate, and i think it reflect in most part , not only what the guardians community See, but also what the guardians community feels.

the only thing i dont get, is how you can be always so calm (im not criticizing you), when i see modifications incomplete or just whitout sense, i only wish to take my keyboard and smash it on the hand of the change responsible XD
(ok maybe its my modder spirit that come out)

ok now, joke aside… very good work

Brutaly.6257:

Summary
-Make Altruistic Healing innate which frees up room to diversify in builds.

This statement made my day.

Great review.
I doubt we’ll see such sweeping changes to a class unfortunately. The best we can hope for are tweaks and fixes.

Adding a new Virtue at this stage is probably way outside of their roadmap, so the best you might hope for is reclassifying AH and MF into a lower tier.

Incidentally I sent a bug report on the spirit weapon issue suggesting exactly what you did: make “Eternal Spirit” grant SW invincibility. I had the feeling that this is perhaps what they intended, but forgot to include the trait change in the patch ( as it might just tempt a handful of people to invest in Zeal ).

In terms of easy-mode fractals, you might just want to make them susceptible to agony…

Anyway, good work!

Although to me, I feel like my Guardian is pretty complete because the AH build matches my play style perfectly—I wouldn’t mind getting any improvements to what you listed. If AH was a given virtue, it’d be nice to focus on some more dps-related traits for sure.

Also, I think scepter should be given a lot more credit than what most guardians give it. But having the orb travel as fast as a bullet would be nice.

I just finish to read the complete “opera”

i have changed my mind, is not a good work, its an awesome work.
Ill just stop to make propositions, to support only this one that have all the things we really need.
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Edit: for the spirit weapon part.

I think they need to have a clear idea about minion mechanics. Now the spirit weapons have an health bar (very low) but also a timer duration. and this just dont make sense, because the timer was here exactly because the weapon was immortal.

So, im ok if they dont want our minions immortals, but:

-Give to them Enoug HP to fill their role, a shield of avenger that die after 3 projectiles, is not a good investiment.

-Make minions Health recover, when the summoner recover health. (or just a % of the health recovered)

-Delete the duration timer.

This would only make the already above-par Guardian class even better. The way Anet is going to “fix” the fact that we only use less than 6 utilities is by nerfing them so hard the other ones won’t seem as kittenty.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d like to see those changes but I’d rather not have them touch the Guardian anymore, at least before every other class is fixed.

I agree with most of your analysis, but I don’t agree with a lot of your solutions. I’m not going over everything you wrote and responding to it all (since that would be crazy time-consuming). What I’m going to do instead is give a quick rundown of what I think about the problems and post a couple of suggestions of my own. I think this will make for a more interesting discussion than just answering everything you wrote.

Altruistic Healing
This is indeed one of the biggest problem this profession faces. Not because it’s a bad trait (it’s an excellent Grandmaster trait), but because it overshadows almost every other trait. It caters to our profession, because we spread boons without even thinking about it, and it shores up the biggest downside our profession has (low healthpool). To top it all off, it’s in what is probably the best trait-line Guardians have access to. No other Grandmaster trait can compete, even if they’re more interesting.

Valor
As mentioned above, Valor is our best trait-line. It offers defense and offense and holds a number of interesting traits. Other trait-lines often have interesting traits, but are not enough to make the investment worth it. Every time you spend 5 points in a trait-line, a Guardian has to wonder: “Are these point better spend in Valor?”.
A lot of problems Brutaly mentioned stem from this overarching problem.

Ranged options

As discussed by Brutaly, this is a problem. Most things about this have been said in this and other threads, so I’m not going into it any further.

Mobility
I’m going to address this shortly. I don’t think Guardians lack too much mobility. The options are certainly there, but we have to sacrifice way too much, which makes any build that invests in mobility options non-viable.

Retaliation
I’ve written about this, but it bears repeating. Too much about the Guardian revolves around Retaliation, which is a boring, passive mechanic. It alleviates some problems (like terrible ranged damage), but overall the boon is a poor mechanic in a game that wants an active playstyle.

Solution-time

• Make other trait-lines worth investing in. This will call for a big redo of all our traits, but the end-result should become that each line has at least 1 Grandmaster trait that’s as interesting and effective as Altruistic Healing (Pure of Voice, for example, is on the right track). Our damage-oriented lines also need some traits (preferably Master-level or higher) that increase our survivability.
• I don’t think we need more mobility, per se. Giving us access to ways of keeping our enemy close would serve a similar purpose. Numerous ways of doing so have been discussed in other threads, so I won’t go over them again.
• I’ve discussed ways of improving the Scepter a lot, so unless someone is specifically interested in them, I won’t retype them.
• The Staff could use a redesign. It’s currently unfocused and that’s the main thing that needs to be looked at. Decide what role a Staff is supposed to fill, and work with that.
• Change Retaliation so it does higher damage with a shorter duration, making the decision to use it more skill based, instead of just trying to keep it up as much as possible.

RAVVSlathotep.5463:

This would only make the already above-par Guardian class even better. The way Anet is going to “fix” the fact that we only use less than 6 utilities is by nerfing them so hard the other ones won’t seem as kittenty.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d like to see those changes but I’d rather not have them touch the Guardian anymore, at least before every other class is fixed.

(New post, since the previous one was long enough.)
Arenanet would be fools if they only fixed/changed/tweaked one profession at a time. If they’re going to change/tweak/fix professions, all of them should be done in the same patch.

Ynna.8769:

• Change Retaliation so it does higher damage with a shorter duration, making the decision to use it more skill based, instead of just trying to keep it up as much as possible.

this is a double sided edge for us. this solution can work, but only if retaliation is completely removed on traits, and avaible only on utility skills or long cd weapons skills.

Ynna.8769:

(New post, since the previous one was long enough.)
Arenanet would be fools if they only fixed/changed/tweaked one profession at a time. If they’re going to change/tweak/fix professions, all of them should be done in the same patch.

I have to say that I don’t know why you’re telling me that but I’ll see if I can continue your line of thought.

That is why they get nothing done.
They have 5 out of 8 classes that need fixes, 2 of those 5 need overhauls, and all they do is lower and raise cooldowns in a misguided attempt to pretend to fix stuff. Reworking 1 class takes weeks, maybe months; now, reworking 2 classes and fixing a metric tons of balance issues with the rest would take hell knows how long.
They could focus on one class per month and do some serious rework (the Necromancer needs it badly, for example), and it would improve the game’s balance and improve public opinion.

Instead they’re lying about game progression, fixing what isn’t broken, throwing sand at the consumers’ eyes, organizing repetitive events that add nothing special and AVOIDING doing real fixes to the classes, because it’s easier to shove the dust under the carpet than to sweep everything.
They actually managed to implement Guesting, finally. A “release day” feature that was only implemented almost half a year after release..

First, I agree Altruistic Healing prevents diverse builds as it is the primary means of survivability for the Guardian, but it costs too many trait points as investment. However, You run into another problem by making it a Virtue. Using a Virtue gives up the passive effect. If any Guardian is caught off-guard with Virtue of Altruism popped, their defenses are down. While Fury is a good trade-off (gain distance on an enemy and strike it down quickly), it creates a senario where players will dump only 5 points into the Virtues tree to get a boon that is relatively easy to apply (every 20 seconds, 14 seconds when traited). With added boon duration, it would be relatively easy to get 8 seconds of Fury (since Inspired Virtues last 5 seconds). The cooldown would have to be increased, but then no one will want to risk being vulnerable for a long period of time unless there is only one opponent and a good burst will finish it. It’s a good idea, but you may need to look into a different active ability for the Virtue.

I’m all for trait changes/merges. It is definitely a problem of the Guardian. Just keep in mind that there isn’t a cooldown reduction on one-handed weapons. Retaliation and Aegis stacking would make both worthwhile as long as all senarios are thought out. Virtue of Courage cannot stack anymore. You could have a duration of 20 hours (or more) of Aegis because it stacked duration. While that isn’t necessarily a problem, it cannot stack intensity now or each Aegis from Virtue of Courage must end in 40 seconds (30 when traited).

This whole review of the guardian was needed and I enjoyed reading it hopefully some dev will see this or we can get it sticky to the top so a moderator can see it and maybe pass this along to a dev so they can discuss. The fourth virtue idea is great and the changes to zeal would make me happy since im currently using only 10 points in it for the 10% to burning foes I also would love a 1h build for wvw since recently I started using the sword and greatsword combo for it and I love it to death.
Again nice review =]

The way to fix the Guardian’s issues is not to spread AH. The way to fix the Guardian’s issues is to give us more viable options other than AH/MF. Other than that, I agree with most of what you said.

But the issue is that AH/MF are so necessary that you really can’t spec into anything else without getting destroyed. These two(AH more than MF) are the Guardians key to surviving among all else.

Alarox.4590:

The way to fix the Guardian’s issues is not to spread AH. The way to fix the Guardian’s issues is to give us more viable options other than AH/MF. Other than that, I agree with most of what you said.

The problem is, how create other options, withotut make the guardian a real immortal selfhealing machine even when specced as glassy dps without defense?

I understand clearly what you mean, i love to have always different options to choose, its the fun to be a builder.
But i have to say that the option proposed by brutality, is simple and effective. Maybe we cannot have many options as selfhealing, but when the self healing issue is covererd, we can really build what we like to play.

First, thx for keeping the discussion civil, I appreciate it.

Ganzo.5079:

the only thing i dont get, is how you can be always so calm (im not criticizing you), when i see modifications incomplete or just whitout sense, i only wish to take my keyboard and smash it on the hand of the change responsible XD

Well im an old man and after more then 20 years of servicedevelopment and marketing, including service design, i have learned that screaming accomplishes nothing.

Feedback followed with a a desirable change do.

Excursion.9752:

Brutaly.6257:

Summary
-Make Altruistic Healing innate which frees up room to diversify in builds.

This statement made my day.

Then you maybe should read the entire thread and get a grasp of the concept of alternative investments and you might see that the concept of making something less valuable infact increases the value of the alternative.

If you just are here to post pointless oneliners im certain there are other less thought thru posts that deserve it.

Tarsius.3170:

Great review.
I doubt we’ll see such sweeping changes to a class unfortunately. The best we can hope for are tweaks and fixes.

Adding a new Virtue at this stage is probably way outside of their roadmap, so the best you might hope for is reclassifying AH and MF into a lower tier.

You are probably correct but if no one posts some sort of “complete” feedback then the odds are slim that they actually change anything in the direction the customers want. I worked with service marketing and customer dialogue are a powerful tool and hopefully they glance at this and actually consider some of the stuff in here.

ArcTheFallen.7682:

Although to me, I feel like my Guardian is pretty complete because the AH build matches my play style perfectly

Personally i agree but that is whats wrong, there are no other builds to use no matter what playstyle you go. Not if you want to play a melee centric gameplay in wvw or a bunker or even a healer type. Not investing in AH or MF is the same as lowering performance and there should be more valid builds for the melee centric guardian.

We need to see past our own preference, i adore AH, for the greater good of the profession and as it is now we are a one trick (build) pony.

RAVVSlathotep.5463:

This would only make the already above-par Guardian class even better.

Both yes and no. Virtue of Altruism would be weaker than AH, as a tool of healing, and there would be different builds that would be made possible without 30 points in Valor. Just check what the proposed change to the symbols would do, incoming heals from symbols proccing AH would be more then halfed.

And the ones that that uses VoA as an active ability to gain dps and swiftness for the group would totally lack AH.

And if it turns out that VoA is to strong then adjust the healing from it. This is much easier then nerfing AH, or adding traits with similar strength in radiance and Zeal, is the same as risking breaking the entire profession. AH, as it stands right now, carries the guardian.

Ynna.8769:

I agree with most of your analysis, but I don’t agree with a lot of your solutions.

As long as we agree on the problem then im fine with that, my solutions was jolted down to illustrate ONE way of solving the issues.

Personally i dont find our mobility to be to bad, at least no in combat, but out of combat i think we lack innate means to move around and we have to invest to much just for moving around at a decent pace.

Viralseed.9362:

First, I agree Altruistic Healing prevents diverse builds as it is the primary means of survivability for the Guardian, but it costs too many trait points as investment. However, You run into another problem by making it a Virtue. Using a Virtue gives up the passive effect. If any Guardian is caught off-guard with Virtue of Altruism popped, their defenses are down. While Fury is a good trade-off (gain distance on an enemy and strike it down quickly), it creates a senario where players will dump only 5 points into the Virtues tree to get a boon that is relatively easy to apply (every 20 seconds, 14 seconds when traited). With added boon duration, it would be relatively easy to get 8 seconds of Fury (since Inspired Virtues last 5 seconds). The cooldown would have to be increased, but then no one will want to risk being vulnerable for a long period of time unless there is only one opponent and a good burst will finish it. It’s a good idea, but you may need to look into a different active ability for the Virtue.

I’m all for trait changes/merges. It is definitely a problem of the Guardian. Just keep in mind that there isn’t a cooldown reduction on one-handed weapons. Retaliation and Aegis stacking would make both worthwhile as long as all senarios are thought out. Virtue of Courage cannot stack anymore. You could have a duration of 20 hours (or more) of Aegis because it stacked duration. While that isn’t necessarily a problem, it cannot stack intensity now or each Aegis from Virtue of Courage must end in 40 seconds (30 when traited).

The cooldown/duration on the suggested virtue was just a food for thoughts. But the reason why i chose those number was that my warrior For great Justice has a 20 sec cd and gives 3*might (for 32,25s and perma 6 stacks of might thru one skill) and Fury (10,25s) which have very low cd and long duration on fury and heal me and the team for 1500.
Compared to that 20s cd and 10 s duration, when giving up you major survivability tool , is justified. But again it was food for thoughts.

My thought about VoC was that the first aegis applied from courage, passive or active works as it does now but aegis applied thru traits and skills would have a much shorter duration.

Alarox.4590:

The way to fix the Guardian’s issues is not to spread AH. The way to fix the Guardian’s issues is to give us more viable options other than AH/MF. Other than that, I agree with most of what you said.

I agree but frankly i think they need to rebuild the entire traitlines then, AH in particular, and MF in some cases, are just to good to pass down on.

Just imagine if you trait a 30/30/10/0/0! What type of traits would make that workable in wvw or Tpvp? imo some sort of nuclear device would be in order.

We agree on the problem but i think some more innate survivability is needed for making builds with out 30 points in valor valid, from a competitive point of view.

Arken.3725:

But the issue is that AH/MF are so necessary that you really can’t spec into anything else without getting destroyed. These two(AH more than MF) are the Guardians key to surviving among all else.

I agree totally with this, and i cant see the traits that should compensate for this in Zeal and Radiance, they would be stronger than any single skill we have in order to compensate.

Ganzo.5079:

Maybe we cannot have many options as selfhealing, but when the self healing issue is covererd, we can really build what we like to play.

This pretty much describes my concern, it would be needed to have survivability traits of AH magnitude in all trait lines and the what happens when we combine those?

And the need for strong traits like AH is a signal that something is wrong in its core.

Frankly im starting to more and more in favor of removing AH completely and the reason for that is that it would totally expose the true nature of the underlying mechanics and frankly i think its a sore sight. I know its over the top for most people but i have issues with bandaids and right no AH feels like a band aid (even though comfortable) for bad underlying mechanics.

I don’t think spreading Altruistic Healing to all Guardians is a good idea. It’s a really, really powerful trait, so just giving it away would create a whole new dynamic that might not be healthy for the profession balance.

Other options might be hard to think of, but that doesn’t mean it’s a viable alternative to just spreading our best trait. Adding some more control options in offensive lines might serve as an alternative to more self-healing. Or maybe giving a couple of escape options to the offensive lines. There are options, we can think up ideas, and if we can, professional game-designers certainly can.

But as a low health, low mobility profession, AH is all we have. I agree with some of your suggestions but not to reduce AH’s effectiveness.

Edit: It’s not like we can retreat and come back with a new strategy. We’re the only profession that once you’re in combat, you’re stuck. There’s no escape for us, we either win, lose or hold out long enough until reinforcements arrive.

Good read. About SoW root … something tells me that the root on Symbol of Wrath exists not for balance reasons, but for aesthetics. Basically, it looks like an artist came up with a cool animation for SoW, and it just so happened to be an animation that only looks right if you are rooted.

Line of Warding may suffer from a similar issue. I don’t recall offhand what other race/gender animations look like, but for a norn female, LoW actually lifts you up quite a bit into the air, and I can see how this might look odd if the player could continue moving. This is also the case with Empower, though I think the self-root on Empower is more justifiable.

I feel like game balance considerations should always dictate whether or not an ability self-roots, but I’m not sure that’s the case with these and a few others. Of course, it’s entirely possible that everything was made this way deliberately, but I think it’s more likely that at least some of these self-roots are art-driven, because they don’t make a lot of sense from a mechanics standpoint.

Ideally the abilities would get updated and the art changed to reflect the new state, but I am not hopeful.

Brutaly.6257:

Both yes and no. Virtue of Altruism would be weaker then AH, as a tool of healing, and there would be different builds that would be made possible without 30 points in Valor. Just check the what the proposed change to the symbols would do, incoming heals from symbols proccing AH would be more theh halfed.

And the ones that that uses VoA as an active ability to gain dps and swftness for the group and self would totally lack AH.

And if it turns out that VoA is to strong then adjust the healing from it. This is much easier then nerfing the AH in Valor and risking of breaking the entire profession. AH as it stadns right now carries the guardian.

You make a very good point but it doesn’t invalidate the fact that, at the cost of a “AH tier” heal in favour of VoA we’d be getting great trait merges that would more than make up for the smaller healing. It would open as vast world of possibilities, sure, with tons of new builds but wouldn’t that make a good class overpowered?
I’m really asking your opinion on this, cause it feels that if everything you’ve stated were to be implemented the Guardian would make it good against everything. I don’t really see any drawbacks.
Right now we have the lack of flexibility, movement and range.
Of course, this is all opinions.

Ynna.8769:

I don’t think spreading Altruistic Healing to all Guardians is a good idea. It’s a really, really powerful trait, so just giving it away would create a whole new dynamic that might not be healthy for the profession balance.

Yeah i do agree that at a first glance it might look really bad but imo having it innate would actually make it easier to balance. If its to powerful just adjust the healing you get from it.

We need a base line of survivability, which makes all types of builds valid and if we look at a 30/30/0/0/ what are the stuff we lack, imo its health as a buffert in fights and considering all our other traits, like heal on dodge etc, i think most of us actually agree on that we shouldnt increase the innate healthpool and i think AH is a better alternative then a larger healthpool.

Dont get me wrong, i still find that Zeal and radiance needs some really nice traits in order to compete with valor/honor/virtues but leaving AH as it is would require those traits to be close to silly.

Adding some more control options in offensive lines might serve as an alternative to more self-healing. Or maybe giving a couple of escape options to the offensive lines.

I think those options has to be implemented in addition to the “new” virtue. Zeal in particular is just so weak and that is also radiance compared to what you loose out on when investing in them, honor and virtues included.

RAVVSlathotep.5463:

You make a very good point but it doesn’t invalidate the fact that, at the cost of a “AH tier” heal in favour of VoA we’d be getting great trait merges that would more than make up for the smaller healing. It would open as vast world of possibilities, sure, with tons of new builds but wouldn’t that make a good class overpowered?

Ofc it might but then it can be adjusted at the baseline (untraited guardian) by just reducing the heals you get from the virtue.

And the suggested changes to traits are just an illustration on what *type’ of changes i think is necessary, i think Arenanet is more competent then me when it comes to actually choose what to put in there. But personally i find the suggestion to be balanced compared to whats in there already.

This is my main argunent for this, besides opening up to a huge variety of builds.

Ynna.8769:

I don’t think spreading Altruistic Healing to all Guardians is a good idea. It’s a really, really powerful trait, so just giving it away would create a whole new dynamic that might not be healthy for the profession balance.

Other options might be hard to think of, but that doesn’t mean it’s a viable alternative to just spreading our best trait. Adding some more control options in offensive lines might serve as an alternative to more self-healing. Or maybe giving a couple of escape options to the offensive lines. There are options, we can think up ideas, and if we can, professional game-designers certainly can.

AH is indeed powerful but based on those around you. Look at the Elementalist that receives the same amount of healing without having to worry about the amount of teammates around them. I think a lot of people overlook the fact that AH only heals us, while other professions provide very similar healing to not only themselves, but others as well.(ele again)

Edit: Not to mention that others don’t have to give up mobility to achieve said healing. We’re stuck in symbols or empower.

Brutaly.6257:

Ofc it might but then it can be adjusted at the baseline (untraited guardian) by just reducing the heals you get from the virtue.

And the suggested changes to traits are just an illustration on what *type’ of changes i think is necessary, i think Arenanet is more competent then me when it comes to actually choose what to put in there.

This is my main argunent for this, besides opening up to a huge variety of builds.

Guess that with enough balance it would work. It would turn an essential trait into an innate buff that would only heal enough to give the Guardian some relief, instead of carrying it like it does now, and it would let the now new, open traits to do the work. Sounds good enough.

IMO Guard doesn’t need this extensive of an overhaul. The vast majority of guard issues could be fixed by adding in more weapon skills/traits to slow down our opponent (cripple), improving how symbols function, and by giving us a decent ranged option with an updated scepter (which the dev’s have said they aren’t happy with atm).

Great post. I understand that to a Guardian, retaliation is basically a boring passive mechanic that promotes poor gameplay, but to other classes attacking a Guardian, doesn’t it promote more skillful gameplay and more important discourage mass AOE nuking in WvW. I almost killed myself last night while defending a tower in WvW because I was spamming my staff auto attack through the door, only to hit 5 guys all with retaliation.

Aberrant.6749:

IMO Guard doesn’t need this extensive of an overhaul. The vast majority of guard issues could be fixed by adding in more weapon skills/traits to slow down our opponent (cripple), improving how symbols function, and by giving us a decent ranged option with an updated scepter (which the dev’s have said they aren’t happy with atm).

While im agree with you as this as temporary solution (im in the groups of the ones that starting proposing this kind of solutions some month ago) I have to say that this kind of shot term solution , dont fix\balance our class at all.

- low build variety will remain exactly the same.
- bunker retal build, will remain the cause of QQ on the forum == stupid nerf throug the whole class.
- the guardian will continue to be requested only as Supportive class.

Aberrant.6749:

IMO Guard doesn’t need this extensive of an overhaul. The vast majority of guard issues could be fixed by adding in more weapon skills/traits to slow down our opponent (cripple), improving how symbols function, and by giving us a decent ranged option with an updated scepter (which the dev’s have said they aren’t happy with atm).

I agree, those needs to be fixed as well and i think OP covers those but the fact remains (which imo is the biggest issue with the guardian) that we are a one build pony with very little variation.

Just a reflection on the symbols, there is more then a small tweak needed, today you need to invest 55 points if you want a symbol guardian and something is seriously wrong if you have 55 points dedicated to 4 skills in the game and 25 of those are in a line that bring very little value..

Indure.5410:

Great post. I understand that to a Guardian, retaliation is basically a boring passive mechanic that promotes poor gameplay, but to other classes attacking a Guardian, doesn’t it promote more skillful gameplay and more important discourage mass AOE nuking in WvW. I almost killed myself last night while defending a tower in WvW because I was spamming my staff auto attack through the door, only to hit 5 guys all with retaliation.

I played a retal guardian during BWE and even back then when it had a fixed damage of 132 per hit it was virtually an i win button. Im a bit ashamed but i still play a retal guardian (i hate my self for it) in TPvP becasue its just to good. versus a bunch of professions its an i win button.

Sure you can look at it that it demands skill to avoid but frankly the only thing you can do is to run. Sure boons can be stripped but in its current iteration a retal guardian have an endless number of skills to reapply it to self and the team.

Yes its great versus aoe but imo movement and spread out tactics and flanking should be the counter, not a no brainer boon.

My main gripe is that its counterproductiuve to the great mechanics they put into this game.

This is worth a sticky as ‘state of the union’ address for Guardians. I do disagree with some of what’s being said here, primarily about your experience compared to other classes. I’m sad to see you advocate that it’s good that the other classes you have experience with are successful because of their strong weapon implementation, relying less on their utility slots and skills.

I personally think that the great part of being a Guardian is the fact that you can move away from reliance on specific weapons to get more variation by focused reliance on the utility slots and skills. Simply a difference in perspective I guess.

Except you can’t vary your build. It’s AH(MF to a lesser degree) or you die, plain and simple. This hasn’t changed and it doesn’t look like it will be.

Edit: I recently tried giving a Zealous blade a shot at a possible alternate to AH but man, what a terrible trait. Doesn’t stack with healing power at all.

That’s just a matter of opinion I suppose. I don’t use Valour 30 for everything I do because I don’t need it and the builds are just as effective if not more. In fact, I find it more challenging and appealing to not use it and attempt to move away from it whenever possible. My alternatives to AH are focusing on the inherent damage mitigation you get as a guardian. I think that approach gives me a broader insight to the profession.

Having mostly played the guardian profession through betas and release I entirely agree on the problem part of the original post. Solutions, however, while some of them are quite nice I don’t fully agree with all of them, though I won’t be trying to make any points regarding those as everyone has their own ideas that would work for them.

Since major changes are not something that we will be seeing that soon, as it is not quite an easy task to do, it is important that the developers are aware of the core issues of the profession and will possibly (hopefully) try to address them at one point in the best way possible for them (and us).

I agree with the first half where you outline problems but I don’t agree with all of the changes in the second half.

I’ve been staring at my AH build for 3 weeks now trying to figure out how to change it without wrecking my Guardian and I just can’t find a way to change his spec. Having played 5 classes to 80 and Warrior being one, this seems absolutely ridiculous and is bringing back bad memories of WoW’s infamous Paladin vs. Warrior years.

Mars.6319:

I agree with the first half where you outline problems but I don’t agree with all of the changes in the second half.

I’ve been staring at my AH build for 3 weeks now trying to figure out how to change it without wrecking my Guardian and I just can’t find a way to change his spec. Having played 5 classes to 80 and Warrior being one, this seems absolutely ridiculous and is bringing back bad memories of WoW’s infamous Paladin vs. Warrior years.

lol dont you think this is a bit selfish.
you just will find a new and probably more effective build, just like all of us.
and then, forums exist also to ask help :P

Brutaly for President! Emperor! King!

silliness aside. great review, great write-up, great discussion.

just keepinng this short – LOVE the suggestions you have regarding aegis and retaliation.

aegis while it’s gone after blocking one attack, it doesn’t make sense to stack in duration. in some cases perhaps, but i’m not going to apply it in antipation for an attack that may or may not come in 20s. not am i going to apply it twice if i know “both” will be gone in one hit. stacking in intensity only makes sense.

retaliation as viable as it sitll is and i love it as it’s saved my butt and won me battles in WvW before, i will agree it’s sort of passive. sure i have ways to apply it, and i do keep an eye on it and react accordingly at times, but it seems almost TOO passive and lazy if you will. the changes you mention could add a lot to gameplay.

the only thing i felt was a LITTLE too aggressive were the dmg increase traits or CD reductiosn that applied to all 2h, 1h or offhand weps. as much as i’d love that, could it be a little too much? although would open up a WHOLE lot more doors and viable builds for the Guard and not being stuck in 30/30.

looking forward to more, and hopefully this takes off on good grounding and that ANet can take what they will from these discussions that as as end-users conduct. : ))

love the Guardian community. keep the fight up!

This needs to be stickied. Badly.

I actually am very grateful that something like Altruistic Healing is made into a trait. Even if currently all alternatives are considered sub-par, at least it opens up the door to a future possibility of spec’ing without an emphasis of, or entirely out of boons.

In GW1 the Dervish could never use anything other than the scythe because for a very long time, mysticism (their primary attribute) basically did what AH does for guardian now, and the scythe is the only weapon that has synergy with it. It basically forced you to only ever use enchantment skills and never anything else. Compare it to the assassin’s primary attribute, critical strikes, which works with every weapon in the game (including the scythe), it allows for a very diverse meta from instajib chains to ranged aoe to melee aoe spam to condition stacking and whatever else.

They later reworked mysticism entirely to removed the self heal on enchant aspect, and though the solution wasn’t the most elegant, at least made the profession less broken. I really do not want to see a repeat of the prohibitive playstyle of having a profession depend on any one mechanic in the game.

the only flaw in this post is that it will make guardians too good… =^.^=
we are already close to perfection in PVE, making us viable in WWW/PVE outside bunker build … or remain in bunker build, but gain mobility and ranged options fixed like in your post will make all other classes obsolete…

the main ‘beauty’ (we can disagree with this word ) of the game is that all classes are flawed, all classes have bad weapons, all classes have useless traits and skills, just as all classes have some "broken’ (as in very good that you must have) skills and traits.

there are classes that have to be fixed before guardians.

saying this, i am not rejecting ANYTHING in the OP.

You’re basically saying guardians are “close to perfect” in pve because it’s the most tanky class.
It’s true in the sense that PVE is mostly about sustaining the dps pressure (from mobs) and not go down. Unfortunately that’s not how the game was supposed to be, or it would had been just guardians in pve and no other classes (although, that is becoming the case in higher level fractals, and more so now rangers are more or less useless).

technically, that wasn’t how this supposed to work, and if all classes were compared on the proficiency they do their designated duties, then guardian wouldn’t be up there anyway. Especially WvW. A good thief, or mesmer, or ele, or pretty much anything other than a warrior would be much much better than a guardian. How many enemy players can you tank? How many can a thief kill (and without getting killed), how many can a mesmer port? Guardians are next to useless in WvW, especially now spirit weapons all went to crap. The only class that needs bunch of guardians to keep them alive are the warriors, which is probably the least proficient class in any function.

anyroad. people that thought guardians were best (in regard to PvE and WvW) at defensive roles with pure defensive specs need to take a look at other traits and builds. More than 2/3 of the guardians at 80 fractal are dps spec.

Lalangamena.3694:

the only flaw in this post is that it will make guardians too good… =^.^=
we are already close to perfection in PVE, making us viable in WWW/PVE outside bunker build … or remain in bunker build, but gain mobility and ranged options fixed like in your post will make all other classes obsolete…

the main ‘beauty’ (we can disagree with this word ) of the game is that all classes are flawed, all classes have bad weapons, all classes have useless traits and skills, just as all classes have some "broken’ (as in very good that you must have) skills and traits.

there are classes that have to be fixed before guardians.

saying this, i am not rejecting ANYTHING in the OP.

Razor.9132:

Having mostly played the guardian profession through betas and release I entirely agree on the problem part of the original post. Solutions, however, while some of them are quite nice I don’t fully agree with all of them, though I won’t be trying to make any points regarding those as everyone has their own ideas that would work for them.

Since major changes are not something that we will be seeing that soon, as it is not quite an easy task to do, it is important that the developers are aware of the core issues of the profession and will possibly (hopefully) try to address them at one point in the best way possible for them (and us).

Well as long as we agree on the issues we have then we are more then half way. There is a ton of different solutions to an issue and mine are just what i would like to see, nothing more and nothing less.

Hopefully Arenanet reads these forums and as long as most of us agree on the issues the more value this thread gets. Sure they wont change all the stuff but at if we at least have some sort of compilation then the odds increases that they chnage some stuff “in our direction”.

Mars.6319:

Mars.6319:

I agree with the first half where you outline problems but I don’t agree with all of the changes in the second half.

I’ve been staring at my AH build for 3 weeks now trying to figure out how to change it without wrecking my Guardian and I just can’t find a way to change his spec. Having played 5 classes to 80 and Warrior being one, this seems absolutely ridiculous and is bringing back bad memories of WoW’s infamous Paladin vs. Warrior years.

lol dont you think this is a bit selfish.
you just will find a new and probably more effective build, just like all of us.
and then, forums exist also to ask help :P

Ganzo, i think you missed the point, what he actually writes is that he agrees with the described issue of being forced to build in certain ways.

the only thing i felt was a LITTLE too aggressive were the dmg increase traits or CD reduction that applied to all 2h, 1h or offhand weps. as much as i’d love that, could it be a little too much? although would open up a WHOLE lot more doors and viable builds for the Guard and not being stuck in 30/30.

The values are just examples but the point is that Radiance and Zeal need major boost to compete with Valor/Honor/Virtues since there are some major traits in those, both minor and major ones that really shine.

I actually am very grateful that something like Altruistic Healing is made into a trait. Even if currently all alternatives are considered sub-par, at least it opens up the door to a future possibility of spec’ing without an emphasis of, or entirely out of boons.

This is somewhat of a dream imo, a guardian without boons would mean a removal of virtues in their current form and also a major overhaul of the majority of our weapons.

The thing is that Arenanet clearly stated that they want a melee centric boon soldier and that we are, as long as we have AH. Survivability without AH and with 1h Sword/scepter is just to low for us to be that boon soldier.

In fact making AH innate would actually increase the opportunities to build around 1h sword/scepter and utilities at isnt boon based. Virtues, choice of runes, choice of sigils would valid options to keep the boon soldier going.

Infact one of the reason why i got the idea of Virtue of Altruism was that Arenanet presented their vision for the profession.

Lalangamena.3694:

the only flaw in this post is that it will make guardians too good… =^.^=
we are already close to perfection in PVE, making us viable in WWW/PVE outside bunker build … or remain in bunker build, but gain mobility and ranged options fixed like in your post will make all other classes obsolete…

Once again the solutions are just ideas, but i have to disagree with your initial statement. Checkout whats already in place in the “bunker traitlines” there is no massive boost there, in fact its a nerf to bunkers by making AH less effective with symbols and also a nerf to the passive Retaliation. Bunker builds would be made much weaker with no option to deal damage when hit upon.

The major changes are in Zeal and Radiance and if the suggested changes are placed in the correct tier then the investment to get those would make it impossible to make big investments in Virtues, Honor and Valor.

So if tiered smart and palced in the proper lines, no this wouldnt make us overpowered, but it would make a a knights geared 30/30/10/0/0 guardian a valid option.

We are overpowered in PvE and we have one build alone, 30 points in Valor, that makes us OP. To me that isnt perfection, its dull and it makes pve content to easy and reinstate the tank concept but with high dps.