Guild Wars 2

Ynna.8769:

You know what I figured about Altruistic Healing: If it was an Elite Signet, I would like it a lot more (it would also be blatantly overpowered). I just don’t think it’s a really inspired Grandmaster Trait.

That is just an excellent idea! This would also make Perfect Inscriptions much more worth and also make signet builds in general more valid.

Passive from signet would be altruistic healing and active it could be swiftness and/or fury.

That would definitely make radiance much more worth it.

Why would it be over powered btw?

Any ideas on how to make Zeal more worth the investment?

I originally avoided this thread for reasons I’m unsure of but upon reading it, I found it to be quite concise and dead on with regard to the state of the Guardian. I agree with pretty much everything Brutaly mentioned and while my solutions would probably differ, I agree on the same problems. For example, I would probably go with boosting Virtue of Resolve’s effectiveness instead of adding another self-healing virtue. The AH issue would remain, unless Brutaly’s version of it were added to Virtue of Resolve or something, I dunno, it’s doesn’t really matter as long as we get fixed!

As a lot of you already probably know (I remember your names ), my gripes with Guardian are with how the weapons, specifically one handers, work, how they generally have very low trait synergy, don’t really play off of each other in the same way that other profession’s weapons do, the fact that making a build outside of 30 Valour is essentially suicide and my biggest gripe: the fact that Guardians are generally supposed to maintain melee range but simply can’t do it without gimping their build. In fact, I find even the idea of having to trait just to get a snare when every other profession has them for free is a little draining.
I won’t go into detail, however, as I’ve pretty much covered everything in my previous threads, suffice to say, I really like this thread and hopefully the ideas and propositions put forward get a good looking at by the ArenaNet team! Thanks Brutaly!

Brutaly.6257:

Ynna.8769:

You know what I figured about Altruistic Healing: If it was an Elite Signet, I would like it a lot more (it would also be blatantly overpowered). I just don’t think it’s a really inspired Grandmaster Trait.

That is just an excellent idea! This would also make Perfect Inscriptions much more worth and also make Signet builds in general more valid.

Passive from Signet would be Altruistic Healing and active it could be swiftness and/or fury.

That would definitely make Radiance much more worth it.

(1)Why would it be over powered by the way?

(2)Any ideas on how to make Zeal more worth the investment?

(1) Because it makes it accessible to every Guardian, regardless of trait-investment. Altruistic Healing is kinda balanced around the fact that you give up quite a lot to get that much survivability.

Just to give an example: Say I make a Signet-build with Symbol of Altruism. I go heavy into Radiance, because I want to do damage and it improves my Signets. I then take 10 points in Zeal to do even more damage, and I take 10 points in Valor for extra crit-chance. This leaves me room to take either Inspired Virtues or – probably better- Empowering Might. If I then take one or two weapons that give some boons, I get nice crit damage and a constant stream of healing trickling in.) And you can’t balance it with a cooldown, because it’s the passive effect that’s pretty strong.

The only way to get it balanced is to give it pretty low base-healing and have it scale decently with Healing Power, but that limits the uses of the Signet in different builds and makes it pretty weak for Signet builds.

This is how I’d make the Signet, by the way:
Signet of Altruism
120 second cooldown
Signet Passive: Applying a boon to allies heals you (say, 25 or 50 base-healing)
Signet Active: Grant Quickness to nearby allies and heal them for each boon they have (double the healing of the passive)

(2) I have some ideas, but it’s pretty much reworking the entire line, together with changing the other lines a bit.(like swapping the Expertise in Zeal for the Malice in Radiance). Zeal lacks focus and doesn’t live up to its name. In my opinion (and this is really just my opinion), each trait-line should represent an archetype of the profession, and Zeal should be about being a zealot. This means damage and burning. If I can find the time this weekend, I plan on making a thread about how I see each trait-line and how I would change them.

I wonder what % stronger we’d be if we simply had every guardian trait in the game? A lot of our traits are negated by the fact we can only have 3 class skills active. I also often feel like our skills have been given unnecessarily long cd so you have to waste traits on -20% cd. I’d be curious to see. I would bet only 20% stronger than our current best builds.

Warrior or thief would likely get a massive power gain, in comparison.

Just shows how weak our ability to really specialise is and how blah the class is.

Ynna.8769:

(2) I have some ideas, but it’s pretty much reworking the entire line, together with changing the other lines a bit.(like swapping the Expertise in Zeal for the Malice in Radiance).

I think Zeal giving power and condition duration is a design meant to keep people from an obvious min-max trap. Ele’s fire magic also give power and condition duration. It has the same focus on damage and burning.

The problem with a trait giving both power and condition damage is that it’ll become the mandatory trait to use regardless of whether you’re direct damage spec’ed or condition damage spec’ed, with the rest of your traits thrown into defensive lines, and it will out perform other trait distributions that favors one damage type over another. The game is balanced around having you specialize in one type of damage, or if you want both, then you cannot max either of them. Power and condition damage definitely should not go into the same line.

That said, that was a general statement across professions. I think it’s possible to make the case that condition damage is unviable for Guardians and hence that rule shouldn’t apply, but I think it’d be difficult to prove. And if a case is indeed made for it, then the better way to go is to make condition damage a viable alternative to power based builds, rather than assimilating it into power based builds.

I’ll have to rethink that, then.(I’d also need to read up on other profession’s traits before I actually start writing).
My reasoning was that Guardians only have access to burning, which doesn’t really make increased duration all that useful, unless you get effects that make something happen while a burn is active on a target (which I was going to shift into Radiance).
Zeal would become the Line that you went into because you wanted straight up sustained damage, while Radiance would rely more on crits with the randomness somewhat lessened by long-duration burns.

Ynna.8769:

My reasoning was that Guardians only have access to burning …

Yap. Answered that. But I have more to add. In order to make condition builds viable for the Guardian, but instead of trying to fit bleed in somewhere, how about a trait that make some of the other conditions that the guardian does have to also cause damage? Candidates are immobilize and blind, probably immobilize. This is similar to the necro trait that causes fear to also deal damage.

How does this have anything to do with condition duration? Well, the reason why people don’t want to bother with condition duration is because in order to get one more second out of these very short lasting conditions you need a very significant investment that doesn’t pay out in any other way. We just have to give people enough incentive to squeeze even one more second out of a condition and it will open up a new avenue for diversity.

Bakitten291:

After reading through a couple times I have to agree with alot of the OP. There are some things that I would do differently though. I would make Virtue of resolve into your mentioned virtue of altruism. I feel like we really don’t need another defensive virtue, and this would make it something far more active than just gaining health. However in doing this I think the numbers would need to be adjusted, as we are losing out on that passive regen, and also making it slightly weaker if your symbol changes were to go through.

As an added virtue I would like to see something more offensive and possibly snare related. There is an idea that I think would be awesome, but implementing it would be kind of weird. Something along the lines of “whenever you do X amount of damage, you apply a snare to your current target” and make the threshold like 7k or so. This would give a snare to all builds, but would favor the damage builds that need it more, since they could total the damage faster than defense minded builds. Also, make the on use of it do an AoE immobilize for 2-3 seconds. The buff you could get from 5 virtue trait could stay as fury. I think this would help alot with both our mobility, and getting a healing trait out of the valor line to free up some points. And obviously all the numbers regarding it could be adjusted to balance it.

Other than that I pretty much agree with most of the other things, just figured I would throw an added idea in there.

Just reposting this because I think it got missed and was wondering what people thought of the Idea.

Interesting. I only recently began playing something other than a Guardian (a Necromancer, actually), so I don’t know what traits they have. Thanks for the info.

Brutaly’s analysis are always worth reading!
I agree for the most part but I’m not so drastic abouth the changes needed. To me we are mainly a defensive melee profession, so having low mobility and poor range options it’s natural (as far as we are the best in melee, clearly). For the same reason it’s imho correct that we give our best focusing in honor and valor and not in an offensive line like zeal.
That said I think that every trait should have its purpose, so a few tweaks in zeal and radiance are indeed needed.
Another good point of Brutaly’s analysis is the one about weapons: GS is ok and funny, Hammer is OK stat-wise but spamming 1-1-2-1-1-2… is not funny at all, and staff is a set of random skills (I use very rarely 1-handed).

@Codo: I see this all the time, but when someone gives us a tool, that tool should be a viable options. If Arenanet doesn’t want Guardians doing a lot of damage, or doing anything at range, don’t give us access to things like Zeal or the Scepter, instead of pretending we can do it, but then giving us subpar tools.

It would be like giving the Engineer a Mace, but having all the attacks on it suck, because Engineers aren’t supposed to be good at melee fighting. Just remove the kitten Mace, then.

Codo.2860:

Brutaly’s analysis are always worth reading!
I agree for the most part but I’m not so drastic abouth the changes needed. To me we are mainly a defensive melee profession, so having low mobility and poor range options it’s natural (as far as we are the best in melee, clearly). For the same reason it’s imho correct that we give our best focusing in honor and valor and not in an offensive line like zeal.
That said I think that every trait should have its purpose, so a few tweaks in zeal and radiance are indeed needed.
Another good point of Brutaly’s analysis is the one about weapons: GS is ok and funny, Hammer is OK stat-wise but spamming 1-1-2-1-1-2… is not funny at all, and staff is a set of random skills (I use very rarely 1-handed).

I cant accept the poor range options just because we are being categorized as "best melee class. Scepter skills need some improvement, if that remains to be our ONLY range weapon. I’d love to see some staff skills being reworked to offer range attack instead their current state.

@Ynna
1. I see your point wouldnt that be balanced by the fact that valor and honor is the ones that primarily give you survivability and if AH was innate and i was going for a crit/power build i would have only 11k health.

In a retal/bunker build i allready go for 0/0/30/20/20 and the only shift i could see is that i would go for a 0/0/20/30/20 if AH was innate.

2. Im looking forward to a write up on the traitlines, i for one would really appreciate such a write up.

@Bash
As you said that would be weird and also lack control other then in duels, in wvw and tpvp there are infinite sources of damage and making a cc relying on what other people (or luck glacial cough"). Personally i think the cripple should be tied to weapons and choice of weapons, not our virtues that are present in any build you do.

Ynna.8769:

@Codo: I see this all the time, but when someone gives us a tool, that tool should be a viable options. If Arenanet doesn’t want Guardians doing a lot of damage, or doing anything at range, don’t give us access to things like Zeal or the Scepter, instead of pretending we can do it, but then giving us subpar tools.

Spot on, this is what i call balance with in the class. Atm Guardians are in very poor shape in this area, the internal balance and i think this is what Anet should focus on, to make all lines and weapons to do their job, atm Zeal and to some extent Radiance isnt balanced with with the other lines.

If it aint working and Arenanet has no intention to make it work, then remove it.

The same goes with the sillyness of retaliation, the less risk you take and the less skill you play with them more you gain. And the weird part is that they have placed the most vital traits for this in the defensive line which makes it even more easy mode.

If anyting, retal related traits should be in zeal and radiance so you need to go for active dps in order to get the passive.

Frankly Concentration should be in Radiance so in order to build that boon soldier you should actually place points in those lines.

Ynna.8769:

@Codo: I see this all the time, but when someone gives us a tool, that tool should be a viable options. If Arenanet doesn’t want Guardians doing a lot of damage, or doing anything at range, don’t give us access to things like Zeal or the Scepter, instead of pretending we can do it, but then giving us subpar tools.

It would be like giving the Engineer a Mace, but having all the attacks on it suck, because Engineers aren’t supposed to be good at melee fighting. Just remove the kitten Mace, then.

rchu.8945:

I cant accept the poor range options just because we are being categorized as "best melee class. Scepter skills need some improvement, if that remains to be our ONLY range weapon. I’d love to see some staff skills being reworked to offer range attack instead their current state.

Brutaly.6257:

Spot on, this is what i call balance with in the class. Atm Guardians are in very poor shape in this area, the internal balance and i think this is what Anet should focus on, to make all lines and weapons to do their job, atm Zeal and to some extent Radiance isnt balanced with with the other lines.

If it aint working and Arenanet has no intention to make it work, then remove it.

I think that here we come to a matter of personal preference. VIABLE is different from COMPETITIVE. In my opinion if a range guardian is not viable it’s indeed a game design fault, if it’s not competitive it’s alright to me. This because I can understand that an engineer would want to use a mace for a specific task, but I can’t understand why he should use it as well as a guardian.
This cause professions, like classes in a RPG game, should fit playstyles. If I want a melee character I should go warrior or guardian, period. Playing other professions in melee should be fine but not over the top. If we want every profession to have the same performance in any field we’re just saying that we don’t want different professions, but only one. Or that we want different professions for aestetycs reasons only.
For example I really dislike how races were handled in GW2: reducing them to an aestetyc choice with no impact on gameplay made them lose part of their meaning.
But I understand that this is just my opinion.

So the discussion in this area boils down to how viable the Scepter really is?
Because it’s not like anyone’s asking for ranged capabilities similar to the Ranger. And I must admit that I haven’t played other professions extensively, but to me it seems that melee Ranger, melee Elementalist (although this is more close-range, than melee, right?), etc. are pretty viable (if not competitive).

Also, if we’re shifting the discussion to the viability of the Scepter (or Staff, but whatever), I retract my Engineer/Mace example. Not having access to a single melee-skill (150 range or lower) hardly hinders your ability for any type of content.

Codo.2860:

I think that here we come to a matter of personal preference. VIABLE is different from COMPETITIVE.

I agree and Zeal and Scepter doesnt have to be competitive but the issue is that they arent even viable atm.

Chase a person that is less then 600 from you and use the scepter and you will find, if he has swiftness up, that the orbs wont even be able to chase him down. That imo isnt viable.

The same with smite, an aoe that infact does less damage the more targets that are in the area, to me thats not a viable aoe.

Zeal isnt viable above 10 points since it actually lower your overall performance. To me thats not viable. Is there a single player out there that builds for crit/power? This pretty much tells me that its not viable.

And i agree,our ranged option shouldnt be as good as a elementalists staff but it should be at least as good as a warrior since they fulfill the same melee centric purpose.

Ok so it seems we all agree.
Zeal should have at least a viable grandmaster option but it should NEVER become our must-have trait.
The same for scepter.

I think we do agree, but with the caveat that I don’t think any other weapon or trait should be must-have.

Thank you OP ^^

After you put all the “bugs” and faults of this profession, I immediately deleted my Guardian

(after salvaging Exotics for Ectos ofc )

When they fix it in couple of years, I’ll make new one ^^

Ynna.8769:

I think we do agree, but with the caveat that I don’t think any other weapon or trait should be must-have.

Fine to me.

Lillian Wandom Hale.7102:

Thank you OP ^^

After you put all the “bugs” and faults of this profession, I immediately deleted my Guardian

(after salvaging Exotics for Ectos ofc )

When they fix it in couple of years, I’ll make new one ^^

Many complaints but it’s still super strong!

First, Sry for my bad english.

U did rly great work. I hope they will not ignore it, your Ideas are amazing.

But something is missing.

1. Burn alone is to weak to make conditiondamage as good as power/crit. So 300 more Conditiondmg is Radiance is useless, we can´t play a good Conditiondmg build. Even if are the only 1 who makes our enemys burn. Other Conditions are….not for a Guardian. Poison and bleeding will break the Class´s feeling. Ikittennow what i mean.

So this need another Solution. Possibel a second Class Mechanic.

For example Torch 4 “set yourself alight”, add this to some other Weapons or Slotskills too, and give us some Traits which will benefit if u set yourself “alight”….like Inner Fire for example like u said.

Radiance could increase “Alight” Duration for 30% (or something like this)….the name of this Traitline will be perfect too.

2. The sword is boring. Only 1, 2 (rly low dmg) and a 15sec CD…

3. The Torch, 5 deals low dmg, autohits are better. This skills needs a big! dmg increase. This will make 1h builds to be more fun too.

Greetings