Guild Wars 2

Guardian already haves a maul and GS for power builds, and seeing as i use sword to supplement my torching build, it would be optimal for a sword one to burn as well.

Since Sword have probably lost their power DPS role for ever and is mainly use in condi guardian build these day. It could be nice to rework the skill #3 to make it better and more condi oriented. Not because sword need a burn, but because sword need some rework since day one anyway.

I have been suggesting since DH reveal that they make the trait piercing light effect sword & bow hits as well as traps.

That would make condi guardian rather decent as all the sword/bow hits would apply a 4-5 second bleed.

That would be nice to add bleed to guardian, but it would really improve the guardian much because Bleed is pretty bad right now. All good condi build rely on burn for a reason.

They would need to increase the duration of bleed by around 15-20% and decrease burning duration by around 15-20% to rebalance things.

I second this.
Making sword condi-oriented weapon will distinguish it from other weapons.

Sword is really the condi weapon for single target. Since our burn application relies on maximizing hits/second , sword has the highest hits/second against single target.

I’d love to see it become more focused on condi however. Here are some ideas that could be added as traits or through weapon revamp. I’m just listening some ideas. I’m not saying they all need to be added.

- crit on sword applies bleeding
- virtue of justice passive also applies bleeding when wielding a sword
- apply confusion when blinding a foe.
- while wielding a sword, applying burning also applies (bleed or vulnerability)

What do you guys think ?

Sword isn’t the best single target condi weapon. It’s the scepter. But for PvP, scepter can have some difficulty to hit the target regularly and that’s why Sword is part of the build (plus the teleport).

- I like the crit on sword applies bleeding. It could work with Right-hand mastery in two trait. One trait increase one-handed crit chance and the other trait improve the cd of sword and give them bleed on crits. Then you need to place those trait in the right place. I could see the one-handed crit chance stay where it is for PvE and putting the sword+bleed trait as a master in Valor. That would be the best place for the build, but it doesn’t really work well with the concept of valor.

- I don’t like the Virtue of justice passive thing. Burning should still be our main source of condi.

- Ya it could work. This would help to protect our burning against condi clear.

- The bleed on burning is a bit op. That would be pretty much a 150% buff to our burning skills. If it apply short stack of vulnerability, then I could be ok. Like 2-3sec of vulnerability by stack of burning.

Some of these could replace some of the useless trait the guardian have. Even we have a lot fewer of those now.

Thaddeus.4891:

That would be nice to add bleed to guardian, but it would really improve the guardian much because Bleed is pretty bad right now. All good condi build rely on burn for a reason.

They would need to increase the duration of bleed by around 15-20% and decrease burning duration by around 15-20% to rebalance things.

True bleeding by itself isn’t that great.

But if each sword hit applied say 4-5 seconds of bleeding the guardian could easily keep up 12-16 stacks of bleeding with sword auto attacks + whatever burning they would also be doing.

And that is before + duration effects are taken into consideration.

That combo could be quite nice and the bleeding would serve to do some damage when burning gets cleansed.

idk I still like Sword as a power based weapon. It has some good utility behind it such as gap closer with blink as well as projectile protection with ZD. Tbh the thing I really would want for sword would probably be fixing the end chain of sword being not reflectable, or Vuln stacking for each hit. Mainly the end chain not being reflectable because I’m tired of AA in melee and having a class like mesmer or Warrior and others that have reflect options throwing up their reflects and making my end chain get thrown back at me multiple times or me having to completely halt my DPS in melee until the chain resets.

Sword could be a decent anti mid range kite weapon. AA has slightly longer range than other melee weapons (150/150/300 vs 130 for most other melee AA) and a quick mid range gap closer. If they would just make Zealots Defense mobile vs rooted you would have a great mobile weapon for closing distance with ranged.

Also, just add % projectile finisher the the 3rd strike on AA to make it more versatile. Then you can make it a condi weapon or a support weapon, just pick your fields.

Why you insist on bleeding? Guardian traits are all burn focused.

i just wished they fix the sword AA 3

Rainbowsand.2438:

Why you insist on bleeding? Guardian traits are all burn focused.

Because the guardian needs another damaging condition.

Complete reliance on a single condition means said condition must

1: Be extremely easy to apply and stack up very vast
&
2: Do a crapton of damage.

And even with it doing those 2 things someone with resistance or a ready source of cleanses will neuter your damage potential.

Having ready access to a second damaging condition means its harder for them to counter your damage potential.

Any addition to Condi viability on Sword would be great, bring it back into use. Right now it’s just worse in so many ways, only very niche situations is it worth pulling out. I’d love to see it be the condi weapon. Change the 3 skill to apply bleeds on each hit would be a good start and maybe even enough.

scepter 2 should be a symbol youre all going to say I’m noob but…in WvW I use sigil of doom on sword and earth on scepter…poison comes in handy to prevent some healing and my high crit rate when hitting a burning foe gives me 3 stacks of bleed on scpeter with2 not really THAT high damage but it adds a bit morre damage per tic and it burry my burning a little I think it comes in handy cause usually those 2 condi last longer than my burning so it’s up when burning is not…I swapping often IDK maybe I’ll change earth for something else tho

I want to think i’m not the only one that says this is a bad idea. With all due respect to all the “burn guards” and the ones that forgot that mace is a defensive weapon at first, sword was, and it still is our main DPS 1 hander, this is even more true for zerker/marauder medi guards. The fact that Zeal overly benefit’s symbols is not an excuse to rethink the problem and try to find a solution for Sword to retake it’s ex position as the best 1H Melee DPS.

If anything I would rather encourage scepter get’s a new trait in the lines of “smite has a chance to trigger additional burning ticks or w/e”. This would also help Condi Guard in Pve for single target burn dmg, as we know it’s lacking in that department. Any decent guard knows Zeal in it’s current iteration is not healthy for our other weapon sets.

And if we are talking about adding a new condition, I would rather have torment than bleeding.