Guild Wars 2

1. Move all symbol traits from Zeal and into Honor making honor the real symbol line.

2. Move empowering might, vigorous precision, two hand mastery and elusive power to zeal. EM (master), 2HM (adept) EP (adept), VP (master)

4. Have made it so Zealous blade buffed all weapons and moved it back as grandmaster trait and scrapped the kitten just introduced.

5. Normalize symbols in ability to move while casting, casting time and duration. And ofc increased size of the symbols, what other weapon has to be traited in order to get it to work as intended.

To trait symbols fully then we are talking about 55 points in two different lines, what other individual weaponskill has to do that?

6. Made the symbols apply the entire boon length when placed (would also solve the issues with SoS)

7. Only keep one symbol trait outside of Honor and that would be the grandmaster trait in radiance. This was in place in beta and added 20% crit when in symbols, why not fury as a boon.

8. Remove glcial heart and replace it with perfect inscriptions and let the 20% fury trait replace PI as grandmaster.

The above is a indirect nerf to valor and honor and a huge buff to zeal and would open up for more diversified builds. It would also create a reasonable master trait in radiance for two hand gameplay and a reasonable master trait in zeal for one hand gameplay.

If anything, Symbol traits need to be sorted out and moved together.

If you play with two Symbol weapons you have to take III in Honour, it’s compulsory and silly, their default size should be higher.

55 Points across two lines just for Symbols is mad.

But so are Spirit Weapons for us.
30 in Zeal, 20 in Radiance, 10 in Virtues to get all Spirit traits…

To trait symbols fully then we are talking about 55 points in two different lines, what other individual weaponskill has to do that?

fully traited necro-marks need 60 pts and 4 major traits in 3 different traitlines. luckily, one of the traits just sucks, so to spec on marks, you only need 40 pts, 3 major traits….

Spirit weapons should be in one line honestly but since they are so diversified i dont know where they should be, its a bit more simple with symbols, they are primarily damage and secondary support.

Yeah the symbolsize is just absurd when untraited.

This post makes absolute perfect sense. I too was thinking about how wrong it was for Anet to divide Symbol Traits like they did. Makes no dang sense.

To add: Each weapon should be able to mark a symbol(coughswordcoughsepter)

+1 OP – Should really consider working for Anet and teach the Dev’s a thing or two.

Very nice thoughts here Brutaly

The best thing they could do for build diversity is make AH and MF 20 point traits. Then you would have Alot more options.

Relentliss.2170:

The best thing they could do for build diversity is make AH and MF 20 point traits. Then you would have Alot more options.

That would be a solution as well which i also suggested in the past. The only issue is if there is any reason to invest 30p in valor if you do that?

Personally i think they should make the impact of AH weaker and reducing boonpulses and move EM and vigorous pårecision would do that.

I can live with meditations being strong since you infact give up almost every utility when they choose them so they are fine. In AH you dont give up a thing, instead you gain 9% dps, 450 toughness and can keep all your utility on the castbar and its superstrong as long as you have one man in the party that actually stays in melee range with you..

you dont gain 450 toughness only 300 150 trait work only for allies not for you

Pecar.1236:

you dont gain 450 toughness only 300 150 trait work only for allies not for you

No, it works for you too just like EM/AH it just only activates in combat. Go attack something and look at your buffbar and your stat sheet.

1. Absolutely in favor of this as long as traits are merged together. Honestly, Writ of Exaltation should just be removed and have Symbols already be this large. It’s so annoying to use Symbol of Protection on large enemies to have to move ontop of the enemy just to be inside of your own Symbol. I’m thinking:

Writ of Exaltation removed. Symbols are now 50% larger without a trait.
Writ of Persistsence moved to Adept level.
New Trait: Writ of Power, Master level. Symbols deal 10% more damage and apply 2 stacks of Vulnerability for 5 seconds per tick.

I’d be more than happy. Of course, new Zeal minors would have to be added. The extra damage could even be removed from Writ of Power. I would just rather the trait have a better Vulnerability application than one stack that lasts 3 seconds.

2. Empowering Might belongs more in Radiance, but it’s welcome in Zeal. Two-Handed Mastery and Elusive Power can also go into Zeal. Vigorous Precision I’m going to vote against. Honor is for healing, and Selfless Daring would be nothing without Vigor. It would be a waste to have to spend 15 points in Honor and then an addition 15 (assumption) in Zeal of all things to have a good healing output. Moving the two major traits from Honor would require two new traits to be added, but I’m sure we can find better, support-oriented traits to add into Honor.

4. I think Zealous Blade is…. okay. I mean, it is painful knowing it only applies to one weapon but until it gets a boost from Healing Power, it just isn’t worth enough over the other self-healing traits.

5. I don’t really know how it would be better to cast a stationary Symbol while moving unless you mean for the Symbol to move with the caster. The other points of this suggestion are covered in my first point.

6. I don’t think this is necessary. Symbol of Swiftness just needs to be reworked so it applies its duration if the user has less than that duration of Swiftness. For example: Symbol of Swiftness has a 10 second duration, but you only have 8 seconds active. Symbol of Swiftness sets that duration to 10 seconds. With the same duration, you walk into the Symbol with 15 seconds of Swiftness. No changes apply. It would fix that annoying point where you recover the one second of Swiftness you have remaining each tick.

7. Fury while in Symbols would be nice, but it would have to be a different effect than the Boon, Fury. Doubling the amount of Boons received from Symbols would make Altruistic Healing even more powerful. I’d still much rather see a weight effect where enemies move slower while Inside of your Symbols. Cripple or Chill would suffice (even a new condition).

8. Glacial Heart is better now, but it still can be removed relatively quick. I’d much rather see it reworked to have a shorter Chill duration and a shorter cooldown.

They should also consolidate spirit weapon traits into a single trait line. Its crazy to have to go 30 zeal, 20 radiance and 10 virtues just to have access to all the spirit weapon related traits.

@Viralseed
Vigorous precision isnt for healing, its for doding and avoiding damage and dps builds are more demanding then tank builds and that is the reason why i think it should be in a dps centric line..

Having heal on dodge is actually counterproductive, imo, to the unique mechanism anet has put in the game. Imo it fits perfect in zeal or radiance. If people need to dodge they can also use sigils and food which makes dodging almost endles it seems.

Having zealous blade work on two weapons makes it double as good on a skilled player which just dont spam chains on gs but also swap and also has great synergies with some sigils, leech on swap and crit, and just imagine a gs/sword player hitting withww+ZB or a sword players chain hitting with all kittens in the chain. Its not a weak trait imo.

5. Sorry for being unclear, ofc we should be able to move when casting symbols, not to other way around. That and the lengthy cast on mace is in particular slow and non fluid.

6. The main point with applying the entire boon instead of pulses are two fold. Symbols in general would provide better support for your team and less proccs to AH. First one is better for the team and the second one is a nerf which makes non symbols weapons, zeal and radiance relatively stronger.

7. If boons where applied in a chunk instead of pusles it wouldnt make AH stronger than it is today. It would just make radiance builds stronger and if you invest in that trait (30p radiance) I wouldnt look at AH. I would go for honor to get the symbol enhancers like vulnerability, size (which should still be there), duration and ofc pure of voice to get some condiremoval and max the impact of the symbols.

@Fishergrip
I can just agree.

This won’t happen. This is wishful thinking from players, thinking “I could get my perfect build if things were like this!”.

You see, there is no rule saying that you can get everything you want just because you want Symbols, or Two Handers (but in fact you can). The problem is that people want too much.

The way it works now makes perfect sense, look:
Zeal increases damage, both Symbol traits there increase damage directly. Every trait there is damage increasing, and the only support it has comes from Spirit Weapons traits.

Radiance enhances burning and criticals, and everything in the line grants direct damage increase. It also buffs Signets, another way to increase self-DpS.

Valor increases self-survivability. Nothing there is support or benefits your party with the exception of Strength in Numbers, which could go to Honor. It buffs Meditations, utilities that doesn’t give boons or group support, but increases our combat capabilities.

Honor has plenty of boons, utilities and heals, Vigorous Precision, Empowering Might, Longer Lasting Symbols, Healing Symbols… maybe the ones that doesn’t fit as much are Larger Symbols and Two Handed Mastery. It also buffs Shouts, our utility for boon Group support.

Virtue is like mushrooms for me. It increases our Virtues, and enhances various types of things, but the keyword here is enhance. It also buffs Consecrations, which is a shame… wish they were somewhere else.

So there’s absolutely nothing wrong with this.
What you guys are proposing is to move Symbol DpS increasing traits in the boon/group support line, so you can get all your group support/boons plus extra DpS?

Perfect Inscriptions in Valor? So everyone can pick the new Signet of Judgment for even more defense? And leaves Radiance without the best enhancing Signet trait in the line?

If you guys still don’t get it, check other professions and you might understand how the traits are designed. Another quick example, from my Mesmer:

(Power Line, Adept) Illusions deal 15% more Damage.
(Precision Line, Adept) Phantasms (an illusion type) have Fury. (they CRIT more!)
(Vitality Line, Adept) Phantasms have 20% more health.
(Vitality Line, Grandmaster) Phantasms deal 15% more damage.
(Unique Line, Master) Phantasms attack 20% faster. (Enhanced performance)

It’s all scattered, and it still makes sense (maybe except the extra damage on Vitality).
Guardians wouldn’t be any different.

I don’t know about this. While it is a big investment to trait into symbols 100%, there are 2 distinct areas the different traits buff. The Zeal line is for offensive boosts to symbols, and the Honor line is for defense / support. That fits the trait lines (Honor is the defensive trait line, Zeal is the offensive one). Shoving the offensive ones into Honor wouldn’t really fit the trait line.

Plus, where in Honor would you even put those traits? If you replace the Honor minors then you lose other good traits like Vigor and heal-on-dodge. If you place them as major traits, then you wouldn’t be able to trait for every symbol trait anyway because you’d only have at most 3 major trait slots to fill (if you take 30 in Honor) and at least 4 Symbol-based majors, even assuming you combine all the minor traits from Zeal into a single major trait. I guess maybe they could merge another 2 symbol traits into one (perhaps longer duration + larger radius) or something to solve that problem.

Great break down Danicco, and thank you for speaking up.

As far as larger symbols and faster 2h cooldowns, they still make sense in the support trait line in the aspect of larger symbols provide more boons to more people further from the guardian

Also our best group support weapon is the staff, so more empowers for large stacks of might and small group burst healing.

The few traits that bug me are ones that force me to trait into things that I will never use, such as increasing scepter damage in the zeal line…..but i had to trait for symbols to get there, which the scepter does not have.

For your mesmer, the more damage on phantasms I am sure is to allow them to be useful since they are alive longer, without having to trait too far down two trees to make one of those helpful.

Coming back to address symbol size. The visual of an untraited symbol from GS, Staff, and possibly Hammer is much smaller than the effective size. Mace is the appropriate size for the visual radius.

Untraited, the radius is as big as it looks visually when traited for larger symbols

Try to stand just out of range of a target dummy for a symbol and drop it, you will see it does damage.

Now keep standing there and trait for larger symbols and you will see that the new visual radius encompasses that exact same radius you invisibility had….of course now you have larger symbols so back up some more and drop a symbol and see that you can still hit outside of your symbol range.

I tested this in the mists, unsure of how this goes in PvE. Possibly just bugged, but I reported it regardless.

Ok there is a huge issue regarding your phantasm comparison. Mesmers have them on every single weapon and as utilities. It makes sense that they are spread out in that fashion as you get a huge boost to almost every weapon. With guardians, we have symbols on only our 2h weapons, and a single main hand. Any of those traits are wasted on all of our offhands and 2/3 of our main hands.

That means taking points in zeal without using those weapons (of which 2 traits are cd reductions for weapons without symbols are wasted. As a mesmer, there isnt a single phantasm trait that is wasted.

Brutaly.6257:

5. Sorry for being unclear, ofc we should be able to move when casting symbols, not to other way around. That and the lengthy cast on mace is in particular slow and non fluid.

we don’t?
sorry but I’m nearly always casting symbols while running….
yes that mace symbol also.

So i don’t understand Why You are talking as we don’t have this ability….

EDIT: as for now there is only one symbol that is locking in place while casting and that’s the symbol from gs 4…
(I can cast both Symbol of Faith and Symbol of Swiftness on the move and If I remeber well hammer third autoatack also was able to casted on the move (but I didn’t use hammer for long so i can be mistaken in this part)

^ I think Brutaly was saying that symbols should remain as they are when it comes to being able to cast while moving.

Whatever the case, Symbol of Faith (mace), Symbol of Swiftness (staff), and Symbol of Protection (hammer) can definitely be used while you’re moving.

Symbol of Faith is slow, yes, but since you can use it while moving, use the skill before you get to the location you want to put it down. It takes some practice to get the timing right. It’s very doable, though. The cast time is actually exactly the same as Symbol of Protection.

Symbol of Swiftness is easily usable while moving. You barely have to time anything. Just cast it and it’s down.

The only symbol that can’t be used while moving is Symbol of Wrath (greatsword).

Brutaly.6257:

Relentliss.2170:

The best thing they could do for build diversity is make AH and MF 20 point traits. Then you would have Alot more options.

That would be a solution as well which i also suggested in the past. The only issue is if there is any reason to invest 30p in valor if you do that?

It would depend on how good they made the new Grandmaster Traits to replace them.

Some form of extra condition removal or crit damage as a GM trait in Valor would make a lot of sense, considering by in large the epic boost to conditions in the last patch.

- ideas for new GM traits
Using a meditation converts one condition to a boon for the caster.

+20% crit damage. (adjust number so its noticable but not op)

Crits have a 10% chance to apply regeneration.

Crits apply a new debuff that stacks toughness, ie like the trait in honor with might but stacks up toughness instead.

Crits have a 10% chance to remove a condition.

Crits have a 10% chance to apply a boon.

The truth of the matter is I just feel AH or MF are near essential in most builds, having to go 30 points into valor is kinda boring. The only other option is to go very high in virtues.

I know this is bit of a stretch but why not turn these into auras of some kind? I’ve always believed(and still do) that symbols promote static gameplay which is against this games design. Why not revamp these skills into auras?

9. Gut Selfis- er, Altruistic Healing so its existence no longer poisons the discussion of any build that doesn’t have it.

I’m astounded it made it through this last patch unchanged.

I think they can keep AH in the game in it’s current form, but reduce the base healing and make it scale somewhat. That would allow you to go full clerics gear and end up with the same-ish level of survivability you have today, but make it say… half as effective for DPS builds, which will probably make people re-evaluate whether it’s worth the investment.
Something along the lines of 40 + 3% healing power would probably get the job done.

Since I really got in depth with my Guardian during pre release, I’ve always wondered why the hell traits are they way they are with them. Not sure why the symbol minor traits are in Zeal, but all the good symbol enhancements are in the Honor tree. They cover a nice basis, but it leaves a lot of the utilities inferior, in general.

Merging some traits would make more sense to me – also freeing up some slots for new traits.
Or incorporating some in the baseline and get rid of the trait.

Having what, 5-6 traits just for symbols is mad imo – like the 5 for necro staff.