Guild Wars 2

Gaiyeerishima Cat.1082:

Oh my god, reading this is depressing lol. You guys should not be trying to change one of the best elites in the game, for one of the strongest professions in the game. The dev is right, guards are more than usable in top tier pretty much anywhere, and if you don’t think that you must be pretty blind.

Man what game are you playing and where can I buy it?

Gaiyeerishima Cat.1082:

Oh my god, reading this is depressing lol. You guys should not be trying to change one of the best elites in the game, for one of the strongest professions in the game. The dev is right, guards are more than usable in top tier pretty much anywhere, and if you don’t think that you must be pretty blind.

Please enlighten me how this is such a good skill?

username.4932:

What you don’t understand is that they have no intention to modify anything as guardian is fine for the dev team.

That’s a presumptuous statement not having any merit. You don’t know what their intention is. Changes have been made, mostly to our benefit.

Of itself, Renewed Focus is pretty awesome. It’s the virtues that need some smoothing out. I think it’s the elite that needs the least attention.

JonPeters.5630:

Virtues are not balanced for PvE vs PvP vs WvW they are balanced for combat which is tuned for generally 1-5 combatants. Whethe or not they are effective in a given encounter depends on that encounter. Sometimes they are more useful as passive abilities and sometimes they are more useful as actives. Finally, they are not balanced against other skills specifically, they are balanced as the class mechanic of the Guardian profession which is an effective profession in nearly all if not all content.

Problem is most of the time that it’s better not to use the virtue, barring dps builds and justice.

The other question is that will the team put more effort into tuning combat above 5 participants, since there’s a lot of content in this game that requires such?

This isn’t meant to really contradict anything you said as I don’t really care about changing this skill, but the logic can’t flow like that.

Redscope.6215:

Gaiyeerishima Cat.1082:

Oh my god, reading this is depressing lol. You guys should not be trying to change one of the best elites in the game, for one of the strongest professions in the game. The dev is right, guards are more than usable in top tier pretty much anywhere, and if you don’t think that you must be pretty blind.

Man what game are you playing and where can I buy it?

Renewed Focus is a good skill however being tied to Virtues make it a lackluster skill. Lets say Renewed Focus renewed utility skills instead, then everyone would probably agree that its great.

The only way to fix Renewed Focus is by fixing Virtues.

Gaiyeerishima Cat.1082:

Oh my god, reading this is depressing lol. You guys should not be trying to change one of the best elites in the game, for one of the strongest professions in the game. The dev is right, guards are more than usable in top tier pretty much anywhere, and if you don’t think that you must be pretty blind.

Yes i tottaly agree with you, Renewed focus is fine. Probaly as fine as mercifull intervention was back at the start. Alot of people said it was fine, and whoops all of the sudden the dev buffed it by double changed the cooldown by about 60% and trippled it scaling value. So yes, i guess the dev never do misstakes.

So please my good sir, enlighten us blind people how oh how thy think a 90 second cooldown two second channel invurb is the strongest skill in game. Oh please tell us how, thy mighty servents wishes to know.

Lots of overreacting on this thread. Two trait lines need work but three are probably the best in game IMO.

Having trait lines that work well doesn’t really make up for having broken ones since all trait lines are supposed to work well.

On topic, as Aza said, fix Virtues and Renewed Focus becomes awesome all of a sudden.

JonPeters.5630:

Virtues are not balanced for PvE vs PvP vs WvW they are balanced for combat which is tuned for generally 1-5 combatants. Whethe or not they are effective in a given encounter depends on that encounter. Sometimes they are more useful as passive abilities and sometimes they are more useful as actives. Finally, they are not balanced against other skills specifically, they are balanced as the class mechanic of the Guardian profession which is an effective profession in nearly all if not all content.

Interesting…so that is how you look at the Virtues.

• Is this how you look at all class mechanics, or is it different for each class?
• Out of curiosity, how would you describe the Guardian? I think people are confused and don’t even know what the class’s ‘focus’ / niche / purpose is.
• 1-5 party members? I ask because your comments make me wonder if I’ve been looking at Virtues in the wrong angle. Basically – how do I play this profession like it was intended to be played?

If Virtues are balanced for combat involving 1-5 players, then I can’t help notice their effect doesn’t scale by the number of players in team.

For example, wouldn’t it be reasonable for the VoJ effect to be stronger if you are solo than if you were in team?

^

That doesn’t make sense. The statement that Virtues was designed for 1-5 players doesn’t mean the effects scale based on the number of players, nor that it was implied it should.

If you start scaling the Virtues based on the number of players, then there will be a range when the Virtues are underpowered & overpowered, putting Virtues in a worse spot.

JonPeters.5630:

Virtues are not balanced for PvE vs PvP vs WvW they are balanced for combat which is tuned for generally 1-5 combatants. Whethe or not they are effective in a given encounter depends on that encounter. Sometimes they are more useful as passive abilities and sometimes they are more useful as actives. Finally, they are not balanced against other skills specifically, they are balanced as the class mechanic of the Guardian profession which is an effective profession in nearly all if not all content.

As a Virtues proponent and avid user, some of this disappoints me. Particularly the view that passive virtures are more useful when it doesn’t feel that way. General gameplay encourages active use of them, not passive. More specifically, the passives, even when traited, are very lackluster. There SHOULD be a want to keep them on passive, but because they are rather weak, there’s no need to and you don’t feel weakened when using them actively.

JonPeters.5630:

Leonsky.3156:

JonPeters.5630:

This is absolutely working as intended. The game wide rule (minus a bug or two that we are working on) is that once a skill has given you any of the benefits, canceling or interrupting that skill puts it on full cooldown. The alternative, in this case especially, is to be able to make yourself invulnerable for 2 seconds, cancel and then recast 4 seconds later which would be very broken.

Jon

Then wouldn’t it be more beneficial to players to just get the virtues at the start of Renewed Focus instead and ride out the invulnerability duration.

It might, however that is not the only consideration when creating a skill. In this particular instance the idea of refreshing virtues is powerful and we want you as a player to commit to this instead of casting and canceling right away. It is also flavorful in that you meditate for a few seconds to renew your focus not he other way around.

Jon

Virtue recharge aside (for what that’s worth when you’re not traited in virtues), this elite is by far absolutely worse than regular utilities that do the same thing (make people invulnerable) on a number of levels (no stun breaker, shorter duration, longer cooldown, severely punished for doing a dodge roll).

I would consider it flavourful if it an elite skill wasn’t subpar to the utilities of just about every class.

MercenaryK.4180:

That doesn’t make sense.

It makes plenty of sense to me. Passive Virtues are certainly not balanced for combat in teams of 1-5. Scaling would be a more than reasonable way to achieve that balance. In fact one of the big issues with Virtues is that the passives are relatively weak compared to the Actives (even solo) and they DON’T get better when you team.

Maybe the Active effects are balanced in combat with a team but Virtues as a whole, are not.

Obtena.7952:

MercenaryK.4180:

That doesn’t make sense.

It makes plenty of sense to me. Passive Virtues are certainly not balanced for combat in teams of 1-5. Scaling would be a more than reasonable way to achieve that balance. In fact one of the big issues with Virtues is that the passives are relatively weak compared to the Actives (even solo) and they DON’T get better when you team.

Maybe the Active effects are balanced in combat with a team but Virtues as a whole, are not.

Makes sense. As a solo guardian, using the actives of your virtues is not as noticeably stronger in comparison to the effect it has on the nearest 5 allies, collectively.

Take 5 into virtues and you just granted burning on next attack, 3 stacks of might, an instant heal, regen, protection, and aegis to the nearest 5 allies. Collectively, this is superior than maintaining the passives for just the guardian(minus VoR).

Personally, I think the passives could use a slight bump, especially VoR in the healing power coefficient, but they have their place.

My only input on the RF discussion is to remove the ability to dodge or cancel while channeling RF. Too many times by reaction I bump dodge and kill myself.

Yeah, honestly virtues need work. You look at classes like ranger and elementalist and you see that pets and attunement swap are class-defining characteristics. Then you look at guardian, where in most cases the virtues are just ‘there’. I understand that the fact that they don’t take up utility slots is significant, but they don’t really feel unique. VoJ is pretty cool I suppose, but VoR and VoC should be changed somehow in my opinion because, like others have said here, they just kind of feel like subpar utilities.

Having VoC to give party aegis is nice, but in situations where I need party aegis I just equip retreat instead because it has such a smaller cooldown for the same effect, making it much more dependable. As for VoR, I find myself only using the active when there is absolutely no other alternative to keep a teammate alive, because I just find the 2k heal is such poor compensation in most situations for it taking away my regen that supplements my already low HP pool, especially with all of the other mechanics that guardian has to provide party support.

This leads into the idea that RF is more often used as a panic button than it is a utility, much less an elite one. People generally use it for the invulnerability when they’re in a pinch, and the recharged virtues is just a secondary benefit because chances are the virtues were just burned in a moment of panic rather than used strategically because they weren’t planning on having to use RF at that moment in the first place.

well… I am biased on the topic Running a100% boonduration Build.

I Love my virtues – of course they are traited

i think the comparison to warr is shortsighted. yes they get an over better reggen. But we have Access to a Lot of Protection and multiple heal sources. Means what we reg stays longer.

I agree However that the cd on voc are to Long for what it does despite the Protection it Grants. Maybe make ist a 3x Pulse aegis every two secs.

And while you are at it pleaaaase priotize Blocks over aegis. Nothing Sucks more to waste a Block and aegis at the Same time.

Brutaly.6257:

JonPeters.5630:

Virtues are not balanced for PvE vs PvP vs WvW they are balanced for combat which is tuned for generally 1-5 combatants. Whethe or not they are effective in a given encounter depends on that encounter. Sometimes they are more useful as passive abilities and sometimes they are more useful as actives. Finally, they are not balanced against other skills specifically, they are balanced as the class mechanic of the Guardian profession which is an effective profession in nearly all if not all content.

Which is fine and dandy. One of the issues is that the passives are to weak and adds close to nothing and the actives isnt that impressive either.

An other issues can be found in the individual virtue. 90 s cd on aegis is just really bad in almost all game formats and the same goes for 60 sec cd on regen. Virtues are pretty much poorer versions of signets in the passives and worse versions of shouts in their actives.

You say they are balanced in 1-5 opponents and this might be true for VoJ and VoR but in VoC aegis is totally unpredictable with even two opponents in vicinity, especially in the current meta in pvp and wvw where aoe rules.

The big hits it was good to negate back in beta and bwe isnt the main concern anymore.

The virtues and Renewed Focus also pigeonholes us, especially in wvw, versus a 30 point valor build or 30 point in virtues. You have the numbers here i bet and you can easily check what the most common builds are and those builds are reinforced by the weakness of virtues and the elite which solely focus on virtues.

Beef up all virtues so you dont have to trait them to be strong (they arent strong unless at least 30 points in virtues compared with untraited shouts) and keep RF as it is but make it more worth using. Why not reset all cd on all skills. It is an elite after all and should serve as a gamechanger.

Want to see some crazy insane aegis application? Prismatic Understanding, 30 deep into Chaos tree for Mesmer. Every second you are in stealth the mesmer gains 3s of Aegis, Protection, or Regen. Since they have 3-4 stealths on relatively low cooldowns they can spam the crap out of aegis. Also its not just their stealth, its any stealth they receive gives them that.

JonPeters.5630:

Leonsky.3156:

JonPeters.5630:

This is absolutely working as intended. The game wide rule (minus a bug or two that we are working on) is that once a skill has given you any of the benefits, canceling or interrupting that skill puts it on full cooldown. The alternative, in this case especially, is to be able to make yourself invulnerable for 2 seconds, cancel and then recast 4 seconds later which would be very broken.

Jon

Then wouldn’t it be more beneficial to players to just get the virtues at the start of Renewed Focus instead and ride out the invulnerability duration.

It might, however that is not the only consideration when creating a skill. In this particular instance the idea of refreshing virtues is powerful and we want you as a player to commit to this instead of casting and canceling right away. It is also flavorful in that you meditate for a few seconds to renew your focus not he other way around.

Jon

Funny you mention that, I was just wondering why this elite isn’t listed as a meditate, since that’s indeed what it is, and thus it should benefit from our meditate trait lines, no?

It used to be a meditation but changed due to programing complication, i have explained why in a recent post, so i wont explain again.

Perikittenor.1892:

It used to be a meditation but changed due to programing complication, i have explained why in a recent post, so i wont explain again.

Programming complication. Lol.

It changed because there was a trait that made all meditations instant. Which made Renewed Focus instant. Which removed the invulnerability.

You’re only invulnerable while casting. Since you have no cast time on an instant skill, you had no invulnerability on an instant Renewed Focus.

Asmodal.6489:

well… I am biased on the topic Running a100% boonduration Build.

I Love my virtues – of course they are traited

i think the comparison to warr is shortsighted. yes they get an over better reggen. But we have Access to a Lot of Protection and multiple heal sources. Means what we reg stays longer.

I agree However that the cd on voc are to Long for what it does despite the Protection it Grants. Maybe make ist a 3x Pulse aegis every two secs.

And while you are at it pleaaaase priotize Blocks over aegis. Nothing Sucks more to waste a Block and aegis at the Same time.

You’re running a 100% boon duration build, you’re traited for virtues, and you can still honestly say that VoC’s cooldown is too long.

JP, something’s got to change here. I think you guys have put way too much weight on the Aegis boon. It’s not even as good as a Blind. At least Blind will initiate combat and break chain attacks. Blind is able to be re-applied much more often than Aegis and some classes can even spam it (I’m looking at you necros and thieves).

Redscope.6215:

Asmodal.6489:

well… I am biased on the topic Running a100% boonduration Build.

I Love my virtues – of course they are traited

i think the comparison to warr is shortsighted. yes they get an over better reggen. But we have Access to a Lot of Protection and multiple heal sources. Means what we reg stays longer.

I agree However that the cd on voc are to Long for what it does despite the Protection it Grants. Maybe make ist a 3x Pulse aegis every two secs.

And while you are at it pleaaaase priotize Blocks over aegis. Nothing Sucks more to waste a Block and aegis at the Same time.

You’re running a 100% boon duration build, you’re traited for virtues, and you can still honestly say that VoC’s cooldown is too long.

JP, something’s got to change here. I think you guys have put way too much weight on the Aegis boon. It’s not even as good as a Blind. At least Blind will initiate combat and break chain attacks. Blind is able to be re-applied much more often than Aegis and some classes can even spam it (I’m looking at you necros and thieves).

I’m 100% boon duration/virtue traited too. ALthough I won’t point straight at Aegis and VoC, I will say that the idea of the passives being strong to the Guardian as an individual is severly flawed. Active benefits are great as is, and hopefully, they’ll never nerf them, but the passives need some serious help if the direction for Guardian Virtues is to be correct. Which is, strong when passive, activated as a sacrafice for the group. Right now, there’s really no point in keep virtues passive.

Virtue as they are now “passive” are terrible. And they do not feel as a Guardian mechanic at all even the active ones ( unless you trait for them ). But if you do trait them, they are really nice and can bring alot to the battlefield.

Main problem right now is that unless you trait them they bring nothing to define our class. And that would maybe be ok, if we had more trait tree’s that would be capable of improving them, but that is not the case currently.

What i would like to see is more diversety in our builds that could potentials buff the virtues.

It works as intended, i agree completely with Jon, the Dev. Work on not dodging by accident and improve your situational awareness. Renewed Focus is great, but there’s a reason we have multiple elites, the same one isn’t the best for everything.

Alrik Vas.3507:

It works as intended, i agree completely with Jon, the Dev. Work on not dodging by accident and improve your situational awareness. Renewed Focus is great, but there’s a reason we have multiple elites, the same one isn’t the best for everything.

I agree, to some degree.

To be honest, they should just mash Tome of Courage and Wrath together, and give us Tome of [Insert fancy word].