Guild Wars 2

Most likely just a flavor of the month type thing, and while I myself had made various comparison posts with guardians and other professions, most of it was in attempts to nudge balance either up or down, or to fill gaps I felt there were in the playstyle.

Lately I have been seeing a lot of “warrior does it better” with the exception of support or namely stability/protection.

This coupled with the ideas that this game revolves highly around the ability to do damage, especially in PvE, but to some degrees PvP/WvW would be more satisfying to a lot of guardian players if they could have more of a return in their gameplay besides standing around staying alive (i.e. killing players more reliably).

Pulling this all together into my main point:

I have always felt that guardians should have a strong and reliable way to do “defensive” damage, much the same way that warriors do “offensive” damage.
And yet still maintain the guardian theme without making it a clone of each class.

By defensive damage I mean things like our burn on block, or retaliation. Interesting ideas, but they have obvious flaws.

Burn is limited on guardians for various reasons and is not extremely punishing against attackers.

Retaliation is less effective solo but can be devastating in groups against AoE.

What are some ideas that we as the community can come up with to enhance our defensive damage to be comparable to some degree to offensive damage? What mechanics would you use to get us there?

Keep in mind, defensive damage can’t be totally overpowering, because you inherently will live longer than your attackers as you are defensive, but right now our defensive damage can sort of be ignored for the most part.

It needs to be a situation where you want to kill the guardian but it would hurt to kill the guardian. Making it a combat choice.

Do we need more survival to make our existing defensive damage work better over a longer duration?

Or do we need more damage while defensive?

Would conditions help answer this problem?

You should elaborate further on what you are thinking here:

Do we need more survival to make our existing defensive damage work better over a longer duration?

Or do we need more damage while defensive?

Would conditions help answer this problem?

I have some ideas, but want to be certain I see the angle you are presenting things.

Mostly polling community on what ideas they could come up with to be defensive while still putting out damage without making it OP.

I really like the idea of centering ourselves around more blocks and reflects, but would take more rework of our weapons, so I don’t think it would happen any time soon.

Things like protector’s strike but spread across all of our weapons and shorter cool downs, yet have it an actively defensive play style.

If played right we avoid/block a lot of damage as well as return it back, but not leave it at a passive thing so that you can outplay someone if they time things wrong.

Kind of an “Aikido” redirection of flow style of fighting.

Use the attackers strength to redirect the flow of energy back at them, causing them to hurt themselves.

CMF.5461:

Mostly polling community on what ideas they could come up with to be defensive while still putting out damage without making it OP.

I really like the idea of centering ourselves around more blocks and reflects, but would take more rework of our weapons, so I don’t think it would happen any time soon.

Things like protector’s strike but spread across all of our weapons and shorter cool downs, yet have it an actively defensive play style.

If played right we avoid/block a lot of damage as well as return it back, but not leave it at a passive thing so that you can outplay someone if they time things wrong.

Kind of an “Aikido” redirection of flow style of fighting.

Use the attackers strength to redirect the flow of energy back at them, causing them to hurt themselves.

I was going to mention Protectors strike and Aikido. Thing is, that kind of gameplay is very close to fighting game mechanics. What I imagined is guardian would end up playing like a revisioned gw1 mesmer. Which was the type of class that turned enemies skills upon themselves.

It would be a very interesting way for guardian to play, but I don’t see anet redesigning any of the classes unfortunately.

Yeah, I dabbled a bit in GW1 back in the day, but never made it far past post searing. (was playing another mmo at the time..I think EQ2?)

But the old mesmer is actually a fairly good representation of defensive fighting.

I wonder how that can be utilized to be more “guardian” like.

CMF.5461:

Yeah, I dabbled a bit in GW1 back in the day, but never made it far past post searing. (was playing another mmo at the time..I think EQ2?)

But the old mesmer is actually a fairly good representation of defensive fighting.

I wonder how that can be utilized to be more “guardian” like.

Anet would have to give guardian access to confusion. Confusion combined with retaliation and burning would be highly defensive.

Well, Guardians already have access to the retaliation boon in a lot of different ways. The Valor trait line has a lot of ways to do “defensive damage” in PvP.

In PvE Guardians already have a great “defensive damage” build. Go 20 into Honor and get (VII) Writ of Persistence (symbols last longer) and (III) Writ of Exaltation (symbols are larger) with a hammer. The hammer’s auto-attack chain drops a symbol of protection, so with these traits you will have permanent protection, high damage, and AoE.

Also, the reason Warriors are valued for their damage in PvE is because of their banners. In a party where everyone benefits from banners other classes can do higher DPS then warriors. But if you didn’t have any banners at all the DPS of the entire group would lower. Hence, bringing Warriors is optimal.

And yet, confusion really only works well in PvP. Also I am not thematically on board with confusion for the guardian, but that can be overlooked it need be I guess.

I agree though, I don’t think we will see much of what I would have liked happen in the game. Sad.

My initial knee-jerk reaction/opinion to this topic is my belief of the Guardian’s role is to provide support whilst bringing good damage – and that support allows everyone else to focus more on damage than survival. It cannot be calculated, but imagine a party, of whichever size, with and without a Guardian.

I believe that the party without the Guardian would absorb more damage and have to be more defensive, cutting down on their maximum damage potential. This isn’t to say a Guardian is strictly a safety net, because they can contribute to the offense and not just the defense, but I believe the Guardian allows everyone else to relax and not have to worry if a mistake on their end occurs.

But I see what you’re wanting to do to the class, and I do not like it, because I think the Guardian currently can be played in such an aikido manner by perfecting skill application and timing.

You should put focus on the trait that allows burning on block – there you can really define the Guardian’s contribution to damage by defensive style – we have a lot of ways to create block – but the burning duration of 1 second is minimal and pretty weak and doesn’t really support the idea of maximizing your blocks to cause a little burn.

Start there and see what you can come up with.

lots of access to retaliation has never been an issue, but the effectiveness of retaliation is “mostly” limited to AE situations as well as PvP.

Hammer autochain symbol I would not really call defensive damage, but mindless auto attack. I do see what you mean in terms of it giving us “protection” and thus it is “defensive” but not in line with my original intent. Also it is not “zomg” damage (though it can be fairly good high pressure…but again not really what I was going for).

Warriors are not “just” banners, but yes in a group situation, that is what they bring. Fury and might (and damage).

We bring protection and stability (and projectile reflects/condition cleanse).

In the terms of the “mechanic” of warriors, they are an in your face run up and attack, chase things down, kill kill kill.

In the mechanics of a guardian we are inherently defensive and are supposed to survive a lot of things. A lot feel we can be pigeonholed into a defensive support build though.

There are plenty of dps guards, so don’t misconstrue what I say as being guards can’t do damage.

What I wanted was to bring the theme of “defensive” damage to the table, instead of just throw more damage and buffs at the guard, I wanted to look at playstyle.

MercenaryK.4180:

You should put focus on the trait that allows burning on block – there you can really define the Guardian’s contribution to damage by defensive style – we have a lot of ways to create block – but the burning duration of 1 second is minimal and pretty weak and doesn’t really support the idea of maximizing your blocks to cause a little burn.

Start there and see what you can come up with.

Like I said, I really liked the idea of the trait “defender’s flame”, but as you pointed out it is just not there yet.

I also have mentioned I thought our burning effect should have some sort of secondary attached to it, such as reducing damage done by burning targets by x%, making us more “defensive” and bring more “utility/support” and “survival” to the group as a whole, while still working solo.

Also, we do not have enough blocks that happen frequently enough to really use the trait I feel.

Aegis (30-40s VoC passive, 69-90s active, retreat 45-60s)
Shelter (fairly good one…probably only good one, but not focus of damage through a fight)
Protector’s Strike (15s, decent but not enough alone)
Shield of Wrath (3 every 36-45 seconds)

If we had more blocks – which it needs to be said they nullify a direct damage attack, we’d be pretty OP.

………… Which Boon can we sustain? Protection? Retaliation? Why not work off of those Boons instead of Blocks? The trait could burn surrounding enemies when those Boons are active, but with a cool down so we’re not perma-Zealot’s Flame – but then I’m afraid it’s too much like the skill – which has a 15 second cool down – so the trait would need to be more unique.

I thinkg Guardians should work more on a counteratack philosophy, skills like Mace’s 3 are in line with these but are clearly not enough, we need more reflecting/retaliating skills

but too many block/counteratack skills would be op, so there should be counteratack skills that react but do not block, so you rely on your basic stats/self healing to survive.

also Retaliation should scale with toughness

I can see and agree that if we have too many blocks and full damage negation, it would be a bad thing.

It can be argued that multi hit attacks would negate that problem, and “frenzy” style attackers that do lots of little hits would counter the blocking playstyle, while power hits would be countered by the suggested play style. So is it “all” bad?

Still I see what you are saying.

Boons are not unique enough, I feel and are not signature to “guardian” to call it a playstyle of defensive damage.

a lot of people hate retaliation with understandable disdain as it is so passive that can give such a great gain in group situations.

I do think we need more reliable protection spread throughout the guardian abilities besides hammer and shouts.

Burning has proven to be not enough, so not sure I want to emphasize burns, but more rather augment them to make them better.

Bleeding+burns has shown good, but not sure if that is the fix for guardians…and condition spam is a problem right now so don’t really want to add fuel to the fire per say.

Not trying to be a negative nancy, but just bouncing off your suggestions for discussions sake. Not saying I don’t like them, I appreciate the involvement

No offense taken, it’s good to have a productive conversation about how the Guardian!

I too would like to avoid heavy conditions outside of burning – the Guardian was modeled after the Paragon and they were a Burning focused profession. Other conditions existed, but lots of their skills revolved around the Burning condition, either applying or when applied.

I think we have a lack of skills that have a reaction when Burning occurs, and maybe that’s where we should start (ignoring traits). Zealot’s Flame is rather lackluster as it’s first an AoE burn and then a ranged attack that damages and burns – but what if the target is all ready on fire? Double the burn duration applied by Zealot’s Fire?

With that example, maybe then we can develop ideas from that. Say with Shield of Judgement if targets are on fire increase burning duration, or spread burning to others. Shield of Absorption could also add if allies are on fire inside the shield, burning is converted to regeneration.

Maybe we can have a Trait instead that amplifies our Burning affects based on specific skills – i.e. Shield skills do X to enemies and Y to allies if burning condition is present – and not just +/- % damage or a simple Heal, but create an alternate affect.

Possibly what you want to do is make people afraid of being burned when a Guardian is around – like “Oh kitten cure it quick before X or Y skill is used”. In the hands of a Guardian, the Burning condition is a priority to remove, otherwise it leads to further pain beyond just some condition damage.

There we won’t be so focused on raising Condition Damage, but just applying the condition itself. Condition Duration might be important, maybe. Virtue of Justice would definitely benefit from this change.

Hmm…..I think that’s a good start, no?

Cmf,

Gw1 had a lot of counter skills, but for the most part they have been streamlined into gw2 mechanics, they are now known as simply retaliation and confusion. Thats why I suggested giving guardian confusion.

Following the gw1 formula, I could imagine guardian having skills that effects change depending upon what the target is doing. Similar to daze I guess.

For example, protector’s strike when it counters could deal double damage to foes who are still attacking you. If the foe is no longer attacking it will daze them instead.

For the most part, due to the way gw2 plays it will be VERY difficult to emulate what was found in gw1 completely.

So confusion would be the only logical choice for guardian. Enemies will be punished for attacking guardian with retaliation up and they will be punished for spamming skills when confusion is on them.

I think it would be great to give guardian something like “symbol of confusion”, a symbol that applies confusion. It would definitely be punishing and give guardian the point control dominance anet says they are suppose to have.

Because right now, their area control is a joke.

Aza.2105:

Cmf,

Gw1 had a lot of counter skills, but for the most part they have been streamlined into gw2 mechanics, they are now known as simply retaliation and confusion. Thats why I suggested giving guardian confusion.

Following the gw1 formula, I could imagine guardian having skills that effects change depending upon what the target is doing. Similar to daze I guess.

For example, protector’s strike when it counters could deal double damage to foes who are still attacking you. If the foe is no longer attacking it will daze them instead.

For the most part, due to the way gw2 plays it will be VERY difficult to emulate what was found in gw1 completely.

So confusion would be the only logical choice for guardian. Enemies will be punished for attacking guardian with retaliation up and they will be punished for spamming skills when confusion is on them.

I think it would be great to give guardian something like “symbol of confusion”, a symbol that applies confusion. It would definitely be punishing and give guardian the point control dominance anet says they are suppose to have.

Because right now, their area control is a joke.

the problem is, confusion doesn’t quite fit the guardian theme, what i think would be better is some kind of rework to burning, something like

Burning:
- deals x damage per second
- the damage increases y% for each second you keep the condition up on the same target
- stacks duration

as it is now, burning is the most boring condition in the game, does lame damage and has no “side effects”, so thinking about how burning works in real life, the longer you burn, the bigger the damage.

I think something along those lines could enhance the flavor of our class, we are the Fiery Deffenders after all

korelg.7862:

Aza.2105:

Cmf,

Gw1 had a lot of counter skills, but for the most part they have been streamlined into gw2 mechanics, they are now known as simply retaliation and confusion. Thats why I suggested giving guardian confusion.

Following the gw1 formula, I could imagine guardian having skills that effects change depending upon what the target is doing. Similar to daze I guess.

For example, protector’s strike when it counters could deal double damage to foes who are still attacking you. If the foe is no longer attacking it will daze them instead.

For the most part, due to the way gw2 plays it will be VERY difficult to emulate what was found in gw1 completely.

So confusion would be the only logical choice for guardian. Enemies will be punished for attacking guardian with retaliation up and they will be punished for spamming skills when confusion is on them.

I think it would be great to give guardian something like “symbol of confusion”, a symbol that applies confusion. It would definitely be punishing and give guardian the point control dominance anet says they are suppose to have.

Because right now, their area control is a joke.

the problem is, confusion doesn’t quite fit the guardian theme, what i think would be better is some kind of rework to burning, something like

Burning:
- deals x damage per second
- the damage increases y% for each second you keep the condition up on the same target
- stacks duration

as it is now, burning is the most boring condition in the game, does lame damage and has no “side effects”, so thinking about how burning works in real life, the longer you burn, the bigger the damage.

I think something along those lines could enhance the flavor of our class, we are the Fiery Deffenders after all

Theme only matters if we are role playing.

Other classes have access to retaliation, protection, regen and burning. So are they out of theme too??

CMF.5461:

our burning effect should have some sort of secondary attached to it, such as reducing damage done by burning targets by x%

I really like this idea as a trait.

korelg.7862:

also Retaliation should scale with toughness

It’s worth noting Diablo 3 had the same problem with reflect damage and this is the solution they discussed implementing.

Aza.2105:

korelg.7862:

Aza.2105:

Cmf,

Gw1 had a lot of counter skills, but for the most part they have been streamlined into gw2 mechanics, they are now known as simply retaliation and confusion. Thats why I suggested giving guardian confusion.

Following the gw1 formula, I could imagine guardian having skills that effects change depending upon what the target is doing. Similar to daze I guess.

For example, protector’s strike when it counters could deal double damage to foes who are still attacking you. If the foe is no longer attacking it will daze them instead.

For the most part, due to the way gw2 plays it will be VERY difficult to emulate what was found in gw1 completely.

So confusion would be the only logical choice for guardian. Enemies will be punished for attacking guardian with retaliation up and they will be punished for spamming skills when confusion is on them.

I think it would be great to give guardian something like “symbol of confusion”, a symbol that applies confusion. It would definitely be punishing and give guardian the point control dominance anet says they are suppose to have.

Because right now, their area control is a joke.

the problem is, confusion doesn’t quite fit the guardian theme, what i think would be better is some kind of rework to burning, something like

Burning:
- deals x damage per second
- the damage increases y% for each second you keep the condition up on the same target
- stacks duration

as it is now, burning is the most boring condition in the game, does lame damage and has no “side effects”, so thinking about how burning works in real life, the longer you burn, the bigger the damage.

I think something along those lines could enhance the flavor of our class, we are the Fiery Deffenders after all

Theme only matters if we are role playing.

Other classes have access to retaliation, protection, regen and burning. So are they out of theme too??

yeah, but still, there is a reason why you choose to play guardian and if we could get a fix while keeping the feeling of the class wouldn’t it be better? also we already have many traits that work for a burning build, so reworking the condition’s effect should be easier… I’m not much of a RPer but I want to keep the class theme to a certain degree at least

@Aza

I see what you mean about confusion now. Especially considering the GW1 history of abilities and the translation into GW2.

@MercenaryK

Wow, I really like some of those ideas! I really do agree, that burning itself does not have to be a source of damage, but more a mechanic to trigger other effects. I totally +1’ned your post of ideas!

Relatiation was our best tool for this. While people complained about it, the skill was in line with many other games ie Thornmail from LOL. It needs to do real damage again. Being able to give it to other people, via skills or symbols was incredibily OP and probably what I would have nerfed instead of gutting the damage. Giving Retaliation to 3 or 4 people on an SPVP point and /lol while people died was a bit ridiculous. Having it as a self only skill that actually bit a little would be nice.

I would like to see Retaliation reworked a bit so that it gives Weakness and Vulnerability to anyone attacking you. I think it needs to give damage but maybe not be able to give it to anyone else. So the longer someone attacks you the more damage you can do to them. This would give you a chance to damage someone in tank mode, but if you were caught with your pants down you could still get bursted.

Another dot would be nice. Burning is sweet and you should be able to maintain a 100% uptime in tank mode, either that or a 2nd dot would be a nice feature. Burning is more of a I kill you while I get a cup of coffee, but if you could maintain it throughout an entire fight, it would make being defensive a bit more fun. Keep in mind one can keep it going for a bit now, but in defensive mode 100% uptime would be ideal.

Whenever I tried to put together a build like this I always asked one important question:
Why did ANet decide to build defence mostly around a single game mechanic – evasion, why not block, or parry (technically there is Protector’s Strike, but mechanics wise it’s still a block)?

For a guardian there are only two forms this build can exist in:
1. retaliation
- maximum boon duration, preferably full Virtues line
- blasting symbols, Stand Your Ground, Signet of Judgement
- very high sustain needed (healing power)
- high power so retaliation deals at least some decent damage
- cleric equip

2. burn on block
- very high condition damage needed and condition duration if possible
- mace, focus, Shelter, aegis
- decent sustain needed
- Rune of the Guardian x6
- apothecary equip

The retaliation variant desperately tries to oppose the current game mechanics revolving around not taking hits at all while the blocking one fits in there much better, but in both cases I can’t find enough sources of retaliation and blocks respectively to make it work. Traits spread out in different trees don’t help much either. Additionally neither build works against condition users.

So my answers are:
1. Do we need more survival to make our existing defensive damage work better over a longer duration?
Yes, in the form of active blocks, channeled preferably (Shelter, warrior Shield Stance).

2. Or do we need more damage while defensive?
No, we just need more ways to project the damage, see #1.

3. Would conditions help answer this problem?
Yes, sort of. As long as blocking fits better inside current game mechanics, burning on block is superior, again see #1 and #2. Otherwise we could use more skills like Protector’s Strike.

I’m going to be a little radical and suggest this:
Virtue of Resolve – passive effect – In addition to its passive regen, every time you heal an ally you deal X% (smallish amount, 30% or less maybe?) of the amount healed as damage to up to three (five?) foes in a small area around that ally.

Now before you say, “Silver! You cray-zay!”, hear me out. Yes this could be tricky to balance but I think it would bring a few things to the profession whilst still sticking to the Guardian’s theme.

- First of all, it is a very defensive way of dealing damage as CMF wanted ideas for.
- This is strictly that, an idea. Please don’t get too bent out of shape about it. I’m just throwing ideas around to try and improve my favourite profession.
- The effect would only be active when Resolve is off cooldown. Maybe?
- It makes healing power more useful (although I still kinda like it).
- It makes Virtue of Resolve a lot more interesting. Although I fear too many people choose not to activate it enough as it is anyway… If this is a huge problem, shift it to the Courage passive instead, I dunno… maybe make it a buff in addition to activating Resolve instead?
- I think it still fits with the meaning of Resolve, just barely.
- It might be a good idea to make the damage caused not trigger Justice …or not? Maybe that would be cool.
- Perhaps not with Altruistic Healing either? I dunno, maybe that would be good too.
- All of a sudden, staff and mace do more damage! :O
- All of a sudden, support Guardian does more damage without adding conditions that don’t quite fit, thematically.
- It wouldn’t be unstoppable, ranged attacks would still be a good counter against it, it’s not like we have many ways of maintaining melee range as it is…
- It would make positioning interesting in regard to when to pop lots of heals.
- Since it would scale with healing power, more offensive builds wouldn’t be over the top with it since a lot of their heals are quite small anyway.
- I probably had more points but now I’ve forgotten them!

Anyway, I dunno, I’m just throwing ideas around that are outside buffing retaliation, although I also quite like that retaliation scales with toughness idea!
I’m not going to defend this idea to the grave, maybe this idea will start the gears turning in other people’s head and we get even better ideas.
Peace.

I feel like I’m a very “defensive damage” guardian with my build. Symbols and Consecrations, perhaps a signet, and boon duration runes. Zerker gear, Clerics trinkets. I out heal everything and I keep respectable, sustained damage.

The game changer tho, is the constant might / vuln / blind. With these going all the time, everyone benefits. My warrior cannot do that whilst doing 2 other things. My warrior cannot juggle party role responsibility the way my guardian can in the span of a single fight.