Guild Wars 2

MINOR HEART OF THORNS SPOILERS AHEAD

I thought of this elite spec while farming materials, so please forgive any inconsistencies. Names subject to change. I’m not good with numbers, so I won’t be putting any damage or healing on any of the skills or anything, and I might get some conditions off-bearing when it comes to balance. With that said, please enjoy!

The Justiciar – Your traversal through the Maguuma Jungle as you marched towards what would soon be Mordremoth’s final resting place, made you see just how much evil the world can bring upon the innocent. You vow to yourself to bring justice to these evils, and you will stop at nothing to do so.

Profession mechanic – You have been inspired by the Hope and Mercy of your friends and teammates, and have decided to use that Hope and Mercy to help others in the form of two new Virtues (F4 and F5). Placing Virtuous Wells swaps out each Well’s respective Virtue (i.e Well of Resolve will swap out Virtue of Resolve with something new, etc.) with a new skill that detonates the well in a blast of righteousness and purifying light. Using said replacement skill increases the cooldown of both the Virtue replaced and it’s respective Well by 50%.

• Virtue of Hope -

Passive – Your outgoing boons have increased duration. This duration increase affects boons distributed by this Virtue’s active effect. (Duration Increase: 15%)

Active – Copy all of your boons to nearby allies. (Max boon duration – 5 seconds. Max boon stack – 5 stacks. Targets: up to 5 allies. 45 second cooldown.)

• Virtue of Mercy -

Passive – Periodically transfer conditions from nearby allies to yourself. (Interval: 8s, Conditions Transferred: 1, Maximum Allies: 4, Combat Only)

Active – Grant nearby allies Justiciar’s Mercy for 10 seconds. (Justiciar’s Mercy: Incoming damage is reduced by 1% for every boon you. Cooldown: 75s)

New Weapon – Trident (yes, above-ground). The skills are pretty much the same as the underwater ones, just slightly tweaked.

Weapon Skills -

• Light of Judgement – Fire a ball of light that damages foes and heals allies. Damage: ?, Healing: ?, Number of Bounces: 5, Range: 900. Cast Time: 0.5s.
• Purify/Purifying Blast – Release an orb of cleansing light that homes in on your target and detonates on impact, burning enemies and curing conditions on allies in the blast radius. Damage: ?, Number of Targets: 5, Burning: 6s. Number of Allies: 5, Number of Conditions Cleansed: 2. Radius 300, Range: 900. Cast Time: 0.5s, Cooldown: 12s (Purifying Blast – Detonate the orb early to burn foes and cure conditions on allies. Same stats as Purify. Cooldown: 8s)
• Field of Light – Create a field of light at a target location that does damage every second at a target location. Damage (5x): ?, Number of Targets: 5, Duration: 5 seconds, Radius: 240, Range: 900, Combo Field: Light. Ground target skill. Cast Time: 0.5s, Cooldown: 15s
• Refraction – Create a bubble at a target location that absorbs hostile projectiles and pulses retaliation to allies. Retaliation: 2 seconds, Number of Targets: 5, Duration: 6 seconds, Radius: 240, Combo Field: Light. Ground target skill. Cast Time: 0.5s, Cooldown: 20s
• Weight of Justice – Crush your foe with the weight of justice, knocking them down. Applies a unique condition: Weight of Justice: Movement speed and attack speed are reduced by 33%, Duration: 5s. Cannot be removed with condition clears. Damage: ?, Knockdown: 2s. Cast Time: 1s, Cooldown: 30s.

Slot Skills – Virtuous Wells. You have found a way to channel your virtuous powers into wells of light that bolster allies, interfere with enemies, and can interact with your Virtues.

• Well of Resolve (Healing Skill) – Place a well that grants regeneration to allies, and converts conditions on allies to boons. Initial self heal: ?, Ending Heal: ?, Healing per Pulse: ?, Regenerationper Pulse: 2s, Conditions converted per Pulse: 1. Pulses: 5, Duration 5s, Radius: 300, Number of Allies: 5, Cast Time: 1/4s Combo Field: Water, Cooldown: 25s (37.5s if Smitten).
• Well of Justice (Utility Skill) – Place a well that damages enemies and applies burning every pulse. Damage per Pulse: ?, Burning per Pulse: 1.5s, Number of Pulses: 5, Duration: 5s, Radius: 300, Number of Targets: 5, Cast Time: 0.5s Combo Field: Fire, Cooldown 30s (45s if Smitten).
• Well of Courage (Utility Skill) – Place a well that pulses Aegis to allies and damages and removes boons from enemies. Damage per Pulse: ?, Damage on Final Pulse: ?, Boons Removed per Pulse: 1, Boons Removed on Final Pulse: 3, Aegis per Pulse: 2s, Pulses: 3, Duration: 6s Radius: 300, Number of Targets: 5, Number of Allies: 5, Cast Time: 0.5s Combo Field: Fire, Cooldown: 40s (60s if Smitten).
• Well of Mercy (Utility Skill) – Place a well that damages enemies and removes conditions from allies. Damage per Pulse: ?, Conditions Removed per Pulse: 1, Pulses: 4, Duration: 4s, Radius: 300, Number of Targets: 5, Number of Allies: 5, Cast Time: 0.5s Combo Field: Fire, Cooldown 30s (45s if Smitten).
• Well of Hope (Elite Skill) – Place a well that damages enemies and transfers boons on them to nearby allies, and heals allies and transfers conditions from them to nearby enemies. Damage per Pulse: ?, Boons Transferred per Pulse: 1. Healing per Pulse: ?, Conditions Transferred per Pulse: 1. Pulses: 5, Duration: 5s, Radius: 300, Number of Targets: 5, Number of Allies: 5, Cast Time: 1.5s, Combo Field: Fire, Cooldown 90s (135s if Smitten.)

Profession Mechanic Interaction – Whenever you place a Virtuous Well, it’s respective Virtue (i.e. Virtue of Resolve’s respective Virtue is Virtue of Resolve, Well of Justice’s is Virtue of Justice, etc.) gets temporarily replaced for the duration that the well is on the ground with a new skill called a ‘Smite’. Activating a Smite will cause the Virtue’s respective Well on the ground to explode with a blast of righteousness and purifying light, which has a different effect depending on the Well that was blasted. Smiting a Well will cause the Well to go on an extended cooldown (increased by 50%). (Smiting a Well will cause it to activate a blast finisher on a fire field, as the Wells are fields.) Here are the effects:

• Smite of Justice – Smite your Well of Justice, causing it to erupt in righteous fire that burns nearby enemies. Damage: ?, Burning: 5 stacks for 10s. Number of Targets: Blast Radius: 500, Cast Time: 1s Combo Finisher: Blast, ICD: 50s.
• Smite of Resolve – Smite your Well of Resolve, causing it to unleash purifying light that heals and removes conditions from nearby allies. Healing: 25% more than Initial Self Heal on the Well, Number of Allies: 5, Conditions Removed: 5, Blast Radius: 500, Cast Time: 1s, Combo Finisher: Blast, ICD: 70s.
• Smite of Courage – Smite your Well of Courage, causing it to release a blast of righteous fury that damages nearby enemies, and grants stability and might to nearby allies. Damage: ?, Stability: 3 stacks for 5s, Might: 5 stacks for 5s, Number of Targets: 5, Number of Allies: 5, Blast Radius: 500, Combo Finisher: Blast, Cast Time 1.5s, ICD: 90s
• Smite of Hope – Smite your Well of Hope, causing it to release an explosion of righteous light that transfers all conditions on nearby allies to nearby enemies, and all boons from nearby enemies to nearby allies. Conditions Transferred: 13, Boons Transferred: 11, Number of Targets: 5, Number of Allies: 5, Blast Radius: 500, Combo Finisher: Blast, Cast Time: 2.5s, ICD: 240s.
• Smite of Mercy – Smite your Well of Mercy, causing it to explode with purifying fire, damaging and burning nearby enemies, and granting Resistance to nearby allies. Damage: ?, Burning: 3 stacks for 5s, Healing: ?, Resistance: 5s, Number of Targets: 5, Number of Allies: 5, Blast Radius: 500, Combo Finisher: Blast, Cast Time 1s, ICD: 90s.

Traits -

• Minor Adept – Justiciar’s Path: You have been inspired by the Hope and Mercy of your allies, and have decided to use the Hope and Mercy to help others in the form of two new Virtues. Grants access to the Trident on ground, and Virtuous Wells.
• Major Adept – Hopeful Invigoration: Virtue of Hope’s passive Boon Duration Increase is now 20%.
• Major Adept – Merciful Resistance: Virtue of Mercy’s passive effect now grants 2s of Resistance for every condition transferred.
• Major Adept – Wells of Weakness: All wells now apply Weakness (1.5s) to enemies every pulse, and have reduced recharge times. (Recharge Reduced: 25%)

• Minor Master – Burning Light: Your Light of Judgement skill now applies Burning (1s) to every enemy it bounces off of.
• Major Master – Smitten Attraction: Taunt (3s) an enemy who is affected by one of your Smites. (60s ICD, Maximum Targets: 1)
• Major Master – Justiciar’s Hope: Nearby allies gain up 150 Healing Power (6s) based on your effective level. (Interval: 3s, Radius: 600, Combat Only)
• Major Master – Trident Mastery: Your Trident skills have increased range and reduced cooldown. (Range Increase: 300, Recharge Reduction: 20%)

• Minor Grandmaster – Critical Healing: You healing now has a chance to critically heal. (Critical Heal Chance: 50% of you Critical Chance. Critical Healing Amount: 50% of your Critical Damage.)
• Major Grandmaster – Smiting Defender: Blocking an attack reduces all Smite cooldowns by 1 second. (15s ICD)
• Major Grandmaster – : Wells have reduced recharge, and all incoming boons from your Wells have increased duration. (Cooldown Reduction: 25%, Duration Increase: 25%)
• Major Grandmaster – Righteous Reach: Wells have an increased radius, and all outgoing conditions from your Wells have increased duration. (Radius Increase: 100, Duration Increase: 25%)

Hey I like the name and the theme of rendering judgments. I don’t think this elite specialization design is specialized enough, it kind of does a bit of everything so its focused should be narrowed. Guardians already have their own version of wells with symbols. They pulse damage, give boons, and are light fields so your wells would be redundant. If I were you I would make this spec specialized in front line condition damage/debuffing(changing the weapon accordingly), make your wells a version of symbols that are all fire fields instead of a light fields. Judgments would blast the fire fields and give some kind of unique debuff to enemies depending on the symbol(like specific boons can’t be applied to enemies for a set duration).

To be honest, my thinking is a bit ‘don’t we already have this?’

Between traps and symbols, ability to deal pulsing area damage is not exactly something that guardians are lacking at the moment. Obviously, traps aren’t going to be available for a future elite specialisation, and being able to throw down wells en masse like a necromancer or chronomancer would be a different way of doing things to traps (placed at feet, trigger when an enemy enters) and symbols (only one max per weapon set), but at the very least I don’t think I’d be inclined to follow dragonhunter up with another specialisation with AoE-focused utilities right away.

I like the idea of extra virtues, but two from one elite specialisation seems like it might be too much. Hope looks a lot like the mesmer’s Signet of Inspiration – this in itself might not be a bad thing, but the similarity is there. I’m also inclined to think it’d be more powerful on a guardian than a mesmer – guardians are better than mesmers at giving themselves a big stack of boons at once. Mercy being about speeding up weapon skill recharges seems… odd. I’d expect ‘Mercy’ to be a defensive virtue, rather than an offensive one (and while some weapon skills are defensive, the net result of faster weapon skill recharges would be more offensive than defensive). Mechanically, speeding up a random weapon skill recharge at a time also seems odd, especially for the generally more disciplined and predictable guardians. That seems more likely to be a chaos mesmer mechanic…

The interaction between the wells and virtues also seems flawed. Taken at face value, blowing up a well is already taking a second resource (the virtue) so increasing the recharge of both the well and the virtue seems overly harsh, particularly since Resolve and Courage already have long base recharges as it is. More fundamentally, such an approach means that the elite spec is a skill short (elite specialisations have a heal, four utilities, and an elite skill). It’s probably work better just to decouple the wells from the virtues and have them increase their own recharge if detonated. This would also prevent the fiddliness of intending to detonate a well, and instead triggering the base effect of a virtue because the signal from your F# button press didn’t reach the server in time.

Weapon-wise… As much as people want it, I don’t think we’re likely to see an underwater weapon ported to dry land in that manner. Underwater weapons are basically designed to do everything and work with any build as much as is possible underwater, which means they’re better (and certainly more versatile) than dryland weapons by design – on land, you have the freedom to pick weaponsets that fit your build. Dragonhunter longbow is pretty clearly an answer to the ‘guardians don’t have a good ranged weapon’ criticism (which I always thought was exaggerated, although I can’t deny that longbow is more comfortable in PvP than sceptre) – we might see a bias towards ranged weapons in future elite specialisations so said future specialisations can avoid receiving the same criticism, but I don’t think we’re likely to see the style of underwater weapons ported over.

Traits I haven’t looked too closely at, but my initial response is that there are probably too many traits based on using wells (note that dragonhunter only has one trap-based trait in the entire line) and minors really shouldn’t be something that forces you into using a specific weapon (Pure of Sight is about as close as I can consider even vaguely acceptable – in principle that can include staff and scepter and focus 4 – that’s that’s borderline). After all, somebody might take the specialisation just because they want the modification to the profession mechanic (the extra virtues in this case) and otherwise play core, and that should be a reasonable decision to make. As written, somebody doing that would effectively be down at least two traits (minor master does nothing if you’re not using the right weapon, and there’s no option for a grandmaster trait that doesn’t interact with wells in some way).

This Elite spec sounds absolutely fantastic, you show some real insight into existing in-game mechanics and interesting mechanics that the often bland Guardian really lacks.

And you show detailed knowledge of the Guardian class and the kinds of areas and playstyle + build diversity we are lacking now.

Not only would this offer a unique playstyle to the Guardian but it also synergises very well with other things, and synergy is something Guardian builds have really been lacking for a while.

I like the idea of a Trident, but this could also work with the Spear, the animation could work similarly to the Rev Hammer where a light spear is thrown by the animation.

The mechanics for the Wells are awesome, it would be nice to see us getting some corruption and conversion through AoE mechanics, the ability to manipulate both boons and conditions, it plays into our point control playstyle.
And we are offered the unique mechanics of cooldown manipulation depending on playstyle.

You need to add a 4th utility Well, as all utilities have 4 options (except Revenant because they get 6+2 elites)

Because of that it would introduce the option that changing the utility skill will change the Virtue.
That way you have the mechanics in place so that swapping in a different Well will change one of the Virtues, but also that if you don’t have a Well chosen as a skill, the Virtue will stay as the standard Guardian Virtue, or will F4 and F5 not be available at all if you don’t have 3 utility Wells and the elite Well?

I really like the ideal of critical healing too, not seen that since EQ1.

I think blowing up the Well should be a flip-over skill like Zealot’s Flame is right now on a timer that is limited to the Well’s duration. Rather than being tied to the Virtue, the Virtue active should be separate, which will be easier to balance and manage.

And I think some Wells should be fire fields to help address our lack of Might stacking and perhaps one as a Lightning field to address the Swiftness access.

@draxynnic.3719 Dragonhunter has two Trap based traits in the entire specialisation and I wouldn’t take that as some kind of benchmark to design along, I would take it as a sign of some lazy and poorly thought out design with the specialisation.
Many of the Dragonhunter traits are lackluster or boring, and could use a total re-design.

We don’t have clear playstyle trait lines like the other professions were designed with.

Made a few changes to the original post:

• Changed Virtue of Hope’s passive effect, but kept the active effect the same.
• Changed Virtue of Mercy’s passive and active effects.
• Changed related traits to reflect these changes.
• Changed the Wells to be Fire Fields.
• Removed the cooldown increase on Virtues from Smites.
• Fixed some spelling/grammar errors.

Just want to clarify a few things:

• The Justiciar, in my eyes, is meant to be a boon strip/condi cleanse support role, something the Guardian isn’t too good at (especially the boon stripping, Guardian has none of that currently).
• The fact that it only has 5 Wells instead of 6 is because I decided to give two extra Virtues, so the lack of another Well, in my honest opinion, kind of balances it out.
• The way the Smite skills are supposed to work is that the Smite doesn’t appear when you slot it, but rather the Smite only appears after you place a Well, and the Smite is only available for the duration the Well is on the ground.
• Smiting a Well doesn’t destroy it, it just simply activates a blast finisher on the (now) fire field (the healing skill I made to be a water field though, as to keep it in line with it being a purely defensive skill) to grant might and do additional effects. This puts the Well on an extended cooldown.
• Symbols are currently only linked to certain weapons, whereas the Wells would always be available regardless of weapon equipped. However, I do agree with the similarities with the light fields, which is why I changed the fields to be fire fields.

Rejigged mercies look better. I’m a bit concerned that it feels like the actives of Hope and Mercy are designed to be used in quick succession, but they don’t have to be (Mercy, for instance, could follow up a series of shouts from a shout guardian).

Ezrael.6859:

@draxynnic.3719 Dragonhunter has two Trap based traits in the entire specialisation and I wouldn’t take that as some kind of benchmark to design along, I would take it as a sign of some lazy and poorly thought out design with the specialisation.
Many of the Dragonhunter traits are lackluster or boring, and could use a total re-design.

We don’t have clear playstyle trait lines like the other professions were designed with.

Tw… oh, you’re counting Hunter’s Determination. Technically true, as I did say “involving traps”, but completely missing the point. You can slot no traps on your bar and Hunter’s Determination would still be useful.

If you go through the other elite specialisations, each has a maximum of one trait that requires using the elite specialisation’s signature weapon to be useful, and a maximum of one trait that requires using the elite specialisation’s special skill type to be useful, and in each case they’re always major traits and therefore you can slot different traits if they’re not useful. The closest you get in a minor slot are traits that are clearly designed with a particular weapon’s properties in mind (Pure of Sight in the dragonhunter line, Impact Savant in the scrapper line) and they each at least give you something when using a different weapon.

By contrast, the proposed Burning Light minor requires using a trident to be useful (as does Trident Mastery). All three of the grandmasters require having at least one well slotted to be useful (two of them modify wells, one modifies the recharge of smites, which is a chain skill for wells), while one each of the adept and master majors also requires having wells on your bar to do anything at all.

So, what happens if you want to use the elite specialisation without using the wells or the weapon?

The adept minor is pretty typical for elite specialisation adept minors. The minor grandmaster is an interesting idea (focuses on direct healing, which is a little weird since I don’t think that’s a focus of this proposal in general, but that’s not what I’m addressing here). The master major is completely and by design useless unless you’re using a trident.

For the adept major, you have a choice between two traits that each modify one of the new virtues. That’s an odd position to put them – I would be inclined to put them in different branches so you do have the opportunity to have both – but if you’ve taken the elite specialisation you’ll definitely have the new virtues and those will therefore be useful.

For the master major, you’ve only got one choice: Justiciar’s Hope, boosting the healing power of nearby allies. So you have a trait you can use, but its only one choice, and I don’t think it’s a choice many players would choose given an alternative.

For the grandmaster major, as previously discussed, you’re SOL.

The design principle used by ArenaNet in existing elite specialisations appears to to allow a reasonable range of viable trait builds to be set up without assuming that the player is using the weapon or any of the 6-10 slotted skills of the elite specialisation. This brief clearly does not achieve that. Your proposed suggestion of linking virtues to having the appropriate well would appear to make it even worse, obliging the player to use at least three wells just to break even on a regular guardian.

I would remove Wells of Weakness, Smitten Attraction, and Smiting Defender, move one of Hopeful Invigoration or Merciful Resistance into master tier, merge Burning Light and Trident Mastery (without the range increase – I can understand the urge to hand out a 1500 range weapon to match ranger longbow and engineer mortar, but this is neither the weapon nor the elite specialisation to do it with) and merge Righteous Reach with the other grandmaster well trait. Then make a bunch of new traits that do not assume that every justiciar will be using wells and/or a trident.

gamerinachair.4057:

Just want to clarify a few things:

• The Justiciar, in my eyes, is meant to be a boon strip/condi cleanse support role, something the Guardian isn’t too good at (especially the boon stripping, Guardian has none of that currently).
• The fact that it only has 5 Wells instead of 6 is because I decided to give two extra Virtues, so the lack of another Well, in my honest opinion, kind of balances it out.
• The way the Smite skills are supposed to work is that the Smite doesn’t appear when you slot it, but rather the Smite only appears after you place a Well, and the Smite is only available for the duration the Well is on the ground.
• Smiting a Well doesn’t destroy it, it just simply activates a blast finisher on the (now) fire field (the healing skill I made to be a water field though, as to keep it in line with it being a purely defensive skill) to grant might and do additional effects. This puts the Well on an extended cooldown.
• Symbols are currently only linked to certain weapons, whereas the Wells would always be available regardless of weapon equipped. However, I do agree with the similarities with the light fields, which is why I changed the fields to be fire fields.

• Guardian is actually pretty good at condi cleansing if you build for it – Pure of Voice on a shout build, Absolute Resolution, pulling conditions with Save Yourselves! and then dealing with them using self-cleanses such as CoP, etc.

Boon removal is missing, but you’ve got two wells, on long cooldowns, that remove boons. That doesn’t scream boon removal specialist to me. What I’d expect from a boon removal guardian is something like a trait that makes Justice remove one boon on each passive activation and remove all boons on the target on active use (“Justice Cannot Be Denied”?) or that simply removes a boon every time you inflict a burn (“Burn Away Their Defenses”). Compare to existing boon removal professions – mesmers and necromancers both have an autoattack chain on one of their weapons that involves boon removal, plus the option for boon removal utilities as well.

• I can see that. Not sure I agree, but I can see that.

• Pretty much what I thought.

• Okay, I thought smiting ended the well. Even so, though, I don’t think the benefits match the cost – a blast finisher is not worth making two long cooldowns even longer, particularly since it appears to replace the active use of the virtue. Obviously, you don’t want to make smiting cost-free, but at the moment the price seems overly harsh for the benefit unless you know the fight is going to be over quickly and you’ll have plenty of time to recharge afterwards. What I’d suggest is a) just make it so the smite increases the recharge of the well without affecting the virtue, b) make it so that active use of a virtue smites the well (at no additional cost) if the appropriate well happens to be active, or c) just remove the smiting concept altogether, and have a trait that makes active use of virtues trigger a blast finisher on the guardian’s location. (Call it Explosive Ideals or something).

• Yes, I acknowledged that. Symbols being linked to specific weapons means that in practice you can generally only have one out at a time (there are ways to have two or even three, but that requires either triggering the Zeal trait and/or weaponswapping between symbols). They can’t be used to bomb an area the way that, say, a necromancer well bomber can. On the other hand, guardians already have a fair amount of ability to deal sustained AoE damage to the area around them through symbols and other skills (lootstick, hammer auto, Whirling Wrath, mace 2 and 3, offhand weapons – sword and scepter are the most 1v1-oriented guardian weapons and they still have AoE capability) and the existing dragonhunter just adds to that, so ‘even more AoE capability’ feels redundant at this point. If the wells are providing utility rather than something you just drop for damage, that’s something different… but then, that’s what Consecrations are for.

So, like others have said, these ideas are a little much. Wells don’t really cover something the Guardian is lacking, nor does the overall idea match with your implementation. The profession mechanics are also a little unintuitive. Also, some numbers don’t confirm to the norms.

It feels more like fan service than an actual, realizable, option.