Guild Wars 2

Hello all.
Like a lot of you, I like creating new elite specialisations in my spare time.
Unfortunately, balancing is not exactly my strong suit, and I could use some constructive critisism in that department.
I hope I can achieve something for guardians among the lines of my specialisation for necro, The Envoy. ( link: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Elite-Specialisation-Idea-need-Feedback/first#post6277614 ).

That spec also started out as extremely overpowered, and is now, after community help, nearing a state of relative balance.

Without further ado I present:

The Seeker, the first condition damage specialisation for Guardians

Lore

Changed Virtues

Weapon: Main hand dagger

Utility Skills: Elixirs

Traits

I have tried to create a spec that is able to unload a lot of conditions within a short timeframe, while being mobile within a small range. This is a guardian with mobility from close to midrange, keeping the class its original weakness of being unable to go long-range effectively. While many would want to see this otherwise, I feel everything should have an achilles heel.

Is this balanced?
Probably not, I am not that great at initial balancing.
That is where you guys come in.
Please give me feedback, both positive and negative ( as long as it’s constructive).
Hopefully, with the help of the community, I can transform this from an initial idea into a balanced spec that’s fun to play.

Enjoy the (long) read

*bumped for visibility, feedback still welcome

I would argue that almost every one of the traits is overtuned in one way or another. Could you please add some cooldowns to them to get a grasp of how often you could trigger these.
Adept 1: Resistance duration is too long. I can think of a plethora of ways of gaining Protection as a guard. We have the most access to it. If this is on a 15s+ icd, then it might be okay.
Adept 2: Pick one, you can’t have them all on the same trait. That would be way too powerful.
Adept 3: This one is actually ok but dump the reta. And no stacking. You could raise the damage bonus to 10%.
Minor 2: This one needs some other trigger, possibly blocking an attack? And a 1s ICD. You could raise the endurance gained to 10.
Master 1: Lose the reta. (You alrdy get it from Virtues)
Master 2: This should be one or the other, not both. And needs an ICD.
Master 3: This needs to cap somewhere. Maybe 15% max bonus?
Minor 3: How does this scale with Healing Power? Regardless of that, it is way too strong considering how many other ways we have for healing. Our dodges heal, our aegis heals, Resolve heals, our symbols heal + your actual healing skill. Should be more like: “Heal for 166 health when you gain Retaliation.” And the movement speed is kinda misplaced here. There’s no effective way of gaining reta when out of combat.
GM 1: Just no. Think of something else. Light Fields to Fire fields even without the added benefit of having 2 fields would be too strong. Think of the current sword #2 with some alacrity. Permanent fire field. Just no. But I do like the healing part.
GM 2: Too random, just make it a basic cd reduction trait. Those are tried and tested, and they work.
GM 3: Silencing Justice becomes way too strong with this. Just make it Unblockable. Nothing should go through evades. Dump the condis on Blessed Courage. Just make the shield return to you.

Btw, my viewpoint is that of PvP, since it should come 1st when designing new specs.

Then about the Virtues themselves. Don’t try to cram everything into all skills, unless using 1 of the skills disables the other 2. Unless that IS your plan, make 1 virtue condi, 1 virtue healing and 1 virtue CC. (currently Spear of Justice does 2 things, but SoJ is single target basically)

There’s more I could say but they are just subjective opinions considering the flavor, these here are just my objective observations.

First of all, thank you for your detailed response!
You make some good points, and I will adress them one by one.

Adept 1: I agree that the trait needs an ICD. But I also feel like guard should have semi-reliable acccess to resistance, we are supposed to be the number # 1 defensive support class overall. I feel if I would go on a 15+ seconds ICD it would hardly be usable as something you would tactically activate for the resist, instead of it just being a side-effect of protection. I will put it on a 15s CD for now, but I’d rather cut the duration in favour of a lower ICD in the end. I am just unsure what the magic number on both resistance and ICD should be.

Adept 2: Do you mean only a single condition, or that the trait can only affect a single virtue?

Adept 3: I suppose I am trying to push retaliation a bit. Basically I am trying to find a way to make retaliation something you would actually WANT to have in both pve and pvp ( right now retaliation is usually a side-effect, but not something you would solely pop a skill for). The 5% bonus that stacks is mainly to force a choice: If you use all possible elixirs you get 25% damage. But only for 6 seconds maximum, and after that you just sit there while having blown all your cooldowns. In PvE I see no problem with this, and in PvP, would such a “one-trick-pony-build” actually work? since guardian has no real ranged options, I felt it wasn’t that OP. But if you still deem it OP after this explanation I will rework it.

Minor 2: Advice taken and added a 1 second ICD and blocking component. Raised endurance gain to 10.

Master 1: I love bonus retaliation, but perhaps a mirror’d cc is enough. retaliation removed.

Master 2: What do you mean with one but not both? That the trigger should be either when inflicting a condition OR when giving a boon, or do you mean the effect, either burning or damage, or is it meant for both parts of the skill? As for an ICD, what sort of number are we looking for? 1 sec ICD?

Master 3: 15% bonus sounds about right. added the cap.

Minor 3: I suppose I tried to do 2 things at once ( making retaliation wanted and giving guardians the 25% movement speed most want so bad) while failing at both. I would actually make it scale extremely low with healing power. I just figured the trait sort of had a precedent with the scrapper trait that heals with swiftness and superspeed. but perhaps a small heal when you get retaliation with a small ICD or something? This should basically be a minor trait to make retaliation go from “whatever” to “ooh, I want this!”. So how should I approach this?

GM 1: Just the healing part for doing a combo-finisher alone won’t cut it for a grandmaster I think… This trait was basically created because in PvE guardians get yelled at a lot for overwriting firefields with their light fields, meaning we cannot make good use of most of our skills. Any proposals here?

GM2: Advice taken, although 20% CD reduction does worry me a bit, considering the trait makes you share effects with allies..

GM3: Advice taken on Silencing Justice. I had not considered adding a disable upon other virtues actives when used, but if that is what it takes to balance it…how long would the disable have to be in order for it to be strong but balanced?

As for the flavor:
I suppose we all have different opinions on what is “guardian-like” and what isnt.
This is a mix of the witcher/fanatical inquisition that took engineer lessons.
I felt a fanatic-theme could work for a spec, considering nobody really considered traps to be guardian-like, yet now almost everyone accepts Dragon Hunter.

Once again,thanks for the feedback, please keep it coming

Master 1: Balthazar’s Pendulum.
The next time you are the target of crowd control, mirror the effect back to your attacker. ICD: 30

- Can we NOT get MORE passive traits like this. Its annoying at it was with nightmare runes and Mesmer only don’t take this trait because its in a crappy traitline. There’s enough option as it is.

Adept 2: The Truth Is Ugly
Virtue’s effects now apply additional conditions to enemies with their effects.
Justice active: apply (3) confusion (4s)
Justice Passive: every 5th attack, apply (1) confusion (2s)
Resolve active: apply (5) poison (8s)
Resolve passive: apply (1) poison (3s) every pulse to up to 3 nearby foes while in combat.
Courage active: apply (4) bleed ( 9s)
Courage passive: apply (2s) bleeding (5s) every time Courage’s effect renews or when aegis blocks an attack while in combat.

- Should either change the passive OR change ONE activation. Take the virtue traitline for instance. Anything to do with changing the active. Is on its own, while the passive change is on a Minor and affects all three. This is personally really overtuned.

Minor 2: Defender’s Zeal.
Regain endurance when hit by attacks while blocking( endurance regained: 10) and inflict (2) bleeding (4s) upon your attackers if your endurance is not full. This trait has a 1 second ICD

- Would make more sense to apply bleed if endurance IS full. Otherwise your getting both affects or neither and also kinda makes it a either or situation. You not dodge and get extra damage from bleed or avoid damage but miss out on the bleed. Theif trait similar to this adds Endurance when using Ini on staff but you have 10% when durance isn’t full. So you either have to waste dodges to get that 10% bonus, or you get more doges but lose out on the 10%.

Master 2: Zealot’s Fire.
Whenever you grant a boon to an ally or inflict a condition on an enemy, foes near that ally (300) take damage ( 277) and start burning (3s).

- For this either when granting boons, or inflicting conditions as well as a ICD of 5 secs. With Staff or GH Hammer this would be stupidly good and considering the new weapon has a ton of condis on it it would be way too easy to spam “Dancing Dagger”.

Master 3: Surgical Incisions
Dagger attacks now cripple (2s) enemies. Deal bonus damage to foes depending on the amount of conditions currently on them ( bonus damage: 3% per condition, maximum bonus 15%).

- Need an ICD on that cripple otherwise say hello to perma cripple up to 3 targets.

Grandmaster 1: Flames Of Faith
Guardian light fields are now fire fields as well and grant the effects of both fields upon interacting.
Combo finishers you perform in any combo field now heal you (220).

- Either or, can’t have both. With is being a GM and change to fire fields at least is a choice

Grandmaster 3: Tainted body, pure spirit
All virtues are now ground targetable shadowsteps with 400 range.
Silencing justice now makes your attacks unblockable (3s) with it’s active.
Cold Light Of Resolve now forms a mobile icefield (5s) around you with its active.
Blessed Courage now inflicts (3) bleeding (4s) when hitting foes. The shield now returns to inflict additional (2) bleeding (4s) to foes for each foe struck by the initial shield.

- Too much stuff in a single trait. Take a look at Absolute Resolution or Indomitable Coruage. They only affect 1 Virtues active per trait. Pick a virtue to buff up, but not all 3.

Auto attack: Dancing Daggers: throw a dagger at your target, piercing foes in a line while applying bleeding (7s). Apply additional bleeding (7s)to each foe for each foe hit after the first. Max targets: 3. Combo finisher: projectile ( 20% chance). Range: 600.

- No offense but really? Just giving away Thiefs “Dancing Dagger” to Guard making it better and an auto attack? Idk what you can change it to, but making an exact skill of another class and making is just…… an insult to injury?

Dagger 3: Alchemist’s Concoction: Stab your foe and evade ( ¾ s) backwards (450), dropping a flask that leaves a chemical field (5s) that (2)confuses (4s) enemies standing in it every second. If you successfully hit a target before evading, gain access to Volatile Combustion. Range: 130. Puddle radius: 360. Combo field: ethereal.
Activation time: ½ second. Recharge: 12.

- Personally either this need to be kept as is and remove the chain, or reduce this skills affect in someway. Too powerful and chances are you’ll get the chain 9 times / 10

Dagger 3: Volatile combustion (3s): Throw a specially prepared dagger into your chemical field, causing it to combust and applying massive(4) burning (3s) to foes standing inside the field with each tick. Range: 600. Activation time: 1 second. Combo finisher: Blast.

- Too powerful, its hard enough to stay near AoEs in PvP as it is without tanky guards dropping massive damage on them.

Thematically and perhaps gameplay-wise, it seems more like something you’d see on engineers, necromancers, or even thieves. The theme seems to be “toxic chemicals” but the most prominent themes on guardians are light, fire, and magic (which even Dragonhunters adhere to, despite being 50% ranger wannabe). It’s not very fitting and it steals niche themes that already exist on other professions.

Morte De Angelis:

Balthazar’s Pendulum: While I understand your reasoning ( or more, your active dislike) when it comes to passive traits, they are unfortunately a part of the game, and it will probably stay that way ( as in: Arenanet will probably keep giving us these in the future). I deemed this trait to be okay, mirroring crowd control back every 30 seconds seemed not that gamebreaking. It is also something you have to actively choose, you so are free to pick something else. Still, if you have suggestions for a similar “anti-disable” mechanic that would promote active play, please hint me into the right direction, the spec would only benefit from this

The truth is ugly: Fair point. Removed the additional active effects in favour of keeping passive ones.

Defender’s Zeal: Once again, fair point. advice taken and trait adjusted.

Zealot’s Fire: Scrapped the condition part, kept the when granting a boon, and added a 5 second ICD. Also renamed this trait to Heart Of Holy Flame, to avoid confusion with the torch skill that has the same name, and to emphasise that this trait deals with burning.

Surgical Incisions: Added a 10 second ICD.

Flames of faith: Seeing other people being very sceptical about the light to fire-field change and even say its overpowered when the 2-field part was scrapped, I have scrapped this trait and replaced it by just the combo finishers heal you. Renamed to Mystic Vigor.

Tainted Body, Pure Spirit: While it pains me to basically see “uber condi virtues” go, I can see why it would be overpowered. Decided to keep the universal shadowstep ( perhaps this could use an ICD to prevent infinite jumping guardians in pvp)and picked the buff to Silencing Justice.

Auto-attack: I am sorry if I struck a soft spot, you seem to be quite outraged about this. If it provides any solace, I had forgotten that thief dagger #4 had inherited this name from Guild Wars 1. It was not meant to insult thieves in any way. Renamed to flashing daggers to avoid confusion or insults.

Dagger 3: I can see your point. added a 100% longer recharge fact if volatile combustion is used.

Thanks for the feedback, appreciated!

Fashion Mage:

I am sorry if you dislike the theme, that cannot be helped.
Fitting or not is a matter of personal taste, and elite specs are supposed to bring new roles/themes/gameplay/niches to existing profs. Thus disliking it is okay, but ‘stealing niches’ goes a bit far. If we would follow that logic we could not create anything new for any profession because it would steal something from another.

If you have any objective input for balance that is certainly appreciated, but I am unwilling to get into an argument about what are fitting thematics and what is not ( since it would not add anything to my goal with this topic, which is achieving acceptable balance with this spec).

Wielder Of Magic.3950:

GM3: Advice taken on Silencing Justice. I had not considered adding a disable upon other virtues actives when used, but if that is what it takes to balance it…how long would the disable have to be in order for it to be strong but balanced?

You see I’ve been playing around with new ESpec ideas myself, and thought about how to bring new life into the virtues. A newer, skill-based version of them to be more precise. One way to do that would be to enhance their impact with the downside of sending the other 2 on a cooldown as well. It wouldn’t be a full cooldown but a shorter one to prevent spamming them all at once. There’s a precedent to this in the form of Tempest Overloads. Now the OL doesn’t send other OL’s into cd but you do have a waiting period in-between using them. That’s basically what I was going for. A global cooldown for all of them(no more than 10-12s, affected by traits that reduce virtue cds), the full cooldown for the one you use.

Now that things are reined in, I have a few more suggestions.

Firstly, on Adept 2. Resolves effect is still too powerful, in fact I think Guardians should never have access to Poison. It kinda goes against the fundamentals of the class. Keeping 3 enemies around you poisoned at all times would still be too powerful for any class. It’s not the damage but the -33% healing effectiveness that poison does. I’d rather go with Chill(1s), or change it to a boon instead of a condi.

Now Mystic Vigor seems a bit underwhelming. That is easily corrected by having the healing go to allies as well. Guardian is not a selfish class, after all.

The minor 3 is still too powerful. I understand your way of thinking here, but it’s misplaced a bit. Scrappers didn’t have any real way of getting back hp but guardians do that alrdy. Even if most of those things are in Honor. (that should be changed instead of giving guard more)