Guild Wars 2

Guardian
Pure of Voice: This trait has been fixed to always properly convert conditions into boons.
Smite: Now displays a radius skill fact.
Empower: This ability now casts faster. Fixed a bug that caused this skill to heal twice.
Healing Breeze: Angle of this ability has been increased so that allies are easier to hit.
Hold the Line: This shout’s range has been reduced to 600, making it consistent with other shouts. It now properly affects allies within its full radius.
Line of Warding: This ability’s animation has changed and can now be cast while on the move.
Orb of Light: This ability now heals allies it passes through.
Orb of Light Detonate: Increased this ability’s scaling with healing power by 50% and reduced its level scaling by 20%.
Shield of Absorption: Added a skill fact to the healing portion of this ability.
Symbol of Wrath: Increased the size of the combo field on this ability to cover the whole visual area.
Bow of Truth: The health of this spirit has been increased by 30%.
Hammer of Wisdom: The health of this spirit has been increased by 33%.
Sword of Justice: The health of this spirit has been increased by 30%.
Shield of the Avenger: The health of this spirit has been increased by 30%.

Really happy about this. It might be the first update where we didn’t get nerfed. Pure of voice fix and also buff to staff…/drools

Reduced the number of maximum of stacks of Retaliation allowed to five (was 25). Duration still stacks.

Nice staff changes!

Good changes overall.

Dual.8953:

Reduced the number of maximum of stacks of Retaliation allowed to five (was 25). Duration still stacks.

What’s that even mean?

Epic patch… epic. They finally fixed pure of voice which is HUGE and also the line of warding while in motion is gonna be a game changer in WvW. Also faster cast-time on empower. This was a patch to buff guardians supportive abilities. Daddy is pleased.

I use only staffs for the past 2 months in wvwvw so its an understatement to say i like staff lol. Dual staff setup is op in zergs :P
This update made me uberhappy ^^

Pure of Voice fixed, Spirit Weapons re-buffed, Staff buffed, Healing Breeze buffed…not a bad patch at all for Guardians. Still waiting on a Scepter projectile fix, but I can be patient. I’ve got to be honest, though, even if all they fixed were Spirit Weapons and Pure of Voice, I’d still be pretty happy.

In general, small changes this patch (as usual), but most of them seem positive and geared toward bringing lesser-used specs/weapons up to the level of what’s popular. Next patch I’m hoping for a trait cleanup, though. Too many professions have messy/useless traits, and not many were addressed this patch.

Pure of Voice is probably the biggest buff. <3

Dont forget rune’s of the soldier now also effect the entire party.

Andy.9137:

Dual.8953:

Reduced the number of maximum of stacks of Retaliation allowed to five (was 25). Duration still stacks.

What’s that even mean?

means you have to be careful about which skills or combos you use to stack retaliation. You cannot endlessly combo retaliation to last minutes any more. (which is good, that means bosses cannot either)

Also, forgot to mention:

“Food items that give special bonuses upon a critical hit now have an internal cooldown before they can produce the special bonus again.”

I see this having a huge impact on the PvE/WvW meta for all classes, but for Guardians in particular, with our emphasis on passive healing. I think it’s a positive change, but I might be biased, since I never ran Pies in either mode (kinda saw them as a crutch, to be honest).

I am pretty happy with the changes, but I really, really, super really, wished they would have done something with Symbol of Swiftness, which tends to kitten me off more in the game than anything else. I should never be able to run through a SoS and not get the speed, needs to pulse faster.

- New rewards have been added to laurel vendors

Interesting, hoping for knights.

Very good Guardian patch; Pure of Voice, Healing Breeze and staff overall always looked good on paper but had significant bugs or drawbacks. Now they look like much better options for various builds. I’ve hated non-mobile LoW ever since the BWEs.

+1 for the dev team IMO

Soryuju.8164:

Also, forgot to mention:

“Food items that give special bonuses upon a critical hit now have an internal cooldown before they can produce the special bonus again.”

I see this having a huge impact on the PvE/WvW meta for all classes, but for Guardians in particular, with our emphasis on passive healing. I think it’s a positive change, but I might be biased, since I never ran Pies in either mode (kinda saw them as a crutch, to be honest).

One thing I really liked about this game was the build option. Been running and gearing a Sword dps build which may not be viable any more. Losing this options just forces AH more IMHO. Without testing I’m going to say this potentially killed a fun build. Sad.

Blood~

I think we have a friend among the DEVs. Atm it seems that the only class that got bigger buffs is necromancer and I don’t mind. We need to see more necros.
Sad tho that rangers only got minor changes.

+1 on the sweet awesome staff changes!

+1 for “upgrading” Soldier Runes!!

Now remove a condition of all your allys affected by your shout

Pure of Voice fix seems nice, even if I’ll probably never grab that trait. Working traits are always good, though.

I dunno how much actual effect Spirit Weapon health increases will actually have. 33% is substancial, but a substancial boost to a tiny amount is still a tiny boost in the end. But I’ll have to play around with it to see.

Staff buffs are great. Staff is my favorite Guardian weapon, and improvements are welcome even though I’m not one of those who insists its horrible. Empower buff honestly seems like overkill a bit, a skill that provides 12 stacks of Might having a long cast time seems completely justified to me, but it probably wasn’t boosted that much. Somewhat leery about the animation change for Line of Warding. Being able to use it while moving is amazing, but I loved the animation it was using before (and I believe it was the only attack in the game that used that animation). Don’t know what they changed it too, hopefully not the generic “hand wave” animation like Symbol of Swiftness.

Healing Breeze buff is nice, and something I definately agree with. Aiming a cone is a lot more difficult than aiming something like a radial heal, so giving a bit of extra leeway on it is good.

Symbol of Wrath fix and Shield of Absorption tooltip changes are nice little fixes.

Overall, a very, very nice patch for Guardian. Especially compared to Ranger.

Spirit Weapon buffs.

I’m happy. :)

Bloodgruve.6038:

Soryuju.8164:

Also, forgot to mention:

“Food items that give special bonuses upon a critical hit now have an internal cooldown before they can produce the special bonus again.”

I see this having a huge impact on the PvE/WvW meta for all classes, but for Guardians in particular, with our emphasis on passive healing. I think it’s a positive change, but I might be biased, since I never ran Pies in either mode (kinda saw them as a crutch, to be honest).

One thing I really liked about this game was the build option. Been running and gearing a Sword dps build which may not be viable any more. Losing this options just forces AH more IMHO. Without testing I’m going to say this potentially killed a fun build. Sad.

Blood~

Well, First the 1h sword crit with AH/VP gets nerfed, now just the standard 1h sword crit build gets nerfed again. We are seriously at the point where 1h sword has almost no viability.

And they still haven’t fixed the BROKEN Givers Armour +Boon Duration.

Bakitten291:

Bloodgruve.6038:

Soryuju.8164:

Also, forgot to mention:

“Food items that give special bonuses upon a critical hit now have an internal cooldown before they can produce the special bonus again.”

I see this having a huge impact on the PvE/WvW meta for all classes, but for Guardians in particular, with our emphasis on passive healing. I think it’s a positive change, but I might be biased, since I never ran Pies in either mode (kinda saw them as a crutch, to be honest).

One thing I really liked about this game was the build option. Been running and gearing a Sword dps build which may not be viable any more. Losing this options just forces AH more IMHO. Without testing I’m going to say this potentially killed a fun build. Sad.

Blood~

Well, First the 1h sword crit with AH/VP gets nerfed, now just the standard 1h sword crit build gets nerfed again. We are seriously at the point where 1h sword has almost no viability.

Some people still use them to close gaps and create a small “safe mode” with zealots defence. Also it’s fast.

Hicci.8761:

Bakitten291:

Bloodgruve.6038:

Soryuju.8164:

Also, forgot to mention:

“Food items that give special bonuses upon a critical hit now have an internal cooldown before they can produce the special bonus again.”

I see this having a huge impact on the PvE/WvW meta for all classes, but for Guardians in particular, with our emphasis on passive healing. I think it’s a positive change, but I might be biased, since I never ran Pies in either mode (kinda saw them as a crutch, to be honest).

One thing I really liked about this game was the build option. Been running and gearing a Sword dps build which may not be viable any more. Losing this options just forces AH more IMHO. Without testing I’m going to say this potentially killed a fun build. Sad.

Blood~

Well, First the 1h sword crit with AH/VP gets nerfed, now just the standard 1h sword crit build gets nerfed again. We are seriously at the point where 1h sword has almost no viability.

Some people still use them to close gaps and create a small “safe mode” with zealots defence. Also it’s fast.

My point is that they are killing off the 1h crit builds, which are the only builds that bring out the full potential in the sword. Depending on the life steal rate of pies, we might not have enough health return to justify the build anymore.

Quick question If I use pure voice and turn a condition into a buff will that give me health if I am running the AH build?

Bakitten291:

My point is that they are killing off the 1h crit builds, which are the only builds that bring out the full potential in the sword. Depending on the life steal rate of pies, we might not have enough health return to justify the build anymore.

No not quite – The Healway Guardian (by the “default” standard build) utilizes the 1H Sword.

NerdyMike.2695:

Bakitten291:

My point is that they are killing off the 1h crit builds, which are the only builds that bring out the full potential in the sword. Depending on the life steal rate of pies, we might not have enough health return to justify the build anymore.

No not quite – The Healway Guardian (by the “default” standard build) utilizes the 1H Sword.

True, but only if you choose it to be. you get nothing better out of using it compared to any other weapon. You can easily use the healway build to the same degrees with scepter or hammer or mace if you so choose. And I will repeat, it is 1h CRIT builds that took a hit with hits. The builds that focus around the sword use.

Edit: Also, just did some testing, the CD is 1 second, since I got it to proc twice while using WW on a group of mobs. While not too bad, this will cause a loss of healing when using things like ZD, WW, or any AoE attacks.

HAPPY DAYS, HAPPY DAYS!!!

KCS Lefty.4521:

+1 for “upgrading” Soldier Runes!!

Now remove a condition of all your allys affected by your shout

Isn’t that a nerf?

At least from what I’ve observed, they CONVERTED conditions into boons. Does this mean now they’ll work as advertised and only REMOVE conditions instead?

Xhyros.1340:

KCS Lefty.4521:

+1 for “upgrading” Soldier Runes!!

Now remove a condition of all your allys affected by your shout

Isn’t that a nerf?

At least from what I’ve observed, they CONVERTED conditions into boons. Does this mean now they’ll work as advertised and only REMOVE conditions instead?

That’s pure of voice.

Overall nice buffs to the Staff. Still downloading the patch, but I’ll play around with it once I’m done.

Only real nerf is to Hold the Line, but I already knew its radius was too wide. It was like — 1200 before? It was really big.

Wow, those are pretty nice. Not everything I dreamed of and mostly Quality of Life and bug fixes, but it should make a lot less annoyed Guardians.

Fixing Pure of Voice makes it an actually viable trait, and I can now feel validated in my PvP build.

The change to Healing Breeze get’s an “A” for effort, but a “C-” for actually fixing something.

Staff changes I’m probably going to need to see in action, but they’re a nice thought. My critique on the Staff not knowing what it wants to be still stands.

And I still don’t care about Spirit Weapons.

So basically Spirit Weapons get nerfed into oblivion, ArenaNet buffs them very slightly, we eat it up and forget about how useless they are?

Called it.

Hmm symbol of wrath gets larger.. But we will not visual see the different since it didn’t cover all of the visual? Still think symbols are toooo small:b I mean you can just fit two persons in there at max.. Be they azuras xD

Orb of Light only heals for 494 with 1,114 healing power. Eh, not as great as I thought.

Empower is a 3 second cast.

Shield of Justice got a new sound.

I do notice my Wall of Mist is a lot brighter now. Cool.

Phoenix the One.4071:

Hmm symbol of wrath gets larger.. But we will not visual see the different since it didn’t cover all of the visual? Still think symbols are toooo small:b I mean you can just fit two persons in there at max.. Be they azuras xD

There is a trait that makes them as large as any other AOE field. I recommend taking it as it makes a huge difference in pvp/wvw.

ComeAndSee.1356:

Orb of Light only heals for 494 with 1,114 healing power. Eh, not as great as I thought.

Empower is a 3 second cast.

Shield of Justice got a new sound.

I do notice my Wall of Mist is a lot brighter now. Cool.

Yeah staff is pretty nice to use now – I might actually use it a bit more than just situationally.

Got the Wall of Mists here to, but didn’t check it before logging out for the night

So their answer to fixing the staff is to… make the healing even more OP. And apparently healing breeze’s current function is intended too.

This settles it, guardian is the healer class, afterall.

I’m very pleased with this patch.
Very excited to play…at the end of the week after exams. T.T

Props to the Devs.

Bakitten291:

My point is that they are killing off the 1h crit builds, which are the only builds that bring out the full potential in the sword. Depending on the life steal rate of pies, we might not have enough health return to justify the build anymore.

Yea, for me the appeal of Sword/Torch was good damage output with survivability through food. Without the survivability this setup just doesn’t offer much. 1 sec isn’t terrible but its a huge reduction from where it was. They just made AH again more desirable and limited good build options. I figured we’d get this or an AH nerf, glad we didn’t get both.

Blood~

Reduced the number of maximum of stacks of Retaliation allowed to five (was 25). Duration still stacks.

This part doesn’t make any sense. Retaliation didn’t stack in intensity so how was it 25 stacks before ? It still not stacks in intensity now, so this just means no change, does it ?

Kaim.5483:

Reduced the number of maximum of stacks of Retaliation allowed to five (was 25). Duration still stacks.

This part doesn’t make any sense. Retaliation didn’t stack in intensity so how was it 25 stacks before ? It still not stacks in intensity now, so this just means no change, does it ?

I played around with it, what it means is that you cannot have retaliation stacks from more than 5 sources at once, so say you used all of your virtues, save yourselves, and stand your ground and once, any other sources of retaliation would do nothing, like say a leap finisher through a light field. Honestly it doesn’t really do much at all, since there would be no point in causing that my sources at once anyways, and once one of the original source’s time was up, it allows another source to activate, so you just have to wait a few seconds for a virtue source to wear off.

Since when did soldier runes fail to wipe a condition? Never seen that occur.

Alarox.4590:

So basically Spirit Weapons get nerfed into oblivion, ArenaNet buffs them very slightly, we eat it up and forget about how useless they are?

Called it.

Actually, to be fair, we said they would need more HP after the nerf, Anet listened and did it. That exceeds my expectation. Are they useful? They weren’t much use BEFORE the nerf.

What you are seeing here is the best way any developer can make a change; nerf THEN adjust for missing capability to ensure no period of time ingame where something in transition might be OPed or bugged. They aren’t going to avoid QQ anyways, so might as well the do the change from the bottom up. Thank you Anet.

I was waiting for the food nerf to be honest. I think it’s better this way, regardless of how many builds relied on it.

Edit: Mainly because it highlights problems with some weapons/builds rather than using the insane healing as a crutch to offset said problems.

Bloodgruve.6038:

Soryuju.8164:

Also, forgot to mention:

“Food items that give special bonuses upon a critical hit now have an internal cooldown before they can produce the special bonus again.”

I see this having a huge impact on the PvE/WvW meta for all classes, but for Guardians in particular, with our emphasis on passive healing. I think it’s a positive change, but I might be biased, since I never ran Pies in either mode (kinda saw them as a crutch, to be honest).

One thing I really liked about this game was the build option. Been running and gearing a Sword dps build which may not be viable any more. Losing this options just forces AH more IMHO. Without testing I’m going to say this potentially killed a fun build. Sad.

Blood~

I fear my Zealous Defender build is going to be hurt significantly with this change as now the only ~real~ form of healing comes from Monks Focus. They should have seen this a mile away and buffed Zealouts Embrace… at least put it on par with AH healing.

Outside of the food Nerf, it was a pretty good patch for guardians.

Bakitten291:

Hicci.8761:

Bakitten291:

Bloodgruve.6038:

Soryuju.8164:

Also, forgot to mention:

“Food items that give special bonuses upon a critical hit now have an internal cooldown before they can produce the special bonus again.”

I see this having a huge impact on the PvE/WvW meta for all classes, but for Guardians in particular, with our emphasis on passive healing. I think it’s a positive change, but I might be biased, since I never ran Pies in either mode (kinda saw them as a crutch, to be honest).

One thing I really liked about this game was the build option. Been running and gearing a Sword dps build which may not be viable any more. Losing this options just forces AH more IMHO. Without testing I’m going to say this potentially killed a fun build. Sad.

Blood~

Well, First the 1h sword crit with AH/VP gets nerfed, now just the standard 1h sword crit build gets nerfed again. We are seriously at the point where 1h sword has almost no viability.

Some people still use them to close gaps and create a small “safe mode” with zealots defence. Also it’s fast.

My point is that they are killing off the 1h crit builds, which are the only builds that bring out the full potential in the sword. Depending on the life steal rate of pies, we might not have enough health return to justify the build anymore.

Second.

Silver.8023:

I was waiting for the food nerf to be honest. I think it’s better this way, regardless of how many builds relied on it.

Edit: Mainly because it highlights problems with some weapons/builds rather than using the insane healing as a crutch to offset said problems.

And although I agree, they should have waited and tested it’s effects.

They knew it would greatly impact Guardians that did not spec into AH and ran around in pure DPS builds.

Nothing is going to change to spirit weapons, the AI is just way too dumb. Anyway who cares because we are the all around class in the game.

We are like superman we do everything but we have one weakness : Kriptonite (ranged weapon)

not a bad update for the Guard! the staff changes seem nice though i’ve put mine ndown for a while. will pick it up again to check it out. casting while running is definitely nice. nooow i wouldn’t mind that for the hammer’s ring of warding either ; )))

reading between the lines, and being a little more skeptical than i usually am accustomed to, seems as if they’re pushign Guardians to more healing or more AH focused builds