Guild Wars 2

Hello guardians! Lets take a break from murdering my face with burning and talk about how you guys are liking the new traits. Feel free to either directly answer my questions or just talk about what you feel is important for the devs to know about these changes.

Questions:

1. Are you using the new elites at all? I’ve heard from a few guardians that they’re having trouble dropping Renewed Focus for the new ones because RF is just that good.
2. Any new builds besides bunker and power medi? Anyone make a spirit weapon build that’s actually good? I am well aware of your lovely burn build >_<.
3. Has anyone made a good symbols build?
4. Overall, are you happy with the build diversity that guardians have right now?

1. Everyone uses RF. You won’t be able to stop us from using it, unless you want to nerf it to a point where it will be weaker or equal to Elixir S or Mistform while beeing an elite skill.
2. I played bunker and medi until now but burn guard seems to be a nice option too.
4. Haven’t found a lot to complain about.

4. plenty of things to complain about, i think first page of threads sums it up well

1. Feel my wrath is great in PvE / WvW. Not worth giving up RF in sPvP. Signet of Courage is bad in every situation. The passive is sooo lack luster and the active’s cooldown/cast time make it useless.

2.Power Medi’s lack of disengage is making it more difficult, but still playable. I think you will be seeing to slowly fade out of tournament play.

3. Symbols are okay in pve, but in PvP no. In order for symbols to be affective in PvP, your enemy must be ignorant enough to stand in them and eat damage. Relying on an opponents ignorance is bad design.

4. Overall, Guardian is doing ‘okay,’ but we’re very lackluster compared to other classes right now. In an ever evolving game, our inability to properly disengage severally caps our skill ceiling. There is not much room to grow as a guardian once you hit a certain point. The “First in; last out” design is really limiting our ability to adapt in this ever changing meta. The simple solution would be to make JI or MI ground targeted.

1. I’m not so sure about the signet, but I’ve used the shout in conjunction with the new immobilize on VoJ active for some pretty lulzy burst while roaming in WvW. People would go from 100% within a couple of seconds.

2. I don’t really know of any entirely new builds. But the ones we had have been altered a bit by the changes.

3. I think a Zeal/Valor/Honor symbol bunker build with Symbolic Avenger could work in sPvP, but I haven’t really tried it to be sure.

4. Am I happy with the builds we have? Yes, even though we received a few damage nerfs (most notably sword being pushed out of both PvE and PvP meta). Do I think that our viable build selection is diverse enough? Not really. Signets are still pretty bad, and I’ve heard that spirit weapons aren’t really worth using much.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Hello guardians! Lets take a break from murdering my face with burning and talk about how you guys are liking the new traits. Feel free to either directly answer my questions or just talk about what you feel is important for the devs to know about these changes.

Questions:

1. Are you using the new elites at all? I’ve heard from a few guardians that they’re having trouble dropping Renewed Focus for the new ones because RF is just that good.
2. Any new builds besides bunker and power medi? Anyone make a spirit weapon build that’s actually good? I am well aware of your lovely burn build >_<.
3. Has anyone made a good symbols build?
4. Overall, are you happy with the build diversity that guardians have right now?

1. I’ve tried the new shout elite and it’s amazing for bunker builds, not very strong for dps due to the loss of sustain from RF.

2. Bunker might make a comeback but Power seems like it’s taking a backseat. Condition Guardian is far superior.

3. No because of the tiny modifier from Symbolic Avenger and WoP being in Honor.

4. I am happy to see Condition Guardians being strong but i’m a little sad Power Guards got a pretty significant nerf.

I’m loving the update.

In pvp I’m currently running a burn focused spirit weapon/medi build similar to what I was running before the update. (People really underestimate Hammer of Wisdom)

In PVE I’m absolutely loving my symbol healing signet build. I’ve been face tanking damage in 49 and 50 fractals that I never thought would be possible. I ran a 50 with a group with two warriors in it and my healing was enough that they could burn the bosses down without batting an eyelash at the damage they were taking. (Pure of Heart and Signet if Courage work really well together) IIRC I’m healing for about 8k every 10s before activating virtue of resolve or the 1.5k heals from when an aegis is broken.

Power medi is dead. The current zerker stats do not support our primary defense mechanic (our healing).

I am disappointed with the build diversity all classes have right now. You are either bunker or super glass cannon. Can’t really go inbetween

That being said I am happy to welcome our new 9k backstab thief brethren

1- Feel My wrath is a great option for PVE, but I dont see us dropping RF in pvp.
2- Meditation is still my staple build. Spirit weapons are still bad
3- I have made a symbol build and it’s not bad at all in pve but it wouldve been better with the 20% SA instead of 10 %
4- In PvE Im pretty happy, in pvp not so much

The Gates Assassin.9827:

1. Are you using the new elites at all? I’ve heard from a few guardians that they’re having trouble dropping Renewed Focus for the new ones because RF is just that good.
2. Any new builds besides bunker and power medi? Anyone make a spirit weapon build that’s actually good? I am well aware of your lovely burn build >_<.
3. Has anyone made a good symbols build?
4. Overall, are you happy with the build diversity that guardians have right now?

1. The symbol doesn’t feel all that useful in WvW id be nice if the heal pulse was shorter but meh in PvE its ok i suppose, the shout is decent but still living in RF’s shadow.

2. Spirit weapons are bad and have been for a while a guild member of mine made a viable build…about a year ago… as of today id encourage new players to avoid them like the plague.

3. symbols…build…? aside from finding a worthwhile build in wvw i haven’t bother touching zeal yet so, maybe in the future ill work on one if i feel the need.

4. id make a sarcastic comment here but i’ll avoid it for some real talk. As i’ve said repeatedly the honor line is BAD BAD BAD the adepts and the masters need some work, especially the adepts. Mace which i dont use in WvW (because i dont want people to laugh at me) is only good (i think) in PvP and MAYBE PvE, revival trait which i’ve tried using most of thursday night is bad, and again my arch nemesis at this point is HORRIBLE about as useful as a punch to the face (kinda feel like “i hate falling damage traits” should be my slogan at this point)

zeal looks interesting, radiance looks ok, valor its serviceable, and virtues is good. like i said though the one line that every WvW guard runs since the beginning of the game the shining star of guardian and the source of all its support, Honor, is in a bad place and i feel like no matter what i try and build it will never sit well with me because of the crappy options i have for my adepts and masters.

all in all, as a Guardian i feel very lost in what my place is since i cant disengage and escape my enemies as easily as other classes, which is fine i suppose… but not being able to be the corner stone of my party / group with my support i feel like im being forced into a heavy DPS role in using mediguard in every game mode now.

if i cant be an iron wall that people can depend on why do i have to be a glass cannon?

I think making symbols move along with the guardian so that way symbols can do what they what they were intended to do. To make it fair you may have to balance duration to make it a balanced trait of you make it follow the guardian as he moves. I love symbols and in any instance other than pve doesn’t seem to really make up for any other kind of build. I’m not one to be too interested in a burn build. I feel as a supportive character like a guard, symbols and wards to assist players around us should be the main focus point. Bunker and medi seem to be the best example of this.

Purely PvP/WvW perspective here:

1. New Elites It’s hard to beat an invulnerability in PvP/WvW, especially if it has additional benefits. And with the current high damage environment, you need the invulnerability and you don’t really need additional damage of “Feel my Wrath!”. Signet of Courage needs changes before it will ever be used. It has the same problem as warrior healing signet: if the passive is strong, there’s no reason to use the active; the active by itself isn’t enough. The reason Tome of Courage used to work years ago was its large amount of nearly uninterruptible healing in a short window.
2. New Builds Not yet. In PvP, the amulet system is a large factor. With low base HP, we’re limited in what we can choose. To make any kind of hybrid guardian we would need power, vitality, toughness, precision with some ferocity, and healing (honor line depends on it; valor doesn’t). Spirit weapons will be useless unless they become much harder to kill. Right now, most die before they’re of much use. On top of that, they often lag behind targets who are kiting, so the command abilities fail. Consecrations need re-worked or have their numbers improved so that they aren’t as niche.
3. Symbols Build It won’t happen in PvP/WvW. The larger symbol size is needed to make offensive symbols remotely viable, but it’s in a support line. Except Writ of Persistence is a crap trait for support builds (the healing is laughable). We would also likely need something to keep opponents on symbols or compensation for them running off of them.
4. Overall Diversity We didn’t really lose much, so I guess? We didn’t gain much either and we have a lot of the same problems. The ridiculous burning burst damage is going to be nerfed eventually, so I wouldn’t count that.

What it boils down to is this:

• Offensive builds lack CC, be it hard or soft and largely lack swiftness as well. It’s too easy to kite an offensive guardian after they use their teleport/leap skills. Scepter helps in that regard, but doesn’t fix the problem.
• Defensive/Bunker builds in PvP want some additional vitality to offset low base HP, but can’t get it. And if the meta shifts away from full bunkers again, defensive guardians lack good options of offense.

Spirit weapons would end up being a burn build, so yea. I adapted my old medi zerk to medi marauder and took virtues with honor and valor. Not sacrificing any of my DPS and actually getting more +HP + team support. All in all, I feel like everything has been a plus so far.

1. In most cases I am still using Renewed Focus in both PvE and PvP. Especially now that virtues became even more powerful with the latest virtue specialization. Guardians can get the following buffs not once, but twice: condition removal (Absolute Resolution), stability and a stunbreaker (Indomitable Courage). Not to mention the other passive and actives plus invulnerability you get from virtues. It is just too good to give up. We have a full trait line dedicated to just virtues. If we have an elite skill that can make this trait line twice as useful than it becomes a trivial choice what to use.

In some cases encounters don’t require support as much. That’s where the new elite shout Feel My Wrath is pretty useful for the Quickness on a low cool down.

The active on the new healing elite Signet of Courage takes too long to cast. Especially in PvP where people get burst down in matter of seconds. This elite takes over 4 seconds to cast. When you notice that someone is low on health, you cast it, and by the time the signet finishes your teammates have most likely died already. In the meantime you’re just standing there like a stick-in-the-mud while everyone can hit and interrupt you. Like Exedore mentioned, the reason why people used the healing tome was because you could spam skill 1 and heal people in an area around you, not because of the full heal on skill 5.

2. I definitely think there is potential for some new guardian builds. Bunker might find his way back in the PvP meta and there is some more variation for meditation builds. Burning condition build looks interesting although I haven’t really tried it out myself.

3. Not so sure what to think of the new symbol meta. I feel like guardians are being forced into symbols while not having many options for weapons that do not have much access to symbols like sword and scepter. Personally, I think the mace feels a bit clunky and light fields feel useless. I do appreciate all the consolidations of traits that has been done with the new specializations. Although some traits still do not feel at the right place or sometimes even messy. Glacial Heart has nothing to do with virtues and the retaliation traits feel very weak. Writ of Persistence feels more at home with the other symbol traits in the Zeal line.

4. Overall I think we are heading towards the right direction but there is definitely room for improvement.

1: I along with allot of other guards have been using the new feel my wrath in PvE yes.

Renewed focus however will likely stay the go to for PvP though because you pretty much have to have it to survive focus fire.

As for the new signet, I know allot of people who have tried it. I know of very few if any who plan to use it.
Mainly for a few reasons like
1A: The cast time being so long
1B: The healing being pathetic compared to other choices utility
etc…

2: Yes I have seen a decent number of guardians (including myself) who are using or considering using carrion/rampager/sinister now both in PvP, PvE and WvW.

As for spirit weapons, no I don’t know anyone who wants to use them (besides shield, even then only when something to stop projectiles is absolutely needed) in any aspect of the game even after trying them with various builds.
The reason being they just die so easily & their still so reliant on a crappy AI.

3: Symbols are really only useful for world bosses & dungeon bosses that don’t move around allot. Any intelligent enemy simply avoids them.
Even then having to decide between the shout grand master trait & the symbol trait is a no brainer (if you have shouts & symbols u take shout GM over symbol GM every time).
Frankly the symbol GM’s in zeal and honor could stand to be merged, even if it meant symbols lost their very small healing per pulse.
(Zeal could also stand to have it’s symbol minor traits buffed and swapped around with it’s majors so it didn’t feel like you have to have a hammer/mace for it to be any good)

4: Yes, though there are allot of traits that could still be worked on. There are also several traits with internal CD’s which could stand to be reverted to previous versions where they were less powerful but had no ICD.
There are also a decent number of weapon skills (and utilities, looking at spirit weapons) that could stand to be adjusted or redone)

Exedore.6320:

Purely PvE/WvW perspective here:

What it boils down to is this:

• Offensive builds lack CC, be it hard or soft and largely lack swiftness as well. It’s too easy to kite an offensive guardian after they use their teleport/leap skills. Scepter helps in that regard, but doesn’t fix the problem.
• Defensive/Bunker builds in PvP want some additional vitality to offset low base HP, but can’t get it. And if the meta shifts away from full bunkers again, defensive guardians lack good options of offense.

This ^.

What little CC the guardian has is on long CD’s and all hard CC so it is negated by stability/resistance.
The guardian lacks any soft CC.

Defensive guardians are also out done by defensive versions of other classes because while they are defensive they also manage to bring CC & more condition damage.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Hello guardians! Lets take a break from murdering my face with burning and talk about how you guys are liking the new traits. Feel free to either directly answer my questions or just talk about what you feel is important for the devs to know about these changes.

Questions:

1. Are you using the new elites at all? I’ve heard from a few guardians that they’re having trouble dropping Renewed Focus for the new ones because RF is just that good.
2. Any new builds besides bunker and power medi? Anyone make a spirit weapon build that’s actually good? I am well aware of your lovely burn build >_<.
3. Has anyone made a good symbols build?
4. Overall, are you happy with the build diversity that guardians have right now?

1. I’m not using either of the new elites any more. RF is just too important. If FMF had no cast time, I’m pretty sure it would be very viable. The cast time, even though it’s short, messes things up. The reason RF is so important is because virtues are so important.

2. I used to play as power shouts, but shouts just can’t compare to power medis that much. If POV removed 2 conditions, and if SY! wasn’t split between PvE and PvP, then it may just be able to compete.

3. n/a

4. I feel diversity only comes in the form of using different traits in the same trait lines. Virtue/Radiance/Valor is where it’s at for PvP

PvE wise, I’m loving the update. The two things that are a slight damper are:

1) Why is the Radiance Grandmaster Trait choice between 2 different condition damage traits and buffing signets. It means in the stand out PvE Trait line for critical hit focused Guardians you don’t really have anything exciting. [Question: In any Gamemode do people take Retaliation scales with Condition Damage? – Genuinely curious.]

2) While I understand Bows are coming out, it would be nice if Scepter could get its #2 skill turned into a symbol like all the others – it synergises so much better with other traits.

Overall, I’m now enjoying using a Hammer in PvE, which I think has a fair balance of utility and damage. For my Elite I’ve been running Feel my Wrath which I think is strong, but it only just edges out Renewed Focus for me. Signet of Courage I want to like, but find its range and power way too low.

Elite Skill : Signet of Courage
This fits my support role in pvp/wvw. I’m healer/condi cleanser setup with high focus on increasing the burst of healing over time (Signet of courage, Virtue of Resolve + Battle presence , .. etc) .. The pretty much makes me use the signet mostly PASSIVELY as it fits my role better. Having said that, the signet passive heal is still laughable for an elite compared to the heal on virtue of resolve with battle presence. The radius is laughable too compared to the virtue of resolve one. I’ve tested those with a full on healing setup and it was still at much less effecivene as virtue of resolve EVEN with the signet trait on while the raidus is literally HALF the one of virtue of resolve. That’s not how an elite should be. A 1/3 of a class machenic (virtue of resolve) should NOT be more powerful than an elite. IT JUST DOESN’T MAKE SENSE.

Feel my Wrath is really good for PvE.
Combine it with greatsword, normal mobs literally evaporate. Veterans don’t last much longer. I’d call it a time saver, doesn’t really affect the outcome.
Its really annoying being a guardian in WvW. The increase in DPS across the board means our low life pool puts us on the defensive vs just about everything.

Mostly just wvw, haven’t delved into pvp since I’ve been hearing what a trainwreck it’s been.

1. “Feel my Wrath” is just really strong, though for larger groups in which I face too much CC, I resort back to Renewed focus— I don’t mind it since I get everything I used to have and more— namely, PoV, Courage, AH, and AR although the dodge heals will be missed…

2. Nothing too spectacular, the traits don’t have much variety, especially in honor.

3. No

4. “In a good spot”— could be better.

Signet of Courage’s radius (300ft) makes it difficult to get a full benefit from unless your party is stacked pretty tightly. This makes it easier to use in a dungeon / fractal or other PvE setting where the group would be stacked up anyway, and has potential to be pretty good in sPvP when trying to defend a point too.

It’s trickier to use in WvW though, where groups tend to squirrel or get knocked around more…

The 4+ seconds of cast time is just begging to be interrupted. It’s hard to use in its current state.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Hello guardians! Lets take a break from murdering my face with burning and talk about how you guys are liking the new traits. Feel free to either directly answer my questions or just talk about what you feel is important for the devs to know about these changes.

Questions:

1. Are you using the new elites at all? I’ve heard from a few guardians that they’re having trouble dropping Renewed Focus for the new ones because RF is just that good.
2. Any new builds besides bunker and power medi? Anyone make a spirit weapon build that’s actually good? I am well aware of your lovely burn build >_<.
3. Has anyone made a good symbols build?
4. Overall, are you happy with the build diversity that guardians have right now?

For PvE, I think we are doing fine. Perhaps more than fine with the Symbolic Avenger bug and the new quickness elite.

For PvP, I feel that the heavy condition meta severely limits the builds that we can have and forces us to take certain traits to survive. Seeing as though we have the lowest health pool, condition damage takes a real toll on us. The only solutions to this are to take an amulet with vitality or take as many condition cleanses as we can. The vitality amulets aren’t really a solution either as it just means it will take just a few more ticks until we are dead anyways.

Our current solutions for condition removal are:
*Take Pure of Voice and bring a lot of shouts. If you do this, you pretty much have to take soldier runes also.
*Bring Meditation skills like Contemplation of Purity and Smite Conditions. Monk’s focus is pretty much required for this also for the CD reduction and heals.
*Taking Absolute Resolution in the Virtues line. Which usually means you also need Renewed Focus so that you can double cast it to remove condis.

The said part of the above is that taking just one of the above solutions usually isn’t enough to fight against a condi heavy class. You usually have to take Virtues along with one of the other condi solutions. This severely limits the builds that we can output. As such, builds that utilize spirit weapons or signets will be severely limited even if the functionality to them were better.

Honestly I think the thing that limits the builds that we have the most is the need for condition removal and I think one of the things that could help that is to give us a way to not have to designate two of our three traitlines to take care of it. The easiest solution would to make the condition removal part of Absolute Resolution baseline. This way, we would free up a line and open up a lot of other builds. (Although, signets and spirit weapons need a lot of work still to make them viable.)

I assume this is about pvp…

#yes, good stuff. Love it to dish out a fast empower on bunker builds.
#spirit weapon builds are tricky. I would have loved to see them be able to be comboed of with shattered aegis and comunal defense but since the first competes with SW master it does not work. generally idea of bringing you own army to the fight to bounce of AH cant work this way. also SW HP is even more of a problem now then before.
#no. I could see it working in a point defense bunker build(as alaways) but it faces the same problems as always. they are too static.

1. ilove it.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Hello guardians! Lets take a break from murdering my face with burning and talk about how you guys are liking the new traits. Feel free to either directly answer my questions or just talk about what you feel is important for the devs to know about these changes.

Questions:

1. Are you using the new elites at all? I’ve heard from a few guardians that they’re having trouble dropping Renewed Focus for the new ones because RF is just that good.
2. Any new builds besides bunker and power medi? Anyone make a spirit weapon build that’s actually good? I am well aware of your lovely burn build >_<.
3. Has anyone made a good symbols build?
4. Overall, are you happy with the build diversity that guardians have right now?

1. I love “Feel My Wrath”, a great elite that gives support to others, and helpful to a single Guardian. I’ve tried the Signet of Courage and it’s eh. It doesn’t really feel all that elite to me. If it healed me and my allies or healed allies and granted a boon(s) on some interval that would feel elite. Right now it feels like the tomes, a cute gimmick but nothing I’d ever run. In pvp I’ve been running “Feel My Wrath” and it is helpful in team fights, but I do miss RF. I figure it’s just a play style change though and I’ll get use to it.

2. In PvP I don’t feel like there are other builds that stand a chance outside of Practice or Unranked. We still get out-bunkered. Burn and Medi are the go to builds which I guess is an improvement over just Medi. As people have mentioned before we could use more amulet options.
I also feel our less than spectacular trait choices are hurting variety. Shattered Aegis is not a a grandmaster trait and putting it there really just narrows the build choices we have. Poor or underwhelming traits don’t expand build diversity, they hurt it.

3. I haven’t tried a symbol build. In pvp getting someone to stand in a symbol isn’t easy. By the way, why isn’t Smite a symbol? Make Smite a symbol and you’ll see symbol builds.

4. Burn builds aren’t laughed at any more, but we’re pretty much in the same spot we were before the patch. We’re neither the best nor the worst. Though I don’t know if that puts in a good spot or not.

Edited for clarity and grammar (probably missed some spots still though).