Guild Wars 2

The changes to the skills are fine, but please revert the order.
Not even re-binding them helps, as then you mess up every other weapon/class you play..

DEDEN.2870:

I’m not sure I particularly like this change — and I especially don’t like the random re-jiggering of the skills to different hotkeys.

As far as Symbol Of Wrath goes… Isn’t the self-root when you use it a big enough limitation already? It makes it fairly difficult to land the initial attack successfully — and any halfway decent player is going to be out of the area of effect before it ticks more than once or twice.

Even if you’re using it in conjunction with some kind of cripple or immobilize (or with the pull of the greatsword #5), it’s not doing huge amounts of damage that aren’t avoidable. Either way, it’s not something you can chase anyone with — which makes it rather lackluster in sPvP and WvW.

If the problem is the non-stop retaliation it provides, how’s about removing that from the skill entirely? Keep the same recharge and burn effects and so on and allow players to combo for retaliation if they want to?

Either way, can we get the keys back to where they were. Futzing with stats is one thing, but there are a lot of players who’ve been playing for over a month know who are going to have to retrain their muscle memory — just because.

i agree totaly man. couldnt say better myself. all i asked was that they didnt screw with the layout.

I like the change, the 5 second reduce on our gap closing blind leap finisher more than makes up the increase on the symbol for me.

First of, we should be able to manage our abilities and the button they are assigned to ourselves. Second, what’s with the CD change? My GS Guardian was already weaker than my GS warrior, and now I have to wait even longer to do less damage?

Change Symbol of Retaliation and make it Symbol of Might while you are at it?

False, not every guardian everywhere is crying like you…get use to it or rebind your keys

Exactly, we should be able to arrange our skills on the bars the way we want to, its bad enough we are limited by a static placement, let alone the fact they change them around for no reason. No one cares about nerfs to cooldowns or anything else. The rage is about ORDER.

Either Let us arrange them the way we want, or dont kitten with them.

@Obsidian It’s not exactly that our GS is weak, it’s Warrior’s hundred blades that’s broken.

But that aside, this patch wasn’t a nerf. Sure we won’t have as many fields provided for our hammer but now we have easier-to-access finishers with this setup.

Well, these changes will have to get use to. I’m not sure how I would fair with the greatsword now. We still down pretty fast against a well-built thief, we still get kited against a well-played ranger, we kinda were even with the warriors. With this, its tough to say now.
Surely it’s nothing, just a larger cooldown.

The key changes though, was really uncalled for.

Killua.8041:

This wasn’t a nerf, an improvement in general. Sure it messes up 1 of our field spam to setup hammer (Symbol of Wrath) but now we have easier-to-access finishers for groups.

Please explain.

makes me feel like a first week noob again i have to keep looking down, i hope they change the order back wtf

Uhm, a little confused here. The patch notes state that the cd on whirling wrath was changed to 10 seconds, but wasn’t it 10 seconds before the patch already?

So what exactly changed (apart from it now being on 2 instead of 3)?

Eveningstar.6940:

A couple things bother me about this change:

1. The intention of removing perma-Retal from the metagame is understandable. However, I don’t think doubling the recharge on Symbol of Wrath is the most elegant or useful way to go about it, unless their intention was also to reduce Greatsword functionality. Symbol of Wrath is a mainstay of Guardian damage and Guardian combos. It’s not going to be quite a problem in PVP (which is where perma-Retal tends to make the most difference) because Symbols are so static and limited in size. In PVE, though, Symbol of Wrath has group utility in the form of combo fields, and is also the one powerful link between Greatsword and Zeal (which includes Greatsword Traits and Symbol traits). Without a reliable symbol in Greatsword, Zeal isn’t really an attractive Trait line for Greatsword.

This right here. If Anet wanted to fix the perma-retal of Symbol of Wrath, they could have done it differently than completely nerfing the amount of damage we do with the skill as well (by not allowing us to use it as often). They are taking the one weapon we have that does effective damage in PvE, and nerfing it. The greatsword was always about damage anyway, not support, and now they’re taking away the damage from it as well. If this keeps up, greatsword will be rendered completely useless. Fail Anet, fail.

There is more than one weapon for PVE that does effective damage. This change is annoying and hopefully it’s indicative of Anet adjusting retaliation to be a short term, burst reaction ability.

Why were Greatsword skills Whirling Wrath, Leap of Faith and Symbol of Wrath moved from their original positions on the hot-bar to the positions they are in now?

They were just fine before and made it convenient to go from Symbol of Wrath on hot-bar #2 immediately into Whirling Wrath at hot-bar #3.

Their positioning now doesn’t make much sense.

I moved away from Greatsword quite a few weeks ago, and I’m really glad I did. If I were still in the mindset of using the GS I’d be pretty unhappy at the moment – that cooldown on Symbol of Wrath is a killer. Huge nerf.

The change actually improves the GS imo.

I have to say very unhappy about the change. 1 the muscle memory factor, 2 the retaliation skill doesn’t make you immune to damage just reflect it, even though we can slowly heal in combat the guardian health pool is by far the largest so its not hard to kill one especially in wvwvw. The guardian was gonna be my second level 80 character but now im really gonna have to think about continuing playing him after this combined with the lower health pools and imo horrible lack of 1,200 range damage options. Which is very disappointing since its made me question what other changes in the game they will make to my other classes or even still to guardians and effect further my desire to play. Yes its anets sandbox and they can do whatever they want with it but maybe if it pushes enough players away that supported the game after launch then maybe one day they will listen.

I’m sad with the increased recharge to Symbol of Wrath. Leap combo finishers are awkward to use, considering how you need a combo field at the end of the leap, so the reduced recharge to Leap of Faith wasn’t worth it, IMO.

@ Killua – how exactly? – it’s quite clearly a nerf.

Why in the world would you change the order of the skills almost two months after launch? I am not going to argue changes in the skills but changing their location is harmful to the people who play a guardian. We have conditioned ourselves to press buttons in a specific order when we are in combat. Please ArenaNet change it back!

I can undestand why they changed the layout to coincide with the increased cooldown on symbol of wrath, and decreased cooldown on leap of faith. Main problem is: this is a huge greatsword DPS nerf in two ways.

1 – You can’t have retaliation up as long unless you’re using shouts.
2 – The aoe it provided every few seconds would tick for a noticeable amount of damage on an enemy.

The only compensation is slightly lower cooldown on leap of faith, which is a single target combo move. Greatswords are now a little bit more in line with the awful damage output of the rest of the melee weapons at least.

What I don’t understand is they don’t want us to ‘have retaliation up all the time’, yet we have 2 shouts that give a mighty amount of retaliation on fairly low cooldowns.

Not only do they mess with our ability to combo in GS but they also reduced the usefulness of any traits that affect symbols or the placement of buffs on allies. Change Retaliation, not the way one of our main weapons is utilized. Or buff all those traits you indirectly nerfed as well. I feel like I’m playing a game not made by ANet but by NCSoft or Blizzard. Had such high hopes….

I know this has been posted already but it needs to be brought to attention.
Why would Arena Net change the order of the skills? I don’t think they realize what trouble it is to reconfigure your muscle memory. Unless you’re going to allow the skills to be rearranged after they have all been unlocked then don’t touch the order.

I honestly don’t mind what they do with balancing the skills but changing their slots is absolutely ridiculous.

-1 ArenaNet.

Was retaliation really that powerful? I’m finding it hard to believe that’s the case. Why isn’t it something that guardians should be striving for in wvw??

I completely dislike the rearrangement of the skills, its completely weird pressing 3 for leap while i press w

It has no Synergy. If anything the leap of faith should be before the whirling attack as you leap to them then spin. I preferred to leap to them drop my symbol then spin to destruction.

Im in middle of dungeon and we are having trouble. Layout change isnt helpn…

They really need to change this back to the way it was. I don’t get why they meddle with what isn’t broken…

The whole idea of changing fields cd with leap….just no.

Khellendros.5189:

It has no Synergy. If anything the leap of faith should be before the whirling attack as you leap to them then spin. I preferred to leap to them drop my symbol then spin to destruction.

I haven’t used the Greatsword in a little while, but I used the Leap of Faith as a gap closer as well – generally as a precursor to Whirling Wrath.

This change doesn’t make any sense.

Instead of increasing the cooldown from 10 to 20s, why couldn’t they have simply exchanged the retaliation to something else? Heck, they exchanged stability for protection on the Tomes already.

Pointless change. You can get perma-Retaliation without the use of Symbols if you want. Adjusting Symbol of Wrath CD does nothing to change this.

But frankly, I won’t complain. 15s Leap of Faith, 12s with Two-Handed Mastery? Pretty kitten perfect for so many reasons. And massively serves to cushion the Retaliation loss… though not the loss of AOE damage in PVE.

What I dont get is if you are moving stuff, why not make it match up with 1h sword so jump is always button 2, and the spinning attack is 3?

Seriously annoying, and so easy for them to not scramble.

The ui is bare min, poor choices make it a double whammy bad

This is a really stupid and unwelcome change and I really can’t see the justification for any of it.

Firstly, moving the skills around. This is insanely frustrating given how muscle memory tends to work. This proves one thing very strongly – we need to be able to move the weapon skills around on the quickbar to where WE want them, not where Anet think we do.

Secondly, the Greatsword nerf. Thanks for wrecking the Guardian’s one good weapon. It’s not like Guardians were dps powerhouses compared to some other classes, but the Greatsword did work well, it felt balanced and had good synergy. And now you’ve wrecked it, without making any much needed improvements elsewhere.

The Guardian classes has some pretty major issues at present – a lack of ranged viability, poor elite skills, a number of lacklustre weapons which need attention (hammer, mace, scepter, staff) and some broken traits. Yet rather than make the effort to fix some of these issues you’d rather just twirl the nerf bat and break one of the few aspects of the Guardian that was working quite nicely. Fail.

Yeah, I think I agree with everyone else here. I mean, GS was our 100% offensive weapon (without augmenting via traits) and now it’s completely gone down the tubes. Hell, I think the worst part about this change for me personally is that I used Symbol of Wrath + Whirl as a way of cleansing conditions. With this change, it’s just absolute hell. Why not just completely change the field the sword sets to might instead and keep the original cooldown time , if there’s such a bloody fuss over Retaliation?

And changing around the layout so that they could emphasize finishers are good? How DENSE do you have to be to not notice that Whirl/Leap were good in the first place. I’m sure everyone figured that out the MINUTE they unlocked that ability.

I think this is the first time that Anet has truly nerfed us in any regard. Before, they would make changes, but there was always an upside to anything they took away from us. The 5 second reduction on the leap just doesn’t make up for EVERYTHING we lost. This is a bloody disgrace.

Cernow.3974:

This is a really stupid and unwelcome change and I really can’t see the justification for any of it.

Secondly, the Greatsword nerf. Thanks for wrecking the Guardian’s one good weapon. It’s not like Guardians were dps powerhouses compared to some other classes, but the Greatsword did work well, it felt balanced and had good synergy. And now you’ve wrecked it, without making any much needed improvements elsewhere.

What nerf to the Greatsword? Did i miss something? Are you talking about the symbol CD?

I dont see any reason why mess up our skill order.

It just seems dumb, to say the kindest word.

I’m bumping this thread, because apparently everyone is disgusted at this change.
A hot-fix is all it takes, put the skills back where they were unless you’re going to let us customize the layout.

I just can’t fathom why Anet insists on making Guardians gameplay experience so frustrating… nerf after nerf with mediocre “buffs” to make up for it. As if this wasn’t enough, they go and arbitrarily (give me a break, people had combo finishers figured out by now) change the GS skills layout. It’s obvious they don’t like whatever numbers they’re looking at DPS-wise for Guardians, so they resort to this type of nonsense to “balance”. I won’t be able to take much more of these changes based on making gameplay intentionally frustrating, not challenging. Keep it up and see how many people stick around to see how “balanced” the game ends up.

The nerd doesn’t bother me, I can adapt to a lesser skill.

another sign for skill order change~ you just cant do that and expect anyone to be happy. It was a terrible mistake, the skill order is not even intuitive anymore for GS.

I originally rolled guardian to be a supportive powerhouse. But the closer I got to level cap I realized the support is so mediocre, and requires so much investment, that you can’t help but wonder whether you are hindering the group or actually helping out.

This GS nerf was a low blow, which combined with the keybind change might just cause me to reroll entirely.

Im going to disregard the fact that ANet totally screwed the symbol of wrath, it’s not that great anyway..

But the NEW LAYOUT? Man, this is so bad. It was perfect before, now we have to hit Key 2 for Whirling while Running (W) ??? I mean why in the right mind would this change make it through?

IF IT AINT BROKE, DONT FIX IT.

in all honesty, i do not see what the big deal is with retaliation. did it really need a nerf? because my thief, mesmer, warrior, and pretty much anything else dropped guardians without even noticing retaliation damage, so i dont see why retaliation is so bad as a boon. secondly the change in skill placement is just really annoying. i think the skills and the way retaliation worked were fine. i probably be playing a different character seeing as i dont think they will change them back.

Confused is an understatement.

Were there any complaints about previous placement of greatsword skills? Everything was intuitive and flowed pretty well.

All of a sudden, out of the BLUE (at least for ME, I didn’t read ANYTHING about people complaining about skill placement) skills are changed up… This is the first time this has happened to ANY class in GW2 thus far.

Why ANet? Why would you mess with one of the only 100% satisfactory weapons we have? Why wouldn’t you look at broken kitten weapons like the scepter and shield instead of screwing up our only fun weapon?

Why?

That, and the overall increase in cooldown times for GS. GS already felt too auto-attack heavy to me, now it’s even more so.

Easy fix. Change back the CD and make it so the GS symbol gives might instead of retaliation.

Oh yeah the increase in cooldown times is a whole other story. I was just referring to something SO simple, like skill placement, and the complete disappointment with the changes made.

emtwo.4058:

That, and the overall increase in cooldown times for GS. GS already felt too auto-attack heavy to me, now it’s even more so.

The GS still has the lowest cd’s of its overall skills than the other two, however. The change was made so that the symbol didn’t help give a perma-retaliation to the player. Hopefully the devs tweak retaliation in a bit, rather than try to re-balance the entirety of Guardian’s light fields. Then again, I don’t really use my GS much anymore, so I can’t comment on its new efficacy.

Zeph.5927:

MysticoN.5068:

Easy fix. Change back the CD and make it so the GS symbol gives might instead of retaliation.

Freaking brilliant. You my friend, have surpassed the Anet dev team in terms of common sense AND intelligence. They should hire you right away.

Seriously, why did something that could be so simple, turn out to be so hard for Anet to comprehend?

Dude, this. THIS would make the symbol retaliation-LESS (which is evidently what ANet wants to reduce) and still make it awesome. Of course they would still have to switch the abilities back to their original positions. I mean cmon. What the hell was the Guardian dev team thinking? Oh yeah, I know what. The same thing they were thinking when they developed the scepter and shield.

Draeka.5941:

emtwo.4058:

That, and the overall increase in cooldown times for GS. GS already felt too auto-attack heavy to me, now it’s even more so.

The GS still has the lowest cd’s of its overall skills than the other two, however. The change was made so that the symbol didn’t help give a perma-retaliation to the player. Hopefully the devs tweak retaliation in a bit, rather than try to re-balance the entirety of Guardian’s light fields. Then again, I don’t really use my GS much anymore, so I can’t comment on its new efficacy.

My point with this post is just to discuss the new position of the skills, and get a reply to WHY. The other post about GS changes is more directed at cds, efficacy, etc. But .. so simply…

Don’t fix what ain’t broken. We want our original skill positions back!