Guild Wars 2

most people are more mad about skill rearranging because they don’t see the monster behind: the -100% nerf of the major mechanic of the greatsword.
It almost looks like that the rearranging of skills and retaliation reasons are used as excuses to that incredible nerf.

I can live with the skill changes. What I can NOT live with is changing my skill order. Put it back, please. This is going to be a royal pain if they change skill orders every time they change cool downs. I hate having my leap on three, I used that situationally, because my leap would occasionally jump me off randomly, plus it made sense to have them in that order. Really annoyed by this. I don’t want to have to change my key bindings because they apply to all my characters.

I’m really frightened for the future of this class when so many people in this class forum are so vocal about something so trivial. This thread is really a bad reflection on Guardians. Some people need to take a deep breath and a long hard look at themselves.

Could you care to explain what you find so trivial?

kingghidra.6247:

I’m really frightened for the future of this class when so many people in this class forum are so vocal about something so trivial. This thread is really a bad reflection on Guardians. Some people need to take a deep breath and a long hard look at themselves.

A 10 second increase in one of the primary greatsword skills and a complete swap of three out of 5 skill positions is not “trivial” imo, especially not for those of us heavily invested in greatsword. I’ve pretty much loved greatsword on my guardian until tonight, but the cooldown change and the skill repositioning really did hurt the fun factor for me, so I don’t consider that trivial either.

They could have easily chosen to replace the retaliation with another boon for the greatsword symbol, and kept the same cd.
That cd increase means: we dont you to use greatsword.

I agree with Bobobejumbo.4951 and Zeph.5927. Nerfing classes just because some people lack skills in PvP is silly.

The same reason why dungeons get nerfed. Because people whine they’re too hard.

Well, some things should be hard as hell! Unless I see no point in playing this game. I can just go play tetris then. Oh, wait. Even tetris becomes harder at the end… O_ô

DiogoSilva.7089:

Also, GS used to be very formulaic. There was a single optimal skill sequence, that was basically about using 2->3->4, and 2->3 when 4 was under recharge. Now that the symbol has double the recharge than Whirling Wrath, we’re going to see the wrath not combo with it half the times, and the other skills way less, giving some sort of decision making behind the symbol usage. Before, we could spam condition removal and retaliation. It was a mindless, noob weapon. Spam 234, and you get massive melee-range aoe, condition removal two times, tick damage, loads of burning, and loads of retaliation. You spammed 234 in pve, and you would win against almost everything. Now, the retaliation stacking and the two free condition removals are more valuable, because they’re less frequent, and that’ll lead to decision making about the best time to use the symbol.

I think it’s simply a funnier playstyle as it is now.

After playing the “new” GS for a bit, I have to say I disagree. This new style is more mindless. I have always saved Leap of Faith for when I needed it. Now I save Symbol of Wrath as well. So now I am spending 90% of the time doing whirl, auto attacks, whirl, auto attacks. Or you simply spend most of your time on my other weapon and coming back to GS only when I need to.

I get that there are some aspects that are better, like Leap of Faith on a smaller CD can potentially be good. But it is situational.

Overall, I find it to more formulaic then previously and less entertaining to play. Mostly cos your being re-active rather than proactive. The old style was more fun. At least before auto attacks were part of my rotation, now it feels like auto attacks are my rotation.

1-1-1-3, 1-1-1-3, 1-1-1-3, oh wait sorry… I mean 1-1-1-2, 1-1-1-2… my bad, old habits are hard to break :P

This isn’t a positive change, I still find myself shocked that this fix got through… Whose in charge?

It’s unlikely that Retaliation is being nerfed (or changed in the future) because of people whining. People whining may have brought the issue to Arenanet’s attention, but it’s clear that they’re unhappy with the way Retaliation works and gives people (Guardians) ways of dealing damage while focusing completely on defense.

The point is… who cares about retaliation? They could entirely strip the retaliation effect from the symbol of wrath and I wouldn’t care about that, but with the current change they totally messed up my gameplay.

I am (was?) a big symbols & combo fields user; not only my symbol’s downtime is now badly hampered; now I also have to relearn button placement from scratch on my main weapon.

Here’s hoping they don’t keep nerfing the living daylights out of PVE Guardians for the sake of PVP, I’ve seen that happen before and since Guardian is the ONLY class I actually want to play if they continue to nerf it I’m going to feel very jaded, change it by all means but balance it for crying out loud.

Try giving us something back when you take something away, is that really too much to ask?

Don’t like retaliation? replace it, don’t just nerf it and the ability it is attached to.

After 100’s of hours, why move around skills to different buttons – this makes absolutely no sense. I think eveyone in here agrees. Change it back ASAP, or at the very least have it so players can sort their own order of things.

Who cares about the order of cooldowns… seriously.. !?

Please dont mess with players interfaces and inflict your forced changes after this much playtime. You just making people more and more angry… especially after the nerfs – yet warriors are perfect apparently..

m2,i really hate it when skills move from the positions i know !
(if we could chose the order of skills there would be no problem)

my point 2,replace retaliation with something else and old cd(or cut retaliation dmg by 50%)

Edit: easy fix for retaliation,you get only dmg all 0.5sec(or 1sec,rest is clipped)

I have to agree.
After so long getting used to it,they change it.
Now i’m jumping away from the mob or getting me killed because i’m thinking i’m pressing symbo of wrath.

Leap of faith should be in slot number 5 everyone hardly uses it unless there trying to close a gap in wvw.
But i do agree i want to be able to move the skills in the slots i please.

Yes Sphinx I was just thinking the same thing about the skill bar, why not let players put it in the order they like? And is that the reason they changed it for cool down order (facepalm). Leap of Faith is great XxTAFxX (casues blindness!) and is an aoe effect if i’m not mistaken?

I strongly agree with the above comments. I hardly even touch PvP (my PC can barely handle it), so I’m almost exclusively PvE. I primarily solo, because I prefer to. I have a specific setup to increase my damage output, everything in Symbols/SW/2H mastery, And I almost only use Greatswords. I could be upset about the timing changes to correct percieved imbalances in PvP, or the rearrangement of skills that have been the same since before launch, but the fact of the matter is that this reduces my damage output/self healing significantly enough in PvE that it’s almost crippling.

It is increasingly noticable that the guardian is turning into a monk when the damage output has to be sacrificed just to stay alive.

The cooldown changes I can get behind if retaliation was becoming an issue, but I don’t understand why the skill order has to be changed just to maintain an arbitrary rule which states that skills are ordered left to right from lowest to highest cooldown.

Over one month into the game people are accustomed and comfortable with the basic skill layout. A change in any skill’s cooldown isn’t going to confuse people with regards to which number on the keyboard they have to press in order to trigger it (if that was the reason for the arbitrary ordering system in the first place).

It’s ok to break the Rules if it makes things less complicated. Re-ordering weapon skills = more complicated than leaving weapon skills as they are.

You can change binds it to the keys you want and you will have to get used to new CD’s eventually.
Well letting players put skills in order they want seems reasonable, but later you wander what for? You can bind it manually so skill order only shows CD and they are in that order not other because of highter number = highter CD.

Personally, I don’t really mind. I’ve (only) played like 180 hours on my guardian but it doesn’t take much time to get used to. I have never died because of using the wrong skill. I do find myself whirling instead of using the symbol occasionally, but it’s not a very big deal. In a week or so everyone probably forgot it was different in the past.

Edit: Grammar and spelling

Combo field: Ethereal in “Symbol of Wrath” now,but still with wirl finisher ->Cleansing Bolts
must be a bug

Edit: tooltip all Symbols = Combo field: Ethereal
Edit2: sry only in german,eng tooltip is ok

bartoszq.9540:

You can change binds it to the keys you want and you will have to get used to new CD’s eventually.
Well letting players put skills in order they want seems reasonable, but later you wander what for? You can bind it manually so skill order only shows CD and they are in that order not other because of highter number = highter CD.

Good sir, you are horribly wrong.
What you are going to keybind this way is not the skills of one weapon, but the skills of all your weapons; including your second weapon set and both your underwater weapons.

So to keep consistance in your greatsword gameplay you lose it with three other weapon sets.
Not to mention skill #2 was the simbol skill of both greatsword and mace before the last patch: any symbol based build is going to have messed up commands wichever keybinding is going to use.

iowen

Here’s hoping they don’t keep nerfing the living daylights out of PVE Guardians for the sake of PVP

They are not nerfing guardians PvE for the sake of PvP, guardians were to usefull both in PvE and PvP.

iowen

Try giving us something back when you take something away, is that really too much to ask?

Guardians are suppose to be guardians and that means they should protect others which they already do insanely good (I’ve seen many times people looking only for guardian specifically because they are just so good at keeping party alive).
So giving that argument, when they out-perform any other support, why should they still be able to do same or even more burst/AoE damage? This was and still is unbalanced, they change only one thing in one weapon…

I have to agree with most people here that changing the order of the skills at this stage of the game is a very bad decision. I dont mind the changes to the skills as much but please leave them in the same order. Greatsword Guardians are most of the time using auto-attack – whirling wrath – symbol – auto attack – whirling wrath – symbol anyway. Taking the Symbol out of that by giving it an hour recharge does not really improve the situation. It might have been better to change the boon the symbol gives instead of messing up skill bar.

I think I will be sticking to other weapons until the greatsword gets fixed.

The skill order was change to be in general rule – highter skill number = highter cd.
You can still change binding so it is no problem at all to have same old habits for binding, but you will have to still get used to new CD.

Yeah, switching to your 2nd weapon set will totally be messed up.

this cooldown change on SoW is killing all symbol based builds. Please revert to the previous cooldown, and change the boon granted.

~50% less heal(Writ of the Merciful)
~50% less symbol dmg
not much point in for 2h sword in cleric armor anymore

better change would been:
Symbol of Wrath,same cd,same qbar pos
Retaliation → Might
Combo Field: Light → Combo Field: Fire(no more auto clense spam)

didn’t think it was so powerful tbh, such a small static area, if you can dodge that then there is something wrong with you.

bartoszq.9540:

iowen

Here’s hoping they don’t keep nerfing the living daylights out of PVE Guardians for the sake of PVP

They are not nerfing guardians PvE for the sake of PvP, guardians were to usefull both in PvE and PvP.

iowen

Try giving us something back when you take something away, is that really too much to ask?

Guardians are suppose to be guardians and that means they should protect others which they already do insanely good (I’ve seen many times people looking only for guardian specifically because they are just so good at keeping party alive).
So giving that argument, when they out-perform any other support, why should they still be able to do same or even more burst/AoE damage? This was and still is unbalanced, they change only one thing in one weapon…

i’m guessing you don’t play a guardian then;)

Yep, symbol-build PvE-exclusive here, Greatsword is useful when soloing in PvE but not my choice for when in a group. So what this has done is impact my soloing experience (presumably because GS symbols were too op in PvP) and not touched any other part of my game … it just seems petty.

It’s an irritating and pointless change and I am now feeling pretty unenthusiastic about going back to him. Most of my time is spent soloing so a nonsensical nerf to that has really sapped my enjoyment of the profession.

When they made the changes,they did not take into account all the symbol traits which were originally made to work with Greatsword,Hammer and Mace builds. (Staff doesn’t really adds much and has horrible dps anyway)

Nerfing the symbol cooldown without increasing its duration makes all those symbol traits useless and the symbol itself subpar.

If the goal was simply to make retaliation less viable or prevent guardians keeping it up for long durations,then the simplest solution would be to change the boon granted by the symbol.
Greatsword is a pure offensive weapon so perhaps adding Fury or Might or Vigor for 1second each second to the symbol would had worked better.

I always found the symbol’s best utility was for condition removal anyway – and an extra few seconds on there won’t hurt my play style too much. 5 secs less on blind leap gives me an extra blind per encounter – which is nice.

Usually nerfs don’t bother me, but this one did. A large part of the survival aspect of my build involved getting symbols down. Agree with everyone who suggests retaliation should of been swapped out for another boon such as might, fury, etc…

This single change also effected so many traits.

iowen.4217:

Combo field: Ethereal in “Symbol of Wrath” now,but still with wirl finisher ->Cleansing Bolts
must be a bug

Edit: tooltip all Symbols = Combo field: Ethereal
Edit2: sry only in german,eng tooltip is ok

Must be a tooltip bug, but if Symbols actually became an Etheral field that’s freaking awesome!

Not being able to maintain the burning from Symbol of Wrath has brought down GS damage considerably.

Secondly, the weapon has 4 long CD skills now. Its become less fun to play as your always waiting for the CD’s. Before if I could chuck down a Symbol of Wrath to have a little fun between W’s.

I’d love to see it go back to its original CD and give it a might or fury buff instead of Retaliation.

We really have a crap bunch of weapons to use now. The GS used to make the class fun. Thanks a lot Anet for messing this one up.

Gods. If they smacked Fury in SoW I’d immediately change to a Symbol build. ~50% uptime with Two-Handed Mastery and Writ of Persistence? Please.

I’m inclined to thing it’s a simple mistake – if skills are ordered by CD by default, it might just be that someone forgot to fix it after rolling out the skill changes.
The question is, will putting it back to how it was before in a couple of days time infuriate everyone again that has acclimatised to the new layout?

“Greatsword is a pure offensive weapon so perhaps adding Fury or Might or Vigor for 1second each second to the symbol would had worked better.”

That’s the point, peoples think GS is only offensive. That’s not really true.
Why they nerfed SoW ? It’s simple reason… SoW is a light combo field, so any whirl or projectile combo finisher will AoE remove condition.
You don’t really need to spec “condition remover” with a GS because you already have the stuff on the weapon, but it’s a little nerf now.

Really ?

My biggest complaint is why mess with the button placement at all ? I hate re-learning things to appease another or a change done for P vs P. If they are starting to change things for the sake of P vs P and affecting P vs E play this is a road they really don’t want to go down. I would have thought they learned that lesson from Guild Wars I

( All you’ll do is consistently tick people the hell off and force some of us to quit playing all together ).

I hate P vs P !!! always have and could care less how it stacks against P vs E. They may have changed how P vs P works for GW 2 but the attitudes and players who enjoy that are still the same ole crowd that have played that play style in any other game and it will never be a crowd I enjoy gaming with. Tried it and quit shortly after the game started, the same attitudes and players will always be there.

A major part of the problem is the Min/Maxing you find everyone doing. What’s the biggest amount of damage I can do ? What’s the longest I can keep up " X " to ward this off ? You want to avoid changes like this in the future then start thinking like that before you ever say it’s ready to be played.

Some of us simply want to play and enjoy the game with friends so please don’t make this a trend to change up things every time there is a need to balance something. Really ? You actually needed to mess with the skill bar itself ?

GW1 had PvE and PvP completely separate. This needs to happen in GW2. They are already showing that they are incapable of balancing them both using the same skill sets.

Just no…

We are moving towards retaliation being more of a counter to taking many hits rather than a general boon to keep up all the time. We also wanted to improve the combo finisher of the guardian, so we reorganized guardian greatsword skills to the following:
Skill 2: Whirling Wrath (10 second recharge)
Skill 3: Leap of Faith (15 second recharge)
Skill 4: Symbol of Wrath (20 second recharge)

So no change to Whirling Wrath and a 25% reduction to Leap of Faith recharge is the improvement… but while they could’ve increased Symbol of Wrath’s recharge by 50% (from 10 to 15), they decided to increase it by 100%… all the way to 20 seconds.

They should’ve increased Whirling Wrath’s damage to compensate, at least…

I agree Symbol of Wrath should be changed to give Fury or Might instead, and the recharge changes should be reverted.

Nurvus.2891:

GW1 had PvE and PvP completely separate. This needs to happen in GW2. They are already showing that they are incapable of balancing them both using the same skill sets.

Just no…

Absolutely YES. For the sake of pvp and pve, there needs to be a split. The two modes are completely incompatible.

To OP: I used GS with a symbol heavy build. After this update I switched my traits to support Virtues. I think you get more out of it.

Why didn’t they just remove retaliation from symbol of wrath?
I would like an official response on this!

If arenanet wanted retaliation only to be applied sometimes and not kept up the whole time why didn’t they increased the cool down but also increase the damage to even it out. I surely hope the Arenanet thought properly about this one.

Also the worst is why change the order of the spells? Who cares what order they are anyway?? Leave it as it was which people got used to! That was a very stupid idea from the dev team.

With the symbol it should have it’s damaged doubled to compensate for the fact we can’t use it twice in 20 seconds now, that would at least make a bit more sence (just the damage aspect, not the ret etc) – or even an extra 50% damage with a 25% symbol size increase.

Why not make Symbol of Wrath give might instead, greatsword being an ‘offensive’ weapon.

Hopeless.8195:

Why not make Symbol of Wrath give might instead, Greatsword being an ‘offensive’ weapon.

All Symbols give “defensive” boons. I guess they want that uniformity to remain.

Retaliation is more on offensive boon.
Stability,Aegis,Protection would be to strong “defensive” boons.
so Vigor(not so good) and Might would be on option in exchange for Retaliation.
(or change Retaliation to do % of the dmg taken(scaled by power),in this chase Retaliation would do more uniform dmg)

I hope they don’t plan on reordering the abilities every time they change the cooldowns. I expect it to be put back in the original order.