Guild Wars 2

This is quite terrible hope it will be reverted soon.

@Zax, i hope they simply realise it was a mistake and put the cooldowns back to how they used to be (alon g with layout), and then simply adjust the retaliation aspect of the symbol. It’ll never happen though, i really think they don’t see it as an issue (kinda like the FOV issue).

don’t mind the skill changes, revert the interface on skill order though.

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.

THIS makes perfect sense and is how I played too. I see the mob(s) from a distance, leap in, plant my symbol, then spin. Sometimes I do use binding blade, but usually only if there was a ranged mob I needed to bring into my aoe range.

All the arguments boil down to one basic thing, WTF can we not just assign our own hotbar skills ?!??!

So every time they gonna to change the cool downs on abilities they gonna change the ability order?

I don’t understand why keep it from lowest cooldown to highest on your skill bar? Who cares if it is not like that? seriously

Well I am totally handicapped after this new changes… We been playing like this since launch and even before the launch a lot of us.. To just change the place of the skills is more of taking a pi**. Just restore it or atleast make it customisable at this problem will never be a issue again.

Why do you change the places of the Greatsword skills.. please revert it.. starting to get real annoyed at ANET..

I have so much faith in you guys why are you doing stupid things like these..

My god I didn’t realize people feared change this much. Just get used to it, what’s the big deal?

It took me 2 minutes to get used to the new greatsword layout, but well it took me 10 to get used to play en Ele properly, so I’m not like others I guess.

I don’t see it as such a big deal considering Leap of Faith’s CD reduction, a decent leap + leap finisher + Aoe blind is invaluable. This is a team game, there are lots of other combo fields other than our own.

+1
and why are sword(1hand) on radiance trait? there is no room for radiance in my build already have high crit chance else i would change to that.

Frankly if they didn’t want Retaliation up full time all they had to do was take the finishing move component away from Leap of Faith … problem sorted, nothing else needed to change.

-1. They moved the abilities to different slots. Just get used to it. Change isn’t scary.

I hate the new layout after playing for so long with my guardian using GS this feels awkward.

We need to be able to change the skills order and get a decent ranged weapon or at least make the scepter attacks go three times faster.. right now you hit like 10% of the attacks.. this is really annoying.. I’m about to change class and I’m a 80 full exotic guardian -.-

Think the most annoying thing about this is if it’s happened once is it going to happen every time ANet change a skill cooldown.So in another few months when some cooldown is possibly changed will this happen again, this goes for other classes aswell if there are changes. Pain having to keep getting used to a new key settup.

Symbols builds are still solid. It’s just that GS is probably not a good choice for a Symbols build now. You’re better off with Hammer for a symbols build, and Mace as well. Greatsword now is more of a Combo Finisher weapon, and will therefore benefit more from recharge reduction, which means Honor.

One of the unforeseen effects of the recent patch was to tilt builds further away from Zeal than before, and closer to Honor. It’s a bit odd, since Honor is already a fantastic trait line for any Guardian, and Zeal is really limited to Symbol builds, Spirit Weapons and Greatsword. ….Except, well, you’re still way better off going Honor for Greatswords now.

Anyway, Symbols builds are perfectly viable. You’re just better off with a different weapon. Although, it should be said that Greatsword is not a bad idea for a weapon swap option in Symbols builds, because Symbols create Combo Fields, and Greatsword has your only Leap finisher on a short recharge, as well as two Whirling finishers.

The recharge on Symbol of Wrath also seems to make it more favorable as a swap rather than a main weapon for Symbols builds.

Good luck!

I don’t care if you reduce the cooldowns…leave the abilities in the order they were!

I spent over 100 hours and killing more than 10,000 enemies ingraining the skill order locations in my muscle memory.

And now you’ve decided to arbitrarily re-assign them. That’s not cool at all.

Can you give us the ability to reorder skills on our own at least?

I would much rather they change the boon granted by the symbol than increase its cooldown so drastically. It really messes up the (already sub par IMO) symbol builds compared to more popular builds.

Also, re-arranging the skill order is just silly. Put it back how it was.

I am infuriated by this nerf.

The change to greatsword’s button layout doesn’t bother me. The weapon’s main attacks are the 1-5 number keys. It won’t be difficult to adapt especially since the game hasn’t been out that long.

Increasing the cooldown of Symbol of Wrath bothered me at first and will make me change my traits around but let’s be honest, the greatsword was and still is a superior weapon for guardians compared to the other options.

I also agree that retaliation lasted a long time with ways to increase boon duration and it felt like the symbol spell was too spammy if one also considers the trait to decrease the cooldown of 2-handed weapons.

Played CM explore last night and felt like a complete noob not being able to hit my usual combos because of the rearranged keys. Thought about trying a hammer but said screw it. I will probably just use my guardian for crafting. I saw an Anet employee responded to someone asking about rebinding and they said you will adjust over time which is true, but when you are playing in upper level content where missing keys leads to your death and armor damage. I do not see the reason to fight through setting up the muscle memory for a character I have 132 hours playing one way. If they wanted to reduce the usefulness of the guardian they did a hell of a job because mine is going to be spending most of his time in LA just sitting around.

No. change isn’t scary. If you really played guardian hundreds of hours you would also be upset. The way it was before was alot easier than it will be now.

If retaliation is such a hot issue of balance right now they why don’t they do the novel idea of changing retaliation instead of doing all these completely awkward changes to the greatsword?

RoseRIP.8502:

I also agree that retaliation lasted a long time with ways to increase boon duration and it felt like the symbol spell was too spammy if one also considers the trait to decrease the cooldown of 2-handed weapons.

Hammer drops a symbol every 4 seconds. That isn’t too spammy at all? Boon duration increase barely affect that 1 second of retaliation. 30% of boon duration? 1.3 seconds.

Ahh well, I am still anxiously waiting for Anet’s response. This patch that just appeared to screw something up, especially the skill order kind of made the impression that Anet is jumping to conclusions rather than work something out. Feels like Guild Wars 1 all over again… >_<

I must say, I really, really dislike what you guy at Arena did to the weapon skills.
The cooldowns and such aside, switching places just made me suddenly feel completely uncomfortable with my guardian, because you just wasted all the muscle memory with that.

Either allow us to freely remap weapon skills like Utility Skills, or put it back the way it was, because without character-specific keybinds that kind of placement swapping is just like asking rebind keys every time you play a different character, or to shoot yourself in the leg.

I was running CM Explore last night and did notice the impact on the long cooldown on symbol of wrath. I mainly use this for the light field since it had a short cool down – could care less about the retaliation. Aftersignificant time on the GS Guardian, I prefer to have the GS skills back to same positioning keys or give options to change weapon skill order.

Anet should’ve just taken the retaliation off Symbol of Wrath and made it something else like burning, might, etc.

Thankfully, I am leveling up my Thief.

Re bound my skills to the way they were before patch. No problem everything is fine…until….

..I swapped to my second set of weapons and started playing like Simple Jack…

Broken UI is one gigantic gorilla on barbiturates sitting on your lap.

Well, this nerf, and more importantly the moving around of skills, has made me decide to quit the game altogether.

I’m also not a new player and have GW1 GWAMM and 50/50 HoM.

Why didn’t they just remove retaliation completely from the skill, instead of increasing cooldown by 100%. This nerf has nothing to do with retaliation (and I call BS on their explanation), but instead to nerf Symbol GS Guardians.

To all the other classes gloating about this nerf, just wait until it happens to your class and they completely shuffle all your skills around as well.

This whole thing has Izzy and GW1 Paragon nerfs written all over it…

I miss the old GW1 layout where you could order the skills in the order you wanted

The majority of what has been said hits the nail right on the head. Changing the order of the skills was the worst idea imaginable for a game that locks players into a predefined order. ANet really dropped the ball and whoever was responsible for this needs to seriously have their decisions questioned on this matter. Muscle memory and lack of customization are nothing to scoff at and something like this should have been handle BEFORE launch.

Something like this may have been deemed necessary, but now that players are incorporated into the process in the Live version, something ANet just has to accept as unchangeable.

Yeah change back skills placement on Quickbar please

If they’re going after retaliation then why not just do somethng like this.
—-
Put the GS back how it was (same cooldowns) and completly remove the retaliation aspect of the symbol – to compensate increase the symbols damage by 5%.

Change leaps combo in a light field from retaliation into something else (regen, might, fury etc).

No more retaliation on the GS and the weapon stays pretty much how it was in regards to damage etc.
-
Put Signet of Judgment back to how it was and remove Vengeful from the Vitues trait line, replace it with another trait – perhaps 25% duration increase on stability (just suggesting based on a 25% thing, can be another trait type). Perhaps even go as far as to remove the retaliation alltogether of the Signet and change it to 5 seconds of might (or something else similar).
-
For a deep retaliation build they just got it reduced by 25% duration (no +25% trait) and they loose some more by not having any on the GS – everyone else who isn’t deep retaliation gets things in return and all is well.
—-
Just an idea rather than weekly retaliation nerfs that affect all builds that happen to have some retaliation, instead of only affecting deep retaliation builds.

IDC for what they made this change for future guards… But give me back the old lay-out..

Played so dam much on the old 1
Atleast give the option to rearange skill 1-5 on our own terms

i’ll agree the changing of the skills is a pain, and I can care less about the retaliation loss. What really gets me is the crippling affect it had on the GS. You get 3 combo finisher moves on the GS to use, and now you cannot use them effectively at all because of the huge cool down on our only light field with that weapon. Not to mention that the symbol builds are really effected greatly by this change.

To be fair if they really wanted to nerf retaliation, and keep with the symbol boons then take retaliation off and replace it with another. Protection or regeneration would be good defensive boons to put on instead. The skill order, while minor in this all, should be returned, and the CD on the symbol should be returned. Just replace the retaliation effect with something more defensive. This would allow us to actually make use of the light field and our combo moves once again which actually made the GS fun to play….

guys just go into options – control options – change weapon skill 2 , 3 and 4 to 3 , 4 and 2 and problem solved , yes u will still have the skills laid out the same but your finger will now press the right skills they are used to.

Elementdot.6081:

Hammer drops a symbol every 4 seconds. That isn’t too spammy at all? Boon duration increase barely affect that 1 second of retaliation. 30% of boon duration? 1.3 seconds.

For the sake of reference: With Writ of Persistence and Two-Handed Mastery -an admittedly heavy investment that locks you out of some other desirable Traits- you could keep up old Symbol of Wrath 7.5s on an 8s cooldown. That’s 7s of Retaliation on an 8s cooldown. The 30% Boon Duration you mention would result in a Retaliation surplus of over a second per 8s cycle.

Again, that’s a 30 point Investment in Honor that locks you out of stuff like Empowering Might, Battle Presence, Pure of Voice and most notably Writ of the Merciful. So it’s nothing casually done. But totally possible.

@ Cememt, been suggested already and well, doing that messes up your secondary weapon and water weapons.

The lep change to 15 seconds doesn’t make up for the 100% increase in cooldown on the symbol at all.

It is not a “slight” change, people are annoyed because the reason they gave for the change doesn’t match up to what they actully changed and a lot of it doesn’t make any sense.

Unless this has already been mentioned, here’s another side the greatsword changes have affected: with the increased cooldown on Symbol of Wrath, you have not only affected retaliation, but also any of its synergies with symbols and applying boons in general.

Honor’s major trait “Writ of the Merciful” (10) heals anyone standing in your symbols per second, which is very useful in any encounter on a stationary target that may distribute conditions such as burning to nearby players. This change also affects the amount of times you can combo Symbol of Wrath and Whirling Wrath to remove conditions from nearby allies.

Valor’s major trait “Altruistic Healing” (11) heals the guardian once any boon is applied to any nearby ally per second. This is especially effective in any encounter where the guardian has current aggro of the target and there are nearby allies in melee range/standing in your symbol; this also generally helps with solo play as well.

Here’s an idea: revert the changes made to the greatsword, however nerf the Virtues’ major trait “Vengeful” (2) from 25% retaliation down to anywhere from 14% to 21% or however you see fit. This trait is specifically for retaliation and nothing more, and reverting the greatsword changes will resolve the muscle memory issue, whereas I’m sure nobody’s muscle memory will be affected by editing a boon duration trait.

Seeing as nerfing Symbol of Wrath solely for its retaliation also affects other aspects of builds (unless intended), I would like you to specifically focus on retaliation alone instead of a meaningful skill with many different uses. The Vengeful major trait seems to be the most logical target for editing, in my opinion.

@ major melchett yah that sucks but i hardly ever bring out the staff except for symbol of swiftness and to spam 1 through a door at attackers so seems a much easier relearn for the staff which is out 2 % of the time rather then GS which i use 98% of time

They may or may not have messed up great sword. I am not sure since I do not really use it. However retaliation is far from fixed. It is still endless. See my thread on the guardian forums for more information ( https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/You-can-still-do-endless-retaliation-its-just-harder-guide/first#post378331 ).

Basically you can easily keep up retaliation endlessly against ranged and melee attackers.

The new greatsword layout is proper annoying and awkward, please revert this change.

I find it astonishing people are throwing around theories of cooldowns and skill functionality when no one has considered the actual in-game limitation that is imposed by skill ordering: new players.

Skill order is very important because it dictates the order you learn skills.

With Symbol of Wrath’s nerf, particularly the cooldown, and the overall aim to make retaliation less sustainable, giving Symbol of Wrath as your second skill is just stupid. You may as well not have the second skill.

I get the impression Anet want to make retaliation something you apply for when the foe is about to use a powerful attack. You can’t expect a player who has just unlocked skill 2 to have any understanding of monster animations and use this mechanic correctly. With a 20second cooldown to boot, the skill becomes completely pointless and you’d just keep spamming 1 all day.

Sure Anet could let you reorder skills once you’ve unlocked them all, but it isn’t in the game yet. Sadly, we just have to accept the order of our skills is controlled by the level 1 viability of the weapon and suck it up.

The skill order change is annoying, but I agree that it actually makes sense in the context of the cooldown changes. The sad part is that, because people are so focused on having to retrain their fingers (which will probably only take a few days of play), many people are missing that the underlying changes are a huge nerf to the damage output of the weapon.

Just wanted to stop in and say that the order of the skills should be put back to how they where. The new cooldowns and other redos are ok to leave.

Like others have said making a pvp game with 5 skills that are set to a weapon and can not be changed are fine. People will get use to them, but you can not go and just change where the skills are like this. In both PvE and PvP people learn twich skills where they hardly have to think they just know.

Learning order of skills isn’t as important as end game, or even mid game mechanics- anything that doesn’t unlock a skill from 0% when killed isn’t tough enough to worry about in the grand scheme of things.

Learning skills takes about 15 minutes. I don’t think this is a valid reason to adjust skill order.

I find it astonishing that that is really your theory. It is completely based on the recharge rate of the abilities. Look at literally any weapon set in the game (except thieves-I think their system is based on how much initiative each ability costs).

When I was leveling up my Guardian, I unlocked the Symbol first and then Whirling Wrath right after it. It was not confusing to me in the slightest bit how the ability worked. It ticked for damage and granted me the ability to reflect incoming damage back at the source (based on my power). If that is confusing to anyone, they simply are not reading the tool-tip, which is frankly just standard practice in any MMO.

I don’t care if they nerf all the skills as long they don’t change place T_T…

revert or give an option for custom layout. AS it is, it is just an inconvenience :/

What the 10 minutes it takes to learn all the skills as a new player? I doubt it’s even that long.

Flawed theory aside, I don’t think the skill order change was that big of a deal, I’ve already adjusted and in some ways find the increased leap of faith decent in that I can blind/vulnerability more.

But still I wonder why Anet decided to not let us change our skills on the hotbar like every single other MMO ever made allows us.