Guild Wars 2

You’re welcome.

agree with majormelchett

you cant play a symbol build with greatsword any longer, thats double sad, because “zeal” got a few traits to push greatsword AND symbols….

Dnias.2734:

I am a guardian, and I did love the constant output of DPS, but lets be serious….we were waaaaay OPed. Also for ppl complaining about how they auto attack #1 until their CD’s are done. I believe people should try conditioning yourself to swap wpns during combat… It really amazes me how mindless some people can be when they get stuck into a routine and then that routine changes because changes were made to the process in which they went about things.

The issue isn’t weapon swapping (I can weapon swap just fine thank you, as I’m sure nearly everyone giving reasonable complaint on the REAL problem can).

The issue isn’t “waaaah, I can’t mash the same key as quickly!”

The issue most certainly was not our DPS in comparison to other classes (that’s almost laughable, considering the Guardian outputs fairly consistent damage, but nothing to write home about in comparison to say Thieves or Warriors).

As has been stated clearly, succinctly, and multiple times, the issue IS the complete derailing and destruction of ANY sort of viability on Guardians using Symbol-based Builds with a Greatsword. The Greatsword’s synergy with Symbol-based builds was nerfed excessively and without any proper reasoning (the nerf was SUPPOSED to be towards Retaliation-builds!).

Rather than passing this off as a complaint about “ack, my routine changed” or people not weapon swapping properly, please look at, comprehend, and acknowledge the REAL issue that has been clearly presented.

Very simply: that cooldown nerf BROKE Symbol-based builds with the Greatsword. THAT is what it comes down to.

EDIT: Inserted proper quote. It wasn’t working right at first.

yes the nerf broke one build… Because ist was clearly op.

anet gave some lame excuse u do Not have to buy. Get over it. gs is still viable. U just can Not have a perma Symbol up anymore. If its Not about the retaliation use Mace as secondery and the you are golden again.

Please do Not make this Sound like an official outrage of the guardian Community. it really is not.

A perma symbol using SoW?, it had the 2nd longest cooldown of all the symbols on weapons before the nerf, it was never possible to use the SoW to have a perma symbol.

It broke 1 build?, it’s been clearly show time and time again it hurt more than 1 build.

It was clearly OP?, yeah a symbol that can be put down at best every 8 seconds (with 20 points in a trait line) was clearly OP (yeah right). If it was for that reason you’d kinda expect Anet to have said so (they didn’t), and to have had a huge amount of complaints before the nerf on how it was so OP and why every symbol should get thier cooldowns doubled (i really think people need to let that sink it, it was DOUBLED).

Hey all, I am yet to experience the nerf to GS as my power pack went kaboom after a week of using (rather amusing as the one it was replacing was weaker and was in the computer when I first bought it hehe) but from all the comments I am seeing, it is going to affect me as my build was pretty much GS/Justice orientated with larger symbols.

It is an even greater shame that Anet aren’t responding to this when there are plenty of people finding this to be a really big problem, not helping that it was aimed for pretty much perma ret builds which I think can still get that without much effect from this. Have to say, the same is more or less happening with the error 7******* thread in tech support.

I do hope though that they respond to this thread and get this nerf sorted as it seems to have affected every GS build and nothing really towards the retaliation side. Again, this is just based on everyones comments I have read.

Asmodal.6489:

yes the nerf broke one build… Because ist was clearly op.

anet gave some lame excuse u do Not have to buy. Get over it. gs is still viable. U just can Not have a perma Symbol up anymore. If its Not about the retaliation use Mace as secondery and the you are golden again.

Please do Not make this Sound like an official outrage of the guardian Community. it really is not.

As was already said, it was never possible to use a perma-Symbol with the GS. This also broke more than one build…read the initial posting in this thread and you’ll see that.
If the issue was this so-called “perma-Symbol” build, then why wasn’t the Mace Symbol nerfed? The Mace Symbol has an 8 second cooldown and provides Regeneration. That, coupled with increased AoE and Symbol-healing traits surely would make the Mace Symbol stupidly OP right? (Answer: no).

There was not a single thing that made GS Symbols OP, and as has been stated so many times already, if it was the Symbol giving Retaliation that was the issue then why wasn’t the boon simply changed to something else?

And the solution on the player’s end is not simply to use the Mace instead if it’s not about the Retaliation on the GS Symbol… (really…c’mon now, “use another weapon, it’s close enough” is essentially what you are saying, when the Mace is a completely different style of play).

The solution is to find out why the nerf that was stated to be aimed at Retaliation instead broke other GS builds. Really, this has been stated so clearly so many times, that for people not to understand that (EVEN IF YOU ARE COMPLETELY FINE WITH THE GS CHANGE) is completely beyond me.

People make this sound like an outrage (or to be much better stated, an issue/legitimate complaint) within the Guardian community because it is. You may not be irked about it in any way/shape/or form, but there are many others who are (who have posted here and in other threads). A portion of the community looking for answers from ANet is still the community.

There is no reason to just let it be swept under the rug. No good will come from that, and it then opens the door to all kinds of other game mechanics changes with shoddy explanations.

An extreme example: what if you read patch notes one day that read something like this…“Guardians traited properly could have a constant Vigor boon up for increased stamina recovery. This allowed them to dodge very frequently. We decreased the natural stamina recovery rate of all classes across the board in order to help curb that a bit. Guardians should no longer be able to dodge as readily.”…the obvious solution in that particular case would be to target the trait that allows Guardians to have nearly full stamina all the time rather than blatantly nerfing everyone’s stamina recovery across the board. It’s a case of aiming for one thing (perma-stamina regen on Guardians) and causing huge and unnecessary collateral damage in other areas in the process (reduced stamina regen for everyone altogether), while still doing very little about the stated initial problem in this example (Guardians can still maintain Vigor, the nerf did little to hurt their own stamina recovery despite being stated to do so).

The GS nerf aimed for one thing (Retaliation builds), did little about it (perma-Retaliation builds were barely scuffed by the GS change at all), and took out a bunch of other options in the process (builds options and versatility already mentioned in the main post on page 1).

EDIT: Having quoting issues again. Fixed it.

This is really depressing me as my guardian build was (still is…) centered around zeal greatsword/symbol damage as well as larger symbol, having the symbol stay up longer and making the symbol heal allies. This “nerf” has completely broken my build (and it was a hard build to pull off in pvp too). seems like im going to have to re-spec as it is now redundant and cringe worthy that they have 5% GS damage in a trait line dedicated to Symbol passives.

why were gs symbols builds popular? Because they where very strong. 8sec recast on a symbol that lasts for 6secs is pretty perma for me… All right its notvrealy perma but still…

A Symbol that stacks up on vurnability, heals you, grants retaliation, is able to apply crits via decent pbao damage on multiple targets to trigger effects and adds hits to virtue of justice activation.

Sound kind of too Good to be true. Guess what … It is WHEN you can do it with two weapon sets.

GS got the Short Stick and got nerfed. Because with whirling Wind ist already had a Huge pbaoe damage skill. Big whup.

As stated the reason anet gave is Not convincing. Live with it. Anet will not admit to it. Tweaking mechanics sounds better then fixing a mistake.

If you want to Play a Symbol Centered Build you still can…. Just not with gs alone.

These things Happen in mmos… All. The. Time.

Symbols are easy to get out of so i dont really see the problem. Its like with wells, unless you can root them in the symbol your not going to do that much damage to them unless they are braindead morons that dont know how to press evade or w to walk out of it.

Ive never seen a symbol based guardian… ever. And the only time ive taken increased symbol radius was when i was hammer / mace build so my symbol would effect more team mates, i didnt care about lawl symbol damage in pve.

Big deal, your easily countered build was nerfed, get over it.

why were gs symbols builds popular? Because they where very strong. 8sec recast on a symbol that lasts for 6secs is pretty perma for me… All right its notvrealy perma but still…
A Symbol that stacks up on vurnability, heals you, grants retaliation, is able to apply crits via decent pbao damage on multiple targets to trigger effects and adds hits to virtue of justice activation.
Sound kind of too Good to be true. Guess what … It is WHEN you can do it with two weapon sets.
GS got the Short Stick and got nerfed. Because with whirling Wind ist already had a Huge pbaoe damage skill. Big whup.
As stated the reason anet gave is Not convincing. Live with it. Anet will not admit to it. Tweaking mechanics sounds better then fixing a mistake.
If you want to Play a Symbol Centered Build you still can…. Just not with gs alone.
These things Happen in mmos… All. The. Time.

1)the only thing really op in the GS simbol build is retaliation, so they can simply strip off retaliation from the simbol, and anyway its really effective only for PVE play, because if a player stand up on a simbol whitout move, well its his fault if he die.

2) all people that are actually sad with this modification dont use ONLY the GS.
They use off course others weapons, but now most of the time, when you swap from a weapon(mace or staff for me) to the GS the kittening simbol is still on CD!

Now ANet is pulling bush’s old playbook of ‘shock doctrine’.

They realize people are not “getting over” the gutting of the zeal tree in regard to GS symbol support, so they toss another nerf in guardians’ general direction to try to .

I get it, and ANet still doesn’t seem to get it. No dollars for gems until they fix greatsword support.

the nerf to the SoW duration has caused me to swap from a GS/Staff to HAMMER/Staff. The cooldown is far too long now and I believe the OP put it in very clear terms how it was detrimental to more builds in the end and not just towards the intended Retaliation nerf.

Please look for an alternative and give the old SoW back. The increased cooldown also made the weapon set less engaging and less fun to play as we spend our time auto-attacking even more. It is almost as boring as Scepter / Focus now in terms of incredibly long cooldowns, not much APM, and spending more time Auto-Attacking.

Thanks

i have some solutions for this…

1) SOW damage -20%(based on damage before the 22\10 patch)
might (3 stacks) or fury only when you are above the simbol
CD 10 sec
--——————————————————————————————————————————————
2)no change on Sow damage or boons (based on damage before the 22\10 patch)
CD 15 sec
so if before the 7\10 patch we had cd like (1-10-10-20-30)
with this modification we have (1-10-15-15-30)
and i think this is still a good compromise.

Another solution is to realize that nothing is wrong with what they did. Forcing ppl to branch off to a weapon swap was probably their intention. You talk about auto attack as if what you were doing before didn’t have it’s own mindless pattern once you found a rotation. 3,4,f1,2 repeat. With the SoW being up on an 8 second cool down from the press of the button, meant that we could cleanse conditions with almost a 100% up time of SoW. I was 20 points into zeal line. Since nerf I have stripped Zeal line and dumped it all into radiance, touchiness and virtues, and I might add, I like the build a lot better.

Dnias.2734:

Another solution is to realize that nothing is wrong with what they did. Forcing ppl to branch off to a weapon swap was probably their intention. You talk about auto attack as if what you were doing before didn’t have it’s own mindless pattern once you found a rotation. 3,4,f1,2 repeat. With the SoW being up on an 8 second cool down from the press of the button, meant that we could cleanse conditions with almost a 100% up time of SoW. I was 20 points into zeal line. Since nerf I have stripped Zeal line and dumped it all into radiance, touchiness and virtues, and I might add, I like the build a lot better.

Why wouldn’t they force a weapon swap on the Mace or the Staff then by drastically increasing the cooldowns on their respective symbols? The Mace symbol provides solid healing (a hefty amount of healing when coupled with the symbol-healing trait) and creates a Light field, all on an 8 second cooldown. Traited for increased AoE and for symbol-healing that Mace symbol can output a hefty amount of green numbers. The Staff can provide Swiftness every 15 seconds (12 seconds when traited for cooldown) in an AoE (a large AoE if traited properly) to all allies passing through while also doing damage to enemies. Why not “encourage” weapon-swapping by nerfing the cooldowns on those symbols? I just don’t think that argument holds any weight.

I don’t know about this 3, 4, F1, 2, repeat pattern. Some people might have used that, but my personal pattern was different. The fact that the pattern you speak of is different from mine enhances the point that the previous version of SoW had elegance of design. You could easily fit it into your combat rotation wherever you liked AND for multiple purposes. Now it hardly has a place in the rotation at all. It’s more of a “I’ll cast it every now and then, but I won’t be missing it while on cooldown since it doesn’t contribute much anyway” skill, whereas before it was just as bread-and-butter to the Greatsword as the Mace symbol is to the Mace rotation.

Personally, I always liked to Leap onto a target (GS 4), Symbol and then Spin (GS 2 and then GS 3), activating F1 right as I started to spin. I also made heavy use of dodge-rolling (even in PvE) and being able to control enemy positioning and movement by creating a “no-fly zone” (using SoW) around me was a key part of the playstyle (by using SoW AoE you discourage competent enemies from standing in it, thus forcing enemies to engage you on your own terms either inside or outside of your AoE, essentially letting you control and defend the ground you stand on like a Guardian should).

Actions like that are simply no longer available as readily as they were before. The active, flowing, and natural/elegant part of the GS skills has been kittened in exchange for a new SoW that simply is not up-to-par with the cooldown it has. The skill itself is not powerful enough, does not provide enough terrain/objective control, and does not offer near-enough usage or build versatility to justify or dictate that 20 second cooldown.

Yes, SoW could allow you to cleanse conditions quite readily. If that was an issue then it should have been stated as such by the developers in the patch notes, and the combo field should simply have been changed to another type (Fire perhaps, to keep consistent with the Guardian theme). Again, this all goes back to how inelegant of a method they used to nerf SoW (supposedly for Retaliation-build purposes) and caused collateral damage to other builds, playstyles, and the GS weapon itself in the process.

That’s great that you’ve found a new build you like better, really. But what about people who liked the symbol-based builds better? What about people who like meditation builds? Or Altruistic Healing builds? What do those builds have to do with this? Nothing really, which is the point:

Discovering a new build and liking it more changes nothing about how this SoW change caused vast harm to the viability and the versatility of the GS in Symbol-based builds, the GS in relation to the Zeal trait-line, and the combat flow/elegance/usability of the GS skillset. The change decreased our build options and made Greatsword combat less pro-active and more passive, whether it encouraged you to look for another build or not.

Another solution is to realize that nothing is wrong with what they did. Forcing ppl to branch off to a weapon swap was probably their intention. You talk about auto attack as if what you were doing before didn’t have it’s own mindless pattern once you found a rotation. 3,4,f1,2 repeat. With the SoW being up on an 8 second cool down from the press of the button, meant that we could cleanse conditions with almost a 100% up time of SoW. I was 20 points into zeal line. Since nerf I have stripped Zeal line and dumped it all into radiance, touchiness and virtues, and I might add, I like the build a lot better.

You are contraddicting yourself man, if the modification have NOTHING WRONG, why do you change your build? YOU know the problem and you discarded the zeal line.
Even if i dont use zeal line, for my playstile 20 sec on cd is a lot of time, i swap weapon on every cooldown because i like a fast gameplay. something like
Pull mob away from the friends (gs5 x2), simbol, leap, spin->switch to mace->simbol->parry (mace3)->ray of judgment etc etc.

But this is not a rotation, the skill usage is determined by the situation, and if a return to GS and i have 7 or 8 seconds left on the simbol cd, its a lot of trouble.

Sorry if my reply seemed contradicting. I changed my play style because I wanted to try the crit hammer build. My change had nothing to do with what they nerfed. I played the zeal line for 2 weeks after the fact and received no cons from sticking with the setup I had (other than retaliation) and a slightly longer CD on SoW, going from 8 seconds to 15 seconds. The only thing I used in zeal line was blinding jeopardy and Fiery Wrath. Those two traits had nothing to do with the nerf.

The point I was trying to make, was that just because they nerfed something, does not mean it is the end of a class. If people would take the time to realize that the GS is still a good weapon, and that there are other builds out there.

Ganzo.5079:

i have some solutions for this…
2)no change on Sow damage or boons (based on damage before the 22\10 patch)
CD 15 sec
so if before the 7\10 patch we had cd like (1-10-10-20-30)
with this modification we have (1-10-15-15-30)
and i think this is still a good compromise.

This is exactly what would have worked best, the 5 seconds extra cooldown on SoW compensated by the 5 seconds reduction on leap (i’d maybe even be ok with 18 seconds cooldown on leap).

Thinking about it, it would work quite well as unlike my suggestion (to just change the buff given) it’s a simple cooldown change only. Doing this would mean all the traits it affected wouldn’t be as bad (i honestly think they’ve forgot about all the GS traits in the symbol trait line).
—
Ahh well, it won’t happen as we got our token rebuff on SoW (10% extra damage).

although i feel that the search for a compromise is a lot better then the gimme gimme attitude i do not see how a 15 sec RC symbol would change your argumentation behind the “my build is broken”-story.

@Ganzo: to limit the strength of a symbol build to the singular boon of one weapon set is pretty short sighted. there are so many traits that can benefit from a symbol its just silly.

i do agree that it is not a really great choice in pvp against skillfull oponents but there are also a lot of ways to keep pepople in your symbol – you turn out out pretty squishy though. if you got the enemy on the hook its pretty kitten hard to get away from a guardian with gs/hammer and the right traits+skills

Asmodal.6489:

@Ganzo: to limit the strength of a symbol build to the singular boon of one weapon set is pretty short sighted. there are so many traits that can benefit from a symbol its just silly.

im not short sighted…
the 7\10 update log say something, go to read it and then re-look the solutions!

Please explain why it’s a nerf PvP wise if i can close ground 25% more often and most fights dont allow me to just stand inside a small symbol on the ground for more than a second or two? I’m speaking from WvW open ground fights and skirmishes between small groups, NOT SPvP or dungeons. I can see in dungeons how the dps loss would be felt, but in WvW I personally would rather “leap” more with a blind attached and “ok” damage.

Why is this so hard? Remove the retaliation and change it with other boons. It is that simple. Idk why Anet need to double the CD of the skill.

This is just stupid. If you take a look at The way Anet has been “balancing” classes, they’ve basically been making most classes weaker overall, for PvE this is terrible. They take what players enjoy and break it. I can see the direction Anet is moving with this game and it’s hugely disappointing. Ontop of which they don’t respond to the playerbase.

Freyvin.5690:

Please explain why it’s a nerf PvP wise if i can close ground 25% more often and most fights dont allow me to just stand inside a small symbol on the ground for more than a second or two? I’m speaking from WvW open ground fights and skirmishes between small groups, NOT SPvP or dungeons. I can see in dungeons how the dps loss would be felt, but in WvW I personally would rather “leap” more with a blind attached and “ok” damage.

Leaping more is cool and all, but it really doesn’t make up for the collateral damage dealt to Symbol-based builds utilizing the Greatsword. Naturally mobility will always be of a higher priority in PvP.

Suggestion:

Maybe to continue to allow for that newly increased mobility while also making amends for the SoW nerf we could have something like this:

Leap: keep new 15second cooldown
SoW: change it to 15 second cooldown

That basically would be dropping 5 seconds off the original Leap duration (pre-nerf GS Leap was 20 secs) and adding those 5 seconds onto the SoW (changing it from the pre-nerf GS SoW of 10 secs up to 15 secs). This would allow the GS to keep the new mobility provided by the lower cooldown Leap of Faith while still providing a somewhat reasonable cooldown on the Symbol of Wrath.

Personally, I would prefer the original Symbol duration back since it fit right between the Mace and the Staff symbols in cooldown time. This allowed you to easily accommodate any symbol-generating weapon in symbol-based builds, particularly when weapon cycling/swapping to chain or overlap symbols (all had roughly/relative close cooldown times) or to use while your other symbol and weapon skills were on cooldown (active weapon-swapping but still having a symbol available).

The new Symbol of Wrath 20 second cooldown is so kitten high that it creates a huge disparity and makes for far less uptime, when using the Greatsword individually without trying to chain symbols and even when weapon-swapping (it’s really quite stupid to swap from a Greatsword, to a Mace, and then back to Greatsword and still have the Symbol of Wrath be on cooldown…). It basically makes Symbol-based Greatsword builds vastly inferior to where they used to be, kittens the usefulness of the Greatsword in the Zeal traitline (the line it is encouraged in), and does so in an unnecessarily unintuitive and unwarranted manner.

One way to fix the Symbol trait usefulness, without making boons rampant, is to make new kinds of Symbols (Flash Symbol) that have instantaneous effect (1 tick) and thus neither give refreshing Boons nor Combo Field.

It could be a Chain after Leap of Faith, Whirling Wrath or Symbol of Wrath.
Being an instant Symbol, only Writ of Persistence would be neglected.

Full idea in my signature.

really we dont need and AOE tipe instant attack. simbols are a things that persist on ground, the enemy can see them, ad he can avoid them(if its smart enogh), you can use them to create a “deadly” area around you, so the enemy can chose if attack you, keep distance, retreat, or something else.
Add some new tipe of simbols is a good thing, maybe less strong, and less large, but it must be a simbol lol.
And in any chase, the solution for the GS case, is simple… no need to change completely the mechanics of a weapon that before the 10\7 patch, was completely fine.

I agree that it would be unfair if Flash Symbol damage was equal to the total damage dealt by normal Symbols, but that’s not what I’m suggesting.

What made ANet change SoW – according to them – was the fact that it allowed for an overpowered capability to provide a Boon that can be overwhelming in PvP.

Since making SoW give no Boons at all would be unfair, a good sollution is adding a new type of Symbols, and add it as a Chain somewhere on Weapons that need a Symbol nerf, and thus maintaining the usefulness of Symbol-oriented traits.

My sollution doesn’t aim to flame the decision of ANet, but instead give it options to maintain their decision while at the same time, fix some of the problems it created.

Your “sollution” is simply rejecting the change ANet made. Very smart. :P

Nurvus.2891:

Your “sollution” is simply rejecting the change ANet made. Very smart. :P

It’s not “my” solution, is a solution that a lot of player approve, and is a way more faster to APPLY AND TEST than create new set of skills. ^^

And if for you this suggestion is a simple reject for this change, yes im rejecting a change that i think is wrong ^^

I also think the change was unnecessary or overdone, but I want to try and give ANet some credit – they work for this game, and we merely play it.
So I want to think they know a little more than we do regarding what needs to be done.

So I try to make suggestions that work with the way they implemented things, rather than suggesting they revert their changes.

Nurvus.2891:

I also think the change was unnecessary or overdone, but I want to try and give ANet some credit – they work for this game, and we merely play it.
So I want to think they know a little more than we do regarding what needs to be done.

This is a really bad affermation, players are the best testers of a game. Devs sure know the game better then us, but they are humans like us, and they can ignore things that a player notice. because we look the game with different eyes.
So if a decision is wrong for a lot of players, why dont change it.

So I try to make suggestions that work with the way they implemented things, rather than suggesting they revert their changes.

read better, its not a simple revert the change, but its an adjustment.
They have pointed the finger on retaliation… ok delete retaliation and give something else with the old cd.
its vital to keep retaliation on Sow? ok but the cd its to high, so why don’t set 15 or 14 sec CD.

just to add a little to this discussion, I’ve played 3 classes now, each of which at some point has taken inexplicable nerfs (Engineer, Mesmer and Guardian) – none have ever recieved any kind’ve feedback from Arenanet as to why they made the nerfs

Indeed, the fact they tried explain why they nerfed GS’s symbol is more than I’ve ever seen said on a topic. Mesmer gets nerfed virtually every patch with nought but a word on why (And before you say “but mesmer needs nerfs” I should point out the skills they have been nerfing on mesmer arn’t the skills that need nerfing indeed, some of them actually need a buff and nobody used them anyway (Even fewer now))

So, don’t take their silence as meaning they’re ignoring you, but don’t get your hopes up they’ll fix anything, half of mesmer’s skills and trait lines have been busted since BWE2 and they havn’t recieved any changes, don’t count on guardian’s GS symbol getting looked at for at least 6 months either

Ganzo.5079:

This is a really bad affermation, players are the best testers of a game. Devs sure know the game better then us, but they are humans like us, and they can ignore things that a player notice. because we look the game with different eyes.

Ugh… if I’m making a suggestion, it’s obviously because I don’t think ANet are perfect, otherwise I’d open my hands and expect candy.

So if a decision is wrong for a lot of players, why dont change it.

Because if developers ever become ruled by player demands, a game is destroyed.
This happens because like 9 out of 10 players want things without considering the long term side-effects and mentality changes.

It’s like the players asking for Recount meters, Inspection, etc.
Most of them may have the purest intentions, but they overlook the long term problems their idea causes.

Ganzo.5079:

read better, its not a simple revert the change, but its an adjustment.
They have pointed the finger on retaliation… ok delete retaliation and give something else with the old cd.
its vital to keep retaliation on Sow? ok but the cd its to high, so why don’t set 15 or 14 sec CD.

I agree they went extreme on SoW. Could be 15 cd on both LoF and SoW (reverting the 10% damage increase on SoW).

But I said what I said in response to this statement of yours:

And in any chase, the solution for the GS case, is simple… no need to change completely the mechanics of a weapon that before the 10\7 patch, was completely fine.

I underlined the part where you deny the change was ever necessary.
And that’s what I responded to.

Nurvus.2891:

Because if developers ever become ruled by player demands, a game is destroyed.
This happens because like 9 out of 10 players want things without considering the long term side-effects and mentality changes.

It’s like the players asking for Recount meters, Inspection, etc.
Most of them may have the purest intentions, but they overlook the long term problems their idea causes.

For this i express myself in wrong term, but my english is really bad, but look this thread, and look the other thread like this one on this section of the forum.

If a decision made by devs is fine, you can see 2 types players:

-Players that know if a particular skill is unbalanced and agree with devs even if the change hurt their gameplay.
-players that want the iGOD skill unchanged

one example of this is the recent save yourself nerf.

In the GS case we have:

-angry GS lovers that see their playstile changed for a boon, and they want a total rollback
-players that havent their playstile changed, so for them this change hurt nothing
-players that used to play the gs, and they rerolled to another weapons\spec, they are angry, but they dont care too much.
-players that try to fix this thing making new suggestions
-players that try to fix this thing by the suggestion of new values

so, its little different from a simple request.

Anyway, I already agreed they went too far, and reducing the SoW recharge back to halfway (15) between the current and old value might solve the issue.

Still, GS has always been somewhat slow in gameplay, and because of that I instead suggest a new type of Symbols should be added, making it possible for Traits to become better, ANet to give some weapons an extra Chain skill, or make some existing AoE skills count as Flash Symbols, etc.

Alot of potential.
Most of my suggestions are all about giving ANet more options besides mere number tweaks.

GS basically became an aesthetic item on my character. Sometimes I wave it around in Lions arch, because it looks neat, but outside of that I don’t use it anymore.

I will address a few things I have read recently on the topic.

1. Yep, it’s still a bad fix. Oh well, ANET has their reasons even if I don’t agree, or like the change I’m done complaining about it. It’s obvious they don’t care about transparency, or working on it, so what’s done is done.

2. Guardians have a lot of build choices. I treat GS like it’s not an option and focus on what ever else is available, because I would rather be playing than arguing with people on here.

3. The people complaining about these threads are worse than the people complaining about the nerf in the first place. Your complaints are not constructive. Your snide remarks, and cynicism just make you sound like trolls.

4. We get it. You don’t like the change. I don’t either. Almost a month has gone by and it’s not going to change. Time to move on already.

5. ANET I am very disappointed in you. That is all I really need to say on this subject. Peace out.

Amins.3710:

Those complaining about a ‘fix’ to an ability that was blatantly OP is nothing more than mere children who realize the world does not revolve around them and there needs to be some balance… much like the reckogning theives will recieve in due time.

How exactly was the SoW “blatantly OP”? I’ve never heard anyone say that… ever. The GS wasn’t overpowered or underpowered, it was middle of the road damage (especially compared to warrior, thief, mesmer) and excellent versatility, the way most weapons should be. The reason the GS was so popular among guardians was because it was one of the most well designed and polished weapon sets in the game, not because it was OP. But than again you only have 1 character, so why are you pretending to know anything about what’s OP or not?

Here’s hoping that in the upcoming ‘big patch’ ANet will have reviewed the responses and suggestions this community has offered in relation to SoW and agree that they may have gone overboard.

What they should not believe however is that by giving SoW a little 10% damage increase all is fine and dandy all of a sudden. It was simply throwing the dog a bone in hopes that he’ll stop barking (in my humble opinion).

As far as I’m concerned they can keep their 10% and their Retaliation. I just want my old Light Field back on a 10s(8s) cooldown and the skill showing up in it’s old spot on my bar.