Guild Wars 2

Despite hundreds of well-reasoned posts by Guardians, it appears none of our suggestions are going to change the vast problems inherent in the proposed patch changes. This apparently includes no revert to the ill-conceived changes to Symbol of Swiftness.

Once again, it appears that Guardian simply have no seat at the table when it comes to class traits or balance. Either no one at Anet is willing to speak up for our class, or (worse yet) they just don’t care.

Sylpheed.8163:

Makoto.9647:

We don’t really sacrifice that much for a dps build, I run zerkers with 16k HP and find myself being just fine. The only type of warrior I even struggle to fight against is pure regen tank condi warriors in a 1v1 situation, and it just usually draws out into no one dying. If you want to have pure zerkers with the same amount of survivability we currently have + more HP then what’s the point of playing a Warrior? Our DPS spec is viable, and I addressed the need for more soft CC (Which is cripple/chill/snare/etc if you don’t know the terminology). We have a good amount of leaps and blinks and utilities that give movement speed. (Which we won’t need to use if we get more soft CC). You keep saying that we sacrifice too much survivability to go dps spec but most of our needed traits are in the valor / honor lines anyway, and again.. If you want to maintain the survivability we have now with more damage, that’s just broken. There has to be some kind of give and take balance, you can’t have it all.

I would seriously like to know how you have 16K HP in “zerkers”? I assume when you say that, since you did not specify otherwise, that you mean full zerkers, armor, weapons, and trinkets. If you are running a DPS setup, then you don’t have the extra vitality either, so you “should” have about 13,500 HP. Now, as an example, I can run full zerkers with my Warrior, and Im sitting at about 19,500 HP. That’s with nothing traited for vitality, and I guarantee you, I am outdamaging any Guard on the field by about 3 times what they can individually put out. Now, Guardians have burst, yes if spec’d full DPS I can burst a warrior down to about a third of their health in one go.

However, that means everything goes on CD, what happens next is all too familiar for us, they escape – Bulls Charge, Sword #2, GS #3 or #5 whatever you name it. Yes you touched on the fact we need better soft cc, I posted above I think a good fix for our sword #2 and JI to be more efficient they should be area targetable, but you know what, even then a warrior will gain distance on us if they are using the 25% speed trait, unless we are using Traveler Runes. I’ve run a Signet build on a guardian that maximizes vulnerability stacks and Mighty Blow hits hard but the CC you get from our Bane Signet and…the condition damage one is nice but the cast time is too long on them imo.

You also talk about abilities that provide speed, so you are talking about Retreat, and Save Yourselves which are shouts, and if you are running a “Guardian DPS” build you should be using meditations in which case you won’t have either of those on your bar. Can you have DPS with a shout build? Of course you can, but you won’t be able to maximize your burst potential.

I posted above my thoughts about our condition damage being a Guardian only condition not shared with other classes, also someone posted above an idea in the zeal line that converts power to vitality which I think would be a great idea then my idea of giving us base 3500 HP, which BTW still puts us well below that of a Warrior, only one class in the game has less HP then a Guard and that’s Thieves. I think class balance is great, obviously, but ANET needs to address this condition meta, simple fix, add immunity timers. What is the point of condi removal if it gets reapplied instantly, and for a class like us HP is what saves our you know what’s when it comes to conditions, which as pointed out, are second lowest pool in the game. So all that protection we get, don’t mean jack you know what.

I cant wait to see the answer of Jon Peters for each player’s argument in this topic.

In this post, i see what the guardian really need without be overpower, all reasonable arguments, by the community.

Hamish.1384:

Sylpheed.8163:

Makoto.9647:

We don’t really sacrifice that much for a dps build, I run zerkers with 16k HP and find myself being just fine. The only type of warrior I even struggle to fight against is pure regen tank condi warriors in a 1v1 situation, and it just usually draws out into no one dying. If you want to have pure zerkers with the same amount of survivability we currently have + more HP then what’s the point of playing a Warrior? Our DPS spec is viable, and I addressed the need for more soft CC (Which is cripple/chill/snare/etc if you don’t know the terminology). We have a good amount of leaps and blinks and utilities that give movement speed. (Which we won’t need to use if we get more soft CC). You keep saying that we sacrifice too much survivability to go dps spec but most of our needed traits are in the valor / honor lines anyway, and again.. If you want to maintain the survivability we have now with more damage, that’s just broken. There has to be some kind of give and take balance, you can’t have it all.

I would seriously like to know how you have 16K HP in “zerkers”? I assume when you say that, since you did not specify otherwise, that you mean full zerkers, armor, weapons, and trinkets. If you are running a DPS setup, then you don’t have the extra vitality either, so you “should” have about 13,500 HP. Now, as an example, I can run full zerkers with my Warrior, and Im sitting at about 19,500 HP. That’s with nothing traited for vitality, and I guarantee you, I am outdamaging any Guard on the field by about 3 times what they can individually put out. Now, Guardians have burst, yes if spec’d full DPS I can burst a warrior down to about a third of their health in one go.

However, that means everything goes on CD, what happens next is all too familiar for us, they escape – Bulls Charge, Sword #2, GS #3 or #5 whatever you name it. Yes you touched on the fact we need better soft cc, I posted above I think a good fix for our sword #2 and JI to be more efficient they should be area targetable, but you know what, even then a warrior will gain distance on us if they are using the 25% speed trait, unless we are using Traveler Runes. I’ve run a Signet build on a guardian that maximizes vulnerability stacks and Mighty Blow hits hard but the CC you get from our Bane Signet and…the condition damage one is nice but the cast time is too long on them imo.

You also talk about abilities that provide speed, so you are talking about Retreat, and Save Yourselves which are shouts, and if you are running a “Guardian DPS” build you should be using meditations in which case you won’t have either of those on your bar. Can you have DPS with a shout build? Of course you can, but you won’t be able to maximize your burst potential.

I posted above my thoughts about our condition damage being a Guardian only condition not shared with other classes, also someone posted above an idea in the zeal line that converts power to vitality which I think would be a great idea then my idea of giving us base 3500 HP, which BTW still puts us well below that of a Warrior, only one class in the game has less HP then a Guard and that’s Thieves. I think class balance is great, obviously, but ANET needs to address this condition meta, simple fix, add immunity timers. What is the point of condi removal if it gets reapplied instantly, and for a class like us HP is what saves our you know what’s when it comes to conditions, which as pointed out, are second lowest pool in the game. So all that protection we get, don’t mean jack you know what.

I run a zerker meditation build with Traveler Runes. I have about 2 Trinkets that give me vitality, and I’m 25 in honor. So my base HP is around the 15k mark. With food and WvW bonuses I hover around 16k-17k. GS/ S+T Guardian, my burst is insane and I can kill a whole variety of foes such as Condi and zerker mesmers(most of the time) Perplexity Engineers, and Thieves which are easy for me to kill. I only lose really lose if the odds are against me 1v2+(sometimes I win them because I burst down one of them so fast i can move to the other) Though I’d say we need soft CC so some of the other builds don’t have to run traveler runes or go gimmicky Staff+ Retreat builds to just have faster movement speed.

I’m pleasantly surprised by these changes. I was honestly expecting nerfs, but then again i’m pessimistic and expect every class I play as to be nerfed into oblivion with each patch. I cant wait for the patch, I’m already thinking of new possible offensive builds with the new changes.

Hamish.1384:

Sylpheed.8163:

Makoto.9647:

We don’t really sacrifice that much for a dps build, I run zerkers with 16k HP and find myself being just fine. The only type of warrior I even struggle to fight against is pure regen tank condi warriors in a 1v1 situation, and it just usually draws out into no one dying. If you want to have pure zerkers with the same amount of survivability we currently have + more HP then what’s the point of playing a Warrior? Our DPS spec is viable, and I addressed the need for more soft CC (Which is cripple/chill/snare/etc if you don’t know the terminology). We have a good amount of leaps and blinks and utilities that give movement speed. (Which we won’t need to use if we get more soft CC). You keep saying that we sacrifice too much survivability to go dps spec but most of our needed traits are in the valor / honor lines anyway, and again.. If you want to maintain the survivability we have now with more damage, that’s just broken. There has to be some kind of give and take balance, you can’t have it all.

I would seriously like to know how you have 16K HP in “zerkers”? I assume when you say that, since you did not specify otherwise, that you mean full zerkers, armor, weapons, and trinkets. If you are running a DPS setup, then you don’t have the extra vitality either, so you “should” have about 13,500 HP. Now, as an example, I can run full zerkers with my Warrior, and Im sitting at about 19,500 HP. That’s with nothing traited for vitality, and I guarantee you, I am outdamaging any Guard on the field by about 3 times what they can individually put out. Now, Guardians have burst, yes if spec’d full DPS I can burst a warrior down to about a third of their health in one go.

However, that means everything goes on CD, what happens next is all too familiar for us, they escape – Bulls Charge, Sword #2, GS #3 or #5 whatever you name it. Yes you touched on the fact we need better soft cc, I posted above I think a good fix for our sword #2 and JI to be more efficient they should be area targetable, but you know what, even then a warrior will gain distance on us if they are using the 25% speed trait, unless we are using Traveler Runes. I’ve run a Signet build on a guardian that maximizes vulnerability stacks and Mighty Blow hits hard but the CC you get from our Bane Signet and…the condition damage one is nice but the cast time is too long on them imo.

You also talk about abilities that provide speed, so you are talking about Retreat, and Save Yourselves which are shouts, and if you are running a “Guardian DPS” build you should be using meditations in which case you won’t have either of those on your bar. Can you have DPS with a shout build? Of course you can, but you won’t be able to maximize your burst potential.

I posted above my thoughts about our condition damage being a Guardian only condition not shared with other classes, also someone posted above an idea in the zeal line that converts power to vitality which I think would be a great idea then my idea of giving us base 3500 HP, which BTW still puts us well below that of a Warrior, only one class in the game has less HP then a Guard and that’s Thieves. I think class balance is great, obviously, but ANET needs to address this condition meta, simple fix, add immunity timers. What is the point of condi removal if it gets reapplied instantly, and for a class like us HP is what saves our you know what’s when it comes to conditions, which as pointed out, are second lowest pool in the game. So all that protection we get, don’t mean jack you know what.

Please stop, read lucent’s post as he knows what he’s talking about. If you wanna be a War, reroll.

Personally i would prefer to have weapon skill set to be revamped or refined. We already have good boons and utilities. What i feel is the lack of synergised weapon with it.

Hammer

Everyone agrees that the hammer is literally, a hit and miss. Animation too slow, cast time too long and overall effect is rather meh

1) Symbol of Protection – 1 Second cast time from 1 1/4, well we know it’s a heavy weapon, but everytime you cast these symbols everyone has moved on.
2) Mighty Blow – Blows so much your hit rate is sucks. 1/2 second cast time instead of 3/4. And if Cripple is added so they don’t run away, great!
3) Zealot’s Embrace – Great skill, except wave travels a little slow? Just myself personally casting it and feels like everyone sees it coming and dodge away miles before it reaches them.
4) Banish – Basnish so hard you don’t even hit them half the time. Either give us lower cool down or increase range effect. Trading a decrease in damage is fine, it is meant to be a crowd control skill after all.
5) Ring of warding – 1/2 second cast time would be nice, but unesscary

Staff

Possibly our best asset as a Guardian, swiss army knife of uh.. staffs. It AOE, Heals, Gives Swiftness, Mights and Crowd Controls.

1) Orb of Light – Nothing wrong but would love for it to travel on a flat plane? Half the time people untarget and their top down view means that the orb goes into the ground!

Greatsword

Another well thought out weapon! Might, Crowd Control, Symbol with retaliation

1) Whirling Wrath – Just a suggestion to change away from random projectiles, i know people like that, but atleast give us an option to trait for spinny of death like warriors and thiefs have. I mean most the time when we cast this, we are literally next to the target anyway.

2) Leap of Faith – Maybe a tooltip on distance? I am assuming it is 130 range like a normal GS range.

Mace

Quite an underrated weapon, very useful in single PvP

1) Faithful Strike – Like the hammer, this skill feels too slow to cast. 3/4 of a second would be nice. Or give a base increase in heal

2) Symbol of Faith – Good skill, too bad everyone kites out of it. Give the Symbol either more Regen or cast Stability for the duration of the Symbol. That’ll give the enemy incentives to attack or defend.

Sword

Our melee weapon used mostly as a middle range weapon.

1) Sword Wave – How is this a projectile when skill says “wave”, Just a little pet peeve when i use a sword in Jade Maw and those things reflect projectiles
2) Flashing Blade – Great skill, once again tooltip on distacce for blind?
3) Zealot’s Defense – Great skill. Would be nice if the shield casted can be bigger or have it surround the player instead.

Scepter

One of the good weapons, but incredibly flawed by the auto attack

1) Orb of Wrath – Wow just wow… so slow it makes everyone feel like Neo dodging these.
2) Smite – Maybe change it to a symbol for combo field?
3) Chain of Light – Increase to 5 stack of Vulnerability would be nice. 2% more damage, 5% overall is great

Focus

Ray of Judgement – Just like Orb of Wrath, by the time it bounces off anything, everyone is already out of range.

Shield

Shield of Judgement – But we aren’t dealing any judgement. 3 second protection for a 30 second cooldown skill is quite an insult. Decrease cooldown or add more utility like Cripple / Chill. Atleast we’ll be dishing out Judgement. Dredd Style

Torch

1) Zealot’s Flame – Why stop at 3 targets, max it to 5
2) Cleansing Flame – Great skill, only if your attack connects. Quite a delay trying to follow someone with this skill

[/quote]

I run a zerker meditation build with Traveler Runes. I have about 2 Trinkets that give me vitality, and I’m 25 in honor. So my base HP is around the 15k mark. With food and WvW bonuses I hover around 16k-17k. GS/ S+T Guardian, my burst is insane and I can kill a whole variety of foes such as Condi and zerker mesmers(most of the time) Perplexity Engineers, and Thieves which are easy for me to kill. I only lose really lose if the odds are against me 1v2+(sometimes I win them because I burst down one of them so fast i can move to the other) Though I’d say we need soft CC so some of the other builds don’t have to run traveler runes or go gimmicky Staff+ Retreat builds to just have faster movement speed.
[/quote]

Can’t tell you how similar you and I are in terms of setups I vary my traits some from my main build of what I’m using now, but essentially its 0/0/30/20/20. I have about 5 sets of armor I switch between and 3 sets of ascended trinkets. Mainly though I use Knights Armor, Traveler Runes, and Celestial Trinkets or Zerker trinkets. I have similar experiences. Theives go down from our burst because of their low HP pools and one successful burst can pretty much take em out of the fight. Warriors not the case (20K HP) and Necros with their seemingly infinite pool of HPs, I have trouble with Scepter/Staff Mesmers, Condi Engis…

Well now that I think about it pretty much any class that can kite me. This is based on small to solo roaming scenarios. Zergs is totally different, little to no escape ability means if I put up Focus #5, switch to GS, #2 then JI into the zerg with my 15k’ish HP (I get mowed down so fast I start popping my meds for condition removal and heals but I can’t “get out” like a lot of these other classes can. Yes its situational I know. I imagine you and I have similar play styles though. And yeah I agree with you as I said before about soft CC and my idea on it was posted at the top of Page 4 along with some of what others have said.

How about a trait in the master line of zeal that applies 2-3 stacks of vulnerability each time you set fire to a foe. That’ll give condition guardians an automatic cover for their fire applications, it will give a good bonus to power guardians, since they are setting things on fire anyways from VoJ, it would also fit in very well with the new kindled zeal for a hybrid guardian.

Sylpheed

[/quote]

Please stop, read lucent’s post as he knows what he’s talking about. If you wanna be a War, reroll.[/quote]

Hmm? Not sure what the problem is I thought this was constructive class discussion did I say something out of line? I don’t know Lucent, nor do I know you, but I know what I’m talking about being as I have played Guardian for over a year and like many have multiple level 80’s (6) and I do WvW with 4 out of the 6 so I can make very solid/sound comparisons between classes. I do have an 80 Warrior and I know exactly what he brings to the table compared to a Guard.

Adrianicus Shield.6803:

How about a trait in the master line of zeal that applies 2-3 stacks of vulnerability each time you set fire to a foe. That’ll give condition guardians an automatic cover for their fire applications, it will give a good bonus to power guardians, since they are setting things on fire anyways from VoJ, it would also fit in very well with the new kindled zeal for a hybrid guardian.

Its a good thought but honestly I don’t think this would address the major issue I have with Burn damage the way its currently implemented. You have to understand, if I am full Condition Damage as a Guard, and anyone else applies a burn to a target I’m about to attack, and then I apply a burn, my burn only adds in duration to the existing one but the other person’s burn damage is set.

For example; get a friend who is a Guard, go trait, gear up for full condition damage, have him apply a burn to a target then you apply a burn directly after. If he is not full condition damage and his burn ticks for say 200 when yours would tick for 700ish, you will see only his burn damage and the one you applied just added the duration to his.

Sylpheed.8163:

We don’t really sacrifice that much for a dps build, I run zerkers with 16k HP and find myself being just fine.

…

Please stop, read lucent’s post as he knows what he’s talking about. If you wanna be a War, reroll.

You clearly said you were full zerker and lucent’s post clearly indicates he is not full zerker to reach 16k hp. 25 in honor is not full zerker…its a hybrid build. Full zerker implies glass cannon, not a mix of glass cannon and survival. Not that there is anything wrong with a hybrid build. If you are trying to prove yourself right by pointing at what lucent said, you are just proving yourself wrong and you apparently don’t even realize it.

Your comments about guardians wanting to be warriors is a straw man argument at best. What some of us guardians want to do is to actually be able to use all of our trait lines instead of being locked into traiting honor and or valor to not be instant kills.

I think the general consensus is that it is pretty ridiculous that almost no guardian traits beyond 10 points in zeal. There are many reasons for that. One is the issues with symbols and the fact that symbol traits are unavoidable if you go beyond 10 points in zeal. Another issue is the extreme loss of survivability if you do not trait honor and or valor. No one is asking to be a warrior. They are only making comparisons to the only relevant class….the only other one in heavy armor….the only other one expected to dive in head first.

Edited for civility. Thanks Kelnis…forgot myself for a minute there.

Hamish.1384:

Adrianicus Shield.6803:

How about a trait in the master line of zeal that applies 2-3 stacks of vulnerability each time you set fire to a foe. That’ll give condition guardians an automatic cover for their fire applications, it will give a good bonus to power guardians, since they are setting things on fire anyways from VoJ, it would also fit in very well with the new kindled zeal for a hybrid guardian.

Its a good thought but honestly I don’t think this would address the major issue I have with Burn damage the way its currently implemented. You have to understand, if I am full Condition Damage as a Guard, and anyone else applies a burn to a target I’m about to attack, and then I apply a burn, my burn only adds in duration to the existing one but the other person’s burn damage is set.

For example; get a friend who is a Guard, go trait, gear up for full condition damage, have him apply a burn to a target then you apply a burn directly after. If he is not full condition damage and his burn ticks for say 200 when yours would tick for 700ish, you will see only his burn damage and the one you applied just added the duration to his.

I thought that as soon as his fire is over, then your fire begins.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Effect_stacking

Or is this bugged?

Applying vulnerability on fire would also work as group support, since an aoe flame blast, or fire field, would increase the dmg of the team by 2-3% ea. (Some of the master tier traits are being reworked for the engineers, hopefully one of the devs notices this suggestion for the guardian as well.)

Keep it civil fellas. You’ll further dissuade the devs from responding to our concerns. This isn’t the time or the thread for a kitten ing contest, so please, keep your egos in check.

ODB.6891:

Sylpheed.8163:

We don’t really sacrifice that much for a dps build, I run zerkers with 16k HP and find myself being just fine.

…

Please stop, read lucent’s post as he knows what he’s talking about. If you wanna be a War, reroll.

You clearly said you were full zerker and lucent’s post clearly indicates he is not full zerker to reach 16k hp. 25 in honor is not full zerker…its a hybrid build. Full zerker implies glass cannon, not a mix of glass cannon and survival. Not that there is anything wrong with a hybrid build. If you are trying to prove yourself right by pointing at what lucent said, you are just proving yourself wrong and you apparently don’t even realize it.

Your comments about guardians wanting to be warriors is a straw man argument at best. What some of us guardians want to do is to actually be able to use all of our trait lines instead of being locked into traiting honor and or valor to not be instant kills.

I think the general consensus is that it is pretty ridiculous that almost no guardian traits beyond 10 points in zeal. There are many reasons for that. One is the issues with symbols and the fact that symbol traits are unavoidable if you go beyond 10 points in zeal. Another issue is the extreme loss of survivability if you do not trait honor and or valor. No one is asking to be a warrior. They are only making comparisons to the only relevant class….the only other one in heavy armor….the only other one expected to dive in head first.

Edited for civility. Thanks Kelnis…forgot myself for a minute there.

Dat edit. Also, there is no ‘zerker trait’ so I have no clue what you mean by full zerker. Zerker is a gear stat and if I choose to trait correctly I can pull it off just fine. Everyone knows how bad the zeal trait line, no need to regurgitate. The problem is fixing that trait line isn’t going to allow us to go full zerker + full zeal without still covering it with defensive traits or armor. That’s why every one is suggesting many broken ‘buffs’ which won’t work due to balance issues. Also they have to -balance- around PvE as well, which I have no interest in regardless. And showing off your time in game doesn’t really mean much here.. I’ve mained guardian since beta and have eight 80s, just like almost everyone else.

Sylpheed.8163:

Dat edit. Also, there is no ‘zerker trait’ so I have no clue what you mean by full zerker. Zerker is a gear stat and if I choose to trait correctly I can pull it off just fine. Everyone knows how bad the zeal trait line, no need to regurgitate. The problem is fixing that trait line isn’t going to allow us to go full zerker + full zeal without still covering it with defensive traits or armor. That’s why every one is suggesting many broken ‘buffs’ which won’t work due to balance issues. Also they have to -balance- around PvE as well, which I have no interest in regardless. And showing off your time in game doesn’t really mean much here.. I’ve mained guardian since beta and have eight 80s, just like almost everyone else.

Pretty sure no one ever said anything about a “zerker trait” before you did just now. Full zerker means you are both gearing and traiting for maximum damage versus either survivability and damage or survivability alone. That is a commonly accepted bit of terminology in this game. I don’t profess to have all the answers as to how to fix zeal or anything else in this game, as I am not a developer and do not have the time, inclination, or access to all the game data to make a correct set of decisions. I do know that now is the time apparently to suggest any ideas that can possibly lead to improving zeal as we recently had the ear of a dev. Whether you have interest in a particular game mode or not, that game mode still exists..along with the other game modes and all deserve balance. I personally do not pvp much, but I don’t have a problem with pvp balance…so long as it does not prevent pve balance. As far as I’m concerned, showing off whatever you get from pvp does not matter much either. Nothing really does except enjoyment of whatever game mode one chooses to participate in. I personally began with a warrior main and have been through several other mains until I settled on guardian. I bought into the premise that ANET set, that there were no pre-defined class roles. That any class could build for any role. I happen to like the way a guardian does damage versus the way a warrior does. I don’t mind being behind warriors in damage as long as we aren’t too far behind and our trait lines are functional enough for us to not be stuck with honor/valor as our only viable options.

ODB.6891:

Sylpheed.8163:

Dat edit. Also, there is no ‘zerker trait’ so I have no clue what you mean by full zerker. Zerker is a gear stat and if I choose to trait correctly I can pull it off just fine. Everyone knows how bad the zeal trait line, no need to regurgitate. The problem is fixing that trait line isn’t going to allow us to go full zerker + full zeal without still covering it with defensive traits or armor. That’s why every one is suggesting many broken ‘buffs’ which won’t work due to balance issues. Also they have to -balance- around PvE as well, which I have no interest in regardless. And showing off your time in game doesn’t really mean much here.. I’ve mained guardian since beta and have eight 80s, just like almost everyone else.

Pretty sure no one ever said anything about a “zerker trait” before you did just now. Full zerker means you are both gearing and traiting for maximum damage versus either survivability and damage or survivability alone. That is a commonly accepted bit of terminology in this game. I don’t profess to have all the answers as to how to fix zeal or anything else in this game, as I am not a developer and do not have the time, inclination, or access to all the game data to make a correct set of decisions. I do know that now is the time apparently to suggest any ideas that can possibly lead to improving zeal as we recently had the ear of a dev. Whether you have interest in a particular game mode or not, that game mode still exists..along with the other game modes and all deserve balance. I personally do not pvp much, but I don’t have a problem with pvp balance…so long as it does not prevent pve balance. As far as I’m concerned, showing off whatever you get from pvp does not matter much either. Nothing really does except enjoyment of whatever game mode one chooses to participate in. I personally began with a warrior main and have been through several other mains until I settled on guardian.

He states going into honor traits doesn’t mean you’re going full zerker, but my gear IS full zerker. We all know Zeal needs buffs, but fixing zeal isn’t the problem. Some of the suggested buffs about boosting our HP/Defensive stats more while speccing for “full zerker” is out right broken. A warrior with zerkers and no defensive traits/stats, regardless of his 3-4k extra HP drops almost nearly as fast. It is practically just a buffer to survive an extra two hits or so. And yeah.. I’ve read every post in this thread, and you should too. Because no one else is reading them and just acting like they know what I’m talking about when a lot of the proposed changes are way out of line. There ARE good proposed changes, and most of these are generally asked by a lot of people such as the need for soft CC.

Sylpheed.8163:

ODB.6891:

Sylpheed.8163:

Dat edit. Also, there is no ‘zerker trait’ so I have no clue what you mean by full zerker. Zerker is a gear stat and if I choose to trait correctly I can pull it off just fine. Everyone knows how bad the zeal trait line, no need to regurgitate. The problem is fixing that trait line isn’t going to allow us to go full zerker + full zeal without still covering it with defensive traits or armor. That’s why every one is suggesting many broken ‘buffs’ which won’t work due to balance issues. Also they have to -balance- around PvE as well, which I have no interest in regardless. And showing off your time in game doesn’t really mean much here.. I’ve mained guardian since beta and have eight 80s, just like almost everyone else.

Pretty sure no one ever said anything about a “zerker trait” before you did just now. Full zerker means you are both gearing and traiting for maximum damage versus either survivability and damage or survivability alone. That is a commonly accepted bit of terminology in this game. I don’t profess to have all the answers as to how to fix zeal or anything else in this game, as I am not a developer and do not have the time, inclination, or access to all the game data to make a correct set of decisions. I do know that now is the time apparently to suggest any ideas that can possibly lead to improving zeal as we recently had the ear of a dev. Whether you have interest in a particular game mode or not, that game mode still exists..along with the other game modes and all deserve balance. I personally do not pvp much, but I don’t have a problem with pvp balance…so long as it does not prevent pve balance. As far as I’m concerned, showing off whatever you get from pvp does not matter much either. Nothing really does except enjoyment of whatever game mode one chooses to participate in. I personally began with a warrior main and have been through several other mains until I settled on guardian.

He states going into honor traits doesn’t mean you’re going full zerker, but my gear IS full zerker. We all know Zeal needs buffs, but fixing zeal isn’t the problem. Some of the suggested buffs about boosting our HP/Defensive stats more while speccing for “full zerker” is out right broken. A warrior with zerkers and no defensive traits/stats, regardless of his 3-4k extra HP drops almost nearly as fast. It is practically just a buffer to survive an extra two hits or so. And yeah.. I’ve read every post in this thread, and you should too. Because no one else is reading them and just acting like they know what I’m talking about when a lot of the proposed changes are way out of line. There ARE good proposed changes, and most of these are generally asked by a lot of people such as the need for soft CC.

Sylpheed,

You said: “We don’t really sacrifice that much for a dps build, I run zerkers with 16k HP and find myself being just fine.”

It is widely accepted, that in the “guardian community” a DPS build for a Guardian consists of typically 10/30/30/0/0. Add on top of that Beserker gear (Assumption here being since you didn’t not otherwise state you are FULL beserker) then you would in no way shape or form have 16k HP.

I was confused by this, because this is not possible, but I digress.

One of the bigger issues in my opinion is if a Guard is full berserker running a DPS build he/she has minimal condition removal and VERY low HPs. My server is against SBI this week, I kid you not but the majority of their zergs consist of Necros, Condi Mesmers, LB/Hammer Warriors, the condition meta is out of hand. The ONLY way for Guardians to combat that and survive longer than .000024 seconds is to trait something like 0/0/30/20/20 (or along those lines).

So Sylpheed, if you really WERE running a DPS build, and full beserker gear, you would be sacrificing a lot, a lot of HPs and valuable condition removal, just to get some burst DPS which in the end isn’t comparable to our heavy counterparts the Warrior, who will have almost 6-7k more HP without even gearing/traiting for Vitality.

Hamish.1384:

Sylpheed.8163:

ODB.6891:

Sylpheed.8163:

Dat edit. Also, there is no ‘zerker trait’ so I have no clue what you mean by full zerker. Zerker is a gear stat and if I choose to trait correctly I can pull it off just fine. Everyone knows how bad the zeal trait line, no need to regurgitate. The problem is fixing that trait line isn’t going to allow us to go full zerker + full zeal without still covering it with defensive traits or armor. That’s why every one is suggesting many broken ‘buffs’ which won’t work due to balance issues. Also they have to -balance- around PvE as well, which I have no interest in regardless. And showing off your time in game doesn’t really mean much here.. I’ve mained guardian since beta and have eight 80s, just like almost everyone else.

Pretty sure no one ever said anything about a “zerker trait” before you did just now. Full zerker means you are both gearing and traiting for maximum damage versus either survivability and damage or survivability alone. That is a commonly accepted bit of terminology in this game. I don’t profess to have all the answers as to how to fix zeal or anything else in this game, as I am not a developer and do not have the time, inclination, or access to all the game data to make a correct set of decisions. I do know that now is the time apparently to suggest any ideas that can possibly lead to improving zeal as we recently had the ear of a dev. Whether you have interest in a particular game mode or not, that game mode still exists..along with the other game modes and all deserve balance. I personally do not pvp much, but I don’t have a problem with pvp balance…so long as it does not prevent pve balance. As far as I’m concerned, showing off whatever you get from pvp does not matter much either. Nothing really does except enjoyment of whatever game mode one chooses to participate in. I personally began with a warrior main and have been through several other mains until I settled on guardian.

He states going into honor traits doesn’t mean you’re going full zerker, but my gear IS full zerker. We all know Zeal needs buffs, but fixing zeal isn’t the problem. Some of the suggested buffs about boosting our HP/Defensive stats more while speccing for “full zerker” is out right broken. A warrior with zerkers and no defensive traits/stats, regardless of his 3-4k extra HP drops almost nearly as fast. It is practically just a buffer to survive an extra two hits or so. And yeah.. I’ve read every post in this thread, and you should too. Because no one else is reading them and just acting like they know what I’m talking about when a lot of the proposed changes are way out of line. There ARE good proposed changes, and most of these are generally asked by a lot of people such as the need for soft CC.

Sylpheed,

You said: “We don’t really sacrifice that much for a dps build, I run zerkers with 16k HP and find myself being just fine.”

It is widely accepted, that in the “guardian community” a DPS build for a Guardian consists of typically 10/30/30/0/0. Add on top of that Beserker gear (Assumption here being since you didn’t not otherwise state you are FULL beserker) then you would in no way shape or form have 16k HP.

I was confused by this, because this is not possible, but I digress.

One of the bigger issues in my opinion is if a Guard is full berserker running a DPS build he/she has minimal condition removal and VERY low HPs. My server is against SBI this week, I kid you not but the majority of their zergs consist of Necros, Condi Mesmers, LB/Hammer Warriors, the condition meta is out of hand. The ONLY way for Guardians to combat that and survive longer than .000024 seconds is to trait something like 0/0/30/20/20 (or along those lines).

So Sylpheed, if you really WERE running a DPS build, and full beserker gear, you would be sacrificing a lot, a lot of HPs and valuable condition removal, just to get some burst DPS which in the end isn’t comparable to our heavy counterparts the Warrior, who will have almost 6-7k more HP without even gearing/traiting for Vitality.

I might come back to talk when you stop over exaggerating.

i hope they fix sword/shield/scepter skill instead twiking trait

Cool down mates we are saying all this since launch to devs, till now nothing happened and there is no reason for this to change.

Guardian do not interest anyone in the dev team so do not expect your feedback to be taken as it should

Either we accept the class as it is now either we reroll, this thread is just a waste of energy but at least you tried …

I would consider unrooting Zealots Defense instead of a buff to Powerful Blades.

EDIT: Also, Inner Fire should work with the torch skill 4. Torch needs a buff, nobody uses it really.

Sylpheed.8163:

Hamish.1384:

Sylpheed.8163:

ODB.6891:

Sylpheed.8163:

Dat edit. Also, there is no ‘zerker trait’ so I have no clue what you mean by full zerker. Zerker is a gear stat and if I choose to trait correctly I can pull it off just fine. Everyone knows how bad the zeal trait line, no need to regurgitate. The problem is fixing that trait line isn’t going to allow us to go full zerker + full zeal without still covering it with defensive traits or armor. That’s why every one is suggesting many broken ‘buffs’ which won’t work due to balance issues. Also they have to -balance- around PvE as well, which I have no interest in regardless. And showing off your time in game doesn’t really mean much here.. I’ve mained guardian since beta and have eight 80s, just like almost everyone else.

Pretty sure no one ever said anything about a “zerker trait” before you did just now. Full zerker means you are both gearing and traiting for maximum damage versus either survivability and damage or survivability alone. That is a commonly accepted bit of terminology in this game. I don’t profess to have all the answers as to how to fix zeal or anything else in this game, as I am not a developer and do not have the time, inclination, or access to all the game data to make a correct set of decisions. I do know that now is the time apparently to suggest any ideas that can possibly lead to improving zeal as we recently had the ear of a dev. Whether you have interest in a particular game mode or not, that game mode still exists..along with the other game modes and all deserve balance. I personally do not pvp much, but I don’t have a problem with pvp balance…so long as it does not prevent pve balance. As far as I’m concerned, showing off whatever you get from pvp does not matter much either. Nothing really does except enjoyment of whatever game mode one chooses to participate in. I personally began with a warrior main and have been through several other mains until I settled on guardian.

He states going into honor traits doesn’t mean you’re going full zerker, but my gear IS full zerker. We all know Zeal needs buffs, but fixing zeal isn’t the problem. Some of the suggested buffs about boosting our HP/Defensive stats more while speccing for “full zerker” is out right broken. A warrior with zerkers and no defensive traits/stats, regardless of his 3-4k extra HP drops almost nearly as fast. It is practically just a buffer to survive an extra two hits or so. And yeah.. I’ve read every post in this thread, and you should too. Because no one else is reading them and just acting like they know what I’m talking about when a lot of the proposed changes are way out of line. There ARE good proposed changes, and most of these are generally asked by a lot of people such as the need for soft CC.

Sylpheed,

You said: “We don’t really sacrifice that much for a dps build, I run zerkers with 16k HP and find myself being just fine.”

It is widely accepted, that in the “guardian community” a DPS build for a Guardian consists of typically 10/30/30/0/0. Add on top of that Beserker gear (Assumption here being since you didn’t not otherwise state you are FULL beserker) then you would in no way shape or form have 16k HP.

I was confused by this, because this is not possible, but I digress.

One of the bigger issues in my opinion is if a Guard is full berserker running a DPS build he/she has minimal condition removal and VERY low HPs. My server is against SBI this week, I kid you not but the majority of their zergs consist of Necros, Condi Mesmers, LB/Hammer Warriors, the condition meta is out of hand. The ONLY way for Guardians to combat that and survive longer than .000024 seconds is to trait something like 0/0/30/20/20 (or along those lines).

So Sylpheed, if you really WERE running a DPS build, and full beserker gear, you would be sacrificing a lot, a lot of HPs and valuable condition removal, just to get some burst DPS which in the end isn’t comparable to our heavy counterparts the Warrior, who will have almost 6-7k more HP without even gearing/traiting for Vitality.

I might come back to talk when you stop over exaggerating.

That’s ok, I could really care less. I know both classes well enough to base my own opinions of them, I don’t need your input just trying to help you understand what it means when you tell someone you are full DPS and beserker.

No change for Guardian? Looks like they still want to change SoS no matter how many people proved it to be very bad idea.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview/page/29#post3156808

Hamish.1384:

Sylpheed.8163:

Hamish.1384:

Sylpheed.8163:

ODB.6891:

Sylpheed.8163:

Dat edit. Also, there is no ‘zerker trait’ so I have no clue what you mean by full zerker. Zerker is a gear stat and if I choose to trait correctly I can pull it off just fine. Everyone knows how bad the zeal trait line, no need to regurgitate. The problem is fixing that trait line isn’t going to allow us to go full zerker + full zeal without still covering it with defensive traits or armor. That’s why every one is suggesting many broken ‘buffs’ which won’t work due to balance issues. Also they have to -balance- around PvE as well, which I have no interest in regardless. And showing off your time in game doesn’t really mean much here.. I’ve mained guardian since beta and have eight 80s, just like almost everyone else.

Pretty sure no one ever said anything about a “zerker trait” before you did just now. Full zerker means you are both gearing and traiting for maximum damage versus either survivability and damage or survivability alone. That is a commonly accepted bit of terminology in this game. I don’t profess to have all the answers as to how to fix zeal or anything else in this game, as I am not a developer and do not have the time, inclination, or access to all the game data to make a correct set of decisions. I do know that now is the time apparently to suggest any ideas that can possibly lead to improving zeal as we recently had the ear of a dev. Whether you have interest in a particular game mode or not, that game mode still exists..along with the other game modes and all deserve balance. I personally do not pvp much, but I don’t have a problem with pvp balance…so long as it does not prevent pve balance. As far as I’m concerned, showing off whatever you get from pvp does not matter much either. Nothing really does except enjoyment of whatever game mode one chooses to participate in. I personally began with a warrior main and have been through several other mains until I settled on guardian.

He states going into honor traits doesn’t mean you’re going full zerker, but my gear IS full zerker. We all know Zeal needs buffs, but fixing zeal isn’t the problem. Some of the suggested buffs about boosting our HP/Defensive stats more while speccing for “full zerker” is out right broken. A warrior with zerkers and no defensive traits/stats, regardless of his 3-4k extra HP drops almost nearly as fast. It is practically just a buffer to survive an extra two hits or so. And yeah.. I’ve read every post in this thread, and you should too. Because no one else is reading them and just acting like they know what I’m talking about when a lot of the proposed changes are way out of line. There ARE good proposed changes, and most of these are generally asked by a lot of people such as the need for soft CC.

Sylpheed,

You said: “We don’t really sacrifice that much for a dps build, I run zerkers with 16k HP and find myself being just fine.”

It is widely accepted, that in the “guardian community” a DPS build for a Guardian consists of typically 10/30/30/0/0. Add on top of that Beserker gear (Assumption here being since you didn’t not otherwise state you are FULL beserker) then you would in no way shape or form have 16k HP.

I was confused by this, because this is not possible, but I digress.

One of the bigger issues in my opinion is if a Guard is full berserker running a DPS build he/she has minimal condition removal and VERY low HPs. My server is against SBI this week, I kid you not but the majority of their zergs consist of Necros, Condi Mesmers, LB/Hammer Warriors, the condition meta is out of hand. The ONLY way for Guardians to combat that and survive longer than .000024 seconds is to trait something like 0/0/30/20/20 (or along those lines).

So Sylpheed, if you really WERE running a DPS build, and full beserker gear, you would be sacrificing a lot, a lot of HPs and valuable condition removal, just to get some burst DPS which in the end isn’t comparable to our heavy counterparts the Warrior, who will have almost 6-7k more HP without even gearing/traiting for Vitality.

I might come back to talk when you stop over exaggerating.

That’s ok, I could really care less. I know both classes well enough to base my own opinions of them, I don’t need your input just trying to help you understand what it means when you tell someone you are full DPS and beserker.

You care, hence why you keep responding. If you don’t need my input you would of never clinged onto my responses. I am full berserker guardian. I’ve played this game more than enough, purely from a WvW and sPvP standpoint, and know what I’m talking about. Anyway, I’m glad you’re finally done!

I am not sure there is much they can do. They gave warriors more regen, more dps, more mobility, more CC… the CC should have been a Guardian thing and not Warrior but it is too late to change that now without Warriors crying foul. They have stated Guardians are supposed to get into a fight and stay there more or less. By that statement Guardians should have been the masters of Crowd control whereas the Warriors should have been the rabid dog killers.

Look…over there…the boat….they missed it!

Hamish.1384:

If you are running a DPS setup, then you don’t have the extra vitality either, so you “should” have about 13,500 HP. Now, as an example, I can run full zerkers with my Warrior, and Im sitting at about 19,500 HP. That’s with nothing traited for vitality, and I guarantee you, I am outdamaging any Guard on the field by about 3 times what they can individually put out.

Just LoL, nothing more. DPS Guards deal fullbuffed about 50% more dps then every warrior. And u have in your Builds. Hard CC (GS Pull) Reflexion (Sword) Agis+Focus blocks. 2 or 3 Blinds (GS+Sword+Focus).
Or dps lost and proctection+ more cc with your Hammer (still more dps then a Warr can put out).

Invulmaking Eliteskill which is renewing your Virtuers. For example your healing signet is healing u within 1 second for about 60 or more % of your maximum health.

Unused passiv condition removing (Warrs “DPS” Builds have not even 1 condition remove, shake it off or the signet are not used in normal dps builds".

F2 +Shelter+Elite+F2 again can heal your for about 6k or more, still 50% Health. And not attackable by 4 seconds.
Oh, and with only 5 traitpoints 100% vigoruptime!

I rly don´t know why u guys still think that warriors are demigods cause of their normal maximum health.

I don’t see Warriors as a demi-gods in any way shape or form. Nor do I think that the Current guardian is weak. This doesn’t need to turn into another Guardian vs Warrior thread. Lord knows we have enough of those already. All I was doing with my earlier post was pointing out a few things that had been mentioned previously.

We are supposed to be a more defensive class. However we do have a higher dps potential then the warriors do. I have seen the proof of this, and even replicated it. The issue with it however is how zarking much we have to give up to get there. I only really do the DPS builds for pve, they work well. However I don’t feel that they are exactly optimal for wvw. I don’t want the Guardian to become another over powered noob class like the current warrior is.

What I want is for anet to rethink what they are doing. We don’t need more damage. What we need is for some of our useless skills to be fixed and our traits to get another look, some merged and some new ones added.

The truth of the matter. We are balanced. But the Rest of the game is out of balance. The current warriors and condition meta. I was in WvW tonight on my necro tabbing through the enemy zerg when I came across a Guardian at about half health, so I popped my signet and let him have it followed by epidemic to spread the love. Before I had even gotten epidemic off the poor fellow was already downed. I won’t say it was my conditions that did it. But knowing his low health pool and how much condition damage I had at the time I know it played a roll.

only a thing before all…

Think to use gear system (runes, sigil, ecc as rune of the traveler) for solve some issue on guardian… is WRONG…

You only make this class more bad than now… we will not free to build and set up the gear that we want…..

also i don’t understand why after all have seen these problems with the conditions meta, in the new patch we see items pro conditions…………

another thing… why necro, that have 2 health pool, have more life than all the others class… necro have to switch health pool, also guardian have to raise his health, almost have the same life of the ranger/mesmer

Trait for sword number 3 to reflect projectiles.
Trait for teleports to be ground-targeted (sword used to be like that in beta, right?)

Stuff like that. Have no time to add more ideas now, unfortunately.

Leap combo on #2, better tracking (homing? Target leading? Or better yet, don’t root us) and maybe 5-10% more damage on #3 so that it’s actually worth interrupting your autoattack for it.

Better still, give us a damaging condition on #2 or #3 (that isn’t burning, we get plenty of that from autoattacks) to make the condition damage on the Radiance line have some worthwhile application. Mobility stays the same, but build options and damage open up.

Better still, make #3 a full block. Using #3 as a ranged punish is great in theory, until you realize that you can’t actually hit anything that isn’t standing in front of you, so it ceases to be a ranged punish and instead becomes a very poor emergency defensive skill. If it were a full block it could be used as a melee punishing skill as well.

Also, combine Supreme Justice with Permeating Wrath.

Oh, and while we’re talking about Sword: Remove the projectile property from Sword Wave. Sword autoattacking is the only autoattack from a melee weapon in the game which can be reflected back in your face in Fractals and elsewhere, which is incredibly irritating.

-A change to remove (or convert) a condition per attack (and a cooldown, dunno 8 seconds for example).

-Some soft CC, cripple or frost, possibel added on the third attack of the swords chain.

-Cooldownreduction, possibel merged with another onehanded weapon, zepter for example.

- Speedbuff, 25% faster if a sword is used. Or get some swiftness if u switch to a sword in combat.

JonPeters.5630:

The change to sword damage from 5% to 10%. I’ve seen a lot of talk that maybe it is not really needed. The fact was this was a lackluster trait and this is a lackluster change to it. I would love to do the right thing here and have a change that MH sword wants rather than just 5% more damage.

Thoughts?

Jon

Keep the 5 to 10% damage boost. But listen to the other ideas on how to add to guardians because we need it.

JonPeters.5630:

The change to sword damage from 5% to 10%. I’ve seen a lot of talk that maybe it is not really needed. The fact was this was a lackluster trait and this is a lackluster change to it. I would love to do the right thing here and have a change that MH sword wants rather than just 5% more damage.

Thoughts?

Jon

I agree +5% for sword is fine as it is.

My personal view ( but one I know is shared by a fair amount of others here ) – is that we lack any kind of reliable melee range soft crowd control.

We have good DPS and good in-fight mobility but nothing that aids us to actually land any of our damage or prevent opponents from fleeing.

Sword has a teleport, very short range auto-attack and a long channelled #3 damage/absorption skill ( which doesn’t pierce ). Most of the time you’ll teleport to someone, you might get 1 good hit in, and they’ll be out of range of you again ( this goes for Judges Intervention and Leap of Faith with whirling wrath etc too ).

Adjusting the trait to a couple of seconds of chill to flashing blade wouldn’t go amiss perhaps? Ideally I’d want chill to be available to all our weapons though – so perhaps Glacial Heart could be made generic rather than be tied to the hammer.

JonPeters.5630:

The change to sword damage from 5% to 10%. I’ve seen a lot of talk that maybe it is not really needed. The fact was this was a lackluster trait and this is a lackluster change to it. I would love to do the right thing here and have a change that MH sword wants rather than just 5% more damage.

Thoughts?

Jon

Change the trait to make the blades pierce.

Preferably pierce and cast on move… but pierce is key.

Amins.3710:

JonPeters.5630:

The change to sword damage from 5% to 10%. I’ve seen a lot of talk that maybe it is not really needed. The fact was this was a lackluster trait and this is a lackluster change to it. I would love to do the right thing here and have a change that MH sword wants rather than just 5% more damage.

Thoughts?

Jon

Change the trait to make the blades pierce.

Preferably pierce and cast on move… but pierce is key.

I’d argue that piercing and “casting on the move” should just be something that it does anyway – requiring a trait for it doesn’t seem right.

( and to re-iterate foofad’s comment – sword#1.3 autoattack should not be reflectable )

Torment and Chill seem like good options to assist Guardians ability to stay in combat without increasing mobility. Seems like every other class has a “condition on crit” trait, why not add a Torment on crit trait to the radiance line? This would offer another damaging condition to make use of a stat that is pretty underwhelming on a Guardian.

Overall, conditions like Burn could also do with an initial damage component if stacking. Say damage equal to one tick based on the users condition damage trait and duration increase on the existing.

MH Sword never really lacked damage if you speec for one handed damage, it does howver come with a few drawbacks, Auto-attack chain 3. Will miss alot of time if you do not have a target, even if you stand infront of them, and it is prone to miss targets that are downed.

MH Sword skill 3: Zealot’s defense. Tooltip say block. Kinda miss leading since it will not trigger any On block traits.
The projectile speed on the Main hand sword is rather slow, someone further away than 100 – 150 will almost never be hit, unless they stand still.
Feels like I am a Agent fighting Neo in Matrix eachtime someone sidesteps away from it.

Pirate.5736:

Torment and Chill seem like good options to assist Guardians ability to stay in combat without increasing mobility. Seems like every other class has a “condition on crit” trait, why not add a Torment on crit trait to the radiance line? This would offer another damaging condition to make use of a stat that is pretty underwhelming on a Guardian.

Overall, conditions like Burn could also do with an initial damage component if stacking. Say damage equal to one tick based on the users condition damage trait and duration increase on the existing.

+1!!!!

Ive been saying the torment part for months, pretty much since torment was introduced as a condition.

Either a 2s chill with 10s CD on crit, or torment on crit so we can have a viable condition build base would be nice. Though, I would like to see those extended to all 1h weapons, as mace is VERY lacking in terms of cc/movement, and a chill/torment on scepter would really help with the whole “don’t bother out of 400 range”

Forget the sword thing and deal with the guardian core issues first:

- We should be the best at tanking, we are not
- We have both less mobility and less cc than war
- Heal power stuff is pointless as nothing scale enough with it for the stats you lose.
- Aegis need redesign as it is most often inefficient with the amount of multiple hit skills.
- Symbol concept and traits need redisign from a wvw point of view. We have many traits about it for just few weapons using them. It is really hard to use in wvw because (too static, easy to dodge, …))

Please take care of the guardian core issues before anything else, we have been waiting (and reporting) long enough for these core issues to be dealt with.

JonPeters.5630:

The change to sword damage from 5% to 10%. I’ve seen a lot of talk that maybe it is not really needed. The fact was this was a lackluster trait and this is a lackluster change to it. I would love to do the right thing here and have a change that MH sword wants rather than just 5% more damage.

Thoughts?

Jon

I play Sword/shield guard in PVE and i think it is really not needed. Bur move on cast Zealot’s Defense or pierce or some other active improvement on it would help us more.
And if you really want to hepl us dont destroy our mobility please.

username.4932:

Forget the sword thing and deal with the guardian core issues first:

- We should be the best at tanking, we are not
- We have both less mobility and less cc than war
- Heal power stuff is pointless as nothing scale enough with it for the stats you lose.
- Aegis need redesign as it is most often inefficient with the amount of multiple hit skills.
- Symbol concept and traits need redisign from a wvw point of view. We have many traits about it for just few weapons using them. It is really hard to use in wvw because (too static, easy to dodge, …))

Please take care of the guardian core issues before anything else, we have been waiting (and reporting) long enough for these core issues to be dealt with.

I will agree with you but at the same time i will not agree.

We should be best at tank, Yes we should but that should also come with the drawback of being slow. We either dedicate or we don’t. But our main problem for now is that being in melee gives no big advantages.

As you said we lack CC a few with Hammer but it is really weird to have like one 2 sec imob for 15 sec, a knockback that only hits one and deals very little damage. And the ring of warding is either a hit or miss, with long cast time and force us to stand still while doing so.

Most of our things are lacking in healing scaling and a few don’t. They may have to check it over but i would rather have a healing breeze that heals 5 friends around me first.

Aegis is as you said, totaly bullkitten. It is easily predicted due to Blue giant shield over our head when it triggers and a keept blue shield on our hand. And it will only block one attack, sure it might block a thiefs backstab for 7k or it might block that other guardian staff autoattack for a 200 damage. Considering that almost all of our Aegis skills has a really long cooldown it feels akward since it is ussualy not that good and against a clever opponent it is worthless.

Symbols, i cold not agree more with you, Symbols are really lacklusting and the traits affecting them are to spread out. And most of our weapons don’t even benefit from them.

About tanking i mean that if you dedicate to it you will do as good as a war dedicated to it. Our class should do it slightly better than war.

An aegis redesign would surely fix this issue at the same time.

Well, Sword is supposed to be a mobile melee weapon. Thus, it would be interesting to have a trait which gives you a 25% speed bonus when using a sword (in addition to the damage boost). I think that making #3 a full block would be a bit too much… for blocks, Guardians can already use the Focus. Now, the #3 could use a rework, I find this skill to be fairly lacklustre (not very good for burst, narrow attack, root). How about making the attack a bit wider + adding chill or cripple? Then it could be an interesting tactical skill. Oh, and #2 should work without a target pretty please

username.4932:

Forget the sword thing and deal with the guardian core issues first:

- We should be the best at tanking, we are not
- We have both less mobility and less cc than war
- Heal power stuff is pointless as nothing scale enough with it for the stats you lose.
- Aegis need redesign as it is most often inefficient with the amount of multiple hit skills.
- Symbol concept and traits need redisign from a wvw point of view. We have many traits about it for just few weapons using them. It is really hard to use in wvw because (too static, easy to dodge, …))

Please take care of the guardian core issues before anything else, we have been waiting (and reporting) long enough for these core issues to be dealt with.

People need to stop confusing tanking with high sustainability. There are no tanks in GW2 because there is no traditional triad. What there is, however, is a large capacity for any and every class to build heavily into self-sustain. That’s what a bunker is. Addressing your points one-by-one:

- Guardians are arguably the best bunkers in the game. We have access to more blocks than you typically know what to do with, relatively strong CC options, an immunity skill, not to mention our access to boons upon boons. Couple that with Altruistic Healing, vigor on crit, and heal on dodge and you have some ridiculous self-healing. Then there’s our high capacity for condition removal with Purging Flames, Pure of Voice, and Runes of the Soldier. I rarely, if ever, die in WvW, and it’s more-or-less the same when I bunker in tPvP. Note that bunkering is useless in PvE and it basically means you can’t dodge.

- No arguments here. Guardian has garbage mobility unless you bring Sword/X + GS or Staff with Judge’s Intervention and some swiftness utilities. The teleports and leaps themselves are good, but the swiftness uptime is barely better than Mesmer.

- Why is it that Cleric/Cleric was the tPvP bunker guardian meta for so long? If you’re ignoring the strength of Healing Power, you’re ignoring a very large chunk of a guardian’s functionality. That said, there’s a thing called over-investing, and I usually draw the line at 500-600 Healing Power in my WvW builds.

- Imo, you’re using Aegis wrong. It’s perfectly suited for blocking key, easily-telegraphed skills. Earthshaker and Shield Bash are perfect examples.

- Symbols are a bit of a double-edged sword. On one hand, I can easily drop a GS5 on a regroup or a push and trigger a ton of healing via AH. Same goes for mace 2 and hammer 1 3rd chain. On the other, you can easily walk out of them. However, that makes them no different than essentially every single other piece of AoE in the game, so it’s probably not as big of an issue as you think.

JonPeters.5630:

The change to sword damage from 5% to 10%. I’ve seen a lot of talk that maybe it is not really needed. The fact was this was a lackluster trait and this is a lackluster change to it. I would love to do the right thing here and have a change that MH sword wants rather than just 5% more damage.

Thoughts?

Jon

Guardian doesn’t need a damage increase. They need more accessible forms of chill or even cripple.

Or perhaps give them a new type of skill that teleports targets back to you when they move too far away from you.

Similar to this: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Scorpion_Wire

Ultimately the crux of guardian issues is that there is no way to consistently damage targets who choose to kite. And there are no adequate ranged options to deal with players who kite. Something must give, either guardian is a heavy armored melee class who needs snares and other disables to stay on the target or they are a heavy armored class with excellent range capabilities.

We are not saying that we are bad bunker, but when we go bunker that is all we can do aswell. When fightning a Mesmer bunker, He/She can still put presure on me. While fightning a Warrior bunker he can still put pressure and hard CC on me. When fightning a Ele Bunker he can still apply pressure to me.

most of these can apply pressure aswell as a additional skill. While all we can do is boon. Im not saying that booning is bad, most of them are rather good. But thats it, never seen anyone run away from my 500 autoattacks.

And i assumed one should dodge easily -telegraphed skills. But il use my 90 sec cooldown for it from now on, oh i pray they don’t have shorter cooldowns.

JonPeters.5630:

The change to sword damage from 5% to 10%. I’ve seen a lot of talk that maybe it is not really needed. The fact was this was a lackluster trait and this is a lackluster change to it. I would love to do the right thing here and have a change that MH sword wants rather than just 5% more damage.

Thoughts?

Jon

Hi. The reason most people think ’it’s not really needed’ is because the raw damage on Guardian has never been the issue, it’s the amount of sustain/utility you have to lose as a DPS guardian (which is what I assume you’re trying to fix). Even still:

Powerful Blades:
5% damage increase when using a Sword or Spear. Critical hits gives one condition and it’s remaining duration back to struck targets (20 second cool down).

This would help with some of the sustain Guardians lose when trying to spec as DPS in PvP. Also has synergy with Radiant Power.

More importantly though, I think DPS guardians would benefit from better Hammers and Mace weapons. The last hit of the Auto hit on each takes slightly too long at the moment. Shave that down and these weapons become better DPS options, which are worse damage than sword, but better sustain/soft CC.

So idea:

Mace:
Faithful Strike: 1 second cast —> 1/2 second cast (like sword)

Hammer:
Symbol of Protection: 1 1/4 seconds cast —> 3/4 second cast.

Glacial Heart:
5% damage when using a hammer. Critical hits with hammer chill enemies (100% chance. 10-20 seconds cool down).

This is what I think is more required for Guardians than extra damage on Sword. The damage isn’t the issue.