Guild Wars 2

Recently we had a buff to consecrations. The change (along with the Pure of Voice adjustment) meant that there is now more options for dealing with the conditions meta. By shifting away from shouts to consecrations, we lose the speed buff granted by “Retreat!” in favor of other things. In my opinion, this made Staff all that much more important since it gave us that speed buff without having to trait much for it.

This is where the change to Symbol of Swiftness comes back into play. It essentially means that you will have to become immobile for some time to become mobile. I think that really takes away from the nature of the skill.

Instead of making the Swiftness pulse, perhaps we could make something else pulse with it while keeping the swiftness? Maybe Fury or Quickness? Doing so would not strip the guardian of one of its two mobility skills, and would create a desire to stand in it for not only guardians but other players as well.

Aza.2105:

Makoto.9647:

And this is a bit disappointing. They made the game and said that the classes would be able to fulfill many roles. But in contrast to other classes Guardians are forced in to a supportive zerg class. We who picked the class and were thinking of going other routs promised by Anet possible for all classes?

This applies to every class in the game I believe. Most are forced to run a few builds because others just don’t work well.

Also, I wanted to add for Jon a brief summary of what I understand about Guardian’s design.

Guardian is a melee oriented class, who is slow and defensive. Not meant to be fast since their presence is strong in group settings like wvw. Their range attack options are inadequate yet they have nothing to consistently stay on top of targets while using melee skills. I just do not understand the design philosophy for the class. Why isn’t guardian a primarily ranged class with heavy armor? It would make more sense due to the fact that they are slow and stationary.

There was a stream several months ago, were one of the developers specifically stated that guardian is meant to teleport to their target and stay there. This is sort of true, when you teleport to a target in pve mobs stay there with you. However in pvp, when you teleport to a target they are unlikely to stay there with you.

I’m not trying to be sarcastic or anything. I just want to understand what the devs imagine for the class. Once again I state from my perspective a melee oriented class that can’t stay in melee range consistently makes no sense. A slow, defensive class with poor access to mobility who has inadequate ranged options doesn’t make much sense.

Out of all the classes, guardian is the only one who seems to have this issue.

Tbh thats not right.
Warrior for example are good in wvw both solo, zerge and minigroup and in different rolles like support, tanky and dps.
Same with theif, elementalist, mesmer etc to make some. But the Guardian is stuck with 1 role and that is support both in zerge and in small groupplay. For example when we are in need to carry a staff to get a speedbuff for smallgroup or solo roaming we then are forced in to support.

You need runes and sigil for unleash the power of the guardian!

You need runes and sigils for more conditions, and now you MUST HAVE runes with mobility.

I really think they havent a idea how a guardian feels and works outside sPvP. Awful changes and the community already explain why that changes are useless with great arguments.

Can we please just stop trying to make Kindled Zeal a thing. Condi damage on a class who has all of one condi and would get overwritten instantly unless you actually make a condi set. Which is beyond useless, because we only have one condi. Full circle.

Jon:

• Increase Virtue of Resolve’s Passive
• Combine Writ of Exaltation and Writ of Presence
• Make Shield of Judgment provide Protection AND Regeneration
• Make Shield of Absorption destroy projectiles inside the dome
• Reduce both shield skill cooldowns by 5 seconds

Are these things really too much to ask?

The guardian’s support role is strong right now, but he cannot perform a ‘tank’ role as well as you would have players believe. There’s a difference. Tanking is always support, but support is not always tanking.

Redscope.6215:

Jon:

• Increase Virtue of Resolve’s Passive
• Combine Writ of Exaltation and Writ of Presence
• Make Shield of Judgment provide Protection AND Regeneration
• Make Shield of Absorption destroy projectiles inside the dome
• Reduce both shield skill cooldowns by 5 seconds

Are these things really too much to ask?

The guardian’s support role is strong right now, but he’s not a tank. There’s a difference. Tanking is always support, but support is not always tanking.

Sounds great!

I use some form of teleport to attack a foe. He dodge rolls once and is the out of range and can stay there because we are too slow. If we blink again he just dodges again. How are you supposed to mele with long CD and no mobility?

JonPeters.5630:

Hello Guardians,

Supreme Justice and Kindled Zeal
I feel like there is a build here, but TBH I haven’t gotten it to work in our internal testing yet. This is as good a place as any to talk about stat conversion traits.

Currently they do not convert 100% of a stat because certain stat bonuses such as those from signets do not get converted. For that reason we are being conservative but normalizing all of our conversions to the follow #s for now.
Minor: 5%,7%, and 10% respectively for adept, master and grandmaster.
Major: 7%,10%, and 13% respectively for adept, master, and grandmaster.

I’m not sure this will be enough, but I do not want these traits to be overpowered as I feel they are fairly passive. That being said, I think they are good simple traits and with 12 traits per line it is absolutely fine to have some passive simple to understand traits.

Another thing about this build is that you do not have all of the information you need about this power guardian right now, but I can’t reveal more without spoilers. /tease

Jon

Jon,

The issue w/ a 30/x/x/x/30 type build, building around Power & Burning (which is a super fun build when you take in Permeating Wraith) is we loose too much sustain…. we compensate that sustain through Sigils & Runes….

Now you’re saying, you’re going to take that away because you’re not willing to give us an additional Condition (ala – Symbolic Power now causes Torment Per Pulse)…

This forces us to take 15 in Honor or 30 in Meditations to regain our sustain…. yet, if we do that, we then loose the 30/30 build, which is currently where the real synergy comes from.

Ideally, the build would have to be a Shout/Med base build… something like this

You have Condi Removal… but your sustain is going to be hampered severely….

Contrary to belief, the power/condi guardian NEEDS a ton of healing… the HP pool is ridiculously low as well as the ability to keep a target close to you once you’ve used your very limited soft CC and blinks.

If you’re not going to give us more conditions, fine… but then don’t give us +Condi modifiers… give us +Burning Modifiers and allow Burning to Heal us for a % of damage it does……..

Your solution of forcing us to go sigil/runes is ~not acceptable~.

Sorry.

I would like to thanks Dev for that :

Zeal VII – Zealous Blade. This trait now scales with Healing power (2%.)

I’ve asked with several people that VII would scale with Healing, even a bit, to open up new build, less relying on AH.
I see Devs are watching and listening to the community feedback

So Kudos and thank you, and keep up the good work !

Some mobility might be nice, though i think it would be better if we had consistent soft CC so people don’t just walk away with ease. We’ll stay in the fight, and we’ll fight, but we better kitten well make sure others fighting us stay in the fight with us.

Talyn.3295:

JonPeters.5630:

Hello Guardians,

So I wanted to talk about the bigger discussion topics for the Dec changes for you as well.

Shattered Aegis
As soon as I get in on Monday, I’ll post the damage #s on this and the power scaling. I think a meaning ful discussion about this change is going to require that. One danger here is that big WvW zergs using this could be really powerful, but I will say that the numbers are decent.

Supreme Justice and Kindled Zeal
I feel like there is a build here, but TBH I haven’t gotten it to work in our internal testing yet. This is as good a place as any to talk about stat conversion traits.

Currently they do not convert 100% of a stat because certain stat bonuses such as those from signets do not get converted. For that reason we are being conservative but normalizing all of our conversions to the follow #s for now.
Minor: 5%,7%, and 10% respectively for adept, master and grandmaster.
Major: 7%,10%, and 13% respectively for adept, master, and grandmaster.

I’m not sure this will be enough, but I do not want these traits to be overpowered as I feel they are fairly passive. That being said, I think they are good simple traits and with 12 traits per line it is absolutely fine to have some passive simple to understand traits.

Another thing about this build is that you do not have all of the information you need about this power guardian right now, but I can’t reveal more without spoilers. /tease

Symbol of Swiftness
To clarify the new Symbol of Swiftness will give you 4 seconds of Swiftness every single pulse regardless of if you have swiftness or not. This is a improvement in many situations and a slight loss in the situation where you were using the Symbol as just a one time buff. I think this makes it feel more like a Symbol, which is good. We are still discussing the idea of it being 5 seconds, but there is some danger of that going pretty high with boon duration.

Power guardian vs Condition guardian
I think Dec 10th will see the emergence of the power guardian, but I think that the condition based guardian still has a ways to go. Ultimately this is because it is hard to cover the burning and frankly you need a good reliable second or even third condition that guardians simply do not have right now. I think for those professions lacking that 3rd damage condition we are looking at supplementing them via runes and sigils rather than skills/traits right now but that won’t be something we attempt until the build that follows the Dec 10th build.

I think that is everything for guardian and hopefully you enjoyed a few half spoiler/half teases.

Thanks,

Jon

Thanks for taking the the time to reply and answer some of our questions. I love the guardian class and what it stands for. And while I do like the idea of a more offensive guardian style of play I only really see that being useful some of the time. Our very low hp base and lack of significant ranged options doesn’t allow for much survival in some instances.

I think that if you were to consider some trait options which allowed us to get some more HP we might be more inclined to try this style of play more.

In my opinion the thing most guardians are looking for right now is some kind of soft crowd control, mainly either a chill or a cripple that isn’t part of a RNG. Also spirit weapons are weak in most instances in the game. I myself would be very happy to see some work put into them to make them usable again. Even if this would require a split between sPvP versions and the rest of the game.

I do look forwards to seeing the information on the power guardian.

Thanks again for replying

THIS RIGHT HERE ANET. Guardians need soft cc or hard cc and more hp. THAT IS OUR MAIN PROBLEM.

Symbol of Swiftness is an uncalled-for nerf. It should stay how it was in my opinion…
Powerful Blades + Trip Med Offensive with Sword will be delicious.
Turn Glacial Heart into something worthy already. With the staff symbol thing going Guardian is going to take top place for lack of mobility.
Glacial Heart: on crit chill for 4 seconds every 10 seconds…… drool
Oh, and put the trait somewhere 10/30/30/0/0 builds can reach please…

The lack of mobility in combat coupled with a Guardian’s lackluster crowd control is the biggest handicap. In a group vs group or zerg vs zerg situation they Guardian is left chasing targets while the enemy focuses on those the Guardian is supposed to protect.

Symbols are easy to avoid/roll out of, Binding Blades in WvW seldom lands against dodge/rollouts,

Ring of warding with Hammer is so slow by the time it hits any opponent with a modicum of intelligence has already rolled out of the circle.

If a Guardian’s role is to stand and fight then gives us the means to force enemies to stand and fight.

To add just a bit more where it all goes wrong is when you compare Guardians versus Warriors, the other heavy class. Warriors not only have more mobility they also enjoy more crowd control options then does the Guardian. Guardians should be able to control the flow of a fight via CC measures whereas Warriors should be left to pound the enemy into the dirt.

1. I believe Anet specifically stated that they didn’t want guardian’s ranged weapons to be too powerful because its a melee class.

2. Anet has stated that guardians are suppose to slow moving.

3. Anet has stated that they do not want guardian to do much damage.

4. Anet has stated that they want guardian to teleport to a target and stay there.

5. Anet has stated that like warrior, guardian is a melee oriented class.

It just doesn’t make sense.

1. How does the slowest moving class expected to be a melee oriented character? Better yet, why does the slowest moving class have the worst range options? How does a melee oriented character have worst options than a ranged character to be in melee range? Once a guardian teleport to the target, how does it make the target stay put?

The only thing that their design points to is that guardian is suppose to be something they stand against, a dedicated healer/support class. Just like traditional healers they only stand out in groups, solo they are underwhelming. That their entire design is based around making other classes better.

There’s one thing I really want to suggest to the devs. Can we stop balancing the game purely around PvP and WvW?

There;s plenty of players who never do PvP, and the game is very much so more broken in PvE and PvP at the moment. When the optimal setup for ANY dungeon is 1 mes 4 war there is seriously something wrong with it.

Also, what do you want Guardians to actually do? The icon for them is a shield, so I’m quite sure you wanted them to be a heavy bunker class. Yet despite that, Warriors can actually bunk better.

One more thing….

Would you please.. please please please…. change Glacial Heart to act like a Mantra and give it 2 charges?

SoS- Let’s just put some numbers on this: 20s of swiftness if you stay the whole time. 15s because it runs out while waiting for the 5 ticks. Swiftness gives you a 33% boost to speed, meaning 15s of running with swiftness equals 20s of normal running. That’s the exact same as spending the 15s running without swiftness +5s you don’t have to spend waiting in the symbol. I’m sure that we all knew this internally, but it’s good to have it fleshed out.
tl;dr SoS is pretty much worthless.

Kindled Zeal- I think there are two routes to go with this.
1) Survivability, if applying burning removed a condition or lowered their duration, this would be a great gain and truly worthy of a grand master trait. Guardians are already lacking in roaming potential, so adding some durability to offensive variants would be a nice compromise without straying from the slow melee theme, though I can see how this might be too hard to manage.
2) Adding another condition while burning, similar to blind exposure. I like the idea of adding torment because it fits anet’s view of the guardian just staying still and duking it out. This is important, because no matter how powerful your burn it’s still only one condition that can be easily removed. This would at least give the burning a buffer, and provide more utility to a party since torment stacks. (I’m still open to ideas of other conditions though)

If we are supposed to Teleport to a foe and stay there, then our Teleports need to provide a condition to keep the foes there. Perhaps a chill or a cripple? I would hate to see us lose the blinds thought as this are extremely useful for a zerker guardian in PvE. But with the retaliation nerf, there is nothing to keep a foe from just out running us and shooting us down with range spikes.

I’m wondering if these rune and sigil hints. Means that in order to fix balancing in all classes. They are issuing runes and sigil’s to each class separate. Which is exactly what wow did with it’s Inscription system. Rift did it in a more slick way with Planar Attunement. And Secret World half hearted on it with misc powers. Basically what I’m getting at is. It’s been done before to not have it be a flop like those games. The reason you need to use sigil and runs in the first place. Needs to be addressed or gotten rid of.

Main problem is like I mention before. Too many points are wasted or locked. Which doesn’t allow any build freedom. Some classes specifically Warrior and Elementalist. Don’t have such crutches. If all builds really want to be made viable. Then what each build is stronger at. Needs to be compacted more in anyone of the 5 trait lines. So if you want a certain build. You go after two trees and regain your classes identity. And not be all over the world using trait points.

For example I like two handers. Make it so “everything” for a build like that is only in two trait lines. If you really want to open this up for us. Make it all in one line, that’s even better. Say put power/burst/sustain traits all in Zeal and Radiance early. And combine certain things Like Two Handed Power and CD Speed. Like why is two handed refresh time even outside of attack traits anyway? Just combine it we got nifty tool tips now.

By doing that you completely free a power build to get some kind of support and a little defense. Nothing tank worthy but at least a little so they not so squishy. Or maybe that build can go after more self healing/deeper support/team healing/Full Power kitten the team. This is just an example but it be the beginning of opening things up. And whiping out the meta play the Dev’s obviously don’t like. Every meta they see they drop kick some how no matter what profession it is. If you do find a meta sometimes its better to keep it to yourself.

So instead of giving us the option for conditions, as EVERY class has even before runes/sigils, guardians will be forced to use them to even think of a condition build? Let alone that its not like these sigils and runes will be class specific, so we will see an even bigger flow into the already massive condition meta.

All that aside, we still are one of the least mobile professions, we still have literally no soft CC to keep anyone near us, we still are extremely weak against conditions, unless we spec hard into condition removal, which limits our builds very badly. None of these current "buff"s are going to fix any of that. Kindled zeal will still be useless A) because we have one condition, and B) because to put the points that far into zeal, makes us lose way too much in the line of defenses, which we need BADLY, primarily because of our low health pool and poor mobility. Honestly, if we even had multiple conditions, I still doubt kindled zeal would be worth it, as nothing else in the zeal line does anything for conditions. it is completely power based, and you could easily put into more defensive lines and pick up more condition damage in gear and be better of.

However, I really think the core issues need to be fixed before any of that is even thought of. We NEED some type of soft CC, that we can at least semi-frequently apply to keep people near us. We are one of the slowest classes with very lack luster ranged capabilities, yet compared to a warrior, who is very mobile, and also has ranged capabilities, they DESTROY in a comparison to the amount of CC they have in addition to that. I still suggest a glacial heart revamp to effect every weapon with a shorter duration and CD, or even apply chill on symbol pulse or application would be a start. (though 1h sword would still be SOL in terms of staying on someone with a symbol trait)

We need some type of revamp on our condition removal skills/traits. We have ALOT of condition removal at our hands, that is obvious, the issue is being able to keep up with the massive amount of reapplication, and also the requirement of our utility skills for mobility and support. I believe that we need to move some condition removal into our damage trees, just to make them able to be used without completely tanking our chances at living.

I have no issues being the slow moving bunkerish class. However, we simply do not have the tools to even play that correctly. When the only way to even fight half of the classes is to equip a ranged weapon and use it as a longer range melee weapon, something is wrong. Also the fact that we keep getting pushed further and further into the hole of bunker due to everyone getting large buffs, and also a meta which we can’t really participate in is getting really discouraging.

I know you say that we shouldn’t be allowed to do as much damage because of our basic defenses, but at the end of the day, those basic defenses are not even doing it anymore without specing heavily into buffs for them. Yes we are a heavy class, but toughness is starting to become overrated when a thief can backstab for 7k+ on 3.2k armor. Our passive healing through resolve is now pathetic as without any buffs, it wont even cover a single bleed stack, compared to a warrior who gets 300/s right off the bat due to signet, but also gets the highest health pool in the game. Yes we get the most access to aegis, but in pvp game modes, that aegis can easily be wasted on some minor tick from an AoE attack. Due to how stagnant guardians have become in regards to balance, we can no longer look into specing for damage outside of trying for a gimmicky burst build, and are stuck in the same 3 trait lines that we have been for the last several months.

I don’t have a problem with any of these changes. They’re primarily an improvement to DPS builds for sPvP, but there are obviously going to be a few improvements for certain WvW builds (mostly group setups).

We could still use some help against the condition spam meta, though. Whether that means buffing PoV or Purity or whatever else, we’re definitely behind. The previews seem to suggest that the only thing being done to tone down the condi spam is reducing Necro bleed spam by 2 stacks from short CD skills in sPvP only. Bit of a bummer.

The chill/cripple/immob availability (for others) doesn’t help us very much either, since we’re comparatively slow to begin with. Not being able to remove it reliably hurts. Not as big of a group in large group play, but it’s a big problem in small ops—whether that be defined as sPvP or roaming in WvW.

Just my two copper.

Edit: It’s going to take more than the pending changes to Zeal to make it worth going into that trait line for anything. Everything else is just better, no matter how much “better” those traits get. They’re still lackluster and contribute very little in the way of utility.

No one will read and take seriously your feedback, we know this even more after each round of balance update.

The easy way to fix our issues is just to reroll war, anet won’t fix guardian class.

Perikittenor.1892:

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Honor VI – Pure of Heart. Increased scaling with Healing power from 25% to 40%.
:Nice but it is still overhealing alot. You need to understand that this will always trigger when we have full health the first time, and after that. It depends whatever we are virtue or shout to even make it useable.

This is QFT. A burst heal normally gets wasted when a fight is initiated as we are in full health. It would be MUCH more effective if it provided that heal in a Heal-over-time (HOT) form such as regeneration so it could minimise the over-healing.

username.4932:

No one will read and take seriously your feedback, we know this even more after each round of balance update.

The easy way to fix our issues is just to reroll war, anet won’t fix guardian class.

Sad but true they have not listened to one bit of feedback from our guardian forum since launch.

Will u Guys ever remove the Lighfield from Hammers AA Chain?
It´s rly bad in Teamgame and hard to controll without losing your proctection AND tons of dmg.
Most times Water/Fire/Frost/Aetherfields are much stronger.
But u can´t use them well with this weapon.

Skill 5 IS actually a light field. Not in the Tooltip but its works ingame…fix this Tooltip.

Rework Hammers AA, let the Symbol+Protection there, only make it no Combofield….
That would be rly awesome especially for PvE, the Hammer would be a much better choice.
Thanks for reading, and sry for my bad english.

I find it funny that other game companies succeed where Arenanet failed. To create a slow moving bunker class that work as a force multiplier by buffing themself and other around them in terms of survivability and debuffing those it is capable of hitting.

One of the games i refer to is TL2. Although i know the game itself is not a MMO or probably balanced at all. But, everytime i play it i feel like a Guardian. And everytime i play GW2 i feel like playing TL2 with my friends instead.

Xae Isareth.1364:

There’s one thing I really want to suggest to the devs. Can we stop balancing the game purely around PvP and WvW?

There;s plenty of players who never do PvP, and the game is very much so more broken in PvE and PvP at the moment. When the optimal setup for ANY dungeon is 1 mes 4 war there is seriously something wrong with it.

Also, what do you want Guardians to actually do? The icon for them is a shield, so I’m quite sure you wanted them to be a heavy bunker class. Yet despite that, Warriors can actually bunk better.

If you think that 4W1M is optimal for ANY dungeon you are sorely mistaken and completely clueless. The PVE speedclear meta, while boiling down to DPS/reflects, is actually fairly varied and almost every class can have its place in record runs, guardians included.

Veeman.5270:

Perikittenor.1892:

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Honor VI – Pure of Heart. Increased scaling with Healing power from 25% to 40%.
:Nice but it is still overhealing alot. You need to understand that this will always trigger when we have full health the first time, and after that. It depends whatever we are virtue or shout to even make it useable.

This is QFT. A burst heal normally gets wasted when a fight is initiated as we are in full health. It would be MUCH more effective if it provided that heal in a Heal-over-time (HOT) form such as regeneration so it could minimise the over-healing.

The only way that would work is if it wasn’t a Regen.

It’s fine as it is. I use it all the time. Overhealing on the 1st hit of an encounter is minimal, as most other classes have some kind of issue on ‘the opening’ anyhow…

It’s terrible in PvP. And no one uses it. Their data collection tells them no one has it traited.

That’s why they are buffing it, because they think it will encourage people to use it more.

What they don’t realise is that the skill is flawed based on how Guardians work.
If they actually thought about how the class was designed they would realise that most of the times Aegis is removed the player is already at full hp, so that heal is wasted.

It’s quite clear that they really don’t know very much about the profession and how it plays, especially after the embarrassment that was – 2 devs looking for Purging Flames on stream.

Aaaaand I’m still not reinstalling Guild Wars 2. I’m not sure if any of the Devs have sat down and played this class at all cause they seem to do the stupidest things imaginable. I would actually love to see a Dev sit down and try to defend the changes made to the class and how they fit with our mechanics because I have no doubt they wouldn’t be able to do it.

Antares.2586:

I would like to thanks Dev for that :

Zeal VII – Zealous Blade. This trait now scales with Healing power (2%.)

I’ve asked with several people that VII would scale with Healing, even a bit, to open up new build, less relying on AH.
I see Devs are watching and listening to the community feedback

So Kudos and thank you, and keep up the good work !

is anyone doing the math on this?

Zealous Blade Healing is way off now and with 2% it’s still a joke, you need 1300 healing power to make it heal for 26 hitpoints when an attack hits.

I’ve put on my Healing power gear/Weapons, my ascended trinkets and im upto 1800
give or take, so then I will be able to heal for 36 hitpoints!

if 20 people stand still and let me hit them for 10 seconds I would heal for 1k
(oh wait I can only hit 5 people at a time)

now since my toon is level 80 I have 16,000 hitpoints with a whooping heal of 150 hitpoints; again if everyone stands still and in range.

I’ve tried to understand these changes but I can only think of someone that’s in a area that doesn’t scale stats and plays with the numbers at level 2 or something, it just doesn’t add up.

Power of the Virtuous (Virtues 25) still needs an increase to at least 2%, although I’d rather see 3%.

Glad to see Zealous Blade getting a bump up on the healing though. I think this was much needed.

@Zepher, it’s 25 + (.02 * HP). So if you have 1000 Healing Power, it’d be 25 + 20 per hit.

Sure, it’s small, but at least its a step in the right direction.

The worst thing is that its an offensive trait line but in order to get it to work you need to traits and gear defensively.

To gear healing power with at least 15 points in honor si a waste.

So the question is, will we be seing 20/x/x/15/x builds and if so, why?

Why even dress down from dps to get healing power when you can have the same dps from staying out from those 20 points in zeal and choose and offensive gear or more points in honor.

Its a gimmick, just like glacial heart.

Make Zealous Blade a straight number, 50 per hit, and not scale with healing power and ofc make it so it affects all weapons but the damage buff would only affect GS.

Zepher.7803:

is anyone doing the math on this?

Zealous Blade Healing is way off now and with 2% it’s still a joke, you need 1300 healing power to make it heal for 26 hitpoints when an attack hits.

I’ve put on my Healing power gear/Weapons, my ascended trinkets and im upto 1800
give or take, so then I will be able to heal for 36 hitpoints!

if 20 people stand still and let me hit them for 10 seconds I would heal for 1k
(oh wait I can only hit 5 people at a time)

now since my toon is level 80 I have 16,000 hitpoints with a whooping heal of 150 hitpoints; again if everyone stands still and in range.

I’ve tried to understand these changes but I can only think of someone that’s in a area that doesn’t scale stats and plays with the numbers at level 2 or something, it just doesn’t add up.

Nothing Arenanet has made for Guardian has made any sense. They give us symbols and spread all the traits around, 50% of our weapons don’t even have symbols.
And All PvP reward high mobility so a (GS)AoE field on 20 second cooldown that has a 180 radius and deals 350 damage @ 3200 power each tick for 5 ticks. Makes no sense at all. Infact, it has been about a year since people actual dodged out of my symbols.

Currently about 90% of our weapon only deal damage, yet the dev team say Guardian are not supposed to deal high damage. Good riddance on that one.

And our consecration lack the same punishment aswell 2k on 5 target damage if they stand in it, for 35 second cooldown is not justified.

And don’t get me started on meditation or the skills that should not be named.

username.4932:

No one will read and take seriously your feedback, we know this even more after each round of balance update.

The easy way to fix our issues is just to reroll war, anet won’t fix guardian class.

Pretty much this. The only way for them to take this seriously and fix the guardian is stop playing it.

A lot of players will stop playing it when you need to cross a entire wvw map to get the zerg at normal speed with only 4 seconds swiftness in a 12 seconds CD.

Zepher.7803:

Antares.2586:

I would like to thanks Dev for that :

Zeal VII – Zealous Blade. This trait now scales with Healing power (2%.)

I’ve asked with several people that VII would scale with Healing, even a bit, to open up new build, less relying on AH.
I see Devs are watching and listening to the community feedback

So Kudos and thank you, and keep up the good work !

is anyone doing the math on this?

Zealous Blade Healing is way off now and with 2% it’s still a joke, you need 1300 healing power to make it heal for 26 hitpoints when an attack hits.

I’ve put on my Healing power gear/Weapons, my ascended trinkets and im upto 1800
give or take, so then I will be able to heal for 36 hitpoints!

if 20 people stand still and let me hit them for 10 seconds I would heal for 1k
(oh wait I can only hit 5 people at a time)

now since my toon is level 80 I have 16,000 hitpoints with a whooping heal of 150 hitpoints; again if everyone stands still and in range.

I’ve tried to understand these changes but I can only think of someone that’s in a area that doesn’t scale stats and plays with the numbers at level 2 or something, it just doesn’t add up.

Just to fix something, I think the intent is to make it scale in addition to what it already does, at 1k healing power that would put the heal at 45 per hit pre wvw bonuses. Granted, that doesn’t seem like alot, but also you have to figure in that ANY attack while using GS will heal you for that amount, that includes utilities, and also anything like symbols that were cast and are still active after switching to GS. The issue however is that your limited to it only healing for that weapon, so as soon as you switch you lose all of that extra healing.

Brutaly.6257:

The worst thing is that its an offensive trait line but in order to get it to work you need to traits and gear defensively.

To gear healing power with at least 15 points in honor si a waste.

So the question is, will we be seing 20/x/x/15/x builds and if so, why?

Why even dress down from dps to get healing power when you can have the same dps from staying out from those 20 points in zeal and choose and offensive gear or more points in honor.

Its a gimmick, just like glacial heart.

Make Zealous Blade a straight number, 50 per hit, and not scale with healing power and ofc make it so it affects all weapons but the damage buff would only affect GS.

Bingo!

Core guardian problem since day 1.

Unless they add some core functionality changes in zeal , there is 0 benefit in going past 10.

Ofc, lets hope they don’t flat out nerf honor to “encourage” us to trait into zeal

Here is an idea with zeal:

Grand master trait: Critical hits shave off 2s off your virtue recharge

And suddenly now you have 30/0/30/5/5 viable or even 30/x/x/x/15

I feel like an incredibly simple fix to the symbol debacle would just be to add a symbol skill to one of the guardian’s offhand weapons. Looking at mesmer as an example, phantasm traits can be effective in any mesmer build because every weapon set has a phantasm skill. Guardian traits seem to imply that symbols are just as big of a class mechanic for them as phantasms are for mesmers, so how about we just have the currently awful shield 4 skill replaced with a symbol that will allow access to symbols for builds that rely on sword and scepter for damage?

Black Box.9312:

I feel like an incredibly simple fix to the symbol debacle would just be to add a symbol skill to one of the guardian’s offhand weapons. Looking at mesmer as an example, phantasm traits can be effective in any mesmer build because every weapon set has a phantasm skill. Guardian traits seem to imply that symbols are just as big of a class mechanic for them as phantasms are for mesmers, so how about we just have the currently awful shield 4 skill replaced with a symbol that will allow access to symbols for builds that rely on sword and scepter for damage?

Shield 4 is good when you’re not in sPvP.

Black Box.9312:

I feel like an incredibly simple fix to the symbol debacle would just be to add a symbol skill to one of the guardian’s offhand weapons. Looking at mesmer as an example, phantasm traits can be effective in any mesmer build because every weapon set has a phantasm skill. Guardian traits seem to imply that symbols are just as big of a class mechanic for them as phantasms are for mesmers, so how about we just have the currently awful shield 4 skill replaced with a symbol that will allow access to symbols for builds that rely on sword and scepter for damage?

I agree that Guardian symbols need to be as available as Mesmer Phantasms. If you’re going to have half a dozen traits related to a single mechanic like Symbols, that mechanic should be very readily available.

Not sure an off-hand Symbol would be the answer, though. Sure, it’d work nicely with Scepter and Sword, but it would allow Mace to double-symbol, and allow Mace + Shield along with Hammer or Greatsword or Staff to triple-symbol with weapon swap. Which might be a bit much with some of the traits (namely symbol healing, AH, and possibly symbol vulnerability). And rebalancing those skills to the point where triple-symbol wouldn’t be too much would mean making them underwhelming on single symbols.

So that kind of pigeonholes it into mainhand weapons to keep it at 1 symbol per weapon. Scepter is no problem, Smite is obvious symbol material. Sword… who knows. None of the current skills fit, but maybe a complete redesign of skill 3 to include a symbol would work, since the overall opinion of Sword 3 is that its pretty mediocre or poor right now anyway.

Well, for the most part this’ll help the PvP build I’ve been working on. I did pretty good damage and now I’ll do even more. Hopefully I’ll be able to post the build for it soon.

Symbols are one of the most useless things in a Guardians repertoire currently for what use are symbols if they are so easily avoided? Currently I have three characters fully geared for WvW, my Guardian was my first one but I currently am enjoying more success with my Mesmer and he just outranked my Guardian at 104 to 103. I am finding that as other classes improve my Guardian is becoming more and more of a niche toon and is lacking in versatility. Currently gearing up and setting up my warrior.

Guardian….stand in the middle of the battle and get pounded on until you drop vs
Mesmer…move in and out with the flow of the battle

Now considering that in a zerg vs zerg situation the battle will push one way and then the other which character is more advantageous and fun to play? I mean it is quite common to be steamrolled by 3 hammer warriors on the frontline of an enemy zerg and left for those behind them to drive the stake in.

The problem with any static AOE like symbols/wells/etc is that they’re great in PvE where stuff doesn’t move, and they’re great in PvP where you have static points to defend/attack, but they’re only bad in mobile fights. So they’re balanced in 2/3 game modes, but crippled in another.

Personally I think symbols should become auras instead of ground AOEs but meh.

I’m going to restate what everyone here is saying. The Symbol of Swiftness change would completely nerf the guardian in WvW (while also making pve more annoying)!!! We are already tied for the slowest class with mesmers. We have absolutely NO passive speed buff like every other class but mes. No one, and I mean no one, is going to sit in their symbol for 5 ticks waiting for swiftness to stack (because you lose most if not all of the benefit of the swiftness by not moving).

I am already the slowest person in the zerg hanging with the mesmers if I don’t have “Retreat” equipped or if I happen to have some animal trample through my SoS. Now you are mandating that I have “Retreat” equipped, and I will still end up being slower than before.

Why don’t you just leave SoS alone? Or make it add 2 ticks if you already have swiftness if you are trying to buff zerg speed. I will honestly consider switching my main from guardian because I will get frustrated with how darn slow they are.

This change is obviously structured again around sPVP and meantime you hurt every guard in WvW and PvE.

It won’t hurt guards in a big zerg where symbols drop like crazy. You’ll see better zerg mobility because of it which will help you and others.

It’s not so good solo or in small party, but in those situations you can afford to sit in the symbol for some ticks.

AND now two guards with staff stack instead of only one being effective.

2650 armor with strength in numbers, 2900 power 47% crit and 905 condi damage which makes burn hit 555, bleed ~90 and poison 150(sigils). and i also have 50% burn duration

Bring me the condi buffs anet:D make me burn for more

(edit) im sad to see shattered aegis go tho, it was a nice 3 sec burn(1900 dps) (+ 1.5 sec because it blocks which will still remain)

so there definitely is a possible power condi guard build.

I’m not against a power condition guard build. As long as they speed us up somehow. If they don’t won’t be any point to that. Because you won’t stay in contact long enough to benefit from it. Staff is not good for keeping contact. And scepter is still too slow for something like building stacks. And as it stands now some stack building you need to be close to do it. So yea…all kinds of we need help on this being viable.

All I can say is, make Rune of Traveller craftable and you will see 99% of Guards installed on it.
As soon as I seen the new patch changes, I just ignore everything, all useless changes.
Luckily, I’ve already had Rune of Traveller setup on all my armors.

Cmon Anet, admit that you are totally clueless about this class.

JonPeters.5630:

Symbol of Swiftness
To clarify the new Symbol of Swiftness will give you 4 seconds of Swiftness every single pulse regardless of if you have swiftness or not. This is a improvement in many situations and a slight loss in the situation where you were using the Symbol as just a one time buff. I think this makes it feel more like a Symbol, which is good. We are still discussing the idea of it being 5 seconds, but there is some danger of that going pretty high with boon duration.

that is a pretty nasty change for wvw. Oo i hope you thought that through…