Guild Wars 2

I was planning on posting a redesign of the Guardian traits in order to start some discussion on how our traits could be changed and improved.
This was proving to be a little harder than I anticipated (planning fallacy), but I still wanted some discussion on it. What follows are a couple of ideas about our traits. Feel free to discuss them, or post your own ideas on Guardian traits.

So, what the introduction out of the way, let’s get down to business.

What’s wrong with Zeal?
I apologize for starting with such a big question, but I needed to get it out of the way if I wanted to get anywhere.
There are several (major) problems:

• The minor traits are pretty lackluster. They focus on Symbols, but this poses two problems: Symbols are rarely that important in a damage-focused build (since they’re pretty inconsistent in dealing damage) and the rest of the line does nothing for Symbols, apart from somewhat encouraging a Greatsword.
• The line focuses on Spirit Weapons, but does not offer all the traits that Spirit Weapons need, unlike all other lines, who do offer all available traits for their respective skills.
• Condition duration is rather meaningless for Guardians, as burning stacks in duration.
• The Master-level traits offer (mostly) small and situational bonuses.
• One of the Grandmaster traits is completely useless due to lack of scaling.
• It encourages you to use weapons that don’t play well with line. Greatsword does work fine, but using a Scepter makes your minor traits useless, nor does a Focus play particularly well with Zeal.

Should Zeal encourage you to use certain weapons?
Zeal currently offers 4 traits encouraging the use of certain weapons, and I don’t think this is necessarily bad. I just think it goes about it the wrong way. As mentioned, encouraging the Scepter does nothing for Zeal, so it might be interesting to encourage (for example) the Hammer and the Greatsword.

Is there anything severely lacking in Zeal?
Apart from an interesting Grandmaster trait, most of Zeal’s problem stem from things that are out of place, not things that are really lacking. It would be nice, however, to have some form of escape mechanism, which less defense oriented builds need.

Is Radiance the right place for one-handed weapons?
On the surface, it looks like it. One-handed weapons hit faster, and are thus more likely to trigger Virtue of Justice, adding to the burning aspect of the line. If you look at the first two minor traits, however, you’ll notice that this build encourages an active use of Virtue of Justice, making the point about faster-hitting weapons moot. On the other hand, I like that encouraging one-handers frees you up to use the Torch, which fits perfectly here and faster hitting weapons also means more crits.

But Right-Hand Strength is a great trait, should it be removed than?
It is, on a power-level. It’s however not very interesting, which I feel is a necessity for Grandmaster traits. It would be better if Radiance offered some kind of on-crit effect, which would make this trait more than just increased damage.

What about Perfect Inscriptions?
This also fails the “interesting”-test. It’s weird that the most powerful trait for signets is also the most boring one.

Are Signets the right skills for Radiance?
This is one I’m not sure I’ve got an answer for, but I don’t see why Signets would have to be tied to Radiance.

Part 2

Valor is the best trait-line, right?
Yes and no. It’s good because it offers Tougness, Altruistic Healing or Monk’s Focus, with a few okay traits, but it also has unnecessary bloat, like Strength of the Fallen, Mace of Justice or Focused Mind. And Glacial Heart is a wonky trait that has too many ifs. It’s mainly the fact that it offers the much-need survivability that Guardians crave that makes it such a popular line.

Altruistic Healing is best trait, right?
Depends on how you see “best trait”. It’s certainly a very effective one, but in my opinion, not a very interesting one. It doesn’t change how you look at your skills, it doesn’t alter your playstyle, it slightly nudges you towards using boons, but as a Guardian, you’d have to put in some effort not to use boons.

Is Valor best suited for a Meditation focus?
Like the Signet-question, I’m not sure. Although I feel a bit stronger here. There’s really nothing that binds Meditations to Valor and the associated traits could be easily put into any other line and it would still feel right.

I thought Zeal focused on Symbols, but now Honor does as well?
Indeed, and it does it much better. Mainly by having better traits that fit Symbols better and not having those traits mandatory for advancing down the line.

Why is there so little healing in our line related to healing?
There’s some healing, with the Grandmaster trait being the major one, but it’s circumstantial. It doesn’t matter that much, since most skills scale pretty terribly with healing power anyway, but that’s another problem altogether. Healing power is mostly useful for keeping yourself alive with your main heal, which is useful in a line that increases your total health.

Should Empowering Might be a Master Honor trait?
The answer might be no, but it risks becoming too powerful when crit-based builds have to sacrifice less to take it. On the other hand, it’s rather out of place in Honor.

• Is Honor the best place for Two-Handed Mastery?*
  Probably not, but it’s also not the worst place. Most two-handed weapons offer enough support to make putting the trait in a support-line worth it.

I’m going to quit here. I like some traits from the Virtues-line, but I honestly haven’t played around with it enough to form an opinion on it. Sorry. I’ll just leave some questions.

Are the Grandmaster traits in Virtues-line worth the investment?

Does the focus of each trait on an individual virtue hinders the value of each trait?

Is there too much Retaliation in the Virtues-line?

Can Virtues be more than just a trait-line to support other trait-lines?

i like what your getting at, it would be nice to see the offensive trees be a bit more suited to the weapons that their supposed to be for. Currently it just doesnt feel fun or worth it to do a glass cannon guardian.

it would be nice to actualy setup a bar and feel like your ready to be dps of the group.

it would take alot of work to fix the tree currently and i dont think were first on the list :/ but man what i would give to do
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5NnrNHa4bQ
that again

You know, I remember you posting the same thing a few months (or less) ago.
I think I posted back then and I will post today as well.

Ynna.8769:

Valor is the best trait-line Guardians currently have, due to being a mix of survivability and offense, and providing the extra healing and/or defense a Guardian needs.

No. “Best trait line” is subjective.
A great trait line is one that gives you extra attribute points to whatever you want to, and still allow flexibility so you don’t feel locked forever with the same stuff.
Valor does have good flexibility, but so does others. In my opinion, Honor is the best trait line since it offers so many great options that I wish I could spend 50 points there just to pick everything I want – that’s a great trait line.

Ynna.8769:

What’s wrong with Zeal?

Nothing, really.
I remember you seem to think Zeal is bad for some reason, but you still haven’t seen the good parts of it. If you compare it to a great trait line such as Honor you might feel it lacking of course, because Honor is simply too awesome. Valor is great too, but Zeal isn’t bad at all.

Ynna.8769:

The minor traits are pretty lackluster. They focus on Symbols, but this poses two problems: Symbols are rarely that important in a damage-focused build (since they’re pretty inconsistent in dealing damage) and the rest of the line does nothing for Symbols, apart from somewhat encouraging a Greatsword.

They’re great if you use anything that has symbols. They’re even greater if you pair them with Honor for extra Symbol effectiveness.
I agree that enhancing just the Greatsword and Scepter is a bit lackluster – they could’ve made it enhance all 2 handers for example so it’s more attractive to Staff/Hammer as well (both uses Symbols).

Ynna.8769:

The line focuses on Spirit Weapons, but does not offer all the traits that Spirit Weapons need, unlike all other lines, who do offer all available traits for their respective skills.

This just means there’s flexibility, this just means Zeal is a good line. And why do you think you need all Spirit Weapon traits in a single line?

Ynna.8769:

The Master-level traits offer (mostly) small and situational bonuses.
One of the Grandmaster traits is completely useless due to lack of scaling.

Although it seems small bonuses, it’s actually a great increase. There’s few traits that have a raw increase in damage, so these must be valuable.

Zealous Blade isn’t useless, if it were more it would be OP because of all the healing we already have. Imagine a 100 healing for each hit: I’d never die with a huge amount of armor and healing power. I’d drop a Symbol and for each mob I’d gain 100 health, plus my auto-attack.
They would need to rename Guardians to “player-controlled raid bosses that scales with the amount of players attacking it”.
25 seems small, but it’s an amount that you don’t become an unkillable character.

But if you’re refering to Wrathful Spirits, well, I think it sucks because only the Sword does significant damage…

Ynna.8769:

Should Zeal encourage you to use certain weapons?

Different than other professions, we only have 1 weapon reducing CD that’s placed in Honor, and works for all our two handers. This is sorta awesome if you think about it, and it means you’re not required to pick these traits if you go down that line.
But like I said before, it’d be great if it were better for all two handers instead just the Greatsword, but as far as the Scepter/Focus traits goes, it’s manageable.

Ynna.8769:

Is there anything severely lacking in Zeal?

It wouldn’t fit the line. Trait lines aren’t supposed to be self-centered all work all around themselves. Zeal gives everything that a “Power” build would require, and even some survivability that doesn’t really fit well.
Escape mechanism would fit Valor or Honor well though.

Ynna.8769:

Valor is the best trait-line, right?

They aren’t unnecessary bloat, they’re “options”. If you don’t take them, it’s okay, but someone may pick the line for them. If the traits are interesting or not, that’s another question that doesn’t relate to the line’s potential.

Ynna.8769:

I thought Zeal focused on Symbols, but now Honor does as well?

Zeal increases damage, Honor increases support/healing.
If Zeal increased the Staff’s power and Honor increased it’s healing skills, would you think it’s weird?
So it’s not that it’s better, it serves a different purpose.

Ynna.8769:

Is Honor the best place for Two-Handed Mastery?

I agree it feels out of place, Zeal would seem a better choice. Empowering Might could be seen as a “support” type effect, so it kinda fits Honor too.

[stupid 5001 length limit!]

[continuing]

Ynna.8769:

Are the Grandmaster traits in Virtues-line worth the investment?

In my opinion, no.
For the three professions I played (Warrior, Guardian, Elementalist), I don’t see the point in going further the line that doesn’t grant attribute bonuses.
This is because I don’t think people really value these points, as if 300 points is something you’d think as not necessary. These 300 points are pretty much another set of armor or trinkets you can equip, so these lines should offer a really desirable option if I’m to throw out a major attribute increase.

Elementalists for example have a good one, it decreases the attunement-switch cooldowns. Means you can switch faster for better versatility. And boon durations.
Warriors have it bad, it’s Critical Damage and 1% (seriously, 1% per 10 points) to a burst skill that if you’re planning on DpS you never use it (because you’d lose 12% extra damage). It only servers to pick reduced Signet CDs, because Signets are awesome as Warriors.

For Guardians… I’d pick only for the Master of Consecrations effect, because Wall of Reflection is insanely OP and cool. The minor isn’t worth it either in my opinion, 5 seconds is just too low to justify using a “bonus” CD if you’re not using it with Renewed Focus.

I think it’s cool that Guardians don’t have a huge emphasis on weapon traits like a Warrior, but they could be more fitting to the lines like the Warrior’s. Although they’re different professions and maybe they thought of “what would a (trait line) Guardian be like?”

So, a Zeal Guardian should be about damage and damaging utilities.
Radiance should be about conditions and critical damage.
Valor should be about protection and boons.
Honor should be about healing and support.
Virtue should be about mushrooms and Wall of Reflection.

If I could suggest some changes, without thinking any numbers:

- Everything in Zeal that says “Greatsword” should say “Two Handers”.
- Two Handed Mastery should be moved to Zeal.
- Zealous Blade should be changed to “All attacks” and moved to Honor.
- Scepter should have a Symbol for Smite.
- Radiance should have more interesting choices. They’re rather bland in my opinion and I’d only go there for Right Handed Strength and the minors that are more powerful than majors.
- Glacial Heart should be removed from Valor and go maybe to Zeal or changed to something else entirely. It kinda sucks anyway.
- Virtues line should have better utility choices other than Master of Consecrations. Elementalists have plenty of really excellent choices that makes you pick the line even at the cost of the attribute points because of all the great choices there, but I think the problem lies with the Virtues themselves. They’re a signet type of skill, and spending here means increasing a single signet’s effect. I wouldn’t spend points to increase any Signet effect currently, unless they’re about reduced CDs or maintaining their effect even during CD.

@Danicco: Thanks for the exhaustive feedback. I have indeed made a similar thread about a month ago, but the premise was different. In this case I’m more interested to see what other people think, and see if I can incorporate that into a potential overhaul of the traits.

As for Zeal, I don’t think it’s really, really bad (that’s mostly just rhetoric). It just has a lot of things that bug me, and is not very good, compared to our other options.

As for why I think all Spirit Weapon traits should be in one line is because it’s like that for every other type of skill and because it makes building around those skills harder.

My 2 cents.

Zeal grandmaster traits shouldn’t even be master trait, they need complete overhaul or massive buff.

Traits with +5% dmg with weapons should be +10%, similiar to warrior or with some utility, like +5% dmg when target is suffering from condition. Bear in mind that in Anet’s eyes warrior is the most complete proffesion and their weapon specific traits compared to guardians are heaven and earth.

Guardian is the only proffesion whos toughness line improves critical damage, every other proffesion improves critical damage either through precision line or through its proffesion specific line. I’d rather have it in Radiance.