Guild Wars 2

Hey all. These suggestions are mainly to make the skills more viable and fluid to use.

SWORD

Sword Wave (auto 3): Remove the projectiles. This feature is awful on a melee weapon because of the asbsorbs/reflects. But the main reason for me, it is awful is if your target is a little bit higher or lower than you, your attack will miss.

Flashing Blade: This skill does near no damage and is often used as mobility skill, but with a restriction (needs a target) and even being a teleport have a very small cast time. Compared with Leap of Faith (GS#3), this skill is really bad (both are mobility, both have the same range, both have blind, but GS#3 actually does damage and is a leap finisher with very little more CD). Just a small change, add 1~2 stacks of burning for 3 seconds and change to be a leap finisher, there are other teleport skills that are leap finishers (mesmer staff #2 and mesmer sword #3), so I see no reason to.

Zealot’s Defense: Remove the root, if the the root is removed this skill actually could be used to attack fleeing foes or to charge aganist ranged foes. This skill already is a DPS loss if the auto is broken to be used. Second suggestion: This skill still roots, but projectiles pierce through foes.

HAMMER

Symbol of Protection: Reduce the cast time to 1 second from ~1.25. Reduce the damage of the hammer hit and symbol damage to keep the same DPS. Reason: This will make the hammer a lot more fluid, the Protection uptime increase won’t really impact and will make Symbolic Avenger trait more viable to use without Writ of Persistence trait on Hammer. This is a long time request from players.

Banish: Increase the number of targets to 3. Reason: This skill have a huge telegraph, is really easy to be avoided and only hits 1 person. I really think that this skill needs a change to be more viable and this might be the way (the skill would be still easy to dodge). With this change, this skill could actually be used to disable a group of foes and have a better role.

MACE

Faithful Strike: Reduce the cast time to 0.75 second from 1. Reduce the damage of this skil to keep the same DPS. Increase the number of foes to 3. Reason: This will make the skill more fluid and the heal would proc more often (the heal is very low).

Symbol of Faith: Reduce the cast time to 0.75~1 second from ~1.25. I don’t know the reason to Mace skills have that much cast time considering that have no gap closer or CC/soft CC. These suggestions would make the Mace less turtle and more fluid.

TORCH

Cleansing Flame: Reduce the channel time to 2.5~3 seconds from ~4.25. Right now this skill is just a DPS loss even on burning builds to be used, the channel time is just too high. In that way it would be more useful.

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Any other suggestions would be appreciated. Note that I tried avoid to buff things, but to make the skills more fluid and viable.

I posted it on reddit. I’m posting here because not everyone goes there. Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/48tjao/guardian_weapons_qol_suggestions/

Frankly I would reduce the third hammer AA to 1/2 second cast time then take a pulse off the symbol and reduce symbol damage to compensate.

The ward could also stand to be castable while moving.

Faithful strike could stand to actually scale with healing power.

Flashing blade, Put a symbol on it after landing that does damage similar to symbol of protection and grants might (10 seconds) per pulse, pulsing 3 times.

Zealot’s defense, in addition to what you said the projectiles could stand to be faster.

Scepter, Change it to a channeled beam (ala mesmer greatsword) but reduce the damage by around 10-15% to compensate for it connecting so much faster.

Wave of Wrath. Move it to the second staff slot, put it on a 3 second cool down, increase the damage and make it heal allies it passes through.
For the new staff #1 just copy paste the trident number 1 with better scaling.

My QoL changes:

• Longbow
  Symbol of Energy: It honestly just doesn’t need the burning
  Hunter’s Ward: Wards and other similar CC effects should never cull imo

• Hammer
  (AA needs more than just QoL)
  Zealot’s Embrace: Projectile moves faster
  Banish: Cast-time reduced and maybe hits 3 enemies
  Ring of Warding: Either cast-able on the move, or less “activation delay”

• Staff
  Orb of Light: Remove increased cooldown for burst and normalize cooldown to 4s

• Mace
  Faithful Strike: deals damage to 3 enemies, still only procs 1 heal (Necro/Thief dagger treatment). Probably could cast faster too.
  Symbol of Faith: Activates faster
  Protector’s Strike: Functions like Ranger Greatsword with channel and flip-skill (original skill effects remain)

• Scepter
  Smite needs to be a symbol, which requires more than QoL adjustments
  Chains of Light: I wouldn’t be opposed to a 2-5s cooldown reduction considering no trait reduced Scepter cooldowns.

• Sword
  Sword Wave: Each Sword in the animation is the center point for a small, overlapping, wave instead of projectile.
  Flashing Blade or Zealot’s Defense (likely ZD) needs to be a symbol, which requires more than QoL adjustments

• Torch
  Cleansing Flame: Might as well just make it cleanse 3 conditions on both caster and allies

The other weapons/weapon skills don’t need what I’d consider QoL changes (even some of these are barely QoL)

One thing we might want to add to the list:

increase projectile velocity of Greatsword #5 (binding blades).

Even for our weapons that work perfectly well across many scenarios, they still seem to be lacking and have out-dated features (some more than others). I really hope the devs read and consider the qol improvements in this thread. They would definitely make playing guard more fun!