Guild Wars 2

After putting so much work into getting my traits / runes / build worked out now I feel like I have to go back to the beginning… Since pre-launch I have been drawn to Guardian for the Retaliation mechanics of the class…. Now I have over 200 hours of play on a profession I’ve enjoyed but it’s dynamics have been changed. It’s been made weaker only because of what’s been observed in PvP.

Chaplin made a reference to “we’re watching Guardians and Mesmer”. Were the changes even play tested extensively in PvE settings? Did ArenaNet have players run every dungeon with the changes and see how much they hurt this profession? Or did they just decide we’ll make these changes and let the community play test it? This is my question, how does their internal process work?

It seems PvP balancing is being giving priority. I think it’s time we have PvP versions of some skills. ArenaNet had to resort to this for GW1. As much as I didn’t like it, at least things can be balanced separately.

I do not see how it’s possible that they would have had enough time to properly test these major changes in all PvE scenarios. IMO the profession has been almost ruined by this.

It seems this change is to address a structured PvP issue. People who focus on Structured PvP can roll a new character in 5- minutes and be at max level and max stat gear. They can easily choose to go a different path.

Level 80 PvE characters who’ve committed to the profession end up with changes that were made to address a pvp issue. Played focused on PvE get kittened because the balancing isn’t versioned between PvP and PvE.

I want the Guardian changed back. I want ArenaNet to explain what their process is for proving these things out before they change the (stopping the hemorrhaging in PvP because players are exploiting something is a horrible reason to retool a profession for PvE players) system. Who’s with me?

So many MMOs go through this, major class/profession overhauls in the first few months. Players get angry they leave and you know what else? They tell their friends how angry they are. They go on unmoderated websites and they vent and that’s what leads to the downfall. Players leaving and new players to scared to take the risk. Although GW2 is a free to play MMO do not underestimate a players perceived value of the time they will invest in a game. Their time is the real valuable thing and they won’t take the risk and get involved if people are that unhappy.

Major system changes/nerfs imply a failure in the beta testing. I know all this is normal with MMOs, just expected so much more with GW2. I think the major system changes we see in MMOs post launch has a lot to do with MMOs high failure rate in general.

For me it’s not about the retaliation, it just seems this was a quick solution to nerf the retaliation upkeep in general, but doing so… it had a major impact on greatsword DPS and synergy between traits especially those dealing with greatsword utility and symbols, which is what bothers me the most.

in other words, they have no idea how to balance the class.
You’re useto playing fighter???
Well… give Support a chance!! is what they really want.

I’m with you, was fine as it was.
If the changes are for PvP, make different skill sets.

Welcome to Online Games where classes will be changed constantly. I would suggest that instead of having remorse over split milk, look forward on how to play with changed skills. Skill changes/nerfs will not stop. That is the essence of moba/mmo games.

I do understand your plight but I don’t agree with you.

SportingSCP.2834:

in other words, they have no idea how to balance the class.
You’re useto playing fighter???
Well… give Support a chance!! is what they really want.

Doesn’t that negate one of the selling points of the game? I get to play how I want due to the variety of play styles allowed with each profession. If I want to be support I can be, if I don’t, then I don’t have to be. If what they really want is for me to play support then I will simply roll warrior where I can be support, fighter ranged or melee. Removing options doesn’t change how people play a profession, it will simply reduce the number of players playing that profession.

people complain about guardian because they are rough and tough to take down… meanwhile their classes has a type of burst which makes them cry they can’t burst us down… in the end it comes out the same… we’re tough with no burst, thier weaker with great burst

If you suddenly suck with a Guardian after these changes, it’s not the profession’s fault. We are indeed weakened through the changes, but they didn’t make us unplayable.

guadians will always have a soft spot for me, i always loved playing as paladins in any game. Let us be heard and we will have our fighter back

They are not nerfing guardians PvE for the sake of PvP, guardians were to usefull both in PvE and PvP.

Guardians are suppose to be guardians and that means they should protect others which they already do insanely good (I’ve seen many times people looking only for guardian specifically because they are just so good at keeping party alive).
So giving that argument, when they out-perform any other support, why should they still be able to do same or even more burst/AoE damage? This was and still is unbalanced, they change only one thing in one weapon…

What upsets me is changing my skill order….
to hell with bigger CD logic. My brain was trainned.

I’ll get used to it again, but can you imagine what will happen if they change again?

This change is very redicilous. All guardians in our guild are raging (at least the ones who logged on so far).

Personally I skilled for greater and stronger symbols + symbols healing allies. So this nerf is greatly reducing my intended build efficiency.

Why do guardians get nerfed every patch?

I demand skills being seperated for PVE and PVP like in GW1. I dont want to have any business with pvp balancing.

Having to re-jig your builds has always been an aspect of MMOs that you’ll have to deal with. I can’t count the number of times I had to re-do it in WoW, pretty much every patch.

The fact that they were going to be changing the retaliation mechanic has been known since near launch. Your continued investment in that mechanic and assumption that it wouldn’t be touched is on you, in my opinion.

Nevron.9413:

The fact that they were going to be changing the retaliation mechanic has been known since near launch. Your continued investment in that mechanic and assumption that it wouldn’t be touched is on you, in my opinion.

And the impact on Symbol builds was expected as well then? So since ret was going to be changed in the near future we should have expected it to effect many builds that weren’t based on ret as well?

If ret was the only thing changed or affected I don’t think so many would be here complaining or discussing it.

Reteliation is very weak anyway in PVE except a few niche uses. I used symbols for group healing. They could have just nerfed the reteliation duration on it, instead of the whole skill.

bartoszq.9540:

So giving that argument, when they out-perform any other support, why should they still be able to do same or even more burst/AoE damage? This was and still is unbalanced, they change only one thing in one weapon…

I agree that Guardian is very strong in support, the notion though that they out-perform other professions in burst/AE is frankly ludicrous, and wasn’t changed at all by this nerf. What has changed is their ability to buff their group with Retaliation and to maintain that boon on themselves beyond that period. It is blindingly obvious that you have never actually played a GS-traited Guardian, though perhaps you’ve been handed your hat by one in PvP and in a burst of pettiness want to see us made impractical in PvE to make up for that.

Malediktus.9250:

Reteliation is very weak anyway in PVE except a few niche uses. I used symbols for group healing. They could have just nerfed the reteliation duration on it, instead of the whole skill.

This is bang on the money.

GrayGhost.6857:

Nevron.9413:

The fact that they were going to be changing the retaliation mechanic has been known since near launch. Your continued investment in that mechanic and assumption that it wouldn’t be touched is on you, in my opinion.

And the impact on Symbol builds was expected as well then? So since ret was going to be changed in the near future we should have expected it to effect many builds that weren’t based on ret as well?

If ret was the only thing changed or affected I don’t think so many would be here complaining or discussing it.

The OP emphasized the retaliation mechanic, so that’s what I replied to.

Guardians are suppose to be guardians and that means they should protect others which they already do insanely good (I’ve seen many times people looking only for guardian specifically because they are just so good at keeping party alive)

This is where the no dedicated support design begins to break down. They know Guardian is a problem. Although they may not need them, teams are wanting them and expecting Guardian’s to spec for support…. Although it may not be the Holy Trinity, when you have a profession that’s expected to behave a certain way when in groups I would say the entire design of the game according to the philosophy stated in the manifesto fails and the design can be called broken.

The problem for ArenaNet is, this is exactly how they designed Guardian. Now they are going to go nerf crazy to try and change the profession at launch to fix this… What does that leave the Guardian as? A shell of what it was originally envisioned to be?

This should have been worked out in beta

SamTheGuardian you are wrong. What I meant was that the guardians were both great supporters and DPS which was bad, and now they had to choose what they want to do. Many classes can support you, but in other ways, and guardian supporting was to simple to do.

the guardian as the names says it is suppose the guard and protect but the only weapon which could let it to be a fighter and be useful alone is now ruined because of some pvp thing. arena net must change it back because the greatsword is not to protect its suppose to do dps and now we cant fight good without the bad skill management.

You can still trait for symbols and use the hammer. Getting high crit and Arcristic (whatever it’s called). Healing trait. You do decent damage and have crazy survivability.

But I am just as kitten as everyone else, instead of buffing/ fixing major problems with each class they are nerfing things that didn’t seem like an issue or were not op (they seem for pvp focused). I have been reading in all the class forums and its universal that everyone’s kitten (except warrior which seems to be not op in Anets mind.....seriously?). For Christ sake the elementalist got nerfed.... the class that needs the most work.

Anet, you are pissing of the gw2 community and you need to start heading in the right direction or your fan base will go to another game

From Honduras u got all my support sam.

Anet, it would make much more sense to raise up perceived weak classes than to nerf perceived strong classes.

This way any change made in response to relentless sPvP whine would not adversely affect the other areas of the game where the vast majority of players reside.

At the very least please return to asking yourself ‘Is it Fun?’ once more before making these changes.

Why do people keep thinking about high DPS and high crit? I use Power/Vit/Toughness gear and it limits damage quite a bit. And not everyone wants to use a hammer. Its hard to find a decent hammer skin. Was already hard enough to find a greatsword skin I liked.

SamTheGuardian.2938:

So many MMOs go through this, major class/profession overhauls in the first few months. Players get angry they leave and you know what else? They tell their friends how angry they are. They go on unmoderated websites and they vent and that’s what leads to the downfall.

No. Not at all.

Let’s be frank here: people will rage about any change that Anet makes. People will rage at any change that Anet doesn’t make. I can go to every profession board, right this moment, and find several threads that:

1. Proclaim that this profession is the weakest in X.
2. Proclaim that the changes in this patch were stupid and buffed Y theoretically overpowered profession.
3. Proclaim that their profession has no identity.
4. Proclaim that Anet sucks because they didn’t fix certain bugs to their profession.
5. In the next thread under, proclaim that Z profession is overpowered and needs to be nerfed. Even though in their board they think they’re the weakest.

I’ve seen many, many MMOs in my time. I’ve been playing these things since DAoC. And you know what? People will rage about anything. Ultimately? It doesn’t matter. If you go rage on a third-party forum, it’s not going to make two flips to the success or downfall of a game. If that were the case, World of Warcraft would have been crushed under the bile of its own fanbase a long, long time ago.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t provide feedback. You most certainly should. However, such feedback is best done when presented in a mature, rational fashion. Raging isn’t going to do anything, nor are ineffectual threats to their success.

I know, lots of people hate the hammer and even though I use it I feel to needs to be changed to make it more fun, but do the same dps

For the skins I have to agree….wtf? Why do they all look so dull