Guild Wars 2

First of all the purpose for this topic is to suggest some changes for guardians. I have looked around the forum and try to collect some of them.
It could be debated whether or not this belongs to the suggestion sub-forum, though I like to keep it profession-specific, and try to avoid too much trolling.

First of all I can say that I got a lvl 80 guardian, so I have played on it for awhile, I do not got the same experience as Brutaly, nor the knowledge as Amins or the dedication to builds like Harbringer.
But I think I got a few good points..
Feel free to discuss them, and please do explain your criticism. And feel free to ask, might not go too much into details to keep a long text a bit shorter.

Changes and the like

Weapon set
Two-handed
Hammer
info I find hammer to be a fine weapon all in all, with both group support and high dmg, and the best is a low CD blast-finisher on demand. Still it could us a bit love.
Auto-attack Wiki set it to two times ½second cast plus 1,25 on the last one which would be 2,25 seconds, but in fact it is more like 3,7 seconds. I like this to be on par with Greatsword, I know it is a powerful combo to lay down a symbol with only 3,7 second CD, but it does not feel so fluid in combat as Greatsword .
Lower this to the listed seconds.
Mighty Blow If anything remove the leap, else fine as it is.
Zealot’s Embrace I love having a 1200 ranged attack that immobilize in a line, a possible tweak would be 600-900 range and a cone.
Banish Fair CD for a good knockdown, nothing to add
Ring of Warding Did you see the staff change? Give this the same change or make it instant to justify the CD. ( after watching Amins vid, I might rethink this suggestion)

Greatsword
Honestly, even after the nerf I have nothing to add.. great aoe, with a buff on auto, retaliation on demand, leap finisher and a aoe ranged pull.

Staff
Staff did get better after the change to warding.
Flash of light Add combo finisher: blast to this again to justify the CD.
Symbol of swiftness Could add cripple for more utility without traits

One-handed
Mace
Very inexperienced here, feel free to come with input, so far as I know it is great for survivalbility.

Scepter
Our best range weapon, but frankly this could use a tweak or two.
Auto Attack Slow orbs can be a problem, but great in close range, this could be balanced with a smite animation and let a bolt of lightning strike the foe within its range.
Smite Great damage, but make it a symbol, lower the attacks to 8 instead of 15, and make it like other aoes.

Sword
Great for single target damage, fast and in most cases reliable.
Auto attack The last strike should not be able to be reflected.
Flashing Blade would like a range of 900, and being able to use it without a target.
Zealot’s defense Remove the root and the fact that your missiles can be reflected.

Off-hand
Focus
Really very good in my honest opinion, adds finisher till your main-hand though on a high CD, but still.

Shield
What no block?
Shield of judgment Block the next incoming attacks for3 seconds and add protection to 5 people within 600 range.
Shield of Absorption Lower CD to 30sec to reflect the similarity of Refraction

Torch
More burning!
Zealot’s Flame now activates inner fire
Zealot’s Fire act as a blast-finisher, stop me if this is too OP
Cleansing Flame Lower the damage (10x) 846, add burning 2s 125.
Aquatic
Really don’t venture underwater if I can avoid it.
But feel free to come with tweaks.

Now that was the weapons, I tried to tweak it accordingly to my experience with warriors, engineers, thieves and elementalists. Now for our beloved traits, 0/5/30/30/5 anyone?

Zeal
-adds power and condition damage
minor traits
Zealot’s speed a few posts talked about the name and the utility, well change the name. Or better change it to Writ of Exaltation
Symbolic Exposure Feels good enough
Symbolic power increase the damage of symbols, though I would like to see it increase it a bit more.
Major traits
Revenge of the fallen Never liked traits that says you should be downed.. but no idea to what to replace it with.
Spirit weapon Masteryfaster recharge time and add 10% more damage, remove Wrathful spirit.
Eternal spirit becomes a grandmaster and add Improved spirit weapon duration
Zealous blade include Greatsword power
add master trait Hammer deals 10% more damage when you are under the effect of a boon.

Radiance
-adds Precision and condition damage, removed condition damage though it fits to burning add critical damage
Minor traits
Surprisingly good in my opinion.
Major traits
Searing firereduce Cd to 10-15sec
A fire inside Make it a Adept
Shimmering defense Remove add master Empowering might
Empowering might Remove 1sec internal CD.
Powerful blades Reduce CD on sword and spear with 20% as well.
Perfect inscription Remove (yeah I know it is good with healing signet) replaced with*Glacial heart*
Glacial heart Lower internal CD to 15secs. And the symbol linger for longer.

Valor
Do I really need to mingle with something soo good?
Well maybe a bit. First of all add boon duration instead of critical damage
Minor traits
Great tbh.
Major traits
Strength of the fallen Fuse it with revenge of the fallen
Strength in numbers makes it 200 toughness, or at least 100.
Mace of justice add lower CD by 15%.
Altruistic Healing Really want to add something about group healing here, just to make it group supportive like Amins talked about, though it would be OP.

Honor
Another great trait line.
Minor traits
No suggestions
Major traits
Pure Heart Agies grants protection on removal.
Two-handed Mastery I would like to see it moved down to adept, though that might be too powerful.
Writs of persistence and Writs of the merciful merged.
Honorable Reach Improve the range of scepter and staff.
Battle Presence add Absolute Resolution’s passive effect, though not the condition removal.

Virtue
I feel like these last trait lines are gimmicks, tricks and such.. no mandatory really.
Minor Traits
Inspired Virtue change this to be implanted in virtues without it, these should instead create a combo field when activating your virtues:
Justice : Combo field fire 4sec, burning as well?
Resolve : Combo field water 4sec, regen?
Courage : Combo field light? We got sooo much light, Ethereal would have been cooler.. but not very guardian like.
Power of the Virtuous I feel like this is kinda weak, since it demands 25 skillpoints and only add 1% per boon, maybe 1,5 or 2%?

Major Traits
Retaliatory Subconscious gain retaliation for 4 secs and create a Shield of Absorption Whenever you are daze, stunned, knock down, knock back, feared. Remain CD, how to justify it, well I look on others professions trait, though you shouldn’t^^.
Improved spirit weapon duration removed, silly name.
The virtue of chance 25% chance on critical strikes to gain a random boon.
Absolute Resolution Change to Virtue of patience Removes up to three conditions. The passive effect gets stronger the longer you sit with conditions.

Well some might be op, other just nonsense:) But leave a comment, I can always edit.
Inspired Virtue
Virtues
People claim that they are not as useful as other special abilities and often it is better to sit on the passive effect. So the tweak is to add the effect from
Justice 25CD, not far from current CD when traited, grants 3 stack might to you plus 5 people upon activation for 6secs.
Resolve 40CD, Grants regeneration to all in the group, renew upon using a heal skill.
Courage 60CD, grants protection to all in the group.

Utilities
Healing
Healing Breeze There have been lots of suggestions here, like making it an aura, or being able to get swiftness and run around and heal people.
Shelter Works fine with the block traits.
Signet of Resolve Really good in my opinion, even untraited.
Utilities again
Merciful Intervention where to begin with this one, first the heal is weak, the teleport random, and in my experience it often bug. My idea would make it ground target/personal, so you could either target a friend to teleport to his location and heal or just to a random place (mobility escape).
Add break stun and reduce CD to 45secs.
Sanctuary too bad they nerfed the size, but lets reduce the CD to 90secs or less.
Signet of Mercy Ihate mot of these.

Elites
Feel like two tomes are overkill.. and with no dedicated healer, and a huge heal skill in courage, I think removing it would be okay. Add stability though. Nothing worse than be chained CC using an elite:)

I most add higher healthpool cause this has been discussed as well.
At least un par with the mesmers, engineers etc.. if they can have two professions with highest HP, they can have two with lowest as well:D

I just read the first page, and so far the majority of the things you are asking for are not needed and would make the Guardian profession just too strong.

Hammer is a very powerful weapon right now. The conal immobilize you are suggesting is just way too OP. Ring of Warding is almost perfect how it is. Only issue I have with it is the ease of which people can get out of / through it.
EDIT – Didn’t notice the suggested range reduction with your change to Zealot’s Embrace. I think if you lowered the range even further than 600 – almost melee range – it wouldn’t bee too strong, but I still don’t think the change is necessary

Sword has many ranged projectiles, so why shouldn’t people be able to reflect them back to us as they would with any other ranged projectile. Flashing Blade would be nice to use without a target, but I do like how pro I feel when I use it to escape by targeting a mob far away. I do think it’s damage should be significantly increased though.

If you gave shield a block – especially a timed duration block – there would be absolutely no reason to use the focus. The shield already provides passive defense just by equipping it, and can be traited to provide passive toughness as well. Allowing it to do the same – or better based on your suggestion – as focus would make the latter obsolete.

Your torch suggestions are kinda hard to follow. I think it’s pretty balanced as is, though Zealot’s Flame active is kinda unreliable.

Scepter is the only weapon that needs some significant changes

I would also like to say that posts like this, even though they can provide interesting ideas and nice feedback, are almost always ignored by ANet. It requires a tremendous uproar from the players to get ANet to even consider a proposed change, and even then you are more likely to see a change to something completely unrelated to what was being requested.

cough bunker ele / spirit weapons cough

That said, I can’t really blame them. If they made changes based on each individual suggestion who knows where the games balance would be right now.

Thank you for you feedback, balancing profession is not my, strongest side:)
Well about the warding, yeah remove the fun gimmick about you being able to jump over it or dodge through it:/

I on the other hand do not share the same opinions as you:) I find that hammer really feels stiff to use, and with wrong tooltips, tsk tsk.

They might ignorer it, it is completely up to them, I seen company such as Blizzard being slow to react to other than QQ’s, but it is up to them what they decide and a totally different issue;)

a lot of good stuff here. a lot of OP stuff as well. ; )) but do appreciate the time you put into this.

tooltips though, that’s not an “issue” exclusive to the hammer though. a lot of the in-game tooltips are misleading or are just wrong. the hammer i feel is in a great spot so far. the only change would really again be on RoW. would love to be able to use it on the move, but not instant cast. though i guess either or.

and yes would love to fix merciful intervention so some may actually use it in combat. ; ))

one question, you mentioend radiance line should add crit dmg? a lot of people would solely focus on radiance line regardless of traits just to get 300 precision and 30% crit dmg. i kind of like how it’s spread out now so you haev to give and take to get a good crit chance and dmg rate.

Some interesting ideas there.

Overall, I think weapon changes aren’t a priority, nor are the base stats like HP. Every weapon has a use and the lower base stats are made up for with intrinsic healing ability. I do wish that GS was a little more focused.

I would like some rethinks on some trait stats and the traits themselves.

1. The bonus to trait recharge isn’t very useful if you want to run passive virtues for Virtue
2. Valour traitline is too hard to get away from.
3. Zeal isn’t general enough to benefit more builds.

I think adjusting traits would go a long way to improving the variety and appeal of Guardian gameplay.

Ahh I see just wanted to make the Zeal and rasiance trees more interesting for people.. I know you don’t have to run valor/ honour:b
I know every tree got it advantages, but more toughness, crit dmg, heal on buff, more health, faster 2h combo and might to the whole group on crit… It is just nice!

Yeah the weapons probably don’t need a big teak, and yeah hate that MI is soo bugged… Please make i ground target.. Maybe even leave a little water field where you teleport to:D that would make my day^^ super healing on demand with hammer + MI combo

Vitu.3580:

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If you gave shield a block – especially a timed duration block – there would be absolutely no reason to use the focus. The shield already provides passive defense just by equipping it, and can be traited to provide passive toughness as well. Allowing it to do the same – or better based on your suggestion – as focus would make the latter obsolete.

i would love the change to shield and use it on one set and focus on the other…

sword/shield + mace/focus + retreat + VoC would be OP in terms of block/mitigation in pve and in bunkering down… guard would truley be a facetank.

10 blocks + 3 blinds (5 in radiance) + renewed focus + shelter would lead to rotation where you can avoid being hit even once – even without the blinds you can facetank champs and wittle them down while constantly healing.

we are already very close to that – 3 more blocks would be insane….

shield does need some love though… i really do not like that weapon

Yeah maybe just lower the cooldown a bit or something.. Seems like awefull little you get for those high CD.
Also a tweak to the hammer could be increasing Banish damage to huge number, or well just to be a damage dealing ability.. So when you are up against champions or the like you would sit and think " should I do Mighty Blow now for a combo-finisher og give huge amount of damage with Banish the it can be ready again" or well you get the point,, just a few more skills to play with outside pvp^^