Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone.

First off, I want to make it clear that I main a guardian (though perhaps not for much longer), so what I write in this post might seem a bit biased or even one-sided, but I’m making every effort to be objective and consider how upcoming changes not only affect guardians, but also other classes as well. In saying that, I welcome any contrasting views to my own that might help me see the situation in a different or better light. I also want to make note of the fact that my guardian’s build would probably be considered very unconventional relative to the perceived norms, and this forms part of the reason I feel frustrated with the upcoming changes.

First, I’ll post my guardians build here:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vUAQNArfcnkIS1Q2NEuDBNRmIseAwD6vqCx76BEjYDB-zwBB4fCikFgEBBKRtIastBFRjVXDT7iIqGA-e

Basically, the build is a meditation build that focuses on a high crit rate and damage with one handed weapons, namely the sword and scepter. The meditations themselves are useful for their heals and condition removal, in addition to the fact that they give fury when used, which helped out the damage a bit. With right handed strength and fury, I could get up to a 78% crit chance (not including any food used). I also found litany of wrath benefits nicely from fury, because it makes the heals fromm damage that much better and, if timed right, it wasn’t hard to get my health up to max from near death just with that skill alone (provided I made the most of the time needed to damage enemies, it also works better on grouped enemies).

I also use burning (with traits for 20% extra damage to burning foes) and vulnerability from blinds to supplement the damage, with blinds also being refreshed after kills for more defense and vulnerability.

All-in-all, it felt like a decent build with good damage and good survivability, and I was using it in fractals and dungeons without too many issues. I know people generally look down on builds that don’t use shouts or consecrations exclusively, but I don’t like the idea of being bottle-necked into one kind of build just because of narrow public perceptions. I’ve often been berated for not having shouts when I’m in a party, even though I personally feel they’re highly overrated, especially in higher level fractals, but I guess that’s just how things are.

However, with the upcoming changes to guardians and crit damage as a whole, my build, especially with my current gear load out, will pretty much be rendered obsolete while bunker builds, which already seem to be a staple among guardians, are focused on even more by the devs, to the point where I feel like we’re being bottlenecked into using them in the same way eles are bottlenecked into going for water, arcane builds.

In addition to that, guardian support builds are becoming increasingly underwhelming compared to the support other classes will be able to offer after the new patch is released – in particular engineers, elementalists and warriors – and it’s really killing my desire to play it as a main.

I’ll list some of the issues I have in a more concise manner.

1: SUPPORT

I think a lot of people have considered guardians to be one of the best support classes for a very long time, and I don’t think it was far-fetched to assume that any guardian in your party should, at the very least, be carrying a staff or be using shouts or consecrations. However, with how the game has steered towards a zerker meta in PvE, with players favoring damage over defense, I actually find guardian support abilities to be close to useless in most situations. With the upcoming patch, the gap is being widened even further with the warriors new trait that allows them to give might to allies whenever they themselves gain might.

“Tactics: Phalanx Strength – When you grant yourself might, grant it to nearby allies as well. 6s of might is granted each time this trait triggers. (It works with blast finishers)”

With a warriors inherent ability to easily attain a 100% crit rate, and with traits that give them might on crit with a greatsword, it’s not hard to imagine that a greatsword warrior would easily be able to sustain up to 25 stacks of might for an entire party on his own. That coupled with banners that have a large aoe (1200 range), a long duration and that are easy to maneuver around for parties, will, in my opinion, make warriors a far more desirable support class than guardians.

Guardian shouts, on the other hand, suffer from long cooldowns, short durations and a small aoe (600 range), which often means you fail to buff allies in battles where your party tends to spread out more, which happens a lot in fractals. Even their staff skill, empower, suffers from a similarly short range.

NO LOVE FOR ONE-HANDED WEAPONS

As my time in Tyria has marched on, I’ve noticed an increasingly smaller amount of guardians playing with one-handed weapons, especially the sword, torch, shield and mace. I think most new guardians tend to try them out and in theory, they look like good weapons on paper, but after using them practically, most tend to deviate to the staff, hammer and greatsword, with maybe a scepter/focus as an alt purely for the sake of ranged damage and defense when needed.

It’s easy to understand why though, when you consider the staff, greatsword and hammer offer combo fields and finishers, group buffs, control, healing and have a lot more synergy with guardian traits.

BUILD VARIETY

Here are the upcoming grand master traits that will be available to guardians in the next patch.

Zeal: Amplified Wrath- Burning damage is increased by 33%
Radiance: Radiant Retaliation – Retaliation Damage scales from condition damage instead of power
Valor: Communal Defenses – Grant 5s of aegis to allies in 360 range when you block an attack. 20s cooldown.
Honor: Force of Will – Gain up to 300 vitality, based on your level. (around 3k HP at level 80)
Virtues: Purity of Body – Resolve’s passive effects increase endurance regeneration by 15%

So far as I can see, every single one of these changes favors a guardian bunker build and does little to improve the severely neglected weapons or potential builds that many guardians have long since given up on. It’s almost certain we’ll see more guardians stacking toughness, vitality and condition damage gear, especially in wvw or sPvP, while using a greatsword or hammer to stack retaliation/protection to use in conjunction with burning to outlast and defeat their enemies.

Sure, it’s nice to see potential burning builds finally getting some attention, but in my opinion, these traits only offer more variations to bunker builds, which seems to be the only thing the guardian might be good for anymore. No attention was given to the largely ignored spirit weapons, or to the virtually abandoned guardian weapon classes, such as the mace or sword.

Of course, guardians aren’t the only class suffering from this issue. I also feel that thieves are also being bottlenecked into stealth builds even more with their new traits, but I’m sure there will be plenty of thief players (or even their victims), who’d be more than willing to cover that particular detail.

IN CLOSING

With the severe crit nerf to Celestial gear and zerker trinkets in particular, my particular gear and trait combination will see me losing a very large amount of crit damage, to the point of being obscene (with celestial armor and zerker/valkyrie trinkets losing around half of their crit damage, while traits lose about a third).

Considering how my build relies very much on a high crit rate and damage value for my dps, this nerf will essentially render my build, and my current gear load-out, next to useless, while offering little compensation. Right now, I’d probably be much better off with soldier’s, dire or carrion gear. Then again, I’d probably just be better off switching to another class now.

I feel really sorry for other players who, like me, have tried hard to come up with other viable guardians builds outside the norms only to be shot down for their efforts.

I also really hope Anet gives us a one-time gear stat change option, because I’ve spent months crafting ascended celestial armor, my legendary (meteorlogicus) and getting all ascended trinkets (including a fully upgraded Fractal Capacitor), so these changes really irk me beyond belief. More than that, they’ve somewhat destroyed my build and left me feeling really disheartened about playing, knowing I’ll have to spend even more time gearing for a new build, either on my guardian or on another class. What would be better, of course, would be for other build and weapon options to become more viable, but as things are, things are looking rather one-dimensional for guardians.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

However, with the upcoming changes to guardians and crit damage as a whole, my build, especially with my current gear load out, will pretty much be rendered obsolete while bunker builds, which already seem to be a staple among guardians, are focused on even more by the devs, to the point where I feel like we’re being bottlenecked into using them in the same way eles are bottlenecked into going for water, arcane builds.

In addition to that, guardian support builds are becoming increasingly underwhelming compared to the support other classes will be able to offer after the new patch is released – in particular engineers, elementalists and warriors – and it’s really killing my desire to play it as a main.

I have to disagree:

On your obsolete build: The ferocity change will not impact your builds as much as you think. The added traits do not change the effectiveness of your current builds. I think you’re worried but with little reason.

Other class support: Guardian as a class will still be one of the most desired for teaming. ‘Sharing’ support roles with other classes not only means everyone has more access to roles (good for the game in general) but that YOU can also be supported by THEM more often.

While some of the specifics you mention might be relevant concerns, they aren’t related to the upcoming patch.

Obtena.7952:

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

However, with the upcoming changes to guardians and crit damage as a whole, my build, especially with my current gear load out, will pretty much be rendered obsolete while bunker builds, which already seem to be a staple among guardians, are focused on even more by the devs, to the point where I feel like we’re being bottlenecked into using them in the same way eles are bottlenecked into going for water, arcane builds.

In addition to that, guardian support builds are becoming increasingly underwhelming compared to the support other classes will be able to offer after the new patch is released – in particular engineers, elementalists and warriors – and it’s really killing my desire to play it as a main.

I have to disagree:

On your obsolete build: The ferocity change will not impact your builds as much as you think. The added traits do not change the effectiveness of your current builds. I think you’re worried but with little reason.

Other class support: Guardian as a class will still be one of the most desired for teaming. ‘Sharing’ support roles with other classes not only means everyone has more access to roles (good for the game in general) but that YOU can also be supported by THEM more often.

While some of the specifics you mention might be relevant concerns, they aren’t related to the upcoming patch.

I’m not saying the ferocity change as a whole has killed my build, but rather, how it changes my gear in particular. To put things in perspective, you need to consider that as crit stats currently are, trinkets offer more crit damage relative to their other stats, than armor or weapons do. However, once ferocity is brought in line with the other stats, trinkets will lose a lot more crit damage than other gear types.

Similarly, Celestial armor also had much higher crit values relative to its other stats, than other types of armor did, even higher than zerker armor in fact. So, by using celestial armor and zerker trinkets, I’m suffering a much higher crit damage loss than I would have, had my gear loadout been different (e.g. If I had zerker armor, and celestial or soldier’s trinkets).

So yes, my current build based on my gear loadout, is kitten, because other gear loadouts can achieve better results. I write that off to poor initial balance on Anet’s part.

As for my concerns about actual build variety, they still stand, because rather than buffing weaker build or weapon options, Anet is instead focusing on buffing already popular play styles (like guardian bunker builds), thus causing what I see to be a bottleneck as far as build play variety goes. Because of the nerf to crit damage, sword guardians (as an example) will look even less desirable now, because the sword is purely a damage based weapon and damage as a whole is being nerfed, while the greatsword, on the other hand, still offers enough support and sustainability, to remain viable despite the damage nerfs.

The easiest way to solve this would be to give weapons like the sword, scepter or torch more utility to offset the loss in damage, or, at the very least, more synergies with traits.

I agree with Obtena. You’re worried about nothing. Bunker builds will not go into Radiance or Zeal for anything. At most, you’ll see hybrid builds that make use of the burning or the Retal or both but nothing too crazy.

We haven’t yet seen the full scope of the changes so we have to wait till the patch notes come out, then we can really talk about what’s going to happen.

Ferocy wyll decrease the total amount of a berserker build critical damage by arount 10-15%, not all that chance. And they say that the celestiol equipment obtain increased stats to be more usefull.
Abount support, you’ve not a support build, then you don’t need to think abount that, right? live happy, you’re a “useless” guardian anyway :-D
You’r only support skill is the tome, useless in almost all the situations. You can use it in some dungeons or wvsw, but only sometime.

Abount tanking, the guardian is the best bunker/supporter class, and if some other classes gain the skills to support ally you can be happy about that: you’re no more the only idiot that fight to keep your ally alive while they play like mindless berserkers and make your life kitten
ly the Warrior can be a good alternative to the guardian, but a warrior don’t give the defensive support ability that guardian give.
And actually, the best healer is the mesmer, whit 3k hp every 3 sec. But you will never see a mesmer healer because no one want to use a build like that whit a mesmer XD

New Traits (for what we actually know, because new trait changes will be revealed) give to the guardian some ability but my build (supporter) don’t give nothing usefull by that trait changes. I’ve my build and that build don’t change whit that new traits. I don’t see more chances to be a good dps whit that new Grand Master traits and don’t see the chance to be a Condition Damage Dealer, because you can increase the burn damage by 33%, but you can’t inflict the damage of Necro, Ranger or other classes that inflict more than only one condition at time. Necro and Ranger inflict a very high CD because they give you burn, poison and XX stack of bleed in lesser than 2 sec. That make them inflict more than 1800 damage x second just by condition damage, reducing your healing and giving you conditions like crippling, chill and weakness. If you inflict 800 damage x second whit fire… yeah… good… you’re a useless condition damage build.

That new traits don’t give me nothing new to try.

Don’t worry, be happy, nothing big is changing for us, little poor guardians!

Silv.9207:

Ferocy wyll decrease the total amount of a berserker build critical damage by arount 10-15%, not all that chance. And they say that the celestiol equipment obtain increased stats to be more usefull.
Abount support, you’ve not a support build, then you don’t need to think abount that, right? live happy, you’re a “useless” guardian anyway :-D
You’r only support skill is the tome, useless in almost all the situations. You can use it in some dungeons or wvsw, but only sometime.

Abount tanking, the guardian is the best bunker/supporter class, and if some other classes gain the skills to support ally you can be happy about that: you’re no more the only idiot that fight to keep your ally alive while they play like mindless berserkers and make your life kittenly the Warrior can be a good alternative to the guardian, but a warrior don’t give the defensive support ability that guardian give.
And actually, the best healer is the mesmer, whit 3k hp every 3 sec. But you will never see a mesmer healer because no one want to use a build like that whit a mesmer XD

New Traits (for what we actually know, because new trait changes will be revealed) give to the guardian some ability but my build (supporter) don’t give nothing usefull by that trait changes. I’ve my build and that build don’t change whit that new traits. I don’t see more chances to be a good dps whit that new Grand Master traits and don’t see the chance to be a Condition Damage Dealer, because you can increase the burn damage by 33%, but you can’t inflict the damage of Necro, Ranger or other classes that inflict more than only one condition at time. Necro and Ranger inflict a very high CD because they give you burn, poison and XX stack of bleed in lesser than 2 sec. That make them inflict more than 1800 damage x second just by condition damage, reducing your healing and giving you conditions like crippling, chill and weakness. If you inflict 800 damage x second whit fire… yeah… good… you’re a useless condition damage build.

That new traits don’t give me nothing new to try.

Don’t worry, be happy, nothing big is changing for us, little poor guardians!

To be honest, players like you are the kind I dislike the most. Instead of giving your opinion in a constructive, helpful way, you choose to be condescending and resort to insults. I don’t mind people disagreeing with me and I don’t mind conceding to points that I feel are relevant and disprove my own assessments, but I will never respect someone who approaches this kind of discussion with such a childish demeanour.

Firstly, I’d like to point out that I’m not a mindless berserker. In fact, I think the term itself is inaccurate, because to play with a pure zerker class with low survivability, actually takes a lot of skill, far more than playing as a pure tank build where you can take more hits and where healing comes easily. Sure, you do get zerkers who die over and over again because they can’t handle the glassiness, but you also get skilled players who are a true boon to their allies. What matters most, is the player behind the build.

Secondly, just because I am not currently playing as a support build, that doesn’t mean that I haven’t played as one. In fact, I do have gear in my bank for such a build and I have used it from time to time. The only reason I stopped using it is because I found that at higher level fractals, support, especially of the defensive kind, becomes increasingly less helpful, especially when enemies start one-shotting players regardless of defensive buffs and where evasion, blinds and blocks are far more useful. Guardian offensive support is also not as good as some of the other classes. As for healing, I never actually mentioned that specifically, so I’m not sure why you had to bring up the whole “mesmers are the best healers” argument in the first place.

In saying all that, I don’t purely stick to meditations in dungeons or fractals, and do switch to wall of reflect or shield of the avenger when necessary. I’m not saying guardians are useless at support, just that I think a lot of their support options, especially shouts, are overrated and that other classes offer better alternatives.

In the end, I just feel that Anet is trying to force another variation on an already existing play style with these guardian updates. I never said players will actually adapt to that variation and I personally believe most guardians would be hard-pressed to give up other grandmaster traits like Altruistic healing, just to get more burn damage. But then, if all we’re getting are traits that no-one is going to use, while existing, underpowered weapons and traits are still being ignored rather than rebalanced, then really, what do I have to be happy about?

I would test your build in reality before giving up on it. You use quite a lot celestial stats. This means you will have more power and precision after the feature pack, This means your base damage and your crit chance is slightly increased. In addition sigil of fire will trigger approx. twice as often as before. It will trigger now even on monsters you can’t crit at all. The loss of overall damage will be less than expected.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

I’m not saying the ferocity change as a whole has killed my build, but rather, how it changes my gear in particular.

But that’s the point … the change is absolute but the real impact is relative. There should be no change to your gear if you understand what this change means for all gear. Zerkers will still be top damage; it’s why you choose it and that reasoning is still valid.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

As for my concerns about actual build variety, they still stand, because rather than buffing weaker build or weapon options, Anet is instead focusing on buffing already popular play styles (like guardian bunker builds), thus causing what I see to be a bottleneck as far as build play variety goes. Because of the nerf to crit damage, sword guardians (as an example) will look even less desirable now, because the sword is purely a damage based weapon and damage as a whole is being nerfed, while the greatsword, on the other hand, still offers enough support and sustainability, to remain viable despite the damage nerfs.

That concern always existed, even prior to this incoming patch. It’s not related to a loss of crit damage because again, it’s relative; all weapons will have an equal decrease in damage because of ferocity implementation.

I just can’t understand where you are coming from. Because the ferocity change is a general decrease in damage for gear with crit damage stat, nothing really significant happens. The damage output gaps close for the various gear families but the rank between those families are really unlikely to change. No reason to rethink your gear at all.