Guild Wars 2

It’s all been said before, but melee heavy class needs more tools to melee. Don’t want to make us carbon copies of other classes? Fine. Make us the melee class with less duration on snares, but more powerful snares. Let us chill folks a bit more.

Easiest fix? Glacial Heart should work with all weapon types, and should have a 2s duration on a 10s cooldown. Then, folks who want to invest in one of the 2 different chill sigils for their weapon can get a little bit more chill uptime (still subject to all normal condition removals, so it’s not massively game breaking). With Glacial Heart, the chill on crit sigil, a Guardian could get maybe 4s out of 10s worth of Chill duration, enough for a few attack chains between defense moves and tumbling around.

…besides, I know you want a sword that shoots both fire and ice. We all do. Let’s see if we can’t make this happen.

All in favor?

While I agree Glaicial heart is kinda…lackluster, 2 sec chill every (possible) 10s is way too strong. As is giving it to every weapon…

Topher.1684:

While I agree Glaicial heart is kinda…lackluster, 2 sec chill every (possible) 10s is way too strong. As is giving it to every weapon…

Moving it from 16.6% up time to 20% up time makes it too strong? Just out of curiosity, what duration would be balanced, in your view? 1 second per 10 seconds, IF you got it to proc everytime the ICD was up?

And if you’re not in favor of making this applicable to other weapon types, do you think that there should be alternative snare options for Sword/Mace/GreatSword users, or do you think that it’s a tool those weapon sets don’t need access to?

What, in your opinion, would be the balanced version of this trait?

I like alot of you’re ide’s but with that being said. A long time ago in a different galaxy Guardians were more about burn, then someone though we needed a CC “we do”. However i don’t think it feels that much like a guardian to chill people.
And it is really not worth 20 traits for the current one we have. I would like if they invested more on our Burn and made it more viable and fun, as burning someone then chilling them only to burn them again feels slightly wrong.

My opinion though.

You have to admit though Perikittenor that our ability to keep targets in melee is rather limited.

If no one feels chill, they could change it to a slightly shorter duration immobolize on crit. (Holy chains/brand binding you to one spot.)

I’m tempted to say that they should move it to the Radiance (Zeal for duration?) tree and add as a Grandmaster ability “Deal X% more (straight? condition?) damage to chilled(immobilized if changed), enemies.”*

*Some self interest may apply.

Thanks Kai. That’s primarily what I’m looking to discuss here.

My thought process was this: Most Guardians are hankering for some kind of way to stay on top of a target in sPvP, and the other melee classes are already crippling and immobilizing all over the place.

How do you give us some limited access to a much needed tool without making our class feel exactly like the others? Chill seemed like the obvious answer to me. I mean, it’s more powerful than cripple, but we’d trade duration for effectiveness.

A warrior with a sword can already keep cripple up with just his charge ability and autoattacks for 75% of the time, and that’s if he has no condition duration or modifying traits, etc. My proposal gives us a potential 20% chill up time, that we need to invest a trait to get access to. It makes our methods different, gives us an additional much needed condition (each condition in our tool belt makes it that much harder to cleanse a burn application), and the devs are already talking about reworking this trait anyway.

To me, this is the most elegant solution. Let’s do it this way so that we don’t derail the thread massively.

Are you, as Guardians, in favor of chill becoming our snare of choice (even if you aren’t particularly in favor of the method above)?

How do you feel about this proposed modification to Glacial Heart? If you’re not a fan, what would you do to this trait, if anything?

Do you have other opinions about the Guardian’s need for some kind of snare, at least as it pertains to melee focused Guardians in sPvP?

Indeed i never said we have good cc abilitys. They are infact terrible and i like the ide. Only dislike the “Chill” part of it, as i’ve stated why above.

Lord Rheios.4152:

If no one feels chill, they could change it to a slightly shorter duration immobolize on crit. (Holy chains/brand binding you to one spot.)

I’m tempted to say that they should move it to the Radiance (Zeal for duration?) tree and add as a Grandmaster ability “Deal X% more (straight? condition?) damage to chilled(immobilized if changed), enemies.”*

*Some self interest may apply.

That’s an interesting idea. Radiant Restraint. They could absolutely use the animation from the scepter immobilize, and it might appeal to people more who don’t like the idea of using both chill and fire (I’m a fan, but I can see how some people might find them contrasting).

If the devs showed up here, pouring out of a magical genie’s lamp, and wanted to grant all of our wishes, how would we propose such a trait should be balanced? I do feel that 2s on a 10s timer is reasonable for chill, but I can’t tell if it’d be OP as an immobilize. At the same time, 1s on 10s still seems weak to me. What say you?

Glacial Heart won’t ever be exciting for PVE because it’s not Vuln, Might or Fury. All the other conditions are useless or situational for Guardian PVE, including chill.

I disagree Obtena. I’d find chill or immobolize to both be very interesting options and ones I’d try out if they trait-ed properly for me. To be fair though I’m not highly invested in optimization for things like speed runs and such. More like optimization towards specific RP based concepts.

I think Chill can be really cool and plays towards a concept of an order focused and controlling enforcer of justice. Something about that just screams chilling opponents to me. And that’s all I need. I’d be using it now, save its down a tree I honestly didn’t expect it to be + its unrealistic current penalties. (would agree on all weapons at the very least.)

(Mechanically however, it doesn’t synergize with much outside of just keeping people put/slowing skill regen, which may hurt its usage. The concept of immobolize might appeal to other people more because it’d work with the Vulnerability stacking from immobolize in the Zeal tree, I think.)

I get how chill is ‘neat’ but it’s a very situational condition for PVE and therefore, hardly worth traiting for. Even if it applied chill on a mob with no cooldown at all (i.e. constant chill application), I’m not sure it would be worth taking for PVE.

On the other hand, Vuln, Might and Fury are good always because you can always use damage.

I have no problem staying in Melee. In fact, I find Guardians and Warriors annoying with how many ways they can gap close when I’m not playing one.

Yea, honestly what is with all the burning? Because burning builds are so popular. >.> Chilling would have actually been something. Burning looks cool, but that’s about it.

Dirame.8521:

I have no problem staying in Melee. In fact, I find Guardians and Warriors annoying with how many ways they can gap close when I’m not playing one.

The problem is not the lack of gap closer, the problem is the lack of soft CC you need to keep then in melee after the gap closer.

The warrior has a LOT of gap closer and cripples (softCC) the guardian has a low amount of gap closer and no softCC at all.

And glacial heart is a pretty mediocre/bad trait. Like a lot of guardian traits. And need a buff.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

You have to admit though Perikittenor that our ability to keep targets in melee is rather limited.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

You have to admit though Perikittenor

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

PERIKITTENOR

DAT FILTER.

Sorry i had to.

Glacial Heart is a pretty lousy trait that almost nobody uses, and I don’t think Anet’s currently proposed changes will fix that. Allowing it to work with all weapons would at least slightly improve its appeal.

As a general design, I don’t like melee characters with tons of gap closers AND snares. I don’t want to see some kind of inescapable guardian build that can chain skills together to make it almost impossible for an enemy to disengage, but it should probably be a little bit harder than it currently is. This is a very difficult balance to set.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

You have to admit though Perikittenor that our ability to keep targets in melee is rather limited.

While it may be limited guardians can usually sit on a point and eat some pretty heavy damage from one or two people. And who cares if they are kiting you they need to get on the point eventually to take it. And if you want to talk about more aggressive playstyles meditations with GS/ and Sword/Focus work wonders…. Guard defensive weapons (that is hammer/staff and Mace/shield) don’t have any gap closers because they are about area control and keeping people out (or in if you can keep em inside ring of warding).

But yes glacial heart does need a little bit more oomph….

jportell.2197:

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

You have to admit though Perikittenor that our ability to keep targets in melee is rather limited.

While it may be limited guardians can usually sit on a point and eat some pretty heavy damage from one or two people. And who cares if they are kiting you they need to get on the point eventually to take it. And if you want to talk about more aggressive playstyles meditations with GS/ and Sword/Focus work wonders…. Guard defensive weapons (that is hammer/staff and Mace/shield) don’t have any gap closers because they are about area control and keeping people out (or in if you can keep em inside ring of warding).

But yes glacial heart does need a little bit more oomph….

Yes yes, PvP Guards are great point sitters. Now, can you please address WvW, especially since I don’t PvP.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

jportell.2197:

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

You have to admit though Perikittenor that our ability to keep targets in melee is rather limited.

While it may be limited guardians can usually sit on a point and eat some pretty heavy damage from one or two people. And who cares if they are kiting you they need to get on the point eventually to take it. And if you want to talk about more aggressive playstyles meditations with GS/ and Sword/Focus work wonders…. Guard defensive weapons (that is hammer/staff and Mace/shield) don’t have any gap closers because they are about area control and keeping people out (or in if you can keep em inside ring of warding).

But yes glacial heart does need a little bit more oomph….

Yes yes, PvP Guards are great point sitters. Now, can you please address WvW, especially since I don’t PvP.

In WvW take sword/focus+GS and meditations. Problem solved.

The issue is that in PvP Guardian are only point holders.

They can’t do anything else – granted, it’s perfectly fine to have some profs being better at something, and everyone have their specific place, but reall, you can’t do anything else. In spvp.

Which means that guards are crap for WvW solo (in small team are very good) roaming, because the only thing they do well isn’t there (except the bloddfaillust, but ppl comes in full zergs to cap those so who cares). WvW roaming is much more all about mobility (both in and out of combat) and dmg, with their proper counters.

WvW zerging, the group utility makes up to the issues. Same for PvE.

guardian ability mostly burn,
what if Glaicial heart change element to ice instead, and it have the 60% chance to proc chill on 5th burn atk

SchuMidas.4782:

guardian ability mostly burn,
what if Glaicial heart change element to ice instead, and it have the 60% chance to proc chill on 5th burn atk

That’s an interesting thought, actually. What if Glacial Heart replaced all guardian burn effects with chill instead?

Virtue of Justice chills for 1 second on every 5th attack and chills for 4 seconds on activation. Permeating Wrath turns it into AoE chill.

Zealot’s Flame applies long duration chill in a small radius around you and a decent duration ranged chill if thrown. (Would turn the torch into a powerful soft CC option, something guardians currently can’t get from an offhand.)

Purging Flames creates a chill field.

Shattered Aegis applies chill when aegis is removed.

Fire Inside makes spirit weapons apply chill.

Defender’s Flame applies chill when blocking.

Shimmering Defense applies long-duration chill to nearby enemies when you reach critical health (people would actually use this now.)

Judge’s Intervention chills targets near the impact point.

Superior Runes of the Forge would chill nearby enemies when you reach 50% health.

You’d sacrifice burn damage from any of those effects you were using in exchange for a strong disabling condition. That would be a tempting new option and would certainly at least cause an unused trait to get some use.

While that would be cool, it would mean

1- make glacial heart a grandmaster trait, which leads to
2- moving it somewhere else. Which grandmaster could be removed/repositioned? in which line? wht to place in the void left in Glacial Heart spot?
3- guardians have so many sources of burning that chill instead of burn would have a way too high uptime for how powerful it is.

Definitely intrigued by the design idea tho.

AndrewSX.3794:

While that would be cool, it would mean

1- make glacial heart a grandmaster trait, which leads to
2- moving it somewhere else. Which grandmaster could be removed/repositioned? in which line? wht to place in the void left in Glacial Heart spot?
3- guardians have so many sources of burning that chill instead of burn would have a way too high uptime for how powerful it is.

Definitely intrigued by the design idea tho.

Put it in the Zeal line. That would achieve two things.

First, there’d be an actual incentive to put points in Zeal, which is currently by far the least popular guardian trait line. You could downgrade either of the existing Zeal grandmaster traits to master. They’re not good enough to warrant their current status anyway, which is part of why nobody puts points in Zeal.

Second, this revamped grand master version of Glacial Heart would synergize with the Zeal stat bonuses since you’d want power and condition duration (but not condition damage) in a guardian build that spams chill but has no source of damaging conditions.

To keep the trait numbers even, move Focused Mastery to Valor to replace the missing master trait. Focused Mastery would synergize better with Valor anyway since our focus skills are a source of on-demand block and Valor has other blocking-related traits.

As to the problem of this probably being overpowered…Well, at least it’d be fun and unique. It’s also not like this would be a huge DPS build since there’d be no burn damage and having to put 30 points in Zeal would not allow for maximum power DPS setups.

If balance proved to be impossible you could modify the trait to read, “All burn effects are replaced with a chill effect of equal duration or 2 seconds, whichever is lower.” Then you could still use some condition duration stuff to get the chill up to 3 or 4 seconds but you couldn’t get 14+ seconds out of skills like Zealot’s Flame and Shimmering Defense. That would probably not be stupidly overpowered, at least.

Stice.5204:

AndrewSX.3794:

While that would be cool, it would mean

1- make glacial heart a grandmaster trait, which leads to
2- moving it somewhere else. Which grandmaster could be removed/repositioned? in which line? wht to place in the void left in Glacial Heart spot?
3- guardians have so many sources of burning that chill instead of burn would have a way too high uptime for how powerful it is.

Definitely intrigued by the design idea tho.

Put it in the Zeal line. That would achieve two things.

First, there’d be an actual incentive to put points in Zeal, which is currently by far the least popular guardian trait line. You could downgrade either of the existing Zeal grandmaster traits to master. They’re not good enough to warrant their current status anyway, which is part of why nobody puts points in Zeal.

Second, this revamped grand master version of Glacial Heart would synergize with the Zeal stat bonuses since you’d want power and condition duration (but not condition damage) in a guardian build that spams chill but has no source of damaging conditions.

To keep the trait numbers even, move Focused Mastery to Valor to replace the missing master trait. Focused Mastery would synergize better with Valor anyway since our focus skills are a source of on-demand block and Valor has other blocking-related traits.

As to the problem of this probably being overpowered…Well, at least it’d be fun and unique. It’s also not like this would be a huge DPS build since there’d be no burn damage and having to put 30 points in Zeal would not allow for maximum power DPS setups.

If balance proved to be impossible you could modify the trait to read, “All burn effects are replaced with a chill effect of equal duration or 2 seconds, whichever is lower.” Then you could still use some condition duration stuff to get the chill up to 3 or 4 seconds but you couldn’t get 14+ seconds out of skills like Zealot’s Flame and Shimmering Defense. That would probably not be stupidly overpowered, at least.

I would love this, a guardian symbol build with hammer that is actually viable

/swoon

Logged in just to say, Man the idea of a Grandmaster exchanging all of your burning effects for chill instead would be soooo kitten cool and I would love it. I agree with everything Stice said, it would fit everything so well. Maybe make an exception where a few of our traits having to do with burn would stay the same or be moved to avoid us having Perma chill. Either way, This is one of the coolest ideas yet. No pun intended.

Man it’d be tempting, even if they couldn’t balance it.

Variations could also be acceptable, if they didn’t want the chill to completely negate burn or something. (Thus invalidating half of radiance’s stat increase, if someone went into it it for signets or something. Frostbite [Frostburn?] anyone?)

jportell.2197:

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

jportell.2197:

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

You have to admit though Perikittenor that our ability to keep targets in melee is rather limited.

While it may be limited guardians can usually sit on a point and eat some pretty heavy damage from one or two people. And who cares if they are kiting you they need to get on the point eventually to take it. And if you want to talk about more aggressive playstyles meditations with GS/ and Sword/Focus work wonders…. Guard defensive weapons (that is hammer/staff and Mace/shield) don’t have any gap closers because they are about area control and keeping people out (or in if you can keep em inside ring of warding).

But yes glacial heart does need a little bit more oomph….

Yes yes, PvP Guards are great point sitters. Now, can you please address WvW, especially since I don’t PvP.

In WvW take sword/focus+GS and meditations. Problem solved.

I’ve already addressed that. Those go on cooldown. Then what? And, btw, I do use all three already, and problem is not solved.

I went on build editor and tried to make a super Frozen Guardian build. 3k Attack, 3k Armor, 68% crit damage which isn’t too bad because I’m still pretty defensive. 52% Increased chill duration with 14k HP. Glacial heart proc is 7.6s, and Sigil of Ice is 3s every 10s not to mention chill on hit which is 3s as well, plus sigil of hydromancy. I wish I had a level 80 Guardian to test it out on…. but the crit chance is low, so I’m hoping Oct 18 patch will be able to net us some decent access to fury.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

jportell.2197:

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

jportell.2197:

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

You have to admit though Perikittenor that our ability to keep targets in melee is rather limited.

While it may be limited guardians can usually sit on a point and eat some pretty heavy damage from one or two people. And who cares if they are kiting you they need to get on the point eventually to take it. And if you want to talk about more aggressive playstyles meditations with GS/ and Sword/Focus work wonders…. Guard defensive weapons (that is hammer/staff and Mace/shield) don’t have any gap closers because they are about area control and keeping people out (or in if you can keep em inside ring of warding).

But yes glacial heart does need a little bit more oomph….

Yes yes, PvP Guards are great point sitters. Now, can you please address WvW, especially since I don’t PvP.

In WvW take sword/focus+GS and meditations. Problem solved.

I’ve already addressed that. Those go on cooldown. Then what? And, btw, I do use all three already, and problem is not solved.

You mean 2 teleports a leap and a pull isn’t enough?

I agree. Either make Glacial Heart viable, or if they are afraid to make it viable, just remove it and replace it with something else. As it stands, it is a useless trait.

jportell.2197:

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

jportell.2197:

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

jportell.2197:

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

You have to admit though Perikittenor that our ability to keep targets in melee is rather limited.

While it may be limited guardians can usually sit on a point and eat some pretty heavy damage from one or two people. And who cares if they are kiting you they need to get on the point eventually to take it. And if you want to talk about more aggressive playstyles meditations with GS/ and Sword/Focus work wonders…. Guard defensive weapons (that is hammer/staff and Mace/shield) don’t have any gap closers because they are about area control and keeping people out (or in if you can keep em inside ring of warding).

But yes glacial heart does need a little bit more oomph….

Yes yes, PvP Guards are great point sitters. Now, can you please address WvW, especially since I don’t PvP.

In WvW take sword/focus+GS and meditations. Problem solved.

I’ve already addressed that. Those go on cooldown. Then what? And, btw, I do use all three already, and problem is not solved.

You mean 2 teleports a leap and a pull isn’t enough?

1 teleport to get the jump on target first.
1 teleport to stay with kiting target who has already evaded the 1st teleport.
1 leap to stay with continuous kiting/fleeing target who has already gotten away from previous 2 teleports.
1 pull that might work and might not depending on actions of target.

Not really enough, sometimes, yes, but definately not all the time. This is also not mentioning their own teleporting/disengaging skills.