I’ve been reading a lot of complaints from both engineers and guardians about their lack of a real ranged weapon so I was wondering how you all would feel about an inclusion of high powered (read:sniper) rifles. I personally love the scepter and wish that they would just make the pingpongs fly 2x faster but the idea of having a long-cast, long-range weapon sounds pretty cool especially given the guardians tendencies towards catching things on fire.
I’ve noticed that quite a few people are put off by the idea of a firearm for Guardians, however I do not understand why. They are far less ‘magical’ yes but a long range rife could easily fit the role of guarding your teammates. Snipers/Scouts/Recon are called Guardian Angels after all. (well I guess recon are hogs but you get what I’m saying)
1 could be a regular shot that causes burn on the 3rd hit or something
2 a knockback/interrupt/confuse
3 weak dmg shot that plants a symbol of protection at the target
4 shoot a healing/blinding beam
5 some sort of retribution to the group
I don’t think there’s room (aesthetically) for such weapons. What would make them different (aesthetically) from the Rifles that already exist.
Oh and @Celestina and everyone else who says Rifles wouldn’t fit the Guardian. I still haven’t heard/read a proper argument on this. (Apart from fantasy traditionalism in the form of “guns can’t be magic”, which is easily countered.)
New Elite Skill: Rifle of Courage
1 sec cast, 60 recharge, 9001 skills points
Summon an arcane rifle to defend you. – Every tooltip says defend, but it would attack your targeted enemy every five seconds with a maximum range of 1200, and lasts 60 seconds. Damage would be equivalent to Sword of Justice when shooting at range, and subpar at close range.
Command: Command the Rifle of Courage to your hands and replace your weapon skills. Rifle of Courage is destroyed on weapon swap, or at the end of its duration.
The weapon skills wouldn’t be like a tomb, which are situationally powerful, but rather built around general combat, hence the short cooldown. The weapon skills would be less powerful the closer you are to your target, and basically lose effectiveness under 600 range. We already have enough close range stuff for that.
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I don’t think the Guardian would look good with a rifle, but it’s fun to think about.
Upon further thought, the Warrior Longbow skillset could be transcribed onto Guardians and it would be pretty much perfect for us. Looking at the skillset I’m not sure why it was put on a warrior instead when they already have a rifle and axe for ranged.
Upon further thought, the Warrior Longbow skillset could be transcribed onto Guardians and it would be pretty much perfect for us. Looking at the skillset I’m not sure why it was put on a warrior instead when they already have a rifle and axe for ranged.
The Warrior’s “thing” is that he’s a master of all weapons. They have access to pretty much every non-magical weapon apart from pistols.
if we step back and ignore the semantics of “holy magic” and that stuff
Guardian playstyle is defined by their ability to protect allies, utilising barriers, preventing opponents landing their hits. If a guardian isn’t in close quarters, he isn’t guarding his buddies.
To me that means even if a guardian had a gun (Asura or charr guardians are usually tech orientated not holy magic users, using a gun seems more natural to them than a bow); it’d still only be appropriate if it were a shotgun-style skill set. Long range rifles exist to put as much distance as possible between attacker and victim, guardians exist to stand between attacker and victim.
…on a side note. My guardian charr already looks enough like a krogan without giving her a shotgun xD. “Krogan Charr charging!”
Or just buff our current weapons for ranged? Rifle is just silly. I really loved my paragon, but I still had mixed feelings about spear. While being able to build adrenaline at range was awesome, it’s still just throwing an unlimited amount of boring spears that appear out of nowhere. Staff and scepter’s auto attacks should just be changed/buffed. Not that staff isn’t cool for hitting multiple targets, I just don’t want a mid-range attack on what should be the penultimate caster weapon. Mace or scepter makes more sense for mid-range caster.
Or just buff our current weapons for ranged? Rifle is just silly. I really loved my paragon, but I still had mixed feelings about spear. While being able to build adrenaline at range was awesome, it’s still just throwing an unlimited amount of boring spears that appear out of nowhere. Staff and scepter’s auto attacks should just be changed/buffed. Not that staff isn’t cool for hitting multiple targets, I just don’t want a mid-range attack on what should be the penultimate caster weapon. Mace or scepter makes more sense for mid-range caster.
I admit I would be perfectly happy if they changed the animations for scepter. Make the auto attack and smite actually LOOK powerful. Right now they look like we’re tickling our targets.
They wouldn’t include a ‘sniper’ type weapon because this is probably reserved for the Commando class ANet made and then scrapped before finalising the 8 professions we use today.
Their were classes such as the Marksman and Warden (which eventually became the Ranger), the Commando (a sniper rifle type class) and the Juggernaut (a non-magical knight type class) but they were all scrapped. Might see a return of them in the future?
