Guild Wars 2

Fabsm.5897:

The secret is being adaptable, if you are missing the days of “1-2-3-4, rinse and repeat, mob is dead” you’re only clinging to the past.

Finally, our class is not defined from a single weapon or a single build. We have lots of them, i like and use them all. Everyone of us has her preference, of course, but sticking with an outdated build because “it worked well and i want it back” is not constructive for our class at all.

Amen bro. Glad to hear some positive news on this forum. I play quite similarly to you and i use GS/Hammer as my 2 weapons. I confirm this setup works.

Finally, our class is not defined from a single weapon or a single build. We have lots of them, i like and use them all. Everyone of us has her preference, of course, but sticking with an outdated build because “it worked well and i want it back” is not constructive for our class at all.

The classes are defined by the choice of multiple weapons across multiple builds, and the 7/10 patch ruined a number of builds for 1 of those weapons.

What you people are saying is, it’s perfectly fine for Anet to ruin a number of builds on a weapon because we can use a different weapon with the same build or use the same weapon with different builds – sorry but that really isn’t a good thing.

Just accepting the change isn’t constructive at all, offereing suggestions to make the change better so the old builds work again is (which has been done a number for times).

@MajorMelchett
You’re right about constructive suggestions. But, most of the comment on this and the other thread don’t want “suggestions” to how to make it work, they only want the old build restored.

Instead of trying and resurrect the old build, we should bring up a NEW build which is even better than the defunct “Symbol build”.

I don’t have much skill with the Greatsword, even pre-patch, but i have lots of experience with the Guardian, so i am offering what i can to bring up a NEW build from the ashes of the patch.

1) People is referring too much to “solo play”. I think that with the changes, GS has become a “party weapon”. The ability to finish more often clearly augments party playstyle, and clearly (at least in my eyes) bring to light other weapons as “solo play”, like the hammer or the sword/torch.

2) When i have to play the Greatsword, i have now an aggressive playstile, based on consecration and leaps (to activate Retaliation/Fire Armor). I suggest myself to the party as “finisher man” with every field they put in, to activate all the combos i can, even using Binding on immune boss if necessary. GS has three finishers, and while not all of them do the same damage, they all work to combo. This brings up interesting synergies, and while we cannot exploit them alone, we can surely abuse them in group play.

3) The Symbol build was based on a endless repetition of #1-#4 abilities, augmented from the (almost) 24/7 uptime of the SoW. We cannot duplicate this uptime, but we can use other symbols to reach the same effect. For example, we can pair the GS with another weapon that creates symbols: the Hammer, Staff and Mace come to mind. Swap time is 10s, so by the time we come back to the GS, the CD will reset and we can continue to put symbols on the ground. Swapping could be even more interesting with the right runes (Hydromancy, Bloodlust, Energy).

4) Other good effects are Consecrations, while not symbols, Sanctuary and Wall of Reflection both provide Retaliation if comboed (while defending from attacks, altough not doing damage) while Purging Flames and Hallowed Ground provide Fire Armor/Burning Bolts. This could bring to a mixed Symbols/Consecrations build.

But even with these or other hints.. the main point is…

IT WOULD NEVER BE THE SAME AS BEFORE!

Sorry for the emphasis, but that is the point. Whining because it has all become an “auto-attack feast”, is not constructive. Trying and make good use of the hints provided, even with the example for other weapons (what i do with the hammer can be easily adapted for the GreatSword) surely is.

Having Determination in making our class shine is different from being stubborn and stagnating.

@ Fabsm

The Hammer, although it can be satisfying in many ways, is simply a boring weapon. All of the things you listed in your rotation, you can do with other weapons. You listed dodge rolling, utility skills, virtues, and auto attacking with the supplement of Mighty Blow here and there.

The Hammer has 3 other abilities which you neglect to mention (unless you meant “Knockback” instead of “Knockdown”, but I assume you were referring to Bane Signet). Simply put, the Hammer really only offers you 1 on demand damage ability in PvE, and the rest of the time you are auto attacking (painfully slowly I might add), or using abilities that are not tied to the Hammer, which again, you can do with any weapon.

With the Greatsword, you had options for on demand damage abilities and each of them could be used when appropriate, or in a priority rotation if the situation called for it. In a typical rotation with the Greatsword, a player would use all 5 of the weapon specific abilities. That is active; that is fun. On top of that, we are also weapon swapping and using our virtues, dodging, and using utilities (shocking, I know).

So if you think the Hammer is fun, good for you and keep playing it, but don’t even try to compare its activity level to the Greatsword. There is no comparison. The Hammer is bland, slow, and incredibly passive. It needs just as much work as the Greatsword. This game is supposed to provide active combat, not passive. The Guardian weapon sets seem very opposed to this view on combat, and don’t think it isn’t a problem. Don’t take it sitting down.

Please note that the above refers solely to PvE content. PvP Hammertime can be quite a blast :-)

I had leveled a guardian to 50 alongside my main but then shelved my guardian for a bit to work primarily on my main. I just recently picked my guardian up and was leveling and saw the changes to greatsword. I used a combo of greatsword and sword/torch. I do rotate my weapons routinely. I notice however that I truly feel that GS has lost alot of the the fun factor to it and I eventually in the course of the battle just feel that I am hitting 1 so often.

GS seems to have lost alot of the it’s synergy and you wind up with a boring swinging the sword animation and feel. I can only say that I would hope this isn’t what we should expect for the game. Watching our character just swing a weapon.

I think that everyone has covered various options to the symbol nerf. You can still rock a greatsword but for the love of the game please weapon swap on the beloved symbol cooldown. Like a scepter and torch. By the time you burn through skill 2, 4 and 5, a a whole minute has passed….lol…..

j/k…but weapons swap…please?

mekkanic.4759:

I think that everyone has covered various options to the symbol nerf. You can still rock a greatsword but for the love of the game please weapon swap on the beloved symbol cooldown. Like a scepter and torch. By the time you burn through skill 2, 4 and 5, a a whole minute has passed….lol…..

j/k…but weapons swap…please?

People are weapon swapping. Not the issue at hand even remotely. Please read the thread more carefully and you will see that the Guardian player base is well aware of the ~ key or whatever they have weapon swapping set to.

my tank\heal build need a large use of the weapons swap, but swap the weapon(mace to GS in my case) and see that your simbol is on CD, well can be really frustrating -_-"

Personally, I think the biggest issue here isn’t even the result of the nerf, but the way it was carried out. The actual results of the change were very different from its stated purpose, and even a week later ArenaNet has still been completely silent on the issue, not even acknowledging whether or not they believe an issue exists.

The patch notes stated that the change was made in relation to the Retaliation boon (The reasons for which have already been covered), but keeping Retaliation up constantly is still possible even after the change. The change was only a minor hit to a Retaliation build, which was the stated target, but a major hit to completely unrelated builds (Most notably a Greatsword-based Symbol build), a fact which was never even acknowledged by them.

I also don’t see weapon swap as a valid argument here. One could combine a Greatsword and a number of other weapons effectively before in a symbol-based build previously (which was what was hit hardest by this). As a result of this change, if you still wish to do so, it forces you to rely much more on your second weapon than you did previously. While this is fine if the question is “is a symbol build still viable?”, that isn’t the issue. The issue is that one weapon which was previously useful in that sort of build has now almost completely lost its synergy for no good reason. We can adapt and choose other weapons, yes (and I don’t even run that kind of build myself), but isn’t one of the selling points of this game supposed to be having these choices? We simply lost one of those choices as a side effect of something completely unrelated, and even then I wouldn’t have nearly as much of an issue with it if ArenaNet was communicating with us at all on the topic.

As a third point, this one a specific response to a point Fabsm’s previous post:

Greatsword has not become more of a “party weapon”. The only thing it gained in a party situation is being able to drop a leap finisher slightly more often. On the other hand, it lost the ability to create combo fields (which allies can use in turn) nearly as often as it could before, and along with it made the party support added by all of the symbol traits less effective. Effectively, the only sort of party benefit is that it increased how often we can use one finisher by 25%, while reducing how often we can use a party support option (the combo field, and with traits healing and applying vulnerability) by 50%. From my perspective, that hurts how much of a “party weapon” it is much more than it helps. All it did was increase our reliance on either party members or utility skills to provide combo fields for its finishers, not make it significantly more effective overall.

(Also worth noting is that if you use SoW, a few other GS skills, swap to another weapon, and then swap back after the 10s cooldown on swapping, SoW will most likely still have at least several seconds left on its cooldown. The only way you would consistently have it up when you swapped back was if you spent 10s in each weapon, swapping as soon as the cooldown ended every time, and hit SoW as soon as you switched back into GS every time.)

I might be called a noob for this. I understand there are advantages of utilizing weapon swapping. But I don’t use it. My main is a level 47 Guardian. I use greatsword. I use it on pretty much all of my alts except the thief of course. Why? I don’t know. I love the look it of maybe. Maybe I watched too much Berserk. Like Cloud a little too much. But I don’t want to HAVE to swap weapons on a regular basis to be able to enjoy the game. Guess I didn’t read the fine print when I purchased this game a couple weeks ago over other MMO’s I was contemplating purchasing.

Scepters suck, Staff sucks, Hammer is Dull, Mace is slow, Sword is ok in pve…

I am running out of weapons to pick from.

Relentliss.2170:

Scepters suck, Staff sucks, Hammer is Dull, Mace is slow, Sword is ok in pve…

I am running out of weapons to pick from.

Eh..I don’t know that I would go that far, but our weapons definitely need some tuning to make them more attractive. Each one has problems. Scepter auto-attack is unreliable and looks wimpy (also has no chain), staff has pitiful damage, Hammer is very boring in PvE, Mace is only attractive to dungeon runners focused on defense, the 1h sword is actually in a good place.

No need to list the others; you guys get the point. Each of the Guardian’s weapons (and I’m fairly certain other professions feel the same way about their weapons) definitely is lacking in one area or another that makes it an unappealing choice. To clarify, I am not saying that each weapon should be good at everything, but I am saying that there are certain drawbacks to each weapon that make it almost universally unattractive.

When you don’t have a nice base of weapons to choose from, it makes these drawbacks less apparent. I think that is one of the core issues with the current state of the Guardian. I’m not saying people can’t enjoy certain weapons, but compared to our counterparts in other professions, I would say our weapon enjoyment factor is on the low end of the spectrum, even if we find the profession enjoyable on the whole.