Guild Wars 2

They appear in every battlefield, always willing to be at the forefront of an army. They are fearless in combat and are delighted at the sight of stronger opponents. They are known as “Vanguards”. A befitting name for those who are always at the front of the lines.
If by any chance you meet a ”Vanguard” in battle, flee or surrender.
That’s the only way to survive at least against the ones who refuse to taint their Halberds with the blood of a coward.

As you might have guessed Vanguard is a “Tank-spec” but can dish out some dmg if Specked right

Weapon: Spear/Staff (Well i say staff/spear but the skills and appearance of the spec weapon will be more those of a Halberd, that can happen only by using spear on land or giving Staff a whole new set of skills when using the Vanguard spec)

Weapon skills:
1: Swing left->Swing right-> Swing down: appropriate conditions applied, i’m thinking weakness torment and burning mostly
2: Brandish: Charge your Halberd(Staff/Spear) with fire and Light and quickly swing diagonally twice. Applies vilnerability
3:Endure->Beatdown->Earthshatter:With endure you keep your Halberd forward blocking all attacs for 4 secs. If you block at least 3 you get three charges of beatdown. When using beatdown you slam your halberd on the ground causing dmg to all enemies in front. If you use all 3charges within 3 secs then you get Earthshatter. With earthshatter the vanguard jumps in the air and then lands in the target location shattering the earth and causing cripple,taunt and torment.
4:depends on stance
5:depends on stance

Mechanics: Stances and Brilliant Body (also no weapon swap)

Virtues are replaced by stances that change the Halberds’s 4 and 5 skills. The stances are,

Stance of Justice (The proverbial Dmg stance)
4:Fireswirl thrust: thrust forward creating a swirl of fire that pulls and burns enemies
5:Spear of Light: throw a conjured spear of Light that impales an enemy causing one stack of bleeding and burning every 2 secs for 4 secs. Then it explodes and damages both the impaled enemy and the surrounding ones. The more stacks of bleeding and burning the target has the greater the dmg.

Stance of Resolve(Support stance)
4:Ground Sweep: Sweeps the ground 360 degrees around self, knocking down up to 5 enemies. Creates consecrated ground.
5:Symbol of retaliation: slams the ground and creates a symbol that gives retaliation to all who stand on it.

Stance of Courage(Pure Tank stance)
4:Light Eruption->Brilliance blast: stab the ground causing light to spring from it causing slow and blindness to those in front and then use Brilliance blast to detonate it and knock them down
5: Vortex: swirl your halberd overhead damaging and causing slow and torment to all nearby while deflecting all projeciles back to attackers at range.

Brilliant Body: Brilliant Body continually consumes Holy Fire to keep itself activated . It gives the Vanguard 3 secs of Light aura every 4 secs and when hit spreads conditions or boons depending on stance. Justice spreads Burning and might, Resolve spreads blindness and regen, Courage spreads Taunt and aegis, effect can only activate once every 5 attacks taken.

Holy fire is a new resource kind of like adrenaline. When out of combat it fills to maximum. It generates from the use of Vanguards utility skills and Halberd(staff/spear) weapon skills but only when Brilliant body is active, so the more skills you use the longer you can keep Brilliant body activated. When BB is not activated and you’re in combat it takes 35 secs for the Holy fire bar to completely refill.

Utility Skills:Physical(pertaining to nbrilliant body)

Healing:Light Mantle: Surrounds the body with a cloack of light and heals while giving protection. If Brilliant body is active, next 3 secs all dmg taken gets healed back

Glory Charge:charge the enemy and strike with the shoulder. creates fire waves that also hits enemies behind target.

Holly fire strike: Punch your enemy with a Holy fire imbued fist stunning him for x secs.
If Brilliant body is active when stun ends target explodes with holy fire burning itself and up to 3 nearby enemies

Brilliant weapon: Transfer some of the essence of fire and light in your weapon giving each hit you make for the next 10 secs apply weakness. If BB active then also blindness

Heroic Roar: Enhance your voice to unleash a deafening roar that applies fear to all nearby. If BB active then apply taunt and torment

Ultimate: Brilliant Resurgance: Immediatelly finishes cooldown of BB. If BB active then produces a 360 wave of light and fire that causes blindness and weakness

As you can see main focus is using as many skills as possible to constantly maintain Brilliant Body for dmg mitigation. Rest is just extra dmg and cc that can be specced into with the right traits (Which i’m not about to think of, i’m not making the game) but never the main point

So what do you think?

Some visual examples
(None of these images are mine)

So, if I don’t want to use the new weapon, I lose both my weapon swap and my virtues?

Oh boi, I don’t know how you did it but you managed.
This is the concept that I’ve been roleplaying for quite some time now and I love it, though there are a bunch of things that need tweaking but I can’t tell how (I’ll try to figure something out and contribute).
But anyway, polearms/halberds is something that we could use for a change and here is why I think so:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Polearm
This is a little bit of new stuff that a considerable ammount of players would like to see.
Also if you check out bank wardrobe in spears category, you can find a vendor quality polearm that looks like a whole different kind of weapon.
In the end of the day, thanks to recent bloodstone weapons I can immerse a little bit better into my character with a staff that has a spear shaped head.

By the way, Imperius with his spear is the real stuff. Best husbando

RabbitUp.8294:

So, if I don’t want to use the new weapon, I lose both my weapon swap and my virtues?

For the weapon swap yes you do lose it.
You see normal guardians and dragonhunters have 10 weapon skills, 3 virtues, 1 healing, 3 utilities and 1 ultimate. So 18 powers in total.

Vanguards would have 9 weapon skills, 3 stances, 1 brilliant body, 1 healing, 3 utility and 1 ultimate. So again 18 powers.

If they also had weapon swap they would also have 5 more weapon skills and that would make them a bit too versatile for a specialization i think.

As for virtues you do lose the passive buffs yes but you compensate with the effects of Brilliant Body quite well. The active ones i suppose there could be a trait that allows for them to be used when entering the coresponding stances.
Or it could be a standard part of the mechanic, that works too i supppose

Rodzynald.5897:

Oh boi, I don’t know how you did it but you managed.
This is the concept that I’ve been roleplaying for quite some time now and I love it, though there are a bunch of things that need tweaking but I can’t tell how (I’ll try to figure something out and contribute).
But anyway, polearms/halberds is something that we could use for a change and here is why I think so:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Polearm
This is a little bit of new stuff that a considerable ammount of players would like to see.
Also if you check out bank wardrobe in spears category, you can find a vendor quality polearm that looks like a whole different kind of weapon.
In the end of the day, thanks to recent bloodstone weapons I can immerse a little bit better into my character with a staff that has a spear shaped head.

By the way, Imperius with his spear is the real stuff. Best husbando

Wow i had no idea Halberds were actually part of the game in early develoment, that’s kind of neat!

koniallis.4736:

RabbitUp.8294:

So, if I don’t want to use the new weapon, I lose both my weapon swap and my virtues?

For the weapon swap yes you do lose it.
You see normal guardians and dragonhunters have 10 weapon skills, 3 virtues, 1 healing, 3 utilities and 1 ultimate. So 18 powers in total.

Vanguards would have 9 weapon skills, 3 stances, 1 brilliant body, 1 healing, 3 utility and 1 ultimate. So again 18 powers.

If they also had weapon swap they would also have 5 more weapon skills and that would make them a bit too versatile for a specialization i think.

As for virtues you do lose the passive buffs yes but you compensate with the effects of Brilliant Body quite well. The active ones i suppose there could be a trait that allows for them to be used when entering the coresponding stances.
Or it could be a standard part of the mechanic, that works too i supppose

All that requires I use the spear weapon. If I choose not to, Vanguard doesn’t really offer anything.

RabbitUp.8294:

All that requires I use the spear weapon. If I choose not to, Vanguard doesn’t really offer anything.

Why use a specialization then if you dont want to use it’s weapon? Especially a two handed weapon. Personally i dont see many dragonhunters, reapers or scrappers without their specialization weapons

RabbitUp is right here. As for dragonhunter I use it only for improved virtues and traits, not for traps or longbow and I am doing fairly good in both pvp and pve while smacking things up with combination of hammer/staff/greatsword.

There are many players that use elite specs without taking the advantage of a new weapon, it shouldn’t be a bound choice to the elite spec as it really limits build diversity.

I’m with Rodzynald and RabbitUp. As a concept I love this idea, but practically speaking you’ve gone too far.

-Taking away weapon swap unnecessarily limits this spec, although the idea probably wouldn’t really work with a weapon swap
-Completely changing the virtues makes the Virtues traitline obsolete, and frankly, all other traits that affect the passive virtues. This further limits the spec.
-That #3 weapon skill is too complicated and limiting. Flip skills are fine, but 2 flip skills? Too much. Even if we take that DD Elite skill which has 3 parts, they don’t have requirements, just a target limit of 1.
-I didn’t find a single block skill in all that. Guardians are kinda reliant on that with their low base health, and as this spec doesn’t offer much in the way of healing either…

+Halberd is cool! I want one. ^^ And unlike some people, I do believe that new weapons are bound to end up in the game at some point.
+"Holy Fire" as a resource is a nice touch. It does sound more like an energy bar than an adrenaline bar but that’s irrelevant mostly.
+This ended up having only a few actual positive sides, but I still like it in general.

And I’m sorry but your naming of skills kinda sucks. But that’s just a personal opinion. But really swinging as AA? I don’t want to play golf…

Yannir.4132:

I’m with Rodzynald and RabbitUp. As a concept I love this idea, but practically speaking you’ve gone too far.

-Taking away weapon swap unnecessarily limits this spec, although the idea probably wouldn’t really work with a weapon swap
-Completely changing the virtues makes the Virtues traitline obsolete, and frankly, all other traits that affect the passive virtues. This further limits the spec.
-That #3 weapon skill is too complicated and limiting. Flip skills are fine, but 2 flip skills? Too much. Even if we take that DD Elite skill which has 3 parts, they don’t have requirements, just a target limit of 1.
-I didn’t find a single block skill in all that. Guardians are kinda reliant on that with their low base health, and as this spec doesn’t offer much in the way of healing either…

+Halberd is cool! I want one. ^^ And unlike some people, I do believe that new weapons are bound to end up in the game at some point.
+"Holy Fire" as a resource is a nice touch. It does sound more like an energy bar than an adrenaline bar but that’s irrelevant mostly.
+This ended up having only a few actual positive sides, but I still like it in general.

And I’m sorry but your naming of skills kinda sucks. But that’s just a personal opinion. But really swinging as AA? I don’t want to play golf…

For the weapon swap i actually agree with you. I only removed it because i didn’t think it would work otherwise. The only solution i thought of was to remove weapon swap only when using Halberd and keeping it when not, and i’m not sure that’s feasible

Virtues i said before are replaced by Briliant Body and any traits that worked on them are inherited by it with it’s own twist (forgot to write that specificaly, my bad)

The #3 skill…….. honestly i just wanted a power i could name beatdown

Endure is supposed to be the main block skill that you use almost like an auto-attack. it would have low cooldown, 2-3 secs mostly and can be used almost constantly. (Also why i justified the 3 parts) Earthshatter i envisioned would mostly be a gapcloser towards ranged attackers and coupled with the cripple taunt and slow from other skills, is supposed to keep you as close to your enemies possible without actually giving you swiftness. Vortex would also have a higher but all in all low cooldown that can be used situationaly, mainly when surrounded to keep enemies close and on you while teammates can finish them off

For Holy fire i actually wanted to go with a combination of Warrior’s adrenaline and Revenant’s energy. Don’t know if i actually managed it but i really like how it turned out on “paper”, despite how i originally came up with it in my thoughts

Keep your opinions coming people. Good or Bad doesn’t matter, we can work things through

Virtues traits and their effect on Briliant Body:

Inspired Virtue:Virtues now also apply the following boons to allies when activated
Justice: might Resolve: regeneration Courage: protection,-> Adds the boons either as extra stacks or extra boons to the spread you gain every 5th hit

Virtue of Retribution Gain retaliation when you activate a virtue. Retaliation you apply lasts longer.-> You gain retaliation along with light aura every 4 secs when using BB. Retaliation you apply lasts longer.

Absolute Resolution Activating Virtue of Resolve removes conditions from nearby allies. Virtue of Resolve’s passive effect is stronger.-> Entering Stance of Resolve removes conditions from nearby allies, removes conditions from you as well if BB active

Power of the Virtuous Deal extra damage for each boon you have. Virtues recharge faster.-> Deal extra damage for each boon you have, Stances recharge faster

Battle Presence Nearby allies gain Virtue of Resolve’s passive effect.-> That actually stay the same

Indomitable Courage Activating virtue of courage breaks stun and grants stability to nearby allies. Virtue of courage’s passive effect triggers more frequently.-> Entering Stance of Courage breaks stun and grants stability to nearby allies.

Permeating Wrath Virtue of Justice’s passive effect no longer only burns your target, but also burns the area around your target each time it activates. Virtue of Justice causes burning more frequently.->When entering Stance of Justice apply 2 stacks of burning to all enemies around you.

Hope this helps

Ideas for Vanguard traitline

Minor Adept
Brilliance: The guardian trains his/her body and martial skills to such a degree that he can safely infuse his body with Holy Fire and create martial stances based on his/her virtues

Major Adept
Shining Armor:Last part of halberd Auto attack grants protection. Reduces cooldown on physical skills while BB is active
Awe Inspiring: Applies torment every 4secs to all nearby enemies when BB is active.
Flickering Flames perseverance: The less Holy fire you have left the greater the toughness you gain

Minor Master
Scorching rejuvenation: Gain health every time you block an attack. Additional health gained if BB active

Major Master
Cleanse: Every time you block you also turn a condition to a boon
Constant Vigilance: Every 2nd aegis you apply to either yourself or your allies you gain a stack of protection
Halberd Mastery: Increases damage of stance skills of Halberd. When not using a Halberd reduces the cooldown of #4 and #5 skills

Minor Grandmaster
Vanguard Tactics: Every cripple, taunt, slow you apply increases your concentration

Major Grandmaster
Defense Tactics: Increase toughness for every boon on you
Borrowed Brilliance: Every time someone other than you applies a boon on you, you gain Holy Fire
Shared Brilliance: You Heal yourself and all others around every 4 secs when BB actve.

If you have any other ideas for traits, please post them. These aren’t exactly final draft or anything, just some that came to mind.

Thematically this is a very cool elite spec idea and I really wish (but doubt) that they would bring spears to land, or give classes polearms. There are just too many reasons that this doesn’t seem likely.

The main thing I don’t like about your design is it does not appear to be a specialization capable of synergy, but rather an elite spec that creates a class of its own. It’s very limiting in that you don’t get as much out of it if you don’t use the spear/staff/halberd as your weapon and physical skills as your utilities. Guardians need weapon-swap, and being able to mix and match utility types is pretty important for build-crafting.

Stances are a utility skill-type, not a class function. I doubt they will change this for future elite specs. Also, the way the weapon works (skill 4 and 5 change dramatically based on stance) is fairly unprecedented. I mean sure, there are ele weapon skills on different attunements but these feel more like half-weapon skills since they don’t get weapon swaps.

Even with Brilliant Body, the stances don’t seem incredibly impactful (except for courage which dances the fine line of being op). Mechanically speaking, I don’t really like that I would have to press two buttons (switch to stance 1, AND activate BB) just to get a passive effect. I do like your idea of only one stance being active at a time (it’s a unique twist on virtues), but consider making the meat of their effects be independent of BB. Maybe add the corollary of: Having BB active when you you swap out of/into a stance will activate an additional powerful effect based on which stance was switched out of, but send BB into cooldown for a few seconds.

One thing I do like about your design though is the concept of charging ‘Holy Fire.’ This could be a very very interesting way for the new class function and traits to add flavor to the class and also have other traitlines synergize with it.

Arcaedus.7290:

Even with Brilliant Body, the stances don’t seem incredibly impactful (except for courage which dances the fine line of being op). Mechanically speaking, I don’t really like that I would have to press two buttons (switch to stance 1, AND activate BB) just to get a passive effect. I do like your idea of only one stance being active at a time (it’s a unique twist on virtues), but consider making the meat of their effects be independent of BB. Maybe add the corollary of: Having BB active when you you swap out of/into a stance will activate an additional powerful effect based on which stance was switched out of, but send BB into cooldown for a few seconds.

One thing I do like about your design though is the concept of charging ‘Holy Fire.’ This could be a very very interesting way for the new class function and traits to add flavor to the class and also have other traitlines synergize with it.

When you say make the meat of their effects be independant of BB do you mean making BB have only the light aura every 4 secs effect and add the spread of condis and boons directly on stance? if so then that is actually a great idea. I’ll do just that. As for weapon swap i’ll relent and make it available always but that means i will change the 4,5 skills of the Halberd.

So new Mechanics would be

Mechanics: Stances and Brilliant Body
Virtues are replaced by stances.
The stances are,
Stance of Justice (The proverbial Dmg stance)
While in SoJ every 5th hit you take spreads Burning and might. When Briliant body is active it also gives quicknes

Stance of Resolve(Support stance)
When in SoR every 5th hit you take spreads blindness and regen. While BB is active also gain resistance

Stance of Courage(Pure Tank stance)
When in SoC every 5th hit you take spreads stability and aegis. When BB is active also spreads taunt

Weapon skills #4,5
4.Brilliant thrust: Thrust forward damaging enemies with a cone of fire and light.
SoJ: Pull and burn. While BB active also torment
SoR: Confuse and blind. While BB active also vulnerability
SoC: knockdown and weakness. While BB active also slow

5. SoJ: Fire eruption: Slam the ground and damage all enemies 360 around you causing cripple. While BB active create Aoe that causes burning
SoR: Firelight sweep: sweep 360 in front knocking down all enemies.While BB active also create symbol of regen
SoC: Vortex: swirl your halberd overhead lightly damaging and causing slow and torment to all nearby. While BB active also deflect all attacks and projeciles back to attackers.

Brilliant Body: Brilliant Body continually consumes Holy Fire to keep itself activated . It gives the Vanguard 3 secs of Light aura every 4 secs.

Holy fire is a new resource kind of like adrenaline and used to power Brilliant Body. It generates from the use of utility skills and weapon skills (not Racial skills) but only when Brilliant body is active, so the more skills you use the longer you can keep Brilliant body activated. When BB is not activated Holy fire cannot be generated. When out of combat it fills to maximum automatically

As you can see this version has weapon swap and can generate Holy fire with pretty much all skills available to Guardian. Let me know what you think.

Also dont forget to suggest ideas for traits you might have in mind.
Thx for all the feed back, keep it coming

koniallis.4736:

So new Mechanics would be

Mechanics: Stances and Brilliant Body
Virtues are replaced by stances.
The stances are,
Stance of Justice (The proverbial Dmg stance)
While in SoJ every 5th hit you take spreads Burning and might. When Briliant body is active it also gives quicknes

Stance of Resolve(Support stance)
When in SoR every 5th hit you take spreads blindness and regen. While BB is active also gain resistance

Stance of Courage(Pure Tank stance)
When in SoC every 5th hit you take spreads stability and aegis. When BB is active also spreads taunt

Yes, this is what I was trying to suggest! I think this would be an excellent direction for the devs to take guardian’s next elite spec in if nothing else. Really like the condition/boon you chose for each stance too.

As for the BB effects, I’m not sure about the taunt on Courage. I suppose if it was single target and had a range (maybe 600) it wouldn’t be over powered in pvp/wvw. How exactly were you expecting the additional effects due to BB to work; would they be single-time activation upon activating that stance, or would they periodically pulse?

Arcaedus.7290:

Yes, this is what I was trying to suggest! I think this would be an excellent direction for the devs to take guardian’s next elite spec in if nothing else. Really like the condition/boon you chose for each stance too.

As for the BB effects, I’m not sure about the taunt on Courage. I suppose if it was single target and had a range (maybe 600) it wouldn’t be over powered in pvp/wvw. How exactly were you expecting the additional effects due to BB to work; would they be single-time activation upon activating that stance, or would they periodically pulse?

The BB effects would be applied every spread so basically every 5th hit. as for taunt i thought it could be applied to the on actually performing the hit thoug i suppose applying it to target is also an option. Maybe both even.
And no i don’t think it would be op, especially if the boons/ condis only last 3 to 4 secs (with traits incresing the duration of course)

Arcaedus.7290:

Thematically this is a very cool elite spec idea and I really wish (but doubt) that they would bring spears to land, or give classes polearms. There are just too many reasons that this doesn’t seem likely.

Give me reasons or I’ll cry myself to sleep T^T
I’ll tell you what. I left WoW due to certain things and wanted something fresh so I looked at GW2
Of course I am a righteousfag for life so I always pick paladin archetype classes.
I say, Anet should update some info because year ago I found myself quite dissapointed when I found out that guardian’s tomes were made into underwhelming elites and spears turned out to be an underwater weapons even when a lot of skins for them look like a dangity dang polearm/halber which is nowhere near to be a spear to use underwater.
DANG IT MAN! There are even moments in certain cinematics where some fighters are seens with spears, using them in close combat. Just check out this battle sequence… I feel like Anet is teasing with me. Polearms is a fine chunk of new combat content.

https://youtu.be/TZxUUwKj2DU?t=2m34s

Almost every corrupted sylvari has some sort of a pole weapon (or a staff)

Rodzynald.5897:

Arcaedus.7290:

Thematically this is a very cool elite spec idea and I really wish (but doubt) that they would bring spears to land, or give classes polearms. There are just too many reasons that this doesn’t seem likely.

Give me reasons or I’ll cry myself to sleep T^T
I’ll tell you what. I left WoW due to certain things and wanted something fresh so I looked at GW2
Of course I am a righteousfag for life so I always pick paladin archetype classes.
I say, Anet should update some info because year ago I found myself quite dissapointed when I found out that guardian’s tomes were made into underwhelming elites and spears turned out to be an underwater weapons even when a lot of skins for them look like a dangity dang polearm/halber which is nowhere near to be a spear to use underwater.
DANG IT MAN! There are even moments in certain cinematics where some fighters are seens with spears, using them in close combat. Just check out this battle sequence… I feel like Anet is teasing with me. Polearms is a fine chunk of new combat content.

https://youtu.be/TZxUUwKj2DU?t=2m34s

Almost every corrupted sylvari has some sort of a pole weapon (or a staff)

1. “Spears” in the game are already an underwater weapon. If we want a pole-arm type weapon that would involve either A.) “bringing spears to land,” or B.) design an entirely new class of pole-arm skins and animations. Both of these options while entirely possible and widely demanded by us would require a lot of effort, may cause confusion and probably don’t line up very well with what the game developers want to do in terms of future elite specializations.

2. There are already classes that use the staff as sort of a polearm, namely Daredevil and Revenant. Not to say that there couldn’t also be spears (since they’d be more stabbing oriented), but the fact that they already have melee animations for staves just makes it less likely.

3. Contingent on #1, even if they brought spears to land, that would give us new sets of skills which would heavily upset class balance. Devs would have to decide who gets spears and who doesn’t, what compensation the others would get and thematically, what would all spear skills have in common. A possible solution to this is that the next expac brings new weapons into the game (crossbow/bowgun, great axe, spear), and that each of the 9 classes would receive access to these weapons in subsequent expacs. This way all 9 classes would receive roughly equal access to these ‘new’ weapons.

I really want spears or polearms in the game too… there just seems to be too many barriers to their entry into this game which have only increased since HoT came out :/

Of course there is no need for making new skins, what we have now is just right as it is.
As for balance, whole elite specializations also upset class balance as you described it.
Anet knew what they were doing, adding new elites and look at the current state of it so far into HoT.
Now I am fairly convinced that balancing a bunch of weapon skills will be much easier than a weapon, traits and utility skills all at once.
I guess that if polearm weapons were to make an appearance, there also could be some other arms for other classes to introduce along the way so that everyone gets something fresh.
Dang, I’d even pay for it just to get my halberd/spear on land.

Revised vanguard thread HERE