Guild Wars 2

SWORD (main-hand)
Flashing Blade

• Teleport no longer requires a target. If the teleport is activated without a target, the Guardian simply teleports 600 range forward in a straight line.

FOCUS (off-hand)
Ray of Judgment

• Recharge increased to 30 seconds.
• Channel a piercing ray at your foe that damages and inflicts blindness. Allies near you gain regeneration and cure conditions.
• Damage (3x): 100
• Blind: 2 seconds
• Regeneration: 1 second
• Duration: 1 second (Cast-time would probably end up equating to 1½ seconds)
• Radius: 180
• Range: 1,200
  • The radius effect (granting regeneration and curing a condition) triggers at your location.
  • The Regeneration and Cure Conditions effects trigger 3 times respectively (once for each attack).
  • The animation is actually a ray now and not some prissy bubble.

ALTERNATIVELY

Ray of Judgment

• Invoke a ray at target location. Foes are damaged and blinded. Allies gain regeneration and cure conditions.
• Damage (3x): 100
• Blind: 2 seconds
• Regeneration: 1 second
• Duration: 3 seconds
• Pulse: 1 second
• Radius: 240
• Range: 1,200
  • Ion Cannon beam animation ala Ray of Judgment in Guild Wars 1.

Shield of Wrath

• Channel a shield around yourself that blocks attacks and grants retaliation. Upon its final pulse, the shield damages nearby foes.
• Cast-time increased to 3½ seconds
• Damage: 300
• Retaliation: 1 second
• Pulse: 1 second
• Duration: 3 seconds
• Radius: 180
• Combo Finisher: Blast
  • By “Pulse,” the description means to say that the shield grants Retaliation every second while being actively channeled (a full channel will pulse retaliation 3 times).
  • This skill will block attacks so long as the Guardian continues to channel it (or until its duration expires).
  • The radius applies to the skill’s damage that occurs at the skill’s final pulse.
  • The blast finisher triggers at the beginning of the skill.

SHIELD (off-hand)
Shield of Judgment

• Changed to a skill-chain: Shield of Judgment—> Judge’s Ward
• Create a shielding wave in front of you that damages foes and grants protection to yourself and up to five nearby allies.
• Damage: 302
• Protection: 5 seconds
• Range: 600

Judge’s Ward

• Cast-time: ½ second
• Push back and weaken all foes in front of you with a wave of spiritual energy.
• Weakness: 5 seconds
• Knockback: 300
• Range: 600

Shield of Absorption

• The bubble no longer roots the caster or requires channeling in order to maintain it past the initial cast-time.

TORCH (off-hand)
Zealot’s Flame

• Recharge increased to 20 seconds
• Light yourself aflame and gain regeneration, might, swiftness, and you periodically burn up to three nearby foes.
• Burning: 1 second
• Self-burning: 3 seconds
• Regeneration: 5 seconds
• Might: 5 seconds (3 stacks)
• Swiftness: 8 seconds
• Pulse: 1 second
• Duration: 5 seconds
• Radius: 600
  • By “Pulse,” the description means to say that the skill will burn up to 3 enemies in a 600 range radius around the caster once every 1-second interval starting with the moment that the skill is first activated (the burning duration inflicted for each pulse is 1 second).
  • The self-burning only triggers once upon activating the skill.

Zealot’s Fire

• Immobilize and damage all nearby burning foes.
• Damage: 300
• Immobilize: 2 seconds
• Range: 240

Cleansing Flame

• Recharge increased to 20 seconds.
• Cast-time decreased to 2¼ seconds.
• Damage (5x): 1000 (skill only strikes 5 times now; still does the same amount of damage overall)
• The final attack removes up to 3 conditions from the caster (removal only triggers on the final attack tick, but regardless of whether or not it actually hits anything).

SCEPTER (main-hand)
Orb of Wrath

• Changed into a skill-chain: Orb of Wrath —> Orb of Fury --> Judge’s Insight

Orb of Wrath

• Cast-time removed
• Damage reduced to 80

Orb of Fury

• Fire a slow-moving orb at your foe.
• Cast-time: 0 seconds
• Damage: 80
• Range: 1,200

Judge’s Insight

• Smite your foe with a direct strike that inflicts vulnerability and grants you might.
• Cast-time: ½ seconds
• Damage: 150
• Might: 1 second
• Vulnerability: 3 seconds
• Range: 1,200

Smite

• Changed to a chain-skill: Castigate —> Smite --> Scourge
  • Skill-chain recharge increased to 8 seconds. Recharge only begins after the final skill in the chain is used (or if the player waits too long to use a subsequent skill in the chain).

Castigate

• Damage and cripple foes in the target area.
• Cast-time: ¼ second
• Damage: 100
• Cripple: 2 seconds
• Radius: 240

Smite

• Cast-time removed
• Damage (8x): 835 (this skill now only hits 8 times)

Scourge

• Cast-time: 0 seconds
• Damage (8x): 835
  **Completely equivalent to Smite.

I agree with Flashing Blade more than anything else!!

Also changes to Shield of Absorption would be very very very welcomed

The problem is that we don’t have the metrics to see which weapons are “under-used” and I don’t think Arenanet will release that data. Would be cool if they did, though.

How is focus an underused weapon!? I’m pretty sure it’s most people’s first choice when using a one handed weapon.

Shield of Absorption only need a bug fix so it actually block all projectiles, including siege projectiles.

Of the 3 off-hands tho, I think torch is the one that needs the most help. It’s the only off-hand that has no self preservation abilities, and there’s no control abilities (snares or disables) on it to compensate for that. For one, Cleansing Flame’s condition removal effect needs to apply to the caster as well.

I somehow prefer the current Shield of Wrath…

Wouldn’t do any changes besides Flashing Blade. And cripple in sword autochain but that has been suggested multiple times by now.

either remove the stupid root or add missile reflection from/to the shield 5 skill and shield will be considered to be used….

I wasn’t expecting either focus or shield to be in here… both are fine as is imo… I was expecting sword and scepter… those two are in far greater need of a rework. Dear holy god increase the speed of scepter orbs already… or give us a real long ranged weapon -.-

Yeah, forgot to mention scepter…i only use it to attack cannons/oil so i’m not having issues with them running away ^^

yeah, don’t change shield of wrath, it’s pretty much perfect as it is ( and it’s our highest damage skill ).

Ynna.8769:

The problem is that we don’t have the metrics to see which weapons are “under-used” and I don’t think Arenanet will release that data. Would be cool if they did, though.

One peak at the “post your stats” thread on this sub-forum will tell us everything other than greatsword is underused. But that’s not necessarily AN’s fault. Like insects to a bug zapper, the vast majority of players gravitate towards whatever weapon/build gives them the highest damage. The higher their damage output, the happier they are. Weapons that function as DoT, CC, healing, or support will ALWAYS be “under-used”, but that’s on the community.

darkace.8925:

One peak at the “Post Your Stats” thread on this sub-forum will tell us everything other than Greatsword is underused. But that’s not necessarily ArenaNet’s fault. Like insects to a bug zapper, the vast majority of players gravitate towards whatever weapon/build gives them the highest damage. The higher their damage output, the happier they are. Weapons that function as DoT, CC, healing, or support will ALWAYS be “under-used”, but that’s on the community.

Even asking this forum would have significant problems. If you’re at the forums, you’re already taking the game more seriously than the more casual (not pejorative) player. Then there’s the fact that we’ve had complaints about every weapon, including the Greatsword.

We also have to define underused. I’m sure no-one is asking for a perfect balance between the weapons.

Also, if, for example, support weapons are underused, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re bad. It could be that the people who come to the forums prefer dealing damage (as you said), or it could be that support isn’t as interesting in this game, or that it’s under-appreciated by the community, etc.

Yeah… something not being used often only explains half the story. For example, even if Staff were a fantastic weapon, I wouldn’t expect to see it used much by solo players in the open world. Survivability/CC weapons like the Hammer and Mace get a lot of use from me because I personal am pretty bad at timing dodges, but for someone who’s good at avoiding damage anyway there wouldn’t be much point in using a defensive weapon.

Different weapons are meant to fill different roles in combat, which means their use will naturally be imbalanced due to how popular certain roles tend to be among players compared to others. “Healers” and “tanks” are generally much less common than “DPS” in other MMOs, and it doesn’t surprise me at all that the hardcore dungeon crowd don’t gravitate towards support/survivability weapons rather than those with high DPS. It doesn’t mean anything’s wrong with the weapons, it’s just a natural result of building a game that tries to let people play their characters the way they want rather than the way the game makes them.

I’d worry less about how popular some weapons are and just focus on how they feel or perform at their intended roles.

… focus and shield are underused…? Is this supposed to be a troll post? If anything, the torch is the most underused offhand by far. The only people I’ve ever seen using the torch are lowbies trying to level.

On the word “under-used”:

Perhaps that wasn’t the right word. What I meant to say was more along the lines of “weapons that do too little or perform too reactively.” Typically, though, weapons that do that are normally the under-used weapons of a profession. However, in the Guardian’s case, it seems that, well, all of the off-hands play this way—which is sort of a travesty.

My defense for the Shield (Judgment and Wrath) skill changes is that Wrath is horribly reactive. Ask yourself the question, “When will I actually get to use Shield of Wrath’s destruction ability?” The answer is never if you’re using the skill actively while in combat. If you ever do trigger it, it’s because you popped it, waited 4 seconds on the fringe of a fight, then bolted in with a teleport skill in order to dish out a big pocket of damage. That’ll work once per fight—and only at the beginning of the fight, AND only if your opponent doesn’t ping you with 3 hits from long-range. It’s bad. The block is good, but it might as well just be that. A skill shouldn’t tempt players with a final ability that’ll never really be triggered in heated combat when it would actually be in handy the most.

People seem to think that the damage nerf would be an overall nerf, but I think they neglect the damage capacity of Retaliation—especially in heated combat. If you take enough hits, the damage from Retaliation could easily surpass Shield of Wrath’s original base damage.

Shield of Judgment is just lack-luster. I felt that it needed something more and so I borrowed from my idea for Shield of Wrath.

On the “Pulse” mechanic suggestion, that is actually a buff if nothing else. Instead of simply getting one big boon packet, you get several small packets. This sort of set-up removes a lot of issues with removal since—if you let a respective shield run out its duration—you would probably get your boon(s) renewed.

I will also be making suggestions for the Torch off-hand and Scepter main-hand as well in the future because, yes, they are rather and lack real utility that can truly sway combat.

It’s not about the damage of Shield of Wrath. It’s about you wanting to reduce it to 1 block per 2 secs that renders your F3 passive useless for that time. Currently it provides 3 blocks instantly that don’t hinder Aegis from being applied and i like the way it is. I would rather see the explosion removed and a shortened CD ^^

I’ve always liked shield, it does strike me as a little odd that there’s no block there outside of the whole magic bubble which I completely love.
I’ve also always thought that a reasonable compromise would be to make Shield of Judgement either like a 1 second channeled block or a single block counter attack style skill that at the end of the channel or when you choose to activate it, performs it’s already established ability of damaging foes and granting protection to allies.

(You also forgot to say make Flashing Blade a leap finisher! )

darkace.8925:

One peak at the “post your stats” thread on this sub-forum will tell us everything other than greatsword is underused. But that’s not necessarily AN’s fault. Like insects to a bug zapper, the vast majority of players gravitate towards whatever weapon/build gives them the highest damage. The higher their damage output, the happier they are. Weapons that function as DoT, CC, healing, or support will ALWAYS be “under-used”, but that’s on the community.

For stats, you don’t want tens or hundreds of uses, you want tens or hundreds of thousands of uses, which Anet has.

Well, I consolidated and tweaked all of my suggestions in the OP so have a bump.

Shield of Wrath

Channel a shield

That means i can’t attack or stomp while blocking with it? Guess i would never use a focus again…

Focus is almost perfect as it is right now, just leave it this way.

Please, please, please for flashing blade! It would be such an amazing improvement.

I love your sword, focus and torch (except Zealot’s Fire) suggestions.

Swagg.9236:

SWORD (main-hand)
Flashing Blade

• Teleport no longer requires a target. If the teleport is activated without a target, the Guardian simply teleports 600 range forward in a straight line.

Shield of Absorption

• The bubble no longer roots the caster or requires channeling in order to maintain it past the initial cast-time.

These two are simple quality of life changes. I really want these to happen.

I despise the fact that a class wearing heavy armor is carrying around a focus.