Guild Wars 2

It was asked by the staff at the AMA to discuss any builds that will be affected by the specialization changes.

I play hammer guardian almost exclusively in PvP — it is the most satisfying weapon set and build I’ve been able to find. Glacial heart really is at the core of this build. Firstly, because it provides a huge 500 damage bonus on crit — that allows for some really nice burst connects. Second of all, the AoE unblockable chill is invaluable for offensive guardians using hammer because the hammer by nature is a slow, clunky weapon with large traceable animations -- landing hits needs to be more rewarding. Enemies running away from you is not your only concern — there needs to be some sort of defense / duel power to help. The AoE unblockable chill solves both the running away and defense issues because the -66% recharge on skills UNBLOCKABLE is a tremendous asset to allow for some breathing room in between hammer skills / attacks. That short duration chill is exactly what is needed to make hammer viable.

The current replacement trait removes the A. damage — which is going to be a huge cripple to guardian hammer builds in PvP, and also B. the chill — movement speed impairment on a traitline is really quite uninteresting to a hammer guardian in PvP because the hammer as a weapon set already contains so many movement impairment abilities on it from the immobilize, to banish, to the uncrossable ring of warding.

Please please please do not remove the aspects of glacial heart that made it such a great trait for hammer guardians.

I for one think glacial heart should be removed, because of the lack of a tl;dr

I don’t mind the removal of Glacial Heart as long as we gain back that 500 – 1k crit damage from Chill. The burst + slow was what made Glacial Heart.

The slow isn’t going to be that great without the Burst effect. That’s what people will missing / complain about.

I’m kind of excited to see how slow will effect the use of hammer builds. However I do agree that removing glacial heart might be the wrong move to make. I thought it was a cool trait to have, the only thing that bugged me about it was that I would lose the fury up time. Since the meditation traits are being rolled into one that fixes the problem.

I don’t know if any Dev’s will read this but I thought it would be a cool idea to give guardians equal access to both burning and chill. It would allow us to open up new avenues toward condition builds and it would be really cool!

I’m interested in seeing how slow plays. I’m not completely opposed to giving up chill for slow. My only problem is what is said above; when you take out the damage, it stops working. Nevermind the fact that the tooltip for Virtuous Mallet didn’t mention anything about the slow effect being aoe. Glacial Heart was good not only because chill is good, but because it did aoe damage and aoe chill. Nothing feels better than diving into a pile of enemies and proc’ing GH. If you kept Glacial Heart as it is, replaced chill with slow, and renamed it Virtuous Mallet then I’d be willing to try it out. I think it’s correct in saying that chill doesn’t really align with Guardian.

It’s funny how glacial heart was hated one for ever until the surge of hammer medi guards hit after seeing it work on a winning team.

Now people can’t live without it. I’m still underwhelmed by it, but it does provide some extra burst when tied together with a few more effects. Losing this gives us more soft CC (something we have been asking for a lot now)…so it is like a + and – at the same time?

CMF.5461:

It’s funny how glacial heart was hated one for ever until the surge of hammer medi guards hit after seeing it work on a winning team.

Now people can’t live without it. I’m still underwhelmed by it, but it does provide some extra burst when tied together with a few more effects. Losing this gives us more soft CC (something we have been asking for a lot now)…so it is like a + and – at the same time?

It was hated before as it was on a ridiculously long CD for what it did. It’s still pretty bad IMO but we gotta work with what we got.

Also keep in mind Glacial Heart needed a critical hit to trigger and even then a 50% chance to proc with a 15 second cooldown. The new slow will have a 33% chance to trigger on any hit with a 10 second cooldown, making hammer stronger for builds with low crit chance

This is the softcc we have been waiting for, 33% on hit with a 10s icd is going to be quite powerful for zerk hammer builds imo. So far these trait changes look amazing to me and ive mained gaurd for about 2 yrs. I am very excited for these changes and see a lot of great build options already

Xanthin.2814:

This is the softcc we have been waiting for, 33% on hit with a 10s icd is going to be quite powerful for zerk hammer builds imo. So far these trait changes look amazing to me and ive mained gaurd for about 2 yrs. I am very excited for these changes and see a lot of great build options already

Slow is 50% if I remember correctly, while Chill is 66% movement speed reduction, so it’s a nerf to our kitability.

We should not desire to maintain ‘kiteability’ because it’s a crutch anyways. While I question the placement of the slow on hammer in Virtue line, it is a step in the right direction. Besides, if LB is any good, kiting won’t make sense.

i guess the main problem of the new “glacial heart” is its placement in virtues. people will pick the condi remove on virtue instead of the slow. I would suggest to put it back in the Valor line (master). in pvp most of the guard(defensive and offensive) will pick both, valor and virtues. Valor has no offensive Master trait, although dps guard will go for valor because of monks focus. The dmg loss on the new trait hurts abit, but i think we will be fine with the 4 aditional traitpoints. dps guards could get a huge dmg increase out of zeal to compensate for the dmg loss on glacial heart

tldr pls Anet but Glacial Heart/virtues mallet into valor

I imagine the damage will be made up elsewhere with a few more trait points to spend and some nice buffs to damage traits. The big change is that Mallet now debuffs basically everything except movement (outside of movement skills), which was kind of the point of GH. VM seems like more of a sustain ability than catch.

Virtuous Mallet trait fits best in the Honor tree. That’s where the other most used hammer trait is: Writ of Persistence. Although I wouldn’t mind if it stays in the Valor specialization where it is currently being used in the PvP guardian meta together with meditations.

There’s two things unclear to me though. What’s the reason for replacing Chill with Slow? Is there something we don’t know yet about the new elite specialization? Also what’s the thought behind putting this trait into the virtues specialization when the link between Virtuous Mallet and virtues is non-existent. It is doing exactly the opposite of a virtue. I would rename the trait “Vicious Mallet”.

TL;DR: I think ANet has some ironing out to do with logically categorizing the guardian traits to the right specializations.

The change was a pretty significant blow to Dps Guards. Again, without any real mobility/soft cc, it’s going to be even harder to stick to targets.

It is funny how the devs were like HUR DUR NO BUILDS USE THIS when the Meta Guardian build in their pampared and preferred game mode usesd Glacial Heart as it’s Center piece. Also, Hammer meta in WvW also uses Glacial Heart as a key component.

My main concern with the people making changes to this game don’t even play it at all.

I’m pretty disappointed about the change to glacial heart. Although it doesn’t thematically fit with the theme of a guardian, GH offered a LOT to guardian. It offered a nice burst, which was my main reason for taking it, but it also gave us some soft CC on a weapon that already had problems with kiting. It was perfect, as all you need with hammer are a couple of mighty blows, and a single auto attack chain to get some decent damage in. That 3 seconds of chill was perfect for just this! Ever since the internal CD of GH was dropped to 15s, I’ve loved using hammer in pvp. In fact, the only time I don’t use GH is when I pair hammer with greatsword, and hammer becomes more of a CC weapon rather than my primary dps (would take purity, or strength in numbers over GH for more survival).

I don’t like the change to GH (Virtuous Mallet) for the following reasons:
1. The trait is now in virtues? Ok, first of all, if I go into virtues, i’m going to want absolute resolution over this trait any day. In my opinion, the trait fits much better in Honor or Valor.
2. No more soft CC. I find that most of the time when I’m using a hammer, I’m chasing opponents, and trying to get in that MB while struggling to keep up mobility wise. GH offered that soft CC which was a big help, and now that’s gone. Also, we received no soft CC (well there’s that master trait in Radiance, but hammer guardians likely aren’t going to trait into radiance as it doesn’t offer very compelling Grandmasters for a power based, or support build), no swiftness, and no increase to mobility with these new traits/changes.
3. No more burst of damage? This was the main reason people took GH from what I gather. To maintain what GH is right now, Virtuous Mallet could cause a fiery blast (similar to sigil of fire proc, except blue) with the damage component being retained, along with some other effect (boon removal, daze, cripple, or slow). This would make Virtuous Mallet comparable to GH.
4. Slow is great, and this trait will give guardians a lot of access to slow, however it’s shifting hammer from more of a burst/damaging weapon to that of a support weapon (no longer on crit, and the trait is in the virtues line). Also, in most pvp situations, I doubt slow is going to trump aoe burst damage + UNBLOCKABLE soft cc that GH brought.

tl;dr: If this change to Glacial Heart goes through, I’ll be QQing because my favorite weapon is likely going to become a lot less viable in pvp in comparsion to other options Guardian now has.

Anti.9156:

i guess the main problem of the new “glacial heart” is its placement in virtues. people will pick the condi remove on virtue instead of the slow. I would suggest to put it back in the Valor line (master). in pvp most of the guard(defensive and offensive) will pick both, valor and virtues. Valor has no offensive Master trait, although dps guard will go for valor because of monks focus. The dmg loss on the new trait hurts abit, but i think we will be fine with the 4 aditional traitpoints. dps guards could get a huge dmg increase out of zeal to compensate for the dmg loss on glacial heart

tldr pls Anet but Glacial Heart/virtues mallet into valor

Agreed. I don’t think it should belong in the virtues line and I could see it as a master for either Valor or Honor. Valor feels to be more of a damage line and Honor has the symbol traits, but I think it belongs back home in Valor.

Strength in Numbers has been one of my favorite traits and it feels weird saying that this might be the best candidate for swapping. If swapped with Virtuous Mallet, it’ll belong in a line based around non skill-specific team support effects, it’ll help open up a decent number of builds, and could be a good counterpart for Absolute Resolution for when you want a bit more heal and condi removal or just straight up toughness. It also let’s you keep Communal Defense in Valor where the are multiple aegis-giving effects for proc’ing CD and it’s where AH is. And I don’t think it belongs in Honor because if you’re playing hammer you might want to also play symbols, and there’d be no way to take empowering might if you wanted to make a Zeal/Valor/Honor offensive build. Valor has been a decent line to mix with Zeal when playing GS medi guard and will keep the focus on active defenses like CD instead of SiN. Especially now that Zeal has nice aegis traits as well, you could choose between playing a Communal Defense guard with Wrathful Spirit and Shattered Aegis, or take ‘Virtuous’ Mallet, Empowering Might, and Symbolic Avenger.

Putting it in Valor also let’s you swap out Zeal for Virtues to play a similar setup in a completely different way. There’s an obvious number of viable bunker builds playing Valor/Honor/Virtues but there’s very little chance of giving up Absolute Resolution. If you’re running Permeating Wrath you’re running Supreme Justice, if you’re running Battle Presence you’re running Absolute Resolve, and if you’re running Indomitable Courage, then you’re running Absolute Resolution or you could be running Strength in Numbers if you’re running shouts/don’t want more condi clear. With that kind of setup, it would still be possible to run hammer with Virtuous Hammer and not give up the stuff that makes Virtues, Virtues. I could see a Supreme Justice, Permeating Wrath, ‘Virtuous’ Mallet build, sounds fun. You have the option to select between Virtuous Mallet or Communal Defense and Pure of Heart or Empowering Might depending on where you want to be on the scale of support to offense, without breaking the coupling in the Virtues traits.

tl;dr Put it back in Valor, swap it with Strength in Numbers.
Thoughts?

Aaron.4807:

It is funny how the devs were like HUR DUR NO BUILDS USE THIS when the Meta Guardian build in their pampared and preferred game mode usesd Glacial Heart as it’s Center piece. Also, Hammer meta in WvW also uses Glacial Heart as a key component.

My main concern with the people making changes to this game don’t even play it at all.

While I dislike the change, to be fair, I’m pretty sure the devs play the game or at least understand how this change impacts people that use the trait; hence why we get the new hammer trait in Virtue.

The devs specifically said no one uses the trait. Meanwhile a team won the last big tourney with a guardian using it. So…. what do you think?

Honestly, there needs to be something given in return. With Guardian having virtually no access to soft cc and mobility being hindered, we need something.

Aaron.4807:

The devs specifically said no one uses the trait. Meanwhile a team won the last big tourney with a guardian using it. So…. what do you think?

I think ‘they’ made an absolute statement in error; I even question if ‘they’ did say it. It’s not that ‘they’ are clueless and stupid and don’t play the game, they simply mis-spoke. They aren’t spin doctors and politicians, they are a bunch of wound up game devs … you know, the kind of nerds that program AND play games.

I also think it’s pretty naive when people complain that something was changed because of something as ridiculous as the ‘devs don’t know their game’.

The explanation is probably the most simple one; it’s likely not the most useful trait in the line it’s in, so they changed it. I can also think of reasons it’s no longer a chill. Perhaps if you stopped being so critical and assuming, you could do the same.

Let’s stick to discussion on fixing the problem so maybe the devs will give us what we want.

I thought I’d add a bit more about the changes to the trait itself and not just where it was moved because I’m actually pretty happy with Virtuous Mallet as an idea. In all honesty, Glacial Heart was an absolutely fantastic trait but it was good because you could play it with intelligence sigils and judge’s intervention to basically ensure that you could jump on somebody and proc it. It made the burst damage monstrous when you set up a full wombo combo. But it lost a lot of value in builds with low precision that relied on intelligence, so it only shined in zerker medi guard. I for one enjoy a medi build that runs valk amulet and intelligence but GH loses value when not weapon swapping into hammer. The effect that it gives is more deserving of frequent use and not just burst damage. So the fact that Virtuous Mallet is an on hit and not on crit is a buff in my eyes. I think hammer deserves to be a more ‘in your face’ sustain and support kind of weapon, not a burst weapon. We already have burst on GS, 1h sword, scepter, torch, and focus. You can get burst damage elsewhere. VM is gonna proc every 10-12s. 3s of slow every 10s is great. (Mind the placeholder numbers). If Virtuous Mallet was a small aoe maybe with some damage, then it very much competes with Glacial Heart and aligns much more with what hammer is about. It could easily drop people with a well timed slow when their heal skill takes an extra 1/2 second to cast. And I’d much rather have VM than GH when I see an enemy go down and can stop their team from spike res’ing them by applying slow (if it becomes an aoe)

Even if it’s an aoe but without damage, it’d still be a good trait. The text also mentions it being the hammer cd reduc trait. And the wombo combos coming off JI + MB + GH + damage sigils was getting a bit unhealthy. JI is a great gap closer utility and should never change, but we kept piling on damage effects and were getting a bit 1-shot-ish with very little telegraph unless you used focus 5 as well, but at that point you’re going for the 10k burst dream.

Fair enough. Here are some thoughts on the changes:

1. The current damage application is unreliable and perhaps even infrequent. It would be reasonable for Virtuous Mallet to also deliver damage to the target when it procs, but not necessary if it’s a factor that affects trait balance.
2. I think the Virtue line is odd choice for placement though I can’t predict if it’s the right one for PVP once all the traits go live. The concern is that Absolute Resolution will always be more desirable. It’s hard to predict this to be true because the meta will change when these new traits come in. I’m speculating here: GENERALLY, cleansing becomes less necessary if you can stick on your target better and apply constant pressure.
3. I think it’s a mistake to take away our ability to reduce movement speed of the target, though I think the AOE unblockable chill was a little much in the current version.
4. I think it’s interesting that it gives hammer abilities a reduced recharge (it doesn’t say how much it’s reduced …). Anet may think more frequent Interrupts and Immobilization access may be the balancing factor to justify the chill-to-slow change. I can understand that line of logic.

In summary, I value the movement speed reduction more than the damage or the skill recharge reduction from chill. If the slow was returned to a chill or even changed to immobilize/knockdown, I could live with the lost damage and the positioning of the trait.

Obtena.7952:

Aaron.4807:

The devs specifically said no one uses the trait. Meanwhile a team won the last big tourney with a guardian using it. So…. what do you think?

I think ‘they’ made an absolute statement in error; I even question if ‘they’ did say it. It’s not that ‘they’ are clueless and stupid and don’t play the game, they simply mis-spoke. They aren’t spin doctors and politicians, they are a bunch of wound up game devs … you know, the kind of nerds that program AND play games.

I also think it’s pretty naive when people complain that something was changed because of something as ridiculous as the ‘devs don’t know their game’.

The explanation is probably the most simple one; it’s likely not the most useful trait in the line it’s in, so they changed it. I can also think of reasons it’s no longer a chill. Perhaps if you stopped being so critical and assuming, you could do the same.

Jesus dude, what I said was a joke and not to be taken literally. Lighten up.

But seriously, I don’t care about losing the chill if the slow is also AoE and has the crit on it too. Then it would be worth taking over resolution. Right now it is just something very meh.

I’d rather take some solid mobility over any form of CC if we’re to receive none. *looking for a 25% movement trait.

I think they could use this turtle condition to stagger or quagmire the adversary with a “blue fire” visual, similiar to virtue of justice when traited with the actual permeating wrath with the 50% cooldown and plus 15% slowdoes if target gains new boons?
would work like quagmire area that would last 2-3 seconds, if any player were cough by the “toxic fire” would get movement effect.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quagmire

just my 2 cents.

I would miss the chill effect and burst damage, but I think I could live with either as long as the uptime was decent. many complaints with glacial heart before were the uptime. or if it procced and was immediately cleansed you had to wait too long to reapply it.

Aaron.4807:

The devs specifically said no one uses the trait. Meanwhile a team won the last big tourney with a guardian using it. So…. what do you think?

They also said that every Thief picks Critical Strikes. They obviously don’t care about PvP and focus on PvE.

Good riddance, we don’t need more passive, undodgeable damage. Meditation guardian is already looking at massive buffs, so it’s not like this is going to destroy the viability either. People keep complaining about guardian’s lack of soft CC, yet 3 of the hammer skills are CC. Additionally, from the trait preview, we will be getting an on-demand panic strike in radiance, but I guess you always need something to cry over.

Just a pedantic point: Anet indicates a reason chill was removed because Guardians don’t chill. OK, but they don’t slow either. They DO immobilize though.(HINT)

There goes my fire and ice guardian build. I even had the winter weapons for the looks.

Obtena.7952:

Just a pedantic point: Anet indicates a reason chill was removed because Guardians don’t chill. OK, but they don’t slow either. They DO immobilize though.(HINT)

Guardians cripple (Tome of Wrath #2). Say what you want, it’s there.

I find it laughable that people are calling this a blow to dps guards or meditation guards. The trait is goes mostly unused in PVE due to the light field on the hammer for min-maxers and hammer’s sluggishness for casuals. In pve it only became a thing after the tournament with the one meditation hammer guardian on the winning team, which is a couple of months old. Before that very few guardians actually ran this trait in pvp.

Vizardlorde.8243:

I find it laughable that people are calling this a blow to dps guards or meditation guards. The trait is goes mostly unused in PVE due to the light field on the hammer for min-maxers and hammer’s sluggishness for casuals. In pve it only became a thing after the tournament with the one meditation hammer guardian on the winning team, which is a couple of months old. Before that very few guardians actually ran this trait in pvp.

Most Guards run Hammer in PvP and every single one of those runs Glacial Heart.

Vizardlorde.8243:

I find it laughable that people are calling this a blow to dps guards or meditation guards. The trait is goes mostly unused in PVE due to the light field on the hammer for min-maxers and hammer’s sluggishness for casuals. In pve it only became a thing after the tournament with the one meditation hammer guardian on the winning team, which is a couple of months old. Before that very few guardians actually ran this trait in pvp.

You assume a significant portion of the population gives a rat’s behind about light fields and min maxing. I think that’s not a sound assumption and may even be the opposite based on the kind of people this game caters to. The fact is that if your not a min maxer, you play the weapon you like and you choose the ‘easy’ traits because they are made for the weapon you use …. and hammer has massive ‘cool’ appeal.

I can see how it’s a blow to PVP med guards … what traits do they use if they use a hammer? Pretty sure one will be Glacial. OP already explained it’s value in PVP. Not sure how you find that laughable unless you didn’t read the OP’s post.

Plexxing.2978:

There goes my fire and ice guardian build. I even had the winter weapons for the looks.

Awe that makes me sad (; _ ;)

Virtuous mallet sounds like trash to be quite honest. Glacial Heart allowed for nice burst and not even for just medi guards. My Altruistic bunker guardian with intelligence sigil could hit extremely hard with this and mighty blow once every 15 seconds. It’s hard to see this as anything other then a nerf imo.