Guild Wars 2

Merciful Intervention. Hmmm.

As somebody who plays meditation guard, I just can’t see this. Let’s look at the situation.

Typically, a Medi Guard is bringing 3 meditation utility skills > kittenite Condition and CoP.

A typical med guard burst uses JI, SC and some kind of high damage burst in combination (there are a few, you all know them). That puts any med guard typically on 2 util cooldowns instantly. Crucially, this includes one of your stunbreakers.
So after entering the melee and laying down some burst, you generally have to keep pressure up super high or face near certain death on congested points. I generally try not to let my enemy get too many conditions on me or ANY kind of clutch CC on me, which often leads to me blowing CoP somewhere within the first 20 seconds of a fight or so. That second stunbreaker is so ridiculously clutch at times, I cannot really see anybody dropping it.

So what does merciful intervention offer? A decent range teleport, 4K HP return when traited but ONLY if an ally is targeted successfully. So effectively, this skill is still completely useless in 1v1s, and not much more than a glorified gap opener in team fights – in which it will probably save you zero times anyway, since how often will you be able to teleport to a teammate who is pew pewing off point? I can certainly see more use in hotjoin or spvp, but tpvp?
Will it save you more than a second stun breaker that also removes ALL conditions? I seriously seriously doubt it.
In one sense I appreciate that MI will reward more “proactive” play but anybody who has ran on to point and faced up against a combo like Necro + Condi Ranger knows how the best laid plans aft gan aglay.

So is anybody going to use this? Are bunker builds going to use this? The healing power scaling is about the same as shelter, and i doubt anybody is going to be using Monks focus on a bunker.

IF this skill broke stun and was castable without teammate support, I might use it.

So where does the niche lie here? I’m quite confused.

In my opinion, Contemplation of Purity will still take my utility slot even after Merciful Intervention is changed. I find that, as a Meditation burst Guardian the stun break as well as the condition cleanse is infinitely better and useful than a 4K heal teleport that doesn’t stun break you. Now, if MI were to stun break me when I use it, that would be a different story. I would pick it over CoP, I’m already weak against conditions so either way, fighting a well played condition player is GG.

I really don’t think anyone will use this skill, besides right after patch to try it out. In six months to a year the ally requirement will be dropped.

There’s no room for it

you need purity for the condi meta
smite is the lowest cd medi for sustain

it would be MI vs. JI… an on demand gap closer that stun breaks is superior.

I would probably switch it in temporarily to catch up with team mates, or to do some adhoc terrain breaking teleports. It certainly won’t occupy by toolbar 99% of the time.

MI is more tailored to a support-type role, but we generally see full on medi specs fulfilling DPS roles. I don’t think you’d see MI being super popular with a medi spec unless one was converted to more of a defensive style. Having to give up any of the other three removes a lot of what make your typically medi DPS spec good.

Perhaps if you were in a situation where you were playing as a small team where the AoE condi clears were adequate, you could sub MI in for CoP, but I can’t imagine that actually being done in practice.

I have one build in mind that I want to try it with, the build isn’t new or groundbreaking, but I believe the new changes will synergize very well with it.

The build is the standard 0/0/2/6/6, however instead of taking the typical shout or consecration you replace it with MI, you also give up SiN for med mastery to reduce the CD on RF and MI. This will give bunker guard more mobility in pvp, and should be a great help.

the only way it could be usefull in my opinion, is porting when ur using ur elite renewed focus. when ur in the elite you have 2 sec time to exactly place the port on the ally. the elite is 72 cooldown, MI has 40 sec cooldown so i quess that could work. other then that, no i wont use it:D

Short answer: No.

Long answer: While Merciful Intervention might gain some extra niche uses, it remains rather useless relative to any of your other skills you might put in its place. Meditation Guardians are focused on dealing damage, not healing allies and will generally keep the other Meditations. Support Guardians will probably continue to gravitate towards Shouts (while Shouts aren’t buffed, they continue to be very strong with good trait support) or maybe Consecrations.

The most useful I’ve found Merciful Intervention to be is to set up a combo of MI —> Ress with knockback, but that’s not worth missing out on Judge’s Intervention or an additional Shout.

It might become useful for running around a map.

Im tempted to use it in a niche way in some dungeons/JPs, where normally it was only necro/ele/thief/mesmer that could blink up where you would normally have to run around.

Im tempted to try it to see if it would work in those instances.

If you can self-target MI for the heal or use while stunned still (like Mesmer’s Phase Retreat), I think it still has merit.

As others have said, the problem is that it is not a stun breaker as well.

Another option is to lower the cooldown (and the healing component as well) since it is more about its use of mobility/positioning when part of Meditation builds.

If the ally requirement was dropped + it was a stun breaker, I can see it’s usage being neck and neck with JI (possibly beating it). Or everyone could just drop smite condition and then teleport around like a heavy armor thief.

Monoman.2068:

If the ally requirement was dropped + it was a stun breaker, I can see it’s usage being neck and neck with JI (possibly beating it). Or everyone could just drop smite condition and then teleport around like a heavy armor thief.

If the ally requirement was dropped, I would take it over JI.

@Anet: Whatever you may think, guardians need a disengage.

ANet should really take the stun break off JI and put it on MI. That would really make skill selection an interesting decision for Guardians which hasn’t happened for a long time.

process execution.8014:

ANet should really take the stun break off JI and put it on MI. That would really make skill selection an interesting decision for Guardians which hasn’t happened for a long time.

The problem with that is it would be an overall nerf since the cooldown for MI is greater than JI.

IMO, MI needs to have it’s cooldown brought in line somewhere between JI and Smite Condition cooldowns especially if there is no stun break since there is the requirement of needing to target an ally. If it was given stun break, the cooldown is probably right where it should be but I still don’t imagine many taking over Contemplation of Purity – it’s just too good in the heavy condition pressure meta.

See Blink and see Lightning Flash. Changing MI to be more like Lightning Flash in that it does not break stun but being able to be used while stunned might be the more logical if the target requirement was dropped.

If target requirement was dropped, I’d think it was the Buff of the Year for Guards.

That being said, It seems Anet is fixated on Guardians needing at least one person with them to be overwhelmingly effective.

That’s okay though. bring a thief.

Artaz.3819:

process execution.8014:

ANet should really take the stun break off JI and put it on MI. That would really make skill selection an interesting decision for Guardians which hasn’t happened for a long time.

The problem with that is it would be an overall nerf since the cooldown for MI is greater than JI.

In theory, yes, but in practice JI isn’t often used as a stun breaker. Even if you did have it off cooldown, porting to an enemy while facing incoming burst is often counter-productive.

I really don’t see this as being a very useful skill whatsoever.

Now that Mi is ground targeted, it will be a lot more difficult for me to use. So many times it’s saved me without me knowing where I was going, I was able to retreat from a losing fight. But now I actually have to have an eye for where my ally is, which sucks.

Also, it’s pretty much a Shelter heal with no allies around or a full heal if your allies are close together or they have pets. I wonder if they’ve fixed that.

Is anybody going to use MI?

Not for WvW, no.

It’s just a pointless skill from concept up.

Changes on MI is good, to disengage from fight. I could think of myriads ways to perform combo and trolling with this change.

Comparing to Mesmer and Ele blink, i think we shouldn’t whine at all haha.

yLoon.5289:

Changes on MI is good, to disengage from fight. I could think of myriads ways to perform combo and trolling with this change.

Comparing to Mesmer and Ele blink, i think we shouldn’t whine at all haha.

You do realize that you must port to 180 of an ally for the blink to work? Explain to me how useful as a disengage this will be and which meditation you’re dropping for it.

You’re going to lose your AOE damage/low cooldown sustain, stun break/burst blink or stun break/full cleanse. All for a niche utility that is now harder to use in a real fight with zero effective disengage.