Guild Wars 2

fishergrip.4082:

Scepter might do about the same damage as sword on a target dummy, but how many target dummies do you fight? It works decent in PvE, but there’s a reason you don’t see many people using scepter in WvW.

The reason you don’t see people use it is because smite is a broken AoE so the weapon suffers against any type of group. 1v1 roaming it is one of my favorite weapons. Works amazingly vs thieves/rangers/eles that have alot of movement. The key is using it like a melee weapon with extended range.

akamon.2769:

hmm thinking on how a targetless teleport would work.. so we would just teleport the corresponding distance in whichever direction you’re facing? how would that deal with slight ledges, etc? so we don’t get stuck etc.

would love that as well though!

Would be awesome, could work the same as the rangers great sword ability swoop…..an absolutely fantastic ability.

Sword is actually amazing with focus as a burst weapon. Pop 5 for your shield, wait a sec or two, teleport to your enemy, drop 3 on them so they take a ton of damage, switch to GS then just whirling wrath and cast symbol with 4 (if they’re not dead by then).

Bailey.6892:

akamon.2769:

hmm thinking on how a targetless teleport would work.. so we would just teleport the corresponding distance in whichever direction you’re facing? how would that deal with slight ledges, etc? so we don’t get stuck etc.

would love that as well though!

Would be awesome, could work the same as the rangers great sword ability swoop…..an absolutely fantastic ability.

Elementalists also have a similar ability….just transports you a set distance in whatever direction you are facing.

colesy.8490:

Sword is actually amazing with focus as a burst weapon. Pop 5 for your shield, wait a sec or two, teleport to your enemy, drop 3 on them so they take a ton of damage, switch to GS then just whirling wrath and cast symbol with 4 (if they’re not dead by then).

Also for extra damage, with Focused Mind (meditations are insta), you can pop Smite Condition while your sword3 is happening.

I want to play “classic knight” sword and shield but I can`t do this because if I want to be team player – I must to use mace+shield or hummer and staff;
if I want to deal max damage – I must to use sword+torch or greatsword.
And if I want to be a bad player or bag with loot I can play stupid sword+shield…

If you’re a team player, a GS with hold the line, stand your ground and save yourselves skills along with superior aria and pure of voice will work fine.

Max damage you can use sword+focus and greatsword to burst enemies down.

But yeah, as much as I would love shield to be playable (love the skins) it just … isn’t. I mean I’ve used it in some niche cases since I carry all weapons around with me and switch them out on the fly, but it’s just not that good besides fringe cases.

I have been playing with Shield more in my build recently and have been liking it more and more. I think the biggest issue I had originally was the the long CDs on shield, even when traited for it. However, When you realize that most of your damage comes from your main hand either through auto attack or abilities, It becomes alot easier to handle the longer CDs and use them only when you really need to. I do miss the extra blinds/blocks/possible burst damage from focus, and the possible long range burst from torch #4, but the extra damage reduction/aoe damage on shield 4, and the pushback/heal on shield 5 are very handy when used correctly.

As far as being on topic. As I have said before, 1h Sword is pretty good as it is, the only changes would be increase flashing blade damage, and maybe a bit wider arc on zealot’s defense so it could hit a bit easier at a longer range. Oh and also either fixing the tooltip or fixing the mechanic for projectile absorb so they actually match one way or the other.

and nothing again…mood…

my sword hit for almost 5k with the last step of the chain and about 7k with ZD, ofc in wvw versus level 80. So no its not weak at all, just as scepter isnt weak.

And if you combine it with focus, judges intervention and mighty blow we are talking well over 10k instant aoe damage, add in zd and a sword chain and we are talking about killing a heavy in seconds.

I dont know how may eles i one shotted with this setup, hysterical.

Build for damage and damage is what you get.

JI + Ring of Warding, Save Yourselves, Shield of Wrath, F1 activate = lots of dead people. And finish anyone with ZD.

Ill suggest you to try a sword/focus based build… you will be surprised by the streght of this!
now with the last change you can use flash blade to avoid aoe.
Anyway 3rd sword skill in 1v1 will be pretty amazing (i do about 4-5k damage in wvw with full knight gear …) and the auto-attack git very hard! (with knight gear i do about: 800, 800, 600-600-600 with no crits, if you get a triple crit on the last one you can do more than 4k damage with “auto-attack”!).
i usually run GS/sword-focus AH build and i love when enemy force me to swap to sword… because i can destroy them easily :P

Seniour DEVs Why we wouldn`t receive sword\shield changes again in future patch???
Why you can`t make Zealot`s Defense “cast on move”?
Why you can`t put new condition(torment) into Flashing blade?

Deathmond.7328:

Why you can`t make Zealot`s Defense “cast on move”?
Why you can`t put new condition(torment) into Flashing blade?

I run 1H sword as my main weapon. I honestly think ZD is fine; you can use it defensively, or, you can use it to punish people who get close. I’m fine with that.

Torment on FB also seems a little OP, given as it’s a low cool down. I’d sooner see VoJ updated via a trait to add Torment in small amounts, rather than tagging it to the 1H.

Deathmond.7328:

Seniour DEVs Why we wouldn`t receive sword\shield changes again in future patch???
Why you can`t make Zealot`s Defense “cast on move”?
Why you can`t put new condition(torment) into Flashing blade?

I’d be fine with these. I don’t think Sword needs a massive buff, but Flashing Blade does deserve a slight one. Its short cooldown doesn’t make up for the low damage and a short-cooldown closer is available on Greatsword that actually does damage (and won’t occassionally teleport you into a wall or not move you at all).

azureai.9764:

Deathmond.7328:

Seniour DEVs Why we wouldn`t receive sword\shield changes again in future patch???
Why you can`t make Zealot`s Defense “cast on move”?
Why you can`t put new condition(torment) into Flashing blade?

I’d be fine with these. I don’t think Sword needs a massive buff, but Flashing Blade does deserve a slight one. Its short cooldown doesn’t make up for the low damage and a short-cooldown closer is available on Greatsword that actually does damage (and won’t occassionally teleport you into a wall or not move you at all).

ZD is fine, Flashing blade, (if the leaked trait notes are true) is getting a buff in Vulnerability duration from blind exposure.

FOR SHAME YE GUARDIANS.

not one of you has mentioned WHY sword is so awesome: its range is 150. On the main attack (1 button). All other melee attacks in the game have 130 range (minus GS burst, which is also 150 – but is incomparable to a 150 range on your 1 button). If you stay tight on your target getting the kill becomes fairly easy. I also like sword quite a bit for WvW roaming, as Judge’s Intervention, Leap of Faith, and Flashing Blade cover 2400 range instantly. Great for getting people in combat as they panic to hit the nearest waypoint, and catching thieves and DD eles. Honestly, I prefer mace for generally everything, but when I want to be fast and deadly, I use sword.

I like sword, but if you think 20 more range is even noticeable, well… I’ve been playing Guardians since BWE2 and I have never run into a situation where I’ve said “Man, that 20 range sure made a difference.”

foofad.5162:

I like sword, but if you think 20 more range is even noticeable, well… I’ve been playing Guardians since BWE2 and I have never run into a situation where I’ve said “Man, that 20 range sure made a difference.”

you should try warrior sword and find out then

do we have sword ? omg i just remember now …

what a crap !!!

I’ve played Warrior and Guardian quite a lot and to be honest, I didn’t even notice the range difference. The only real difference it would make is on the first two swings with the sword. You know, those two swings that don’t really do anything but are more reliable than the third swing? The extra range on Sword Wave it pretty average as well, since if you even used it at max range, you’d only hit your target once anyway, doing roughly a third of its potential damage. Additionally, getting Sword Wave to hit more than one enemy is a lot more labour than it’s worth, I’d take Final Thrust over Sword Wave any day, even with less Justice procs.

sardonic wrath.5690:

FOR SHAME YE GUARDIANS.

not one of you has mentioned WHY sword is so awesome: its range is 150. On the main attack (1 button)..

That is a typo in the tooltip.

The ranges is 130 just like the other melee weapons in the game.

If you dont believe me try it out on the dummies in lions arch, hammer and gs hits/misses at the same range as sword.

Oh, and Zealot’s Defense is not fine. At all. There is no case where autoattacking does not do more DPS than Zealot’s Defense, and ZD isn’t even a spike damage skill in the sense that it dumps all of its damage at once instead of over time as autoattacking does. Considering the root, the lack of meaningful or improved damage over autoattacking, the fact that it’s a projectile and subject to reflection, and it’s so freaking slow and avoidable akittens max range, the only time you should ever be ZDing is to block a projectile or keep your damage up in momentary cases where you absolutely cannot melee (per boss mechanics, etc).

Sword is pretty strong on paper. Fast attacks, multi hitting auto attack which procs virtue of justice every rotation, high mobility, and for shortage of gap closer you have a projectile blocker available until your port is ready.

Biggest problem with sword is that it is a single target oriented weapon and AE weapons can do just as much damage and perform better in a majority of the fights you will encounter.

On a boss PvE fight or even in a 1v1 fight, sword will perform well. Same goes for scepter as it suffers from the same design ideas of fast attacking but single target oriented.

Throwing out a random statistic, 95% of the fights you run into throughout the game are group oriented fights, making sword and scepter only shine in about 5% of the game. Made up statistics are made up, but the idea I think holds true.

The other downside to sword is that ZD is (as so often pointed out) not strong enough to warrant use most of the time. Added on top of the fact that you are rooted in place and it is easy to run out of the projectile range or even strafe them.

Faster projectiles, or homing projectiles can assist making this better. Higher damage wouldn’t hurt as well. As it is now though, it is more of a utility thing than a primary on cooldown attack.

The approximate “burst” time of ZD is about 2 seconds worth of casting give or take. The auto attack chain is also an approximate 2 second rotation. Our auto chain hits 5 times while zd will hit 8 times. Shorten VoJ procs to 4 hits to burn and ZD will do slightly more damage than the auto chain, but that is a lot of trait points to made ZD “almost” useful in the sense of damage.

Just pointing this out but a lot of your 5% are boss fights.

Also, by the numbers, Greatsword’s optimal damage build doesn’t do as much damage as optimal Sword builds, to the tune of 10%. Sword definitely smokes Greatsword 1v1. It’s just that it’s a one trick pony in that respect.

Yeah, GS is “typically” burst while sword is sustained dps. Same thing with hammer, the hammer symbol on auto chain provide a more consistent dps over time versus greatsword.

GS gives us more flashy numbers though, and those always feel nice

The change that I would like to see for swords is make ZD mobile when traited, for example, Powerful blades.

I do enjoy the extra bit of projectile blocking on Zealot’s Defense which is mostly what I use it for, great on Young Karkas. Anyways, to add to my list of gripes about Sword Wave, it’s technically a melee attack that uses invisible projectiles so…. it’s like the only “melee” attack that can be reflected into your face. Most of sword’s bigger attacks are prone to reflection or projectile blocking. I wouldn’t usually have a problem with that but it’s a melee weapon…
As I’ve said before, I’d also really like it if Zealot’s Defense hit foes in a line, it would somewhat address sword’s lack of AoE effects, proc Justice like a mofo and give a lot of people more reason to use it over the auto attack. It would also make its awful idiosyncrasy of missing targets that move very slowly less of an issue in some cases as you’d at least be able to hit something else sometimes….
Having Zealot’s Defense reflect projectiles would be an interesting idea that I’d like, it’d make ZD somewhat devastating, really. At the very least, you know it would miss less because the projectiles would usually come from a profession that isn’t a Guardian
I dunno. I’ve said all this one hundred times by now I think….
I just want to use sword and be effective!!!

Sword is REALLY irritating to use in Jade Maw. It’s stupid. It’s the only melee weapon in the game you have to stop using so you don’t kill yourself.

Oh, btw: Sword + Sigil of Fire is really good. Helps to mitigate some of the AoE inadequacies of it.

for people saying: “take root off from #3”

didnt you all think how utterly stupid you would look flailing around while running? seriously? melee already looks pretty stupid due to flail and run (except ranger 1h sword).

anyone with little combat experience would see tht it looks pretty dumb. step in + hit = yes. run and flail = no

Bread.7516:

melee already looks pretty stupid due to flail and run (except ranger 1h sword).

Make a max-width male norn ranger and see if you say the same thing.

I’d be much more ok with ZD locking me in place if its effect was freaking awesome. It is a very effective skill defensively but offensively it’s a little crap. I still stand by my “hit foes in a line” idea for it or at the very least put a little homing on the projectiles.
Having it reflect projectiles is just a pipe dream but …….wouldn’t it be cool!?

I still think Sword Wave needs a complete rework and Flashing Blade needs to be a leap finisher.

I tested once 1h sword.
I would love this weapons but it has one massive disadvantage: group fights.
whatever I wouldn’t take as an off hand and how I wouldn’t use it when that isn’t 1v1 fight 1hswords is rather not doing well. yeah dmg is good but using sword against multiple foes nearly always ends for me with death

about scepter – it is in some cases much better weapon than 1h sword – while lvl’ing my guardian I was able to solo events at little higher lvl than mine with shield+scepter weapon set – and i didn’t achieve that with any other weapon set – at most that is because shield skills granted me some defensive skills and scepter let me atack groups of mobs without letting them into melee range so they wasn’t able to hit me.
judgement intervention was also funny – stun breaker and also surprising teleport and dmg to all hated enemies? thank you very much (and then dodge, knockback using shield 5 and back to previous tactic)
problem with Zealots defence i that it block projectiles IN FRONT of you. and while move to be at flanking angle is rather not problem (and while casting ZD i cannot turn around) that may not be fully used in some cases

I have a question. Back in beta I could have swore I saw a video with a Guardian using a targeted teleport. He went from the ground to the top of the tower walkway in Kyhlo(sp?). What was that?

probably flashing blade- that’s targetet teleport – but in beta for some moment is was grount targeted….
but I’m afraid that was possible only for a while – because teleporting on the walls in wvw would be op :P

well id have to agree that 1h swords not very good for PvE because:

it has very limited aoe
it has no symbols
single target focused and the dps is still not THAT good.
no finishers
only offhand focus is good
torch is garbage in PvE
shield is totally garbage in PvE; seriously guardian shield is really really crap in pve

it’s very sad that scepter(ranged) and 1h sword (melee) do comparable dps.

oh i wish 1h sword was any good. ive wanted infinite light for so long but nothing justifies my purchase if im not going to use it anyway

tl;dr 1h sword – no utility not very good dps – so what’s the use?

The sword can have very good DPS with the correct build, at least against single targets. The only thing that keeps me from using it more often is the fact hat it’s even more autoattack-centered than the other weapons.

Mentioned it before, but no one ever seems to acknowledge it. Here is a little video about the sword and something odd it can do.

http://youtu.be/VJctr83uNIU

Yes I submitted a bug report, and yes it works on moving targets such as other players.

CMF.5461:

Mentioned it before, but no one ever seems to acknowledge it. Here is a little video about the sword and something odd it can do.

http://youtu.be/VJctr83uNIU

Yes I submitted a bug report, and yes it works on moving targets such as other players.

Interesting. I wonder if that’s completely exclusive to the sword, or even the guardian in general? I swear I’ve done that with the GS before.

Saw a ranger video that showcased missing attacks allow them to leap a couple times to close the gap with sword leap chain and it got me wondering what I could find on our weapons.

I do it with the greatsword sometimes too, but can’t recreate it reliably.

I could beat my level 80 geared warrior with my level 60 guard wielding a sword and shield any day of the week. Sword chain 3 on the guard his like a truck and zealots defense is so powerful AND it rotates you in the direction of the target (PLUS ITS RANGED) tell me how this weapon with a blind, a truck like auto attack and a super fast channel that protects you from projectiles briefly is bad? PLZ I WANNA KNOW!! you can always take one stack of bleed and a mediocre auto attack with a decent leap and a cripple that hits for pathetic damage. There is a reason the warriors swords need a buff, not the guardians. If you are experiencing weak damage output might I suggest stop going full bunker? My two cents

One thing I noticed about ZD is that is can have problems with slopes. I used in on a guy running down a ramp, and he hit a plateau and continued running, but the ZD continued to angle down and hit the ground that was now behind him. That is, it didn’t adjust the angle to match. Seem like it will only be able to yaw but not pitch.

I’ve used the skill for awhile now… sometimes it works nicely, other times it doesn’t. I think having it pierce would let it serve its purpose better, or have it perform actual blocks instead of projectile destruction… although the latter would possibly make it vulnerable to unblockable projectiles, which would be bad.

Epic.3950:

I could beat my level 80 geared warrior with my level 60 guard wielding a sword and shield any day of the week. Sword chain 3 on the guard his like a truck and zealots defense is so powerful AND it rotates you in the direction of the target (PLUS ITS RANGED)

In that case, you obviously need to learn to play your warrior. Besides, you know what helps against ZD? Simple strafing. Do that at 300-600 range, and none of the projectiles will connect.

CptAurellian.9537:

Epic.3950:

I could beat my level 80 geared warrior with my level 60 guard wielding a sword and shield any day of the week. Sword chain 3 on the guard his like a truck and zealots defense is so powerful AND it rotates you in the direction of the target (PLUS ITS RANGED)

In that case, you obviously need to learn to play your warrior. Besides, you know what helps against ZD? Simple strafing. Do that at 300-600 range, and none of the projectiles will connect.

Although it’s not necessarily failing to accomplish its goal by doing so. A melee attacker won’t be hitting you at that way, and projectiles will be destroyed, so it can buy you a bit time to recharge some other resoureces or hold a position. If they have a non-projectile ranged attack then that might still cause you problems though.

CMF.5461:

Sword is pretty strong on paper. Fast attacks, multi hitting auto attack which procs virtue of justice every rotation, high mobility, and for shortage of gap closer you have a projectile blocker available until your port is ready.

Biggest problem with sword is that it is a single target oriented weapon and AE weapons can do just as much damage and perform better in a majority of the fights you will encounter.

On a boss PvE fight or even in a 1v1 fight, sword will perform well. Same goes for scepter as it suffers from the same design ideas of fast attacking but single target oriented.

Throwing out a random statistic, 95% of the fights you run into throughout the game are group oriented fights, making sword and scepter only shine in about 5% of the game. Made up statistics are made up, but the idea I think holds true.

The other downside to sword is that ZD is (as so often pointed out) not strong enough to warrant use most of the time. Added on top of the fact that you are rooted in place and it is easy to run out of the projectile range or even strafe them.

Faster projectiles, or homing projectiles can assist making this better. Higher damage wouldn’t hurt as well. As it is now though, it is more of a utility thing than a primary on cooldown attack.

The approximate “burst” time of ZD is about 2 seconds worth of casting give or take. The auto attack chain is also an approximate 2 second rotation. Our auto chain hits 5 times while zd will hit 8 times. Shorten VoJ procs to 4 hits to burn and ZD will do slightly more damage than the auto chain, but that is a lot of trait points to made ZD “almost” useful in the sense of damage.

Very good post but Anet DEVs doesn`t want to see this…
ololololo re-balance patch – and we receive boost of shouts and GS build!
I really hate people who makes guardian skills change and balance!

Jericho.4521:

CMF.5461:

Mentioned it before, but no one ever seems to acknowledge it. Here is a little video about the sword and something odd it can do.

http://youtu.be/VJctr83uNIU

Yes I submitted a bug report, and yes it works on moving targets such as other players.

Interesting. I wonder if that’s completely exclusive to the sword, or even the guardian in general? I swear I’ve done that with the GS before.

That is not a bug, all attacks that have a chain like that will continue firing the attack until a cool down is reached or an enemy is hit. You can’t force the final attack in the chain to proc on an enemy more than once without going through the chain again – the only reason they are able to pull it off in the video is because they haven’t hit anyone with the last attack, and thus it triggers a couple of times before the cooldown.

The bug with our repeat fire after miss is that it hits both times if you watch the video again.

If you have a target and miss it will still hit the target. If you do not have a target and miss it will continue to fire off to the side 3 times before restarting the chain.

So you can force 2 swordwaves in a row for extra burst.

I had to try that sword wave thing right away and I found out that you can actually do it indefinitely as long as you can keep the motion up.

One thing is for sure, Warrior’s received what I would call a FREAKING AWESOME buff to sword while absolutely nothing was done to Guardian sword so at the very least, we won’t need to worry about people saying, “Yeah well you should see Warrior’s sword…”
To be honest, I was still jealous of the old Warrior sword skills since they had a cripple, a leap finisher, an immobilse and free bleeds, now they have an extra cripple and a really hard hitting spike skill on top of that.

Edit: Final Thrust also hits multiple targets. My Warrior is very happy. My Guardian is still kinda sad.

Warrior sword was not bad weapon before patch and now it is a good weapon. Guardian sword was a bad choice and remained…