Guild Wars 2

Just food for thought in the announced intro of new utilities/traits in the future;

Guardian has no viable alternate condition build. Every other profession can at least stack bleed..apart from engineer who has reverse problem and has no power build.

Guardians have no projectile finisher.

Guardians have a tonne of knockback/knockdown, but no stun. Cough-cough looking at the signets here.

Guardians when specc’ed to D.P.S direct damage still come second to warrior. They have the same toughness as warrior, yet 7k less HP..cough-cough power trait that significantly boost HP bar. There is shouts that help reduce damage for small windows of time, but assigning these traits takes away directly from,..well..being a D.P.S focused guardian.

Precision trait line paired with condition damage? we have no damaging condition that prots on critical hit.

Guardian has too many weakling weapon skills. Line of warding/ring of warding claim to prevent foes from passing. However in Higher PvE play many foes just walk on through those. Shield of the avenger gets shot right through. If the description states no foe can cross..well, it should read foes can’t cross unless they are mean and/or we just don’t want these guys being blocked. In PvP play more and more players are figuring out how to time a jump or roll that allows them to bypass them as well.

Guardians have no cripple. Pretty key snare for a melee power profession. We have immobilise..but much like the wards, a number of foes laugh at any attempt to immobilise them.

Whirling wrath can hit for up to 7k (power/prec build) damage on a low toughness squishy if it fully connects. Our fellow melee professions can successfully do this with flanking strikes/burst skill. The skill is very animated considering most of the time most guardians aren’t full glass cannon and will only hit for 2.2K..seems a bit stiff of animation for a weapon skill that hits for 40% the damage other melee classes can do instantly 90% of the time.

I still think the warrior/guardian are the most balanced professions in gw2. Just adding food for thought.

Guardians have no projectile finisher. —-→Torch 4/4. pretty much one shot an ele in WvW today with that.

Precision trait line paired with condition damage? we have no damaging condition that prots on critical hit.——→ oh so true. I could never understand that.

A Guardian can use a condition damage build, but isn’t good.
You can use the Radiant line to increase conditio ndamage, obtain the torch trait that decrease torch recharge and increase burning duration of 20%.
30% condition duration by trait + 20% of the torch trait + 15-20% of rune + 10% of sigil. You can increase the burning duration of 80%.
Then in Virtues you can obtain to apply burning every 4 attack and make it an AoE burning skill.

Yes, if you do all that you lose all your defensive ability, but you obtain a good damage. And the burn is the powerfull damaging condition of the game.

But yes, it’s only one condition.

Mesmer, necro and ranger win on conditions because they give to the enemy fire, bleed and poison at the same time.

That’s why the guardian can be a good Condition Damage Dealer, but not the best.

We don’t need a condition damage build. Conditions are useless in PvE and our lack of condition diversity hinders us in WvW/sPvP.

According to a thread on gw2guru, Guardians are apparently second-highest DPS right now, after a lightning hammer ele, with the highest max DPS. It would be nice for our greatsword to be more damage-y like the Warrior greadsword however, I think our GS has far more utility, and it would be a pity to lose all of that for the sake of some numbers.

Line/Ring of Warding are exceptionally powerful in WvW/sPvP content. The fact that champions and legendaries can walk through the lines unmolested in no way detracts from the power of those two skills. There’s a reason why every single guardian in a WvW raid runs Staff or Hammer, or sometimes both.

I agree with you on the cripple front. I also wish that we had better swiftness uptimes (without having to spam two utility slots on cooldown and rely on a buggy application via staff 3). Still think that the condi damage signet should have its passive switched to a 25% movespeed buff. The active would make sense and at least then it would be worth taking.

Devils.3679:

Guardians have no projectile finisher. —-->Torch 4/4. pretty much one shot an ele in WvW today with that.

Precision trait line paired with condition damage? we have no damaging condition that prots on critical hit.——-> oh so true. I could never understand that.

So you put down a ward and used torch 4? Primed and detonated your own field or used someone else’s? I’ll tag this along with skill descriptions that are some what vague, or just get completely ignored by some foe types and players.

Boonprot.6274:

We don’t need a condition damage build. Conditions are useless in PvE and our lack of condition diversity hinders us in WvW/sPvP.

According to a thread on gw2guru, Guardians are apparently second-highest DPS right now, after a lightning hammer ele, with the highest max DPS. It would be nice for our greatsword to be more damage-y like the Warrior greadsword however, I think our GS has far more utility, and it would be a pity to lose all of that for the sake of some numbers.

Line/Ring of Warding are exceptionally powerful in WvW/sPvP content. The fact that champions and legendaries can walk through the lines unmolested in no way detracts from the power of those two skills. There’s a reason why every single guardian in a WvW raid runs Staff or Hammer, or sometimes both.

I agree with you on the cripple front. I also wish that we had better swiftness uptimes (without having to spam two utility slots on cooldown and rely on a buggy application via staff 3). Still think that the condi damage signet should have its passive switched to a 25% movespeed buff. The active would make sense and at least then it would be worth taking.

Yes there is a reason. Staff=Aoe and hammer equals blast finisher every 4 seconds. These are the main reasons, not the lines/ring of warding. They’re helpful in choke points, but outside of these ring ward is easily escapable. I can even knock my opponent out of with my own hammer or hammer of judgement. Engineer rocket boots or rifle knockback will also remove them from it. Ele focus immunity will also walk them right on ol’ out of it. Line of warding can be dodged/jumped through and in exposed area’s simply walked around while checking your cell phone.

This is the crux of the matter. In pvp play or legendary pve status the foe has the advantage of enormous HP, toughness, condi shake off and stoppable and damage. That is why they’re labelled group events. These skills are here to stay, so the thinking is let’s just sign off on it and make the skill work as stated 100%. I have to disagree that these skills in wvw are “exceptionally powerful” they do not damage, they do not buff, they do not strip,..they hamper movement momentarily, that’s all they do..and as stated, that hamper can, and is avoided through glitches or straight out nullification of what they do. Optimally they will stop a zerg on a choke point for 3-4 seconds,and that is optimally..any form of teleport/immunity/roll and those players are straight through. If they did stop foes/opponents dead in their tracks, then I could agree they have situational exceptional use, but this is not the case. I do appreciate your feedback though.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

Devils.3679:

Guardians have no projectile finisher. —-->Torch 4/4. pretty much one shot an ele in WvW today with that.

Precision trait line paired with condition damage? we have no damaging condition that prots on critical hit.——-> oh so true. I could never understand that.

So you put down a ward and used torch 4? Primed and detonated your own field or used someone else’s? I’ll tag this along with skill descriptions that are some what vague, or just get completely ignored by some foe types and players.

Torch 4 Zealot’s flame can be thrown when active and has a 1,200 range and on a dps build you can expect it to hit for 5-15k 7-10k being the avg hit. 10/25/0/25/10 with scholar runes is what i run with sigil of force and bloodlust.

Question: is there a mechanical difference between a stun and a knockdown? I know that Launches prevent stunbreakers from being used for a period of time, but I was under the impression knockdown and stun were functionally identical.

There seems to be some confusion here. A projectile finisher is when a projectile travels through a field effect and gains additional benefit. If a thief uses pistools through their smoke field the shots will blind. If a ranger lays down a fire ring with torch and swaps to bow and fires through it, it will cause burning. Generally projectile finishers are limited to 20% chance of gaining projectile finish. Guardians torch 4 and scepter 1 have 0% of gaining additional effects.

There is a difference between knockdown/knockback/stun. The knockdown/knockback does not make the players skill bar go into reset where no skills can be used. A stun/daze will do this temporarily making the player unable to use part of/all of their skill bar. The difference seems small, but is in fact significant. Hence why stunlock warriors with mace/hammer are very effective in 1 vs 1 situations.