Guild Wars 2

I dont understand why this is a light field. Its pretty obvious that the intended purpose of the ability is healing. So why then would they make it a field that would ruin any water field dropped by an Ele? Its totally worthless in WvW because you will be murdered by your raid if you dropped it on top of a water field during a large battle. I know it has its uses in small havoc groups but even in that situation it would still be better as a water field.

The answer is simple – class design, what’s useful and what makes sense usually comes only after what the profession was actually meant to do.
A water field on mace symbol would break the original design/vision of the profession unless all other symbols would get their own type of combo field as well.
I don’t see symbols being Light only as a problem, symbols are kind of a design flaw by themselves. The problem lies in the lack of usefulness of light field itself and the lack of useful finishers besides blasts from Mighty Blow a guardian can produce.
Fortunately overwriting other fields by Symbol of Faith (and also Swiftness and Wrath) can be avoided by not using it at all, but Symbol of Protection on hammer is a completly different story.

Light* fields wouldn’t blow so hard if the blast finisher was condition cleanse like the other finishers. It still would be inferior to water but at least it would be closer than this brief retaliation garbage. Like we don’t have access to retaliation or something…

*Thanks for catching that

It could also be incredibly powerful that way. A 4s water field on an 8s cooldown would be serious business for group healing.

Currently, the lowest cooldown on a water field is 15s on the engineer’s healing turret, although the engineer can’t always pop that for group heals because they depend on it for actual healing as well (similar to a ranger’s healing spring).

Geyser and healing rain are more common for water field blast usage, although those have 20 and 45 second base cooldowns, respectively.

Not to mention there’s no water field in the game that actually damages someone, so it wouldn’t really fit as a symbol anymore.

ArchonWing.9480:

Water fields wouldn’t blow so hard if the blast finisher was condition cleanse like the other finishers. It still would be inferior to water but at least it would be closer than this brief retaliation garbage. Like we don’t have access to retaliation or something…

I assume you mean “light fields wouldn’t blow so hard”, to which I would partially agree. The AoE retaliation can actually be useful, although it’s a bit hard to make it so due to the short duration. However I think they should change whirl finishers to provide the AoE condi clear you are talking about, rather than just having them shoot a spread of bolts that can just end up being useless.

Yea, lol. I meant light fields. :p I edited it now.

But yea, the retaliation is just way too short for it to be of use. It’s hard atm, since I feel mace 2 would be better off having no field.

And yea, agree with everything else as well.

I would not mind a rework on mace symbols, maybe we could start see more weapon variety on WvW, wich class atm is sticked to 1 or 2 becouse theres a huge gap of effectiviness.

2 guards > infinite water fields

This would be stupidly strong

Evocatus Rex.6857:

2 guards > infinite water fields

This would be stupidly strong

True, but atm mace for WvW is useless or 99% useless.
It feels like would be efective IF a cluster of guardians would run mace for healing spam, but all we need on WvW is hammer 1 ; 2 and waterfields for that.

No thank you. Professions shouldn’t have the capability to “do it all”. Guardians already have the second best blast finisher in the game. Teamwork and group synergy should be rewarded.

Blast light field = 4 sec retaliation. Not 1.

Fixed

EFWinters.5421:

No thank you. Professions shouldn’t have the capability to “do it all”. Guardians already have the second best blast finisher in the game. Teamwork and group synergy should be rewarded.

Above Engi and Thief? Maybe #3 but definitely not second best

I think it would be a cool idea, but the CD of MACE 2 would have to have a pretty substantial increase. ~20-30s would be appropriate

ArchonWing.9480:

Light* fields wouldn’t blow so hard if the blast finisher was condition cleanse like the other finishers. It still would be inferior to water but at least it would be closer than this brief retaliation garbage. Like we don’t have access to retaliation or something…

*Thanks for catching that

Light fields wouldn’t be so bad if blast, whirl, leap and projectile finishers had decent effects.

Here is the situation
Blast = Area Retaliation
Leap = Retaliation
Projectile = Remove Condition
Whirl = Cleansing Bolts

Why I consider these to be rubbish

• Blast Finisher is clearly worth using on our light fields, to give allies retaliation. Guardians have access to two blast finishers (I think) – Hammer 2 and Focus 5 (weird one that might not blast) (I’m excluding the Trident one and ridiculous Tome of Wrath one). Usually there are more important things to do than give allies retaliation.
• Leaping is usually an attacking maneuver – why waste time dropping a light field in order to leap at an enemy in order to create a boon that relies on them attacking you?
• Projectile - Guardians have no projectile finishers.
• Whirl. Whilst I can see some use for this in my mind, I can’t actually remember a single instance of triggering this combination specifically to clear conditions. It’s just weird and circumstantial. It depends too much on a lot of time standing in a small area – not something I do when fighting enemy players.

What Should be Done?
The effects of the finishers should be improved. It’s not my role to second guess what Arenanet think would be balanced, but I would suggest perhaps some effects that aren’t strictly defensive.

I also believe we should have more finishers. i.e. Put finishers on more of our weapon skills.

Light fields need a rework NOW. Yes we can access it a lot and therefore it is not a good one, i can fall in behind that logic. The main problem is the field priority that make light field so worthless. Not only do they have Terrible, Bad or slightly bellow average effect. But they might also hinder the effect of a good Combo field.

A second note is that most Whirl are terrible, light field combined with whirl even more so. “You send a couple of projectiles at random direction at random length that if they connect to a ally, then the bolt will cure one condition”, assuming they have one.

Yes Such good, much reliable, wow.