Guild Wars 2

Make it happen.
Or, explain why not.

Its damage, healing and interaction with Virtue of Justice are balanced around its current tempo.

I’m fine with mace not being a great Dps weapon, but at the moment mace support is not very good. And the mace trait gives 5% more dmg.. No idea why since mace users obviously aren’t focusing on damage.

Not just +5% damage, but +200 Healing Power; which is huge. Too bad shield trait is located in the same tier and line. I’d rather pick shield trait instead.

Mace gives a huge boost to AH.

I wish the staff had a trait that gave that much healing power. ._.

xFireize.6318:

Not just +5% damage, but +200 Healing Power; which is huge. Too bad shield trait is located in the same tier and line. I’d rather pick shield trait instead.

Mace gives a huge boost to AH.

Hammer gives a bigger boost to AH and isn’t terrible.

I’m inclined to say no, especially if you are talking about reducing ALL the Mace weapon attack times by 50%. Even if only #1 was speed up 2 times, it would be rather ridiculous, especially coupled with a passive VoJ. You just increased my damage, doubled my healing for me and surrounding allies and gave me a less than 2 second passive VoJ cooldown. Have to pass on this idea.

foofad.5162:

xFireize.6318:

Not just +5% damage, but +200 Healing Power; which is huge. Too bad shield trait is located in the same tier and line. I’d rather pick shield trait instead.

Mace gives a huge boost to AH.

Hammer gives a bigger boost to AH and isn’t terrible.

Did I say hammer was terrible? Hammer AH boost relies on AA hits and combo fields. Sometimes you just can’t afford waiting 3+ seconds to land a symbol. Even though I love hammer as a secondary weapon of GS, I still prefer mace & shield for self-heal and defense.

xFireize.6318:

foofad.5162:

xFireize.6318:

Not just +5% damage, but +200 Healing Power; which is huge. Too bad shield trait is located in the same tier and line. I’d rather pick shield trait instead.

Mace gives a huge boost to AH.

Hammer gives a bigger boost to AH and isn’t terrible.

Did I say hammer was terrible? Hammer AH boost relies on AA hits and combo fields. Sometimes you just can’t afford waiting 3+ seconds to land a symbol. Even though I love hammer as a secondary weapon of GS, I still prefer mace & shield for self-heal and defense.

I’m saying that Mace is terrible. Hammer is better than Mace at AH, and Hammer isn’t a terrible weapon like Mace is.

Hammer AA + extended symbols means that you’re proccing AH once per second plus an additional double tick on the third swing after the first AA cycle. You can also elect to blast a fire field instead of continuing an AA chain at any point in the chain without worrying about keeping your HP/s up, because you’ll get 3 Might out of it, thus negating any loss of healing. If you Blast between AA chains, it’s a net gain of two more AH ticks. You can also elect to blast Water fields for the heal at any point and come out ahead.

After the initial spool up, you should never not have a symbol on the ground. In contrast, Symbol of Faith lasts six seconds at maximum, meaning you’re always going to have a minimum of a two second gap in your Symbol uptime. In practice you’re going to have even longer than two seconds of gap, because the AA chain lasts a little over three seconds and interrupting a Mace AA chain is very bad. Typically the best Mace rotation is to drop a symbol as soon as you swap to it, and right before you swap to your other weapon. Symbol, Protector’s Strike, two to three AA rotations, Symbol, swap. So it’s more like a three second gap, sometimes four.

In short, your complaint of having to wait three seconds or more to drop a symbol is unfounded because you’re just as likely to have to be waiting around with a Mace as you are with a Hammer. Only Hammer provides more HP/s from AH as well as the opportunity to blast Water and Fire fields for even more healing, on top of outright negating damage from Protection uptime which means less healing needed from the outset.

I prefer Symbol of Faith because it’s on demand and can be paired with Shield. Similarly, I prefer Protection from Shield than Hammer because it’s on demand. I don’t like long AA — wastes time and boring. To me, 3.7 seconds could be used for a lot of other moves. To each his own.

You realize that Mace’s AA sequence has exactly the same timing as Hammer’s, yes? You aren’t getting any kind of AA speed improvement by using a mace instead. You still spend a lot of time waiting for Symbol of Faith to come off cooldown, and god help you if you flub Protector’s Strike and have to sit around waiting for someone to hit you or cancel out of it with no benefit.

Additionally, Shield means more, longer cooldowns. That means more waiting, and more boring. Not to mention worse uptime on everything important.

I mean, Mace+Shield is certainly visually interesting and appealing on that level, but objectively, it’s a really terrible combo for just about everything compared to our other options. It’s okay if you use Hammer as a swap. That way with some boon duration you can have effectively permanent Regeneration and Protection at the same time, and Hammer’s much more powerful autoattack complements Mace’s extremely weak AA and keeps your DPS reasonable.

Its Mace Skill 1 that should have its timers reduced.

But lets be honest. I doubt they are ever going to do anything to improve this class noticeably.

foofad.5162:

You realize that Mace’s AA sequence has exactly the same timing as Hammer’s, yes? You aren’t getting any kind of AA speed improvement by using a mace instead. You still spend a lot of time waiting for Symbol of Faith to come off cooldown, and god help you if you flub Protector’s Strike and have to sit around waiting for someone to hit you or cancel out of it with no benefit.

Additionally, Shield means more, longer cooldowns. That means more waiting, and more boring. Not to mention worse uptime on everything important.

I mean, Mace+Shield is certainly visually interesting and appealing on that level, but objectively, it’s a really terrible combo for just about everything compared to our other options. It’s okay if you use Hammer as a swap. That way with some boon duration you can have effectively permanent Regeneration and Protection at the same time, and Hammer’s much more powerful autoattack complements Mace’s extremely weak AA and keeps your DPS reasonable.

I don’t think I compared mace’s AA and hammer’s. Oh in case you haven’t tried mace, its AA is faster than hammer’s.

It’s all preference. If one can afford going through the long Hammer AA all the time, sure go ahead. I don’t think anyone is against it.

I’m not denying that hammer does give higher boost to AH when you just do AA with Writ of Persistence. It’s just really boring and has more dependents. The other 4 hammer skills are fun though. I don’t think I’ll ever give up my Two-handed Mastery for Writ of Persistence.

Shield cooldowns are appropriate for what the skills do IMO. So I don’t mind doing AA while waiting; that’s how I use AA anyway. I treat every other weapons set except GS as secondaries; and for me mace/shield gives the best on-demand defense+heal, hammer gives offense+cc, and staff gives utilities+heal. If I did main hammer maybe I’d have a different opinion about its AA.

hammer is superior to mace in every way.
hammer provide consistent perma protection, mace provide partial regen.
hammer provide constant AOE damage, mace provide single target ( 3 ppl cleave maybe on AA 1+2?)
hammer provide CC, no CC on mace.
hammer provide blast finisher on low CD, mace have no finishers.
hammer have superior damage.
hammer even provide better healing if traited for healing symbols due to overlapping symbols.
i like the way mace/shield combo looks … hammer is uglier…

Hammer isnt Superior in every way

you dont get perm protection, it comes at the end of the chain of auto swing and drops a light field.. which isnt great as it often will overide a fire or water field.

constant AoE damage is a bit over stated. hammer has slightly longer cleave range and one 180 radius AoE skill. so i guess so

Hammer does have better CC i give it that. and really the 3 CC skills are its only redeeming feature. a range immobolise a short ranged KD and a small ring that is glitchy and easy to escape. as where with mac the only CC you will get is a Push from shield 5, which is awesome for blocking stomps and rez’s. (have even got a few people off a cliff but its though to do) but this CC is on a long cooldown and hard to use compared to hammer.

the blast finisher is nice, i give it that.

Superior damage?
Hammer auto 269+333+370= 972 base. mace 269+336+470= 1075 base
hammer symbol 3x 555 mace symbol 5×840
mighty blow 640 mace counter attack 672
so ya… really? plus you can spec into mace for +5% dam ontop so is hammer really better dps?

have not tested the healing vs each other. I think this isnt correct. lets look at with healing symbols. Hammer symbol will heal 3 pulses, mace will heal for a small amount upfront then 5x on the pulse with 996regen and an extra burst ever 2 seconds from auto attack. so again no and this is before i even factor in the +250 healing power

So lets face the truth, yes hammer skins are ugly, but we use hammer because it offers 3 CC options and a blast finisher. Nothing ells about this weapon is superior to a mace shield combo in anyway. Mace shield can give healing and protecting without dropping a light field that will override more valuable fields, but has 1 hard to use CC on a long Cooldown. Hammer dose not do more damage, but it provides a much needed blast finishers. Hammer also cannot come close to the healing you get from a mace.

Mace can provide sustained DPS and sustained healing in a fight which is great, but water field blast healing is more effective. Im not saying everyone should switch to mace but have 1 or 2 in a 20man group can provide considerable damage mitigation using shield 4 and mace 3 to block attacks and apply protection to mutliple allies without needing someone to attack.

The damage is awful if you’re running full cleric.

Let’s stop comparing mace to hammer; it’s like comparing guardian to warrior. The arguments never end, in the end it’s just preference.

Just go back to the mace AA discussion. The only thing I don’t like about it is the third chain doesn’t cleave. The damage is actually stronger than third chain of GS. Activation time is appropriate.

While the original suggestion needs alot of work, I think that Mace does have the clear advantage of a on-demand, low recharge symbol and it gives the most healing. The question is if there are any competitive builds that would use these features. Not really … and increasing the speed of any of Mace’s attacks doesn’t change that either.

Personally, for Mace to really be brought out for me, healing needs a more significant role in the game. Right now it’s near or at the bottom of the list of damage migrators.

Obtena.7952:

I’m inclined to say no, especially if you are talking about reducing ALL the Mace weapon attack times by 50%. Even if only #1 was speed up 2 times, it would be rather ridiculous, especially coupled with a passive VoJ. You just increased my damage, doubled my healing for me and surrounding allies and gave me a less than 2 second passive VoJ cooldown. Have to pass on this idea.

In pvp is quite rare to pull of a entire mace AA. In fact trying to finish the chain is down right punishing. Imo from a pvp perspective a buff to the AA speed is justified, or at least a slight range increase on the attacks.

Perhaps with communal defense we’ll start to see more players make builds around mace, but this might be wishful thinking.

Why pair mace with a shield?

Shield 4 is crap because you are melee and offering protection to people in front of you. It doesn’t make any sense if you’re up front.

Shield 5 knocks people away, and mace has no reach… and not to mention that awful root.

Torch is better with Mace because it gives you nominally more reach even if the damage is pretty mediocre, plus torch 4 actually gives you a threat to people from afar.

It seems to me that focus is far superior to shield for the same reason it’s a superior offhand with any other weapon. Focus 5 gives you more damage and also can serve as an addition block to the mace’s block and 4 gives more support. It’s also a blast finisher (admittingly on a long cooldown)

Hammer is better in many cases, but mace healing isn’t completely useless either when used in conjunction with other hammer guardians. I know it’s hard to really justify regeneration and healing over protection, but hey, protection doesn’t protect you from all attacks!

IMO, hammer is the far superior AH weapon, while mace is better off in a healway one as it scales quite well with healing power. Though it’s actually not a bad dps weapon… and here comes focus again! It’s kinda funny to actually run into a zerg and boom, protector’s strike downs some people!

But yes, there’s really no reason why the thing should hit at the same speed as a hammer. It doesn’t have to be 2x faster; but it needs to be faster than hammer.

Aza.2105:

Obtena.7952:

I’m inclined to say no, especially if you are talking about reducing ALL the Mace weapon attack times by 50%. Even if only #1 was speed up 2 times, it would be rather ridiculous, especially coupled with a passive VoJ. You just increased my damage, doubled my healing for me and surrounding allies and gave me a less than 2 second passive VoJ cooldown. Have to pass on this idea.

In pvp is quite rare to pull of a entire mace AA. In fact trying to finish the chain is down right punishing. Imo from a pvp perspective a buff to the AA speed is justified, or at least a slight range increase on the attacks.

Perhaps with communal defense we’ll start to see more players make builds around mace, but this might be wishful thinking.

Perhaps, but in contrast, the same is would be true of Hammer, but I understand Hammer is a more popular weapon in PvP.

As a slight diversion, perhaps it’s worth considering that it’s not so much the Mace that is deficient but the offhands it could be paired with? Focus/Sheild simply add more effective defensive options, not as necessary with an already healing-focused weapon like Mace. Torch would be the only offensive off hand you could pair with Mace, I don’t feel that’s a good marriage.

I will confess, if chain #3 was even 3/4 second to execute, It would make Mace a little more attractive without being over the top.

Obtena.7952:

Aza.2105:

Obtena.7952:

I’m inclined to say no, especially if you are talking about reducing ALL the Mace weapon attack times by 50%. Even if only #1 was speed up 2 times, it would be rather ridiculous, especially coupled with a passive VoJ. You just increased my damage, doubled my healing for me and surrounding allies and gave me a less than 2 second passive VoJ cooldown. Have to pass on this idea.

In pvp is quite rare to pull of a entire mace AA. In fact trying to finish the chain is down right punishing. Imo from a pvp perspective a buff to the AA speed is justified, or at least a slight range increase on the attacks.

Perhaps with communal defense we’ll start to see more players make builds around mace, but this might be wishful thinking.

Perhaps, but in contrast, the same is would be true of Hammer, but I understand Hammer is a more popular weapon in PvP.

As a slight diversion, perhaps it’s worth considering that it’s not so much the Mace that is deficient but the offhands it could be paired with? Focus/Sheild simply add more effective defensive options, not as necessary with an already healing-focused weapon like Mace. Torch would be the only offensive off hand you could pair with Mace, I don’t feel that’s a good marriage.

I will confess, if chain #3 was even 3/4 second to execute, It would make Mace a little more attractive without being over the top.

Do you feel mace is powerful or it will be powerful with slight tweaks? Do you feel that the healing on the AA chain will save allies or help them?

0.0.20.30.20 with mace and battle presence is incredible healing.
Mace is useless in the zerker meta, but outside of the meta it does aoe regeneration / virtue / dodge healing / symbol healing really well.

The offhand choices are terrible and protectors strike needs buffed, but for pure party wife sustain it’s not so bad. Just needs some pve meta and mechanic changes.

Aza.2105:

Obtena.7952:

Aza.2105:

Obtena.7952:

I’m inclined to say no, especially if you are talking about reducing ALL the Mace weapon attack times by 50%. Even if only #1 was speed up 2 times, it would be rather ridiculous, especially coupled with a passive VoJ. You just increased my damage, doubled my healing for me and surrounding allies and gave me a less than 2 second passive VoJ cooldown. Have to pass on this idea.

In pvp is quite rare to pull of a entire mace AA. In fact trying to finish the chain is down right punishing. Imo from a pvp perspective a buff to the AA speed is justified, or at least a slight range increase on the attacks.

Perhaps with communal defense we’ll start to see more players make builds around mace, but this might be wishful thinking.

Perhaps, but in contrast, the same is would be true of Hammer, but I understand Hammer is a more popular weapon in PvP.

As a slight diversion, perhaps it’s worth considering that it’s not so much the Mace that is deficient but the offhands it could be paired with? Focus/Sheild simply add more effective defensive options, not as necessary with an already healing-focused weapon like Mace. Torch would be the only offensive off hand you could pair with Mace, I don’t feel that’s a good marriage.

I will confess, if chain #3 was even 3/4 second to execute, It would make Mace a little more attractive without being over the top.

Do you feel mace is powerful or it will be powerful with slight tweaks? Do you feel that the healing on the AA chain will save allies or help them?

I feel that as the primary healing weapon, Mace is correctly designed. For me the question isn’t molding poorly used weapons/stats/traits into useful ones … it’s for the game to make the focus of these things more meaningful. You can make a build that uses Mace to it’s fullest capability and it gives good damage and healing. The problem is that there isn’t alot of place in the game where the advantages of using the Mace are fully exploited because healing isn’t the most effective damage mitigation in GW2. Even if they tweeked the Mace for better damage … still no one would use it. It couldn’t be a tweak, it would have to be something as extreme as the suggestion made by the OP.

Obtena.7952:

I feel that as the primary healing weapon, Mace is correctly designed. For me the question isn’t molding poorly used weapons/stats/traits into useful ones … it’s for the game to make the focus of these things more meaningful. You can make a build that uses Mace to it’s fullest capability and it gives good damage and healing. The problem is that there isn’t alot of place in the game where the advantages of using the Mace are fully exploited because healing isn’t the most effective damage mitigation in GW2. Even if they tweeked the Mace for better damage … still no one would use it. It couldn’t be a tweak, it would have to be something as extreme as the suggestion made by the OP.

My perspective is even if the game was changed to were healing was a legit form of mitigation, mace would still be weak. This is coming from the perspective of pvp. In a pvp setting its rare to actually land the 3rd attack in the AA chain.

As you know in pvp no one stacks, even if they decided to stack on a target its unlikely that landing the mace 3rd attack would happen, since the target would be dead very quickly. Faithful strike is just too slow.

I feel they should spread out the healing of the AA chain. Instead of being 600 health on the final hit, it should be 200, 200, 200. It would make the AA of mace less punishing in a pvp setting. This of course is just my opinion, others may disagree.

Aza.2105:

Obtena.7952:

I feel that as the primary healing weapon, Mace is correctly designed. For me the question isn’t molding poorly used weapons/stats/traits into useful ones … it’s for the game to make the focus of these things more meaningful. You can make a build that uses Mace to it’s fullest capability and it gives good damage and healing. The problem is that there isn’t alot of place in the game where the advantages of using the Mace are fully exploited because healing isn’t the most effective damage mitigation in GW2. Even if they tweeked the Mace for better damage … still no one would use it. It couldn’t be a tweak, it would have to be something as extreme as the suggestion made by the OP.

My perspective is even if the game was changed to were healing was a legit form of mitigation, mace would still be weak. This is coming from the perspective of pvp. In a pvp setting its rare to actually land the 3rd attack in the AA chain.

As you know in pvp no one stacks, even if they decided to stack on a target its unlikely that landing the mace 3rd attack would happen, since the target would be dead very quickly. Faithful strike is just too slow.

I feel they should spread out the healing of the AA chain. Instead of being 600 health on the final hit, it should be 200, 200, 200. It would make the AA of mace less punishing in a pvp setting. This of course is just my opinion, others may disagree.

I think what we have here is a recognition that not every weapon is intended for every element of the game. Staff blows in PVE too but has a place in WvW, for example.

l’m not sure where Mace fits in. Of the different types of play, I would say it fits sPvP the worst, WvW the best. Perhaps doubling the attack speed of it does make it more interesting in pvp but those kinds of changes can’t be considering without seeing how they impact other parts of the game as well.

Obtena.7952:

Aza.2105:

Obtena.7952:

I feel that as the primary healing weapon, Mace is correctly designed. For me the question isn’t molding poorly used weapons/stats/traits into useful ones … it’s for the game to make the focus of these things more meaningful. You can make a build that uses Mace to it’s fullest capability and it gives good damage and healing. The problem is that there isn’t alot of place in the game where the advantages of using the Mace are fully exploited because healing isn’t the most effective damage mitigation in GW2. Even if they tweeked the Mace for better damage … still no one would use it. It couldn’t be a tweak, it would have to be something as extreme as the suggestion made by the OP.

My perspective is even if the game was changed to were healing was a legit form of mitigation, mace would still be weak. This is coming from the perspective of pvp. In a pvp setting its rare to actually land the 3rd attack in the AA chain.

As you know in pvp no one stacks, even if they decided to stack on a target its unlikely that landing the mace 3rd attack would happen, since the target would be dead very quickly. Faithful strike is just too slow.

I feel they should spread out the healing of the AA chain. Instead of being 600 health on the final hit, it should be 200, 200, 200. It would make the AA of mace less punishing in a pvp setting. This of course is just my opinion, others may disagree.

I think what we have here is a recognition that not every weapon is intended for every element of the game. Staff blows in PVE too but has a place in WvW, for example.

l’m not sure where Mace fits in. Of the different types of play, I would say it fits sPvP the worst, WvW the best. Perhaps doubling the attack speed of it does make it more interesting in pvp but those kinds of changes can’t be considering without seeing how they impact other parts of the game as well.

Mace a wvw weapon? It seems its better for spvp since the weapon lacks mobility. Imo there is just too much movement in wvw for mace to be a good weapon. Mace seems like its designed around turtling/camping playstyle.

Mace+Focus is used in AOE burst builds for medium groups and zergs in WvW. The combined AOE of Focus 5 + Mace 3 is pretty strong on a crit. It’s not super common but people do use it as such.

I have an awesome idea to make mace a decent choice weapon.

and it is simple.
make “protectors strike” a whirl finisher…
simple and elegant.

Hate to break it to you but it already is.

ArchonWing.9480:

Why pair mace with a shield?

Shield 4 is crap because you are melee and offering protection to people in front of you. It doesn’t make any sense if you’re up front.

Shield 5 knocks people away, and mace has no reach… and not to mention that awful root.

Torch is better with Mace because it gives you nominally more reach even if the damage is pretty mediocre, plus torch 4 actually gives you a threat to people from afar.

It seems to me that focus is far superior to shield for the same reason it’s a superior offhand with any other weapon. Focus 5 gives you more damage and also can serve as an addition block to the mace’s block and 4 gives more support. It’s also a blast finisher (admittingly on a long cooldown)

Hammer is better in many cases, but mace healing isn’t completely useless either when used in conjunction with other hammer guardians. I know it’s hard to really justify regeneration and healing over protection, but hey, protection doesn’t protect you from all attacks!

IMO, hammer is the far superior AH weapon, while mace is better off in a healway one as it scales quite well with healing power. Though it’s actually not a bad dps weapon… and here comes focus again! It’s kinda funny to actually run into a zerg and boom, protector’s strike downs some people!

But yes, there’s really no reason why the thing should hit at the same speed as a hammer. It doesn’t have to be 2x faster; but it needs to be faster than hammer.

I tried the mace/torch together for the past few days. I was surprised that they actually go together so well, except cosmetically. It definitely feels better than mace/shield or mace/focus.

wuuuut, have you ever been on a Time Warp with that auto-attack? I feel godly by the way it heals everyone, it attacks so fast that I’m able to get everyone back to normal health ^^

Why not?

Because Mace guardian would be the top DPS build in the game not using fiery greatsword by a significant margin.

foofad.5162:

Hate to break it to you but it already is.

not really,
it is whirl only if the block is not interrupted and it procs at the end of the move after 4 seconds.
if the block is interrupted, you don’t gain the protection and you don’t gain the whirl finisher.

you can test it with purging flames.
put purging flames then protectors strike on it, in city you will gain protection and one fiery bolt. but if you will try the same when you are in combat and mob attacking you, you will get the explosion damage instead.
thats why its so weak.

Whirl finishers are fundamentally worthless on any skill that isn’t channeled damage over a duration. They produce one bolt per second. An instant skill will only produce one bolt. It’s pretty pointless and it will not save the skill.

I wish Glacial Heart had half the cooldown and applied for maces instead of hammers. I’m loving using mace/shield now with a healway variant but if that happened, I’d never let it go.