Guild Wars 2

So i wanted to try a healing power dragon hunter and its pretty cool so far. Really nice sustain and team support. But the main weapon to use for healing power, the mace just feels like its still stuck in 2012. Everything it does takes forever to cast for how little effect and range it has.

The main attack chain feels like it does nothing for how slow it is and it doesn’t scale well at all with healing power. It says that it has the same attack speed as rev mace for the first 2 attack but it just feels so much slower.

Number 2 feels just horrible. In an age where i can put down my scrapper lighting stun field at 1200 range with less than half the cast time and more damage there is really no reason this melee skill without any single hit damage capabilitys should have over 1 s cast time. Also even with full healing power the regen hardly does anything.

The third skill also feels very weird. Sometimes it triggers the attack on the first block, sometimes it does after the 3rd sometimes even later. The payoff when you dont get hit at all is a super short ammount of protection that doesnt even last as long as its cast time. lol. Also sometimes i just want another attack instead of a block. This should work like revs offhand sword where you can actually choose how long it blocks and when you attack.

If you are looking into playing a support oriented class, I would look at Tempest and Druid.

Guardian offers very few boons, negligible healing and o.k. cc at best. Bunker guard used to be a staple but it has been overshadowed. The boons that the guardian does give only last ~5s anyways and the cd on shouts is still too long to keep decent cleanse for your team. Most of the guardians healing in loaded into Virtue of Resolve and to somewhat a degree Empower (staff 4). It doesn’t help that bunker guards have to take shelter and renewed focus to keep themselves alive…before they can even help their own teammates.

You’ll find most of the guardian weapons feel like they are stuck in 2012…even the LB (copy paste ranger bow).

Guardians are in a good spot!

Understand, also, that the Dragonhunter elite spec is not designed to focus on pure support, unlike Druid, or even Tempest. It is likely the guardian will receive an elite specialization later to further boost this role.

Thx for the feedback, i agree most of the old guardian weapons are clunky and slow by today standards. But for now i would like to focus on the mace like the topic implies.

So my suggestions would be:

Keep the healing the same on the 3rd autoattack chain without any investment, but at least tripple the ammount it heals now at 1500 healing power. Also reduce some aftercast from the first 2 hits.

Change number 2 into a 0,5 s cast time skill

Make the 3rd skill a 1,5 second block for 5 allies within the range that you can cancel with an attack by pressing the skill again.

Sounds good? Too op? Not enough?

I will be honest, I don’t think slow and clunky are compelling reason to change weapons. While it does heal, I don’t think it’s intended as a healing weapon since we don’t have trinity. Adjusting the heal would be a wasted exercise IMO and wouldn’t make up for the slow, clunky feeling.

Frankly, I don’t think there is much to change on Mace.

Mace #1 is a little slow because it hits multiple targets; Mace IS a AoE weapon. Like any AoE weapon, it will be lackluster against single targets.

Mace #2 is the symbol bomber; even though it’s longer CD than Hammer symbol, it’s not locked up on the third level of a chained attack.

Mace #3 is better than people give it credit for though it has some situational awareness requirements to make it useful.

Seems to me that all these things target the very concept of what it means to be a Guardian; team support, defensive buffing, Melee AoE effects.

I don’t feel the problems with Guardian are related to any specific weapon or skills though there are improvements, the concept itself doesn’t really fit with the way the game promotes high damage and teamplay, unless maybe at the highest fractal levels.

If there was one improvement I would like to see with Mace, it would be to change protectors strike so it’s not taking you out of the action for almost 4 seconds. Maybe add a 2nd stage, allowing player to discharge it for a lesser benefit.

Obtena.7952:

Mace #1 is a little slow because it hits multiple targets; Mace IS a AoE weapon. Like any AoE weapon, it will be lackluster against single targets.

It’s funny because the 3rd attack from the chain doesn’t cleave.

That’s true, that’s the AoE heal. I don’t regard that an an inconsistency in the weapon though as it fits the class concept.

I do find it odd that the AA only damages that one target. Necro and Thief dagger show that you can have cleave damage and only get a secondary benefit once. Also, I’d like Mace 3 to act more like the recent blocking skills add mentioned, where you can toggle the block and it blocks more than once.

But, any changes I would want to make would be more along the lines of QoL. The design and concept for Mace is spot on. But, that didn’t mean it can’t feel more smooth. Many of the older skills that haven’t already had tweaks made to them really deserve a fluidity update.

Obtena.7952:

(…)

I don’t feel the problems with Guardian are related to any specific weapon or skills though there are improvements, the concept itself doesn’t really fit with the way the game promotes high damage and teamplay, unless maybe at the highest fractal levels.

If there was one improvement I would like to see with Mace, it would be to change protectors strike so it’s not taking you out of the action for almost 4 seconds. Maybe add a 2nd stage, allowing player to discharge it for a lesser benefit.

I believe it is the overall performance of the mace skills + traits that are super outdated, healing power could be a little bit stronger and/or to make bunker spec (mace shield) work on guardian toughness would had to be more valuable for that class for the healing power be a bit more efective (what is the point of being class with best toughness if stat is worthelss, high damage bulds are much easy to play and way more efective), since bunker spec sacrifices the only important thing to the game “damage ouput”.

Guardian/DH uses really awfully the base stats if speced that way wich IMO is the guardian real issue.

P.S i still use mace shield and always used since game release, anything outside that is much easier to play and way more efective, the thing is not every one like to leech damage output (play the placebo game) to make game much easier (this is WvW)…
Better iteration process and less class favoritism would be apreciated Anet.

As an alternative to making skill 2 have a shorter cast time you could add an attack to the symbol like the hammer has. This way the skill could at least have some damage poential against non ai thingys.

It is not my intention to destroy everything that the mace stands for, but to give it a chance in 2016 that goes beyond pure novelty.

That’s a noble intention but the mace has concept and when it gets modified to try to fill other concepts at the expense of it’s current one; it becomes good for neither.

I believe the only improvements that make sense to me for Mace are those that are already similar to what it does, not ones that try to make it good for what it doesn’t do. Trying to make Mace more appealing for PVP isn’t going to result in people using it more for PVP; It just doesn’t deliver enough to that game mode in the first place.

Its not just pvp. In wvw the only reason to use a mace is to get a shield offhand.

Thats not because of design or because of concept. It is concretely because it is not good at what it is supposed to do in todays meta.

Chasing meta shifts is a questionable reason to revisit skills.

Mace isn’t bad. In fact, paired with focus it has some good synergy. Those two are 100 times better than using a shield, which is a total bust.

Edit: Focus Mastery, Communal Defenses, retributive armor, invigorated bulwark, etc.

Obtena.7952:

Chasing meta shifts is a questionable reason to revisit skills.

Isn’t it like to main reason to ever do that apart from straight up bugs? Also getting one change in like forever seems to be hardly chasing.

But i get get it every guard seems to regard this weapon as perfectly fine and competitive, so it would be foolish to improve it
sorry i ever decided to make a suggestion, you guys are in a good place indeed

I’m not sure if you aware of the history but for Anet, that one little change is a pretty big deal to make, so if it’s going to happen, it better be a good one. I’m all for improvements but when you literally get a few weapon skill changes in a year, mace wouldn’t be where I think it should be, especially to chase a meta you can’t catch.

To put mace guardian competitive on the meta they would have to buff alot the mace traits, and i mean alot.

Actually mace creates alot of atrition to the class, and its users, every other class has huge mobility, much faster pace combat.

How metas change in this game is a huge placebo, it doenst mean balance nor work class/wepon QoL.

My guardian uses mace/focus, and I think it is great. My guardian is very hard to kill and I can go against heavy odds and win. I don’t see how you could augment the mace and not make it easy peasy. Well, I still can’t beat a veteran shadow leaper, but none of my other characters can either. My guardian did kill the vet shadow leaper, but only after having gone to the down state . I had the npc down far enough that I was able to finish him and thus get back up, and I don’t really consider that much of a win. But my guardian is the only character of mine that could get even that far.

@redcomyn.4651 if that is pve anything works there, even no armor

mace has awfull performance for player vs player combat.

I’m not surprised. However, you didn’t specify pvp, or at least I didn’t see it if you did. If you had, I wouldn’t have volunteered an opinion about it. I’ve never done pvp so have no opinions about what works or doesn’t work in it.

I think every one was talking about pvp gameplay :P

Give mace/focus a try with proper traits. Blocking is fine.

Is it the bees knees, no. But mace has its place.