We’re bringing in a few quality-of-life adjustments for the guardian, giving them a few more options for support but also allowing for different damage options and self-sustainment. You won’t see a huge amount of balance changes to the guardian at this time, as they are generally still in a good spot. With that being said, their new grandmaster traits will explore new boundaries as they make use of the strongest player-activated burning condition in Guild Wars 2.
I pretty much guessed it. We will still get 5 Grandmaster traits to explore, though.
I can’t deny that Guardians are in a good spot, but it’s a pretty stale spot.
5 Grandmaster traits
Zeal
Amplified Wrath – Burning damage is increased by 33%.
Radiance
Radiant Retaliation: – Retaliation damage scales from condition damage instead of power
Valor
Communal Defenses – Grand 5 seconds of aegis to allies in 360 range when you block an attack.
Honor
Force of Will – Gain up to 300 vitality based on your level.
Virtues
Purity of Body – Resolve’s passive effects increases endurance regeneration by 15%.
Woo! We have burns! Except, ya know, there’s nothing we can do to cover said burn. Who cares if you do 10k damage over 10 seconds if it gets immediately cleansed?
I am curious about the QOL changes. Maybe a 25% speed trait like everyone else except Mesmer.
Well, let’s not throw a damper yet. Virtue of Justice is a strong skill; it’s just that it requires major traiting and it’s not because of the burn damage. (Justice is Blind—-> Renewed Justice—-> Blind Exposure—-> Radiant Power—-> Fiery Wrath)
I’m guessing this will involve grandmaster radiance, which is currently the bomb for one handers but pretty useless for everything else.
The problem with Anet thinking is that they seem to assume you have a 30/30/30/30/30 build in which some things are always taken together. That is what they keep doing with the Necromancer and Death Shroud, leaving that class to have the design philosophy of a badly microwaved piece of meat— burnt ( some parts are OP) on the outside yet frozen on the inside (some parts are just unplayable)
For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards,
for there you have been and there you will long to return.
Personally I feel Guardian’s have been falling behind in the “power creep” for a while in the WvW game.
“In a good place” reads more like “we’re too lazy”. Maybe I’m alone in the observation, but I notice there’s less and less Guardians around. Which sort of says it all does it not?
Why would they even say “You won’t see a huge amount of balance changes to the guardian”? They have to know it’s going to irritate the players.
Gundent
Charr Warguardmeznecrotheifrangergineer
[ETA]-HoD or wherever Mega-server-blob who cares anymore?
Personally I feel Guardian’s have been falling behind in the “power creep” for a while in the WvW game.
“In a good place” reads more like “we’re too lazy”. Maybe I’m alone in the observation, but I notice there’s less and less Guardians around. Which sort of says it all does it not?
Why would they even say “You won’t see a huge amount of balance changes to the guardian”? They have to know it’s going to irritate the players.
It’s a valid point. Guardians need to make massive concessions to have their builds work, and while that is by design intent, if you keep creeping the other classes, then a lot of them won’t have to sacrifice as much. That’s why a certain class gets whined about a lot, because it seems like they can just kitten and kitten around without any critical consequences.
For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards,
for there you have been and there you will long to return.
I hope, and if they aren’t, I WANT them to do something with the Spirit Weapons.
I think Spirit Weapons sounds really cool, but they have become completely useless. My fear is that they aren’t fixing them because they will become too similar to Necromancers. Well, too bad, they should have thought about that before adding such skills to the Guardian, and showcasing them in a video before release.
I guess I’ll keep using same build I’ve been using since the beta.
Disappointing.
Playing a guardian is months of watching 7 other classes get new toys .
Come on, it’s not that hard. There’s lots to do. At first glance, spirit weapons aren’t even skills. There are no condition builds. Guardian mobility is garbage and half of it dependent on having rabbits around. Address these issues.
Guardian builds have barely budged since launch. Warriors got even a brand spanking new trait for having trouble dealing with boons. What the hell?
I guess I’ll keep using same build I’ve been using since the beta.
Disappointing.
Playing a guardian is months of watching 7 other classes get new toys .
Come on, it’s not that hard. There’s lots to do. At first glance, spirit weapons aren’t even skills. There are no condition builds. Guardian mobility is garbage and half of it dependent on having rabbits around. Address these issues.
Guardian builds have barely budged since launch. Warriors got even a brand spanking new trait for having trouble dealing with boons. What the hell?
Why does this seem so obvious to the player base but, not to the devs? What do we need to do to get the point across? Would any of these issues unbalance Guardians if addressed?
Gundent
Charr Warguardmeznecrotheifrangergineer
[ETA]-HoD or wherever Mega-server-blob who cares anymore?
I am just glad I made a Warrior as a 2nd main a few months ago. 2500+ hours on my Guard and I only play him in WvW anymore, and that has some serious issues after recent nerfs. sigh.
Guardians are well-known to be the one of the best, if not the best class in the game, across all modes. I’m not saying they don’t have a right to complain about certain things, but let’s not act like the class has major broken issues.
Oh, and if they nerf critical damage, while it technically hits every class, doesn’t that hit pretty much all non-bunker guardian builds since we don’t have a condition build?
lol@ pve changes affecting everything. :/
For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards,
for there you have been and there you will long to return.
I don’t want anything overpowered, I want something that would revitalize the game play. Hell, ever making Spirit weapons useful would be great.
Then again, it took them 4 years in GW1 to make Ritualist spirits useful.
Do you guys want to make the Guardian even more OP?
The guardian is in a great position as it is.
No, they don’t. They want to try out new things with the guardian but they can’t because half of their abilities have been imbalanced towards the underpowered side.
….. no, it sounds horrible, 15% is nothing when vigor is 100%, and other classes get things like 25% or more for lower tier traits.
Lower tiers that ALSO don’t go away when you activate something. Rangers get like a passive 25% in their first tier that stays on. If we pop our virtue, our TINY 15% is gone
But hey, its grandmaster so it HAS to be awesome …
The only one that sounds remotely interesting is Communal Defense.
It depends on how fast the Aegis effect is added to your allies. Does it reapply fast enough that Shelter would become essentially 3 seconds of immunity for your party if you are blocking something like a 100b or flamethrower?
The only one that sounds remotely interesting is Communal Defense.
It depends on how fast the Aegis effect is added to your allies. Does it reapply fast enough that Shelter would become essentially 3 seconds of immunity for your party if you are blocking something like a 100b or flamethrower?
The only one that sounds remotely interesting is Communal Defense.
It depends on how fast the Aegis effect is added to your allies. Does it reapply fast enough that Shelter would become essentially 3 seconds of immunity for your party if you are blocking something like a 100b or flamethrower?
Still, it competes with AH and MF…
Communal defense has 20 second cooldown.
Only thing that strikes me as worth talking about is the nerf to vigorous precision.
The only one that sounds remotely interesting is Communal Defense.
It depends on how fast the Aegis effect is added to your allies. Does it reapply fast enough that Shelter would become essentially 3 seconds of immunity for your party if you are blocking something like a 100b or flamethrower?
Communal Defense was stated to have a cooldown of around 15 seconds, it could combine well with pure of heart and shattered aegis.
I can see a wacky build with 5 Guardians in a Party stacking this trait. Since a single Aegis produces more Aegises for other Guardians, you’d constantly be procing the trait every 15 seconds block a ton of attacks and triggering pure of heart and shattered aegis constantly.
Communal Defense was stated to have a cooldown of around 15 seconds, it could combine well with pure of heart and shattered aegis.
I can see a wacky build with 5 Guardians in a Party stacking this trait. Since a single Aegis produces more Aegises for other Guardians, you’d constantly be procing the trait every 15 seconds block a ton of attacks and triggering pure of heart and shattered aegis constantly.
Same thing as stacking 5 of anything, class mechanics end up becoming extremely wonky.
Also, one Aoe on all of them would ruin it all, as they would all block, the trait would trigger for all of them, and they would only end up with one aditional block because aegis doesn’t stack charges, only duration.
Condi Guardians just isn’t going to be a thing. Ever. Just no.
Maybe they should give Guardians more conditions like Torment, Cripple and Chill, everything that slows enemies down, but not conditions that stacks loads.
Guardians being the profession that holds the line and stands the ground and kitten.
That sigil(rune?) of benevolence looks awesome for healing guardians. I’m a lot more excited about that than any of the absurd yet boring trait additions for guardians.
Condi Guardians just isn’t going to be a thing. Ever. Just no.
Maybe they should give Guardians more conditions like Torment, Cripple and Chill, everything that slows enemies down, but not conditions that stacks loads.
Guardians being the profession that holds the line and stands the ground and kitten.
Change shattered aegis to 3 stacks of bleed, give radiance torment on crit, keep burning, add in sigils OMG CONDITION SPEC. Too bad apparently that is just too hard to do.
Condi Guardians just isn’t going to be a thing. Ever. Just no.
Maybe they should give Guardians more conditions like Torment, Cripple and Chill, everything that slows enemies down, but not conditions that stacks loads.
Guardians being the profession that holds the line and stands the ground and kitten.
We have chill. Sort of. On 1 weapon. When traited.
I was thinking of things more from a PvE perspective though, not a huge fan of PvP in this game myself.
Power has 916 base attribute. Is the retaliation scale going to base 0 Condition Damage as if it was 916? If it’s not it seems kinda lame.
I was wondering about the same thing, maybe condition damage will have a better scaling, like 0.15 or even 0.225, compare to 0.075 for power.(It’s still trash, guardian has little to no reason to build up condition damage since burn is the only condition we got, for most build at least.)
Only thing noticeable is the vigor nerf, everything else kinda just meh.
lol those fake patch notes showed more competence than this “balance” patch.
those fake patch notes actually tackled some of the main issues with guardians such as the lack of soft cc which helps a lot in letting guardians stick to their target as well as making spirit weapons viable again for an alternate 1v1 experience
Eh, I’m pleased they at least addressed the issue of Guardian’s lacking a strong burning build. I run a burning build for fun sometimes, and that trait should help. However, going 30 into Zeal still feels dirty. I’ll assume they’re just playing it safe first and will buff it as necessary, but any lower it wouldn’t be worth going that far into Zeal.
I hope, and if they aren’t, I WANT them to do something with the Spirit Weapons.
I think Spirit Weapons sounds really cool, but they have become completely useless. My fear is that they aren’t fixing them because they will become too similar to Necromancers. Well, too bad, they should have thought about that before adding such skills to the Guardian, and showcasing them in a video before release.
I really want Spirit Weapons to be useful.
This. So much this. That said, a lot of the new traits do seem to… suck.
Amplified Wrath: Biggest selling point is that it is better than Kindred Zeal, pretty much no matter what.
Radiant Retaliation: this, arguably, has the most interesting possibilities. I did some theoretical math in another thread, and I came up with about 550 damage per tick from retaliation. This is… quite scary. A condi support guardian that spreads masses of retal can be quite deadly in WvW and PVP.
Valor: Meh. AoE Aegis is good I guess.
Honor: It is about as flat a buff as you can get.
Virtues: Little point in such a minor endurance gain when AoE Aegis does more for group protection.
I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.
whoaa
so we get 5 useless grandmasters!
way to go
spirit weapons still useless. still no point in going for condi (burning alone is a joke).
no change at all. oh, sry. lowest hp class gets vigor uptime cut in half. awesome.
I’ve been playing the same build since beta weekend 2.
Guardian development has been about as exciting as watching paint dry.
The most exciting change for the guardian for me since the beta was a projectile velocity increase for Staff’s Orb of Light. I think that says something.
I’ve been playing the same build since beta weekend 2.
Guardian development has been about as exciting as watching paint dry.
The most exciting change for the guardian for me since the beta was a projectile velocity increase for Staff’s Orb of Light. I think that says something.
Don’t forget the nerfs on PoV amongst other exciting changes. Wo-opidy-hoo.
I’m pretty much tired of them saying Guardian is in a good spot because that means they aren’t trying to innovate and things are going to get stale. Aside from the 20% damage bonus from two traits I don’t give a crap that Guardians can burn because that’s all we can do. We can’t bleed, cripple, can barely chill, can’t torment or poison either, just burn and burn is kind of lackluster especially on it’s own. We’ve been painted into this corner when it comes to conditions.
I probably won’t use any of these new traits for day to day game play. Some of them the ones that grant party wide blocks and swaps retal from power to condi look useful for small group or wvw zerging, that’s about it.
Yep but as paint that are drying in a good spot so are Guardians according to Anet.
And you can not deny that if you paint something correctly, clearly it is in a good spot.
“Guardians are in a good spot”
- Mike O’brien 2014
Periclltor – Guardian
Account and Char® name could
be the same, Profanity!?
