Guild Wars 2

Yikes, this wasn’t what I was hoping to see.

Fiery Wrath down to 7% from 10%

Amplified Wrath down to 15% from 33%, and the ICD on the Defender’s Flame component added

Radiant Power down to 10% extra crit chance from 25%

Might of the Protector: ICD added

So in total, we get DPS reduced not in a crippling way but noticeably shaved. The crit chance and damage changes I believe are fair and I can deal with, but…

I feel adding an ICD to Might of the Protector and the burn-on-block component of Amplified Wrath is unnecessary. This prevents the guardian from being rewarded from timing a Shelter or focus 5 properly to block attacks, which was a major, major source of damage and reward for good play. I’m a bit disappointed.

Edit: Besides that, I think Virtues is still getting a more-than-solid buff, medi traits are fine unless they mess up the scaling, etc. Just that Radiance looks a WHOLE lot less attractive now.

Very surprised by a lot of the nerfs from the intended changes. Warriors, Elementalists and Engineer’s got massive buffs and yet…

i am still completely mad they they didnt fix the honor line, but i love the changes to the tomes. i still feel that honor has gone from essential to oh look now your group play line is crap, have fun. i also still hate the fall damage trait its pointless for that trait to be in honor and it needs to be destroyed.

Bear in mind that conditions as a whole have been changed/re-scaled and burning will stack now so it may not be the straight nerf you’re anticipating.

yeah i understand fiery wrath and maaaaybe amplified wrath nerf. also radiant power was 10% more d mg not crit chance, no 25% anything.though that wouldve been awesome haha.

the one I really dont get is destroying might of the protector, which maybe using shelter at the right time be actually rewarding, and was one of the very few skillful things a guardian could do. I’m really disappointed in this change hope they reverse it.

Booms.2594:

yeah i understand fiery wrath and maaaaybe amplified wrath nerf. also radiant power was 10% more d mg not crit chance, no 25% anything.though that wouldve been awesome haha.

the one I really dont get is destroying might of the protector, which maybe using shelter at the right time be actually rewarding, and was one of the very few skillful things a guardian could do. I’m really disappointed in this change hope they reverse it.

My thoughts exactly. Dumbs us down even more. Really sad. Punishing enemies for hitting into blocks always felt rewarding to me, and timing blocks well was one of the few things that required real skill on the guardian’s part.

ventusthunder.5067:

Booms.2594:

yeah i understand fiery wrath and maaaaybe amplified wrath nerf. also radiant power was 10% more d mg not crit chance, no 25% anything.though that wouldve been awesome haha.

the one I really dont get is destroying might of the protector, which maybe using shelter at the right time be actually rewarding, and was one of the very few skillful things a guardian could do. I’m really disappointed in this change hope they reverse it.

My thoughts exactly. Dumbs us down even more. Really sad. Punishing enemies for hitting into blocks always felt rewarding to me, and timing blocks well was one of the few things that required real skill on the guardian’s part.

A pretty sizable nerf to virtue range for what reason? I keep questioning what’s going on because a lot of it makes zero-to-no sense. The retaliation traits are still garbage, Might of the Protector got a massive nerf against skillfully blocking multiple attacks. It’s not like Guardians stacked might very well anyways.

Every kitten patch we get some sort of pretty nasty nerf for no logical reason. Where are the nerfs to the apex classes? This is bs.

It does make very little sense, I’d like to get an explanation from the Guardian developer(s) on why they believed this was a fair change. Our class wasn’t really the highest skill cap in the first place.

I’d simply propose for Amplified Wrath to go back to at the very least 20% (remember the hype surrounding it when it came out? "Guardians are going to get access to the most damaging, devastating condition in the game! 33% burning damage!!!) And now it’s been pushed back to 15%, which is nerfing over half of the extra damage the trait provided anyway.

Secondly, keep Might of the Protector the same as it was before. 1 stack of might for 15 seconds with no ICD was perfectly fair and in my opinion was one of the best-designed traits for guardian. Defender’s Flame can keep that ICD, that trait was stupid.

I think these are more dragonhunter nerf, than guardian nerfs, now that I think about how OP i thought dragonhunter was going to be. This makes a lot of sense

Normally i’m pretty upbeat about the Guardian profession but holy crap at these changes. You know what, i’m done. Keep doing what you’re doing with the oblivious buffs to the best classes while nerfing those that NO ONE complained about.

Of course, and shield remains unchanged

at the same time, mesmers get 3x the number of changes which shows where most of the development times goes to

I saw the finalized version of the changes and laughed. They basically took all of the buffs that people were excited about and did a complete 180, either making them near insignificant or outright nerfing them (i.e. block procs). They still seem to think that the shield trait is good even for people that are willing to kitten themselves with the shield, they still think that 3s of retal on a 30s cooldown is good, and we are still going to be the only class with no access to +25% movement speed.

I’m so done. No more guardian hype. It’s all a sham.

I would really like to hear from one of the lead devs on how they can justify keeping Guardians in the dark for so many years.

I want the devs to explain to us why they believe broken shield weapon and broken spirit weapons are ok.

I want the devs to tell us why they believe being “in a good spot” justifies our profession receiving no significant changes since the launch of the game while every single other profession receives massive power creeps.

For once i would love the devs to be honest with us instead of lying, instead of stabbing us in the back, instead of hiding in the shadows. Come out and justify why you hate Guardians so much!

So Might of the Protector has gone from a skill that could grant you anywhere from 5-20 stacks of Might for 20s with a well timed block (though if you’re gaining 20 stacks of Might from blocking 20 attacks in 2 seconds you’re probably in deep kitten anyway).

To, at most granting 4 stacks of Might for 15 seconds….

What the actual fk?

Virtue active effect ranged cut in half, why? You reduced the cool-downs from 30, 60, 90 to 25, 50, 75. We still have the longest cool-downs of all the profession mechanics by far and the necessity to heavily trait them in order to even make them remotely useful.

A 1500 heal on a 600 radius with a 50s cool-down and a single block on a 75s cool-down are hardly… what’s the word? ‘good’?

This is comic gold. Oh the sky is falling right into the guardian forums apparently. You act like guardian will be unplayable now.

Drennon.7190:

This is comic gold. Oh the sky is falling right into the guardian forums apparently. You act like guardian will be unplayable now.

Condition builds just might be, we only have one condition after all and it was just hit as hard as Anet could muster.

Drennon.7190:

This is comic gold. Oh the sky is falling right into the guardian forums apparently. You act like guardian will be unplayable now.

I already don’t play either of my guardians anymore. After the update, I’d planned on changing that.

But now I have no reason to do that anymore.

Drennon.7190:

You act like guardian will be unplayable now.

That’s your own conjecture. Mesmer or elem got buffed as if they are currently unplayable. So why not guardians?

Drennon.7190:

This is comic gold. Oh the sky is falling right into the guardian forums apparently. You act like guardian will be unplayable now.

I wouldn’t say the sky is falling….at first I was stoked seeing all the changes to the other classes, before the stream cut off at ranger, but after reading the notes I was very disappointed. The nerf to Virtue’s range was reasonable, and the Amplified Wrath change is up in the air seeing we don’t know how it will play after thew patch. Shield looks like it will still be bad and not used unless they’re making shield grant aegis part of the weapon set, the shave to Fiery Wrath made me sigh, buI can deal with it. Inspiring Virtues is still not baseline. To be honest my disappointment comes from there being no new flavor that accompany some of the nerfs.

quaniesan.8497:

Drennon.7190:

You act like guardian will be unplayable now.

That’s your own conjecture. Mesmer or elem got buffed as if they are currently unplayable. So why not guardians?

Mesmer rarely sees top tier play and Ele is falling out because of shoutbow doing a better job. Can you name a time period where guardian wasn’t meta? Please inform me.

Drennon.7190:

quaniesan.8497:

Drennon.7190:

You act like guardian will be unplayable now.

That’s your own conjecture. Mesmer or elem got buffed as if they are currently unplayable. So why not guardians?

Mesmer rarely sees top tier play and Ele is falling out because of shoutbow doing a better job. Can you name a time period where guardian wasn’t meta? Please inform me.

memers always one of the top tier. Don’t make kitten up. Elems have been complained previously for their DD build or variants that were always unkillable. And you know what funny? even shoutbow got buffed.

Drennon.7190:

quaniesan.8497:

Drennon.7190:

You act like guardian will be unplayable now.

That’s your own conjecture. Mesmer or elem got buffed as if they are currently unplayable. So why not guardians?

Mesmer rarely sees top tier play and Ele is falling out because of shoutbow doing a better job. Can you name a time period where guardian wasn’t meta? Please inform me.

Rise of the Celestial Builds. Since Old Guardian meta was bunker guardian, and they got pushed out of it since Cele d/d ele and such did the same job but with more benefit. Then after some time Medi Hammer guardian grew in popularity.

quaniesan.8497:

Drennon.7190:

quaniesan.8497:

Drennon.7190:

You act like guardian will be unplayable now.

That’s your own conjecture. Mesmer or elem got buffed as if they are currently unplayable. So why not guardians?

Mesmer rarely sees top tier play and Ele is falling out because of shoutbow doing a better job. Can you name a time period where guardian wasn’t meta? Please inform me.

memers always one of the top tier. Don’t make kitten up. Elems have been complained previously for their DD build or variants that were always unkillable. And you know what funny? even shoutbow got buffed.

Mesmer always top tier…? Yeah you don’t know what your talking about. No need to continue correcting you.

Drennon.7190:

quaniesan.8497:

Drennon.7190:

You act like guardian will be unplayable now.

That’s your own conjecture. Mesmer or elem got buffed as if they are currently unplayable. So why not guardians?

Mesmer rarely sees top tier play and Ele is falling out because of shoutbow doing a better job. Can you name a time period where guardian wasn’t meta? Please inform me.

Let’s not kid ourselves here. The only thing keeping medi guard “meta” is the fact that it counters current thief builds so well, which is really kind of moot anyway when you’re against a thief that’s smart enough to outmaneuver you. One good player playing well with a decent build doesn’t make the decent build suddenly amazing.

Also note the nerf to the virtue range which also hits all virtue traits with a sledgehammer.

In a good place.

Might of the Protector nerf kinda silly but what about Empowering Might ICD?

blakdoxa.7520:

Also note the nerf to the virtue range which also hits all virtue traits with a sledgehammer.

That’s what irked me the most. It’s like they just decided it should be 600 because most other AoE boon abilities are 600. Nothing is broken with it on live, why change it?

Guardian can actually do condition stacking with the change to burning. Pushing F1 will actually apply a burst of damage instead of just ineffectually adding to a duration that would’ve probably been cleansed off before actually ticking anyway. Downside being that now it’ll actually be much harder to trigger that bonus 7% against burning targets damage since burning won’t stack duration. Rejoice, for we shall burn all that is impure!

I wonder how long the cooldown on the Radiant Fire trait will be. Zealot’s Flame (Torch 4) cast when you critically hit? Burning… EVERYTHING BURNING,

Stalwart Defender: Gain 180 additional toughness while wielding a shield. Shield abilities have 20% reduced recharge.

This should have been changed, the devs even mentioned in the last livestream that it was lackluster and redundant. There’s still 0 reason to ever take shield, and it’s competing with another trait that gives basically the same amount of toughness to you and your entire party.

Nobody even bothered to go back and look at it.

I thought I was on the guardian forums. Must’ve accident stumbled upon the thief forums. Let me consult my map.

We are in a good place now. /sarcasm

Good thing they changed the name of Healing Breeze because these changes are far from a breath of fresh air for a stagnant class. I really wanted to play my Guardian again but with things staying pretty much the same since launch it’s gotten boring.

“Dragonhunter seems pretty boring to me, at least I still have tomes! * tomes removed* Oh, at least I still like the base prof- * virtues nerfed* Uh, well, er… at least Healing Breeze is still a reference to monks? * name changed*”. Oh well, sorry for still having a tiny bit of faith in you ANet. My bad.

Consecrations weren’t even given the range trait as a baseline effect, and that trait no longer exists.

Sounds like someone is going to be put on the discount rack with the rest of the out of season fashions.

ventusthunder.5067:

Fiery Wrath down to 7% from 10%

hurts but not too much. I always felt that people overestimated the burn uptime on targets. a lot of our hits did not profit from the trait (except for burst builds). In general we will have a definite 100% uptime in all builds now because VoJ is now baseline 2sec

ventusthunder.5067:

Amplified Wrath down to 15% from 33%, and the ICD on the Defender’s Flame component added

hurts as well but really it would have been op. Imagine a hunters call with 16 hits to be fully blocked on a condi guard.

ventusthunder.5067:

Radiant Power down to 10% extra crit chance from 25%

way I see it we can still have 25% total crit chance on one hnded weapons + we have better acces to fury now. otherwise it would have been nearly 55% crit chance without any investment in precision.

ventusthunder.5067:

Might of the Protector: ICD added

Does two stacks now. needed for the same reason amplified wrath needed a tone done. this combo would have provided potential 10+ stacks burn 20+ stacks might. I mean we all would have run that simply for the lolz.

ventusthunder.5067:

So in total, we get DPS reduced not in a crippling way but noticeably shaved. The crit chance and damage changes I believe are fair and I can deal with, but…

ventusthunder.5067:

I feel adding an ICD to Might of the Protector and the burn-on-block component of Amplified Wrath is unnecessary. This prevents the guardian from being rewarded from timing a Shelter or focus 5 properly to block attacks, which was a major, major source of damage and reward for good play. I’m a bit disappointed.

see above… one or the other had to go. both is disappointing but all in all probably reasonable.

ventusthunder.5067:

Edit: Besides that, I think Virtues is still getting a more-than-solid buff, medi traits are fine unless they mess up the scaling, etc. Just that Radiance looks a WHOLE lot less attractive now.

I dont see it that way simply because with vurnability effecting condis we would have looked at a 58% increase on condi damage in addition to 6% from the sigil. abuse of that was incoming anyway.

It pains me a little. maybe just one “ouch” instead of two.

Ezrael.6859:

So Might of the Protector has gone from a skill that could grant you anywhere from 5-20 stacks of Might for 20s with a well timed block (though if you’re gaining 20 stacks of Might from blocking 20 attacks in 2 seconds you’re probably in deep kitten anyway).

To, at most granting 4 stacks of Might for 15 seconds….

What the actual fk?

Overall we get a higher number of stacks over time. Shelter at the moment give at best 10 stacks and only if you opponent is stupid.

focus 6 stacks
Aegis 2 stacks (multiples)
Mace 2 stacks
Shelter 4 stacks
DH VoC: Possible 8 stacks

You are crying about something that was never in the game and you should compare the status quo what it is to what it will be next week rather then some concept that might have been relvealed a little too soon.

Favored classes got the attention. Rest didn’t. Guardians fall into the latter.

Adapt or play an alt. Could also be a good time to take a break and wait out the expansion pack.

Xhyros.1340:

Guardian can actually do condition stacking with the change to burning.

Guardian lacks any weapon with conditions in their auto-attack. Stacking conditions without them is useless. Take a look over the condi Warrior: they can stack tons of bleeds, plus torment and fire, and still they are weak despite having bleeds attached to sword’s auto.

Is not that I’m against conditions (I’m not), is that Guardian lacks the tools.

The new trait system is a hell more restrictive that the current one; after the changes the only “viable” build in duels/PvP will be pure zerker meditation based ones.

Buran.3796:

Xhyros.1340:

Guardian can actually do condition stacking with the change to burning.

The new trait system is a hell more restrictive that the current one; after the changes the only “viable” build in duels/PvP will be pure zerker meditation based ones.

And you will probably end up wrecked running a pure dps build.

Crapgame.6519:

Buran.3796:

Xhyros.1340:

Guardian can actually do condition stacking with the change to burning.

The new trait system is a hell more restrictive that the current one; after the changes the only “viable” build in duels/PvP will be pure zerker meditation based ones.

And you will probably end up wrecked running a pure dps build.

I’m a little concerned because of the new “Reach 700 condition damage for gains” that would make getting a hybrid build to churn out some reasonable burning damage a little more difficult than previously.

It’ll be interesting to see what the stat increase to gear will be as this will determine if it is possible to reach the 700 condition damage to start getting some good damage gains.

I normally run a build that uses a mix of Zealot and Berserker gear to make use of the selfless daring trait however now that you have to choose between this and our Vigor providing trait it looks like my healing is going to take a fair hit.

I will not even rage. I will only stop completely playing as Guardian (I already don’t play as much any more, so…). At least other classes become more interesting.

This is just ridiculous. Shield fix? No. Several nerfs (some traits they even give any numbers, so wait for more nerfs). And why they did the Thread about Tomes changes asking for suggestions if they implemented as they said? They don’t give a (beautiful little cat) about the community. They did nothing about all class problems.

“Fiery Wrath down to 7% from 10%”: This trait already would have a high impact because the burning uptime already would be lower because no more stacks in duration. So there was a double nerf.

Considering the amazing buffs of other classes and the nonsense nerfs of Guardian. There is no reason to play as Guardian anymore.

Bye Guardian. At one time you was my prefered class, but I already don’t play with you and you’ll become even worse.

After going through it over and over again im pretty confident it will actually be DH/zeal/radiance that will be the optimal choice. The reason DH is going to be great is that it offers an amazing burst that will go like this:

. JI + spear of justice (traited to also activate signet of wrath when activated and big game hunter) then symbol of wrath on GS followed with a WW that will be doing a 60-70% damage/10 % crit/ (and maybe 20%+ crit with a fury from many places), given that they’ll be taking symbol and heavy fire damage that should be an amazing combo. the crucial component in it all will be the signet of wrath that activates on spear of justice so you can carry out the max dps dmg on a still target. If they start running you can switch to bow and finish them off.

- do not not make the mistake of going with the 10% dmg bonus from retaliation or the zealots flame – the biggest challenge for guardian is not reaching the target (Ji and leap can do that ) but staying on point. landing 5 good attacks in a row is better than landing that 1 great attack.

My biggest concern is how to deal with survivability. As guardians now have more focus on complimenting their raw dmg traits with condition traits we wont be choosing the honor line as much..which has nearly all our vitality sustain traits.

Zeal is critical for me so i can get the symbols going against strong melee units, but so will radiance be for that crucial, crucial signet of wrath on justice to get the burst off, and DH finally provides a counter against being kitten’d. its so so frikken tempting to drop the interest in DH but then the burn duration drom justice wont be s high, no great big game hunter and no counter to being kittened (+ the bow will have the great function of enabling us to kill our enemies as they try run away on low health which has always been an issue for guardian).

What i’m banking my hopes on is that the passive heal on our new tomb signet thing is decent. please make it so. do not want to fall into the one tricky pony category that is the medi guard which has a drastic sustain drop after it’s initial 10 sec burst…

Crapgame.6519:

Buran.3796:

Xhyros.1340:

Guardian can actually do condition stacking with the change to burning.

The new trait system is a hell more restrictive that the current one; after the changes the only “viable” build in duels/PvP will be pure zerker meditation based ones.

And you will probably end up wrecked running a pure dps build.

With how condis will work… prepare to get several +90-100 stacks o yourself lol after burn your condi cleanses

Very disappointed with the nerfs to the “on block” traits via the internal cooldown. Especially as it (improving condi/burning build for Guardian) was talked up… Was excited about using a condi build more, but now I don’t know. Timing the blocks correctly, rewarded skillful play (something that could be improved on and against), now, as it looks to be, not so much. Dang.

I don’t think it was ment to be a nerf so much as it was for balance sake. It still rewards classes with more block skills without giving you a whole TON of burn that more dodgy/attacky sorts don’t get. If its really underpowered they can always up the burn time later (or toss on another stack)

GreyWraith.8394:

Bear in mind that conditions as a whole have been changed/re-scaled and burning will stack now so it may not be the straight nerf you’re anticipating.

It is a nerf because they nerfed conditions to scale better with condition damage and nerfed burning again to make it stackable. With AW shelter will only give a mediocre 2 stacks of burn instead of 10 against a rapid fire.

They nerfed virtue range just to make the DH’s new virtue seemed like a buff.

where are these changes listed?

I too think the intent is balance, just wish they were able to do it in a way that preserved or increased the opportunity for skillful play with the “on block” traits instead of diminishing skillful play while using them. Even if the dps over time works out the same (via upping burn time or tossing on another stack), I think skillful play itself (as pertains to an “on block” condi Guardian) took a nerf.

It wasn’t just the condi Guardian who was rewarded for knowing when to block and what block skill to use at what time, it was also the opponent, in knowing when to attack, when to cancel a skill, what skills to interrupt, when to use an unblockable, etc.

@Treeoflife – You can see them here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/June-23-Specialization-Changes

quaniesan.8497:

They nerfed virtue range just to make the DH’s new virtue seemed like a buff.

No they are obviously trying to encourage stacking and the zerker meta >.>