Guild Wars 2

The good
Judge’s intervention/Purging Flame/F1 activation will give out 3 burn stacks, instant procing Fury in Radiance.

-Permeating Wrath is an on target effect

-F1 procs got buffed to 2s duration

-“Feel My Wrath” is an actual contender to Renewed Focus

Suspected/Expected
Amplified Wrath’s burn modifier got halved. /saddace

Unexpected
-Virtues 1200 radius got reduced to 600
Needed imo. We actually have to think about positioning instead of instant poping virtues from across the screen.

-Burn on block got an icd of 1 second. /sadface
-Might on block got an icd of 1 second
Both needs to be a “1s icd per activated source”, if that isn’t already the case.

Damage modifiers in general got reduced. /sadface
Virtues cooldowns got reduced further /sweetsauce

My wishlist got fulfilled so i’m beyond estatic. I understand others aren’t as thrilled due to certain changes, but the Devs were adamant about these numbers not being final and that things could change while functionality wouldn’t.

For me, at least, I think the problem is that every single numbers change that people were hyped about was reduced from what we were originally shown. Hell, putting an ICD on might/burn on block is an outright NERF if you ask me, and the Fiery Wrath nerf is just salt in the wound when you consider the reduced burning uptime already making it less effective.

But like I said in another thread, what takes the cake IMO is the complete disregard of the shield trait and skills, despite the fact that this time they had even acknowledged in the livestream that it needed something more and that they liked the suggestion of adding aegis to the trait. Total slap in the face to the guardian community that has been asking for some sort of shield buff for YEARS.

I agree with the changes overall being better than some of the nerfs we got dealt.

Anything to do with burning is experimental at best at this point. So ICD on blocking = burning may be justified due to how burning stacks now. We’ll see in the next upcoming week if the trait needs tweaking depending if Tyria accidentally got burnt down to the ground with the new changes. On paper, burning has a really dangerous chance of being overpowered for a Guardian if built correctly even with something as small as 7-8 stacks.

Most potent example I can think of is blocking a risen berserker who’s doing his meat-blending jutsu.

Sadly, I gave up on Shield. Focus goes much further, and the shield skills are overshadows by other utilities that do a better job than what the weapon does.

I’m with you on that one I really wanted the Shield to have some type of change. Even if it was its Shield trait. Or just change its “absorb” to a “block” so it gives us a reason to channel it :/
It’s just feels like a lackluster weapon with nothing going for it.

I kind of saw the op prowess of 2x might on block before hand, so i’m not all surprised. What I am surprised about is the 1s icd function. It needs to be a bit more dynamic; a “cap” effect like some one else mentioned or a “per activated source”.
If our “gain might on crit” trait truly has no icd then i’d agree with the change (hey one can hope) but if not, we’ll either stay at the same might stack as before… or have much, much less..

They’re probably afraid to remove the ICD on Empowering Might because OH NO, THAT WOULD MAKE AH 2STRONK. Because heaven forbid we get some sort decent sustain that doesn’t revolve around burning high cooldowns.

Feel my wrath will never contend with renewed focus because that is our only escape or way of effectively mitigating damage in a dire situation. Run that on a dps guard in pvp against an engi/shoutbow/necro /and get your heal interrupted…..you are a dead target

We don’t have an escape blink or stealth or invulnes besides that. I state again, on a pure dps guard? You cannot run that over renewed. End of story

I dunno man, that’s a fine line to cross though. AH already feels like godmode at times so throw in ideal EM with decent crit and 5 targets and suddenly we got something worry about. Maybe make the ICD per target rather than global? shrug I’m at a loss on this one.

-Permeating Wrath is an on target effect

^ This seems to be the only thing the devs really really listened to the community about.

Speaking from a PvP perspective, the main thing I’m concerned about is how we’re going to handle the new condition buffs. Our cleansing is currently decent, but not great, and the improvements to our condition management with the upcoming patch are pretty bare-bones. To list off the main buffs:

1) We can pick between Smiter’s Boon or the Focus CD-reduction trait for marginally improved cleansing, but can’t take both.

2) “Feel My Wrath!” can be traited with Pure of Voice and run with Trooper runes for up to 2 extra conditions cleansed once every 24 seconds. However, this comes at the cost of being able to refresh Absolute Resolution via Renewed Focus, and you also lose RF’s invulnerability, which has the potential to negate incoming conditions, so the gain isn’t as large as it initially seems.

3) If you were only taking 20 points in Virtues before for AR, you get kitten second cooldown reduction on AR now. If you had 30 points, the cooldown is basically the same (.5 second increase).

No one’s going to use the new Healing Breeze, so I’m not listing its interaction with Shout traits here.

Our sustain is a little better from things like Smiter’s Boon and un-nerfed Selfless Daring, but I’m having a hard time believing that those will offset the massive influx of conditions Anet is pushing for with this upcoming meta, and our low HP pool is liable to dissolve under that kind of pressure. We have no access to Resistance (unless we get lucky with PoV/CoP and convert Chill), and our existing cleanses are geared for a much slower metagame, since most of them haven’t really been updated since release. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think our only cleansing skill to be buffed since launch is Purging Flames. We’ve held on up until now, but I’m worried that this patch will be the breaking point.

Outside of the cleansing issue, I like the idea of FMW, and I’m not really bothered by the new Honor line quite as much as some people are. Protective Reviver will be a nice trait for PvP and decent for group-play in WvW, and most people don’t currently run Honor in PvE anyways. Having the three GM traits competing with each other for slots on bunker builds is annoying, and it’s frustrating that they kept the fall damage trait around without adding anything to it, but I think the rest of the line seems decent enough.

Like many others here, I’m disappointed by the numbers nerfs to our traits, and also with the general laziness apparent in some of the specialization redesigns (or lack thereof). This update was supposed to clean up undesirable traits, so why do we still have Healer’s Retribution, Wrathful Spirit, Symbolic Exposure, Stalwart Defender, and other traits that have been complained about since they were implemented? We may be “in a good spot,” but if you don’t want to buff us, at least let us diversify with some new options.

I’m still excited to try out things like FMW, but after looking over some of the other professions, it definitely seems like less effort went into our changes, and the devs don’t seem to be listening to a lot of the feedback we’ve been giving for the past couple years. I don’t really see our meta growing or changing in many interesting ways in the coming weeks, and that’s what this patch was supposed to be all about.

Just a little gem, in my opinion:

Radiance path: When you specialize in this path you will be able to area blind AND get an immobilization when you hit someone who’s been hit with Justice. Since immobilization on scepter and hammer is already part of the PvP meta, seems an interesting new ability.