Guild Wars 2

Blasino.3128:

Aza.2105:

Blasino.3128:

Third, Guardian has a low damage output? I really think you need to read the wiki before spewing crap like this. Most professions would kill to have the skill coefficients Anet has given us. Just because we can’t Hundred-blades doesn’t mean we can drop a good 18k of damage in 2 seconds on a person (because we kittening can).

Coefficients are only part of the big picture. When you start to include damage modifiers and cooldowns then a very different picture begins to emerge.

Please by all means show the low damage output of a guardian.

No, you show me how its comparable to warriors. I’m not the one that said its low, my opinion is thakittens mediocre. And I’m not doing a number by number comparison, that is a very linear approach and doesn’t consider other variables such as cds, damage modifiers, cooldown reduction traits.

You are saying that guardian can deliver a equivalent of a 100b 18k hit, guess what? I believe you. But I’m asking you if when 100b is off cd six seconds later, can guardian once again deliver a 18k attack? My point is, guardian would be outpaced by every other class in game due to a few reasons:

Longer weapon skill cooldowns
Situational access to quickness
Damage modifiers placed in obscure places
Damage modifiers with strange requirements (unscathed defender) (elusive power is contrasting to vigor on crit)
Inability to keep enemies in radius to deliver full damage
Lack of hp and defense to bridge the interval between complete skill rotation, which results in the probability of dying before the next rotation. (in pvp) (when you trait to do damage)

All of these things add up to bring down the overall dps of the class. Other classes may not have the damage coefficients. But guardian does not have their consistency nor the ability to be offensive while retaining defensive techniques.

First, you must know your weaknesses in order to play your strengths.

Aza.2105:

a few reasons:

Damage modifiers placed in obscure places

Damage modifiers with strange requirements (unscathed defender) (elusive power is contrasting to vigor on crit).

Inability to keep enemies in radius to deliver full damage

Lack of hp to bridge the interval between complete skill rotation, which results in the probability of dying before the next rotation.

I was going to post something to this extent, but this was very nicely laid out. FYI: I took out all the non-relevant items because I do not see those as the issue.

I also want to say we do not have ANYTHING like THIS

…. 50% critical hit vs BURNING FOES…. no brainier right there.

Warriors & Engi’s are littered w/ these types of Traits that allow them to completely bunker down w/ a specific gear set, while loosing NOTHING in the damage department.

If ANET want’s to keep all our defense in 2 single tree’s, fine… but a rework of our 2 OFFENSIVE tree’s needs to happen.

We should ~not~ have to sacrafice ~everything~ in terms of offense if we want to run up our defensive tree’s…. meaning, our T1 Abilities need to be improved.

20% damage while ageis is up? SUPER FREAKING GIMMICKY. I mean, really Anet? What ability are we gong to use that on? Oh wait… right, it’s for our UBER RANGED game play… I get it now.. ergumpdumpster

How about 20% damage while Retal or Regen or Vigor or Protection… or how about when we have Fury on, so that when we’re duo’n w/ partymember, we can bunker down to support them but add in some damage…. or some nice synergy w/ Inner Fire.

What I feel needs to be reworked to make our Melee / DPS aspect of the class better:

1) Hammer #1, Second Attack – 1s Chill (on all targets hit)

2) Mace #1, second attack – 1s Chill (on all targets hit)

3) Scepter Smite – 1s AoE Chill on initial cast

4) Sword – Zealots Defense – Blocks Trigger Burns (on all targets attacking)
5) Sword #1 Ability – Bleeds on each attack (Turn this into our Condi spec weapon as it goes well w/ Focus & Burns on Blocks), reduce the direct dmg accordingly.

6) Shield – Shield of Judgement – Weakens Targets.

That’s just to start…

We need our offensive traits to actually mean something as they are very mediocre… Raw Damage is NOT enough, as stated above.

In a world where Condi’s are the Meta… the guardian is utterly lacking as our single Burn gets eat’n up by every single classes passive condi removal.

Our Burn is a JOKE and more importantly it cripples our teamplay as every other class does it better due to guardians giving up everything to spec into Apothecary gear (specifically, condi) just for 1 freak’n condition.

I get you, the devs’, are on limited resources (time/energy/money) but you created a very defensive class w/ the lowest of hps, then buffed everyone else’s defense making our baseline offensive abilities very lack luster…. while giving us no real way to keep people in our midst: For every way we have to stay on top of an enemy, they have the same amount of escapability (blinks, leaps, invis, charges) + CC.

Final Thought: It is ~very~ easy to kite a guardian.

Aza.2105:

Stuff

Then why are you even replying to my point to AtlasUbound if you aren’t even arguing “low damage output?”

And, I never said we do comparable damage to a warrior or was I even arguing that point.

Blasino.3128:

Aza.2105:

Stuff

Then why are you even replying to my point to AtlasUbound if you aren’t even arguing “low damage output?”

And, I never said we do comparable damage to a warrior or was I even arguing that point.

Whirling Wraith is on the Same Exact Cooldown w/ 20% less raw damage, however we’re not rooted in place… so take that as you will.

Amins.3710:

Blasino.3128:

Aza.2105:

Stuff

Then why are you even replying to my point to AtlasUbound if you aren’t even arguing “low damage output?”

And, I never said we do comparable damage to a warrior or was I even arguing that point.

Whirling Wraith is on the Same Exact Cooldown w/ 20% less raw damage, however we’re not rooted in place… so take that as you will.

No 100b is a 8sec cd, 6 1/2 (?) traited. Whirling Wraith is a 10sec cd 8sec traited. Its true that WW is mobile but the damage doesn’t really have the consistency as 100b due to the projectiles.

In regards to your reply to me, if I had to suggest some positive changes to guardian that doesn’t drastically alter play mechanics. It would be:

Elusive power: Gain 10% damage when endurance is full. Now it synergizes with vigorous precision.

Unscathed Contender: Gain 10% damage for each active virtue. (Max 30% damage)

Pure of Heart: Changed to proc on block instead of the removal of aegis, but lowered the maximum base healing.

Spirit weapons: Remain summoned until destroyed, cooldowns begin after you summon them.

Zealous Blade: Increased damage to 10% (up from 5%).

Glacial Heart: Now increases hammer damage by 5%

Zealot’s Defense: The block mechanic is now registers as a normal block.

Flashing Blade: Increased range to 900.

Banish: Damage increased

Zealot’s Embrace: Damage increased

Smite Condition: Is now a blast finisher.

Power of the Virtuous: Damage per boon increased to 2% up from 1%

Blasino.3128:

Aza.2105:

Stuff

Then why are you even replying to my point to AtlasUbound if you aren’t even arguing “low damage output?”

And, I never said we do comparable damage to a warrior or was I even arguing that point.

Because you called out the one poster, saying what he wrote was crap. But realistically he isn’t wrong. But the problem is not a linear issue as I noted.

Aza.2105:

Amins.3710:

Blasino.3128:

Aza.2105:

Stuff

Then why are you even replying to my point to AtlasUbound if you aren’t even arguing “low damage output?”

And, I never said we do comparable damage to a warrior or was I even arguing that point.

Whirling Wraith is on the Same Exact Cooldown w/ 20% less raw damage, however we’re not rooted in place… so take that as you will.

No 100b is a 8sec cd, 6 1/2 (?) traited. Whirling Wraith is a 10sec cd 8sec traited. Its true that WW is mobile but the damage doesn’t really have the consistency as 100b due to the projectiles.

In regards to your reply to me, if I had to suggest some positive changes to guardian that doesn’t drastically alter play mechanics. It would be:

Ah, must have misread it.

However, the consistency is exactly the same. You could even go so far as to say WW is 10x’s better because it’s not reliant upon your target being stunned/rooted for the full duration.

Projectiles are just an issue w/ learning curve. Everyone know’s to stand on top of your target.

Amins.3710:

Aza.2105:

Amins.3710:

Blasino.3128:

Aza.2105:

Stuff

Then why are you even replying to my point to AtlasUbound if you aren’t even arguing “low damage output?”

And, I never said we do comparable damage to a warrior or was I even arguing that point.

Whirling Wraith is on the Same Exact Cooldown w/ 20% less raw damage, however we’re not rooted in place… so take that as you will.

No 100b is a 8sec cd, 6 1/2 (?) traited. Whirling Wraith is a 10sec cd 8sec traited. Its true that WW is mobile but the damage doesn’t really have the consistency as 100b due to the projectiles.

In regards to your reply to me, if I had to suggest some positive changes to guardian that doesn’t drastically alter play mechanics. It would be:

Ah, must have misread it.

However, the consistency is exactly the same. You could even go so far as to say WW is 10x’s better because it’s not reliant upon your target being stunned/rooted for the full duration.

Projectiles are just an issue w/ learning curve. Everyone know’s to stand on top of your target.

But the projectile damage is reduced the more targets there are right? I’m assuming the projectile vanishes when it hits something.

Aza.2105:

I’m not the one that said its low, my opinion is thakittens mediocre.

But you are saying he is right?

We can go on like this forever. The point is you took one portion of my reply which was part of an entire point that AtlasUnbound has done a poor job of conveying his thoughts and started to chest thump.

Blasino.3128:

Aza.2105:

I’m not the one that said its low, my opinion is thakittens mediocre.

But you are saying he is right?

We can go on like this forever. The point is you took one portion of my reply which was part of an entire point that AtlasUnbound has done a poor job of conveying his thoughts and started to chest thump.

Depends, you don’t seem to be satisfied with the answers I’ve given you. Would it satisfy you if I confirmed what you think I’m saying to you?

I would rather WW root us and increase the damage/remove the projectiles. You don’t get very far when it’s activated anyway. It’s true though, while the coefficients are rather large, the slow windup, lack of health and lack of secondary effects(example cripple) hinder the Guardians potential damage.

Sure Guardians can do damage. Sure they can do the buffs and take the damage.

Yet again we come full circle. Read the post from Relentliss.2170.

You will see the point that I am making.

You can all stop trying to call me out on this stuff, it isn’t going to stop me from posting because I am right.

Make sure to read my older posts too, on this same thread. Don’t just jump in half kittened and try to peakitten your way into the spotlight.

Not that it was or was not your intent to stick your neck out Aza.2105, thank you all the same.

Back on track with the actual discussion though…

WW has great AOE damage, it does hit several targets + whirl for combo field.

Only issues with it for me are:
1: after the main target the projectiles are random
2: have to spec so hard to get any damage out of the Guardian in general, meaning you cant take a hits long enough to get good use out of him. (You do your damage and die most of the times) [sPvP you do fine in though.]

The longsword does need some love for that auto attack. Even if Burning is kitten they could at least be consistent with it and put it on the longsword 1 and 2 then soothing like blind on attack 3 ( just a thought, they may be a little broken? Just trying to keep with the Guardian theme. )

Some weakness and vulnerability for the guardian could even help.

I would like to see some of this:

-33% chance to cause Chill on crit

-X% chance to apply weakness on block (instead of Burn)

-Reduce Cooldown of Virtues by X flat amount on crit
or Each Time an attack is blocked

-Gain swiftness when a virtue is used

-10% chance to gain quickness with Virtue of Justice burns a foe

-When you gain (boon) you also gain (boon)
[not sure which boons to pair, Might and Regen, Regen and Aegis, Might and Aegis?]

Not sure if i’d want all of that, might make the profession too strong.

A few things i’d like to see adjusted:

-More access to swiftness

-Symbols turned into temporary Aura’s.

-Access to more burning or a wider variety of conditions.

-More elite skills that are a little more automated. Example would be I place down a symbol that lasts a long while to provide benefit to the team without me having to use up a skill bar.

Arken.3725:

Not sure if i’d want all of that, might make the profession too strong.

A few things i’d like to see adjusted:

-More access to swiftness

-Symbols turned into temporary Aura’s.

-Access to more burning or a wider variety of conditions.

-More elite skills that are a little more automated. Example would be I place down a symbol that lasts a long while to provide benefit to the team without me having to use up a skill bar.

With good placement in the trait lines you would not be able to get all of them. I would not expect 1 guardian to be able to get everything I listed.

I completely agree, this is just an alternative to the current design. However if we’re to keep symbols as they are, I think some of the traits need to be merged.

Taking a slight shift in the conversation and trying to talk about the strengths of our weapons in the below break down:

Greatsword

• High damage coefficients (good with power)
• Retaliation
• Might
• Blind
• Multi hit procs VoJ (good with burning)
• Mobile
• Bursty

Hammer

• High damage coefficients (good with power)
• Frequent symbol damage/boons
• Control oriented Immobilize/ward/knockback
• Consistent high dps

Staff

• Low damage coefficients
• Medium range
• Good ranged AOE
• Swiftness
• Might
• Heals (empower/orb of light)
• Minor area control (ward)

Mace

• High damage coefficients (good with power)
• Regeneration
• Heals (Faithful Strike)
• Block (Protector’s Strike)
• Symbol ticks 5 times and heals 5 times to do damage and heal together

Scepter

• Low damage coefficients
• medium to far range
• Fast attacking (good with burning)
• Immobilize
• Vulnerability

Sword

• Moderate damage coefficients
• Multi hitting (good with burning)
• Mobile (Flashing Blade)
• Projectile absorption

Focus

• High damage coefficients
• close and far range
• Regeneration
• Blind
• Block x 3

Shield

• Moderate damage coefficients
• medium range
• Protection
• Pushback
• Projectile absorption
• Heal (Shield of absorption)

Torch

• High damage coefficients (good with power)
• Multi hit (good with burning)
• Burning

Toughts?

Went back and messed with a build calculator and did more comparison between guard and warrior.

In almost every single instance, the warrior out “stats” us. They have higher vitality, higher toughness, higher power so on and so forth.

Yet I noticed something that I think we can call our “strength”.

In a somewhat related post someone was asking about how much toughness is 10% damage reduction. This is not a constant number as it changes from scenario to scenario depending on attacker and defender stats, but in general it is about 300+/- armor.

So taking that into consideration, we have reliable access to protection and signet of judgment which provide 33% and 10% damage reduction. Together that is a soft “1290” toughness (again not exact and different fights change that approximate number up and down).

As far as power stats, we have access to a lot of 10% and 5% damage modifiers in our traits, to make up for lower direct power stats.

Additionally we have access to indirect precision stats as well.

For our low health pool we have a lot of passive healing via VoR and Regeneration.

So to sum it up, Guardian’s strength really are our boons/traits. What we don’t have directly we have indirectly with smart use of boons and traits.

Going round circle, does this make up for our lower stats? It makes it somewhat more of an active play style in ensuring certain boons and effects are in play, but still majority of it is passive in just auto attacking and letting boons run.

I see good and bad, and we really are weak without those boons. I think we need MORE of those critical boons (might/protection/fury) to make up for our lack of direct stats in more accessible weapons/traits instead of “if you want protection run hammer, if you want might run staff/gs, if you want regen run mace”.

Those boons are critical in our play style, but we can’t access them in good amounts evenly.

I can definitely see that. I just believe that the Guardians active play style should be much more rewarding than a more passive style of a Warrior. This isn’t to say the Warrior doesn’t require skill and rotations, just looking at it from a more rewarding style, the Guardian requires more to do to be just as effective if not more.

Definitely going to look over the weapons more closely so we can have a discussion.

CMF,

Just read your previous two posts, I think they are well thought out.

I can agree with you about signet of judgement, its a very good utility. However my problem is that guardian’s signet build isn’t very good. Out of the four signets we have, SoJ is the best one we have. The other three feel very clunky, primarily due to the long cast time on bane and wrath signet.

I feel anet has created a identity issue with guardian, which stems from a non coherent theme. We are told what guardian is in anet’s class descriptions but how it plays out in real time is quite different from the description.

My analysis is that, if you look at warrior. They are a offensive version of guardian. They have traits to reinforce this idea, lots of high damage modifers, easy to maintain a high crit rate, high mobility etc etc.

With guardian, the class is built around a defensive and support theme. But looking at the traits, many of them do not reinforce thakittens as if Anet randomly played around with the idea, then stopped mid way. Warrior can obtain better stats simply because they have access to better damage dealing traits.

To follow guardian’s theme, I believe we would need access to better defensive traits. Like a interesting trait would be following damage reduction theme, like a passive trait could reduce all incoming damage by 10%.

Another trait could convert power/toughness into healing. What I’m trying to express here is, if we had traits like this, then it would be possible to focus on other stats, which would in turn boost our overall survivability.

Lets say if we could get damage reduction in the radiance tree and healing power in the zeal tree, then valor and honor wouldn’t feel very mandatory. While guardian is suppose to be a boon warrior, I feel that the theme has become diluted over the year.

Protection is suppose to be very important for guardian, yet in pvp it was nerfed across the board. So yes my thought is more passive damage reductions, maybe passive condition reduction traits.

Put them in the weak trees like zeal and radiance. Aegis should be re-evaluated, overall I feel are virtues are weak.

Virtue of courage’s aegis reuse time should be reduced to 30secs, the virtue trait would reduce it further to 20secs.

VoR, passive regen should be increased.

Damage reduction traits should be added to zeal and radiance. Or simply they could buff zealous blade to actually return significant heals.

These are just my thoughts though, nothing I’d say MUST happen. You know?

But I do feel that if we had more traits that focused on defense, then offensive stats would be much more flexible. Meaning we could actually go zerker and rely on passives to sustain the hp.

Aza.2105:

CMF,

I feel anet has created a identity issue with guardian, which stems from a non coherent theme. We are told what guardian is in anet’s class descriptions but how it plays out in real time is quite different from the description.

That pretty much sums up the majority of design issues in this game.

Christos de Soufre.3802:

Guardians are bad and need buffs and by the Six Anet pls make us heal for more and do more damage. And more mobility and CC too please, like cripples. Thx.

We won’t get anything as long as that clown who hosts the State of the Game keeps saying, “.. and guardians are fine”.

Is it any coincidence that he plays a Necro?

its Ironic because the ONLY reason people like a guardian or 2 in fractals is WoR, and SoA.

The AoE condition removal can be covered by a warrior or mes now anyways.

Its sad because I might very well be naked using a lvl gs and as long as I have those 2 abilities and PoV, the run will be fine

this video below will show the discrepancies between current warrior and guardian potentials. Notice how the warrior never drops below 90% health and casually crits for 5k on auto attacks.

Notice how he can shrug off 4 people and make it home while rotating through his cooldowns.

I was just in a match against a condition warrior(Sword/Sword and Bow), the guys regeneration was out of this world. There was literally nothing I could do to damage him. I was landing nearly everything I had and avoiding most of his skills but the amount of regeneration was just way too much. This really needs to be reduced significantly. As a Guardian, I need to pop multiple skills to even gain such regeneration but I also give up a ton of damage in the process.

Edit: Also, i’m suggesting that the active play should be rewarded much more than passive. As a Guardian, you don’t gain much passive boons, everything is revolved around critting and shouts with virtues.

In terms of figths that is why in WvW guardians are always my targets, 90%+ is a free kill w/o effort.

I need to do a recap and edit the first post eventually, but right now this is more turning into a rehash of theory and mechanics… which is not bad to do sometimes.

One of the more interesting posts on the forums is this one:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/zero-damage-it-s-possible/page/2#post2654556

While I don’t agree with the OPs tact and approach, I do appreciate his theory.

To cut through the BS and arguments, it sums it down to this: Maximize damage reduction and use healing to make up the difference to reach “zero damage”.

This is not really possible, but the theory does help in survivability. Things that are not addressed to the fullest extent is that conditions are not reduced in effect by toughness and I am not 100% on the sequence of damage multipliers being before or after the damage calculation.

Either way you can drastically reduce the incoming damage and make up for the majority of the remaining damage with heals per second.

Conditions like vulnerability will interfere with your “zero damage” or things that apply extra damage on a set of variables such as being knocked down or having burning on you.

The “zero damage” claim is a bit much and the resolve behind the claim is pretty strong, but you can vastly improve healing by damage mitigation, which is known, but nice to see with math and numbers to back it up.

This also helps explain those warrior videos where they take no damage and out heal everyone.

Going to quote myself here from another thread because I would like to see/hear more thoughts on it… also I really just like the sound of my own voice :

CMF.5461:

On a somewhat serious note, since the guardian’s trait line does not line up power, precision, critical damage together; we are now at a deficiency in our damage trinity.

Do you think the intended guardian damage set up to be based on precision/crit damage and have power as a tertiary stat, while emphasizing crit damage and precision to as close to 100% as possible?

Going full power/prec and putting left overs into crit damage you can get 100% crit chance with 1h weapons doing approximatly 737 damage on first attack of sword, factor in the crit damage at 92% you get 1783 damage every attack.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJAsOmIseAAA4vqHAAAA4qAFB-jQyAYrASEASeFRjtqhWKJiG11YKXioa79yqN4BSGA9xA-e

Switch it around and go full crit damage with 100% crit chance you have the sword doing 655 damage, but with 122% crit damage you will now do 1781 damage with every attack.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJAsOmIseAAA4vqCA46BFBAAA-jQyAYrASEASeFRjtqhWKJiG11YK3FVrdBs3FRrWIgRjBA-e

This only works if you include fury and 1h weapons, after that you will be suffering in crit chance at around 90ish%

I swear Anet does not have a test server.

Svarty.8019:

Christos de Soufre.3802:

Guardians are bad and need buffs and by the Six Anet pls make us heal for more and do more damage. And more mobility and CC too please, like cripples. Thx.

We won’t get anything as long as that clown who hosts the State of the Game keeps saying, “.. and guardians are fine”.

Is it any coincidence that he plays a Necro?

Dude that was sarcasm by the guy you are quoting. Guardians are fine. At least in tpvp I could care less about the rest of the game myself but I know others do.