Guild Wars 2

A build tool link for you to look at the traits mentioned below: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQBAA

Criteria for “poor” traits: Traits that simply aren’t good enough to be worth the points you put in (or sometimes just worthless), and that the only reason for taking them is that you have no better alternatives (or have nothing but other poor traits to choose from). I’m leaving out traits that can greatly affect some builds, but are rarely used.

(*) = Grandmaster Trait

Zeal-

Revenge of the Fallen
Greatsword Power
Scepter Power
*Wrathful Spirits
*Zealous Blade

Radiance-

Healer’s Retribution
Shimmering Defense
Inner Fire
Searing Flames
Powerful Blades
*Perfect Inscriptions

Valor-

Strength of the Fallen
Strength in Numbers
Mace of Justice
Glacial Heart (Good in theory, but far too infrequent and unreliable)

Honor-

Wrathful Spirit
Pure of Heart
*Battle Presence
*Pure of Voice

Virtues-

Unscathed Contender
Retalitory Subconscious
Elite Focus
*Shielded Mind

The problem with the Zeal line is that it’s difficult to get your build to match up with the traits in the line. The minor traits mostly influence the Hammer/Mace due to their almost constant Symbols, but the Major traits affect Spirit Weapons and the Greatsword (among other completely random things). However, the main problem is that BOTH Grandmaster traits are worthless. Spirit weapon damage is already a small chunk of your damage, and traiting for adding 10% to a small fraction doesn’t change the fact that it’s a small fraction. The Greatsword trait only heals for 25 per hit. You’d be better off going 30 points into Valor to gain far more survival, AND damage.

The only reasons for going into Radiance are only 2 Major Traits (for 20% faster Signet cooldowns and the Grandmaster trait for 1h weapons), possibly the Minor Traits, and the Precision. Every other Major trait is filler that, if you’re lucky, might somehow kinda synergize with your build. The other Grandmaster trait for improving Signets is poor. It doesn’t even affect 3/5 Signets. For Signet of Judgement, it increases it’s effect from 10% reduced damage to 12% reduced damage. For Signet of Resolve it actually doubles it’s effect. That’s 4/5 this trait is negligible for.

Minus a few pointless traits, Valor is a solid line. Both Grandmaster traits are very effective, and overall the line increases survival and damage significantly.

Honor is mostly solid. Its Minor traits are very effective, and most of its Major traits as well. However, it has 2 very situational Major traits (they CAN be useful, but there’s no reason to take them over the other very good traits) and it has 2 poor Grandmaster traits. Pure of Voice is bugged and only works for 2/4 shouts (and ArenaNet is in no hurry to fix it). Battle Presence is barely effective assuming you don’t activate VoR, while all traits affecting VoR encourage you to activate it, rendering this a wasted Grandmaster trait.

Virtues is a strange traitline. If you happen to have a build that benefits from it, you might go 10 points in. The only time you really want to go 20 points in is if you’re running an entirely buff-centric build and you’ve already gone deep in Valor and Honor. The problem with Virtues is that it has traits that give increased survival and damage, but in going 20+ into the line you lose MORE survival/damage than you would gain by going into another line.

Overall I think the main focus for future balances to Guardians lies in the traits. Much of them are good, both balance wise and usability, but the current selection leaves a lot to be desired.

Your thoughts to add?

Pure stat traits like +dmg or -cooldown definitely needs an overhaul. Instead of just changing a stat, they should instead add new mechanics to the table. If we want more stats we could have just used the trait points and gear. I really do not expect traits to work as just another sigil of force or other some such.

The mesmer traits are very good in this regard. The pistol trait reduces cooldown and increases bullet range for both the stun and the duelist, the focus trait reduces cooldown and adds reflection effects to their wall and the warden. That’s the kind of compensation that I expect from taking a weapon specific trait when I’m supposed to be using 2 sets of weapons. Glacial Hearts seems like a step towards this direction, though I’m not sure I’ve found a way to make this particular trait work for me yet.

Spirit weapon traits are the same. Those +duration +dmg -cooldown etc just seems like a bad excuse to lock us out of other more viable traits that actually works with the rest of our builds, and to discourage honor/valor bunkering. A fire inside is… interesting, aside from the fact that it only works on 2 out of 4 skills, it is probably the only way for a solo burn spec condition guardian to “work,” as long as you stay in open world PvE. Spirit weapons are inherently inflexible, since they take up utility slots that we need for gap closers, stun breakers and condition removal. There’s just no reason why anyone should give up any of those for a little more damage.

If they triple the movement speed of the spirit sword and give us a trait that turns its command ability to let us swap places with it I think that could make spirit sword worthwhile. Heck, I’d also take a trait that does nothing but let us ground target the spirit bow’s command ability, at least that’d make it “work.” It’s all the little things, I guess we’ll see in time if build diversity will finally come to GW2.

A lot of traits you listed I use in my different builds. Here’s my two cents;

Zeal:

Revenge of the Fallen- Very situational. Buff to 100% more dmg. Guardian down skills don’t that much dmg in the first place.

Greatsword/Scepter Power- 5% more dmg. Don’t see anything wrong with this.

Wrathful Spirits- 10% more dmg. Again nothing bad about it.

Zealous Blade- Now my favorite one, it gets such a bad rap. Key here is you have to combined it with other forms of healing. ZB/AH/Omnomberry Pie. I actually made a build around this.

Radiance:

Healer’s Retribution- Good. I use it with my retaliation build.

Shimmering Defense- Last ditch to get dps out. Could use a shorter CD.

Inner Fire- This would be amazing if Zealot’s Flame proc it, but it doesn’t.

Searing Flames- Would be worth using if it trigged more. 10 seconds would be good.

Powerful Blades- 5% dmg. Like I said with the other, don’t see the problem.

Perfect Inscriptions- I find it decent if you run a Signet heavy build.

Valor:

Strength of the Fallen- Double it so 66% less damage.

Strength in Numbers- Good in WvW.

Mace of Justice- Same as the other 5%.

Glacial Heart- Needs a shorter CD to be viable. 15 or 20 second would be good.

Honor:

Wrathful Spirit- Decent to use with a retaliation build.

Pure of Heart- Good for support/bunker builds.

Battle Presence- This one is kinda weak. Maybe add Justice or Courage, but that could be op.

Pure of Voice- Good in WvW. Would be better if they fixed the bug.

Virtues:

Unscathed Contender- Sounds good, but meh overall.

Retaliatory Subconscious- Good for retaliation build.

Elite Focus- Not bad tomes at 30 seconds, and Renewed Focus for five.

Shielded Mind- This is actually pretty decent because it also breaks stuns on all allies in range.

In certain fights, Unscathed Contender is basically a flat 20% damage increase, which is actually really good for a minor trait. Yeah, it’s situational, but there are other decent options in Virtues 10 to use the rest of the time.

Unless you never touch your traits in between fights (in which case, it’s your fault you’re not taking advantage of the system) then calling the trait worthless is misleading.

Urthona.3198:

In certain fights, Unscathed Contender is basically a flat 20% damage increase, which is actually really good for a minor trait. Yeah, it’s situational, but there are other decent options in Virtues 10 to use the rest of the time.

Unless you never touch your traits in between fights (in which case, it’s your fault you’re not taking advantage of the system) then calling the trait worthless is misleading.

True, although it only has synergy with the Scepter as the rest of our weapons put you directly in harms way. For PvE though, I can see usefullness. Outside of that, it seems more like a liability as other traits can always be useful, while this one carries a significant risk of be useless. If it’s a risk that you’re willing to take, then roll with it.

Harbinger.8637:

Greatsword/Scepter Power- 5% more dmg. Don’t see anything wrong with this.

Wrathful Spirits- 10% more dmg. Again nothing bad about it.

Healer’s Retribution- Good. I use it with my retaliation build.

Powerful Blades- 5% dmg. Like I said with the other, don’t see the problem.

Perfect Inscriptions- I find it decent if you run a Signet heavy build.

Strength in Numbers- Good in WvW.

Mace of Justice- Same as the other 5%.

Wrathful Spirit- Decent to use with a retaliation build.

Pure of Heart- Good for support/bunker builds.

Retaliatory Subconscious- Good for retaliation build.

Elite Focus- Not bad tomes at 30 seconds, and Renewed Focus for five.

Shielded Mind- This is actually pretty decent because it also breaks stuns on all allies in range.

[5% damage increases]: 1.) It’s not a significant increase. 2.) They’re traits that you only pick because there’s nothing better, and because it just happens to fit your build.

[Retaliation traits]: In building for as much Retaliation duration as possible, you’re most likely sacrificing so much more damage/utility/survival. If you have a huge amount of Power and Toughness then it might be worth it as Retalition will do some damage and you’ll be able to take enough hits to where you wouldn’t be better off just building for direct damage. Outside of that though, it seems more like a gimmick more than an applicable strategy versus anything but P/P + Quickness Thieves.

[Perfect Inscriptions]: It only affects 3/5 Signets, and SoJ is only affected by an increase from 10% to 12%.

[Wrathful Spirits]: Spirit Weapon damage to your total damage is like ‘1’ to ‘20’. +10% of ‘1’ is ‘1.1’. It doesn’t change the fact that it’s such a small factor.

[Strength in Numbers]: In WvW most people are already running some form of +Toughness gear. If you were surrounded by glass cannons then it might help a bit relative to their survival without you, but in practice it’s just a negligible effect.

[Elite Focus]: It’s good, but is it worth 20 points into Virtues? IMO, not at all.

[Shielded Mind]: I actually didn’t know it breaks stuns on allies. That’s pretty good. The only problem I see is that you’d have to be running a dedicated buff build if you want to go 30 Virtues, as that only leaves 40 points left and Honor/Valor is almost a requirement.

My retaliation build is very solid. 3k attack/armor with +16k hp. Also add 40% crit chance with 69 crit dmg. My retaliation hits people for around 400 dmg, add the amount of dmg I’m already putting out. Plus my survivability, it’s more then a gimmick.

Love stacking close to a minute of retaliation. I can pretty much keep it up indefinitely.

I am currently leveling a guard and loving it. I am coming from a thief, and I see that only two trait lines are worth it really. That’s Valor and Honor. The traits in the other trees are really not that great. Zeal mite be ok with spirit weapons but those builds are bad in dungeons. Radiance is ok with a signet build but again, those are bad in dungeons also.

Our traits are not special out of the valor line, and this is a known issue from the very beginning. Our class is supposed to be some sort of tactical melee fighter, but our customization options, lack of tactical part.

I made a lot of proposition on a single thread about how the devs can modify traits and skill to giver us a more dept and tactical class.

now the worst things for guardians on the traitline is the condition damage stat. We really dont need this stat, Burning is the worst condition in terms of condi damage scaling, id like to see some other conditions, maybe tied to that +5% damage traits, that are kinda lame compared with the other classes.
Id like to see some kind of “enemy control” too, we are supposed to be primary melee but we have a poor mechaninc to force the opponent on our attack range, we lack of mobility and our teleport skills are only usefull to reach the opponent, but are useless if the enemy have +25% speed then us and we cant block or slow down him.

The way the current system is, if you want to be tactical you have to rely on equipment. More so than the warrior class.

I find most of the other trait lines rather useless or you have to follow a specific build to make it work making you inflexible when faced with different situations.

The Valour and Honour lines are best suited for this role. AH+EM synergy is the heart of this flexible play style as just this alone allows you to have decent enough healing without having to use full clerics gear or invest heavily into healing on your equipment. This then free’s you to use other types of gear such as Knights for hybrid style. Beserker for pure DPS. Pow/Tough/Vit for front line face tanking.

You will then be able to swap trinkets also. 2H mastery also helps in terms of going DPS or support with staff. Different writs are good with Mace for DPS and healing as well as hammer. The only down side is if you use sword or scepter or torch, but then you are only losing a very small amount of dmg (5%) for not going into the other trait lines.

I find that the Guardian is far more equipment reliant than the warrior by far. Able to deal with any situation based on a build with good synergy. Its almost as if it was designed to be this way.

New traits will be nice though. It wouldn’t make the other traits so rubbish that there isn’t much need to go into them.

What we have to consider is that FOOD SHOULD NOT BE A MAJOR PART OF YOUR BUILD. Builds that require life steal on crit should help to increase your effectiveness, not be the basis of it.

Harbinger.8637:

My retaliation build is very solid. 3k attack/armor with +16k hp. Also add 40% crit chance with 69 crit dmg. My retaliation hits people for around 400 dmg, add the amount of dmg I’m already putting out. Plus my survivability, it’s more then a gimmick.

Love stacking close to a minute of retaliation. I can pretty much keep it up indefinitely.

What’s your opportunity cost in comparison to a build where you didn’t focus on Retaliation but kept the rest of that build?

Alarox.4590:

Harbinger.8637:

My retaliation build is very solid. 3k attack/armor with +16k hp. Also add 40% crit chance with 69 crit dmg. My retaliation hits people for around 400 dmg, add the amount of dmg I’m already putting out. Plus my survivability, it’s more then a gimmick.

Love stacking close to a minute of retaliation. I can pretty much keep it up indefinitely.

What’s your opportunity cost in comparison to a build where you didn’t focus on Retaliation but kept the rest of that build?

Not that much tbh. If I focus on Honor I get 18k hp, but I find 15k hp is more then enough. Specing Radiance only gives me around 10% more crit, so again not a big deal. Then I’m already doing a lot of dmg, so I’m not worried with Zeal.

I know Retaliation got hit with the nerf bat really hard, but it’s still a viable build.

Definately agree that Wrathful Spirits is a lackluster Grandmaster trait. Spirit weapons don’t do enough damage to justify a meager 10% increase, and it only effects half the available Spirit Weapons (well I suppose “technically” it also boosts Shield’s activated ability, but that does so little damage its barely worth mentioning). If it remains at all, it should be boosted to at least 15% damage increase (thats what Engineer turrets get) and it needs to boost Bow and Shield. Bow could get 2x condition removal and increased healing for the active, Shield could gain a chance at reflecting projectiles instead of just blocking them (maybe a 20-30% chance?).

“A Fire Inside” has the same problem as Wrathful Spirits as far as only boosting half the available spirit weapon skills. It really is terrible for a trait that already effects only a quarter of total utility slots for a class to not even boost all of the utilities its meant to boost.

Personally, my solution to both of these would be…

~ Remove Wrathful Spirits altogether, freeing up 10 trait points for Spirit Weapon builds.
~ Add a 5% damage boost for spirit weapons, 2x condition removal / increased healing for Bow, and chance of projectile reflection to Shield, to “A Fire Within”. Seems like a lot, but considering “A Fire Within” requires spirit weapon users to go 20 points deep into a traitline thats otherwise not very useful for spirit weapons, I think it’d be alright.

Don’t get your beef with Pure of Voice. The only reason people don’t like it now is because it’s bugged with Hold the Line. Otherwise, AoE Condition Conversion is crazy good.

Ojimaru.8970:

Don’t get your beef with Pure of Voice. The only reason people don’t like it now is because it’s bugged with Hold the Line. Otherwise, AoE Condition Conversion is crazy good.

I agree with this. Pure of voice is good. (even if its bugged)

Wrathful Spirit is good to, for a tier 1 trait. getting a free boon when aegis is consumed from an attack. Why isn’t that good?

Infact, I have always felt the whole Honor line has too many good choices to just choose 3. With the exception of Pure of Heart, and Battle Presence (which are pretty terrible)

Strength in Numbers is better than Retributive Armor…a lot better.

Retaliation is still an excellent investment. Don’t forget this spreads to your teammates quite often and is also effective against ranged damage your team is taking. I’ve seen shortbow rangers kill themselves on retaliation alone quite a few times.

It also has an interesting benefit in that buffed supervisors still take full retaliation damage even while taking no damage from normal attacks.

I really want Permeating Wrath to be a worthwhile trait, but it just doesn’t fit where it is. If you invest enough points to points to pick it up, you are basically set up to crank out VoJ activations and the trait basically sets you up to do the opposite. It should either do something awesome on the activation, or allow the passive effect to keep working while it is on cooldown.

All of the +5% damage traits need to be coupled with something else to make them worthwhile. Eg +5% damage and +5% crit, or 5% damage and lifesteal, or 5% damage and cd reduction, a lot of the warrior traits work like this

The grandmaster traits are weak compared to other classes. Some are ok, but most look like master or even adept traits.

We need more ways to heal. I’m pretty much stuck going 30 valor for any decent build. Eg in the honor traitline you could have a shouts heal ability just like the warriors. In virtue you could have a regen added to any virtue you pop.

The spirit weapon traits could be combined into 3 making spirit weapons more viable.

Basically, combine some weak traits to make nice traits. Make better grandmaster traits.

Some traits should be nerfed as well. AH and Selfless Daring come to mind.

Yaki.9563:

Some traits should be nerfed as well. AH and Selfless Daring come to mind.

Selfless daring was nerfed already.

And AH was nerfed pretty hard due to the Vigorous Precision nerf.

AH doesn’t need to be nerfed, there just needs to be more viable options. Yeah it’s better than most options, but saying it’s overpowered is assuming everything else is balanced and doesn’t need improvement.

The reason almost every Guardian runs 30 Valor with Altrustic Healing in their builds isn’t because it’s overpowered. They run it because it fits into bunker builds, support builds, and damage builds.

haviz.1340:

Yaki.9563:

Some traits should be nerfed as well. AH and Selfless Daring come to mind.

Selfless daring was nerfed already.

In PvP.

Iavra.8510:

And AH was nerfed pretty hard due to the Vigorous Precision nerf.

Hardly. You lost out on about 150 self-healing every 5 seconds. Oh noes. Compared to the 350+ you heal yourself every other second just from Empowered Might.

Alarox.4590:

AH doesn’t need to be nerfed, there just needs to be more viable options. Yeah it’s better than most options, but saying it’s overpowered is assuming everything else is balanced and doesn’t need improvement.

The reason almost every Guardian runs 30 Valor with Altrustic Healing in their builds isn’t because it’s overpowered. They run it because it fits into bunker builds, support builds, and damage builds.

It fits all those because it’s overpowered. The base heal value is far too high and it doesn’t scale with healing power, so that makes it extremely powerful self healing that requires absolutely no sacrifice of stats. You can go full berserkers and heal yourself for the same crazy amounts as you can in full clerics. That’s broken.

Cut AH base value down to 20 or so and make it scale far more with healing power, so that full clerics will make it heal for about 100. Then it would be balanced because you’d have a trade-off to make. Do you want ridiculous self healing or do you want good damage? As it is now you get both.

Yaki.9563:

Alarox.4590:

AH doesn’t need to be nerfed, there just needs to be more viable options. Yeah it’s better than most options, but saying it’s overpowered is assuming everything else is balanced and doesn’t need improvement.

The reason almost every Guardian runs 30 Valor with Altrustic Healing in their builds isn’t because it’s overpowered. They run it because it fits into bunker builds, support builds, and damage builds.

It fits all those because it’s overpowered. The base heal value is far too high and it doesn’t scale with healing power, so that makes it extremely powerful self healing that requires absolutely no sacrifice of stats. You can go full berserkers and heal yourself for the same crazy amounts as you can in full clerics. That’s broken.

Cut AH base value down to 20 or so and make it scale far more with healing power, so that full clerics will make it heal for about 100. Then it would be balanced because you’d have a trade-off to make. Do you want ridiculous self healing or do you want good damage? As it is now you get both.

Clerics is bad already, that insignia shouldn’t exist.

haviz.1340:

Yaki.9563:

Alarox.4590:

AH doesn’t need to be nerfed, there just needs to be more viable options. Yeah it’s better than most options, but saying it’s overpowered is assuming everything else is balanced and doesn’t need improvement.

The reason almost every Guardian runs 30 Valor with Altrustic Healing in their builds isn’t because it’s overpowered. They run it because it fits into bunker builds, support builds, and damage builds.

It fits all those because it’s overpowered. The base heal value is far too high and it doesn’t scale with healing power, so that makes it extremely powerful self healing that requires absolutely no sacrifice of stats. You can go full berserkers and heal yourself for the same crazy amounts as you can in full clerics. That’s broken.

Cut AH base value down to 20 or so and make it scale far more with healing power, so that full clerics will make it heal for about 100. Then it would be balanced because you’d have a trade-off to make. Do you want ridiculous self healing or do you want good damage? As it is now you get both.

Clerics is bad already, that insignia shouldn’t exist.

So you agree with me that AH should be nerfed?

Yaki.9563:

So you agree with me that AH should be nerfed?

Why do you keep putting those words into my mouth? I don’t see the reason why AH should be nerfed. So more people would go for full cleric’s gear and leeching in dungeons? Because it’s what they do. Doing 3 times less damage while offering nothing in return.

Yaki.9563:

Iavra.8510:

And AH was nerfed pretty hard due to the Vigorous Precision nerf.

Hardly. You lost out on about 150 self-healing every 5 seconds. Oh noes. Compared to the 350+ you heal yourself every other second just from Empowered Might.

You have not utilized the old AH/VP combo to its fullest then.

There was literally no ceiling as to how much you can heal out of those traits, you just need to stack crit and use as many multi-hit AoE abilities to hit as many enemies as possible (even symbols qualify) and spike heal yourself for hundreds to thousands of hp per ability. It was fairly broken, to be honest.

Heinel.6548:

Yaki.9563:

Iavra.8510:

And AH was nerfed pretty hard due to the Vigorous Precision nerf.

Hardly. You lost out on about 150 self-healing every 5 seconds. Oh noes. Compared to the 350+ you heal yourself every other second just from Empowered Might.

You have not utilized the old AH/VP combo to its fullest then.

There was literally no ceiling as to how much you can heal out of those traits, you just need to stack crit and use as many multi-hit AoE abilities to hit as many enemies as possible (even symbols qualify) and spike heal yourself for hundreds to thousands of hp per ability. It was fairly broken, to be honest.

Which is still only 1/5 as much healing as you were getting from EM/AH.

Yaki.9563:

Heinel.6548:

Yaki.9563:

Iavra.8510:

And AH was nerfed pretty hard due to the Vigorous Precision nerf.

Hardly. You lost out on about 150 self-healing every 5 seconds. Oh noes. Compared to the 350+ you heal yourself every other second just from Empowered Might.

You have not utilized the old AH/VP combo to its fullest then.

There was literally no ceiling as to how much you can heal out of those traits, you just need to stack crit and use as many multi-hit AoE abilities to hit as many enemies as possible (even symbols qualify) and spike heal yourself for hundreds to thousands of hp per ability. It was fairly broken, to be honest.

Which is still only 1/5 as much healing as you were getting from EM/AH.

You’re just pulling numbers out of nowhere now.

Well, he is right, but only if:
- You got 4 or more allies beside you.
- You hit no more than once per second.
- You only hit one enemy at a time.

If any of those points changes, VP gets better while EM loses value.

/edit: typo.

Ah seems about right now, in fact it seems a bit underpowered.

A couple patches ago boons were nerfed to apply to only 5 people.
Recently, vigor was nerfed.

Before it was very powerful, now not so much. Still strong but definitely not OP.

I would tend to side with Alarox on why AH is so widely used. It is not because it is OP, but because the other traits especially Grandmaster Traits are so bad. AH is one of the only Grandmaster I would consider worthy of a 30 point trait investment. The other two being Monk’s Focus (same tree) and 1-handed strength, which is only helpful for half of the guardian’s weapons. It could use a slight nerf to it’s healing output, but nothing like only 20 per boon application. Also keep in mind that Guardians are the most melee centric class in the game and they have the lowest base health.