Guild Wars 2

I am here to possibly cause waves but I think these would be good changes for guardian to make the class more interesting and fun to play and giving us a slight bit more complexity as well as a bit more of visual satisfaction.

My idea is originated off a few posts i’ve seen floating around the forums so I cant take credit for it but I am merely stating how I think it should work. But without further ado.

Change the Virtues into a stance/atunment based system.

The reasons behind this is currently virtues are unimpressive and have terribly long Cd’s making for uninteresting passive game play. The only time virtues are fun is when you are speced 15 into radiance and can spam VoJ for blind and burn. Not to mention a lot of our base stats are lowered to compensate for these boring passive effects that make us good.

How would it work?:

My theory is pressing f1-3 would change your atunment to a different Virtue. When changing Atunment you activate the virtues effect and cause it to do something noticeable. This would be the equivalent of activating a virtue now. But after the active is done you get that virtues passive along as you are Attuned to that specific virtue.

This would also give guardians a far more active supporting role, For example. Your group is trying to burn down a champion mob, but the mob has a big aoe you need to watch out for. You start off by attuning to justice. Putin heavy burning on the target as well as giving your allies a nice boost of damage for a short duration. As the boss prepares to aoe you change your atunment to courage putting aegis on everyone and increasing defenses for a little while. Then people start to get low so you change to Resolve to heal people for a large amount and apply some passive regen. Then later you switch back to Justice to try and push the damage again to finish the boss off.

The key thing with this is we would easily be able to buff these effects to make them more noticeable and more effective since the guardian would only be able to access one at a time and switching would cause that virtue to go on CD. You could easily add in some noticeable spell effects so plays will know what virtue the guardian is in.

Justice would have an aura of blue flames
Courage would have the aegis and could have a shield shaped aura
and resolve would give an aura of glowing blue light.

(This also solves the problem with Ages ruining all shield skins for guardians, because we would attune to it when we need the shield and not have it up at all times where it usual blocks an insignificant hit.)

Obviously this would not be an easy change and would require quite the rework of traits surrounding virtues as well as a re-balance of the guardians stats but overall I believe it would create a larger variety of builds and more interesting and involved play style for guardians.

I think you just need to play your Guardian more. Guardians can already do everything you suggested when they trait 5 in Virtues, and it is exciting to play. If they changed anything, I think Virtue of Resolve’s active effect should be stronger.

I suggested this a while ago. Make it so each is a stance and the Guardian only has one weapon to choose from(similar to Elementalists). I’d be ok with something like this, even though it would require a massive overhaul. As it stands, it’s a very uninteresting class mechanic with an emphasis on the actives only. The passives from each virtue are terrible, even when traited 30 into virtues.

i think restricting the weapons would be detrimental to guardians rather than helpful, but Finnway, i have been playing my guardian since beta and he is still my main, that doesnt change my opnion that the class still needs a bit for of an interesting mechanic

No, I think this is a terrible idea and is way to similar to how other MMOs work, and how they worked was annoying.

the point is to have a single noticeable and effective passive at a time rather than 3 subtle and boring passive with horrendus cds for the actives give the guardian the abbility to choose between a very active support style (lots of virtue changeing) or a more passive style by staying with the passive they prefer

Finnway.2183:

I think you just need to play your Guardian more. Guardians can already do everything you suggested when they trait 5 in Virtues, and it is exciting to play. If they changed anything, I think Virtue of Resolve’s active effect should be stronger.

The active? Pft, what about the passive?

Virtues are bad if you dont trait it.

If you spend few point to improve it by traits, virtues become in a great skill.

The only buff the virtues needed is on Virtue of Resolve’s passive effects.

I have to chime in that the proposed idea is just bad. In fact it would make the Guardian OP. I enjoy the Guardian, he’s my main and honestly I have a hard time picking up other classes because ’they’re not the Guardian’. I say that not to boast my knowledge of the Guardian’s mechanics or expertise, but that I enjoy the Guardian, A LOT.

Your idea would be good ONLY DURING solo-play. Imagine SEVERAL Guardians hanging around – your changes would be OP, and that’s why the Virtues are currently the way they are. Think about it – there isn’t a cap on the number of party members for the active effect. All it takes is for a couple of Guardians to get on TS and time their Virtues. But that’s not to say one Guardian alone can’t make an impact – but the more Guardians around the more powerful their Virtues are when strategically used.

Now I’m sure if the patience and time was taken to learn boss mechanics, the Virtues would only grow in their potency as they are then triggered at ‘exactly’ the right time -making the Guardian indeed a masterful tactician of the battlefield.

In my opinion, the main problem of virtues are:

Passive Effects: They are too weak (really weak), and don’t followthe idea “use the strong passive effects to yourself or activate to help allies”. It need to be changed to be useful. My suggestions are:

1. VoJ: Make the passive effect a new condition “Blue Flame” (or something like this). It have the same damage as burning and stacks in duration. This condition also reduce the movment speed of your enemy by 30~50% (we lack snares). The active effect remains the same (burning);
2. VoR: Increase the base heal from ~90 to ~200 and makes it to scale better with healing power. The passive effect now is just useless and make any difference at all (I wouldn’t even care if they just remove the passive effect that is now, becouse it is useless). That also would make viable to use the Battle Presence trait;
3. VoC: Block a random hit every 40 seconds don’t make us tankier at all (I also wouldn’t care if they just remove the passive effect, becouse it is useless as VoR). It should have less CD (something like 20 sec) or even work simillar to VoJ (gets Aegis every 5th hit). Also they could change to work only at combat, in that way Aegis wouldn’t destroy our shield appearance and would be a small nerf to its buff (you will not be able to tank the 1st hit and enering combat).

Active Effects: Aside VoJ, the active effects are very weak. Why? They have insane cooldowns and you use once every century. They should reduce the CD of VoR to 45 sec (untraited) and VoC to 60 sec. That would make them more viable and less boring to use.

VoC occurs at a rate of 30sec when traited. Every 5th hit with say, staff or sword would be easily achieved and almost create a perma-block boon, totally OP.

I like the idea of people thinking of ideas for the Guardian, but can ideas that aren’t….. I dunno…. insanely OP or pulled out of some dark recess of the brain?

I can imagine an ANet employees grief to some extent when visiting the forums.

“Let’s see what ideas are floating around on the forum today…”
click click …….. click click
“………….. I don’t know why I come here for inspiration.”

Every 5th hit you take, not you do. Also the Block wouldn’t count as a hit.

Every 5th hit you do obviously would be OP.