Guild Wars 2

Some tweaks to various weapon skills I’d like to see just to improve the quality of life of playing a Guardian.

Sword:
Flashing Blade – Remove the after cast delay. Right now it is a very clunky skill as a gap closer due to the delay after using it, the enemy has ample time to dodge away before you can start to channel Zealot’s Defense.
Zealot’s Defense – Fires magical projectiles with all the drawbacks but none of the advantages. They can be reflected or absorbed by any skill that interacts with projectiles but they don’t count as any type of projectile finisher.

Either stop them being reflected if they aren’t going to count as projectiles.
Or make them into a 20% small projectile finisher.
Or make them reflect projectiles back.

Mace:
Faithful Strike – A little too slow, reduce it to 3/4 of a second.
Symbol of Faith – Too slow, reduce it to 1/2 a second.

Focus:
Ray of Judgement – The ray that is cast from this skill is far too slow, it easily misses in close combat and if you are chasing after someone that is 750-900+ range away (w/wo Swiftness) it won’t reach them before its 1200 range is up. So double the travel speed.

Torch:
Cleansing Flame – Lower single target DPS than Scepter, lower melee cleave DPS than Sword. Make it remove 3 conditions from the Guardian as it channels, 1 per second. Reduce the channel time to 3 seconds.

Greatsword:
Binding Blade – This skill should automatically pull anyone caught by it back to the Guardian if they try to move further than 600 range away.

Hammer:
Symbol of Protection – Too slow, reduce the cast time to 3/4 of a second.

Scepter:
Orb of Wrath – Still unreliable in the action combat GW2 was designed around.
Make it instant hit and increase the cast time to 1/2 a second.

Or turn it into a 3 step chain. (2 instant hits, 1 orb).
1 – Strike of Light 1/2 a second, Damage: 224 (0.666)
2 – Strike of Wrath 1/2 a second, Damage: 224 (0.666)
3 – Orb of Flame 1/2 a second, Fire an Orb at your foe that causes damage and burning.
Damage: 224 (0.666) 1 second of Burning.
(Damage numbers can be adjusted so that DPS is similar or slightly less than we have now against a non-moving PvE target to balance instant hits and 1s of Burning.)

The first two instant hits would function like the first two Necro Scepter strikes (except with a blue animation) and the 3rd would fire an Orb like we have now that also causes 1s of Burning.

Although some time ago I was hopeful, like you, and posted suggestions like these, I have since realized they will have little to no effect on the Guardian class. Everything you posted has been mentioned somewhere before, and makes sense from a design philosophy if you have invested time into a Guardian.. that being said.. I don’t think they want to improve our QOL

I wouldn’t get my hopes up about any change. I would Just be happy if Sword Wave was no long considered a projectile. Seems rather dumb to stick a projectile on the auto attack of a melee weapon, and it serves no purpose. Other then having it reflected back in my face ever so often by something.

The other day I realized I couldn’t even knock down those annoying poison trees in fireheart rise, sure the first two attacks worked, but number three missed every time. And No I don’t recall why i was trying to kill the thing.

Mentioned all of these changes before, as well as some others. I have seen these changes mentioned before, still never seen implemented. However one dev did chime in on person post and stated, “Guardian scepter has the highest damage auto attack on all weapons.” When asked for proof of this, said dev was gone and never to be seen again.

I have already started a thread abut how slow Guardian is. They are my first love, but unfortunately after not playing thief in 8 months and not being aware of all the changes I had no problem annihilating guardians,..especially ones with hammer. None of their animations have changed, all of their 2 handed weapons attacks are slow and clunky or highly telegraphed or just don’t do any serious damage at all. The only build I walked ginger with was mediation DpS..even then the build is so old that it is fairly predictable and with no equiv or quick hands it just can’t swap weapons as it needs to. It is too easy to lure a guardian into swapping to scepter for range and then dance through it, or zero in for spike damage once their scepter skills are exhausted. It made me feel so bad for my first profession of choice I felt I had to say something. The last straw was when I watched a guardian try to use spirit weapons on me. I felt embarrassed for them. The speed at which engi’s use nades/turrets..the speed of shatters..the speed of spike damage thiefs..the constant Cc of hammer warrior’s are all moving at a pace that guardian can no longer adequately match. I stand by my statement of taking a veteran guardian and confronting them against any other profession of equal skill..it truly highlights the guardian knows what needs to be done and can play well, but the weapon speeds is what lets them get pipped at the post every time. Stunning styles, arguably one of the best contributors of guardian 1 v1 videos hasn’t posted in months. I still see them in tpvp occassionally where they simply do center node defense. The guardian has remained the same when every other class has been more than up’ed significantly.

^A guardian should be able to beat an equally skilled thief every single time. The last time I lost to a thief in a fair 1v1 was against an amazing s/d thief while I was playing shouts.

That third AA attack with Sword is the worst thing about sword. Hate it. I guess it’s there to proc the passive VoJ but it needs to be changed to, uh, almost anything else that hits 3 times. Like, anything.

dace.8019:

That third AA attack with Sword is the worst thing about sword. Hate it. I guess it’s there to proc the passive VoJ but it needs to be changed to, uh, almost anything else that hits 3 times. Like, anything.

The only problem with it is that it’s a projectile attack and can be reflected.

The Hammer #1 AA (Symbol) isn’t necessary a problem any more with the “buffed” (fixed) Writ of Persistence. The Real problem with hammer now is mainly #4 and #5 skills, that #4 is only for throw people off cliffs (this only hit ONE person!) and #5 is really bad to properly land (they should make it castable while moving – like they did with #4 hammer of warrior) – you only really can properly land with JI or “get luck”.

I hardly think that ANET will do something about the weapons problems that Guardian have. Several people (including me) already did similar suggestions, but they only moved a finger to try to fix the problems.

Mikau.6920:

The Hammer #1 AA (Symbol) isn’t necessary a problem any more with the “buffed” (fixed) Writ of Persistence. The Real problem with hammer now is mainly #4 and #5 skills, that #4 is only for throw people off cliffs (this only hit ONE person!) and #5 is really bad to properly land (they should make it castable while moving – like they did with #4 hammer of warrior) – you only really can properly land with JI or “get luck”.

I hardly think that ANET will do something about the weapons problems that Guardian have. Several people (including me) already did similar suggestions, but they only moved a finger to try to fix the problems.

Precast Hammer 5 or 4 and then use judge’s intervention This a fun combo so u can trap people in the ring as they flee like terrified rats clawing at the walls desperate to escape their doom. Or be like SUPRISE! You just won a free flight on Guarian Air lines over this cliff here =)

Darek.1836:

^A guardian should be able to beat an equally skilled thief every single time. The last time I lost to a thief in a fair 1v1 was against an amazing s/d thief while I was playing shouts.

I agree with the should part. Maybe it is because I played Guardian to the point of death and their animations appear obvious to me and because of this knowledge their rotations are also predictable because of the time I spent on them. Maybe it is just me..but as stated, after being on hiatus from thief I felt I should be the one at the noticeable disadvantage with ring rust. I found evading was a wonderful dream and their symbols were just too easy to avoid. Using dagger/pistol-pistol/dagger it felt like the guardian was in slow motion. Only the meditation builds were the ones to watch, but they still felt a tad slow. Many of symbols just didn’t have enough affect on me because they just couldn’t get them out fast enough when they would have been the most useful.

foofad.5162:

The only problem with it is that it’s a projectile attack and can be reflected.

And that sometimes they don’t hit objects or mobs/players depending on their elevation when a regular attack would.