Guild Wars 2

Real Talk: A post meant to outline the problems with the Guardian, this one is for the hammer. This will hopefully initiate a talk with devs about how to bring balance to the weapons after a year of minor or no changes. I will be guiding the talk with the Q/A mode, and if anyone makes inflammatory remarks we will all vote it down to clear it out. These comments are coming from the idea of wvw since pve mobs don’t move and spvp has hampered the evolution of Guardian with its focus on point defense.

Hammer 1: Auto attack chain needs to be faster. Its been said on the forums by non-devs that its slow because it applies a symbol to the ground, but I haven’t been able to find a dev post confirming that. It needs to be faster, 1 second cast time is plenty long considering that most people will get out of the symbol before it can do any serious damage. And since you need to stick to your target you as the Guardian will be out of it as well, sometimes before the 2nd pulse. Symbols I will discuss in another Real Talk later in our program

Hammer 2: Low cooldown blast finisher, good damage with a 300 movement attached. Really solid ability unless you are using it up or down a slope. The ‘explosion’ on hammer 2 does not go up or down on the X Axis. Instead the damage goes out. So if you are trying to hit an Asura down hill, or the leap doesn’t track up or down the slope well, you’ve just wasted an attack. This has been in since the beta and never mentioned or fixed.

Hammer 3: Moderately low cooldown ranged root. Solid ability. The telegraph is quite long, but so is everything else on a Guardian.

Hammer 4: 750 launch, short range, and low damage. For an ‘aoe’ weapon it doesn’t make sense to have it as a single target attack. It should be changed to a cone attack (max 3 targets), 180 range, 500 launch attack. This will bring it from a trolling ability to a useful CC. Someone mentioned this change in a previous weapons post and I can’t find it, but its still a very good suggestion.

Hammer 5: Brings what little CC we Guardians have to bear…but if the target is running from you it will be out of range before its cast is done. To get around this you basically have to combine it with Judge’s Intervention. This skill has the EXACT same clunkiness that Hammer 4 on warrior did have before it was changed. Why this hasn’t been changed as well is beyond me.

Please post suggestions or comments in the posting below and keep it civil please =D

Solid post, I agree with all your suggestions. Hammer auto-attack chain is tricky though, due to the symbol. Personally I wish the symbol was moved to another skill, but many like it where it is, and I wouldn’t even know where else to put on hammer to be honest. My only decent idea is to swap it out for mighty blow have that as 3rd attack, then adjust duration, cast time and cooldown to symbol of protection to mirror mace symbol. But even that has its drawbacks…

Real Talk: A post meant to outline the problems with the Guardian, this one is for the scepter. This will hopefully initiate a talk with devs about how to bring balance to the weapons after a year of minor or no changes. I will be guiding the talk with the Q/A mode, and if anyone makes inflammatory remarks we will all vote it down to clear it out. These comments are coming from the idea of wvw since pve mobs don’t move and spvp has hampered the evolution of Guardian with its focus on point defense.

Scepter 1: This attack is the tip of the frustrating iceberg that is the scepter. Its slow, its a projectile (but not a finisher), doesn’t track well, mediocre damage, and isn’t a chain attack like necro (chain attack + condis), mesmer (chain attack that continues even without a target that creates a clone at the end of the chain), or elementalist (no chain attack, but applies condis and has 4 attunements). This doesn’t make any sense when looking at other classes abilities on scepter 1. It needs a major rework, it requires so much rework in my opinion that I don’t even have a suggestion for it.

Scepter 2: An ‘aoe’ RNG attack that hardly hits. The little smite fists that attack have a pretty good chance of missing if the target is slightly out of the center. The fists that attack in the area need to have a 5 target aoe cap so that it can do some aoe, and make it a symbol. The RNG needs to be taken out of the attack, its insanely frustrating. The attack needs to be cleaned up.

Scepter 3: A medium range, medium duration root that does mediocre damage and an insanely long cooldown. I think this cooldown is still this long because for some reason having the slowest class in the game means that we should have long cooldown CC as well. The cooldown should be lowered to 15 seconds, maybe even 12 seconds considering other classes ability to just about spam root abilities.

Hammer 5 really should either cast instantly, or be useable on the move.

Hammer also has an overabundance of light fields, either the field on 1 or the 5 should be changed to fire imo.

Banish needs to do more in general, I like the idea of making it a cone AoE.

What Zeru said.

#1: Increase projectile speed. I’m talking like double it. I got an auto attack-chain for you. How about the first projectile is normal, the second moves slightly quicker and the third causes a 1 second chill on top of normal damage. (I am not going to lie, this is really WvW/PvP thinking, since I don’t use it in PVE)

#2: I am fine with, I drop it on downed players, and for PVE I rarely even use a scepter.(Even though I made an ascendant one lol).

#3: I wouldn’t mind the cooldown, if they gave us the same duration as the warriors 4 second pin on their bow. So either lower CD, or increase the kitten thing to a 4 second pin.

The symbol combo field on hammer 1 should be changed. This would be the single best quality of life upgrade for my guard. Either make it fire so I can blast it for might and get that extra damage, or make blasting the light field give condition removal. Retaliation is such a stupid and useless boon in all aspects of the game. It does trivial damage against pve enemies and against players it only works against the stupid ones.

Real Talk: A post meant to outline the problems with the Guardian, this one is for the sword. This will hopefully initiate a talk with devs about how to bring balance to the weapons after a year of minor or no changes. I will be guiding the talk with the Q/A mode, and if anyone makes inflammatory remarks we will all vote it down to clear it out. These comments are coming from the idea of wvw since pve mobs don’t move and spvp has hampered the evolution of Guardian with its focus on point defense.

Sword 1: The auto attack on sword is solid. Its high damage and quick. However the last part of the chain is gimmicky. Sometimes it hits, sometimes it doesn’t. I found its best if you try to lead the target when hitting them with it to ensure it actually lands. This needs to be cleaned up a bit.

Sword 2: A teleport attack that has next to no damage (I’ve hit a mosquito with sword 2 in wvw and it didn’t die) and applies an AOE blind. Here is the problem with it though. It doesn’t have any soft (warrior, ranger, thief) or hard CC (mesmer) built into it, and it isn’t a leap finisher like other teleport weapons (mesmer staff 2) and can’t be used while stunned (mesmer staff 2, thief sword 2).

Sword 3: The most range inducing, keyboard breaking ability in the game. Mediocre damage for a channeled sword attack, the attacks count as projectiles but aren’t projectile finishers, the block on blocks ranged attacks when it should be a reflect, and its tracking is the worst in the game. I’ve had a person run by me (180 range away) with swiftness up and it missed every attack. This needs some serious work and has been this way since beta.

I would love it if Banish become a cleave AoE. Its so silly to see my character swinging a big ol’ hammer through a group of enemies and somehow only knock away one. Its logically silly and inconsistent with all the other attacks on the weapon. Giving it a cleave would make a lot more sense, and give some useful spacing and control utility to the weapon.

Not sure I agree with the faster cast time on the Auto. Traited with longer symbol duration, its pretty much already a perma-symbol (which means perma-Protection as well). Make it faster and it becomes closer to permanent even without longer symbol duration, and with the duration trait you could double-stack your symbols for a second or two. Maybe it could be changed in PvP only, since it has the most trouble there since people move around more so you don’t get the effects as much.

The problems with Mighty Blow are pretty much the same with any “leap” attack. They need to fix all of them to work reliably on hills. Other than that, I agree its a great attack as-is.

Zealot’s Embrace is mostly fine. Could maybe use a bit of a projectile speed boost, though. Or give it a wider area (perhaps it could cover the area of an untraited symbol instead of the current narrow band). Something to make it a bit more reliable at longer ranges.

Ring of Warding just needs to be usable while moving. A part of me wishes it also blocked projectiles, but that would probably be too powerful.

Keep in mind that most of my complaints are from an sPvP perspective.

The damage on Sword 2 isn’t really a problem for me. The lack of soft CC and the fact that it’s not a leap finisher are pretty heartbreaking. Just compare this to the warrior sword charge. Leap finisher, 3 seconds of cripple, 8 second cooldown, can be used to charge without a target. I’d trade our Sword charge for theirs in a heartbeat. Would be the best day of my life.

Also, you’re under estimating how bad Sword 3 is. It’s not that it blocks while it should reflect, it’s that it absorbs when it should block. That’s right, IT DOESN’T EVEN BLOCK. So it does not triggers the “on block” traits. You also forgot to mention the biggest problem, which is that it roots you. So if you’re fighting a foe who you need to use a ranged attack against, you have to stand still while they get further away from you. The tracking wouldn’t be as big an issue if you could try to stay on top of them while it fired.

It’s so outrageous that every other class has a 25% movemeent speed access via Signet or Trait AND that if they’re expected to melee, they have some way to slow their foe, while we have NEITHER. Honestly, every other melee class gets both of these, and we’re not even allowed ONE of them. I’d settle for either or, at this point. Devs have said that they want sigils and runes to build diversity, but every build I make has to come with Runes of Speed factored in, because I dare not take anything else.

Real Talk: A post meant to outline the problems with the Guardian, this one is for the mace. This will hopefully initiate a talk with devs about how to bring balance to the weapons after a year of minor or no changes. I will be guiding the talk with the Q/A mode, and if anyone makes inflammatory remarks we will all vote it down to clear it out. These comments are coming from the idea of wvw since pve mobs don’t move and spvp has hampered the evolution of Guardian with its focus on point defense.

Mace 1: This is probably one of our best chain attacks. Solid damage and a heal on the end. The only improvement to this would be if the attack on the end of the chain was PBAOE and the heal was a larger, maybe 180 instead of 120.

Mace 2: A regen light symbol that does solid damage on a nice cooldown. Again, I’ll cover symbols later in our program.

Mace 3: High damage aoe after you block and if you don’t a whirl finisher that gives protection. Solid ability.

Heres my problem with mace…there is ZERO CC. None what-so-ever. In every other MMO the mace has always been a weapon that dazes, stuns, or does high damage with some sort of armor penetration. But following along with our severe lack of CC this makes sense. This would be fine if we had CC somewhere else and the warrior class didn’t have 2 hard CCs and a 3 second block that will keep blocking if you aren’t facing a target on MH mace, and an aoe knockdown on offhand mace…ohh and warrior auto-attack cleaves. Compared to the only other class that can use a mace, ours needs some improvements, mainly CC.

Here’s how you fix half of the issues plaguing Guardians:
Change Signet of Wrath to give 25% movement speed bonus, because honestly, do we really need a condition damage signet?

Here’s how you fix Guardian Sword specifically:
Make it so Sword 3 no longer roots you. Reduce the CD to 10s.

Both of these? I won’t give a hoot about soft CC anymore.

Very good point about the movement. I forgot to add that I was going to suggest that the sword 3 projectile be removed and be replaced with this: 2 180 range explosions on the target per sword swipe. It would not only ensure that the damage went through, but would add some utility to the ability.

And you’re right about the ‘not blocking’ it counts as an absorb for some reason…which isn’t what the tooltip says =/ It needs to either block or reflect. Just fixing the ability would add utility to it, lol

You just said that you liked every button on Maces, but then complained that it doesn’t do something that it isn’t intended for. Maces are fine. Good, actually. We need soft CC, but not here. Let this remain the Cleric’s weapon of choice.

Agree on most points. #2 needs to be a symbol, badly. Very very badly. #3 has too short a duration for way too long a cooldown.

As for #1, I actually think that it’s fine. We’re not really meant to use it from 1200, more like from 450. If you can stay in the sweet spot it does solid damage at a decent attack speed. My REAL problem is how insanely stupid it looks. Way to make my only ranged option lobbing blue tennis balls, Anet.

Flashing Blade NEEDS to be a Leap finisher. It makes zero sense that its not. At all. Even the Mesmer Staff teleport is a leap as you mentioned, and that goes backwards but is otherwise essentially the exact same attack. If one is a Leap, the other should be as well. Sword needs a combo finisher in any case, and Flashing Blade is a prime candidate. Other than that I’m actually fine with how it is right now. Low damage, yah, and I suppose that could be boosted a bit, but the instant 600m distance and the AoE blind make it a great utility skill, especially with certain traits (namely Blind Exposure). Definitely don’t think it should be a stun-break, that’d be a bit too much (and if it was usable while stunned but not a stun break it wouldn’t make sense, since the attack isn’t JUST a teleport, but a teleport + stab).

Agree with you on the AA. Its mostly fine, just needs to possibly be adjusted a bit to be a tad more reliable. It seems like there’s a slight delay between your characters’ stab animation and the waves actually coming out, so maybe if they got rid of that delay it would be better.

Zealot’s Defense…. I dunno. I like the skill in theory, its unique and very Guardian-esque, but in practice its certainly lackluster. I think some pretty major changes are in order to improve it. What I’d maybe do would be something like this… remove the projectile “spread” effect, and change it to a channeled beam coming out of the shield much like our downed #1. Beam does 6 hits over the duration of the channel, slightly less hits than the max from the current iteration but obviously it’d be infinitely more accurate and reliable. Damage over the duration would be roughly what it is now if all hits connect. Adds an extra hit for each projectile blocked, rewarding you for using the skill defensively by giving you more damage and making it dangerous for enemies to keep shooting you while you’re channeling, as compensation for the fact that you’re immobile.

PraetorMortis.8610:

Either make it fire so I can blast it for might and get that extra damage, or make blasting the light field give condition removal.

The light field does give condition removal in combination with projectile finishers. The only downside is that we’re dependent on ranged classes to provide the projectile finishers.

Although I do agree that the constant light field can be annoying for those who want to stack and use fire fields. Perhaps they could give guardians a trait that allows us to change the Symbol of Protection into a more offensive ‘Symbol of Redemption’ that gives 2 stacks of might and a fire field.

Mace auto 3rd strike needs to cleave. Protectors strike used to knock back or knock down in beta, I can’t remember which. I would love on demand protection from protectors strike.

Real Talk: A post meant to outline the problems with the Guardian, this one is for the focus. This will hopefully initiate a talk with devs about how to bring balance to the weapons after a year of minor or no changes. I will be guiding the talk with the Q/A mode, and if anyone makes inflammatory remarks we will all vote it down to clear it out. These comments are coming from the idea of wvw since pve mobs don’t move and spvp has hampered the evolution of Guardian with its focus on point defense.

Focus 4: Long cooldown, low regen duration, blinding attack. Its got a lot of utility and cures a condi per bounce. But the cooldown is insane. It should be around 20 seconds, and to be honest a Guardian should be able to target a friendly player, and cast it on the friendly player to initiate the bounce. Because if the target is at 900 range and running from you while you cast it will miss and the ability will be wasted for nearly half a minute. Ohh and it actually tracks! Why sword 3 can’t do this or scepter 1 can’t do this…I don’t know.

Focus 5: Blocks three attacks, blast finisher at the start, high damage if it explodes…but has a cooldown longer than a lot of utilities abilities. It needs to be shortened by 5-10 seconds.

Real Talk: A post meant to outline the problems with the Guardian, this one is for the shield. This will hopefully initiate a talk with devs about how to bring balance to the weapons after a year of minor or no changes. I will be guiding the talk with the Q/A mode, and if anyone makes inflammatory remarks we will all vote it down to clear it out. These comments are coming from the idea of wvw since pve mobs don’t move and spvp has hampered the evolution of Guardian with its focus on point defense.

Shield 4: Mediocre damage, long cooldown, protection applier. Like the focus this cooldown is way too long for what it does. It also doesn’t really do what a shield is supposed to do. Here is what I think it should be changed to. Block attacks for 3 seconds. At the end of the three seconds apply protection to you and 5 party members for each attack blocked, 6 seconds max, 600 range. Not only would you be able to protect yourself from attacks, but you’d be able to provide support to allies. If you felt like you could also add a small damage explosion to give it some more utility, similar to what it does now.

Shield 5: Knock back, instant cast, and a heal. Again…insanely long cooldown for what it does. Lower it by 5 seconds.

I would love to see more damage on the hammer and more easy access to the symbol.

People don’t want to stand still for me to chain the auto attack on them. I also feel penalized for interrupting the auto attack for other abilities.

Enemies often move outside of the symbols radius for some reason.
Possible options are to make glacial heart chill be random % based chance for all targets in a symbol.

Hammer 4 is counterproductive, in most situations, as most enemies enjoy being punted away from me. The time it takes to re-engage (if desired) is usually just as long as the enemies down. It is only good for denying stomps and rezzes, while an aoe effect would be preferred for that situation.
I personally would rather see it changed to a daze and not punt the target. With a secondary effect of extra damage or chill.

I’m fine with Mace’s AA and Symbol of Faith. They’re both very nice for heal / symbol builds and decent even for non-heal builds.

I’d like to see some functionality changes for Protector’s Strike, though. It just seems conceptually flawed, to me. Having an effect at the end that requires you to not block for 3 seconds is just silly. Why am I being encouraged to use a block skill and not actually block anything? Its also pretty kitten against ranged attacks, where you can block the attack but then your counterattack is 100% useless.

Here’s what I’d like to see happen with Protector’s Strike. First off, make the “Protection to yourself and allies” thing a triggerable chain effect. This would be well in line with many other block skills in the game, which give you a secondary effect you can trigger on-command while in block stance. Much better than starting up the block and hoping you don’t get hit if you actually want the Protection. Now its a reliable choice, do you want a Block or do you want Protection. If there’s a powerful single-hit attack coming or you want more damage, Block is the go-to. If you’re expecting multiple hits, go for the Protection (where right now in situation 2 the attack is mostly useless).

Secondly, if you block a projectile with the attack it should launch a counterattack projectile instead of doing the useless melee counter. Should be entirely possible to code that, since they managed to code the Ranger GS Block to only trigger Counterattack if attacked in melee range.

They should also ALL be Whirl finishers. Mind you, a Whirl finisher on such a short attack is near useless anyway, but its even worse that ONLY the end-effect is a whirl. The whole attack should be a whirl or not at all.

I would like some variety from the scepter 1 as a chain, its currently very bland and does not mix well with any talents (besides rhs and scepter power)
It would match its skill set if it stacked vulnerability, but I believe that will overlap other classes scepter skills.

scepter 2 is ok, it should be counted as a symbol for traits, but not have any additional effect

scepter 3 is great, but after I use it I generally swap to a primary weapon set as the scepter is left with nothing

No reason to make Shield #4 a clone of a warrior block. We can already do this with Shelter. My big beef is that Aegis has so many linked traits to make them really, really good, but we have no way to gain additional uses of Aegis!

Here’s a freakin’ ingenious plan, make the Shield, the incarnation of the Aegis symbol, GIVE Aegis. Crazy, right? Instead of protection in a cone, make it protection and Aegis in the same radius that a shout has. Now, using a shield gives you access to an actual block, and it gains a ton of versatility based on what your Aegis does.

After Shield #4 gives Aegis, then reduce CD on both Shield abilities by 5s. They’re crazy long now.

Real Talk: A post meant to outline the problems with the Guardian, this one is for the torch. This will hopefully initiate a talk with devs about how to bring balance to the weapons after a year of minor or no changes. I will be guiding the talk with the Q/A mode, and if anyone makes inflammatory remarks we will all vote it down to clear it out. These comments are coming from the idea of wvw since pve mobs don’t move and spvp has hampered the evolution of Guardian with its focus on point defense.

Torch 4: The activation needs to be properly explained in the tooltip for one. Also when you initially cast it, the ability should have a wider area that it burns. 120 is a joke. It needs to be 180-300. Also when you activate torch 4 and throw the fire at someone the target should get direct damage and burning, and anyone around the target that was hit should get 2 seconds of burning. Projectile speed is perfect, I have no idea why scepter 1’s attack isn’t like this.

Torch 5: Needs to apply burning per pulse…I mean you’re literally breathing fire on someone. It should also cure condis on yourself, elementalist water dagger 2 heals the elementalist as well as allies, I don’t see why this doesn’t cure condis on the Guardian as well.

The shield has an aoe knockback and as such in spvp and wvw it will always have a use.

But it’s a one trick pony and often outclassed by the focus which is technically a better shield.
Focus can block attacks and stop incoming damage by utilizing the blind.

It seems extremely lacking coming from every-other-game-in-the-world where a shield provides stat bonuses such as blocking and armor. While in this game it is just another weapon.

Torch 5, self condi cleansing. That’s how you open up dps builds, you give them the tools to be relevant, to exist. Honestly that’s all the torch really needs right there.

Smite absolutely needs to be a symbol. No doubt. It would fix all of the problems the attack has while keeping the same general functionality (a ground-targeted AoE) and give another reliable Symbol build weapon, which would be great since right now Symbols are rather limited. Damage would probably have to be reduced (compared to the “max” damage Smite can do if you get all hits) but the added utility of being a Symbol would make up for that. The only issue is which boon it would give. I guess maybe Might would be the least broken of the current boons that have no associated symbol. 2 or 3 stacks that last 1 second per pulse, perhaps?

Chains of Light, lower the cooldown. A lot. Its a single-target snare on a weapon that encourages you to play at mid-range, it really needs to be usable much more frequently. Also, set the range to 1200. The other attacks on the weapon have 1200 range and it would help you catch up to people at longer range, which again is good because you’re being encouraged to fight at mid-range with Scepter.

If Smite and especially Chains of Light got changed, I think that would be good enough that the AA wouldn’t really need much of a change. It already does very respectable damage.

Is it too greedy to ask for the teleport to work without a target?

Shield does provide extra armor, at least a little bit, even without traits. The skills aren’t bad, but the cool downs are. Lower cool downs by 20% if skills remain unchanged. Or give skill 4 a short daze and skill 5 a blast finisher when activated.

Sword third hit can be quirky, but the glaring issue on the weapon is skill #3. So many good suggestions out there, this skill needs some love/change/rework.

Real Talk: A post meant to outline the problems with the Guardian, this one is for the staff. This will hopefully initiate a talk with devs about how to bring balance to the weapons after a year of minor or no changes. I will be guiding the talk with the Q/A mode, and if anyone makes inflammatory remarks we will all vote it down to clear it out. These comments are coming from the idea of wvw since pve mobs don’t move and spvp has hampered the evolution of Guardian with its focus on point defense.

Staff 1: The ‘zergling prod’. If anyone has a suggestion on how to improve this, please post it. Other classes’ staff 1 attacks are insanely better than what we have…so post away!

Staff 2: Low cooldown, extremely high utility ability. If you need some extra damage on target, don’t detonate the orb and you can throw it again in 2.5 seconds. If you need some extra healing, blow it up for some. Solid ability.

Staff 3: I’m still not sure what to think about this ability with the recent change to how it applies swiftness. But if you stand in it you get quite a bit of swiftness and if you’re already on the move with swiftness you get an extra 4 seconds when it pulses, so theres some give and take with it.

Staff 4: This should be able to cast on the move so that when the battle line changes your heal/might isn’t wasted on nothing because you couldn’t keep up with the fight.

Staff 5: Holy cooldown batman…Please shave off 5 seconds from this.

Mightymealworm.8409:

Shield does provide extra armor, at least a little bit, even without traits.

Oh, you’re right. It’s 61 toughness. My apologies for derailing

Zealot’s Fire is almost fine as-is. Its an insta-cast AoE burn that doubles into a single-target spike (and you can even get both effects if you time it right), and has a very low cooldown to boot (even the cooldown after Zealot’s Flame isn’t too bad). Honestly, I use Torch just for this attack, I really like it. That said, I wouldn’t argue with a little more range on the AoE effect and a boost to 5 targets instead of 3 to really make it a truly great AoE option.

Cleansing Flame needs some help. I’d go a different direction than the typical “just let it self-cleanse” option, though. That doesn’t fix the attack enough. My suggestion would be to make it a cone-shaped fire field with the same range and area as the current attack. 1s cast time, you blow out a blast of fire and it leaves the ground burning for the maybe 5s. Does damage every second to enemies standing in the cone (still doesn’t burn except for proc’ing Justice), cures 1 condition for allies standing in the cone every second. Solves all the problems the attack has. The lowish damage doesn’t matter because you don’t have to channel for the whole duration, you can still use your other attacks and the AoE will just give you some extra damage on top of your normal attacks. The self-condition cleansing isn’t a problem because if you want to cleanse yourself you just step in the field after casting it. And the attack picks up an extra bit of oomph from the fire field.

Scepter is not a bad weapon, it’s just a bad RANGED weapon. The auto attack works well up to range about 300 to 400, and for ranged weapon hits hard. Past that and you miss alot. Scepter 2 has such a short cool down it can be placed down to cover pathways and perches very well. #3 skill is a bit lackluster, though. I am also in love with changing the scepter trait to only 5% damage increase but adding cripple on crit. No more complaining about projectile speed with that.

Staff 2 needs to be fixed so it doesn’t get stuck in terrain, forcing a detonation. Only problem with staff 5 is that they didn’t shave the cool down of the skill when they reduced the duration of the line.

Real Talk: A post meant to outline the problems with the Guardian, this one is for symbols. This will hopefully initiate a talk with devs about how to bring balance to the weapons after a year of minor or no changes. I will be guiding the talk with the Q/A mode, and if anyone makes inflammatory remarks we will all vote it down to clear it out. These comments are coming from the idea of wvw since pve mobs don’t move and spvp has hampered the evolution of Guardian with its focus on point defense.

First we need to discuss the traits. There are currently 5 different traits that improve you symbols spread out over 2 trait lines. These need to be combined. Writ of Exaltation and Persistence need to be combined as either a adept or master trait. Symbolic Power and Exposure need to be combined in the 25 point talent and a new 15 point zeal trait should be created that adds chill to your symbols. This would not only give us some soft CC, but add some much needed customization and utility to symbols.

Electro.4173:

Smite absolutely needs to be a symbol. No doubt. It would fix all of the problems the attack has while keeping the same general functionality (a ground-targeted AoE) and give another reliable Symbol build weapon, which would be great since right now Symbols are rather limited. Damage would probably have to be reduced (compared to the “max” damage Smite can do if you get all hits) but the added utility of being a Symbol would make up for that. The only issue is which boon it would give. I guess maybe Might would be the least broken of the current boons that have no associated symbol. 2 or 3 stacks that last 1 second per pulse, perhaps?

Chains of Light, lower the cooldown. A lot. Its a single-target snare on a weapon that encourages you to play at mid-range, it really needs to be usable much more frequently. Also, set the range to 1200. The other attacks on the weapon have 1200 range and it would help you catch up to people at longer range, which again is good because you’re being encouraged to fight at mid-range with Scepter.

If Smite and especially Chains of Light got changed, I think that would be good enough that the AA wouldn’t really need much of a change. It already does very respectable damage.

I would like to add that +10% damage to Scepters is in the Zeal line, whose minor traits fully and only deal with symbols, while the Scepter itself(or any offhand you combo with it for that matter) does not have any Symbols. Why do i need to invest 20 points in Zeal for Symbols minor traits just to get +10% damage to Scepter trait?

Until I can get this un-merged back to its original form please put #’s in at the start. For hammer put #Hammer, etc. And if you can edit your posts as well, sorry for the inconvenience.

Oh god, the merge killed it.

At least they didn’t move it all to the Fan-generated Content subforum. :-D

Next topic…

Real Talk: Merging Threads

Maladon.5760:

Next topic…

Real Talk: Merging Threads

I’m against ’em!

Heaven forbid there should be well organized community feedback that the devs can evaluate. Honestly, looking through this made me realize just how many of our weapon sets need work.

I spend alot of time on the GW2 builder, and in comparison, the toolkits and moves attached to the Warrior weapons are just so much better. I think our Mace, Hammer and Greatsword are in a decent place, but all of our offhands and all of our other weapons need some tweaking.

Well lets try to keep it going with the hashtags. But GDIT this is ridiculous…

Dynnen.6405:

Well lets try to keep it going with the hashtags. But GDIT this is ridiculous…

This happens all the time. Several other people tried what you did, and it always ends in merging. So just expect that going forward.

In all honesty, you flooded the forum, what did you expect?

Well if there werent so many problems with Guard weapons there wouldn’t be ‘flooding’.

Played with every possible weapon set in pvp, and came to the conclusion that only GS and Staff are well-balanced – dps, cc, cond. cleansing, symbols, support, and mobility. And the new GS trait is beautiful with any build that has moderate to high healing.

kekuso.5837:

Played with every possible weapon set in pvp, and came to the conclusion that only GS and Staff are well-balanced – dps, cc, cond. cleansing, symbols, support, and mobility. And the new GS trait is beautiful with any build that has moderate to high healing.

With 1200 healing power the update to the GS trait now adds 24hp per swing, for a whopping total of 49HPS each time you connect with your weapon. If you divide this by the Greatswords attack time, we can increase it to 59HPS. The healing portion of this is still super lackluster, it’s just now less lackluster.

Ludus Rex.1562:

With 1200 healing power the update to the GS trait now adds 24hp per swing, for a whopping total of 49HPS each time you connect with your weapon. If you divide this by the Greatswords attack time, we can increase it to 59HPS. The healing portion of this is still super lackluster, it’s just now less lackluster.

Yeah a good analogy. It was like dying of AIDS. And now its like dying of AIDS, while winning a 10 dollar raffle.