Guild Wars 2

Hiya.

I love the idea and looks of Sanctuary. It’s so cool !
But in practice, it fails many times. I’m disappointed in this really.

It has a lengthy CD (cooldown) and that’s fine. But when I use it,
I often experience that it’s a total waste. Against the Fire elemental
in Metrica Province it doesn’t block at least 2 of the attacks it can throw at you.
Neither the one where fire skids across the ground, nor where molten
volcanic rock rises from beneath. On top of this, I’ve even experienced
HARPIES, those flying devils with swords, being able to stand up close and still
strike me, while in Sanctuary. Bossess just wade through it too, although THIS
I can better understand. Poison penetrates Sanctuary too and this is just so annoying. Especially given the size of the sanctuary.
I think it would be fair to make some kind of rule such as, if you place sanctuary on an area that already is poisoned, then the poison will be in the sanctuary too. However if you place sanctuary on clear ground, then that doesn’t occur.

I agree. It also makes you look foolish casting only to get killed right after using the skill. I have seen other players run under it thinking they had safety there, only to die fast. It’s embarrassing.

A lot of the skills in the game are this way. I’ve actually stopped buying any more for that very reason. They don’t do what they advertise they do.

That’s what doesn’t seem right in this game, the duration of skills. 5 or 6 seconds is ridiculously short, I don’t really see the point.
Sanctuary is not an awesome dome that shields you from harm, it’s just a stupid block. It doesn’t create a safe haven for your team to retreat into, it just stops one or two attacks… Maybe. Most of the time Sanctuary will disappear before people can even get into it.

That kind of stuff should stay waaaay longuer. Maybe 15 seconds. It just feels ridiculous to block a single attack on a 5 or 10 minutes long boss. It’s the same for every “shield” ability in the game really.

It’s not like in WoW, where your tank’s panic button actually serves durint tight situations. In GW2 there’s no tank and no real heal, your life keeps going back and forth, and as soon as you get aggro you are forced to run away untill someone else gets it, then repeat. It’s kinda kitteny as it is, but it means that unlike WoW where you sometimes have dangerous situations, in GW2 the situation is always the same. As far as I saw, bosses don’t have super attacks once every 2 minutes, they just spam the same few attacks on a small cooldown. So there is no special moment to use your protection skills. You just drop them as soon as it’s up and soak up one or two hits that wouldn’t make a difference.

It would be awesome for Sanctuary to stay for 15 or 20 seconds, so you can actually run to it if you get damaged and regen a little before going back to the boss. It would be awesome for Wall of Reflection to stay 20 seconds, forcing the ennemy to get through it instead of just waiting (well the wall is 10 seconds, which is STARTING to get noticeable, that’s why it’s the only shield I like. Still feels a little too short). You know, create an actual wall that really modifies the battlefield.

I dunno about PvP but it’s all purely defensive. Maybe make it so you can’t attack either through Sanctuary and Walls, so it really becomes a way to temporize the fight (for both sides, so it’s not OP), giving you time to heal and get CDs back.

And I’m not even talking only about terrain spells. Stuff like Chaos Armor, Fire armor etc only last THREE SECONDS, or a CD of 30-40 seconds. WTF? I feel like many, many skills in this game seem useless because you don’t have time to see the effects.

Oh my goodness yes Tim… I can see it before my eyes.

Nyaru, I’m not really THAT fussed about the duration. As I said, it’s more
the fact that Sanctuary… Well, isn’t a sanctuary. That’s what I hate. In fast paced
battles, seconds do matter. Thus I’m okay with the duration. I know some people
would definitely call it extremely imbalanced to have something like sanctuary act
like a true sanctuary, for 15-20 seconds though. However, it’s still interesting what you
said. Especially about wall of reflection. I hope they take a look at sanctuary the most though, as the Wall has 10 sec and is quite good at what it does. Maybe if sanctuary were bigger, so you could at least have SOME chance (maybe) at dodging incoming spells, while being protected from certain projectiles, WHILE healing. The problem is though, that so many poison spells have a HUGE AOE.

Yea, the AoE splash through makes it pretty impractical. I’ve only ever used it on some commune skill challenges when I am feeling lazy.

No surprise there.
I especially HATE when nightmare courties for example, boss
types, just RUN through it…

The LZ.7891:

No surprise there.
I especially HATE when nightmare courties for example, boss
types, just RUN through it…

Anything with stability can run right through it, which bothers me

I didn’t realize that stability was the cause.
That’s just sad! Urgh sanctuary >< … Doesn’t even
heal well.

Another flaw on Sanctuary is the AoE limit on skills, if you are being zerged by mobs and try to use it to make some breath room for you and your team(Ex: AC trap room), only 5 mobs will be pushed away, the rest will be on top of you beating you to death.

My question is why isn’t sanctuary on a 60s cooldown like Shadow Refuge? I just don’t understand why anyone would take Sanctuary when it gets countered so easily by much shorter cooldowns.

On a side note, I wish flamethrowers were a projectile.

There is another topic about Sanctuary… yes… it simply sucks…
Just like Merciful Intervention, Healing Breeze, Orb of Light, Signet of Mercy and Line of Warding (people can dodge it…).

A lot of supportive/healing skills simply are useless, with wrong mechanics, low performances and insane CD.

Why I should use a 120s CD -not so safty- Sanctuary (2h weapon can hit me, area effect can hit me, people are not pushed back), when I can deal 5000 damage every 10s with others skills?
This is GW2.

Anet create some skills like that just for guise… otherwise would not have been an MMORPG, but a Fantasy FPS.

IMO the best thing to do with sanctuary is to lock non-stability type npcs or players against the wall knocking them down over and over again while you are wailing on them. But I gave up sanctuary for JI due to its massive investment for small return.

Pick up the ground targettable consecrations trait. It makes Sanctuary instant cast, and you can use it to quickly protect allies by shaking people off them in a fight, or knock people off a bridge from a distance in WvW. The trait allows you to be much more creative with the spell.

While you guys are whining about Sanctuary being useless I’ll be completely facerolling Giganticus with it.

Remember you can also use sanctuary to bump people off ledges or fort walls, that’s pretty much the only use I make of it ( aside from skill point communing when I was levelling )

Sanctuary is awful for basic PvE, somewhat decent for dungeons, and loads of fun for WvW.

The CD duration doesn’t compensate the effect of the skill.
Result: I don’t use it at all.

Merciful Intervention uses two lines of argument:
The nearest ally.
With the lowest Hit Points.
This results in… what, exactly?

A.net needs to stop being afraid of granting direct heals utility. Most of the high healing utility are lackluster and has a long cooldown/gimmick that makes them not even worth using.

redknight.8036:

A.net needs to stop being afraid of granting direct heals utility. Most of the high healing utility are lackluster and has a long cooldown/gimmick that makes them not even worth using.

This is by design. Arenanet was set on not having any healers in the game, which resulted in everyone having a personal heal and other heals being rather ineffective. This doesn’t matter much if the skill also has a nice other effect (Sanctuary), but on skills like Merciful Intervention, the healing is more or less the main reason to take, so it feels lackluster.

You want to be invincible for the duration?

If the skill isn’t working in the situation you’re trying to use it in, use a different one.

It used to be an elite, Anet moved it to utility and RF to elite and didn’t bother trying to rebalance either. A few patches later RF is more balanced, sanctuary isn’t.

It’s the Anet seal of quality that I’ve come to expect by having been a Necro.

Nyaru.7954:

That’s what doesn’t seem right in this game, the duration of skills. 5 or 6 seconds is ridiculously short, I don’t really see the point.
Sanctuary is not an awesome dome that shields you from harm, it’s just a stupid block. It doesn’t create a safe haven for your team to retreat into, it just stops one or two attacks… Maybe. Most of the time Sanctuary will disappear before people can even get into it.

That kind of stuff should stay waaaay longuer. Maybe 15 seconds. It just feels ridiculous to block a single attack on a 5 or 10 minutes long boss. It’s the same for every “shield” ability in the game really.

It’s not like in WoW, where your tank’s panic button actually serves durint tight situations. In GW2 there’s no tank and no real heal, your life keeps going back and forth, and as soon as you get aggro you are forced to run away untill someone else gets it, then repeat. It’s kinda kitteny as it is, but it means that unlike WoW where you sometimes have dangerous situations, in GW2 the situation is always the same. As far as I saw, bosses don’t have super attacks once every 2 minutes, they just spam the same few attacks on a small cooldown. So there is no special moment to use your protection skills. You just drop them as soon as it’s up and soak up one or two hits that wouldn’t make a difference.

It would be awesome for Sanctuary to stay for 15 or 20 seconds, so you can actually run to it if you get damaged and regen a little before going back to the boss. It would be awesome for Wall of Reflection to stay 20 seconds, forcing the ennemy to get through it instead of just waiting (well the wall is 10 seconds, which is STARTING to get noticeable, that’s why it’s the only shield I like. Still feels a little too short). You know, create an actual wall that really modifies the battlefield.

I dunno about PvP but it’s all purely defensive. Maybe make it so you can’t attack either through Sanctuary and Walls, so it really becomes a way to temporize the fight (for both sides, so it’s not OP), giving you time to heal and get CDs back.

And I’m not even talking only about terrain spells. Stuff like Chaos Armor, Fire armor etc only last THREE SECONDS, or a CD of 30-40 seconds. WTF? I feel like many, many skills in this game seem useless because you don’t have time to see the effects.

I agree sanctuary needs a tweak, but definitely not the duration. A few seconds can make all the difference in this game, that’s what makes it more challenging. You have 5 skills, a heal, 3 utilities and an elite slot. You don’t just mash all the buttons at once and expect to win against a boss fight that takes over 10 minutes. I’m sorry but this game is great the way it is and the way you bring WoW into this is just stupid. If you want this game to be more like WoW then go play it. I’ve played GW1 for over 6 years and I enjoyed both that and GW2 thoroughly. Anet’s very good at balancing issues, listening to players and also keeping us updated on things they acknowledge need to be changed so be patient.

This game doesn’t need to be more like WoW like you are suggesting.

Thanks for the insults.
I’m sure A.net appreciates your treatment of different opinions.

The facts are there, some abilities are lackluster and purely situational.
OP Point: Sanctuary for its long cooldown, provides very little compared to other utilities.
Do you agree Yes / No?

I ask you again.

Do you agree Yes / No?

I do kinda agree Sanctuary isn’t neccesarily worth it very much, compared
to what it used to what you could otherwise get. It’s just a shame for such an
ability! and I can’t believe it might’ve been an elite !