Guild Wars 2

Hello peeps,

I don’t usually go on the Guardian forums and I’m not sure if this idea has been thrown around or not… but what would people think if the Resistance boon was added to Save Yourself?

There was an obvious power creep across the board and certain skills haven’t been buffed to keep up – for example Save Yourself. It’s supposed to give you a bunch of boons to make you more survivable as you grab condis from your allies, but this skill hasn’t really kept up with the power creep, in my opinion. Thieves got resistance added to their Mesmer steal so now when they use the Mesmer steal, they get every boon + resistance. I think Save Yourself deserves the same treatment/buff. It would be much better with 2-4 sec resistance built into it so that you don’t instadie when you pick up condis from allies and gives you a bit of time to figure out what you’ll do with 1000 bleeds on you. It also makes it a better overall stun-break because you can break a stun and automatically be immune to any immobilize that was on you so you can actually escape. It would also protect you from immobilize that you could pick up from an ally too, not to mention temporary protection from a potential condi bomb.

Thoughts?

The idea of Save yourself was to use it while standing next to a necro for the condi mobility, or to use it with contemplation of purity, cleaning your party from condis and becoming the ultimate buff.
The problem is that Anet never solved the problem on the boon stacks after converting the condis. Example if you somehow swalloed 25+ stacks of bleeding from your party and used contemplation of purity you would only get 5 secs of regen (broken). So you don’t become the ultimate buff, you just increase the boon duration from save yourself by 5-10 secs (OMG SUPER OP, DH NEEDS A NERF!).
Leaving that aside and considering that contemplation of purity has a high cooldown due to it being a stunbreaker, the adittion of resistance could be a nice idea. However you should never use Save Yourself unless you can cleanse yourself off, so I don’t see a point in adding resistance to it.

I think wasting two stunbreaks just so you could effectively cleanse your allies is really… not good. Essentially, you waste 1 stun break, then you waste another stunbreak so you convert all the condis into boons so you don’t die. If you don’t have another stun break on top of those 2, that’s gg. They may have had that combo in mind at the start of the game a few years ago, but the game changed A LOT. Also, I think the boons are on Save Yourselves because you get condis from your allies (you get cripple, vuln, bleed/poison, weakness) but in turn get swiftness, protection, regen, vigor so it balances out. The problem is that before HoT, Save Yourselves rarely resulted in you melting to the ground. After HoT, if the enemies have 2 condi people, it’s a huge risk to use the skill.

If you run a support guard with 3 shouts as your utilities, there will always be a situation where you have to use Save Yourselves either to break a stun so you don’t die, or to save an ally, and you don’t always have condi cleanse ready. Also, it seems silly to me that you need to use at least 1 extra skill JUST so you can use Save Yourselves. Sure, complete cleansing of allies is really strong but the downside is too big – die or have to use F2 or another utility just so you can cleanse yourself.

Resistance would at least give you some wiggle room and imo, more sustain to support guardian. Maybe I’m wrong and just need to do a bit more DH support to get used to the cleansing synergy (like using F2 only when using Save Yourselves), dunno, but the skill feels a lot more suicidal in HoT. I guess Fragments of Faith with Pure of Heart and Hunter’s Fortification works too.

Just adding 5 seconds of resistance would make this skill good again. In PvP and small group action you can probably get away with pulling a couple players condis to yourself. In WvW it should be renamed Kill Yourself with all the condis in the game rn. Especially things like venom shares. I moved over to CoP in WvW a couple months back due to just how prolific condi spam has become.

5 seconds of resistance + boon duration would also bring some play/counterplay, the long duration condis would be still ticking after 5 seconds and then you would have to make the decision to use more condi clear or ride them out. But it gives you an initial buffer where you are immune.

Considering the large burn bursts in the game, Resistance would be a nice addition. but this addition isn’t the reason why Bunk Guards are not meta. It’s just 1 of numerous changes that Guardians could use.

Shouts were initial designed to use the boon duration from the inital class concept , with so many boosts to other classes and boon duration removed from game to be spreded into trinket stats, it killed the guardian even more, since we cant play the right stats where the class atributes need strong numbers in pair with the inital boon duration.

Guardian was designed to be strongly deppendent from boons, now it needs a few tweaks to be in pain with other classes.

Some classes on bunker specs do very good damage, while guardian dont have survuabiity nor damage, and still lacks group support, a class that sacrifices that much and cant feel any role beside DH medi trapper killing bad players….. it is not in good spot and it is far from that…

Yep.

It should be a bit more than just “kill yourself”

MethaneGas.8357:

…It would be much better with 2-4 sec resistance built into it so that you don’t instadie when you pick up condis from allies and gives you a bit of time to figure out what you’ll do with 1000 bleeds on you. It also makes it a better overall stun-break because you can break a stun and automatically be immune to any immobilize that was on you so you can actually escape. …

What you describe here isn’t really the purpose of SY. There are other skills or traits which achieve what you’re looking for. But I do agree that Shouts could need a buff.

If I could redesign or change some of them:

Save Yourselves

• Boons stay the same
• Boons scale based on affected allies (e.g. 5 stacks Might per affacted ally, cap 5, other boons last 3s per affected ally)
• Stunbreak also affects allies
• Gain a unique buff for 1s per affected ally. If you take lethal damage within this period, you are healed for x instead of dying (s. A.E.D. or Rebound).
• Limiting the duration of the boons and buff by nearby allies keeps it from being too strong solo.
• Might need a slightly increased cooldown.

Retreat

• Boons stay the same
• Removes movement impairing effects from nearby allies by default (e.g. Cripple)

Hold the Line

• Now also grants x seconds of Resistance

Xaylin.1860:

Save Yourselves

• Boons stay the same
• Boons scale based on affected allies (e.g. 5 stacks Might per affacted ally, cap 5, other boons last 3s per affected ally)
• Stunbreak also affects allies
• Gain a unique buff for 1s per affected ally. If you take lethal damage within this period, you are healed for x instead of dying (s. A.E.D. or Rebound).
• Limiting the duration of the boons and buff by nearby allies keeps it from being too strong solo.
• Might need a slightly increased cooldown.

Wait what, did you think about this before posting? Thats making it worse, much worse. I dont think it needs to be made worse, all those ESL players out there rocking shout Guardians.

Boons scale based on allies? So let me get this right, if i was solo I would take all condis from nearby allies and give them to me, which is 0 condis as im solo.

I would get 3 seconds of all the current boons i get at 10 seconds because it is only affecting 1 person, me(because im solo). And id get a 1 second boon that if i die within that 1 second I get an AED or rebound? Who is waiting around until they are at 1% health to fire this skill off? I guess when alls ur getting from it is 3 seconds of boons it’s probably worthwhile lel.

And you want to increase the cooldown as well?

wait there are guardians on ESL? lol, no wonder those team dont reach finals? >o:)

we actually dont need that much of a change into boons but more small tweaks to other things, at least we need 2 or 3 changes in some traits or class itself.

Here is a few ideas, not ment i would love to see them all implemented :P :

-Guardian do need a bit boon % outside staff.

-Symbols heal and larger would be fin and nice to be vanilla, on some weapons, example, mace guardian is very short range combat due being slow symbol would help alot.

-Guardian need boons a bit stronge, if no boon duration is present.

-Guardian Sword and mace need traits and some skills revised.
Sword, remove the static cast from sword 3 at least, increase the AA swing speed a bit.
Mace trait needs to give 250 healing power and goto to 500, also effect needs to last a bit longer, i hate when it vanishes and im still on midle of a fight…

-Guardian consecration like sanctuary needs to be changed,CD and bigger dome or add resistance.

-Guardian SW need the trait on zeal to be vanilla, no trait for SW, and SW moving speed needs to be increased to actually hit something, andproabably make them a bit more sturdy or with more stronger effect.

-Guard needs a more HP on core class, the trait is really awfull, since healing power poorly works on the class.

-Staff skills need some tweaks, like staff 5 CD, and some effect/boon for the party.

If some of these were introduced to guard i would not mind to call it balanced, at least the health pool, SW, and simbols change, simbols imo need to be strong w/o trait burn.

The issue will still stay, some classes on sturdy stats still hit alot on bunker guard and bunker guard is a wet noodle, offering almost nothing to the team, the trade off with the actual game balance is the problem guardian sacrifices to much to a low gain, and imo is where guardian stayed behind.

Chorazin.4107:

Wait what, did you think about this before posting? Thats making it worse, much worse. I dont think it needs to be made worse, all those ESL players out there rocking shout Guardians.

Boons scale based on allies? So let me get this right, if i was solo I would take all condis from nearby allies and give them to me, which is 0 condis as im solo.

I didn’t make it worse. I increased its viablity in a group situation and for the case to save your allies (and not yourself…) where it is supposed to be strong. There are other skills for solo use.

If that’s not your cup of tea, no problem. But it certainly is more interesting than it is now. The only reason you wouldn’t like it if you abused the skill for boons (which – conceptually – it isn’t supposed to be used for). Note: It would work the same for AH as the current version since you’d always affect at least yourself. So that can’t be an argument.

The A.E.D part you got totally wrong. It is about buying time for your allies.

Xaylin.1860:

Chorazin.4107:

Wait what, did you think about this before posting? Thats making it worse, much worse. I dont think it needs to be made worse, all those ESL players out there rocking shout Guardians.

Boons scale based on allies? So let me get this right, if i was solo I would take all condis from nearby allies and give them to me, which is 0 condis as im solo.

I didn’t make it worse. I increased its viablity in a group situation and for the case to save your allies (and not yourself…) where it is supposed to be strong. There are other skills for solo use.
.

I think with the proposed change to the boons, it still wouldn’t remove the part where you instantly melt to condis. For example.. I’ve had moments where I fought 1-2 Necros and they do Soul Spiral (AoE 11 poison stacks). I used Save Yourself to cleanse my allies but instead, I got like 30 poison on me and died in 2 secs before I even knew what happened. The idea was to cleanse 2 condis from allies (the poison and whatever else) but instead, the Necro’s cover condis got cleansed and I picked up the massive poison. I’m not against cover condis because that’s a big part of how some condi builds manage to deal damage, but picking up 30 poison or 20 bleeds makes eyes water with tears :P

I do like the ideas mentioned of making symbols just flat our larger (to match what they’ve done with Necro marks) and possibly make them heal allies just as a passive without requiring a trait. Good suggestions but Save Yourselves would still be Kill Yourself.

I like Save Yourselves when solo in open world pve but for anything else its just suicide… It needs to be reworked.

MethaneGas.8357:

I think with the proposed change to the boons, it still wouldn’t remove the part where you instantly melt to condis. For example.. I’ve had moments where I fought 1-2 Necros and they do Soul Spiral (AoE 11 poison stacks). I used Save Yourself to cleanse my allies but instead, I got like 30 poison on me and died in 2 secs before I even knew what happened.

Well… that’s its nature? It isn’t supposed to ensure your survival. It takes away a huge amount of conditions from your whole group while on the move without a casttime. It has to come with a trade-off. But I did suggest the A.E.D-like effect to give you slightly larger window to react if you’ve gained too many conditions.

I’d rather see the group support aspect buffed to make it interesting in certain situations rather than causing a power creep, overbuffing it and making everything else useless. Because – let’s be honest – nobody would use Meditations or Consecreations – if Save Yourselves was as good for yourself as for your party.

MethaneGas.8357:

I do like the ideas mentioned of making symbols just flat our larger (to match what they’ve done with Necro marks) and possibly make them heal allies just as a passive without requiring a trait. Good suggestions but Save Yourselves would still be Kill Yourself.

I think increasing the default radius of Symbols would be fine. But I wouldn’t add any new innate characteristics. However, what ANet could do is frontloading certain effects. For example, causing the larger part of the damage on casting the Symbol instead through ticks. For boons it’s not that easy. Swiftness should certainly be frontloaded as well. But I don’t see this being reasonable for Protection.

That aside, I still really would like to see 1 Symbol per (MH) weapon due to consistency reasons. Right now, it just doesn’t make much sense.

Reminder that SYS was from a time where poison and burning stacked duration but not intensity, and confusion didn’t also do flat damage per tick without proc (whittling down instead of condi burst being a thing).

Agreed on the symbol per mainhand.

King Cephalopod.7942:

Reminder that SYS was from a time where poison and burning stacked duration but not intensity, and confusion didn’t also do flat damage per tick without proc (whittling down instead of condi burst being a thing).

You mean back when Glamour Mesmers could stack such an amount of Confusion that using SYS would have killed the Guardian as soon as he pressed one more button?

Yes, it got more dangerous to use. But that doesn’t mean the idea behind it needs to change. Adding Resistance to it would defy the whole concept of the skill. Plus, I feel that Hold the Line is the more suitable Shout for Resistance and it could really need some help to become more attractive.

hold the line is a weak shout, while retaliation is useless, stan your ground is much better just due stability than hold the line with prot and regen :\

HtG needs a small buff or buff change.

Xaylin.1860:

Yes, it got more dangerous to use.

In the current condi meta that is WvW by more dangerous you mean suicidal. If you take SY in it’s current format you have to use it either in conjunction with RF or CoP. Firing SY whilst you have RF running is a total group condi clear and as you are invuln no condis will be applied to you. Your other option of course is CoP, pull them all in and convert them all to boons straight away.

Stand alone it’s just not worthwhile to have with all the venom shares out there and how powerful condi bombs have become. 5 seconds of resistance would fix that, would make SY a powerful condi clear for your group. Rather than the certain death it is in large scale WvW conflicts.

The balance will come from PvP however, SY is still probably useful in this format, you arnt pulling condis that have been applied by a zerg to 5 ppl to yourself. More likely pulling condis from 1 or 2 ppl. And in this scenario the ability probably works fine.