Guild Wars 2

Direct from the Twitch Feed

Traits

• Elite Focus – Now also grants stability when using Tomes ( tooltip shows 13 secs, boon application interval 10 seconds )
• Glacial Heart – ICD reduced to 15 secs, chill reduced to 3 secs (from 4 ), unblockable.

Spirit Weapons – Command Abilities

• Eternal Spirit is renamed to Expeditious Spirit and now reduces cooldowns on Spirit Weapons command abilities ( tooltip: by 20% )
  – Hammer 12 secs
  – Sword 8 secs
  – Bow 16 secs
  – Shield 12 secs
• Spirit Weapons will no longer die when command regardless of traits.
• Hammer of Wisdom’s command ability is now a Blast Finisher
• Sword of Justice’s command ability now applies 5 stacks of vuln to anyone who is struck
• Shield of the Avenger’s command ability now bounces to allies and applies aegis
• Bow of Truth’s command ability is now ground targeted, 1200 range.

Other skills

• Merciful Intervention 180 radius ground targeted teleport to an ally. Will fail to teleport if Ally is not within target area. ( Tooltip indicates heal area is still only 120 radius )
• Renewed Focus is now a meditation and will trigger all meditation related traits (!!!)

Tome of Wrath

• Conflagrate damage increased by 10%
• Judgement cast time reduced by 1.5 seconds

Tome of Courage

• Purifying Ribbon – Now cleanses 2 conditions ( up from 1 ) on each bounce on an Ally

I can’t believe some people are already complaining. These are some very solid buffs all around. I’m very excited to see how these play out come the 9th.

Tarsius.3170:

Direct from the Twitch Feed

Sorry I didn’t note everything down in time, but I’m watching a repeat now and will update

Traits

• Elite Focus – Now grants stability when using Tomes
• Glacial Heart – Recharge reduce to 15 secs, chill reduced to 3 secs (from 4

Spirit Weapons

• Eternal Spirit is renamed to Expoditious Spirit and now reduces cooldowns on Spirit * Weapons
• Spirit Weapons will no longer die when command regardless of traits.
• Hammer of Wisdom’s command ability is now a Blast Finisher
• Sword of Justice – I missed what changed.
• Shield Avenger bounces to allies and applies allies
• Bow of Truth is now ground targetted.

Other skills

• Merciful Intervention 180 radius ground targetted shadow step to ally ( will fail to teleport if Ally is not within target area )
• Cooldowns on some tome skills have been reduced ( didn’t catch which skills or by how much )

Sword of justice applies 5 stack of vulnaribility.
Tome of Wrath #1 10% bonus damage #5 decrease cast time.
Tome of Courage #2 removes 2 conditions now.
Renew Focus is now a meditation.

Sword of justice applies 5 stacks of vulnerability to all targets with its active.

Shield of the Avenger applies aegis (you missed writing aegis there)

Bow of Truth also has 1200 range on the active

Renewed Focus is now classified as a meditation

Tome of Wrath’s conflagration (#1) does 10% more damage, judgement has lower cast time (forgot by how much)

Tome of Courage’s purifying ribbon now heals 2 conditions instead of 1

Can’t remember if they said you had to be traited with elite focus to get the cooldown reductions on the tome skills or not, I’m guessing not.

thanks folks – rewatched it now and i think I got most of the key points down

Awesome changes overall. kitten Finally some Guardian love. took 2 years to do so but boy

Idk if Sipirit Weapon builds will become a thing yet, they are kinda weird as goes for trait placement, but they will be more useful now

Medi Guard more viable for PvP finally. Hope this finish some racism vs medi Guard at least in EU I still get it from time to time

Solid buffs.

I like how they made spirit weapons more active…even though I really don’t want to see more minion-type builds in PvP.

Still would like to see that Litany of Wrath gets no cast-time at least in PvE. The skill is basically worthless now, at least make it more useful in PvE where having no cast-time won’t harm anyone.

Increasing Focused Mind to last slightly longer 7-8 seconds in PvE would also help Guards in PUGs somewhat when there’s no Warrior in the party.

Tarsius.3170:

• Eternal Spirit is renamed to Expeditious Spirit and now reduces cooldowns on Spirit Weapons

Might want to clarify that this is the attacks of the spirit weapons that are faster, as there’s already a trait that reduces spirit weapon cooldowns (that is, for summoning the weapons). I can’t recall if this only meant the activated abilities or also the weapon’s auto-attacks.

Tarsius.3170:

• Sword of Justice – Applies 5 stacks of vuln to anyone who is struck

May want to specify that this applies only to the active ability, not the sword’s auto-attacks.

Yes. Very solid buffs, especially considering I have mained medis for over a year now and used to enjoy spirit weapons. Renewed Focus being a meditation makes me incredibly pleased.

so.. merficul intervention is useless now. 120 radius is small as … to land in an emergency situation on moving allys

I was hoping to see a few more balances. In particular, torch is still in desperate need of a buff, yet two years down the line, Anet still blatantly neglects it. Then again, torch needs a buff on other classes as well, not just guards.

As a medi guard though, I do indeed have something to be happy about, so it’s decent progress.

SilkySmooth.1574:

so.. merficul intervention is useless now. 120 radius is small as … to land in an emergency situation on moving allys

It’s a 180 radius, but yes it’s not that big. I think it’s a fair tradeoff for the added benefits of being able to choose who to heal though. I believe it also heals in the area, although I’d have to watch the video again.

Besides, it’s current iteration can still be detrimental if it ports you into a more dangerous spot during the same emergency situation. You have no control over it currently, so it can still end up screwing you.

You can just double tap it on the floor to get an immediate heal if you need it anyways, you just won’t get the blink.

SilkySmooth.1574:

so.. merficul intervention is useless now. 120 radius is small as … to land in an emergency situation on moving allys

It was always 120 radius for the heal, (and 180 is the radius of the targeting circle for anyone wondering ). At least now we can actually choose where it delivers us, which is pretty useful. I wonder if ambients will count?

I definitely agree on torch and shield, but the medi buffs are quite fair to me, and something we’ve needed for a while. I’ll have to change my fighting style against other meditation guards to keep up with the new changes, however, it’ll be quite the improvement when it comes to dueling other classes and in group fights.

And yeah. Sword/Focus GS guard with both JI and MI, can escape using ambients and tower walls. I really hope MI cannot target tower walls/gates but considering it does now… idk.

Tarsius.3170:

SilkySmooth.1574:

so.. merficul intervention is useless now. 120 radius is small as … to land in an emergency situation on moving allys

It was always 120 radius for the heal, but 180 radius targetting circle, and now we can actually choose where it delivers us, which is pretty useful. I wonder if ambients will count?

I would think not as they aren’t considered allies. At least I hope it doesn’t, since the last thing we need is mobs and critters causing more grief in the borderlands.

Changes sound pretty solid.

Yamsandjams.3267:

Tarsius.3170:

• Eternal Spirit is renamed to Expeditious Spirit and now reduces cooldowns on Spirit Weapons

Might want to clarify that this is the attacks of the spirit weapons that are faster, as there’s already a trait that reduces spirit weapon cooldowns (that is, for summoning the weapons). I can’t recall if this only meant the activated abilities or also the weapon’s auto-attacks.

Tarsius.3170:

• Sword of Justice – Applies 5 stacks of vuln to anyone who is struck

May want to specify that this applies only to the active ability, not the sword’s auto-attacks.

Activated skills of SP and the same for SoJ.

I’m definitely looking forward to testing these changes – medi guard is looking very strong ( renewed focus! ) and stability on tomes is very welcome.

med guard got some huge love
more pvp and wvw med power guard will flourish (might push warrior aside?! )

Oh wow, I’m pretty stoked about this patch! I haven’t been like that in a loooooooong time!

I currently main Medi’s, and use Spirit Weapons (for funnzies). Looks like now there’s some good reasons to actually use SW besides the fun factor. And having an RF as a Medi skill is icing on the cake.

The tomes fixing is nice, but I was hoping more for a shorter CD, and nerf of skills for balancing, but that’s just me. This is a good change too.

IMO, granting stability with tomes should come inherent with the skill, or move Elite Focus down to adept. I just can’t imagine taking it over the other stuff.

Glacial Heart is okay, I’m not sure how that’s gonna turn out.

Renewed Focus being a meditation is very amusing. That middle valor slot for AH builds can be used to take meditation mastery, and of course is a natural boon for medi builds.

I don’t know how spirit weapons will fit, but it’s worth a try.

Harbinger.8637:

I can’t believe some people are already complaining. These are some very solid buffs all around. I’m very excited to see how these play out come the 9th.

I’m not complaining about the changes that were done, they are fairly nice.

I just think there was allot more that could have been done.

As I said in another thread
Guardians still have 18+ (give or take) traits that are very under powered or just plain useless, 6 (give or take) utility skills which nobody will ever want to use & 8 (give or take) weapon skills which could use improvements so that they work better for the role they want them to fill & or are more user friendly.

So the changes that did happen are nice, just there is allot more they could do.

messiah.1908:

med guard got some huge love
more pvp and wvw med power guard will flourish (might push warrior aside?! )

Doubtful.

Guardian lacks one of the key things needed for a melee class in pvp.

That being enough cripples/chills/immobilizes to keep the enemy in range.

Meditation guardian also can’t pump out the raw burst that a warrior can or stun as often.
So it’s fairly safe to say warriors spot in pvp melee is safe from us.

Don’t get me wrong, its alright to have a guardian on your team for condition removal. But you won’t see them replace warriors for pvp melee.

Heck guardian still won’t be able to bunker in pvp like ele, warrior & engineer can either. So we also have that problem.

We didn’t get everything we wanted, and I’m pretty sure I won’t be using any other spirit weapons beside shield, but I’m happy

Really liking it for my med guard, but disappointed we aren’t seeing anything about our bad ranged combat, and the hammer gets dodged too easily and stuff like that.

I see a lot of people going crazy and over exaggerating the changes, saying dps guards are going to be op.

Here is my take on the changes, for what it’s worth.

Elite focus

• Stability will allow players to activate the 5 skill on both tomes, the tomes themselves are still underplayed – Ineffective change

Tome of Wrath

• More damage, faster cooldown, they are begging for us to use these tomes…but see below on renewed focus change – ineffective

Tome of Courage

• Better cleansing, but cleansing is not why people picked up this tome, elite focus change will help players get the group full heal off though. Niche change and ineffective, again see renewed focus change below

Glacial Heart

• More frequent soft CC is a good thing, 15 seconds sounds like a solid middle ground and the devs are listening, hammer is highly under utilized except in wvw, and has problems with gap closing anyway probably best in zerg play – Nice but ineffective change

Spirit Weapons

• Reducing the auto attack cooldown by trait will provide more burst for spirit weapon users, but the spirit weapons will still be prone to easy death and unpredictable with movement patterns
• Providing blast finisher on hammer is interesting, but hard to control and monitor when it is in a combo field or not, and will miss probably more times than naught
• Sword of Justice vulnerability is interesting and will help increase percent damage done by not just the spirit weapon but the guardian and any surrounding allies
• Aegis on shield activate is welcome, but wont see much play
• Ground target bow activate should have been in game since launch
• Bottom line, some quality of life changes, but spirit weapon builds are still limited by utility slots being taken up and heavy investment in traits. They tend to be weaker in the long run due to the above reasons, and only effective in bursts of cooldowns then totally ineffective till spirit weapons are back – Ineffective change, but nice that they are testing new things

Merciful Intervention

• Thank you for trying to provide more mobility and control, something we guards have been asking for with this skill since launch, limit of ally in field is a catch 22, but it may help while grouped. Pointless solo. – Possibly good group escape ability….

Renewed Focus

• People are freaking out about this providing fury, I just want to remind people that the fury will last about 4 seconds, with 2 of those being the channel of renewed focus in the first place, thus 2 seconds of fury (1 maybe 2 hits), not a dps increase.
• Biggest plus on this change is providing a cooldown reduction on the skill, thus further ingraining the ability is a mandatory for all guards and further pushing tomes out of play (redacting any changes they had above). Also this is an easily accessible trait to pick up in valor 1, so any guard can get this if they want.
• Good survival change for all guards, will make bunkers even stronger, not as much help for dps, but nice.

TLDR – Renewed Focus and Glacial Heart are the only real changes we may see, and RF mostly helps bunkers even further bunk. Good try, thanks for more than just tooltip updates, although not revolutionary to the guard class as a whole in the long run I don’t think.

CMF…very good assessment. I for one am happy with the Renewed Focus being a med. However, even though spirit weapons and tomes were buffed, I still don’t see myself using them except maybe if I use a spirit weapon in one of my utility slots since Renewed Focus is a med now.

As I stated in another post, I really wish they would have done something with the QOL issues concerning the hammer, mace, sword, and scepter.

I realize many of you believe we should be happy with what we got, but when you wait for months upon months for changes, its difficult to not get your hopes up.

To be honest now tomes are really viable in wvw. As of moment guardians with tomes are easy targets of CCs so that real tome usage time was less than 10 seconds. After the patch guardians will have some choices. I personally welcome every change except for spirit weapons. Oh and love the 15 sec on glacial heart. I can finally now use hammer as a guard instead of switching it to warrior

Some nice changes, but I was hoping for some stability with Tomes without a trait and something to increase the life expectancy of spirit weapons.

I am not really sure these people play guardian as they seem to ignore the real fundamental issues.

Relentliss.2170:

Some nice changes, but I was hoping for some stability with Tomes without a trait and something to increase the life expectancy of spirit weapons.

I am not really sure these people play guardian as they seem to ignore the real fundamental issues.

I really wish they did something for Spirit weapon survability, when I dodge, my spirit weapon should dodge/avoid damage. They have something like 15k HP at level 80, might be ok for PvP but in PvE, that often a 1-2 shot.

Huge buffs for medi guards?

Really?

Are we reading the same notes???

decent changes……really happy with RF changes….MI, Glacial heart, spirit bow/sword might be fun to play with.

overall, this would be AWESOME, if it came every 2 months instead of 6.

glacial heart is still kitten

make it 10icd, 100%chance,chill 2-3seconds,aoe,unblockable

Zackie.8923:

glacial heart is still kitten

make it 10icd, 100%chance,chill 2-3seconds,aoe,unblockable

Or better yet, just make it not require the slowest weapon we have so that we could actually make USE of it.

I really like what they did for Medi guard with Renewed focus, though a large influx will appear that also means new and bad bad medi guardians will appear all over the place. Easy food for anyone that knows the combos as well as smart in their play ;3

No credits for me? ;(

I’m happy with the SW change tho.

Not disappointed with the changes but they really didn’t make tomes useful they really need to last longer to be more useful.

Happyangrycatfish.1725:

Not disappointed with the changes but they really didn’t make tomes useful they really need to last longer to be more useful.

Not useful? In WvW the full heal will make a huge impact.

Lets put it this way, if I had a choice of any of the current Elites and slotting another basic skill like a second Stand Your Ground I would slot the basic skill. Compare this to Signet of Rage or Banner Rez and you get my drift. Elites…lol…pretty sad when you have to slot a trait to make them worthwhile or even work.

These changes aren’t bad, but they also don’t address of other issues.

• Tomes having Stability should have been baseline from the start. The skills are useless if you don’t have Stability. It’s good that we can now trait it, but it really should have been like that from the beginning.
• The Glacial Heart change is also necessary, but remains unreliable. Guardians need a way to keep people in melee range and this isn’t enough.
• Spirit Weapon changes are okay, I guess. They should be more useful, but still have some of the problems they always had. AI-driven stuff is always gonna be sorta unreliable. I mean, how often is the Hammer’s Blast finisher going to land when you want?
• The Merciful Intervention chance is a creative way to get around the issues involved in it. I’m afraid it might be hard to land in frantic battles, but it’s better than what we currently have.
• Renewed Focus being a Meditation is an interesting change and should be welcome for Medi Guardians. The Fury doesn’t matter too much, but the other traits should be useful. But by making Renewed Focus even better, the Tome changes are a bit more useless by comparison.

These changes aren’t awful, but doesn’t fundamentally change the Guardian in any way. Not having access to ways to keep our enemies close will continue to drag us down.

I don’t know if this was an undocumented nerf or if Bow of Truth scales now or something, but its active was only healing something like 86 health per tick, and the wiki states that it currently heals 96 health per tick.

I run a triple med guard in spvp so I love the Renewed Focus change, but IMO it’s only problem is that will buff builds that are already strong. The culprit being easy access to Meditation Mastery.

I would change this trait from an Adept trait to a Master trait, easily done by swapping place with Focused Mind. So Focus Mind becomes Adept trait and Meditation Mastery a master trait.

This change wont impact in any way a triple med dps guard since we are already going 6 points in Valor, but it will stop some bunker builds from being even stronger than they already are and generating a “shave” that will affect triple med guards in the long run.

I said this in Dulfy’s page, but probly more direct to say it again here. The improvements for the shield and bow are a good start. As for the sword and hammer, they fail to see that the primary reason you dont see them much in play in pve and wvw is that those weapons are melee and they will MELT in 2 second in the sea of AOE and champion’s wrath. I do not see myself using those 2 anytime soon,even after that buff. The hammer is more of annoying than being useful to you and the party more or less because of its third hit in the chain. The launch of the third hit should be changed to KnockDown. The fact that recharge only starts after the weapons dissipate make people think twice about carrying it in battle, that’s way too much down time for what they do (maybe except the powerful shield) and how long they survive. I do like the change to Renew Focus.

Haha I remember those times when tomes were stationary! We had stability then but you were gutted anyways cause you couldn’t move at all.

Best thing about the guard changes are the hammer, RF and SW becoming somewhat useful for small group play.

Heh nothing changed really. Why, u ask?
1. Anet buffs other classes damage both sustain burst and condi (ranger, mesmer). These classes usually stand at 1200-1500 range and pewpew us slowly down with both power and condi dmg all while we struggle to reach them/find them.
2. Anet buffs guardian sustain a little bit. Point 1 kind of makes this point 2 pretty bland.
This would be a nice buff if other classes were left as they were so u notice our improvement but i don’t think we will notice a danm thing since it all evens out to close to same as it was before if not worse when u think of all the extra burst and condi spam we will feel.

Hurry up Trion pls