Guild Wars 2

Was anybody else really excited for this trait? I know I was. The thought of being able to make use of Shattered Aegis and Pure of Heart by blocking an attack with aegis and getting another for free seemed like a wonderful opportunity for some builds and it would’ve fit perfectly in my janky off-tank build. But alas, through some quick testing it seems like we’ve run across the first “to nearby allies” effect that doesn’t include the user and the first grandmaster trait from a selfish perspective that can be paraphrased as “On block, do nothing.” It may still find a home but it feels extremely sub-par because of this, anybody have some thoughts?

My excitement over this patch was destroyed with the boon duration nerf from runes.

In fact, for a guardian, this patch sucks.

Devs explained this a few weeks ago. But yeah, it was one of the only new traits I was excited about too, it just feels neutered without any self benefit.

Powerful trait for small scale group pvp. Its not much of a solo trait.

PS

I don’t think communal defense has a target limit.

I think that the 20s cd is enough to warrant getting it for yourself, the only place that would be concerned would be pvp or WvW group roaming and I don’t see that as crossing the line where on the opposite end of the spectrum, it would be the thing that made it viable for something like solo roaming in WvW, it’s not like we’re talking about chaining a ton of aegis, we’d be giving 1 more person 1 aegis.

And that’s interesting, that would be way too imbalanced but I’ll have to test that.

Also I must have missed whatever talk was going around about Communal Defense from the devs so I’ll look into that unless somebody wants to point me to it.

oh, i thought it was a self application also.

the range (360) is WAY to short for it to be a proper group support.
well, back to battle presence

Can be this trait any sort of useful in instances like per say, ascalon fractal or dredge? 30 Points in Valor though..

It’s good for a zerg of guardians in wvsw, or for spvp, but there’s a problem: You don’t chose what attack you block.
If you see the enemy active a dangerous skill you can active your Virtue and block that attack, but in wvsw there’s too many enemy that attack you from all the sides. And you can’t chose the skill you’re near to block.
It’s a passive trait and it’s hard to use it in a good way. You need to know very well how to play to use a trait like that.

I don’t know where that trait can be good, but that trait reduce the survavibility of the Guardian, the main bunker/supporter of all groups that do pve/spvp/wvsw and that mean that the guardian die more quickly, whitout Altruistic Healing.
I prefer a Guardian that live longer and continue to do it’s work and use shouts to give stability and use empowering might than a guardian that give aegis when struck by a common or a casual attack, losing all the benefits of a “strategic” trait, and die quickly because whitout one of the best healing passive ability of the guardian.

Agreed. And if the trait was better then I might consider running it in some fotm but right now it’s just not good.

So, ways to make this trait into something you might enjoy using/would dare to pick over Altruistic Healing, Monk’s Focus, or Battle Presence?

- Give the user aegis, obvious
- Make the aegis last 6s instead of 5s

- Make the range more than 360, first thought is 600 range like our shouts but it also seems like a bit much

If I got aegis myself and it lasted an extra second, it would be a trait that I would love to try. Extra range would be a nice bonus but you could argue that it might make it too powerful or that it isn’t completely necessary.

The problem is that it competes with both monk’s focus and AH. :S

It’d be pretty nice with a mace/focus, but what build I am lost on.

Some kind of small scale 0/5/30/30/5 build….

It’s a very underwhelming grandmaster trait, goes 30 into a line that competes where a lot of guard builds get sustain from (AH and MF). However the biggest deal breaker is it doesn’t apply to the Guard.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

My excitement over this patch was destroyed with the boon duration nerf from runes.

In fact, for a guardian, this patch sucks.

For my guardian, this patch rocks awesome socks.

But with regards to the topic at hand, I always felt that communal defenses had a better place with traits like Pure of voice and Battle presence and Force of Will has a better place with AH and Monk’s Focus but hey, that’s just me. Anet apparently don’t feel the same.

Well put Silv, that’s the major problem I’m having with it as well. I can’t see myself giving up my own survivability in order to gamble on an aegis for my friends.

I could see myself trying to go through a choke in WvW and being able to put up some extra aegis with it and popping courage in order to push people through without getting cc’d but that seems to be all it’s worth at the cost of our own survivability. A self aegis might just put it in the map to have some uses outside of such a niche example without putting ourselves at such risk. Other than that I guess you just have to have incredible faith in your friends’ ability to burst in pvp or group roaming and that that 1 extra aegis they get (on top of popping courage) will give them enough time.

Alright, now I really gotta test this out, been a little bit busy so I haven’t been able to test Communal Defense in a WvW zerg or large group fight like Teq but I’ve seen another forum post about the number of allies gaining aegis having no limit.

Shattered Aegis + Pure of Heart + no ally limit Communal Defense would be brutal.

Rune of the Monk (6) only applies to other allies too, not the guardian himself. Benevolence sigil does the same thing but is less ambiguous in its description. Thank you for wasting my time and money on these things ANet.

Ya, I decided to do some looking around at other things that only apply to allies and not the user, I think we could use a little fix on consistency. hint hint, torch 5