Guild Wars 2

Torch

Zealot’s Flame. In addition to it’s current effects, it now provides 10 seconds of swiftness on cast. CD increased to 25s.

Cleansing Flame. Conditions are now also cleansed from the guardian casting the skill. It now cleanses up to 5 conditions total, 1 on cast and 1 each second afterwards. CD increased to 25s.

Sword

Flashing Blade Changed funtionality and updated description to: Teleport forwards, striking and blinding nearby foes. It no longer needs a target to perform a 600 range teleport, similar to Mesmer’s Staff Phase Retreat skill.

Pros of these changes:

Relieve some of the pressure on having to carry a Staff and/or Greatsword for mobility and/or swiftness.

You no longer feel as pressured to take Pure of Voice+Soldier Runes and/or Absolute Resolution for condition removal.

All of this definetly opens up new build possibilities.

Thoughts?

Those cds are way too long. We spend too much time auto attacking as it is.

^it’s to balance the Swiftness uptime and to not overdo the self condi removal, it would be 20s with the Radiant Fire trait anyways. Also, one is a channel skill and the other a single target burst skill, with a brief CD increase like this, it doesn’t interfere much in your already high autoattack uptime, and it adds that much needed utility to the Guardian him/herself (without having to always take either Staff and/or Greatword).

Great ideas.

I like your suggestion with Cleansing Flame, but I think it should only remove conditions from the caster. 1) We have enough allied condition removal, more may be too much. 2) Targeting these types of skills on allies is a PITA (think Healing Breeze).

Flashing Blade I like your idea about Flashing Blade, but only if it continues to act the way it does now when it has a target. I don’t want it to just blinks us forward 600, when we have a target selected.

I’m almost always running Greatsword or Hammer, Staff, and Pure of Voice in WvW for the reasons stated. I’ve tried every build out there and while some are viable (and a lot more fun), this setup is just the most reliable in any given situation.

They need to do something for sure. When almost every decent build has 30 in Valor, something needs to be changed.

I don’t think the increased cooldowns are necessary, but good ideas.

Kasei.8726:

Great ideas.

I like your suggestion with Cleansing Flame, but I think it should only remove conditions from the caster. 1) We have enough allied condition removal, more may be too much. 2) Targeting these types of skills on allies is a PITA (think Healing Breeze).

Flashing Blade I like your idea about Flashing Blade, but only if it continues to act the way it does now when it has a target. I don’t want it to just blinks us forward 600, when we have a target selected.

I’m almost always running Greatsword or Hammer, Staff, and Pure of Voice in WvW for the reasons stated. I’ve tried every build out there and while some are viable (and a lot more fun), this setup is just the most reliable in any given situation.

They need to do something for sure. When almost every decent build has 30 in Valor, something needs to be changed.

I don’t think this is ever going to change unfortunately. I don’t think they could do anything to any trait line to make it more effective than 30 into valor for AH without making the profession completely unbalanced.

Kasei.8726:

Great ideas.

I like your suggestion with Cleansing Flame, but I think it should only remove conditions from the caster. 1) We have enough allied condition removal, more may be too much. 2) Targeting these types of skills on allies is a PITA (think Healing Breeze).

Flashing Blade I like your idea about Flashing Blade, but only if it continues to act the way it does now when it has a target. I don’t want it to just blinks us forward 600, when we have a target selected.

I’m almost always running Greatsword or Hammer, Staff, and Pure of Voice in WvW for the reasons stated. I’ve tried every build out there and while some are viable (and a lot more fun), this setup is just the most reliable in any given situation.

They need to do something for sure. When almost every decent build has 30 in Valor, something needs to be changed.

Yeah, of course, Flashing Blade would work just like it does now with a target selected.

Also, I think Cleansing Flame should still cleanse conditions from allies too (it already does just that!), I think a Guardian should never lose his/her support regardless of spec or weapon chosen.

timidobserver.7925:

I don’t think this is ever going to change unfortunately. I don’t think they could do anything to any trait line to make it more effective than 30 into valor for AH without making the profession completely unbalanced.

I proposed these changes with several builds in mind. Imagine that with 50% swifness uptime (with traited Torch) and an out of combat movement skill (new Flashing Blade), you shouldn’t need to spec into shouts (retreat, save yourselves), or use greatsword (leap of faith) or staff (symbol of swiftness), and now with more condition cleansing on weapon skills (new Cleansing Flame) you no longer need Pure of Voice or Absolute Resolution or even Meditations (or Purity). You can now “freely” spec into (finally) signets and feel viable spamming blinds while applying several stacks of vulnerability and setting up your bursts with a 4s immobilize with SIgnet of Wrath.

All of a sudden underplayed and underpowered specs like these would gain viability: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQRArd8flYgKCnEyKEfIFSuArHEEAhQVPwn6xDxFA-TwAgyCqIKSBmDMTRywshNKZVyWgpAA (+70% burn duration for 2 second burn duration on VoJ passive, change signets and amulet if desirable).

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQRArd8flYgKCnESIEfYFRuArHE0gFsSR80HugrCOE-TwAA1CnIwRhjDHDOScs4MEZJymgJBA (signet build with over the top condi cleanse, with 3 condis cleared every 10 secs, 1 or 2 with focus, 5 with torch and 1 with each signet used, along with great damage and pretty decent vit and toughness; you could even take 10 from Valor and put them into honor to get Selfless Daring and change Sigils of Battle for Sigils of Energy).

I could go on and on giving so many more examples, but you get the point.

Also, AH is extremely ineffective with Scepter/Focus and Sword/Torch as weapon sets, I wont deny the usefulness of Meditations and MF, but I wouldn’t consider these overused or mandatory for the newely added mobility like shouts or other weapon sets are right now.

The key changes would be the new out of combat or non target Flashing Blade and the Swiftness from Torch. Cleansing Flame, cleansing condis for the Guardian casting it should have always been there.