Guild Wars 2

Some feedback since playing around with them:

Hammer: Hammer is probably at the best place of all the weapons. Its utility is good, works as expected and I cant think of an improvement that isn’t a blanket improvement on all the weapons.

Sword: Sword is also in a pretty good spot. I think the tooltip for its damage is not accurate however, and should be changed. Also, it would be nice if when traiting for eternal spirit, that the sword would come out and start attacking again sooner after using command.

Bow: This is one of the weapons that needs a huge change, but luckily IMO the change is pretty simple. The bow needs to be glued to your rear end at all times, instead of seemingly wandering aimlessly between your teammates. This would give you some needed control over its command ability, since you can just move yourself to the most optimum spot for its effect instead of relying on shoddy AI.

Shield: Same as the bow, it needs to be glued to you at all times. Another possible improvement maybe to swap the command and its default actions, letting you control when popping the shield of absorption would be most optimum, while it attacks, weakening foes, and quickly returns on its own AI (which may requiring some counterbalance tweaking, but IMO might be better overall).

General changes: The Wrathful Spirit trait, as a grandmaster one, needs some spicing up. A great way to do that would be to, in addition to the damage bonus, to decrease the cast time on the weapons significantly.

Another change that would greatly improve spirit weapons IMO would be if they teleport with you on a teleport ability that takes you to a target (when they are near you) (Judges Intervention, Merciful Intervention, Flashing Blade).

The biggest problem is the fact that the weapons don’t cool down when active. That means that if you trait for longer weapons, you’re not really getting that much more uptime. Same goes for shorter CDs.

The biggest problem with Sword of Justice is that it just doesn’t do enough damage. It’s supposed to be the “cheap” weapon with long uptime and short recharges, but it’s still only 50% uptime and it barely hits for 1k on a crit. Shield of the Avenger also has problems since it doesn’t trigger the block unless someone nearby actually gets hit, so it just kind of floats there uselessly for a while instead of putting the barrier up. I can’t really think of a good way to fix this though. Maybe just have it barrier whenever it can and follow you whenever the barrier isn’t up.

As for traits, Guardian traits are supposed to suck. That’s what keeps us balanced. If we were meant to have good traits we wouldn’t have so many +5% damage traits and a Grandmaster trait that only heals you for 25 health per attack with a single weapon. If Guardians had good traits we’d be better than warriors and that’s not kosher. Then they’d have to buff warriors even more to compensate and I don’t think that’s possible short of making HB unblockable and mobile.

Here’s what should be done.

1) Consolidate all the SW traits into three. Keep them all in two branches, and make it so some of them don’t only affect SWs. For example, Altruistic Healing isn’t made for shouts, but Shouts benefit greatly from it.

2) SW cooldowns should begin as soon as the weapon has been summoned, not when the weapon has left the field.

3) SWs should initiate their finisher at the end of their duration to ensure the player receives their fullest benefit.

Kita.7819:

Here’s what should be done.

1) Consolidate all the SW traits into three. Keep them all in two branches, and make it so some of them don’t only affect SWs. For example, Altruistic Healing isn’t made for shouts, but Shouts benefit greatly from it.

2) SW cooldowns should begin as soon as the weapon has been summoned, not when the weapon has left the field.

3) SWs should initiate their finisher at the end of their duration to ensure the player receives their fullest benefit.

1) I don’t think they need to be all in one line, but having them in the first tier of the other lines would be better. Also, removing one Spirit Weapons’ trait (or combining one) would give the builds more freedom.

2) Shouldn’t this make the baseline cooldown longer for the Spirit Weapons for balance reasons?

3) Good idea.

Meditation stuff is all in Valor, Consecration stuff is all in Virtues. Shout stuff is all in Honor, but gets help with Valor. Spirit Weapons are in Radiance, Virtues and Zeal.

Zeal
Eternal Spirit – Spirit weapons are not destroyed when commanded.
Spirit Weapon Mastery – Spirit weapon skills recharge 20% faster.
Wrathful Spirits – Increases spirit weapon damage by 10%.

Radiance
A Fire Inside – Spirit weapons cause burning.

Virtues
Improved Spirit Weapon Duration – Spirit weapons last 50% longer.

Take the Virtue skill and give it to Zeal. Combine it with Spirit Weapon Mastery.

Tweak the Radiance skill to give some random benefit to some other weapon. I’m trying to give the Trident a boost with this skill, but I don’t know how to word it.

One thing I’d really like to see added to Spirit Weapons is a timer. I want to know how long my weapons have left so I know if I should keep saving my active ability for later or just use it, and I’d just generally like to know when the weapons are going to go away.

The main across-the-board change I’d like to see for Spirit Weapons is longer duration. Even traited, most of the weapons only last 30 seconds. Thats really low for a summon ability, IMO. I’d say at least a 50% increase to every weapon (so make Hammer / Bow / Shield 30 seconds default, 45 traited, and sword 45 default, 67 traited). At least.

Though I suppose having the abilities start cooldown on summon and not wait until they disappear would also work. But that would go opposite of what all other summons in the game do (though they ALL ought to be changed perhaps).

As for specific changes for weapons… Sword should do a 3-hit combo instead of a single hit, like the Hammer does. Would work better with “A Fire Inside” that way. Could just split the damage between all 3 hits.

Hammer needs the delay between attacks reduced. It seems to spend far too long just sitting there doing nothing.

Bow should really only fire a shot when you actually need a status healed. I can’t count the number of times its fired on me when I’m clean, then a second later I get hit with poison or a burn and would really like some cleansing, but nope, it wasted its shot so now I’m out of luck. Like the Hammer I also think it should have its delay between shots shortened as well. Both of these changes would make it a lot more reliable. Also, I wonder if “A Fire Inside” actually does anything at all for the Bow, and if not, would suggest maybe an extra cleanse per shot or maybe a small regeneration so that the trait isn’t entirely wasted on the Bow.

Haven’t quite gotten the Shield just yet, so I can’t comment on specifics for it.

Make Command Targetable.
Sword – targeted AoE Damage against 5 targets caught in the blast.

Hammer – Fires a projectile at the target that knocks down in a line and returns for a second strike ala Thor’s Hammer. Max 5 targets in a line.

Shield – Dropping a Globe of Shield with targeting. This is probably the best way to make the utility slot worth it. Regular attacks will weaken targets. This is how it should be done.

Bow – Same deal. It should shoot healing arrows then do a targeted cleansing barrage on command to remove conditions. Who the heck would rely on a random AI to cleanse conditions?!

The problem with Spirit Weapons is their up-time. If you invest heavily into Spirit Weapons, you’re kittening yourself when they’re not active, which is a lot of time.

What I’d do is:

1) Start the CD for when they’re summoned.

2) Stagged the CD times such that if you trait for 20% reduced CD and 50% uptime, the CD and the duration are equal, so that people who trait for SWs get 100% uptime.