Guild Wars 2

Here’s my 2 cents abkut power creep. First off, yes, I dislike it. There are elements of new elites that are too “full”, especially Scrapper/Revenant, but nevertheless, the other aspect of the power creep is that some of the newer stuff is better designed. Guardian’s base weapons are soooooo outdated these days, that frankly, I’d be more in favor of conforming to the “power creep” a little bit, because ultimately it would mean better design. In order to bring some of the newer stuff down to old standards, it would have to be not only reduced in power, but quality, and I don’t think that is necessary.

All in all, I think there is a happy medium. (similar to how many iterations Mesmer and Necro Scepter has gotten in the past year or so.)

ronpierce.2760:

Here’s my 2 cents abkut power creep. First off, yes, I dislike it. There are elements of new elites that are too “full”, especially Scrapper/Revenant, but nevertheless, the other aspect of the power creep is that some of the newer stuff is better designed. Guardian’s base weapons are soooooo outdated these days, that frankly, I’d be more in favor of conforming to the “power creep” a little bit, because ultimately it would mean better design.

What of the new stuff for the guardian is better designed than the old? I mean there were specific stuff in the old guardian that were badly designed for sure like Spirit Weapon and some trait. But in general, I don’t see the new elite as better designed.

For exemple, I think that it was better design when the meta were GS + Mace/X which give you a good rotation to make and in PvP we had medi guardian with Scepter/X and GS or Hammer and Bunker Guardian. There was diversity in build. Now it’s just all about GS, Hammer, longbow and Traps.

Anyway, power creep have nothing to do about the quality of design. You can make something that is well designed, but not a power creep. They could make well designed trait and weapon, without making them more powerful than previous iteration.

Thaddeus.4891:

ronpierce.2760:

Here’s my 2 cents abkut power creep. First off, yes, I dislike it. There are elements of new elites that are too “full”, especially Scrapper/Revenant, but nevertheless, the other aspect of the power creep is that some of the newer stuff is better designed. Guardian’s base weapons are soooooo outdated these days, that frankly, I’d be more in favor of conforming to the “power creep” a little bit, because ultimately it would mean better design.

What of the new stuff for the guardian is better designed than the old? I mean there were specific stuff in the old guardian that were badly designed for sure like Spirit Weapon and some trait. But in general, I don’t see the new elite as better designed.

For exemple, I think that it was better design when the meta were GS + Mace/X which give you a good rotation to make and in PvP we had medi guardian with Scepter/X and GS or Hammer and Bunker Guardian. There was diversity in build. Now it’s just all about GS, Hammer, longbow and Traps.

Anyway, power creep have nothing to do about the quality of design. You can make something that is well designed, but not a power creep. They could make well designed trait and weapon, without making them more powerful than previous iteration.

I wasn’t specifically talking about DH. There’s a reason DH is not meta, part of that is our “strongest” and best put together things are traps, which are niche at their very core.

I was referring to the uniqueness and complexity of some of the other Elite spec skills and weapons. Especially weapons. While you could tone them down, at its core, a Guardian GS is pretty well put to shame by the Hammer of a Scrapper.

Also, my point is, clunkiness versus shiney new skills are part of that potential for power, as well as the need for all skills to come off as “usable”. Look at sword for example and compare it to Revenant’s sword (though revenant sword has design issues too between single target and multi-target). Blinding Flash is bland, and frankly weak, can’t be used to move forward, like a forward phase retreat, etc. If everything had to be toned down to the level of Hammer/Sword, I wouldn’t be very happy because for the most part, they’re clunky to use and not very fun.

Would also be similar to reverting Warrior Hammer back to it’s slower and immobile former self. There are a lot of things that just need to be reviewed with a modern philosophy lens, in my opinion.

A happy middle ground would be good. Some bumps/fixes/changes to less fluid things, and some nerfs to some things that are a little too encompassing, like the Scrapper hammer.

The other thing is you have to consider how it feels to lose a lot of what you’ve been given. That’s one of the most potentially dangerous aspects of powercreep is that it isn’t easily reversible because it just doesn’t feel good to feel like the Developers are trashing your stuff for some false sense of “balance” or appropriate “power level”. Because for the most part it IS arbitrary. The danger in power creep isnt the power itself, but how much becomes obsolete due to the power creep, especially as developers become tunnel visioned on a specific set of items (such as their fixation on meta builds and elite specializations).

You seem to have an incredibly limited understanding of game mechanics.

The Immobilize removal was added to Wings of Resolve during beta because Immobilize prevented the DH from using Wings of Resolve at all due to it being a leap, even if it was traited to remove 3 conditions.

You claim the DH Virtues are all better with no trade-off while conveniently not mentioning that all DH virtues can be interrupted and go on full cooldown for no benefit, something that never happens to regular virtues.

The entire document is riddled with confirmation bias or poor knowledge and understanding.

Your Scepter changes show that you have never played a Guardian with a Scepter and don’t understand its PvP flaws at all. Changing might stacking to a damage boost and cooldowns is generic and boring, it’s hilarious that your document claims you will add more interesting ideas to the Guardian, but for the most part you just change everything unique back to boring % passives.

The Mace trait change is especially hilarious, removing the ability to stack 500 healing with block control and changing it to utterly random single condition cleansing?

We have loads of ways to cleanse conditions on ourselves or allies.

Our problems are that every build must been boon generation with AH or burst with MF to be viable. All our survivability is in those two traits and if you don’t have on you are like paper.

We also have terrible Might stacking abilities when solo and our group contribution is pitiful next to Warrior and Herald.

ronpierce.2760:

I wasn’t specifically talking about DH. There’s a reason DH is not meta, part of that is our “strongest” and best put together things are traps, which are niche at their very core.

I was referring to the uniqueness and complexity of some of the other Elite spec skills and weapons. Especially weapons. While you could tone them down, at its core, a Guardian GS is pretty well put to shame by the Hammer of a Scrapper.

Also, my point is, clunkiness versus shiney new skills are part of that potential for power, as well as the need for all skills to come off as “usable”. Look at sword for example and compare it to Revenant’s sword (though revenant sword has design issues too between single target and multi-target). Blinding Flash is bland, and frankly weak, can’t be used to move forward, like a forward phase retreat, etc. If everything had to be toned down to the level of Hammer/Sword, I wouldn’t be very happy because for the most part, they’re clunky to use and not very fun.

Would also be similar to reverting Warrior Hammer back to it’s slower and immobile former self. There are a lot of things that just need to be reviewed with a modern philosophy lens, in my opinion.

A happy middle ground would be good. Some bumps/fixes/changes to less fluid things, and some nerfs to some things that are a little too encompassing, like the Scrapper hammer.

The other thing is you have to consider how it feels to lose a lot of what you’ve been given. That’s one of the most potentially dangerous aspects of powercreep is that it isn’t easily reversible because it just doesn’t feel good to feel like the Developers are trashing your stuff for some false sense of “balance” or appropriate “power level”. Because for the most part it IS arbitrary. The danger in power creep isnt the power itself, but how much becomes obsolete due to the power creep, especially as developers become tunnel visioned on a specific set of items (such as their fixation on meta builds and elite specializations).

Quality of Design, Diversity of Design and Balance are 3 totally difference things, but you seem to put them all together.

For example, the Guardian Sword is about Quality of Design. Like you said, Blinding Flash is not that useful and the sword auto-attack have work bad in a lot of situation.

But Guardian GS vs Scapper Hammer is all about diversity of Design. The GS isn’t badly design, it’s actually really nicely designed. They are just designed for different thing, so one is better suited for some content, while the other one is better suited for something else. GS have a really great design for PvE and WvW Zerg. You have a leap, you have a symbol, you have a really great CC for some situation, etc.

And finally, you have balance. That’s just the numbers. Something could be well designed, but poorly balance. Or the other way around. For example. You could remake the Guardian sword so it feel more useful. Make Blinding Flash work more like a teleport or a forward phase retreat as you said, rework the auto-attack so it doesn’t bug and change the skill 3 to be useful. That would fix the bad design problem. But it won’t fix the balance issue that Sword is one of the worst dps weapon of the guardian.

I agree that you don’t want to destroy the good design that came with the elite spec. But you can drop balance them without doing so. But like i said and like you said too, you can’t just nerf the elite spec or people will be upset. A middle ground would be the best option here, but I don’t think that it’s what anet want.

As for power creep, you are right and wrong. Yes one problem of power creep is that designed tend to power creep only a part of each profession, making the remaining of the profession weaker by comparison. But the power creep itself is bad because it make older content obsolete. Take dungeon for exemple. My guardian used to do 8k dps when the game started. Now? we do like 20-23k dps. So if you were fighting Subject Alpha it would take you between 24 and 30 seconds to kill him at the end of CoE and he would be able to attack you maybe like 9-10 times. If your group was bad, it could wipe easily.

Now? It would take less than 9 seconds to kill him. Even with a bad group, he will die before he can kill the group, meaning ; you don’t need to dodge, heal, use aegis, blind, protection or anything. The power creep make old content easier and make mechanics completely useless.

Of look at the Effigy in CoF path 1. They also nerfed it, so it wasn’t totally because of the power creep, but we used to need poison and to hunt down crystal to kill him because otherwise he would have too much regen. Now? We kill him in 6 second or less and we couldn’t give more of a crap about his regen. Hell, he doesn’t even have time to do much attack anyway.

TheBravery.9615:

Zantmar.5406:

It’s on ops docutment on wings of resolve, it’s not about u it’s the OP’ docutment, obviously he didn’t play enough pvp, or hates DH secretly and wants to nerf everything DH stands for with making base guard viable as an execuse
And justice spear’s unblockable lets us deal with revs and their little bubble, it rewards u when u can disable people’ sustain if u time it right, should not be removed

Let’s not assume things.

You’re welcome to “feel otherwise”, but I don’t intend to nerf or buff the profession (or any profession that I’m doing balance suggestions on). I’m bringing traits and skills in line of one another so all traits and weapons will see equal use with all things considered.

I just had some angry person vandalize the spreadsheet with no constructive commentary, and opted to just throw personal insults at me (my personal favorite: ball sucking kitten monkey). Oh boy, I imagine the amount of flak I’ll get when I eventually get to engineer. On that note, consider the engineer along with your argument that I shouldn’t realign the elite skills back into reality. Would you be OK with me keeping engineers strong as they are now and buffing everything else in power creep?

Balance is not something that’s easily accomplished and not everyone will agree on any suggestion proposal. Despite this, you’re welcome to collaborate with us and provide constructive feedback so I could share your perspective.

wow i didnt realize ur little spread sheet could be changed, i should have done something to it then
the moment i saw that you put wings of resolve on 45 sec cd as a suggestion i stopped reading

any how your scepter change is quite strange, the main dps skill on scepter is smite and should be expanded on its usage, instead of causing a knock-back which may or may not push your target out of smite when u cast it, the charged you are building should instead cause knock down/immobilize on the next smite you activate.

reducing firey wrath is to 5% is quite terrible, Zeal line already compete with DH line for damage mods and reducing such a line zeal would make zeal look much weaker

i suggest keeping the modifier the same, and swap the trait along with your zealous speed minor, since the zealous speed cast a symbol at your location, and scepter is a ranged weapon(which won have much to do with casting a symbol on your location when you are trying to range something), it makes more sense that way.

virtuous speed minor seems unnecessary, its same as giving reapers faster attacks, and spamming all of your virtuous is horrific trade for a speed boost, i suggest other wise make the trait grant 10% movement speed for every boon currently on you, max 30%

your symbolic avenger is overpowered, symbol is a ticking aoe and your 2seconds of cripple will stack a lot of cripple, while this is good synergy with Dragon hunter, i believe it is too much. i would rather that you remove a condition when you place a symbol. this gives zeal a slight bit of condition management which most other lines on guardian provides.

on to your radiance
sword is a lacking weapon the the weapon it self should be changed. sword is a power weapon and should stay that way, i would rather you simply give give the trait 10% crit chance and 10% attack speed, the trait is named right hand strength after all

smite the heretic might be horrifically op or awesome with DH not sure if necessary

valor:
tyrian avenger should be renamed if elona or cantha ever get introduced
otherwise very nice changes. so i have to mention that ageis should be put to the the last removed block so we can cover the bonus from unscathed contender

virtues.
i rather not having my most important condition removal along with my most important stun breaker.
in fact i rather supreme justice/absolute resolution/indomitable courage be the minor traits instead
also your absolute resolution is horrifically weak for a grand master.
again the current virtues line does a great job already, what should be brought to line is base guard’s virtrues

and i cant see your goal with DH line, Dh line is fine if you hate DH just say so

Zantmar.5406:

TheBravery.9615:

Zantmar.5406:

It’s on ops docutment on wings of resolve, it’s not about u it’s the OP’ docutment, obviously he didn’t play enough pvp, or hates DH secretly and wants to nerf everything DH stands for with making base guard viable as an execuse
And justice spear’s unblockable lets us deal with revs and their little bubble, it rewards u when u can disable people’ sustain if u time it right, should not be removed

Let’s not assume things.

You’re welcome to “feel otherwise”, but I don’t intend to nerf or buff the profession (or any profession that I’m doing balance suggestions on). I’m bringing traits and skills in line of one another so all traits and weapons will see equal use with all things considered.

I just had some angry person vandalize the spreadsheet with no constructive commentary, and opted to just throw personal insults at me (my personal favorite: ball sucking kitten monkey). Oh boy, I imagine the amount of flak I’ll get when I eventually get to engineer. On that note, consider the engineer along with your argument that I shouldn’t realign the elite skills back into reality. Would you be OK with me keeping engineers strong as they are now and buffing everything else in power creep?

Balance is not something that’s easily accomplished and not everyone will agree on any suggestion proposal. Despite this, you’re welcome to collaborate with us and provide constructive feedback so I could share your perspective.

wow i didnt realize ur little spread sheet could be changed, i should have done something to it then
the moment i saw that you put wings of resolve on 45 sec cd as a suggestion i stopped reading

any how your scepter change is quite strange, the main dps skill on scepter is smite and should be expanded on its usage, instead of causing a knock-back which may or may not push your target out of smite when u cast it, the charged you are building should instead cause knock down/immobilize on the next smite you activate.

reducing firey wrath is to 5% is quite terrible, Zeal line already compete with DH line for damage mods and reducing such a line zeal would make zeal look much weaker

i suggest keeping the modifier the same, and swap the trait along with your zealous speed minor, since the zealous speed cast a symbol at your location, and scepter is a ranged weapon(which won have much to do with casting a symbol on your location when you are trying to range something), it makes more sense that way.

virtuous speed minor seems unnecessary, its same as giving reapers faster attacks, and spamming all of your virtuous is horrific trade for a speed boost, i suggest other wise make the trait grant 10% movement speed for every boon currently on you, max 30%

your symbolic avenger is overpowered, symbol is a ticking aoe and your 2seconds of cripple will stack a lot of cripple, while this is good synergy with Dragon hunter, i believe it is too much. i would rather that you remove a condition when you place a symbol. this gives zeal a slight bit of condition management which most other lines on guardian provides.

on to your radiance
sword is a lacking weapon the the weapon it self should be changed. sword is a power weapon and should stay that way, i would rather you simply give give the trait 10% crit chance and 10% attack speed, the trait is named right hand strength after all

smite the heretic might be horrifically op or awesome with DH not sure if necessary

valor:
tyrian avenger should be renamed if elona or cantha ever get introduced
otherwise very nice changes. so i have to mention that ageis should be put to the the last removed block so we can cover the bonus from unscathed contender

virtues.
i rather not having my most important condition removal along with my most important stun breaker.
in fact i rather supreme justice/absolute resolution/indomitable courage be the minor traits instead
also your absolute resolution is horrifically weak for a grand master.
again the current virtues line does a great job already, what should be brought to line is base guard’s virtrues

and i cant see your goal with DH line, Dh line is fine if you hate DH just say so

Well yeah, it’s good to gather feedback.

I won’t be able to achieve full consensus from every contributor here, but I could at the very least consult you guys for feedback and additional perspectives, and I will change the document accordingly.

I don’t hate dragonhunter. Their virtues are fun to use than instant cast effect of the original virtues. What I’m trying to achieve with the changes to dragonhunter though is to position the specialization along side the core specializations, so it’s seen more of a “sidegrade” than an “upgrade”.

One thing i’d suggest though is hold off on recommendations until I have completed drafting the “alpha” of this, because a ton of changes are being made to this and it’s hard to keep up. (for example, the cooldown on wings of resolve was changed- again)

In the meantime, thanks for reading and showing interest.

TheBravery.9615:

Their virtues are fun to use than instant cast effect of the original virtues.

something should be done about the original virtues then

currently the game screams the fact that elite specs are better than the origional pvp or pve
i mean:
necro- base necro was a joke, still is, and hopefully not be forever
mesmer- have fun running travler runes
guardian- base virtues? pleaz drink red bull and grow sum wings
ranger- good day Mr. Smoke Scale, i see that you and your pet tyrian is doing well
revenant- i was gonna buy travler runes for him and then swiftness showed up
warrior- particle effects, nuff said
engineer- wow i have “unlocked” melee

Zantmar.5406:

TheBravery.9615:

Their virtues are fun to use than instant cast effect of the original virtues.

something should be done about the original virtues then

currently the game screams the fact that elite specs are better than the origional pvp or pve
i mean:
necro- base necro was a joke, still is, and hopefully not be forever
mesmer- have fun running travler runes
guardian- base virtues? pleaz drink red bull and grow sum wings
ranger- good day Mr. Smoke Scale, i see that you and your pet tyrian is doing well
revenant- i was gonna buy travler runes for him and then swiftness showed up
warrior- particle effects, nuff said
engineer- wow i have “unlocked” melee

I’d think there’s more to it than that.

There was a discussion about this path earlier in this thread
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Suggestion-CDI-Guardian-Balance/6017078/

Look at the attached image, and tell me, which option do you think is the best to deal with intraprofessional imbalance?

power creep obviously, nerf bat kills fun and induce rage, equalizing is a nerf and a buff at the same time which is time/ money consuming on anet’s part
power creep is: fast, easy, cheap, less rage.

edit:
i mean
1. wow this other trait is not as bad as before, maybe ill give it a try some other time
2. kitten this trait isn’t as good anymore but i guess ill still run it
3. wow my build just become trash

Zantmar.5406:

power creep obviously, nerf bat kills fun and induce rage, equalizing is a nerf and a buff at the same time which is time/ money consuming on anet’s part
power creep is: fast, easy, cheap, less rage.

edit:
i mean
1. wow this other trait is not as bad as before, maybe ill give it a try some other time
2. kitten this trait isn’t as good anymore but i guess ill still run it
3. wow my build just become trash

Interesting.

Well, like I said, it won’t be possible for me to reach a consensus with everyone here, and there are multiple ways to approach balance problems. The one I’m making is strictly “equalize”.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/The-Grand-Guardian-Overhaul-Part-1
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/The-Grand-Guardian-Overhaul-Part-2-Traits

Above are other suggestion threads for “powercreep” method, as long as the author also intends to “buff” every other profession. (as well as PvE mobs for that matter)

@ Zantamar I actually have to differ with you on sword being a power weapon only.

Sure it is a power weapon at base but radiance is supposed to be the line that gives options for condition damage.

I dont agree with it getting an executioner’s style trait however. I think it should just do bleeding on critical hits.
This would provide a secondary damaging condition without needing a sigil.

TheBravery.9615:

Zantmar.5406:

TheBravery.9615:

Their virtues are fun to use than instant cast effect of the original virtues.

something should be done about the original virtues then

currently the game screams the fact that elite specs are better than the origional pvp or pve
i mean:
necro- base necro was a joke, still is, and hopefully not be forever
mesmer- have fun running travler runes
guardian- base virtues? pleaz drink red bull and grow sum wings
ranger- good day Mr. Smoke Scale, i see that you and your pet tyrian is doing well
revenant- i was gonna buy travler runes for him and then swiftness showed up
warrior- particle effects, nuff said
engineer- wow i have “unlocked” melee

I’d think there’s more to it than that.

There was a discussion about this path earlier in this thread
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Suggestion-CDI-Guardian-Balance/6017078/

Look at the attached image, and tell me, which option do you think is the best to deal with intraprofessional imbalance?

You need to look at the class’s base abilities and how they scale with stats before traits before you reduce how well traits work however.

Some traits are rather strong for a reason, that being if they weren’t the class would never be able to compete due to lower base effects and scaling.

Having strong traits but lower base scaling also creates some choice, you could be really strong at something (DPS, CC, Healing/support) but doing so would mean your less so at others.
(the guardian tends to make allot more sacrifice here then the Ele, engi or rev so before you nerf the guardian traits you may want to look at them so the decrease they need isn’t so severe)

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

TheBravery.9615:

Zantmar.5406:

TheBravery.9615:

Their virtues are fun to use than instant cast effect of the original virtues.

something should be done about the original virtues then

currently the game screams the fact that elite specs are better than the origional pvp or pve
i mean:
necro- base necro was a joke, still is, and hopefully not be forever
mesmer- have fun running travler runes
guardian- base virtues? pleaz drink red bull and grow sum wings
ranger- good day Mr. Smoke Scale, i see that you and your pet tyrian is doing well
revenant- i was gonna buy travler runes for him and then swiftness showed up
warrior- particle effects, nuff said
engineer- wow i have “unlocked” melee

I’d think there’s more to it than that.

There was a discussion about this path earlier in this thread
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Suggestion-CDI-Guardian-Balance/6017078/

Look at the attached image, and tell me, which option do you think is the best to deal with intraprofessional imbalance?

You need to look at the class’s base abilities and how they scale with stats before traits before you reduce how well traits work however.

Some traits are rather strong for a reason, that being if they weren’t the class would never be able to compete due to lower base effects and scaling.

Having strong traits but lower base scaling also creates some choice, you could be really strong at something (DPS, CC, Healing/support) but doing so would mean your less so at others.
(the guardian tends to make allot more sacrifice here then the Ele, engi or rev so before you nerf the guardian traits you may want to look at them so the decrease they need isn’t so severe)

I’m well aware of this and I intend to give the other professions the same treatment.

I should put this in the OP or something.

Good night, sweet prince.

Gaile Gray.6029:

You asked for feedback and here are things you should know:

• In GW2 Forum culture, CDIs are initiated by a developer and are placed in the CDI Sub-forum. Yours are player-created threads that offer suggestions. Creating such threads is fine, but the term “CDI” should not be used for this or future threads, polls, surveys, etc., to avoid confusion or concerns about misrepresentation of the content.
• The threads have been renamed to retain the Suggestions tag that you kindly used.
• Please rename your personal polls or surveys to remove the “CDI” nomenclature.
• Please do not make staff call-outs. (See the Forum Code of Conduct if you have questions.)

Thanks for understanding.

Thanks for posting in here, it’s good to know a staff member opened this thread.

I’m in class right now, but I’ll make the changes you pointed out as soon as I can.

By Ogden’s hammer!
This thread is top tier, salvation of guardians that heralds a bright new future.
It has to be kept quality thread for as long as it needs.

Zantmar.5406:

power creep obviously, nerf bat kills fun and induce rage, equalizing is a nerf and a buff at the same time which is time/ money consuming on anet’s part
power creep is: fast, easy, cheap, less rage.

edit:
i mean
1. wow this other trait is not as bad as before, maybe ill give it a try some other time
2. kitten this trait isn’t as good anymore but i guess ill still run it
3. wow my build just become trash

It maybe the fast, easy, cheap and less rage option. But it’s also the worst for the game. Power Creep is one of the worst possible thing you can have in the game and gw2 is full of it right now.

Thaddeus.4891:

Zantmar.5406:

power creep obviously, nerf bat kills fun and induce rage, equalizing is a nerf and a buff at the same time which is time/ money consuming on anet’s part
power creep is: fast, easy, cheap, less rage.

edit:
i mean
1. wow this other trait is not as bad as before, maybe ill give it a try some other time
2. kitten this trait isn’t as good anymore but i guess ill still run it
3. wow my build just become trash

It maybe the fast, easy, cheap and less rage option. But it’s also the worst for the game. Power Creep is one of the worst possible thing you can have in the game and gw2 is full of it right now.

And? I fail to see the point, if it’s worst possible thing we can have and its full of it… Why are u still playing?
Power creep is like equalizing in it self.
When u have something great and something not so great, u up the not so great thing to the level of that of the great.
Unless u tell me u can challenge reapers of the same skill with wings of resolve on 45 sec cd and removing 1 condition only while not being able to choose indomitable courage. Then sure u can nerf DH vitrues however u want
What DH has is fine, what people needs to realize is that base guard is a thing of the past it was designed for the past contents, it needs to be brought inline with DH, not removing a limb from DH so it become the same as its kitten cousin guardian
So far, other than the valor line and some of the zeal line on OP’s docutment, I don’t see any thing that helps base guard become viable like current DH. The docutment perttymuch torn DH apart and base guard’ sustain become even worse (nicely done on ur attempent to nerf guard as a whole)
It’s simple to make base guard better, better virtues and sword/sceptre buff , and spirit weapons? Go play a minion necro and a ray of enlightment will hit you.

Really saying u dislike power creep is like saying U hate new technology
The fact the game is full of power creep means the game and it’s content is moving on, and your so called likes and dislikes is falling behind.

I’m happy Gaile responded to this thread because it gives me hope, but I haven’t seen a proposed change come in years

This will never happen. The quality level you set with your proposed changes does just not match what gw2 balancing team can achieve.

They would have to hire additional people, instead they actually take people away from the balancing team/assign them different tasks after they released badly tested and unfinished elite specs for the expansion.

The balancing team isn’t even to blame here. I am sure they hate it aswell that they are forced to deliver low quality content. The arenanet leadership is to blame that sets the priorities wrong like that.

Zantmar.5406:

Thaddeus.4891:

Zantmar.5406:

power creep obviously, nerf bat kills fun and induce rage, equalizing is a nerf and a buff at the same time which is time/ money consuming on anet’s part
power creep is: fast, easy, cheap, less rage.

edit:
i mean
1. wow this other trait is not as bad as before, maybe ill give it a try some other time
2. kitten this trait isn’t as good anymore but i guess ill still run it
3. wow my build just become trash

It maybe the fast, easy, cheap and less rage option. But it’s also the worst for the game. Power Creep is one of the worst possible thing you can have in the game and gw2 is full of it right now.

And? I fail to see the point, if it’s worst possible thing we can have and its full of it… Why are u still playing?
Power creep is like equalizing in it self.
When u have something great and something not so great, u up the not so great thing to the level of that of the great.
Unless u tell me u can challenge reapers of the same skill with wings of resolve on 45 sec cd and removing 1 condition only while not being able to choose indomitable courage. Then sure u can nerf DH vitrues however u want
What DH has is fine, what people needs to realize is that base guard is a thing of the past it was designed for the past contents, it needs to be brought inline with DH, not removing a limb from DH so it become the same as its kitten cousin guardian
So far, other than the valor line and some of the zeal line on OP’s docutment, I don’t see any thing that helps base guard become viable like current DH. The docutment perttymuch torn DH apart and base guard’ sustain become even worse (nicely done on ur attempent to nerf guard as a whole)
It’s simple to make base guard better, better virtues and sword/sceptre buff , and spirit weapons? Go play a minion necro and a ray of enlightment will hit you.

Really saying u dislike power creep is like saying U hate new technology
The fact the game is full of power creep means the game and it’s content is moving on, and your so called likes and dislikes is falling behind.

I’m not here to challenge your opinion that power creep is the worst and another approach would be better.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Power-creep-vs-nerf-bat-vs/6019508

It’s a controversial topic because there’s such a split in opinion. They’re all legitimate ways to deal with imbalance, but consider the implications.

Just exactly how much power creep is acceptable before it goes out of hand? What impact will it have in PvE? If your sustain is very high, you pump out amazing damage, PvE would become even more mundane than it already is.

On the flipside, is nerfbat really the solution to the power creep? Nerf bat will be difficult to accomplish because there are many players that are unwilling and refuse to let go of their new powers. Too much nerf bat and PvE content may become harder to deal with.

In the end, you’re welcome and entitled to your opinions on the approach, and I respect that. As I said earlier, it’s not possible for me to reach consensus with every person here. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t influence anything here. It’s like public administration in government- the idea isn’t about fighting the government, but working with the government so you’re not at a disadvantage.

Zantmar.5406:

Really saying u dislike power creep is like saying U hate new technology
The fact the game is full of power creep means the game and it’s content is moving on, and your so called likes and dislikes is falling behind.

Ok you really don’t understand Power Creep do you. Power creep isn’t the same thing as balancing. Not all buff = power creep.

I encourage you to watch this video. They will explain it better than me and this will be more enjoyable than to read my stuff.

Really dude. Hating power creep is like hating new technology?? Are you serious. Power creep is just bumping numbers on abilities. That’s not new technology. Of course I’m gonna hate power creep.

1) They limit build diversity. All good build now automatically need an elite spec because they are so much more powerful. Intead of having to decide 3 trait lines, it’s not decide 2 trait lines other than the elite spec.

2) They through balance off. I’m not saying that the balance pre-hot was perfect, balance is a never ending battle. But as time pass, it’s suppose to improve. Designer smooth the balance by nerfing what is too powerful and buffing was is too bad. But with a sudden addition of all those powerful abilities, all the balance is through out of the window and they need to start over, leaving the players with a very unbalanced game for months each time, until they fix basic kitten.

3) Power Creep also make old content obsolete. Bosses in dungeon that we used to kill in 30sec with a good group, can now be killed in less than 10second. The constant complain that dungeon are dps and dps only where do you think it’s coming from? No need to dodge or to block much because you can just explode the boss. So instead of always adding more content to you game, the dev team really only try to replace the old content that’s becoming trivial and boring because we are so much more powerful.

TheBravery.9615:

Just exactly how much power creep is acceptable before it goes out of hand? What impact will it have in PvE? If your sustain is very high, you pump out amazing damage, PvE would become even more mundane than it already is.

The good answer is zero. Like I said everything not all buff are power creep.

You can balance stuff by buffing without adding power creep. Let’s take a exemple from the guardian. Spirit Weapon are bad and nobody use it. If they buff them so they are about equal to meditation build in PvP or GS + Longbow build in PvE. That’s a buff, but not a power creep. You are still around the power curve. You won’t go faster through a boss with this new Spirit Build than you could with a standard meta build.

Now if you buff enough your Spirit Weapon that it make them the new best build by a good marging. Let,s say that you can do about 23k dps with an Hammer build at Sabetha and that the new Spirit Weapons build allow you to make 30k. Then it’s a power creep of 7k. Now the old build are useless because everybody want to play the Spirit Build. Now why play Elementalist when you can have a build that does about the same dps but give you defensive advantage. Now people can have a way easier time in raid. What Anet will do for the next raid? They will increase the HP. Just like Fractal Boss have higher HP than Dungeon boss and that Raid boss have higher HP than Fractal.

Your question should be ‘’Just exactly how much buffing is acceptable before it become power creep? What impact will it have in PvE? If your sustain is very high, you pump out amazing damage, PvE would become even more mundane than it already is’’

Buffing bad skills, trait or ability so that they are more competitive to the good skills, trait or ability is called balancing and it’s a good thing. Buffing stuff, or adding stuff so that they reach higher on the power curve than anything you already have in the game create Power Creep, which is never a good thing for a game.

The point people are making about should we buff or nerf is because they added so much power creep recently that they kind of broken a good portion of the game and that people want to kind of fix the damage anet already did. I don’t really agree with that because even if it fix the power creep that HoT brought it would be a disaster on a PR level. That’s a big problem with Power Creep. You can’t fix it because of how people react. You can just balance thing out and make a commitment that never ever again add power creep.

TheBravery:

Your suggestions as-is would completely obliterate my current build (I change up my build semi-regularly, so take that statement with a grain of salt).

Obviously I’m not claiming you shouldn’t propose those changes just because of my build. But, I feel I need to explain how I’m using what I’m using to help with some perspective. So please take the following as the constructive criticism it’s meant to be. As a side note, I’m primarily a PvE player.

Atm I utilize Scepter + Torch combined with Zealous Scepter, Supreme Justice, and Permeating Wreath traits. Playing off of this combo I’m also utilizing Altruistic Healing.

In brief what this build does is allow me to utilize #2 Smite + #5 Cleansing Flame to stack on and maintain 10-18 stacks of might (sometimes even more) by synergistically using rapid hits and VoJ procs; while simultaneously gaining a moderate stream of healing. The synergy of all of this is really tight, and I find it a blast to run this build.

The problems your changes cause for me:

1) Chains of Light. In order to keep foes who are not in melee range with me inside of the first Smite use, Chains of Light is very useful… but as it currently is it does not keep moving foes inside of the area for the entire duration of Smite. I’m okay with this, because it requires timing and positioning on my part. To reduce the immobilization duration means that Chains of Light becomes largely useless for my needs of making Smite hit as much as possible. Having Chains of Light hit 5 foes doesn’t matter if I can’t keep them inside smite. Usually groups of foes are clustered anyway and when they are they’re not moving much… so multi-target isn’t largely helpful in that way, either.

2) Cleansing Flame / Conflagration. Having movement cancel this skill means when I’m using it on moving targets, I’ll have less hits land when they move around and out of range. It already has an understandable but limited range. Less hits means less procs of VoJ, which means less healing and might for me. When I’m in combat with a fair number of other players around me, I find that I often need to chase mobs a little bit when I’m channeling Cleansing Flame.

3) Zealous Scepter Trait. The scepter (my build or otherwise) revolves around very rapid hits, and the original trait capitalizes on this feature. Your suggestion I don’t feel does, and is the main cause why my build would go bye-bye. Your reasoning about the boons that guardians already have access to isn’t realized in my build… I utilize might from the original trait. In this case the redundant boons you refer to in your notes allows for a variety of possible builds, and I think is a good thing that there can’t be too much of. Also, I start off with scepter out, so having the trait useful when I swap to scepter also makes it largely useless…. especially because those charges would likely only build up in combat only; I can’t see them being allowed to build up out of combat.

Your change to this trait and the scepter skills also tells me that you view the Scepter as a back-up weapon, and aren’t considering it much for a role as a primary one (which is what I use it for).

4) Orb of Wrath. Your change here obviously doesn’t negatively affect my build. I think an increase to velocity would be welcome. However, there’s one thing I’d take over increase in velocity, and that is to change the orbs from quasi-homing to fully homing. I’d like to see them home like the Mesmer staff skill Winds of Chaos. That may be too much of a power boost, I’m not sure, but you asked for other suggestions…

Anyway, I hope that helps…

~EW

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

TheBravery:

Your suggestions as-is would completely obliterate my current build (I change up my build semi-regularly, so take that statement with a grain of salt).

Obviously I’m not claiming you shouldn’t propose those changes just because of my build. But, I feel I need to explain how I’m using what I’m using to help with some perspective. So please take the following as the constructive criticism it’s meant to be. As a side note, I’m primarily a PvE player.

Atm I utilize Scepter + Torch combined with Zealous Scepter, Supreme Justice, and Permeating Wreath traits. Playing off of this combo I’m also utilizing Altruistic Healing.

In brief what this build does is allow me to utilize #2 Smite + #5 Cleansing Flame to stack on and maintain 10-18 stacks of might (sometimes even more) by synergistically using rapid hits and VoJ procs; while simultaneously gaining a moderate stream of healing. The synergy of all of this is really tight, and I find it a blast to run this build.

The problems your changes cause for me:

1) Chains of Light. In order to keep foes who are not in melee range with me inside of the first Smite use, Chains of Light is very useful… but as it currently is it does not keep moving foes inside of the area for the entire duration of Smite. I’m okay with this, because it requires timing and positioning on my part. To reduce the immobilization duration means that Chains of Light becomes largely useless for my needs of making Smite hit as much as possible. Having Chains of Light hit 5 foes doesn’t matter if I can’t keep them inside smite. Usually groups of foes are clustered anyway and when they are they’re not moving much… so multi-target isn’t largely helpful in that way, either.

2) Cleansing Flame / Conflagration. Having movement cancel this skill means when I’m using it on moving targets, I’ll have less hits land when they move around and out of range. It already has an understandable but limited range. Less hits means less procs of VoJ, which means less healing and might for me. When I’m in combat with a fair number of other players around me, I find that I often need to chase mobs a little bit when I’m channeling Cleansing Flame.

3) Zealous Scepter Trait. The scepter (my build or otherwise) revolves around very rapid hits, and the original trait capitalizes on this feature. Your suggestion I don’t feel does, and is the main cause why my build would go bye-bye. Your reasoning about the boons that guardians already have access to isn’t realized in my build… I utilize might from the original trait. In this case the redundant boons you refer to in your notes allows for a variety of possible builds, and I think is a good thing that there can’t be too much of. Also, I start off with scepter out, so having the trait useful when I swap to scepter also makes it largely useless…. especially because those charges would likely only build up in combat only; I can’t see them being allowed to build up out of combat.

Your change to this trait and the scepter skills also tells me that you view the Scepter as a back-up weapon, and aren’t considering it much for a role as a primary one (which is what I use it for).

4) Orb of Wrath. Your change here obviously doesn’t negatively affect my build. I think an increase to velocity would be welcome. However, there’s one thing I’d take over increase in velocity, and that is to change the orbs from quasi-homing to fully homing. I’d like to see them home like the Mesmer staff skill Winds of Chaos. That may be too much of a power boost, I’m not sure, but you asked for other suggestions…

Anyway, I hope that helps…

~EW

Thank you for sharing.

TheBravery.9615:

Thank you for sharing.

No worries. Despite being one of my favorite weapons across the classes, the scepter seems poorly regarded among the Guardian community as a whole… which contributes to my attempts to find ways to make it useful and fun (at least for me) in its current state. I think it has a lot going for it that is often summarily dismissed/ignored (not that you are; just generally speaking).

I apologize for my original flippant comment on p.1. All the forums are littered with suggestions for balance and change, and I’ve found them to largely be very poorly thought out and unnecessary. Usually they’re trying to make changes that improves only the player’s play style, instead of considering the play style intention of the skill/trait/whatever.

Yours isn’t like that. It looks like you put a lot of time and love into your suggestions. I’m sorry that it took Gaile’s comment for me to give them the consideration they actually deserve.

Also, sorry to keep my commentary strictly centered around my current build… but, it is the freshest information in my mind, and as you can see I can get very verbose… I could spend all day discussing the Guardian.

:)

~EW

Finished the first draft. I’ll stop editing this for now and collect some feedback for about a week and then I’ll make another revision if necessary.

Please share your criticisms with me so I may gain your perspective and refine these further.

@ bravery

Before you reduce the effectiveness of guardian traits it may be more beneficial time wise to start with other classes.

I say this because guardians tend to not multi task as well as several other classes, thus any reductions on the guardians end would require much larger reductions where Rev’s, engineers & elementalists are concerned.

Most of my other critiques still stand regarding traits & virtues.

As for weapon skills/utilities

1: Hammer AA. Because this is so slow most guardians only use hammer when they have to. (by reducing the cast time & removing the after cast then reducing the number of pulses on the symbol to 1 you can maintain the same protection uptime & damage output)

2: Zealot’s Embrace. A shadow step doesn’t really feel like its guardian-ish. (Simply increasing the speed of the wave and reducing the cast time would be enough as it’s currently very slow)

3: Staff Piercing Light. (this would be far to powerful. Instead why not just get rid of the detonate on orb of light, increase the speed/hitbox size then increase the healing output.)

4: True Shot, true the damage could be a it on the high end given the cool down, however reducing the damage means a big drop in longbow damage output overall.
(instead why not reduce the damage by say 20%, tack on a cripple, make it usable while moving then reduce the cast time of the AA to 1/2 second so the damage over time stays more or less the same)

5: Hunter’s Ward. This skill already took a very long time to cast for any environment with high pressure (PVP and Raids) Either leave it as is in game or change it to be a wave attack that immobilizes and burns foes with a lower Cd then is now since it would have a lower area of effect.

6: Orb of Wrath. This skill already had problems connecting with targets beyond 600 range, making it summon 7 orbs one at a time before they can fire will just cause more problems (however creative it is) Change it to a channeled beam _(ala mes greatsword) with near instant connect, but reduce the damage by 15 or so % to offset the change.

7: Sword AA. (the only change the sword needed was on the 3rd AA, it got that but having an executioners effect on it is not needed, just make the AA hit reliably with a melee cleave)

8: The only change focus could have used was possibly a faster speed on the ray. (lasting “silence” effects would be impossible to balance as well)

9: Same ^ for Shield.

10: Having movement speed cancel effects is generally a bad thing (reduce the torch #5 to 4 pulses for 1 second, have the first and last effect the guardian is all it needs)

11: litany of Wrath is more or less fine as is.

12: Signet of Resolve (nice idea but generally protection is something you want up constantly or when you want it up not randomly. The second half is kind of convoluted)

13: Purification (the only thing it really needs is for the initial heal to be larger, the secondary heal to be smaller and the regeneration to be shared with allies)

14: Hollowed ground ( boon ripping doesn’t really fit the guardian and if it were to get it a consecration wouldn’t really make sense and they protect allies and cure stuff.)

15: Merciful Intervention (at this point since they both have long CD’s, teleport and are of limited use for multi tasking just merge it with Judge’s Intervention and call it “Intervention”. Then feel free to create something new.)

16: Smite condition is good as is unless you plan on greatly reducing access to conditions across the board.

17: Retreat. (to keep shouts up to par with other abilities why not lower the CD to 30 seconds base then lower the boon base uptime to 18 seconds base)

18: Save yourselves (really needs some resistance, its being nicknamed the suicide button by many people)

19: Hold the Line (could use a slight boost to stay in line with other skills. Either a cool down reduction to 30 seconds or a boon uptime increase)

20: Bane signet. (fine as is more or less, the knock down could be made into a wave like warrior offhand mace)

21: Signet of Judgment (why not just go with protection and retaliation for a short duration to help counter spikes)

22 etc… : Removing the boons from traps and adding arming times will effectively make guard bad vs many other classes which it already struggles to fill the same roll as. If done those classes would need even larger nerfs to maintain balance. (hence why I suggest you start with the more powerful classes and work your way down so that the changes later on won’t have to be so much)

I posted my Comments on a few traits. Wasn’t able to read the rest of your suggestions. I’ll finish up this weekend :P

Zealous Scepter
A very interesting concept. However cool on paper, I much rather prefer a low damaging aoe effect (20% of original orb damage) around a foe when an orb lands. Reason being: The trait change could promote build diversity for those who want more F1 procs in a group, rather than something that just effects a single target. Just my own desire for the trait but an AoE effect rather than Single Target idea is still there.
- I imagine some type of damage reduction needs to be done to make this happen.

I do agree that Might stacking with Scepter hasn’t exactly change the playstyle of Guardian or better him in any way. Maybe if this was prepatch but enter ANY team scenario with a scrapper and rev… you will always have high, if not full, stacks of Might.

Kindled Zeal
I agree. Kindled Zeal was always a “why do we still have this” trait ever since Amplified Wrath was added. It’s a bit one-sided and miss placed in a tree that’s meant for “zealing”; focusing on aoe or direct damages.

I personally like the 10% crit idea. Almost every amulet has Power so it’s not one sided and Guardian absolutely lacks crit chance in his builds.

Shattered Aegis
I recommend shatter aegis grants health to self rather than health to allies. Other classes like Rev, Engi and Ele already have extraordinary passive heals. I personally like this trait change because it some what replaces the healing factor from Zealous Scepter + Altruistic healing, of which, was a niche combo to use.

I think it’s a perfect example of give (this new aegis factor) and take (removing scepter might stacking)

Symbolic Avenger
I like the Cripple effect considering our Condi Guardian promise (trap bleeds) was never delivered (darn it Grouch!)

I’m liking the idea of Symbol’s applying condi (vulnerability on cripple effect in dh line + burns) considering Symbols are underused due to their ineffectiveness due to Symbols can be out played by a competent player.

Symbols applying additional condi pressure via attrition damages/cc, may actually lead to more build diversity with Symbol usages.

Right Hand Strength
I don’t think nerfing a trait, then adding an additional effect to seclude other weapons just to make Sword look good, is the right approach here. Also, Sword is more defined by its initial burst effect instead of a Finishing Move burst effect, your suggested health threshold of 25% burn proc isn’t exactly what Sword is all about.

Considering the Inner Fire trait you suggested getting buffed to a 2 burn stack threshold, the 20% fury is basically going to be up 100%. This completely dominates Right-Hand Strength, making it underwhelming

• I recommend Inner Fire stays the same at a 3 stack thresholds.
• Right-Hand Strength stays the same at 15% crit chance.
• Add Sword damage modifier of 5% instead of a 20% weapon cd.

This will give Sword its “Burst” effect while also allowing people to choose exactly what trait they prefer based on their weapon selections, as usual.

Wrath of Justice
A bit too much emphasis on Scepter#2 Smite, some what singling it out compared to other guardian weapon skills. I’d honestly be fine with Signet of Wrath actually activating your Signet of Wrath on the utility bar, much like how Radiant Fire activates Torch#4’s flame so you can throw Torch#4 twice. Signets needs the love too. (and honestly, I feel this was its original intent but never fully implemented)

This puts more emphasis on Signet builds, getting a double activation for something that’s already limited with “Line of Sight” issues (Signet activation needs that error to be remove imo) as well as defining single target Signet skills vs AoE trap or sustain skills.

Perfect Inscriptions
My suggestion on Wrath of Justice already activates a signet on the utility bar, I recommend to just change Perfect Inscription’s Retal Aura to Fire Shield Aura instead and keep the rest of the trait values as is.

Why fire shield:

• Fire Shield complements Altruistic Healing builds with its Might stacking, essentially promoting Sage Amulet considering Sage is already a subpar amulet for Guardian at the moment.

• Gives the Guardian additional Might stacking abilities considering we removed Might stacking on Zealous Scepter’s trait change.

• Gives additional burn procs, of which, is mostly effective 1v1 as team pvp still has too much aoe condi cleanses going around, complementing Signet’s single target utility effects.

• Promotes build diversity for players who wants Rune of Fire and GS#4 Leap in Purging Flames. Players will like the new Fire Shield trait change.

Radiant Retaliation
The trait needs to increase Retaliation damages by 25% but ONLY for the Guardian. It does not apply for allies who receives Retal from the Guardian. However, Spirit Weapons can (should) also receive this bonus effect. Approx Retal damage would be around 312, about the level of Engi’s retal damages with his perma might stacks.

Reasons:
The trait no longer singles out just Condi build variants.

Removal Perfect Inscription’s Retal Aura for Fire Shield means Guardian wont have perma retal by any sense of the word, making room for increased retal damages for the guardian himself.

Saiyan.1704:

Right Hand Strength
I don’t think nerfing a trait, then adding an additional effect to seclude other weapons just to make Sword look good, is the right approach here. Also, Sword is more defined by its initial burst effect instead of a Finishing Move burst effect, your suggested health threshold of 25% burn proc isn’t exactly what Sword is all about.

Considering the Inner Fire trait you suggested getting buffed to a 2 burn stack threshold, the 20% fury is basically going to be up 100%. This completely dominates Right-Hand Strength, making it underwhelming

• I recommend Inner Fire stays the same at a 3 stack thresholds.
• Right-Hand Strength stays the same at 15% crit chance.
• Add Sword damage modifier of 5% instead of a 20% weapon cd.

This will give Sword its “Burst” effect while also allowing people to choose exactly what trait they prefer based on their weapon selections, as usual.

Perfect Inscriptions
My suggestion on Wrath of Justice already activates a signet on the utility bar, I recommend to just change Perfect Inscription’s Retal Aura to Fire Shield Aura instead and keep the rest of the trait values as is.

Why fire shield:

• Fire Shield complements Altruistic Healing builds with its Might stacking, essentially promoting Sage Amulet considering Sage is already a subpar amulet for Guardian at the moment.

• Gives the Guardian additional Might stacking abilities considering we removed Might stacking on Zealous Scepter’s trait change.

• Gives additional burn procs, of which, is mostly effective 1v1 as team pvp still has too much aoe condi cleanses going around, complementing Signet’s single target utility effects.

• Promotes build diversity for players who wants Rune of Fire and GS#4 Leap in Purging Flames. Players will like the new Fire Shield trait change.

Radiant Retaliation
The trait needs to increase Retaliation damages by 25% but ONLY for the Guardian. It does not apply for allies who receives Retal from the Guardian. However, Spirit Weapons can (should) also receive this bonus effect. Approx Retal damage would be around 312, about the level of Engi’s retal damages with his perma might stacks.

Agree with pretty much everything you said except for a couple things

1: Right handed Strength. The sword already does pretty decent single target damage & if the 3rd AA had some reliable cleave then it would be a great melee damage weapon.
Radiance is mainly about 2 things, Critical hits and condition damage. Seeing as inner fire has the critical hits part covered pretty well wouldn’t adding a condition onto sword crits (say a 4 second bleed) be better ?
I mean assuming you don’t even have + condition damage it can still be a decent little boost when fully might stacked.

2: Fire Aura, Could be interesting. personally though I would say 3 stacks of might for 15 seconds for nearby allies & a single condition cleanse for yourself.
(this would work with altruistic healing and provide a bit of condition clear which signet builds lack)

3: Radiant Retaliation. Anything that boosts retaliation damage encourages passive play which is bad both from a gameplay perspective and a balance perspective.

@ Bravery, Lastly on the subject of passive gameplay.

While it’s commendable your looking at spirit weapons it won’t do much good as in the end they really need a complete overhaul in their identity.

I say this for 2 reasons

1: Spirit weapons have a large downtime due to how easy they can die, the fact their Cd starts after they die and they only last so long even if left alone.
&
2: Using a spirit weapon means you sacrifice much if not all your ability to sustain your own health, cleanse conditions, provide boon support or provide CC.

Even if both of these problems were more or less solved via new versions of traits, adjusting when CD’s happen and how long spirit weapons last the guardian would essentially become either the new version of the MM necro or the poor mans version of it.
Both outcomes would be bad from a gameplay perspective (encourages you to let AI do all the work) & a balance perspective.

It would be better to redesign them completely.
Personally many people I know would like it if the designers took a look at the dervish weapon enchants and redesigned spirit weapons to a similar degree. (short term short CD effects for the guardian & possibly nearby allies that last a set number of hits & or seconds that can provide things like projectile defense, healing on attack condition removal, CC etc…)

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Before you reduce the effectiveness of guardian traits it may be more beneficial time wise to start with other classes. I say this because guardians tend to not multi task as well as several other classes, thus any reductions on the guardians end would require much larger reductions where Rev’s, engineers & elementalists are concerned.

Will do. I’m ok with going with any profession next, which profession should i do next? I’m thinking engineer / scrapper or necro / reaper.

Most of my other critiques still stand regarding traits & virtues.

I considered swapping places of zealot’s speed and vigorous precision, but decided against it. Zeal’s minor traits placed too much emphasis on benefiting off of symbols and I would have to rework that to give it logical sense.

As for fiery wrath, I thought about making it a minor, but in the end, what does it accomplish? More damage. You’re right that players tend to take it because it gives such a nice damage bonus, so I’m reluctant to make a move that would etch it closer to power creeping. It’s universal in nature, so it should only be attractive if zealous scepter isn’t attractive.

I know you have a lot of other trait recommendations, but would you please elaborate why you recommend them?

As for weapon skills/utilities

1: Hammer AA. Because this is so slow most guardians only use hammer when they have to. (by reducing the cast time & removing the after cast then reducing the number of pulses on the symbol to 1 you can maintain the same protection uptime & damage output)

I could do this, but if I did, i’d lower the base damage as well as the coefficient to match it’s new attack speed. In the end, it will deal the same amount of damage, unless there’s a specific reason why you want it striking more times and merits developer’s time in changing it.

2: Zealot’s Embrace. A shadow step doesn’t really feel like its guardian-ish. (Simply increasing the speed of the wave and reducing the cast time would be enough as it’s currently very slow)

Guardians are “Magical”, they’re harder to understand than a some other profession like a warrior. I made this so the hammer’s skills would work better together and require more advanced play to make use of. (Zealot’s embrace – time a ring of warding – mighty blow.

3: Staff Piercing Light. (this would be far to powerful. Instead why not just get rid of the detonate on orb of light, increase the speed/hitbox size then increase the healing output.)

What makes it strong? 444 (1.2) damage too high? or the fact that it’s pretty much a laser? One of the reasons why I made this change is because it lacked in identity and had a flawed function. I could do what you recommended, but then we’d end up with another generic damage projectile, which I was trying to avoid.

4: True Shot, true the damage could be a it on the high end given the cool down, however reducing the damage means a big drop in longbow damage output overall.
(instead why not reduce the damage by say 20%, tack on a cripple, make it usable while moving then reduce the cast time of the AA to 1/2 second so the damage over time stays more or less the same)

I wanted to end mindless spamming of skills that are on cooldown, and True Shot was evident to me that it was one of those skills. It really could go either way here, but I wanted to encourage strategic use of the skill.

5: Hunter’s Ward. This skill already took a very long time to cast for any environment with high pressure (PVP and Raids) Either leave it as is in game or change it to be a wave attack that immobilizes and burns foes with a lower Cd then is now since it would have a lower area of effect.

On the contrary, high pressure makes the game suspenseful and strategic. There has been several times where I’ve used this to completely disrupt an enemy zerg in WvW (5 rings, enemies that touch them lose a stack of stability, and there’s no limit on how many foes can touch the rings). I could make it a cone shaped attack, but I wouldn’t be able to use it as I’ve been using it before- On a cliff above an enemy zerg, disrupting their frontlines. I wanted to preserve this aspect, but tone it down so the guardian will have to make a decision whether it’s the right time to use the skill.

6: Orb of Wrath. This skill already had problems connecting with targets beyond 600 range, making it summon 7 orbs one at a time before they can fire will just cause more problems (however creative it is) Change it to a channeled beam _(ala mes greatsword) with near instant connect, but reduce the damage by 15 or so % to offset the change.

I suggested an increased velocity on the orbs. Mesmer greatsword’s autoattack is mesmer greatsword’s auto attack and I don’t want to create a duplicate attack.

7: Sword AA. (the only change the sword needed was on the 3rd AA, it got that but having an executioners effect on it is not needed, just make the AA hit reliably with a melee cleave)

If I remove the effect, I remove the identity. As it is now in game, sword has limited identity. The only identity it has is blinding flash and it’s not even worth taking sword over other weapon choices.

8: The only change focus could have used was possibly a faster speed on the ray. (lasting “silence” effects would be impossible to balance as well)

You’re right about that it’d be impossible to balance. Quite frankly, it’s impossible to balance this game too, but the least we could do is move as close to balance as possible. I have several effects in mind for each profession to counter the new meta in the game. (tons of boons and conditions and control effects etc) Stay tuned when I work on other professions.

9: Same ^ for Shield.

10: Having movement speed cancel effects is generally a bad thing (reduce the torch #5 to 4 pulses for 1 second, have the first and last effect the guardian is all it needs)

Not really. Hundred blades on warrior is a self root and it’s considered one of the warrior’s best skills. It’s about the context on when to use it.

11: litany of Wrath is more or less fine as is.

I understand it’s use with monk’s focus because it’s a meditation, but other than that, guardians have other sources of healing. Yes it has high burst heal potential, but is it worth taking over the others even when guardians have low health to begin with?

12: Signet of Resolve (nice idea but generally protection is something you want up constantly or when you want it up not randomly. The second half is kind of convoluted)

13: Purification (the only thing it really needs is for the initial heal to be larger, the secondary heal to be smaller and the regeneration to be shared with allies)

14: Hollowed ground ( boon ripping doesn’t really fit the guardian and if it were to get it a consecration wouldn’t really make sense and they protect allies and cure stuff.)

15: Merciful Intervention (at this point since they both have long CD’s, teleport and are of limited use for multi tasking just merge it with Judge’s Intervention and call it “Intervention”. Then feel free to create something new.)

16: Smite condition is good as is unless you plan on greatly reducing access to conditions across the board.

I’ll get to that eventually.

17: Retreat. (to keep shouts up to par with other abilities why not lower the CD to 30 seconds base then lower the boon base uptime to 18 seconds base)

18: Save yourselves (really needs some resistance, its being nicknamed the suicide button by many people)

19: Hold the Line (could use a slight boost to stay in line with other skills. Either a cool down reduction to 30 seconds or a boon uptime increase)

For all shouts, they already are seeing use in WvW, so i’m reluctant to give them buffs.

20: Bane signet. (fine as is more or less, the knock down could be made into a wave like warrior offhand mace)

21: Signet of Judgment (why not just go with protection and retaliation for a short duration to help counter spikes)

Hm. I could do this, but i’d either reduce the duration of protection or increase the cooldown.

22 etc… : Removing the boons from traps and adding arming times will effectively make guard bad vs many other classes which it already struggles to fill the same roll as. If done those classes would need even larger nerfs to maintain balance. (hence why I suggest you start with the more powerful classes and work your way down so that the changes later on won’t have to be so much)

Lastly on the subject of passive gameplay.

While it’s commendable your looking at spirit weapons it won’t do much good as in the end they really need a complete overhaul in their identity.

I say this for 2 reasons

1: Spirit weapons have a large downtime due to how easy they can die, the fact their Cd starts after they die and they only last so long even if left alone.
&
2: Using a spirit weapon means you sacrifice much if not all your ability to sustain your own health, cleanse conditions, provide boon support or provide CC.

Even if both of these problems were more or less solved via new versions of traits, adjusting when CD’s happen and how long spirit weapons last the guardian would essentially become either the new version of the MM necro or the poor mans version of it.
Both outcomes would be bad from a gameplay perspective (encourages you to let AI do all the work) & a balance perspective.

It would be better to redesign them completely.
Personally many people I know would like it if the designers took a look at the dervish weapon enchants and redesigned spirit weapons to a similar degree. (short term short CD effects for the guardian & possibly nearby allies that last a set number of hits & or seconds that can provide things like projectile defense, healing on attack condition removal, CC etc…)

Not sure if you saw the new spirit weapons, but I’ve reworked them to behave more like intelligent abilities rather than another necro minion.

• Bow of Truth: You can summon it afar from you, strike foes far away from you or at a distance, hit things you don’t have a line of sight to.
• Hammer of Wrath: Shortened cooldown by over 40% and made it so it “sics” your target rather than just sitting there waiting to get hit.
• Shield of Avenger: Gave it a strong support property, summon it on a target ally and grants the ally magnetic aura.
• Sword of Justice: Essentially traps your target foe and forces the foe to fight the sword in a duel, kinda like JarvanIV’s Cataclysm in league of legends.

All spirit weapons see greatly reduced cooldowns for more uptime.

Ragnar, you’ve being a great help to me. Thank you for sharing your thoughts, and please continue to do so in the days ahead as I refine these further.

If you would though, please elaborate more on why you recommend your changes rather than should. It helps me gain a better understanding. If you’re unsure about my changes or if my explanations in the spreadsheet weren’t clear (many of them aren’t, I was getting tired), you can ask me why I made the changes and you may refute the reasons.

Saiyan.1704:

I posted my Comments on a few traits. Wasn’t able to read the rest of your suggestions. I’ll finish up this weekend :P

Zealous Scepter
A very interesting concept. However cool on paper, I much rather prefer a low damaging aoe effect (20% of original orb damage) around a foe when an orb lands. Reason being: The trait change could promote build diversity for those who want more F1 procs in a group, rather than something that just effects a single target. Just my own desire for the trait but an AoE effect rather than Single Target idea is still there.
- I imagine some type of damage reduction needs to be done to make this happen.

I do agree that Might stacking with Scepter hasn’t exactly change the playstyle of Guardian or better him in any way. Maybe if this was prepatch but enter ANY team scenario with a scrapper and rev… you will always have high, if not full, stacks of Might.

I think you’ll like what I did with smite and chains of light then, if you want aoe effects hitting more targets. Ragnar above suggested that it becomes a laser like mesmer greatsword. It could go either way.

Kindled Zeal
I agree. Kindled Zeal was always a “why do we still have this” trait ever since Amplified Wrath was added. It’s a bit one-sided and miss placed in a tree that’s meant for “zealing”; focusing on aoe or direct damages.

I personally like the 10% crit idea. Almost every amulet has Power so it’s not one sided and Guardian absolutely lacks crit chance in his builds.

Shattered Aegis
I recommend shatter aegis grants health to self rather than health to allies. Other classes like Rev, Engi and Ele already have extraordinary passive heals. I personally like this trait change because it some what replaces the healing factor from Zealous Scepter + Altruistic healing, of which, was a niche combo to use.

I think it’s a perfect example of give (this new aegis factor) and take (removing scepter might stacking)

Hm, while I eventually plan on getting to the other professions to tone down their sustainability, you’re on to something. Let me work on other professions, and I’ll get back to this. Once I see the full picture and they still have overly strong sustainability, then I’ll change this.

Symbolic Avenger
I like the Cripple effect considering our Condi Guardian promise (trap bleeds) was never delivered (darn it Grouch!)

I’m liking the idea of Symbol’s applying condi (vulnerability on cripple effect in dh line + burns) considering Symbols are underused due to their ineffectiveness due to Symbols can be out played by a competent player.

Symbols applying additional condi pressure via attrition damages/cc, may actually lead to more build diversity with Symbol usages.

Right Hand Strength
I don’t think nerfing a trait, then adding an additional effect to seclude other weapons just to make Sword look good, is the right approach here. Also, Sword is more defined by its initial burst effect instead of a Finishing Move burst effect, your suggested health threshold of 25% burn proc isn’t exactly what Sword is all about.

Considering the Inner Fire trait you suggested getting buffed to a 2 burn stack threshold, the 20% fury is basically going to be up 100%. This completely dominates Right-Hand Strength, making it underwhelming

• I recommend Inner Fire stays the same at a 3 stack thresholds.
• Right-Hand Strength stays the same at 15% crit chance.
• Add Sword damage modifier of 5% instead of a 20% weapon cd.

This will give Sword its “Burst” effect while also allowing people to choose exactly what trait they prefer based on their weapon selections, as usual.

Hm. You bring an interesting point. I’ll do the first 2 suggestions you have, but keep the burn proc in. Sword went through a makeover in this suggestion.

Wrath of Justice
A bit too much emphasis on Scepter#2 Smite, some what singling it out compared to other guardian weapon skills. I’d honestly be fine with Signet of Wrath actually activating your Signet of Wrath on the utility bar, much like how Radiant Fire activates Torch#4’s flame so you can throw Torch#4 twice. Signets needs the love too. (and honestly, I feel this was its original intent but never fully implemented)

This puts more emphasis on Signet builds, getting a double activation for something that’s already limited with “Line of Sight” issues (Signet activation needs that error to be remove imo) as well as defining single target Signet skills vs AoE trap or sustain skills.

I’m not quite sure if I follow. Having the signet trait active a signet trait on the utility bar would just put it on cooldown wouldn’kitten What is there to gain from that? I get radiant fire’s torch 4, but zealot’s flame is a sequence skill.

Perfect Inscriptions
My suggestion on Wrath of Justice already activates a signet on the utility bar, I recommend to just change Perfect Inscription’s Retal Aura to Fire Shield Aura instead and keep the rest of the trait values as is.

Why fire shield:

• Fire Shield complements Altruistic Healing builds with its Might stacking, essentially promoting Sage Amulet considering Sage is already a subpar amulet for Guardian at the moment.

• Gives the Guardian additional Might stacking abilities considering we removed Might stacking on Zealous Scepter’s trait change.

• Gives additional burn procs, of which, is mostly effective 1v1 as team pvp still has too much aoe condi cleanses going around, complementing Signet’s single target utility effects.

• Promotes build diversity for players who wants Rune of Fire and GS#4 Leap in Purging Flames. Players will like the new Fire Shield trait change.

The main reason why I changed it was because signets had varying cooldowns and didn’t equally utilize the light aura (similar to absolute resolution with virtue of resolve vs wings of resolve). But I think I’m seeing where you’re getting at. There’s nothing to benefit off of using signets in these suggestions. Compare this to signet mastery on warriors which activate a signet when you strike a foe below health threshold and benefit off of using signets with a precision increase- and that’s an adept trait.

One thing to note though, is that the trait offers increased passive effects. I could throw in fire shield, but would have to remove the passive buff. Is this acceptable? I’m neutral to this decision.

Radiant Retaliation
The trait needs to increase Retaliation damages by 25% but ONLY for the Guardian. It does not apply for allies who receives Retal from the Guardian. However, Spirit Weapons can (should) also receive this bonus effect. Approx Retal damage would be around 312, about the level of Engi’s retal damages with his perma might stacks.

Reasons:
The trait no longer singles out just Condi build variants.

Removal Perfect Inscription’s Retal Aura for Fire Shield means Guardian wont have perma retal by any sense of the word, making room for increased retal damages for the guardian himself.

I’m honestly against anything that buffs retaliation because there’s no counterplay against it and usually comes in the form of boon rip/corrupt/stealing. Not everyone hase it.

Beautiful. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and continue to do so. It’s a great help.

To everyone else that provided critiques before the first revision release (EphemeralWallaby.7643, Zantmar.5406, Ezrael.6859, ronpierce.2760, King Cephalopod.7942), I’ve some changes. Thank you for the feedback.

I dislike the way you changed a lot of the healing skill. They were alright, they just needed some balance. Here a list of the Healing/sec of each skill. The first number will be the hp/sec when traited with their respective trait. And the second number will be the hp/sec which is the stardard medi build in PvP. Then the advantage and disadvantage of the skill.

Receive de Light : 162hp/sec ; 203hp/sec ; Adv: Heals Allies, Disadv: Long cast time
Litany of Wrath : 150hp/sec ; 231hp/sec ; Adv: 25% of dmg in heals, Disadv : Heal vary.
Shelter : 152hp/sec; 217hp/sec ; Adv: Block for 2sec
Signet of Resolve : 203hp/sec ; 254hp/sec ; Adv: Passive condi Removal
Purification : 412hp/sec ; 494hp/sec ; Adv : Dmg Ennemies, Disadv: Need to trigger trap

The goal of a balance, should be to make sure that the healing with the most disadvantage and less advantage have a better healing. For me this list should be
1-2) Purification, Signet of Resolve : Because Signet doesn’t have real advantage, and Trap have a big disadvantage, since you can’t use it while running aways for exemple.
3) Receive de Light come next because he have a big advantage. It’s a niche skill with it’s own identity
4) Shelter can stay the last one because it’s advantage is so big.

Basically, I propose to keep the current order in which the healing skill are right now. Purification and Signet of Resolve stay some of the most powerful heal, while shelter have the leas amount of hp/sec. That say, the vanilla heal are all way below purification. I propose to add 60% more heal to all of the vanilla healing skill. That give us these numbers.

Receive de Light : 325hp/sec ; 386hp/sec ; Adv: Heals Allies, Disadv: Long cast time
Litany of Wrath : 218hp/sec ; 300hp/sec ; Adv: 25% of dmg in heals, Disadv : Heal vary.
Shelter : 243hp/sec; 308hp/sec ; Adv: Block for 2sec
Signet of Resolve : 408hp/sec ; 469hp/sec ; Adv: Passive condi Removal
Purification : 412hp/sec ; 494hp/sec ; Adv : Dmg Ennemies, Disadv: Need to trigger trap

Keep in mind that I double the base heal for Litany of Wrath and not just added 60% to rebalance that heals. That ways, each heals are more equal and we will choose the heal we need depending on our need. See how Litany of wrath is still the worst skill, but the slowly came closer to shelter when we get to a full medi build. Litany of Wrath is a meditation after all and should have an advantage in a medi build. The strongest heal stay purification, which was not improved, so you don’t have power creep.

Nooooooo, the forums ate my post that look me 35 minutes to write, kittens!

I apologize but this will be short and blunt because I don’t want to write everything again:

Zealot’s Speed: A trait’s internal cooldown, if it is based off a skill, will almost always be the skills ICD, so the ICD is 15s not 30s. I Like that it activates from boon threshold so that we can choose when to activate it and use it out of combat. I think that since it is a symbol this could cause a lot of balancing issues in the future since it benefits from all other symbol traits like healing, size, cripple, increase damage, burning, etc.

Fiery Wrath: Please don’t lower its damage anymore. It started at 10% and was already nerfed to 7%. This is not part of the power creep, but a base line trait that a lot of the guardians damage is balanced around. Similar to how a guardians survivability is balanced around meditations and AH. Furthermore Zeal is a damage line (power, not condi), and although I appreciate the extra personal survival your changes added, Zeal needs to increase DPS first and foremost. If its too powerful as a major adept, make it into a minor.

Virtuous Speed: Completely Backwards. Although 25% movement speed is always helpful, its primary purpose is to get us from point A to B faster (between points in sPVP, roaming in WvW, and running around in PVE). It makes no sense to use all your virtues, the backbone of a guardian’s defense while traveling. Should be “increase movement speed when one or more virtues is off cooldown”. In all honesty whichever trait line gets the 25% movement speed buff it will be the go to line for PVP and I would rather see it in Valor or Virtues which are the 2 most commonly use lines currently.

Glacial Heart: Seems like a good fit for Zeal, but even with all your changes GH doesn’t benefit the hammer in PVE at all, meaning zeal has to be one of the stronger PVP lines. Right now with your changes, Valor and Dragon Hunter are still mandatory, but you gutted Virtues, so maybe Zeal is viable.

Fervourous Precision: Great trait, in all honesty Zeal should have more +crit traits. It makes no sense that Radiance is our best condi and crit line.

Shattered Aegis: I like the combining of the two traits although I’m not sure you need to nerf the damage and healing. Ironically aegis is not actually as prevalent as you would think on Guardians. Fragment of Faith is the only skill/trait that really blows up the balance of Shattered Aegis because it sprinkles aegis around like candy.

Symbolic Avenger: Like the change to increase size, its really a necessary modification for damage builds that use symbols.

Thaddeus.4891:

The first number will be the hp/sec when traited with their respective trait. And the second number will be the hp/sec which is the stardard medi build in PvP. Then the advantage and disadvantage of the skill.

Receive de Light : 162hp/sec ; 203hp/sec ; Adv: Heals Allies, Disadv: Long cast time
Litany of Wrath : 150hp/sec ; 231hp/sec ; Adv: 25% of dmg in heals, Disadv : Heal vary.
Shelter : 152hp/sec; 217hp/sec ; Adv: Block for 2sec
Signet of Resolve : 203hp/sec ; 254hp/sec ; Adv: Passive condi Removal
Purification : 412hp/sec ; 494hp/sec ; Adv : Dmg Ennemies, Disadv: Need to trigger trap

The goal of a balance, should be to make sure that the healing with the most disadvantage and less advantage have a better healing. For me this list should be
1-2) Purification, Signet of Resolve : Because Signet doesn’t have real advantage, and Trap have a big disadvantage, since you can’t use it while running aways for exemple.
3) Receive de Light come next because he have a big advantage. It’s a niche skill with it’s own identity
4) Shelter can stay the last one because it’s advantage is so big.

Basically, I propose to keep the current order in which the healing skill are right now. Purification and Signet of Resolve stay some of the most powerful heal, while shelter have the leas amount of hp/sec. That say, the vanilla heal are all way below purification. I propose to add 60% more heal to all of the vanilla healing skill. That give us these numbers.

Receive de Light : 325hp/sec ; 386hp/sec ; Adv: Heals Allies, Disadv: Long cast time
Litany of Wrath : 218hp/sec ; 300hp/sec ; Adv: 25% of dmg in heals, Disadv : Heal vary.
Shelter : 243hp/sec; 308hp/sec ; Adv: Block for 2sec
Signet of Resolve : 408hp/sec ; 469hp/sec ; Adv: Passive condi Removal
Purification : 412hp/sec ; 494hp/sec ; Adv : Dmg Ennemies, Disadv: Need to trigger trap

Keep in mind that I double the base heal for Litany of Wrath and not just added 60% to rebalance that heals. That ways, each heals are more equal and we will choose the heal we need depending on our need. See how Litany of wrath is still the worst skill, but the slowly came closer to shelter when we get to a full medi build. Litany of Wrath is a meditation after all and should have an advantage in a medi build. The strongest heal stay purification, which was not improved, so you don’t have power creep.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention.

How did you get 412/hp a second for purification? total heals 2192 on activate and 6413 on trigger, then additional 1300 health with regeneration on 30s cooldown assuming 0 healing power = 286.83 hp/s (or 330.17 hp/s with regeneration included). I prefer to use minutes as a determinant on the sustainability of a heal because a small difference while looking only at seconds is a major difference in a minute- so purification heals 17,210 hp / minute or 19,810 hp / minute.

17,210 hp / minute and 19,810 hp / minute (with regen) on a profession with built in sustain via traits and a base health pool of only 11,645 at level 80 without any additional vitality stats (+ a bunch of built in healing via traits). Compare this to the next strongest (personal healing) skill signet of resolve, which heals 12,225 hp / minute and is on a 10 second longer cooldown.

You’re absolutely right about each skill having advantages and disadvantages, but the advantages of purification outshines signet of resolve and litany of wrath, which competes for the same identity: burst healing. Looking further, purification offers (arguably) better advantages than signet of resolve and litany of wrath (yes it needs to trigger for that burst heal, but you also damage and blind 5 foes. Compare this to lousy unreliable passive condi cleansing and the requirement to stay offensive to heal for a higher amount)

That’s why I’m against using purification as a benchmark for balancing other heals. Instead, I’m using receive the light and shelter’s average ~9000 hp/minute as a benchmark. While doing so, I removed all identity conflicts of all healing skills and gave them different characteristics so choice of a healing skill determines more on the situation.

Receive the light:

• Advantage: very high group healing capabilities (48,900 hp / minute);
• Disadvantages: Heals over time, not burst heal. Does OK personal healing (9750 hp / minute)
• Identity: Ally support / Ally burst healing

Symbol of Life:

• Advantage: Is a symbol – works with all symbol traits, deals damage, revives, also heals allies;
• Disadvantages: Low personal healing (7824 hp / minute), ally heal amount not as great as receive the light (39120 hp / minute).
• Identity: PvE / DPS maximization / Revivals / Ally sustain

Shelter:

• Advantages: Very useful in PvP / WvW
• Disadvantages: Heal amount is on the low side
• Identity: PvP / WvW personal survivability

Signet of Benevolence

• Advantages: Grants allies protection passively, Shadowstep mechanic / Rescue a distant ally / Shadowtep / Stunbreak
• Disadvantages: High cooldown
• Identity: Mobility

After reading this again, I agree with the previous commentator that this might be a little too convoluting. I might increase the cooldown further, increase heal amount, and remove the requirement that the shadowstep only works if there’s an ally in your target area.

Purification Trap

• Advantages: AOE purification for 10 seconds
• Disadvantages: Requires a trigger on trap, low end of healing spectrum
• Identity: Strong counter vs condition heavy enemies

compare this with how it is now,

• Receive the light: Party support
• Litany of Wrath: Cousin of purification, requires you to work harder for the same amount of heal, requires monk’s focus trait but on the bright side, has a short cast time.
• Shelter: PvP WvW preferred choice
• Signet of Resolve: healing skill in the shadow of purification, lousy passive, useless skill
• Purification: Best burst heal, easiest vs litany of wrath, deals damage, blinds up to 5 foes and gives you regeneration, invisible to enemies

As you can see, I’ve been pretty critical about purification, signet of resolve, and litany of wrath- so I gave them overhauls. Receive the light and shelter have a dedicated identity, so I left them alone.

Indure.5410:

Nooooooo, the forums ate my post that look me 35 minutes to write, kittens!

I apologize but this will be short and blunt because I don’t want to write everything again:

Zealot’s Speed: A trait’s internal cooldown, if it is based off a skill, will almost always be the skills ICD, so the ICD is 15s not 30s. I Like that it activates from boon threshold so that we can choose when to activate it and use it out of combat. I think that since it is a symbol this could cause a lot of balancing issues in the future since it benefits from all other symbol traits like healing, size, cripple, increase damage, burning, etc.

I’m sure arenanet could make exceptions as long as it’s in the direction of better balance. I could follow their design principles and reduce the ICD to 15 seconds, but would have to increase boon threshold to some very high number.

Fiery Wrath: Please don’t lower its damage anymore. It started at 10% and was already nerfed to 7%. This is not part of the power creep, but a base line trait that a lot of the guardians damage is balanced around. Similar to how a guardians survivability is balanced around meditations and AH. Furthermore Zeal is a damage line (power, not condi), and although I appreciate the extra personal survival your changes added, Zeal needs to increase DPS first and foremost. If its too powerful as a major adept, make it into a minor.

I reduced it because it was far too attractive vs wrathful spirit and zealous scepter, and usually became the default choice for the adept class in Zeal. I wanted situational traits to shine brighter than universal trait, but not in a way so any trait would greatly influence build diversity. (I removed the virtue cooldown traits and made it mostly baseline)

Virtuous Speed: Completely Backwards. Although 25% movement speed is always helpful, its primary purpose is to get us from point A to B faster (between points in sPVP, roaming in WvW, and running around in PVE). It makes no sense to use all your virtues, the backbone of a guardian’s defense while traveling. Should be “increase movement speed when one or more virtues is off cooldown”. In all honesty whichever trait line gets the 25% movement speed buff it will be the go to line for PVP and I would rather see it in Valor or Virtues which are the 2 most commonly use lines currently.

Yeah, you’re right about that. I don’t want it to be one or more virtues is off cooldown though, because that would mean that the guardian will essentially have 25% movement speed every time out of combat without any other major caveats. I could reduce it from all to just any 1 virtue. Is this a better move?

Glacial Heart: Seems like a good fit for Zeal, but even with all your changes GH doesn’t benefit the hammer in PVE at all, meaning zeal has to be one of the stronger PVP lines. Right now with your changes, Valor and Dragon Hunter are still mandatory, but you gutted Virtues, so maybe Zeal is viable.

In response to your suggestion that it should be in Valor or Virtues, I didn’t want to create a situation where all the good pvp traits were in a few trait lines (like it is now). I want players to evaluate the situation and build accordingly so each profession have strengths and weaknesses when it comes to PvP / WvW.

Fervourous Precision: Great trait, in all honesty Zeal should have more +crit traits. It makes no sense that Radiance is our best condi and crit line.

Shattered Aegis: I like the combining of the two traits although I’m not sure you need to nerf the damage and healing. Ironically aegis is not actually as prevalent as you would think on Guardians. Fragment of Faith is the only skill/trait that really blows up the balance of Shattered Aegis because it sprinkles aegis around like candy.

Shattered aegis hits pretty hard, and is very strong with communal defenses. To add something and not take away anything would power creep guardian.

Symbolic Avenger: Like the change to increase size, its really a necessary modification for damage builds that use symbols.

Thank you for your response and sorry the forum ate all your typing. Happens to me a lot as well.

Well after looking at the whole thing I have serious doubts about how much good the changes would actually do.

It would boost a few things, but the nerfs to others would likely have such a impact that the class would either be in the same spot it is now (one trick pony that once understood is easily handled) or even worse.

What’s more while some of the boosts/tweaks are nice I still see meditations (traps would not be used much at all because without boons and a arming time added nobody would want to use them due to the sustain going down the toilet)being far and away the best options the class has for play because of how they function & interact with traits.

There are also several changes like those to focus, shield, staff & hammer which are so off from what is needed (nothing is needed in case of focus and shield).

This new “Silence” effect is also massively overpowered.

No matter how much love spirit weapons get buff wise they are also either going to remain the poor mans version of MM necro or better then it which is bad for the game.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Well after looking at the whole thing I have serious doubts about how much good the changes would actually do.

It would boost a few things, but the nerfs to others would likely have such a impact that the class would either be in the same spot it is now (one trick pony that once understood is easily handled) or even worse.

What’s more while some of the boosts/tweaks are nice I still see meditations (traps would not be used much at all because without boons and a arming time added nobody would want to use them due to the sustain going down the toilet)being far and away the best options the class has for play because of how they function & interact with traits.

There are also several changes like those to focus, shield, staff & hammer which are so off from what is needed (nothing is needed in case of focus and shield).

This new “Silence” effect is also massively overpowered.

No matter how much love spirit weapons get buff wise they are also either going to remain the poor mans version of MM necro or better then it which is bad for the game.

I can’t disagree with you.

On paper it’s difficult to understand how these will effect the actual game, better or for worse. It’s like patch notes before an actual patch- you see one thing, expect another, and get something else.

What I could do is use that theoretic builds sheet and simulate a build for you, so you can see how they might interact. Just let me know how you want to build it so I can make it.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Well after looking at the whole thing I have serious doubts about how much good the changes would actually do.

It would boost a few things, but the nerfs to others would likely have such a impact that the class would either be in the same spot it is now (one trick pony that once understood is easily handled) or even worse.

What’s more while some of the boosts/tweaks are nice I still see meditations (traps would not be used much at all because without boons and a arming time added nobody would want to use them due to the sustain going down the toilet)being far and away the best options the class has for play because of how they function & interact with traits.

There are also several changes like those to focus, shield, staff & hammer which are so off from what is needed (nothing is needed in case of focus and shield).

This new “Silence” effect is also massively overpowered.

No matter how much love spirit weapons get buff wise they are also either going to remain the poor mans version of MM necro or better then it which is bad for the game.

Re reading what you wrote, you have a point about traps.

The piercing light trait have also been receiving criticism from other people because traps are unblockable + have a CC attached to them.

I could change the trait so that they create a symbol instead of dazing foes. Would synergize with other specializations. Opinions?

silence/purified are pretty strong on second though. I’ll change it on the next revision.

TheBravery.9615:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Well after looking at the whole thing I have serious doubts about how much good the changes would actually do.

It would boost a few things, but the nerfs to others would likely have such a impact that the class would either be in the same spot it is now (one trick pony that once understood is easily handled) or even worse.

What’s more while some of the boosts/tweaks are nice I still see meditations (traps would not be used much at all because without boons and a arming time added nobody would want to use them due to the sustain going down the toilet)being far and away the best options the class has for play because of how they function & interact with traits.

There are also several changes like those to focus, shield, staff & hammer which are so off from what is needed (nothing is needed in case of focus and shield).

This new “Silence” effect is also massively overpowered.

No matter how much love spirit weapons get buff wise they are also either going to remain the poor mans version of MM necro or better then it which is bad for the game.

Re reading what you wrote, you have a point about traps.

The piercing light trait have also been receiving criticism from other people because traps are unblockable + have a CC attached to them.

I could change the trait so that they create a symbol instead of dazing foes. Would synergize with other specializations. Opinions?

silence/purified are pretty strong on second though. I’ll change it on the next revision.

They already changed traps several weeks back so they & the daze are blockable.

The daze can be annoying now if you don’t have blocks/stability true but it also serves as the warning to dodge asap because it comes before any damage does.

Really short of changing them into wells there isn’t that much that can be done for them because traps will always nuke idiots & be easily avoided by good players.

Wells on the other hand are ranged & share boons granted, but cannot be layed out preemptively & are completely visible to enemies.

PS: I’ve been going over some builds on paper and using a calculator to do the math.
The changes are nice for survive-ability in a few ways with altruistic healing builds (which require nearby allies and you basically stacking on them constantly)

Symbol builds like hammer & mace are also better, though hammer still has some of its current problems. (mainly being slow as hell)

Spirit weapons are also improved, though nobody in their right mind will ever want to use them vs shouts-meditations.

The nerfs to damage spike potential, virtues _(traits and DH) over all damage with non symbol builds, meditations etc.. also nerfs non symbol-non AEGIS spam offensive builds quite hard.

Over all I like a few of the ideas but would not want the complete change as it would hurt offensive build options allot and not really do anything to promote anything but altruistic healing based builds.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

TheBravery.9615:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Well after looking at the whole thing I have serious doubts about how much good the changes would actually do.

It would boost a few things, but the nerfs to others would likely have such a impact that the class would either be in the same spot it is now (one trick pony that once understood is easily handled) or even worse.

What’s more while some of the boosts/tweaks are nice I still see meditations (traps would not be used much at all because without boons and a arming time added nobody would want to use them due to the sustain going down the toilet)being far and away the best options the class has for play because of how they function & interact with traits.

There are also several changes like those to focus, shield, staff & hammer which are so off from what is needed (nothing is needed in case of focus and shield).

This new “Silence” effect is also massively overpowered.

No matter how much love spirit weapons get buff wise they are also either going to remain the poor mans version of MM necro or better then it which is bad for the game.

Re reading what you wrote, you have a point about traps.

The piercing light trait have also been receiving criticism from other people because traps are unblockable + have a CC attached to them.

I could change the trait so that they create a symbol instead of dazing foes. Would synergize with other specializations. Opinions?

silence/purified are pretty strong on second though. I’ll change it on the next revision.

They already changed traps several weeks back so they & the daze are blockable.

The daze can be annoying now if you don’t have blocks/stability true but it also serves as the warning to dodge asap because it comes before any damage does.

Really short of changing them into wells there isn’t that much that can be done for them because traps will always nuke idiots & be easily avoided by good players.

Wells on the other hand are ranged & share boons granted, but cannot be layed out preemptively & are completely visible to enemies.

PS: I’ve been going over some builds on paper and using a calculator to do the math.
The changes are nice for survive-ability in a few ways with altruistic healing builds (which require nearby allies and you basically stacking on them constantly)

Symbol builds like hammer & mace are also better, though hammer still has some of its current problems. (mainly being slow as hell)

Spirit weapons are also improved, though nobody in their right mind will ever want to use them vs shouts-meditations.

The nerfs to damage spike potential, virtues _(traits and DH) over all damage with non symbol builds, meditations etc.. also nerfs non symbol-non AEGIS spam offensive builds quite hard.

Over all I like a few of the ideas but would not want the complete change as it would hurt offensive build options allot and not really do anything to promote anything but altruistic healing based builds.

Would you say altruistic healing still hinders build diversity after these changes?

I could make altruistic healing a minor within valor trait (remove might of the protector) and place another trait in it’s place (maybe a reverse altruistic healing- giving allies boons heals them) If I were to do this, I’d have to reduce the healing effectiveness of altruistic healing because it’s grandmaster in nature and I’m reducing it down to a minor.

Also the 01/26 patch affected only test of faith, so foes passing the ring won’t get an unblockable daze effect.

/other thoughts. Force of will is still looking unattractive. Might scrap that symbol proc and merge radiant resistance into it from radiance/ place in it’s place some other trait that benefits off of healing or giving boons to allies.. maybe in the form of temporary boost in damage output

Signets still look rather lackluster..

I wouldn’t say that altruistic healing & monk’s focus hinder build diversity per say.

Its just that altruistic healing or monks focus are needed for survivability in PvP & WvW. Without them a guardian may as well have a sign over their head that says “Dies Easily”.

This presents a problem since altruistic healing only works well with shouts (since they provide boons to allies, which must nearby to trigger it) and monks focus only works well with meditations. The other skill types don’t provide a way to trigger either of them and thus you lose in incredible amount of sustain by using them.

There are 3 ways to solve this.

1: Increase the personal healing per second that the guardian can do for themselves & increasing the effect and number of defensive effects. _(tweaking traits, lowering cool downs on heals, increasing the amount of things that reduce/negate damage etc…)
Followed up by removing the sustain from these 2 traits.

(this is the by far the hardest but possibly best solution if done absolutely perfectly)

2: Giving spirit weapons, signets & consecrations there own grand master traits that heal, remove conditions & provide sustain on use or periodically.
or

3: Changing signets, consecrations & spirit weapons so that they provide boons either on use, pulsing etc… so that they can work well with altruistic healing.

Personally I’m in favor of a mix between 2 and 3 as is would be easiest and make these skill types more flexible.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

I wouldn’t say that altruistic healing & monk’s focus hinder build diversity per say.

Its just that altruistic healing or monks focus are needed for survivability in PvP & WvW. Without them a guardian may as well have a sign over their head that says “Dies Easily”.

This presents a problem since altruistic healing only works well with shouts (since they provide boons to allies, which must nearby to trigger it) and monks focus only works well with meditations. The other skill types don’t provide a way to trigger either of them and thus you lose in incredible amount of sustain by using them.

There are 3 ways to solve this.

1: Increase the personal healing per second that the guardian can do for themselves & increasing the effect and number of defensive effects. _(tweaking traits, lowering cool downs on heals, increasing the amount of things that reduce/negate damage etc…)
Followed up by removing the sustain from these 2 traits.

(this is the by far the hardest but possibly best solution if done absolutely perfectly)

2: Giving spirit weapons, signets & consecrations there own grand master traits that heal, remove conditions & provide sustain on use or periodically.
or

3: Changing signets, consecrations & spirit weapons so that they provide boons either on use, pulsing etc… so that they can work well with altruistic healing.

Personally I’m in favor of a mix between 2 and 3 as is would be easiest and make these skill types more flexible.

I’m trying to do number 1, but yeah, it’s very complicated to do that correctly.

I thought about giving guardian other sources of sustainability, but I’m concerned that I’ll create a guardian that is capable of choosing all sustainability traits (e.g. if they’re situated in different specializations or classes), and becoming unkillable.

(imagine AH/MF coupled with the new Writ of Persistence and shattered aegis)

I may have made a mistake there by trying to give other specializations sources of sustain (new shattered aegis in zeal, improved write of persistence).

I could try to lower the need for MF and AH by further increasing the virtue of resolve’s passive, as well as signet of courage’s passive- but in the end, this will encourage passive play- which I’m against.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_Z1buZnVy1JQ9JLfXwfUOPQ2b96XhXd6Yl0w1ITorX0/edit?pref=2&pli=1#gid=852159247
http://strawpoll.me/6987213

If you guys are reading this, please cast your approval rating vote after reading the suggestions.
Currently at 1.57 / 4 (D+) rating with 7 votes, which suggests that there is strong disapproval for this.

It’s worth mentioning that despite the small sample size, all the votes are basically 0s and 4s. Also, unlike what your public school will imply, C is average. Therefore, there is an aggregate dislike, but it’s not particularly strong. What we can tell, is that it’s fairly polarizing without any strong supporters to counteract the strong disapproval.