Guild Wars 2

Been playing this class since Beta and after a while on her the Guardian feels mediocre. There are a lot of things that are kinda ho-hum, could be better but aren’t. The class is not bad and its reasonably effective, but compared to a thief, warrior or mesmer its pretty mediocre at best.

Suggestions:

Speed when meleing. My number 1 suggestion is to let us spec or give us a signet for a run speed boost. Having to equip a staff, is just garbage. Even a warhorn would be better. It sucks you can not get the same speed boosts that every single other class in the game can get. It really weakens your ability to mele effectively. Speed is very important for pvp, its just a fact of gaming.

Ranged Damage – A Scepter should be on par with a Rifle to be considered a proper ranged weapon. It’s not. If nothing else is done the first skill should be a chain with a damage boost to it. The other skills are ok but the 2 skill needs to apply a symbol, maybe vulnerability. Given the difficulty of the 3rd skill its damage is not very good.

-The Staff needs something better. The 4 skill could be an AOE damage and regen, Holy Light could fall from the sky like an Ele spell. Standing in place in a game full of CC is not very useful. The 5 skill could be useful but the animation and cast time make it nearly useless. Where I want to use it most is when other people are chasing me. Pausing to cast it is not helping me here.

-A proper ranged weapon, a bow, needs to be added at a later date.

Elite Skills – The tomes are quite powerful but the other skill, Renewed Focus is dull at best. Should it renew ALL your skills and maybe be on a 90 sec cooldown, then it would be quite useful. Particularly for blokes who would like to bunker guardian but find after 30 sec that’s it and their cooldowns are gone and with little health they are dead. Rather than rework a lot of skills this skill would be very effective.

-Some new skills could be added, Aura of Wrath, Aura of Courage, granting yourself and allies near you boons. I want to use my elite skills more but their one dimensional nature makes them difficult. A 2 min CD would be fine.

Weapons

Shield – The CD length is garbage. Both skills are useful but more designed for pvp than pve. Your pve guys want to use one but its garbage compared to a Focus. In pvp pushing people off the point is neat but then they can just run through it. Given its cast time it should be like a mini-sanctuary.

Focus – Is good but the buff making bosses 90% immune to blind is garbage.

Sword – best thought out weapon. The arc of the 3 skill could be bigger or if you could cast it on the run to make it more effective. If ranged characters can rapid fire on the run, this skill, given its average damage should be able to be cast on the run.

Torch – I don’t quite get it. Its reasonably effective but kind of underwhelming.

Mace – well thought out weapon.

Hammer – The cast time on the 3rd stage of the first skill is garbage. The leap on the 2nd skill could be double its length and that alone would make the hammer heaps better to use. With a bad Australian latency its a useless weapon for me. The root skill is dumb at best and would be best replaced with an AOE knockdown or even slow.

GS – I have a lot of issues with the 5 skill. Its very tricky to apply and even when applied it often only pulls people half way to you. Even on the golems in the mists it will only pull 2 out of 3 to you. A 33% failure rate is not acceptable. It also has a lot of issues with small terrain features. A well placed pebble can stop it from working. It would also be better if you removed the 1st stage of it. It would make it a lot easier to use.

Symbols – need to lose their long cast time and be done on the run. I’d personally prefer an Aura or even just getting it to be an instant skill would be better.

In general I agree with most of this. Although, I think some of these ideas could be put into traits, and some of our current traits removed. I think the #3 hammer skill is fine, but I agree that the sword #3 should allow movement, or maybe be traited for it. I’ll have to spend more time looking at this later.

I do agree with you we need something to boost our base run speed. Rather have something like the warriors where we just run faster for holding a weapon.

Hammer- Is fine IMO. I rather keep the long swing on the 3rd attack and just speed up attacks one and two. The Leap is fine, the fact that 4 or 5 sec CD on a blast finisher is pretty wicked. Zealots Embrace is fine. Its Ring of Warding needs to be fixed. First when you use hammer two you gain Retalition. So the tool tip needs to say it is a combo field. Second Banish forces people out of our ring when it used to make them bounce off it, players can dodge out of it which also not cool. Third animation needs to change to hammer two so you don’t stop moving in order to trap your target that is moving.

Tome of Wraith- Needs to be a spirit weapon. First it should cast Might(3stacks), Fury, Retaliation, and swiftness for 10seconds on a 15second CD. Second thing it casts Right after is 6seconds of Quickness on a 15 second CD. third it needs to Cast an AoE Knock Down that knocks people down for 1 second on a 6 second CD. And Finally the Tome constantly pulses either 700 or 1000 Damage ever two seconds. The pulses don’t burn the target but refrshes burns on the target.The Tome should just follow the guardian around and not attack a single target. Also the tome only lasts 14 seconds.

Tome of Courage-Should be changed to Symbol of Courage. The symbol size should be equal to that of mesmer’s time warp. Damage is on par with other symbols or non existant. Lasts for 18 seconds pulse heals for 1000 or 1200 every 2 or 3 seconds. Grants Protection, and Stability while causing either Chill, Cripple, or Weakness.

Renewed Focus- Please just scrap this thing all together. I picked a guardian because on the guildwars2 website they had a guardian quote saying something along the lines of “If you want to get to my friends, you’ll have to go through me first.” I wish we had a elite skill that based on that quote. Not oh watch as i do nothing for 3seconds.

Virtues- F1 and F2 are fine. f3 is find very lack luster. it should be more inline with the others and offer constant buff not one that gives ageis once every forty seconds. Virtue of Courage should give you 5% or 7% damage reduction and when you trigger it should give you 10 or 15 seconds of protection to you and your friends. then you change the virtue trait to grant aegis instead of protection.

just my silly 2 copper.

Also our signets give no numerical values what so ever. Warriors signets say how much power they get. I just wish mine did too. Also when I get the Grandmaster signet booster. Does signet of reslove heal 2 conditions every ten seconds or 1 every 5 or 8? Please really like to have some numerical values placed on our signets. I would like tool tips to just state how much gain by ultilizing the signets.

to me we lack a proper ranged option like ALL other classes do, and I mean by that one that provides:
- a fast, spammable, decent damage auto-attack
- a 900 sized AOE condition/damage Ground targetted AOE (I would love a burn aoe)
- most if not all skills with a range of 1200.
examining the staff and scepter, they fail at those criterias.

I agree the Guardian feels a little lackluster at times. Ironically, for different reasons, I find the sword to be one of the least useful weapons, whichs saddens me but I’ve got other threads on that. I think everyone agrees on the lameness of scepter. Not sure what you meant about removing cast times on symbols and making them cast on the run; they all have that functionality except for Symbol of Wrath and the others have really short casts, with the possible exception of hammer but come on, it’s easily the most spammable symbol in the game.
Auras granting constant boons would be a little overpowered if you ask me, especially if you consider the Altruistic Healing trait.

More reliability with skills hitting.

Zealot’s Defense and Whirling Wrath being the main culprits.

Tests with Golems show that Zealot’s Defense often has a hit or two that doesn’t land even when standing right infront and letting autotarget make sure you’re facing perfectly (if it doesn’t land in these extreme carebear circustances, how can it hope to land well in real combat). You can hear when it doesn’t land properly by the amount of sounds.

Whirling Wrath is worse, in order for all the hits to land you have to stand inside your target, as in turning collision off and standing inside their body which is frankly ridiculous for a game.

Average damage standing next to the Golem 4.5k, when standing inside the Golem each time it spawns? 6k…

Clearly and by sound you can tell many more hits are landing which don’t land in normal use.

Also some massive issues with Smite on the Scepter. Testing it as the only damage skill vs Golems, there’s a huge range in damage as to be expected with 15 hits with a 50% crit rate.

But sometimes many many hits don’t even land.

In one test yesterday I had an entire duration Smite only land 2 hits, there was some lag at the time so either there is a massive error in GW2 not displaying damage done correctly under lag or there’s a massive issue with damage not being dealt correctly under lag.

Or how about the fact that some of our traits are utter rubbish.

Compare these two for example, their effectiveness in combat and the recharge rate.

@Ezrael
i think you are right, some of our traits are utter rubbish.
WTX, trigger once every 5s & 30s recharge?
Why do we have to put up with this?

Staff should be full supportive, imo.
All the others weapon are dps and CC, why this can’t be something different?
No sense to create another DPS or CC weapon… what is the point?

The problem is that Anet hate support players… all the supportive skills and weapon are extremely weak than the DPS one…
Some one like it… someone else no.
I don’t.

This game should meet all the players needs, dps and CC are satisfie… supportive don’t.

Wave of Wrath:
Copy the mace mechanic.
3 attack and the 3° one heal you and all the nerby ally.

Orb of light:
Fix it.
The orb disappear in the ground.
If you select a foe, the orb follow his direction. Why if you select a friendly target don’t??
It should do it.

Swiftness:
The amount of damage is useless… change it in regen.

Empower:
Cast in movement.
90y and not 60y.

Line of Warding:
Create a line in front of you that foes cannot cross (jump or dodge!).
NPC too !!! (nobody exept me noticed it?)
If an ally cross it, whe wall removes all the condition.
5 sec. is ok.

S’all ok coming on here and throwing out all your buffs, wondering why we don’t get them. I don’t see that happening unless they completely instance pvp away from pve. I do not pve, I am not sure how these changes would effect it, but I am struggling to find even one suggestion here that would not break pvp.

Renewed focus resetting all skills, and on a 90s cd? This is a joke right? It is already the most favourable elite for bunker guards, this alteration would truly turn guardian into a lawlfacemash profession.

As stated, I can only look at these from a pvp perspective, and as it stands, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some nerfs coming our way.

@BitTeeHunter: I mostly do PvP as well, and I don’t think that Scepter changes (not a Scepter buff) would break PvP.
Of course, a lot of suggestion you’ll see in this thread would improve on intended weaknesses, but you shouldn’t disregard all of them.
I also don’t think we need actual nerfing. We’re good at what we do well, but not in an overpowered way. We mostly bunker well, but are not uncounterable (unlike what popular opinion likes to believe).
Although, given the info that was recently posted on Reddit, we might lose some of our defensive capabilities.

Renewed Focus is already on a 90s cooldown, but it feels lacking. I would like to see Shield #4 give AoE Aegis for the amount of cooldown on it. Also, I feel like the reaction time on Sword #3 seems a bit slow. It could just be latency, but I rarely block projectiles that are already in flight. Does anyone else have that problem?

Ynna.8769:

@BitTeeHunter:
Although, given the info that was recently posted on Reddit, we might lose some of our defensive capabilities.

Well we already have a very tough time in WvW with any condition removal which has no immunity added to it like it should. Enemy players can simply put all the condition back on your team mates the moment after you removed conditions from you and your team mates.

Poison stacks, bleed stacks, fire stacks, etc, are crazy dps powerful with NO current mitigation to any of them. The game is based heavily on who has ranged + condition dmg = win of engagement. Sure you see some melee run up to their foes who can use a 6 second immunity to all damage such as warriors, but after that immunity is gone, then what?

We use our CD’s on XYZ skill to break stun, clear condition, etc, and then we are stuck for 30-60+ seconds before we can do anything else. Our strong point is some of the defensive abilities we have, and frankly, Anet should be looking at ways to buff Guardians to better handle condition damage, because we simply cannot keep up on any reasonable level with the insane amount of it that goes out.

Both the staff and scepter are not fun to use. Nor are they very effective. They have lots of skills that are very lacklustre.

Go pick up a rifle and see how much damage it does. The scepter should do similar damage. It does 25% of a rifle’s damage. Someone might argue that a Warrior has less defense. That is a lie with about 25-28k health and heavy armor it has plenty of defense. They can be more tanky and do more damage at the same time. How is that balanced?

The staff has lots of skills no one uses. Why? Because the benefits of using the skill do not outweigh the cost. If it is supposed to be support, then let it support. Make the 4 skill a big pit of condition removal and any enemy who steps into it picks up burning condition. Have your speed circle also slow enemies. Have the hard to use orb do some nice damage. I don’t really care what, but using it just for just one or two skills means you have 3 or 4 skills that suck.

Swap the person who does Warrior with the person who designed Guardian for the first big patch. Every Warrior weapon is awesome and serves its purpose well. Some of ours just plain suck.

No one likes using these weapons they need to be looked at.

Relentliss.2170:

Both the staff and scepter are not fun to use. Nor are they very effective. They have lots of skills that are very lackluster.

I think a case can be made on the fun-factor, but not about the effectiveness of the skills. If you look at the individual skills on the Staff, they’re all pretty good, actually. They just don’t contribute to an overall theme, like other weapons have.
The Scepter’s attacks aren’t that bad. If you tweaked the first attack a bit, it would be an okay weapon, but because it’s our only ranged option, it’s more noticeable when it isn’t good.

I honestly don’t have too much problems with guardian, but i do think our ranged weapon needs a little work. Symbols as much as i want to love them aren’t great either.. I really really tried to give them a chance but it’s just not worth it.. People don’t stay still in pvp nor pve.. I put symbols down and every including me just don’t sit still long enough for the effects to take place.. why? because if you’re stationary in this game you take alot of punishment for it..

I wouldn’t mind if the symbols traveled with us.. In other words when we cast them the we become the center of the buff and it follows under our feet. So kind of like an aura just you can see the symbol under us until it goes away..

I honestly HATE the 2 on staff outside of that i love the staff it’s great support. You have 4 fully channeled giving 12 stacks of might and an aoe heal.. I know it’s not great being stationary but if you position right you can get it off most of the time.. The 2 on the other hand.. Sometimes is just hard to keep track of.. I in all honesty wouldn’t mind if it was change into something entirely new or you don’t have to detonate for the heal effect, it explodes on contact with ally or enemy, that would enforce their wanting you to pay attention to positioning to make sure it hits your target or close to them.