Guild Wars 2

I think we can all agree that with the current balance mentality toward the guardian we are not going to be “meta” anytime soon.
So this is my take on how to improve the guardian to bring him back into the meta with hopefully a lot of build diversity (we are all tired of just playing medi/medi trapper or shouts)
Some of these suggestions may feel OP but in a perfect world these changes would only get through if every other class gets such a big overhaul aswell.

My goals with the guardian in short:
Increase build diversity (power dps, condition dps, support/heal)
Make every weaponset playable (for different roles/build)
rework spirit weapons
update the “role” of the guardian to be sort of the “opposite” of the necromancer

Part 1, Virtues, Utilities and Weapons
Part 2

Let’s start with the basics: Virtues:

• Virtue of Justice (F1): CD reduced to 20 seconds.
• Virtue of Resolve (F2): CD reduced to 40 seconds, now converts 1 condition into a boon upon activating.
• Virtue of Courage (F3): CD reduced to 60 seconds. Aegis Refresh rate changed to 20 seconds.

With a bit stronger “vanilla” virtues I want to achieve less dependancy on the Virtues traitline.

Next up: Utility Skills:
Meditations feel pretty good, only skills that need work are

• Merciful Intervention: Reduced CD to 40, changed text to “Shadowstep to the targeted area and heal around them. If no ally is present in the targeted area, this ability will heal for only 50%.”
• Litany of Wrath: Doubled the initial self heal.

These changes achieve two things, it creates a bit of choice when going for a meditation build and it gives base guardian a much needed mobility skill.

Shouts:

• Retreat: CD reduced to 30 seconds.
• Hold the Line: CD reduced to 30 seconds.
• Stand your Ground: Stability stacks increased to 10 up from 5.
• Save Yourselves: Added 10 seconds of Aegis, Stability (1 Stack) and 2 seconds of Resistance.
• Receive the Light: CD reduced to 35, doubled healing power scaling.
• Feel my Wrath: CD reduced to 40 seconds.

Retreat and Hold the Line are very basic shouts, that’s why they need a bit lower CD.
Stand your Ground stability increase is mainly because of WvW and the current “cc powercreep” introduced with HoT.
Save Yourselves needed a bit of an update in the boon department.
FMW got a bit overnerfed in my opinion.

Consecrations:

• Purging Flames: Will now convert 3 conditions into boons upon activation.
• Hallowed Ground: CD reduced to 60 seconds. Pulsing Stability increased to 3 stacks, will now also pulse resistance for 1 second.
• Sanctuary: CD reduced to 60 seconds, radius increased to 240, healing per second increased by 100%
• Wall of Relection: no changes.

Hallowed Ground never really got played, should now be viable in cc and condition heavy environments.
Sanctuary same thing as above, but against heavy melee and ranged pressure.

Signets

• Signet of Mercy: CD reduced to 90, Radius increased to 600. Active changed to “Revive a nearby downed or dead player” (preference for fully dead players).
• Signet of Courage: CD reduced to 120 seconds, passive heal halved, pulse intervall halved. Casttime reduced to 4 seconds, active can now be cast while moving and gain 3 stacks of stability upon activation.

Those 2 signets just had to high cd for what they where doing, mercy has now a nice, niche, but powerful role und Courage’s active won’t be interupted that easy. Traits will further improve signets but that will come later.

Now on to Spirit Weapons:
I believe Spirit weapons need a complete overhaul and I have drawn inspiration from the GW1 SW’s from the Ritualist
You and your allies can only have one Spirit Weapon active at the same time.
The SW will attach itself on your real weapon set and won’t have a health bar anymore.
You will loose the SW if you swap weapons.
Every weapon has a distinct role.
Traits will further increase funacionality of the weapon.

• Weapon of Warding: CD set to 20 seconds, give yourself a Weapon of Warding for 9 seconds which pulses aegis for 2 seconds every 3 seconds and you inflict weakness for 3 seconds with every 5th attack
• Resilient Weapon: CD set to 20 seconds, give yourself a Resilient Weapon for 9 seconds which pulses resistance for 2 seconds every 3 seconds and you gain “reflection” with every 5th attack for 2 seconds (while under the effects of “reflection” you reflect all incoming missiles back to their source, like sword #3 Zealot’s Defense)
• Warmongers Weapon:CD set to 20 seconds, give yourself a Warmongers Weapon for 9 seconds which pulses 5 stacks of might for 5 seconds every 3 seconds and inflict 1/2 second of daze with every 5th attack
• Splinter Weapon: CD set to 20 seconds, give yourself a Splinter Weapon for 9 seconds which pulses fury for 3 seconds every 3 seconds and inflict burning with every 5th attack, also every 3rds attack damage is split into 3 attacks (like sword auto #3)

SW’s will need alot more balancing and tweaking, but that’s the groundwork.

Weapons
Greatsword: Seems pretty well balanced right now, maybe a slight increase in projectile velocity for #5 Binding Blade.

Hammer:

• AA: Decreased to casttime of Symbol of Protection to 1 second down from 1 1/4
• Mighty Blow: Increased Base Damage scaling to 2.5 up from 1.75 (same value as True Shot), increased leap range to 480, can now be ground targeted.
• Zealots Embrace: Increased chain travelspeed by 100%, reduced casttime to 3/4 down from 1 second.
• Banish: Reduced casttime to 3/4 down from 1 second, CD reduced to 20.
• Ring of Warding: Can now be cast while moving (same speed as Whirling Wrath)

Staff:

• Orb of Light: Removed. Added a new Skill: Symbol of Judgment (Downed Skill 3)
• Empower: Casttime reduced to 2 seconds down from 2 1/2.

Mace:

• AA: Faithful Strike: Doubled base healing and healing power scaling.
• Protectors Strike: Will now block for the full duration until hit by a melee attack, can now be manually triggert for AoE Protection.

Sword

• AA: Sword Wave no longer shots projectiles.
• Zealots Defense: Can now be cast while moving, upon activation gain “reflection” for 2 seconds.

Scepter

• AA: Projectile Velocity increased by ~50%, (needs to be tested, goal is to make it not as easily strafable as it currently is)
• Smite: Is now a Symbol which pulses Fury and cripple for 3 seconds (3 pulses). CD increased to 12, reduced number of impacts to 12 down from 16.

Focus

• Ray of Judgement: Increased Projectile Velocity by 50%.

Shield:
Base shield is fine, the trait needs an update.

Torch:

• Cleansing Flame: Will now remove 1 condition from the guardian at the start and the end of the cast.

Part 2, Traits

tl:dr
My goals with the guardian in short:
Increase build diversity (power dps, condition dps, support/heal)
Make every weaponset playable (for different roles/build)
rework spirit weapons and signets
update the “role” of the guardian to be sort of the “opposite” of the necromancer

I love picking these things apart! I’ll go into a more detailed analysis later. But I wanted to say, I totally agree with sword changes. Sword’s problem isn’t exactly the skills, it’s almost there, but it needs a definite reliability boost. Mobile 3 would certainly do that. Also the sword 3 fix is just flat necessary. They even changes the Revenant auto chain for this very reason.

That said, after all the philosophy changes and power creep and mobility given like candy, I think Sword 2 could really work like a forward Phase retreat when a target is not selected. This would directly help Guardian high tier viability simply because of how much mobility plays in that classification. The damage on it could certainly be boosted too (sword 2).

When comparing to the elite weapons it becomes painfully obvious that there are a lot of base weapons that need updated, especially on guardian. (Hammer 2 is a great example of a melee attack that pales in comparison to say, Engineer Hammer 2.)

A few critiques

Virtues
Frankly it would probably be better to just roll the first virtues minor trait into the base virtue activation effects.
Courage, the refresh rate would be a bit much when taken in consideration with other AEGIS applications, maybe make it 30 seconds.

Litany of Wrath, if the base healing were increased this much the healing from damage done would need to be reduced.

Save yourselves. One of the main problems this utility has is that pure of voice and the trooper rune don’t activate before it does. If they did and it gave some resistance then it would be fine.

Receive the Light. This is already as much as a 7k heal for the guardian and allies. The main problem is its directional. If it were a true AOE then it would be fine.

Stand your ground, is actually fine as is.

Feel my Wrath. Its good as is, any lower and the quickness would likely be cut.

Sanctuary. The main problem this skill has is its made obsolete by stability and does not stop ground targeted spells from being cast under it.

Signet of Mercy. Frankly it should just give a flat +% increase to all healing done.

Signet of Courage. The active should really be changed. With that long of a cast time & that big of a heal there is no way to ever truly balance it.

You left out Signet of Wrath and Bane signet

Signet of Wrath should be changed to grant + run speed as a passive and the active should immobilize and bleed (5 stacks for 5 seconds)

Bane Signet should be changed to knock down all enemies in a narrow fast moving cone

The spirit weapons rework idea is nice but would need a ton of balancing.

Few things on Hammer.
If the last AA were 1/2 second with no after cast they could take one pulse of the symbol and end up with the same overall damage output but a much faster AA chain.

As for mace AA, the main problem it has is it does not scale at all with healing power. The base healing is alright. Fix the first part and it would be fine.

Like the ideas.

Just have to pray that after all this time Anet does something good.

Criticisms:

I agree with Ragnar that the Signet of Courage active needs to be changed rather than tuning the numbers associated with it. The ‘cast for 5237429378 seconds, then heal people,’ functionality would be better off on either signet of mercy, or even tomes (which we hope to reclaim in a future elite spec).

Changes to scepter are great, but this would leave sword as our only weapon without a symbol though. To counterbalance this, I think sword should gain a symbol (on sword 2, would be a high damage but low duration symbol).

The aegis refresh rate for VoC should not be any less than 30 seconds in my opinion (and perhaps 25 seconds if traited). Anything lower gives us too high of an aegis up time.

Increasing scepter auto attack velocity would be great, but if you couple that with the 1200 range, it might become slightly op as a “mid range” weapon. I think increasing scepter projectile velocity, but decreasing range to 900 would be best.

I don’t think your changes to staff are the ideal changes. Empower for one is a fine skill as is. It’s intention is to be used as a team-skill. Staff 2 on the other hand suffers from a rather poor mechanic. I think a better change to staff 2 would be to change the orb to a ground-targetted attack like so:

Fire an orb of light to the target location that pulses healing to allies and damages foes. (same cd). Flip skill —-→ Detonate the orb of light to blind and damage foes and grant regeneration boon to allies (9s cd).

Praises:

I like your changes to the base cd reductions for our virtues. In my opinion, our virtues need a LITTLE extra something added on to them (like what Ragnar suggested) to make them worthwhile without taking the virtues trait line.

Your changes to hammer are by far and large my favorite changes here and largely represent what us guardians want out of hammer! The only thing I’d debate though, is making MB a ground-targetted skill.

Your changes to scepter would be very welcome and I definitely dig them. They seem very well-balanced and would make scepter great for condi builds too (paired with your trait suggestions in part 2 of this post).

Your changes to spirit weapons are very novel, interesting and would bring a breath of fresh air to SWs. I like the idea that they add utility and can be made into team-utility. The problem is, they add too much passive play and not enough active play. I recommend that the SWs have cooldowns around 25-35s, last 15-20 seconds, and have actives that can be used roughly every 5-15 seconds.

I love your changes to the shouts, probably my second favorite changes you’ve made here. Retreat is put in the perfect spot now imo. I would debate SY though. Given that it’s a 48s cd when traited (which is fairly high), I think it should give 3s of resistance.

I think Hallowed Ground and Sanctuary would be in a better spot at 50s cd.

@ Arcaedus

Love that idea for putting a symbol on sword #2.

If it had one I’d like to see it grant might.

Something like

Flashing Blade: Teleport to your foe blinding them, When you arrive place a symbol of might.
Symbol of Might: Grants 10 seconds of might per pulse, pulses 3 times, does 100 + 25% of power as damage per pulse.

I like these changes. There’s a 100% chance guardian would still not be top 3 class but there’s a CHANCE for it to be a real meta build which is what we’ve been lacking since glacial heart nerf.

A nice set of changes in my opinion. I especially like the suggested changes to Hallowed Ground.

Replacing Orb of Light with Symbol of Judgment might be a little broken if it had a similar cooldown (since it would still be #2). I’d personally prefer Symbol of Swiftness being replaced by it and upping the cooldown slightly.

On your suggestions (my comments are in bold, italic and underline):

Virtue of Justice (F1): CD reduced to 20 seconds.
Virtue of Resolve (F2): CD reduced to 30 seconds.
Virtue of Courage (F3): CD reduced to 60 seconds. Aegis Refresh rate changed to 30 seconds. (20 seconds traited)

Merciful Intervention: Reduced CD to 40, changed text to “Shadowstep to the targeted area and heal around them. If no ally is present in the targeted area, this ability will heal for only 50%.” (Interesting idea, but only a CD reduction to 30 seconds would be enough to be useful)
Litany of Wrath: Doubled the initial self heal. (This skill actually is ok if traited now on PvE, but still weak on PvP/WvW)

Retreat: CD reduced to 30 seconds. Very good suggestion
Hold the Line: CD reduced to 30 seconds. I also agree
Stand your Ground: Stability stacks increased to 10 up from 5. Is interesting considering the stun fest on WvW, but I’m not sure if I agree
Save Yourselves: Added 10 seconds of Aegis, Stability (1 Stack) and 2 seconds of Resistance. I don’t agree, it would be too powerful, maybe add only 1 of these boons?
Receive the Light: CD reduced to 35, doubled healing power scaling. Very interesting, but only 30 seconds CD and no extra healing
Feel my Wrath: CD reduced to 40 seconds. Okish

Purging Flames: Will now convert 3 conditions into boons upon activation. I don’t agree, right now is 100% fine (very good on burning builds)
Hallowed Ground: CD reduced to 60 seconds. Pulsing Stability increased to 3 stacks, will now also pulse resistance for 1 second. I only agree with the CD reduction, and maybe increase the duration of the stability to 3 from 2 seconds. Remember that also increase boon duration by 20% and is a fire field, but this skill really needs a buff
Sanctuary: CD reduced to 60 seconds, radius increased to 240, healing per second increased by 100% Maybe reduce the CD to 70 seconds, but don’t change anything more
Wall of Relection: no changes.

Signet of Mercy: CD reduced to 90, Radius increased to 600. Active changed to “Revive a nearby downed or dead player” (preference for fully dead players). I don’t agree, in my opinion, it should have its cast time reduced to 2 seconds and not revive dead players, maybe a little of CD reduced, but what this skill really needs is a cast time reduced
Signet of Courage: CD reduced to 120 seconds, passive heal halved, pulse intervall halved. Casttime reduced to 4 seconds, active can now be cast while moving and gain 3 stacks of stability upon activation. In my opinon the cast time should be reduced even more, something like 3~3.5 seconds and the passive should be on every 5 seconds but with the healing reduced by ~40%, not 50%
Also
Signet of Wrath: changed from condition damage to precision on its passive. – Right now the passive is worthless on most cases, who played as buning guardian knows this is a dead slot compared with any other option to add damage and even as precision would help burning guardians if they use this signet.

On Spirit weapons [link] I don’t belive they need a redesign, only some adjustments/buffs. Also the cast time should be reduced to 0.75 seconds (also with minions and elementals)

On wepons I will only opine on what I belive that needs changes

Hammer:
AA: Decreased to casttime of Symbol of Protection to 1 second down from 1 1/4. Also reduce the last hit of the chain and the symbol damage to keep the same DPS
Banish: Reduced casttime to 3/4 down from 1 second, CD reduced to 20. Okish, but it could instead cleave

Mace:
AA: Faithful Strike: Reduced the cast time to 0.75 second, reduced the damage to keep the same DPS. This skill now cleave
Symbol of Faith: Reduced the cast time to 0.75~1 second.

Sword:
AA: Sword Wave no longer shots projectiles.
Flashing Blade: This skill also apply 2 (maybe only 1) stacks of burning for 3 seconds and is now a leap finisher.
Zealots Defense: Can now be cast while moving or the projectiles pierces.

Torch:
Cleansing Flame: Will now remove 1 condition from the guardian at the start and the end of the cast. Interesting suggestion, I though once to remove 2 conditions of the Guardian on the end of the channel. But what would be really interesting is to reduce the cast time to 3 seconds instead (maybe even 2.5 seconds), in this way this skill would be viable on burning builds.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

@ Arcaedus

Love that idea for putting a symbol on sword #2.

If it had one I’d like to see it grant might.

Something like

Flashing Blade: Teleport to your foe blinding them, When you arrive place a symbol of might.
Symbol of Might: Grants 10 seconds of might per pulse, pulses 3 times, does 100 + 25% of power as damage per pulse.

I think that a “symbol of ire” or another name that pulses 1 seconds of fury would be more interesting (let the might be of Scpeter expertise). It would trigger only if hits and pulses 3 times. Damage is about 50~75% of the Symbol of Protection damage. Would be interesting.

Things I much rather prefer,

• Allow the ability to teleport with Hammer#2 Mighty Blow + Judges Intervention.
• Increase F1 burn duration by 1/4
• Remove the Signets activation “Line of Sight” issue.
• Amplified Wrath’s burn is reduced by 1 sec, but the icd is removed.
• Defender’s Dogma: Blocking an attack causes your next attack to proc F1 activation (normal) but F1 can now stack up to 3 charges.

Servers will burn when they buff or change guardians skill into something better

Here’s my thoughts: anything I don’t comment on specifically could probably be interpreted as at least a ‘worth a try’.

On utilities:

Litany of Wrath probably doesn’t need the proposed buff. It has a short activation time, and actually has the potential to give a pretty significant initial heal if you combine it with the meditation trait and the trait that makes Smite Conditions trigger when using healing (this means that a) you get a double trigger of the healing on meditations trait, and b) any damage from the Smite Conditions will also be damage for the Litany healing).

Ten stacks for Stand Your Ground seems like it would probably make it virtually impossible to remove all the stacks in the relatively short period of time the stacks last, even in the current CC-happy meta.

Signet of Mercy (or anything, really) resurrecting fully dead characters is probably not something that will ever happen.

I don’t think replacing spirit weapons with something different in all but name is going to fly – ArenaNet has clearly considered them to be a part of the guardian’s image (even if they’re not particularly viable now). I’ve seen claims to the effect that ‘they will always either be OP or UP’, which seems illogical to me – somewhere between those will be a region where they’re balanced, it’s just a matter of finding it.

I’ve also seen people say things like not wanting them to become guardian equivalents to necromancer minions. Personally, I really don’t see anything wrong with this. Necromancer minions do seem to have reached an equilibrium where they see use but are not overpowered must-have skills: aiming for something similar for spirit weapons seems quite reasonable to me. Not everyone likes minion-master playstyles, sure, but as long as they’re not so good you must have them to be a competitive guardian player, you can always choose not to use them. They’re not like mesmer illusions where you’re forced to have them whether you want them or not.

One possibility could be to give them instant or very rapid activation – that way, it would actually be viable to offset their low uptime by only calling them when they’re needed, rather than having to spend a long cast-time to call them which deters their use after combat is joined (especially in the current CC heavy environment).

On weapon skills:

Sword: I think there’s a technical limitation against Zealot’s Defence being able to channel on the move. Removing the quasi-projectile behaviour of the sword auto 3 is something that needs to happen, though. Mechanically, it should be a wave attack like Wave of Wrath.

Hammer: Banish is a pretty darn strong control effect, particularly when there are convenient edges to be knocked off. This is supposed to be balanced by a cast time that, at least in theory, gives opponents an opportunity to get out of the way. If it needs to be buffed, I’d be inclined to keep the current activation time and recharge… and make it unblockable.

Sceptre: Orbs have already been sped up. Wouldn’t complain if they got faster as a simple buff, but I suspect the idea of sceptre is a long theoretical maximum range and high damage balanced by the slower speed. Speeding them up could lead to nerfs down the track.

Turning Smite into a symbol… ehhh. I guess making it a symbol that grants Might or Fury could fit. Making it cripple targets would probably be overkill, particularly since sceptre already has an immobilise.

Staff: Rather than replacing Orb of Light with another symbol, I’d rather see the additional cooldown for detonation removed or substantially decreased. The detonate is hard to land properly – if someone does so, they should be rewarded, not harshly punished when it’s just a little too early or too late. (This would increase potential healing output, but numbers can be tweaked if needed, and more significantly, healing has been made a lot stronger since guardian staff was designed.)

Cleansing Flame removing conditions on the guardian as well really should have been in there from the start, IMO.

Warangel Eldrith.9408:

I think we can all agree that with the current balance mentality toward the guardian we are not going to be “meta” anytime soon.
So this is my take on how to improve the guardian to bring him back into the meta with hopefully a lot of build diversity (we are all tired of just playing medi/medi trapper or shouts)
Some of these suggestions may feel OP but in a perfect world these changes would only get through if every other class gets such a big overhaul aswell.

My goals with the guardian in short:
Increase build diversity (power dps, condition dps, support/heal)
Make every weaponset playable (for different roles/build)
rework spirit weapons
update the “role” of the guardian to be sort of the “opposite” of the necromancer

Part 1, Virtues, Utilities and Weapons
Part 2

Let’s start with the basics: Virtues:

• Virtue of Justice (F1): CD reduced to 20 seconds.
• Virtue of Resolve (F2): CD reduced to 40 seconds, now converts 1 condition into a boon upon activating.
• Virtue of Courage (F3): CD reduced to 60 seconds. Aegis Refresh rate changed to 20 seconds.

With a bit stronger “vanilla” virtues I want to achieve less dependancy on the Virtues traitline.

Next up: Utility Skills:
Meditations feel pretty good, only skills that need work are

• Merciful Intervention: Reduced CD to 40, changed text to “Shadowstep to the targeted area and heal around them. If no ally is present in the targeted area, this ability will heal for only 50%.”
• Litany of Wrath: Doubled the initial self heal.

These changes achieve two things, it creates a bit of choice when going for a meditation build and it gives base guardian a much needed mobility skill.

Shouts:

• Retreat: CD reduced to 30 seconds.
• Hold the Line: CD reduced to 30 seconds.
• Stand your Ground: Stability stacks increased to 10 up from 5.
• Save Yourselves: Added 10 seconds of Aegis, Stability (1 Stack) and 2 seconds of Resistance.
• Receive the Light: CD reduced to 35, doubled healing power scaling.
• Feel my Wrath: CD reduced to 40 seconds.

Retreat and Hold the Line are very basic shouts, that’s why they need a bit lower CD.
Stand your Ground stability increase is mainly because of WvW and the current “cc powercreep” introduced with HoT.
Save Yourselves needed a bit of an update in the boon department.
FMW got a bit overnerfed in my opinion.

Consecrations:

• Purging Flames: Will now convert 3 conditions into boons upon activation.
• Hallowed Ground: CD reduced to 60 seconds. Pulsing Stability increased to 3 stacks, will now also pulse resistance for 1 second.
• Sanctuary: CD reduced to 60 seconds, radius increased to 240, healing per second increased by 100%
• Wall of Relection: no changes.

Hallowed Ground never really got played, should now be viable in cc and condition heavy environments.
Sanctuary same thing as above, but against heavy melee and ranged pressure.

Signets

• Signet of Mercy: CD reduced to 90, Radius increased to 600. Active changed to “Revive a nearby downed or dead player” (preference for fully dead players).
• Signet of Courage: CD reduced to 120 seconds, passive heal halved, pulse intervall halved. Casttime reduced to 4 seconds, active can now be cast while moving and gain 3 stacks of stability upon activation.

Those 2 signets just had to high cd for what they where doing, mercy has now a nice, niche, but powerful role und Courage’s active won’t be interupted that easy. Traits will further improve signets but that will come later.

Now on to Spirit Weapons:
I believe Spirit weapons need a complete overhaul and I have drawn inspiration from the GW1 SW’s from the Ritualist
You and your allies can only have one Spirit Weapon active at the same time.
The SW will attach itself on your real weapon set and won’t have a health bar anymore.
You will loose the SW if you swap weapons.
Every weapon has a distinct role.
Traits will further increase funacionality of the weapon.

• Weapon of Warding: CD set to 20 seconds, give yourself a Weapon of Warding for 9 seconds which pulses aegis for 2 seconds every 3 seconds and you inflict weakness for 3 seconds with every 5th attack
• Resilient Weapon: CD set to 20 seconds, give yourself a Resilient Weapon for 9 seconds which pulses resistance for 2 seconds every 3 seconds and you gain “reflection” with every 5th attack for 2 seconds (while under the effects of “reflection” you reflect all incoming missiles back to their source, like sword #3 Zealot’s Defense)
• Warmongers Weapon:CD set to 20 seconds, give yourself a Warmongers Weapon for 9 seconds which pulses 5 stacks of might for 5 seconds every 3 seconds and inflict 1/2 second of daze with every 5th attack
• Splinter Weapon: CD set to 20 seconds, give yourself a Splinter Weapon for 9 seconds which pulses fury for 3 seconds every 3 seconds and inflict burning with every 5th attack, also every 3rds attack damage is split into 3 attacks (like sword auto #3)

SW’s will need alot more balancing and tweaking, but that’s the groundwork.

Weapons
Greatsword: Seems pretty well balanced right now, maybe a slight increase in projectile velocity for #5 Binding Blade.

Hammer:

• AA: Decreased to casttime of Symbol of Protection to 1 second down from 1 1/4
• Mighty Blow: Increased Base Damage scaling to 2.5 up from 1.75 (same value as True Shot), increased leap range to 480, can now be ground targeted.
• Zealots Embrace: Increased chain travelspeed by 100%, reduced casttime to 3/4 down from 1 second.
• Banish: Reduced casttime to 3/4 down from 1 second, CD reduced to 20.
• Ring of Warding: Can now be cast while moving (same speed as Whirling Wrath)

Staff:

• Orb of Light: Removed. Added a new Skill: Symbol of Judgment (Downed Skill 3)
• Empower: Casttime reduced to 2 seconds down from 2 1/2.

Mace:

• AA: Faithful Strike: Doubled base healing and healing power scaling.
• Protectors Strike: Will now block for the full duration until hit by a melee attack, can now be manually triggert for AoE Protection.

Sword

• AA: Sword Wave no longer shots projectiles.
• Zealots Defense: Can now be cast while moving, upon activation gain “reflection” for 2 seconds.

Scepter

• AA: Projectile Velocity increased by ~50%, (needs to be tested, goal is to make it not as easily strafable as it currently is)
• Smite: Is now a Symbol which pulses Fury and cripple for 3 seconds (3 pulses). CD increased to 12, reduced number of impacts to 12 down from 16.

Focus

• Ray of Judgement: Increased Projectile Velocity by 50%.

Shield:
Base shield is fine, the trait needs an update.

Torch:

• Cleansing Flame: Will now remove 1 condition from the guardian at the start and the end of the cast.

Part 2, Traits

tl:dr
My goals with the guardian in short:
Increase build diversity (power dps, condition dps, support/heal)
Make every weaponset playable (for different roles/build)
rework spirit weapons and signets
update the “role” of the guardian to be sort of the “opposite” of the necromancer

Not to be rude, but theres multiple complkaints about Power Creep and 99% of your suggestions are buffs, like reduced cooldowns, increased coefficients etc. I’m sure I would love all thsoe changes, but 99% would never happen as it would just make Guardian too strong and require reductions afterwards, or other classes would nbeed the same treatment, ala Power Creep.

1) Virtue. If your goal is to make Vanilla Virtue on par with DH Virtue, it’s not enough. I agree with your chance for Justice and Courage. I’ll talk at the end for Resolve.

2) Shouts : I disagree here since most shout are already good. I agree with 10 stack for Stand your ground and for the double Healing scaling for Receive the Light. But otherwise I think they are just small buff just for the sake of small buff. For Feel my wrath and the resistance on Save yourself I’m just strait against them. Feel my wrath is already great and resistance save yourself kind of broke the skill if you ask me.

3) Consecration : Purging flame is good as it is. Again buff for the sake of buffing. You are right about Hallowed ground. A CD of 60 would give a slighty higher stab uptime than stand your ground witch if balanced since SYG is instant, have a bigger range and you don’t need to stay on place to get the stab. The number of stack is also important, this skill wasn’t balance after the stability change. Not sure why put resistance here tbh. Sanctuary need a buff, the one you propose is ok I suppose.

4) Signets : I would rather reduce the castime and the cd as much. Get the CD to 120 and reduce to cast time to 2sec and I would agree. For signet of courage, from 4.25sec to 4sec? Not enough really, 3 secould would be better if you ask me. That’s a heal of a long time in battle. But I like the stability thing and halve the passive and interval is needed. Hell I would even get to 245hp each 3sec to be more on line with the Virtue.

5) Spirit Weapons : I like your idea. BUT it’s a big overhaul and some people like the idea of playing with several spirit weapon around them. I would much rather prefer to make them work than to change them completely. To me the main problem with these skill is the fact that they have a high CD that start after the weapon die. Which mean that you are left with almost nothing for long period of time. If instead of 30 to 60sec cooldown they had CD of 15-30second, the uptime would be much better. After that some little balancing like the terrible healing of the Bow and you would have decent skill. Again, I’m not against you idea. But I would prefer to use your idea in a future specialisation than to completely replace Spirit Weapons.

6) Weapons : I like the quality of live improvement for the Hammer, but the dps of the hammer is already great. If you reduce the castime of the AA you need to reduce its damage. You can’t improve the dps of the hammer AA. Your change on Sword are useless. Yes they are improvement, but it won’t make sword good anyway. I still think that sword should be transformed into the condi weapon that the guardian lack. Maybe add some bleeding on AA.

Power Creep : Like Valkyriez said. The Power creep is already way too big in this game. That said I pointed out what I think were too high buff. The AA on hammer is a big NO NO as well as Feel my wrath and some other minor stuff. But other than that, most of these buff are for skill that people just don’t use because they are not powerful enough. That’s not power creep if you ask me. That said. I think there is some rebalance to do about DH to make it more balance versus Vanilla. The 3 biggest offender if you ask me are Wing of Resolve, Purification and the DH trait line. They are just too powerful.

Vanilla Resolve have a passive of 84hp/sec and an active of 32.5hp/sec. The active is less good, but give you a burst of heal when in danger.

Wing of Resolve have the same passive, but the active give you 129hp/sec. This make the passive and vanilla resolve completely obsolete.

If all traited, here comparaison of heal per second for all Guardian heals.
Purification : 412hp/sec
Signet of Resolve : 254hp/sec
Receive the Light : 203hp/sec
Shelter : 152hp/sec

There is some serious rebalance to do for those two aspect.

Valkyriez.6578:

Not to be rude, but theres multiple complkaints about Power Creep and 99% of your suggestions are buffs, like reduced cooldowns, increased coefficients etc. I’m sure I would love all thsoe changes, but 99% would never happen as it would just make Guardian too strong and require reductions afterwards, or other classes would nbeed the same treatment, ala Power Creep.

I’m aware of that.
As I said at the top every class should get the same “treatment”. “Overbuffing” and then balancing is (imo) better than just trying to make bad or utterly broken skills good with a 5% increase in dmg/duration etc.
That mentality is why we still have ~50% unused utility skills and ~70% useless traits.

A large part of the problem with the power creep is that it’s uneven. With just a couple of exceptions, builds that use elite specialisations are just plain better than builds that don’t… and the exceptions are, probably not coincidentally, professions that are currently viewed as weak in PvP

Litany of Wrath: Fully traited (taking into account Part 2), it would heal for 7200 sans healing power, good for 300 hp/s. That’s without dealing any damage either. Considering Thaddeus’ post, that puts it at second best without any drawbacks and a 1/4s cast time.

Shouts: 20% Boon duration makes traited Retreat perma aoe swift. SYG doesn’t need 10 stacks, Earth Armor and Dolyak Signet aren’t up nearly as often nor are they aoe.

Purging Flames: Conversion isn’t necessary.

Signet of Mercy:No revive skill revives the fully dead. Likewise, nothing is on a 90s cooldown like that is (Search and Rescue works very differently). In reality, its the passive that needs changing more than the active (revive skills themselves are hard to balance around, being pretty swingy by nature).

Spirit Weapons: I too like to add random effects to skills in the name of nostalgia pandering.

Hammer: AA3 damage will need to drop 20% if its going to cast in 1s. Mighty Blow doesn’t need all of that.

Staff: Why does Staff get 2 symbols?

Mace: AA needs a 3 target limit on damage, not the extra healing

Sword: You just like, didn’t finish your AA changes. You’ve got to explain more than just "Removed Projectiles). In regards to Zealot’s Defense, just make it a Symbol of Deflection and base changes around that.

Scepter: 50% is not the right answer, and the cripple needs to go on the Symbol.

Cleansing Flame: Might as well make it remove 3 conditions from everyone. It’s much more straightforward.

Misc Thoughts: That’s a lot of aegis renewal you’re giving both guardians and dragon hunters. 33% more in many cases. Lots of cd reduction and other fun things. Hope you intend to share some of that with the rest of the professions, otherwise your power is creeping in the wrong direction.

Ghotistyx.6942:

Litany of Wrath: Fully traited (taking into account Part 2), it would heal for 7200 sans healing power, good for 300 hp/s. That’s without dealing any damage either. Considering Thaddeus’ post, that puts it at second best without any drawbacks and a 1/4s cast time.

7200? Litany of Wrath heal for 1640. If you double that, it’s 3280. After that you heal the meditation heals from the trait, so 3280 + 1960 = 5240. It’s equal to 219 hp/sec. Which is great if you ask me because Signet of Resolve have not really any advantage so it’s higher, but Receive the Light also heal allies so it’s lower. It’s think it’s perfect.

What you do to reach 7200 is that you doubled not only the initial self heal from the skill, but you also doubled the healing from Monk’s Focus, which wasn’t in the OP idea.

Right now, Litany of wrath’s initial heal is doing 150 hp/sec not traited. Not really powerful, especially since when you need to use your heal in emergency and probably will do very little damage. That,s why not many people are using it.

Because fully traited into Meditations would imply you’re also taking Smite Condition on heal, which is another Monk’s proc. Going into his trait changes, nothing happens to Smiter’s Boon.

Ghotistyx.6942:

Because fully traited into Meditations would imply you’re also taking Smite Condition on heal, which is another Monk’s proc. Going into his trait changes, nothing happens to Smiter’s Boon.

which brings in on par with the trap heal.
no one uses litany of wath since its been introduced (in a competetive setting)

Ghotistyx.6942:

Because fully traited into Meditations would imply you’re also taking Smite Condition on heal, which is another Monk’s proc. Going into his trait changes, nothing happens to Smiter’s Boon.

The problem is that if you use a meditation build for PvP with both Monk’s Focus and Smiter’s Boon. You are still better off with the trap. For exemple, in PvP. Most Guardian use both Trap and Meditation.

Purification will still trigger smiter’s boon and we still have Monk’s focus. In that situation the trap will heal you for 494 hp/sec

Right now? In that situation, Litany of Wrath would heal you for 231 hp/sec + the damage into heals.

Litany of Wrath was already okish, but one of the less good healing skill pre-hot. Now with Purification, it’s just not in the game anymore.

I noticed a large spike in interest in these sort of thread since the last “balance” patch so bump.
my shout changes even got through

If Anet read this thread and said,
“Oh they want shout cd’s lowered. Ok!”

…oh so help me God…

It did absolutely nothing for us in the competitive scene.

Saiyan.1704:

If Anet read this thread and said,
“Oh they want shout cd’s lowered. Ok!”

…oh so help me God…

It did absolutely nothing for us in the competitive scene.

well better than nothing^^
time to buff pure of voice to convert 2 conditions now