Guild Wars 2

Over the course of my time on these forums, there has been a large amount of discussion regarding traits and how to fix them; mostly regarding traits that seem in very off places, and traits that are just downright horrible and never get used. After getting some positive feed back on my break down of the radiance traits, I have decided to start a thread regarding the break down of every guardian trait, and start a discussion on what really needs to be done, and things that can be changed to help the guardians quality of life.

The first few posts will be my personal opinion on each trait, along with how it works with other traits in the line, and possible changes that each trait line could see. This is all a matter of my opinion, but meant to get some serious discussion going regarding this matter. I ask that those replying in this thread please keep it clean and not start a flame war over conflicting Ideals for traits. This is meant to be a general discussion, and to possibly get the Dev’s to notice and improve on the traits that just don’t make sense and are never used. If you do post an idea in this thread, please make it a logical one, and a balanced one. This thread is not meant to be a “ZOMG BUFF US LOL” thread.

Zeal: Power +10, Condition Duration +1% per point.

5 Zealot’s Speed: Create a Symbol of Wrath when your health drops below 25% (30-second cooldown). – This minor trait is honestly horrible and needs to be nuked. The whole symbol minors need to each be moved down a tier and a new grandmaster minor needs to be made.
15 Symbolic Exposure: Symbols apply vulnerability to foes. – Fairly decent with the fix to symbol animations and size, but needs to be moved to the 5 point talent, possibly buffed to be 2 stacks of vulnerability compared to 1.
25 Symbolic Power: Increases damage of symbols. – Once again decent, but needs to be moved down a tier to the 15 point talent. The replacement should be a redone Glacial heart, which would apply chill to symbols.

10 Binding Jeopardy: Immobilizing a foe also applies vulnerability to them.- Applies 5 stacks of vulnerability per Immobilization. Fairly good but situational to the hammer and scepter weapons.
10 Fiery Wrath: Increases damage by 10% against burning foes. – Pretty much the only reason people go 10 points into zeal is for this skill. With our amount of burning applying skills this trait can be up fairly often, and is pretty amazing for a 10 point skill.
10 Protector’s Impact: Create a Symbol of Protection when you take falling damage. Take 50% less damage when falling. – Generic falling damage trait, everyone has one, It has to go somewhere.
10 Revenge of the Fallen: Increased damage by 50% while downed. – As with any of the downed state traits, this honestly sucks, and nobody ever grabs them.
10 Shattered Aegis: When an aegis you applied is removed, it burns nearby foes. – applies a 2 second AoE burn when Aegis is broken. A decent trait, but rather random to be the zeal tree. May have been put in to work with fiery wrath, but we have so many other sources of burning that this trait is very lacking.
10 Spirit Weapon Mastery: Spirit weapon skills recharge 20% faster. – good for spirit weapon skills, sadly, the skills themselves are lacking in large group fights as they die quickly.

20 Zealous Blade: Attacks with your greatsword deal an extra 5% damage and heal you. – Good with the recent buff to combine traits, a bit of survivability with added damage on a weapon, makes sense in the zeal tree.
20 Focused Mastery: Focus skills recharge 20% faster. – Not sure why this is in zeal at all, would make more sense to be in radiance due to the blind on ray of judgment, or valor due to the blocking.
20 Scepter Power: Scepter damage is increased by 10%. – Straight forward damage increase. Makes sense in zeal, Mostly because it can synergize with Fiery wrath due to the fast attacks from smite with VoJ, also due to Binding Jeopardy. The main issue I do have with this though, is that Scepter does not have a symbol, and thus gains nothing from the minor traits in zeal. For this I believe that the trait should also turn smite into a symbol.
20 Eternal Spirit: Spirit weapons are not destroyed when commanded. – Once again, another good spirit weapon trait.

30 Wrathful Spirits: Increases spirit weapon damage by 50%. – A pretty hefty boost to spirit weapons But falls into the same issue as all spirit weapon traits.
30 Kindled Zeal: 10% of your power is converted into condition damage. – They did a good job moving zealous blade to master tier and combining it with great sword mastery. Replacing it with this trait was just a horrible Idea. Maybe an increase to 15-20%, oh and maybe another condition for guardians instead of burning might actually make this trait worth it.

How I feel zeal needs to be fixed: The devs really need to find a niche for zeal and move around traits. The offensive based symbol minors are fine, but as I said, change glacial heart into a 25 point zeal trait that adds chill on symbols. Also, combine all of the spirit weapon traits into this tree to keep them under one line. Combine wrathful spirits and A fire inside from radiance into something like “increases spirit weapon damage by 30%, Spirit weapons also cause burning” And combine Eternal Spirit with the virtue line’s Improved spirit weapon duration into something like “Spirit weapons are not destroyed when commanded, spirit weapons also last 25-50% longer (don’t feel like messing around with numbers to balance that)” This would give spirit weapons their own line, instead of having to dump 60 points to maximize them.

Also, Traits like Focus Mastery and Shattered Aegis need to be allocated to new trait lines, as they don’t really seem to fit in with how zeal is apparently meant to work.

Radiance: Precision +10, Condition damage +10 per point

5: Justice is Blind: When activating Virtue of Justice, nearby foes are blinded. – Very good defensively, also works very well with blind exposure
15: Renewed Justice: Virtue of Justice is renewed when you kill a foe. – Very good for PvE, decent for pvp if your getting a good amount of kills. Works well with blind exposure and the 5 point virtue trait
25: Radiant Power: Deal more damage to foes inflicted with conditions. – 10% extra damage whenever any condition is on an enemy. So pretty much 10% free damage.

10 Healer’s Retribution: Gain 3 seconds of retaliation when using a heal skill. – This one is junk except with the healing breeze bug, also does not make sense in a crit/condition based build, Fury for 5-10 second would make more sense.
10 Signet Mastery: Signets recharge 20% faster. – pretty good, brings our biggest heal to 32 seconds, also helps our CC with 2 signets
10 Shimmering Defense: Burn nearby foes when your health reaches 25% (60-second cooldown). – This one is complete junk and needs an overhaul. Possibly a good place for Shattered Aegis to help add more damaging conditions to this trait line. Could also change shattered aegis to cause bleed stacks (the act of shattering a magical shield and the shards going everywhere)
10 Inner Fire: When you are set on fire, you gain fury. – Situational but VERY strong. In pve it is lackluster, PvP/WvW it is almost free perma fury with the condition heavy meta.
10 Searing Flames: When you apply burning to an [sic] foe, remove a boon. This effect can only trigger once every 20 seconds. – Like the Idea, CD is stupid though. 5 Seconds would most likely be a good idea, just because we have alot of issues with bunkers simply because we have no condition damage variant, and have to suffer breaking through buffs.
10 Blind Exposure: Applying blind also applies 3 stacks of vulnerability (10 seconds). – Awesome trait, synergy with sword/focus/GS/VoJ and also with Radiant power due to the length of the duration.

20 Radiant Fire: Torch skills recharge 20% faster. All burning durations are increased by 20%. – Pretty decent after the buff, the big bonus is not that it gives extra burning ticks on skills, but more that it keeps fiery wrath from zeal active 20% longer.
20 A Fire Inside: Spirit weapons cause burning. – Needs to be moved to a different tree. I still cant understand why they threw some random spirit weapon traits in random trees. This needs to be combined with another spirit weapon trait in zeal, Possibly even Wrathful spirits, simply lower the damage some, and add in the burning they can do.
20 Inscribed Removal: Using a signet cures a condition on you. – Pretty decent when using a signet based build, but somewhat situational as only 2 of our 4 signets are defensive in use. But in the condition heavy meta, any condition removal is good.
20 Powerful Blades: Sword and spear damage is increased by 5%. – straight damage boost for sword and spear, would like to see some improvements like they did with torch and GS but its good for any 1h sword based build.

30 Right-Hand Strength: Critical-hit chance with one-handed weapons is increased by 15%. – Amazing damage boost for any 1h weapons. This trait is also great for helping proc our on crit traits in honor, and also any on crit food or sigils we have.
30 Perfect Inscriptions: Signet passive effects are improved. Signet passives are increased 20% except for resolve, which goes from 1 condition every 10 seconds to 2. Pretty good if your going to be using any signets with 2 hand weapons. I do think this could use a buff to 50% though, as you are only looking at 36 extra points worth of stats per signet, and 2% less damage from judgement.

What I feel should be done with Radiance: Add some types of condition damage to the trait line. Currently the 300 extra condition damage is fairly wasted due to the complete lack of damaging conditions we have. I suggested moving “A fire inside” to merge with zeal traits, leaving an empty trait slot open. I would suggest making a master trait called “Punish the wicked – Critical hits have a chance to cause torment.” (once again, don’t feel like really getting into numbers at this point) This would give us a viable chance at a condition build, and also help against the Kiting classes. Also, as mentioned, remove shimmering Defense and replace it with shattered Aegis, giving more condition damage. Overall though, the rest of the traits work well with each other and are pretty true to the current look of the trait line.

Valor: +10 Toughness, +1% critical damage per point

5 Valorous Defense: Gain aegis when your health reaches 50%. – Decent, an extra block when you get half health, has a lot of possible synergy with multiple builds.
15 Courageous Return: Virtue of Courage is recharged when you rally. – A free Aegis if you rally, plus an activation of Virtue of Courage as well. So 2 blocks and whatever extra effects you may have traited for courage.
25 Might of the Protector: Gain might when you block attacks. – 15s of might each time you block an attack. This trait makes shelter an INSANELY strong comeback heal when used correctly against multi-hit attacks, and also gives a good bonus to all your aegis application and also focus #5 use.

10 Meditation Mastery: Meditations recharge 20% faster. – Pretty basic CD reduction, standard an effective for the utilities it modifies
10 Defender’s Flame: Gain a 100% chance to burn attackers when blocking. – Another Modification on blocking that works extremely well with Shelter. It is nice in the fact that it gives that extra bit of damage each time you block an attack.
10 Strength of the Fallen: Lose health 33% slower while downed. – Still absolutely hate downed traits. Replace this with Focus Mastery from Zeal, as focus would work better with the blocks here than anything else in the zeal trait line.
10 Strength in Numbers: Nearby allies gain up to 150 toughness based on your effective level. – Pretty amazing trait for 10 points. You can effectively get 250 toughness for yourself with just 10 points, and an extra 150 for your entire group. Personally use this in a lot of my builds now.
10 Purity: Lose a condition every 10 seconds. – Good standard passive condition removal. Stacks with signet of resolve well.
10 Retributive Armor: 5% of toughness is given as a bonus to precision. – I feel like this talent has fell by the wayside a bit after the buff to strength in numbers. The crit chance you get generally isn’t enough to be compared to other traits in the valor, so possibly either a slight buff or rework might be in order.

20 Mace of Justice: Wielding a mace grants 5% additional damage and up to 250 healing power (based on level). – Great after the rework. And fits the self defense style of valor pretty well.
20 Glacial Heart: Critical hits with a hammer have a 100% chance to chill your target for 5 seconds. This effect can only occur once every 30 seconds. – As mentioned above, rework it and move it to zeal and a symbol trait, An easy cleanse chill on a 30 second CD is complete garbage. I think a hammer based trait would be great to replace this, but honestly have no clue what to make it into.
20 Honorable Shield: Gain +90 Toughness when wielding a shield and reduce the cooldown on Shield skills by 20%. – Any class that can wear a shield has this trait, and it works perfect for it
20 Focused Mind: Meditation skills are instant. – Semi lackluster but with the recent changed to merciful intervention, may see more use. I am curious to see if the bonus heal on MI with MF is intentional or not before I make a full judgement on this skill.

30 Altruistic Healing: Applying a boon to allies heals you. – The bread and butter of basic survival for guardians. And the main reason everyone goes 30 into valor. Pretty much defines the trait line as a self survival line.
30 Monk’s Focus: Using a meditation skill heals you. – The other basic survival tool, but more geared towards the Damage crowd. Also defines the trait line as a self survival line.

What I feel should be done with Valor: Not much really. The trait line works exactly as it should, self sustain and defense. The only traits that I feel need to me messed with are Strength of the fallen, which really needs to be removed and a new trait added. Cold hearted turned into the symbol trait and moved to zeal. Focus mastery be moved to this line, since the blocking on #5 makes sense with all the modification on blocks in this trait line, and it is a strong defensive offhand. And a new Hammer based trait come into play, But as I said, I have no clue what to add that wouldn’t make the hammer overpowered, as it is already a strong weapon overall already.

Reserved for Honor Traits, Have yet to do, so may be a day or two

Reserved for Virtue Traits, Have yet to do, so may be a day or two.

Reserved for anything else that might be needed, Great suggested Ideas, possible personal changes, and also any updates on traits we might get in the future.

So far, your evaluation of the traits makes sense to me. Can’t remember a point where I’d strongly disagree right now.

However, I have a nasty feeling that this great compilation will be worthless because ANet will totally ignore it and any related discussions.

CptAurellian.9537:

So far, your evaluation of the traits makes sense to me. Can’t remember a point where I’d strongly disagree right now.

However, I have a nasty feeling that this great compilation will be worthless because ANet will totally ignore it and any related discussions.

I could see that happening, but there are also things that give me a bit of hope. Mostly in a few changes that happened in the last big trait patch, such as GS power being mixed into zealous blade and made into a major. That was suggested multiple times on here and actually made it. Also other things such as long bow buffs for rangers, and also some group utility with their shouts. Just a few things here and there actually made me think they do listen here and there.

I agree that the zeal traits seem mushed into there with “extras”, so that you get the non synergy of symbols and non symbol abilities that waste parts of the trait line.

Downed state traits do feel like a total waste, and gimicky. If they created an actual advantage then I could see them being used, but as it is now, it is not enough and should be removed or reworked.

I have a love/hate with spirit weapons. I see what they are for, but with the addition of HP and the short duration, they are “mostly” not worth it. Best ones would be hammer and shield for the utility they bring….also sword is broken atm.

Zealot’s speed used to give swiftness WAY back in the day I am told, which makes sense as a survival/escape ability. Why it was changed to retaliation I have NO idea, pretty useless at the moment.

Along the same lines, Protector’s Impact is standard enough with on fall reduction, but I think Regeneration would make more sense to help us survive a fall and recover more quickly from it. Stability would be interesting to get everyone to stand up from a “stun” more quickly.

I think our on burn traits in general are all “interesting” but not there yet. I did see one interesting semi-synergy with Shattered Aegis and Searing Flames in that they are close to cool down with each other, so it could be used as a passive boon removal. 20 seconds is too long to be useful, maybe have it remove 2-3 boons every 20 seconds?

Overall thanks for the break down Bash, and yes it may do nothing, or it may inspire more changes. I’m all for analysis and discussion so I encourage more posts like this!

It really is, I think they built around valor first and everything else kind of just fit in random places.

Just to offer some feedback on what you’ve got so far:

Zeal Minor Traits: Rather than just shifting these down, I’d like to see them reworked entirely. I’ve taken issue with these traits since beta, since they’re specific to certain builds and generally underwhelming. If you’re not running a build that’s using symbols frequently, they will do nothing for you, and even if you are, their impact is minimal (for example, the single stack of Vulnerability that Symbolic Exposure gives with each pulse lasts for only 3 seconds). Replace them with anything else – maybe even buff them and combine them into a major trait. But these should not be traits you’re forced to take if you want to invest in Zeal.

Revenge/Strength of the Fallen: These should really be combined into one trait and left alone. It won’t see much use, but Anet seems to like these sort of traits, so I doubt they’ll remove it entirely. Alternatively, remove one trait and add some utility to the other trait, like what they’ve recently done with the downed traits for Engineers and Eles. A reworked Symbol Major trait could fit in here, due to Symbol of Judgment – something like 50% more damage in downed state, and Symbols inflict 2 stacks of 10s Vulnerability per pulse?

Shattered Aegis: I’d agree with you that this one feels a little random in Zeal. I could see moving it to Radiance, though I’d also combine it with Wrathful Spirit, which I feel is one of the more underwhelming Honor traits (3s Retaliation when Aegis ends). Having it give Bleeds could be interesting for condition builds, though I’m not sure how likely that is to happen.

Spirit Weapon Traits: I definitely agree that these need to be combined, and I’d like to see them condensed into the Zeal and Virtue lines exclusively. I like your ideas about which ones to combine, but personally, I’d like to see Eternal Spirit removed and made base functionality for the Weapons. Being on a timer, having a small HP bar, and being destroyed on use makes them the most fragile pets in the game, and having to trait around these issues is silly.

Focused Mastery: I’d also like to see this in Valor, and it’d be nice to see it pick up an additional effect. Maybe another on-block effect, to synergize with Might of the Protector.

Scepter Power: I honestly don’t see Smite ever becoming a symbol, so unless the devs surprise us with one of these patches, I’d rather just have the Zeal Minors reworked. This trait already gives double the standard damage boost, anyways, and I don’t think it needs improved.

Kindled Zeal: I think this should be moved down to the Minor Grandmaster slot, like many similar traits amongst other classes. All Guardians have burning, so it conveys some benefit regardless of build, and if we ever do get a viable condition spec, having it slightly lower in the line will afford them some more flexibility.

Chilling Symbols: I have to admit, thematically, I’ve never been a fan of chill on the Guardian, and if symbols were going to get some sort of snare effect, I’d prefer it to be Cripple. That said, I could see such a trait fitting nicely as a new Major Grandmaster trait in Zeal, perhaps combined with Symbolic Power’s 10% damage boost.

Healer’s Retribution: I agree that this one is a little weird right now, but I’m not sure Fury is the right buff. Inner Fire is in the same tier and already gives us a source of Fury, and it’s my opinion that the Guardian’s limited access to Fury is an important balancing factor for our offensive builds. It would be interesting to see this reworked into another trait to promote condition builds, but I don’t have a suggestion ready for how to do this.

Shimmering Defense: Shattered Aegis could certainly fit here, though I wouldn’t mind them just reworking this trait into something useful and maybe raising the damage threshold to 50%.

Searing Flames: I agree that an ICD reduction is necessary, but I’d start at 10 seconds, to put it on par with Sigil of Nullification, and then cut it further if it’s still not seeing use. I don’t perceive Guardians as a profession meant to break bunkers.

Inscribed Removal/Perfect Inscriptions: Besides a stat buff to PI, I’d like to see these combined into one Grandmaster trait.

Powerful Blades: Any sort of bonus. Torment, CD reduction, combo finishers, etc. In TPvP, most teams don’t bother with Guardians that aren’t bunkers, and it’d be nice to give them an incentive to.

Retributive Armor: A stat buff would be nice, but adding something less passive to the trait would be even better, in my opinion. Major traits should give more than just a boost to numbers, since they help define a build.

Focused Mind: I’d like to see this combined with Meditation Mastery, since it only benefits half of our Meditations at the moment.

Those are my thoughts, anyways. Looking forward to seeing your posts about Honor and Virtues!

One of the things about guardian traits that irks me the most is the fragmentation of similar traits over different lines. Why are symbol traits in both Zeal and Honor? Why are Spirit Weapons in both Zeal, Radiance and Virtues? Why are the crit traits in Honor, while only Radiance and Valor enhance crits with their stats? While some traits synergise greatly, others don’t at all. That is, in my opinion, the first issue that needs to be adressed to increase build variety.
And of course, things like cripple on symbols (chill would be a bit too strong IMO), some acces to Fury if specced for, and merging some of our weak traits would be very welcome as well!

It’s to set up synergies, Bean. If you want to build a Symbols based character, you can do so by diving into Zeal, or Honor, or both. The two trait lines talk to each other in that way. That’s a good thing.

Good synopsis and lots of good ideas so far. A couple suggestions:
Zeal
- Spirit weapons need an overall re-work and I wouldn’t bother messing with traits until then. In particular, Eternal Spirit (spirit weapons aren’t destroyed when commanded) is practically mandatory when using a spirit weapon. I would just make Eternal Spirit baseline, but increase the cooldown of the spirit weapon command abilities. Then you can have a trait lower the cooldown on the command ability to bring it back to where it is with Eternal Spirit.
- Zealous Blade healing needs a healing power coefficient. Even something small like 0.01.
- Since Zeal has a secondary stat of condition duration, its traits should take advantage of that somehow. Right now, all it does it give us slightly better up-time for burning to ensure Fiery Wrath is active. But in group fights, you can almost guarantee the target is burning anyway.
- The 5pt trait in zeal is a nice idea, but wrong ability. Change it to Symbol of Faith (regeneration) at say 50% HP and it’s much better. That would even make it worthy of being 15pt or 25pt. It also gives non-symbol weapons help for spec’ing into Zeal.

Valor
- Focus Mind should be removed. Either make it baseline (two of the four meditations are instant already) or combine it with Monk’s Focus.

Other
- I want to see the hammer #1 chain tweaked. That 1 second cast time on the auto-attack makes hammer very cumbersome to use for anything besides CC and blast finisher.

As usual, Bash, a balanced and insightful read. Totally agree with pretty much everything there.

Like I’ve said in my sword threads and various other threads from months ago now, I’d be happy with a couple of simple cripples thrown in on weapon skills, none of this fancy chill stuff. I mean c’mon, if someone hits you in the leg with a weapon, you’re going to be walking funny. Guardians are the only profession that has extremely limited access to cripple yet is also extremely reliant on being in melee range, we all know it.

Since we’re throwing ideas around, while I really like the bleeds on Shattered Aegis idea (Guardians at least need some bleeds), an alternative could be aoe blind on aegis removal, imagine how annoying that would be! It would fit thematically, I know Thieves would hate it but what Thief really has the right to complain about blinds right? Additionally, Shimmering Defense could also do some kind of aoe blind, that’d be kinda nice. I’m just throwing out ideas and will not defend any of these suggestions outside of the cripples! So nobody get their undies in a twist about the Thief comment!

In any case, I am totally for making the Guardian profession the best it could be, as it stands I think fixing Zeal, fixing a few dud traits, adding a couple of weapon skill cripples and tweaking sword and scepter are the biggest concerns.

I’ve lost most of my faith in Anet being able to fix any of their blaring issues that have been present since Beta.

I’m 5% from claiming GW2 a purely PVE game and moving on.

That’s a little extreme. What do you take issue with?

Bash,

Your summary of the traits is really good, perhaps we can get this to become a sticky? And open it up for proposed changes to the class.

foofad.5162:

That’s a little extreme. What do you take issue with?

1) Skill Lag. There is ~zero~ reason for this in today’s environment.

2) Preaching a player vs player focused game: Clearly it is not as they just hired 4x’s thier current “Living World” (PVE) development team while WvW / PvP only see updates every 2-3 months (where pve see’s full content + updates every month, sometimes twice).

3) Uselessness of traits, among ALL classes, as “fillers” to make the appearance of diversity among builds…. where we all know this is not the case.

4) Inability to bring the same content into WvW: Legendaries, titles, progress…. etc. Contrary to belief, there has to be some kind of non-useless carrot.

5) Uselessness of the items we recieve in WvW… badges… really? do I REALLY need 4,000 badges sitting in my bank?

6) Certain classes are so overly broken… luckily the meta doesn’t even grasp it yet, because once they do, group wvw is going to be ridiculously lopsided w/ just a select few classes….

Guardian Specific:

1) The fact that IF you truely want to go out and roam (solo) when there is any decent population on the opposing servers you either 1) have to equip GS + S/F w/ JI and then either Centaur Runes/SY/Retreat for any kind of swiftness. ON top of that, we have ZERO “snaring” ability…. take into consideration every other class does not have to spec like this just to go out and roam (minus Necro, they’re still as horrible at it as us); Or 2) eat it when 3+ see you, eat it when 2 players of equal skill see it, eat it if you’re not tower hugging.

2) Lack of any reliably applicable Chill/Cripple if you did want to deviate from scenario #1 above.

3) Pigeon holed into 2 tree’s unless you run scenario 1 above… if you’re not tanking up, you have to have mobility/escapability… other classes ~still~ have this one attribute built into 90% of their weapons, not just 2 (GS / S).

4) Our Burst DPS is a very Gimmicky build and severely telegraphed.

….. Just to name a few issues. The list is ENORMOUS.

Amins.3710:

foofad.5162:

That’s a little extreme. What do you take issue with?

1) Skill Lag. There is ~zero~ reason for this in today’s environment.

2) Preaching a player vs player focused game: Clearly it is not as they just hired 4x’s thier current “Living World” (PVE) development team while WvW / PvP only see updates every 2-3 months (where pve see’s full content + updates every month, sometimes twice).

3) Uselessness of traits, among ALL classes, as “fillers” to make the appearance of diversity among builds…. where we all know this is not the case.

4) Inability to bring the same content into WvW: Legendaries, titles, progress…. etc. Contrary to belief, there has to be some kind of non-useless carrot.

5) Uselessness of the items we recieve in WvW… badges… really? do I REALLY need 4,000 badges sitting in my bank?

6) Certain classes are so overly broken… luckily the meta doesn’t even grasp it yet, because once they do, group wvw is going to be ridiculously lopsided w/ just a select few classes….

Guardian Specific:

1) The fact that IF you truely want to go out and roam (solo) when there is any decent population on the opposing servers you either 1) have to equip GS + S/F w/ JI and then either Centaur Runes/SY/Retreat for any kind of swiftness. ON top of that, we have ZERO “snaring” ability…. take into consideration every other class does not have to spec like this just to go out and roam (minus Necro, they’re still as horrible at it as us); Or 2) eat it when 3+ see you, eat it when 2 players of equal skill see it, eat it if you’re not tower hugging.

2) Lack of any reliably applicable Chill/Cripple if you did want to deviate from scenario #1 above.

3) Pigeon holed into 2 tree’s unless you run scenario 1 above… if you’re not tanking up, you have to have mobility/escapability… other classes ~still~ have this one attribute built into 90% of their weapons, not just 2 (GS / S).

4) Our Burst DPS is a very Gimmicky build and severely telegraphed.

….. Just to name a few issues. The list is ENORMOUS.

QFT. However, I don’t feel that there’s as big of a mobility problem as people let on when I’m roaming in WvW (especially with medis). I’d be lying if I said I disagree with the need for more snares though. Like, more than just two super-short immobilizes and a traited chill that replaces far more useful traits if used.

I’d probably give my Sunrise for either RoJ or Flashing Blade (maybe both) to cripple as well as blind. I also feel as though Mace could use a daze or stun somewhere on the bar.

Christos de Soufre.3802:

Amins.3710:

foofad.5162:

That’s a little extreme. What do you take issue with?

1) Skill Lag. There is ~zero~ reason for this in today’s environment.

2) Preaching a player vs player focused game: Clearly it is not as they just hired 4x’s thier current “Living World” (PVE) development team while WvW / PvP only see updates every 2-3 months (where pve see’s full content + updates every month, sometimes twice).

3) Uselessness of traits, among ALL classes, as “fillers” to make the appearance of diversity among builds…. where we all know this is not the case.

4) Inability to bring the same content into WvW: Legendaries, titles, progress…. etc. Contrary to belief, there has to be some kind of non-useless carrot.

5) Uselessness of the items we recieve in WvW… badges… really? do I REALLY need 4,000 badges sitting in my bank?

6) Certain classes are so overly broken… luckily the meta doesn’t even grasp it yet, because once they do, group wvw is going to be ridiculously lopsided w/ just a select few classes….

Guardian Specific:

1) The fact that IF you truely want to go out and roam (solo) when there is any decent population on the opposing servers you either 1) have to equip GS + S/F w/ JI and then either Centaur Runes/SY/Retreat for any kind of swiftness. ON top of that, we have ZERO “snaring” ability…. take into consideration every other class does not have to spec like this just to go out and roam (minus Necro, they’re still as horrible at it as us); Or 2) eat it when 3+ see you, eat it when 2 players of equal skill see it, eat it if you’re not tower hugging.

2) Lack of any reliably applicable Chill/Cripple if you did want to deviate from scenario #1 above.

3) Pigeon holed into 2 tree’s unless you run scenario 1 above… if you’re not tanking up, you have to have mobility/escapability… other classes ~still~ have this one attribute built into 90% of their weapons, not just 2 (GS / S).

4) Our Burst DPS is a very Gimmicky build and severely telegraphed.

….. Just to name a few issues. The list is ENORMOUS.

QFT. However, I don’t feel that there’s as big of a mobility problem as people let on when I’m roaming in WvW (especially with medis). I’d be lying if I said I disagree with the need for more snares though. Like, more than just two super-short immobilizes and a traited chill that replaces far more useful traits if used.

I’d probably give my Sunrise for either RoJ or Flashing Blade (maybe both) to cripple as well as blind. I also feel as though Mace could use a daze or stun somewhere on the bar.

They could change the zeal traits to give pulses of cripple instead of vulnerability. That would be way more useful than how it currently is imo.

Just an update, I will be updating this in the next couple days for the last couple trait lines, have been busy with family obligations and have not had much time to work on them at all.

Zeal 5 shouldn’t be changed

Its great for symbol builds and gives free retaliation, a light field and some heal ticks with Writ of the merciful (Honor X)

Retaliation at 25% health really does not help much, and honestly its very easy to get retaliation as a guardian, the health ticks are also pretty much pointless, at it is like what 600 health overall. at 25% health that isn’t going to save you.

Sachit.9753:

Zeal 5 shouldn’t be changed

Its great for symbol builds and gives free retaliation, a light field and some heal ticks with Writ of the merciful (Honor X)

No, it should be changed. However, you can keep the theme by using a more beneficial symbol and increasing the health percent at which it triggers.

Bash,

Do you feel the stats per tree are in the correct locations?

Zeal - Power/Cond dur
Radiance - Prec / Cond dmg
Valor - Toughness/C dmg
Honor - Vit / Healing Power
Virtue - Class oriented / Boon duration
--------------------------------------------------------

If any of those could be moved around to make more sense, where would you think they would make the most logical move?

My list was:

Zeal - Power/Cond dur
Radiance - Crit/Crit dmg
Valor - Tough/Healing Power
Honor - Vit / Boon duration
Virtue - Class / Cond dmg

With this, there would be some traits (minor and major) that would need to be shifted around to make much more sense of the change but with some current traits I felt this just made more sense.

EDIT: Took a double take of what I wrote and noticed it mirrored Thieves.

I have never been very active on the forums, in any game, but since I love GW2 so much I want to be better at the game.

However, I am unhappy.

I fell in love with the Guardian.
I thought the idea of a tanky character that can do some buffing, some healing, and some protection.

So I set up my traits for it.
Taking Healing power, toughness, boon duration, and vitality in my trait lines.

I was doing alright.

Then my friend decided to give somthing similar a try on his warrior.

Behold, the warrior can indeed effectivly do the same thing.
Without being entirly speced for it.

He had is warrior build for mostly damage, with a few points in toughness and vitality.

He just changed som traits to make his banners heal.
Then is able to heal and buff just as well as I am, however he has a absorbatant amount of HP.

So we tested this.

We have mirrored stats on gear and traits.

With JUST his banners he was matching the healing of every skill that I could pop AND he didnt have to do a thing, just let the banners do their thing.

He can sheild block for longer, stun, and do more damage, as well as buff for long periods of time and all he has to do is focus on fighting.

Now say he switches to shouts heal, the amount they heal is the same a the Guardian Resolve use, BUT he has multiple shouts and some only have a 25 second CD.

As much as I love the idea behind the guardian, the warrior does everything the same, if not better, plus has access to ranged weapons, and just MORE HP. We had the same items and build but he had 4000 more HP.

Needless to say, I now have a warrior until the guardian gets some love.

~I just love Yogurt

Amins.3710:

2) Preaching a player vs player focused game: Clearly it is not as they just hired 4x’s thier current “Living World” (PVE) development team while WvW / PvP only see updates every 2-3 months (where pve see’s full content + updates every month, sometimes twice).

I’m sure A-net is adding head count to the areas seeing the most player traffic, in this case, PvE (it’s why I play GW2 – I’ve only played WvW 2 or 3 times since launch, and NEVER ONCE played PvP).

As a PvP player, you should be thanking the devs for obviously doing everything they can to tempt players into the PvP/WvW areas – I mean, EVERY ONE of the A-net Point reward chests I just got in the last update was crammed with PvP weapon and armor skins, WvW reward tokens, blueprints, and other gear clearly intended to tempt players like me into the WvW/PvP area. Quite honestly it was kitten ing me off, until I realized that they were just trying to make sure more players got to see the content they designed for that area.

ArtemisEntreri.4138:

Bash,

Do you feel the stats per tree are in the correct locations?

Zeal – Power/Cond dur
Radiance – Prec / Cond dmg
Valor – Toughness/C dmg
Honor – Vit / Healing Power
Virtue – Class oriented / Boon duration
————————————————————————————

If any of those could be moved around to make more sense, where would you think they would make the most logical move?

My list was:

Zeal – Power/Cond dur
Radiance – Crit/Crit dmg
Valor – Tough/Healing Power
Honor – Vit / Boon duration
Virtue – Class / Cond dmg

With this, there would be some traits (minor and major) that would need to be shifted around to make much more sense of the change but with some current traits I felt this just made more sense.

EDIT: Took a double take of what I wrote and noticed it mirrored Thieves.

With how the traits are set up right now, I honestly feel like it should be:

Zeal: Power/Critical damage
Radiance: Precision/Condition Duration
Valor: Toughness/Condition damage
Honor: Vitality/healing power
Virtues: Class/Boon duration

This would give zeal the actual damage I feel that it is meant to have, and would make more sense as there is only 1 trait in there (fiery wrath) that actually makes sense with condition duration. Meanwhile radiance is full of traits that add conditions that make sense with condition duration such as vulnerability, blind, and also the added bonus of the new torch trait, and the up time on radiant power.

I would move condition damage to valor, along with making some of the traits more condition based (it already has burn on block, but this could also be a good place for a modified shattered aegis that could give bleeds, and maybe a torment based trait.) It just makes sense that a self sustaining trait line would also have conditions since they can take time to actually do damage.

The other two trait lines I would leave as is, but with the suggestions I am thinking of, well mostly virtues which I feel really needs some offensive support to make it more appealing than just for boon duration bunkering, but we will see those once i finally get around to doing them.

ImagoX.4718:

Amins.3710:

2) Preaching a player vs player focused game: Clearly it is not as they just hired 4x’s thier current “Living World” (PVE) development team while WvW / PvP only see updates every 2-3 months (where pve see’s full content + updates every month, sometimes twice).

I’m sure A-net is adding head count to the areas seeing the most player traffic, in this case, PvE (it’s why I play GW2 – I’ve only played WvW 2 or 3 times since launch, and NEVER ONCE played PvP).

As a PvP player, you should be thanking the devs for obviously doing everything they can to tempt players into the PvP/WvW areas – I mean, EVERY ONE of the A-net Point reward chests I just got in the last update was crammed with PvP weapon and armor skins, WvW reward tokens, blueprints, and other gear clearly intended to tempt players like me into the WvW/PvP area. Quite honestly it was kitten ing me off, until I realized that they were just trying to make sure more players got to see the content they designed for that area.

I don’t really considering giving everyone badges/blueprints as trying to get people to WvW. It was honestly more of a free gear hand out, as there is nothing you can get only in WvW compared to any other aspect of the game. If there were something else as a bonus, such as armor skins like spvp, or some type of actual bonus you get for WvWing compared to anything else in the game, that would draw people in.

And honestly, the same thing goes for sPvP. Getting skins didn’t really make me want to sPvP any more than I do, it was a nice bonus, but nothing that would promote people to get more into it.

However this is getting off track of the actual topic, so lets keep it about traits ok guys?

Bash.7291:

ArtemisEntreri.4138:

[…]

With how the traits are set up right now, I honestly feel like it should be:

Zeal: Power/Critical damage
Radiance: Precision/Condition Duration
Valor: Toughness/Condition damage
Honor: Vitality/healing power
Virtues: Class/Boon duration

This would give zeal the actual damage I feel that it is meant to have, and would make more sense as there is only 1 trait in there (fiery wrath) that actually makes sense with condition duration. Meanwhile radiance is full of traits that add conditions that make sense with condition duration such as vulnerability, blind, and also the added bonus of the new torch trait, and the up time on radiant power.

I would move condition damage to valor, along with making some of the traits more condition based (it already has burn on block, but this could also be a good place for a modified shattered aegis that could give bleeds, and maybe a torment based trait.) It just makes sense that a self sustaining trait line would also have conditions since they can take time to actually do damage.

The other two trait lines I would leave as is, but with the suggestions I am thinking of, well mostly virtues which I feel really needs some offensive support to make it more appealing than just for boon duration bunkering, but we will see those once i finally get around to doing them.

I already stated it in the other thread on the Radiance tree: while such changes might make sense from a PvP point of view, they would definitely obliterate PvE AH builds for anyone who thinks just a tiny bit about effectiveness. It is a huge difference whether you are sitting at ~75% or ~55-60% of the damage output of a DPS build.

CptAurellian.9537:

Bash.7291:

ArtemisEntreri.4138:

[…]

With how the traits are set up right now, I honestly feel like it should be:

Zeal: Power/Critical damage
Radiance: Precision/Condition Duration
Valor: Toughness/Condition damage
Honor: Vitality/healing power
Virtues: Class/Boon duration

This would give zeal the actual damage I feel that it is meant to have, and would make more sense as there is only 1 trait in there (fiery wrath) that actually makes sense with condition duration. Meanwhile radiance is full of traits that add conditions that make sense with condition duration such as vulnerability, blind, and also the added bonus of the new torch trait, and the up time on radiant power.

I would move condition damage to valor, along with making some of the traits more condition based (it already has burn on block, but this could also be a good place for a modified shattered aegis that could give bleeds, and maybe a torment based trait.) It just makes sense that a self sustaining trait line would also have conditions since they can take time to actually do damage.

The other two trait lines I would leave as is, but with the suggestions I am thinking of, well mostly virtues which I feel really needs some offensive support to make it more appealing than just for boon duration bunkering, but we will see those once i finally get around to doing them.

I already stated it in the other thread on the Radiance tree: while such changes might make sense from a PvP point of view, they would definitely obliterate PvE AH builds for anyone who thinks just a tiny bit about effectiveness. It is a huge difference whether you are sitting at ~75% or ~55-60% of the damage output of a DPS build.

See thats part of the issue right now, there is pretty much one build for dungeons, 0/x/30/30/x with zerkers gear. There is no real deviation from that at all in terms of effectiveness. I personally have no issue lowering the damage on what could be considered the most sustainable damage build in the game, and actually giving it to the damage trees. I look at traits on a basis of build diversity. In dungeons, there is none for guardians. But as i said, this is all personal opinion, and obviously traits would need to be moved aroud alot if that stat set up ever came to happen.

Amins.3710:

foofad.5162:

That’s a little extreme. What do you take issue with?

1) Skill Lag. There is ~zero~ reason for this in today’s environment.

2) Preaching a player vs player focused game: Clearly it is not as they just hired 4x’s thier current “Living World” (PVE) development team while WvW / PvP only see updates every 2-3 months (where pve see’s full content + updates every month, sometimes twice).

3) Uselessness of traits, among ALL classes, as “fillers” to make the appearance of diversity among builds…. where we all know this is not the case.

4) Inability to bring the same content into WvW: Legendaries, titles, progress…. etc. Contrary to belief, there has to be some kind of non-useless carrot.

5) Uselessness of the items we recieve in WvW… badges… really? do I REALLY need 4,000 badges sitting in my bank?

6) Certain classes are so overly broken… luckily the meta doesn’t even grasp it yet, because once they do, group wvw is going to be ridiculously lopsided w/ just a select few classes….

Guardian Specific:

1) The fact that IF you truely want to go out and roam (solo) when there is any decent population on the opposing servers you either 1) have to equip GS + S/F w/ JI and then either Centaur Runes/SY/Retreat for any kind of swiftness. ON top of that, we have ZERO “snaring” ability…. take into consideration every other class does not have to spec like this just to go out and roam (minus Necro, they’re still as horrible at it as us); Or 2) eat it when 3+ see you, eat it when 2 players of equal skill see it, eat it if you’re not tower hugging.

2) Lack of any reliably applicable Chill/Cripple if you did want to deviate from scenario #1 above.

3) Pigeon holed into 2 tree’s unless you run scenario 1 above… if you’re not tanking up, you have to have mobility/escapability… other classes ~still~ have this one attribute built into 90% of their weapons, not just 2 (GS / S).

4) Our Burst DPS is a very Gimmicky build and severely telegraphed.

….. Just to name a few issues. The list is ENORMOUS.

I seem to recall playing a game back in 2001 that didn’t have has bad of skill lag like this graphic engine Even when taking relics and the area had over 300 people in the area swinging and casting like mad men

Also agree 100% in the PvE vs. WvW content disparity. It really is a game breaking design at the moment and gets compounded with bi-weekly content updates. Really no excuse for it.

Bash.7291:

See thats part of the issue right now, there is pretty much one build for dungeons, 0/x/30/30/x with zerkers gear. There is no real deviation from that at all in terms of effectiveness. I personally have no issue lowering the damage on what could be considered the most sustainable damage build in the game, and actually giving it to the damage trees. I look at traits on a basis of build diversity. In dungeons, there is none for guardians. But as i said, this is all personal opinion, and obviously traits would need to be moved aroud alot if that stat set up ever came to happen.

Erm no. There is quite some deviation from the typical AH build since more and more people have already moved or are moving towards DPS builds which are way more effective when played correctly. If AH takes a beating by stripping Valor of the crit damage, you just reduce build diversity and force everyone into the DPS builds.

CptAurellian.9537:

Bash.7291:

See thats part of the issue right now, there is pretty much one build for dungeons, 0/x/30/30/x with zerkers gear. There is no real deviation from that at all in terms of effectiveness. I personally have no issue lowering the damage on what could be considered the most sustainable damage build in the game, and actually giving it to the damage trees. I look at traits on a basis of build diversity. In dungeons, there is none for guardians. But as i said, this is all personal opinion, and obviously traits would need to be moved aroud alot if that stat set up ever came to happen.

Erm no. There is quite some deviation from the typical AH build since more and more people have already moved or are moving towards DPS builds which are way more effective when played correctly. If AH takes a beating by stripping Valor of the crit damage, you just reduce build diversity and force everyone into the DPS builds.

I sure hope your are talking PvE cause in WvW a DPS Guardian in zerg v. zerg situations usually melts like butter. ‘Effective when played correctly’ translates into what exactly, roaming, etc.?

If you had read anything, you’d know that I’m not talking about WvW or PvP.

Bash.7291:

See thats part of the issue right now, there is pretty much one build for dungeons, 0/x/30/30/x with zerkers gear. There is no real deviation from that at all in terms of effectiveness.

Says who? I dungeon-run with guildies typically, and the “anchor man” for the entire group is a Guardian running Cleric’s gear (not Zerker) with a spread of traits that encompass 4 of the 5 lines with only a Grandmaster ranking in Honor (along with 15 in Radiance, 20 in Zeal and only 5 in Virtues). I love playing in that group: we’ve always got tons of Might, symbols all over the place we can build off of and combo from, healing, the works.

I might not know everything, but I know enough about Guild Wars to say without hesitation that there’s no such thing as a single way to play ANY of the classes (only the best way that meshes with a particular player’s style).

ImagoX.4718:

Amins.3710:

2) Preaching a player vs player focused game: Clearly it is not as they just hired 4x’s thier current “Living World” (PVE) development team while WvW / PvP only see updates every 2-3 months (where pve see’s full content + updates every month, sometimes twice).

I’m sure A-net is adding head count to the areas seeing the most player traffic, in this case, PvE (it’s why I play GW2 – I’ve only played WvW 2 or 3 times since launch, and NEVER ONCE played PvP).

As a PvP player, you should be thanking the devs for obviously doing everything they can to tempt players into the PvP/WvW areas – I mean, EVERY ONE of the A-net Point reward chests I just got in the last update was crammed with PvP weapon and armor skins, WvW reward tokens, blueprints, and other gear clearly intended to tempt players like me into the WvW/PvP area. Quite honestly it was kitten ing me off, until I realized that they were just trying to make sure more players got to see the content they designed for that area.

Why would I care if more pve’rs come into wvw?

And you think I don’t have 1000+ support tokens still in my bag? What a fk’n joke.

Amins.3710:

Why would I care if more pve’rs come into wvw?

And you think I don’t have 1000+ support tokens still in my bag? What a fk’n joke.

My point, since you obviously mis-read what I said, was that the devs obviously DO think WvW is important and are actively trying to pull people into that area of the game by barraging players like me (who are largely uninterested in the entire concept of “beating” another human being) with reward items that can ONLY be used in PvP/WvW.

If they’re currently adding more staff to build PvE content (which seems like a valid conclusion, seeing as how they are releasing PvE content so frequently), it’s for one reason only: because the devs are looking at user behavior data that leads them to the conclusion that more players want PvE content than anything else.

Successful software companies remain profitable by creating products that users will actually… well, USE. Not because they “dislike” any particular sub-set of customers. If more people start playing WvW, then they’ll be more motivated to develop additional rewards for that type of play as well…

ImagoX.4718:

Amins.3710:

Why would I care if more pve’rs come into wvw?

And you think I don’t have 1000+ support tokens still in my bag? What a fk’n joke.

My point, since you obviously mis-read what I said, was that the devs obviously DO think WvW is important and are actively trying to pull people into that area of the game by barraging players like me (who are largely uninterested in the entire concept of “beating” another human being) with reward items that can ONLY be used in PvP/WvW.

If they’re currently adding more staff to build PvE content (which seems like a valid conclusion, seeing as how they are releasing PvE content so frequently), it’s for one reason only: because the devs are looking at user behavior data that leads them to the conclusion that more players want PvE content than anything else.

Successful software companies remain profitable by creating products that users will actually… well, USE. Not because they “dislike” any particular sub-set of customers. If more people start playing WvW, then they’ll be more motivated to develop additional rewards for that type of play as well…

I would have never have guessed that companies have customer support advocacy departments….

What will they think of next….

Your comments have nothing to do w/ their claim to be the next best PvP Game.

ImagoX.4718:

Bash.7291:

See thats part of the issue right now, there is pretty much one build for dungeons, 0/x/30/30/x with zerkers gear. There is no real deviation from that at all in terms of effectiveness.

Says who? I dungeon-run with guildies typically, and the “anchor man” for the entire group is a Guardian running Cleric’s gear (not Zerker) with a spread of traits that encompass 4 of the 5 lines with only a Grandmaster ranking in Honor (along with 15 in Radiance, 20 in Zeal and only 5 in Virtues). I love playing in that group: we’ve always got tons of Might, symbols all over the place we can build off of and combo from, healing, the works.

I might not know everything, but I know enough about Guild Wars to say without hesitation that there’s no such thing as a single way to play ANY of the classes (only the best way that meshes with a particular player’s style).

I assumed that cpt was talking strictly about damage AH builds and not anchors, to which there is pretty much only one damage AH build. I should have said that more clearly in my post.

@cpt: What other damage builds are viable for guardian in pve dungeons? I run them infrequently so the only one i know of that most people are ok with are zerker ah/em builds. Almost every damage build is extremely selfish for us and for group orriented play are not very welcome to groups, except for anchors, which are not really there for damage

Forums ate my reply earlier.

I’ve seen quite a few full DPS guardian builds that use 10 or 20 in Zeal and 25 or 30 in Radiance. That gets them 20-25% increased damage pretty much all the time. And there are still some trait points to spare for vigor on crit and +250 toughness from 10 points into Valor. Many dungeon paths, in particular CoF path1, can be done without much survivability or group utility other than damage buffs.

Nothing is wrong with having toughness and crit damage in the same trait line. It’s just that Altruistic Healing is just that good compared to survivability from alternate trait lines, especially in dungeons.

Bash.7291:

@cpt: What other damage builds are viable for guardian in pve dungeons? I run them infrequently so the only one i know of that most people are ok with are zerker ah/em builds. Almost every damage build is extremely selfish for us and for group orriented play are not very welcome to groups, except for anchors, which are not really there for damage

Look around on these forums. There is a fair share of builds like the classical 10/30/0/30/0, Brazil’s 0/30/0/30/10, the virtuan 10/30/0/0/30 (where the hell has the thread gone?) or something in between. Most of them bring at least as much support as the AHs floating around out there, if not even much better one, while providing around 30-40 % more damage. Never forget that AH is quite selfish by its very nature.

I wont go into micro level, as i think op made a nice writeup and i share 90% of his opinions, but stay on a macro level.

Zeal:
No group centric traits that benefit the team.
To much focused on one weapon, gs. The damage enhancers should also be more supportive of one handers. Like zealots blade should heal on hit with every weapon not just gs.

Radiance
Radiance is the opposite, to much focus on 1h weapons. There should be an other grandmaster trait, like the one that was in place during beta that added a chunk of precision when you where inside a symbol and there should be more groupcentric stuff. Why not fury to symbols as a grandmaster trait.

Symbols:
To many traits for one skill in one weapon, max two symbols per setup.. This would be alright if we had the necro setup with 4 marks (symbols) on the staff and we could specialize in them but as of now there are only two weapons (Mace and hammer) that actually have the uptime for it to ever consider it and than boon duration, healing power and toughness is much more important (better synergies) due to the nature of the weapon.

Some might argue that the symbol stuff in zeal is offensive and in honor you find defense/support but frankly with mace and hammer that is just wrong. The fact is the best dps enhancers for those two weapons are infact longer lasting symbols in pve versus static opponents and larger symbols in pvp and versus mobile pve opponent.

So either move the minor symbol traits to honor or just move all symbols from hammer, mace and gs to staff and keep the traits as they are.

If theu move all symbols to the staff we would also have a very decent ranged alternative with staff and scepter which would allow us to play guardian at range with serious impact.

And symbol bombing with 4 symbols would be hysterical tbh.

Yay I can finally log in again. Just a quick update, will be posting honor/virtue today, as I am finally free to finish them.

yay.D looking forward to seeing the rest of it all.

and i would love nuking with 4 symbols

I’ve contributed to similar posts in the past with my stance on the Virtue line, but I’ll add to this one too:

Power of the Virtous: Needs at least 2% increase. I’d even go further and say a 3% is better. This trait is too weak for such a large investment into a trait line. This will make it worthwhile.

Unscathed Contender needs changing as well, but honestly, there’s several ideas for a replacement. For example, give additional buffs similar to the 5 and 25 Virtues traits. Another example, for each trait on passive, gain a 3% damage increase on attacks.

And in general, I think there should be more options for offensiveness in the line rather than support/defensive.

I’m mainly concerned with the lack of traits that are really desired.
The Zeal GMs are awful.

Radiant Power is the real reason to go into radiance (in almost every possible situation, it adds more damage than RHS), and the signet trait is nowhere near strong enough. Compare RHS @ basically 300 precision vs. 36 additional stats per signet that you never use.

The Valor GMs are very strong choices, which is probably why so many people gravitate towards them.

Honor GMs are also very strong, although I think Battle Presence makes more sense in Virtues. Empowering Might is also a great trait, but is probably misplaced in this line (Bump up the power a bit and make it a Radiance GM trait)

Virtues has a lot of good ideas, but it kinda stumbles on itself. It’s also too support oriented. Permeating Wrath is a strong trait, but it basically keeps you from using the virtue that you’ve invested in. Shielded mind is certainly a useful trait, but the long cooldown on VoC keeps it from being the kind of trait that you really spec to get.

Brutaly.6257:

...

Symbols:
To many traits for one skill in one weapon, max two symbols per setup.. This would be alright if we had the necro setup with 4 marks (symbols) on the staff and we could specialize in them but as of now there are only two weapons (Mace and hammer) that actually have the uptime for it to ever consider it and than boon duration, healing power and toughness is much more important (better synergies) due to the nature of the weapon.

Some might argue that the symbol stuff in zeal is offensive and in honor you find defense/support but frankly with mace and hammer that is just wrong. The fact is the best dps enhancers for those two weapons are infact longer lasting symbols in pve versus static opponents and larger symbols in pvp and versus mobile pve opponent.

So either move the minor symbol traits to honor or just move all symbols from hammer, mace and gs to staff and keep the traits as they are.

If theu move all symbols to the staff we would also have a very decent ranged alternative with staff and scepter which would allow us to play guardian at range with serious impact.

And symbol bombing with 4 symbols would be hysterical tbh.

That would be great. If guardians could drop Water, Fire, and Light symbols on the staff which could cause damage per tick + a boon. Water could cause damage + 1 second of chill and grant regen, Fire could do 1 second of burning + Fury or Might, and Light would be just higher direct damage + swiftness. Move Empower to the GS and reduce the healing on it. It seems GS is a very Might oriented weapon.