Guild Wars 2

I wanted to create this thread to talk about the stale feeling of Guardian’s weaponset. This is not only based on actual skills from weapons but also synergy with traits as this definitely helps add some depth and fun in gameplay.

I really hope the devs can do a little bit of analyzing and improving the options open to Guardians (Jon Peters, where uat?). I started getting a bit bored of playing mine (320+ hrs, Full exotic, etc) but realized it’s mostly due to the lack of weaponry-based skills. I’m bored; I only use Hammer, GS, and Staff (to useful not to use, but really boring to use). The problem is, I feel completely useless using most other sets because I know what I COULD be achieving by running AH-Hammer+Staff. This is my personal rating of how our weapons feel to me; feel free to leave feedback and maybe let’s come up with some helpful ideas to get some of our weaponry out of the dumpster.

Greatsword – 4/5
Greatsword is THE known guardian go-to. Staleness is at a low; it was at an even better state before unwarranted symbol of wrath nerf. It has some fun pull-utility and a gap closer, and generally feels good to use. However, greatsword is LACKING in terms of trait synergy. Zeal, while supposed to be a GS go-to, is underwhelming and usually ignored. AH build works decently but still not as well as with Hammer.

Hammer – 4/5
Hammer has recently become the PvE/WvW undisputed king. Altruistic Healing + hammer auto chain and blast finishers not only provide 100% prot uptime for melee part members, but great damage and self healing as well. The problem? Hammer’s 3,4, and 5 skills are not only slow windups, but have very situational use. #3 Zealots embrace sloooow movespeed and usually misses. #4 useless in dungeons, #5 hard to land without JI. Traits work decent with hammer.

Staff – 2/5
Staff can be a great utility weapon, but staleness is definitely apparent. Auto attack is repetitive, boring, and sound effect makes your eardrums cry. #2 orb is not only useless, but sometimes more hurt than help (accidental aggro bc of random projectile vector). SymbSwift is good, but not exciting. Empower is a good skill, but stale – sitting still for extended time. Not much synergy with traits as well.

Scepter – 1/5
Scepter is a general pain to use. Orb is unreliable and useless during moving battles, not to mention not fun to use (at all). Smite is mediocre AOE, doing decent damage in a tiny radius. Immobilize is “ok” but doesn’t even have the 1200 range attached to it. Sound effects and graphical effects are miserable. Nothing worth traiting into.

Sword – 3/5
Sword is a pretty fun 1h, however suffers from a few detriments. Flash of light does miserable damage, and can literally only be used as gap closer (will kill your dps). Zealots defense looks sw00t, but can’t hit moving targets reliably and I also question it’s reflect properties. Auto chain is satisfying, and has decent trait synergy with radiance, only.

Mace – 3/5
Mace chain is pretty kitten good, doing solid damage with small aoe heal on third hit. Symbol has long-ish cast time, but still good for supporting. Channeled block is much better in party than in solo, imo. Decent synergy with traits, however mostly tunnelvisioned into the Altruistic Healing as with Hammer.

Focus – 4/5
Focus is the most effective offhand, providing great utility and survivability through blind+regen and on-command blocks. However, focus takes a huge hit in one department – Looks. I’m sitting here wearing 100lbs of steel, flaming gauntlets, smashing dragons in the face, holding a tiny antique…

Shield – 2/5
Shield is a decent offhand but tends to get stale due to long cooldowns and low perceived benefit of having equipped. Addition to armor is almost nil. #4 is GOOD, but too long cast time, too small of a cone. #5 is situational, but an AoE knockback and tiny heal can be beneficial. Much more effective with trait (reduc CD’s, toughness while equipped), but could still use some work.

Torch – 1/5
While a cool concept, torch fails in practicality. #4 skill is usually useless in dungeons, as burning is already up and only stacks duration. Throwing it does pretty good dmg at 1200, but long CD. #5 is OK for cond removal, but requires a long channel and to be close (400 rng I believe?). Usually ends up feeling like you’re holding it in your offhand, but youre not entirely sure why. Channeling on #5 is also not very fun to use imo.

reserved (solutions/suggestions)

I have to say I have many lvl 80’s and I just cant agree with this at all. Guardians have the benefit of being able to build in several different ways and still be extremely effective. Many other professions have only one option or two at most for any viability. I agree that a few of the weapons could sever to be tweeked some but that is about all, the 1/5 is just silly, watch some of the Guardian videos you will see people with those 1/5 weapons do some crazy things. I would say many other professions need a lot more work.

Now as far as the looks mentioned there are specific skins that do look better with different costumes etc if you really want to go for that. Though I am sure we can all agree we would love for a lot more options in that department in general.

greatsword 4/5 (situational)
hammer 5/5 (best wpn for guardians)
staff 3/5(good heals and support)
scepter1/5(speed of orb)
sword 3/5 (would be 4 if #3 skill can be used while walking or more range)
mace 4/5 (good for tanking)
focus 5/5 (saved me so many times in dung)
shield 1/5 (pretty useless)
torch 3/5 ( #3 skill is doing 5k on crit nice dmg, and torch #5 i think have best dmg overall if you have hight crit rating for 1h wpn)

A bit trivial, aesthetics only, but I find GS’s animations a bit redundant. I mainly mean #2 and #5. We have two whirling animations. They ought to change #5 to something else, leaving the mini swords and binding chains, but at least change the sword animation.

/agree

There’s very, very little incentive right now to do anything other than hammer/greatsword with Altruistic Healing. Here’s a great video talking about balancing, a lot of which I think applies to the Guardian right now:

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/balancing-for-skill

The video talks about First Order Optimal Strategies, or FOOS. Right now, there’s no incentive based on skill/power to do anything else.

Sadly looking at other classes right now I don’t hold much hope of this being looked into any time soon. Mesmer has been similarly backed into a corner in terms of build options by nerfs to their greatsword and phantasms (if you’re not using sword/offhand/staff and running a shatter build, you’re playing ineffectively).

Since they kicked symbol of wrath in the head and zeal line continued to suck it continues to push people towards AH/Hammer.

What alarms me is they don’t seem to be doing much to encourage people to branch out; applying nerfs to the skills people arn’t using and encouraging people to stick with the ones that are already overused (See example: Ranger traps, Mesmer Phantasms, Engineer turrets)

True. The devs are always throwing around the phrase “metagame”.

Well, right now the metagame isn’t rewarding Guardian players who are trying to step out of the current AH/Hammer/GS mold.

Sure, you can use other weapons…and you don’t have to go 30 points into valor, but the game won’t reward you for it. In fact, it’ll punish you.

Mostly agree with the original list, though I would rate scepter much higher. Although it’s boring, it’s pretty effective as a mid-range weapon with a long range option for static targets.

I agree. I’ve been using mainly hammer/GS since forever. Scepter is just boring to use, shield is just useless in most scenarios, torch is also boring, staff is also boring.

This “staleness” issue is due to personal taste (no offense); not because the other weapon choices are really bad or objectively “boring.”

I don’t even (currently) use a Greatsword. I use:

Staff with Mace/Focus

Scepter/Focus with Sword/Shield

Staff with Hammer

Scepter/Focus with Mace/Shield

And several other combinations according to whim, utility, build (traits), etc.

Again, I mean no offense or hostility, but some people (not necessarily the OP) get too much into mechanics, min/maxing, what’s more “effective”, and just forget to have fun with whatever their choices are. If AH Hammer is the “most effective” for you, but you hate it, it’s NOT working for you-even though it may work wonders for many, if it bores you why bother with it? Find weapon combos you like, and ENJOY playing GW2, rather than just going for the theoretically most “powerful/effective” gameplay that you just can’t personally stand anymore.

Having said that, the usually neglected weapons are very good, even for damage purposes, and certainly have their uses (scepter offers pretty good damage, and mace is not boring nor “stale” to me, for instance-would you believe I am using it with a symbol build, and NO Valor at all?) And there are other traits besides Altruistic Healing, regardless its usefulness (I disagree with the notion of it being the “superior choice” ALL the time, though I also use it when I feel like it.) There are ways of being effective and doing good damage other than following the usual weapons/builds-experiment, and have fun!

In short, I suggest avoiding any “metagame” dictating how you should play/enjoy GW2-I agree some traits need some reworking-and in some cases, getting FIXED, because they are buggy-but we need not follow each other builds blindly like “power sheep,” especially since what works for most may not work for you at all, for whatever reasons.

I’ve said it one hundred times before, sword and scepter seem so boring to me and both have really small amounts of trait synergy and build flexibility. I’ve offered plenty of suggestions in other threads so I won’t bother repeating them here unless people are really interested.

I really want to use a sword but I can’t when almost every other weapon is way better!

This is where Anet have dropped the ball. This game is supposed to have horizontal progression. Yet for whatever reason we have 5 weapon skills and the skills for each weapon are locked in stone. Its just a baffling game design flaw. The opportunity is thereto allow people to buy and earn different weapon skills and further customise their characters. A Moba style weapon skillset goes against the whole notion of norizontal progression.

Ie say I don’t like Hammer 4. Its slow and kinda dumb. Maybe I could earn and slot in a 2 sec KD on the same cd timer. Something that more suits my playstyle.

This would make players a lot happier than’vertical progression.

I presume this is just talking about PvE… shield rocks in PvP and is by far my favorite offhand.

Coming from having my mesmer as main, guardian offers a LOT more choices with viable weaponry. But I agree, there are many weapons in this game that need re-examining.

A lot of Guardian staleness comes from traits too I think, they tend to be very generic and one-dimensional.

We have several traits that grant small amounts of Retaliation when something happens.

We have several +5% weapon damage traits. The Greatsword Grandmaster trait is an insult.

We have nothing to enhance our ability to be more maneuverable or to fight better at range, I appreciate that the Guardian is supposed to Guard things but in a game as diverse as GW2 where all profession should be able to do everything it is not healthy to pigeonhole the Guardian into what is effectively a melee only role.

There’s too much Retaliation in our traits, not enough special and unikittenfects or synergy. Condition builds are also very poor for us compared to several other classes that can build very effective conditon specs in terms of damage, control and variety of conditions and control inflicted. + Survivability. (See Necro, Engineer, Ele, Thief, Ranger).

When it comes to real player vs player combat the Guardian is only really effective at melee range or near mid range.

The Staff goes out to mid range but it is a very low damage and underlines the Guardian steady damage style.

The Scepter lacks speed and accuracy to hit a real target over 600, realistically it has issues at all ranges, even around 300 vs a smart opponent and will only hit someone that’s not moving or immobilised. (Immobilise is already very/too powerful and pursuing that as the way for all our melee damage to land isn’t healthy either).

So we have a class that lacks ranged options and works effectively in melee. Well, being in melee means several things, but one very important thing.

If there is damage flying around you can guarantee it will hit you.

Guardians get hit by a lot of damage, trying to use most of our weapons effectively means you will eat most of the damage flying around, a lot of it not even aimed at you when it comes in the form of AoE Wells, Traps, Caltrops, Element Fields, Meteors etc

It also means you are subject to the AoE component of many weapons attacks or autoattack.

This means that most Guardian builds need to be built defensively by nature, you need to be able to survive a beating just to be able to fight, nevermind even making a bunker build yet.

Our highest damage comes from the Greatsword, trying to use this effectively means you are going to be taking a lot of damage.

+ The way the meta has evolved the only thing a team has wanted a Guardian to do since beta is to be a tank, to be defensive, take damage, distract people and give your team boons while they run around killing everything. (Having much more fun).

The Guardian also can’t take advantage of vertical space very well, the only thing working in that is the Scepter which we already know has trouble hitting anything moving. Staff won’t hit up or down. Binding Blades have a lot of obstructed issues.

Temple is a great map, but all the other professions can take so many more advantages of the vertical nature of the map compared to a Guardian.

I think the Guardian could really do with a helping hand in basic melee combat, a trait for increase base speed when weilding melee weapons like the warrior would help.

We have access to teleports and immobilises but when we are built as a Profession to not be bursty and to be more sustained damage these abilities don’t work as well as they should.

Base melee speed would help the sustained melee damage style by stopping us from being kited and controlled easily by many Professions and builds.