Guild Wars 2

I was thinking, maybe we could be proactive in improving our profession by listing the skills, traits, etc that for one reason or another, we feel are not worth using, and why of course.

Weapon Skills

• Shield of Absorption – It would be nice if this skill could absorb more ranged damage sources than it does. Siege attacks at the least would be a huge improvement. I doubt all ground-targeted AoE will ever be able to be absorbed though.

• Zealot’s Defense – It would be nice if this was a mobile skill. As it is, it gets used because it is there, but it’s not very desirable. It roots for the duration, which leaves us open to flanking. The area it covers (width not length) is small and is difficult to aim properly.

• Orb of Wrath – We have all covered this one enough times to know that something needs to improve. Hopefully the devs already have something in the works for this though.

• Leap of Faith – Not useless by any means. But it has accuracy issues. And when it has accuracy issues, the blind does not get applied. Two issues that should be linked to one fix.

• Spear Wall – It sounds neat. It looks cool. In application though, it just fails hard. I propose changing it to Spear Cage. A cube of spear walls trapping the target for 2 seconds while doing damage of some type followed by a brief cripple condition.

Will continue editing comments into the original post as I have opportunities throughout the day.

Merciful Intervention, because it’s bugged and doesn’t work. We can start with that.

Shield of Absorption should be fixed, no AoE should be able to damage us when using the skill.

Zealot’s Defense should be able to be casted while moving.

I don’t understand why dodging during Renewed Focus causes it to go on its full CD w/o giving the effect

I have been playing with a Hammer since level 8, I haven’t found many bugs yet. I just recently started playing with a 1-hand Sword/Torch and I agree with Farzo.

Farzo.8410:

Zealot’s Defense should be able to be casted while moving.

Because with the Torch you get Cleansing Flame which you can move while casting it so that you can keep the skill focused on the mob/enemy. So I don’t see why not make Zealot’s Defense a movable casted spell.

I can give a list and some decent reasoning to each. Debate please.

Zealot’s Defense: Not terrible but it’s too easy to avoid and leaves you open to melee attacks.

Shelter: Again, not terrible but the 2 second block doesn’t make up for healing almost half as much as SoR on a similar CD when traited.

Sanctuary: Needs to be adjusted to prevent AoE damage and health to be slightly boosted. Doesn’t feel like a sanctuary to be honest.

Merciful intervention: See above.

Save yourselves: I think the 5 seconds is fine when you’re solo but should be adjusted to 10 if you strip conditions from your teammates.

Signet of Mercy: On too long of a cast time and cd to be useful.

Zealot’s Defense – Plant your legs and range spam while reflecting projectiles. Has limited use in PvP – but in Dungeons will get you killed.

Sanctuary – Too long of a cooldown to be a valid utility slot.

Merciful Intervention – based on two arguments – closest ally with lowest HP = targeting fail. Forget about it. It doesn’t work.

Zeal Traitline

5 Zeal – Zealot Speed – drops a symbol of wrath when health drops to 25%.
What use can this possibly be? Increase it to 50/75% threshold and it might be useful.

IV – Revenge of the Fallen
Does more damage when downed. HAHAH. GTFO.

XII – Zealous Blade
20 HP gain per hit. While mobs deal 300-400 outside dungeons and inside they take out 10-33% when specced full toughness. This will not make a huge difference.

Radiance
I – Healer’s Retribution
Gains 3 seconds of retaliation after using healing skill. What a joke.

III – Shimmering Defense
Burns enemies around when you are at 25% HP. This … isn’t going to change the fact that you’re about to die.

IV – Inner Fire
When set on fire, you gain Fury. ROFL.

V – Searing Flame
When you set a target on fire, you remove a boon. Cooldown 20 seconds. The cooldown is too long for this to even be viable in PVP.

Valor

III – Strength of the Fallen
Lose health 33% slower when downed.
This is a good combination with Revenge of the Fallen trait. You deal more damage and die less quicker when downed. ROFL Kittens.

Virtue
IV – Retaliatototottotototory Subconscious
When under the effect of knockdown – you gain 3 second of retaliation. This will make the CC effect stay, while discouraging people to hit you. In theory.

In practice: lol.

Arken.3725:

I can give a list and some decent reasoning to each. Debate please.

Shelter: Again, not terrible but the 2 second block doesn’t make up for healing almost half as much as SoR on a similar CD when traited.

I’m fairly certain that when you combine shelter with might of the protector and you have altruistic healing you get healed for each stack of might you gain. So when you are fighting multiple enemies with that setup, it makes shelter the superior choice out of all the other heals.

If we’re going into traits here’s a nice list.

Zealot’s Speed: Doesn’t provide the proper boon and the symbol dropped doesn’t help with your current almost dead state.

Any trait that magnifies your downed state needs to be removed.

Healers’ Retribution for a 3 second retaliation

Shimmering defense sort of goes hand-in-hand with Zealots speed; not very useful for when it’s deployed.

Inner fire: I almost never find myself on fire so I think it should be changed to affect all conditions but instead of fury, give might.

Searing flame along with Glacial heart is on too long of a cd to be viable.

Aza.2105:

Arken.3725:

I can give a list and some decent reasoning to each. Debate please.

Shelter: Again, not terrible but the 2 second block doesn’t make up for healing almost half as much as SoR on a similar CD when traited.

I’m fairly certain that when you combine shelter with might of the protector and you have altruistic healing you get healed for each stack of might you gain. So when you are fighting multiple enemies with that setup, it makes shelter the superior choice out of all the other heals.

It does but I think only two seconds of block won’t really do much especially when compared to the warriors shield block for 5 seconds.

Shield of Absorption doesn’t absord all projectiles. Anything siege passes through, and they shouldn’t. Sanctuary and Zealot’s Defense block these fine, so this should as well.

Wall of Reflection doesn’t reflect siege too. It should (lol).

Sanctuary needs to have a slight wider area. You can still get melee’d inside of it, and it should absorb projectiles even though they’re ground-based (such as Meteor Shower, but not Lava Font for example).

Signet of Mercy CD is way too long. Other similar skills don’t have such a huge CD.

Shelter needs either an improve in healing or in the block duration. It is “sorta” fine for now because it’s useful for the blocking, but only that. Signet of Resolution is vastly superior in most situations, even in PvP. Shelter is only better when you’re soloing or being focused by more than 3 at once in my opinion.

Tome of Courage and Tome of Wrath needs tweaking. Too long CD and too short duration are minor issues, but not being able to use our Utility Skills or Heal is begging to have it being wasted. Focus fire the Guardian or Control him, and he won’t make full use of it’s already not so great skills.

Traits

Protector’s Impact could be a bit better. Most other professions have a great utility skill attached to it to make it worth using in various occasions (PvP), but this one… I only use it when I know the fall will kill me and I want the shortcut.

Wrathful Spirits is terrible for a Grandmaster Trait. A 10% increase damage in a Sword that deals 600~ damage? Why would I take it?

Strength in Numbers is terrible. No one who understands how much it is worth takes it.

Battle Presence is still bugged. Still.

Weapon Skills

• Orb of Wrath [Scepter #1] – You all know.
• Leap of Faith [Greatsword #4… opps I mean #3] – Useful gap closer, but useless blind since it still has issues hitting.
• Spear Wall [Spear #4] – Useless in PvP, barely useful in PvE. Cool to look at though. It should apply cripple, or bleeding… or something useful.

Utility Skills

• Sanctuary – Very situational due to its long cooldown, and lack of protection against aoe and mobs with longer reaches.
• Signet of Mercy – Additional healing is not worth the slot, and you won’t have the additional healing when you need it after reviving someone. It only revives downed players, not defeated players.
• Bow of Truth – It doesn’t follow the guardian well, which makes positioning its command very frustrating.
• Merciful Intervention – Reliable for self healing, but unreliable for everything else.

Other

• Healing Breeze – Untargeted cone skill… should be a quick area heal.
• Shackle [Drowning #1] – We would get our only cripple in a underwater downed ability…
• Judgment [Tome of Wrath #5] – Too situational. With only 600 range, you’re more likely to get downed, before you finish casting.

Traits

Zeal

• Zealous Blade – Really weak.

Radiance

• Shimmering Defense – The other traits in the line make this useless.
• Searing Flames – Removes only 1 boon every 20 seconds… yay O.o

Valor

• Strength in Numbers – 30 toughness isn’t worth much compared to other traits in the line.
• Glacial Heart – Not a bad trait, but the 50% chance on top of critical chance, with a 45 second cooldown is pretty underwhelming. Remove all of the chance and keep it at 45 seconds, or keep the chances and lower the cooldown to 30 sec.

Virtues

• Unscathed Contender – too situational. Can work well with a burst build with a hard hitting opener, but aegis is basically removed as soon as it’s applied most of the time. Also, I rarely get the first hit on opponents due to my playstyle, but that’s just me.
• Elite Focus – Not useless, but surely underwhelming.

Arken.3725:

Shelter: Again, not terrible but the 2 second block doesn’t make up for healing almost half as much as SoR on a similar CD when traited.

It’s incredibly usefull in PvP. I’ve saved myself countless times by using shelter right before getting hit with a ton of burst damage. I never use it in PvE though.

I’ve used it in spvp and it hasn’t helped me when compared to SoR. It can save you since you can’t be interrupted but other than that…

Shelter really does not need a buff, it’s a perfectly fine skill primarily useful for it’s 2 seconds of blocking on a fairly short cooldown. This profession already has survivability to the max, even more so isn’t productive.

Simple enough to just merge a few traits, I think, although that means they’ll have to come up with a bunch of new ones to fill the space. Probably why they haven’t done it yet:

Zealous Blade + Greatsword Power: GS attacks heal you and recharge 20% faster.
Mace of Justice + Strength in Numbers: Nearby allies get +30 toughness while wielding a mace, and mace skills recharge 20% faster.

Hell, if they’re feeling lazy at least make the +5% damage traits into -20% CD traits for starters.

mrauls.6519:

I don’t understand why dodging during Renewed Focus causes it to go on its full CD w/o giving the effect

Probably to prevent exploiting by continually ending it early and getting a couple seconds of immunity every few seconds. I would suggest that it active all remaining virtues and instantly refresh them in addition to the immunity period. That fixes the dodge problem and makes it a bit more user friendly.

Arken.3725:

Shelter: Again, not terrible but the 2 second block doesn’t make up for healing almost half as much as SoR on a similar CD when traited.

Shelter is fine. Not everyone wants to trait signets, so if you consider the base cooldowns, it’s not all that bad. But the real power is the block. It blocks everything for two seconds. If you block a 4k attack, it’s done more effective healing than Signet of Resolve. Using Shelter to block instant-death attacks in PvE is great, but takes some getting used to. Shelter is best used if you get hit a lot, whereas Signet of Resolve is better if you’re not taking damage.

Nothing like using a Signet, only to see the restored HP bar not going up after the cast is over due to knockdown / interrupts. No, I rather take Shelter low cooldown and semi invulnerability.

Signet’s passive Condition removal is the only good argument for it. Otherwise, Shelter just blocks so much when facing dungeon bosses big hits or World v World focus fire.

I am mostly in WvW nowadays, and have tried a lot of skills/combos there. So this will be my context:

- Healing breeze: this skill feels really clunky. it doesn’t really heal that much, has a long cooldown, and takes more than 2 seconds to complete casting. The other heals we have are so much better that I rarely see anybody use this.

- Merciful intervention: nevermind that it doesn’t work, but even if if it did, the problem in WvW is that the person with the lowest health is usually somebody who is getting focus-fired or in a very dangerous area (lots of red circles!). Healing 2000 or so is not really going to help the situation and often end up getting yourself killed.

- Signet of Mercy: actually not as bad as it seems – can save a person from certain death sometimes, but the recharge is just insane.

- Bow of Truth: it’s actually an okay condition remover, but it’s not that reliable and there are so many better skills (even for condition removal) out there that this doesn’t really seem useful.

now for some skills that other folks have listed…
- Shelter: I use to not think highly of this and consistently use the signet for healing, but after playing WvW for a while, I will never use another healing skill again. In my opinion, it is one of the best healing skills of any class. The heal is not much, but guardians have a lot of other skills/traits that will heal for a small amount, and the only time that you really need a lot of healing is when you are getting hit by many things. Those many things don’t stop hitting you after you have healed (so vicious), and the couple of seconds of invulnerability is tremendous. It allows you to do crazy things like rushing into the middle of a large group and consistently survive; rushing out of a besieged tower and wreck havoc. It’s pretty amazing.

Sanctuary – (ground targeted). Without the ground-targeting trait, the utility of the skill is much more limited in my opinion. Sure, it does not block AOE (but it would be the most enormously overpowered skill if it did – 8 seconds of aoe invincibility? sign me up!), but a lot of classes don’t have very reliable AOE. If you are fighting an entire squad of elementalists, it won’t help, but most likely you are not, so it helps you negate a lot of damage. With ground targeting, you can use it to block points, make obstacles in enemy lines. If you run into a bubble that’s within the enemy lines, a lot of them will try to shoot you at no avail, or rush at you and get knocked down. You will have several seconds with all the enemies around you trying to hit you (and probably about half at least failing) – which means they are not trying to hit your allies. When your allies are not getting hit, they tend to push the line. I have seen many standoffs ended by rushing into a sanctuary cast within the enemy lines.

Arken.3725:

Aza.2105:

Arken.3725:

I can give a list and some decent reasoning to each. Debate please.

Shelter: Again, not terrible but the 2 second block doesn’t make up for healing almost half as much as SoR on a similar CD when traited.

I’m fairly certain that when you combine shelter with might of the protector and you have altruistic healing you get healed for each stack of might you gain. So when you are fighting multiple enemies with that setup, it makes shelter the superior choice out of all the other heals.

It does but I think only two seconds of block won’t really do much especially when compared to the warriors shield block for 5 seconds.

So? The warrior skill doesn’t heal you either and its not a utility skill. So its not the same.

From what I see:

Signet of Resolve: Good for when you are dps

Shelter: Good for when you are a tank

Healing Breeze: Good for when you are support

For the blind question i have to say that is kinda useless have this condition only on 2 gap closing skill (and on traited VOJ) is not effective as for engineer or thief, is a “good” defensive mechaning when you are already on melee range, not when you are chatching someone.

Title is very misleading. Most posts in this thread are nit pickings but ultimately, most skills and utilities listed are all useful in some way, some better in certain situations. The only real dud I see is merciful intervention because no matter how much effort you give it, it’ll teleport you to something you don’t want to protect. If this was improved then it will be worth using to a degree.

Merciful intervention is not bugged for me. When i use it, it always targets my party member with the lowest ammount of health. Even when i use it in WvWvW surrounded by 20 people. It always goes after the lowest hp% party member in my party.

Just woke up and I am glad to see a solid amount of feedback. I am going to go through and compile a nicely formatted list in the original post. Please keep the feedback coming. The better we are able to present our case, the more likely we are to see positive results.

Polle.6908:

Title is very misleading. Most posts in this thread are nit pickings but ultimately, most skills and utilities listed are all useful in some way, some better in certain situations. The only real dud I see is merciful intervention because no matter how much effort you give it, it’ll teleport you to something you don’t want to protect. If this was improved then it will be worth using to a degree.

That’s your opinion, and it’s very much valued. Since you don’t feel the skills are lacking much, what about traits? Surely there are traits, whether minors or majors, that you don’t really find desirable. The goal here is to focus on what they are, why we feel that way, and what we can do to improve it. It’s ultimately up to the devs to decide on what deserves improvement, but we can help present the situation to them.

If you feel everything is perfect the way it is, then i am happy for you, but I don’t think this thread is of much concern to you in that case.

1. Healing Breeze (Have not met a single guardian who uses this)
2. Smite condition (1 condition with 20s CD? This is way to high of a CD for what it does, maybe if it was 3 conditions I would use this)
3. Contemplation of Purity (CD is too high considering how fast conditions can be applied, also meditation is not very useful as a whole in any build)
4. Merciful Intervention (Lets face it, 80s CD is insane for anyone trying to do WvW, this skill in very impractical, the heal itself isn’t even that much and it often targets clones/pets)
5. Judge’s Intervention (Don’t get me wrong I use this in my build, but I still think the 45s CD is a bit too long, 30s seems more reasonable considering the damage isn’t that high, its our only teleporting ability for offense)
6. Sanctuary (Its not horrible, but 120 seconds CD? I mean that’s more then one of our elite skills. The heal isnt even that good, its really only good for blocking a charging zerg or trolling people in puzzles.)
7. Save Yourselves (Should be on a 45s CD, 60 is a bit much for WvW play, its 45s if traited, but really should be 30 when traited considering it only gives 10s of buffs)
8. Hallowed Ground (Again, CD 80s? I am starting to think they really want to make guardians not a viable profession in WvWvW with options. This CD should be brought down to 60s, and it should damage enemies inside at the same time)
9. Signet of Judgement (Not horrible, but no one is going to waste a valuable skill slot on this for PvP or WvWvW, the benefit just isn’t that great. Perhaps also add an aoe chill or immobilize to the casted part)
10. Signet of Wrath (First, hardly anyone uses condition damage as a guardian, because well none of our melee abilities do condition damage, secondly the immobilize for 3 seconds isn’t bad, but think of it like this, if you cast this at max range 1200, it will take longer then 3 seconds for you to get to the target before they are running again)
11. Signet of Mercy (No one would ever use this in a PvP or WvWvW situation. It should provide a passive regeneration and the revive ally should work on dead players not just downed players)
12. Spirit Weapons (All of them are pretty sub par, because guardian has no melee condition or cripples from our base skills, perhaps have these apply conditions( vuln, cripple, chill, bleed, etc. That will make them more useful.)
13. All Elite skills except Renewed Focus (Lets face it, guardians hate their elite skills, even renewed focus doesn’t stop conditions from being put on/damaging you. I hardly can find a reason to use the two books, they don’t last long enough and they don’t do enough damage or heal for enough to be that useful in a WvWvW situation. Almost all of the forms are incredibly useless except for the snow leopard, but only because it has a short stealth that aids in getting into a keep/tower and a long speed burst. Those forms are on way to long of a CD for how long they last and how little damage they do compared to other professions elites skills.

@2: I use smite condition. And I know many others do too. I like the fact that I can remove a condition on command with a damage bonus

@12: The hammer is quite useful, but the problem with all spirit weapons is that the cooldown doesn’t start until the weapon disappears.. So traiting for longer lasting spirit weapons is not as useful as it could have been.

@13: Renewed focus makes you invulnerable, you will not take damage from conditions (for 3sec), I don’t know if it prevents new conditions during those 3 sec, but I would hope so.

I agree on all other points

Out of curiosity, am I the only one that really likes Renewed Focus then?

Of course it could be that I paired it with Superior Runes of Lyssa for a short CD supercharged elite skill.

For those that are wondering,

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rune_of_Lyssa

As for on topic discussion,

1) Merciful Intervention – a bullocks ability, make it targetable please. A dream change would be for it to be another AOE ground target heal/teleport, but now that’s just crazy talk.

2) Symbols (in general) – too many traits and weapons rely on them to do the pittance of damage that they do. When fighting another guardian I don’t even bother staying out of their symbols, they just aren’t punishing enough. Maybe a punishing condition like weakness/vulnerability/blind on pulse? or just up the damage to make ppl notice, considering that all but 1 requires you to be in melee range to apply anyway it doesn’t seem like an unreasonable request.

3) Smite – Just make this a symbol already…..it is the shining light on an otherwise terrible weapon. Applying symbol traits to this ability might just save this weapon, assuming that increasing the projectile speed on scepter’s #1 ability is just too much…..

4) Scepter’s #1 – Just see above…..

5) GS in general – Give this thing some love already…the hammer is superior in every way to it. This has been proven multiple times in this forum. Also, Ring of Warding trumps Binding Blade in every way. It’s way too clunky for a 600 range pull, esp since you have to rely on a projectile hitting your target(s). In WvWvW I’m lucky if I can even get 2 ppl pulled back to me in a zerg, out of 5….

6) Bane Signet – A .75s cast time on a long range interrupt ability is painful….drop it to .25s please so I can use it to counter enemy casts.

7) Smite Condition – Punishing damage is “meh”, a 2.5k crit max on a full out power/crit dam build doesn’t entice me enough to use it in the way it was intended. You could up the cleanse’s punishing damage to 3x or allow it to cleanse up to 2 or 3 (balance decision here) conditions and multiply the damage per condition cleansed (i.e. 1 cleansed is 2x, 2 is 3x, etc.). This would instantly make it a staple utility guardian’s would need to use tactically.

8) Book Elites – Difficult to say how to fix them, just not really that effective against opponents with more than half a thought. Stock stability for the entire duration would help a lot and is consistent with most of the elite class transform abilities (i.e. juggernaut, tornado, etc.)

9) Virtue of Resolve – I find this really underwhelming unless traited for Absolute Resolution, then it becomes near OP (unlimited target AOE 1650+hp heal + 3 condition cleanse/fear breaker on a maximum 48s CD). I really love this Virtue when I have the trait, and at the same time I hate it when I don’t have the trait. Maybe baseline a weaker version of this trait (i.e. add a 1 condition cleanse).

10) Staff – I really, really want to love this weapon, but it’s anemic in focus. It’s like 1/4 support, 1/4 AOE, 1/4 control, 1/4 heal. Although this could very well be a high skill curve weapon.

11) Spirit Weapons – Give them damage contributions from your weapon and they’re golden. They currently hit for way too little for the mandatory downtime that comes with them. If overall damage output is a concern, shorten their duration, just make them something to be feared in the fray.

12) Purging Flames – Please fix it so that it cleanses 1 condition per second in the consecration. Currently bugged/designed to kill 1 condition upon cast which just makes it a PBAOE fire field unless otherwise traited. I would like to add this into my rotation of abilities, but just doesn’t perform well.

13) Signet of Mercy – The revive downed ally spells in general are far too clunky and too long of a CD to warrant use. If you really want us to use these long CD abilities, change from revive downed ally to revive defeated ally. That there is a game changer utility worthy of a 4min CD.

14) Signet of Wrath – Does anyone take this utility anymore?

15) Healing Abilities – Either Signet of Restoration is OP or both Shelter and Healing Breeze are so underwhelming that nobody uses Signet of Restoration apart from very specific niche block builds that use Shelter. Seems that they need to be brought up to par.

Wow, sorry for the long winded response there….

Edit: After reading through what I wrote again, I think that I just really posted feedback on abilities that aren’t “worthless”, but rather general feedback as to the state of the Guardian in general. Sorry about the derailment there.

deherch.3158:

@2: I use smite condition. And I know many others do too. I like the fact that I can remove a condition on command with a damage bonus

@12: The hammer is quite useful, but the problem with all spirit weapons is that the cooldown doesn’t start until the weapon disappears.. So traiting for longer lasting spirit weapons is not as useful as it could have been.

@13: Renewed focus makes you invulnerable, you will not take damage from conditions (for 3sec), I don’t know if it prevents new conditions during those 3 sec, but I would hope so.

I agree on all other points

Eh, renewed focus you still take damage from conditions, it only prevents direct damage. I have and will continue to die while casting Renewed focus to conditions.

Out of curiosity, am I the only one that really likes Renewed Focus then?
Of course it could be that I paired it with Superior Runes of Lyssa for a short CD supercharged elite skill.
For those that are wondering,
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rune_of_Lyssa

already tryed on my thief with traited basilisk venom xD
its funny lol SYS on 36 sec cd

Ganzo.5079:

Out of curiosity, am I the only one that really likes Renewed Focus then?
Of course it could be that I paired it with Superior Runes of Lyssa for a short CD supercharged elite skill.
For those that are wondering,
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rune_of_Lyssa

already tryed on my thief with traited basilisk venom xD
its funny lol SYS on 36 sec cd

Better than SyS, you don’t get stability which is worth more than half of the other boons.

Also, about shelter and shield block. Lets say you block 4k worth of damage within those two seconds and receive about a 5k heal at best. Shield block would then have the potential to block about 9k on the same cooldown and still have a heal left over.