Guild Wars 2

Hello

I’m here to propose a few ideas of my point of view of the Guardian and try to convince you about it. I separated it on 3 topics, Reasoning, Conclusion and Solution. If you simply want to know what I suggest, go straight for solution, if you want to know why, go for conclusion, and if you want to know how I got into that, start from the reasoning XD

I feel like the Guardian is lacking on a point when it comes to damage. I understand that it is not meant to be the best damage class, and I’m not here to suggest damage boosts or anything close to that. What I want to do is find a simple solution to a problem that, to me at least, is huge.

There are many ways to fix the problem that I will state, but this is the one I found to be the most attractive way that doesn’t affect too much the play style of the class as a whole. There are many things I would like to share about the Guardian, but I did my best to stick to the point XD

These comments are from a PvPer, and are intended to PvP. The change that I am suggesting won’t affect PvE too much.

Let’s get into it

1) Reasoning

What does the Guardian lack ? I’m pretty sure there are quite a few answers coming from different people to that question. I’m here to give you merely my point of view on that matter as an experienced Burst Guardian. Not many people like that kind of mentality, so it isn’t a very explored side of the profession as a whole.

To my eyes, Guardian is a really complete profession in general. It has an outrageous capability to tank/mitigate/avoid damage if spec’d for it, as well as it has a great potential for bursting the opponents down if spec’d for it. And i won’t even talk about all our support abilities. But then, what does it lack of ?

I have over 1000 games as a Guardian on the mists and I’ve done most of that as a ’’Burst’’ style Guardian. I have tested over 20 builds and I still feel like it is missing something. With my experience as a DPS Guardian, on both, WvW and tPvP, I’ve came to the conclusion that we can have OUTRAGEOUS bursting damage if we manage to land our skills properly. Going for triple med monk’s focus will provide you some healing during that. We can run a Great sword and a Sword for a great mobility on the field through the leaps/ports with Judge’s Intervention. But again, we fall back to that question. If it is possible, and I know it is, to actually hurt people as a Guardian, what is it lacking ? Some people will tough up and say nothing, Guardian is fine the way it is, but I shall say it’s an incomplete class when it comes to damage. Why there aren’t many people running it ?

People seem to have the idea that our profession is a tank/healer profession, which is terribly wrong. I can see the Guardian having the potential to compete with Warriors and Mesmers when it comes to raw damage. But Warriors, our closest mates, have something we don’t. And we have something they don’t, but let’s not get off topic here and focus on what we lack on in order to improve.

Let’s analyze both classes main damage weapon, the Greatsword.

(1) Auto Attack chain, Warrior can set up 2~3 stacks of vulnerability and the Guardian can have 1~2 stacks of might. Seems fair enough to me.

(2) Whirling Wrath and Hundred Blades. as we can see that’s burst of both classes, those that have the capability to melt down opponents quickly. Warriors hit harder, but Guardians have a larger range due to WW being sort of an AoE. Fair for both.

(3) Leap of Faith and Whirlwind Attack. A big ‘’foward jump’’ for both professions, Warrior deals damage, Guardian blinds, seems good to me. Warriors evade and Guardians dont, which isn’t a big problem if you consider Leap of Faith has a larger range. So far so good

As you can see until here both classes are really close. I’m not here to say that Guardian is as good as or worse or better than Warriors. I’m merely comparing both because it is the easiest way to get to the point I’m trying to get, you can compare the Guardian to any class, i choose Warrior because it is the one that is more like us.

(4/5) Symbol of Wrath and Binding Blades vs Bladetrail and Rush. This is where the difference gets evident so let’s talk about both together. Guardians get a stationary symbol with heavy damage and retaliation and an AoE pull. In the other hand, Warriors get a cripple and a long-range push. Here we can see that the Guardian is meant to be an ‘’Stationary AoE’’ kind of thing and the Warrior is more like a single-target mobile burster. They get 2 gab closers and a cripple while we get 2 powerful but not very mobile AoEs and a Pull.

To my point of view, the Guardian is more powerful when you look just at the Greatsword itself. I feel like there is more synergy. But what makes the Warrior come up to us ? The traits. Forceful Greatsword, Slashing Power, Mobile Strikes and all that good stuff is what makes Warrior’s Greatsword to have more actual damage than ours. We have Greatsword Power, half of the potential that Slashing Blade has, and Zealous Blade, which is completely lackluster since it does not scale with healing power. That leads to warrior dealing more damage than us in general, but that is how it should be. We have a lot more defensive and mitigating potential, leading to a balance.

Then, considering that, what is broken on the Guardian ? What is our weakest point ? What should we aim for improving ? In my opinion, the key to make the Guardian a complete profession is on the Zeal line. You see, Guardians can have a very high damage, compareable to warriors, and the strongest survivability on the game, but you gotta be completely spec’d for it for those to happen. Which was a great move from ArenaNet to not make it overpower. But hell, Warriors can land their burst a lot easier than us. You will find warriors doing BC + HB a lot more often than guardians landing SoW and WW, why ?

2) Conclusion

Analyzing that problem we will reach to a simple conclusion. Warriors will land a Bull’s Charge + Hundred Blades a lot easier than our Pull+ Symbol of Wrath + Whirling Wrath because they have CC. Our burst is easily avoided.You will find people running away from you with no great efford unless you are completely mobile, but that won’t help you to burst, since our burst is stationary. Wait, doesn’t Guardian have CC as well ? Immobilizes on hammer and scepter, bane signet, hammer of wisdom, all of these, why people don’t use them as effectively as a warrior can use a Bull’s Charge ? Are all the Guardians bad and stupid ? No.

Now analyzing all the other professions and a whole and comparing it to the Guardian. All of them can CC on their main burst weapons. Engineers, Mesmers, Warriors, Thieves, Elementalists, Necromancers, all of them. But hey, the Guardians have an immobilize on the Hammer ! Zealot’s Embrace ! Well, the Hammer is a great bursting weapon indeed, but it is limited and requires a lot of effort to fix it and make it our ’’main’’ damage weapon. Mighty Blow has a Cooldown, the auto-attack is slow, which leads the weapon to being a secondary setup when it comes to damage. Hammer of Wisdom will only work if you fully trait yourself for it, which is going to require at least 30 points spent on top of 1 utility, which will easily lead us to glass cannon spec. And kitten our condition removal heavily if you take a deep try on it, but I won’t get into that. With that in mind let’s move on to the Solution of our little problem.

3) Solution

How to improve our lack of control to burst problem ? We can’t aim for something that is too overpowered like an immobilize or a stun on the greatsword. We shall do this on a way that doesn’t change the core of the profession too much. We need a smooth control in order to not make our burst to land 100% of the time with no effort, so let’s work around Cripple. But how should we fit a cripple on the Guardian ?

For answering that, let’s go back a bit. What is the weakest point of the Guardian ? Zeal, right ? Alright, let’s work around Zeal. Simply adding a trait that adds Cripple on the foe with a % wouldn’t fit the style of the class. So let’s try to mix it with something, add it to another condition we already have perhaps ?

What conditions do we have the most ? Burn and Blind obviously. We have a lot of access to burn and blind, so let’s make that cripple with a very low duration, I’d vote for 1~1.5s. Tbh I would prefer blind, but let’s get into it and make it variable so that it might become interesting.

So finally what do I suggest ?

New Trait !

Inflict a (1~2s) Cripple to your foe whenever you (Either Blind/Burn) him.

Where ? Zeal line.

Adept, Master or Grandmaster ?

I’d honestly vote for Master. Otherwise if we put it into Grandmaster we might have the same problem as we have with Spirit Hammer of forcing yourself to play glassy. And adept would get you a good trait with no great effort.

In order to fit this trait in, I would honestly fuse Spirit Weapon Mastery and Eternal Spirit, which would be a nice buff to the Spirit Weapons, something that seems like ArenaNet has been trying to do lately.

If you wan’t my opinion on the name of the trait, I would call it something like Burning Pain or Blinding Pain, but that is a small detail haha (I Have a terrible taste for names)

TL;DR: Guardians have mobility but their burst is stationary, thus we need a cripple. It’s useless to catch up to our opponent if we can’t burst them. Zeal is the lackluster line so we shall improve it. Add new trait to zeal with a cripple.

PLEASE LEAVE YOUR FEEDBACK. I’m really curious to know people’s opinion on this matter.

With love,

Sorem <3

PS: English isn’t my first language, forgive me if you find any grammar mistakes

yea, we need a stun CC or sorts that is not from the weapon.

signets are crappy imo even if they do provide.

it’s hard to hit WW.

Zackie.8923:

yea, we need a stun CC or sorts that is not from the weapon.

signets are crappy imo even if they do provide.

it’s hard to hit WW.

Yay ! First Feedback !

<3 Love you

Some better CC would indeed be nice, but imho Zeal needs a rework that goes a lot farther than just that. Right now, there is virtually no reason to go deeper than 10, maybe 20 points into that tree. That is pretty sad for what should be the DPS tree.

CptAurellian.9537:

Some better CC would indeed be nice, but imho Zeal needs a rework that goes a lot farther than just that. Right now, there is virtually no reason to go deeper than 10, maybe 20 points into that tree. That is pretty sad for what should be the DPS tree.

Completely fixing the Zeal line would indeed take a lot more than that, can’t argue with you there. But that is a simple solution that would buff up a lot of aspects of the dps guardian. I have some ideas on the Zealous Blade trait that could make the whole tree attractive, but saddly i dont see it being the kind of stuff that ArenaNet would give us. So i posted this minor solution that would get ppl to put at least 20 points on Zeal for a decent reason more frequently

Lets first draw their attention to the trait line, then we can aim for major changes XD

Thank you very much for your feedback <3

This has been discussed alot in the past regarding zeal and some good idea have come out of it, one of the biggest things was actually adding CC to the trait line to make it more appealing for damage based builds, since we do lack mobility (which I am fine with, but we have limited snares that don’t make up for it.)

My personal suggestions for zeal would be 2 of 3 things

1) Move Glacial heart to a 20 point talent in zeal, lower the duration, lower the CD, and make it work with all weapons. (something like 15 second cd, 2-3 second duration)

2) Upgrade zealous blade. a) make it include the 5% extra damage from greatsword power, (this will clear room for Glacial heart as well.) b) Either make it scale slightly with healing power, or buff the heal slightly.

3) remove the 5 point talent and move each symbol talent down a tier (vulnerability on symbols to 5, symbol damage to 15, add in a 25 point trait to make symbols immobilize up to 3 targets for 1 second, and cripple them for 2. Make it so only the cripple applies to Hammer symbol, as adding an immobilize to that spamable of a symbol would cause issues. This could also be a 30 point talent that could replace zealous blade as well.

I use 20 points into Zeal for my meditation / tanky dps build and with the 5 stacks of vulnerability when using an immobilize, + 10% increased damage to burning targets (something we do quite often and easily) I haven’t had a problem with the tree. Then again I also use hammer / scepter + torch as my weapon sets to maximize the immobilization trait.

I will say that I think hammer is much more of a bursty weapon vs the greatsword. Granted greatsword has the fast attacks people like, but with mighty blow on hammer on a 4-5 sec cooldown that crits for 4k at minimum versus most enemies, and the auto chain doing 850-1.2k on non crit hits, it packs way more punch per blow than the greatsword. Just my opinion / what I’ve seen damage wise with my character.

Bakitten291:

This has been discussed alot in the past regarding zeal and some good idea have come out of it, one of the biggest things was actually adding CC to the trait line to make it more appealing for damage based builds, since we do lack mobility (which I am fine with, but we have limited snares that don’t make up for it.)

My personal suggestions for zeal would be 2 of 3 things

1) Move Glacial heart to a 20 point talent in zeal, lower the duration, lower the CD, and make it work with all weapons. (something like 15 second cd, 2-3 second duration)

2) Upgrade zealous blade. a) make it include the 5% extra damage from greatsword power, (this will clear room for Glacial heart as well.) b) Either make it scale slightly with healing power, or buff the heal slightly.

3) remove the 5 point talent and move each symbol talent down a tier (vulnerability on symbols to 5, symbol damage to 15, add in a 25 point trait to make symbols immobilize up to 3 targets for 1 second, and cripple them for 2. Make it so only the cripple applies to Hammer symbol, as adding an immobilize to that spamable of a symbol would cause issues. This could also be a 30 point talent that could replace zealous blade as well.

I like your ideas. Although, I’d settle for adding mobility to the zeal line, like a 25% run speed signet or something, if they don’t want to do cc.

/Signed

Setun.4368:

I use 20 points into Zeal for my meditation / tanky dps build and with the 5 stacks of vulnerability when using an immobilize, + 10% increased damage to burning targets (something we do quite often and easily) I haven’t had a problem with the tree. Then again I also use hammer / scepter + torch as my weapon sets to maximize the immobilization trait.

I will say that I think hammer is much more of a bursty weapon vs the greatsword. Granted greatsword has the fast attacks people like, but with mighty blow on hammer on a 4-5 sec cooldown that crits for 4k at minimum versus most enemies, and the auto chain doing 850-1.2k on non crit hits, it packs way more punch per blow than the greatsword. Just my opinion / what I’ve seen damage wise with my character.

How many points do you have in radiance with your build? I ask because at 25 points you get radiant power, which means anytime you have a condition on a target, you are doing an extra 10% damage. Unless you run hammer/scepter/condition signet, odds are the extra points in zeal might be better placed in radiance, as you get a more constant damage buff. (also this turns burning into a free 20% damage boost)

If I run a 2h damage build i generally run 10/25/30/0/5 which is literally just a slightly modified version of my 10/30/30/0/0 1h strength build.

timidobserver.7925:

I like your ideas. Although, I’d settle for adding mobility to the zeal line, like a 25% run speed signet or something, if they don’t want to do cc.

/Signed

See, I honestly don’t want more mobility as a class. The dev’s have already said that guardians are meant to get into fights and hold their ground, which is an ideal I follow as well. Let warriors have all the mobility. I just think as a class we should be able to punish people who do jump into it with us in through different forms of CC. As it is at the moment, the only class that cant escape us is a necro, who has a ton of CC and range to make up for that fact. They also have conditions so even if someone does try to kite/run they are still going to be taking indirect damage. They really just need to give us some CC to help make up for the fact that we only have a very small amount bursty mobility on a very few select weapons.

Bakitten291

How many points do you have in radiance with your build? I ask because at 25 points you get radiant power, which means anytime you have a condition on a target, you are doing an extra 10% damage. Unless you run hammer/scepter/condition signet, odds are the extra points in zeal might be better placed in radiance, as you get a more constant damage buff. (also this turns burning into a free 20% damage boost)

If I run a 2h damage build i generally run 10/25/30/0/5 which is literally just a slightly modified version of my 10/30/30/0/0 1h strength build.

This is my build here:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.3|2.1c.h1|b.1g.h1a.f.1g.h1d|1c.7f.1c.7f.1c.7f.1c.7f.1c.7f.1c.7f|21j.0.2u.0.31j.0.2u.0.31j.0.2u.0|k12.0.u16c.k18.0|1b.7|w.13.15.12.0|e

The numbers are slightly off vs what I actually have at the moment. My attack and hp base are higher than what the site says (3400 attack and ~18.3k hp). Also I should mention that the ascended knights amulet / earring piece in the build I’m going to get eventually. Right now my Guardian has the berserker/valk ascended pieces for those slots.

If I can make a suggestion, try taking the 10 out of zeal and putting 5 in radiance, and 5 more in honor. not only do you get some more health, but you also pick up the 10% damage increase for having less than 100% endurance, and you also get an added defense from aoe blind on justice use. (and 50 extra perc). Your effective power and effective health both end up going up from that change, despite losing the 100 power out of zeal. Or you could go 5 into virtues instead of justice to get the bonuses on virtue use as well.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.3|2.1c.h1|b.1g.h1a.f.1g.h1d|1c.7f.1c.7f.1c.7f.1c.7f.1c.7f.1c.7f|21j.0.2u.0.31j.0.2u.0.31j.0.2u.0|a2.5.u16c.p18.0|1b.7|w.13.15.12.0|e (here is the link, its about 200 more power effective power and 800 effective health more)

In Radiance first:

Powerful Blades 5% damage to Sword and Spear = weak and boring.

Change it to add some unique flavour.

Powerful Blades – Zealot’s Defense and Zealot’s Flurry are now mobile attacks that will channel while moving.

Addressing Guardian’s attempt to do damage in a game where most damage is ranged and all professions are more mobile than us.
Remove both current Grandmaster Zeal traits and replace them with:

New Grandmaster Zeal trait – Wrathful Symbol
Symbols apply a 0.5s immobilize each tick.

New Grandmaster Zeal trait – Zealous Aura
Symbols are now Auras on the Guardian and apply their damage to foes and boons to allies in a 180 radius around the Guardian.
(Taking III Writ of Exaltation in Honor will increase this to 240 radius).

Going 30 points into the damage trait line should yield a significant damage boost, as doing so means sacrificing a lot of defence and healing from other places.
Risk vs Reward ~ With these traits the Guardian would open up several more damage and hybrid options with various viable damage and support style builds with synergy between existing traits in Honor.

Would also break the mould of so many builds using 30 Valor / 30 Honor.
Go 30 Honor for pure Symbols.
Or 30 Valor for an interesting more mobile Altruistic Healing build.

The Guardian currently has no need to go past 10 points in Zeal, this needs to be addressed.

Bakitten291:

If I can make a suggestion, try taking the 10 out of zeal and putting 5 in radiance, and 5 more in honor. not only do you get some more health, but you also pick up the 10% damage increase for having less than 100% endurance, and you also get an added defense from aoe blind on justice use. (and 50 extra perc). Your effective power and effective health both end up going up from that change, despite losing the 100 power out of zeal. Or you could go 5 into virtues instead of justice to get the bonuses on virtue use as well.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.3|2.1c.h1|b.1g.h1a.f.1g.h1d|1c.7f.1c.7f.1c.7f.1c.7f.1c.7f.1c.7f|21j.0.2u.0.31j.0.2u.0.31j.0.2u.0|a2.5.u16c.p18.0|1b.7|w.13.15.12.0|e (here is the link, its about 200 more power effective power and 800 effective health more)

I’ll give it a whirl, but with the food I use plus having vigor almost always up it’s pretty hard for me to not get full endurance during most fights. The two traits I have under the Zeal tree is why I haven’t really tried out your recommendations. Since I use both hammer and scepter the vulnverability stacks work wonders, and I get 10% free damage for having someone burning. I do tend to gravitate towards having a strong base attack damage versus a super high crit chance, so as long as my crit chance is about 15-20% I’m good to go lol. I do like the idea of dealing 20% extra damage for having someone burning!

Bakitten291:

timidobserver.7925:

I like your ideas. Although, I’d settle for adding mobility to the zeal line, like a 25% run speed signet or something, if they don’t want to do cc.

/Signed

See, I honestly don’t want more mobility as a class. The dev’s have already said that guardians are meant to get into fights and hold their ground, which is an ideal I follow as well. Let warriors have all the mobility. I just think as a class we should be able to punish people who do jump into it with us in through different forms of CC. As it is at the moment, the only class that cant escape us is a necro, who has a ton of CC and range to make up for that fact. They also have conditions so even if someone does try to kite/run they are still going to be taking indirect damage. They really just need to give us some CC to help make up for the fact that we only have a very small amount bursty mobility on a very few select weapons.

I agree that CC would be a great option, but I could live with just giving us a little more mobility as well. I’d only want CC if it were something on par with static field, or in other words, something with a great deal of WvW utility. Of course my opinion is bias toward myself being primarily a WvW player.

A big problem with Zeal is that for all the focus it has on symbols, it’s missing the “Larger Symbols” trait, which is key to making them useful offensively. That should replace the 5pt minor trait.

Then, instead of something with CC like cripple, which doesn’t fit the guardian theme, you can have a major trait to create a Symbol of Swiftness when you get CC’ed.

Bakitten291:

This has been discussed alot in the past regarding zeal and some good idea have come out of it, one of the biggest things was actually adding CC to the trait line to make it more appealing for damage based builds, since we do lack mobility (which I am fine with, but we have limited snares that don’t make up for it.)

My personal suggestions for zeal would be 2 of 3 things

1) Move Glacial heart to a 20 point talent in zeal, lower the duration, lower the CD, and make it work with all weapons. (something like 15 second cd, 2-3 second duration)

2) Upgrade zealous blade. a) make it include the 5% extra damage from greatsword power, (this will clear room for Glacial heart as well.) b) Either make it scale slightly with healing power, or buff the heal slightly.

3) remove the 5 point talent and move each symbol talent down a tier (vulnerability on symbols to 5, symbol damage to 15, add in a 25 point trait to make symbols immobilize up to 3 targets for 1 second, and cripple them for 2. Make it so only the cripple applies to Hammer symbol, as adding an immobilize to that spamable of a symbol would cause issues. This could also be a 30 point talent that could replace zealous blade as well.

Very nice suggestions. Our CC should be attached / traited to our symbols.

Very nice.

timidobserver.7925:

Bakitten291:

This has been discussed alot in the past regarding zeal and some good idea have come out of it, one of the biggest things was actually adding CC to the trait line to make it more appealing for damage based builds, since we do lack mobility (which I am fine with, but we have limited snares that don’t make up for it.)

My personal suggestions for zeal would be 2 of 3 things

1) Move Glacial heart to a 20 point talent in zeal, lower the duration, lower the CD, and make it work with all weapons. (something like 15 second cd, 2-3 second duration)

2) Upgrade zealous blade. a) make it include the 5% extra damage from greatsword power, (this will clear room for Glacial heart as well.) b) Either make it scale slightly with healing power, or buff the heal slightly.

3) remove the 5 point talent and move each symbol talent down a tier (vulnerability on symbols to 5, symbol damage to 15, add in a 25 point trait to make symbols immobilize up to 3 targets for 1 second, and cripple them for 2. Make it so only the cripple applies to Hammer symbol, as adding an immobilize to that spamable of a symbol would cause issues. This could also be a 30 point talent that could replace zealous blade as well.

I like your ideas. Although, I’d settle for adding mobility to the zeal line, like a 25% run speed signet or something, if they don’t want to do cc.

/Signed

Believe it or not, Guardians can have a decent mobility if build for it. Running a triple med with sword and greatsword will provide you 3 ports and a lot of condition removal, being conditions probably the main thing people can use to kitten the mobility of any class.

First of all, i’d like to recall that our type of damage is stationary, having more mobility wouldn’t solve the problem. It’s close to useless to be able to catch up to your opponent if you can’t burst them because they would just outrun WW and get the kitten out of our symbols with no effort.

I feel like putting an immobilize on the symbols would be too overpower to be honest. Immobilize is one of the strongest CCs around. If symbols had an on-demand CC like that, all we would have to do in order to burst our opponent is pull them and set the symbol. Considering the pull is AoE and so are the Symbols, that trait could give us something close to that ranger elite skill, which is obviously something too strong to have on a 20s cd. If it were like you suggest, even if people poped their condition removal, the immobilize would tick up again on the next symbol tick.

Exedore.6320:

A big problem with Zeal is that for all the focus it has on symbols, it’s missing the “Larger Symbols” trait, which is key to making them useful offensively. That should replace the 5pt minor trait.

Then, instead of something with CC like cripple, which doesn’t fit the guardian theme, you can have a major trait to create a Symbol of Swiftness when you get CC’ed.

The main reason i feel like we need a cripple is to make our burst somewhat less close to impossible to land completely. I choose blind for it because i thought it was a source that wouldn’t just fit the regular SoW + WW rotation randomly.

I understand that Zeal needs a lot more love than this in order to get competitive to other trait lines such as honor, but again, i feel like we should ‘’start from the beggining’‘. The best thing we can do is first draw ArenaNet’s attention to the issue, which seems to have been forgotten, then we can start going for drastical changes.

Again Thanks for all the feedbacks

Exedore.6320:

A big problem with Zeal is that for all the focus it has on symbols, it’s missing the “Larger Symbols” trait, which is key to making them useful offensively. That should replace the 5pt minor trait.

Then, instead of something with CC like cripple, which doesn’t fit the guardian theme, you can have a major trait to create a Symbol of Swiftness when you get CC’ed.

I slightly disagree, as honor is the secondary symbol line, which includes larger, longer lasting, and healing symbols, all of which make sense together. Where as vulnerability, cc, and more damage would make more sense as an offensive line. Keep in mind that most symbols are used currently for the defensive buffs they give, not for damage. It would make sense to be able to spec more towards them doing damage. which can only be done if CC is attached to them. It would also allow a specialized build around symbols, which there currently is, but only works in spvp

Sorem.9157:

immobilize on the symbols would be too overpower

Sorry, I forgot to say that the immobilize would only be put in effect on the initial casting of the symbol, not on each tick, kind of like how engineer glue gun and ranger’s muddy terrain work. And yes I do agree that having immobilize on each tick would be extremely OP.

Bakitten291:

Exedore.6320:

A big problem with Zeal is that for all the focus it has on symbols, it’s missing the “Larger Symbols” trait, which is key to making them useful offensively. That should replace the 5pt minor trait.

Then, instead of something with CC like cripple, which doesn’t fit the guardian theme, you can have a major trait to create a Symbol of Swiftness when you get CC’ed.

I slightly disagree, as honor is the secondary symbol line, which includes larger, longer lasting, and healing symbols, all of which make sense together. Where as vulnerability, cc, and more damage would make more sense as an offensive line. Keep in mind that most symbols are used currently for the defensive buffs they give, not for damage. It would make sense to be able to spec more towards them doing damage. which can only be done if CC is attached to them. It would also allow a specialized build around symbols, which there currently is, but only works in spvp

Sorem.9157:

immobilize on the symbols would be too overpower

Sorry, I forgot to say that the immobilize would only be put in effect on the initial casting of the symbol, not on each tick, kind of like how engineer glue gun and ranger’s muddy terrain work. And yes I do agree that having immobilize on each tick would be extremely OP.

Well, better XD But i still think it would be too much, a 1s immobilize would be enough to get a full WW out and the cripple afterwards would easily give you a few auto-attacks to finish the target off. Idk, i think immobilize is kind of a strong thing to have as such an easy access on the greatsword.

I’d be in probably for a chill though, or even just cripple.

Sorem.9157:

Bakitten291:

Exedore.6320:

A big problem with Zeal is that for all the focus it has on symbols, it’s missing the “Larger Symbols” trait, which is key to making them useful offensively. That should replace the 5pt minor trait.

Then, instead of something with CC like cripple, which doesn’t fit the guardian theme, you can have a major trait to create a Symbol of Swiftness when you get CC’ed.

I slightly disagree, as honor is the secondary symbol line, which includes larger, longer lasting, and healing symbols, all of which make sense together. Where as vulnerability, cc, and more damage would make more sense as an offensive line. Keep in mind that most symbols are used currently for the defensive buffs they give, not for damage. It would make sense to be able to spec more towards them doing damage. which can only be done if CC is attached to them. It would also allow a specialized build around symbols, which there currently is, but only works in spvp

Sorem.9157:

immobilize on the symbols would be too overpower

Sorry, I forgot to say that the immobilize would only be put in effect on the initial casting of the symbol, not on each tick, kind of like how engineer glue gun and ranger’s muddy terrain work. And yes I do agree that having immobilize on each tick would be extremely OP.

Well, better XD But i still think it would be too much, a 1s immobilize would be enough to get a full WW out and the cripple afterwards would easily give you a few auto-attacks to finish the target off. Idk, i think immobilize is kind of a strong thing to have as such an easy access on the greatsword.

I’d be in probably for a chill though, or even just cripple.

The symbol on the GS is a decently long CD though, but i do understand, Immobilize might be a bit too much on something like that. I would love personally to make our slows chill based, but last time I mentioned that everyone went nuts saying that chill is too strong of a condition to put as our snare. (even though ele’s can get some liberal use of it and still be one of the most mobile classes.)

as a main guardian, I’d like to put my input on this.

I’ve never felt the guardian wasn’t mobile. I’ve rarely encountered a situation where I said “man I wish this enemy was crippled”

with just GS alone and 1 utility slot for a teleport-to-enemy skill, you have 3 closers. skill 2 to leap to, skill 5 to pull toward, and a utility to insta-melee. It’s all about the order you use the skills.

then there are alternative forms of crowd control, less direct than cripple or gap closers. staff 5, hammer 5, and other similar skills all produce the same end result: keeping your enemy where you want them.

while I do agree that Zeal could use some work, I find that traiting into raw power on a guardian just isn’t as effective as other classes. dump some extra into Radiance, and go full vitality. Don’t even use the grandmaster traits: all symbol effects. GS still does tons of damage and you don’t sacrifice party support.

CC has never been an issue with me. It’s boon removal or condition damage that is severely lacking on a guardian. You can CC all you like, but if they have stability, you kind of just have to outlast for a while.

roachsrealm.9284:

as a main guardian, I’d like to put my input on this.

I’ve never felt the guardian wasn’t mobile. I’ve rarely encountered a situation where I said “man I wish this enemy was crippled”

with just GS alone and 1 utility slot for a teleport-to-enemy skill, you have 3 closers. skill 2 to leap to, skill 5 to pull toward, and a utility to insta-melee. It’s all about the order you use the skills.

then there are alternative forms of crowd control, less direct than cripple or gap closers. staff 5, hammer 5, and other similar skills all produce the same end result: keeping your enemy where you want them.

while I do agree that Zeal could use some work, I find that traiting into raw power on a guardian just isn’t as effective as other classes. dump some extra into Radiance, and go full vitality. Don’t even use the grandmaster traits: all symbol effects. GS still does tons of damage and you don’t sacrifice party support.

CC has never been an issue with me. It’s boon removal or condition damage that is severely lacking on a guardian. You can CC all you like, but if they have stability, you kind of just have to outlast for a while.

Apparently you must not roam that often then. Literally every class can go “oh hey this fight with this guardian isn’t going to great, See ya” and get out alive and fine. We have a total of 2 charges (one requires a target), 1 teleport (which is on a 45 second cd) a pull (which falls off the second someone steps out of 600 range) A signet with immobilize (which has a horrible passive) a signet with a knockdown (actually very good) scepter immobilize (pretty decent, but scepter is broken as a range weapon) and an immobilize on our hammer (very easy to side step outside of like 300 range) and that is literally it for our mobility and CC. Our swiftness is tied to a horrible utility shout, and a symbol on a non damage weapon. So if you play roaming damage at all, you are out of luck if someone runs and has swiftness.

So lets see, theives, cant catch at all, stealth removes our use of JI and 1h sword leap, they also get spammable teleports. (this is fine though, as I view thieves most deserving of mobility). Warriors: cripple on almost every weapon, a trait that makes cripples immobilize, useful ranged weapon, 2 charges on GS, charge and immobilize utilities, hammer has 2 knockdowns and a cripple, easy 30 second swiftness from elite sigil. They are also almost impossible to catch if they are determined to get away. Ele, Ride the lightning, flame charge, multiple slows, very easy condition removal so locking them down with immobilize is useless. The list goes on and on. The only way to start to catch other classes is almost to burn each gap closer one after another, which leaves us with nothing very very quickly, in which swiftness just gives them a straight out running advantage.

roachsrealm.9284:

as a main guardian, I’d like to put my input on this.

I’ve never felt the guardian wasn’t mobile. I’ve rarely encountered a situation where I said “man I wish this enemy was crippled”

with just GS alone and 1 utility slot for a teleport-to-enemy skill, you have 3 closers. skill 2 to leap to, skill 5 to pull toward, and a utility to insta-melee. It’s all about the order you use the skills.

then there are alternative forms of crowd control, less direct than cripple or gap closers. staff 5, hammer 5, and other similar skills all produce the same end result: keeping your enemy where you want them.

while I do agree that Zeal could use some work, I find that traiting into raw power on a guardian just isn’t as effective as other classes. dump some extra into Radiance, and go full vitality. Don’t even use the grandmaster traits: all symbol effects. GS still does tons of damage and you don’t sacrifice party support.

CC has never been an issue with me. It’s boon removal or condition damage that is severely lacking on a guardian. You can CC all you like, but if they have stability, you kind of just have to outlast for a while.

The main problem that i’m trying to show here is that we lack opportunity to kill our target. I understand that the Guardian has enough mobility to move around on the field through ports and leaps (FB, LoF and JI) effectivelly. But none of that helps against swiftness for example. Doesn’t matter if you catch up your opponent with your ports if he has switftness and you don’t. He is just going to easily outrun you again and again.

You mentioned quite a few CCs that the Guardian has, and i completely agree on those. But what i am saying is that they can’t be used easily. All of them require some huge effort to land properly. The Hammer is easily dodgeable, the wards from it and from staff can be denied by stability, both either have a long cast or require you to stop moving. Scepter indeed has a very useful immobilize, but the rest of the weapon is so lackluster that it’s not worth using. The auto-attack is so slow and unreliable that if the opponent decides to counter you back by meleeing he is probably going to outdamage you.

Summing it up, i know that our profession has mobility to move on the field and some powerful CC abilities. But none of those can be applied on a fast combat, which requires them to pop up instantly. All of them aren’t viable without demanding you to sacrifice something in order to land them effectively. Not to mention the cooldowns.
We need something that can be easily accessible and that can be used to in fact harm our foe.

But again Thanks for the feedback

Bakitten291:

Apparently you must not roam that often then. Literally every class can go “oh hey this fight with this guardian isn’t going to great, See ya” and get out alive and fine. We have a total of 2 charges (one requires a target), 1 teleport (which is on a 45 second cd) a pull (which falls off the second someone steps out of 600 range) A signet with immobilize (which has a horrible passive) a signet with a knockdown (actually very good) scepter immobilize (pretty decent, but scepter is broken as a range weapon) and an immobilize on our hammer (very easy to side step outside of like 300 range) and that is literally it for our mobility and CC. Our swiftness is tied to a horrible utility shout, and a symbol on a non damage weapon. So if you play roaming damage at all, you are out of luck if someone runs and has swiftness.

So lets see, theives, cant catch at all, stealth removes our use of JI and 1h sword leap, they also get spammable teleports. (this is fine though, as I view thieves most deserving of mobility). Warriors: cripple on almost every weapon, a trait that makes cripples immobilize, useful ranged weapon, 2 charges on GS, charge and immobilize utilities, hammer has 2 knockdowns and a cripple, easy 30 second swiftness from elite sigil. They are also almost impossible to catch if they are determined to get away. Ele, Ride the lightning, flame charge, multiple slows, very easy condition removal so locking them down with immobilize is useless. The list goes on and on. The only way to start to catch other classes is almost to burn each gap closer one after another, which leaves us with nothing very very quickly, in which swiftness just gives them a straight out running advantage.

I’m starting to like you <3

Esle Carrie approves.

Sorem.9157:

timidobserver.7925:

Bakitten291:

This has been discussed alot in the past regarding zeal and some good idea have come out of it, one of the biggest things was actually adding CC to the trait line to make it more appealing for damage based builds, since we do lack mobility (which I am fine with, but we have limited snares that don’t make up for it.)

My personal suggestions for zeal would be 2 of 3 things

1) Move Glacial heart to a 20 point talent in zeal, lower the duration, lower the CD, and make it work with all weapons. (something like 15 second cd, 2-3 second duration)

2) Upgrade zealous blade. a) make it include the 5% extra damage from greatsword power, (this will clear room for Glacial heart as well.) b) Either make it scale slightly with healing power, or buff the heal slightly.

3) remove the 5 point talent and move each symbol talent down a tier (vulnerability on symbols to 5, symbol damage to 15, add in a 25 point trait to make symbols immobilize up to 3 targets for 1 second, and cripple them for 2. Make it so only the cripple applies to Hammer symbol, as adding an immobilize to that spamable of a symbol would cause issues. This could also be a 30 point talent that could replace zealous blade as well.

I like your ideas. Although, I’d settle for adding mobility to the zeal line, like a 25% run speed signet or something, if they don’t want to do cc.

/Signed

Believe it or not, Guardians can have a decent mobility if build for it. Running a triple med with sword and greatsword will provide you 3 ports and a lot of condition removal, being conditions probably the main thing people can use to kitten the mobility of any class.

First of all, i’d like to recall that our type of damage is stationary, having more mobility wouldn’t solve the problem. It’s close to useless to be able to catch up to your opponent if you can’t burst them because they would just outrun WW and get the kitten out of our symbols with no effort.

I feel like putting an immobilize on the symbols would be too overpower to be honest. Immobilize is one of the strongest CCs around. If symbols had an on-demand CC like that, all we would have to do in order to burst our opponent is pull them and set the symbol. Considering the pull is AoE and so are the Symbols, that trait could give us something close to that ranger elite skill, which is obviously something too strong to have on a 20s cd. If it were like you suggest, even if people poped their condition removal, the immobilize would tick up again on the next symbol tick.

Exedore.6320:

A big problem with Zeal is that for all the focus it has on symbols, it’s missing the “Larger Symbols” trait, which is key to making them useful offensively. That should replace the 5pt minor trait.

Then, instead of something with CC like cripple, which doesn’t fit the guardian theme, you can have a major trait to create a Symbol of Swiftness when you get CC’ed.

The main reason i feel like we need a cripple is to make our burst somewhat less close to impossible to land completely. I choose blind for it because i thought it was a source that wouldn’t just fit the regular SoW + WW rotation randomly.

I understand that Zeal needs a lot more love than this in order to get competitive to other trait lines such as honor, but again, i feel like we should ‘’start from the beggining’‘. The best thing we can do is first draw ArenaNet’s attention to the issue, which seems to have been forgotten, then we can start going for drastical changes.

Again Thanks for all the feedbacks

You should stick your suggestion into the suggestions forum and link it here. I’d really like an Anet dev to at least see the idea of being able to trait into attaching CC to symbols.

As a general fix, the movement slow down on Whirlwind needs to go. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve leaped, WW and only got 1-2 hits off and then they run away. Our ranged to mobility is the worst I’ve seen in WvW that without a really coordinated group/effort, you can spend more time using a scepter than utilizing your greatsword/hammer.

If they really want us Guardians to be on the front line, they sure don’t give us a heck of a lot of options to hold people there and do damage (as Bash pointed out with CC’s from other classes).

As earlier said, I think there should be a trait that makes symbols snare. A trait that would add an immobilize would be too strong, so I think it would be best to make all symbols cripple for 1-2s per pulse. We could use a bit more soft CC, and Zeal has plenty of room for good traits.

P.S.: to the people that say Cripple doesn’t fit the style of the Guardian: don’t forget what those symbols actually are. They are spells that make the ground hurt. I could imagine people getting crippled after stepping on a circle of destructive light magic on the ground.

Guardians lack of damage and offensive buffs. Also they can’t inflict long duratiom conditions. Give a guardian perma fury, get critdmg into radiance and make them able to inflict conditions permanently – then they’d be as good as warriors. (InPvE!)

Dub.1273:

Guardians lack of damage and offensive buffs. Also they can’t inflict long duratiom conditions. Give a guardian perma fury, get critdmg into radiance and make them able to inflict conditions permanently – then they’d be as good as warriors. (InPvE!)

Guardians don’t lack the damage, most players just lack the willingness to spec towards that damage. Any deep radiance/valor build with the right gear is going to put out alot of damage, the issue is that most people cant get away from the honor trait line that offers very little damage and is pretty much a support/bunker line.

As far as perma fury, I really do not believe that is the solution, as honestly it is very easy to get crit % on a guardian, (RHS easily pushes my 1h crit into 60+%, with just regular non perc 2h weapon im above 30%) Also we do have sources of fury that are easily overlooked. Radiance has a 10 point trait that gives your fury each time you suffer from burning, which in wvw, and even more so in Spvp you get ALOT, even more so fighting another guardian. Save Yourself has 10 second fury which can be upped with boon duration, and also runes of the pack, which are great for group based damage guardians gives you and allies might, fury, and swiftness when struck.
I used to believe that guardians needed more fury as well until I actually looked into it and figured out how to get it.

Keep in mind this thread is for fixing the zeal line, not just damage in general.

Bean Muncher.5197:

As earlier said, I think there should be a trait that makes symbols snare. A trait that would add an immobilize would be too strong, so I think it would be best to make all symbols cripple for 1-2s per pulse. We could use a bit more soft CC, and Zeal has plenty of room for good traits.

P.S.: to the people that say Cripple doesn’t fit the style of the Guardian: don’t forget what those symbols actually are. They are spells that make the ground hurt. I could imagine people getting crippled after stepping on a circle of destructive light magic on the ground.

Exactly what I am saying lol. People cant get immobilize out oftheir heads, but that would generate us a 5x 1s immobilize on a symbol which is AoE. Imagine that on a team fight, all u have to do is pull everyone and then lock them, lol. Cripple fits the Guardian perfectly, and so does chill (Hence we have Glacial Heart). I made it blind because it is actually harder to land during the raw gs combo and i didnt want Anet to think it would be too strong, plus it could be used more often if failed. Many classes have stupidly easy access to cripple, and i cant figure out why guardians, as an essentially melee class dont. IN MY HONEST OPINION i thinkthat cripple on symbol would be the best go, but i was scared of anet thinking they shouldnt givr the greatsword even more AoE power haha xD

Sorem.9157:

Exactly what I am saying lol. People cant get immobilize out oftheir heads, but that would generate us a 5x 1s immobilize on a symbol which is AoE. Imagine that on a team fight, all u have to do is pull everyone and then lock them, lol. Cripple fits the Guardian perfectly, and so does chill (Hence we have Glacial Heart). I made it blind because it is actually harder to land during the raw gs combo and i didnt want Anet to think it would be too strong, plus it could be used more often if failed. Many classes have stupidly easy access to cripple, and i cant figure out why guardians, as an essentially melee class dont. IN MY HONEST OPINION i thinkthat cripple on symbol would be the best go, but i was scared of anet thinking they shouldnt givr the greatsword even more AoE power haha xD

As I said before, I would love our slows to be chill based, but alot of people blasted that idea before, mostly because of the 66% CD increase that comes along with chill, and the effect that would have regarding our already decent survivability. Though, to be honest, a 1 sec chill pulse on symbols I do not think would be an issue, as once you move out of the symbol you are pretty much free, and the only weapon that you can spam symbols on is hammer, which is easily avoided anyways.

I just do not feel that cripple makes as much sense as chill, considering guardians are more of a magic based knight, were warriors are the physical based.