Guild Wars 2

Sebrent.3625:

Thought about it a bit more:
Signet of Courage’s passive could make Guardian stacking even more of a thing in WvW. You basically just made a new Healing Signet but with a group heal that is ideal for the melee trains.

Basically, it’d just be promoting more passive play from a class that already has loads of such passive play … enough to actually be able to facetank damage in a game where facetanking kills others.

This is a good point, a Guardian can already get a passive AoE heal with one of the Virtue traits (and I do not believe that trait is going away with the new core specialization trees) I don’t think we need to give them another one, even if it’s paired with a 50k heal with a 180 second base cooldown.

Kinda liked that one idea where you get (or even grant?) something like healing or Resistance when you remove a condition. Something that procs off of active play would be best IMO.

DiogoSilva.7089:

As long as Signet of Courage’s passive is not too strong, and its usefulness lies more on its active effect than its passive effect, I think there won’t be any worries about stacking. But, of course, the passive should still be relevant enough to be exciting.

About the shout, I agree about the lack of counterplay. And, as I have said already, and as others have said as well, fury+quickness is more fitting of a warrior or revenant than a guardian.

So, instead of the shout suggestion, I recommend a consecration that would apply the tome’s 5th skill, the aoe knockdown, on activation, plus something else with the field (have it tick fury on allies, without the quickness, plus burning on enemies?).

One thing to remember is that Quickness is becoming a boon, which means it can be stripped/stolen/corrupted, the latter of which could cause it to backfire easily, as AFAIK, Necro Corruption skills tend to target offensive boons first.

Still, the idea of keepting ToW 5 -either as a shout or a consecration- is quite appealing.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Also, the biggest drawback behind those changes, is that all other players’ professions will envy them. coughelementalistscough

I speculate more will be discussed as more elites are talked about.

Also:

We like the idea of tomes and if we did this we would hope to bring them back in a future Elite Specialization.

Would that be as tomes, or something under conjurations/kits?

Or is it way too far off to ask?

Current Tomes are worse DPS than Greatsword Auto-attack. Anything would be better than those pieces of crap.

In my opinion, the tomes were awesome tools but maybe a little bit too situational. I really like the idea of seeing them coming back later with a new specialisation (but maybe with a little rework to make it less “All or nothing”).

For the moment, I’m really exited by the way things are turning for Guardian if you decide to keep these ideas. It will also make the elite’s choice more difficult, which isn’t a bad thing at all. Let’s do that !

By the way, thank you so much. I’m so glad you asked the community for their opinion

Foefaller.1082:

Also:

We like the idea of tomes and if we did this we would hope to bring them back in a future Elite Specialization.

Would that be as tomes, or something under conjurations/kits?

Or is it way too far off to ask?

I suspect kit Tomes. I would not be sad to see that…..

I really think a KD consecration is more fitting to a guardian than a fury-quickness shout.

However, as an alternative, wrath’s shout could scale based on allies health. Something like, “for each affected ally with health lower than the threshold (<50%), the duration is increased by 1 second” (downed allies count), while still retaining a decent base duration, say, 5s base. This would make it feel more guardian-ish. “You hurt my comrades, so you’ll pay for it!”

Please look at my post about assigning tomes to “spirit weapon” and “consecration”.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Assigning-Tomes-to-Skill-Categories/first#post5037217

I’m really upset that you proposed the idea of making the elite tomes into shouts and signets! SHOUTS ARE ALREADY A GOOD SPEC.
The signet one, I am fine with, but PLEASE consider Consecration and Spirit Weapon for the Tome of Wrath…

Shouts already have sufficient utility, decent range, and NO CAST TIME. With many Shout Guardians speccing Altruistic Healing, this new “Feel my Wrath” shout just encourages an already viable build. Viable is a complete understatement. Shout and Medi Guards are of the MOST useful across game types.

Consider Consecrations/Spirit Weapons.

Quite frankly, if this change goes through for Tome of Courage, I’m not playing this game anymore. Tome of Courage was fine the way it was and offered a very powerful backline support spell that rewarded good foresight and skill, now it’s being dumbed down super hard into some lame signet. It was also the closest thing to being a monk in this game, and I’m tired of healing being kitten over in this game. Again, if this change goes through, I’m leaving this game and never coming back. I don’t see why Tome of Courage can’t stay in addition to Signet of Courage anyway, but I know that isn’t going to happen.

Jovel.5706:

A signet and a shout.

Removing the tome animations leaves me sour, are people really okay with ArenaNet throwing these away?

Personally I’ve always thought they should add tomes as a new caster weapon anyway, we really only have three, compared to over a dozen martial weapons. And while for the most part retrofitting martial weapons to casters has created some really interesting ‘battle mage’ caster mechanics (LOVE my DD ele and DW necro), it would be nice to have some more design space for more traditional magic use.

Fashion Mage.3712:

Quite frankly, if this change goes through for Tome of Courage, I’m not playing this game anymore. Tome of Courage was fine the way it was and offered a very powerful backline support spell that rewarded good foresight and skill.

Blackmail, classy. Peace.

He said they will likely come back in the future. If I had to guess, as kits or Conjures.

The changes seem A-Okay as long as duration get tweaked around the new cooldown (obviously much longer than their current versions since we cant have 2 elites floating around less than 30 secs)

I like the idea. I’m so tired of using Tome of Wrath only to cast Zealot’s Fervor…

That elite shout sounds great to me.

ronpierce.2760:

Fashion Mage.3712:

Quite frankly, if this change goes through for Tome of Courage, I’m not playing this game anymore. Tome of Courage was fine the way it was and offered a very powerful backline support spell that rewarded good foresight and skill.

Blackmail, classy. Peace.

He said they will likely come back in the future. If I had to guess, as kits or Conjures.

It’s not blackmail, it’s my favourite skill in the game that is also the closest thing to playing my favourite profession from guild wars 1. It’s bad enough that this game doesn’t have monks, now this happens too? If ANet isn’t interested in supporting a selfless healer playstyle, then I’m not interested in playing Guild Wars 2. Just a personal thing really, and I doubt ANet cares that one less person is playing their game, but some respect to people who like monks would be nice.

Either way, these new skills are just simplified and watered down, plain and simple. Tomes are far more complex and interesting, but of course people always just wanna bash their faces on their keyboards to get results.

Elite choice becomes meaningful.
The most powerful and unique aspects of the tomes are preserved.
They fit nicely as subclasses of current utilities.

I too love the flavor of tomes, but would gladly see them go (to perhaps come back in a future specialization! – I’d gladly trade guard weapon swap for a legit heal kit…err…tome and so on).

+1. Excellent idea.

Fashion Mage.3712:

It’s not blackmail, it’s my favourite skill in the game that is also the closest thing to playing my favourite profession from guild wars 1. It’s bad enough that this game doesn’t have monks, now this happens too? If ANet isn’t interested in supporting a selfless healer playstyle, then I’m not interested in playing Guild Wars 2. Just a personal thing really, and I doubt ANet cares that one less person is playing their game, but some respect to people who like monks would be nice.

The change is good for the game.

To be perfectely honest, the closest thing to a healing monk in this game is the water elementalist and not the guardian. Guardian is more of a prot monk.

Water elementalists aren’t even that good at healing outside of WvW, and in PvP they’re better at bunkering than supporting their allies. I don’t want to wait 2-3 years for the next expansion to be able to use Tomes again.

The tomes either need balancing, or replacing, in it’s current itteration to be both useful and fun. The proposed changes seem like nice replacements!

JonPeters.5630:

Wanted to run a potential idea past you all. Comments welcome.

Tome of Courage -> Signet of Courage
Passive: PBAoE Heal every 10 seconds.
Active: Light of Deliverance

Tome of Wrath -> “Feel My Wrath”
Shout that grants Quickness and Fury

We like the idea of tomes and if we did this we would hope to bring them back in a future Elite Specialization.

Thoughts? Comments?

Thanks,

Jon

So, basically Tome of Courage becomes a Signet type, 180 cd, version of its 5 skill: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Light_of_Deliverance

And Wrath becomes a shout type, 30s cd, of its 4 skill: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Zealot%27s_Fervor

I approve this change. While I dont main a guard, both my roommates do, and their opinions are that Tomes are COOL in concept but USELESS in practice (“F- Tomes!” is a direct quote). Both run Renewed Focus. 95% of Guardians I run into use renewed focus.

Scrapping tomes and rebuilding into a Specialization later on is awesome sounding too.

Also Jon, I think that just asking this question, and seeking feedback from the community, is fantastic
Please do this as much as possible!

Remember: Even when you listen you can’t make everyone happy, but when you don’t listen you can make everyone unhappy!

Fashion Mage.3712:

Water elementalists aren’t even that good at healing outside of WvW, and in PvP they’re better at bunkering than supporting their allies. I don’t want to wait 2-3 years for the next expansion to be able to use Tomes again.

It seems they intend to add new elite specs at a much faster pace than that. It might have taken them 2-3 years to add elite specs, but now that the foundation is there, it’ll probably come faster.

I don’t play much Guardian but… Great idea, make it happen Jon!

These look like REALLY nice changes. Now something else might be worth taking over RF depending on situation.

As long as tomes are confirmed to come back later, I’m fine with this change.

I love tomes in concept, but they don’t work in their current iteration and its unlikely they’ll see significant changes to make them viable at this junction. However, if they could be reworked in the form of Elite specialization utilities (at least I presume they’d be utilities) then that would allow the time to develop them properly into working, viable utilities.

I just don’t want to lose the concept entirely.

As far as the skills themselves go… the shout seems fine. Not so sure about the Signet, however, as having another source of passive healing when Guardian already has one fully passive heal source through traited Resolve and a few other more active ones (like healing symbols and heals on dodge) may be a bit too much.

People who enjoy healers are usually a minority, it doesn’t make it okay to kitten on them though.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Fashion Mage.3712:

Water elementalists aren’t even that good at healing outside of WvW, and in PvP they’re better at bunkering than supporting their allies. I don’t want to wait 2-3 years for the next expansion to be able to use Tomes again.

It seems they intend to add new elite specs at a much faster pace than that. It might have taken them 2-3 years to add elite specs, but now that the foundation is there, it’ll probably come faster.

I’d really like to think that, but at this point I don’t have much faith in ANet, and they haven’t impressed me that much in the past few years either.

Arricson Krei.9560:

Please look at my post about assigning tomes to “spirit weapon” and “consecration”.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Assigning-Tomes-to-Skill-Categories/first#post5037217

I’m really upset that you proposed the idea of making the elite tomes into shouts and signets! SHOUTS ARE ALREADY A GOOD SPEC.
The signet one, I am fine with, but PLEASE consider Consecration and Spirit Weapon for the Tome of Wrath…

Shouts already have sufficient utility, decent range, and NO CAST TIME. With many Shout Guardians speccing Altruistic Healing, this new “Feel my Wrath” shout just encourages an already viable build. Viable is a complete understatement. Shout and Medi Guards are of the MOST useful across game types.

Consider Consecrations/Spirit Weapons.

+1 for you sir. Or M’am. Whatever. I mainly support this cus of spirit weapons need love….

Sure, I like the sound of this.

I play (healing) book guard in wvw during guild raids and they are primary used for burst sustain when the melee train makes a heavy push towards the enemy or as an emergency stabilizer until you stop for a full regroup. You would typically use the 3 skill for aoe protection and then spam 1 for the aoe heals until the book ends. It is true that using books in raids has gone out of style for the most part, but it still provides a good tool for group support when needed.

I feel like that turning it into a signet would take this aspect out of the tomb’s original intent as being this powerful healer for short duration. You also lose out of making the choice of choosing something selfish (renewed focus) vs group support. However, it seams like a fair compromise until tombs are reworked into something better (hoping it becomes like the engi’s tool kits).

Like someone said before, this proposed signet will make the battle presence trait useless and redundant. However, if the trait becomes the signet’s passive, it would be a good reason to make a new (and better) grandmaster trait to replace it.

I’ve been mainly playing my guardian recently, and this sounds like a great change! Especially if it means that tomes will come back later with an elite spec and be nicer. Always like the idea of them, but they just aren’t in a good spot right now.

JonPeters.5630:

Wanted to run a potential idea past you all. Comments welcome.

Tome of Courage -> Signet of Courage
Passive: PBAoE Heal every 10 seconds.
Active: Light of Deliverance

Tome of Wrath -> “Feel My Wrath”
Shout that grants Quickness and Fury

We like the idea of tomes and if we did this we would hope to bring them back in a future Elite Specialization.

Thoughts? Comments?

Thanks,

Jon

I want to keep the Mage/Sage theme to Tome of Wrath, and keep the long ranged attack.

I really would have liked that to stay as a Kit of some kind… (Environmental Weapon)

JonPeters.5630:

MiniEquine.6014:

Any idea for Cooldowns if these would be put in place? The Tomes are pretty cool, but Courage, currently, is almost useless.

I don’t have the heal/boon duration numbers in my head but the current test cooldowns are 180 on signet of course and 30 on “feel my wrath.”

Jon

Birdbomb OP

30s cooldown elite (regardless of what it does) causes 16×3 bird strikes, which proc AoE Burning from Justice on every 3rd hit (traited). That’s 16 AoE burns… done with Quickness and Fury with this new shout. And now that traps allow you to stack bleeds, Mad King is more viable.

I would prefer to see Spirit Weapons or Consecrations get love over shouts, but I’d have to give it thought how.

Yes these changes would be amazing

Maybe 90 second cool down on the Signet and 60 cooldown on the shout would be cool with all the balancing a durations you guys could make these compete with renewed focus

Here’s an idea: Change Tome of Courage/Wrath into signets/shouts/whatever-inappropriate-skill-type AFTER the tome elite spec gets released.

I believe this is a great idea Anet. You put some potential into these skills and synergize them with the specializations you are building. I say +1, would love to see the specifics when you get there.

JonPeters.5630:

Wanted to run a potential idea past you all. Comments welcome.

Tome of Courage -> Signet of Courage
Passive: PBAoE Heal every 10 seconds.
Active: Light of Deliverance

Tome of Wrath -> “Feel My Wrath”
Shout that grants Quickness and Fury

We like the idea of tomes and if we did this we would hope to bring them back in a future Elite Specialization.

Thoughts? Comments?

Thanks,

Jon

Please make this happen, This is the 2nd guardian update that I LOVE, the 1st was Retreat change

JonPeters.5630:

Tome of Courage -> Signet of Courage
Passive: PBAoE Heal every 10 seconds.
Active: Light of Deliverance

Tome of Wrath -> “Feel My Wrath”
Shout that grants Quickness and Fury

Yes please, these actually sound like I need to make a real decision between elites.

SUGGESTION:

Signet of Courage:
Passive: Advanced Group Healing Signet (Radius 600) 162 (Interval: 1 sec)
Active: AoE Full Heal (Radius 1200) (120 sec cooldown) (Number of targets: 5)

• Heals for less the more people are close to you e.g: Share 250 health per tick across 5 people is 50 hpt each. Or In Reverse! Higher hpt the more allies you are close to?
• Passive effect is self only or party members only?

Feel My Wrath:
AoE Fury (Duration: 30 sec) Self Only Quickness (Duration: 10 sec) (90 sec cooldown)

• Group AoE Quickness for longer cooldown?
• Swap Fury for AoE Slow (Duration: 10 sec)?

I was just joking with my friend the other day ‘watch them turn Tomes into spirit weapons’ lol

he said ‘oh gawd dont give them anymore bad ideas’.

very nice ideas, maybe in a future spec we can get an elite consecration aswell? <3

Signet of Courage
Passive: Very low base heal per tick, 50-100 base, but have it scale well with Healing Power (0.3-0.4x would feel well balanced in my opinion)
Active: 2-3 seconds cast time, 120-180 cooldown. Add some form of block or a single stack of stability while casting.

“Feel My Wrath”
1 second cast time, 240-300 cooldown. 5-8 seconds quickness, 30-40 seconds fury, Unblockable AoE knockback, blinds and burns on foes.

JonPeters.5630:

Wanted to run a potential idea past you all. Comments welcome.

Thanks for this. It’s really nice to have some discussion about the skills before they’re fully ready to ship.

JonPeters.5630:

Tome of Courage -> Signet of Courage
Passive: PBAoE Heal every 10 seconds.
Active: Light of Deliverance

How strong is the passive? Is the active the exact same as the current Courage 5 skill?

The signet’ll have to have a reduced cooldown in order to be usefull in PvE. If it stays at a 4 1/4 casting time, your whole party will be downed by the time it goes off.
You want to use it when your team gets low and it’s very hard to pre-emptively cast it with gw2 combat dodges.

Anyway, I never use the tomes currently so definitely liking this change. It’ll have to compete with Renewed Focus though. Not sure if I would take either of these over RF.

Warangel Eldrith.9408:

very nice ideas, maybe in a future spec we can get an elite consecration aswell? <3

An elite consecration would be nice, and a trait that did something to consecrations other than reduce recharge…

Is there any plan to flesh out all the existing skill types after adding types to untyped skills? Some types only have 4 skills (and currently use 5 traits to improve the 3 you choose.)

No the proposed changes are fine cause spirit weapons need to die in a fire like every other dumb AI ( minions). Useless in pve mediocre to bad in pvp. The only spirit weapon that is worth a slot is the shield cause it usually protects itself from the ranged AoE that kill the others. An elite SW would basically be a permanent cooldown cause it dies to AoE before running its full duration.

I like the idea of freeing up tomes and grimoire as a potential weapontype for magical proffesions. If they are going to add new weapons in the future then we have a lot of diffrent ranged and melee archetypes to chose from, but not that much left for magical tools. The only problem is focuses with book skins.

So you want to get rid of 2 of the more unique aspects of guardians because they don’t fit in with your new world view about all abilities having to belong to a group of like abilities. Don’t approve of it at all.

How about you look to improve the tomes rather than replace them making the class less interesting? Tome of courage is used in WvW, tome of wrath needs work.

However that shout does look good, OP even.

I like the concept of tomes, not that I’d use them myself, but those skills do just seem to be better. If the heal was half decent (and scaled decently with healing power, so zerkers couldn’t abuse it), Signet of Courage would find its way onto my tank/support guardian’s skill bar – and I hate signets! XD

And heres a concept for the Elite Spec with Tomes

The Mystic

Made once a concept about that which uses Esoteric Scrolls which seal some kind of mystical “forbidden” spells (could count as consecrations) while Tomes would count as “spirit weapons”, which aren’t books, that you hold in the hand, but instead big magical Grimoires that float in the air and make their spells alone when you command them to do them for you

Whould be also a nice way to bring back some kind of *mysticisms back from the Dervish, which was in my humble opinion the only part, that was awesome and unique about the Dervish.
The lore of the game also talks in regard of the priory of durmand about “Mystics”, but yet we have never seen one ….

So I propose that Guardian Elite Specialization that brings back Tomes as “Spirit Weapons” together with Esoteric Scrolls as Concecrations to use “Forbidden Mystic Forces” that are sealed away inside of them together with a “Stigma System” that works as “keys” to unseal the esoteric scrolls to unleash their forbidden mystic forces.
Thats a moment which you, as an enemy don’t want to see happening actually, because these powers are naturally not without a reason “forbidden” ….
—-

However, my opinion on the Dragonhunter stays unchanged…
Rename it, please rename them to Seeker for example.

I find it stunning, that the devs lost absolutely no word about their terrible name in the stream and the huge turmoil about it in the forums, that so far no other name ever before created in this game so much, because of it beign so extremely unfitting and out of any guardian related context.

I would like to hear soon somethign of the devs about all this turmoil that this immersion breaking name creates and what they think about possibly renaming it to somethign ,that fits alot better, sounds better and catchier for a profession that resembles its gameplay alot more a kind of warden that uses aggressive wards.. and heck why traps?? just only because Anet seems to generalize the utility skill types now among all professions instead of beign a bit more creative and giving those elite specy maybe for once also new utility types and not only copy pasted stuff from one class over to the others???

It would be actually a nice move of anet to make out of that name mess some kind of community poll similar to maybe how cutthrout politics worke,d so that we get some kind of ingame way to vote, gor how the class should get renamed.
Now it is still the time to rename things, before its to late and tons of textx ,voice actings and stuff would have to get changed if that unfitting name somehow finds place in these things in the story of HoT

PS: and if Necromancers should get tomes under a new elite spec, they would have instead of Grimoires big floating “Necronomicons” …

Reminds me on Secret o Mana by the way nostalgia T.T the game had enemies named Grimoire and Necronomicon, beign two macial books that uses all kinds of magic sells agains you.

morrolan.9608:

So you want to get rid of 2 of the more unique aspects of guardians because they don’t fit in with your new world view about all abilities having to belong to a group of like abilities. Don’t approve of it at all.

How about you look to improve the tomes rather than replace them making the class less interesting? Tome of courage is used in WvW, tome of wrath needs work.

However that shout does look good, OP even.

RF is more useful in WvW for yourself and for the group as you can provide protection regeneration condition removal might aegis heals and burns twice in a row on half the cooldown. And the new signet would completely replace the function of the tome since people only use it for the #5
Furthermore tomes lock us out of our utilities virtues and heals which makes them more of a handicap than help.

I like it a lot! Just gotta figure out that sweet balance.

I would approve, only if the changes would be implemented at the same time the tome specialization is released.

Tomes do serve purposes, albeit at rarer opportunities than Renewed Focus, as well as being something inherently cool. Currently, nobody is suffering because of the skill options that the guardian has at the moment, and many people (those who do use tomes, and those who appreciate tomes just for the sake of unique effects and voice acting [which is amazing]) would be wounded by their removal.

In that vein, it sounds like we already have the foundations for another guardian spec. I’m looking forward to it.

If this is being brought to attention because of the impending trait overhaul (and condensation of traits), it would be just as easy to compact some of the existing tome traits into fewer, like how the Warrior is getting “signet mastery”.