Guild Wars 2

Heyo, just continuing to post about skills/traits that I think need some rework. Today’s discussion will be about Virtues. As it stands, these are essentially Signets. Normally though, signets have a powerful selfish effect and then a long cd active, this does not seem to be the case for Virtues. The passive effects for all three are incredibly underwhelming and become even worse when you trait into them. I am proposing that both effects be useful for their respective purposes.

Before I go on about a temporary fix to these, I would like to introduce an idea for a more permanent/interactive solution. I would like for each Virtue to be an attunement/stance in the long term. Example would be a Guardian picks a Greatsword for their weapon and switches between three virtues for a different set of skills within each virtue. This is very similar to Elements. You’d have an offensive Virtue(Justice), Defensive(Courage) and support(Resolve). I think most would agree this would allow for better play instead of just three long cd signets.

Onto my temporary fix. I propose that each passive(when traited) increase in power exponentially. The active gained when traiting these virtues completely overshadows the passive, regardless if you’re in a group or alone. The passives were meant to be as a selfish/solo solution that would assist the Guardian by him/herself only. The problem here is the actives are so much more powerful, that in most cases, you wouldn’t even notice the passive effects. Here’s an example of what I would like to see:

Virtue of Justice: Passive is now changed to every 10 successful hits, the Guardian gains 2-3 seconds of Fury.

Virtue of Resolve: Passive has been increased to 200-250 hp/sec(when traited). 150 when un traited.

Virtue of Courage: Passive is changed to grant the Guardian 2-3 seconds of protection whenever he’s critically hit, ICD 10-15 seconds (when traited). 1-2 seconds un traited.

I honestly believe the passive effects from both Resolve and Courage are incredibly weak. I understand that passive play is terrible for this game and I would see it gone completely to more of an interactive style I stated above. However, this is a short-term solution to what is inherently three VERY LONG cd signets with poor passives.

Maybe they are encouraging using them actively instead of passively. Actively they are quite powerful even with only a few traits invested. Personally, I wouldn’t want even more guards not using virtues for the party.

I understand that, but then why bother having passive effects? I completely get the reason behind utilizing them within a group setting but not by yourself.

Because if we didn’t have defensive passives there would be no excuse for our pitiful HP total.

And for the non-snarky response, because if they had no passives they would be the Engineer class mechanic only worse because we couldn’t pick which ones we wanted.

Maybe they would end up with something like warrior heal signet. You don’t even use that heal signet when you’re almost dead, if you do use it, you’re basically giving in to death.

Anet said they want people to have a reason to use signets. Having the active overshadow the passive gives that reason. Apparently there are many guards that like the passives considering how many guards you see that don’t use their virtues.

laharl.8435:

Maybe they would end up with something like warrior heal signet. You don’t even use that heal signet when you’re almost dead, if you do use it, you’re basically giving in to death.

Anet said they want people to have a reason to use signets. Having the active overshadow the passive gives that reason. Apparently there are many guards that like the passives considering how many guards you see that don’t use them.

I mean, there really isn’t too terribly much reason to use anything other than Courage for the Aegis in boss fights if you don’t have traits to support them. 5 Virtues alone increases their worthiness by a lot, and it only gets more powerful the further in you get. But if you are a 10/30/0/30/0 or something, why would you pop them unless you were about to RF anyway? There is no incentive.

But the thing is, I barely even notice the passives(spvp). I can honestly say these have never assisted me in battle in any significant way. The comparison to healing signet is a bit off I think, with a low base-health and limited invulnerability, I don’t think it would be nearly as strong. Not to mention the cds on each virtue are obscenely long.

Edit to foofad above: Even if you traited 30 into virtues, the passives themselves would be even worse because the actives power was just increase exponentially.

Edit again: Just a little off-topic, if you were to give the Guardian Healing Signet, no one in spvp would take it. Why? because just as I stated above, your health is too low and your options to mitigate burst over long periods don’t exist. I’d still take Shelter.

Arken.3725:

But the thing is, I barely even notice the passives(spvp). I can honestly say these have never assisted me in battle in any significant way. The comparison to healing signet is a bit off I think, with a low base-health and limited invulnerability, I don’t think it would be nearly as strong. Not to mention the cds on each virtue are obscenely long.

You would notice never burning if you were a Shouts/Sanctuary bunker. You’d also notice the lack of HP/s coming in. Just because you don’t notice them doesn’t mean they don’t have an effect. How long is your typical fight in sPvP? As a bunker, they can last 30 seconds, a minute, two minutes. How much additional health does that add up to? Quite a bit. You’ll probably never notice Courage’s passive because it’ll get used up on autoattacks, but the others are definitely present.

If you’re speccing bunker, you won’t notice Justice since your damage output is pretty much zero. You’re then left with Resolve which can impact your fight.

Arken.3725:

Edit to foofad above: Even if you traited 30 into virtues, the passives themselves would be even worse because the actives power was just increase exponentially.

I was responding to Laharl about the actives being unused by some people, because there is no incentive to use them if you don’t have Virtues. I agree that the actives become more useful as you invest further in to Virtues; That’s the whole point of the Virtues line, really. That doesn’t make the passives worse though, it makes them less important than the actives.

Arken.3725:

If you’re speccing bunker, you won’t notice Justice since your damage output is pretty much zero. You’re then left with Resolve which can impact your fight.

Proportionally, the less damage you do the more you notice Justice procs because they become a larger chunk of your overall damage. It’s not great damage but it’s more than it would be without.

foofad.5162:

Arken.3725:

Edit to foofad above: Even if you traited 30 into virtues, the passives themselves would be even worse because the actives power was just increase exponentially.

I was responding to Laharl about the actives being unused by some people, because there is no incentive to use them if you don’t have Virtues. I agree that the actives become more useful as you invest further in to Virtues; That’s the whole point of the Virtues line, really. That doesn’t make the passives worse though, it makes them less important than the actives.

I don’t know if I believe that entirely. Again, if this was the sole purpose was just to assist your group, why bother even having a passive? I just believe that both sides should see a decent power increase when traited. This was just a temporary idea to make them better. I’d love it if they were turned into something else entirely.

Edit: I agree it’s better than none but when you’re a bunker, this virtue is almost always on cd because there’s really no strategic way to utilize it except to just increase your parties damage potential.

Arken.3725:

foofad.5162:

Arken.3725:

Edit to foofad above: Even if you traited 30 into virtues, the passives themselves would be even worse because the actives power was just increase exponentially.

I was responding to Laharl about the actives being unused by some people, because there is no incentive to use them if you don’t have Virtues. I agree that the actives become more useful as you invest further in to Virtues; That’s the whole point of the Virtues line, really. That doesn’t make the passives worse though, it makes them less important than the actives.

I don’t know if I believe that entirely. Again, if this was the sole purpose was just to assist your group, why bother even having a passive? I just believe that both sides should see a decent power increase when traited. This was just a temporary idea to make them better. I’d love it if they were turned into something else entirely.

Edit: I agree it’s better than none but when you’re a bunker, this virtue is almost always on cd because there’s really no strategic way to utilize it except to just increase your parties damage potential.

I’ve already addressed that. If there were no passive it would be a crappier version of the Engineer class mechanic, and there would be no excuse for our low HP. Unless you completely change a lot of things about the class, removing them reduces our differentiation.

I agree that the passives are VERY lackluster and need improvement.

I vehemently disagree with almost all of the changes you propose, with the exception of VoR’s passive. I especially think doing a “switch” for virtues is a terrible idea. I used to play DAoC and the paladin class had a similar game mechanic, where you’d switch your chant (ie Virtue equivalent) and what ended up happening is that you’d have to do one of two things: 1. Leave it on the most effective chant, which was battle for more damage, the others were subpar. 2. You’d literally spam-switch constantly so that you could get all 3 chant benefits at the same time. When one ran out, you’d just spam all three once again. It’s not a fun game mechanic and was extremely annoying, but you had to do it to be competitively effective.

I do also agree that Courage needs something else, but that’s one I’m not sure on what could be done. I really like the blocks it gives passively. Really, if they’d make Aegis not be the first to be used when blocking, it make Courage a whole lot better without even having to change it. Or even perhaps changing Aegis altogether to block any received damage for a couple of seconds versus just one hit.

I proposed this a long time ago and think it’s still a good idea for giving value to passive Virtues: “Make a trait that for each virtue on passive, gain a 3% damage increase. Or maybe give additional buffs similar to the Virtues 5 trait.”

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

snip

Warhammer did the same thing. Aura “twisting” was a really unfortunate reality of those classes. It was fun for the first five minutes, then you quickly looked for a way to macro it.

Well I look at say Elementalists profession mechanic and it most certainly seems to be quite a bit more interactive/fun. I think if the skills themselves were balanced properly, staying on one virtue would be to your own demise. The problem with Courage is that 1 block every 40 seconds(30 traited) is honestly nothing of benefit aside from maybe a lucky block on a powerful skill. Combat moves so fast and skills active so quickly that it’s nearly impossible to utilize or keep track of when the next Aegis will activate.

foofad.5162:

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

snip

Warhammer did the same thing. Aura “twisting” was a really unfortunate reality of those classes. It was fun for the first five minutes, then you quickly looked for a way to macro it.

Agreed, I played a Kotbs and I completely understand. The last thing we need is a change from an incredibly boring mechanic(signets) to something that encourages spamming then swap.

Ops, forgot about my comment on Justice. I think that guardians should have a different burn condition. In this respect, our fire damage is different from the other professions and won’t be overwrote. This would make Justice actually useful.

One of the main reasons I was advocating protection on a crit proc is because Guardians(spvp) have very limited protection access. Almost zero in dps builds.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Ops, forgot about my comment on Justice. I think that guardians should have a different burn condition. In this respect, our fire damage is different from the other professions and won’t be overwrote. This would make Justice actually useful.

Considering Guardian flames are already different from regular flames, you’d think this would be reasonable. But as with the lack of Torch 4 and Inner Fire synergy, it seems strict adherence to the original mechanics is more important than a thematically accurate change that would potentially make more build options less terrible.

I remember seeing suggestions that passive burn on voj could be traited to become 1 sec of chill instead.

Even if you’d balance that out by increasing the hits-to-proc count it could solve some of the profession’s soft-cc woes and increase our “conditions portfolio”.

I think we might miss VoC’s passive anti-gank mechanic, given our low healthpool – it probably does more that we realise. As others have mentioned the issue is mainly with Aegis itself – priority blocking, or perhaps let its block effect for 1/2 sec to make it more useful in larger skirmishes.

Agree with the VoR tick increase.

I’m assuming you’re talking about BS? That would be the case if it actually revealed the target. I just don’t think that one block does anything significant.

Arken.3725:

I’m assuming you’re talking about BS? That would be the case if it actually revealed the target. I just don’t think that one block does anything significant.

True – but that’s an issue with stealth rather than the guardian. ( and a 1/2 sec duration aegis might help make it a more effective burst counter )

I just don’t see an issue with the Courage change. Guardians lack protection access outside of bunkering.

Arken.3725:

I just don’t see an issue with the Courage change. Guardians lack protection access outside of bunkering.

Wha?! O.o

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Protection
I dunno, I see a lot of blue shields on that page.

Arken.3725:

I just don’t see an issue with the Courage change. Guardians lack protection access outside of bunkering.

Defensive builds get defensive boons? Hmmm…

kitten it, how did we ever let it come to this?

Two shouts provide protection, one with a very long cd and short duration. VoC is the same. Unless you can keep your target forever in your symbol of protection, it’s useless. I’m talking from an spvp point of view.

Edit: Heck, in a lot of cases, Engineers, Ele’s and Rangers have access to more protection without needing to spec bunker.

Arken.3725:

Two shouts provide protection, one with a very long cd and short duration. VoC is the same. Unless you can keep your target forever in your symbol of protection, it’s useless. I’m talking from an spvp point of view.

Edit: Heck, in a lot of cases, Engineers, Ele’s and Rangers have access to more protection without needing to spec bunker.

The problem with that though is that you cannot exclude WvW and PvE when talking about a complete mechanic change. You have to consider all sides of gameplay.

On paper, virtues do a TON!…..but in actual play I agree, I hardly notice them.

Sorry for wall of text Tying to reduce the visual impact of my post by hiding it under spoilers…but hope someone actually reads it :p

CMF.5461:

On paper, virtues do a TON!…..but in actual play I agree, I hardly notice them.

Virtue of Justice

hide spoiler

VoJ passive provides, in essence, an additional hit of damage the primary form of keeping both of our damage modifier traits active.

In reality, VoJ is not noticed because of condition layering/priority/over abundance in combat. I don’t need my own personal burn since there are plenty of other sources of conditions and burning available.

The extra hit also only scales with condition damage, so when our melee attacks go up to 1k-5k damage hits, our extra burning tick only does about 300-500, and start to contribute less to the overall picture.

More frequent burns will not fix this problem, as burning only ticks once per a second, so you can’t push out “more” damage per hit without increasing condition damage.

Yet changing it to a physical attack would make it susceptible to direct damage mitigators such as armor and blinds and such.

The intent of the mechanic is to give us more damage when passive, and to give the group more damage when active.

Possibly having it stack might on proc or provide 10% more damage when passive would help achieve the offensive idea in a way that can scale to different variables instead of just a static burn. I feel fury would be decent, but mostly overlooked in the long run with plentiful ways to achieve fury or crit chance.

Virtue of Resolve

hide spoiler

VoR is amazing on paper and the single source of sustain for guardians………but damage happens way faster than VoR ticks for, and again we don’t notice if it is on or off.

We want to avoid doing like healing signet and making it seemingly overpowered, but I think the mechanic is in the right mindset but could use more tweaking to work for players with less healing power but not be overpowered for players with tons of healing power.

The intent of this mechanic is to provide sustain and make up for our lower health pool. Possibly change it to replenish a percentage of incoming damage as a heal? Or leave it as is but increase the base healing done, but keep the healing power coefficient decently low.

Actively it should provide the group with needed recovery or sustain. Yet it on its own, is largely ignored as a heal. The biggest advantage of this skill is the traited condition removal and not the ability itself.

It’s active could probably use some looking at too, ignoring traited modifiers that make it worthwhile.

Virtue of Courage

hide spoiler

VoC is pretty much worthless as noted in earlier posts. Especially in PvP where incoming damage happens so frequently it is wasted away in meaningless attacks.

Having it proc every “x” incoming hits would provide some interesting defense, but that may prove too powerful.

The intent on this mechanic sort of blends in with the intent of VoR. To provide a defensive way to survive a fight, yet not through sustaining health, but instead by preventing damage in the first place.

I think the best way to provide passive defense by mitigation of damage would be to have it reduce incoming damage by x% while passive but keep the active as a group wide aegis. Additionally reduce the refresh time of this to make it actually usable, something like 30-60 second?

Sorry for wall of text Tying to reduce the visual impact of my post by hiding it under spoilers…but hope someone actually reads it :p

I read what you had to say. I enjoyed your spoilers. And I basically agree with your ideas. Well done.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Arken.3725:

Two shouts provide protection, one with a very long cd and short duration. VoC is the same. Unless you can keep your target forever in your symbol of protection, it’s useless. I’m talking from an spvp point of view.

Edit: Heck, in a lot of cases, Engineers, Ele’s and Rangers have access to more protection without needing to spec bunker.

The problem with that though is that you cannot exclude WvW and PvE when talking about a complete mechanic change. You have to consider all sides of gameplay.

Normally this would be the case but if they keep splitting skills/traits between game modes, I feel it only makes sense to balance one differently than the other.

Edit: I completely agree Jaxom, the last thing we need is another HS. The reason why I believe the changes I suggested would be balanced would be mainly because of the trait commitment and long cd upon activation. A lot of other traits/skills given by other professions don’t require as much investment, nor do they have long icd’s to deal with.

I’m most annoyed by the fact that investing in Virtues gives no stat that improves their passive effect. Kind of stupid. While the passive is more aligned to self improvement, it doesn’t mean they should be as insignificant as they are.

Agreed. Also one thing I’ve noticed about the discussion about traits/skills is that everyone wants to have everything. If this were the case, we’d never need tiers for traits. There needs to be some give to build your character and you can’t have everything. Heavy investment prevents you from being the master of all trades, which should always be the case.

CMF.5461:

On paper, virtues do a TON!…..but in actual play I agree, I hardly notice them.

Virtue of Justice

hide spoiler

VoJ passive provides, in essence, an additional hit of damage the primary form of keeping both of our damage modifier traits active.

In reality, VoJ is not noticed because of condition layering/priority/over abundance in combat. I don’t need my own personal burn since there are plenty of other sources of conditions and burning available.

The extra hit also only scales with condition damage, so when our melee attacks go up to 1k-5k damage hits, our extra burning tick only does about 300-500, and start to contribute less to the overall picture.

More frequent burns will not fix this problem, as burning only ticks once per a second, so you can’t push out “more” damage per hit without increasing condition damage.

Yet changing it to a physical attack would make it susceptible to direct damage mitigators such as armor and blinds and such.

The intent of the mechanic is to give us more damage when passive, and to give the group more damage when active.

Possibly having it stack might on proc or provide 10% more damage when passive would help achieve the offensive idea in a way that can scale to different variables instead of just a static burn. I feel fury would be decent, but mostly overlooked in the long run with plentiful ways to achieve fury or crit chance.

Virtue of Resolve

hide spoiler

VoR is amazing on paper and the single source of sustain for guardians………but damage happens way faster than VoR ticks for, and again we don’t notice if it is on or off.

We want to avoid doing like healing signet and making it seemingly overpowered, but I think the mechanic is in the right mindset but could use more tweaking to work for players with less healing power but not be overpowered for players with tons of healing power.

The intent of this mechanic is to provide sustain and make up for our lower health pool. Possibly change it to replenish a percentage of incoming damage as a heal? Or leave it as is but increase the base healing done, but keep the healing power coefficient decently low.

Actively it should provide the group with needed recovery or sustain. Yet it on its own, is largely ignored as a heal. The biggest advantage of this skill is the traited condition removal and not the ability itself.

It’s active could probably use some looking at too, ignoring traited modifiers that make it worthwhile.

Virtue of Courage

hide spoiler

VoC is pretty much worthless as noted in earlier posts. Especially in PvP where incoming damage happens so frequently it is wasted away in meaningless attacks.

Having it proc every “x” incoming hits would provide some interesting defense, but that may prove too powerful.

The intent on this mechanic sort of blends in with the intent of VoR. To provide a defensive way to survive a fight, yet not through sustaining health, but instead by preventing damage in the first place.

I think the best way to provide passive defense by mitigation of damage would be to have it reduce incoming damage by x% while passive but keep the active as a group wide aegis. Additionally reduce the refresh time of this to make it actually usable, something like 30-60 second?

Sorry for wall of text Tying to reduce the visual impact of my post by hiding it under spoilers…but hope someone actually reads it :p

I particularly agree with the VoC change you mentioned. A persistent damage percent reduction would be substantially more effective and noticeable than a passive, one-hit, aegis proc every 40 seconds. The only issue is making that not overpower bunker guards.

I think the weak nature of VoR should be corrected by making absolute resolution baseline. This way there is no excuse for any guard to ignore clicking VoR. This also gives me a little freedom to trait outside of the virtues line more as a glass guard.

As far as VoJ goes, I think it is a mistake to encourage any guard to not click virtues. VoJ has extremely effective active effects when traited (might, blind, burning). The only issues are the duration of might it gives and the fact that our burning is taking the same slot as burning from other classes. They need to really fix that by making our burning be a non damaging condition….like make it actually have a burning type visual effect but actually be implemented as a chill. Of course they would need to adjust Zeal II to reflect that new condition as well. I think burning should be removed from guardians as a condition altogether as it is completely ineffective as our sole damaging condition that just gets overridden by other classes. That will allow them to actually remove condition damage from the radiance trait line bonus and replace it with something actually useful to guardians.

Yes virtues are signets but they are signets that affect the group. I feel the passive effects should be shared more with allies, vor can already do that with battle presence. It would be neat if voj and voj had options to do something similar.

I agree voj is a bit lacking but it has some synergy pure of heart if you trait for it.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Arken.3725:

I just don’t see an issue with the Courage change. Guardians lack protection access outside of bunkering.

Wha?! O.o

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Protection
I dunno, I see a lot of blue shields on that page.

Protector’s Strike shouldn’t even be on there, it’s used as a counter against stronger skills I don’t think I’ve ever been given protection once when used in the heat of battle. Contemplation of Purity has a long cd and has quite a bit of RNG attached to it. Shield of Judgement got nerfed in spvp to only give 3 seconds of protection.

The only way to keep up a decent amount of protection would be to keep your target from moving and spamming AA on Hammer. This obviously isn’t going to happen.

I’m not saying give the Guardian a ton of access to protection, all i’d like to see is a bit more sustain for those builds outside of bunkering.

Arken.3725:

… all i’d like to see is a bit more sustain for those builds outside of bunkering.

Here is where I think we hit the biggest road block.

If we add sustain to the guardian profession, it needs to be in the form of traits that are not viable to obtain at the same time as picking up other “bunker” type traits.

Otherwise you run the risk of making bunker even more of a problem for balance and further pigeon holing us even more.

The other option is to keep sustain where it is at but increase damage potential in one of two ways.

Either increase damage or increase CCs to allow current damage to take full effect.

Most are proponents of increasing CCs to some extent because we are pretty much in agreement that guardian damage is pretty good when set up appropriately.

For dps specs to be more viable in pvp they either have to finish fights quickly or survive fights long enough to do damage potential.

Mass condition spam, ae attacks, and a plethora of incoming CCs and avoidance mechanics have become a detriment for many guardians in trying to be more damage oriented.

So we are left with bunker…but everyone is tired of guardian bunkers…even a lot of guardians themselves.

Absolutely, i’m just advocating for some sustain outside of bunkering. Obviously I don’t want it to be on the same level because then bunkers wouldn’t be needed. As you stated, you would need to allow for such sustain to be achieved outside of normal bunker means. Zeal is a complete mess with the minor traits alone, not to mention other than Fiery Wrath, there’s no incentive to go past 10 points.

Edit: A lot of the Guardian’s bunker capability comes from constant dodge-healing. This is being toned down with the nerf to Vigorous precision. I think Energy Sigils should also be nerfed to avoid the constant dodge-spamming from all professions.

Sort of sounds like the melee elementalist.

Its a big ask for them to give us 3x as many skills for each weapon set . . . a big, big ask.

Well obviously you’d have to do a lot of re-balancing. This just seems like a long-term solution to a boring mechanic.