Virtues FIX
I think if anything I’d rather just see a CD reduction for the Virtues. I mean . . . they decided it was necessary for a Virtues CD reduction for DH and it’s not like the base Guardian effects are much stronger.
I think if anything I’d rather just see a CD reduction for the Virtues. I mean . . . they decided it was necessary for a Virtues CD reduction for DH and it’s not like the base Guardian effects are much stronger.
This. Why the hell does DH get reduced CD on virtues and regular guardians don’t? Aren’t elite specs supposed to be no better than normal specs, just different gameplay? If so, reduce the CD for normal guardians. Seriously.
Anet explained why somewhere, but most people don’t care anyways.
Anet explained why somewhere, but most people don’t care anyways.
Can you find a link or paraphrase the reason?
Kirrena Rosenkreutz
Anet explained why somewhere, but most people don’t care anyways.
Can you find a link or paraphrase the reason?
Is he referring to this?
Virtues:
This specialization will ask that you make a trade-off of instant-cast abilities in order to gain access to a more physical aspect of them. With that goal in mind, we want to ensure that the virtues are rewarding while, while still maintaining some risk about them. In this iteration we’ve shored up a bit of the risks. We’ve lowered recharges of both Justice and Resolve while specialized as a Dragonhunter, in addition to lowering the cast times and improving battle effectiveness.
Spear of Justice: Increased missile velocity by 100%. Reduced the casting speed from 3/4 second to 1/4 second. Updated skill facts when virtue traits are equipped. Fixed a bug that caused this trait to not trigger with Wrath of Justice. Reduced recharge from 25 to 20. This ability is now unblockable.
Wings of Resolve: This ability now removes Immobilize at the beginning. Cooldown has been reduced from 50 seconds to 30.
Shield of Courage: Reduced the cast to 0.25 seconds. The after-cast of this ability has been reduced by 200 ms. This ability now blocks all attacks from the front, while attacks from behind will strike the guardian.
That’s only dragonhunter, not core.
Kirrena Rosenkreutz
please keep passive effects when we activate them and increase colldowns if you must…
^^there problem fixed and now we gona see ppl actualy use them
That makes a WORSE problem – no trade off, less risk, and very little reason not to just mash and mash again.
Virtues are like Signets – activating them carries a price and that price makes the decision important.
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
^ which was the effective explanation given way long ago. Virtues are like signets that you will always have equipped. Because they’re always equipped regardless of skills or traits, they can’t really be as powerful as a skill or trait you have to choose to equip. There’s no tradeoff for getting that base benefit. Something that I particularly like is that they generally have support for improving the passives and for improving the actives. That way, you can choose what playstyle you want to use. Signets don’t have near that level of trait support (though Perfect Inscriptions comes close).
Fishsticks
please keep passive effects when we activate them and increase colldowns if you must…
^^there problem fixed and now we gona see ppl actualy use them
That makes a WORSE problem – no trade off, less risk, and very little reason not to just mash and mash again.
Virtues are like Signets – activating them carries a price and that price makes the decision important.
Is there really such a big trade off the way they are now, though? Unless you’re a burn Guardian and depend on Justice’s passive as a major source of damage, the cost of activating your Virtues is pretty minimal. If I’m saving my Virtues in a fight, it’s because I want to make sure that the traited active effects are used to their maximum benefit. It’s definitely not because I’m concerned about losing a couple hundred points of damage every few seconds, a healing effect that’s weaker than Regeneration, and one block every 30-40 seconds. At best, I’ll prioritize using my other heals before Virtue of Resolve.
Letting us keep our passive effects does go against the original spirit of the Guardian’s Virtues, but a number of recent trait changes/additions seem to be encouraging us to avoid using our profession mechanic (e.g. buffing Permeating Wrath, not buffing VoJ active to deal more overall damage than VoJ passive, making Battle Presence only work when Resolve is off cooldown, making passive Resolve regenerate endurance with the Purity of Body trait, introducing the Zealot’s Aggression trait with DH, etc.). If this is the direction they’re going to go, letting us keep our passives doesn’t seem wholly unreasonable.
The only problem I have with Virtues is, that the active effect is incredibly weak if untraited and incredibly strong if traited. Without the Virtues traitline it does not feel like activating them has any meaningful impact. Arenanet cannot simply lower the base cooldown of Virtues, because if they make untraited Virtues balanced, the traited ones become overpowered.
Dragonhunter has a lot stronger base Virtues with lower cooldowns, but you give up instant casts and your first minor trait in the DH traitline.
^ which was the effective explanation given way long ago. Virtues are like signets that you will always have equipped. Because they’re always equipped regardless of skills or traits, they can’t really be as powerful as a skill or trait you have to choose to equip. There’s no tradeoff for getting that base benefit. Something that I particularly like is that they generally have support for improving the passives and for improving the actives. That way, you can choose what playstyle you want to use. Signets don’t have near that level of trait support (though Perfect Inscriptions comes close).
This is true, & if virtue improvements were spread across all core specialisation lines I feel would be justified. But at the moment looking purely at the base virtues active they just don’t provide enough benefit for me to want to activate at the cost of losing the passive.
Also I feel profession mechanic should be skills your actively using most of the time in every fight. With current virtue cooldowns I find VoR (50 sec) & VoC (75 sec) just to long going through 2-3 separate fights before the passive is back in effect & active available for use. On a whole I believe the base virtues should be skills that can stand on their own, if their signet like let them be signet strength at base.
Some change I would like to see are:
- Reduce cooldowns – VoJ 25 sec No Change, VoR 40 sec, VoC 50 sec.
- Make Inspired Virtue baseline.
- Add a single condition cleanse to VoR baseline remove 1 from Absolute Resolution so it still cleanses a total of 3 with AR traited.
These would make the active worthwhile to activate at a cost of a 40 – 50 sec cooldown & lost of passive effect.
That’s only dragonhunter, not core.
Yes, I’m responding to the post above me ..
^ which was the effective explanation given way long ago. Virtues are like signets that you will always have equipped. Because they’re always equipped regardless of skills or traits, they can’t really be as powerful as a skill or trait you have to choose to equip. There’s no tradeoff for getting that base benefit. Something that I particularly like is that they generally have support for improving the passives and for improving the actives. That way, you can choose what playstyle you want to use. Signets don’t have near that level of trait support (though Perfect Inscriptions comes close).
This is true, & if virtue improvements were spread across all core specialisation lines I feel would be justified. But at the moment looking purely at the base virtues active they just don’t provide enough benefit for me to want to activate at the cost of losing the passive.
Also I feel profession mechanic should be skills your actively using most of the time in every fight. With current virtue cooldowns I find VoR (50 sec) & VoC (75 sec) just to long going through 2-3 separate fights before the passive is back in effect & active available for use. On a whole I believe the base virtues should be skills that can stand on their own, if their signet like let them be signet strength at base.
Some change I would like to see are:
- Reduce cooldowns – VoJ 25 sec No Change, VoR 40 sec, VoC 50 sec.
- Make Inspired Virtue baseline.
- Add a single condition cleanse to VoR baseline remove 1 from Absolute Resolution so it still cleanses a total of 3 with AR traited.
These would make the active worthwhile to activate at a cost of a 40 – 50 sec cooldown & lost of passive effect.
This ^ so so much.
As is there is just no way to justify activating the core virtues due to extremely long CD’s and passives outweighing actives by so much.
They need to make a few of the on activate traits base line (or at least partially so) and or lower the cool downs.
^ which was the effective explanation given way long ago. Virtues are like signets that you will always have equipped. Because they’re always equipped regardless of skills or traits, they can’t really be as powerful as a skill or trait you have to choose to equip. There’s no tradeoff for getting that base benefit. Something that I particularly like is that they generally have support for improving the passives and for improving the actives. That way, you can choose what playstyle you want to use. Signets don’t have near that level of trait support (though Perfect Inscriptions comes close).
This is true, & if virtue improvements were spread across all core specialisation lines I feel would be justified. But at the moment looking purely at the base virtues active they just don’t provide enough benefit for me to want to activate at the cost of losing the passive.
Also I feel profession mechanic should be skills your actively using most of the time in every fight. With current virtue cooldowns I find VoR (50 sec) & VoC (75 sec) just to long going through 2-3 separate fights before the passive is back in effect & active available for use. On a whole I believe the base virtues should be skills that can stand on their own, if their signet like let them be signet strength at base.
Some change I would like to see are:
- Reduce cooldowns – VoJ 25 sec No Change, VoR 40 sec, VoC 50 sec.
- Make Inspired Virtue baseline.
- Add a single condition cleanse to VoR baseline remove 1 from Absolute Resolution so it still cleanses a total of 3 with AR traited.
These would make the active worthwhile to activate at a cost of a 40 – 50 sec cooldown & lost of passive effect.
This ^ so so much.
As is there is just no way to justify activating the core virtues due to extremely long CD’s and passives outweighing actives by so much.
They need to make a few of the on activate traits base line (or at least partially so) and or lower the cool downs.
Take the virtues traitline. Or: don’t use them stupidly. Why would you hold on to resolution or courage if you’re about to die and popping them would allow you to live? Should make it so rallying refreshes all virtue cooldowns so you won’t have the excuse of thinking you’ll get picked up so better save those virtue passives.
please keep passive effects when we activate them and increase colldowns if you must…
^^there problem fixed and now we gona see ppl actualy use them
That makes a WORSE problem – no trade off, less risk, and very little reason not to just mash and mash again.
Virtues are like Signets – activating them carries a price and that price makes the decision important.
we already paid price with lowest heath pool… and people will use other elites instead RF to refresh them
Take the virtues traitline. Or: don’t use them stupidly. Why would you hold on to resolution or courage if you’re about to die and popping them would allow you to live? Should make it so rallying refreshes all virtue cooldowns so you won’t have the excuse of thinking you’ll get picked up so better save those virtue passives.
Not sure I agree. Why should we be forced to take Virtues just to have worthwhile actives. Typically profession specialisation lines should be the major line for enhancing &/or change the gameplay of the base profession mechanic. They should be worthwhile skills in themselves at untraited. I just can’t agree that base VoR & VoC are reasonable skills for the cooldowns.
VoR – Healing (approx 1.6k) yourself & nearby allies (5 targets) is worth a 50 sec cooldown & the loss of the passive health regen. Not that it should be a full health but to compare Receive the Light heals for 5 × 1.3k on a 40 sec cooldown without the loss of a passive regen.
To note the passive regen was an important part Arenanet discussed in why guardians are one of the low health pool professions. 50 sec without is approx. 4200 lost healing (84 per sec, no traits & no healing power). So using the active skill is a loss of 60% of your healing or looking at it another way it’s a punishment of 160% for using it over a 50 sec period.
VoR – New Active (40 sec cooldown)
Healing: 1,225 (slightly reduced)
Number of Targets: 5
Regen (5 sec): 650
Conditions Removed: 1
Radius: 600
Looking at this active your still losing slightly less then 60% of the total healing but also have the addition benefit of removal of a single condition which should encourage active use. An advantage for foes with increase active use is decreased in overall healing also more vulnerable windows were VoR won’t be available as it’s on cooldown.
To note this is a selfish analysis only looking a benefits to the guardian but this is still the risk & cost the guardian is taking on for activing VoR.
VoC – A single aegis to yourself & nearby allies is worth a 75 sec cooldown & the loss the passive. Looking at Retreat you get the same aegis 20 sec plus 20 sec of swiftness to yourself & 4 allies in the same radius on a 40 sec cooldown. Which is the same cooldown on the passive application.
Aegis is a amazing for high damaging single hitting skills but is easy to identify, remove or bypass by unblockable or mutli-hitting/channelled attacks.
VoC – New Passive
Aegis Refresh: 30 sec (still provides a 150% punishment for activating with regards to aegis)
VoC – Active (50 sec cooldown)
Aegis (20 sec): Block the next incoming attack.
Number of Targets: 5
Radius: 600
Protection (5 sec): -33% Incoming Damage
This changes F3’s active from protection of a single hit to Burst/Spike protection. One aspect of F3 is if used in the right circumstances you still typically going to have a 49 -45 sec window without benefit from VoC.
To note a single aegis bar 1 shot mechanics generally does not provide enough benefit if used in emergency situation. Again for foes you’ll get the same benefit similar to VoR in more active uses of VoC means less random aegis from passive & greater windows were VoC would be on cooldown.
Lastly were not changing the overall power of virtues as typically in most viable builds virtues is a required spec line. There might be a little power creep in the active effects as you’ll be able to use them more often but I believe this will be countered by the increase downtime these virtues will be on cooldown. This should open up more core spec/build options as it would reduce the need for Virtues.
What this provide as well is better sustain of our low health pool through our virtue which could also open up more flexibility with our utility skill choices.
(edited by Bezagron.7352)
please keep passive effects when we activate them and increase colldowns if you must…
^^there problem fixed and now we gona see ppl actualy use them
+1
I agree that virtues passive effects should always remain.
This is apparent especially with the dragon hunter.
Fizzy Bubbler