Straight to the point: they are too long, even when traited.
We are given 3 of them, with recharges respectively are 30 (burn), 60 (regen) and 90 (block). Once they are activated, the respective passive bonuses are gone until they recharge.
As a front-line, guardians’ health pool is typically in the mid teens. Devs’ justification is that guardians have passive bonus from virtues to make up for such low health pool, in comparison with a Warrior. There’s some merits to that justification. But that is also TRUE that, after virtues activation, we no longer have what supposed to make us even with a Warrior’s healthbar, and easily downed being at the front line, we are borderline being the party’s liability. Aside from the fact that the active virtues’effect is quite mediocre with respect to their recharge, remaining in the absence of the passive bonus for such an extended long time causes rather ackward game play: in order to survive,you are forced to limit your engagement in the front line ( dodge or going ranged) which expose the folks in the back. Renewed Focus seems to be a relative remedy, but we shouldn’t be forced to rely on a particular elite skill just to play on regular basis. Given the active effect, each one should have 10-15 seconds taken off their recharge times. AND/OR improve active effects so that it will incentivize people more to actually activate it. And I’d advocate a grandmaster trait that retain passive bonus after activation of virtue.
Their passives are not all that, to get the best use out of virtues you gotta activate em, and even trait for em. Justice can give blinds + 3 might stacks when activate and refreshes on mob death. The others can give condition removal + regen / Aegis + protection to a group of people. The passives are really just icing on the cake.
Aye, the Virtues in totality need improvement. They are rather lackluster, passive especially! There should be incentives to keeping them on passive.
I do agree that the cooldowns are way too long, especially on Courage. The Aegis reapplication time is iffy at best, and the total cooldown for the active is absurd, especially untraited. That said I don’t think that the effects themselves need to be improved. They’re quite good and all have their times and places, although I find the active on Justice to be pretty abysmal when untraited.
The rest are just fine though, especially considering the 1200 range, which makes them quite good in WvW when people start getting spread out, as well as allowing you to catch your ranged people in dungeons.
Well Justice has a nice recharge on kill when traited for, which is good – it would be nice if the Resolve had a similar minor trait to renew it ( like recharge when your health gets below 15% with a 20 second ICD ).
Courage has a recharge on rally which is disappointing, because in an ideal world you will be downed rarely – not sure what an alternative might be – a minor trait that recharges it when you use a heal skill – or perhaps it could just be an added effect of Protective Reviver.
I’ve seen other threads suggesting improvements/ changes to aegis’ basic function since the next attack could be a huge crusher or CC of some sort or it could be a hit for 40 damage… here’s a simple suggestion that I think would improve it a lot. change it to stack in intensity instead of duration. As in how many attacks it will block.
courage passive would function the same, but change the active to apply like 3 stacks so you’d block the next 3 attacks. then the 90sec base cd would be more justified, and it would synergize better with traits like defenders flame and pure of heart.
^I would love it if aegis was able to block multiple attacks. I’ve always though “big deal I can get my aegis to last forever, but it still only blocks ONE attack!” There should be a limit to it of course, it would be OP as hell if you could stack it up with all the skills we have that give aegis and block everything. 3-5 max probably, most block skills usually block 3 at most so probably that would be best. Its not like it’s hard to get rid of aegis for enemies anyway. By now everyone has learned to use weak attacks to break the blue glowy shield, then burst the guardian. Being able to stack it would make them have to think more carefully about when to unload on us and not just spam after they pop the shield. I wouldn’t mind the long recharge on courage for that. Justice, I have no problem with, the burn is decent and I usually trait it to recharge when I kill something anyway. Resolve definitely needs some work. Even in full cleric gear the regen passive is horribly weak compared to just about every other regen in the game, the active for it isn’t to spectacular either.
In my opinion the Guardian Virtues (mainly the passives) are useless. Not only becouse its effect, but becouse their insane cooldowns. In my opinion, only the active VoJ is OK, becouse it have good synergy with traits and decent cooldown. In my opinon:
Active:
Passive:
Now I have no reason to keep my virtues unused. The passives are just junk. Also, should have more traits related to passive effects.
Oooh, now there’s an idea – stacking Aegis. Cap it at three, and let your Virtue cycle charge it up too. So after 1:30 you would have 3 blocked attacks. That’s a neat idea. Then you could deliberately stack it to ward off multiple hit attacks using the active + Retreat and so on. It would also help out Mesmers.
I like the Aegis’s stacking idea too. The proposed 3 stacks sound reasonable. Blocking one single attack is rather meager. It’s virtually negligible in pve due to the number mobs and their attack.s More so in WvW or PvP where multi-hit skill are rather prevalent. Granted, it’s a block on demand, yes, you can time it to block a single killer move from a Champ. But then what? you are vulnerable in the next 90s. There is a reason why Reversal of Fortune in GW1 being as spammable skill.
Instead of stacking aegis on VoC, it should have it’s own effect that blocks the next attack that deals a certain percentage of your max health. There’s already a warrior trait that activates when hit with something hard. Why not make VoC block the next attack that does at least 10% or 15% of your max health?
well, as stated the stacks could easily get out of hand if not limited some how. I think pretty much all intensity boons stack up to 25. programming wise I don’t know if it would be a pain to then make aegis an exception to this. it might be easier to just limit how many stacks are applied by abilities, I think the vast majority should still be limited to one stack " so I think I’d be against the VoC passive building up to 3 stacks" but let a few of the more cd heavy abilities apply 2 or 3 stacks.
Instead of stacking aegis on VoC, it should have it’s own effect that blocks the next attack that deals a certain percentage of your max health. There’s already a warrior trait that activates when hit with something hard. Why not make VoC block the next attack that does at least 10% or 15% of your max health?
but that could potentially make it useless at blocking CC as most crowd control does a low amount of damage.
I’d much rather block a large hit than a soft/hard CC followed by a large hit…
I think just making the Aegis block last for 1 second would be enough for it to soak up flurries of hits or zerg aoe, and make it worthwhile activating
I think just making the Aegis block last for 1 second would be enough for it to soak up flurries of hits or zerg aoe, and make it worthwhile activating
Would be interesting if that applies for both passive and active effects.
I’d much rather block a large hit than a soft/hard CC followed by a large hit…
this also probably wouldn’t work against flurry abilities since the individual hits might not be large enough to set it off. and you’d lose the ability to use aegis as a way to make sure your stomp or revive isn’t interrupted. it has its drawbacks but I think Anet went with just blocking the next attacks over something like this because there’s fewer variable affecting if it triggers or not.
I think it’d be better to keep it closer to what it is now and just change how it stacks rather than rework the ability from the ground up.
(edited by rajule.8054)
Tarsius’ idea of making it block everything for one second does sound better than the stacking. For one thing, it wouldn’t majorly affect 1 vs. 1 given the attack speed of each class while still boosting Aegis in the context of fighting multi mobs and also allowing the guardian abit of extra time, even if it’s 1 second, to react to the initial rush (i.e. WvW Zerk for example).
Voj is strong enough already imo
Vor is just poor, i would add an condition removal every 10 seconds on it, and active effect should be buffed with 50%
Voc – reduce active cooldown with 33 % and would be fine, sometimes the aegis can block 1 fear skill, 1 CC or 1 damage from champion mob or balista in wvwvw , but is too random for 90 sec Cooldown.
Tarsius’ idea of making it block everything for one second does sound better than the stacking. For one thing, it wouldn’t majorly affect 1 vs. 1 given the attack speed of each class while still boosting Aegis in the context of fighting multi mobs and also allowing the guardian abit of extra time, even if it’s 1 second, to react to the initial rush (i.e. WvW Zerk for example).
Agreed. I’d rather have a 1 second block than a 1 hit block. You can be hit multiple times over the course of 1 second and 1 Aegis as it is now doesn’t help one bit in those situations. It should be easy enough for them to do that. There are tons of block moves in game already that work like that with varying durations.
Tarsius’ idea of making it block everything for one second does sound better than the stacking. For one thing, it wouldn’t majorly affect 1 vs. 1 given the attack speed of each class while still boosting Aegis in the context of fighting multi mobs and also allowing the guardian abit of extra time, even if it’s 1 second, to react to the initial rush (i.e. WvW Zerk for example).
How would the passive work with this setup?
Tarsius’ idea of making it block everything for one second does sound better than the stacking. For one thing, it wouldn’t majorly affect 1 vs. 1 given the attack speed of each class while still boosting Aegis in the context of fighting multi mobs and also allowing the guardian abit of extra time, even if it’s 1 second, to react to the initial rush (i.e. WvW Zerk for example).
How would the passive work with this setup?
Same. Whenever Aegis activates, passive or active, 1 sec of block. That’s what I got from his idea.
Given the time between 2 consecutive attacks of mob or enemy player in 1vs. 1 context, this won’t change much, at best give the guardian 1 extra block vs. fast attacking enemy. This change would only matter when he get hits by multi mob or players during that 1 second period. As a side side kicks, it will give us more synergies with 1 or two of our underused on-block effects.
Tarsius’ idea of making it block everything for one second does sound better than the stacking. For one thing, it wouldn’t majorly affect 1 vs. 1 given the attack speed of each class while still boosting Aegis in the context of fighting multi mobs and also allowing the guardian abit of extra time, even if it’s 1 second, to react to the initial rush (i.e. WvW Zerk for example).
How would the passive work with this setup?
Same. Whenever Aegis activates, passive or active, 1 sec of block. That’s what I got from his idea.
Given the time between 2 consecutive attacks of mob or enemy player in 1vs. 1 context, this won’t change much, at best give the guardian 1 extra block vs. fast attacking enemy. This change would only matter when he get hits by multi mob or players during that 1 second period. As a side side kicks, it will give us more synergies with 1 or two of our underused on-block effects.
well what I meant was currently the passive block pops up every 40 sec. once its pops up it stays on you until there is an attack to block. if its changed to block for a duration instead of a number of attacks when does that 1 sec start? from the point of the first attack? would you expect stats like boon duration to affect the block time? or just the duration of the active aegis stays on your character?
I was just thinking a flat 1 second block from the moment you are first struck, and keep the rest of the mechanics the same. You couldn’t really have it get affected by Boon Duration as having multiple sources of a 2 second block would get OP ( a group of Guards could probably maintain block indefinitely ).
It also occurs to me that when we put points into Virtues, we are infact increasing our Virtue Recharge Rate ( not directly reducing the cooldown time per se ). It might be interesting if we had some trait effects that would increase our recharge rate just like Vigor does for Endurance – something along the lines of “Increase virtue recharge rate by 100% for 5 second every time you block an attack” or “for 1 second while you cause burning” or “every time your blind an enemy” etc etc
(edited by Tarsius.3170)
It might be interesting if we had some trait effects that would increase our recharge rate just like Vigor does for Endurance – something along the lines of “Increase virtue recharge rate by 100% for 5 second every time you block an attack” or “for 1 second while you cause burning” or “every time your blind an enemy” etc etc
I don’t think I’m on board for a duration block, but this could be a good alternative/ addition to the virtue recharge issue.
I don’t mind Aegis as it is but I can’t work out why VOC is not on a more reasonable CD
Virtues are balanced the way they are so that they cannot be abused when Guardians get together in a group. Currently it’s a healthy balance so that even if several Guardians do party it up in any format, their Virtues will not become OP.
ANet learned their lesson when Nightfall was released and GvG matches were predominately 8 Paragons spamming shouts and being unstoppable. Paragon shouts were nerfed thereafter and continued to be nerfed because the more Paragons in a party the more powerful they the Paragons and the rest of the party members become.
GW2 does not have a limited party size in hence the Virtues cannot be buffed further than what they are without crazy re-design. Hell, in my opinion the trait that removes VoJ CD when an enemy is killed is pretty sweet – in the right scenario your entire party is applying massive Burns for a good duration. Against a single target and you got a very very powerful Virtue.
Aegis is fine as it is. Just because you lose Aegis on a 40 damage hit or a 4,000 damage hit doesn’t warrant its change. It takes some math but if you can figure out when VoC will reapply Aegis you ultimately gain more control over the battle, i.e. knowing when to dodge, when to pop other blocks or VoC.
I’d rather not ANet hold my hand and making it simple for me to save my kitten . I’d rather learn how to do it with what I currently have than engage in ez-mode.
I also think Aegis works fine for PvE and sPvP where it rewards skilful timing, and nothing needs to be done to VoJ generally.
However, with VoC in WvW anything above a group sized encounter and it becomes useless.
Giving it a 1 second duration, or even half a second would make it have some kind of beneficial effect even in that game mode without effecting smaller encouters too much. You are right that the “zerg of guardians” balancing issue would need to be looked at carefully – I suspect that AoE caps and the naturally scarcity of skills that apply Aegis would be enough to prevent people from generating obscene amounts of damage mitigation – but it’s definitely something to be cautious about.
(edited by Tarsius.3170)
Virtues only need a little tweak, base CD reductions, 15-20 sec on courage and resolve, Resolve passive base needs to be doubled to the base of 168 HPS. If i wanted this i’d lightly tap the healing power scaling just in case it’s a tad bit overboard, and it’s balanced out.. Though that’s all virtues really need, VoJ is fine, VoR just needs a passive buff, and a minor CD decrease, and courage needs a slight CD decrease(VoC is fine because it’s rewarding if you time it on a big attack, the passive is only to passively mitagate damage, the active though is timing/skill based.) .
I played around on the skill builder concerning Healing Power, traits, and VoR – I can max it out (I think it’s maxed) at 735 HP / 3 sec. This effect is also shared with nearby party members, so we’re looking at a decent Regen that’s constant and cannot be stripped/removed unless the Guardian activates it, which is just shy of a 3k party heal. This is with 1824 Healing Power (not sure if it can go higher unless I mistakenly overlooked it).
VoR is more of a safety cushion for the Guardian and the party – remember that every profession can successfully heal & protect it self – tampering with VoR and you create a dependency on the Guardian and/or reinforce glass cannon builds. I’d hate to see the Guardian pigeon-holded into being a VoR machine.
VoC traited can provide 3.5 sec of Stability party wide, not including Boon Duration boosts – so you can essentially with several Guardians prevent any CC to all party members. This does not consider Shouts and Consecrations. Reducing the CD – outside of traiting Virtues, and you got more Stability and Block, both of which are incredibly powerful Boons – imagine these Boons having more up-time in WvWvW. It’s feasible if a couple Guardians simply just time their VoC popping.
The strength of Guardians’ and their Virtues is with coordination in a team, and their weakness is without that communication. GW2 is more lax compared to GW1 when it comes to this – GvG was intense where everyone was watching skills and their activation times. I don’t see this much at all in GW2.
I remember when fighting the Skeletal Lich in the Mad Realm; he would pop his AoE Fear, and a couple of times I noticed when I used SYG! people would just …. stand there, not realizing they have Stability/control. People typically don’t expect that coordination / thinking, and that’s a MAJOR problem.
I’m trying to dig at the root of the problem, and I don’t believe its our Virtues that need attention. I think it’s either the content or the players them selves. Cause honestly I feel the Virtues have A LOT of potential without having to gear/gimp yourself into a shoddy set-up in order to have maximum effects.
So let’s figure out whats at root before we look at the icing on top of the cake. Cause otherwise we’re, to be blunt, wasting our kittening time and being kittenes. I’d rather not be ignorant.
^I think you make some valid points. I didn’t play gw1 so I can’t comment with any experience as far as that goes. I do regularly run Absolute Resolution and Indomitable Courage and I can agree that multiple guardians stacking such abilities is extremely powerful, and also that a lot of people seem oblivious when they are skillfully timed.
Almost everything in this game is extremely short with ultralong cooldowns and ridiculous effects. Compare GW1 blind with GW2 blind: in GW1 blind the enemy couldn’t hit you with a chance of 90% for the next xx seconds (there were build you could keep that up infinitely).
I know you can’t compare the two games, but they must notice that some skills are never used because of this. I noticed they buffed a lot of skills though (like Merciful Intervention heal and cooldown time or Necromancers Spectral Armor, which had I think 90s cooldown and 3-5 seconds of protection.
I played around on the skill builder concerning Healing Power, traits, and VoR – I can max it out (I think it’s maxed) at 735 HP / 3 sec. This effect is also shared with nearby party members, so we’re looking at a decent Regen that’s constant and cannot be stripped/removed unless the Guardian activates it, which is just shy of a 3k party heal. This is with 1824 Healing Power (not sure if it can go higher unless I mistakenly overlooked it).
VoR is more of a safety cushion for the Guardian and the party – remember that every profession can successfully heal & protect it self – tampering with VoR and you create a dependency on the Guardian and/or reinforce glass cannon builds. I’d hate to see the Guardian pigeon-holded into being a VoR machine.
VoC traited can provide 3.5 sec of Stability party wide, not including Boon Duration boosts – so you can essentially with several Guardians prevent any CC to all party members. This does not consider Shouts and Consecrations. Reducing the CD – outside of traiting Virtues, and you got more Stability and Block, both of which are incredibly powerful Boons – imagine these Boons having more up-time in WvWvW. It’s feasible if a couple Guardians simply just time their VoC popping.
The strength of Guardians’ and their Virtues is with coordination in a team, and their weakness is without that communication. GW2 is more lax compared to GW1 when it comes to this – GvG was intense where everyone was watching skills and their activation times. I don’t see this much at all in GW2.
I remember when fighting the Skeletal Lich in the Mad Realm; he would pop his AoE Fear, and a couple of times I noticed when I used SYG! people would just …. stand there, not realizing they have Stability/control. People typically don’t expect that coordination / thinking, and that’s a MAJOR problem.
I’m trying to dig at the root of the problem, and I don’t believe its our Virtues that need attention. I think it’s either the content or the players them selves. Cause honestly I feel the Virtues have A LOT of potential without having to gear/gimp yourself into a shoddy set-up in order to have maximum effects.
So let’s figure out whats at root before we look at the icing on top of the cake. Cause otherwise we’re, to be blunt, wasting our kittening time and being kittenes. I’d rather not be ignorant.
You admitted yourself that these presumably adequate potentials are there when traited for it, meaning the guardian has to give up other things by investing at least 20 points to Virtue. In other words, why do we need to be bound in specific set up just to be adequate? I get it that Anet wants people to learn to activate them smartly by giving high recharge. However, these recharges are put ridiculously high compared to their active effects. What more, we are striped of passive effect (F2,F3) that make up for our low health pool during that recharge duration, rendering us under-performing for an extended time period, while for the most part other classes do not suffer that disadvantage DURING RECHARGE of their class mechanics. What is asked here is not anything extremely overpowering, a current bar is simply to get their recharge reduced by 10-15s. If you might ask, “oh how 10-15s going to change anything”, then you are probably agreeing that even more need to be done.
Virtue of Resolve needs a buff in regen rate. That is all.
5 points in Virtues is a huge step up.
5 points in Virtues is a huge step up.
agreed, ever since I discovered this trait I can’t live without it. its such a huge step up from base virtues
I think there are quite a number of things poorly done with Virtues but I don’t think the recharges are one of them. VOJ works well as it is, VOR recharge is inline with other on-demand heals ingame and VOC is strong enough such that any faster recharge on it might push Guardian away from a less active defense.
I’m of the belief that virtues on their own should be a significant effect. I don’t think traiting or activating should be necessary to get good benefits from them. Even when traited, the passive effects are barely enhanced. Rant over.
(edited by Obtena.7952)
You admitted yourself that these presumably adequate potentials are there when traited for it, meaning the guardian has to give up other things by investing at least 20 points to Virtue. In other words, why do we need to be bound in specific set up just to be adequate? I get it that Anet wants people to learn to activate them smartly by giving high recharge. However, these recharges are put ridiculously high compared to their active effects. What more, we are striped of passive effect (F2,F3) that make up for our low health pool during that recharge duration, rendering us under-performing for an extended time period, while for the most part other classes do not suffer that disadvantage DURING RECHARGE of their class mechanics. What is asked here is not anything extremely overpowering, a current bar is simply to get their recharge reduced by 10-15s. If you might ask, “oh how 10-15s going to change anything”, then you are probably agreeing that even more need to be done.
The purpose of the Guardian’s Virtues is to make a sacrifice between their own survival for the sake of the party’s survival. If you reduce the cool downs then there is no sacrifice and a Guardian becomes a Virtues bot without worrying over the loss of their passive effects. The last thing I want is to be a profession of ez-mode.
Look, if I’m in a party and I’m activating my Virtues for MYSELF, I’m not playing the Guardian right. I should be activating my Virtues for the party members rather than my own survival. If you’re traiting in Virtues its because you want to buff the party more than be a damage dealer – the Guardian is all about sacrifice in every aspect. You trait for damage you provide little support (outside of killing stuff fast), you trait for support you rely more on your team to do all the killing.
Also there are classes that suffer when their class mechanic is not available – we Guardians are lucky that we don’t suffer as greatly as them because our passive effects are just enough to give us some support but not engage in God Mode.
However, I don’t ever feel kitten or like I screwed myself by activating my Virtues. When I do activate them, I feel like I just saved a party members life, gave them more breathing room, or just provided a huge source of damage to everyone.
You need to stop looking at JUST the Guardian when considering Virtues because Virtues AREN’T just about the Guardian – they effect everyone else. 10 to 15 second cool down without traits is just OP – you’re going to be spamming Virtues more often which leads to a lot more heals, blocks, and burns. And this is just from one Guardian.
Straight to the point: they are too long, even when traited.
We are given 3 of them, with recharges respectively are 30 (burn), 60 (regen) and 90 (block). Once they are activated, the respective passive bonuses are gone until they recharge.
As a front-line, guardians’ health pool is typically in the mid teens. Devs’ justification is that guardians have passive bonus from virtues to make up for such low health pool, in comparison with a Warrior. There’s some merits to that justification. But that is also TRUE that, after virtues activation, we no longer have what supposed to make us even with a Warrior’s healthbar, and easily downed being at the front line, we are borderline being the party’s liability. Aside from the fact that the active virtues’effect is quite mediocre with respect to their recharge, remaining in the absence of the passive bonus for such an extended long time causes rather ackward game play: in order to survive,you are forced to limit your engagement in the front line ( dodge or going ranged) which expose the folks in the back. Renewed Focus seems to be a relative remedy, but we shouldn’t be forced to rely on a particular elite skill just to play on regular basis. Given the active effect, each one should have 10-15 seconds taken off their recharge times. AND/OR improve active effects so that it will incentivize people more to actually activate it. And I’d advocate a grandmaster trait that retain passive bonus after activation of virtue.
I don’t think its much of a cooldown issue as it is an issue of the passives being underpowered while traited.
I also definitely would not increase their usefullness if untraited, since if you do not trait into the virtues you have other plusses going for you in either DPS or defense or support.
Currently I run between 19-23k health pending buffs and slight gear adjustments for more or less healing power within the group comp. My active virtues are ok, but I do wish I had better options via traits to make my passives more effective.
The active effects are fine, and even awesome when you start to trait them, it is the passive effect that is so lackluster il rather get a free choice from a Warrior trait. One Aegis every 40 sec, 100 HP/s and a burn every 5 attack, yeah.
Feels really sad and not defining our class at all. And yes, Guardian should be about group stuff. But, diversity please. If we want to be selfish we should be able to be so.
The active effects are fine, and even awesome when you start to trait them, it is the passive effect that is so lackluster il rather get a free choice from a Warrior trait. One Aegis every 40 sec, 100 HP/s and a burn every 5 attack, yeah.
Feels really sad and not defining our class at all. And yes, Guardian should be about group stuff. But, diversity please. If we want to be selfish we should be able to be so.
That’s the thing about the Virtues trait line – notice how a lot of the traits are strictly benefiting/altering the passive effect or its frequency, not the active effect. It’s kinda messed up in a way but sorta cool when you trait Virtues, because the major traits allow you to either buff the party or your self. While Tier 1 is kitten poor on effecting the Guardian itself strictly, the further you go you start to see traits that help both the Guardian & allies, and then just allies.
But ultimately….. if Guardians want to be selfish it’s also very easy to do as they have the deciding factor as to when Virtues are used. I can decide to pop VoC when I’m about to get hit vs anything else. ANet makes it hard for us to be innately selfish vs freedom of choice.
But now we’re getting into the foundation/reason/purpose of the Guardian, which is typically overlooked and neglected. If I wanted to be the ultimate bad kitten I would have rolled a Warrior.
That’s the thing about the Virtues trait line – notice how a lot of the traits are strictly benefiting/altering the passive effect or its frequency, not the active effect.
I don’t think you fact-checked that statement. Shielded Mind – Turns active into a stunbreak. Indomitable Courage – increases frequency of passive, gives 3 seconds of stability on active. Supreme Justice – increases frequency of passive, duration of active. Absolute Resolution, increases strength of passive and cures 3 conditions on active. Inspired Virtue – apply boons on active.
The preference is toward active effects if anything.
That’s the thing about the Virtues trait line – notice how a lot of the traits are strictly benefiting/altering the passive effect or its frequency, not the active effect.
I don’t think you fact-checked that statement. Shielded Mind – Turns active into a stunbreak. Indomitable Courage – increases frequency of passive, gives 3 seconds of stability on active. Supreme Justice – increases frequency of passive, duration of active. Absolute Resolution, increases strength of passive and cures 3 conditions on active. Inspired Virtue – apply boons on active.
The preference is toward active effects if anything.
Touche’. I think I should have specified the number of traits that improve the passive effects vs traits that improve the active effects vs traits that do both.
I think a new set of cooldowns should be 30 seconds/50 seconds/70 seconds (23/38.5/54 seconds with virtues traited)
It would take 10 seconds off the heal baseline, and only 8 if you have full traits for reducing virtue recharge.
And it would take 20 seconds off courage baseline and only 15.5 seconds off with full traits.
With these small reductions of about 15-20% on only the two support virtues, I think it would go a long way to making them feel more integral to all builds and getting rid of that annoying feeling that comes with using courage or resolve. (Its not fun to lose a passive for almost 2 minutes that you are used to having up)
Although I would also be very happy to see cooldowns of 20/40/60 baseline. I just want to show the devs that they can also go some of the way with these changes without upsetting balance, and helping dps guardians to have some defense without needing the virtues tree. (also I wouldn’t mind some baseline movement speed without runes, but I’ll save that discussion for another day)
The fact that you have to go deep into Virtues tree just to make them worth actually activating disappoints me.
Guardians have a very low health pool, and as a DPS guardian I cannot go into Virtues tree without missing some vital traits elsewhere. That means my Virtues are rather poor (besides justice). That combined with a very low health pool makes me extremely squishy.
Virtues really do need a buff.
You admitted yourself that these presumably adequate potentials are there when traited for it, meaning the guardian has to give up other things by investing at least 20 points to Virtue. In other words, why do we need to be bound in specific set up just to be adequate? I get it that Anet wants people to learn to activate them smartly by giving high recharge. However, these recharges are put ridiculously high compared to their active effects. What more, we are striped of passive effect (F2,F3) that make up for our low health pool during that recharge duration, rendering us under-performing for an extended time period, while for the most part other classes do not suffer that disadvantage DURING RECHARGE of their class mechanics. What is asked here is not anything extremely overpowering, a current bar is simply to get their recharge reduced by 10-15s. If you might ask, “oh how 10-15s going to change anything”, then you are probably agreeing that even more need to be done.
The purpose of the Guardian’s Virtues is to make a sacrifice between their own survival for the sake of the party’s survival. If you reduce the cool downs then there is no sacrifice and a Guardian becomes a Virtues bot without worrying over the loss of their passive effects. The last thing I want is to be a profession of ez-mode.
Look, if I’m in a party and I’m activating my Virtues for MYSELF, I’m not playing the Guardian right. I should be activating my Virtues for the party members rather than my own survival. If you’re traiting in Virtues its because you want to buff the party more than be a damage dealer – the Guardian is all about sacrifice in every aspect. You trait for damage you provide little support (outside of killing stuff fast), you trait for support you rely more on your team to do all the killing.
Also there are classes that suffer when their class mechanic is not available – we Guardians are lucky that we don’t suffer as greatly as them because our passive effects are just enough to give us some support but not engage in God Mode.
However, I don’t ever feel kitten or like I screwed myself by activating my Virtues. When I do activate them, I feel like I just saved a party members life, gave them more breathing room, or just provided a huge source of damage to everyone.
You need to stop looking at JUST the Guardian when considering Virtues because Virtues AREN’T just about the Guardian – they effect everyone else. 10 to 15 second cool down without traits is just OP – you’re going to be spamming Virtues more often which leads to a lot more heals, blocks, and burns. And this is just from one Guardian.
I did not ask for 10-15s recharge, that would be crazy. It’s the amount for reduction. And I don’t get this “sacrifice” part. Why is it necessarily a part of the class mechanics at all,? Why can’t we just activate it and still keep the passive benefits which made up for our low health pool? What is the point of helping out the party with a healing (rather low at that) and suddenly becoming a liability – low health and squishy (no regen/blocks) ? This drawback is just random and seemingly no logic behind it IMO.
(edited by quaniesan.8497)
Please do not change virtues. They work fine as they are, especially when traited.
The Guardian’s true power doesn’t come from virtues anyways, but rather his amazing utility skills and weapons.
Its probably all the non-dps guards campaigning for how virtues are fine, l2p. Dps guards all feel every second that VoC or VoR is on CD. I certainly wouldn’t be against a small CD reduction on VoR and VoC. I think VoR passive could use a slight bump as well…maybe get it up to 200 hp/sec without having to kitten a dps setup with healing power to make it effective. I think the trade off for activating virtues is fine…just the down time is a little excessive.
I’d even like it if maybe effects like this were mixed in to some existing dps traits (added effects to zeal/radiance existing traits). Lower CDs, some manner of “on crit” effect for radiance, etc. Put something into those symbol traits in zeal to benefit those who do not have the benefit of symbols on thier chosen weapon sets. They were looking for a way to improve powerful blades…sounds like a winner to me. That way they wouldn’t overpower bunker (valor/honor builds), but would provide a needed survivability boost for extremely low hp dps builds.
While I respect that some people play their guard as a servant to others, I play mine for myself. I do actively pop VoC and VoR when I see my party in need, but I surely will use it for myself if I’m in need. Shortening the pretty ridiculous CDs on VoR and VoC would go towards making looking out for party or myself less of a no brainer.
However, I don’t ever feel kitten or like I screwed myself by activating my Virtues.
This herein lies the problem. There is no “sacrifce” when using your Virtue actives. Passive effects need some help here so that you do feel the bite when activate them. The untraited versions need a bit more, and the traits that affect them need a lot more.
However, I don’t ever feel kitten or like I screwed myself by activating my Virtues.
This herein lies the problem. There is no “sacrifce” when using your Virtue actives. Passive effects need some help here so that you do feel the bite when activate them. The untraited versions need a bit more, and the traits that affect them need a lot more.
Why did you use one sentence out of a paragraph and interpret it out of context?
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