Who designed the base guardian profession?
Who ever it was, it was someone who didn’t understand that the fundamental concept is not something that really works in this game; random defensive team buffs, protective skills, static location attacks, etc ..
It was designed around defensively holding small circular areas the size of our symbols.
Years ago, before huge amounts of power creep through more damaging and debilitating conditions. Lots more range damage. Lots of unblockable skills. Increased availability of Evades and Reflection.
Since then the Guardian has mostly stayed in 2012, while most others saw a variety of power creep across several mechanics, traits, build types and weapon sets.
Guardian recently got an offensive version of ‘holding a small circular area the size of our symbols’ for a couple of months, and then it was nerfed through several extra patches and main patches until once again, the Guardian was no longer competitive at top tiers.
(edited by Ezrael.6859)
It was designed around defensively holding small circular areas the size of our symbols.
Years ago, before huge amounts of power creep through more damaging and debilitating conditions. Lots more range damage. Lots of unblockable skills. Increased availability of Evades and Reflection.
Since then the Guardian has mostly stayed in 2012, while most others saw a variety of power creep across several mechanics, traits, build types and weapon sets.
Guardian recently got an offensive version of ‘holding a small circular area the size of our symbols’ for a couple of months, and then it was nerfed through several extra patches and main patches until once again, the Guardian was no longer competitive at top tiers.
This sadly.
Many of the ideas in guardian design while sounding nice simply do not work well in game because they require things like standing still (symbols) to get the full benefit which the game punishes you for doing or because they try to do things that are done better (often much much better) by other skill types or other classes.
This sadly.
Many of the ideas in guardian design while sounding nice simply do not work well in game because they require things like standing still (symbols) to get the full benefit which the game punishes you for doing or because they try to do things that are done better (often much much better) by other skill types or other classes.
It wouldn’t be bad if guardians could punish or prevent enemies from running away, but guardian’s access to wards is not great enough for that, and it usually screws with their DPS in pve. For example, If hammer 5’s ward was slightly faster and dealt damage on knockback, it would be really cool.
However, Anet rarely (or very slowly) makes large and important mechanic changes to old profession kits, so the chances of seeing anything other than cooldown reductions and more boon/ condi creep are low.
^^ This is what traps are, though it’s arguable that they even do that effectively. For the most part they are of little consequence in PVE or anyone that knows what they are doing in PVP.
Professions are designed and updated by groups. It would be poor form to assume only one person was in charge of those decisions. This isn’t pre-2015 Madden after all.
Fishsticks
DH was the kitten child of Karl McLain so I’m guess he was heavily involved in the core Guardian as well.
As of today, with the departure of quite a few ANet members, balance passes go through a team. No one person is making the changes to a class.
I’m purely speculating but they probably have a pretty big list of wants versus needs for each class. Then they do a stack rank and determine which one’s are logical or just don’t make sense. Then they compare those to other classes to determine what the trickle down effect would be and how that would throw off class balance.
They can’t really focus on one game mode as skills are spread out over three so it is a tough balancing act. I’m not saying I have faith in what they do based on past history but at the least, they’re organized… or so I hope!
I post from a phone so please excuse any references to ducks or any other auto corrections.