Guild Wars 2

Now, I admit I’m not the greatest MMO player, so it’s possible I’m just doing it wrong, but I really don’t like any of the guardian’s elite skills. I’m looking at all three of them, and finding myself leaning more towards my sylvari racial skills than sticking with any of the blue ones.

Renewed Focus: A 2 second invulnerability and recharge the virtues? OK, not horrible, but I really don’t use my virtues all that much, as unless I’m directly beside other players, they don’t really do much. Maybe that’s part of my problem, that it’s more designed for dungeons or PVP, but it really doesn’t do much for me. Added to that, it’s the only underwater elite skill!

The two tomes offer some good skills, but with a cooldown of 180, I really have a hard time getting a good grasp of what each of the skills do. And, perhaps similar to the above, maybe I just need to be closer to other players when I pop them instead of trying to do my own thing.

So, am I right in that these elite skills aren’t that great, or am I just playing the wrong class? If I’m mistaken, can anyone make some suggestions in how I should improve my guardian build so that I don’t humiliate myself quite so much?

Renewed Focus is really kittening strong if you’re traited for meditations and virtues which is pretty much the meta build for guard atm anyways. You get 2k heal, another blind, another cleanse, two more blocks and stability if you trait that far.

All that stuff on top of the 2s invuln makes it really strong against burst stuff and is one of the reasons why guard is so good at trading damage and killing squishies

Renewed Focus is really good for Medi Guardians if they have at least 5 pts in Virtues.

The Tomes are… well, yeah. They’re for silly WvW moments and that’s about it.

You should be using your virtues, otherwise you are doing it wrong. What are you playing that you dont need them since you said dungeons or pvp isnt your thing?

The tomes are utter trash and you just kitten yourself if you use them, you lose your utilites and virtues and you have to trait to even get stability while using the tome. Renewed focus is very good, but its really only good because its the only elite worth using.

YuiRS.8129:

Renewed Focus is really good for Medi Guardians if they have at least 5 pts in Virtues.

The Tomes are… well, yeah. They’re for silly WvW moments and that’s about it.

Also not terrible to toss Tome of Wrath in and catch that quickness buff in PVE. Wouldn’t call it great but it’s an option when you simply won’t be using focused renewal.

Renewed Focus itself is pretty meh, but now that it’s a meditation it’s pretty strong on a meditation build. But otherwise it’s really just the least lackluster option.

I’m still wishing for a 25% movement speed elite signet. Come on HoT. (:

Shanks.2907:

I’m still wishing for a 25% movement speed elite signet. Come on HoT. (:

If we get a movement signet as an elite it will be rage inducing…. We dont need more lackluster abilities.

Tron.3471:

Shanks.2907:

I’m still wishing for a 25% movement speed elite signet. Come on HoT. (:

If we get a movement signet as an elite it will be rage inducing…. We dont need more lackluster abilities.

They will probably implement a trait that gives +25% passive movespeed, but only when wielding a spear or trident. XD

in gw1 elites were like suppa ver of reg skills. fo instance, the necro one where u drained +4 hp and the elite ver was like +9. i don’t remember/want to take the time to link it.

in gw2, elites are sometimes related to actual class skills, sometimes need to be traited to be effective, and sometimes are just long cooldowns to feel like it will be useful, so u never use it because u might need it during the 3 min cooldown

The tomes aren’t trash at all; people just can’t live without their precious panic button.

I got related question. Which elite skill would you recommend for offensive human guardian (still leveling, mainly pve), is hounds any good or should i just stick with tome of wrath?

renewed focus gives you more burning uptime and more UC uptime at lower levels, so it would be better. Tome of wrath is a dps loss. Hounds are okay, i guess.

RF is love, RF is life, get used to it and put at least 1 point in virtues for the extra boons. The elite while garbage compared to other classes elites allows for some neat tricks like gaining all the boons from SYS without taking 25 stacks of confusion/bleed and killing yourself, you can ignore Spectral Wall/Line of Warding/Shelter if your stability is on CD or you are expecting it to be dispelled, it can save you from big damage if you are out of endurance/blocks, in clutch situations it allows you to pop all your virtues twice. I learned to love it, it’s just disappointing that we do not have any decent offensive elite skill.

Fashion Mage.3712:

The tomes aren’t trash at all; people just can’t live without their precious panic button.

You will never be able to cast 4 and 5 even against bad teams. Against anybody with half a brain… no.

lol by the time you pull your tome out and cast a decent skill with it you’ll have died twice.

It’s hard to see how anybody could die in Tome of Courage unless they’re up against really bad odds (or unless the user has no healing power, in which case, don’t use ToC).

YuiRS.8129:

You will never be able to cast 4 and 5 even against bad teams. Against anybody with half a brain… no.

I pull off those skills all the time. It’s not hard either; just need a form of stability (SYG/Hallowed Ground/Elite Focus), and/or you can position sensibly. It’s not an easy mode skill like RF though, but it’s not terribly hard either.

Fashion Mage.3712:

It’s hard to see how anybody could die in Tome of Courage unless they’re up against really bad odds (or unless the user has no healing power, in which case, don’t use ToC).

YuiRS.8129:

You will never be able to cast 4 and 5 even against bad teams. Against anybody with half a brain… no.

I pull off those skills all the time. It’s not hard either; just need a form of stability (SYG/Hallowed Ground/Elite Focus), and/or you can position sensibly. It’s not an easy mode skill like RF though, but it’s not terribly hard either.

Are we talking sPvP here or zerging? Everything goes when zerging, sure, but even with stability up you are likely to get boon stolen/dispelled or simply cleaved to death.

Dying in Tome of Courage is also easy if you get hit by poison and CC’d.

Fashion Mage.3712:

The tomes aren’t trash at all; people just can’t live without their precious panic button.

The tomes are trash and will continue to be until we can use utilities or virtues. There’s no reason why they can’t be treated as conjured weapons. Also tome of wrath is a huge dps loss compared to a proper weapon rotation. The fact is, you lose so much while gaining so very little.

Tron.3471:

Fashion Mage.3712:

The tomes aren’t trash at all; people just can’t live without their precious panic button.

The tomes are trash and will continue to be until we can use utilities or virtues. There’s no reason why they can’t be treated as conjured weapons. Also tome of wrath is a huge dps loss compared to a proper weapon rotation. The fact is, you lose so much while gaining so very little.

Better yet, I’d love to see them treated like kits, where you can access them at any time but just have the individual skill cooldowns increased to compensate.

THAT would make them worth using.

Black Box.9312:

Tron.3471:

Fashion Mage.3712:

The tomes aren’t trash at all; people just can’t live without their precious panic button.

The tomes are trash and will continue to be until we can use utilities or virtues. There’s no reason why they can’t be treated as conjured weapons. Also tome of wrath is a huge dps loss compared to a proper weapon rotation. The fact is, you lose so much while gaining so very little.

Better yet, I’d love to see them treated like kits, where you can access them at any time but just have the individual skill cooldowns increased to compensate.

THAT would make them worth using.

I actually like the sound of this. Though I imagine the judgement spam might get annoying.

With tomes traited for duration you have 30s of Conflagrate spam, which is like 10’s more than Lich form. You do half of the Lich dmg I think, was getting a little bit over 6k autos in CoE with the standard 4/6/2/0/2. But never tried it to see how much it would hit on real players with a DPS setup. Would be fun to have our own Lich build.

Tome of Wrath deals quite a lot of damage in PvP, from my experiences. In particular it eats up players who spam stealth (thieves and mesmers). The user is fairly vulnerable when using it though; using it without some form of stability is always a terrible idea and typically results in dying. It’s meh in PvE imo, but it might increase DPS slightly via quickness, I guess.

Fashion Mage.3712:

Tome of Wrath deals quite a lot of damage in PvP, from my experiences. In particular it eats up players who spam stealth (thieves and mesmers). The user is fairly vulnerable when using it though; using it without some form of stability is always a terrible idea and typically results in dying. It’s meh in PvE imo, but it might increase DPS slightly via quickness, I guess.

Tome of wrath is a huge dps loss compared to a proper gs & sw/f rotation. You really only see speed runner using it to get the quickness buff then quickly dropping it. If you aren’t trying to set records there’s little reason to use it.

I get it that people want to make things better like, shield, spirit weapons, tomes, etc. But reaching for reasons where it might possibly be good should clue you in that its in bad shape. Because really, if it was viable there would be no discussion because people would be using it….

The only really viable elite for guards in WvW and sPvP is renewed focus, as the support tome doesn’t really have enough utility as the heals aren’t really worth the cost to the player. As someone who runs a burst set-up, seeing someone drop a tome usually means that they are going to drop like a sack of kitten within a few seconds, as the player has no stunbreaks and has to rely on only dodges and the blind which has a channeled effect.

Also to be honest, any serious DPS guard won’t use tome, as it doesn’t do more damage than a standard medi set-up. Renewed is an ok "oh kitten " button but at least it has a use.

Back in the dayz our guild used Tome of Courage aka “Book” in wvw. We usually had like 8 – 10 guardians in our wvw raid team and we had them to use books so that 2 books were active all the time. Looking back I am not really sure if the books where actually that good : D

Nowadays all guardians in wvw seem to run the renewed focus. It allows guardians to get away with running more damaging gear. It doenst really feel like an elite though, for example warrior’s Endure Pain has lower CD and you can still attack while not taking damage.

Other book, the Tome of Wrath is not really good. I only use it to give 50% more attack speed against tequila during the “damage phase”?

The tomes are just way too slow and limited, when that burst comes down you need a heal now, and right now, at 1200 radius with VoR, also clears 3 condis and if u need it again fire off RF and pop it again for the group.

I had ToC for a while trying to get it to work and in large melee’s with lots of AoE pressure it was alright. Locking out all my shouts tho is just too much of a loss on top of how slow they are against any sort of decent spike focus DPS.

As for ToW i thought the net DPS was actually a loss compared to your normal rotation? But it did provide some buffs for the group.

Maybe in PvE these might be useful?

Well it’s not just guardians that have bad elites. From all professions the utility skills are much better than their elite skills. Anet really bombed at making the elites in this game.

Chorazin.4107:

The tomes are just way too slow and limited, when that burst comes down you need a heal now, and right now, at 1200 radius with VoR, also clears 3 condis and if u need it again fire off RF and pop it again for the group.

I had ToC for a while trying to get it to work and in large melee’s with lots of AoE pressure it was alright. Locking out all my shouts tho is just too much of a loss on top of how slow they are against any sort of decent spike focus DPS.

As for ToW i thought the net DPS was actually a loss compared to your normal rotation? But it did provide some buffs for the group.

Maybe in PvE these might be useful?

In PVE the tomes are probably the most useless. You lose your utilies and virtues when you use the tome, and its those utilites and virtues that make the guardian “guard” people. The tomes just dont make up for the loss. In dungeons people will be expecting aegis, stability, reflects, condi clear, etc. And you loose all that with the tome.

Renewed Focus is the only elite worth taking but it’s not elite by any means. I’m really hoping our new specialization gives us something truly elite.

I am glad that we will see a replacement for RF in heart of thorns. I think that the tomes are pretty amazing elites with bad numbers. With the new break-bar in HoT I think that tomes could become viable in pvp since the lack of a stun break would become a non-issue. Since the trait elite focus will be changed, and we will have a special trait line replacing virtues, it could allow for room to give a little extra oomph to tomes.

Rewnewed focus is an exceptionally powerful skill despite how boring it is. It can be used with “save yourselves” to completely cleanse your entire team, it gives a blind when VoJ is traited. It gives an extra ageis to your allies, and can be used with indomitable courage for area wide stun-breaks and additional stability, it can be used with absolute resolution to give you reliable a second or third condi cleanse to yourself or your allies. It’s a skill that is designed to enhance the strengths of your character, however you build.

Personally I’d love to see the tomes redesigned to be a bit more like conjure firey greatsword.

In that it lasts for a set amount of time as is now, does not give you a static boon but instead allows you to access your utility & heal skills.

How is a full heal to your whole group (granted it needs to be timed well) a bad thing in PvE?

Beastitude.6805:

How is a full heal to your whole group (granted it needs to be timed well) a bad thing in PvE?

1 second to bring out the tome + delay + 4.75 secs to cast the heal, not very practical unless you can predict your party sucking 7 secs ahead of time

Renewed focus is actually a very handy elite, especially if traited for in a medi build. Outside of medi builds though, it loses some of its charm, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing that certain elites are better for certain builds and benefit from trait synergies (I think more elites should actually).

In fact, I think this is the main downside for the two tome elites, and that is that they have no real synergies with any guardian builds and only actually benefit from two traits in the virtues line that no-one actually uses for the most part (I don’t think any player would ever build solely around elite skills). Another downside is that when you activate tomes, you lose all of your slot skills and virtues, and only get access to five skills dependant on the tome in question. For tome of courage I suppose this isn’t so bad because you get protection for the entire duration and can heal yourself quite sufficiently, but for Tome of Wrath, this is a death sentence. Without heals, virtues or utility skills to help keep you alive, popping Tome of Wrath is pretty much akin to inviting your enemies over for a quick and rather easy kill. What’s worse is that the damage and support functionality of the tome isn’t good enough to warrant that loss in survivability and utility. Hell, an ele just using a scepter/focus/dagger would be able to offer more offensive support for their party than a guard with the tome of wrath, and they can do it without sacrificing utility skills or class mechanics, that’s how bad it is.

What I don’t understand is why the tomes remove your other skills. An elementalist summoning a fiery greatsword doesn’t lose access to their utility skills, so why should a guardian summoning a tome suffer such an incredible gimp?

I will say one thing though. I have used tome of courage in PvP, traited for stability while active, and I must say that if used at the right time, during a heated battle with multiple players, it can lead to a rather easy victory for your team. The amount of healing and damage resistance it provides can keep your teammates alive pretty easily for the entire duration of the skill. It is situational, thanks to its long cooldown, but still very reliable in situations where it can be allowed to shine.

aspirine.6852:

Well it’s not just guardians that have bad elites. From all professions the utility skills are much better than their elite skills. Anet really bombed at making the elites in this game.

I don’t know. Mesmer elites are all pretty good. Supply crate from the engineer is exceptional as well.

Granted, it sure would be nice if every profession had elites that you actually wanted. Or if you could replace the elite skill with a utility skill

Riesenschnauzer.6049:

aspirine.6852:

Well it’s not just guardians that have bad elites. From all professions the utility skills are much better than their elite skills. Anet really bombed at making the elites in this game.

I don’t know. Mesmer elites are all pretty good. Supply crate from the engineer is exceptional as well.

Granted, it sure would be nice if every profession had elites that you actually wanted. Or if you could replace the elite skill with a utility skill

Many classes have been asking for the ability to replace elites with utility skills since launch.

Most elementalists, necromancers & engineers would love it. I know a fair number of shout guards who would as well.

Riesenschnauzer.6049:

aspirine.6852:

Well it’s not just guardians that have bad elites. From all professions the utility skills are much better than their elite skills. Anet really bombed at making the elites in this game.

I don’t know. Mesmer elites are all pretty good. Supply crate from the engineer is exceptional as well.

Necro elites are good, warrior elites are mostly good (at least I know the banner is), I don’t believe guardian elites are bad, supply crate is good, Mesmer elites are good, Ranger elites are good, Ele elites are mostly bad, and -although I’ve never played one- Thief elites seem good.