Guild Wars 2

I find myself only really using Renewed Focus and even then, it’s a boring elite. Is this really the extent of their system’s designer’s creativity?

Shelter. Love it. Will never change to anything else… unless we get something new! lol

Seriously, what feels like a 2 second channeled block + good heal. Every block you do adds a stack of might.

Actually, I really like Renewed Focus and I hope they never remove or severely change its functionality.

I do agree all Elites should have lower Recharge Times.

The Guardian’s elites are all really useful in the correct context. I have a lot of fun with them all, especially Renewed Focus. Maybe the Guardian isn’t the right class for you, based on your opinion.

Renewed Focus is good.

Renewed Focus for me, as well.

Hmm, all elites suck?, renewed focus was already great before the buff (to make it so it can be used on the move)- now it’s AWESOME!.

More so if you take Virtue enhancer traits.

Tome of Courage is my favourite.

Tome of Wrath for WvW sieging, Renewed Focus for everything else.

Mistfire Wolf is great for a build that doesn’t completely ignore our ability to set things on fire.

They are all pretty boring, I will definitely give you that. However, as others have pointed out, Renewed Focus is very very good. It would be nice if one of our elite skills was actually exciting to use.

I love tome of courage, powerful in the right hands.

They are elite skills not win buttons.

Before I used Tome of Courage almost all the time, then about 3 weeks ago I started using Renewed Focus which is pretty awesome if you have built up your Virtues using the Virtues trait line.

I’ll say the same thing I always do, compared to GW1, all elites in the game suck. I never say, “Oh, I wish I could take two of these elite skills,” instead I always say, “If I could just take one more utility skill.” In my not so humble opinion, all the elite skills in the game should be redone, or at least do something passive when they’re on cooldown. I won’t bore you with all of my ideas though.

Kasei that’s not a bad thought though. I agree they don’t need to be I win buttons, but they should hold to their status as Elite. I think you should post some of your ideas. How else can we get the ideas out there!

Most profession’s elites suck. I too wish they made elites more inline with GW1.

My only true problem with elite skills stems from the fact that most of them you cannot use underwater, for Guardian anyway I cannot vouch for other professions. Fortunately I like Renewed Focus but seeing that I paid 30 SP for ToC and can’t even use it underwater that’s kind of crummy. I avoid underwater combat as much as I can anyway. I’m not against underwater combat I think its a great idea I just like fighting on land better because all the races are land based races anyway.

Ever wonder how many elite skills didn’t make the cut? I’m pretty sure any ideas or suggestions about new or improved elites were probably covered in one form or another already by the development teams at Anet, and didn’t make it into the game because it was some how game breaking or just didn’t live up to the expectations.

Tome of Wrath is awesome in WvW when defending. A few guardians on the other side of the gate spamming their tome abilities will definitely make the attackers panic a bit. Courage, likewise, is also good when defending to heal allies and mass-daze the attackers. Nothing turns the tide of a battle quite like going from 100HP to full.

And for lulz against people who don’t know how to deal with it, the spectral wolf/hounds of balth are hilarious when you get ganked by a thief 1v1. If you have a hammer, they’ll pretty much be on the ground the entire time. Our elites certainly aren’t spectacular, but they do help turn the tide and are incredibly useful in certain situations.

Elites for me are just good, maybe they have too much CD, but the effects are fine.

Elites are meant to be powerful but context sensitive. If i was designing the game, I would also strictly avoid “I-Win!” buttons. It’s been my experience through the years that people who complain about things like this are either: a) not using it correctly, or b) lazy and pissed because the dev’s didn’t include (or took away) their ultra-powerful, unbalanced, and potentially game breaking “I-WIN!” button.

If you don’t like it, re-roll or find a different game.

They’re not very spectacular but the skills are very effective in the right context of things.

MastaNeenja.1537:

Ever wonder how many elite skills didn’t make the cut? I’m pretty sure any ideas or suggestions about new or improved elites were probably covered in one form or another already by the development teams at Anet, and didn’t make it into the game because it was some how game breaking or just didn’t live up to the expectations.

Ray of Judgement from gw1 would be really really nice as a new elite… :x

I actually like the Fern Mastiff. It’s good to be able to create
one and it has been useful at times. I’m unsure about getting
Renewed Focus.

Elite skills should simply have their recharge times reduced.

renewed focus is good if its traited right but come on…. stack that up against thieves guild, moa or time warp.
if i use renewed focus in a 1v1 or 2v2 nobody really noticed the difference… it helps, and at times helps a lot but nobody would REALLY notice, its not swinging the balance. the other 3 i named IMMEDIATLY do.

lets compare renewed focus to the bottom 3-4 elite skills….
supply crate (get the right drop and its awesome)
battle standard … still better than renewed focus.
Tornado.. about the same only whirlpool is better underwater.
mass invisibility… still better then RF
Mortar…. ok lets be honest this is horrid

our best elite is still worse than most of the bottom 4

renewed focus is good if its traited right but come on…. stack that up against thieves guild, moa or time warp.
if i use renewed focus in a 1v1 or 2v2 nobody really noticed the difference… it helps, and at times helps a lot but nobody would REALLY notice, its not swinging the balance. the other 3 i named IMMEDIATLY do.
lets compare renewed focus to the bottom 3-4 elite skills….
supply crate (get the right drop and its awesome)
battle standard … still better than renewed focus.
Tornado.. about the same only whirlpool is better underwater.
mass invisibility… still better then RF
Mortar…. ok lets be honest this is horrid
our best elite is still worse than most of the bottom 4

The more you understand the context of when these elites are used and why rather than comparing them hand to hand, the better player you will become. Unlike most the other elite skills, Renewed Focus has the most chaining effects and if you compile them together, it is a very powerful elite skill.

It’s already been noted that it becomes better when traited but most people overlook how good it actually becomes.

The 3 Virtues do the following when traited

- A 5 second burn on the trot that does a few thousand damage.
- Might to you and all your allies
- A small burst heal for you and your allies
- Regeneration for you and your allies
- On the click block
- Protection for you and your allies
- Each virtue activation grants retaliation
- Courage also grants stability/breaks stuns
- Resolve removes 3 conditions

In addition to the other traits which are effected by these virtues depending on which ones you pick

- Block grants might
- Block burns enemies
- Do 10% damage against burning enemies
- activating justice blinds enemies

Thats a hell lot of things going on from just 3 virtues. Imagine activating all of them, then being able to go invulnerable then using them again. I think the main gripe people have is that it isn’t a flashy skill that causes mass chaos or doesn’t turn someone into a blueberry pancake for 10 seconds. The skill is purely reactive and can easily change the course of a fight through boons and cc control.

Kasei.8726:

I’ll say the same thing I always do, compared to GW1, all elites in the game suck. I never say, “Oh, I wish I could take two of these elite skills,” instead I always say, “If I could just take one more utility skill.” In my not so humble opinion, all the elite skills in the game should be redone, or at least do something passive when they’re on cooldown. I won’t bore you with all of my ideas though.

rly nice thought.
I dont rly like one of the 3 elite skills.
Renewed Focus is a way better than before but it is still not rly good if j dont trait the virtues.
imo they should redesign all the elite skills. There r rly good and op elite skills and totaly crap elite skills..

To the OP I agree the Elite abilities are fairly boring and I think that is the point of the post. I do not think the OP is asking for OP elite abilities.

Personnally, I have never used an Elite ability had the feeling, “oh !@#$” here comes my Elite ability this fight just hit a turning point and I am pretty sure none of my enemies have ever said, “Whoa, watch out for that Guardian, he just used an Elite skill” I would rather spend an additional 30 SP to be able to slot an additional Utility skill over pretty much all of my Elites except for RF.

I mean let’s at least get some cool graphical effects for the Tomes. When I use Tome of Wrath I want to be turned into a giant blue flame avatar. When I use Tome of Courage I want to sprout wings from my back and be painful to the eyes to look at for other players.

The tomes were awesome until they removed stability at that point they became very underwhelming. Renewed focus is decent if you invested 5 into virtues. I wouldn’t consider it strong enough to be an elite skill though. I’d honestly rather bring a 4th utility than any of our current elites.

Just lower Elite skill cooldown across the board, some more than others.
90 second cooldown skills is quite high already.
240 second cooldown skills is ridiculous.

In GW1, Elite skills were usually 1 of two things:
- An improved version of an existing skill (lower recharge or bigger damage or extra AoE, etc, or any combination of these)
- A unikittenfect that makes a difference

In GW2, Elite skills seem to have changed to “situationally better skills that are balanced around really long cooldowns”.

I don’t think my elites suck.

Then again, I’m an Asura so I have access to the best elites.

The elites are awesome, what are you talking about? Renewed Focus is great for getting out of stuff, and now we can use it while moving? Oh yes. Tome of Wrath? Can you say extreme DPS burst with a MASSIVE aoe blast knockdown kitten skill? tome of Courage? REad a book in a dungeon while protecting an NPC, they get low, FULL HEAL ON 5 PARTY MEMBERS? IDK what elites you’re talking about. I love mine.

They need to remove the name “elite” from them, because they are anything but elite.

I can’t believe some here actually think they are great. Many have complained about them in the past.

I certainly find Tome of Courage and Renewed Focus to be good elites. However Renewed Focus is about the same as the Warrior Skill Endure Pain and for them its only a Class Skill…

How can one be an Elite for us and only a Class Skill for the other? It kinda shows how out of touch the Warrior dev is and how conservative the Guardian dev is.

I think our Elites are rather useful but they are on long CD. I would much prefer to have skills that I could fire more often. Maybe Aura’s or something that I could fire every 60 sec and impact the battle, rather than large skills like the Tomes on huge CD. That fits my playstyle. When I played LOL I much preferred classes where you could use the Ultimate a lot instead of ones that were on a 2 min cd. The lack of playstyle choices with Guardian is kind of troubling.

Renewed Focus is great, but I really don’t like the other Tomes. They do not have traits (other than all elites last longer, zzzz), they don’t really synergize with anything else you can do (ToC + Altruistic Healing, wheeeee), and… 2? Really? Give us something else, a shout, a symbol, a spirit weapon, just not two boring, pigeon-holing Tomes.

Relentliss.2170:

I certainly find Tome of Courage and Renewed Focus to be good elites. However Renewed Focus is about the same as the Warrior Skill Endure Pain and for them its only a Class Skill…

How can one be an Elite for us and only a Class Skill for the other? It kinda shows how out of touch the Warrior dev is and how conservative the Guardian dev is.

There is hardly a comparison there when you compare just what refreshing those Virtues can do. All ally burn, Might, Heal, Regen, Aegis, Protection, etc etc just take another look at the Guardian traits

So it’s good only if traited?

It is true, guardians elites do suck compared to the other classes. The sheer fact that most people only use renewed focus and state “It’s good if you trait it!” shows that guardians skills suck. None of the other classes have to trait their elites to make them effective. Additionally, because everyone has to pick up RF because it is really the only viable elite to use outside of WvW shows why our elites are bad.

Personally, I hate the Tomes because it takes you completly out of context of being a guardian. Here you are with your sword/mace/hammer/greatsword and then all of a sudden OHHHH—book…seriously? a book? I was really hoping we’d get something similar to Ele’s flaming greatsword as an elite.

Notice how the other classes elites are based on their professions? Necro has a minion master style elite (lich). Thief, who uses venoms, gets a venom style elite. Mesmers who’s main focus is messing with people and distorting things get moa/time warp. Engineer turns into a supply base/elxier Rangers can rampage along with their pets becoming a super duo. Warriors get a banner, and then we get guardian…do any of our skills have a relationship to tomes? No. the only thing you could “kinda” say would be RF if you really wanna stretch it. How does it relate? Well…i’m not really sure, one of you defenders can answer that. I was truly hoping for like a spirit weapon type of elite since that’s something only we can do, summon spirit weapons. But no…we got books…yay.

regardless, just settling for the best of crap does not make it more than crap. I wish I rolled human so I could get the grenth human elite skill cause at least that would be helpful to myself and my team at all situations UNTRAITED.

Ps. i still do like RF but I won’t pretend guardian didnt get the shaft on elite skills.

Pretty much agreed with Calintz, which is exactly why I’ve stuck with Mistfire so far. I don’t PvP much so the chance of it being killed is pretty low and it adds a not insignificant amount of damage on top of Burning. Sucks that the non-paid-for equivalent is Human only (and that they’re much easier to kill).

You really would think that Guardian Elites would center more around our Spirit Weapons or Burning damage, considering pretty much every other Profession is thematically consistent in that way. Who knew, right?

The tome of courage/wrath suck renewed focus is decent.

No, it’s a 90 second recharge on 3 I win buttons, it’s good without traits.

Tomes are winners in wvw and in dungeons but situational.

Renewed focus is nice with no traits and great with 5 points in virtues.

lothefallen.7081:

I find myself only really using Renewed Focus and even then, it’s a boring elite. Is this really the extent of their system’s designer’s creativity?

they dont suck, but they are pretty boring and way too easy to counter and the thing in renewed focus is that you lose 2 ticks from that node if you are playing bunker in pvp

6 Runes of Lyssa gives you Stability when you cast the tomes (or any elite)

It’s nice.

Tim.9850:

I can’t believe some here actually think they are great. Many have complained about them in the past.

I can believe people think they are great. I for one certainty do.

Renewed focus being my favourite it is amazing!

I can accurately see good uses for all of them, when you combined them with the correct combination, and not just expect to hit the elite button and win.

Unfortunately I think a lot of the problem is that some people do not use them correctly.

The problem with the Tomes is that other than maybe the boon skill on Wrath and a couple abilities on Courage, they absolutely need to be built toward for full “Eliteness.” Very few other Profession Elites by comparison require the sacrifices that need to be made to make the Tomes fully effective. Situational is fine. Underwhelming in 90% of other situations is kind of not fine.

Renewed Focus is all around great, but it doesn’t make up for how lackluster our thematically inconsistent reading material is.

I’d give my kingdom for the GW1 ray of judgement

Guardian elites sucks balls but when traited properly, it can be one of the best trait ever.