Guild Wars 2

I have wondered this for a while now. It just doesn’t seem to make sense. If we are an attrition class that is supposed to force an enemy into combat then why don’t we have the soft CC to keep an enemy snared and from running?

Anet apparently wants us to sit in one place and chase people away.

TheGuy.3568:

I have wondered this for a while now. It just doesn’t seem to make sense. If we are an attrition class that is supposed to force an enemy into combat then why don’t we have the soft CC to keep an enemy snared and from running?

Because according to A-net guardians are apparently the Uber-balanced class of the game, and any changes might disrupt the force…

Seriously though, it’s been asked ALOT. We have never been given a reason.

This game doesn’t prescribe to that mindset. They focus on ‘action combat" instead of “strategic combat”. Strategic games pretty much give all melee classes snares, sometimes spammable snares, realizing that without it there’s endless kiting. Arenanet wants endless kiting and dodging for this game, so they can’t go that route.

Try immob with your sceptor, pull with your greatsword, or trap them in with your hammer, or block off their escape with staff. Might work once a while.

Worst comes to worst chill with the hammer or knockdown with a signet

OP:

That’s a mighty fine question and one the ENTIRE community would like an answer on.

It’s a question that has been asked since Beta and has NEVER been responded to.

The concept of a Melee ~ONLY~ class not having soft CC… just lawl.

Just Lawl

Susulemon.3204:

Try immob with your sceptor, pull with your greatsword, or trap them in with your hammer, or block off their escape with staff. Might work once a while.

Worst comes to worst chill with the hammer or knockdown with a signet

Soft CC ie cripple and chill. Scepter immobilize does not last very long and is far from “spamable”. GS pull is ok Hard CC (force a stun break) but it isn’t the type to keep some one in combat. Hammer CC is lacking in general but once again it has some deny skills but no soft CC. Staff …sigh you can just walk around the line. You can’t equip 4 weapons at once btw. Glacial heart is kitten trait and need never be mentioned.

A traited hammer zealots embrace is 2sec of immob every 12 seconds with 1200 range. That is soft cc by your definition so hammer does have soft cc.

Plus you have ring of warding and hard cc with banish. I agree that guardian could always use more across other weapons and if Glacial heart was 100% chance then it might be worth taking but to say Hammer cc is lacking in general when 3 of the 5 skills offer cc and you can use a poor trait to add more seems a bit rich.

Sure, it would be nice for guardian to have more soft cc but we do have some

Kreen.3925:

A traited hammer zealots embrace is 2sec of immob every 12 seconds with 1200 range. That is soft cc by your definition so hammer does have soft cc.

Plus you have ring of warding and hard cc with banish. I agree that guardian could always use more across other weapons and if Glacial heart was 100% chance then it might be worth taking but to say Hammer cc is lacking in general when 3 of the 5 skills offer cc and you can use a poor trait to add more seems a bit rich.

Sure, it would be nice for guardian to have more soft cc but we do have some

Soft cc is chill and cripple. Immobilize falls somewhere between because you can’t dodge while affected by it, stun breakers won’t break it (in general), but you can still use skills normally. Glacial heart is a 4 second with a 30 second icd which makes it insufficient uptime for snaring.

Considering I mention almost nothing of hard cc I really didn’t want to make that the main topic of discussion. That being said banish is one of the worst CC skills out there because you can not gap close it. Ring of warding does not allow you to move while casting it and with a full 1 second cast time it is easily avoided. Additionally it only acts as hard CC if the target runs into the ring. Zealots Embrace has a 1 second cast time and another 1/4 to 3/4 second projectile time based on distance to target and its easily noticeable and dodged and/or strafed. Hammer is a decent area denial weapon but not a strong CC weapon. A single target launch with a 25 second cd that pushes your target out of range and a 40 second cd area denial skill that has a short knock down if and only if a target runs into the circle. Hammer is far from a strong CC weapon on this class. Not to bring that class up again but if you scroll down on the hammer page you will see a good CC weapon.

In general our snaring is lacking. The capability to apply snares while using melee weapons to keep a target in combat. Because we have limited access to swiftness and mobility skills my main question is why we do not have more soft cc to keep targets in range?

We actually have no cripple or chill attached to any weapon independently.

Hammer and Mace need to be given Chill or Cripple.

End of Story.

Why the dev’s can’t see this is, well, astonishing to say the least.

It could possibly be the single largest oversight to a MELEE specific class in the history of MMO’s…

No snare for a melee class. Ridiculous.

Yeah, we really need better access to cripple or chill, people literally are just walking away from us to reset fights and there’s no way to stick.

ZoroDaOtter.3859:

Anet apparently wants us to sit in one place and chase people away.

Well said rofl.

I think their design philosophy of the class is just sitting in one spot and keeping others off that spot. But they didn’t think what would happen if the target doesn’t want to be on that spot anyway…..aka kiting.

So while we have aoe dominance, its a useless feature if you can’t keep people there. Maybe they should have bags of loot inside the guardian symbols in order to lure people to come pick them up.

It could be a precursor in one of those bags.

Is there something wrong with Glacial Heart?

Viking Jorun.5413:

Is there something wrong with Glacial Heart?

Everything is wrong with glacial heart. A rng proc based upon a rng proc with a long cooldown and a short duration and only works with hammer.

One may instead wonder, what is right about Glacial Heart.

Aza.2105:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Is there something wrong with Glacial Heart?

Everything is wrong with glacial heart. A rng proc based upon a rng proc with a long cooldown and a short duration and only works with hammer.

Pretty much that.

Imagine if our Hammer 3rd auto attack chain, caused chill… I would die and go to heaven…. And on top of that, if after banishing someone, they would be crippled when they got up…. A man can dream.

Zosk.5609:

This game doesn’t prescribe to that mindset. They focus on ‘action combat" instead of “strategic combat”. Strategic games pretty much give all melee classes snares, sometimes spammable snares, realizing that without it there’s endless kiting. Arenanet wants endless kiting and dodging for this game, so they can’t go that route.

Ohh this is a ‘strategic’ game (although I have no idea what you mean by strategic). Or maybe its just every other class gets to play that way…

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Crippled
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chilled

Aza.2105:

I think their design philosophy of the class is just sitting in one spot and keeping others off that spot. But they didn’t think what would happen if the target doesn’t want to be on that spot anyway…..aka kiting.

IMO Anet was thinking specifically about spvp point capture when they designed the Guardian. In that format, you have a spot where EVERYONE wants so enemies keep coming at you, there’s no need for any sort of spammable soft CC because your foes have two options: fight you for the point or leave. If they leave, you’ve won, no need for CC because there’s no need to chase; if they fight we don’t need soft CC either because they’ll keep coming at you.

Even though they buffed Glacial Heart two months ago it’s still not useful. The 30 second cooldown and the inability to choose when to use the chill makes it a very lackluster trait. You’ll be better of with a Sigil of Hydromancy which has a cooldown of 9 seconds.

Ring of Warding can be potentially useful if you time it right. But you can’t move when you activate the skill and so it becomes hard to catch someone. That’s why most of the time I see guardians use the skill to keep people out instead of inside.

If they could somehow make our elite skill Tome of Wrath more attractive for guardians it could potentially be slotted to finish off players. It has all the right skills: Cripple, Knock Down, Swiftness, Quickness, Fury and a Burn.

Noah.4756:

Even though they buffed Glacial Heart two months ago it’s still not useful. The 30 second cooldown and the inability to choose when to use the chill makes it a very lackluster trait. You’ll be better of with a Sigil of Hydromancy which has a cooldown of 9 seconds.

Ring of Warding can be potentially useful if you time it right. But you can’t move when you activate the skill and so it becomes hard to catch someone. That’s why most of the time I see guardians use the skill to keep people out instead of inside.

If they could somehow make our elite skill Tome of Wrath more attractive for guardians it could potentially be slotted to finish off players. It has all the right skills: Cripple, Knock Down, Swiftness, Quickness, Fury and a Burn.

Landing RoW is simple. If you’re facign a melee, just let them go all out on you then drop it. If it’s a ranged kiter, you need to open with zealots embrace, double dodge until youre in top of them, then drop the ring. Works 90% of the time. You have to land the zealots embrace first of course, but thats not too hard unless they’re just on full retreat. A mistake I see a lot, is people just trying to stand on top of a moving target than drop the ring. This will hardly ever work. If the target is actively moving, you pretty much always need some other cc on them first before you trap them in a ring.

In zergs, just look for the biggest stack of red, roll into into it then drop that ring.

We just weren’t built for chasing but rather to rely on our allies who specialize in it.

@Moleless: Combine RoW with Judge’s Intervention and its amazing

@Merril: While yes we aren’t the best at chasing people down, being able to hold ground is pointless if you can’t keep people on that ground. Because there are plenty of classes that can hit hard then run away to reset the fight only to come back and hit you again once your defensive abilities are on cooldown. To hold ground you have to be able to control ground. And there are better classes at doing that since we have next to no hard or soft CC.

Noah.4756:

Even though they buffed Glacial Heart two months ago it’s still not useful. The 30 second cooldown and the inability to choose when to use the chill makes it a very lackluster trait. You’ll be better of with a Sigil of Hydromancy which has a cooldown of 9 seconds.

Ring of Warding can be potentially useful if you time it right. But you can’t move when you activate the skill and so it becomes hard to catch someone. That’s why most of the time I see guardians use the skill to keep people out instead of inside.

If they could somehow make our elite skill Tome of Wrath more attractive for guardians it could potentially be slotted to finish off players. It has all the right skills: Cripple, Knock Down, Swiftness, Quickness, Fury and a Burn.

Several patches ago they buffed glacial heart to be a 100% chance. Then when they changed it to a aoe skill they nerfed it back to a 50% chance to proc on crit. I don’t know why, but either way it would still useless.

Dynnen.6405:

@Moleless: Combine RoW with Judge’s Intervention and its amazing

@Merril: While yes we aren’t the best at chasing people down, being able to hold ground is pointless if you can’t keep people on that ground. Because there are plenty of classes that can hit hard then run away to reset the fight only to come back and hit you again once your defensive abilities are on cooldown. To hold ground you have to be able to control ground. And there are better classes at doing that since we have next to no hard or soft CC.

Ahh yes, something else I forgot to mention. That combo is epic. Sadly I can’t find much room for JI in my utility slots these days. Judges Intervention would be a lot more viable if it was ground targeted imo.

pls don’t change JI to ground targeted. at least.. when used for “escaping”, you might not make max distance if you’re ground targeting. at least, not as reliable as clicking a target outside range. that being said, i know many that want JI and sword 2 to be ground target. i think that loses the magic, but to each their own. that adds another click for them to activate. sure, it’s only a milli second, but it’s still a millisecond. i think adding ground targeting for these two skills cause them to lose their magic, and no longer as instant as can be.

and yes, still looking for some form fo soft CC. come dec 10, they better have some Chrsitmas surprises for us Guards. or else… bah, who am i kidding. if they wanna run, hide, there’s nothing i can do about it. :///

akamon.2769:

pls don’t change JI to ground targeted. at least.. when used for “escaping”, you might not make max distance if you’re ground targeting. at least, not as reliable as clicking a target outside range. that being said, i know many that want JI and sword 2 to be ground target. i think that loses the magic, but to each their own. that adds another click for them to activate. sure, it’s only a milli second, but it’s still a millisecond. i think adding ground targeting for these two skills cause them to lose their magic, and no longer as instant as can be.

and yes, still looking for some form fo soft CC. come dec 10, they better have some Chrsitmas surprises for us Guards. or else… bah, who am i kidding. if they wanna run, hide, there’s nothing i can do about it. :///

It’s the same amount of clicks, instead of clicking a farway target, you just click on a location. Unless there’s a way of target the furthest target I don’t know about.

lol. u got me there. XDD hones tmistake though. wasn’t trying to troll or trick anyone. and yea, as far as i know, there’s no way to select furthest possible targets.

though, i still stand my ground on not having it change though. i think what i was getting at it taking more time is say for example, you’re trying to get away as far as possible, as fast as possible, you activate skill, you move your mouse and it’s red and having to readjust until it’s green and you might not be going max distance is not as “instant” as clicking a far target, and then hitting the button once. though maybe that’s just me. anyways.

akamon.2769:

and yes, still looking for some form fo soft CC. come dec 10, they better have some Chrsitmas surprises for us Guards. or else… bah, who am i kidding. if they wanna run, hide, there’s nothing i can do about it. :///

From what I have seen it has been asked for but we have yet to see any comment by the devs. It would be nice but who knows. They said they want to make power guardians better, but it seems they are thinking more DPS and survival skills vs what many power guardians know we need (some sort of soft cc to stick to targets). It is that weird situations where something they toss on other skills like filler we simply have none of.