Guild Wars 2

I think it would help with the cc problem Guardians have for sure. Just the biggest problem with symbols is keeping anyone with half a brain in them for more than a second. It never happens. Potential damage could be high but it’s nearly impossible with how mobile everyone is

In a 1 v 1 scenario it is a little bit more difficult to keep them in it unless you’re running hammer. In PvP you have the advantage of them wanting to stay in one area however, particularly on points where you want fighting to occur since with the increased symbol size it’s the same size as the cap area. In WvW you’re facing multiple people and it’s much more likely to hit, even if they know what they’re doing. Best combo is to get Zealot’s Embrace off, get them in a ring of warding, auto attack till the hammer symbol is down, switch to mace and then put that symbol down. Another option is to get the ring down, and switch to mace for a slightly faster symbol and get a few auto attacks off as well while healing. If you don’t have ring up, starting in mace, putting the symbol down to start healing and then switching to hammer is more effective given the longer duration of mace symbol. If you’re fighting a ranged class then hammer is your best friend, though greatsword will also help with the leap. With my symbol build (15, 0, 30, 20, 5) and meditations I was able to keep people within my symbols long enough to get 5 downs that I noticed while getting my dailies (Couldn’t tell you out of how many total kills, min of 15.) The symbols will tick for about 500-800 each easily, adding about 1k-1.6k per tick of damage on top of my 1.5-2k auto attacks. Symbol damage would be significantly higher if I used greatsword for Symbol of wrath as it has approximately double the base of hammer symbol.

Edit: Really at this point it seems we need to agree and decide whats powerful, what we consider to be “viable” because SPvP viable and TPvP viable are two completely different things, adding PvE and WvW to that list is a whole nother can of worms

CMF.5461:

To the comment earlier that “Zeal isn’t suppose to offer sustain”.

In the interest of build diversity, I do think that sustain type mechanics should be peppered around the trait lines with differing flavors of “how” they sustain.

Otherwise you are always forced down the same tree and then trait points become limited to distribute else where.

OR

Current sustain mechanics need to be “more” accessible by bringing them lower down the trees.

Zealous Blade, I feel, was an attempt to give dps guards more sustain within another tree. It is not enough though, which is why anet went so far as to let it scale with healing power a smidgen, to see what they can adjust. Still feels lackluster.

I completely agree with this. +1

ODB.6891:

CnaeusDane.2938:

Please give me other classes that have a strong sustain in an offensive trait line. I know most general traits of every class, and I can’t think of one.

You wanted examples of “strong sustain” in offensive trait lines:

Ele: Air – soothing winds Fire: burning fire
War: Strength – restorative strength, great fortitude, building momentum
Mes: Dueling – critical infusion, desperate decoy, deceptive evasion

Those are the classes I have played enough to know well. I consider all of those traits to be stronger than ZB. I am not trying to take these out of context as guardians have other options, but so do these classes. No trait exists in a vacuum.

@CneausDane, I’d like to see your answer to this from ODO. You did ignore this afterall.

When fighting in an area it is a bit easier to utilize your symbols better, but in most situations, you’re fighting one other person on point while the rest are AoEing you down. I think what we’ve come to an agreement about is the fact that the potential damage is there but that’s the case with a lot of the Guardian’s abilities. Just in my own opinion I consider symbols to be a hinderance that promotes static gameplay.

@Lonewolf I did already respond to him.

Warrior: Restorative strength adds a few condi clears. Condis which are already affected by dogged march. Great Fortitude does not add sustain. It may add bonus HP as Necros tell us, bonus HP is not always sustain. Building Momentum is the warriors version of vigor on crit, which is vastly worse. It gives 15 per 9 seconds where vigor will give a bonus 25 just in 5 seconds.
Ele: Burning fire is 20 points in to remove 3 condis, just like AR. It’s a nice addition, but still requires other supporting traits to make full use of it. Soothing Air doesn’t increase survive unless the build already has healing power – which scales in a terrible way.
Mes: Critical Infusion is the exact same as Honor 5 and is also being nerfed. Deceptive Evasion requires a dodge roll and actually hurts mesmers as it easily gives away positions. It can be used through conditions for damage but it’s not a end all be all for surviving. A lot of shatter mesmers won’t run it due to the fact that it gives them away. Deceptive Decoy is the only thing that comes close. And even then it’s generally not trading out the sword training.
Aside from mesmer, none of those can be considered sustain. And even Mesmer is very limited.

I can expand on it however, as it was a rather brief response.
Restorative Strength is rather useless with Healing Signet, the heal skill of choice. It requires actually using the skill. As far as pairing it with Healing Surge it’s overkill. Dogged March decreases the duration significantly enough that many Warriors don’t even bother removing them, often by running condi reducing food. Along with that, discipline offers immobilize removal without sacrificing points into trait as discipline is arguably the second best warrior trait line. (First being defense)

Great Fortitude does increase health, but just increasing the health doesn’t increase the sustain if the healing power doesn’t increase as healing isn’t a percent of the health.

Building Momentum is covered above, it’s worse than nerfed vigor traits.

Ele I’ve shared my thoughts above, and since I’m not as well qualified I won’t expand but will rather ask a Ele main to comment further.

Mesmer Critical Infusion is the same as Honor 5 and is also being nerfed.

Deceptive Evasion is more control than anything when paired with the death of clones cause cripple. It allows an easier time for shatter activation skills, but is actually a hindrance for stealth based builds since it will give away the position.

Deceptive Decoy is the closest I’ll consider sustain in that regard, however, in my opinion, is worse than Zealous Blade. Zealous Blade is a constant heal and increase in damage where as Decoy will help at below 25% health it’s dwarfed by sword training. The sword 2 skill is vastly superior for sustain in every way.

@Arken I partially agree that it promotes static game play in some ways. If you don’t run the larger symbol trait then for most situations it hinders game play, with PvE being the exception. A bunker can easily kite within the area of a capture node in PvP, which is about the size of increased symbols. While running the large symbols as a minimum (best paired with longer symbols) it can be an effective way of “control.” I put it in quotations because it’s not traditional control. Greatsword 4 is the best example of it. Every single person who fights a guardian knows to avoid the greatsword symbol, effectively forcing them to move a certain way out of it. If anet combined the 10% extra damage trait with the symbols apply vulnerability trait it would be much more effective, since most symbol traits are fairly low. That or increase scaling / base to make symbols other than hammer and greatsword a large threat. In WvW small man fights where the people know what they’re doing, I’ll agree symbols are useless. In zergs and general PvP I still see a place for them.

Thought: What about changing zealous blades to affecting more weapons in exchange for the damage, while increasing the base by a small amount? If we included one handed swords that could be reasonable. Potentially two weapon sets, pushing towards DPS build since it’d be ideal with 20 20 30 build. Wouldn’t allow for 15% more crit chance without some sacrifices.

Trying to contribute some without being too argumentative.

I disagree with strength/use of symbols in s/tPvP.

Yes, symbols can hit hard…If your target remains in them for the duration.

Yes conquest seems to promote a stationary style fight, but any experienced person knows when to get off the point if it is inundated with AOE/ground effects. Why stand there and die when you can move off for a few seconds then move back in when it expires.

To add an extra point against guardian symbols in s/tPvP.

The ground effect AEs that we typically see cover a point are done from ranged attacks. Necro wells, Warrior Bow, Ranger Bow/traps, Ele staff?, mesmer staff, engineer grenades, thief bow.

That leaves guardian.

We have a staff symbol….? I have yet to see any herald the dps of staff. Yet I would be pleasantly surprised to see someone make it an offensive weapon.

and

Scepter smite, which distributes damage between all targets in area not simultaneously damages them. Also can miss hits based on size…best for large single targets.

We can even throw in purging flames as it can be ground targeted with traits.

Other than that, guardian abilities require you move into the danger zone and front the damage. Which is why many feel we are lacking in survival when it comes to group fights and zerker speced.

Our mechanics are seemingly adverse to the playstyle suggested with symbols.

On a side note, I have been running zerker symbols with GS/Mace meditation for fun in hot joins and it can surprise people, because most are not expecting damage from guardian symbols.

25/x/30/x/x with 15 points to drop where you like, I tend to just drop them into honor and larger symbols. Again, mobile targets are the death of me.

edit:

forgot to add that the ground effects from other classes leave condition based damage, so it continues to damage after exiting the field, which is where I think guardian symbols are failing, yet no one here I think, believes guardians will be viable in any form of condition play as it is now.

Comparing your build to my build I’d site the difference in honor as the major factor. Also hammer is superior in control to GS. Personally I prefer Hammer since GS is so obvious. Try playing with larger symbols, symbols last longer and hammer to compare, as I’ll try going 25 in. I’d gander that the 10% isn’t worth the trade off to symbol duration for exactly the reason sited – they won’t stay in it. But if you’re able to place mace symbol + hammer with the longer duration it will allow for mace symbol down for 6 seconds, hammer goes down after full auto attack – 2.25 seconds – leaving 3.75 seconds for the hammer to pulse, lasting 4 total seconds, and the mace symbol will run out for a total of .25 seconds where a symbol isn’t up in quite a wide radius. Starting with mace means a 9 second swap time, so 3 extra seconds in hammer to get another auto attack off – time enough for mighty blow and another symbol.

You’re right, symbols do lack a ranged factor. Actually one of my suggestions I’ve considered was to make ground targeting symbols a trait and give the hammer auto a longer range to center on target while giving staff 1,200 range. Would be a grand master zeal trait.

As far as conditions part of that is that we have Virtue of Justice so technically if you don’t use it we do get burning ticks – it’s just not anywhere near as good as other classes. I’d also love to see cripple on the 25 zeal minor. Would force a dodge roll to get out easily and if they don’t would at least get two pulses off.

But it all comes down to guardians lacking soft cc. We have the damage. We have the sustain. We just can’t keep a target in place.

Update: Have played 2 matches so far with 25 into zeal. Symbol damage difference is less than 300 a tick. Much much closer to 200. Significantly harder to keep my symbol rotation up, relying much less on symbols than I am my hammer dps.

I was playing it more of a in/out burst with double symbol drops from mace/gs/whirling wrath as applicable.

I did not like the idea of having to complete an auto attack chain for the symbol on hammer, as it was not “on demand” but hammer would give it more consistency, true.

We are kind of derailing the original idea of the thread though which was “Zealous Blade”.

I already emailed Arken a huge list of ideas – really just waiting for him to give an outside look on them. Plus I had another idea that I listed above for it, give it to sword as well.

Also as far as your build the damage change is significant with greatsword, not significant with other symbols. It makes it much harder to get a burst off. Ring of Warding + Ji + symbol of Wrath + whirling wrath is a fantastic burst but easily avoided. Putting 20 into honor makes it less burst but higher damage over time.

I replied, but yes we have been derailing this thread a little bit. I do like the generalized discussion of how to improve this profession.

I was also messing around with a symbol pve based build, and for that I went into longer symbols, because I agree damage over time/dps adds up. For PvP concentrated burst more often than not helps more, but pressure builds are also needed.

I just didn’t feel the uptime for symbols was enough on mobile fights to warrant longer symbols. I did not try hammer though, so maybe it would come into play more. I simply followed the damage modifiers in the trait lines, 10% symbols, 5% greatsword, 5% mace, so picked up gs/mace.

I’ll try it out, as doing is better than saying.

Unfortunately for me, I pretty much left symbol builds in the dust after fighting intelligent players. The healing wasn’t enough, couldn’t keep anyone in it, it felt like I was confined to a small circle. In a mobile game like this, it’s a little unacceptable. Not to mention the benefit just isn’t there. If it were up to me, symbols would be changed entirely.

I agree, they are lackluster. I experiment mostly to try to find something new or comparable to what we have now.

Ground effect based attacks are useful in PvP, but it needs to be more threatening than current symbols are. As mentioned before, other classes with ground effects, have them tied with conditions, or are spammable+conditions, as well as they are cast from range.

Guardian’s do not have those abilities, so either symbols need to do redic damage….or have some sort of utility/survival tied to them, to make them more useful than they are now.

Back to zealous blade though, I still feel that dps guardian’s are lacking in survival/build diversity.

Monk’s and AH are the primary forms of self sustainability, but invested so far into the trait lines that it limits what you can do. ZB, was supposed to offer “some” sustain in the form of offensive pressure, but it proves to be not enough.

Maybe if it healed for a % of damage done, and not based on a flat number.

Or as mentioned before, if guardians had a trait that had healing power scale off of power, you could have a lesser gain in sustain in power builds, but you would not make current bunker builds even more bunker-y (if that’s a word?).

A % done could definitely change things up a bit. Encourage dps Guards to not be afraid of investing so heavily into power. We’re looking to move away from the bunker meta by allowing for a decent amount of sustain. Percentage from damage done would promote this since you couldn’t spec bunker if you wanted any meaningful sustain.

Edit: You could remove the scaling because even with power, you could just take soldiers and still be tanky with insane sustain.

I like the % of damage done. The new medi heal tried to do that but it just isn’t powerful enough to warrant use. It’s got to be a low percent however. 3-5%. 3% would make a 4k mighty blow heal 120. 5% = 200. I’m leaning towards 3-4%.

Edit: thinking ahead, would suggest making it all weapons but grandmaster.

It would require careful testing. We need to take into account the damage done, how hard it is to land said damage, how mobile the Guardian is, CC of any kind, ect. Reason being is because when you look at say HS, there’s no effort at all but a ton of gain. If there needs to be significant effort required, the reward should follow suit.

Edit: A little off-topic; i’m a huge advocate of risk vs. reward. As I stated above, if the effort is substantial, the reward should be too. This should apply to all aspects of play in this game.

Edit again: I honestly believe that the % of damage done is probably the fairest way to go. Prevents one from being both tank/bursty.

Putting some kind of soft CC on symbols as a master trait seems the best way to go, and switch Zealous Blade up to a grand master trait combining some of the following for it.

Heals for 3% of damage dealt (If using all weapons, perhaps rename it Zealous Wrath)
Heals for 4% of damage dealt (All bladed weapons, remains as Zealous Blade.)
Heals for 5% of damage dealt (If it remains greatsword only, as Zealous Blade.)

Increase movement speed by 25% while wielding a melee weapon.
Increase movement speed by 25% while using a bladed weapon.

If it remains only the bladed weapons, increase greatsword damage by 5%.

Personally I like the sound of Zealous Wrath: 25% movement speed increase while wielding a melee weapon. Attacks heal 3% of damage dealt.

Let’s just use 1500 a hit as a sort of middle ground, that’s 45 health. More than Zealous Blade now, scaling with power essentially, rewarding higher risk (for more damage.) Plus the increase movement speed is something guardians have needed for a long time.
With every weapon, that’s pretty rewarding since a mighty blow at 4k is 120 health, on a few second cool down. It would also reward symbol usage since each tick would heal the 3%.

I could also go with Zealous Blade: 4% of sword and greatsword damage dealt is healed. Increase movement speed by 25% while using them and increase gs damage by 5%. Allows for 2 weapon sets, focused more in DPS. Sword damage stacking will be viable but a higher risk while still rewarding GS in zeal. Like the Zealous Wrath more though.

Side proposal to make zeal more appealing, what about switching in 2hd mastery into zeal? It’d make more sense to be there than honor since two of the three are damage based weapons. It would very slightly hurt pure bunker guardians who run it (though I’m not sure how many do in TPvP over the shield while reviving.)

Make them choose between 2hd weapon recharge or symbols pulse cripple (most likely pulse every other hit) which rewards going 30 in for hammer / greatsword builds and rewards going 20 in for symbol control.

Zealous Blade is good as a master trait. It doesn’t need moving, or really changing with the exception of adding a better healing and to perhaps letting it add to another weapon type along with GS.

None of those suggestions sound very appealing as a Grandmaster trait.

The cripple on symbols, like how the fake patch notes read, would make a far better Grandmaster trait.

I like the cripple on symbol ticks, would definitely help with our CC issue. I’m still unsure of the Zealous Blade scaling. It just seems like it would be a slightly more powerful version of Warrior’s Sprint(adept).